Ball and Biscuit

Here's another Fest story halfway shrouded in booze and memory.

I was headed back to my room at the Hampton Inn the second night of Fest. As a middle aged man who had spent the day drinking and listening to loud music I was very glad Hampton Inn was within walking distance of everything.

I was feeling good. My ears were ringing and I was tired, but I was nice and drunkhappy. I was thinking about the last full Fest I had attended five years or so ago and how I felt like a completely different person. While I had an awesome time both times, there was a desperation last time - sort of a yearning need to blow out my system and ...I dunno, feel something, some sort of connection with people again or something. This time I was a little older and more centered, and was just focused on catching up with friends and bands and getting drunk.

I was holding on to that feeling as I settled into the Hampton Inn's elevator, an elevator so slow that I'm pretty sure it is powered by a Donkey Kong-like gorilla pulling the cable up and down.

I wasn't alone in my reveries. A group of British Fest goers was in the other corner. They didn't pay attention to me, as they were engaged in culinary conversation.

"Oi mate, that wasn't really gravy was it?"

"Blimey, and what they called biscuits was bleedin' huge and doughy. Nobody could eat that for breakfast, guv'nor."

It took a while to cut through all the gin and tinnitus and sleepy, but it slowly registered that these limeys were dissing biscuits and gravy, here in central Florida.

The nerve of these foreigners. Gainesville had put on an amazing music festival for them and they were gonna malign biscuits and gravy? You didn't hear me disparaging British cuisine when I was over there - no, I kept my comments stateside out of respect for their ...Queen or whatever. Plus, those people riot over soccer games, who knows what would happen if they heard my irreverent take on spotted dick, which I'm sure they had never heard before.

They might have well been bad-mouthing Steve Spurrier or Tom Petty (As a side note, I can think of at least three houses in Gainesville that I was assured were Tom Petty's old house. Dude got around).

I wasn't going to take this lying down. As a Southern gentleman, I was considering challenging them to a duel, but I think the limeys invented that game, so instead I just burst out with a incredulous "Whaaaaaat?"

That broke the ice. "What kind of gravy did you expect? And your biscuits are cookies. Why would you expect cookies for breakfast?" (I hoped they hadn't heard about Cookie Crisp cereal, or my argument would be invalid).

I actually meant my remarks to be in the nature of good-minded fun, but I did notice they visibly recoiled from my outburst. Then again, if I were trapped in an elevator with a dude twice my age ranting about cookies and gravy, I'm not sure if I'd be able to discern the feeling behind the words either.

We soon patched things up and hurled a few good-natured insults back and forth, all of which are lost in time, unless they've got the internet over in England and they happen to read this and can get back to me.

A week later, my country elected a TV con man to be President of the United States, so I guess they really showed me up, after all.

I Have Become the Worst Thing in Showbusiness. I Have Become a Ham.

Mid '90s: It's about 2 AM and I'm walking home from a sophisticated social engagement. It's a nice fall morning, and I'm slightly drunk, doing what will later be termed my "gay walk," which is sort of a lumbering, shuffling, pigeon-toed Frankenstein gait that comes out when I get drunk or really sleepy or tired of wandering through fabric stores.

Even though it's easy enough to get a ride home, it's always nice to sneak out alone from a party or show and walk home alone through the cool night air with my ears ringing, my head spinning, thinking up ideas and plans, feeling alive and young and at one with the universe, thinking that I've found exactly the place I need to be at, here in Gainesville, Florida.

I'm shuffling down the sidewalk a few blocks from my house. I'm thinking of a Radon or Spoke song and kicking stuff out of my way. "Out of my way, trash! I'm walking here! Out of my way, stupid can! Look at that big piece of burnt driftwood in the sidewalk. I'm gonna kick the hell out of you, just for being in my way, and because I'm young and drunk."

I connect with pretty good force, but the driftwood doesn't fly away. Instead, making a gross "thunk" sound. Hey, this isn't driftwood at all. And, come to think of it, why would there be driftwood in the middle of a sidewalk in Gainesville, miles from the ocean? Oh, this driftwood has teeth.

Holy crap, that was a burnt pig head.

I look at it, all black and burnt. I'm pretty sure it starts crying at me. I'm sort of grossed out, but also bewildered. Why would there be a burnt pig head in the middle of the sidewalk?

Early '00s: I spend early Christmas Day morning in my in-law's guest bathroom reenacting Evil Dead 2, at least the parts that deal with fluids exploding out of a sweaty, sleepy body. "It was the ham," I think. "That evil, evil ham."

The ham had been sitting out for a while the night before, and I thought that it should have been refrigerated. Guess I was right, but winning doesn't feel so good.

So if you invite me to your house and serve ham, I'll eat the leathery, salty, inferior-to-turkey meat. But I'll be thinking of sad burnt pig's heads and terrible Christmases.

The Earl of Eatin'

Who doesn't love a sandwich? Got some meat or a piece of cheese that's been sitting in the refrigerator that you're not too jazzed on? Put it between two slices of bread, slap some condiments in there, and it instantly becomes exciting!

The Earl of Sandwich, with the original sandwich recipe.

I've eaten my share of sandwiches over my life - day after Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches, exotic treats like the banh mi or the torta, reubens, Cubans, and grilled cheeses galore. Put it between some bread, and I'll probably take a chance.

I've noticed that some of  you aren't as adventurous as I am, however. In fact, just the mention of one of the sandwiches I grew up on is enough to nauseate many of you.

I speak, of course, of the banana sandwich. Not the peanut butter and banana sandwich of Elvis fame (although I've had a lot of those, even if they were unfried), I mean the other banana sandwich, the one I thought my mom made up, just based on people's reactions through the years.

Basically, you take a ripe banana (and who can eat those brown mushy bananas? Ugh.), cut it into sections, sort of like big coins, spread mayonnaise on two slices of white bread and arrange your banana coins on one slice of bread. Slap the other slice of mayonnaise bread on top, and you have the banana sandwich.

Through the years, so many people have expressed so much disgust at this recipe that I began to think that my family and I were the only people in the world who experienced this treat. But now with the internet, I see that it even has a Facebook page. I don't exactly know if it's a Southern thing or what, but it's nice to see that other people have eaten them.

I think the main thing holding people back from enjoying a banana sandwich at their favorite restaurant is the lack of a striking name. How about Tropical Surprise? Mayonana? Ape's Delight?

I haven't had a banana sandwich in years, and I can't say that I miss it, but every once in a while I'll think about one. Trust me, once you've had an Ape's Delight, it will lodge in the pleasure centers of your brain.

Everybody Knows that the Bird is the Word

A friend was here for a few days this summer. I try to show visitors the best our city has to offer, so I compiled a pretty good schedule of the area's dining and drinking establishments.

While drinking at Birdies one night, we started talking about strip clubs.

I'll have to admit something here, at risk to my reputation as a dude. Other than delivering food in Atlanta, I've never been to a strip club.*

It's not like I've got anything against naked ladies. It just always seemed kind of ...pointless, I guess. I mean, it's not like you can do anything, you know? You just watch them dance around, listen to Kid Rock, spend a bunch of money, then drive home alone.

Anyway, after more cheap drinks, a strip club seemed like exactly the right place to end the night. But where to go? I had no idea, so I texted some friends. While waiting for their replies, I realized, hey, there's a place right near my neighborhood.  It seems pretty sleazy, too. We'll have a couple drinks, look at some sketchy strippers, then go home and either drink more or fall asleep.

As my friend put it later, "We looked like George Clooney and Brad Pitt walking in there compared to everyone else there." Mostly because we were wearing shirts with buttons and had like, hair, and teeth and everything.

We're sitting there watching the dancers (who have to wear bikinis. Weird.) and a couple of the girls come to our table. They're not as crack-y as I'd expect, and one of them, a curvy goth girl who would later dance to Portishead instead of bad strip club hip-hop, was actually kinda cute. I think she really liked us.

One of the cooler things about being older is that you don't care anymore. The bikini-clad girls are chatting us up, and we're talking to them just like we'd talk to, well, anyone not wearing a bikini in a neon-flashing club trying to get us to buy them expensive shots.

We're so old and square that we're asking them about what they're studying in school and what they're planning to do after they stop dancing, just normal stuff, as we're drinking $75 Coronas.

"So what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen here," one of us asks.

"There was a guy who paid me $100 to hit him in the balls," one of our new friends replies.

"Shit, I'd do that for $10," my friend said, which struck me as really funny, but didn't seem to amuse the dancers as much.

She tells us more about ballbuster and about some guy who wanted to tickle her and then casually says, "Oh yeah. There was the turkey guy."

"Turkey guy?"

"Yeah, this guy paid me a hundred bucks to pretend he was a turkey."

"Wait, wait, wait, this is the third story you bring up? How was turkey guy not the first thing you thought of?"

Actually, that is kinda hot.

"So, did this guy want you to, like, stick a thermometer up his ass?"

"Did he want to wear those little booty things they put on drumsticks in cartoons?"

"No, no, he just wanted me to talk to him, but talk to him like a turkey."

"What? Nobody talks to a turkey."

"He wanted me to pretend he was baking in an oven. So I'd have to say stuff like, 'Oh, you're so golden brown, you're really looking tasty now. I can't wait til I take you out of the oven. You are such a juicy, delicious turkey."

"So you didn't have to pretend to eat him or ... I dunno, gravy him up or anything?"

"No, I just talked to him. After a while it gets hard to come up with things to say about a turkey, but it's easier than dancing."

"Yeah, I guess so. Man, that guy must go nuts around Thanksgiving, huh?"

She described the guy to us a bit, and naturally I've been looking for him ever since. Every once in a while I'll be out in public and I'll start scanning guy's faces, thinking, "I know it's one of you. One of you is the dirty, dirty, bird."

But even more than that, I kept thinking about this poor dude's secret. As a man of the world, I don't care what consenting adults do with each other, but could you imagine having this as your secret fetish? How would you bring that up? Would it be weighing on your mind every Thanksgiving?

"Mmmm, honey. That turkey smells delicious. You know Thanksgiving is my favorite time of the year. I just...sometimes I feel like just eating a turkey isn't enough, you know? Like, I love turkey so much that...why are you looking at me all weird? Uh, you know, just forget I said anything. Help you set the table?"

Or do you bring it up earlier in the relationship? Sort of laying all the cards on the table?

"So...I'm sort of kinky."

"Oh, that's OK, my last boyfriend and I used to watched Cinemax movies together."

"Uhh...Yeeeeah."

Whatever their predilections, I hope both of my faithful readers have a happy Thanksgiving. And if you notice someone gazing just a little too wistfully at the turkey, well...well, it could be me. Are we gonna eat or what? Or you could be at a table with the Turkey Man. Try to be understanding.




* STOP THE PRESSES! I just remembered I've actually been to the Clairmont in Atlanta twice. Once to see Shellac, which probably doesn't count, and once with some friends. My wife at the time was waiting to use the bathroom when a dancer came out and said "Sorry, Hon, didn't know anyone was waiting. Glad I wasn't fucking anyone." Classy!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving kind of gets the shaft. Stuck in there between Halloween and Christmas, most people look at it as the lull between the two big holidays. Me, I love it. It's one of those holidays that all Americans celebrate, and nobody's gonna get all weirded out because they have a different religion or came here from England or India or whatever. I'm not sure how Native Americans feel about it, but I'd like to think that they look at it as the good old days, you know, before the whole genocide thing.

I don't remember too many Thanksgivings as a kid, but I do remember what might be one of my favorite Thanksgivings as an adult. Hell, it might be one of my favorite holiday memories as an adult.

My ex-wife was doing an art show in Gainesville the day after Thanksgiving and left the day before, so Thanksgiving morning I was going to drive to my grandmother's in Georgia, eat, drive back home, then wake up the next morning and drive to Gainesville for Thanksgiving #2. This is a little-known advantage to being married. You can frequently get two Thanksgivings.

It was about a three hour drive to my Grandma's. While I hate day-to-day driving, I love trips. Especially solo trips. No bathroom breaks, no fights over the stereo, leaving whenever I get the urge; just me driving all caffiened up and alone with my thoughts and singing.

Although my dad is an only child, my grandma has a lot of ... well, I'm not really sure if they are actually blood relatives or friends or what. I think there is some sort of family connection way, way off there, like 3rd cousins once removed or whatever. Anyway, they all love me and make a fuss over me, which is one of the few times that attention like that doesn't make me feel awkward and weird.

And damn, can they cook! Along with the usual turkey and stuff, there was chicken and dumplings, about a gazillion vegetables, the most tender ribs I have ever had in my life, and like 5 different kinds of cake. I mean, seriously, can you even name more than 3 kinds of cake?

My plate looked like John Belushi's in Animal House, and every time I'd stop to take a breath or pause to savor another bite, they'd be all over me.

"Do you need something else? Anything we can get you?"

I usually hate being the center of attention, but having all these old Southern ladies baby me was pretty damn comforting and sweet. I was also drinking a ton of sweet tea. Not sweet tea like you get at the store or McDonald's or whatever, this was genuine Old Southern Lady Sweet Tea, the stuff that turns you diabetic after a glass or two. Of course, as soon as my glass was about 1/4 empty, it was filled to the rim by my old lady protectors.

I ate and drank so much I was dizzy. They made me massive plates for Christie (which of course she never got) and the ride home, and hugged my neck and I was on my way back to Jacksonville.

I managed to hit that golden hour, right when the sun starts to set. I've loved that hour since I was a teenager because it meant that my work was done and I was on the road with my friends to a punk show or a skate trip. This time I was almost alone on the road, I was listening to NPR, Fugazi's The Argument, one of those later Man or Astroman albums and feeling completely contented, if still a little dizzy.

I got home to a completely empty apartment complex. Actually, most of the neighborhood was dark. I might have been the only one on our street at the time. I started in on one of my plates, opened a Guinness and started playing 7"s at a volume I wasn't usually allowed to, what with the paper thin walls and all.

It's not too often that I feel completely at peace, but after getting babied all day, eating a ton of food, knowing that I was going to see my wife and her family the next day, but that I had tonight to play the stereo loud, get drunk and eat even more combined with the drive home gave me the most peaceful feeling I had felt in a long time. I still feel good thinking about it today. I hope both of my loyal readers are able to get a piece of that this Thanksgiving.

Weekend Warrior

Occasionally the gods of leisure will smile upon you. Maybe it's fate, maybe they just tire of seeing you trudge through your same routine every week, but for whatever reason they decide to throw a whole bunch of fun at you just to see you happy.

Although knowing that mythological gods could be dicks, they might just want to see if you die of a heart attack from fun overload.

For whatever reason, the gods decided to reward me by scheduling the Jacksonville Backyard BBQ Championships and something called the Cult Movie Drive-in on the same weekend, one of the weekends I was actually off work and could attend a smorgasboard of awesomeness.

There's not too much you can really say about the BBQ Championships, other than it's a good excuse to eat a whole bunch of food and ...I dunno, I guess the ticket goes to charity or something?

I had gone to last year's championship, and while it was pretty fun, it was also sort of unorganized. So there would be long stretches of no food, then a group would gather in front of some booth after somebody said, "They've got ribs" in the same tone you'd use if you had found a kid in a well who needed help. If you were in the back of the group, you might get some ribs, or you might get a big ol' helping of nothing.

This year, there were a lot more people cooking, so much so that I was so loaded up on samples that I felt sort of sick after we left. This is the feeling of accomplishment.


BBQ even makes hipsters smile!



They have this really progressive work release thing where inmates from the local prisons and asylums learn valuable life skills through cooking. Here, a local inmate displays his favorite cleaver.

From there we went to the Cult Drive-in thing. It was pretty dead, which might have had something to do with there being no advertising. I only knew about it because my friend Pat happened to stumble onto their webpage which he forwarded on to me, after having HIS MIND BLOWN. Seriously, the email he sent said something like "abaadabab this just broke my brain."

All sorts of famous-to-nerds people were there, and since they weren't bothered by pesky customers, they were captive to the nerds who showed up who would regale these poor actors with recaps of their favorite lines and how their roles in action movies back in the '70s were totally inspirational at their sad IT or library jobs.


Mink Stole from the John Waters movies was the first person we saw. She was awesome, sort of like a cool aunt. She totally wanted to steal my friend Matthew. Oh yeah, he was visibly freaked out by like 95 percent of the stuff there. He almost fainted when Ms. Stole suggested he talk to Ilsa (you know, the She Wolf of the SS). Ilsa's there by Matthew's shoulder. Poor Ilsa, no nerds at her table yet.


If you pay them for autographs, famous people will pretend to be friends with you.


Pam Grier offered to take me away with her, but I have too much to do here.


Jim Kelly no longer has his amazing afro (where I think many of his powers came from), but was still pretty awesome.

There were all sorts of movies of dubious quality being sold there. They had deals where you could buy 3 for like 30 bucks. I ended up with Moonshine County Express, Killer Fish, Three Tough Guys, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, some animated Dracula thing and ...I can feel your eyes glazing over from here, so I'll stop. Suffice it to say, I loaded up on treats, even though I have the feeling they're all gonna be released next week in five dollar Criterion reissues.

For the next few days I thought of all the stuff I left behind - some Bigfoot movie, a couple Italian Jaws ripoffs, some spaghetti western where Robert Mitchum plays a priest with a machine gun. Man, I really needed some of that stuff.

I noticed how everybody thought it was awesome that I was spending a ton of money on foolishness. I hope all these people remember that when I hit them up for loans when I'm 76 and headed to my third job.

Fred Williamson did a Q&A, which was just amazing. He looked almost the same as he did in the '70s, even though he said he was 73. He came in drinking a margarita and just started calling on people. He had a long list of people who's asses he should have or will or could kick.

I asked what his favorite role was.

"My favorite role? You've seen my movies, right? They're all the same. I look good, kick someone's ass, get the girl if I want her, then leave."

Someone asked if he'd accomplished his goals. He said he didn't have any, and said something like, "I never thought I'd play football professionally, or act in movies, or direct. Or be in this room answering all these dumbass questions."

After that, we went home and I fully intended to come back at 8 to watch Coffy on the big screen, but after my day's adventures, I stayed home and looked at all my treats.

When will the gods smile on me again? Who knows, the ways of gods are unknown to mortal men. I'd like to think they helped me out during Sunday's adventures, when I teamed up with Pam Grier, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly and we uncovered a wide-ranging conspiracy based at the BBQ Championships. I'd tell you more, but a lot of that information is classified at the moment.

Freedom Fries

Nothing tastes better than free food. Back when I lived in Gainesville, a large number of my friends were employed in the food service industries. This meant that there was always a pretty good chance of walking somewhere and getting a meal on the house.

At one point my roommate, who I probably shouldn't name, as he is now a husband, father and pillar of the community, worked at Burger King. We worked out an pointlessly complicated series of codes for when he worked the drive-thru. I'd be sitting on my bed playing Donkey Kong Country and the phone would ring.

"The rooster crows."*

That was my cue to start the car, drive up and take two or three overflowing bags of food. Even if I wasn't hungry, I took pride in being a good roommate and took the bags anyway. This was the time Burger King was introducing the Western Whopper (basically just a Whopper with Bar-B-Q sauce on it) and we ate those things constantly. He'd also hide garbage bags full of frozen hamburger patties and buns in the trash that I'd pick up later and save for our gin and tonic winter cookouts. Now that I think about it, those cookouts were fueled by burning a bunch of pallets that would always mysteriously show up by the dumpster. Between that and the Burger King patties, there's no telling how many carcinogenics are battling it out in our bodies right now.

But as sweet as that free food was, there were the more elaborate food scams. These involved calling up a restaurant and speaking to the manager with a claim of mild food poisoning. The key to this, as with all lies, is believing your own fiction. While my roommate was amazing at this, he will gladly admit he learned from a true master.

This master, who again, I probably shouldn't name, would get so involved in his lie that he would start believing it himself and get frustrated that these managers wouldn't help him. One night in Atlanta he spoke to two or three Hooters managers in an attempt to get 50 free wings. At one point he put his hand over the phone and said to us, "They want to offer me 25, but we got sick off 50 wings. How do we know which ones we got sick off of?"

The managers caved and we got 50 wings. A lot of times we could tell they didn't believe us, but we got free food, so who cared, right?

We would always tip big, because it wasn't the servers fault we got sick (see, I'm believing it again just thinking about it), and were super polite to everyone we encountered. I guess that sort of made up for the whole "Thou Shall Not Steal" thing.

Now that I'm a grown up and have more money than I know what to do with, thanks to the lucrative field of library science, I look back at our scams with some shame, but still a bit impressed that we were able to pull them off. With today's technology food scams are harder to pull off, but under the current economic picture, every once in a while I think of how I should really sharpen my skills at manager calling, just in case.


*It might have possibly been "The eagle has landed." Something to do with a bird.

I'm walking through the jungle gathering mangoes. I meet Raquel Welch. I make a nice mango cream pudding.

I absolutely hated doing yard work growing up. There were some things I didn't mind, watching the grass yield to the power of my mower, that was pretty cool. But pulling weeds or raking the yard was like being sent to the gulag to a 13 year old me.

But the absolute worst job was gathering mangoes. We had a huge old mango tree and my sister and I would have to gather the rotten mangoes off the ground and put them in a trash bag. We might have had to separate the good mangoes and put them aside or something, I have completely blocked that out of my memory.

We would put this job off as long as we could. It didn't help that we never knew when it was going to be forced upon us. My parents didn't seem to have any sort of schedule for chores, it was more like my dad would decide, "hey, this is the exact minute the kids need to clean the yard of nasty, rotting mangoes. Let's get them on it right now."

Standing out in the sun, praying for rain or the sun to set, picking up brown, squishy gnat-infested mangoes was like working on a chain gang. And that smell - that sweet, rotting smell - that stuff smelled like death. The worst were the mangoes with bites out of them. That meant that the huge river rats had been feasting the night before, and were probably hanging out in the darker parts of the yard waiting to bite us and fill us full of the rabies.

It also didn't help that we could see our dad sitting in his chair watching football while were slaving away. He didn't have anyone telling him to work, we bitched to each other. And none of our friends had to do yard work. I remember my neighbor telling me, "My parents hire people to do that stuff. That's what you're supposed to do in the '80s." My parents did not subscribe to that theory.

Picking up mangoes could take us all day, mostly because we would have to gingerly pick up the smallest portion of mango possible with our thumb and forefinger and throw it into the bag before the rats came charging at us, and also because we didn't understand that it would have been a lot quicker to, you know, actually do the job instead of standing out in the yard complaining about it.

I suppose that stuff was supposed to build character. I don't know if it worked or not. Now that I am old, I am obsessed by yard work. I can easily spend all day pulling weeds or raking or mowing. And I have my dad's "I just got this idea! It has to be implemented right now" trait. But you know what I will never do? Touch a damn mango. Neither will my sister. Just seeing the nasty things bring back memories of brown, rotten, rat-bitten fruit baking in the Florida sun. Do you know how many times I've been in a nice restaurant and heard a waiter describe a piece of fish that sounds awesome until he utters that terrible phrase, "covered in a mango salsa?" Too many to count, my friend, too many to count.

Roast Fish, Collie Weed and Cornbread

My favorite lunch place was packed today, so I wandered downtown in a haze of hunger pains. Hey! Da Real Ting is open again for lunch buffet! They might have been open for a while and just didn't have a snazzy sign.

I went there a few years ago and it was awesome. I went today and it was awesome. Jerk chicken, some sort of spicy broiled fish, plantains, man, it was amazing. They even had peach cobbler for dessert, even though I'm not sure that's really Jamaican. They were playing a Toots and the Maytals best of CD, which I believe they were playing the last time I was there. Had to knock them down a grade however, because while the new waitresses are better looking than the older women that worked there before, I liked thinking that the previous women could be my Jamaican lunch lady grandmas.

As I was leaving, I was told that the security cameras captured my meal for posterity. You can see a clip of it here.

Breakfast of Champions

I've been eating fairly healthy for about a month now. Nothing crazy, I just noticed that after two months of eating anything that couldn't run away from me, I was beginning to get a little fatter, so I cut out a bunch of the crap I was eating. Which wasn't too hard, considering that there was a day at my parents that I drank two milkshakes.

I've had a ton of stuff to do at work lately, so I figured I'd blast it all out over the weekend. I went upstairs and got a Mountain Dew and a package of vending machine donuts, which was pretty much my diet a year or two ago.

"Yeah," I thought. "That's the stuff."

I was having trouble concentrating, but I figured I'd level off after a while. Then, after like an hour or so, all the sweet sugar and caffeine seemed to leave my system at the same time and I was sleepy and depressed.

"What's the point of doing all these evaluations anyway," I thought. "I'll probably just get fired soon, or possibly die of some unknown medical condition."

Then the next day I had to come in an hour early to fix the schedule and figured I'd go ahead and take an early lunch. And since I had sacrificed an extra hour of my time to The Man, why bother with the crappy lunch I brought, all full of boring fruit and vegetables? It was Cuban time.

The Cuban sandwich I ate was possibly the worst one I've ever had in my life. Somehow they used too much grease or butter or whatever so it was all soggy and the meat was ...well, there was something definitely off about the meat.

So it looks like nature or fate or something is telling me to stick to my diet. It kind of sucks.

Guess Who Stopped By Work Last Week?

Everybody's Christmastime friend, The Gingerbread Man!

Aw, look! He's hanging out with that nice librarian lady! How sweet!

Aw, Gingerbread Man is making that developmentally disabled fellow happy!

How sweet, now he's hanging out with both of them. Hey, wait a minute, what's that guy about to do to your neck? Get out of there, Gingerbread Man! That dude looks like he's eaten quite a few of your friends and family in the past! This can't end well.

Health and Healing Tour, November 2008

My dad had heart surgery last week. Actually more like artery surgery. I decided to take a week off and go up to North Carolina to help my parents out since he can't really do much of anything right now. Oh yeah, he's fine, thanks for asking.

I also planned to spend the night at my grandma's house, since it's on the way and I really need to get up there more. As I was loading all my crap up Sunday morning, I found out she passed out in church and broke her arm, but still wanted me to come up. I tried to get her not to cook or do anything, but she ended up using her one good arm to make me a feast of chicken and dumplings.



The picture doesn't really do it justice, trust me.

I love my grandma's cooking but felt bad that she had done all this and wouldn't let me do anything at all for her. Actually I got to set a clock back and open a jar, but that was it. Oh, and all that news the next day about Obama's grandma dying after she had done everything for him and made sure he got an education? I really didn't need to hear that all damn day.

I always thought I sort of hated driving, but what I forgot was how awesome it was driving alone at nightfall, watching the sun set behind me as I headed down to my grandma's, with the cotton on the ground looking like snow.

I also figured I had a license to speed since I was
A) visiting my sick grandmother who
B) passed out in church

I mean, what could the cops say?

I headed off to the parents the next morning. I suppose I should mention that I have a terrible sense of direction. Hell, I'm surprised I make it back home every day. To add to this, a good 90 percent of this trip was off the interstate, driving on little highways, usually stuck behind a tractor going 20 MPH.



Yep, I'm lost.



I was behind this tanker for like a million miles.



This is the front of the University of Georgia. I should not have been here. Oh yeah, WHOOOO! GO GATORS! WHOOOOO!



One of the advantages of driving alone was that I could do stuff like take pictures out the window while steering with my knee. Look, mountains!


Once I got into north Georgia the roads started going crazy. Remember in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" when Pee Wee was driving at night and the signs get more and more ridiculous? Well, add a couple falling rocks signs and that's what I was dealing with. Oh yeah, add this every half hour or so:

"Holy shit! Is Jethro really trying to pass me on a blind curve? Doesn't he see that it's like a thousand foot drop with no guard rail? Why the hell did they have to make all these curves? Why didn't they make the Irish drill some tunnels or something?"

But it was really pretty when I wasn't almost getting killed.


I had a pretty good stay with the parents, even if I didn't get to do all the work I had planned to help them with. A lot of that had to do with the fact that the sun sets at like 5 PM.

Check it out, this is what it looked like while I was raking leaves.



The last day we lit our Pagan bonfire to ensure a bountiful harvest for the next year. Oh wait, that's one of those family-only things I'm not supposed to talk about.


Oh yeah, election day was that week. It was sort of like the Super Bowl and Christmas to my parents, as George Bush has turned them into hippies.


My parents have pretty much adopted Barack Obama as their Kenyan son. A couple times I wanted to point out that their real son was the one raking and cutting up trees, and maybe they should call their boyfriend Barack to help them out, but that would have been rude. Watching the republicans get their asses handed to them, the family came together as never before, although not before a few conversations like this:

Mom: "McCain 56 %? I thought you said this was going to be a landslide."
Dad: "It's 15 after 8. That's like 1 percent of one state. Just wait."

Both the speeches were good - if McCain had spoken like that throughout the campaign instead of all that "Joe the Plumber says the terrorists are going to spread your taxes" crap, maybe he wouldn't have gotten his ass beaten so bad. Oh, but what was that weird sad Darth Vader music they played when he walked off the stage?

And Obama paraphrasing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," which coincidentally was the song I was listening to as I pulled into my parent's driveway (Otis Redding version)? Awesome. My mom cried during it, and I gotta admit, I was getting that "It's a Wonderful Life" I'm-not-really-tearing-up-I'm-just-adjusting-over-here feeling as well, especially when he was talking about the old lady voting. Hey, grandmas and old ladies are a weakness of mine, alright?

Then it was on to Lawrenceville to stay with Todd and Leila and Baby Eloise, who actually isn't a baby anymore. You know how Lou Dobbs and all those other cable guys are always going on and on about immigration? Well, what they don't mention is that all those immigrants are bringing their treats to Georgia and turning it into Shangri-La. Holy crap, Lawrenceville is like an EPCOT full of food and treats and I vowed to eat my way through most of it.

Hey, you know what Jacksonville needs? A place that makes bubble tea. I was told this was a jackfruit, which I'm pretty sure is a made up fruit to fool white people. Anyway, it sort tastes like 40 percent pineapple, 40 percent coconut, 40 percent vanilla and 80 percent awesome. This is what angels drink in heaven when they run out of egg nog. And those little tapioca balls are chewey bits of heaven.


I took like 2 pictures of my dad, but ended up taking a gazillion in this Asian market, mostly because of signs like this.


Coming home I ended up in a traffic jam outside of Atlanta that lasted like an hour, but other than that I had no problems. Now I have a million work emails to catch up on and 3,000 miles to do on my bike to make up for the eating tour of Lawrenceville I undertook.

Work Party

I love a work party. Well, at least I used to love work parties in our old department. Pretty much the whole department took that stuff seriously. No bags of plain potato chips or store-bought cookies. We had homemade bean dip, these awesome little ham sandwiches, deviled eggs, a pork loin one time, this awesome pie made up of chocolate pudding, candy bars and something else; man, those days were awesome. Not only would I not have to bring a lunch, I could step outside my office periodically and grab some treats throughout the day.

Work parties are different at the new library. Sure, my department always does it up right, but the building-wide parties are a bit disappointing. First of all, the whole, "Hey, you guys are awesome, you deserve a party. Now sign up to bring food" thing is sort of weird, but whatever. Hell, we're getting rid of bottled water, you can't really expect a fully paid for spread.

Then there's the fact that most of my department never goes to the things, which is just sort of weird. I mean, free food!

So we had a party a couple weeks ago. I made a cake. I gotta say, my cake is pretty bad-ass. The actual cake is nothing special, but the frosting has enough sugar and bad stuff to make you join Weight Watchers just looking at the thing. The actual ingredients include a stick of butter and a pound of sugar.

So I bring my cake in a little after 12. Now that's another thing. You don't want to get there too early or the good stuff isn't laid out yet and you're just sort of standing around trying to make conversation with the people from other departments you try to avoid. But if you get there too late, everything is gone.

I was also waiting on a co-worker. He had made this Thanksgiving casserole, which combined everything awesome about that holiday into one wonderful tray.

So, I made the mistake of setting my cake down on the wrong table. You would have thought I came up with a dead rat on a plate for all the screaming that was going on. I had a good mind to take my cake down to my desk and have my own cubicle party congratulating myself on all my hard work, but I carried on.

Then there wasn't any place to sit, so I took my plate out on the patio. This was also a major faux pas for some reason.

I made two trips - I didn't have completely loaded plates, either. I could have stuffed some more treats on my plates, but figured I didn't want to deprive others. My co-worker's Thanksgiving Surprise hadn't arrived yet, but I figured I'd be able to sneak up after my next desk shift.

Well at 2:00 I sneak up there and all the food is being cleared away. I see one little piece of my cake left which I was going to snatch, but someone else wanted it, and I figured I wouldn't have to clean up the pan that way, so it was theirs. The true tragedy, however, is that all the Thanksgiving Surprise was eaten.

The two people from my department that went to the thing were dreamily talking about it all day.


This is not how a work party is supposed to end. You are supposed to have food hanging around the breakroom for the rest of the day. I actually felt hungry at the end of the day. This should never, never happen at the end of a work party. With no Thanksgiving Surprise to warm my heart, my ride home was sad and lonely.

The Saddest News Ever Reported

The place I get my Cuban sandwiches just upped the price on me by like 50 cents or a dollar. It was hard to tell through the tears.

I know their game. Tempt me with deliciousness, give me a free sample just to set the hook in deeper, then when I'm hooked raise the price on me.

Hell, what am I gonna do? I'm sure I'll be back there next week.

July 15, 2008. A Date That Will Live in Awesomeness.

Not sure exactly how I did it, but I just won a free Cuban sandwich over at International Cafe. Perhaps spending $3,000 in Cubans over there in the last couple years helped. Perhaps that girl behind the counter just needed an excuse to gaze longingly at me. Regardless of how or why it happened, this just might be the greatest single event in my life.

Let's see...graduation, marriage, first real job...yep, pretty much greatest day in my life.

Man, is that free sammich gonna taste good.

HOLY CRAP! UPDATE!

So I went to the store tonight and figured I probably ought to buy a bag of candy to replace the office's depleted supply. Unbeknownst to me it was 2 for 1 and I got the last bag. So now I have a raincheck for FREE CANDY!

Who knows what tomorrow holds? I think I'm hitting the liquor store and the car dealers.