Surf and Turf

So this happened:

Believe it or not, the guy is supposedly going to be OK, but holeeee shit. When I saw that photo I immediately tried to picture what it would be like to have all MY teeth knocked out -- from the inside. I couldn't do it.

That picture is just...Unbelievable. I learned two things that I did not know before. One, never read the NY Post. Two, the sad thing about this horrible sport is that the bull dies whether he wins or loses, because, well, that's the rules. I call bullshit.

Bullfighting may be a tradition, but it's time to stop the madness. Not only because it's cruel and inhumane to the poor animals, but also so I don't have to see shit like this and feel obligated to pass it on to all of you. Man, that looks painful. Dumb ass. Taunting a giant horned animal like that.

Now that you're awake, and collectively holding your jaws and running your tongues around inside your mouths, let's talk about this:

Are you with me here? Are you understanding what it is you are seeing?

Just to clarify: Yes, it is a giant shark sleeping bag.

Why? Well, why not? Who hasn't wanted to fall asleep in the mouth of one of the world's most terrifying predators? I know I have. The designer says she created it in an effort to make sharks more "cuddly" which is really something I never thought about. Usually, when I think about making a shark more of something, it pretty much culminates with "uninterested in me, personally."

The absolute worst thing about this? Well, it's not that it costs two hundred bucks (which includes shipping) although that's pretty bad in its own right. The worst thing has to be the name.

It's called ... The ChumBuddy.

Ignoring for a second the fact that the name sounds like some sort of elaborate masturbatory device designed for men to use while in the library, it's also completely inaccurate.

Here's my detailed analysis as to why: I've always been led to understand that "chum" is what they call the bucket of bloody fish heads that they throw in the water to lure the sharks in.

This would mean that a "ChumBuddy" would be someone who likes to hang out and watch movies with a bucket of bloody fish heads, and I don't think anybody really wants that, so my conclusion stands. Worst name ever.

At first I thought a better name would be something like "Shark Buddy" but then I got thinking that maybe that's still too "cuddly" and she should really name her product something like "Horrific, Urine-soaked Dreams" or "Your Child's Future Therapy Sessions."

The X's over the eyes look like they were photoshopped in there, but I totally think she should sell a sleep mask like that as a ten dollar accessory.

I'm always giving my ideas away. I can't help myself. It's why I'll never be rich.

Nooks. And Crannies.

My wife bought the Nook e-book reader today. So far, there's been no limit to the entertainment value derived from her constant use of that dirty-sounding name.

"Now Lisa and I can be nook buddies."

"I think there's something wrong with my nook. Can you look at it?"

"I plugged it into my nook, but nothing happened."

"I read something that said nooks can sometimes be a little buggy."

"I'm going in the hot tub, then going upstairs to play with my nook."

And here I thought the iPad was a bad name.

Also, we have a winner in the Double Down Double Dare -- Lindy in Mexico. Go read her blog. She can be pretty damn funny.

Crap. Now I have to write a short story.

I also have a giveaway coming up that's worth $150 bucks, and a story of love in the 6th grade. Stay tuned!

I've got chicken in my beard.

I have a few things to talk about today. After hearing so much about it for so long, I finally saw the commercial for the KFC double-down last night, and it totally reminded me of the "taco town" SNL skit.

For those of you who don't have televisions, here is a picture of the double down:

Two fried chicken breasts, two strips of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and Pepper Jack cheese and the Colonel's "special sauce" whatever that is. I'm sure it's probably just ketchup mixed with mayonnaise or something. I tend to stay far, far away from fast food, but in case anyone is going to actually try this thing, here's the damage:

540 calories, 32 grams of fat and 1,380 milligrams of sodium. If you're feeling particularly health conscious, you can go for the "grilled" version, which only has 460 calories, 23 grams of fat and 1,430 milligrams of sodium. (I am pretty sure I'd have to be dating this girl to be eating that much salt on a regular basis.)

How does the grilled version have more salt? This whole creation really just boggles my mind. Just reading the description practically gives me cramps and makes me want to preemptively run to the bathroom. Anyway, I think someone needs to try one of these asap and report back to me. In fact, if you actually take a picture of yourself eating one and send it to me, I will write a short story about you and post it here.

In other news, I've become instantly 33.3% more evil by shaving my beard into a goatee. (I've also taken to walking around with a flashlight held under my chin at all times to heighten this effect. )

Well, that's not entirely true -- I don't really have the flashlight, and the traditional goatee technically has no mustache part. I have the mustache/goatee combo, so it's probably a variation of a VanDyke, but these days, they've all been genericized so "goatee" pretty much covers it. I'm not sure if I'll keep it yet. It's work, and I don't like work.

So here's how this happened. At various times over the years, friends of mine had them and some still do -- even Yort had one at one time, but people kept asking him about his kung-fu grip, so he shaved it off. I got curious one day, because I didn't really know how to shave one, so I googled it, looking for a template or some detailed instructions. What I found instead was a commercial that cracked my ass up. Seriously, it is better than most of the fake commercials on SNL. I include it here for your viewing pleasure:

If you didn't notice it, watch it again and check the expression on the girl's face at about :58 seconds, right before she walks off the screen. She's thinking "I can't believe I'm doing this." which is saying something coming from an ex-porn star.

Needless to say, I had to have one - if only to get ex-porn stars to fondle me. (Note: that hasn't happened yet) I found the company's website and sent them an e-mail, telling them I ran a somewhat successful humor blog. I offered to review the GoateeSaver if they sent me one, and they went for it. It showed up a few weeks ago, but I didn't have the balls to try it until this past weekend.

As you saw in the video, here's what it looks like from the back:

Basically, you jam it into your mouth and bite down on it, then shave around it. A drunk guy could do it. (Which, incidentally, brings up how I actually had the nerve to try it.)

Also, it has other uses. It would be a good thing to carry around just in case you happened upon someone having an epileptic fit, to keep them from biting their tongue. It totally reminds me of how a scuba-diving regulator feels in your mouth, or that rubber thing they stick in your mouth before they give you electro-shock therapy.

Perhaps I've said too much.

Anyway, I tried it, and the funny thing is, cheesy videos aside, it actually works as advertised.

Well, not so much the part about being instantly fondled from behind by porn chicks, or gaining a douchebag attitude. (I'm thinking those might come later, after extended use.) However, when I was done, I unclenched my jaw and I had a mostly perfect goatee.

It was like a little pet for my face. This thing, as stupid as it may look, is actually great for idiots like me who tend to shave early in the morning when they are half asleep and carve into something they shouldn't. Of course, it's like $20 if you buy one, but still....it saves you time in the morning, and prevents inadvertent hatchet jobs, so maybe it's worth it.

At the very least, now when I'm in a meeting at work, I can stroke my goatee and pretend like I'm deep in thought, formulating my evil plans. Or thinking about the latest e-mail client refresh, which basically amounts to the same thing.

I also found that if I combine it with a black cloak and my ski goggles, I can jack up the evil at least one thousand percent:

You will all address me as Emperor from this moment forward, or there will be consequences.

Don't make me force-choke your asses.

And now for something completely different.

While I'm working on my next post, I wanted to bring your attention to the awesome photos that my friend Mark takes.

I hope you all enjoy seeing the world through his lens as much as I do.

Bones. Teeth. Dinner.

My wife is a big fan of the show "Bones" and I've seen quite a few episodes. Most of the time, the ones I see are in syndication, which means they're aired between 6 and 7 pm. An unfortunate consequence of this timing is that as putrid, maggot-infested flesh is falling off a human skeleton on my television, I am in the process of eating a nice rice and bean burrito covered in salsa, or perhaps some angel hair pasta and marinara.

It's pretty disgusting as crime dramas go, and it makes me very thankful that smell isn't yet one of the senses involved in watching a television show. If it ever does become a component of the entertainment experience, say, like 3D, it would not be a good thing for a show like Bones to include. Or a show like The Biggest Loser, now that I think about it.

Anyway, the last episode of Bones I happened to see is one in which they find a body being tumbled to pieces in an industrial front-loading clothes washer. After they stopped the washer, the pieces continued dropping from the top of the drum with soft "plop, plop" sounds, until a new low was reached and a testicle bounced out onto the floor. I don't think I watched the entire episode, but the whole washing machine bit stuck with me.

A few days later, I was doing a little wash of my own. I took some clothes out of the dryer, and saw what looked like a piece of gum stuck to one of the dryer vanes way in the back. (OK, I admit it. Occasionally, I've been known to forget to take my gum out of my pocket and once in a great while a piece will make it to the dryer and subsequently ruin of bunch of my shit or, god forbid, some article of clothing that my wife purchased for $300.00 an ounce. So I always stick my head in there and give it a look. You know. To hide any evidence.)

I reached up to grab the gum, and it felt a little...harder...than gum would normally be. That's because something was stuck to it:

Yes. An effing TOOTH. I immediately thought of that Bones episode. My tongue went instinctively to my molars. Nope. All there. I checked again, just because I was a little skeeved out.

I stood there, tooth in hand, and tried to think of a reasonable explanation. My wife's 90-year-old grandfather had swallowed one of his own teeth not too long ago, and other shit from bridges to babylon was always falling out of his mouth. Maybe it was one of his.

"Should I call him?" I wondered. "Ask him if he has any new unexplained gaps in his gums that he didn't think were there last week?"

I sent a text to my wife that said, "I feel like I'm in an episode of Bones. I found a fucking TOOTH in the dryer!" My thought here was that maybe she had been carrying around one of her grandfather's teeth that she found under his living room chair or something, and it had made its way into our laundry.

She sent me a text back that said, "Did you lose one?" I did another quick inventory. I couldn't help myself. One of my worst recurring nightmares is one in which my teeth fall out. Nope. No gaps. Where the hell did this tooth come from? I didn't remember killing a drifter.

Then I looked down at the pile of clothes that I had pulled out of the dryer and saw what I refer to as my "camping pants." They are 100% cotton, desert camo BDU pants that I pick up at the surplus store. I have a few pairs, because they're light, cut generously in the "crotchal area" for climbing, and -- they have lots of pockets.

Then it hit me. About 8 or ten months ago, I had been walking through the woods and found an ancient, bleached-white deer skull, and the teeth had been falling out. I remembered picking out a nice one and thinking that it would be the basis for a fine practical joke.

I know. I totally deserved it.

Mexico: Part VI - Please let us out of your country.

OK, so this is it. My last vacation post, until I go on vacation again. I can hear the cheering from here. I always think "I'll try to make this quick," but it never is. You all know that by now.

On our first night in Mexico, I turned to my wife and said, "I want to get up really early one day this week and watch the sun come up down on the beach." My wife agreed. I think she had the same thought I did -- that it would be romantic to watch the sun come up together. Just the two of us, a gentle breeze, the waves crashing onto a deserted beach, watching the sun rise and thinking about how great it is to be alive. It sounded wonderful.

On our last night in Mexico, we still hadn't gotten around to it. I swore that nothing would prevent me from getting to see the sunrise the next morning. "We *have* to do it," I said, "How often do you get to see the sun come up over a beautiful white-sand beach in the tropics?"

Not often enough, that's for sure.

When the birds woke me up, for once I was glad of it. It was 5:40 am and still mostly dark. In all my other attempts that week to get up before the sun, I had been spectacularly unsuccessful due to my lack of ambition and overall hatred of mornings in general.

Here is the reason for my hatred: During a normal work-week, I am at my desk by 6 am every day. This sad state of affairs necessitates that I actually get out of bed at precisely 4:17 am so that I can be barreling down a pothole-blasted highway shortly thereafter, surrounded by dangerously weaving 18-wheelers driven by meth-addled Canadian truckers who haven't slept in 48 hours. Most of the time, I can't remember how I got to work. I think it's safe to say I hate morning like Batman hates injustice, or like Jessica Simpson hates having clean teeth.

The upshot of this early morning hatred is that If I'm on vacation for any length of time, I tend to "drift" until I am consistently going to bed at 2:00 or 3:00 am and waking up around 11. So basically, every day of my existence that I am not on vacation is a fight against my normal circadian rhythms. To fight these rhythms while on vacation took an extreme force of will, however I was determined to get at least one sunrise picture for posterity.

I knew sunrise was at 6:05 am, so I stumbled out of bed and threw on my shorts and sandals. I leaned over and said to my wife, "I'm going down to the beach to watch the sunrise. Are you coming?" She answered me with with a low groan and a muffled string of words that I think may have been, "No....and kill those fucking birds." When she put the pillow over her head, I figured I was on my own.

I grabbed my camera and my room key and let myself out quietly, and walked toward the beach. Other than the birds and the occasional dropping coconut, I had the resort to myself.

The beach, however, was a different story. When I walked up and over the last dune, I saw something like that scene in "City of Angels" where all the angels come out to see the sunrise:

It turns out that watching a sunrise is a pretty popular thing to do.

I sat down on the edge of a chair, and got my camera ready. I scoped out some possible shots that I wanted to get, and figured I'd have to wait for the sun to come fully off the water, since there weren't many clouds in the sky.

I wasn't really paying attention to anything except the time and the sun and my camera equipment -- when suddenly, I had a very surreal moment.

There were probably 5 couples on the beach near me, and my sleep addled brain suddenly put the entire picture together. It finally dawned on me that every single one of them were male.

I mean, I don't care one way or another what someones sexual preference is, but right at that moment, I realized how very much I was not a gay couple. I felt a little awkward, like I didn't get the memo that Monday morning sunrises are the gay ones. Everyone around me was snuggling under beach towels or holding hands, and here I was, standing by myself with my camera. I felt like everyone was looking at me and thinking, "Camera-geek-with-sleepy-wife sunrises are on Thursday, you moron." I know that in reality they weren't giving me a second thought, but that's the way my brain works, even before coffee. Most everyone ignored me, except for one guy who had an awesome gray pompadour and about two-dozen different-sized blue circle tattoos all over his body. We had noticed him and his significant other a few times at breakfast, and wondered whether there was meaning behind his tattoos, or whether he just liked circles. We nodded recognition at each other as I walked toward the water to get my picture.

When I let myself back into the room, my wife was almost fully awake and packing our suitcases. "How was it?" she asked. "It was really pretty. And kinda gay," I said. "It was me and about a dozen gay guys." I told her the story and she laughed at me in disbelief. She wasn't laughing because she didn't believe my story. She was laughing because she didn't believe I could have been so completely oblivious all week. "You didn't notice that there are tons of gay guys staying here this week?" she asked. I honestly hadn't noticed, but it did sort of explain the inordinate number of neon-yellow banana hammocks I had seen. And here I thought they were all just French and in really good shape.

Unfortunately, our flight was leaving Cancun at a little after noon, and our shuttle was picking us up at 9, so we had about two and a half hours to finish packing, grab some breakfast and get our bags out to the lobby. We were sad to be leaving. We actually got the lobby early, and I dropped off a tip and a bottle of rum for the concierge, and thanked him for setting the dolphin thing up for us. I got more pesos and ran back to the room to leave the housekeeper a tip and met her as she was coming down the stairs. I thanked her for the cool towel animals and tipped her for all the crappy toilet paper she had to deal with during the week.

I got back to the lobby just in time for the fight. There was a crazy southern lady with big, hard blonde hair screaming at the concierge and a taxi driver, because she wanted to go to 5th avenue and the cabbie was telling her it was 50 pesos. "IT'S NOT 50 PESOS!" she screamed. "IT'S 35 PESOS! YOU'RE A CROOK! YOU'RE TRYING TO RIP ME OFF! She then turned toward everyone else in the lobby, as if for moral support. "HE'S A CROOK, EVERYONE! HE'S TRYING TO OVERCHARGE ME! Her poor husband was just looking at the ground, and her teenage children were walking down the street just to get away from her as she went into a full blown tirade. "THAT'S WHAT THEY DO DOWN HERE! THAT'S WHAT THEY ALLLLLL DO! THEY STEAL FROM YOU! THEY OVERCHARGE YOU FOR EVERYTHING!" The cabbie was trying to talk her down, but she was already in the street waving down another cab. She stuck her head inside the window of the new cab for a second, and then triumphantly screamed, "HE'S ONLY CHARGING 35 PESOS! HE'S NOT TRYING TO RIP ME OFF LIKE YOU! KIDS? KIDS! GET OVER HERE. GET IN THIS CAB THIS INSTANT!" I hate to think of the thousands of dollars of therapy her kids are going to need later in their lives.

She finally left, and I just looked at the concierge and shook my head. "Wow," I said. He laughed and said, "Nice way to start a relaxing vacation, right?" It takes all kinds, I guess. I wish there were more of some kinds and less of others, but there's not much I can do as just one guy.

I still don't get what her big issue was. She was willing to look like a total ass in front of half a dozen people, all over approximately 2 bucks. I figure that if you know it's 35 pesos and the cabbie is over-charging you and telling you it's 50, you take the ride, and just give him his 50. If he charges you 35, you're going to tip him and most likely give him 50 pesos anyway, so what's the big deal? Either way, you're out the same amount of cash, you get a nice ride in a spotless, air-conditioned car, and you don't have to walk to your destination or look like a crazy douchenozzle. Totally worth it.

Our shuttle ride to the airport was uneventful, however when we got there, the lines were out of control. If we thought flying into Cancun was bad, it was nothing compared to flying out. We stood ourselves in the USAir line, and after about 30 minutes we had moved about ten feet. People in line were were talking to newly arrived folks and other people were making cellphone calls trying to figure out what might be going on. Eventually, it was determined that there might be a "slight problem" with our flight out of Cancun. After checking around, we discovered that the plane we were supposed to be boarding in an hour was still sitting in Philly, because it was - to use an aeronautical engineering term - fucked up somehow. They weren't really sure what was wrong with it, however they assured us that they would have a plane there soon. On the screen, our flight went from DELAYED to CLOSED. Nobody seemed to know what "CLOSED" meant. We knew it wasn't the same as "CANCELED" and it certainly wasn't the same as "DELAYED" or even "FUCKED UP" and we didn't know how to interpret it. "Great," I thought. "I hope we don't miss our connecting flight." We finally got to the front of the line, and by then all hell had broken loose. We were soon to find out why.

"There are not flights," the nice lady said, looking at our boarding passes.

"Excuse me?" I replied. "What do you mean? Are you saying we're stuck here forever?"

"No, there ees no planes here to where you are going," she said. "There are not flights."

"Can't you get us on a different flight? A different airline, maybe? Fly us into a different hub? Something?"

"No. There ees no planes from Feely to Albeeny. No planes in Bostone, no planes in Boofeelo. First flight is at 10 am tomorrow morning from Feely." She paused, then said, "Do you want to go to Boofeelo?"

"No," I said. "Buffalo is over 5 hours from Albany. So is Philly. Either way, I'd have to rent a car and basically drive until morning."

"The flight to Feely leaves in 3 hours, you want?"

I said yes.

She wasn't done. She had more good news.

"Your bag ees 6 pounds overweight. That weel be fifty-two dollars U.S., please. Which credit card weel you be using?"

By this time, my sense of humor was almost gone. "Let me get this straight," I said. "You're telling me that you can't get me home until Tuesday afternoon, I have to take an extra day off from work, and you're going to charge me fifty two bucks for the privilege of this screwing?"

"Yes. Or you can take some tings out of your bags." And it was exactly at this moment that I overheard the guy working the next counter say to the gentleman at the front of his line, "Your bag is five pounds overweight, but don't worry about it" as he tossed it on the conveyor behind him.

Our girl heard him too, but she wasn't backing down. In retrospect I should have just taken all my dirty underwear and socks out of the suitcase and dumped them on the counter, and even though it wouldn't have been even close to seven pounds, it would have made me feel better. But I remembered where I was, and I'm too pretty for Mexican prison, so I pulled out the plastic and took my corn cob reaming like a man.

Next came security. I sailed right through, but my wife's purse got snagged for some extra lovin'. A sour looking, 5 foot tall Mexican gentleman grabbed it and dumped it all over the counter and proceeded to paw through the contents. He opened lipsticks and creams, felt up tampons and finally, in triumph, as if he had found a 9mm Glock sewed into a secret compartment, held up her deadly crochet hook. He confiscated it, then looked at her and yelled "FIRE!" She had no idea why he was yelling "Fire" at her, and he continued to get more agitated when she didn't understand. "FIRE! FIRE!" he yelled. Then, to make sure his point was well understood, he yelled "FIRE!," once more. Then he started rubbing one latex-gloved index finger furiously over the other. My wife was getting flustered, because she still had no idea what he wanted her to do. Should she start a fire? She didn't know. Finally, it dawned on me. "He wants to know if you have a lighter or matches on you." I said. "Or maybe two sticks that you plan to rub together," I added.

She told him no, she didn't have a lighter, and he picked up her stuff and jammed it all back into her purse. He pushed it down the line and dismissively waved her away. He was not a man who enjoyed his job.

Finally, we reached our gate. While we were waiting for our flight, we were treated to a constant barrage of F-bombs from a corn-rowed, bleach-blonde, white trash chick. Maybe it's not PC for me to say so, but in my experience, if you see bleached cornrows and Lee press-on nails on a white chick, 9 times out of ten you know what to expect. She would not shut up with her bitching, and all she could talk about was how she wanted to get home to her "fucking kid." Then she had a phone conversation with someone I can only presume to be either the father of her child, or more likely, her current boyfriend whereupon she called him a "fucking asshole" no less than 20 times. I weep for her child. I really do.

After sitting there through two more delays, we were finally loaded onto a ginormous plane around 7 pm. With the daylight savings time change thrown in, we'd hit Philly around 11pm. It turns out that the reason the plane was so large was because it was hijacked from another flight that was supposed to go to St. Maarten, but was subsequently canceled. I have no idea why. Probably to avoid the impending riot of pissed off Philly residents.

Luckily for us, F-Bomb Cornrow sat right behind us on the plane, because the gods of aviation like to screw with me whenever they can. Since she wasn't with anyone else, she thankfully didn't say much, although she really should learn how to cough and sneeze with her mouth covered.

We landed in Philly at 11pm. By chance, I happened to notice someone sitting at a card table in the hallway, a bunch of what looked like boarding passes spread out in front of her. This was the voucher lady, although there were no signs to indicate that. I walked up to the table, and she asked me my name. I gave it to her and she handed us two food vouchers good for ten dollars, and the phone number of the shuttle that picks up every 30 minutes and brings you to the shitty airport motel. We had just missed it. We waited in another line to try to get some sweaty faced, pedophile-looking mole man to approve an extra ten dollars for food because we were not planning on eating out of the vending machine. There were 3 people in front of us in line, and the group he was dealing with when we first got there was trying to get upgraded to the Hilton. It was taking forever, not only because the airline didn't want to upgrade him, but also because he typed with one finger. Not one finger on each hand, but one fucking finger. I wanted to kill everyone. At that moment, I fully understood the mindset of the guy who flew his airplane into the side of the IRS building.

Finally, after waiting another 45 minutes for the shuttle, we were in our hotel. We checked in, and asked the guy at the front desk about using the food vouchers. "We don't have a restaurant or room service at this hotel," he said. I laughed. Apparently, our only option was to walk across the parking lot in the rain, and eat at the bar in the other hotel before it closed in 15 minutes. So we did. We sat down and immediately ordered two grey goose dirty martinis, and a couple of chicken burgers. When we got the bill, we found out that the martinis were $19 dollars each, and we didn't even care. Oh, and it turns out that you can't use vouchers for alcohol.

We slept. We got bit by tiny things. We woke. We scratched. We flew to Albany.

When we got off the plane at the Albany Airport, my wife immediately ran to the bathroom because her bladder was about to burst.

Unfortunately, the bathroom she ran to was the men's bathroom, and she was inadvertently treated to some early morning Albany penis.

And with that, my friends, our vacation was officially over. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Not exactly what I expected.

This article surprised me. Mostly because they're introducing a new character.

My money would have been on Jughead coming out of the closet. Although come to think of it, I probably wasn't the only kid out there hoping for Betty and Veronica to hook up.

The whole article reminded me of this old Betty and Me comic:

Ah, simpler times. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Mexico: Part V: Day of the Dolphins

On the 4th day of our vacation, the rocket birds woke us up at dawn, as usual. This time we had the added bonus of coconuts falling from the trees onto the sidewalk and busting open. When they hit, they made a sound like someone popping a paper bag. It took us a while to figure out what it was --we kept hearing this THOCK! sound, but until we actually saw one fall and hit, we had no idea. I thought we had picked up some douchebag neighbors who were cleaning their sandals by slapping them together or something.

Since we were already awake, we decided on the spur of the moment to see if we could arrange a dolphin swim for later in the day. After being emboldened by snorkeling in a cenote the day before, my wife figured that she would probably be OK swimming with the dolphins as long as she had a life preserver, and as long as there was nothing in the water that could eat her. We went to the lobby and looked at some brochures, and there was one dolphin swim at a place called Delphinus World at XCaret that looked really nice. The water in the brochure was sapphire blue, the dolphins in the photos were clearly chosen for their movie-star good looks, and everything about the place looked new. When we brought the flyer over to our concierge, he pulled out his activities book, and started giving us available days and times for Dolphin Discovery, which was a completely different place. Apparently, the Dolphin Discovery shuttle picked up at our hotel and the other place didn't have one, so if we went to Dolphin Discovery, there would be no taxis required. The price was about the same, maybe even a little cheaper, and we figured that dolphins were dolphins, so how bad could it be? Plus, we had seen a friend's pictures when she went to Dolphin Discovery in the British Isles and the place looked nice.

We booked our trip for later that afternoon, and went and had some breakfast, then hung out on the beach. After lunch, we went down to the lobby to wait for our transportation. When the shuttle bus finally showed up, it was full of people who had already been riding around for an hour, since our hotel was at the end of the line. They were all complaining because they had to cover all the same ground twice, since our hotel was in the complete opposite direction from where we all needed to be. I immediately knew that our ride home was going to suck, because we had to drop all those other people off first. On the plus side, we'd get to see about 5 different resorts.

The other folks on the bus were all from either the US or Canada, and everyone was actually really friendly. Nobody on board had ever done a dolphin swim before and we were all excited. It was the first visit to Mexico for all of us, and my wife and I were the only ones not staying at one of the "All Inclusive" resorts. We got on the subject of how it seemed like the hotels went out of their way to avoid serving Mexican food, and how we all thought that was weird. Even at our hotel, which wasn't strictly considered AI, they had "Italian Night." We decide to try it, and it was every bit as bad as it had sounded like it would be. Asking a Mexican chef to cook Italian dishes is like asking Matthew McConaughey to leave his shirt on for an entire movie. He'll try to do it, and his intentions will be good - but he will most likely fail.

There was an Indian guy on the shuttle sitting behind us with his wife and daughter. They were from Canada, but he still had a pretty heavy accent and she was wearing a traditional head scarf and not saying much. He was friendly and talkative though, and after the "no Mexican food" conversation, he asked us if we had any good restaurant recommendations. My wife piped up and said, "If you like steak, there's a really great steak house right down the street from our hotel. We ate there last night and it was awesome." He did a little head-shake and said, "Ummmm, I am...not so much into steak." I don't know if he was Hindu or not, but even before the last syllable of the word "steak" hit her ears, she remembered the whole "I try not to eat animals that are sacred to me" thing. Oops.

He was telling us all about how he not only got suckered into attending a time-share presentation at his resort, but he got badgered into actually buying one. They had somehow managed to get him to cough up close to 20 grand, and he had a serious case of buyer's remorse itching in his trousers. He was asking everyone on the bus what their opinions were of the whole timeshare concept. He told us that he always got ripped off no matter what he tried to buy, and he seemed resigned to the high probability that the whole thing would turn out to be a complete clusterfuck. "I will probably lose all my money," he said a little wistfully, as if in his head it was already gone.

When we finally pulled up to the Dolphin Discovery place, it was kind of...well, how do I put this delicately? It was a shit hole. It was very run down, and there was a lot of half-finished construction going on. Or rather, not going on, because there didn't seem to be any actual workers. Just piles of bricks and cinderblocks and plywood. I wasn't even off the bus and I already felt sorry for the ghetto dolphins that lived there.

Inside it wasn't actually that horrible. It wasn't exactly nice, but compared to the parking lot and entrance, it was fairly well kept. They have it planned out for maximum tourist consumption. First, they make you walk past all the shops and restaurants to get your tickets. Once you get your tickets, you walk almost all the way back to the parking lot to where the lockers are, once more passing all the shops and restaurants and bars. You go into the "changing shack" and put your suit on, and then stuff everything else into a locker. When you're good to go, they size you up for a life preserver. The life preservers had seen better days, and looked like they had been gnawed on by sea beavers. My wife's was shredded so badly I could see the layers of foam inside.

After you're fitted up, they escort you past all the shops (one more time) to the prep area. The first thing you have to do is watch a video. The video is supposed to tell you what a fun time you are going to have, and it goes through all of the hand signals you have to remember in order to maximize your interactive experience. Since I have the attention span of a weasel on meth, the whole time the video was running, I was busy looking around for dolphins. From where I was sitting I could see two of them through an opening in the brush, just hanging out in this little pool. They were just sitting there next to each other, puffing out of their blowholes and treading water in one spot. They looked like two bus boys who had ducked out behind the restaurant to share a quick joint and talk about how much the customers suck.

After the video, we got ushered out to the actual "Dolphin Area," and we could see 3 dolphins swimming around, chasing each other in the water. Speaking of the water -- it wasn't what I expected. In the brochure, it's clear pale blue and it looks like you're in a natural cove. This was not a natural cove by any stretch of the imagination. I assumed it would be more or less open to the ocean, since -- hey, it's right there, but no. Instead it more closely resembled an algae covered wharf in Jersey. I had been spoiled by the clear aquamarine surf and white sand beach next to our hotel, and this water was greenish and smelled like dead fish. The trainer was already in the water, standing waist deep on a ledge, and she clearly wanted to get the show on the road. She beckoned to us, so we bit the bullet and walked down the stairs and onto the slimy submerged walkway.

This was the first part of our "interaction" and since there were only four of us in our group, it went pretty quickly. There were three dolphins -- one 4 year old, one 12 year old, and one baby. The baby wasn't trained yet, so it wasn't involved much. The dolphins swam by and you got to run your hands over their backs and stomachs. They feel very smooth, but not really slimy at all, which surprised me. It felt kind of like an inner tube full of meat. First on the list was the "Dolphin Kiss." They don't really have much in the way of lips, so it was more of a "Dolphin Face Nudge." Basically, you had to cross your hands over each other palms up, the dolphin would put her head in your hands and lean up to your cheek while you hammed it up for the camera. I was making up Prince lyrics in my head:

U don't have 2 be bottlenose 2 turn me on


I just need your blowhole, baby, from dusk till dawn 


U don't need sardines 2 turn me out 


U just leave it 2 me, I'm gonna show U what it's all about



U don't have 2 eat fish 2 be my girl 


U don't have 2 be cool 2 rule seaworld 


Ain't no particular fin I'm more compatible with

I just want your extra fish and your . . . . . kiss

Of course, like we all do, the dolphins expect to be rewarded for doing things right. The reward, in this case, came out of a disgusting fanny pack full of dead fish that the instructor had strapped to her waist. You know how wonderful spring lilacs smell when you get a whiff of them unexpectedly? This was the opposite of that. There was a greasy sheen on the water around the fanny pack, and every once in a while, you'd catch a whiff and it would remind you of what you were swimming around in.

The next thing they had you do was swim out about 30 feet into the middle of the pool and hold out your left arm. The dolphin then swam under you and flipped over, allowing you to grab her fins. As soon as you had a good grip, she took off across the pool, swimming upside down and towing you through the water. I kept waiting to get her fluke* smashed into my crotch, but it didn't happen. It was actually pretty amazing, and it gave you a good idea of how strong they actually are.

Last on our list of activities was something called the "boogie board foot push" which involved laying on a boogie board with your feet and knees in a locked position while the dolphin stuck her nose in your foot arch and proceeded to try to ram your foot-bones through your spine. They warned you over and over to keep your knees locked, your leg muscles tightened, and your feet pointing down. If you did this, the dolphin would push you across the pool at roughly 20 miles per hour. If you did not do this, then you ran the risk of having a dolphin nose shoved up your blowhole at roughly the same speed. Trust me, my muscles were so tight you could have bounced cinderblocks off my ass.

After that, you get to dance with the dolphins a bit, they do some additional tricks and then it's all over but the high pressure sales pitch to buy the pictures and DVD set. On the way back, they shuffle you into a room where you have to watch your video. Ours wasn't too good because we had gone later in the afternoon and the sun was getting low. This meant that most of the video was in silhouette and pretty poor quality, and they somehow managed to miss the upside-down fin-swim completely. After the video, you are shuffled off to the picture counter to look at the final prints.

Like most everything else in Mexico, there is the price and then there is "the real price." We actually did like two of the pictures, but we thought they were too expensive so we were going to just say no and leave them there. We watched the price go from $100, to $80 to $60 for the entire package, and then when we still turned that down, they started breaking things out into single items. Eventually, the deal became too good to refuse and we ended up buying a couple of 8x10's for about 25 bucks.

After that, we changed back into our clothes and met the rest of the crew for the return trip. We swapped pictures and stories, and someone brought up the variable pricing scheme that seemed to be in effect. The discounts ranged from about 35% to 70%, depending upon how hard you bargained. Of course, the only person who paid full price was the poor Indian guy. He just shook his head in disbelief and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

After the grueling ride to five other resorts, I can honestly say that I liked ours better. The others were nice, but they had a very "corporate" feel to them. There was something a little stepford-y about them; they seemed soulless. As we were driving past all these fancy buildings, I remember thinking, "I'll bet you a month's pay that the people staying here aren't putting their crap into wastebaskets."

So that was our adventure for the day. They were beautiful, intelligent creatures and I'm glad we took advantage of the opportunity. I would highly recommend meeting a dolphin at least once in your life. But not like this. Warning: That link is probably not safe for work. Or anyone, anywhere. There are no pictures, just text, but the URL may get you into trouble. You will learn...things....that are better off remaining unlearned. Don't say I didn't warn you.

PS - I got this in my bag of chips:

It haunts me.

*I wanted to use the correct term and not say "tail" so I looked up "dolphin physiology" and ended up on the page in that link. In retrospect, I should have just said "tail."

PPS - Who has Prince stuck in their heads now?

Continue to Part 6

Mexico: Part IV: Tulum is owned by lizards.

First, let me mention our housekeeper. She was awesome, and every day we'd come back from the beach and have a new "towel animal" on the bed. This one was a little confusing to me because it had the head of a rabbit and the body of Rosie O'Donnell:



I thought this one was actually quite impressive:

On the last day, she went all out and we came back to this:

I didn't know whether to dry myself off with it, hump it, or run away from it. I think it was supposed to be a mermaid, so the rules of mermaid/man interaction state that I am required to hump it, and it was looking at me kind of suggestively. On the other hand, I could also picture myself waking up at 3am to find it hovering over my bed, waving its towelly appendages and trying to latch itself onto my face like a giant palapa bug. It was touch and go for a while, and then I remembered I was on a romantic vacation with my wife so I did the honorable thing and just had a threesome.

Our Tulum trip was set up by a place called Yucatreks, and our guide, Mitch, was an ex-pat from Seattle. He was a cool dude, and it was sort of like being led around Mexico by Trey Anastasio in a safari hat, only with a slightly thinner coating of bong resin. Our tour was going to include the ruins, snorkeling at two cenotes, and lunch on the beach. All in all, a full day.

We hit the road for the hour trip, and tried to buy ice at three different places. Apparently ice is hard to come by on the road to Tulum. The day was windy as hell, so it was probably a good day to wander around the ruins without passing out from the heat, but a bad day for just about anything else, including eating off paper plates on the beach. Here's a shot of a temple from one of my favorite vantage points:

It was truly beautiful, and I can totally see the Mayans' thought process here. They were probably just wandering around in the jungle, getting eaten alive by insects the size of ring-tailed lemurs, when suddenly they came out on this cliff overlooking the beach and started high-fiving each other and yelling, "FUCK, YEAH!!" Or maybe that was just me.

Apart from the ruins, the other interesting thing was that March is apparently iguana mating season. I've seen iguanas in pet stores, and these were NOT the same thing. For one, these are very, very large, and very, very angry, and they were fighting over the wimminz. Also, they seem to have decided that since the Mayans moved out, the place was up for grabs. They were on the top of the food chain and they made sure you knew it:

They didn't just sit there as Master of All They Survey, either. They'd do violent push ups on whatever they were on top of (rock, ancient temple, female iguana, etc.) and the males would get into these slow-motion fights that would involve latching onto each other's necks and pushing with their legs until one of them got flipped over. Then the winner would just keep the loser there until he cried "Uncle!" in iguana-ese or something, then he'd let him up. This would normally take upwards of five minutes, and by that time the female iguana was shaking her iguana ass in front of a different male. It was like watching two drunk guys in a bar fighting over a girl they didn't know was a hooker.

When they're not humping or fighting, they can really move. I always thought of iguanas as being slow, but they can run like a bitch if they want to.

When we got to the ruins themselves, Mitch hired a local guide who looked like Carlos Santana to give us the rundown. He knew a lot, but his English wasn't so hot, so he was hard to pay attention to. Or maybe it's just because I have a short attention span. We followed him from place to place, and I pretty much tuned him out and just looked at the ruins and the lizards. I saw one giant bastard about a hundred feet away, trying to mount this female and she was having none of it. She'd move away, he'd follow, then she'd move away again.

Finally, she had enough and took off in a full-speed, high-steppin' nose-in-the-air run, right toward our group. The giant male was right on her ass, and nobody but me noticed it because they were all listening to Carlos. We were walking slowly down this open path, and my wife and I were straggling a little bit behind the rest of the group. The female iguana tore ass across the path about ten feet in front of my wife and she didn't even notice, because she was looking the other way. The male, sensing he was going to be out-run by his conquest, just ignored our presence and continued running at full speed until it was almost too late. He didn't stop until he nearly collided with my wife's legs.

She noticed that, let me tell you. She jumped out of the way and let out a little scream, and the iguana just stood there hissing at her, mouth open and head bobbing up and down. Since my wife had never cock-blocked a horny iguana before, she decided to very quickly move in another direction. I stuck around for a second or two in order to (very carefully) take his picture:

He was not pleased.

Next on our list of things to do was to snorkel in some cenotes. Since my wife can't really swim, we weren't sure how this was going to go, but she did OK. They gave her a life preserver and we saw some freshwater fish and a shitload of bats. I tried not to think about the fact that everyone always says "don't drink the water," yet here we were snorkeling in it. I also tried not to think about the fact that I had my face in water that was filled with bat shit and the accumulated urine of thousands of foreign tourist-children, but it didn't really do any good. I just resigned myself to living with whatever festering pestilence was going to take root in my body.

The oddest thing to me was that I expected the cenotes to be off in the jungle or something. Instead, they were right off the main road, and had sort of a "roadside attraction" feel to them. The water was pretty damned cold too, so I didn't stay in long. At the second one, you could actually jump off a bit of a cliff into the water. I did this once, just to say I did. This picture captures the exact second my balls shrunk to the size of marbles and snapped up into my esophagus:

Lunch on the beach was fantastic -- the area of the beach we were on was pretty remote and we were the only ones there. The food was local takeout, and it was damn tasty. Mitch cut up fresh avocado and made some guacamole, and then unpacked roast chicken and potatoes and rice and beans, and a bunch of fresh fruit. We ate, had a couple of beers, then hit the road again. It was simple, but it hit the spot after a day of walking around and swimming.

My next post will be about our swim with the dolphins. Well, the dolphins didn't really have much say in the matter, so whether they actually wanted to swim with us was kind of irrelevant, but they did as they were told. Also, they are little whores for dead fish.

For those of you still with me, I'll try to wrap this vacation thing up soon. Maybe one more post about the dolphins, another post about the USAir corncob reaming on the way home, and we'll be done. At this point, it's probably like being forced to watch a slide show of your uncle Mort's trip to the grand canyon or something.

Peace out.

Continue to Part 5

Unfortunate.

Mexico: Part III - Mr. Virgil? This is your wakeup call.

Now that everyone is stuffed on Easter candy, it's time to continue on with our Mexican adventure.

As I said in my last post, we had decided to sleep in for a bit on our second day. We learned a lot on this trip. For instance, here's something I learned -- there will be no "sleeping in."

You know what they have in the jungle? Jungle birds. And these birds get up a LOT earlier than you do. I think when birds from other places are applying for jobs in Mexico, the classified ad looks kind of like this:

There was a dove-looking bird that sounded like a hoot owl. WHOO WHOO WHOO Whoooooooooo! WHOO WHOO WHOO Whoooooooooo! over and over until you wanted to cut a hole into your mattress and crawl inside. The other bird call that was especially pleasing to the ear was the one that sounded exactly like this. Unfortunately, it didn't include the explosion at the end. After about the second day, I started making the explosion sound under my breath every time I heard one - until my wife asked me what the hell I was doing. Then I just did it in my head instead of out loud. [edit: listen to the actual bird call here.]

Here's another thing we learned -- in Mexico, (at the beach resorts at least) you can't flush the toilet paper. Seriously. Instead of flushing it, you simply drop your butt-wipings into the wastepaper basket next to the toilet and the housekeeper picks it up the next day. It's a good thing that the bathroom had a door and a window, because a pail of crap isn't really conducive to indoor air quality. Luckily for both of us, Montezuma's Revenge didn't enter into the picture or things could have become interesting -- and not in a good way.

I found this a little bit revolting to be honest, and I felt bad for our housekeeper. I mean, she probably doesn't make much to begin with, and now she has to empty baskets of feces-laden paper on top of that? (I felt it was only fair for me to tip the crap out of her. So to speak.)

Our last lesson for the day occurred when we got to the beach. We learned that Playa Del Carmen beaches are a little more "European" than we knew.

We saw some things. Some things that should not be seen. Ever, by anyone, anywhere. Human breasts should not look like that. It's not normal. My first thought was, "Why does that old guy in the yellow bikini bottom have two giant brown leather satchels sitting on either side of him?" My second thought was, "Heyyyyy, leather satchels aren't supposed to have nipples." It was eye-opening, to say the least. You tried not to look, but every time she moved it was a brand-new train wreck. It reminded me of this picture. She clearly didn't give a shit what people thought, and I can certainly admire that.

We spent most of the day there, but I didn't go swimming. The wind caused the water to be quite rough and the red flags were out, which generally means you might get sucked out to sea and end up off the coast of Brazil or something. Both the water and the beach were beautiful, however, and the place wasn't very crowded because of the wind. Or maybe it was because nobody wanted to look at satchel tits. I'm not really sure, but there was no shortage of available beach chairs.

On the way back from the beach, my wife made friends with a stray kitten that was hanging around by the bar near the pool. He was all black with green eyes, and maybe 3 or 4 months old. The bar featured rope swings and as luck would have it, that's where we happened to be sitting. The kitten really seemed to like my wife. He was probably chock-full of diseases but he seemed pretty healthy overall. My wife was petting him and commenting on how cute he was and before the last word left her mouth, he squatted down and took a big dump in the sand right near her left foot. He nonchalantly covered it up and sauntered away. "Awww, he's so cute," I said.

But really when you think about it, if you're a cat, what better place could you live? It's like having 300 miles of clean litter box. You've also got great weather all the time, plenty of shelter, lots of birds, (too many frigging birds) and people feeding you scraps all the time. Pretty sweet deal. By the end of the week, we had this going on:

Don't ask. Cats just like her for some reason.

The next day we went on a tour of the ruins at Tulum, and my wife almost got ravaged by some local wildlife. More to come.

Continue to Part 4

Not even with a ten-foot pole....

Mexico: Part II. WTF, Walmart?

We're not big travelers, as most of you have probably surmised. I can count the number of times I've actually been out of the United States on one hand. In fact, I could count the number of times I've been out of the States on one of Mickey Mouse's hands, and still have one fat, white finger left over. So, yeah. We don't get out much.

Believe it or not, the first thing I did before we unpacked anything was to give the room the once-over for bed bugs. I can hear your collective eye-rolls from here. Shut it. You can laugh, but ever since Nessa brought them home from a 5-star hotel last month, I've been doing some research, and I've come to the conclusion that it's not paranoia. If there's one thing you don't want to bring home to your house, it's these little bastards. They are very much like quarter-inch-long vampires. And I'm talking about the old-school scary-assed vampires, not the new sparkly emo ones with the fucked-up hair and the feelings.

Getting rid of a bedbug infestation will more than likely cost you thousands of dollars and a little bit of your soul, neither of which I can spare.

I don't want to get off on too much of a tangent here, but the parallels are obvious: They are immune to most everything, they only come out at night, they feed almost exclusively on the blood of humans, and they can live for 6-8 months without a meal. Also, the most efficient way to kill them is by exposing them to temperatures over 120 degrees. I imagine a tiny stake to the thorax would work too, but it would be very time-consuming. Anyway, the room looked amazingly clean.

After the settling in, the first order of business was to find the ocean, and the second order of business was to figure out the booze situation. We walked out to the beach and took a quick look, and then since we figured the ocean would probably be there for a bit, we turned our attention to the important stuff. We had two bottles of rum from the airport, which was a good start, but since we aren't hardcore enough to drink Bacardi straight from the bottle, we wanted to take a trip to Walmart for some fruit juices and miscellaneous munchies. We also wanted to pick up a cooler since the place we were staying didn't have refrigerators in the rooms.

We walked out to the lobby and grabbed a cab to Walmart. Our cab driver was great and very friendly. When we got there, we asked him if we could pay him to stay put while we ran in to pick up a few things, since we had no idea where we were and we weren't sure if cabs regularly hung out at Walmart or not. I gave him 50 pesos for the ride out, and he said he'd wait. I figured we'd be in and out in five to ten minutes, but that was before we walked into the place. Or "glided in," I should say.

I'm not exactly sure why, but to get into this store, you had to sort of walk under it, and then get on an upward-slanted moving walkway that takes you to the store level. It was like an escalator only without all the pesky stairs. I assume that's so you could take your shopping carts on it.

We have a Walmart about 20 minutes from our house, and although I don't make a habit of going there, I can assure you it's nothing like this one.

They certainly did know their turistas here though, because the first thing we saw when we walked in was a ten-foot-tall stack of styrofoam coolers. The place was a madhouse. And by that I don't mean it was crammed full of people, even though it was. I mean it looked like it had been organized by an actual inmate of an actual insane asylum. There were so many displays that you didn't know where to look first. People handing out samples of food and drinks, kids running around -- It was a little like a street bazaar inside a building. I half expected to see a clown walking down the aisle on his hands.

Like any busy retail establishment with too many customers and not enough help, there was shit all over the place, but I kind of got the feeling that it was probably always like that. Kid's toys, bathing suits, and discarded packages of meat sitting on top of tables filled with bottles of Absolute vodka; Soft drinks and chips left with the lawn chairs and tires. Rum, Tequila and power tools sitting next to a display of fresh mangoes. It was totally surreal. We ran up and down the aisles until we found the juices -- we grabbed some orange, cranberry and pineapple, then went looking for some tonic water and a bag of pretzels or chips.

It was actually harder than it sounds, because everything looks kind of familiar, yet it's just different enough so half the time you're not exactly sure what you're looking at. You feel like you're in one of those movies where you go back in time and step on a bug and when you get back to your present time, everything is just a little....off. I found myself looking at the pictures on the packages, and scanning the shelves for familiar logos -- just trying to find something I recognized. (Hooray for Zucaritas, featuring Antonio El Tigre.)

Wandering around looking at pictures on stuff reminded me of something funny that happened when I worked for a small supermarket chain. An Asian guy who barely spoke English brought back a gallon can of Crisco, and he kept pointing at the outside of the can, and saying "MONEY BACK! MONEY BACK!" It took me a while to understand what he was getting at, but it turns out he was bringing it back because when he had opened it, he had been surprised to find it contained greasy white paste instead of the succulent fried chicken pictured on the outside of the can. I felt a little like that guy.

Because I am pretty sure it's required by Mexican law, I also grabbed a bottle of vodka and some limes from the massive alcohol display in the front of the store. As we were deciding which line would be the fastest, I realized that there was one extremely long line with about 50 people in it, and a half-dozen short lines. Then I realized the long line was long for a very good reason: It was the only one in which you could purchase cigarettes and booze. As my dad used to tell me, nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

At this point I figured we already owed our cabbie about 500 pesos, assuming he was still actually waiting for us. I half-suspected that he'd probably just packed it in and left us there because we were taking so long, but I really didn't want to leave the vodka behind. We had bonded a little, this bottle of vodka and I, since vodka in Spanish is still spelled "vodka" and I could get behind that.

When we finally glided out of the store like we were descending from heaven, we saw our cab driver waiting for us at the bottom of the escalator. I think he was getting a little worried that he might have missed us. I was glad he waited, but was concerned that I might not have enough money to actually pay the guy.

He brought us back to the hotel, and when I asked him how much, he laughed and said, "50 pesos." I said no, and gave him a hundred, and even that was a bargain, considering how long we had made him wait outside. (His name was Eliel, and he was awesome. His English was very good, and if you're ever in Playa Del Carmen, his phone number is 9841330594, taxi 1307.)

We dumped everything in our room, and then I went to the hotel bar and grabbed a bag of ice for 35 pesos, and life was good. We headed back to the bar for 2-for-1 happy hour, and then went to dinner at the hotel's restaurant. The dinner was included, and the first night was the only night it wasn't buffet-style. They offered a choice of steak or fish. I ordered my steak medium well, and my wife ordered the fish. My steak was closer to beef tartare than to medium well, but I ate it anyway because I was hungry. Long story short, I've named my tapeworm Timmy. After dinner, we went back to our room to make few drinks from our new stash.

We wanted some Vodka tonics, but discovered that the only thing we didn't remember to buy was a knife to cut the limes. I felt funny about going to the bar and asking him to cut up my limes for me, so I started looking around the room for something I could use. The only sharp thing I could find was the top to the rum bottle, so I did this:

I twisted the top into the lime until a little lime plug popped out.

Yes, I am the Mcguyver of mixed drinks. I don't know what the housekeeper made of all the swiss cheese limes laying about, but I'm sure she's seen stranger things.

Our first day of vacation was officially over, and we were beat, so we decided to turn in since it was closing in on midnight. Our room was on the top floor, and so had the official "palapa roof." Here's a shot of it:



We both like to read a bit before going to sleep, so we were just lying there with the reading lamps on, enjoying the ocean breeze and the peace and quiet.

The next thing I know, some kind of weird looking, big-assed beetle dropped onto my face and latched on. I immediately flipped out, and jumped up out of bed and started slapping at my head while my wife stared at me like I'd completely lost my mind. Normally, I'm fine with big bugs, and I think they're kind of cool, however I've discovered that I don't like it when they grab my face.

So much for the pre-sleep relaxation. I quickly turned off my light because I figured that was probably what had attracted the beetle in the first place, and if there were any more waiting to drop in for a visit I didn't want to encourage them.

It was OK though, because the next day was our first beach day, and I wanted to sleep in a little. That wasn't going to happen, but I didn't know it at the time.

continue to part 3

You're going to Mexico? Are you nuts?

I heard that sentence at least a half-dozen times before we left. I think the media is slashing the tires of Mexican tourism, and it's kind of a bummer. This was our first trip there, so we had no idea what to expect, but I had heard great things about the Riviera Maya, and the price was right.

Here's my take on it: Mexico is a pretty big place, so saying you're afraid to go to Playa Del Carmen because of the violence in Ciudad Juarez is like saying you're afraid to visit Washington, DC because you've heard there's been a lot of drug-related gang violence in Dallas, Texas. Seriously, they are that far from each other. Also, Cancun, Playa Del Carmen, Tulum, and Akumal are all on the Yucatan peninsula, and don't share a border with the US. No border = no easy smuggling route. I know Cancun has it's problems, but so does NYC. Anyway, enough of my ranting. Has it been established that I hate the media? Good.

That said, here's the first installment of our Mexican adventures.

The flight out was non-eventful. That fact alone should have scared us. Me flying somewhere is usually a complete disaster, and because this time it wasn't, some deep alarm bells should have been going off inside my brain. I should have been on guard. I should have known that payback would be coming.

We landed in Cancun, and the lines were crazy. The first thing I noticed was that the entire airport looked like Abercrombie and Fitch drank too much and threw up. The place was crawling with college students on spring break. The duty-free liquor store in the airport was doing its best to keep them all on their best behavior by giving away free samples of rum and tequila, so we stopped in and bought a couple of bottles.

Once we were through customs, we ran the gauntlet of taxi drivers asking us where we were going and if we needed a ride, and we found the guy holding a placard with our last name on it. He said, "Hi, my name is Juan. Follow me to my car. Do you want to stop on the way for a drink?" I was relieved that he spoke English. We declined the drink offer, and jumped into his van.

The month before we left, I started listening to "How to speak Spanish" recordings in my car on the way to and from work. I knew that almost everyone in the touristy areas would speak some English, but I wanted to be a little prepared. At the very least, I wanted to be able to recognize and respond to few phrases. How are you, I am fine, Please, thank you, where's the bathroom, how much for your women, please don't kill me, that sort of thing.

About ten minutes out from the airport, I realized I forgot to hit an ATM machine to get some pesos. So I asked, "Is there an ATM on the way?" Unfortunately, Juan had pretty much exhausted his English with his initial speech, and since I didn't need a bathroom, I had exhausted my Spanish. I mimed putting a card in a slot and said "Dollares to Pesos?" and he said, "Ahhhh....7-11?" and Juan and I were bonding. At the 7-11, I headed right for the ATM machine. The place was full of local working men, and I could tell that I was the whitest thing that had been in there in a really long time. I mean, there's regular old "white people white," and then there's "IT guy white." It's not a pretty sight. I got some pesos from the ATM, picked up some pretzels and a red bull, and then did the stupid tourist thing of not giving the clerk enough money the first time.

The ride to the hotel wasn't too bad, but it was our first experience with this particular sign:

Topes are the devil's own speed bumps and you do not glide lightly over them. Most of them consist of a gully on either side of a platform, or staggered metal lumps the size of half-coconuts. These things are ridiculous, and they seemed to just pop up in random places. Picture driving along at about fifty on a 4-lane highway, and suddenly there's a freaking speed bump from hell that causes everyone to suddenly slam on their brakes and drive like a bunch of 90-year-old Asian women with bad eyesight. And you have to slow down for these things, because if you didn't, and hit one at anything over 10 miles per hour, you would immediately shit your own kidneys. They are that bad.

Along the way to our hotel, my wife was asking me about some of the phrases I had learned from the audio lessons. I told her how to say "How are you?" and "good morning" and "good afternoon" and "thank you" and a few other phrases I had memorized. The last minute lessons worked out well for her. Her first conversation in Spanish went something like this:

Hotel Clerk: ¡Hola! ¿Cómo está?

My wife: (flustered) Gracias?

After I told her she had responded to the question "Hi, how are you?" with "Thank you," she decided that she was going to say "Gracias" as a response to everything from then on. Her theory was that you can never go wrong with "thank you," even when it's completely out of context. It seemed to work.

Luckily, almost everyone there did speak at least some English, and it was enough for us to get by. We did finally get used to saying Thank you, please, and hello in Spanish, so at least everyone knew we were trying.

After we checked in, the bellman took us to our room, which was in the cheap section, but still only about a 2 minute walk to the beach. After he unlocked our door and put our bags inside, he took two hammocks out of the closet and hung them on our porch for us. They were glorious.

After he left, we decided that we wanted our very first picture together in Mexico to be sitting on our porch in one of our very own personal hammocks. I sat in the hammock and my wife set up the camera for the picture. The timer on her camera gave her about eight seconds to push the button, and then run around the table and join me in the hammock. The resulting picture is one of our favorites from the trip, so I wanted to share it with you all:

Yes, we're very photogenic.

Stayed tuned for parts 2-6. Things get better.

Continue to part 2