I was so busy when I had first moved to Australia that I didn’t have time to write about my adventures of when I first arrived here (I know you are on the edge of your seat wondering what happened).  This is my attempt to right what once was wrong (kind of like a crappy version of  Quantum Leap) and fill you in on the details of my arrival and first few weeks in Sydney.  I am going to write about it a little differently though, it will be less bloggy and more like a personal narrative broken up into a few parts.  Then at the end I will combine the parts and put it into the short story section of the blog.  So without further ado:

I am a professional sleeper.  I can sleep anywhere at any time, just give me a 15 minute heads-up and I could pass out in the middle of a noisy bar or the night before an important meeting.  My mind can be cleared and my senses dulled at a moment’s notice to accommodate a long trip or the need to get away from life and just cease to exist in my brain for a while.

That is why after climbing aboard, taxiing, lifting off and flying for an hour I was perplexed.  I was awake.  I don’t think I have ever been awake at this point in a flight.  This was not just any flight for me though.  This was a flight to Australia for which I had no return ticket.  I was leaving Southern California and not planning to come back for a long time.  I sat there with my eyes closed trying to force myself to sleep thinking of the last few weeks before I left the country.  The goodbye drinks, the farewell dinners, the moving preparations and all of the friends and family that I was leaving on another continent.  My thoughts shifted from the things I was leaving behind to the new world that I was entering.  I was nervous and there was no chance I would ever get to sleep.  Why would I leave a place that I know so well and risk an easy, laid back lifestyle just to move to another country?  That was my last thought until I woke up 13 hours later for breakfast.  I may not be a professional sleeper but I am definitely a top seeded amateur.

Airline food during a 15 hour flight is a necessary evil.  I had a long day ahead of me and if I waited until I landed to eat I would most likely crumble in a heap in the customs line.  My choice was runny eggs or mealy pancakes.  Runny eggs won and I started to deconstruct the plastic tomb in which my food was encased.  Not only are these meals disgusting, they also have to be the most anti-environmental way to eat anything.  Each morsel of food is packaged in its own non-biodegradable home.  They should just go all the way and put every square of toilet paper in its own shrink-wrap or hand out water in little capsules that you pop open, drink and discard on the floor like futuristic peanut shells.

After the plastic carcass of my meal was hauled away by the stewardess I was left to stare at the virtual map which showed my plane moving impossibly slowly across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean to my final destination: Sydney, Australia.  That tiny little dot on the map held all of the things that I was stressing about.  North Sydney was the location of my new office and the Harborside Hotel was where my luggage and I would be living for the next few months until the crate with the rest of my belongings would arrive.  It was also home to the 1 person on the entire continent that I knew outside of work, and I met her a few months before randomly, on vacation in Hawaii.  It was where I had decided that I wanted to live just two months before.  All of that was within the little spot that the video plane was pivoting towards.

Landing is my least favorite part of flying. I am never outwardly nervous but a part of me always looks out the window and wonders how there are not more crashes.  The pilots take a gigantic hunk of metal moving at a few hundred miles an hour and drop it perfectly on a slim strip of concrete a few thousand times a day, every day, with no incident.  Every other task that someone does in the course of my day is fucked up constantly.  How has something that is so difficult been done to almost flawless perfection for so often for so long?   Everyone is nervous during the landing because at some level they know humans are not meant to do this.  A tenth of a percent of me is amazed every time I don’t touch down in a cartwheeling fireball of my own demise.  After we hit the tarmac in Sydney everyone took a deep breath, stopped thinking about their potential death and started wondering where they wedged their laptop case 14 ½ hours ago.

I always think that I am going to get busted when I go through customs.  I had no drugs up my ass, no Mexicans in my suitcase or any flora or fauna that could possibly hump a wallaby and completely destroy the Australian ecosystem yet I felt every customs agent’s eyes drilling into me.  I would usually be tentative about being in the customs line but the flight had dulled my senses and the people watching was too fantastic to miss.  It is like a slide show that kept repeating as I wound around the queue.  First there was stinky Indian business man, and then the nerdy couple in sleep pants holding stuffed animals, and then the chick with fake tits that looked like she showered and did her makeup on the plane somehow , and then the sweet looking old couple and then the confused Asian family who were looking at their own passports like they were in a different language.  Each pass gave me a new perspective to observe the weirdness of the humanity around me.  If airports are a hurricane of people watching activity then the customs line is the eye of the storm.  The quiet calm before the assorted foreigners are spat out upon the baggage claim.

To be continued…

Although I have never been in the Army and am probably more on the pussy side of the scale than the badass side (I’m a lover, not a fighter) I feel like I could relate to them.  Not in any type of military context, since 100% of these guys are way tougher than I am, but rather in a symbolic way.  The previous night I played wingman to one of my buddies who had been visiting for the weekend.

This chick that he had a hardon for is living in Melbourne she decided to come to Sydney with one of her buddies for the long weekend.  Hanging out with this chick’s friend was certainly not me jumping on a “grenade” by any means, she was cute, definitely not my cup of tea, but a cute girl nonetheless.  Chatting up her friend was not where I was reluctantly called to duty but rather with some random old lady whose house they were staying at.  Apparently my visitors friend met this lady a while back and she offered that they stay at her place in Liverpool (an hour out of the Sydney).

When my buddy initially talked to the girls they were complaining about how far the place they were staying was (which it is).  I chimed in and offered that they could crash at my pad.  They, meaning the 2 girls, not THEY meaning the two girls and their old wet blanket soccer mom.  However, just as the mighty Australian fighters did during their battle at Gallipoli, I persevered.  When the girl I was talking to started to spout off racist theories on Aborigines (They have sex in the front yard and throw garbage in the streets!) – I persevered, when the psuedo-Mom was trying to cock-block my friend and I ran interference by chatting her up – I persevered, when the old lady came back to my house to crash and complained about being hungry – I persevered (and made her pasta).

At some point though even the most stalwart wingmen must fight thier own battles and look out for themselves.  I closed the door and retreated to my bedroom at about 4AM.  Leaving my friend and his chick on one side of the couch and what looked like a refugee camp with a snoring old lady on the other end.

The next day I was just about done with the wing-man routine as we went out to the bars for ANZAC day with the same “ladies”.  It was kind of gloomy and I really didn’t feel like drinking much.  If this were some random US holiday I probably would have just taken it easy and called it an early night.  It wasn’t a random US holiday though, it was mother-fucking ANZAC Day.  Little did I know I was walking into one of the most finely crafted holidays ever.

It is a widely known fact that Australians love holidays and love drinking.  It is a not so widely known fact that are huge gamblers as well.  ANZAC day is a pretty standard holiday except it heavily incorporates drinking and gambling combined with a public holiday.  Basically, this is my personal holy trinity of fun (… in the name of the lazy, the drunk and the gambling spirit… amen).  Let me explain.  Apparently the Australian sailors who got their asses handed to them in Gallipoli played a game called “2-up” when they weren’t getting shot at.  This game was banned in Australia because of the problems it caused but for this one day, ANZAC day, they lift the ban.

2-up follow’s Australia’s tradition of simplicity.  Basically, everyone at the pub stands around in a circle with one person in the middle as the coin flipper.  If you would like to bet that the outcome is “heads” you put whatever denomination you would like in your hand and point to your head.  If you would like “tails” you look for someone that is pointing to their head and give them an equal amount of money that they are holding up.  The person betting heads holds the cash until the flipping is complete and the coins come up either 2 heads or 2 tails.  If  ”heads” wins the person keeps the money in hand, if “tails” wins the “heads”  person gives all the money to the tails person.  That’s it.  Simple.  Oh, one last wrinkle – if there are 5 flips without definitive heads or tails the flipper has to do push-ups (if a guys is flipping) or jumping-jacks (if a girl is flipping)… good times.

Like I said, the Australians nailed this one.  They hit the trinity of fun PLUS girls doing jumping jacks. BINGO.  Anyways it was a glorious afternoon.  We really need to sort out something similar to this in the US… maybe Roulettines Day… or Blackjackeen… maybe Crapshanuka?  Ah, forget it…

In the same way that San Diego is a town full of visitors and migrants Sydney is the same except a bit more international flavor and absolutely no black people or Mexicans.  [Insert racist joke here]  There are so many different cultures that find themselves drawn to Sydney and conversations always meander towards the things that people notice about the culture that strikes them as odd.  At a base level it is the same anywhere one goes but the more superficial one gets the more the differences bubble to the surface.  For example:

Sauces and Ice

I ordered a meal from McDonald’s and I asked for ketchup.  They put 1 packet in my bag… one fucking packet.  I can slather that on about 3 fingerfuls of fries.  The next time that I went I specifically asked for extra ketchup.  That time she put 2 in the bag and corrected me (you mean tomato sauce?).  I mentioned this to a friend and she explained to me that Americans are notorious as “over saucers”.  I was never aware of this… I didn’t know if I should be insulted or proud.

In the same vein of the Australian stinginess on sauce they never put enough ice in any drink, especially mixed drinks.  I am a fast drinker and each time I finish my Jameson and Ginger Ale and there is no ice left.  I don’t get it, don’t people want cold drinks?  This is a hot desert country one would think that they would load their drinks up with ice.  I have already started to assimilate to the culture a bit but I like my drinks icy, my foods properly sauced and my homosexuals flllaaaammmming (tip of the cap to Homer Simpson).  I ain’t changing.. USA USA USA!

Look.

This was one of the first turns of phrase that threw me for a loop.  On one of my first days in the office I was talking to a business partner and we were wrapping up the conversation and he said “Look… I need you to do X, Y and Z.”  I hung up the phone and immediately thought that the guy was treating me like an asshole.  In the US when you start a sentence with “look” it is the similar to starting a sentence with “Listen up shithead”.  I came to find out that “look” was a summation word and people commonly start saying that to finish up conversations.  It still sounds weird to me and I still feel like like cold-cocking the person every time that I hear it.

Bar Scene

I could do an entire post on this but there a a few things I can highlight now.

1. No tips - sounds good in theory but in practice it sucks.  The minimum wage is very high and the waiters and waitresses don’t give a shit about you because they are not working for a tip.  They get paid the same same no matter what.  They screw up your order… fuck off.  They pour the wrong drink… fuck off.  I would rather pay the few extra bucks and have better service.  The lack of waitstaff working for tips also leads me to my next point.
2. Booze - For Australia being known as a big drinking culture it is damn hard to get drunk in this town.  Every time the bartenders pour out a shot they use a shot glass and never over pour.  It is a bit ridiculous.  Basically, with the lack of ice I am paying for a lukewarm ginger ale with a splash of Whiskey… good times.
3. Bathrooms - Every single bathroom I have been to is an absolute cesspool.  Even in nice bars it smells like the 3rd day of the port-o-potty area at Coachella.  Has glade plug-in technology not been imported here yet?  Would it kill them to fire up a scented candle?  Half the problem is that most bars have you pissing into a grate on the floor instead of a proper urinal.  Metal floor grates are for slaughterhouses and city sidewalks not for drunk people to piss into.  No bueno.
4. Drinking age - I have always thought that the drinking age should be 18.  I now have second thoughts.  My new position is that 18 should be the drinking age but those same 18 year-olds should not be allowed at the bar until they are 21.  Use the 3 years of bar-less drinking to hone your game and become a proper social drinker.  Although seeing some 18 year-old kid polish off a Jagerbomb and face-plant into a table is funny it gets old when I am trying to chill and have a relaxed evening.

Chicks

Since I moved here everyone asks “I hear that the girls loooovvveeee Americans there”.  This is partly true and partly false, the way I have explained it is that everyone in Australia secretly loves Americans.  They talk shit about the government/politics and the overall “American” stereotype but are very invested in American pop culture and love America as a travel destination.  Women are the same way.  If you come across as the American stereotype you are dead in the water but if you sit back, play your cards right and lay on the American accent you are golden.  It is the same things as a guy with an Australian accent in the US, different is good and different here happens to be American.

Ahhhhh – It is nice to be back on the blogging bandwagon… I am now off for my 5 day weekend which includes ANZAC day which is similar to Veterans day but people pack the pubs and play a coin flipping gambling game called “2 up” that is outlawed every single other day of the year.  Should be interesting…

So before this blog shifts from being about a guy in San Diego to about a guy who lives in Sydney I wanted to give “America’s Finest City” a proper sendoff.  What better way to say goodbye to San Diego than a hastily put together Ultraparadoxical San Diego City Awards Spectacular!  So without further ado:

Best Tijuana Moment – Crappin’ in the Sports Book

Tijuana is just a stones throw from San Diego and I used to frequent the sports gambling facilities that were located right across the border.  I DID frequent them, that is, until I saw a guy get a rifle full of rock salt in the back steps from the door of the bar I was at.  That incident combined with the news stories of police chiefs getting beheaded and piles of dead bodies being found kinda turned me off the the whole Mexico thing.  Before I stopped going though, something magical happened… one of my friends needed to take a shit while we were across the border.  Thanks you Jesus!  Pure comedy… he went into a road side shop, the lady told him to take a hike… he went into McDonald’s, the guy at the counter told him it was for paying customers only (he had no time to stand in line).  As a last resort we went to the sports book (where we gambled) and he rolled the dice on the toilets there.  Now, I have been in that bathroom, it is exactly what you would think of if I told you to imagine a shitty Tijuana bathroom.  Apparently there is no time to clean the Tijuana bathrooms after cleaning all the ones right across the border.  He ended up getting his business done but I am sure there was some hovering involved of or a roll and a half of Mexican TP laid down to block the seat.  He left disgusted, but relieved and probably infected with 8 different kinds of Syphilis.

Stupidest News Moment

There is no hesitation, NONE, when she gets that gobbler in her hand to immediately assuming the position.  The best part of that clip is the reaction of the guys.  They thought they were just signing up to do a quick bit on turkey calls then the hot blond decides to perform fellatio on national TV… classic.

Best Natural Disaster – 2003 wildfires

When I say best, I actually mean the worst.  I was at a friend’s wedding in Arizona when I got a call from my roommate asking me what things I should take out of the house so they don’t get burnt to a crisp when the wildfires swept through out neighborhood.  My girlfriend and I left the wedding then she decided that the drive home was a great time to dump me, which came as a total shock seeing as we had just moved from Chicago to San Diego a few months before.  Wait, it gets better.  During the stone cold silence where I was contemplating the scorched wasteland my house mixed with the anguish of just getting dumped I was pulled over by a cop in Yuma, Arizona who slapped me with a $600 dollar speeding ticket.  After a windy path through 6 foot high walls of flame and a surreal ash-blown landscape (which i chronicled in a short story) we finally arrived back home to my shitfaced roommates in the hot tub, disaster averted… good times.

Best Event – Street Scenes

This was like Kwanzaa, Christmas, Halloween and Flag Day all rolled into one.  Street Scenes was a summer concert in the heart of downtown San Diego with a ton of cool bands.  Apparently the concert promoters were not too good at paying their bills as Street Scene never happened this year.  When I found out that this event was canceled it was like finding out Santa Claus isn’t real all over again.  By far it was most disappointing news I have heard all of 2010… and that’s why the terrorist hate us.

Most Valuable Hobo (MVH) – The Street Crapping Lady

This award goes to the lady who I happened to see on my way to work who was in the middle of taking a shit on the sidewalk.  She saw me out of the corner of her eye and proceed to duck-walk with her pants down to finish up her deuce on the curb.  Now that is a conscientious hobo!

Two of the “best of” headings center on crapping… does that make me immature?  Hopefully people are into poop jokes in Australia or I may be in trouble…

So, I have been away for a while.  Don’t hate me.  I have my reasons.  Just pretend like I am your deadbeat Dad sending you a shoddy birthday gift 2 months late.  Feel free to be happy I care about you but determined to become a slut in 10 years to repay me for my neglect during your childhood.  Wait, I think I took that simile too far.  Lets just forget the last few sentences ever happened.

So for the past few months my job has been toying with the idea of sending a few sales reps to work abroad at some of the satellite offices as a company culture exchange or some-such bullshit.  I was intrigued.  In traditional corporate style they talked in sweeping generalities and the initial conference call to discuss the opportunity sounded more like the musings of a stoner wanting to build a half-pipe in the backyard.  All talk and no substance. *sidenote* These were always some of my favorite conversations to listen in on, the discussion always ended with the phrase “we should TOTALLY do that” promptly followed by more bong hits and never speaking of the crackpot plan that was discussed ever again *end sidenote* The initial plan was to move us out with no increase in salary and no housing or car accommodations provided by the company.  Yeah, no.  Not quite, no one would do that.

I took the initial call with a grain of salt and remained cautiously optimistic then a couple days ago I had an interview with the manager of the sales team overseas.  The interview went well… he even mentioned that he would want someone to start before the end of the year.  He also mentioned a large pay increase and that there would be allowances made for living expenses.  Ahhhh!  That’s when shit got real.  I may actually have a shot at getting this gig and it may be worth getting.  When it was just some nebulous thing that “could” happen it was easy to say, “Hell yeah, I would love to go out there and do this” but when it starts to become more of a possibility the realities of the situation set in.

After I hung up the phone my analytical mind created a pro/con list in my head: Pro – more money and a promotion, Con – way more pressure to succeed, Pro – Sydney is amazing, Con – San Diego is also amazing, Pro – I would get to meet a ton of new people, Con – I don’t know anyone on the entire continent, Pro – I get to use all of the quotes from when the Simpsons went to Australia, Con – I am a douche bag about being excited about using Simpson’s quotes from the Australia episode.  That internal pro/con monologue has been going on in my head ever since.

I am horrible at making these types of decisions.  There is really no “right” answer and either way I will be missing out on something.  Maybe the life that I would take on with a move like this is not the kind that I want.  I would have to totally immerse myself in my job to be successful and I really have no passion for it.  So that leaves me back where I started.  At some point soon I am going to have to make a decision and at this point I don’t know what that decision will be.  Anyways, enough about me and my petty white male problems.  I feel like such an asshole complaining about an opportunity to move to Australia to live, just another reason why the terrorists hate us I guess.

The bottom line is that I may be writing this blog from Australia in a couple weeks or this same seat I have sat in for the past few years… just reading that sentence I know what would be more interesting, but I don’t know if it would be what I want.

After spending 13 hours in the Portland airport I finally arrived back from my trip to Japan.  Honestly, it is not as culturally crazy as many people would lead you to believe.  Don’t get me wrong, if you want to find craziness and fringe culture it is definitely there in abundance (just like every other major city) but at its core it is a city of pretty normal, friendly people.  The friend who I was traveling with was there for work so I basically wandered around the city by myself for about 8 hours a day then came back and had dinner and drinks/watched her throw up from food poisoning after she got back from work each night… good times.  Anyways, there are several things that I noticed that I never had heard about in all of my pre-trip research:

Ice Cubes

Fuck me, the ice cubes in Japan are glorious, I’m not bullshitting.  In my mind, these little chunks of frozen goodness should be their chief export.  When I ordered my first Jameson and Ginger ale it came with 8 of the most solid, crystal clear, perfect cubes of ice that I have had in my entire life.  When I order the same drink in San Diego I get milky centered chunks of frozen refuse.  I could go on and on about this but me being so impressed by this little stupid detail is another “Reason why the Terrorists hate us”.

Where there is a chair, there is a sleeper

It never failed, wherever there was public seating there would be at least one person passed out there.  I’m not talking about a hobo sleeping on a park bench, as far as I can tell, Japan is a hobo-less society.  Every single place there could be an Asian guy or gal sleeping, there was.  Chair at a museum – BAM – passed out Japanese MILF.  Massage chair display at the mall – BAM – well dressed Chinese businessman catching some Z’s.  I even saw some chick at the booth of a coffee shop “resting her eyes”, come one people, coffee shops are for waking up not crashing.  I don’t get it but I like it. I think between the ice cubes straight from Boreas’s loins  to the public napping I could get very used to living in Tokyo.

Trash cans…

… or rather the lack of ANY public trash cans whatsoever was shocking.  I do not know how it is not the filthiest city on the planet because there are 0 public trashcans.  Seriously, I think I saw “a” garbage can the entire time I was there, it was like spotting a unicorn.  I learned very quickly after the first day to finish whatever I was drinking and throw it away before I left the restaurant unless I wanted to be carrying my cup the entire rest of the day.  There are trash cans EVERYWHERE in San Diego and people still throw garbage on the ground – I can’t even imagine what it would look like if people had to keep their trash on them until they got back home.  The streets around my apartment would look like an episode of “Hoarders”.

Jobs

If Tokyo lacks garbage cans there is one thing that is has is spades: employment.  Anywhere you go there is someone doing a pointless job.  The standard uniformed idiot standing on the sidewalk doing nothing – CHECK.  The cosmetics counter at the mall FILLED with employees looking for shit to do – CHECK.  3 people manning the revolving door at the hotel – CHECK.  I think they just do it to lower their unemployment rate but it seems like a bit of overkill.  I’m sure their office buildings are filled with 2 people to a desk, one to work the mouse, another to work the keyboard.

Baseball

I went to a Yakult Swallows vs. Tokyo Giants game while I was in town and it was definitely worth the trip.  It was something I am very familiar with but presented in a slightly different way.  It was like a minor league game except the fans were REALLY into it and for some reason when there was an especially good play everyone busted out umbrellas.  My friend who I was there with was in the throes of vomiting in the bathroom from food poisoning when something magical happened:

…the only white player on either team had “Your Love” by “The Outfield” as his song before he came to bat.  When my friend came back to the seats she questioned if she had been hallucinating when she had heard that song.  Nope.  That HAS to be a joke, right?  It got us talking about what we would have as our song if we played in the Japanese baseball league.  Her choice “99 Luftballoons” in German and mine was “Dancing too Close” by “NEXT”.  I think any song about a dance boner would definitely intimidate the opposing team.

All in all, Tokyo is a fanatic city and I didn’t even mention the amazing sushi, the flawless transportation system or the beautiful museums and parks (or the chicks dressed up like Little Bo-Peep).  Go there.  Immediately.  You won’t be disappointed.

First things first, I typed San Diego to Tokyo into Googlemaps to get an idea of how far I am going to be traveling.  I chose to get the directions by car and this was actually what it suggested that I do:

16.

Kayak across the Pacific Ocean Entering Hawaii

2,756 m

and

32.

Kayak across the Pacific Ocean Entering Japan

3,879 mi

That would be a hell of a trip, but I think I am going to go ahead and stick with Delta Airlines… and why a Kayak?  If I paddled that far in the ocean I may be mistaken for a juice-head once people finally caught sight of me in Tokyo.

Once I am there the next most important thing was entered into the search field “Bars in Tokyo”.  Besides listing out most of the bars in the area pretty much every site talked about certain bars where non-Japanese speakers were not welcome or walking into the wrong Yakuza club can get you in trouble quickly.  I immediately thought how fucked up that was but then I stepped back and thought about it from a foreigners perspective in the US.  If there was some obvious looking visitor who did not speak a lick of English going into a random club or bar here trying to hand the waitress a card with instructions in English while sputtering out sentence fragments they would probably not be treated as anything other than an annoyance or ignored completely.  From what I have seen the US is one of the worst place to visit if you can’t speak English.  I can just picture some beleaguered tourist stumble into Wet Willies and get told to fuck off because the bleach blond bartender (alliteration!!) with hair extensions couldn’t understand what he was ordering.  Ahhh, land of the brave, home of the free.

Getting to Japan – check, getting drunk there – check, now how about seeing some weird stuff?  You better believe there is going to be some bizarre shit going on there and I can’t fucking wait.  People watching is so much fun.  Here is a little sampling of things I want to see based on what I found after typing “weird toyko sights” into “the Google”:

Guys married to anime pillows:

Chicks dressed up like french maids to go to the mall:

Mothra battling Godzilla?

If I even see one of those things while I am there I will consider the trip a success.  Wish me well, at the very least it will provide some great fodder for the blog, and if I do get killed by a roving gang of Yakuza thugs then it goes without saying that you must avenge my death.

Phones don’t work properly – BB (my friend who was celebrating his birthday) got a text a day after his party from his brother wishing him a happy birthday and saying that he tried to call the day before but couldn’t get through.  BB is a notorious stickler about people remembering his birthday and missing it even by a day is an egregious offense to him.  His brother knows this and decided to use the lamest/stupidest lie ever.  He claimed that he called him but did not leave a message and BB didn’t pick up.  Does his brother not understand cell phone technology?  I have had people use this same type of excuse on me before and not only is it a lame attempt to lie, it is also insulting.  Did BB’s brother really think that BB would believe that 1 – He actually called 2 -The cell phone did not record the number on caller ID 3 – He decided not to leave a message on either call attempt.    He might as well have just texted BB and called him a complete fucking idiot… and by the way happy belated birthday.

If you are drunk at a party and scream “Everybody’s gonna get laid!” you better not be bullshitting – One of my friend’s boyfriends was belligerently drunk at a BBQ that I attended and for some reason he thought it would be a good idea to scream that out ever couple minutes.  He said it so often that I think some of the party goers might have expected something to go down at the end of the night.  That is really cruel false advertising.  I think some of the people were ready to go home  but were sticking around so they wouldn’t miss some kind of crazy orgy (well, not really but it would be funnier if they did).  Instead of “everybody getting laid” his girlfriend got pissed at him for some reason and they left… but not before asking another one of the girls at the party if she would “do unspeakable sex acts with Sally Jesse Raphael.  For some reason I can forgive him for making promises he couldn’t keep because that phrase is seven different kinds of awesome.

Chicago is for lovers – Pretty much everywhere we went people were dry humping.  I don’t know if it was because the weather was finally nice or if this is something that is popular in Chicago right now.  Anywhere we went there was some kind of heavy petting going on.  One couple was literally a stones throw from an “urban” family’s picnic and the chick was grinding on her dude.  Hey buddy, tuck your “public park boner” back in your pants and take your humping roadshow somewhere else where there are not children playing foursquare, you deviant bastard!

Second base is a specialty position - the day I flew in the birthday boy had a softball game and they put him at second base.  He was insulted that he was inserted at a position that was best suited for, according to him, “fat lesbians”.  He proceeded to make 3 errors in one inning.  I could not get out of the airport in time to witness this limp dick effort and it is my biggest disappointment of the entire trip.  In the rock paper scissors of life apparently fat lesbian beats balding pollack.

The Wu-Tang clan has a new member – and his name is Mike from Iran (This is an inside joke that only about 5 people will get but fuck off, it is my blog, I will do what I want).

Ontario – “Wait… was that a sign for New York?”

Sophomore year in college I organized a winter formal in Toronto, Ontario.  The main reason was that the drinking age is 19 and anytime I could legally get a drink at the bar I felt much classier when I was that age.  I helped organize the event so I was obligated to go even though I had just broken up with my girlfriend.  I took one of my friends and we had a fantastic time at the party then drinking our faces off in Toronto… until the ride back to Michigan. I was pretty spent from drinking and organizing 40 couples (have you ever heard the phrase “it was like herding cats”?  Getting my drunk 19-21 year old college friends organized was like herding retarded cats… with brain damage… on speed).  The next morning I was a mix of drunk. exhausted and hungover.  We hopped in the car with another couple and started back west towards the Michigan border.

After we left the city limits I said “I’m going to take a nap for a few minutes – WAKE ME UP IN 20 MINUTES – I want to make sure we are on the right track” and promptly passed out in the passenger seat.  I must have been roofied or something because when I woke up and checked out the clock I saw that I had slept for 2 hours!  I asked her why she didn’t wake me up – she said that I looked like I could have used some sleep. “That was nice” I thought… until I saw the sign that said “Kingston – 20 miles”.  I stared in disbelief.  I am no geography major but we may have taken the scenic route if we wanted to end up in East Lansing, MI:

Since I am so mature my first thought was of “Dumb and Dumber” – “You mean to tell me we drove across 1/4 of Ontario IN THE WRONG DIRECTION?!?!?!”  I tried to be as understanding as possible especially when she started crying in the gas station before we turned around.  “It was only a 4 hour detour” – “I always wanted to see the rolling tundra of southeast Ontario” – “Boy these Canadians sure have fucked up highway markers” I said while secretly cursing her non-existent navigation skills.  As we pulled onto the highway I realized that this was my own fault – she is Asian – she should have been in charge of my calculus homework that I didn’t do, not operating a motor vehicle in a foreign land.  After fending off car-bourne insanity for a couple hours we finally arrived home – 8 and a half hours later.  As shitty as it was I think it actually worked out as a bonding experience and a reason for me to try to fight my car narcolepsy.

[Note: In the spirit of even handedness I emailed my friend before I posted this to get her viewpoint:]

From: Ultraparadoxical
To: XXXXXXXXX
Sent: Tue, May 18, 2010 3:22:59 PM
Subject: RE: Against your best wishes

Yo – I am including a story about our ill fated drive from Toronto on my blog – do you have any words to defend yourself that I can include with the story so you are properly represented?

[And her reply]

It was when you approved the direction of choice when passing the awkward penis sign that forced the innocent Saturn and it’s entourage in the wrong direction…

[Ummmm... huh?  Was that Cantonese?  I always told her to stop sniffing glue back in the day but some people never listen.]

I have written in the past about slowing things down and not worrying about making things faster so we would be able to enjoy the things around us more.  I still believe that but I know one thing for sure – waiting sucks.  There are many different times in life where you are required to wait for something with a group of other people.  Each of these different waiting experiences is brutal in its own special way some however are shittier than others.  If Dante were to descend down the 7 levels of waiting areas this is the order that he would go in:

Level 1 – Amusement park lines

This is one of the most tolerable waiting areas mostly for people watching reasons.  Some of my favorites are the white trash couple with their hands in each other’s back pockets – the family who hates each other and is constantly bickering in line – the black family that decided to all wear the same purple airbrushed t-shirt.  Also at a theme park there is something good at the end of the wait… which as we go down the list is not the case.

Level 2 – Restaurants

Who thought that going out to eat and should require that you come into possession of a plastic, flashing dildo-shaped device that vibrates when the table is ready?  I feel like a douche when I get one of those things.  This sushi restaurant in San Diego takes your phone number down and texts you when the table is ready… why can’t everyone do that?

When I am hungry in the waiting area of a restaurant I visibly hate everyone around me.  When a group gets up and is seated before me I just mutter obscenities to myself and hope they get a pube in their “Awesome Blossom.”  Restaurants are still OK though because you are waiting for something that I am going to enjoy, the next few are a different story altogether.

Level 3 – The airport

I always like to be the very last person on the plane.  I watch the rest of the passengers cram together in the line and I am confounded why people don’t just chill out.  I do not understand why people line up 20 minutes ahead of time to sit in an assigned seat.  Once the bags are checked they can’t take off without the luggage owner.  It is a law.  You can be wasted in the bar 10 minutes late for the flight and they either have to wait for you or take your bags off.

Level 4 – Car mechanic’s shop

Every time I get work done on my car I am forced into that stale coffee smelling room that is technically clean but definitely feels dirty for some reason.  There are Sports Illustrated magazines from six months ago that are probably less sanitary that a toilet seat.  I am no germa-phobe but I can’t even imagine all of the filthy hands that have fondled the stack of magazines at that place.  I would rather go down on an Ebola monkey that pick one of those things up.

Level 5 – Doctor’s office

When your immune system is the weakest is the time when you have to sit in a cramped waiting room with a bunch of other people as sick or sicker than you.  They should give you a gas mask to go into these places – the air kind of feels infected in the doctor’s waiting area.  I went to the emergency room once for a split lip and ended up sitting there for over 3 hours.  I felt like such a pussy waiting as people walked in with compound fractures, severe head injuries and other major medical problems.  The one guy walked in with his buddy and literally moaned for the entire time he was waiting (guttural “cats fucking” type moans”) and was puking into a bucket every 5 minutes.  I patiently waited until they finally called me to give me 3 stitches.

Once I am done with one waiting room I get shipped to the examination room where I am forced to stand around in a 58 degree room in my underpants until some creepy old guy pokes and prods me.  It brings me back to my days of being an altar boy (kidding!).  The only thing to do to pass the time is read over pamphlets for obscure diseases or stare at the diagram of the reproductive system… not my idea of a good time.

Level 6 – DMV

The combination of uncomfortable chairs, eye watering BO and cock-sucking employees make the DMV one of the very worst waiting areas.  I understand, I would hate working at the DMV too but no one put a gun to their head.  On a scale of 1 – scorching case of herpes the DMV is about a 9.5 on the shittiness scale.

Level 7 – Greyhound bus stop

The one time I was at the bus stop I felt scummy just walking in the door.  As I walked in to the bus station in Chicago a few years ago I counted 6 bums sleeping, 3 tranny’s mincing, 2 prostitutes hooking and a partridge in a peeeeaaaar treeeeee!  What a shithole.  All of that waiting then just puts you on a bus with these same degenerates for a few more hours until you reach an equally shitty bus station at your destination.  Horrible… just horrible.

Am is missing any horrible waiting areas?