This Just In: Flying Sucks

Pardon me if I'm not slack jawed with surprise:

If the thought of traveling during the Christmas holidays makes you ill, you're in good company. A new travel industry survey finds that 39 percent would rather take the bus than fly.

Irked by new travel security requirements, higher traffic and the clutter of presents, many air travelers express frustration about flying.

If anyone today told me that they "enjoyed" flying, I'd call the men in white coats.

Photo: seenonvarick.com

iPad on Airplanes

Just a week after American Airlines kicked Alec Baldwin off a flight for, among other things, refusing to shut down a piece of electronic equipment, we get this:

The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday that pilots on American Airlines flights would be allowed to use iPads instead of paper flight manuals in the cockpit starting Friday, as reported by ZDNet, even during takeoff and landing. But passengers are still required to shut down anything with the slightest electronic pulse from the moment a plane leaves the gate until it reaches an altitude of 10,000 feet.

The guy in 7D has to power down his phone or get reamed, but a pilot can sit on top of an airplane's controls and use an iPad.

It's becoming ever more clear that air travel was designed not only to get you from A to B faster, but also to prove that a human being's intellect and incredulity can be eradicated without much effort whatsoever.

Flying the Stupid Skies

CBS breaks down the heinous acts of Alec Balwin, actor and flight disruptor:

American Airlines took to its Facebook page Wednesday to explain its actions after Alec Baldwin complained he was kicked off a flight for playing a Scrabble-like game on his cell phone as the plane was about to depart from Los Angeles.

Without mentioning the "30 Rock" star by name, the airline said an "extremely vocal customer" declined to turn off his phone when asked to do so by a flight attendant.

The customer then stood up "with the seat belt light still on for departure" and took his phone into the plane's lavatory, the company continued.

"He slammed the lavatory door so hard, the cockpit crew heard it and became alarmed, even with the cockpit door closed and locked," the airline's post said.

And so on. They eventually kicked him off the flight.

The horrors. He "stood up with the seat belt sign still on." We all know what an incredibly dangerous thing that is. It's not quite as bad as having your tray table down, or having a jacket sitting on your lap, but it's pretty damn dangerous nonetheless. Still, it's better than smoking. Can you imagine if he had been smoking, or tampered with the lavatory's - that's airline language for 'disgusting closet to crap in' - smoke detector?

I love the story's "cockpit door closed and locked" bit, too, as if Baldwin was going to try and commandeer the plane. Whatever.

What sheep we are. Standing up, using cell phones, going to the john, playing word games, all so earth shattering. The guy was rude and loud, so you kicked him off the plane. I get it. But I don't blame him for getting hot. Most airline staff that I have met are vacuous, rude robots themselves. I've done enough flying to know that it's a soul destroying experience orchestrated by halfwits. And please: if cell phone use truly caused problems, planes would be falling out of the sky every single day by the dozens. Let a guy play Scrabble on his phone and we can get on with the flight.

George Carlin nailed it many years ago when it came to showing how arrogant and moronic the airline industry is. Time for another look, so we can laugh at them yet again:



Photo: Paul Morigi/WireImage

Lonely Liar

The publisher of Lonely Planet guide books is red-faced at news that writer Thomas Kohnstamm made up some parts of the books, and didn't even visit one of the countries he wrote about.

I used a Lonely Planet book back in my hitch hiking days. It came in pretty handy when I wanted to find a two-bit hostel or a cheap watering hole. Today, I doubt I would even bother with a guide book, as the internet trumps them all. Besides, most of the guide books only want to tell you about museums, statues and river tours. Where's the fun in that? I was always more interested in where the hot chicks hung out, or where I could get a two dollar margarita.

It doesn't sound like Kohnstamm's lies did much damage. According to the publisher, they've vetted some of the books and couldn't find anything wrong with them. No shocker. The Lonely Planet series is short on descriptions and long on options. It wouldn't take a genius to Google "Buenos Aires" and copy the names of cheap hotels and restaurants.

Kohnstamm says he made the books up because Lonely Planet didn't pay him enough. I believe him. Writers' salaries are going further down the drain every day. Look up "Writing Jobs" on craigslist and you'll see that roughly 80% are non-paying gigs, the rest paying only enough to cover mileage.

Unless you're a bigshot, writing is a part-time gig or a hobby. The fact that Lonely Planet didn't see how they'd be had before now is the only surprising thing to come out of this story. Whether lonely of not, the planet has become www.small.

Does that excuse Kohnstamm? No. Do I feel sorry for Lonely Planet? Ditto.

Now the publisher has a whole new problem on their hands: how many other books have been done in the same vein, and how will they ever find out?

Answer: they won't.

More on the story here.

Sean's Year in Review

Midnight of New Year's Day is only a few hours off, so it's time for me to crack open the diary and see what I was thinking about over the past year.

I'm not so Victorian as to actually keep a diary, so the blog will have to do. Neither am I much of a sentimentalist, though I do find it funny to look back and say, "Was I really that concerned about the price of Starbuck's coffee?"

New Year's is a time of renewal and resolution. Millions of smokers will quit tonight, only to light up during the hangover the following morning. A number of fat people will say that they are going to drop fifty pounds, then chug chicken wings during the college bowl games. Life's funny like that: any other day of the year, a broken resolution would be a broken promise. But a broken promise on New Year's is okay, because people just think you were being a drunken ass when you made the declaration. They never believed you, anyway.

So, let me see. It was New Year's Eve, 2006, and I was in Acapulco. I enjoyed Coronas on the beach, then margaritas in the bar, and then a gorgeous Argentinian girl in the...well, let's not get carried away, shall we? Some things are better left off the page.

January

Shoes

I bought a new pair of shoes yesterday.

That shouldn't be news, but it is for me. I've always had a problem getting over to the shoe store and making a purchase. Like most real men, I only own a few pairs of shoes. A black pair for the suit, a running pair for the street, and a pair of sandals for everything else. I have never owned a brown pair of shoes in my life, not because I don't like the color brown, but because I don't have a brown belt to go with them. As for Oxblood, the name alone turns me off, and besides, red shoes are for Judy Garland.

Tanning and Work

Today's tanning episode got me thinking about work. You see, these two chicks are showgirls. That's their job. They're great friends and I love them to death. So as they were lying there, they asked me if I'd mind moving their chairs (whilst they were still lying on them) so that they could get a better angle from the sun. As women do, they had unstrapped their bikini tops and were lying on their stomachs. It was much easier for them to ask me to move the chairs, rather than tie the tops, get up, move the chairs, lie back down, and untie the tops again. So the thought crossed my mind to do it.

Then I saw something. Over their oiled, tanned, gorgeous kick-line butts, I saw a man painting a light fixture. He was sweating his balls off in the afternoon sun, paint chips all around him, the stink of varsol and epoxy in his nostrils.

I told the girls to stick it.

Heat

I have spent years in the world's hot spots and amongst the tourists they attract. Tourists are a funny bunch. Anyone that tells you they travel in order to learn about 'culture' are full of baloney. After sailing, flying, and hitchhiking around various parts of the earth, I have come to the firm conclusion that nobody wants to learn anything about anybody. At least, not anybody that is alive. People might fly to Italy, but they don't do it so they can rent an apartment in some Palermo craphole and learn the culture of getting mugged. No, they fly to Italy to check into a hotel, look at David's genitals, take a stroll around the Colosseum, then have a pizza at an 'authentic' restaurant.

February

My Name

It was in third grade that funny things started happening. My mom or my dad bought me one of those iron-on shirts, the ones where people would put their names on the back in case they forgot who the shirt belonged to when they pulled it out of the drawer. On the back of that shirt was written SEAN. So it was my shirt with my name. I can't remember what was on the front, but it was probably an iron-on Twisted Sister logo or something.

Anyway, I put on that shirt and went to school. All day long people called me 'Seen,' as in, "I have seen the light." I had no idea why they were calling me this, until I realized that they were ripping on my name. Since that day, I have probably been called 'Seen' about 5, 342 times.

Flush

If one sentence can sum up how ludicrous this stuff is getting, it must be the following one from Fox News, talking about Ibrahim Ramey, director of human and civil rights work from the Muslim America Society:

"Ramey said he was unaware of any specific complaints regarding the direction of toilets in U.S. prisons."

Poor Kids

They didn't look poor. They had well-combed hair and they looked as if they'd had three squares that day. Yet here they were, life's little lost ones. Their eyes darted from tourist to tourist and drunk to drunk, looking for a sucker or someone that wasn't paying enough attention to their wallet. They knew more about the street than I ever would, and they weren't old enough to enter high school.

And that's the way it's going to go for them. Roses, to heroin, to jail, to infection, to death in no time at all, and we'll still be going to the clubs and telling the next generation that we don't want their crummy flowers.

The Environment

Our conceit is limitless. The Earth has been through ice ages, massive earthquakes, hurricanes, innumerable volcanoes spitting sulphur into the sky, catastrophic meteorite impacts, so forth. But hairspray and unleaded gas will be the planet's demise?

Ours, maybe. But the Earth doesn't give a damn about us. Ask the next skydiver whose chute doesn't open how fragile the Earth is, and how much it cares. You'll get two four letter words in response. The first is shit!, the other is thud.



March

Al Gore

“The Earth has a fever.” What kind of an arrogant ass goes before Congress (and the TV cameras; let’s not forget why he was there in the first place) and talks to senators as if they are three years old? This man is quoted as saying that global warming is going to be the end of civilization as we know it, and he uses “The Earth has a fever,” to describe this scientific catastrophe.

I would love to hear Al Gore describe other problems using his condescending, talk-down-to-children-tone.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa: “The marble feels dizzy.”

9/11: “The birdies hit your Leggo set.”

Oil spill: “Exxon made a boo-boo.”

Hurricane Katrina: “Someone pulled the Caribbean’s finger.”

Apartment suicide: “Little man fall down, go boom.”

Assault and battery: “The bullies played a mean game of tag.”

Out With Friends

I have often said that it is not where you are, it is who you are with. I stand by that. If I am with my buddies Dave and Pete in some craphole, I will have a great time. If I am at the best nightclub in Berlin with some loser who complains all the time, I will hate life. This is why I despise going out with a group of people that cannot make up their minds on where they want to go. You’d figure they’d have learned it by now: if you’re truly friends, then it truly doesn’t matter. If the location matters so much, I have bad news for you: you aren’t friends.



April

Eavesdrop

I overheard a woman talking to her friend outside a mall last night:

"You know Angela. If it doesn't involve manicures, pedicures, martinis, or jogging, she doesn't give a shit."

Such is the epitaph over many a woman's thirties.

Good-Bye, Old Friend

I remember hearing about a friend that died. He wasn't a close friend, but we shared some drinks and jokes together. He was a hell of a guy. He got married, and three years later he dropped dead. I hadn't seen him in a long time. When I got the news, the first thing that popped into my head was him cutting up a salami and asking me if I wanted some. That memory comes from an all-night bender that we'd had. At the end of the night he pulled out some salami, some bread, and a knife. He said, "You want some salami?"

I feel like I cheated him. Nobody's first memory after death should involve a damned salami. I like to think he'll forgive me for that.

The Virginia Tech Shooting

I'm fed up with the cops, too. We've got America's Most Wanted, COPS, SWAT, Protect and Serve, and all kinds of tough-guy cop garbage on TV. When a drunk driver gets pulled over, the police have no problem throwing him to the ground or using a Taser to zap him into submission. On the SWAT programs, fifteen guys get out of a van all dressed in black body armor. They look ridiculous, like schoolboys at Hallowe'en. When they kick in the drug lord's slum door, they find the 17-year-old menace to society passed out on the couch in his underwear.

When they shackle the drug kid and put him in the back of the van, they usually bring on a sergeant to make some remarks. "Nobody got hurt," he says. "Successful day."

No kidding, pal. You stormed a suburban home as if you were the Marines. The kid didn't even know you were coming. The chances of somebody getting hurt were pretty damn small. Where are these tough guys when somebody is shooting cheerleaders and university professors in the back?

Netspeak

I have a friend that is the master of Netspeak. She loves it. When something special happens in her life, she types :P. This means she is sticking out her tongue. When she types ;), she’s winking. When she types :O, she’s surprised.

What people like her don’t understand is that I already know all this stuff because it’s implied in the language. When I write to say that I fell down a flight of stairs, they don’t need to type colon-capital-oh to say they are shocked. When they tell me they won free tickets to the playoffs, they don’t have to stick out their tongue. I know they’re a braggart and a blowhard. No emphasis needed.

May

Rosie Quits "The View"

Rosie. Ah, Rosie. The big, round, mound of sound finally decided to pack it in. She was due to resign from The View in a few weeks, but after her latest tiff with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, she punched the clock early. Or as Rosie wrote on her blog: "When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done."

True. Or as I like to put it, "When done taking dump, there is point u must flush."

European Chicks

Women north of the Rio Grande are a terrible disappointment when it comes to the mystery and the allure of woman. Yes, the French chick at the bar in the black turtleneck smoking the long cigarette might be a snob. But there is something sexy as hell about women that can stand alone at a bar and not once - not once - look around the room. Sheer confidence. Like a cat. Utterly disinterested in what you have to say or who you are...or might she be?

This as opposed to, say, the sexy allure of a chick from Kamloops wearing droopy denims when she shouts, "Canada kicks ass. Whoooo!" and then punches you in the arm harder than a lumberjack.

The Beer Test

The beer test is the ultimate indicator of how expensive a city is, because you can be sure that a city charging 1o dollars for a draft beer is not going to sell you a house for under a couple of million. To make a two million dollar house sound reasonable, just tell yourself that it's only worth two hundred thousand beers. Besides, what do you expect in a place like Monte Carlo, where Grace Kelly was a Princess and their Grand Prix has the Mediterranean for a backdrop?

Big Bucks

Any sports star that gets married and has kids before he retires is an idiot. I really believe that. Because man, if I was making ten thousand dollars every time I threw a ball or passed a puck, the last thing I’d want to do is go home to a bunch of screaming kids.

Planet Starbucks

The language of Starbucks amuses me. There is not a chance that any of these people knew what "grande" was ten years ago. Likewise chai, latte, or machioto. How did they learn the lingo? They must have been nervous the first time they used ten words to order a cup of coffee, some in a different language to boot. Or perhaps it just comes naturally to people that think there's no easier way to sound sanctimonious than to specify that their coffee be served at exactly 190-degrees. And what about the prices they pay? When a large (pardon me - venti) latte costs almost as much as a six pack of beer, you know things are seriously out of whack.

June

Gay Marriage

People that get upset when someone wants to talk about such a big issue, and have a good debate about it, aren't worth my time. When feelings drive laws, you should be very nervous. Today's good feelings about gay marriage could be tomorrow's bad feelings about not having Jews own supermarkets, blacks teach school, whites swim in pools. Seem ludicrous? 30 years ago, so did the very idea of gay marriage.

The Enviro-Boobs Strike Again

Poor guy. He's sane, but he doesn't get it: it no longer matters if the air gets cooler or warmer. All that matters is that it changes. Now that 'global warming' is called 'climate change,' the enviro-boobs and others of their mindless ilk can point at a thermometer or a thunderstorm any day of the week and say, "See?"

Personally, I can't decide which is better: global warming, so the babes are in bikinis throughout the year; or global cooling, so the babes want to spend more time cuddling in the Jacuzzi.

Growing up

Back in high school, I'm pretty sure we all wanted to get laid, but it rarely happened. Now, everybody's getting laid and they can't wait to post photos of the evidence all over the internet. It only took sex ten years to go from being the aw-shucks-red-in-the-face-sweaty-palms act it was, to a humdrum event you can now discuss over dinner.

July

Vegansexuals

Pardon the double pun, but sex in New Zealand just got harder to come by. According to one newspaper, Kiwi vegans have declared that they will not have sex with anyone who eats meat. They are calling themselves vegansexual. As if any red blooded human would care, since their “no meat touches these lips” mantra implies that they don’t agree with oral sex, either.

Tattoos

It seems like every woman in a tight shirt and low jeans was born with one of those Asian symbols just above their butt crack. I ponder what the symbols mean. I’d ask, but I know the ladies haven’t the foggiest. They got it because they thought it looked cool. Then the ladies give you dirty looks for staring at their butts, when all you’re trying to do is figure out what their butt is trying to say.

I wonder sometimes if they’re getting busy with an Asian guy, does the man ever think, “Why does this woman have ‘I’m With Stupid’ written above her butt in Mandarin?”

Sportscasters

I’ll give Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly a break on this. Years ago, in a face to face meeting, he asked Sammy Sosa point blank if he would take a steroids test. There was a great deal of controversy over whether Reilly should have asked the question. Not much controversy, though, over the fact that Sosa did not say yes or no. He still hasn’t. He just ignored it, it went away, and the sports writers let it, just as they let his corked bat slip from memory every time they discuss his homerun totals.

Soccer

The soccer tournament involved all of the qualifying countries in the Americas, including the United States. Canada didn't make it because Canada is so involved in soccer that they suck at it, ranking out of the top 50 countries in the world. When Bosnia-Herzegovina (28), Morocco (35), and Guinea (50) are better than you at a sport, you know it's time to stop asking when that sport will become popular in your country.

I flicked on CNN this morning and they were talking about David Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles. He used to play for Manchester United and Real Madrid. He's now come over to play with the LA Galaxy. Headlines on Yahoo are asking if he can save US soccer. The rest of us are asking if he can get out of the way so we can get another look at his hot wife.

Our Times

The other day I was on a flight from Washington DC to Toronto. It was a puddle jumper of an airplane, but it had jets, so it was noisy as hell in the cabin and the seats were too close together.

A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.

And I didn't know if I should say anything.

Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.

Look in the Mirror

The trouble with looking at yourself is the looking. Being bold enough to examine yourself, to be honest about what you see, is tough. I think it was Freud that said no one can psychoanalyse themselves (he also said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, so I guess they can forget my whole point), but it's worth giving it a shot now and then.

August

Mother Theresa Dies

No one noticed the passing of Mother Teresa, and in a way I always liked that. She wouldn't have wanted the headlines, unless they came with a donation for her Missionaries of Charity. She had no crown jewels, and would have hawked them for food if she did.

10 years on, the news coverage still makes me laugh. A few days ago, a number of papers ran a story about how Teresa questioned her faith in God towards the end of her life. That's a great hit job on a devoted Christian, and a wonderful way to celebrate her life, isn't it? Diana, however, gets the tears, the flowers, and the orgasmic excitement of a nation in mourning. Fire up the TV. Replay the Elton John tune. Edit the video and photo montages. Set them to music, with soft focus and dissolve transitions. Nothing's too good for the Princess.

The differences in their deaths could not be more striking. One with malaria and heart failure, the other in a millionaire's limo. Guess which one gets the full blown Larry King treatment?

Senator Criag Bust

I remember reading a book written by a retired cop in Chicago. He went through the vice squad to pay his dues. For that detail, he had to watch gay men go at it in public bathrooms. He couldn't arrest them until they were virtually in the act of sex, otherwise there was no crime. He wrote some pretty disturbing images in that book, about Vaseline and all kinds of stuff, but it's an important example: to convict someone of a crime, there must actually be a guilty act. The lawyers called it mens rea (guilty mind) and actus reus (guilty act). You need to have both in order to constitute a crime.

To believe that the Senator is guilty of a crime, you must then believe that everything the arresting cop is saying is the truth, and you must assume that Senator Craig was looking for sex. It just doesn't stand up. If you believe it does, then God help you when you're in the hands of an overzealous cop.

Bill Moyers Shows His Colors

A few questions for Bill Moyers:

1) If the journalist's job is to provide the public with the "best thinking" out there, who decides what the "best" thinking is?

2) If there is a "movement" for impeachment, how can there not be one against it?

3) Since when was public broadcasting meant to be an alternative to anything? Just because you suck at your craft and have to appear between telethons and Nova re-runs doesn't mean you can give yourself a cool title like "alternative."

4) When did journalists "dare not" talk about anything because officials didn't want them to? Did you even watch the pre-invasion press conferences? I did. Guys were asking Generals if Baghdad was going to resemble Stalingrad. This proves two things: they don't toe the official line, and they are morons.

5) "The journalist's job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium..." Really?

News to us. We lowly worst-thinkers always thought it was. It's nice to know that Bill Moyers believes equilibrium in a story of opinions is a thing of myth and legend.

The Flag

The flag looks pretty, but it means little. The rules that govern it don't actually exist. When you hear someone say that the flag shouldn't touch the ground, or shouldn't be used to wipe up coffee, they're borrowing from the Americans. There are no rules governing the use or misuse of the Canadian flag. You have every right to fly it over your house, or use it as a lobster bib.

Merv Griffin Dies

Merv Griffin died on Sunday. If you've ever watched Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, then you've seen his name at the end of each episode.

I remember staying in the Beverly Hilton about six years ago. It was one of his hotels. Merv's greatest hits were on one of the hotel's channels, and I watched an old interview he did with Richard Burton. Burton said to Griffin, "You're more successful than I am."

Merv looked suitably surprised, and asked Burton to elaborate. Burton said, "You're more successful than I am. Because you're on television." His emphasis on that last word was a sign of Burton's smarts.

Minnesota Bridge Collapse

It took CNN exactly 12 hours to have a graphic that said, Who's to Blame? written beneath pictures of concrete in water. Jack Cafferty, CNN's most asinine reporter (and that's saying something) went on his usual anti-Fed rant. He blamed the bridge collapse on Bush, Iraq, Bush, Iraq. He hearkened back to the glorious mud slinging days of Katrina and the tsunami (tidal wave, to the rest of us). Then he read some emails from his fans that did the same. Then he tossed it back to Wolf Blitzer and returned to his corner, waiting for Blitzer to call his unqualified ass back onto the tube to read more emails later in the show.

This is what passes for reporting nowadays. Jack Cafferty rolls up his sleeves like some 1950's newspaper editor and pretends to do some investigating. The next time you watch this guy on TV, you'll realize he does nothing of the kind. He's a morning show has-been. He's a hack. He sits on a stool and reads emails sent to him by the unemployed of America. Who else is watching CNN at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and writing political diatribes to Jack Cafferty?

Girl Talk

Look, if your relationship is headed for the dumps, you don't need a stranger to give you a list. You need to go with your gut. Guy never calls when he's always three hours late? He's balling somebody. Woman doesn't want to have sex with you anymore? She's not attracted to you. Guy constantly picks on your appearance? He's a jerk.

You know these things, but knowing is not believing. No list in the world is going to help you with that problem. Everybody's been there. When friends are calling your boyfriend an idiot or your girlfriend a witch, you know they're right. You just don't want to believe it.

You're on your own with that one.

Sean Penn

Speaking of pro-Fascists, it looks like Sean Penn has decided to go a step further in his glorious career as a pro-Fascist actor. I used to think that he was a great actor, and still would, if I saw any more of his films. I wouldn't call it a boycott, so much as a bore-cott. Is there anything more mundane that watching a rich American celebrity punish himself for being just that?

Seeing Penn bootlick the heels of an anti-Semitic dictator is a good reminder that actors are just people and some people are morons.

September

French Ambitions

People that believe the US mission in Iraq is all about oil are stupid or misinformed. The US actually believes what they are doing in Iraq is right, for moral and security reasons both. The French are vastly more cynical. They are the true oil-believers. While the Americans and Brits get killed, France buys the oil, and they don't have to fire a shot. All good. But a nuclear Iran changes the formula. A nuclear Iran will alter the costs of French oil interests in the region. The French aren't going to stand for that. Far cheaper to bomb Tehran then be strangled by Tehran's control of the the entire Middle East.

Inviting Hitler

The news out of Columbia University gets more bizarre by the day. On the heels of inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian anti-Semitic tyrant, to their grounds for a "robust debate," a Dean of the University has come out with this as their defence: if Hitler were willing to have a debate with Columbia students and faculty, then the Fuhrer would be invited, too.

When you have to use Hitler as an attempt to quell outrage, you know you've lost your grip on reality.

Cosmo Girls

Think about that: first, they're saying that prehistoric women sat around waiting to screw the losers that weren't invited on the hunting trip. Then they're saying that prehistoric man knew that sperm had anything to do with sex (a sophisticated leap, not quite believed by many island populations in the early 20th Century). Then they're saying that prehistoric man thought his penis was a sponge, and that he could use it to soak up another man's semen. Leap forward a few thousand years, and Cosmo tells every wife in America that if their husband gives them the apocalyptic sex they've always dreamed of, it means he suspects she's running around.

Great. Thanks, Cosmo. We try to show our ladies a good time and you turn it into another chance for "open dialogue."

Death Proof

First, the writing: it's tired. Kill Bill was so well written that we know Tarantino's still got the goods, but with this difference: Kill Bill is not about Quentin Tarantino, while Death Proof is nothing but. It has ten-minute lunch room conversations, but only a passable cast saying the lines. Reservoir Dogs it isn't. Tarantino is horrible at writing teenage girl dialogue. He should stick to bank robbers and assassins. Teenage girls talking about boyfriends for an entire scene is the stuff naps are made of, especially since none of these boyfriends are ever going to appear in the movie. In other words, who cares?

Sean's Baseball Prophesy - Before the Mitchell Report

Jose Canseco released a book a couple of years ago. In it, he fessed up to his steroid use, and said that while he was in the bigs, approximately 80% of the league was juicing. He was lambasted by sportswriters, players, and fans as a dirty rat.

It's turning out that he's likely the most honest man this league has produced in decades.

Michigan Blows It

Michigan lost to Appalachian State, 34-32. Appalachian who? I had to Google the school to find out where it is on the map (Boone, North Carolina; apparently they have quite a music program).

October

Sarkozy Walks

I've pointed out before that Sarkozy walks to the beat of a different drummer. Being French, he gets away with it. Still, I can't fault him for this one. If a reporter showed up from the "most respected news magazine show in TV history" and started asking about my wife, I'd say au revoir, too.

Tonight on 60 Minutes, they aired an interview between Lesley Stahl and the French President. In the interview, Stahl asked Sarkozy about his marital relationship (not long after the interview was taped, Sarkozy and his wife separated). Sarkozy got up, said, "Merci," took off his microphone, and walked out.

The press would have a field day with any British or American leader that did that. Instead, 60 Minutes promoted the piece by calling Sarkozy "smart, energetic, and tempestuous."

UN Wake-up Call

Starvation, by the way, is never caused by a food shortage. There's tons of food lying around. Famine has always been caused by political regimes keeping food from people, not by people wandering into a desert and realizing that there's nothing to grow so they might as well sit down and die. The UN could try to do something about thug regimes not feeding people, but they're too busy writing bogus reports on climate change. Not as messy that way.

Byrd Busted

Funny that his 2002 fear of a declining career coincided with the 2002 receipts of HGH, and continued after he had Tommy John surgery in 2003, then the receipts dried up in 2005 when the league banned HGH. Funny.

Byrd's excuse of a doctor's prescription grows even more shady, as the Chronicle reports that one of the prescriptions was filled out by a dentist whose license was suspended in 2003 for fraud. That does not sound like the kind of high-end doctor that teams provide to their players. I'm not an anatomist, but I do know that the last time my dentist asked me how my pituitary gland was doing was never.

Deborah Kerr Dies

Kerr will be remembered best for her charm and manner, but I especially liked her role in From Here to Eternity. That is one of my must-see Fade to Black films this week. The Sundowners and An Affair to Remember are two others.

Steinbrenner Hangs Them Up

In 1985, he told the press that a bad start to the season would not affect his opinion of manager Yogi Berra. 16 games later, Berra got canned.

On April Fool's Day, 1999, pitcher Hideki Irabu dogged it on a play to first. Steinbrenner called Irabu a "fat pussy toad" in the press, then refused to let him join the team in Los Angeles. Later, he apologized for calling Irabu fat, and said that the team needed Irabu "big time." At the end of the season, Irabu was traded.

Friends in the Facebook Age

I went on Facebook the other day and took a look at a few of the people that have labelled me as 'friend.' If you're not hip to Facebook, a friend is someone that knew you a hundred years ago, writes you an email, and then never writes you again. You're put into a "friend list," and there you remain.

You're like a collector's item from their distant past. Maybe they pull you out once in a while, blow some dust off, look at you in the light of the window, and put you back. Maybe they print out your picture and draw mustaches on it. Either way, you're theirs to keep, unless you 'unfriend' them, and who would want to be so rude as to do that?

Facebook is the Ebay of society. Instead of trading old lamps and hockey cards, you get the chick that sat next to you in first grade and the guy that made everyone laugh with the hand-under-the-armpit fart trick.

Al Gore's Nobel Prize

Alfred Nobel, master of dynamite and TNT, started the whole Prize game back in 1895. Back then, the prize was to go to a person that fought for peace and disarmament. It now includes poverty, economic growth, and the environment. In other words, it's being watered down to include virtually anybody for anything.

Why Terrorism Works

And here I thought this multi-cultural deal was supposed to bring us all together. Not so. Islam, however, is a separatist faith and culture, in word and deed. Yet a highly successful one. Jews have never had Hanukkah and passover celebrations in public schools, and they've been around these parts for centuries. Then again, they haven't blown anything up to show their displeasure about it.

November

Re: The Loser That Got An Operation to Not Have Kids

"We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint and combating over-population.

"My only frustration is that other people are unable to accept my decision."

Au contraire, nitwit. I am more than happy to accept your decision. Knowing that you will never raise a child does not disturb me in the least.

The Gutsy Arts Crowd

Here's a piece I found on the Times (UK) website. It's a story about artists in Europe not standing up for themselves because they're afraid of getting their throats cut.

Gotta love the "artists." Whether they work in paint, film, or literature, the vast majority of these thought provoking individuals are a bunch of chickens.

Bye-Bye Britain

Here's another laugher. Dress-up day at an English school shouldn't make headlines, but this one does. Students and teachers at the school had to dress as Muslims to belatedly celebrate the Eid festival. In the afternoon there was a party, but only women could attend. Of the students, most are Christian. Of the 47 teachers, 2 are Muslim. Yes, you just read that. No word yet on when everyone will have to wear a yarmulke or a Buddhist robe.

December

Brian Williams: Moron

Brian Williams: "My nominee for 2007 Person of the Year is a woman--a woman with a history of abuse, a woman who has never run for elective office, someone we all know, someone who makes her presence known on a daily basis in all our lives and, for my money, is better than any male alternative. That woman is Mother Earth. I think the environment is the compelling issue of our time."

Yes, he really said that. And yes, this is the man that reads you his interpretation of the important news stories on a nightly basis.

Juiced

You have to ask yourself, how is it that sports writers have not been unearthing these stories for the past ten years? The answer is simple: sports writers kiss the ass of every athlete they come across, because if they do not, they won't get 'access.' Gaining access also means keeping mum about the dirty laundry that they might trip over in the locker room.

The players that have been juicing should be ashamed to be on this list, but the sports writers should be equally embarrassed. Once again they have proven to be the most cynical people to ever hold a pen. I place no value in anything they say regarding sports. One minute they're defending Marion Jones to the hilt, the next minute they're holding the Kleenex while she cries in shame on the courthouse steps.

Fat Shopper that Honked at Me

Christmas gives me a chance to give thanks for many things. My friends. My family. My life. The fact that I don't drive a minivan or have floppy boobs and weigh as much as an NFL left tackle.

God's Country

Jesus is Lord.

Or so says the rundown billboard in Pryor, Oklahoma. Red paint on a white background, faded and peeling.

The billboard doesn't have a rundown look because the sentiment it advertises has gone out of vogue here. It's been weathered, and Pryor is a small, working, weathered town. The Days Inn was obviously a mom and pop motel until the chain bought it out, and the only joint with a new paint job is the log cabin bar on the side of the highway. A local tells me that the bar actually has a name but, because of the fresh green paint job, everyone just calls it "the green bar."

Pryor may look rundown, but it isn't poor. It's a place where work is done, and it sits smack in the middle of nature's highway. Ice storms in winter, tornados in summer. Take your pick.

The vehicles people drive are big and powerful and expensive, and the locals wear fresh workingman duds. There's tattoos, but they mean something. The name of a girl, a place, or a flag (American).

In Pryor, you cannot buy beer without a photo ID. It doesn't matter if you're eighty years old and have the tell-tale gimp of a hip replacement, you must show an ID at the Wal-Mart counter. If that seems a little overboard, don't sweat it. Wednesday night is Ladies' Night at the green bar, and they serve free beer all night long. Just show your ID to the bartender, and he'll get you hammered in no time. The free beer is supposed to be for the ladies, but the rule slides further down the list as the night goes on.

The people of Oklahoma are resilient. Another ice storm hit this week, and the state's three snow plows and salt trucks can't keep up. I've heard local after local say that they've been without power for the past three days. One guy talked about his neighbor ripping out a privacy fence for firewood. A woman told me she slept in her long johns and a winter hat. Another guy told me he was burning gas because his wife wouldn't let him buy a generator and he couldn't take his family to a motel because "people that check into motels just come home to frozen pipes." Another guy told me about a truck he saw on the side of the road. Power lines fell on it and the guy inside, "was all cooked up and there wasn't nothing anybody could do about it."

It's been a bummer week for Pryor, Oklahoma. The temperature on Sunday morning dropped just a tad below freezing, and then it started to rain. And rain. And rain. The roads turned to ice and the branches of trees were sheathed in same. So it rained some more and the trees started falling over and the cars started to crash.

My neighbor in the Days Inn motel showed me the side of his truck where a hubcap came off when he went into a ditch. He told me that the two people in the backseat were now in the hospital because they slammed together during the crash and one of them had a broken collarbone. He told me the story while having a smoke, and when I asked him when all this happened he said matter-of-factly, "Couple hours ago." His girlfriend was inside the room and the door was open. She was watching something with a laugh track and when I said hello, she smiled and said, "Hi!"

Nothing fazes people here. You get the feeling you could set off ten tons of TNT over the next hill and someone would mutter, "Storm's coming."

The weather occupies their thoughts. The most popular question in town is, "You got power?" When the person answers that they have, they aren't called a lucky sonofabitch. They're answered with, "Huh. Mine's been out three days. But I saw it was back on east of town, so maybe we're next." Then the conversation moves on to Friday's weather, or the guy that fried under the power lines, or the fact that the people up north are going to get it because the storm's headed that way.

The weather occupies their thoughts, but it should be occupying their ballot box. This is the first "emergency zone" I've ever found myself in, and I can't say I'm wetting my pants. Oklahoma gets hit with ice storms all the time, but it's weather that would make a Canadian yawn. Yes, ice is bad. But after three days, you'd expect to see some salt on the roads. Instead, people just bear it for a week or two until it melts. When I asked about this, I expected some locals to get mad at me for calling them incompetent. They didn't. They agreed with me. One said their politicians had no sense, but common sense is the least common thing around.

They're friendly people, but they're not stupid people, and they're not shy about showing their feelings, either. Most of them work in the various factories that litter the emptiness of Oklahoma, and they know the difference between right and wrong. I've only been here a short while, and I've already heard half-a-dozen people tell each other off. When I heard a man in a hard hat order another man in a hard hat to go get him some work materials during lunch, the man said, "And when am I gonna eat lunch? You eat lunch and I don't eat lunch? That ain't right, man. That just ain't right, you know? Come on. That ain't right." The other man relented and they parted ways.

That wouldn't happen back home. In Toronto, the man would say, "Okay, no problem, boss," and not mean it. Then he'd bitch about it to his friends during work, after work, and into next week. He'd hold a grudge for months, and bad mouth the guy to everyone that said the boss's name. But that's Toronto. In Oklahoma, men in hard hats say, "That ain't right!" And their boss knows it, so he lets it go.

Wal-Mart is the town center. It's where you go for food, clothes, jewelry, you name it, they got it. When I went to the gas station and asked if they had some paper towels lying around, the lady said, "Sorry." I said no problem and she said, "You just don't want to truck up to Wal-Mart." As it happened, she was correct.

Jesus is Lord.

I guess that sign should make me think this is the land of the Bible Thumper. God's country. But no one here talks about God, or religion, or much else beyond the weather and how good their beer will taste after work. One guesses that Ladies Night at the green bar is as good a Sabbath as any, but I wouldn't push the religious talk if you paid me. I heard one guy go on about religion being bull and just a bunch of magic tricks, and the local that was listening to him got quiet and his eyes went stony and deep. He kept his gracious southern hospitality, but somewhere in there I could hear the bolts click back. This is a state where men wear camouflage jackets because they actually use them to hunt stuff on weekends.

If the chips were down during an ice storm, or if bullets were flying past my ear, I'd take a man from Oklahoma in a hard hat over a Californian with a Blackberry any day of the week.

Checking In

I can see why the horror writers have a thing for hotels. They're anonymous places where anything can happen to anyone.

Hotels have lost their wayward flavor, but they still retain that creepy anonymous feeling. Right now I'm in a Buffalo airport hotel room, passing the time and waiting for yet another plane flight in my life's history of plane flights. This is a hotel, not a resort.

The temperature outside is a little above freezing, and the temperature inside feels about the same. This is because, as a room attendant friend once told me, the stewards always turn the temp down to 65F when they're done cleaning a room. Apparently cold air feels "cleaner" than warm air. It gives guests the false impression that the room they're entering has never been lived in, eaten in, screwed in, or slept in before.

Hotels are creepy. Psycho used this, and Stephen King has turned to it a couple of times (The Shining, 1408). King has mentioned hotels so many times in his interviews that I know he's obsessed with them. 10 years ago, he said that he still checked under the bed in hotel rooms. He also said that a hotel room was the scene for him becoming a horror writer.

Early in King's career, he was sitting in a hotel room telling his agent a book idea. His agent frowned and said he didn't want King to become known as a horror writer: bad market. King assured his agent that it was okay, being a horror writer was what he wanted to do. Looking back, they were both right: horror writers weren't cool until King came along, and really they still aren't; name another horror writer not named Stephen King that has smashed the mainstream market.

Hotel rooms don't scare me, but they do give me the heebie-jeebies. I try not to think about all the things that have gone on in here. Over the desk there's a mirror, and I can see myself typing this. How many people have sat at this desk and contemplated blowing their brains out, leaving their wife, asking the hooker for another handjob? There's an internet connection below the mirror. How many people have plugged in and watched porn, written a love letter to their secretary, surfed the dating market looking for something better than their husband?

The hotel I'm in now isn't without a sense of humor. There's a gym loaded with exercise equipment, but it's directly opposite the smoking rooms. Every gym rat that works his layover abs into submission must walk into the hallway and want to barf when the Marlboro Man open his hotel room door.

I once heard a girl tell her friend that she loved having sex in hotel rooms. I didn't ask why, but I guess it has something to do with anonymity, like voyeurism in reverse. Or maybe it's just because she doesn't have to clean the sheets.

Modern hotels have taken some of the anonymity away. The phone has my name on it: SEAN BERRY, in big digital letters. They must have popped up while I was checking in. I wonder whose name was there yesterday, or last week? I know someone was here, because the room steward goofed: there was a grimy coffee stain on the bottom of the coffee pot, and I had to rinse it off in the bathroom sink.

These days, hotels have microwave ovens (the one in this room sounds like a plane taking off when I reheat my coffee), internet connections, and fifty channels on the TV. There's videogames, new-release films, and five sports channels. The restaurants have bars that serve pina coladas, and everyone has a nametag, make-up, and the most welcoming smile that $12 an hour can buy. And it still feels lonely.

I wonder what it was like in the old-old days. Back then, when you closed the door to your house and got in your Chevy to head across country, that was it. You didn't hear from anybody unless you called them person-to-person, and that was way too expensive. So hotels in those days were the loneliest places on earth. If the hotel had a diner, you might meet someone to talk to, but for the most part it was just you, the highway out the window, and last week's smell of cheap cologne. Great perks meant an ice machine located beside a Coke dispenser.

Sportscaster Vin Scully has said that he never got used to it: that loneliness on the road. Hotel after hotel, and trains to ballparks. That was his summer, every summer, for years. No internet, no cell phone, no satellite TV, no distraction. He always hated the loneliness.

Try as they might, hotels will never feel like home because they are what they are: places for people to crash, but never stay. Hopefully. And that's where the horror writers step in...

Pot Boils On...

This is going to have to be a weekly event, as I try to keep up with the demise of the UK as we know (knew?) it. Sure, that makes me sound like some kind of paranoid guy, but emails from my friends make me think otherwise.

Here's another couple of stories that make you wonder where England is heading:

How do you teach British people about their "Britishness?" By destroying their British heritage, of course.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the EU was the most foolhardy decision that European leaders have ever made. Yes, that is saying a lot, but I'm saying it, anyway.

Catch the story here.

Here's another laugher. Dress-up day at an English school shouldn't make headlines, but this one does. Students and teachers at the school had to dress as Muslims to belatedly celebrate the Eid festival. In the afternoon there was a party, but only women could attend. Of the students, most are Christian. Of the 47 teachers, 2 are Muslim. Yes, you just read that. No word yet on when everyone will have to wear a yarmulke or a Buddhist robe.

Here, Kitty

I've gone on the record as saying that Bordeaux is my favorite city in Europe. Just maybe not this week. I think I'll wait until Ringling Brothers recruits this furry friend before I wander around the outskirts of the town.

The Sun Also Gores

Every time I get the urge to be Hemingway, the traditional running of the bulls in Pamplona rolls around and convinces me otherwise.

Click here to see what I'm talking about. Warning: the first pic in the slideshow is a nasty one, as a genius from Norway gets it in the leg.

This photo from AP/Alvaro Barrientos

All Of Us: Strangers

The other day I was on a flight from Washington DC to Toronto. It was a puddle jumper of an airplane, but it had jets, so it was noisy as hell in the cabin and the seats were too close together.

A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.

And I didn't know if I should say anything.

Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.

Poor kid. I told her that the flight was about an hour long and that we would be there in no time. And I went back to my book.

"Do you live in Toronto?" she asked.

I looked at her and she wasn't smiling or frowning, she was just doing what kids have always done: saying what was on her mind. She hasn't learned how to bullshit beyond I-didn't-hit-him in the playground. She wasn't making small talk. She just wanted to know if I lived in Toronto.

"No," I said. "But my family does. I'm there a lot." I couldn't help myself, so I said, "Where are you from?"

"New Orleans," she said.

"Cool," I said. Cool? Whatever. Back to the book.

The flight went on for a while and my mind was bouncing with questions. I never learned not to talk to strangers, and maybe this kid hadn't either. I wanted to asking how New Orleans was doing these days, and if she was there during Katrina. I wanted to ask her what she thought about all that, and if she'd been scared, or if she even remembered it.

"I'm Whitney," the kid said.

I already knew that, because it was hanging from her knapsack in the form of a plastic nametag, roughly the size of a credit card. It was the same knapsack that the plastic stewardess had rifled through. She was making sure the kid wasn't bringing fruit or meat across the border, lest the customs officials put the kid against the wall and arrest her for an agriculture infraction.

"I'm Sean," I said. And, not knowing any better, "Do you have family in Toronto?"

She smiled. "Yes," she said, "My cousins live there. I go every summer for two weeks."

Every summer. To a kid, that must sound like a lot.

"How old are you?" I said. And I looked around, trying to see if anyone thought I was some lecherous bastard.

"Nine," she said.

So every summer for maybe the past two summers, her family has put her on a plane to see her extended family in another country, and little Whitney thinks two summers is 'every summer.' Which I thought was the best news I'd heard in ages. Nowadays there's a virtual traffic jam in front of the elementary schools, or even high schools, because parents won't let their offspring walk five feet without them, nevermind sending them 2000 miles to a different city. But maybe after Katrina, the parents of New Orleans are thinking, "Screw it. Let the kid live a little."

The flight continued. It crossed my mind to ask Whitney if the stews were going to make sure she got to the customs terminal all right, or if she wanted me to show her there myself. And I thought, what a crazy question. You simply do not accompany children anywhere today. If you look cross-eyed at a kid in a restaurant to make them laugh, the mother will cluck her tongue and turn the kid around.

I wonder how many lost children are completely ignored on streetcorners and in malls because people are afraid to touch them? To help them? I bet it's a lot. Help a kid find their mother in a mall parking lot and they'll have an Amber Alert on CNN with your face plastered to it in no time.

We started our descent. The kid pointed out the window and asked me, "Is that Toronto?"

I wanted to say, "You come here every year, shouldn't you know?" but I decided to cool the smartass stuff. So I pointed out the window and showed her the CN Tower ("I've been there," she said), Rogers Centre ("I saw a game there," she said) and Lake Ontario, to which the kid said nothing, reminding me that kids couldn't care less about geography.

The flight landed. I pulled out the customs card and then reached into my pocket. Damnit. I searched in my bag. Damnit. I looked to the kid.

"You got a pen?" I asked.

She did. More responsible than me. More helpful than me, too.

When the plane got to the jetway, I stood up and told the kid to have a nice time with her cousins. She smiled from ear to ear, and it was a great smile. Then I left her standing there in the aisle, without once asking if she was going to be all right, or making sure that the stews hadn't forgotten her. I still feel bad about that.

The modern world is beating us down slowly but surely. No vices, no passions, no joys, no humanity. Making us into insular automatons, where the environment in Brazil is worth more than a human anywhere. Mind your business, and for God's sake don't reach out to anyone. Why, just this month in Kansas, a store video showed people walking over a woman who'd been stabbed. She was lying on her stomach and no one asked her if she was all right. They just walked over her and into the store to buy their beer, Coca-Cola, and tampons. And she bled to death.

I don't like kids. I don't get along with them very well. But I miss them sometimes.

Lift the Lid

I was talking to a girl the other night, and she told me that "all good things end, so what's the point?" She was talking about some relationship that had blown up in her face.

I felt sorry for her. She's twenty-five years old, cute as a button, funny, and has a butt like an East German gymnast. For someone like that, life should be all sunshine and roses. But of course it isn't.

When I visited Henley-on-Thames last year, I was confronted by a storybook English town, complete with quaint bridges and people that said good morning to strangers. After staying there a week, I'd seen drunken debauchery, a fight, adultery, mudslinging at a wedding, and a dude whose doctor told him to quit the sauce or he'd die drunk.

Both of these are examples of looks being deceiving. Nothing new there. But it still surprises me what can happen if you lift the lid off something and peer underneath. You might like what you find. Then again, you might not.

Life is funny like that. Take the Austrian girl, the one with the glorious butt. I was sure that she was a hell of a nice person, with a gracious smile and a quick laugh. And I was right. Yet she doesn't see herself that way. She told me that she is 'angry.' When I told her that I saw no anger in her whatsoever, she replied that I didn't know her well enough. It's been another couple of weeks, and I still haven't seen it. I've talked to her about all kinds of stuff, and there's no cynicism there, just a touch of sadness.

Mmmm.

I've heard this story before, and it came from me. And I can tell you now that this young lady is not angry, no matter what she thinks of herself. I used to think I was an angry young man, but on the whole I would say I am happy about 90% of the time. Yet sometimes I want to be angry. I think she does too, but she can't pull it off because hers is not an angry soul.

The truth will out. We may see ourselves as something (a quaint town, an angry person), but that doesn't make it true. Our own conceit can get in the way time and again, blinding us to the simple fact that we are who we are, if we're brave enough to admit it. We were formed sometime in our childhood, and we more or less carried on from there.

Yes, you can change, at least a little bit. When I was a kid I was brought up to believe that fighting was bad and that violence didn't solve anything. I got pushed around. Sometime around the age of 18, I punched somebody in the face and haven't look back since. It was a life-changing moment, and a good one. I'm not recommending it to everybody, and I certainly didn't become a bully, but I did learn that you have to stand up for yourself. That was a good thing.

But on the whole, I'm more or less the same person I was back then. Older, maybe a bit smarter, but not altogether different. If I look under the hood, the same engine fires. Maybe yours does, too.

I'm not talking about maturity. Saying that I am the same person as I was in University does not mean I still like sleeping on a lawn while covered in beer, or that I like to pull on someone's brastraps. But the desire to seek out the world and the willingness to laugh at it hasn't left me. And okay, sure, I still like a good party now and then. All right, all right, mostly now.

The trouble with looking at yourself is the looking. Being bold enough to examine yourself, to be honest about what you see, is tough. I think it was Freud that said no one can psychoanalyse themselves (he also said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, so I guess they can forget my whole point), but it's worth giving it a shot now and then.

Scary proposition. Along with the old line of looks being deceiving, don't forget its partner, "Truth hurts."

Bordeaux

I've found a new favorite city in Europe.

It surprised me. Travelling to a lot of places makes you somewhat jaded and hard to impress. You get blase about statues, waterfalls, street mimes, "authentic" this, and "genuine" that.

But Bordeaux impressed me. It's a beautiful place, where every building looks as old as Louis XIV. Most ancient cities have a bogus 'old town' which is surrounded by skyscrapers. Bordeaux is all old town. The streets are wide and the monuments aren't covered in graffiti. It's very busy and noisy one minute, and dead-quiet the moment you turn a corner.

Bordeaux has an atmosphere of urban adventure to it. You can wander the streets for hours, some of them only a few yards long. There was one street, Rue Ste. Catherine, that was maybe twenty feet long and seemed to serve no other purpose than to provide space for a sign that says Rue Ste. Catherine.

The shopping district would have North American ladies in stitches. I must have walked the main shopping avenue for fifteen minutes before stopping for a coffee. I still couldn't see the end of it, and I didn't much care to. Fifteen minutes of walking had taught me that Bordeaux has everything a man or woman could ask for, especially if you're a fan of shoes. If you're a Converse All-Star fanatic, then you're in luck: I haven't seen that many pairs of All-Stars in the windows since I was in fifth grade. I didn't even know they made them anymore.

Smokes are cheaper in Bordeaux even after taking the Euro into account, and the beer is reasonable. Unless you order Guinness. I don't know what the Irish did to piss off the people of Bordeaux, but a pint of Guinness will run you 8 Euros, while a pint of Stella is half that. I bought one anyway, just for the hell of it, because I was in an Irish bar. It turned out the lady behind the bar was from England. She'd come to France years ago, married a Frenchman, and spent the rest of her life living in various French-speaking countries. She said she liked Bordeaux, but then again, she pretty much liked them all.

That's a good attitude, and I can agree with that. I've liked most places for one reason or another. What I dig about Bordeaux is that it is beautiful, and it takes care of itself. Venice, no matter what the postcards say, is more or less a craphole. Graffiti all over the place, people chucking cigarette wrappers into canals which smell like a sewer. I heard once that Venice is sinking, and I couldn't help but be grateful. It needs a bath.

In Bordeaux I saw not less than three street sweepers in the space of five hours. They're a lot smaller than the ones they use in the big American cities, but they get the job done. They drive down the streets, walkways, pathways, and they gobble up garbage and sweep up filth in no time. Moments later, they're gone, and so is the day's trash. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is. Just as people generally act the way they dress, I firmly believe that a city's people will reflect their environment, and vice versa. It's an endless cycle. Let a city go to hell, and the people will, too.

And that's what makes a place: the people. The first time I stayed in France some years ago, I was struck by how much I liked the French. Previous experience with French culture involved reading about Napoleon, learning about the Luftwaffe pounding French cities to rubble, and dealing with assholes from Quebec.

I stayed in St. Nazaire and Pornichet for a few months, and I loved the place. Loved the people. I often tell this story of what happened to me one day while in St. Nazaire:

I had to go to the pharmacy to pick up some drugs. I had the address, but I didn't know where the place was, and France is low-low on taxis. I wandered into a bar and show the bartender the address. He started pointing and jabbering, but he knew I couldn't understand him.

Just then a guy at the bar gets up and motions me to follow him. I thought he was going to take me into the street for more jabbering and pointing. Instead, he walks to his car and points to the passenger seat. I demure, saying no, you don't have to do that. He keeps pointing, shrugging his shoulders, not understanding why I won't get in. So I get in.

He looks at the address on the paper and drives me there. My French then was awful, and we don't say a word the whole time. We arrive at the pharmacy and I get out of the car, waving good-bye and saying "Merci," about five times. I go inside and it takes the lady about ten minutes to put the prescription together. I walk outside, and there the guy is, still sitting there. He waves.

I get in, saying "Merci," another five times. He just shrugs. We get back to the bar. I go inside and buy the guy a beer. He looks happy as hell. The bartender raises his eyebrows to ask if we found the place. I hold up my little baggy of drugs, and the bartender nods in satisfaction.

That's France.

I've met some damned kind people in France. The hype about France being an anti-American (and they all think I'm American when I talk) stronghold is merely that: hype. It stems from the people in Paris whom the French don't even like, and from past nonsensical French politicians. The French people, to my mind, are some of the most generous and gregarious people you will ever meet.

I don't think that merely from that one episode. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have never felt shunned because I can't speak French or because they think I'm a Yankee. In Quebec City, you get treated like a jerkoff if you can't speak French. In France, they either try to use some English, or they use a lot of sign language. Either way, they don't make you feel like you're in Hull. I was out on the town in Quebec City one night with a French dude, and I asked him why people around the coat check were pointing and laughing at me. He said, "Because you're speaking English." Just like that. And in a nice gesture he said, "Losers."

Anyway, Bordeaux. I went to a couple of clubs there and struck up some pigeon-French conversations with the locals. Like all people, they want to know what you think of their city. And I was being quite honest when I told them that it was a great city and that they should be proud of it. My French has improved, but it doesn't really matter. The people in Bordeaux switch to bad English to compete with my bad French, and generally you can get the point across. And the point is the same the world over: people are people. Nevermind the politicians and the movie stars and the terrorists and the maniacs. The vast majority of people are just people. They want to be happy, and they want you to be happy, too.

It was nice to come back. Years ago, I had written down somewhere that I would have no problem living in France if it came down to it. Bordeaux reminded me why.

Some Spain and Portugal

Here's a few pics from Spain and Portugal. Click to enlarge. I'll try to type up a few articles in the coming days, but things have been busy.


Friends on the beach.

Triumph. Barcelona, Spain.

Busker Rehearsing.

Balance.

On the rocks - Spain.

Starting line.

Trampled Under Foot. Statue, Malaga.

Waiting. Lisbon, Portugal.

What's The Matter - La Coruna, Spain.

Crab. La Coruna, Spain.

Laura on the beach. Cadiz, Spain.

Laura - B&W.

Church. Spain.

Woman with dog. Cadiz, Spain.

The Med

A few shots from the last couple of weeks in the Mediterranean. Click to enlarge.

Big beers. I love the look on Tony's face (at right) in this photo.

Leaning.

Jodi and Laura, hanging out.

A few buddies in Sorrento.

Scooter walk.

St. Tropez.

A Few Pics

A fountain in Genoa's town center.

These three dogs spent the evening cruising around Sorrento's town square. They either own the place, or think they do.

Me trying for a James Dean in Monte Carlo.

These dudes woke up Sorrento one morning by roaring through.

This Italian woman stopped for a smoke and a chat in Sorrento.