the garrison show

yesterday, one of my roommates started chatting at me, asking me if i’d heard the BANG the night before or saw “the tree.” as mature and clever as i am, i retorted something about BANG-ing one of his relatives and asked which tree he was referring to. he described, “the tree that crashed through the garage.” though he was a day late on april fools, it wouldn’t be the first time he was a day late so i figured he was trying to “pull one over on me.”

turns out it was no joke. half of a fairly large tree split off two nights ago and fell directly on the garage. i’ll show you a picture:

here’s another angle:

so i get home around 6:00 and text jed, my friend i own the house with. then i took these pictures. then i walked over to our neighbor’s house to see how bad it was on there side. then i was almost attacked by a dog the size of a bear. the good news was that it turned our there was basically no damage at all to his shed. he even offered to help us out on the weekend with his chainsaw and try to clean it up. i told him we’d buy him pizza. he laughed at me, kind of the way a grown-up laughs at a kid asking if they “want to play.” cool. then i went inside and, if i remember correctly, beat koon (another roommate) in ping-pong, over and over.

let’s be clear about one thing at this point: i am not a lumberjack. i am not a ‘jack’ of very many things at all, unless they have some sort of keyboard attached. i looked and i could not find a keyboard anywhere near this tree. the more industrious of you out there might have been able to grab your handsaw (scissors or exacto knife) and start going to town, but that’s not really my forte. my forte involves something technological and a warm, soft chair. or maybe a book. if we’re dealing with something that involves any sort of “engine” or “manual labor,” we’ve left my expertise far behind.

given my inability to do anything and the fact that it seemed the tree had already done about as much damage as it was going to,  i was perfectly content to wait for jed to come home around 11. then we could come up with a “battle plan” (using that term makes me feel like i am more important than i am) and maybe get up there and help him throw a tarp over the sunlights. that’s right, i’m not afraid to go up on the roof. with backup.

so i had to do some work last night (which was cool cause i work with my computer…my specialty) and before i knew it i was looking at my laptop and it was midnight. i’d been in my room with the door closed but i’d expected jed to be home by this point - weird. walking across the hall to brush my teeth, i see jed on the couch. investigation is called for. it doesn’t take long to find out that he’s been home a while and has been outside with ryan (another roommate…i know, there are a lot of us) and they’ve been chopping at the tree. wow! let’s look at another picture (from this morning):

from another angle:

as far as i can tell, they did this in the middle of the night. without power tools. what is even more baffling to me is that no one asked for my help. i didn’t even know these things were occurring! perhaps jed and ryan are even smarter than i give them credit for and they knew that my involvement would not only add little value but perhaps jeopardize the safety of all participants. refer again to the above-mentioned lack of expertise.

i hope one of their computers breaks so i can feel useful and fix something. until then, i’ll be indebted.

saturday night, i received a phone call. i was told that it was important i come to mt. pleasant (a wonderful neighborhood in NW DC) as soon as i could. i’ve never been concerned with details and i didn’t start then. thirty minutes later, i’m parking and walking up to my friends’ house.

i was met on the porch and led down the street. as we turned the corner, i could see bright lights and more than one crowd gathered a couple blocks down the road. as we got closer, it became evident that we were, in fact, walking towards a movie set. i later found out that state of play has been filming in DC for quite some time.

so we continue walking down the sidewalk and now it’s clear that the crew is set up just across the street. they’ve got the big lights with the generators and a couple cameras and tons of people standing around. behind them, you can see the small group of locals gathered around to watch the goings-on. it’s difficult to determine, though,  at this point where the actual set is. it’s late, the street isn’t brightly lit, and it’s hard to distinguish any actors from the people just standing around.

and then he appears.

long hair, slightly paunch, shorter-than-expected, but less than 4 feet away — russell crowe. our eyes meet, we smile at each other, silently acknowledging our respective superlatives. he’s just standing there, waiting for the next take and our presence (i’m accompanied by two girlfriends) feels vaguely intrusive, but we’re all good-natured about it.

as we pass, i can feel that he really wants to reach out to me, to ask for my advice on whether i think his character feels natural yet, what i think of the script. i give him my best “i’d-love-to-but-i-just-don’t-have-the-time-right-now” look and he nods imperceptibly. i hate to disappoint the man, but we all have our limits and i just refuse to work on a saturday night.

we continued walking and made it out of the set in another block or so. we joined the throng of the average who were content just watching from afar. after coming so close and having such intimate nonverbal communication, peering at the spectacle from across the street just didn’t have the same appeal and we soon moved on to dinner.

if anyone has any questions about russell, i’ll be happy to answer them.

is summed up by one of the following links:

http://www.zillowblog.com/zillow_blog/2007/03/confessions_of_.html

or

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/any_friend_of_yours_is_a

okay, here’s my complaint. if you run a hostel, it’s pretty obvious that your clientele are going to be unfamiliar with your city at best, right? especially if you’re a hostel in china. so given the opportunity to provide directions to your customers, do you think you might want to come up with something a LITTLE better than, “take bus #361. go to People’s Square stop, turn around and walk 5 minutes.” turn around? are you serious? can i really not even get a direction? it did take 2 hours or so to follow those directions, and that was only with the help of spencer, another in the long line of helpful chinese friends. sheesh.

once i actually got to the hostel (which did turn out to be awesome in the end), i met a few fellows and we decided to go out. unbelievably, it did not take much discussion to reach this decision. what else does one do in shanghai?

so we end up at a spot where there’s a little drinking and a lot of dancing. we’re all standing outside on the patio, comfortable in our maleness and our non-dancing status. i head in to get another beer and i’m stopped right inside the door by a chinese girl. an extraordinarily hot chinese girl. with a halter top. that we’ve all been talking about for the last half hour. oh, yeah.

she asks, “do you dance?” we can all agree there’s only one correct answer to that question in that situation. “yes, yes, and yes.” so my trip to the bar gets aborted and the grind commences. then her friend joins us. suddenly she rips a large sticker, previously unnoticed, off her jeans and slaps it on my chest. and just like that, i’m “#3.” a few minutes later, her friend agrees and annoits me “#4,” as well. other people would wonder what was going on. i had other things to think about.

the mystery resolved itself when an older fellow, presumably an employee of the establishment, unceremonially ripped my stickers off and gave them back to the girls. he ordered them to the stage and it became clear they were contestants in a dance contest. clearly i was not about to take their place, though the sentiment was sweet.

fast-forward a few hours and we’re all ready to go but we’re hungry (and some of us are quite drunk, though not me - seriously). my new chinese girlfriend suggests we hit up a neighborhood restaraunt she knows. done and done. now at this point, there is one of us, a danish gentleman, who is quite a bit more intoxicated than anyone else in the metropolitan area. he starts to protest this idea but ends up going along with it.

now at this point, the story is just going to fall apart. here’s the ending: we finish eating, the girls get in a cab to their place and we get one for the hostel. the danish guy then explains how we were just scammed. in his mind, the “restaraunt” we just ate at was really just a front. never mind that the meals cost a grand total of about $13, it had to be a scam because the chinese girls suggested it. see, the story sucks because it’s not really funny - but it was. it was hilarious. and you’re going to have to take my word for it.

i’ll content myself with the idea that if i’d actually written this when it happened instead of two weeks later, i could have translated the humor. next time.

i could easily try to blame this on my parents. i could say their habitual fear of pizza delivery men and minorities leaves them no choice but to lock the door compulsively. i could say that, but i know it’s really my fault.

i’ve been traveling around a lot, making my driving tour of virginia and catching up with old friends, and this means i keep a lot of clothes and things in my car. i pull into my parents house last night damn exhausted and leave everything in my car to get the next morning.

so the next morning, it hits me that i should do some laundry. for no particular reason, i put the clothes i’m wearing in the washing machine and go out to my car to get the rest. i realize right as i’ve gotten outside the garage that my car is locked and the keys are inside. no big deal.

except the garage door is locked, too.

so i’m seriously standing outside my parents house in my underwear with no car keys, no house keys, no phone. luckily they live in a quiet neighborhood on a pretty big hill so there wasn’t too much danger of being seen by random passerby’s, but there was a lot of danger of looking like a damn idiot all morning.

i checked for the extra key where it used to be (when i was in high school!) and was not surprised to not find it. so i draped myself in a old sheet that was lying in the garage, and bravely walked over to our neighbor’s. luckily, someone was home.

unfortunately, the whole damn family was home. the husband, the wife, the two kids, and the husbands parents, are all treated to a lengthly showing of me in my skivvies while we have a good old laugh about getting locked out. well, most of us were laughing.

long story short (well, it’s probably too late for that), i talked to my mom and figured out where the key is now and let myself back in. crisis averted.

let’s take a walk down a street in imaginary-world for a few moments together.

pretend you’re a judge. an important judge. you make important, political decisions and lots of people pay attention to what you decide. you’re a mover and a shaker. you’ve got visions of elected office and you think the word ’senator’ sounds good in front of your name. you like the finer things in life; your skin itches when not ensconced in cashmere and you have to quash your gag reflex when not drinking antartic glacier-water thawed by virgin seals.

of course, you’re a family man (or woman, for that matter) and you’ve worked hard to put your son through all the right prep schools and finally gotten him into a prestigious university. you’re proud of all you’ve accomplished and all the bright potential of your future. there’s no reason to not think you will be on the right side of the aisle when the lobbyists come calling with gifts.

then, one day, you are forwarded a picture of your son on facebook and he’s wearing beer. literally, a belt fashioned from beer cans hangs snugly on his well-cared-for waist. given the angle from which they hang, the cans are both easily accessible and replaceable. a modern-day batman. as your pride and shame battle for control of your face, you examine more pictures and see him lying unconcious with balls drawn on his forehead and oh, is that a penis about to enter his bare, white ass? why, i think it is.

perhaps that’s enough of imaginary-world. reality: a UK paper gives a brief rundown of some US famous politicians and officials who have recently become ensnared in similar scandals. it’s an interesting piece which pits the recklessness of youth against the sensibilities of the older generation and the freedom of the child against the responsibilities of the parent.

personally, i can’t really think of a funny line to put here to end this post. why don’t you?

commericals are the name of the game today.

here’s a news story about this unfortunate picture which appeared (on the second page!) in the current Ikea catalog. i sorta couldn’t resist spoiling it for you, but it’s still worth a look. it’s not actually an artifically attached man-dick on a friendly little pup but you might not realize that at first. looks like he might be more appropriately called woman’s best friend.

in other news, ford wants to be the maker of the SUV of the divorced, slightly on-the-outs, still caring and trying-to-get-back-in-the-circle-of-trust dad. want proof? here’s a review their ad with a link to video. i understand demographics change and advertisers have to ride the edge sometimes, but this is still a little weird. the looks that the mom and dad exchange…it just makes you ask all sorts of questions you should probably stay away from: why’d they split up? did he cheat on her with a mexican whore on a business trip in tijuana? did he have a closet smack-rock addiction that finally went too far when he tried to mistook the daughter for a tasty bowl of nachos?

maybe he had a dog cock.

it happened. i knew it could but i prayed it wouldn’t. i’ve been living in fear of this moment for more than a few weeks now. i could have planned better for it, but i neglected to. i’ve heard all the meaningless aphorisms: better safe than sorry, safety doesn’t take holidays, look both ways before you cross. i’m not usually this callous or capricious. it’s true, i am an asshole, but this goes beyond simple name-calling.

i broke my last plastic spoon in my ice cream.

you should have heard the stream of invective that flowed from my virgin mouth. i’ve praised the moose tracks before and i sure was enjoying the hell out them then. perhaps too much, for now i was confronted by the tempting goodness armed only a crippled, plastic stick. i did contemplate eating it with my fingers, then shoving my entire face in the bottom of the carton crossed my mind before i slowly put it back in the fridge, thoroughly stymied. i’ve never been defeated so soundly by a dairy product before. i hope i never am again.

UDPATE — when i pulled my strawberries out of the fridge this morning, i think the sour cream and the yogurt were plotting. bitches. time to regulate their asses.

see, i still have no furniture. i think they see that as a sign of weakness.

having trouble sleeping? maybe you need these.

i realized last night, as i was sitting on the carpet at midnight eating moose tracks ice cream out of the carton (delicious!), watching mission impossible on my computer and smelling some funk under my arms, that i’m definitely not an adult.

see, grown-ups know how to furnish a home, eat responsibly, go to bed on time, and clean themselves regularly. these are just a few of the things i’m still working on. i’m really good at organizing, planning, and getting ready to live; it’s actually living where things fall apart. i can make a damn list with the best of them. i know the order the numbers go in and i never forget one.

the walls in my house are as bare as the hardwood floor. art, you ask? let’s just say i’m a minimalist. i actually am excited about decorating, just incompetent at actually doing it. if i’ve got no idea what colors i’m going to paint or what kind of couch or rug i’m going to buy, how can i possibly coordinate colors? you can see my dilemma.

so back to my original predicament. i did eat dinner last night–a fajita from Moe’s–but that didn’t stop me from munching the hell out of some moose tracks. so good! and it’s like a scavenger hunt, trying to find all the little peanut butter cups and fudge ripples. and it’s the best kind of scavenger hunt cause even when you can’t find either one, they’re always just surrounded by wonderful vanilla ice cream. i was i was surrounded by wonderful vanilla ice cream. then i wouldn’t need furniture. i rest my case: mr. tracks is a genius.

and who starts watching a movie at midnight? 14-year olds, that’s who! in reality, i haven’t even started puberty, much less finished. at least i wasn’t watching porn. no comment.

the only redeeming adult quality i’ve got is that, at least for the past two days, i’m an awesome teacher. will that get me to heaven?

last night i put on a showcase. a showcase of what a bad decision it was to hire me as an assistant tennis coach.

the parents at my high school hosted a small tennis tournament this weekend and i got drafted for the mixed doubles due to a large number of drop-outs. with some reservations (i don’t even have a racket!), i agreed to help out. great thinking.

i have to say at the outset that everyone was very polite about my sucking total ass. no one pointed out what a worthless a exuse “just shaking off the dust” was, nor did they actually ask if i’d ever played tennis before. but i’m sure some of them were wondering.

it was a round-robin format and i ended up playing around 24 games with different partners against most of the people that were there. i remember winning 2 of those games. it was, in a word, pathetic. of course, the only reason i got asked to play was because i introduced myself to the wrong person as the new assistant tennis coach. i have exactly “not enough time” to acquire some profenciency before the season gets underway in the spring.

i can only hope it’s one of those tennis teams where “coaching” consists of picking which students should play each other and leaving everything else to the well-paid pros at the country club. i certainly hope to christ that i don’t have to play any of these damn kids.

sometimes, i just hate being white.

no interesting personal information this time around, just some entertaining and informative links. i’ve finally started catching up on my internets since i left the country (months ago) and there’s plenty to share. without further ado:

this guy writes fake obits for names that he gets spam email from. i laughed.

this touched me as a memory from home: a contest to blow up the wilson bridge. seriously.

for the geeks: this router has a 160GB hard drive, a BitTorrent client, an FTP client and an iTunes server all built-in. basically it is a home network in a box.

this baby was born with one eye. in the center of his forehead. be warned, picture is disturbring.

this browser proxy is ridiculous. you put in a website, it gives you the website formatted to look like microsoft word. this makes it easier to look at porn at work.

orgasm or fantastic marinara? you decide.

the story of chad vader, grocery store middle management. i almost peed myself. hilarious. part 2.

okay - that’s good for now. be excellent.

i’m in georgia.

i drove in my civic and my stuff (not that there’s much of it) rode in a van. who drove the van? who’s my only friend? zigler. that’s a stand-up guy for ya.

it turns about it’s pretty close to a 10-hour drive from northern va with minimal stops. if you stop in richmond and visit a couple of your schmuck friends, that can creep closer to 12 or 13 hours.

now, i don’t know if you’ve happened to have been outside at all recently, but it’s hot. damn hot. and it’s even hotter in a 92 civic without air conditioning. and an overheating problem. an overheating problem that forces you to vent the hot air from the engine into the cabin. and sweat like oprah playing basketball on a rooftop court in mississippi in the middle of july. you get the point.

anywho, we got in late, had some food and milkshakes, and crashed like a couple of planes. planes flown by the kennedys. get it?

i get internet wednesday and furniture…eventually. i’ll be starting school (orientation) monday and we’ll see what happens. i’ll keep you in the loop.

when will i post something interesting?

for the second time in my life, i was a total asshole missed my flight.

the first time was much more significant. i missed a flight to san francisco for a job conference. if i’d made it, i may very well be on my way to CA instead of GA…but i totally screwed myself everything happens for a reason and i can’t complain too much. you would have thought i would have learned a lesson from the experience, though.

unfortunately, i didn’t and this time i totally underestimated traffic, lost track of time, and tried to do way too much. suck. i ended up with a decision between flights leaving in one hour (for $180) or six hours (at the possible cost of my sanity). i sucked it up and pulled out my credit card.

at this point, i’m just hungry and tired and ready to be home. too bad i’m not even sure where that is right now…

i’ll be bringing home a trophy to the states. a toad racing trophy.

well, the trophy doesn’t SAY toad racing, but that’s only cause the guy who runs the thing is too cheap to get actual trophies made for the event. he buys second-handers. but i’m getting ahead of myself…

so i’m walking around carins with my new friend dominic, a german tourist, and we wander into johno’s blues bar. the music that drew us in and we got a table and had a few beers listening to the trio on stage. they finish their set and announce that the toad races are coming next.

this may reveal my limited upbringing, but neither of us had ever seen a toad race so we stuck around. while we’re waiting, a kid comes around with a sign-up sheet. a toad costs $3 and it’s only australian money anyway, so i’m down for a toad. i name him ‘triangle’ and explain that i’m a math teacher. inspired. it must be an english-language thing, though, cause my explanation was only rewarded with a blank start from dominic. i suspect germans don’t actually have humor.

eventually, the lights dim and a guy comes out dressed in a safari outfit with a microphone and starts talking up the races. they bring out “the thoroughbreds in their stables” (toads in tupperware) and the guy starts calling people down ot put their toad in the “mounting yard.” it was hilarious. he made fun of everyone and everything without prejudice or discretion. brilliant. “oh, you’re from england? why are is your weather so shitty all the time?” “hello mr. american, your president sure is a sonofabitch isn’t he?” etc., etc.

so there’s 10 toads racing at a time and there are two heats. they take the two winners from each heat and a wildcard and have a championship and that’s that. to make a long story short, my toad won the first heat. it also won the championship though the host was too busy flapping his gums to notice. he was distracted by the hot american college students. evidently my toad was distracted as well because it didn’t even move on the rematch so i “officially” secured third place. bastards. he even picked one of the college girls (anne from ohio) to be the “toad princess” and award the prices. i’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one.

all in all, it was fantastic. far and away the highlight of cairns.

okay, the only thing cool that i did in port douglas was check out this rainforest walk led by an aboriginal medicine man. insane.

the damn aboriginals know (or maybe knew) EVERYTHING about the rainforest. white people would be so murdered within 15 minutes. as we’re walking along the path in the pouring down rain, this guy’s pointing out 5 different plants and trees that would kill you if you touched their sap, leaves, bark, or looked at them funny. he has nothing to fear, though, because next he showed us the 3 different plants that you could create antitoxins from.

“if you get bit by a taipan snake, here’s the one you use to flush the wound with.”

“if you get bit by an hourglass spider, this is what you crush up and grind into the wound.”

“if you cheat on your taxes, this weed will make the IRS forget about you.”

seriously - there’s a plant for everything. there’s one that turns into soap, one that you wash your clothes in, and one that gives you smooth, supple skin. white people would probably try to eat that one. i bought a book about the plants, so if you’re curious, ask me what’s up.

and that was the highlight of port douglas. it did not stop raining - there was one tourgroup that went up into the rainforest and then couldn’t get down because the damn roads had flooded. all four of them.

i bet an aboriginal could find a plant to fix that.

okay, i did it. i didn’t mean to and i didn’t intend to, but i did it.

matt and teesh and i went out to “the pickled pigeon” and wound up in the middle of a karaoke fest. i didn’t ask for it, but they persuaded me to sing. the persuaded me with wine.

i sang “you’ve lost that loving feeling” and didn’t even catch the irony at the time. it hit me a couple days later.

it went over like a lead balloon. the range of that song is a but much for me, especially in such an intoxicated state. i think the guy running the show turned my mike off after about 20 seconds of my singing. maybe he was sober. bastard.

in any case, i had a short life of fame in the bar as people quickly deduced i was american. it was fun until i was exhausted.

if i was a good storyteller, you’d be laughing by now.

i went into a library last night. i can hear you all now - “you’re on vacation, why are you in a library??” but it’s MY vacation and i wanted to go into a library so stuff it!

anyway, the point is that books are another place where the US and australia are radically different. for example, they think science fiction actually qualifies as fiction. they lump it in there with all the rest, and they seem to like it quite a bit. if you’re a trekkie, you need to relocate down under and find some social acceptance.

books are also ridiculously expensive. a frickin’ paperback at borders (yes, they have borders) is like $30!! there aren’t any presses here so all the books have to get shipped and you sure do end up paying for it.

okay, enough with the book talk. i’m going back to surfing and drinking and smashing australian women.

right.

so i’m walking around downtown just sort of checking out the sites and getting a feel for environment. auckland is trendy but edgy; there something here that wants to be new york, but it can’t quite cut it. anyhoo, i drop into a clothing shop to peek at the fashions and strike up a convo with one of the fellows working there. sidenote: these kiwi’s are nice as hell!

he’s got a friend in the store, a young lady, and we happen to leave the store at the same time. we chat on the sidewalk, she invites me across the street for a cup of coffee and inquires what my plans are. of course, at the point i’m not really making plans for more than the next 20 feet or so of storefront, so it’s not a lie when i confess i haven’t got any.

she invites me to an 80’s party. on a farm. in new zealand.
i’m not joking. it’s a 21st birthday party of a friend of a friend, tons of people will be there, you can hitch a ride with us, all locals, etc, etc. so obviously i’m in. we hang around the rest of the afternoon, meet up with a couple of her flatmates, buy some 80’s garb, and pile in the car.

THREE HOURS LATER we arrive at the dairy farm of the party. there’s a band. there’s more than one keg. there’s a lamb carcass inside. it’s a new zealand party, what can i say. there are probably 120 people there and i quickly become known as “that crazy fucking american.” oh, it was a great time.

my personal highlight was my new french friend telling me, “if you weren’t here, we would have to invent you.”

as soon as i can, i’ll get some pics uploaded. in the meantime, just ponder…who flies thousands of miles to a foreign country to celebrate bon jovi and madonna?? i didn’t even think they HAD the 80’s outside of the us…look what an idiot i am.

oh, did i mention the name of the band? Furious Masturbation. i like new zealand.

i am about to lay my head down on the soft, cushiony warmth of an air mattress, courtesy of ransford. he picked me up from the airport only moments ago after a very long flight.

it’s not a good sign that a four hour flight felt long. tomorrow night i’ve got 14 hours in the air in front of me. of course, take off is at 11:00 pm so i will make sure i’m asleep for as much of that as i can be. which shouldn’t be difficult considering i used to sleep through my mom vacuuming my face when i was a kid.

finally, suzy q (yes, that’s her REAL NAME) has posted a photo gallery of our goodbye/birthday party. i pretty much look like a douche in most of the pictures, but what’s new.

koon, if you’re out there and you want to upload your photos to some online sharing thing, i’ll post the link. and the videos. of the keg tossing. you don’t want to know.