The Finale

This blog started in September 2004 when I broke up with my live-in girlfriend over email. I won't argue that it was a dick move. Sharing it with the world, or the 10 people that read this regularly this, was even worse. I was using someone else's pain to get a few giggles out of my friends. There is no bigger fan of giggling than myself, but looking back, I don't believe I would have written the same article.

I have led a reckless life. I enjoyed sharing it with everyone because I was generally the only victim of my bad decision making. Who was hurt when I went into Walgreens in my boxers, tried on sweat pants in the middle of the aisle, and then went out for drinks in my new outfit? Or when I officiated Jell-O wrestling? Or when I got a guy drunk to bring him down from his cocaine high?

To quote an article I wrote in 2005: “Being a good friend, I didn’t judge his actions. I’ve done enough stupid things for two lifetimes, and I’m not even halfway through this one.”

But not too long ago, I got married. That changes both everything and nothing. I am the same person I was before. But I no longer come first. And my recklessness effects us both.

Last night I was drunk and flushed Rebecca's wedding ring down the toilet.

Take a moment to soak in the gravity of that statement. I know it took awhile for me to get my head around it.

This is an uncharted level of douche-baggery. I have no recollection of the event, but it happened and it is something that I have to live with the rest of my life. There is no punchline I can salvage from this to entertain you. The day that Rebecca looks back at this and laughs may never come.

At this rate, it will not be long before my reckless actions completely sabotage my marriage.

So I'm taking the long road to saying this is the last article. I had a good run, but the fun of being unabashedly crazy is gone.

I'm going to need to be a better Jeremy if I want my relationship to work. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Random Wedding Pictures

Below are a few of my favorite pictures that were taken by the wedding photographer we hired. Rebecca will have more posted soon on her blog: http://adventuresiniowa.blogspot.com

Above: The archway we got married under with the city in the background.

Above: I had trouble getting the ring on and had to stop the ceremony and ask for more time. I also missed a few words of my vows, which is a loophole I plan on exploiting later ('I don't have to appreciate you...if you remember, I skipped over the part where I promised to cherish you')

Above: Rebecca and I having our first dance to the acoustic version of Plush by STP.

Above: My brother Todd, myself, my mom Linda, and my dad Steve

Above: Me having a talk with the boss.

Above: My dance with my mom.

The One About My Small Hands

I would prefer to be typing on my computer. I've never liked writing on laptops. It isn't the size of the keyboard...I have freakishly small hands that are perfectly adapted to the tiny typing space. In a very nerdy future, males with this trait will thrive because they are better adapted to use increasingly miniaturized electronics. I'm sorry if natural selection doesn't favor your normal hands. While waiting for your DNA to become obsolete, you can enjoy the fact you can palm a basketball or throw a decent spiral.

I'll just have to settle for the fact that my junk looks enormous in my tiny little hands. It may be an optical illusion, but it still brings a smile to face.

Back to the point. I had to steal Rebecca's laptop so I would have something to do on my trip to Denver. This is for work, and as I enjoy being employed, I don't talk about my job online. But I am compelled to go to Denver every year or two.

Being a good steward of the public's trust, I thought I would save the taxpayers a few dollars by not traveling in the luxury I am accustomed to.

What luxury you might ask? Don't I usually travel on a cheapest flight in a worst seat taking 4 layovers if necessary to get the lowest fare? You know me so well. I would fly in a kennel underneath the plane with the dogs if it was an option.

But I decided to forgo the extravagance of air travel. I'm going to Denver old-school style.

I'm riding the rails.

An hour south of Des Moines is the Oscela Amtrak station. Amtrak is as good with the public's money as I am: the parking is not paved, there is only one power outlet in the station and it isn't grounded, and there wasn't one sign of a vending machine running up the electricity bill. This building screamed frugal. It also screamed 'please give me a swift death at the hands of a wreaking ball.' It probably screamed several other things, but I'm not fluent in their language and had unfortunately left my Building-English dictionary at home.

The crowd at the train station was Not Ready for Primetime bunch you would expect. Good, salt of the earth people. I didn't have to keep a strangle hold on my possessions like I might at the Greyhound station, but I didn't even think of asking anyone if they knew where I could find a WiFi connection. These were dial-up folks.

The train was an hour late, but most flights are backed up at the end of the day too. Not that there was anyone to launch a complaint out. The beautifully handcrafted sign (Sharpie, yellowed paper) over the ticket window stated that “No ticket sales, no baggage check.” Why did they call it a ticket window? Perhaps calling it the “Functionless Window for Customer Bitching” would have been too direct.

Five minutes before the train arrives, they take us out to the platform. The train pulls up, and rail stewardess guy gets out and starts asking us how many were in our party. I have a total Schindler's List moment while the families are ushered to the front of the line and put on the train first. Have you seen a movie with a happy ending that involves people getting sorted out by men in uniform and then asked to step onto a train?

Back in the ghetto of coach, there are 2 seats on either side of the aisle. I grab a double seat for myself, sprawling out my possessions so I seem like I need like I need both seats. There is probably triple the leg room of an airline seat, and as we speak I am actually having to reach a lean forward a little to reach the keyboard on the fold-down tray. There was a lingering fart smell in the cabin, but I think that is just what Southwest Iowa smells like all the time. Who farted? Creston did.

I walked to the lounge about 5 cars forward and was nearly knocked over by some light turbulence. Then I rememberd that I wasn't in the air.

Earlier today a coworker told me that I wouldn't even notice the rails. It's not like I was a hobo in a boxcar. This is a state of the 1980's passenger cabin. It would like moving on a cloud.

This went through my mind as I was tossed around the cabin like a ragdoll. It is less like a cloud that a massage chair where the setting under your butt varies between low and sexual offender. It is not something you can easily adjust to.

But for $154 roundtrip, I wander down to the lounge car, buy a few glasses of wine, and sleep most of the trip. That beats flying with the dogs in storage anyday.

The Real Story...

I'm engaged, but you already knew that.

What you might not have known is that Rebecca has a blog at http://adventuresiniowa.blogspot.com. If you want to read the sweet and cuddly version of the story I'm about to tell, go to her website. If you want the full version complete with bodily fluids, you've come to the right place.

Scene: Iowa City, tailgating
Time: November 2007

Bedhead is a bitch. But since there is no showering on tailgate day, all you can do is throw a hat on and hope for the best.

I'm blurry-eyed after a rough night of drinking that concluded with a grilled meat on a stick outside a titty club. At least that's what I think happened. The gritty taste in my mouth is telling me that I either ate overcooked strip-club beef or huffed the exhaust of an '88 Iroc Z for a half hour. I'm not sure which one is more heart-healthy.

Brom and Rachelle are with us, and although I am convinced that we are all moving in slow motion, we pack up and the 15 trip to campus. Rachelle looks particularly bad, but that's because she's hungover and pregnant. I read in a book somewhere that is not something to expect not to do while expecting.

To her credit, she had no idea she was a few weeks pregnant at the time. The child was born a few months ago without any legs growing out of her forehead. She seems perfectly normal at this point, so if she doesn't end up working for NASA, don't go blaming me.

We all arrive and Rebecca enjoys her first real tailgating experience. Freezing your ass off, beer from strangers, and, well, that's really about it. But there was a lot of beer and freezing.

Hours later, the game starts so we head the other direction. I have never been to a Hawkeye game and I'm not about to ruin my streak. The Broms take off, possibly because Rachelle's unborn child is begging for mercy. Rebecca and I head for the bars.

Rebecca begins her “Iowans are giving the beer away” wonderment. We are several sheets to the wind, but Rebecca keeps ordering drinks because the low prices make her feel like an American tourist in Honduras. “Three dollars will buy me a 32 ounce beer?? I'll take 2 more!!”

We move to Joe's Place and eventually, I go to the bathroom.

This is where it gets good. Buckle in, kids.

I am nonchalantly using the urinal when a gentle fart escapes. A fart who brought a friend over without asking permission first.

I dive for the toilet and avoid anything horribly traumatic from happening, but the damage is done. Upon assessing the situation, the boxers go in the trash...now I'm going commando. The jeans escaped the worst of it, but they are a liability because it won't be long until they ripen to crisp and unbearable funk.

I brought this girl across the country to meet my parents and my friends, see my hometown, and embrace the idea of leaving the only home she's ever known for a guy that she has only been dating a few months. And I've just crapped myself.

Not good.

I return to the table, where my girlfriend is calmly having a conversation with a group of strangers. I join and no one turns to stare. I'm pulling this off! I order a beer and put on my most calm facade.

“Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.” -Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I am Jack's soiled pants.

I suggest that we take a break from drinking and go for a walk. I don't have a plan yet, but outside there is a breeze to carry away the smell. At this point, the smell only exists in my mind, but it is unholy and powerful.

We find this cute boutique that Rebecca loves. I casually ask if they have men's clothes. Of course they don't. Rebecca really wants to browse, so I take the opening.

“Why don't you look around and I'll meet you in a half hour. OK love you bye.”

I don't give her a chance to respond as I fly out the door. I have 30 minutes, and I need new jeans and a pair of underwear. I'd probably kill a man for a shower at this moment, but the adrenaline in my system overrides the alcohol.

Fun fact: There is not a single store in downtown Iowa City that sells men's blue jeans. The clock is running and I've got to improvise.

I have 15 minutes left when I get into a men's dress clothing store. I don't have time to burn, so I ask the first salesmen I see to bring me a pair of khaki's and a pair of size large boxers. Within a minute I'm in the dressing room with some clean pants and a 3 pack of underwear.

I drop my pants and step out of them very carefully. I rip open the underwear and put on the top pair. They are ugly, but at this point I would be wearing GI Joe Under-Ro's if that is what the salesman had handed me. I systematically go over the pants removing all the tags and stickers.

I'm very glad I wore a sweater that day, so the khaki's look like they could be part of my outfit. I quickly walk to the register and hand the clerk the tags. I'm in a hurry to get out of the store before they realize I left a poopy pair of jeans in the changing room.

I make my move towards the door, $55 poorer but with my dignity intact.

“Sir, you left your pants and the package of underwear.”

Damn. So much for dignity. “Just throw them away.”

“Even the new underwear?”

What am I going to do with them? Carry a pair in each pocket for 7 more hours of bar-hopping?

“I don't need them.”

And I hit the door with a smile on my face. I pulled it off with 10 minutes to spare.


Postscript: That night, I continued drinking with my friends and everyone had a good time. I eventually took a shower. Rebecca ended up moving to Iowa and even accepted my marriage proposal. I am no longer welcome at Ewer's Men's Clothing (though that's just a theory).

And no one ever noticed that my jeans magically became khaki's in the middle of the day.

Infected with love...and little something extra

Yesterday, I was bent over a bed with 2 young women tugging at my underwear. Rebecca was in the air on her way to California, so I could relax and fully enjoy the moment.

Which might had been better if they weren’t trying to ram needles into my ass.
I’m ahead of myself. Let me back up.

Two weeks ago, my fiancée and I closed on our new house. Home buying stories are fairly dull, so let’s just skip ahead. The second night in the new house, I was thrown a surprise pre-bachelor party. Chaos ensued, my phone was lost/stolen/liberated-by-guerilla-fighters, and I saw absolutely no naked women. So we will have to give that another try in October.

Now that you know that, forget everything…it was a red herring. I just wanted to explain why I haven’t been returning calls lately. Let me get back to having my pants removed.

The new house can get a little stuffy. It is large, sprawling, and the HVAC system is a Frankenstein’s monster that has been slightly assembled over the past 98 years. We have not mastered how to best cool the house, though I have a feeling that 2 decades may not be long enough, let along 2 weeks. The hot water pipes are routed through the chimney for christ’s sake.

Tuesday night the warm air clouded around me and I could not fall asleep. This is rare for me, so after a half hour of tossing uncomfortably I gave up and went downstairs to watch TV. It was much cooler, the ceiling fan created a nice breeze, and within minutes I fell fast asleep in front of the television.

It was good. Ahhhh.

WHAT THE HELL IS ON TOP OF ME! WHAT IS GOING ON??? IS THAT A WING?? BAT!!! THERE IS A FUCKING BAT ON TOP OF ME!!

The bat and I are incredibly confused. I shake sporadically, like an actor poorly faking a seizure. The bat goes flies into me and then goes into hover mode. This goes on for several seconds, both of us failing to correctly assess the situation.

I gather my wits, roll off of the couch, and run for the kitchen. I’ve seen enough movies to know that the first thing you do when you encounter a bat is to grab a frying pan. I realize that the pan I want to use wasn’t rinsed off after dinner. So here is a lesson kids: always wash your pans right after you eat. You never know when you will need them to kill a disease-carrying flying rodent.

I grab on omelet pan, which is my third choice. I watch as the bat flies through the dining room across the kitchen doorway. Then a few seconds later, it flies across it again.

I stand there, arm raised, the pan occupying the right side of my peripheral vision. There is one singular thought in my head: I need its brain.

That is a little morbid…I should probably explain. As you probably know, bats are carriers of rabies. You may not know that rabies is 100% fatal once you develop symptoms. And unless you have an extensive laboratory background, you definitely don’t know that the only way to determine if an animal is a carrier of rabies is to swab its brain.

So I need this bat’s brain.

I stock up to the doorway, waiting for it to make another pass. Nothing happens. I poke my head through the doorway. I look left. I look right. I think my former cuddle-buddy is on to me, because there is no sign of it.

I put the pan on my head and make a run for the stairs. I try not to imagine what I look like as I bound up the stairs in my boxers sporting cook-wear as a hat. I crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. I don’t wake Rebecca, because unless she has a history in pest control that I don’t know about, there isn’t anything she can do.

Plus, she will figure out when sees the omelet pan on the dresser in the morning. Rebecca is much smarter than people give her credit for.

As fate would have it, I happen to work in a place that has several experts in the field of animal bites and rabies. They tell me what I already know: you have 72 hours to get the post-exposure rabies vaccine or risk dying. While I’m known for being a bit of the thrifty side (who’s not having dinner or a DJ at his wedding? This guy!), I decide that this is one corner that I probably shouldn’t cut.

This brings us full circle to me standing over a bed in the emergency room. The nurses work in tandem, giving me 6 shots to the bum in under a minute. In addition to using a small area on my arm as a voodoo doll (where the bat scratched/bit me) and a shot in the shoulder, the total was about 15 sticks of the needle. And I have four more appointments to look forward to.

What did we learn?

• Clean dishes can save your life.
• Every public health laboratory has instruments designed to cleanly open up small animal skulls
• If you are a bat, don’t cuddle with a human. Your affection will not be returned.
• Losing your phone is worse than getting infected with a deadly disease. No one thinks you’re a dick for getting rabies. But don’t return a few calls...

The Goat and the Financial Sinkhole

My significant other has this absurd idea that a goat wouldn't make a good pet. Rebecca, being utterly aloof and completely unreasonable, wants to get a basset hound. For your entertainment, I will recreate (poorly) the conversation that took place:

R: You promised that when we got a house, I could get a dog.
J: Why don't we get something more practical, like a goat.
R: How is a goat practical in the middle of the city?
J: Other than for lawn mowing, it would save us from buying a shredder. I don't think an identity thief is going to cut open a goat for our bank statements.
R: That's stupid. Dogs are cute and friendly. Goats are smelly.
J: Dogs lick their own ass.
R: Touché.
J: What about goat's milk? And goat cheese? You don't see people selling dog cheese at the farmer's market.
R: How are you going to milk the dog?!? The thought of eating dog cheese is making me sick.
J: Dogs have like 8 nipples. And when the dog gets sick later on, we can't take it to the butcher have steaks made out of it.
R: What kind of sicko eats the family pet??

Now you may be thinking, how did the pet conversation come up? Don't you live in a downtown apartment? You have to keep luggage in the hallway because you there is not enough storage space. You don't have room for a chihuahua, let alone a goat.

There was also discussion of a pet wallaby, but Rebecca actually had a pretty convincing argument for not having a large marsupial in our loft.

No, the reason the pet conversation come up was because a long time ago, I told her that she could get a dog when we bought a house. We close on a house at the end of the month.

How did this happen? How Jeremy Whitaker get talked into buying a house? Does Rebecca have magic powers?

All it took was some simple logic:
I have absolutely no money on hand for a down payment, closing costs, inspections, or even some basic furniture.
I have only had my job a few months
I am not married and will rely heavily on my girlfriend to make the finances work
My credit is slightly above pathetic, but well below that of guy who sits on his couch and smokes weed all day. Like 'The Dude.'

Given all that, how could I not buy a house? I would have to stay awake for days on a crack binge to come up with worse idea. It was perfect.

Knowing that we wanted to buy a house, the next job was to pick a Realtor. It just came down to choosing from two guys I know in the business: Ryan Rivera and Justin Volrath, one I knew in high school and the other in college. Both are solid guys who know what they are doing.

It was settled with a coin flip. Sorry Justin, it was heads. Drinks are on me next time.

Next, Rebecca and I looked at dozens of houses. We spent a lot of time on the county assessor's website. We even put in an offer on a house and then withdrew it. We waited, saw more houses, and then finally found the right house.

You can take a look here:
http://www.iowarealty.com/buying/detail_ml.asp?SearchFilter=8&list_numb=323070

For those in the Des Moines area, it is located a few houses behind the Dahl's grocery store on Ingersoll. For those out of town, it a nice older neighborhood less than a mile from the Governor's Mansion and within walking distance of more than a dozen bars and restaurants. It's a larger old house with 4 floors of finished space. It needs some interior paint and a landscaping overhaul, but nothing that a few weekends of hard work can't fix.

We'll miss living downtown: walking to work, the farmer's market at our doorsteps, stumbling home from the bars downstairs. But now instead I'll be building equity, getting ready for marriage and a potential family, and finally calling a place home.

Plus, there will be plenty of room in the yard for a goat.

My Latest Mistake

When you have so many unimportant things going on in your life, it is easy to get lost in it all.

That was a vague and completely useless statement. And since this isn't the narration to Grey's Anatomy, I'll take a moment to explain.

In the past 2 months, I've been to concerts big and small (Michael Bublé, Stuart Davis), gotten drunk at outdoor venues (Iowa Cubs, Clive after 5) and indoor venues (name a city on the map), and even celebrated my girlfriend's birthday with a bar crawl. Twice.

And before I lose the thought, let me so this: It's my considered opinion that in the fullness of time, history will record the greatness of Michael Bublé. And all of you will apologize to me for listening to adult contemporary.

Except for Alec, who introduced to Bublé. Yes, a black guy from the Caribbean got me hooked on Michael Bublé. Good luck wrapping your noodle around that one.

Nonetheless, it is when life centers around flea markets and the season finalé of House that the important things float to the top.

Twice this week, I have cried like a little girl. The second time was during House episode tonight. Stupid Amber.

But that was more of a subdued, Mufasa-just-died-and-Simba-curled-up-beneath-his-lifeless-paw cry.

The first time was more of an I-just-watched-my-family-get-butchered-by-African-warlords type of uncontrollable sobbing. Yes African warlords, I'm judging you although I don't really know you. Racist? Perhaps. But I don't you'll need to fit me a Klan robe just yet.

Why was I crying? Did it have anything to do with warlords or the Klan? Would a movie about the Klan fighting African warlords be cool? Which side would you cheer for?

Or perhaps my crying fit had something more to do with a word that rhymes with smalcohol?

Smalcohol was only partially to blame. I believe the blood pooling in Rebecca's stomach might have also been a contributing factor.

After a long night of partying, Rebecca decided to stay home while I continued out with some friends. Before I get labeled as insensitive, she gave me no indication that she was about to produce a few pints of bloody vomit.

Oops, I just gave away the ending. Rebecca decided to drive herself to the hospital after deciding that probably wasn't natural. I wasn't here and I don't know how long it took to make the decision to drive to the emergency room, but I can't imagine it was longer than 4 seconds. Or about the amount of time it takes to say 'that ain't cool' and wipe her face off.

Because her boyfriend is completely useless (aka drunk and not answering the phone),. Rebecca called Sleepy and had him meet her at the hospital. Unfortunately, he didn't know how to get to Iowa Methodist. So she left and met him at Mercy instead.

Later, I am giving Sleepy a driving tour of local hospitals.

She sends me a text, and I immediately get the guys I'm with to drive me to the hospital. Upon arriving, I am worried for her, upset with myself for blowing her off, and I've been drinking for 7 hours straight.

Extreme concern + self-loathing + smalcohol = an previously unknown level of crying.

Also, a lot of snot found it's way into the world that night. So if you were at the hospital and I knew you (Sleepy, Crane, Warren, and Warren's girl), I'll pay to get your shirts dry cleaned.

And yeah, and thanks for sticking around.

After several hours, I sobered up, the tears and snot stopped pouring out, and Rebecca was diagnosed with a tear in her esophagus. Soft foods and no alcohol for a week or two and she'll be fine. We got home at 7 AM and have never been so ready to fall asleep.

So what have we learned?

1. Bublé has cross-cultural appeal. Download Home and Quando Quando Quando and then argue with me.
2. KKK versus African warlords is a concept just begging for a Michael Bay film.
3. Learn the location of all the hospitals in the area.
4. Big noses have the potential to produce a lot of mucus.
5. Sometimes, just sometimes, we should pay attention to our significant others. It may save you from a night of tears and a small fortune in dry cleaning.
   

Bar-2-Bar 2008

Looking back, I wonder why it took me 15 minutes to discover the blood gushing out of both knees. I bet it had something to do with all the beer I had drank over the previous 6 hours.

But let me back up. My name is Jeremy. And I hate daylight saving time. What do I hate even more? Snotty intellectuals who know to leave the ‘s’ off the end of saving.

I could bore you with the details, but let me sum up by saying that DST was invented by a Brit and first implemented by Germans during World War I. Why was it created? Either to extend daylight into the evening so people could enjoy more recreation and save electricity for lighting costs; or to screw with me and almost make me late for the Bar-2-Bar run in Cedar Rapids. Damn Germans, always trying to mess with me.

Despite the nearly century old attempt by Germany to make me miss the start of the greatest tradition that America has yet to create, Rebecca and I jumped in the All-Terrain Neon GT and flew across the state.

Fortunately, I made time in our schedule for a nutritious breakfast from Burger King. OK, if good nutrition is London, than a sausage Croissan’Wich meal with a large diet coke and a side of hash browns would be Tokyo. What it lacked in nutrients, it made up for in something more important: Grease. It was going to come shooting out of me later, and it was anyone’s guess which side it would be coming out from.

Just a friendly little advice from your Uncle Jeremy …I’m no food critic, but approach the ham omelet sandwich at your own risk. It is incredibly bland, but with a sweet aftertaste. And what part of ham, cheese, egg, or bread should taste sugary?

We didn’t have time to hang out for the classy “Bring Your Forty” pre-party event at Nic’s house. Nic knows that all the book-learning in the world is useless if you can’t enjoy the simple pleasure of 40 ounces of cold Miller High Life splashing down your throat (and then slowly eroding your liver and colon). So Rebecca and I check in with the group and then head to the starting line.

We have a tough choice to make at our arrival: do we hang out in the parking lot or do we walk 100 steps to a bar while we wait for the run to start? We didn’t think it was much of a choice either. I commence my drinking at 12:40 PM.

Beers quickly dispensed with, we head over to the starting line to realize that it is still cold and we are still sober. So we walk over to another bar. Because if we don’t start drinking again quickly, our bodies would flush out the first beer before we had an opportunity to build on to it to create a nice buzz. And that’s just wasteful.

So we head to another bar.

Two beers later, we are informed we should come to the starting line, because the race is about to start.
“Where is the first bar?”
“Here.”
“So we should put down our beers, go to the starting area, run 5 blocks in the opposite direction, and end up back here in 10 minutes completely out of breath?”
“I think that about sums it up.”

After absolutely no discussion on the topic, we decided against running.

Soon the crowd came, and eventually we prepared ourselves for the run to the next bar. Which was located next door.

Exhausted, I order two Bud Lights. I’m a guy who knows how to take care of a woman, as long as that woman likes cheap domestic beer. Rebecca smiles, drinks her beer, and secretly wishes for me to slip on the ice and break my neck.

Some time later, we make the run down the block to the next bar. One member of our party gets cited for open container. I’m as surprised as you are to let you know that it wasn’t me.

More cans of Bud Light (the favorite drink of Irish, I’ve heard from no one) and three bars later, the run (which involved virtually no running) has come to an end and nothing is left but to walk to car. Nothing could be simpler.

Then I totally come crashing down on the ice.

If I were an 80 year woman with osteoporosis, I would probably just now be coming out of anesthesia for my double knee replacement. Luckily for all of us, my diet has a lot of cheese in it, which, in addition to making me fat, also gives me strong bones.

Maybe I shouldn’t be drinking and wearing shorts in below-freezing temperatures, but the real villains are old people who are too feeble to shovel their walks. Instead of arresting drunk people who carry open alcohol containers, publicly urinate, and steal real estate signs, the police need to bust down their doors and start carting these old people off to jail.

The Second Holiest Woman - A Love Story

Mother Teresa was a total glory-hog.

Think about it. How many other nuns did you read about in the newspaper? Do you think she was out there alone helping lepers in the slums of Calcutta? She walks around in her fancy blue head covering (was that thing silk?) giving interviews and meeting with Princess Di while the nuns actually doing the work are widely ignored. Once the cameras stop rolling, do you think Mother Teresa was pulling an all-nighter in the bathroom with a dysentery-struck orphan?

You know she wasn’t even still in the country. She was on the Vatican’s private jet throwing back appletinis on her way to St. Barts.

OK, I admit that I’ve probably been a little too harsh on Mother Teresa. I doubt they even let her near the Vatican’s jet, since the Catholic Church has made it clear that only sexually-repressed men can communicate with the Lord. The story I heard about her dropping acid with Keith Richards before the British Invasion of the early 60’s is most likely without merit.

But I digress.

What’s really bothering me isn’t Mother Teresa, or even nuns. I could talk about the cute girl from college who went off to the nunnery a few years later. That was a loss to men everywhere. Of course, she had slept with two lifetimes worth of men before becoming a nun, so don’t cry to me if you missed out. Cry to Abbott, who couldn’t figure out that when the girl you are making out suddenly gets off the couch and climbs into bed, IT ISN’T BECAUSE SHE IS TIRED.

My wraith is should really be directed away from future Saint Mother Teresa. My problems are far too petty to drag her, the Vatican, or even my second least favorite religion (Catholicism) into the fray.

Someone at work took credit for a project I did and it’s been chaffing me like a cheap pair of underwear all week. Since I am the new guy, instead of causing a conflict I smiled, nodded, and defiled the good name of a nun instead.

Speaking of cheap underwear, fellas, unless you enjoy the feeling of your fingers fishing around your butt crack all day, do not buy boxers from the Route 66 collection at K-Mart. I thought that ‘Hey, underwear is just underwear and who cares where it comes from.” I thought wrong…it matters where you buy your drawers.

Forced to Enjoy Black History

I just came from watching a guy in an Abraham Lincoln costume speak for an hour in first person, ending with the Gettysburg address. Seriously. If you are looking for a joke here, you are going to come up with one on your own. Jeremy Whitaker is not afraid of getting his hands dirty with a little history.

Of course, with the writer’s strike annihilating the TV schedule, I don’t have a lot to do with my evenings. In a choice between a Lincoln impersonator and American Gladiators, I choose the man without the fake tan and testes the size of marbles from years of steroid abuse. Lincoln may not have been a looker, but even Lincoln is better than a real Hulk Hogan.

Which brings me back to my original topic.

Tomorrow is the 199th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. For one night only, the Iowa Historical Society put two original letters from our 16th president on display. Honest Abe obviously didn’t have a crowd in mind when he composed his correspondence. Imagine a crack-head in an alley trying to forge a medical prescription with a quill pen. That is the penmanship of President Lincoln.

So while I was being mildly entertained by a fake Lincoln and a man in a Civil War uniform sing all 5 verses of Jimmy Crack Corn (which is the about the death of a white man being celebrated by slaves), I remembered something that is so very dear to my heart. And by dear, I mean it holds slightly less significance in my life than Columbus Day.

February is Black History Month.

My guess is that none of you have bothered to celebrate it properly; even the 3 black people who read these articles. The lack of black readership is not because I don’t appeal to black people. I can claim having made out with two African American women, which probably makes me the all-time Iowa record holder.

So my goal of the next 1 3/4 minutes is to get you to embrace Black History Month. Let’s get the lowdown on this celebration of culture from the one man who credibly represents all black people. That’s right, it is the greatest narrator of our time.

Take it away, Morgan Freeman:

"I don't want a black history month.” (60 Minutes Interview, 2005)

Thanks for pissing on all over my parade, Morgan Freeman. Why don’t you narrate yourself all the way to Hell. Just for that, I’m burning my copy of Million Dollar Baby. You only won the Academy Award because it was a weak field!

I’ve only dedicated about another minute to Black History Month, so here is a list of all the ways you can celebrate here in Iowa:

• Pick up a book by a black author. It doesn’t have to be about anybody getting their groove back. My pick: The Count of Monte Cristo. I didn’t know this until years later, but apparently Alexandre Dumas was half Haitian. And a total player.
• It might be tough to find in Iowa, but patronize a black owned business. If you are in Des Moines, Big Daddy’s BBQ on the east side is open on Friday and Saturday from 11:30 – 3:30. It should go without saying, but their food kicks some serious ass. If you are in any other city in Iowa, there may not be any black-owned businesses. Or any black people at all.
• If you are at Fareway or Hy-Vee anywhere in the state, pick up a bottle of Big Daddy’s BBQ sauce. It costs an extra dollar or two, but you’ll know where the money went.
• If you’ve never had Cookie’s salsa, pick that up next time your at the store. The dude is the biggest cracker on earth, but that salsa is surprisingly good. Again, this is of no benefit to African-Americans.
• Read the Enmancipation Proclamation in Lincoln’s own writing: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/
  (his handwriting here is far better than the sample I saw tonight)
• Eating peanut butter is not a tribute to George Washington Carver. Giving props to Simpson College and Iowa State for accepting the man into their colleges is a acceptable. But that is not permission to purchase those Cyclone earmuffs you’ve had your eye on, you gaywad.
  

Pictures from November (some with the High Life guy)

Me, High Life guy, and some chump who had to be in the picture.

Josh-Josh Cock Block, High Life guy, Jeff, Casey Cohl

Jeff and Rebecca.

Jeff being licked by someone who definitely isn't me. Because I wouldn't lick a dude. Seriously. That's not how I roll.

High Life guy, me, Rebecca.

Breaking in 2008

Seriously, I think I took logic and reason with me when I left California. From the phone calls I've been getting, you would think that the entire state has reverted back to a primal state. Seriously, it is like Lord of Flies back there. I think Lucky is running around shirtless hunting wild boar with a sharpened stick. And when the vegetarian Hindu is a half step away from ripping a pig’s beating heart from it’s chest, the shit has definitely hit the fan.

But that’s a whole different story. Let’s start from the beginning.

In an anti-climatic and overdue announcement, I have had a live-in girlfriend since October. And I road tripped across the county to move to Iowa. And I have a new job. And a loft in the middle of the nightlife district. Also, I hung out in Colorado Springs for Christmas with Alec and in Cedar Rapids for New Year’s. Hell, Jimmy’s (phantom) wife even rung in 2008 by wetting her pants.

I’m sure that a normal person would write about any of those things. Fortunately for all of us, I am not that guy.

Let’s talk about diarrhea instead.

My parents told me that they both had a nasty stomach flu over Christmas. I knew that it could be a giardia, cryptosporidium, or even something straight out of Oregon Trail like cholera or dysentery. I told them to hydrate, get plenty of rest, and do their best to feel better.

I know that’s not very exciting, but give me a chance to build the narrative a little bit.

A few days later, I took Rebecca to my parent’s house for a belated holiday meal. She met my aunt, we had dinner, and I used the bathroom. Big mistake.

Around 1 AM my eyes popped open and I jumped up to use the toilet. I wouldn’t leave the bathroom until 8 hours later. I threw up 11 times and my bowel moved probably twice as much. There was no doubt in my mind that by 9 AM, anything located between my mouth and my rectum that wasn’t nailed down had been expelled. It wouldn’t surprise me if my appendix had escaped in all the confusion.

I call my mom and warn her that they will want to wipe down the fixtures in the kitchen with bleach, wash all the dish towels, and clean all the surfaces in the kitchen. My mom thanks me for my concern, but I can tell she doesn’t believe a word of my crackpot theories. She reminds me that my aunt has been staying there for 3 days, and she is fine. It might be true that I know more about infection from watching House than I do from college, it doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.

In retrospect, I was probably wrong. But we’ll get there.

On a side note, because I’m laid up with the mystery poopy-vomiting disease, I have to miss hanging out with Ernesto and Mary while they are visiting from Peru.

Balls!

To keep me alive, my girlfriend makes me my favorite ‘I’m-dying-from-crapping treat’: a big glass of water with a teaspoon of both sugar and salt. I may be a crackpot, but I remember from a health class that the electrolytes you lose during diarrhea can be replaced with simple household spices. And taking all the Imodium you can get your hands on doesn’t hurt either.

It is the morning of New Year’s Eve, and I can tell that Rebecca is wondering why she just moved 2000 miles to spend the holidays with a guy who can barely get through night without crapping on her. I decide that since I haven’t dropped bombs in several hours, I am well enough party. Let’s drink!

We drive to Cedar Rapids and meet Jeff, Sarah, and Debliek at 7 PM; they are already 2 hours into drinking. Rebecca wonders why they started so early, I remind her that this is the Midwest…I’m almost surprised they didn’t start at noon. We join in and the next thing you know, we are playing drinking games at some random party and the New Year has passed.

I would tell you more about that night, but this isn’t a story about a New Year’s party. This is a story about diarrhea. For God’s sake, stay focused.

After sleeping in a chair (poorly), I wake up at 9 AM on New Year’s Day with my stomach rumbling in an unfortunately familiar way. By 9:05, I have taken ownership of Jeff and Sarah’s only bathroom. Thirty minutes and three unholy bowel movements later, I decide it’s time to head to the walk-in clinic. I call to make an appointment, but the walk-in clinic rudely reminds me that they don’t take appointments. It has something to do with being a WALK-IN clinic.

Fine. I say goodbye to Jeff and Sarah and warn them to bleach every surface I may have touched in their house. Rebecca is a trooper and drives me to clinic. She isn’t feeling so hot after a night of heavy drinking and sleeping on the world’s least comfortable chaise lounge, but compared to me, she is a model of health and vigor.

Sans appointment, we show up at the clinic. They hand me a clipboard, which I promptly hand to Rebecca.

“Here’s my insurance card. Feel out as much as you can. If you don’t know, don’t be afraid to guess.”
And I double-time it to the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, I come back, fill out what she didn’t know, and hand the completed forms to the receptionist.

Then I blow up the bowel for the fifth time that day. It isn’t even noon yet.

Jesus.

I come back to find out the bastards have skipped over me while I was in the can. I try to explain that because I’m there for severe diarrhea, that I would appreciate some slack if I’m not in the room when they call. I’m not spending all that time in the bathroom because I’m doing lines of blow with the club kids from Studio 54.

I finally get called, I am escorted to the examination room; the doctor comes in, we talk, and he gives me the news:

“I have no idea what is wrong with you. There is no magic test for diarrhea, so there is no way to find out what you have. But if I had to guess, it is probably norovirus.”

Did they have norovirus on the Oregon Trail?

We discuss my options, and since I know just enough about medicine to be dangerous, I suggest this:

“Since it might be bacterial, is there any harm in loading me full of Cipro and Imodium?”
“Not at all. Here’s your prescription.”
“Cool.”

Target is nice enough to load me up with second line antibiotics on a holiday. In the meantime, Rebecca got Starbucks and is starting to look a little more human. Don’t get me wrong, she still looks like hell, but as a guy whose BM count is approaching double digits (we are now at 8), I won’t be auditioning for America’s Next Top Model next season. Also holding me back from that audition is that Tyra Banks’ giant forehead creeps me out.

We are 2 hours from home, every fart has the potential to ruin my jeans, and the motion of the car makes me want to vomit. As I bad as this is, I smile to myself as we fly down the interstate because I know the situation is about to get worse:

I start my new job in the morning. I sure hope they have a ceiling fan in the bathroom.

Peru - Day 4 (Monday)

I seriously believe that Ernesto was trying to kill me.

It was Monday and the group was flying to Cuzco. Cuzco is located at 10,000 feet, or about 1 ½ times higher than Denver. I was in the emergency room last time I spent more than 2 days at altitude, so I was not looking forward to this flight.

And to rub salt in the wound, I had to be ready to catch the cab to the airport at 4 AM. Ernesto is such a bastard.

The flight is uneventful. And let me clarify that for the Americans in the audience. Airport security was identical to the US. There were no live chickens in the overhead compartment. The wings were not held together with duct tape. Aside from the announcements being made in Spanish, this was no different than a flight from Des Moines to Phoenix. There was even a Papa John’s and a Dunkin Donuts in the terminal.

We check into our hotel, which is uneventful except for one twist. If you check the box that you are unmarried when you check in, they will not let men and women sleep in the same room. We had 2 couples (one engaged) that were forced to sleep in separate rooms because they not married. It sucks, but it’s not the hotel’s fault…take it up with the Pope.

We first meet our tour guide, who I name Professor Tom (he is neither named Tom nor a professor). We first go to a convent, where he discusses the rocks at length and calls the Spanish conquerors ‘sons-of-bitches’ at every opportunity. Then we move on to a cathedral where I can’t help but notice an altar made out of 4 tons of gold.

Generally, robbing churches is not something I think about very often. In fact, with the widespread use of ATM cards, there aren’t many good places to rob at gunpoint other than carnivals and high school football game concession stands. But the carnies have it coming.

But looking at 8,000 pounds of gold protected by little more than a 400-year-old fence and a guy with a walkie-talkie, the thought of an Ocean’s 11 type caper is the only thing on my mind. The Spanish stole the gold from the Incas to make the altar in the first place, so stealing from a thief isn’t really stealing. Right?

The Professor then drags us above the city to see ruins and talks at length about rocks for hours. The temperature has dropped 20 degrees and we are huddled together for warmth, curse the Spanish along with Tom, and wonder what we can do to get him to end the damn tour. We are set upon by native women setting crap (unless you happen to be in the market for finger puppets), this time using cute children and baby goat to lure the girls in our group.

As you might imagine, our girls are total suckers for a cute goat. We freeze longer, knowing that tomorrow is the day we head up Machu Picchu. And no long-winded tour guide or goat-toting old women could get in our way.

Peru - Day 3 (Sunday)

“Hey Clark, shitter’s full.” But we'll come back to that.

The wedding cake was not cut until 3:30 in the morning, but I had passed out in the van about a half hour before that. By the time we returned from the reception, it was 5 AM.

At noon the next day when I got up to go pee, the toilet had other ideas. In a team effort, Josh (my hotel roommate) and I had managed to clog it up the day before. I blame the cow hearts. My urine waits for no man, so despite the toilet being plugged, I let loose.

Our hotel was small and operated with a skeleton crew: 3 staff during the day, 2 at night. After tipping off the front desk to our toilet problems, I heard the doctoral candidate girls having a smoke in the courtyard, so I joined them to catch up on the gossip from the night before.

Total score: 2 girls had hooked up with Latin men, 2 hotel toilets decimated, and 2 people had made out in the back of the van on top of the guy who had passed out. I was a little disappointed…I had expected much more hooking up. I can’t imagine that Ernesto was among them, since he slept at his parent’s bed. And having sex in your parent’s bed is fun once, but after that it is just downright creepy.

Josh came down and swore the toilet had looked at him and said “Senior, please, No Mos” (no more). A group of us had lunch and then did what every tourist does. We went to Hooter’s to watch the NFL game.

The problem with Hooter’s in Peru is that despite the temperature being in the 50’s, the girls still had to wear the ridiculous outfits. No place we had been had heating or cooling. So if it was cold and your uniform is only 2 inches of orange fabric that barely covers your ass, you just have to suffer. I had a beer, watched the Patriots beat up on the Bills, and wondered why the urinals were full of ice.

Then I saw the coolest thing ever (that day): A woman in her 20’s was escorted up the escalator by the security guard. While it doesn’t sound cool to you, the woman was being escorted because she had ever ridden an escalator before. We stood at the bottom and applauded her bravery. Josh even took her picture.

Someone: Josh, you should get her email and send the picture to her.
Me: The woman’s never ridden a freaking escalator. I’m going out on a limb and guess that she doesn’t have a hotmail account.

Then we head to Ernesto’s parents house where the staff prepares leftovers and we all look at pictures from the day before. Being a guy, I grow tired of this after about 2 minutes. But I’m a team player, so I go along with it.

And we sit. And talk. And look at pictures. And slowly 2 hours go by.

“Jeremy, we are getting a group to go to the fountains downtown. You want to come?”

I don’t these people in the group very well yet. Aside from 5 people I already knew, I’ve picked up maybe 2 names. I’m tired of sitting around and all I really to do is go to my room, curl up under the covers, and watch some TV. I don’t want to jump in a cab to be dragged halfway across a strange foreign city with a bunch of strangers to see some stupid fountains.

But I’m a team player.

Behind watching a woman ride an escalator, the fountain park was the coolest thing we did all day. Lima spend millions on this fountain park and for 4 soles (~$1.25) you could see a dozen or so huge fountains, including the tallest fountain in the world (250 feet!). They even did a Fantasia like movie/laser show on one of the fountains. And because we were a big group of Americans, we got our own security detail. Like I told you, I am a rock star Peru.

I’m not going to tell you much about the fountains: I’ll show you…pictures and a link to the park are below. http://www.go2peru.com/Lim_foto08.htm

Peru - Day 2 (Saturday)

It was the most important day of my life…if my name had been Ernesto. Since I’m the whitest kid in the Midwest and I don’t speak any Spanish, perhaps it is best that my name isn’t Ernesto.
I hate to make their wedding day all about me, but until the wedding party starts writing their own articles, their wedding day is going to be all about me.

Though I imagine that Ernesto had to be nervous. It was the day of his wedding, dozens of people had flown in from the United States, and I had been coerced into purchasing a suit for the occasion. Should either of them get cold feet at the alter, he was going to owe me $80 or an equal amount of store credit at Target. Yes, I only spent $80 for the suit. In my defense, in an average year I wear a Halloween costume more often than I wear a suit. And I didn’t spent nearly that much on my costume.

What would I do with $80 in store credit at Target? No question about it: a new game for my Wii and a box of Target wine. If there was any money left over, it would be split evenly between Little Debbie Zebra Cakes and Swiss Cake Rolls. Playing Wii, drinking wine straight from the box, and binging on inexpensive mass produced junk food. That sounds better than some stupid wedding…

Oh right. Most important day of Ernesto and Mary’s life.

I’m slow to wake up at the hotel that morning, probably because of the lethal combination of jet lag and hangover. A shower is out of the question, because I want to take one right before the wedding…and I know that a nasty BM is in the mail after last night’s drive-through beers, Pisco Sours and cow hearts. So I throw on a hat and decide to explore Lima.

We are in pretty nice neighborhood, which is a total letdown for me. When I’m out of the US, I prefer that the streets are dirty and that strangers approach me trying to sell Viagara and date rape drugs. What can I say…Mexico has ruined me for all other foreign countries.

I wish I had something exciting to report, but my sole excitement that afternoon comes when a shop thinks that I might be using a fake bill to pay for a vase. I try to imagine what kind of person would fly in all the way from the United States to pass off a bill that is the equivalent of $6.50. Apparently, I look a lot like that guy.

The wedding is at 7, so our ride shows at 6. The bus driver has no idea where the church is and has to stop for directions several times. We have learned that this is not uncommon…there are virtually no highways through the city and that every trip involves a labyrinth of back roads, roundabouts, and referring to the map a half dozen times to make sure you aren’t lost.

We arrive barely on time, and our bus of 20 Americans unloads at the church. Right away, I notice a floral arrangement that would cost more than many used cars. I have no time to contemplate this further, as we are quickly moved across the foyer, through a grand courtyard, and into the chapel.

The ceremony begins and right away and all of us on the American side realize we have no idea what is going on. The Catholics can sort of guess, but when you are an American Atheist at a Peruvian Catholic event, it is best just to sit quietly with your hands in your lap. The priest was bilingual, so at least I know for sure that we were attending a wedding. Halfway through the ceremony, I realized that they weren’t using a soundtrack. Apparently, the key members of the Lima Symphony Orchestra had nothing else to do that evening. Classy.

It was a beautiful ceremony and it went off without a hitch. It was apparent that a lot of work went into it, and that was only the beginning…

I don’t know that I’ve seen wedding receptions this nice in movies. And as happy as I wanted to be, there is something inherently depressing in the fact that the coolest wedding that I’ll ever attend won’t be my own.

Lessons I learned from Mary and Ernesto’s Wedding Reception:

1. A party that would cost ~$200,000 in the US can be done for around 6% of that sum in Peru.
2. If you know the retired commander of the Air Force, his house makes a sweet place for a reception. Though any rich person whose backyard backs up to a landscaped mountain will do.
3. Security guards at the door adds a feeling of exclusivity that you can’t get any other way.
4. Having a large table dedicated entirely to chocolates is not nearly as pretentious as it sounds.
5. Beer is not necessary for a good time. You heard me right. They had a bar with 5 drinks available: Appletini’s, Cosmopolitans, Pisco Sours, Merlot, and Scotch. All of them were just sitting on the bar already made, so there was no wait.
6. Leave the kids at home. The reception didn’t even get started until after 8 PM, so kids were never in the equation.
7. Giant Cirque-du-Soliel type puppets dancing through your reception for 10 minutes or so after everyone has a light buzz can be pretty fun.
8. Don’t serve dinner. Appetizers were being walked around if people were hungry. Later on, to no announcement whatsoever, 2 small buffet lines opened up and guests could fill a plate at their convenience. But food was definitely not the focus of the event.
9. If you know the national dancing champion, invite her to put on a performance.
10. Put the DJ out of sight. The DJ was behind a curtain somewhere and was never heard from all night. Or at least I didn’t notice the DJ giving an instruction or telling people what to do.
11. If you are distantly related to the mayor to Lima, invite him.
12. If you can afford waiters to walk around with drinks and appetizers, it classes the event up considerably.
13. If you are having the social event of the season, it is proper etiquette to invite the newspaper to take pictures from the society page.
14. No groomsmen or bridesmaids. Just have your family only up front during the ceremony and save your friends from having to rent a tux or buy a useless bridesmaid dress.
15. Leave the entire night unstructured. People will drink, socialize, snack, and even dance without being told how and when to do so.

Peru: Day 1

I took about 150 pictures in Peru. I went to a good friend’s wedding, saw a wonder of the world, and spent a week getting to know a lot of great new people. And the coolest thing that happened in Peru I have no picture for.

For what I imagine is the only time in my life, there was a man waiting at the airport with a sign with my name on it. That’s right, a driver, who had never met me, was instructed to stand outside the baggage claim and wait for me to show up so he could take me to my hotel on the other side of Lima. In Peru, I am a rock star.

That was the first half hour.

Day 1:

Immediately upon arriving at my hotel, Ernesto had left instructions that a cab should be summoned to take me to his parent’s house. Ernesto didn’t take into account that I would be tired after a 10 hour red-eye flight that included a not-so-scenic layover at the San Salvador Airport or that I might not want to wear the same outfit for 48 straight hours. But I took a cold shower (it wouldn’t be the last) and 20 minutes later, I was in taxi headed for Ernesto Sr.’s.

For those who know little about him, Ernesto was my roommate for a year and a half and is getting married tomorrow. He is a good friend and deserves a grand introduction, but references to him are peppered throughout the history of this blog. Hell, I started this blog while we were living together. In a sentence, he is one of the most compassionate and honest individuals I know; and for a doctor, he sure can knock back some drinks. We could use more people like him on the planet.

The 40-minute cab ride set me back about 7 dollars. And if you consider that gas costs a little more in Peru than it does in California, you can quickly imagine why it took me all week to figure out how that works out to a profit.

A quick word about taxis in Peru: Forget everything you know about riding in a taxi. They look like every other car on the road, with the exception of a sticker on the front windshield stating that it is, in fact, a taxi. As for the condition of these vehicles, imagine my Dodge Neon, which currently has 126,000 miles on it and the transmission is starting to go out. Now imagine that I drove it for another 100,000 miles while performing absolutely no maintenance on it whatsoever. That is a taxi in Peru.

And driving in Lima is a what I imagine what driving in Wild West would have been, had cars been invented 50 years sooner. Aside from stoplights, all other traffic instruction is optional and totally unenforced. It is common to honk before you approach a 4-way intersection to let other drivers and pedestrians know that you have no intention of stopping, regardless of what the sign might say.

While I think about all of this, I arrive at Ernesto’s dad’s house.

At the gate of the subdivision there is a man in a paramilitary outfit, though I cannot tell if he is armed. He takes the driver’s license as evidence that he is coming back and not there to rob anyone, and then let’s us through. Even as we drive, I notice that every house is a miniature fortress, surrounded by fences with either sharp iron spikes, glass shards implanted into concrete, or high voltage wire across the front. Each house has a high concrete fence surrounding it the other three sides not facing the street that is shared with their neighbors. The result is that each block becomes an impenetrable juggernaut, the rectangular perimeter surrounded by spikes and electricity, with 2 rows of cells enclosing houses and yards within 10-foot concrete walls.

Or think of a standard suburban block with identical sized lots. Replace the chain link in the backyard with insurmountable concrete, and insert a decorative fence that would rival most prisons for security in the front.

Despite the forbidding security, Ernesto’s childhood home was pretty nice. The architecture is very modern, the servants were friendly, and I spent almost every moment there wondering how he endured the dump where we lived in Iowa City. Perhaps the fact that we lived on a busy street and never had to lock the doors was so radical of a change that he forgot we were living in squalor.

I met the group of Americans that would be traveling together for the next week, and immediately gave up on remembering all their names. I only knew Sarah and Jen, but that was good enough for me. Why do I love Sarah and Jen? How many PhD candidates in Public Health do you know who smoke like it is going out style? If you knew nothing else, that would be enough to understand why they are my friends.

Upon my arrival, I find out that the booze is running low, but that’s OK since we are heading to a horse show. Sarah, God bless her, is a little tipsy and can’t stop calling it a donkey show. I assure her that we not in Tijuana and that no one would be performing sex acts on animals.

We get on a bus and head to the show. On the way, we pull into something the size of a small aircraft hangar, which I realize is a drive through convenience store. Forty-five soles (so-lace) later, we have 4 cold six packs and the party on the bus is in full swing. We are 25 English speakers drunk in the middle of a foreign country on our way to a donkey show. I mean horse show. Damn you Sarah.

We get to the show and our given VIP tickets, because like I said earlier, I am a rock star in Peru. If you are into horses, it was a pretty good show and gave insight into the history and culture of Peru. If you are a jet-lagged American who is half in the bag, it was an opportunity to discover even at an overpriced outdoor venue, $10 of US currency will get you three pretty good-sized alcoholic beverages. And for a dollar, you can get these tasty meat kabobs fresh off the grill.

Two bites into my kabob:
Ernesto: “Jeremy, you know that you are eating cow heart.”
Me: “You know what Ernesto...this is some tasty cow heart.”
















At the horse show. From Left: Dave (urinating), a donkey, Brian (urinating), and Miguel, showing his Peruvian pride.

Like Cortez and Hillary in one cute bundle

Answer: It has just one foolish adventure after the next.

Question: Where the hell have you been the past month and a half? You haven’t gotten sucked into the stale routine of a bureaucrat have you?

It has been a crazy month y’all, and you might find it impossible to believe one slightly doughy guy could fit it all in. Fortunately, I’m no ordinary man. I’m a conquistador. Seriously. And like all good stories, it starts with watching Ultimate Fighting on a pirated satellite system.

Wait, that’s not a good story at all. I got mildly intoxicated and slept in my bed alone. Now that I think about it, all these stories end “I got mildly drunk and went to bed alone.”

Yes, I actually said conquistador a paragraph back, some of you are just getting your head the idea of me dressed up like Cortéz conquering Central America.

Inside of a week in a half I drove to Sacramento, flew to Orange County, drove to Long Beach, spent two days at a Chlamydia Screening Project conference, flew back Sacramento, met my dad at the airport, drove to Redding, drove to Reno, then Lake Tahoe, then back to Redding, puttered around a day, drove through Redwood National Park to Brookings (on the Oregon coast), spent 2 days on the coast, drove to Seattle, spent time with family, ditched my dad, and drove back to Redding where I had to work the next day.

You’re exhausted and all you had to do was read about it. It is very fortunate that I drive the All-Terrain Neon GT, because any other car would have buckled under the strain of a 2000-mile road trip. The Neon just shrugged.

I would talk about what I did all of those days, but I generally don’t talk about work or my family. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my job and love my family, but work occasionally snoops around the website and my family is off-limits.

I write about my friends because by virtue of being my friend, you consent to being written about. If you don’t like it, you can elect to just stop being my friend. Family doesn’t get to vote me off the island, so I leave them alone.

One event from my Seattle trip is that I killed an hour in a dive karaoke bar waiting to go out with my cousins. A month later, someone was attacked in that bar for singing Yellow by Coldplay I can understand that.

Surviving a dive bar and a sore butt from puttering around the Pacific Northwest in an economy car with minimal factory options (you mean they make power windows for all 4 doors?) is not what makes me a conquistador. That was only the beginning.

I climbed a mountain.

You heard me. A mountain.

Alright, I didn’t climb a mountain as much as walk up a really steep trail. The fact remains I was on top of a peak, there was snow, and I wondered more than once what could have possessed me to undertake such a foolish feat. We even did the descent by moonlight.

Any response to that, Iowans? Would have you done this month? Cow tipping?

What could I do that would top hiking among the redwoods, climbing mountains, and going to the dirtiest karaoke bar in the state of Washington? Nothing, right?

Last Friday night, I stopped at McDonald’s, ordered 2 chicken sandwiches, parked my car, and walked over to the silly plastic bench located in the Mickey D’s parking lot. And at 2:45 in the morning, I shared a chicken sandwich with a meth addict who was roaming the parking lot.

We ate in almost complete silence. When we were done he politely thanked me, I wished him luck, got in my car, and my mild buzz long dissipated, went to bed alone.



Captions (from top):
1. Some random conquistador sketch off of the internet
2. Harris State Park in Brookings, OR
3. Myself and Lucky on top of Mt. Lassen. I'm wearing blue and olive together and somewhere, a queer man is dying a little inside.
4. The McChicken, available on McDonald's value menu.

Revised Story of America's Independence

About Fifty years ago, Abe Lincoln decreed that this great nation would no longer subject itself to foreign rule. As the British approached, he ordered that tea be dumped into the harbors to confuse the English into thinking they had sailed to Prince William Sound by accident. What Honest Abe didn't know is that like all reptiles, the dinosaurs that powered the British War Machine were deadly allergic to tea. Despite this discovery, his wife Mary Todd continued to insult his sexual performance in front of the company. Later she would be hung for treason oin the yardarm of the USS Monitor, the first ship in the US Navy constructed entirely of rubber. No one liked Mary Todd Lincoln.

With the dinosaurs out of the battle, Lincoln summoned his greatest military strategist, General George Armstrong Custer. Lincoln knew there was only one way to defeat the superior numbers of the enemy: enlist the aid of Native Americans. And there was no greater friend to the Natives than General Custer. Carrier pigeons spread the word to every teepee and igloo that Americans stood on the brink of oblivion from the scourge of the British. Indians typically ignored White-on-White violence, but there is no way they were going to share a continent with people who routinely ate pickled eggs. Anyone who has ever walked into a room after a pickled-egg fart knows why.

This Coalition of the Willing suffered a harsh winter at Valley Forge, surviving only by using the Native Americans ability to summon game animals with their thoughts. It isn't known why they just sat there and froze instead of marching south to a warmer climate, but most historians believe it has something to do with Lincoln winning a drunken bet of Truth or Dare. Lincoln had big stones, regardless of what Mary Todd may have said to the contrary.

The American army was now ready for its biggest challenge, a direct assault on the armies of England. Lead by a young and spry Prince Charles, this would be no easy task. The forces converged upon in each in Trenton, New Jersey, since neither side cared if it was leveled into a parking lot during the battle. Charles had a distinct size advantage and victory seemed imminent. But Lincoln knew it wasn't size that mattered, but rather how you used it.

We all know how the story ends: The Brits surrendered and the 48 colonies were free from their rule. As a concession of a war, they had to give America all of their dentists and orthodontists, forever losing the secret of clean and straight teeth. And from that point forward, our shared language would only be known as American. Prince Charles also tried to insert possession of Canada into the peace treaty, but Lincoln knew that Canada was no more real than Candyland and admonished Charles for trying to make him look foolish.

So enjoy your 4th of July knowing that dinosaurs went extinct so you could enjoy your freedom.

Jeremy


On a side not, the dinosaurs that survived the swim through the tea became sterile, with the last dinosaur dying sometime in the late 1960's. To this day, all Brits have an irrational fear that tea will cause the end of the human species and ceased drinking it completely. And when a woman is being catty, it has become commonplace to refer to her as a Mary Todd. Typical Usage: In the days leading up to my girlfriend's period, she becomes a total Mary Todd.

Hitler Revival

I don’t even have a joke for this.

A couple weeks ago, the number 4 overall search on Yahoo! was ‘cats that look like Hitler.’ I think that teenagers don’t enough to do over the summer.

Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole

“Why am I here?”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had that thought, especially after a night when I’ve gone a little too far into fiesta mode. Maybe I’ve woken up on a strange couch, a strange bed, or on the front lawn of my own house on the [Jeremy Whitaker Memorial] crack mattress. On a few occasions, I’ve even been fortunate enough to think that waking up next to a strange girl. And on one very unfortunate occasion, it was after waking up naked in bed next to Alec and his girlfriend.

But this time it wasn’t after I woke up from drinking. No, this time I still had a beer in my hand. This time I knew I was in the middle of making a horrible mistake instead of waking up from having made one. How did I know I was midway through a bad idea? Let‘s just say that my mind tends to find clarity when I‘m sitting around nude.

Let’s start at the beginning. And while I’m at the beginning, let me mention that names have been omitted to protect the not entirely innocent. But I almost always leave names out, so this shouldn’t be any different.

It was a slow Friday, so I round up two girls for drinks. One of them invites a guy she’s interested in, so that makes four of us: Girl 1, me, other dude, and girl 2. Two bars and 4 ½ hours later, I’m buzzed and ready to go home. I leave to get in the car with Girl 1. She’s got a boyfriend, so this is nothing more than a sober ride home to sleep in my own bed. The night was over.

Of course it’s not over. Nothing in my life is ever that simple.

The couple calls over and pleads with me to get in the car with them for after-hours. I’m buzzed, but I know that this situation does not feel right. If she is crushing on this guy, so why does she seem so desperate to get me in the car with them? But they use their Jedi mind trip and get me in the car. In fact, I am riding shotgun. Why am I riding in the front seat next to some dude I barely know? Don’t they know that I’m just a third wheel? And where the hell are we going?

Shingletown.

Never heard of it? I’m not surprised. Shingletown is about 45 minutes away, but with construction, is pushing an hour. I was one ignored drunken holler from sleeping in my own bed, now I am being dragged up the side of a mountain (~2,500 feet) next to some strange dude’s house to be the third wheel to a drunken gropefest.

At least I assumed it would be a house. It was not.

We pull off on dirt road that leads up to one of the finest examples of 1973 mobile home architecture.

“Seriously, why am I here?”

I still have my clothes on; this is not the last time I’ll ask this question.

Quick Assessment: I’m tipsy, an hour from home, and have front row seats to the awkward fumblings of two people who like each other but can’t seem to figure it out. Should things escalate to them having sex, there is nowhere in the trailer that I could go to escape listening from it. And I can’t go in the woods…California has bears.

I determine that the probability of someone stopping to pick up an intoxicated hitchhiker at 2 AM in the mountains is slightly worse than me taking down a grizzly with my kung-fu. So I do my best to embrace the situation I’ve landed myself in.

I’m handed a beer and we walk around back to the fire pit. A beer and a fire…things are looking up. While I am on the side of the shed urinating (it was either the shed or the trailer…you decide) I hear a wolf howling. The dude shines his flashlight around trying to find me because the wolf sounded close and he was hoping to scare it off. It takes the entirety of my attention to not pee on my shirt, so fighting a wolf is really not an option.

I return to the safety of the campfire and my beer when it is decided to get in the hot tub. The hot tub has a view of the fire, a place for my beer, and seems like a less likely spot for animal attacks. How? There are also mountain lions in the area, and everyone knows that cats hate water. Therefore, hot tubs are safe zones from mountain lions.

I strip to boxers and get step in. Then the dude tells me I need to go commando.

Let me repeat that last sentence in simpler terms in case you didn’t catch it. The MAN tells me that I NEED to TAKE MY UNDERWEAR OFF. Yeah, I thought it was a little weird too.

In retrospect, I probably could have put up a fight. I could have asked what he called if I soaked my drawers. Or if he had a copy of the hot tub by-laws so he could show me which regulation I was violating.

“Article 2 of the Hot Tub Bill of Rights reads, as amended, ‘The Constitution shall not limit the right of the individual to enforce nudity after daylight hours in hot tubs located adjacent to their trailer.”

But you already know that I caved in. I then realized that they were going to take off their clothes and join me. If they decide this is the moment that they are going to stop being awkward around each other, this is going to go bad very quickly for me. But it takes a much unexpected turn.

He leaves for a minute, and the girl turns to me with a straight face and says:

“Do you think he’s gay?”

That was the igniter to my pent up rage. Like my night wasn’t strange enough? Now she’s got to toss this giant bag of bullshit on top of it?

“Why am I here? Seriously, why did you drag me up here?”

May I remind you, we are both naked and I am almost completely in the bag. I am as livid as a drunk and very relaxed guy in a hot tub could be; which is to say, not very livid. Before I explode like a cheap bottle rocket, the dude comes back; they talk for a couple minutes and excuse themselves.

My calm center is returned as I sit there grateful they decided to go inside to do whatever they were going to do. It’s not that I don’t kiss and tell…the trailer defied my expectations and I couldn’t hear anything over the sounds of hot water jets.

For an eternity that lasted 5-45 minutes, I sat in the hot tub alone and nursed the last beer. I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt that at peace. As the sun came up, I decided to use the last of my energy to avoid passing out in hot tub. I saw my clothes on the ground, but laughed to myself and kept walking.

As I lay nude on the couch surrounded by the lavish decor from my birth year, I’m realizing that I’m not mad. I imagine I feel like Keanu Reeves in Matrix:

“You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

If I had simply gotten in the other car, I’d have wakened comfortably in my bed. Instead I decided to find out how far the rabbit hole goes.

And I discovered the giant hangover at the other end.

Sucker for Helping People

Somewhere around 4 in the morning on early Sunday, I realized that this was a horrible idea. But I’m ahead of myself.

Down in a not so deep or dark place, I am a civic-minded guy. I work at a health department, I give blood, and I’m a sucker for any kid selling any crap to raise money for pretty much any cause. “You want to sell me a $10 package of thumbtacks to buy TOW missiles for an antigovernment militia in Idaho that worships a giant potato? Here’s 10 bucks kid, and you can go ahead and keep the tacks.”

So when there was a sign-up to raise money for Relay for Life (a national fundraiser for the American Cancer Society), I did what any civic-minded individual would do: I blew it off completely.

I’m down with charities, especially secular charities. I hate to think that any portion of my paycheck goes to towards proselytizing (converting individuals to a religious doctrine), so I avoid religious charities despite the fact many of them do some incredible work. Oddly enough, the pope will back me up on this one. He called for an end to proselytizing with Catholic mission work in Africa, saying that deeds alone should be enough to demonstrate the merit of Christianity. Amen to that Padre.

Despite the similarities between the Our Holiness and myself, I blew off Relay for Life because they wanted me to raise $100 so I could go out and walk during the event. Aside from the absurdity of paying for the privilege of walking, I realized that I only hang out with 2 people outside of work. I’m sure they are each good for a couple dollars, but we all know that this ends up with me cutting a large check so I can chafe my thighs raw in the insufferable Northern California heat.

To emphasize my point, if you aren’t in California, go to weather.com and look at the 10 day forecast for Redding (96003). I am not expecting to see rain again until October.

I put the event out of mind. The fundraising deadline passed and almost 2 dozen people I work with turned in over $3000. As I predicted, they did great despite my apathy towards cancer.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on cancer’s side in the battle against cancer. It just hasn’t touched my life significantly. I know some people with some pretty ugly medical conditions ranging from narcolepsy to HIV, but the closest experience for me was Lucky’s sister having a muscle removed from her arm removed because some form of degenerative muscle cancer that was found early on. So I don’t lose a lot of sleep worrying that cancer is coming to get me.

Two days before the Relay for Life was scheduled, I found myself in the organizer’s office talking about, of all things, work. Suddenly I hear “If anyone dropped out, I wouldn’t have a problem walking a couple of hours in their place.”

Who said that?

Oh crap, it was me.

Damn.

Suddenly I find myself agreeing to walk 3 hours…once at 5 in the afternoon and again from 2 AM to 4 AM. It pretty much kills a Saturday night, but if anyone can sacrifice a night out on the weekend, I’m sure it’s me.

Here is a chronicle of my walking:

5-6 PM – It is a cool day, only 90 degrees, but 5 PM is near maximum heating and cloud cover is keeping it heat and a little sticky. For some reason, our team shirt has a Merck Pharmaceuticals logo on it. Apparently, Shasta County Public Health is now a Merck subsidiary. I swallow my snide comments because what are principles compared to a free t-shirt?

7-8 PM – After I stuck around for an hour hanging out with some of the organizers of the event and attempting to put back some of the water I lost back in my body, the person who is supposed to walk at 7 PM doesn’t show. Again, I’m a sucker so I volunteer to fill in. Between the heat, the guy butchering Jack Johnson songs over the PA, and the numerous Pirates of the Caribbean-themed displays, I am getting downright annoyed.

I go home and sleep from 9-1 AM.

2-5 AM – Apparently, I was lied to. They needed someone to walk for 3 consecutive hours during the overnight shift. It’s too late to argue, I’m here and everyone else is asleep or on the edge of vomiting. Someone has to be doing laps on the track for the entire 24 hours, so I zone out and start walking.

3:15 AM – A rock group comprised of all Christian home schooled girls takes the stage. And there is nowhere I can go to get away. Any group willing to play for free in the middle of the night is suspect…but teen girls giving props to JC before each song? And after 5 minutes, I realized either a) These chicks totally rock or b) I have lost my mind from sleep deprivation and walking in circles.

4 AM – They are handing out free cookies, though I’m afraid if my legs stop moving they will buckle beneath me. I stop by the stand, only to find out all the cookies are oatmeal raisin. Who the hell wants a healthy cookie? I’m tired, cranky, and want a damn chocolate chip cookie. I spend the next hour considering what retaliatory action I am going to take against the company that donated the cookies, ranging from an email boycott of the Great Harvest Bread Company to a coordinated full-scale military invasion of all their franchise locations in California.

5 AM – The sky is lighting up and if I want to wait another hour, there is going to be free pancakes. Pancakes, along with vanilla zingers, may nature’s most perfect food. But after 15 miles of walking, I decide it is best to take a shower and go to bed.

5:20 AM – I am passed out cold on my bed, no shower. I didn’t even get my shoes off.

Creative Writing Assignment: Happy Father's Day

Write a few paragraphs about a family member and a particular item…

I was the only kid in fourth grade who could read the thoroughbred racing program. I was by no means a savant and the cookie-cutter house in the suburbs was as far from a functional horse ranch as you could get. How does a 10-year old become a passable at predicting win, place, and show? From the moment I could read, my dad had been teaching me how to handicap the races.

When I picture my dad during my childhood, I see him with a white racing form folded lengthwise protruding from the back pocket of his khaki shorts. As a kid, some of my earliest memories are of my dad and I spending every Saturday night of the summer at some Podunk county fair. I quickly figured that we weren’t there for the cotton candy and the Ferris Wheel. The only place in Iowa you could bet on horses was at a county fair, so we spent the summer following them from county seat to county seat. Every weekend meant a new small town, though the horses and most of the carnival attractions remained the same.

After getting a cursory slice of pizza or bratwurst from the vendors, we made our way to the track. Before each race, he would make notes in the margins and circle important jockey statistics, purses won, and even the record the horse’s trainer. Then I would lean over him, making my own predictions. If he thought that my opinion was technically sound, he would even place a bet for me. I knew to rout for his horses regardless of my own predictions, because his winnings were often tied to the number of midway rides I would get to go on that night.

Time and technology improved; the races moved from county fairs to a large track that was built 3 miles from our house. Even in the harsh winter months when there were no horses running in Iowa, you could bet on races via satellite from exotic places like Pimlico, Louisiana Downs, and Del Mar, “Where the Surf meets the Turf.” Though computers and satellites changed how we viewed and wagered, the starting positions, odds, jockeys, and past performances were still printed on a plain white racing program.

Even from halfway across the country, I can see my dad sitting in his den with the horse races running simultaneously on the television and in a small box on his computer screen. And on the desk where the keyboard would normally be is a racing form, notes scribbled in the margin, and a crease down the middle from having spent time in the back pocket of his khaki shorts.

Vegas...Again

I have no idea what happened to me.

For this very reason, I have put off talking about my Vegas trip. My memory is so hazy and fragmented, I’m pretty sure I’m completely incapable of putting together a coherent narrative. Recently, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones returned a hefty advance for an autobiography. I can’t put 5 days together and make a story; I shutter to imagine 40 years of doing this to my body.

So instead of a story, below are the 10 most Frequently Asked Questions. Enjoy.

1. Did any one of your party have sexual relations while on vacation.

You don’t mess around, do you? Former President Bill Clinton has blurred the meaning of that statement, so I will be direct. Of the eight men on the trip, 2 had vaginal intercourse. That’s right, 25% had sex with a stranger. And 3 others got close to sealing the deal. That leaves 3 who did not get any closer than holding hands.

2. Is it true that one of the women was 51?

I cannot confirm or deny that the women who was goodly enough to sleep with Nate was over 50...I never saw her. There are conflicting reports whether she was 42 or 51. Either What I do know is that Nate is only 24. She must have been one hell of a cougar.

3. What about the other chick that one of your boys hooked up with?

Unfortunately, I blinked and I missed it. In the time that it took me to go to the bathroom, buy a drink, and return to my group, he had met, romanced, and left the bar to go back to his room with a girl. So approximately 10 minutes from eye contact to conjunctal visit.

4. Damn.

That’s not a question. If that wasn’t weird enough, it was Thursday night and we had been clubbing in Vegas for less than an hour. Of course, reports are on a scale of 1 to 10, she was about a 3.

5. I heard on Saturday that you couldn’t get into the club.

We had VIP passes for Light at the Bellagio. Unfortunately, we were labeled a security risk and the doorman was very clear that we could stand there all night and we weren’t getting in.

6. Security risk?? You have the upper body strength of an pre-adolescent girl.

Not only am I a total pussy, but Sleepy was standing next to me. Few things are less intimidating that a well-fed furniture salesman from the Midwest.

7. You might be making fun of Sleepy, but didn’t he almost hook up?

Again, sex isn‘t horseshoes or hand grenades. You have sex or you don’t. In Sleepy’s case, almost hooking up (with the same girl, three nights in a row) led to him getting strep throat and me getting a free watch.

8. They give out free watches for getting sexually frustrated?

If they aren’t, they should really start. And by they, I mean every women who breaches a man’s waistline and then changes her mind. Ladies, I’m not saying that you can’t turn back once foreplay gets started. You just owe the man a watch.

Somehow, Sleepy got a men’s watch from this girl. And since I sat with him in the urgent care clinic for a couple of hours while he was getting antibiotics, he gave me the watch when the pin came out of mine the next day.

9. I heard you sent some crazy text messages. What’s that all about?

I did. My phone cleared most of them by the time I got home, but here are a few that I recovered:

What happened to me? No one should feel like this. Did someone hit me in the forehead with a putter after one of those car bombs?

This was after Saturday night. I picked up 3 random girls on the street, took them to Nine Fine Irishmen at New York, New York, and watched as one of the girls yakked a Irish Car Bomb all over the counter. Up until that moment, that was probably the closest I was getting action in Vegas. And the next day I woke up with a bit of a headache.

I’m watching this chick hose lion poop off Plexiglas and [realizing] my life isn’t so bad.

While drinking at the MGM Grand, I noticed a woman cleaning the lion changes in the middle of the night. In my drunken mind, I was trying to imagine that job interview:

HR: What we would like you to do is to get into the cage, scoop up giant lion turds, and then hose the whole thing off. It should take about 4 hours and the only thing between you and the lions will be a piece of tinfoil.
Interviewee: That’s sounds awful. But I’ll at least have decent hours and good pay.
HR: Of course not. You’ll be working from 1-5 AM on the weekend for the Mexican minimum wage.
Interviewee: I‘ll take it!!

Of course, that was a lot more funny in my mind while I sat there sipping on vodka and Red Bull.

(2 hours later): Still hosing lion poo. And I can’t look away.

Response from Romi (not knowing I was in Vegas): You are retarded or you really need more channels.
Response from Neeley: That is kind of weird watching someone do that on Sunday night. On a date I presume?
Response from Kelli: Are you at the MGM Grand in Vegas!?!
Response from me: Yes, MGM Grand. They don’t let [you] get drunk at the zoo.

Somebody just threw up 6 times on the curb of the Vegas airport. OK, it was me.

On the way to the airport I turn to Sleepy and said “Every moment I don’t throw up in the back of this cab is a blessing.” He thought I was typically funny Jeremy…he soon watched as I proved to how wrong he was. That number had increased to nine by the time I boarded the plane. As a precaution, I had my seat moved to an aisle near the bathroom in the back to be closer to the bathroom.

10. Finally, how much money did you lose?

$15. And I played an epic amount of blackjack, mostly while intoxicated. On the other hand, I spent $450 on bar covers, alcohol, and Denny's.

Less Money, More Problems

Inexplicably, everything cost more money in California. Want a house? A shack with an outhouse on a quarter acre will run you $200,000. Box of cereal? That will be $4.75. Bottle of beer? After you leave a tip you will be lucky anything left from your five.

And as Cap’n Crunch and bottles of beer at the bar are staples of my diet, money is starting to get pretty tight these days.

Fortunately, I’ve come up with a couple of creative ways to save money. As most of you know, aside from money spent at bars I’m total tightwad. I only shop at discount grocery stores. About half of my clothes are from thrift stores, and the rest were on the sale rack at Aeropostale and Old Navy. I may vacation in Vegas, but I’ll only stay at the cheapest hotels no the strip and eat nothing but $5.00 steak dinners and whatever I can get us comped from the pit boss.

Of course, the last buffet free buffet we had almost put me in the emergency room. All the forced vomiting and pepto available in the hotel gift shop did nothing to shake the feeling that there might be a giant tapeworm taking mambo lessons in my intestines. Free buffets = three days of wishing for death. Lesson learned.

Nonetheless, with a Vegas trip coming up, a trip to Peru in September, and impending birth of my first child (just seeing if you were paying attention dad), I’ve got to find some creative ways to make my budget even leaner or bring in some revenue.

The first victim of budget cuts: Zeke and Zena.

I made two solemn promises when I first got my cats: I wouldn’t ditch them the first time they would inevitable piss me off and I wouldn’t let them effect my dating life. Unfortunately, I forgot to include a clause that gave them immunity if I didn’t have a place for them to poop without scaring off potential roommates.

They are in a better place now.

No, I didn’t have them put down. I gave them to this girl named Linzie. I was reluctant to give them to a girl who couldn’t spell her own name correctly, but she loved the little bastards at first sight.

So now that the cats are gone, I’m looking to pick up some extra cash by getting a roommate. I’m in the process of posting an announcement on Craig’s List, so here is what I’ve come up with so far:

Wanted: Roommate to share 2 bedroom apt with young professional male in North Redding. Prefer young educated female, no STD’s or morals, many friends with like qualities. No smoking, drinking is A-OK.

In my mind, I can see the applicants lined up on my stairwell. Then they decide who gets to move in with a clothing-optional Jell-O wrestling battle royale. Then I wake up and realize that I’ll be lucky to get a dude who will usually have the rent on time and have the courtesy to light his joints on the balcony.

Between the money I save by not having cats (~$20 a month) and getting a roommate ($300), I can finance most of my Peru trip. But I’m still a little short. Time to get creative.

I don’t have cable or internet at home. I don’t have a Netflix subscription I can cancel. The completely useless gym membership cannot be canceled for another 2 months. I only eat out once or twice a week, and generally it is at the taco cart in the cheap hotel near work (my Hepatitis A shot is current). I don’t have a home phone and my cell phone is the cheapest plan available.

Did I hear someone say spend less at the bar? Blasphemy. It is my sole form of recreation and quite frankly, the only way I curb the nagging sense that I am somehow not doing enough to meet a nice woman, settle down, have children, and lead a normal life. I’m not desperate yet, but I‘m already plotting out a strategy. At 35, I am either getting a Russian bride or giving gay a chance.

Statistically speaking, gay is probably the better option. Three of friends have married foreigners (2 Russians, one Brazilian) and all three have ended in divorce. As far as I know, all my gay friends are getting far more tail than I am. So in the contest between going gay or going foreign, gay is the clear winner.

I haven’t given up on women yet. I went to a singles event at a local hotel with Lucky and one of my neighbors. My definition of desperate was redefined when I stepped into a poorly decorated hotel bar full of middle-aged men and women. An otherwise unemployable DJ was trying to force merriment on what was obviously a horrible situation. Of course, I couldn’t help but smile at the badness of it all.

Did I dance with a woman who had at least a decade on me? Of course I did. She had it going on for a woman who graduated high school at the end of the disco era. And maybe she has a daughter that could be my new roommate…

Sun Magazine: Rivals

This is a nonfiction piece based on the theme Rivals, a homework assignment for my creative writing class and submitted to a literary magazine. As with everything else on this blog, every thing actually happened:

---------------------------------------------------

In the summer of 2002, I was sent to Kuwait to monitor third-country nationals working on an Air Force Base. Essentially, my task was to sit in 130 degree heat and watch people do jobs that the military didn’t want to send Americans overseas to perform, such as cooking meals, cleaning bathrooms, and light construction. Sometimes I would spend the entire day watching a fence to make sure no one left the worksite. The misery of being having an incredibly boring job was compounded by the fact it was impossible to communicate with my charges and a typical workday was upward of 12 hours.

I shared a tent with 6 other men who I only saw briefly in the evening. It didn’t really matter that we had almost no free time…there was almost nothing to do anyway. The highlight of our first week was capturing a scorpion that strayed into our tent. Dubbed Starvin’ Marvin because he didn’t eat the first 5 days of his captivity, he became our tent mascot.

We were not the only tent to keep a pet; scorpions and tarantula-like camel spiders were in ready supply. We were briefed that keeping pets was against the rules, but who was really going to care if we kept a scorpion in a container on a shelf in the dayroom?

It didn’t take long for men from different tents to boast that their scorpions or spiders were the toughest. This quickly turned into a tournament. Every night at 8 PM at the picnic tables in the smoker’s pit, 2 of these creatures would be put Tupperware, the container was shaken violently, and then they were left to fight to the death.

Although I had no real feelings of attachment to Starvin Marvin, I found the idea of death matches barbaric. Were we no better than a couple of cock-fight promoters? But soon the total monotony of my job and the weeks without television, alcohol, pornography, and regular female contact caught up with me. It didn’t take long until I do found myself outside at 8 cheering for Marvin to kill.

And Marvin did not disappoint. After three weeks, he had survived through 5 matches, dispatching three spiders and two scorpions. He was the longest surviving tent mascot, despite having lost his stinger somewhere along the way. If people needed directions to my tent, I didn’t give them the number; I simply told them I lived in Starvin Marvin’s tent.

As his sixth match was underway, the military police came in and told us to stop the match and get rid of our illegal pets. We tried some wrangling, but it was clear that they were not going to budge on the matter. Relenting, I agreed to take Marvin to the edge of the base and let him free. That was not going to be good enough. We watched in silent horror as they drove a nail through the tough shell covering his abdomen.

While tragic, we knew Marvin, like all gladiators, would eventually die before our eyes. Nonetheless, we were soldiers and we had hoped he would die with honor.

We soon learned that Marvin’s death and the end of the nightly death match meant that we were alone to face our biggest rival: the crushing boredom of working a monotonous job in the middle of foreign desert.

Three Nights, Three Bad Decisions

Every now and then, we have an experience that makes us ask: How did all the decisions in my life lead me to this particular moment? I have asked that at good moments, such as my 30th Birthday Bar Crawl. I have also posed that question at low moments, such as when I was zipped into an orange jumpsuit at the county jail. But usually something strange has to happen…

In a strange turn of events, that happened to me three times in eight days. But as always, I’m ahead of myself.

1. Three of us head to the Valentine’s Singles Party at Rumors, a dance club in Redding. For those of you out of state, imagine Shagnasty’s at its skankiest (Cedar Falls) or pretty much any dance club in Little Rock (except Discovery). I am trying to get back to my roots of making a bad decision and running with it.

(Above- Pudding Eating contest at Rumors)

We know it is going to be bad, so we prepare by drinking a lot ahead of time. But I was unprepared for what happened as we walked in the door. This is the approximate conversation that happened with the two guys in front of us in line:

Strange guy 1-Give me the car keys.
Strange guy 2-Why do you need the keys?
Strange guy 1- I have to take my knife back to the car. Apparently they won’t let me bring it in.
Jeremy- (turning to Lucky, smirk on face) This is going to be a good night.
Lucky- (Says nothing, tries to suppress laughter to avoid getting stabbed).

2. It was a slow Friday night. A female friend and I went out for a couple drinks. It wasn’t going to be anything special, just something to do instead of sitting at home. She is driving this particular night, but she is an Iowa girl who can hold her liquor and knows her limits. She is a pro at the bar…we are able to hang out with still making it clear that we are not a couple.

Two bars later, it approaches closing time and she is sitting with a table of guys. I’m half in the bag, so I agree to go with her to after-hours at their house. On the way in she turns to me:

“I need you to wingman for me.”
“With guys?”
“Yeah, I think the one is really cute so distract the other two.”
“Umm. I’ll try.”

I might be a world class wingman, but this is the first time that I’ve had to run interference for a woman. As a guy, the last thing I want to do at 2 in the morning is hang out with strange dudes. I imagine their opinion about me was the same. Nonetheless, I made jokes, played with their dog, and left Sondra free to make her move while I drank their beer.

Two hours later it is 3:45 in the morning and I can no longer stay awake. Feeling good about having done some heavy lifting as a wingman, I get the keys and look forward to passing out in her car. It is a very chilly night and as I turn the ignition for heat:

Annie are you OK? Tell me that you’re OK Annie!!

Fucking Michael Jackson is blaring through the speakers. In my inebriated state, I cannot figure out how to turn it down. This leaves me with a difficult decision: Listen to a CD filled with Michael Jackson’s greatest hits played at high volume or risk freezing to death.

Not a tough decision. Like any sane (drunk) person, I choose freezing.

3. The following night, Lucky and I hit our usual bar. To avoid getting in a rut, we decide to hit a dance club afterward. Neither one of us dance (I gave it up for Lent), but we run into plenty of people we know and have a good time. I slip a little too far into fiesta mode and the end of my night is a little hazy. We fail to find an open Burger King at 2 AM, so he drops me off and heads home.

I have not given up on eating, so I relive my college days and put a Totino’s Party Pizza in the oven. It barely qualifies as food, but at this point I’m a drink away from sampling the collection bin of my vacuum cleaner.

I turn on the TV and wait for my pizza to cook.

I am slammed awake by the screech of the fire alarm. My cats are going ape-shit as I try to figure out what the hell is going on. I run to rip the smoke alarms from the wall, but find they are hard-wired to the wall. Then I realize that something must be on fire for the alarm to go off.

I run to the oven and through the billow of smoke I see the blackened disc that was once a pizza. Who the hell put that in the there?

Oh, I did.

I throw the smoking pizza out on the balcony and then run to open every window in the house. After 30 seconds that felt a lot longer, the smoke detectors finally fall silent. I h

But a charred party pizza is the present that keeps on giving; I expect it to take months to get to the point where my apartment doesn’t smell like a Boy Scout campfire was held in the living room.

More Trials Than Jonah

It’s been two months, so let me take a moment to reintroduce myself.

Hello. I’m Jeremy.

Now let’s get on with the show.

I’m sitting on one of the couch. On the other end is the girl I’ve been dating for the past couple of weeks. Why are we on opposite sides of the couch? Because she stopped over to have a talk.

Unless you are a complete idiot, you can see where this is going.

The problem with talking to someone who is sitting on the same couch is that to talk face to face, you both have to sit sideways. While it is tough to look poised and confident with your legs folded up near your body, it does make it lot easier to tuck yourself into the fetal position when the girl you are dating politely dumps your ass.

As always, I’m ahead of myself. Let’s fire up the time machine, Mr. Peabody.

(If you didn’t get that joke, go rent some Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes you uncultured savage).

Quite some time before Christmas, I had lost contact with Iowa girlfriend. Are we living in the Amazon? How do you lose contact with someone? Hell, even Africa has pagers (1989 just arrived in Africa. Expect wide scale genocide next year when they find out Milli Vanilli was a fraud).

It seems that Iowa girlfriend was bitter about me avoiding her phone calls the month before and was out for retribution. Not that she would be wrong wanting revenge, because my actions were completely rude. What she didn’t know was that after 3 unreturned calls, I deemed the relationship dead. After saying some nice words (Iowa girlfriend, we hardly knew ye), I went back to dating. Knowing that I have trouble making a relationship work if they are across the street, let alone 2000 miles away, I decided that I should shrink the perimeter just a bit.

Yes people, that is the rule…three unreturned calls is the end of a relationship. That number drops to two if you have been dating less than a month.

So I’m dating again. A couple of days into my mourning period, a run into a girl, we exchange numbers, and the next thing I know I’m enduring a chick film. Show me a man who enjoyed The Holiday and I will show you a man who is lying to get laid. I far preferred The Last Kiss (now on video), whose simple moral was very uplifting: It is OK to cheat if you genuinely feel bad are really, really sorry.

I go on Christmas vacation in Iowa and when I come back we pick right back up again. Things appear to be going well, but then I pick up a strange vibe the passt couple of days. I don’t even know what I mean by that, but I could sense that something was definitely afoot.

“Lucky, I am picking up a bad vibe from this girl.”
“Are you sure? Things seemed alright to me last night.”
“No, I think something bad is about to happen.”

Not 2 hours later, I am sitting on my couch getting dumped. Huhhh.

It is hard to imagine what was going through her head as she explained how great I was but that it didn’t click, but I can share some choice nuggets that were in my mind at the time. In no particular order:

1. I so called this. I could have made some cash on this travesty if I could have talked Lucky into a wager.

2. Why the hell is she talking about a job interview in the middle of becoming “just friends” with me? She must be nervous.

3. So this is what it is like to be on this side of the break-up conversation. I guess doing it to someone’s face isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

4. How is Grossman doing at QB? His play was inconsistent the last 4 games and but the Seahawks aren’t known for having a strong defense.

5. Stop watching the football game, you don’t even like football that much. Of course, it is right over her shoulder and she might not even notice you aren’t paying attention to her

6. I bet I could have gotten Lucky up to $20 on the relationship ending within the week. That’s enough for 2 pitchers of Sierra Nevada and a tip.

7. Would she mind if I got up to get a beer? Wait, no beer in the fridge.

8. Am I actually supposed to believe this “friends” rhetoric? She does have my washer and dryer, so I better go along with it unless I want to be hanging out with the trailer folk at the laundromat.

9. Why the downgrade to friends/drinking buddies? Can I have negotiate up to friends-with-benefits? Is this the wrong time to ask?

10. When, God, when do I get to have a long-term sexual relationship? I’m 31 and dammit I think I’m due!! What kind of vengeful God dangles a long-term supply of sex in front of me only to pull it away at the last moment?

Silently, I ponder if I am the current embodiment of Jonah and God is toying with me because I am an outspoken atheist. I shouldn’t write a book, I should write a book of the bible. Wonder if they have room for it in Book of Mormon?

While all these thoughts bump around in my mind, I don’t give much of outside reaction. I sit quietly letting the thoughts bounce around my mind. Then I realize why I’m not that upset that the only decent woman I’ve met in the past year is giving me the axe.

I knew it was doomed from the start. I’m not ready yet and I can’t expect anyone even half as crazy and restless as me to be ready for a serious relationship either.

But God, if you can find it in your heart, I don’t think a friend-with-benefits is too much to ask.

Vegas. Again.

“If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal.”

-Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

I know what you really want to hear are juicy details about the trip to Las Vegas. This should be 862 words on how Alec, Adam, Ron, and I partied it up.

So what the hell, I’ll throw you guys a bone. Here is what happened on Friday, the first night in town:

After dropping $104.95 on a steak dinner and some blackjack (mostly blackjack), Adam and I hook up with Alec and Ron Payne to go to a club called The Beach. But I’m ahead of myself.

Adam, Alec, and I were all together on the previous trip, so I am going to skip the introductions. http://photos1.blogger.com/img/216/2728/640/4Vegas.jpg

The new addition is Ron Payne. I liked Ron immediately, if only because his name alone qualifies him to star in pornography. On top of that, the guy is probably 210 pounds and built like a brick shithouse. Since he could easily kill me with his bare hands, I thought it was probably best to make sure he was on my side. (Picture below).



Back to the story. We arrive at the The Beach and are immediately faced with a difficult choice: Pay $20 cover or pay $60 and have all of our drinks included.

“How much is a beer?”
“$7.50.”

I hand over $60 before my mind is even through doing the math. Apparently, even on a subconscious level I know that at $7.50 a drink, I’ll make my money back in the first hour. If I go slow.

The problem with an open bar is that I am a complete idiot. I lack the internal monologue to tell me that I could have more fun if I just had a couple drinks an hour. So while my friends are talking with the hot, hot Miller Lite girls and creating new man laws for the commercials, I sit at the bar like a kid in a candy store. It is days like this that I wonder if maybe if the phrase ‘puke and rally’ was written about me.

(Note: It wasn’t. Generally, I puke and then ‘cut and run’ like the liberal I am. Oops…political humor; I apologize.)

Aside from the Miller Lite girls, the talent pool at this bar is pretty shallow and the sausage quotient was pretty high . Frankly, I could care less. I am drunk and I have a girlfriend back home.

My final memories are of Adam talking to this really nice girl. By really nice, I mean that aside from her breasts (which I could draw from memory), I couldn’t tell you the slightest thing about her: name, age, nothing. Seriously, she could have been a 70 year woman missing half her face and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

No one (including me) remembers when I left the bar or how I got to the hotel. I perform my greatest superhuman feat: I bend time and space. I was drunk in a bar at 3 AM, now I am in my bed at 8:45 AM. And how that happened no one will ever know.

I’m not one to kiss and tell…but since it isn’t me we are talking about, that rule doesn’t not apply. I woke up at 8:45 to hear Adam coming home. He tells me to get up so we can watch the Iowa game, but even through the thick cloud of my hangover I realize that something is slightly off.

(What follows is an approximation of our conversation. It was 2 weeks ago and I don’t carry a tape recorder everywhere I go. I start off)

“What happened to you last night?”
“You remember Courtney?”
“Courtney? Doesn’t ring a bell”
“She had the cute friend Ron Payne wanted to hook up with. You know, the one with big boobs.”
“With the rack? Yeah, I remember her. (pause) Her name was Courtney?”
“Yeah, I stayed at her place last night. Alec delivered on the Ass Guarantee.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, except this morning I was in a hurry and couldn’t find my drawers.”
“So you just left them behind and came back commando?”
“I didn’t want to miss kickoff.”

There are a couple things I should explain here. First of all, there might be a couple of you who don’t know that going commando means wearing pants without underwear on underneath. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_commando). According to the link, 9% of men don’t wear underwear on a daily basis.

Second, the entire time we were in Vegas we referred to Ron Payne by both his first and last name. I often did the same thing with a friend of mine’s ex-girlfriend Amber Lake, since it sounded like a stripper’s stage name.

Finally, after our first trip to Vegas Alec made the Ass Guarantee to Adam and I. While we had a blast on that trip, no one brought a girl home. So he vowed to get both Adam and I laid at some point in the future. You can say it was bold, shallow, and even a bit foolish. What you can’t say is that he didn’t deliver on his promise.

If I had a nickel for everytime someone said I look like Beckham...

Why the Ladies Dig Me

This is me with 7 1/2 Gallons of used syringes. Ladies love a man who is just inches away from getting infected with hepatitis.

PS-I don't have a club foot in real life.