He has Emotional Responses. Wait, he has emotions?

Actor/College Friend Nikko Kimzin is currently traveling Europe with the international tour of West Side Story. His blog  can be found here. As he writes I will translate his thoughts and add commentary on his experiences, not with the hope of anyone actually reading them, but for my own entertainment. It's like Whatever Martha, only international. 


When I set out on this little venture to poke fun at my best friend I could not have possibly foreseen how exhausting his blog would become. Clearly I'm very behind in translating his blog/keeping anything consistent happening on this blog. Thankfully, he seems to be equally incapable of keeping it up. The good news is, this proves that our lives are so busy it is close to impossible to prioritize an online presence. Maybe that's true for him, I'm just somehow bored and overwhelmed at the same time - a state I like to call: exhausted.

In Nikko's update "Gutten First Week" there's a lot happening. First and foremost, he's having a good time and showing a lot of gratitude. I think it is moments like this where people have the most trouble understanding Nikko. At first his wishing we could all experience the excitement of his life comes across pretty rough. In fact I'm pretty sure it took me a week to get past,


"And for real for a sec, if I could gift something to you I would invite all of you to be a fly on the wall in the rehearsal room so you would be inspired to be a part of something bigger than yourself: a message of hope". 

Because I couldn't help but translate that as, 


"If only your life were as cool as mine. If only you were on an international tour that isn't only cool and fun but also socially aware, giving people a sense hope. HOPE. Like what are you even doing? Ugh. Be me" 

But I don't think that's what he's trying to do. When Nikko is passionate about a project he really does get very excited about it and wants to share it with everyone. It's actually pretty safe to say that he gets that way when he's passionate about anything. If it anything it helps to explain his choice of profession - the whole sharing of feelings in a public arena thing. As for the gushing about how  relevant West Side Story is to contemporary culture, he's not wrong but he's not also not terribly original. It's kind of the bread and butter of anyone who's working on anything written longer than 3 years ago. I'm interested to know the German perspective but he's clearly too offensive to talk to anyone. 

I will admit that I'm super jealous of the cool places that he is going to in Berlin. Especially the Holocaust Memorial which is also knows as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, or as Nikko kindly puts it "The Jewish Memorial." If you ever get the chance to go to a museum with Nikko, GO. His attention span isn't terribly long (which is nice because people tend to drag out museum visits to try to prove something) but he really appreciates things that are beautiful or historically significant. I'm glad he learned the word somber because it is actually a great way to describe how he gets.

The story about ordering the pastry in fake German. Well. I mean listen. It's a lot. I'm willing to bet that if Hilary had her choice, she'd deport him back to America. If America had her choice, she'd give him back to Mexico. But then what would I have to talk about?