Green Door, What's that Secret You're Keeping?

Took a trip to Atlanta last weekend, due to my poor reading comprehension skills and lack of anything else going on in Jacksonville.

It wasn't a crazytime explosion like my last few vacations, but I was fine having a laid-back weekend hanging out with old friends, meeting new people, eating a ton, and trying to forget the speeding ticket I got on the way up there.

Oh yeah, we also discovered a secret Korean bar.

OK, it wasn't really secret secret, they had signs and stuff like any other bar, but it still felt like we discovered it. Sort of like Columbus "discovering" the Americas when people had been hanging out here for centuries. So yeah, we were totally like Christopher Columbus.

The first thing the bartender said to us as we looked around was, "It's OK, we've had white people in here."

So we felt right at home. There was a bit of a language barrier, their English wasn't the best, and our Korean was rusty. They also didn't seem to know too much about their drinks. We'd ask what was in certain drinks and either get an "I don't know" or two fingers crossed in an X warning us away. Which sucked, because I really wanted to try something called "The Hulk." But we ended up with something called "The Junebug," which was highly recommended and I think the only drink on the menu they knew how to make.

As we drank our flourescent green girly drinks we looked the place over. It was huge - much bigger than the outside would have us believe. There were also a couple groups of Korean guys hanging out here and there, a few of which were slumped over their table while their friends continued drinking. The waitresses would come sit next to us and brush up against us which was a bit strange, but hey, you get used to it.

There were also secret rooms. Again, they weren't secret secret, but they were closed doors that we imagined all sorts of fun was going on without us. Was there gambling going on back there? High stakes karaoke? Secret sexy stuff? There were at least handjobs being distributed, we were pretty sure.

Sadly, we never got to see behind the doors, even after one of us gave what we were sure would work as a password, "Do you even KNOW about the Misfits Fiend Club?"

Maybe next time.

London Calling*

The girlfriend is celebrating a big birthday in a few months (25!), so we're heading to London at the end of March.

To quote that girl in Saved By the Bell before she became a stripper, "I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so...scared."

While I can't wait to walk the streets of London with me bird in 'and, watch loveable chimney sweeps dance and sing, and get a banger in the mouth**, I don't really think I'm much of a traveler. I worry too much. I like my house too much. I'm constantly worried that my cat died or peed all over everything (which is usually the truth), or the house caught on fire, or my white trash neighbors noticed I wasn't home and decided to finally break in and steal my few sticks of furniture. And London, with their pickpockets and Jack the Rippers and Draculas and soccer hooligans running all over the place sounds pretty scary. Wait, Dracula hung around London, right?

But I'm going to try to let all that slide and have a good time, just like a normal person would. We'll see how it works.

Hey, anyone want to donate to my vacation fund? Paypal makes it easy.



*Yes, I realize using "London Calling" is the laziest headline ever when writing about London, but I'm feeling especially lazy today. It's the first day of spring, give me a break.



**Yes, all my knowledge of other countries comes from Fox TV shows, just like how all my knowledge of opera comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons.

You Will Be Visited

Last month, Jacksonville Magazine recognized my talents and sent me and the girlfriend to an east coast beach town to report about how there was no oil on the beaches and how you should spend your vacation there. OK, she actually works at the magazine and got me the gig, but still.


See, no oil

Basically, the city's chamber of commerce put us and a couple other writers up at a swank condo, fed us about a thousand meals over the weekend and even got us VIP tickets to a wine festival featuring REO Speedwagon. In return, we would write articles in our respective magazines talking the place up.


We totally witnessed a murder in that room across the way.

The New York writers were mystified by our Southern traditions, like grits and hush puppies and were amazed that we had actually heard of cannoli. They were also much tanner than the Floridians. Weird.

So that was the fun part. The crappy part, of course, was actually sitting down and writing a story.

I had never written a travel piece (although I totally want to do more. Sign me up!), so I was a bit apprehensive. Plus, every time I tried to start, I was interrupted by some rather annoying ghosts.

The Ghost of 23 Year Old Me: "So you're really gonna stick it to those PR hacks, right? Expose them to the world?"

Adult Me: "What? No. Everyone was great. I mean, they've got to get the word out, you know? And it's not like I'm lying. It was a lot of fun.Great city. I know you're constantly broke, but you should have planned a trip there at least once."

23: "Sounds like selling out to me."

The Ghost of 17 Year Old Me: "And REO Speedwagon? Did you throw a rock at them or something? Yell at them for being lame and old?"

Me: "No. I - What? Why the hell would I want to do that? I'm not a fan or anything, but they're out there working hard, putting on a show, making people happy, you know?"

REO, making people happy.


17: "23 is right. You sold out, man."

Me: "I know you won't understand this, but I've been trying to sell out for years, just nobody wants to buy in. And besides, things change once you get older."

17: "Jesus, you sound like Dad. So what do you do when you're not watching lame old REO Speedwagon?"

Me: "I dunno, stuff. Work in the yard, I guess. Ride my bike. Go to the gym."

17: "Man, this is just depressing. Do you still skate?"

Me: "No. Remember, we weren't really that good to begin with. But you will start to enjoy all sorts of things you hated, or at least pretend you hate right now. Like country and classic rock, gardening, and football."

17: "Alright, I'm outta here." POOF!

23: "OK, now that the kid's gone, you can tell me. How does it feel to completely abandon all your journalistic principles?"

Me: "Now I remember why I never liked either one of you."

I was able to finish the article even with the interruptions(page 28 of December's issue! On newsstands now!), but about a week after I turned it in I happened to read a travel article in GQ. With my now-experienced eye, I could see what went into the article - Oh, that one motel he mentions must be the one he got put up in. Those 3 restaurants must be the ones they drove him to. Now I know how the sausages are made.

I Saw Me a Music Festival

In what will probably be my final stop in the Divorced Guy 2009 North American Tour (unless anyone wants to write me a grant), I went up to Chicago to the Pitchfork Music Fest.

I've been to exactly one big outdoor festival before. I had a great time, probably because the line-up looked like a mix tape I would have made in 1995, but still don't really get the whole seeing music outside in the daytime. In fact, the quote I apparently used was, "I don't want my rock'n'roll mixing with sunshine and picnics and bumblebees and shit."

Some call me a prophet.

But I had an amazing time last weekend. First of all, there were 20 plus Gainesvillians up for the thing, so there were tons of cookouts and hanging out. Seeing about half a bar singing along to Radon songs while the rest of the bar looked on in boredom and bewilderment was pretty awesome. Here, check it out.



I discovered that Mexican food scientists have made giant leaps forward in their beverage division. Sure, they could have stopped with the cinnamon goodness of the horchata, but they felt that they needed something in the alcohol catagory, something sweet, yet potent. For the good of all mankind, they engineered The Bull, a mixture of rum, beer, sugarcane and something from Mexican Heaven. Look how happy it makes people.



Oh, and they also show Bruce Lee and Godzilla movies in the bars up there. Did I design this city?

To be honest, I didn't care too much about the actual music fest, about 90 percent of the emails sent between participants focused on eating and drinking rather than the music. But man, I gotta tell you, it was pretty great. First band I saw was a reunited Jesus Lizard (if they come anywhere near you, drop what you're doing and go), and I caught a fair amount of other bands throughout the weekend before finishing it up with an absolutely amazing performance by the Flaming Lips, who were all full of balloons, good times and confetti. I still get happy just thinking about it.



Once again, I am amazed that I have such an awesome group of friends, and that people are still willing to put up with me. It's a pity the Divorced Guy 2009 North American Tour will have to end. But wait! Does it really? Surely if all five of you reading this site can dig deep and donate, you can fly me somewhere in this great country of ours. If you don't do it for yourself, do it for the children.

New York was Cool; Hope I Didn't Cause an International Incident on My Birthday.

Went to New York this weekend. It was awesome. I ate and drank all sorts of treats (the Vietnamese just might have overtaken the Cubans in the great sandwich wars), saw this really cool lounge singer/comedian guy, hung out with some good friends, put an old French lady in the hospital, got some culture and learning at some museums, yeah, New York, that town really has its stuff together. If you get a chance, book a flight right now, because - what's that? Oh yeah, the French lady.

I rented a bike on my birthday and my friend Curt took me on this long tour through Brooklyn. It was awesome. We went through all these cool little neighborhoods and parks, went over that bridge from "Once Upon a Time in America," rode to Coney Island like in that Ramones song, and just had a great time. I got to see all sorts of cool stuff, like this:


And the opening shot of that old "Barney Miller" show.


We crossed over to Manhattan in the early afternoon. We were going pretty fast in the bike lane through all this crazy traffic, and Curt had been warning me all day to watch out for people opening car doors into the street, so I was being pretty safe and paying attention.

Then this old French lady materialized right in front of me in the bike lane.

I didn't have time to slam on the brakes or swerve or anything really and the next thing I know I'm on the ground. I ask the woman if she's alright and I go to put my bike on the sidewalk when some dudes say, "Where do you think you're going? You're not going anywhere."

"Yeah, I'm not going anywhere," I said a little more forcefully than usual. "I'm just putting the bike up on the curb. I thought New Yorkers were all blase about people getting stabbed and mugged and stuff, somehow my accident happens in front of Batman.

Now if professional wrestling and shennanigan-related incidents have taught us anything, it's that cuts to the head will produce a whole lot of blood. So she didn't look good. She also got a pretty good shiner. By the time I was up the paramedics had been called and some of the crowd had sort of patched her up with some napkins. She didn't speak any English, and her daughter didn't speak much more, so that didn't help, either.

The paramedics examine her and take one of the napkins off her head. I was sort of wondering how bad it really was when I see this massive patch of blood and flesh. Holy crap, I really hurt her, I thought. Then I realized that that was just a napkin underneath the other one that had soaked up all the blood. She had a small cut and seemed to be OK from what everyone could make out what with the language barrier and all, but she went off to the hospital for stitches or catscans or whatever anyway.

I dealt with the cops who were pretty cool about the whole thing. I got an incident report that I have to call about in case anything else happens. I really wanted to take some photos, but I figured that wouldn't be too cool, so I only snapped this one on the sly:



And that's how I spent my birthday. I hope she's feeling better and this didn't color her impressions on her American vacation.

So remember, always wear a helmet and look both ways before crossing the street.

By the way, uh...does anyone know anything about ribs? Mine still sort of hurt when I breath in deeply.

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.