Another trip to Zagreb, rehearsal for the new season of kviskoteka. Each round has four contestants, and this being the first after a few years' break, they managed to get mostly veterans from previous seasons into the first four. I was among the four backbenchers, invited to get acquainted with the process and to jump in if one of the first four can't.
Which is just about great, a tour at others' expense. I didn't go straight to Morkec but flitted to Sesvete first, to see Lajna. I found the house quite easily, despite it being exactly ten years since the last time. We even kissed, sort of, but... fuckit, what a mess. Unheated, things dropped just about anywhere, altogether chaos, and she also doesn't look half the chick I remembered, all disheveled, wearing stuff picked by neither shape nor color, but by how much heat they provide. It's not that I'm any kind of pedant or neatness freak, but this... She was, as usual, in some kind of fright, there was an oil stain on her passport, from oil used to dissolve who knows what, and she and her dear need to go somewhere, and the passport is just expiring and she needs a new one, what if the cops get wise about the oil, or they notice when crossing... She also mentioned wanting to clean up, so she can get pregnant, to take nothing for several months. Fuck the junkie's life, that's not for me. I mumbled something, stayed for no longer than two cigarettes, and vanished back to town.
Morkec was in far better shape, poured some of his whiskey, ran the VHS tapes of their summer house somewhere on Kvarner. The lunch was imperial, and eventually I caught the treska (tresak is a sound when something falls with a serious thud; treska is a general din of such sounds; in Zagreb, treska is an electric tram) and got to the TV building. Not the same place as testing, that one time they rented space from some radnički univerzitet (roughly equivalent to a community college), I wouldn't be able to find it now. We first sat a couple of hours in some small room with Lazo Goluža and I'd guess the director's secretary, and two or three others who entered and went. He explained everything in detail, at least the part we couldn't see onscreen before. Everything is shot on monday, broadcast on thursday. No smoking in the studio. To present yourself, step exactly on the X mark near Oliver, that's where the mike and camera are pointed to. Ignore the secretary, she's there for the audience and staff.
Good preparation, I saw all I needed to. Next week, we play for real.
Then got drunk with Morkec's gang again, no idea where we went, gemišt after gemišt.
On saturday Oma slaughtered the pigs. Her father once made some contraption out of an old washer and wood stove, to serve as a smoker. He even fit the transparent washer's door as a window to check the insides. It was stored in the back of the yard, behind the pigpen, and Oma and I brought it in. I don't enjoy doing anything with her, as her style is quick rough and and rush straight on, and this thing had bent corners and sharp edges. It didn't bother her at all, and I ended up with a scratch on my temple [fucken english, sounds like I'm a religion].
My role was to, once we tip the hog, kneel on the upper ham and hold the lower one tight, so the pig can't find purchase to get up, until Arpi slits her throat (which was his father's job until two years ago), and keep it so until there's at least two liters of blood gathered in the pot. That's when you may let go, it won't go anywhere. Less than that, it could still happen (of which I heard stories, and once, as a kid, even observed) that the hog runs around the yard, insane and dangerous. I've heard cases when only a pistol could stop it. But either way, the job would be done in a day. The sausages would be hung in the smoker the next day.
7-V-2021 - 31-X-2025