Up

Because of a super-good deal on tickets, my wife took Thing 1 to the Demi Lovato / David Archuleta concert at the Gwinnett Arena tonight (for those not in the know, the former is a teen singer/actress heavily featured on Disney Channel programs, the latter owes his fame to American Idol…no clue if he won or not). After a heated game of Rock Paper Scissors that may or may not have involved an actual pair of scissors being pulled, it was determined that my wife would take her (her BFF and the BFF’s mom went with).

I was left with Thing 2 for the evening. If I had driven Thing 2 to the hospital with a compound fracture, part of her femur sticking through her leg, and having to hold her while the doctor popped her dislocated arm back into the socket, I think I still would’ve had the better end of the bargain.

I decided to take Thing 2 to a movie, so we went and saw “Up,” the latest Pixar movie. Question: Am I the only person in America that had no idea this was a 3D movie? The last time I saw a 3D movie in the theaters was “Treasure of the Four Crowns,” which even at the age of 10 I knew was an enormous piece of shit. Obviously, the technology has come a long way. We were given our complimentary 3D glasses (which looked like cheap Ray-Bans, sort of), loaded up on popcorn, candy, and soda, and went into the theater. Upon walking in, we doubled the amount of people that were already in the theater, so we were able to take the perfect seat.

10 minutes into the movie, Thing 2 missed the cup holder with her kids’ sized Sprite, and dropped it right onto the floor. She looked VERY nervous for a second, until I leaned down and whispered, “don’t worry. Free refills. Let’s go get you another one.” So off we went, missing the two minutes where Ed Asner modified his house with balloons. We got her another Sprite, and a handful of napkins, and reclaimed our seats. Amazingly, she was able to sit through the entire movie without requiring a bathroom break. Thing 1, when I first took her to a movie solo, needed one. But, it was “Miracle,” which was about 45 minutes longer, and she held out until the game against the Soviets was almost over. I literally carried her, while running, to the bathroom and got back before the game ended in that movie. Thing 2, however, made it the entire 96 minutes, plus the previews and credits. Gotta love a kid that’s a camel.

There was one sort of emotional part in the movie, but it had nothing to do with the film itself. I had a flashback to when I was Thing 2’s age. My dad would take me to see lots of movies, just him and I. That’s where I saw the Disney classics…Pinocchio, Peter Pan, etc. We also found a way to get together and see all three of the Lord of the Rings movies. Of course, in a solitary lack of judgment, in the summer of 1977 (the same year he took all of us to see Star Wars), he took me and my two older brothers (I was 5, they were 11 and 14) to see Animal House. My younger brother had just been born, so I blame lack of sleep on his part, he probably slept through the whole thing. But, going to see movies was a big part of my childhood, and one of the things I loved doing with my dad. So there I was, for an hour and a half tonight, more like my dad than I’ve ever been (I’m not counting the times my daughters learned to say 4 letter words from me).

So, this movie could’ve been as big a piece of raw sewage as “Treasure of the Four Crowns” (it wasn’t, it was actually pretty good), and I still would’ve lifted up that armrest, put one arm around my daughter, and enjoyed a movie with her. And, while Thing 1 is going on and on about how awesome Demi Lovato is, Thing 2 and I will forever have the inside joke of being able to yell “Squirrel!” and have it be instantly funny.

Commuter of the Day 6/26/2009: Dueling Vanity Plates

Cue the banjos.

So what's worse? The guy that is clearly nouveau riche who is so proud of his new BMW that he just HAS to tell the world, for an extra $50 in vehicle registration fees, that he owns one? A fact that we can clearly see from the BMW logo 12 inches about his vanity plate? And not only that, put his initials on it, so that he can show his friends that "This is MY Beemer, I'M KING OF TEH WURLD!!!!1111ELEVEN1111!!!!"



Or, the douchenozzle who is so panicked over the idea of parking next to 5 Honda Accords exactly like his, that he has to put his name on his vanity plate. The adult version of his mom sewing his name into his underwear right before he heads off to summer camp. Either that, or I was following former Journey, Divinyls and Bruce Springsteen bassist and current American Idol judge Randy Jackson.



One wants to tell the world that he's driving a BMW, because clearly that's not obvious. The other guy wants to tell the world his name. Both spent money to send this message. So, there are no real winners, except maybe the State of Georgia, whose vehicle registration system has that much more money in its coffers.

Bartering

I get my hair cut once every 3-4 weeks. Yesterday was the day for me. My barber is a woman, in a barber shop of all women. She is a good enough barber that I actually followed her from her previous shop to her current one, something usually only done with women and stylists.

Once a year, I barter with her for a haircut. She gives me a free haircut in return for me bringing back a gift from my annual trip to Wisconsin (which is in 2 weeks). That gift would be in the form of beer. So yesterday, we conducted the negotiation. Many beers in the US are regional or even local, so there are hundreds of excellent beers that will never see Atlanta unless carried here by a traveler.

Me: Do you want Moose Drool?
Her: No, it’s no different than Newcastle, which we can get here. What’s that one you got me last time?
Me: Bitter Woman IPA?
Her: (face lighting up): YES! THAT ONE! And any decent wheat beers you might see. You know what I like.
Me: Consider it done.

Very rarely will I react to a woman saying, “you know what I like,” without responding with something dirty. But, when exchanging beer for a free haircut, it’s all about business.

Seen Outside the UPS Store

I wonder how that conversation goes down, when the Fedex guy is dropping off/picking up at the UPS store. Is it like in the Warner Bros. cartoon where the sheepdog and the wolf both clock in, greet each other politely, and then spend the next day trying to kill one another?

Or is it short and sweet?

UPS Guy: (nods to Fedex guy) Fucker.
Fedex Guy (nodding back) Fucker.
UPS Guy: See you tomorrow.
Fedex Guy: Rot in hell.

I Hope That's Not A Dick in a Box

As some of you know, I am a writer of sorts on a completely amateur level (meaning, I don't get paid, and never will). My writing consists entirely of drinking a beer, writing my thoughts down on that beer, and posting those thoughts to this website, a project of a friend of mine and I going on 13 years now. 13 years, and 1330 beers later (with about 6 of us doing all the writing...approximately 900 of those are mine).

On a rare occasion, a brewer or a beer marketing firm stumbles across our website, and decides this would be a cheap and easy way of marketing their product, so they contact us and offer up a free sample. We've had some pretty good brewers send us their beer, which always amazes me because we write reviews like this:

Mow the lawn on the hottest day of the year in flannel pajamas. When done, pour the sweat from your nutsack into a bottle, slap a label on it, and as Emeril would say, "BAM!" You have Bud Light.

Honestly, if I was marketing a beer, I don't think I would want to run the risk, even if I knew I had a flawless product, of letting my product get into the hands of someone so immature they would use the word "nutsack" in a beer review. Or, there are our reviews for Iron City Lager. I disliked that beer so much, I asked an Australian for advice on insults.

Now, for every review that dances across the thin line of Satire and Libel, there is one that inspires sycophantic praise that would simply make you feel embarrassed for me. So, maybe those are, by some freak chance, the ones these marketers are seeing. And, when they do, they somehow feel compelled to send me the best kind of beer on earth: Free Beer.

Unbeknownst to me, my friend that does all the production work on the website had been in touch with one such marketer, and he had given her my address as well when she offered to send us beer. So, it was with great surprise when I opened my front door to go out to get the morning newspaper and saw this box sitting outside (we often enter our house through our garage, so the box arrived the night before without our knowledge). I brought the box inside and took a boxcutter to the tape, praying I wouldn't find something horrible, like free samples of Christian music. Instead, upon opening the flaps, I saw this:



Sure, it looks like a box of beer coasters and a letter, but the key point here is the (hippie recycled) shredded cardboard packing. When you have that in a box, unless it's a joke birthday gift, that means there's precious cargo inside. I reached deep inside (I should've looked at the shipping label, for all I know this came from Australia and it was full of Redback spiders), and felt glass bottles. There were four of them, so I also figured it wasn't the ashes of deceased relatives (you never know what my mom will send in the mail). I pulled them out, one by one, and found these:



I always say that it's important to have a hobby. And as you can see, some hobbies can yield much cooler results than other hobbies. Well, warm at first, but after time in the fridge, cooler.

Glaucoma Discussion

I had my annual eye exam this week, to get a new prescription for contact lenses, and the glasses I wear as a backup (I take my lenses out each night, and wear my glasses until bedtime, and then wear the glasses first thing in the morning until after I shower, where I then put on my contact lenses).

Eye care technology has advanced enough, apparently, that eye doctors are able to tell in their exam if there is a risk factor for glaucoma, at which point they will then test for it by blowing that high pressure puff of air INTO MY FUCKING EYEBALL! Thankfully, the doctor saw none of the risk signs and decided there was no need for me to suffer through the aforementioned sadistic procedure.

While staring at the lights that he was waving around, my mind wandered, and I got to thinking how much fun it would be to have filthy, dirty sex in the eye doctor’s chair. And, since I have the attention span of a kitten, I got to thinking….if I had the choice between suffering through the glaucoma test where they shoot a blast of air into my eyeball, followed by the best sex imaginable, or not having the glaucoma test at all, getting my eyes examined, paying for the service and leaving, which one would I do?

It did not take long at all to decide that I would prefer not having a glaucoma test. If sex was involved, I would gladly give blood, see the dental hygienist, or sit in traffic for 2 hours listening to political talk radio (3 things I hate to do, but have done). But I would gladly pass on the sex if it meant not getting a glaucoma test.

Road Rage on a Clean Street

Yesterday, while driving to work, I was caught behind the one thing that could possibly be worse than a school bus.....a street sweeper. It was going about 15 mph in a 35 mph zone, slowly moving, its brushes cleaning crap off the road.

This road, which is 2 lanes with a double-yellow, has a lot of traffic in the way I was going that morning, as it heads roughly to the interstate that takes you into Atlanta, but not a lot of opposing traffic. So, it's very easy to pass if you are going around a bike, a horse-drawn carriage, or someone on a wheelchair (what are things that move faster than a street sweeper, Alex?). But, the double yellow line was freaking a lot of people out, apparently, because I was about 8 cars behind that street sweeper, and despite there being PLENTY of opportunity to blow around it, it never happened. The street sweeper is not moving at blistering speeds, so using simple math*, passing should be easy.

Unfortunately, the first couple of cars in this Train of the Damned were treating the sweeper as though it was a school bus, carrying precious cargo. In reality, it's carrying non-potable water and 1 or 2 city employees. But, that did not matter to the first couple of cars. They were going to follow this street sweeper if it was the last thing they did, regardless of all of the honking behind them.

Eventually, the street sweeper came to a 3-way intersection. The driver of that vehicle knew exactly what was happening behind him, and he was clearly trying to stay as far to the right as possible, giving people room to pass, but no good. With the first 2 cars not passing, the subsequent cars were not willing to pass 3 vehicles to get around. But, when we hit that intersection, the driver made a move to the right in the sudden gap, and the first couple of cars got the hint and quickly passed. Every car behind soon followed, looking like one of those mass escape scenes in "Victory" or "The Great Escape".

The truly insane thing....the first two cars, completely unwilling to man up and pass a street sweeper on a double yellow, tore off into the distance, going at least 50 in a 35, hurrying to their destination. They can drive like a bat out of hell now, but when following a slow vehicle, they were pussing out. I thought Georgia was well-steeped in NASCAR culture and would've made that pass 3-wide, on a curve. Yesterday, I was wrong.

*The Simple Math (I'd like to thank my dad, who was, literally, an astrophysicist, for inspiring me to break out the calculator on this one:

It is a simple fact of physics (or calculus, or something) that if the driver you are following is going 10 mph, that driver is only driving a ridiculous 14.66 feet per second. If these people are driving a Town Car (which all old slow people drive), that vehicle is 18 feet long, so they can’t even go the length of their vehicle in 1 second.

So…..if you are second in line behind them, back off to give yourself some takeoff speed, and get that sucker to 35mph, you can cruise at 51.33 FPS, 3.5 times their speed, and literally pass them in about a second from the time you cross the line, to the time you cross back, surely enough time to avoid oncoming traffic. You then repeat this process until everyone has passed this car. This is why every car should come pre-programmed with a Metallica guitar solo, to give you the fortitude to make such a maneuver.

And I did this math recently for a friend who was following a Town Car. I have no idea how long a street sweeper is, so I'm not about to do that kind of math.

Commuter of the Day 6/17/2009: 4 Times a Week

4 times a week? 4 times a week doing what? Certainly not gassing up, it's a friggin' Prius. 4 times a week doing Yoga? Working out? Doesn't the government think we should eat fruit 4 times a week? Or am I confusing that with something else?

So, for this truly brilliant COTD, we are left with nothing but more questions, which is the mark of a great vanity plate. It really makes us think. It could be ANYTHING! Masturbating 4 times a week, or even...wait...oh God no....you don't suppose they mean having sex 4 times a week do you? Bastard. FOUR???

Grumblegrumblebastardgrumblegrumble

Commuter of the Day 6/16/2009: BLESSED

I wonder if this driver feels blessed simply the Good Lord shines down on them with good fortune and prosperity, or if they feel blessed because they drive a Lexus?

And is this one of those people that, instead of telling you to "have a nice day," say "have a BLESSED day." As though that's even better than a nice (or good) day. Personally, when I'm told to have a blessed day, that sets the bar kind of high. I would be fine most of the time with a "good day." One in which nobody I know dies, traffic is decent, and I can have a nice refreshing beer at the end of the day. Unlike today, where I had to follow a street sweeper on the way in to work, and I was the 6th car in line and the first 2 cars were too damn timid to pass it, so there I was stuck crawling along. And once we were able to pass it, making me 5 minutes late for work, that's when I saw this asshole rubbing it in about how blessed they are.

Sure, they may be blessed, but some douchebag wrote a heart with an arrow on it in soap on their window. Hah hah! Oh...THEY did it themselves? Wow, that's awkward.

Dear Neighbor Girl: Update

Many of you read my Open Letter to the Neighbor Girl, who enjoys throwing down with a houseful of guests, drinking shitty beer, and going “Woooo”, and “Fuck” at 2AM.

The lifeguard at our pool, a nice guy of about 19, knows her. And does what he can to stay away from her. Apparently Drunk with Partly Slutty is the way she lives her life.

Also, she just finished high school. She did not, as I thought, just finish her first year of college, she just finished her senior year in high school.

You might be wondering, “So Steve, what does this mean?” Well in my twisted sense of morals, what this means is the next time her dad is out of town and she’s getting shitfaced on Natural Light and being loud and obnoxious at 2AM, her dad is getting a phone call. Her dad will be told to “listen to this,” and he will hear her party from up close (I’ll be standing outside their windows). And, her dad will be given a choice. Shut the party down immediately, or the police will do it.

I guess, knowing she’s not just underage but high school underage changes things for me.

The Dance Recital

This past school year, my younger daughter (Thing 2) took a dance class offered one day a week after school (she was in a 3-year old classroom at her preschool). It was a 45 minute class, and she learned a little ballet and a little tap. The class was taught by a woman who specialized in teaching these classes at preschools in the area, and gave a cut of her fee back to the school. Halfway through the school year, that teacher moved out of the area due to her husband being transferred, so a large local dance school picked up these classes (at the same price thankfully) and the owner of the school came to teach my daughter’s class.

This Saturday was her recital. They did a little ballet number, that was about as good as what you’d expect for kids that age. Some of the kids, like Thing 2, were 4, but there were a few that were in the 2 year old class this year, so they were 2 or 3 (their moms, thinking their kids were excellent dancers already, pushed the school to allow them to dance a year up…which of course totally screwed up the class dynamic, as half the kids could pay attention and do the moves, the other half had the attention span of a kitten).

One of the moms who thought her daughter’s poop doesn’t stink, of course, was quite flustered to find her precious little snowflake in the back row (the teacher put the kids who could do the performance in the front). This mom did nothing but bitch and complain all year long, about everything from the dance class, to her daughter catching cold and flu from the school, to everything in between. It was very funny to see the program (full color, which we had to pay $5 to get), with Thing 2’s name in there, and her last name was screwed up…..they left the second half of her last name off (it’s a 3-syllable name, they only got the first 2). Well, that wasn’t so funny, what WAS funny was that our complete last name was transposed onto the girl with the annoying mother, so instead of it being “Alex Whatever,” it said “Alex Same Last Name As Steve.” That actually made it worth it. Sure, we got robbed, but this woman got even more burned. Sucker.

The theme of the recital was 80’s music, so there was a lot of neon, lots of dancing to Michael Jackson, Madonna, and other 80’s hits. The intro was a compilation of different 80’s songs, the bulk of which were right off the soundtrack for “Flashdance,” that was performed by some of the older students, most of whom were probably born between 1991 and 1997. So, it’s safe to say that most of those kids have no clue what “Flashdance” was about. However, I can assure you every parent in the audience whose daughter was NOT part of that ensemble turned to the person next to them and said, “hey, isn’t this from a movie about a stripper?”

Or was that just me?

Revenge of the Nerds, 25 Years Later

I remember loving the movie “Revenge of the Nerds.” It wasn’t one of those movies I quoted with friends all the time, unlike “Better Off Dead” (4 weeks, 20 papers, that’s 2 dollars), “A Christmas Story” (I shot my eye out) or more recently, “Office Space,” (Lumbergh’s gonna have me come in on Saturday, I just know it). But, it was a funny movie regardless. My brother and I spent a lot of our childhood playfully poking fun at our father with the line, “I got the ol’ cruise control set at 35!”

On Friday night, I had a slight touch of insomnia (translated: I poured a beer very late, and stayed up to slowly drink it and for lack of anything better to do), and while channel surfing I found “Revenge of the Nerds” on G4, on their “Movies That Don’t Suck” promotion. G4 is apparently toned down for network TV (despite having a show whose premise seems to be “Hot girls that do disgusting things on video, while professional comedians comment on them”), so Revenge of the Nerds seemed to be edited. I have to be really honest here, it’s not quite the same movie without Booger going, “We’ve got bush! WE’VE GOT BUSH!” And they show you the subject of Booger’s exultations. Or, when Stan Gable wipes whipped cream off a plate and exclaims, “That’s MY pie!” Oh, and Louis Skolnick banging the hot cheerleader on The Moonwalk in the funhouse. All of that was cut. So, what we ended up with was basically an entire movie with what appeared to be rampant sexual tension between Louis and Gilbert, and gay jokes at Lamar’s expense, and fart/burp jokes at Booger’s. It’s been since I was probably a teenager (pre-1990) that I last saw this movie, but I clearly remember it being better (meaning, it had a decent amount of nudity).

But there was one scene which was not cut (which probably should have, if they also cut out Louis telling Betty, “jocks only think about sports, nerds only think about sex) was the talent show at the end. The members of Rho Rho Rho fraternity were doing a skit where they were in a rowboat and singing “Row Row Row Your Boat.” At the end, 3 girls sat up in the boat and sang the “Merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream” part. At the end of that line, all 3 girls wiped their chins. How I missed that when I was 14, 15, 16, I’ll never know, but it instantly made that one scene a hell of a lot funnier. That scene went from “hey, those girls might be giving head to the Rho’s,” to “holy shit, those girls just implied they got facials from the Rho’s”. I have to give the director some credit for that, and the censors for being as stupid as I was 20 years ago when I missed it.

I’m sure there are other movies out there that were very different when watched as adults, versus when you first saw them as kids, so feel free to discuss. Or, music for that matter (take as an example, the woman in her mid-40’s who found out….from me, last year…..that Freddie Mercury was very gay, hence the name Queen, and that “Lola” was about a tranny).

Karma Police

This entry is not about my love for Radiohead (to be honest, I'm not really a fan, and by that I mean I change the station when one of their songs comes on the radio).

This is about a commuter (big surprise, eh?). A guy was absolutely riding my ass in a 25mph zone on the way to work today, through downtown Kennesaw GA, which is a business area.

I had to make a left-hand turn at one point, but where I was, the left-hand turn lane had not yet started. Basically, double-yellow lines, thus it's a no-no to cross them. The left-turn lane was maybe 50 yards ahead. Unfortunately, it was inaccessible due to the traffic trying to get through that particular light, until it turned green and cars were able to inch up.

The guy riding my ass (who had a rather large handicapped parking permit hanging from his rearview mirror) lost patience and crossed the double-yellow and drove up to the left-turn lane. This kind of pissed me off, because I needed to make that left as well, so now this assclown who by all rights should have still been behind me was now in front of me, all because I was following traffic rules, and he was being a dick.

However, unbeknownst to him, there was a cop sitting in the parking lot of the cheese cake bakery just to our right. How he did notice this I have no idea, because the cop was all of about 20 feet from us, watching traffic and drinking coffee. The cop pulled up to the driveway that let out onto the road (traffic was moving, so I let him in front of me), and he pulled up, crossed the double-yellow, and pulled in behind the impatient disabled man and hit his blue lights.

The road the guy was turning onto goes over a set of railroad tracks, and at that point a train came through, putting a red light on the left turn lane. So, I stayed in the lane I was in to go down to a later point where I could cross the tracks instead of using this intersection and getting caught by the train. The guy had nowhere to go, so the cop got out right there to write him a ticket. So there I drove, straight, while passing the impatient disabled man who was going to get a ticket for being a douchebag. My window was down. As I passed him, I am not ashamed to admit, I gave him the "You're #1" sign and said, "Hahhh, fuuuuckerrrrr!"

Commuter of the Day 6/4/2009: Lost Lawyer

This was the vanity plate that stood out today. You can't make it out too well, but the plate says:

CRIMDEF

I'm assuming that means "Criminal Defense."

I'm also assuming he's lost because he waved to the car next to him, made the "roll down your window motion," and then proceeded to gesture all over the place, indicating he needed help finding some place.

Road Trip to Hilton Head, Part 3: Flora and Fauna

The drive down to Hilton Head was the only truly eventful part of our driving around. The rest was spent relaxing, playing mini-golf, spending 6 hours at the beach (no sunburn for me, which I think is unprecedented....I slathered on sunscreen so often, people probably thought I was suffering from OCD). But here are some last thoughts on the trip, related to the title, Flora and Fauna.

Flora:
Hilton Head, unlike other vacation destinations like Myrtle Beach South Carolina and Panama City Beach, Florida (also known as the Redneck Riviera) does not cater to the airbrushed t-shirt, henna tattoo, party crowd. It doesn't have miles of boardwalk where you can entertain kids with complete crap, go-carts, a million mini-golf courses (it has 4 or 5, but not the density that Myrtle Beach has), etc. It's just a peaceful island. And, the best part is, zoning ordinances do not permit massive advertising of businesses, and large businesses are all hidden behind row after row of palmetto trees. I have actually fallen in love with the palmetto, as we were able to drive by multiple Home Depots and Wal-Marts and not even know it, because they were hidden from the road by palmetto trees. The palmetto is in the palm family, but shorter, with thicker trunks, and they don't bend like palms. They are great trees to have around so that your vacation isn't spoiled by views of large orange home improvement stores.

And, one can never understate the wonderful smells in the air from jasmine and magnolia. In New Jersey, you can be a mile from the ocean and know it, because the salt water smell is pervasive. In Hilton Head, you can be the length of a football field from the water, and you don't have that smell of salt filling your nostrils.

Fauna:
Is it odd that I was disappointed that I didn't see one single alligator? Mind you, I would be thinking very differently if I DID see one, I think, but just to see one from maybe 100 yards away, sunning itself on a golf course, would've been cool. When we played mini-golf at night, Thing 1's ball was launched into some short brush near the course. We wacked around the weeds, and then saw them moving on their own, so we decided going for that ball was simply not worth it.

You know you're getting into South Georgia when the dead opossums on the side of the road (the animal with the 2nd lowest will to live in North America) are replaced by dead armadillos (the animal with THE lowest will to live in North America). If you've never seen one, an armadillo is basically an opossum with friggin' armor. They have to be one of the creepiest looking animals out there. Only once have I ever seen a living one, they are usually found dead on the interstate. They come up from Texas and Florida, but their advance seems to have been stopped dead (literally) by I-16 from Savannah to Macon, I-20 from Atlanta to Dallas, and if any get past I-20, then I-40 from Knoxville TN to Little Rock AR takes care of them (surprisingly, they can cross the Arkansas River!). We saw our first dead armadillo 1 mile onto I-16, and then saw dead ones every other mile all the way to Savannah.

Also on I-16, I saw two wild boars....black, with bristly fur. It kind of made me shudder. Without the protection of my car, I know those things would've charged at me. I've seen The Thornbirds, I know what a pissed-off boar can do. It was kind of cool though, I've never seen one in the wild. It kind of felt like the first time I saw a wild bear. Thankfully, he was on the shoreline of a lake, and I was on a boat.

Once on Hilton Head, and at the beach, the only interesting animal I saw was a dead jellyfish, ten feet from our blankets. I brought both my daughters over to it (Thing 1 already knew to stay away). To Thing 2, I said, "you know in Spongebob? When they touch the jellyfish, and they get zapped, and it hurts?" She nodded her head. "That's what'll happen if you touch that, so be sure to stay away from it, OK?" She nodded her head again and went off and played in the water. The jellyfish didn't have its tentacles, so it couldn't have stung, but still, no sense tempting fate. I got sick of looking at it, so I scooped it into a sand bucket and dumped it into the trash can a couple hundred feet away.

Oh, also at the beach, some douchebag found a horseshoe crab swimming in the water and he picked it up and tried to carry it off the beach. The beach patrol blew the whistle, telling him to put it back. Reluctantly, the guy did.

On the way home, we noticed a funny smell in our van. I pointed out that the sand bucket at one time held a dead jellyfish, and currently held dozens of seashells, all of which were the home to a living animal at one point, and likely still had organic matter in them that the seagulls didn't rip out. Hilton Head does not have a lot of decent seashells on the beaches except in the harbor on the eastern end of the island (called Harbor Town). There, the beach is literally covered with them. And I mean covered, you are walking on shells, not sand (it's not a recreational beach). It was basically a mollusk graveyard. Naturally, we were stealing the headstones for our kids' amusement.

On the drive home, we also saw a brown billboard with while letters that said: JOHN 3:16

I think this is South Georgia's way of saying, "Beware of Macon and its Rub N' Tugs filled with male Hispanic masseurs."

Road Trip to Hilton Head, Part 2: Adult Entertainment

As you can see, the trip started with some interesting reading material…..that being license plates and bumper stickers.

It only improved from there. As we approached Macon, which is about an hour and a half south of Atlanta, we started to see billboards for businesses that obviously cater to truckers…large truck stops (with showers!), strip clubs, and massage parlors (also known as a “Run n’ Tug). Macon is at the junction of I-75 (which goes from Sault Ste. Marie Ontario Canada all the way to south Florida) and I-16, which goes from Macon to Savannah (Savannah is not just a stripper name, it’s one of the largest…and by some accounts the prettiest…city in Georgia). At Savannah, I-16 connects with I-95, which links the entire East Coast, so I-16 is a major corridor to get to Atlanta from Florida. So, Macon is a busy highway juncture with lots of truck traffic.

Approaching Macon on I-75, the first adult business we saw advertised was a strip club. I have no idea what the name of the business was, because the billboard looked like this:

$TRIPPER$
(need we say more?)

Followed by the location at the next exit.

There is absolutely no hidden message there, they want to get their point across quickly and cheaply. It was white text on a black billboard. My guess is, the quality of their advertising perfectly matches the quality of their “talent.”

A couple miles down the road, we saw a billboard for a Rub n’ Tug. It said:

INTERNATIONAL MASSAGE PARLOR
TRUCKER’S RATES
CAUCASIAN, ASIAN, LATINO

Followed by info on their location and a phone number.

For those of you who are multi-lingual, you may have noticed a typo in what I wrote above. Note, this was not a typo. Let me explain. In Spanish, the vowel at the end of a noun is indicative of gender. -o is masculine, -a is feminine. Thus, if you are describing a Hispanic man, you would say “Latino.” A female, on the other hand, would be a “Latina.” If you’re following what I’m saying, then you now know what this business is offering is a “massage” (French for “coughHANDJOBcough”) by either a white chick, an Asian chick, or a dude named Manuel. Yes, the children’s Disney Channel show “Handy Manny” did indeed cross my mind.

Before posting this, I wanted to make sure my Spanish is indeed accurate and I contacted a friend of mine, who is from Mexico. He confirmed that this business did indeed offer the sexual services of a male Hispanic, and he also suggested that if you wanted a Latina masseusse, your best bet would be an Argentinean or Chilean, preferably 20 years old. Otherwise, you could get a Mexican girl for less money but MUCH higher quality in Mexico, but do NOT get a massage from a Mexican girl in the US, because they look like they swam across the Rio Bravo. His words, not mine.

Hopefully reading my journal was a learning experience. You now know that Macon is a great place to get very cheap strippers, and massages from Latinos, and you should never get a massage from Mexican women IN the US. Settle only for Argentineans or Chileans.

Road Trip to Hilton Head

This past weekend (Friday morning to be exact), my family and I piled into the Family Truckster and drove southeast to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Normally, trips to SC frighten me, due to rampant ignorance, the religious fundamentalism, and the weak beer due to arcane beer laws in that state. However, Hilton Head is like this little paradise surrounded by misery, with beautiful beaches, palmetto trees, beautiful scenery, and a relaxed atmosphere. I think if the Nazi death camps looked like Hilton Head, the Nazis wouldn’t have quite the same reputation.

I knew this road trip would be legendary when I wasn’t even out of Atlanta (hell, I hadn’t even entered Atlanta yet, I was still in Cobb County) when I saw a Chrysler Crossfire convertible with the license plate that said: THE DEX. I love this plate. This is how a vanity plate should look. It should tell you something about the driver. A nickname, a job (but never simply what kind of car he/she drives, like CRSSFR). So, THE DEX meets all accepted criteria. Mind you, THE DEX is still a douchebag, but not because of his vanity plate, but simply because of his nickname. “Hey, are you THE DEX?” “You bet your sweet ass I am,” he replies, while giving the wink-and-a-gun. Wait, no…THE DEX is probably a wink-and-a-double-gun kind if guy. Two finger-guns, one wink. While he makes that clicking sound with his mouth.

Upon crossing the Chattahoochee River on Interstate 75, I entered Fulton County and the city of Atlanta. Almost immediately, I was right behind a commuter car with a bumper sticker that said:

“I wasn’t born a bitch. Men like you made me this way.”

Obviously it’s never a good idea to be behind a bitch so angry that the bitch must have a bumper sticker advertising this fact. You want to pass them (preferably with at least one lane between the two cars) and get as far in front as possible, so when they do “go postal,” the carnage is behind you. Otherwise, you’re stuck in traffic while an angry woman is being tased in the middle of the interstate by state troopers. So, I passed this car on the left, and glanced over to see what an Uber-Bitch looks like. Much to my surprise AND amusement, I saw that the driver was no less than a MAN, BABY! That’s right, somewhere in Atlanta there is a man so pussy-whipped that he’s driving his girlfriend’s car with this sticker on it. If you’re scoring on a scale of 1-10, buying your girlfriend’s/wife’s tampons is a 10, and driving this car is about a 90. I have actually purchased tampons before (and not for a college prank either!), and I can honestly say in comparison to riding in the Bitchmobile, I’d rather hitch a ride in a beat-up white panel van with no windows and Buffalo Bill at the steering wheel, telling me to put the lotion on the skin.

This is just one of a 2-parter. There is still more to discuss about this road trip, from bible quotes, to adult entertainment, to flora and fauna (more fauna, actually).