Last night at work, one of our nurses spoke to a seemly gentleman with a singular problem. He'd eaten a fucking slipper. Or, to be precise, half a slipper. That's right, a slipper. Which he thought was a sandwich, although it apparently took him a good few inches of mucky rubber and old fabric to realise this. In between our screams of mutual laughter I couldn't help but think... how? Honestly? My only rationale for it boiled down to a few points:
a) His wife's sandwich making skills were seriously below par.
b) She'd been serving beef wellington previously, in the literal sense.
or
c) He's stark bollock mental.
As with most things in the NHS, C was the right answer.
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Saturday 12 December 2009
Overheard in the Gym:
'I mean, yeah, the ancient Greeks didn't have all the equipment like this here did they? But they were still fucking ripped though, just look at 300!'
Yeesh.
Yeesh.
Sunday 8 November 2009
Nocturne.
There are certain times in life's bollocksy travails when you just really need a scotch egg.
Monday 21 September 2009
3D can piss right off.
That’s it. Seriously. I’ve had it with 3D films. For months, solid months I’ve grimly sat through otherwise adequate films with a rapidly decreasing patience for stupid plastic goggles, wobbly visuals and hyperinflated ticket prices. Like a child insistently shoving their latest mangled, godawful finger painting in your face, there’s inevitably a point at which the politeness ends and you have to just demand that someone gets this shit out of your face, and fast.
Is it me or has it all been done before? Memories of free 3D goggles with the latest 90’s dinosaur magazine spring to mind in which you’d look briefly, think ‘Ah. Yes. It’s marginally less confusing with the glasses on. Kind of like a normal picture of a dinosaur, sans-3D, except this one gives me a headache.’
But surely it’s worth the price hike? Right? Although in theory you could actually recreate the experience for yourself by buying the DVD, turning the brightness down to ocean-floor levels, smearing vaseline on the screen, downing some ipecac and then borrowing a pair of your granddad's old NHS glasses (making sure to have a cohort of aids-ridden tramps wear them before you of course) with the lenses replaced by shit-smeared tracing paper. But hey, what’s the good of the latest summer blockbuster without that one point in the film in which some ZANY anthropomorphic marsupial swings through the air and momentarily messes with your depth perception? ‘Wow, it’s like he was coming RIGHT AT ME!’ No. Just no.
Is it me or has it all been done before? Memories of free 3D goggles with the latest 90’s dinosaur magazine spring to mind in which you’d look briefly, think ‘Ah. Yes. It’s marginally less confusing with the glasses on. Kind of like a normal picture of a dinosaur, sans-3D, except this one gives me a headache.’
But surely it’s worth the price hike? Right? Although in theory you could actually recreate the experience for yourself by buying the DVD, turning the brightness down to ocean-floor levels, smearing vaseline on the screen, downing some ipecac and then borrowing a pair of your granddad's old NHS glasses (making sure to have a cohort of aids-ridden tramps wear them before you of course) with the lenses replaced by shit-smeared tracing paper. But hey, what’s the good of the latest summer blockbuster without that one point in the film in which some ZANY anthropomorphic marsupial swings through the air and momentarily messes with your depth perception? ‘Wow, it’s like he was coming RIGHT AT ME!’ No. Just no.
Sunday 7 June 2009
Curse you ketchup.
Why do we still have glass ketchup bottles? Instead of just being able to squeeze some out and move on with our lives, we're transformed instead into a nation of demented, arthritic cuckoos, manically tapping bottles with twitching patience as we pray for the tiniest, dried glob of sauce to come out. Everywhere I look, the world seems to have moved along happily in every other way: no one hauls their shopping home on a mule, the sky dish doesn’t operate via creaky water mill, and people... well, most are still arseholes. I suppose some things never change.
Is it playing on some kind of condiment spin on the old ‘classic’ coke bottle paradigm? Plastic is just, so... so budget, right? Wrong. The reason it fails like a one-eyed dyslexic midget is that ketchup just isn’t cool. In terms of style vs. functionality, it’s arguably only a couple of notches above adult nappies and tin foil. No matter how much their advertising Tristans may have wet dreams about it, no A-list star is likely to be gleefully lathering up hookers’ breasts with Heinz on the sunset strip anytime soon. A hard truth, perhaps, but maybe we just need to face facts. That and the fact that, somewhere down the line, that ketchup is going to run dry and someone will have to store it upside down in the cupboard. In the case of the glass bottle this, of course, means wobbly imbalance and then smashing and lots of shrieking and running around with eyes full of jagged glass shards which, I’ll admit, I find hilariously funny, except when it could actually happen to me. In which case someone needs to pull the plug on this whole damn Triassic operation right now since clearly they didn’t think things through. Luckily, they have me to do that for them.
Is it playing on some kind of condiment spin on the old ‘classic’ coke bottle paradigm? Plastic is just, so... so budget, right? Wrong. The reason it fails like a one-eyed dyslexic midget is that ketchup just isn’t cool. In terms of style vs. functionality, it’s arguably only a couple of notches above adult nappies and tin foil. No matter how much their advertising Tristans may have wet dreams about it, no A-list star is likely to be gleefully lathering up hookers’ breasts with Heinz on the sunset strip anytime soon. A hard truth, perhaps, but maybe we just need to face facts. That and the fact that, somewhere down the line, that ketchup is going to run dry and someone will have to store it upside down in the cupboard. In the case of the glass bottle this, of course, means wobbly imbalance and then smashing and lots of shrieking and running around with eyes full of jagged glass shards which, I’ll admit, I find hilariously funny, except when it could actually happen to me. In which case someone needs to pull the plug on this whole damn Triassic operation right now since clearly they didn’t think things through. Luckily, they have me to do that for them.
BA. (hons.)
It’s a strange thing, education. Perhaps mine has done a fairly naff job all in all, reducing me to beginning blogs with entirely meaningless platitudes, but the baulksome concept of uni – and yes it is as much of, if not more of a concept than an actual reality – still floats around me like some very old, but very well-hidden cheese.
You get the distinct feeling after graduating that, you know, this must be how ex-servicemen feel after being thrust back into regular civilisation. No, not the giddy possibility of surprise anal gang rape hiding around every corner, more a glum realisation that you’re ultimately just another one of the grim-faced shits sitting opposite you on the bus, periodically breaking wind out of spite and vague self-loathing. Coming to the shop counter, you instinctively reach for your student card before you realise that, oh shit, I’m just a norm now. A great big fucking civvy square. I may as well wear a grey bobble hat and do the lottery. The low point of the entire student card debacle is arguably the point at which you can no longer even uphold the flimsy pretence that you thought the card was valid until the end of the actual year, not the academic one, pathetically determined to hold on to that 2% NUS discount on Jeffrey Archer scrotal wash or whatever it entitles you to these days.
That said, however, I spent the entirety of my degree absolutely loathing students. Self-congratulatory, scarf-wearing arseholes to a man, it nevertheless took the best part of a year to realise that these were not gods, Jim, but wankers. Absolute, velvet-lined wankers. Parochial, first year Hull boy that I was, I couldn’t defer quickly enough to the nearest tosser with excessive facial hair and a wanky southern accent. Mid-seminar you’d hear them interrupt the lecturer only to ineffectually repackage an ambiguous proposition into some cool, rebellious imposition of their studenty, ‘question authority’ modus operandi. ‘But is it? Really?’ Wankers. Absolute wankers. They may as well have halted the whole thing just to excitedly present the class with a crude, messy sculpture of themselves, crafted entirely from a lump of steaming shit. It’s essentially the same principle. Until then, ‘wanker’ had been little more than a dull and faintly inoffensive pejorative, yet all of a sudden it so wondrously described all such omnipresent, guffawing ambassadors of student cool. Swaggering from one event to another in pseudo-bohemian knitwear, irritatingly self-assured, syrupy accents and mahogany-carved smirks, they looked, to my eyes, merely chirruping, idiot-faced hatstands.
Yet, the more keen-eyed of you may have noticed the arch-hypocrisy here: namely that yes, I was, technically, a student myself. Except that I wasn’t. Not really. I liked metal, not faux-arty NME toss and squawky singer-songwriters with stupid, outlandish names. I liked Jeff Buckley, not Jeff Backley, and I’d actually listened to all of his songs, not just Hallelujah, the worst song he never wrote. Neither did I live in some kind of feral sub-community constructed entirely of dried cheese and pizza boxes. Admittedly though, there were occasionally parts of university that didn’t solely involve berets, white wine and pretentious simpering.
The greatest thing, speaking retrospectively, is probably the lack of external pressure: the world refrains momentarily from voiding its filthy, wretched bowels all over your head because, well, you’re just a cheeky student arntcha! There is, of course, the occasional fuzzy, hovering guilt of, well, I should have probably read that, or, I shouldn’t have called so-and-so a pubic-bearded cuntrag etc etc. The list goes on. But what are you doing with yourself now? Oh, you’re a student? Well, why didn’t you say! You lovable little scamp, enjoy your cold baked beans and piss-weak cheap cider young leader of tomorrow!
Cruelly thrown back into civilian land, blinking blearily-eyed after graduation I could already feel the mental rot setting in. Barely a second had passed before I was hurling myself back at the now-locked door of higher education, hyperventilating and desperately clawing at it like some hunted teenage girl in a crap horror film. And it’s true. The ink had barely dried on the degree certificate before I’d regressed into some sort of gurgling man-child, alternately hacking at tins with sharpened flint for nourishment and licking condensation from the windows. Any notions of post-structuralism or contemporary literature had decidedly evaporated from my rapidly shrinking skull. The truth is, without the rigorous program of lectures and seminars to continually reinforce the perception that you’re a preppy, liberal, free-thinking intellectual those delicate, ever-so-carefully-built layers of student identity all too easily melt away back into the yawning abyss of lifelong personality flaws and imperfections. It’s why it’s so essential to snappily garner that graduate job: the ego can thus hop effortlessly from ‘pretentious tosser student’ to ‘pretentious tosser businessman’ without once having to sulkily shuffle down from its egotistical stepladder.
I can see now, though, that I went to uni almost exclusively to become a grown up: in short, to become someone who would happily and without hesitation choose James Joyce over Streets of Rage without batting an eyelid. The truth, it slowly dawns, is that the graduate makeover ultimately resolves itself to be little more than fluffy dice in the front seat of the self. Am I alone in still feeling such a fraud? I’d still sooner stuff a box of pine cones up my arse than read the entirety of Ulysses in knotted-brow faux appreciation. That or play video games. Fawn breathlessly over the self-indulgently drab non-adventures of Stephen Daedalus or kick sinister looking people repeatedly in the face with surround sound? Joyce never had a chance.
You get the distinct feeling after graduating that, you know, this must be how ex-servicemen feel after being thrust back into regular civilisation. No, not the giddy possibility of surprise anal gang rape hiding around every corner, more a glum realisation that you’re ultimately just another one of the grim-faced shits sitting opposite you on the bus, periodically breaking wind out of spite and vague self-loathing. Coming to the shop counter, you instinctively reach for your student card before you realise that, oh shit, I’m just a norm now. A great big fucking civvy square. I may as well wear a grey bobble hat and do the lottery. The low point of the entire student card debacle is arguably the point at which you can no longer even uphold the flimsy pretence that you thought the card was valid until the end of the actual year, not the academic one, pathetically determined to hold on to that 2% NUS discount on Jeffrey Archer scrotal wash or whatever it entitles you to these days.
That said, however, I spent the entirety of my degree absolutely loathing students. Self-congratulatory, scarf-wearing arseholes to a man, it nevertheless took the best part of a year to realise that these were not gods, Jim, but wankers. Absolute, velvet-lined wankers. Parochial, first year Hull boy that I was, I couldn’t defer quickly enough to the nearest tosser with excessive facial hair and a wanky southern accent. Mid-seminar you’d hear them interrupt the lecturer only to ineffectually repackage an ambiguous proposition into some cool, rebellious imposition of their studenty, ‘question authority’ modus operandi. ‘But is it? Really?’ Wankers. Absolute wankers. They may as well have halted the whole thing just to excitedly present the class with a crude, messy sculpture of themselves, crafted entirely from a lump of steaming shit. It’s essentially the same principle. Until then, ‘wanker’ had been little more than a dull and faintly inoffensive pejorative, yet all of a sudden it so wondrously described all such omnipresent, guffawing ambassadors of student cool. Swaggering from one event to another in pseudo-bohemian knitwear, irritatingly self-assured, syrupy accents and mahogany-carved smirks, they looked, to my eyes, merely chirruping, idiot-faced hatstands.
Yet, the more keen-eyed of you may have noticed the arch-hypocrisy here: namely that yes, I was, technically, a student myself. Except that I wasn’t. Not really. I liked metal, not faux-arty NME toss and squawky singer-songwriters with stupid, outlandish names. I liked Jeff Buckley, not Jeff Backley, and I’d actually listened to all of his songs, not just Hallelujah, the worst song he never wrote. Neither did I live in some kind of feral sub-community constructed entirely of dried cheese and pizza boxes. Admittedly though, there were occasionally parts of university that didn’t solely involve berets, white wine and pretentious simpering.
The greatest thing, speaking retrospectively, is probably the lack of external pressure: the world refrains momentarily from voiding its filthy, wretched bowels all over your head because, well, you’re just a cheeky student arntcha! There is, of course, the occasional fuzzy, hovering guilt of, well, I should have probably read that, or, I shouldn’t have called so-and-so a pubic-bearded cuntrag etc etc. The list goes on. But what are you doing with yourself now? Oh, you’re a student? Well, why didn’t you say! You lovable little scamp, enjoy your cold baked beans and piss-weak cheap cider young leader of tomorrow!
Cruelly thrown back into civilian land, blinking blearily-eyed after graduation I could already feel the mental rot setting in. Barely a second had passed before I was hurling myself back at the now-locked door of higher education, hyperventilating and desperately clawing at it like some hunted teenage girl in a crap horror film. And it’s true. The ink had barely dried on the degree certificate before I’d regressed into some sort of gurgling man-child, alternately hacking at tins with sharpened flint for nourishment and licking condensation from the windows. Any notions of post-structuralism or contemporary literature had decidedly evaporated from my rapidly shrinking skull. The truth is, without the rigorous program of lectures and seminars to continually reinforce the perception that you’re a preppy, liberal, free-thinking intellectual those delicate, ever-so-carefully-built layers of student identity all too easily melt away back into the yawning abyss of lifelong personality flaws and imperfections. It’s why it’s so essential to snappily garner that graduate job: the ego can thus hop effortlessly from ‘pretentious tosser student’ to ‘pretentious tosser businessman’ without once having to sulkily shuffle down from its egotistical stepladder.
I can see now, though, that I went to uni almost exclusively to become a grown up: in short, to become someone who would happily and without hesitation choose James Joyce over Streets of Rage without batting an eyelid. The truth, it slowly dawns, is that the graduate makeover ultimately resolves itself to be little more than fluffy dice in the front seat of the self. Am I alone in still feeling such a fraud? I’d still sooner stuff a box of pine cones up my arse than read the entirety of Ulysses in knotted-brow faux appreciation. That or play video games. Fawn breathlessly over the self-indulgently drab non-adventures of Stephen Daedalus or kick sinister looking people repeatedly in the face with surround sound? Joyce never had a chance.
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Nashville: Days 15-24
Day 15
Since the sadistic yet borderline retarded bus thing obsessively demolished all possibility of rest, our arrival dawns on me through a foggy veil of semi-sleep. As we crawl out, all feeling twice as bad as we’re looking, we all wilt visibly under the muscular Tennessee heat. Shouldering the dreaded bags we head out onto the straight but seemingly bloody endless road to the Comfort Inn. The miraculous fact that we’ve actually made it has yet to result in specific happys, mostly due to the fact that I’m both ridiculously hot and ridiculously tired. For once, the incompetence of our daft cow of a driver works to our advantage as we arrive not all too far from check-in time and therefore skip the whole ‘see the city until the room is ready’ thing which none of us can be remotely arsed with. We all flop down on the reception couch and stare blankly at the newspapers and coffee opposite. We manage to put on a fair show of being real human beings for a short while, pawing clumsily at copies of USA Today and fumbling with paper cups of coffee, casually scalding ourselves as we attempt to pour a cup like normal people. Soon though, the room’s ready and on our way I note the pool. This is good. Inside we notice the two fairly comfortable beds, the iron, and the working shower and clean toilet. This is also good. I notice that this is not a hostel. This is particularly good. By this time it’s around 12:30 in the afternoon and, as one, we all flop onto our beds and lapse into deep, vegetative sleeps.
Waking up many hours later we try out the novelty of having a pool. As I’m the only one without anything approaching swimshorts I borrow Ross’s denim cutoffs, weighing up the pros of being able to use the pool against the con of looking just a little bit like a hillbilly. Ross’s competitive nature arises and records are set, namely 1 minute 35 seconds for me holding my breath. I fare less well in somersaults, flailing underwater like some demented zero gravity version of the Def Leppard drummer as I frantically pinch my nose while whirling around and feeling nauseous. Back at the room we collapse again, awaking at 11ish to realise that going for a meal isn’t exactly one of our options as this time. We settle for ordering pizzas instead, something that takes a hell of a lot more effort than we initially anticipated, owed in part to Mike’s Hull accent and the guy’s sheer natural flair for idiocy. The delivery guy, once he arrives, tries shamelessly to run off with a $30 tip from $50 in notes. Change? Nah. Because shoving pizzas at people and holding out your hand for the money really necessitates a 60% tip doesn’t it. Tit.
Day 16
Today we finally feel up to investigating Nashville proper, and head up what we soon learn is De-mon-bree-yun street, not ‘Demon-brehn’ as we thought it was called.
The first thing we face is the Country Music Hall of Fame. We were gonna visit it anyway, so figure what better time than now? We sign up for both the studio and the hall of fame tour whilst at the ticket booth we’re AGAIN mistaken for a band, although mistaken’s not exactly the word since me and Ross actually ARE, as we inevitably have to explain: ‘No. No they’re not in a band… no but WE are you see, yes. Yes HIM and I. WE are, yes. We’re not touring. No. We are tourists, yes. Yes we’re actually called Clarion, yes, no, no that’s CLARION, C-L-A-R… oh sod it yes we DO have an accent, how perceptive. England, yes, but no, not London no, there are actually other places apart from… Yorkshire? Hull? You’ve not heard of it? Oh fuck it, yes WE ALL LIVE IN FUCKING LONDON. ALROIT GAVNAH. He’s a cockney shoeshine, he’s related to the Beatles and I butter the Queen’s fucking toast every morning.’
Studio B is our first destination. It’s ok, although a fair bit shorter than any of us expected as we only see three rooms. I’m not what you’d call crazy about Elvis, so it’s mostly lost on me. On the plus side, it’s pleasant to see how shit recording was in days of yore and that. Also, the chance to hear yet another pre-recorded slice of Dolly Parton’s timeless, sickly schmaltz means I’ve heard it two more times than any self-respecting human being should ever have to. The hall of fame is, well… it’s good. As I’ve said to most who’ve asked since, there’re only so many banjos and sequinned shirts a person can look at before you zone out and just stop caring. The little ‘Keith Urban on tour’ bit was cool, although it’s taken straight from the DVD I’ve already seen. No live footage though, pah!
On the night we dare to head into the town to actually find Nashville, so to speak. The first few blocks are predictably unlit and equally uneventful (thank god), but my hunch that somewhere would lie the cultural core of the place is proven when we finally hit Broadway and recoil at the ridiculous array of lights. Walking along we see that it’s mostly comprised of rootin’ tootin’ BBQs and bars of some sort or another, each complete with their own country house band. On our enquiry, though, we find most to be full – it is Saturday after all – and walk down to the end, eventually choosing a slightly out of the way pizza place for tea.
Once suitably stuffed, we file back down the street to look for a bar. The trouble, though, is which to choose as we’re veritably spoilt for choice. That and the fact that they all look pretty much the same to us. Eventually we plump for one on the basis of the only slight variable: the band. So into Robert’s we dive. Bowering and Ross opt for the JD and coke ($5.50), I go for the crown and coke ($5.60) and Mike for the Bud light (priceless).
Being a Saturday night the place is pretty packed and I sorely regret bringing my bag, something that’s become almost instinctual from the hostel weeks. The band is certainly tight and, despite his ridiculously garish shirt, the Tele-toting guitarist certainly has his country licks down. After finishing drinks (a mere matter of seconds for the newly-christened Michael Gulp and a slow process like the tide going out for Old Man River Bowering) our collective spidey senses tell us it’s time to move on. As we walk past the next bar along, the guitarist within me and Bowering pricks its ears up at the country shredding within. We call back Ross and Mike who walk blithely past and demand entry into this shred-saturated craphole. It’s called the Bluegrass Inn and, somewhat deterred by the drink prices (JD and coke is $6 here), I opt for the good old bottle o’ Bud. As the beers start rolling in we look up and notice that Mike has been approached by a couple of girls on the pretence of some crap or other. However, much like a light sprinkling heralds an apocalyptic hurricane, we see the real motive behind their suspicious friendliness haul itself into view and slowly blot out the light. This towering blob of vileness could, I suppose, be loosely classified as human, yet it’s only from the particular arrangement of her frontal flab that you can tell her birth certificate probably (and I really stress that probably) says female. That is, if she wasn’t just vomited into existence in some random pit of Hell or fast-food restaurant. Fearing for my very life and presuming she had little in the way of a modus operandi beyond eating me, I failed (God knows how) to notice the sign on her outer scaffolding proclaiming ‘BUCK 4 A SUCK’. I didn’t really want to read too much into that on the basis that a) I might actually vomit on myself and b) I’d probably be irreversibly sexually traumatised from thereon in, but she spares us no such thought. Turns out she’s on a hen night, and upon this revelation the frilly mountain of lace and crap heaped upon her like some kind of Christmas steamboat starts to make sense. Sort of. I have to say though, the thought of any sane human paying to suck what passes for breasts (although surely only the existence of nipples would distinguish them from all the other plateaus of flab there) is just plain outrageous. So from this it’s fairly easy to guess what our reaction was. At first, oh yes, we laughed, how we laughed, then awkwardly tried to shift her attention the hell away from us. Mostly onto Mike. Her conclusion is, of course, that we’re gay (how else could we resist her wobbly charms?) which is something I enthusiastically encourage as a permanent solution to our shared problem. They come back later and, although we have fairly good conversation with her cronies, she storms back with a vengeance. Again, the gay card is played and we’re eventually home free. The singer from the first band (who didn’t seem to actually do anything beyond jump around like a tit and gob off) passes by with a collection pot thing and, because he reminds me vaguely of Sammy Hagar, I give him a dollar which he doesn’t even acknowledge. Showy twat. His stupid leopard skin cowboy hat makes him look like a Texan Bet Lynch. The next band has two Noodles-alikes and, although the guitarist doesn’t shred nearly as well as the previous Kyle Gass-alike, they’re definitely better. At the table across from us an actually quite hot girl continues to enthusiastically dry-hump the same empty-eyed, flip-flop wearing, crew-cutted average Joe she has for the last hour. He continues to dumbly stare and lazily paw her tits occasionally. What a retard.
Day 17
Today we actually try our best to get to breakfast despite the fact that we’re gradually drifting into increasingly home-like (i.e. – bloody lazy) routines. It’s pretty good, although the absence of MEAT is somewhat disappointing As usual, my eyes are bigger than my belly and load up on absolutely EVERYTHING including waffles, bagels, cereal, coffee, juice and a doughnut. Realising I clearly can’t eat it all I save it for later, something I relish later on as I stuff my fat little face by the pool. The day is largely spent in this fashion and, again, some badass records are set. Today must be my athletic nadir since I manage to hold my breath underwater for 2 minutes 51 seconds, nearly twice my last 1min 35secs effort when trying to beat Ross’s 1 min 45 seconds. The whole thing’s quite a novelty and after realising that Nashville is essentially a street, we have no qualms about relaxing some more by the pool. The heat is still ridiculous though.
For tea we decide we may as well stop delaying the inevitable and just go to bloody McDonald’s already. Despite quite possibly having been more times in the last week than the last decade, I’ve yet to get the ordering procedure right. From the evidence that presents itself at the counter, it would appear McD’s have now started recruiting selectively from the local ghetto special schools. From her bleached, curly hair and vacant, rubbery face I get the feeling the woman’s IQ doesn’t far exceed her shoe size. Despite struggling with the large milkshake last time, I ask for a double quarter pounder with milkshake, stressing the separateness since last time my request for a large milkshake was misconstrued as a request for a large fucking EVERYTHING as well. After I receive the meal I can’t help but notice the extra cup. Oh dear. Last and – well fucking done Einstein – she’s given me the SUPER GIANT MEGA BASTARD SHAKE in addition to a regular drink. Like I really need it along with that massive bastard. Christ I’m not Mike. Oh, and she’s given me one burger in my double. I’m officially enraged. I go back to replace it and could swear the rat-faced Mexican guy spits in it. I hate McDonalds.
Day 18
Today we participate largely in more-of-the-same poolery, although we eventually trudge down to Broadway since Bowering needs a t-shirt, his having been stolen along with his iPod in DC. Additionally, the guitar shop we saw previously requires some serious axe-pervage. Upon closer inspection, Broadway reveals a plethora of Brid-like tat shops, brimming with Nashville souvenir shite. The guitar shop, although understandably somewhat countrified, has plenty of cool shit, notably some pretty damn expensive vintage geetars. Highlight is the irritating, curly-haired, overweight guitar geek rhapsodising about his equipment to the clearly not interested staff. Strumming a ridiculously expensive $3,000 odd Telecaster as if he were doing it a favour, he carries on babbling mindlessly about how he’s ‘a player not a collector’ so he doesn’t mind changing his pickups. Like we care dickhead, try someone who cares. Put the fucking guitar down already and shut the hell up.
Back at the hotel, we opt for the takeaway option again, this time with me as official order translator, allowing me to practice my very best ‘12 inch pepper-fucking-roni’ American accent on them as apparently they can’t understand a frigging word of our oh-so-‘European’ Hull accents.
Day 19
Today we embark upon the Jack Daniel’s tour. We rush through the breakfast and head to the lounge to wait for the bus. Eventually the old dude tour guide bursts in with a ‘Bowering party for the Jack Daniel’s tour get DRUUUNK?’ After a jaunty little ride on the small bus to the meeting place we eventually transfer to the main bus and embark for Lynchburg. The journey’s about an hour and a half (child’s play compared to our previous epic bastard knee crushers) and me and Mike do our best to ignore the relentlessly loud and seemingly endless Tootsies documentary on the mini-TVs.
When we arrive we mill around the visitor’s bit, posing for a brief photo with Jack himself (turns out he’s quite the short arse). Eventually our group is called and, entering the room late from dithering in the toilet I really nail the dynamic entrance. I’m sure the hot girl from our coach is impressed. Our guide is suitably small and wrinkled and totters into sight like a wee bleached raisin in tourist/grandparent wear of t-shirt, jeans and tiny white trainers. After the short introductory film – full of sweeping shots of contented looking (i.e. – pissed) blokes in dungarees and the good ol’ gravely voiced narrator who just can’t help himself by spouting out all the possible marketing-friendly bullshit synonyms for old (‘authentic’, ‘GENUINE’, ‘TRIED AND TESTED’, ‘CLASSIC’, ‘GENUINE’) we’re led outside into the pleasantly gardenish grounds whilst Betty happily babbles on about how great Jack Daniel’s was, although her knowledge stops short of actually knowing what insects are in the trees, or what actually exists in the immediate area beyond Jack Daniel’s and loads of bloody whisky. Okay, BOURBON, let’s not be pedantic. The scenery is suitably rustic: a shed here, some old barrels there, it’s all as good ol’ time as old Betty herself.
There’s plenty of whisky fumes around to smell (or temporarily disable my ability to) and me and Mike volunteer for a mystery task which turns out to be to fan the barrel of malt or rye or whatever it is into the faces of those sadistic enough to take a whiff. As soon as he realises it involves wafting foul stenches into people’s faces, Mike takes to it like it’s second nature.
When it becomes group knowledge that, yes, we’re BRITISH, a wheedling old southern dude hobbles up to ask in a barely comprehensible drawl if we know anyone called Russell cause, you know, they have relatives by that name there. We blink and look blankly at each other in shared amazement. I just didn’t have the heart to break it to him that England is a country, not a fucking cul-de-sac.
As we eventually reach the end we arrive in the gift shop/refreshments bit. A tray of lemonades is laid out for each of us in the party and, inevitably, Mike takes two. Ross and Bowering purchase a bottle each of the special edition gold medal Jack ($40) and I go against it on the basis that I’m not that mad on JD anyway.
On the drive back me and Mike continue to eye the hot girl who takes the seat next us despite my unhappy deduction that she’s probably 16 at the oldest. The coach stops for some reason or other at a liquor store, despite the fact we’ve just been to a WHISKY FACTORY. Not to complain however, me and Mike disembark and he purchases some green label JD (JD Light basically) and I score me some CROWN ROYAL BABY! and hide it in its brown paper bag to makes sure I’m not thrown off the bus for being a JD turncoat. On getting back on the bus we’re presented with the unexpected but glorious sight of hot girl and what I presume is her sister talking to Ross and Bowering. We soon get our big gobs into the conversation and engage hot girl in SEXY CONVERSATION. Okay, conversation. She moves into the seats in front of us and it turns out her name is Becky, she’s 20 (pleasant surprise) and in the 2nd year of a PR degree in her native Cleveland, Ohio. Like just about everyone who meets us she thinks we are a band and is absolutely fascinated with every facet of our European beings. Unfortunately, like most Americans she inexplicably manages to use the term ‘Europe’ as some kind of catch-all blanket term for the gazillion different countries and customs within it. Largely, however, I don’t rightly care since she’s really hot and actually genuinely interested as well. I had a feeling her sister knew I was ignoring her for the most part (well, she was married), and seems to give Becky cues to ask me things like some kind of verbal dig in the ribs like when she asks the inevitable myspace/facebook question. For some unexplainable reason, all Americans seem to use facebook exclusively. Anyway I got hers. Time to sign up to facebook.
Day 20
Today is again a day principally pool-dominated and, since by now we’ve broken into jumping and doing somersaults territory, Mike films me doing an infamous seat drop and does 3 whole takes of a somersault, the second of which I kill my back so badly it feels like tender bacon only to be rewarded with Mike chuckling ‘oh… it didn’t record after all!’ Painful. By now some kind of complex poolside etiquette has resulted: me and Bowering do the sensible thing and avoid the blistering midday heat whilst Ross seems entirely unfussed at the prospect of frying under the concentrated death rays of the Nashville sun. Mike opts for the in-between option, impulsively hurling himself and then crawling back out after flopping around for a minute or so and squeezing his t-shirt on while he’s still soaking. Due to the novelty of not having to share a room with complete strangers, the levels of ridiculousness, in-jokes, and homoeroticism obviously skyrocket. Encouraged as usual by the puppet master Ross, Mike begins a gruelling campaign of baring his hairy arse at every given opportunity. It doesn’t actually bother me inasmuch as seeing a dead pigeon doesn’t bother me, but my feigned shock is gleefully lapped up as genuine arse-phobia, and he proceeds to pull out his pale, wobbly buns whenever possible. ‘Oh look, he’s proud of it!’ squeals the puppet master. Good lord.
Day 21
Today is somewhat similar. Me, Mike and Ross descend to breakfast, I take a bagel and a doughnut back up, Ross a bunch of bananas and Mike nothing so that he has to pump more quarters into the vending machine later. The heat is insane, and we once more drag out the day in pure, unabashed laziness, beginning with an especially extended lie-in. Thing is, this now appears to clash with the cleaner’s rota, so the scene is set for a daily clash of interests, beginning with the initial 11 o clock knock, which after a few days becomes almost a formality by both parties, more a first round bell than anything else, just so we know that she’s here, and yeah, she means business. The first few days we attempt sending her away for a short period, which of course never works because I’m always getting ready and just end up being faced with an unsolvable problem that speaks no English beyond ‘clean?’ or ‘no clean?’ whilst I’m wearing my boxers. The first occasion finds me frantically searching for my wallet while she cleans the room and I glare at her in, I admit, a fairly accusatory way. Upon finding the bloody thing behind my bed and looking hugely relieved, she manages to tell from my body language that I suspected her. ‘Me no touch things, me clean!’ So, yep, I accuse her of stealing. Great start to the occupant/cleaner relationship there. This time, however, we dig our heels in and just plain lock the bloody door, pretending not to hear the angry raps and occasional squawks of ‘Clean! Clean!’ every hour or so.
Since we’ve settled in fairly well by now we dare to actually utilise the fridge and get some brewskies in. Bowering manages to convince Mike to not go for the Bud Lite again, coercing him into taking that big step onto Bud ice. He still drinks his share of 6 before me and Ross have finished our 2nd though. And lo, Michael Glug is born….
Day 22
After weathering the initial attempts of the cleaner to besiege our fortress, Mike and I venture out and our first sight upon exiting the room is none other than the scrunched up and clearly irritated face of the cleaner. Mike appears to weigh up the situation for a moment before bellowing ‘CLEAN!’ in his best Indian comedy accent about 2 feet away from her into her face, and then runs off laughing. One small step for cleaner relations again there.
We actually dare to sit up and stride into the unknown in the searing heat out of necessity today. Again we peruse the numerous tat shops down Broadway, but travel beyond the known boundaries in search of you know, an actual SHOP that sells anything beyond novelty mugs or googly-eyed pencil toppers. The 2 dollar shop yields the pad I write on now, and Ross seizes the opportunity to descend upon the cereal and milk supplies like some breakfast-obsessed vulture. The Walgreen’s yields the shocking but beautiful revelation of a ball for ONE CENT. ONE FUCKING CENT. There’s no way that could possibly be cheaper unless they charged us in Turkish Lira or actually paid us to take it. It’s beyond comprehension in its cheapness, but I guess it’s one of those things you just accept and are grateful for. Suitably tooled up for Memphis, we take to the pool once we’re back. Me and Mike re-attempt some trick jumps with no regard for the others in the pool whatsoever. At the table by the pool, one of the jock o’clock collective has decided to inflict his singer/songwriter ‘skills’ upon all present in combination with the skinny guy with the bandana and his stupidly unkempt beard. I notice they’re necking a sizeable amount of beers, which appears to serve both to – ironically – enhance his naturally imbued suckiness and his perception of how much he doesn’t suck. He goes through the songs like a raving madman, strumming the out of tune acoustic like he’s grating cheese, yowling like a raped cat while trying his best to pull of the whole ‘grief wracked country star’s shtick.
Our conquest of the pool proceeds until we achieve total domination by deterring all would-be pool-goers through our over-enthusiastic splashing and gobbing off. We begin with volleyball, which is hampered ever so slightly by the fact that the dividing line of the pool is horizontal, so one team gets to stand and defend a tiny area with the pool calmly lapping around their ankles whilst the others have to tread 7-9 feet of water and defend a small ocean. Needless to say, this often contributes a not unsizeable strategic advantage. We then cycle through an improvised game of horse, using the word ‘glug’ (cardozo was found to be too long) instead and then moving to heads and volleys after I happened to mention how much I always hated having to play it.
Day 23
This morning sees us again fortifying the barricades against the incessant knocks of ‘CLEAN??’ by locking the door and hiding under the covers like frightened children. Being our last day, the focus is mainly on pool and packing. Dinner consists of leftovers from breakfast (well, salvaged extras) and the remainder of my 64 OUNCE root beer which I got for a paltry 99 cents. Beautiful. For the entire Nashville stay I struggled to comprehend On the Run’s ‘any fountain soda for 99c’ policy, but again, it’s one of those things you just have to put down to divine benefaction. As usual Mike gulped as much as he could on the walk home and then threw the rest into a hedge as soon as he stopped being thirsty. How or why he did this I have no idea, since the cup itself is not so much a cup as a section of industrial piping that felt like you were carrying around a toilet bowl with a straw in it, but Mike is a man of the present. This we know. This is why now, 2 days on, I do the responsible thing and remind Mike that if he hadn’t thrown his into a hedge after three gulps he’d still have some left now. So no, he can’t have any of mine. He’ll thank me when he’s older.
Back in the bedroom, the international situation has cooled somewhat after my secession from the supposedly democratic republic of the right bed. This is largely due to Ross’ JFK-like refusal to affiliate himself with my actions after the botched mission of diplomacy I got roped into. After such damning evidence of the cruel dictatorship of Ross behind his democratic façade, I declare independence as a city-state and join the left bed in a retaliatory strike against the scheming, tight-panted despot. Upon a later last-ditch scheme of stealing the covers and feigning ignorance of it (a staple Ross ‘classic’) I rolled him neatly into the yawning abyss between the bed and the wall, trapping him perfectly. My earlier attempt at this, glorious in the fact that Ross was, in his own words, completely helpless, was foiled only by my merciful nature, much like Prime facing Megatron in Transformers: The Movie (1986). So I decided against the killing blow of leaving him there all night with only the periodic intrusions of Mike’s arse in his face as company, something I siincerely regret upon coming back from breakfast and being unable to sleep due to his insistence of keeping some plasticine, gaudy kids TV shit on at maximum volume. Clearly he had no intention of watching it as he spent the entire time face down in his pillow clutching the remote and giggling like an idiot while initiating the fail-safe method of feigning innocence in an absurd situation every time I demanded to know what the fuck he thought he was ding. Eventually it took a combined force of me and Mike to wrest back control of the remote and throw the batteries off the balcony. I think Mike regrets this somewhat when Ross decides to kneel on his chest and shove the flashing jelly ball repeatedly in to his face. The second occasion of Ross’ entrapment I savour more as a result, and satisfy myself by covering him in shaving foam before he gets out.
Later, after the international situation gives way to a less divisive republic of individual states, Ross resorts to the new tactic of putting everyone’s belongings in his ridiculously tight pants then jumping around in shock and surprise when anyone happens to object to this. Upon ‘processing’ my America book, my swiftly-delivered cock punch to the cuboid bulge in his pants is met with horror at my overreaction as if I’m some lone killer gone mad. Ross leaps away, completely unable to understand what might be annoying me at all. I have to say, though, it’s pretty satisfying since the perverted act itself pretty much warrants a punch in the balls each and every time. Among the items processed are: my exercise book, my watch, my wallet, Mike’s hat, Mike’s passport, Mike’s watch and Mike’s wallet. Needless to say, it’s not the most popular of Ross’s plethora of japes.
Day 24
This morning requires the one thing we’re unused to in Nashville (well, apart from patient cleaners, hot, buxom women throwing themselves at us and, well, quite a lot of things really): GETTING UP EARLY. Packing everything up for the 10am Greyhound feels almost like going home from a nice little family holiday abroad, although the illusion is shattered somewhat as we drag the cow-sized BIG BAGS in the unrelenting heat down the baking expanse of Demonbreun street. As we put our bags down in the queue at the station and I look around, I realise how much I really hate Greyhound stations. My overall despisal of the company itself, the feckless drivers and the grimacing ticket-trolls has already been firmly established, but the station itself always does well to earnestly drag you down with its boxy shitholeness, crap shops and the throngs of absolute retards that inhabit it. After a good spell in a city, it never fails to shatter your fond memories by forcing you to stand in line for a late bus you might not even be able to board along with a horde of lip-smacking, stubby-fingered pigfucks and their squealing, fat offspring. Instead of wasting time on initiatives to clean up the city, Nashville should probably consider just nuking the bus station instead. It’d no doubt add a little prestige to the city and clean up the gene pool no end.
Anyhow, we wait over an hour for the bus to come (laughing in the meantime at the confused old Chinese cowboy dude whose luggage is denounced as too heavy by the ticket troll, which he just fails entirely to comprehend) and push forward, attempting to get past the vulture-like old bastards who hover near the entrance in hopes of cutting in on the credibility of their ‘friendly old folk’ front.
The ride itself is fairly short compared to the others (and those to come) clocking in at about 4 hours and, as we disembark, I marvel at the staff’s ingenious method of setting down our bags, going apeshit if anyone even thinks about going near them, then moving them about 2 yards on a trolley and being perfectly happy for everyone to descend upon it like crack-addled hyenas. A soon as we have all our luggage together we zoom off, me and Ross in the lead, and speed straight through the Greyhound station (a strategy I heartily endorse) and into a waiting taxi outside. Our destination is actually West Memphis (which, apparently, is in Arkansas unlike Memphis proper, which is in Tennessee) thanks to the Elvis-crazed loons that descend upon Memphis this week. It really is just our luck. The Super 8 Motel, our prestigious residence, isn’t quite as good as the Comfort Inn but is still good in that it’s not a hostel, therefore japes galore (groan).
Since the sadistic yet borderline retarded bus thing obsessively demolished all possibility of rest, our arrival dawns on me through a foggy veil of semi-sleep. As we crawl out, all feeling twice as bad as we’re looking, we all wilt visibly under the muscular Tennessee heat. Shouldering the dreaded bags we head out onto the straight but seemingly bloody endless road to the Comfort Inn. The miraculous fact that we’ve actually made it has yet to result in specific happys, mostly due to the fact that I’m both ridiculously hot and ridiculously tired. For once, the incompetence of our daft cow of a driver works to our advantage as we arrive not all too far from check-in time and therefore skip the whole ‘see the city until the room is ready’ thing which none of us can be remotely arsed with. We all flop down on the reception couch and stare blankly at the newspapers and coffee opposite. We manage to put on a fair show of being real human beings for a short while, pawing clumsily at copies of USA Today and fumbling with paper cups of coffee, casually scalding ourselves as we attempt to pour a cup like normal people. Soon though, the room’s ready and on our way I note the pool. This is good. Inside we notice the two fairly comfortable beds, the iron, and the working shower and clean toilet. This is also good. I notice that this is not a hostel. This is particularly good. By this time it’s around 12:30 in the afternoon and, as one, we all flop onto our beds and lapse into deep, vegetative sleeps.
Waking up many hours later we try out the novelty of having a pool. As I’m the only one without anything approaching swimshorts I borrow Ross’s denim cutoffs, weighing up the pros of being able to use the pool against the con of looking just a little bit like a hillbilly. Ross’s competitive nature arises and records are set, namely 1 minute 35 seconds for me holding my breath. I fare less well in somersaults, flailing underwater like some demented zero gravity version of the Def Leppard drummer as I frantically pinch my nose while whirling around and feeling nauseous. Back at the room we collapse again, awaking at 11ish to realise that going for a meal isn’t exactly one of our options as this time. We settle for ordering pizzas instead, something that takes a hell of a lot more effort than we initially anticipated, owed in part to Mike’s Hull accent and the guy’s sheer natural flair for idiocy. The delivery guy, once he arrives, tries shamelessly to run off with a $30 tip from $50 in notes. Change? Nah. Because shoving pizzas at people and holding out your hand for the money really necessitates a 60% tip doesn’t it. Tit.
Day 16
Today we finally feel up to investigating Nashville proper, and head up what we soon learn is De-mon-bree-yun street, not ‘Demon-brehn’ as we thought it was called.
The first thing we face is the Country Music Hall of Fame. We were gonna visit it anyway, so figure what better time than now? We sign up for both the studio and the hall of fame tour whilst at the ticket booth we’re AGAIN mistaken for a band, although mistaken’s not exactly the word since me and Ross actually ARE, as we inevitably have to explain: ‘No. No they’re not in a band… no but WE are you see, yes. Yes HIM and I. WE are, yes. We’re not touring. No. We are tourists, yes. Yes we’re actually called Clarion, yes, no, no that’s CLARION, C-L-A-R… oh sod it yes we DO have an accent, how perceptive. England, yes, but no, not London no, there are actually other places apart from… Yorkshire? Hull? You’ve not heard of it? Oh fuck it, yes WE ALL LIVE IN FUCKING LONDON. ALROIT GAVNAH. He’s a cockney shoeshine, he’s related to the Beatles and I butter the Queen’s fucking toast every morning.’
Studio B is our first destination. It’s ok, although a fair bit shorter than any of us expected as we only see three rooms. I’m not what you’d call crazy about Elvis, so it’s mostly lost on me. On the plus side, it’s pleasant to see how shit recording was in days of yore and that. Also, the chance to hear yet another pre-recorded slice of Dolly Parton’s timeless, sickly schmaltz means I’ve heard it two more times than any self-respecting human being should ever have to. The hall of fame is, well… it’s good. As I’ve said to most who’ve asked since, there’re only so many banjos and sequinned shirts a person can look at before you zone out and just stop caring. The little ‘Keith Urban on tour’ bit was cool, although it’s taken straight from the DVD I’ve already seen. No live footage though, pah!
On the night we dare to head into the town to actually find Nashville, so to speak. The first few blocks are predictably unlit and equally uneventful (thank god), but my hunch that somewhere would lie the cultural core of the place is proven when we finally hit Broadway and recoil at the ridiculous array of lights. Walking along we see that it’s mostly comprised of rootin’ tootin’ BBQs and bars of some sort or another, each complete with their own country house band. On our enquiry, though, we find most to be full – it is Saturday after all – and walk down to the end, eventually choosing a slightly out of the way pizza place for tea.
Once suitably stuffed, we file back down the street to look for a bar. The trouble, though, is which to choose as we’re veritably spoilt for choice. That and the fact that they all look pretty much the same to us. Eventually we plump for one on the basis of the only slight variable: the band. So into Robert’s we dive. Bowering and Ross opt for the JD and coke ($5.50), I go for the crown and coke ($5.60) and Mike for the Bud light (priceless).
Being a Saturday night the place is pretty packed and I sorely regret bringing my bag, something that’s become almost instinctual from the hostel weeks. The band is certainly tight and, despite his ridiculously garish shirt, the Tele-toting guitarist certainly has his country licks down. After finishing drinks (a mere matter of seconds for the newly-christened Michael Gulp and a slow process like the tide going out for Old Man River Bowering) our collective spidey senses tell us it’s time to move on. As we walk past the next bar along, the guitarist within me and Bowering pricks its ears up at the country shredding within. We call back Ross and Mike who walk blithely past and demand entry into this shred-saturated craphole. It’s called the Bluegrass Inn and, somewhat deterred by the drink prices (JD and coke is $6 here), I opt for the good old bottle o’ Bud. As the beers start rolling in we look up and notice that Mike has been approached by a couple of girls on the pretence of some crap or other. However, much like a light sprinkling heralds an apocalyptic hurricane, we see the real motive behind their suspicious friendliness haul itself into view and slowly blot out the light. This towering blob of vileness could, I suppose, be loosely classified as human, yet it’s only from the particular arrangement of her frontal flab that you can tell her birth certificate probably (and I really stress that probably) says female. That is, if she wasn’t just vomited into existence in some random pit of Hell or fast-food restaurant. Fearing for my very life and presuming she had little in the way of a modus operandi beyond eating me, I failed (God knows how) to notice the sign on her outer scaffolding proclaiming ‘BUCK 4 A SUCK’. I didn’t really want to read too much into that on the basis that a) I might actually vomit on myself and b) I’d probably be irreversibly sexually traumatised from thereon in, but she spares us no such thought. Turns out she’s on a hen night, and upon this revelation the frilly mountain of lace and crap heaped upon her like some kind of Christmas steamboat starts to make sense. Sort of. I have to say though, the thought of any sane human paying to suck what passes for breasts (although surely only the existence of nipples would distinguish them from all the other plateaus of flab there) is just plain outrageous. So from this it’s fairly easy to guess what our reaction was. At first, oh yes, we laughed, how we laughed, then awkwardly tried to shift her attention the hell away from us. Mostly onto Mike. Her conclusion is, of course, that we’re gay (how else could we resist her wobbly charms?) which is something I enthusiastically encourage as a permanent solution to our shared problem. They come back later and, although we have fairly good conversation with her cronies, she storms back with a vengeance. Again, the gay card is played and we’re eventually home free. The singer from the first band (who didn’t seem to actually do anything beyond jump around like a tit and gob off) passes by with a collection pot thing and, because he reminds me vaguely of Sammy Hagar, I give him a dollar which he doesn’t even acknowledge. Showy twat. His stupid leopard skin cowboy hat makes him look like a Texan Bet Lynch. The next band has two Noodles-alikes and, although the guitarist doesn’t shred nearly as well as the previous Kyle Gass-alike, they’re definitely better. At the table across from us an actually quite hot girl continues to enthusiastically dry-hump the same empty-eyed, flip-flop wearing, crew-cutted average Joe she has for the last hour. He continues to dumbly stare and lazily paw her tits occasionally. What a retard.
Day 17
Today we actually try our best to get to breakfast despite the fact that we’re gradually drifting into increasingly home-like (i.e. – bloody lazy) routines. It’s pretty good, although the absence of MEAT is somewhat disappointing As usual, my eyes are bigger than my belly and load up on absolutely EVERYTHING including waffles, bagels, cereal, coffee, juice and a doughnut. Realising I clearly can’t eat it all I save it for later, something I relish later on as I stuff my fat little face by the pool. The day is largely spent in this fashion and, again, some badass records are set. Today must be my athletic nadir since I manage to hold my breath underwater for 2 minutes 51 seconds, nearly twice my last 1min 35secs effort when trying to beat Ross’s 1 min 45 seconds. The whole thing’s quite a novelty and after realising that Nashville is essentially a street, we have no qualms about relaxing some more by the pool. The heat is still ridiculous though.
For tea we decide we may as well stop delaying the inevitable and just go to bloody McDonald’s already. Despite quite possibly having been more times in the last week than the last decade, I’ve yet to get the ordering procedure right. From the evidence that presents itself at the counter, it would appear McD’s have now started recruiting selectively from the local ghetto special schools. From her bleached, curly hair and vacant, rubbery face I get the feeling the woman’s IQ doesn’t far exceed her shoe size. Despite struggling with the large milkshake last time, I ask for a double quarter pounder with milkshake, stressing the separateness since last time my request for a large milkshake was misconstrued as a request for a large fucking EVERYTHING as well. After I receive the meal I can’t help but notice the extra cup. Oh dear. Last and – well fucking done Einstein – she’s given me the SUPER GIANT MEGA BASTARD SHAKE in addition to a regular drink. Like I really need it along with that massive bastard. Christ I’m not Mike. Oh, and she’s given me one burger in my double. I’m officially enraged. I go back to replace it and could swear the rat-faced Mexican guy spits in it. I hate McDonalds.
Day 18
Today we participate largely in more-of-the-same poolery, although we eventually trudge down to Broadway since Bowering needs a t-shirt, his having been stolen along with his iPod in DC. Additionally, the guitar shop we saw previously requires some serious axe-pervage. Upon closer inspection, Broadway reveals a plethora of Brid-like tat shops, brimming with Nashville souvenir shite. The guitar shop, although understandably somewhat countrified, has plenty of cool shit, notably some pretty damn expensive vintage geetars. Highlight is the irritating, curly-haired, overweight guitar geek rhapsodising about his equipment to the clearly not interested staff. Strumming a ridiculously expensive $3,000 odd Telecaster as if he were doing it a favour, he carries on babbling mindlessly about how he’s ‘a player not a collector’ so he doesn’t mind changing his pickups. Like we care dickhead, try someone who cares. Put the fucking guitar down already and shut the hell up.
Back at the hotel, we opt for the takeaway option again, this time with me as official order translator, allowing me to practice my very best ‘12 inch pepper-fucking-roni’ American accent on them as apparently they can’t understand a frigging word of our oh-so-‘European’ Hull accents.
Day 19
Today we embark upon the Jack Daniel’s tour. We rush through the breakfast and head to the lounge to wait for the bus. Eventually the old dude tour guide bursts in with a ‘Bowering party for the Jack Daniel’s tour get DRUUUNK?’ After a jaunty little ride on the small bus to the meeting place we eventually transfer to the main bus and embark for Lynchburg. The journey’s about an hour and a half (child’s play compared to our previous epic bastard knee crushers) and me and Mike do our best to ignore the relentlessly loud and seemingly endless Tootsies documentary on the mini-TVs.
When we arrive we mill around the visitor’s bit, posing for a brief photo with Jack himself (turns out he’s quite the short arse). Eventually our group is called and, entering the room late from dithering in the toilet I really nail the dynamic entrance. I’m sure the hot girl from our coach is impressed. Our guide is suitably small and wrinkled and totters into sight like a wee bleached raisin in tourist/grandparent wear of t-shirt, jeans and tiny white trainers. After the short introductory film – full of sweeping shots of contented looking (i.e. – pissed) blokes in dungarees and the good ol’ gravely voiced narrator who just can’t help himself by spouting out all the possible marketing-friendly bullshit synonyms for old (‘authentic’, ‘GENUINE’, ‘TRIED AND TESTED’, ‘CLASSIC’, ‘GENUINE’) we’re led outside into the pleasantly gardenish grounds whilst Betty happily babbles on about how great Jack Daniel’s was, although her knowledge stops short of actually knowing what insects are in the trees, or what actually exists in the immediate area beyond Jack Daniel’s and loads of bloody whisky. Okay, BOURBON, let’s not be pedantic. The scenery is suitably rustic: a shed here, some old barrels there, it’s all as good ol’ time as old Betty herself.
There’s plenty of whisky fumes around to smell (or temporarily disable my ability to) and me and Mike volunteer for a mystery task which turns out to be to fan the barrel of malt or rye or whatever it is into the faces of those sadistic enough to take a whiff. As soon as he realises it involves wafting foul stenches into people’s faces, Mike takes to it like it’s second nature.
When it becomes group knowledge that, yes, we’re BRITISH, a wheedling old southern dude hobbles up to ask in a barely comprehensible drawl if we know anyone called Russell cause, you know, they have relatives by that name there. We blink and look blankly at each other in shared amazement. I just didn’t have the heart to break it to him that England is a country, not a fucking cul-de-sac.
As we eventually reach the end we arrive in the gift shop/refreshments bit. A tray of lemonades is laid out for each of us in the party and, inevitably, Mike takes two. Ross and Bowering purchase a bottle each of the special edition gold medal Jack ($40) and I go against it on the basis that I’m not that mad on JD anyway.
On the drive back me and Mike continue to eye the hot girl who takes the seat next us despite my unhappy deduction that she’s probably 16 at the oldest. The coach stops for some reason or other at a liquor store, despite the fact we’ve just been to a WHISKY FACTORY. Not to complain however, me and Mike disembark and he purchases some green label JD (JD Light basically) and I score me some CROWN ROYAL BABY! and hide it in its brown paper bag to makes sure I’m not thrown off the bus for being a JD turncoat. On getting back on the bus we’re presented with the unexpected but glorious sight of hot girl and what I presume is her sister talking to Ross and Bowering. We soon get our big gobs into the conversation and engage hot girl in SEXY CONVERSATION. Okay, conversation. She moves into the seats in front of us and it turns out her name is Becky, she’s 20 (pleasant surprise) and in the 2nd year of a PR degree in her native Cleveland, Ohio. Like just about everyone who meets us she thinks we are a band and is absolutely fascinated with every facet of our European beings. Unfortunately, like most Americans she inexplicably manages to use the term ‘Europe’ as some kind of catch-all blanket term for the gazillion different countries and customs within it. Largely, however, I don’t rightly care since she’s really hot and actually genuinely interested as well. I had a feeling her sister knew I was ignoring her for the most part (well, she was married), and seems to give Becky cues to ask me things like some kind of verbal dig in the ribs like when she asks the inevitable myspace/facebook question. For some unexplainable reason, all Americans seem to use facebook exclusively. Anyway I got hers. Time to sign up to facebook.
Day 20
Today is again a day principally pool-dominated and, since by now we’ve broken into jumping and doing somersaults territory, Mike films me doing an infamous seat drop and does 3 whole takes of a somersault, the second of which I kill my back so badly it feels like tender bacon only to be rewarded with Mike chuckling ‘oh… it didn’t record after all!’ Painful. By now some kind of complex poolside etiquette has resulted: me and Bowering do the sensible thing and avoid the blistering midday heat whilst Ross seems entirely unfussed at the prospect of frying under the concentrated death rays of the Nashville sun. Mike opts for the in-between option, impulsively hurling himself and then crawling back out after flopping around for a minute or so and squeezing his t-shirt on while he’s still soaking. Due to the novelty of not having to share a room with complete strangers, the levels of ridiculousness, in-jokes, and homoeroticism obviously skyrocket. Encouraged as usual by the puppet master Ross, Mike begins a gruelling campaign of baring his hairy arse at every given opportunity. It doesn’t actually bother me inasmuch as seeing a dead pigeon doesn’t bother me, but my feigned shock is gleefully lapped up as genuine arse-phobia, and he proceeds to pull out his pale, wobbly buns whenever possible. ‘Oh look, he’s proud of it!’ squeals the puppet master. Good lord.
Day 21
Today is somewhat similar. Me, Mike and Ross descend to breakfast, I take a bagel and a doughnut back up, Ross a bunch of bananas and Mike nothing so that he has to pump more quarters into the vending machine later. The heat is insane, and we once more drag out the day in pure, unabashed laziness, beginning with an especially extended lie-in. Thing is, this now appears to clash with the cleaner’s rota, so the scene is set for a daily clash of interests, beginning with the initial 11 o clock knock, which after a few days becomes almost a formality by both parties, more a first round bell than anything else, just so we know that she’s here, and yeah, she means business. The first few days we attempt sending her away for a short period, which of course never works because I’m always getting ready and just end up being faced with an unsolvable problem that speaks no English beyond ‘clean?’ or ‘no clean?’ whilst I’m wearing my boxers. The first occasion finds me frantically searching for my wallet while she cleans the room and I glare at her in, I admit, a fairly accusatory way. Upon finding the bloody thing behind my bed and looking hugely relieved, she manages to tell from my body language that I suspected her. ‘Me no touch things, me clean!’ So, yep, I accuse her of stealing. Great start to the occupant/cleaner relationship there. This time, however, we dig our heels in and just plain lock the bloody door, pretending not to hear the angry raps and occasional squawks of ‘Clean! Clean!’ every hour or so.
Since we’ve settled in fairly well by now we dare to actually utilise the fridge and get some brewskies in. Bowering manages to convince Mike to not go for the Bud Lite again, coercing him into taking that big step onto Bud ice. He still drinks his share of 6 before me and Ross have finished our 2nd though. And lo, Michael Glug is born….
Day 22
After weathering the initial attempts of the cleaner to besiege our fortress, Mike and I venture out and our first sight upon exiting the room is none other than the scrunched up and clearly irritated face of the cleaner. Mike appears to weigh up the situation for a moment before bellowing ‘CLEAN!’ in his best Indian comedy accent about 2 feet away from her into her face, and then runs off laughing. One small step for cleaner relations again there.
We actually dare to sit up and stride into the unknown in the searing heat out of necessity today. Again we peruse the numerous tat shops down Broadway, but travel beyond the known boundaries in search of you know, an actual SHOP that sells anything beyond novelty mugs or googly-eyed pencil toppers. The 2 dollar shop yields the pad I write on now, and Ross seizes the opportunity to descend upon the cereal and milk supplies like some breakfast-obsessed vulture. The Walgreen’s yields the shocking but beautiful revelation of a ball for ONE CENT. ONE FUCKING CENT. There’s no way that could possibly be cheaper unless they charged us in Turkish Lira or actually paid us to take it. It’s beyond comprehension in its cheapness, but I guess it’s one of those things you just accept and are grateful for. Suitably tooled up for Memphis, we take to the pool once we’re back. Me and Mike re-attempt some trick jumps with no regard for the others in the pool whatsoever. At the table by the pool, one of the jock o’clock collective has decided to inflict his singer/songwriter ‘skills’ upon all present in combination with the skinny guy with the bandana and his stupidly unkempt beard. I notice they’re necking a sizeable amount of beers, which appears to serve both to – ironically – enhance his naturally imbued suckiness and his perception of how much he doesn’t suck. He goes through the songs like a raving madman, strumming the out of tune acoustic like he’s grating cheese, yowling like a raped cat while trying his best to pull of the whole ‘grief wracked country star’s shtick.
Our conquest of the pool proceeds until we achieve total domination by deterring all would-be pool-goers through our over-enthusiastic splashing and gobbing off. We begin with volleyball, which is hampered ever so slightly by the fact that the dividing line of the pool is horizontal, so one team gets to stand and defend a tiny area with the pool calmly lapping around their ankles whilst the others have to tread 7-9 feet of water and defend a small ocean. Needless to say, this often contributes a not unsizeable strategic advantage. We then cycle through an improvised game of horse, using the word ‘glug’ (cardozo was found to be too long) instead and then moving to heads and volleys after I happened to mention how much I always hated having to play it.
Day 23
This morning sees us again fortifying the barricades against the incessant knocks of ‘CLEAN??’ by locking the door and hiding under the covers like frightened children. Being our last day, the focus is mainly on pool and packing. Dinner consists of leftovers from breakfast (well, salvaged extras) and the remainder of my 64 OUNCE root beer which I got for a paltry 99 cents. Beautiful. For the entire Nashville stay I struggled to comprehend On the Run’s ‘any fountain soda for 99c’ policy, but again, it’s one of those things you just have to put down to divine benefaction. As usual Mike gulped as much as he could on the walk home and then threw the rest into a hedge as soon as he stopped being thirsty. How or why he did this I have no idea, since the cup itself is not so much a cup as a section of industrial piping that felt like you were carrying around a toilet bowl with a straw in it, but Mike is a man of the present. This we know. This is why now, 2 days on, I do the responsible thing and remind Mike that if he hadn’t thrown his into a hedge after three gulps he’d still have some left now. So no, he can’t have any of mine. He’ll thank me when he’s older.
Back in the bedroom, the international situation has cooled somewhat after my secession from the supposedly democratic republic of the right bed. This is largely due to Ross’ JFK-like refusal to affiliate himself with my actions after the botched mission of diplomacy I got roped into. After such damning evidence of the cruel dictatorship of Ross behind his democratic façade, I declare independence as a city-state and join the left bed in a retaliatory strike against the scheming, tight-panted despot. Upon a later last-ditch scheme of stealing the covers and feigning ignorance of it (a staple Ross ‘classic’) I rolled him neatly into the yawning abyss between the bed and the wall, trapping him perfectly. My earlier attempt at this, glorious in the fact that Ross was, in his own words, completely helpless, was foiled only by my merciful nature, much like Prime facing Megatron in Transformers: The Movie (1986). So I decided against the killing blow of leaving him there all night with only the periodic intrusions of Mike’s arse in his face as company, something I siincerely regret upon coming back from breakfast and being unable to sleep due to his insistence of keeping some plasticine, gaudy kids TV shit on at maximum volume. Clearly he had no intention of watching it as he spent the entire time face down in his pillow clutching the remote and giggling like an idiot while initiating the fail-safe method of feigning innocence in an absurd situation every time I demanded to know what the fuck he thought he was ding. Eventually it took a combined force of me and Mike to wrest back control of the remote and throw the batteries off the balcony. I think Mike regrets this somewhat when Ross decides to kneel on his chest and shove the flashing jelly ball repeatedly in to his face. The second occasion of Ross’ entrapment I savour more as a result, and satisfy myself by covering him in shaving foam before he gets out.
Later, after the international situation gives way to a less divisive republic of individual states, Ross resorts to the new tactic of putting everyone’s belongings in his ridiculously tight pants then jumping around in shock and surprise when anyone happens to object to this. Upon ‘processing’ my America book, my swiftly-delivered cock punch to the cuboid bulge in his pants is met with horror at my overreaction as if I’m some lone killer gone mad. Ross leaps away, completely unable to understand what might be annoying me at all. I have to say, though, it’s pretty satisfying since the perverted act itself pretty much warrants a punch in the balls each and every time. Among the items processed are: my exercise book, my watch, my wallet, Mike’s hat, Mike’s passport, Mike’s watch and Mike’s wallet. Needless to say, it’s not the most popular of Ross’s plethora of japes.
Day 24
This morning requires the one thing we’re unused to in Nashville (well, apart from patient cleaners, hot, buxom women throwing themselves at us and, well, quite a lot of things really): GETTING UP EARLY. Packing everything up for the 10am Greyhound feels almost like going home from a nice little family holiday abroad, although the illusion is shattered somewhat as we drag the cow-sized BIG BAGS in the unrelenting heat down the baking expanse of Demonbreun street. As we put our bags down in the queue at the station and I look around, I realise how much I really hate Greyhound stations. My overall despisal of the company itself, the feckless drivers and the grimacing ticket-trolls has already been firmly established, but the station itself always does well to earnestly drag you down with its boxy shitholeness, crap shops and the throngs of absolute retards that inhabit it. After a good spell in a city, it never fails to shatter your fond memories by forcing you to stand in line for a late bus you might not even be able to board along with a horde of lip-smacking, stubby-fingered pigfucks and their squealing, fat offspring. Instead of wasting time on initiatives to clean up the city, Nashville should probably consider just nuking the bus station instead. It’d no doubt add a little prestige to the city and clean up the gene pool no end.
Anyhow, we wait over an hour for the bus to come (laughing in the meantime at the confused old Chinese cowboy dude whose luggage is denounced as too heavy by the ticket troll, which he just fails entirely to comprehend) and push forward, attempting to get past the vulture-like old bastards who hover near the entrance in hopes of cutting in on the credibility of their ‘friendly old folk’ front.
The ride itself is fairly short compared to the others (and those to come) clocking in at about 4 hours and, as we disembark, I marvel at the staff’s ingenious method of setting down our bags, going apeshit if anyone even thinks about going near them, then moving them about 2 yards on a trolley and being perfectly happy for everyone to descend upon it like crack-addled hyenas. A soon as we have all our luggage together we zoom off, me and Ross in the lead, and speed straight through the Greyhound station (a strategy I heartily endorse) and into a waiting taxi outside. Our destination is actually West Memphis (which, apparently, is in Arkansas unlike Memphis proper, which is in Tennessee) thanks to the Elvis-crazed loons that descend upon Memphis this week. It really is just our luck. The Super 8 Motel, our prestigious residence, isn’t quite as good as the Comfort Inn but is still good in that it’s not a hostel, therefore japes galore (groan).
DC: Days 9-14
Day 9
DC bound. We hurry out of the hostel and I make a beeline straight for the trusty l’ortiz grocery, home of one of the two Americans I haven’t instantly loathed so far because he let me off for not having enough change one time. The others I lump together as one person since I can’t remember how many of them there were (although I only spoke to the 2 girls really) but were the group of kids we met in Washington Square, purely on the basis that they’ve been the only ones to offer pleasant conversation and interest in us without expectation of something return or some ulterior motive, be it monetary, charity-related, tip-related or religious.
Bowering and Ross head to the payphones to confirm the DC booking after god knows how many quarters and god knows how many tries we actually manage to confirm the booking and head off for the bus. The ride is actually none too unpleasant due to MEGA LEG ROOM and the fact that, at about 4 hours, it’s super short compared to the gruelling, stuffy bus-fests we’ve endured so far.
We disembark and mill aimlessly until we finally get our bearings and resolutely ignore the persistent honk of the taxi who dogs us persistently like a vulture over our vulnerable tourist corpses. Like just about every American we see, his eyes light up with dollar signs at the sight of us. We actually realise from the map in my America guide book that the hostel is probably within walking distance. We hazard a trial walk to a given street to gauge the distance. Although the heat is ridiculously, well, HOT, we power on and find it shouldn’t take all too long despite the punishing temperature. Unless we’re prematurely gunned down by the scores of grimacing, arse-faced gangsta wannabees strutting past us or the mechanics/car thieves ‘working on’ an obviously freshly-pinched truck that is.
We finally arrive at the hallowed HI-DC with the benefit of an actual reservation this time to prevent unsuccessful relations with the dead-eyed, gum-chewing counter monkey. At once my expectations were confirmed, namely that it pisses on the other hostels from a particularly great height. I’m shocked by the actual competence, friendliness and knowledge of the chirpy, pregnant white girl who serves us (political correctness note: I found this unusual only based on our experiences thus far, which showed me an essentially feudal America in which the lower level cleaning jobs are occupied by the non-English speaking Hispanic/Mexican women and the other bog standard-level admin and till jobs almost exclusively occupied by black people), having been used to the aforementioned ignorant disinterest and borderline hostility of the plethora of waddling frown-jockeys so far. Anyway, after a short guide to the city and a free map from Erica (the girl serving us) we goggle briefly at the actually useful facilities it boasts (laundry for one! Booya!) as well as a daily $1 breakfast. We find our way to our rooms and comfortably collapse. We’re here and the first of our eight lives is over. Here comes the second.
Day 10
Still full of last night’s Chinese we rouse ourselves as best we can to take advantage of the super cheap breakfast for a dollar. Once we arrive we notice the dinosaur-like big mama who acts as some kind of breakfast sentry who appears to be programmed primarily to stamp about angrily like a caged, demented elephant in her own tiny kingdom, ruling it with an iron fist as she ruthlessly reprimands those who stray from the strict rules, intermittently bleating ‘no milk for de SIRIYUH!’ After being practically rapped on the knuckles and smacked on the bottom for daring to go for seconds, I ask her with a straight face if she has any milk for the cereal.
She is not pleased.
Today’s itinerary consists of the real meat and potatoes of Washington DC – apart from widespread poverty and scores of nightly murders that is – the White House!
Again, it’s blisteringly hot, the fact that this along with New York should by rights be the coldest of the cities we’re visiting fills me with little hope, especially as I recall the hostel sign measuring the temperature at 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
Finding a monument is no huge task, since they all reside within the four-mile stretch of the national mall, so we start from one end logically and head for the Lincoln memorial at the other end. On our way we pass by the national monument, which to me just looks like a big rock spike. Each to their own however; I still think it looks shit though. The real attraction , though, is the swaying figure in the distance who, upon closer inspection, appears to be a pleasantly delirious tramp. Facing away from the path – and thus looking like he’s serenading the empty patch of grass in front of him – he burbles some kind of advertising jingle about little fishies in a Louis Armstong-esque slurred baritone.
We then walk through the war memorials and, inevitably, our English pride recoils at the depiction of what appears to be an entire world war fought and won by a grinning Uncle Sam alone. I secretly beg for some smarmy American to speak up against our overly-vocal denunciations, I swear he wouldn’t get any further than ‘uh hey man , we saved your ass in… *gurgle*’. The Lincoln memorial is suitably grandiose and all that but it fails to really excite me somehow, and I can’t help but feel a little bored.
As we come out the steadily-encroaching clouds finally do what they’ve been threatening to do all day and chuck it the fuck down. I have a feeling that the American weather hasn’t yet heard of the charming British custom of spitting; it either pisses it down like a high pressure hose for hours on end or scorches the fuck out of everything living. They even have supersize me weather over here. We all huddle under the protection of the big Lincoln memorial and, thanks to an inspired flash by Ross, pass the time trying to hook various parts of Mike’s anatomy with his umbrella handle, even inventing an elaborate points system to go with it.
When it clears up we head to the White House which we see from quite a distance. We head round the back to see if they do tours. Against the rock-solid evidence that is Beavis and Butthead Do America though, it appears they don’t. We interest ourselves with the snaggle-toothed and quite obviously bewigged (it looks like a fucking piece of polystyrene packaging spraypainted grey) ‘Concepcion’ who sits opposite the White House next to numerous anti-war, anti-nuke placards and a sign declaring her 24 year long vigil. The bomb-focused material on the stand is a little 60s in its lack of addressing issues beyond ‘the bomb’ but the points put across nevertheless make sense. A Japanese tour guide moves his group with military efficiency as they clamour round for a snap with the local crazy. I notice how her fevered rabbitting about nuclear conspiracies is ignored almost entirely by him, concerned as he is only with getting a group shot with the freak in the most precise and efficient manner possible.
On a nearby bench we regale ourselves with tales of Gareth Butron and hand-drawn cartoons of Robert Young. I chase a black squirrel round a tree singing ‘in the night, in my dreams’ at it. I don’t think it much appreciated being relentlessly pursued to the sound of acapella 90s techno-pop.
After retiring to home camp, sprucing up and then heading back out, we opt for a pre-Simpsons meal at the delightfully named Fuddrucker’s. Yet again we’re served by an all-star cast of scowling, inept, misery-jockeys. Unsurprisingly, just about all of our orders are wrong, and Bowering’s medium burger is so rare it practically moos. In front of us an Abraham Lincoln lookalike (and no I’m not even joking, he literally had the fake beard and stovepipe hat) seems to be on a date with some woman. Clearly they must both be complete freaks considering the fact that a) they thought this would be a good place to go for a romantic dinner, and b) she seems inordinately turned on by the prospect of sharing a greasy burger with some bloke who’s dressed up like a dead president. He laps it right up though, graciously giving out the odd autograph, like dressing up like Lincoln means he can also borrow his fame and achievements along with the fake beard. The fact that I’m not dressed up as someone who abolished slavery seems to him grounds for a condescending glance. Smug, mental bastard. We wolf our meals down and head for the cinema.
Once there I again deliberate agonisingly over whether to get a drink. I don’t. I then agonise over this continually for the entire duration of the film. The film itself is really good, although rendered somewhat cringeworthy by the borderline-retarded, morbidly obese black walrus who sits (and I use the term loosely, I would say she if anything) and apparently thinks she’s actually just watching it all through a window. Excerpt:
(Homer opens the shed door, passes by the jetpack to instead select a tube of glue)
Thick Cow- ‘Whut tha fuck?! Homah git da fuckin’ jet payk! Whut the?! Oh my gawd! Homah git de jeet payk! No dats de glue! Not de glue!’
(Maggie smashes bottle in hand as monkey advances threateningly)
Moron – ‘AW YEAH, DATS IT MAGGIE! GIT DE MUNKEY! OHHH CHU GET DE MUNKEY! CUT IM UP GOOD! OH LAWD!’ As she guffaws like a drugged half-wit on laughing gas. Well maybe not so much LIKE, more WAS.
I despair for some people, I really do.
Day 10
Today a somewhat late rise finds only me and Mike heading for the breakfast gauntlet as Ross and Bowering sleep in, invulnerable to my smack-on-the-head wakeup attempts. What greets us upon arrival to the breakfast area shocks us to our very cores. In comparison to what now blocks out the sun in front of us, yesterday’s breakfast beast seems like some deliciously happy fairy, flitting between the toast humming Disney tunes. The stamping, grimacing black rhino that presents itself to us instead would probably be easiest to describe as an african-american Miss Trunchbull, albeit without the ability to speak or dress properly. Ok, now add a dirty hairnet covering the scraped back afro bun and a twitching vein on the side of her head, beady, twitchy piggy eyes and something like an industrial lorry tarpaulin adapted roughly to the role of apron and you have it. It’s clear her reign of terror is absolute as each breakfaster meekly shuffles along with their heads down like its dinnertime at Auschwitz. Inevitably, someone makes a minor mistake of sorts to be met by the shuffling bitch of death with brutal and merciless retribution. The innocent mistake of taking a muffin before it’d been properly displayed – and doing so with his hands no less – causes great gouts of steam to just about blow out of her ears as she barrels toward him with pure, disgruntled, angry bitch fury:
Dinnerbeast: Hey! Chu” Hey what chu doin’ theya? HUH? WHUT?
Victim: Uh I Uh, I just uh…
Dinnerbeast: Oh my…. Get cho hands outta there! My God… what chu thinkin’ stickin’ cho big ol’ DURTY haynds awl in ma box huh?? Chu got no BIZNIZ in mah box! Dat mah box okay! MY BOX! Only I can go in deyre! Chu unnerstan’ bwoy? Huh? HUH?
Victim: (cowers) please, I’m sorry, I …. NO PLEASE! NO I… NOOOOOOO!
Today’s destination is the national Air and Space museum, again we receive an airport style super thorough search which stops just short of him pulling on the trust latex glove and going for the ‘deluxe’ search.
The museum itself is pretty damn thorough to be fair, covering the bases from lunar modules to the Wright brothers’ plane. Inevitably – ok and partly because of my need to compulsively read everything put in front of me – we get split up and me and Mike literally search high and low for the others. After looking absolutely everywhere I follow a Ross-based hunch and find them in the resident overpriced McDonalds.
Nely reformed, in the big bang section we find the local freak reading the entrie exhibit to his camcorder. As a poor innocent bystander wnaders past they’re practically kidnapped by the crazed idiot, explaining that it’s ‘her’ (his wife I presume, from her looks of shame and thinly-veiled loathing of him) dad who invented the thing and it’s his exhibit, telling him through the camera that someone is looking at his exhibit. I et he hates his son in law.
As it closes I scramble to the toilets for a last-minute piss, but in a cunning trick they’ve reversed all the escalators to make them go down and for some ridiculous reason there’s two women’s toilets downstairs but no men’s; clearly the museum was designed by some sadistic Germaine Greer-esque militant feminist.
We sit on the bench in the mall and decide against going back to the hostel before tea. We head back to good old Chinatown for tea, Peking duck aplenty, although everyone’s just about eaten theirs by the time mine comes. Mike has a pleasant encounter with the hot sauce in the meantime.
On the way back we re-realise how bad the begging problem is in DC/ It seems they fall into broadly 3 categories:
1. The plain old, looks-miserable-next-to-their-cup variety, the sort we’re generally familiar with in Hull. Your common or garden tramp.
2. The more vocal equivalent of type 1. They’ll generally shake their cup and ask for change from their begging spot or actively solicit strangers or vulnerable looking tourists (i.e.- us) with a ‘chu got a dollah mistah?’
3. The Trojan horses of the begging game. They’ll enter your zone of trust with some fawning bullshit such as ‘Oh you guys da shit man! Chu guys all Swedish/in a band/like soccer/massage parlours?’ After the extended bullshit tirade they whip out the punchline, like they just happened to need it that day: ‘Oh by they way, er… chu guys got a dollah?’
Day 12
Again just me and Mike hit the breakfast challenge. Super Robo Dinnerbeast is again present, as irritable and wrathful as ever. Highlights include being greeted by a ‘suh where cho TIKKIT?!’ which I’m sure she decides to ask on the spot just to piss me off. Anyway I’m last to get my breakfast and give her the ticket; I briefly put down my tray and go back for coffee. I’m then greeted again by the scowling, stony black surface of her craggy features demanding ‘yo tikkit’ no later than 5 seconds after I gave her it. Realising I’ve managed to foil her infernal ploy, she makes a sudden accusatory u-turn, out of nowhere pointing the finger that, ‘bud I jus’ saw chu git sum dem MUFFINZ!’ Her muffin obsession, it seems, has driven her to the extent of delusional paranoia, since I hold only one measly bagel intended for toasting. She is, as Ross would say, off her tits. Or, as Tom would say, tapped as a twat.
After hitting McDonald’s for lunch and being accosted outside the toilet by a seemingly innocuous black businessman in tha name o’ tha LAWD (which now makes it a rate of 100% for people on the street being nice to me for an ulterior motive) we head down to the capitol. The walk is fairly casual and once there we laze about in standard fashion, i.e. me writing/reading and Mike falling asleep. In the midst of this we find a band setting up which, with a prompt tooting of horns and bong of bass, soon strikes up th ebig band jazz tunes of ‘Airmen of Note’. They’re damn good to be fair. Mesmerised by the drummer’s truly badass jazz beats I move further toward the front. Eventually Ross comes over to sit with me and Mike. this isn’t because of any sudden interest in the band, however, but to tell us, unsurprisingly, that he wants to go get something to eat. Eventually, he coaxes me away on the assurance that there won’t be a drum solo. On this occasion, I trust Ross’s sudden and surprisingly in-depth knowledge of military jazz band procedures for some reason. Then as we’re about half a mile off I hear it: the distant machinegun clatter of rimshots and hi-hat hits that constitute one bonafide drum solo.
We head earnestly toward the pizza place we earmarked earlier only to find the kitchen shut at 9. Cursing, we head for the nearest not-ridiculously priced restaurant, which happens to be an Indian.
Day 13
Due to the steady build-up of knackeredness of the last few days, today we all sleep in and miss the delights of breakfast.
First item on the agenda is Greyhound tickets. The trip there, even with only small bags, is little short of exhausting. Upon arrival, we’re delighted to find the service to be on exactly the same level of competence, professionalism, intelligence and politeness as the rest of America’s service sector employees, i.e. – fucking zero. The gormless bitch clearly went to same training class as the dickhead in Madison Square Gardens who sold me two tours when she finally tunes into reality from dozy bitch fm, looking us over and summarising: ‘so dat’s five tikkits? Fo today?’ I despair. I really do.
We head back the way we came, obtaining a hot dog combo meal from one of the omnipresent Sabrett vendors. He makes it into my prestigious list of people I don’t instantly loathe by his rare utilisation of ‘thank you’.
Somewhat lost for things to do on the way back I propose putting into action my long-suppressed plan of going to the Dupont Circle. After some uncertainty about the metrobus schedule, we’re soon packed into the tinbox of dreams alongside its usual coterie of killers, rapists and old people. Due to heading outside of our familiar district I painstakingly plot our route on the fly on our USA book whilst glancing at the signs. Ross decides as we come near to our destination to approach the robotic negro coachman to actually find out where we get off.
To be honest, I think the lonely planet guide was perhaps being a bit generous in its description. Dupont circle – well, what we see of it – isn’t, at first glance, the veritable Park Lane it describes it as, full of tweeting birds or poets with cashmere sweaters draped around their shoulders musing in the shade of a tree. We head to Kramerbooks which is, to be honest, the main reason for the visit. My youthful fantasies of a super-cheap indie bookstore brimming with rare books aren’t wholly fulfilled though I must admit. There’s a café there, and the shelves are positively brimming with pretentious literati on their lunch hours, but the prices are basically rrp – well, are – and I snag a Wodehouse and a Chesterton, Mike bags an Ishiguro, enthused by the book he did for Cyborgs and Clones and Ross plumps for the solid meat of Stephen King. Outside we sprawl out on the grass in what I presume is the actual circle part of Dupont circle. I realise that the idea of reading on the grass under a tree is, in fact, a lot better than actually reading on the grass under a tree. Unable to keep my concentration due to ants infesting my being and random prickly, spherical shit in the grass I roll about restlessly. The tree itself is also a wholesale failure at its only purpose: giving me shade. Meanwhile, Ross appears to be being sold drugs by a gang of whacked-out, hoodie-wearing smackheads with dilated pupils.
On the night we finally hit that pizza place , in the hostel, prepare at last for the south-bound trek.
Day 14
This morning we realise that, largely, our preparation falls into the popular category of ‘can’t be arsed’ as we brace ourselves for a parting meal with breakfast beast. Highlights include: Chinese girl reluctantly tiptoeing up to the coffee machine, meekly motioning towards it when the black moon orbits, rounding on her with an enraged ‘WHAT CHU WAN’!?’, and also Ross being absolutely bollocked for not having a ticket even though he’d already given her it.
Today most of our time is spent whiling away the hours. Me and Ross tramp out in the heat in search of snacks and Bowering, like the last few days, sits down awaiting a response from the traditionally incompetent police. Despite the admittedly presumptuous pointing of fingers at the dorm-mate I secretly nicknamed Abdul La Fontaine (for his combined Franco-Indianness, conversing so chummily with the other two gallic bumboys who shared a bunk in the dorm while erstwhilely ignoring us entirely) the consensus appears to lean a little more towards the scampering Latino cleaners who scurry about the place like some kind of Mexican oompa-loompas as being the culprits of the combined ipod and tshirt theft. The policeman actually arrives about 2 hours after DCPD said he would (which, by police standards, actually makes him early) and acts as though he’s looking at some kind of depraved crack-house as he eyes me up and down with evident disgust as I placidly eat my bright green ice-lolly when he suddenly yells ‘YOU CALL THE POLICE?!’ Once inside he isn’t ashamed to say he doesn’t know what the hell the place is (although he stops short of admitting he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, which he clearly doesn’t) and squints suspiciously like it’s some kind of satanic cult headquarters.
We embark for the 5 pm bus at about 3, and arrive there after a pained and sweaty journey at roughly 4, collapsing in a pile of sweaty t-shirts and overloaded luggage. Learning from our previous mistakes I shift my bag into an altogether less ambiguous position, namely right in front of the gates to appropriately give off that ‘fuck right off mate, I was there first’ message.
We board nearly first in line and are slightly disappointed at the lack of MEGA LEGROOM this time. Like long distance runners, we try our best to pace ourselves for the journey, although we pass through Virginia I find it increasingly hard not to instantly fall asleep just due to the fact that I’m on a bus.
About 5 hours in we arrive in Charlottesville and, unlike the other stops we actually have to get off and take our bags. I didn’t actually realise this and begrudgingly haul off the massive cowsack and drag it into the dingy, small-town Greyhound stop at about 10pm. The stop is scheduled for about an hour and, after briefly marvelling at the price plummet of vending machine cans compared to those high flyer machines in DC/NY, we stand, like the scraggy sleep-deprived sheep we are, mill about outside( the stop is so small it closes at 10pm) and await the bus. Soon it comes and, with a sigh, we get ready for the familiar rigmarole of boarding and throwing the bags in the hold. But wait. Something is amiss. Nobody is getting off the bus. Intently as I look, all I see are their fat, snug, contented faces as they’re sprawled out snoring, guffawing, stuffing their faces or doing both, spraying cheetos all over the seats in front. The driver comes out and the crowd reacts with confusion as the clearly inept woman driver flails her arms and clearly tries her utmost to dodge any type of responsibility for anything. After Ross enquires, however, it turns out there’s another bus coming soon. That’s ok then, we just got mixed up. All is well. The other bus finally arrives, pleasingly bigger and it appears to be – most importantly – empty. Upon closer inspection, however, they’re just blacked-out windows. Soon after realising this, the bus stops and the lights flick on, revealing the same sickening panorama of obese tramps who populate the Greyhound lines. It’s ok though, because surely they’re just about to get off. They don’t. Agitation increases markedly. As the driver emerges I groan at what’s surely to come. Clearly cut from exactly the same cloth as the mindless ‘huh?’ merchants serving me across the continent so far, I see her stupid braided hair and utter a silent sob of despair. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. She attempts to liaise with her flock, although surely she should know how many – in this case NONE, lucky us – are getting off. She moves slowly from the stance of ‘I dunt know nuthin’ bout nuthin’ mista’ to the not-too-distant ‘hey ah jus’ do wha I’m tol’, can’ts do nuthins fo ya’ (America’s answer to ‘computer sayas no’ girl) and – bless her warm, selfless, heart – makes her best attempt to climb back into the cab and leave all us 20 satisfied customers with a ‘shit happens’ shrug. We basically shit ourselves and consider our options. Thanks to some bizarre turn of fate, our recently departed English dorm-mate from DC actually steps off and tells us there’s actually a hostel 8 miles from here and he might be able to get us a lift there. Thing is, we need to get to that comfort inn in Nashville or else we lose all we’ve put down on it. Thankfully the previously irritating boisterousness of one of the crowd now becomes useful as he actively engages the feckless, dead-eyed cow and manages to convince her that we won’t sue her for slightly banging our heads if she lets us sit in the aisle. We file in past the gauntlet of chubby, sweaty limbs and sit down. I cannot believe that we are actually doing this. I go for the clutch-knees-to-chest-and-pretend-I’m-not-really-stuck-in-a-bus-aisle-for-potentially-ten-hours position. Sleep is pretty much impossible though, so I converse with a fellow prisoner behind me who’s Texas bound. He is – or was – an art student and is a fan of comic books as well as, it seems, the sound of his own voice, which is something of an irritation since he’s packing some seriously chronic halitosis. We have a fairly good conversation about Preacher though. After what seems like a trillion agonising lifetimes, some people actually get off at the next stop and me and Mike, being the last in and therefore first in the aisle chain gang run greedily to the first empty seats. There are a few more stops after in which – when we open our bleary eyes to take in the freakish Southern mutants that populate the Tennessee truck stops – we’re pointlessly ushered off the bus for it to refuel or something because she crack under pressure and has a PMT hissy fit, making us get out so she can remember what side the petrol cap is on.
DC bound. We hurry out of the hostel and I make a beeline straight for the trusty l’ortiz grocery, home of one of the two Americans I haven’t instantly loathed so far because he let me off for not having enough change one time. The others I lump together as one person since I can’t remember how many of them there were (although I only spoke to the 2 girls really) but were the group of kids we met in Washington Square, purely on the basis that they’ve been the only ones to offer pleasant conversation and interest in us without expectation of something return or some ulterior motive, be it monetary, charity-related, tip-related or religious.
Bowering and Ross head to the payphones to confirm the DC booking after god knows how many quarters and god knows how many tries we actually manage to confirm the booking and head off for the bus. The ride is actually none too unpleasant due to MEGA LEG ROOM and the fact that, at about 4 hours, it’s super short compared to the gruelling, stuffy bus-fests we’ve endured so far.
We disembark and mill aimlessly until we finally get our bearings and resolutely ignore the persistent honk of the taxi who dogs us persistently like a vulture over our vulnerable tourist corpses. Like just about every American we see, his eyes light up with dollar signs at the sight of us. We actually realise from the map in my America guide book that the hostel is probably within walking distance. We hazard a trial walk to a given street to gauge the distance. Although the heat is ridiculously, well, HOT, we power on and find it shouldn’t take all too long despite the punishing temperature. Unless we’re prematurely gunned down by the scores of grimacing, arse-faced gangsta wannabees strutting past us or the mechanics/car thieves ‘working on’ an obviously freshly-pinched truck that is.
We finally arrive at the hallowed HI-DC with the benefit of an actual reservation this time to prevent unsuccessful relations with the dead-eyed, gum-chewing counter monkey. At once my expectations were confirmed, namely that it pisses on the other hostels from a particularly great height. I’m shocked by the actual competence, friendliness and knowledge of the chirpy, pregnant white girl who serves us (political correctness note: I found this unusual only based on our experiences thus far, which showed me an essentially feudal America in which the lower level cleaning jobs are occupied by the non-English speaking Hispanic/Mexican women and the other bog standard-level admin and till jobs almost exclusively occupied by black people), having been used to the aforementioned ignorant disinterest and borderline hostility of the plethora of waddling frown-jockeys so far. Anyway, after a short guide to the city and a free map from Erica (the girl serving us) we goggle briefly at the actually useful facilities it boasts (laundry for one! Booya!) as well as a daily $1 breakfast. We find our way to our rooms and comfortably collapse. We’re here and the first of our eight lives is over. Here comes the second.
Day 10
Still full of last night’s Chinese we rouse ourselves as best we can to take advantage of the super cheap breakfast for a dollar. Once we arrive we notice the dinosaur-like big mama who acts as some kind of breakfast sentry who appears to be programmed primarily to stamp about angrily like a caged, demented elephant in her own tiny kingdom, ruling it with an iron fist as she ruthlessly reprimands those who stray from the strict rules, intermittently bleating ‘no milk for de SIRIYUH!’ After being practically rapped on the knuckles and smacked on the bottom for daring to go for seconds, I ask her with a straight face if she has any milk for the cereal.
She is not pleased.
Today’s itinerary consists of the real meat and potatoes of Washington DC – apart from widespread poverty and scores of nightly murders that is – the White House!
Again, it’s blisteringly hot, the fact that this along with New York should by rights be the coldest of the cities we’re visiting fills me with little hope, especially as I recall the hostel sign measuring the temperature at 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
Finding a monument is no huge task, since they all reside within the four-mile stretch of the national mall, so we start from one end logically and head for the Lincoln memorial at the other end. On our way we pass by the national monument, which to me just looks like a big rock spike. Each to their own however; I still think it looks shit though. The real attraction , though, is the swaying figure in the distance who, upon closer inspection, appears to be a pleasantly delirious tramp. Facing away from the path – and thus looking like he’s serenading the empty patch of grass in front of him – he burbles some kind of advertising jingle about little fishies in a Louis Armstong-esque slurred baritone.
We then walk through the war memorials and, inevitably, our English pride recoils at the depiction of what appears to be an entire world war fought and won by a grinning Uncle Sam alone. I secretly beg for some smarmy American to speak up against our overly-vocal denunciations, I swear he wouldn’t get any further than ‘uh hey man , we saved your ass in… *gurgle*’. The Lincoln memorial is suitably grandiose and all that but it fails to really excite me somehow, and I can’t help but feel a little bored.
As we come out the steadily-encroaching clouds finally do what they’ve been threatening to do all day and chuck it the fuck down. I have a feeling that the American weather hasn’t yet heard of the charming British custom of spitting; it either pisses it down like a high pressure hose for hours on end or scorches the fuck out of everything living. They even have supersize me weather over here. We all huddle under the protection of the big Lincoln memorial and, thanks to an inspired flash by Ross, pass the time trying to hook various parts of Mike’s anatomy with his umbrella handle, even inventing an elaborate points system to go with it.
When it clears up we head to the White House which we see from quite a distance. We head round the back to see if they do tours. Against the rock-solid evidence that is Beavis and Butthead Do America though, it appears they don’t. We interest ourselves with the snaggle-toothed and quite obviously bewigged (it looks like a fucking piece of polystyrene packaging spraypainted grey) ‘Concepcion’ who sits opposite the White House next to numerous anti-war, anti-nuke placards and a sign declaring her 24 year long vigil. The bomb-focused material on the stand is a little 60s in its lack of addressing issues beyond ‘the bomb’ but the points put across nevertheless make sense. A Japanese tour guide moves his group with military efficiency as they clamour round for a snap with the local crazy. I notice how her fevered rabbitting about nuclear conspiracies is ignored almost entirely by him, concerned as he is only with getting a group shot with the freak in the most precise and efficient manner possible.
On a nearby bench we regale ourselves with tales of Gareth Butron and hand-drawn cartoons of Robert Young. I chase a black squirrel round a tree singing ‘in the night, in my dreams’ at it. I don’t think it much appreciated being relentlessly pursued to the sound of acapella 90s techno-pop.
After retiring to home camp, sprucing up and then heading back out, we opt for a pre-Simpsons meal at the delightfully named Fuddrucker’s. Yet again we’re served by an all-star cast of scowling, inept, misery-jockeys. Unsurprisingly, just about all of our orders are wrong, and Bowering’s medium burger is so rare it practically moos. In front of us an Abraham Lincoln lookalike (and no I’m not even joking, he literally had the fake beard and stovepipe hat) seems to be on a date with some woman. Clearly they must both be complete freaks considering the fact that a) they thought this would be a good place to go for a romantic dinner, and b) she seems inordinately turned on by the prospect of sharing a greasy burger with some bloke who’s dressed up like a dead president. He laps it right up though, graciously giving out the odd autograph, like dressing up like Lincoln means he can also borrow his fame and achievements along with the fake beard. The fact that I’m not dressed up as someone who abolished slavery seems to him grounds for a condescending glance. Smug, mental bastard. We wolf our meals down and head for the cinema.
Once there I again deliberate agonisingly over whether to get a drink. I don’t. I then agonise over this continually for the entire duration of the film. The film itself is really good, although rendered somewhat cringeworthy by the borderline-retarded, morbidly obese black walrus who sits (and I use the term loosely, I would say she if anything) and apparently thinks she’s actually just watching it all through a window. Excerpt:
(Homer opens the shed door, passes by the jetpack to instead select a tube of glue)
Thick Cow- ‘Whut tha fuck?! Homah git da fuckin’ jet payk! Whut the?! Oh my gawd! Homah git de jeet payk! No dats de glue! Not de glue!’
(Maggie smashes bottle in hand as monkey advances threateningly)
Moron – ‘AW YEAH, DATS IT MAGGIE! GIT DE MUNKEY! OHHH CHU GET DE MUNKEY! CUT IM UP GOOD! OH LAWD!’ As she guffaws like a drugged half-wit on laughing gas. Well maybe not so much LIKE, more WAS.
I despair for some people, I really do.
Day 10
Today a somewhat late rise finds only me and Mike heading for the breakfast gauntlet as Ross and Bowering sleep in, invulnerable to my smack-on-the-head wakeup attempts. What greets us upon arrival to the breakfast area shocks us to our very cores. In comparison to what now blocks out the sun in front of us, yesterday’s breakfast beast seems like some deliciously happy fairy, flitting between the toast humming Disney tunes. The stamping, grimacing black rhino that presents itself to us instead would probably be easiest to describe as an african-american Miss Trunchbull, albeit without the ability to speak or dress properly. Ok, now add a dirty hairnet covering the scraped back afro bun and a twitching vein on the side of her head, beady, twitchy piggy eyes and something like an industrial lorry tarpaulin adapted roughly to the role of apron and you have it. It’s clear her reign of terror is absolute as each breakfaster meekly shuffles along with their heads down like its dinnertime at Auschwitz. Inevitably, someone makes a minor mistake of sorts to be met by the shuffling bitch of death with brutal and merciless retribution. The innocent mistake of taking a muffin before it’d been properly displayed – and doing so with his hands no less – causes great gouts of steam to just about blow out of her ears as she barrels toward him with pure, disgruntled, angry bitch fury:
Dinnerbeast: Hey! Chu” Hey what chu doin’ theya? HUH? WHUT?
Victim: Uh I Uh, I just uh…
Dinnerbeast: Oh my…. Get cho hands outta there! My God… what chu thinkin’ stickin’ cho big ol’ DURTY haynds awl in ma box huh?? Chu got no BIZNIZ in mah box! Dat mah box okay! MY BOX! Only I can go in deyre! Chu unnerstan’ bwoy? Huh? HUH?
Victim: (cowers) please, I’m sorry, I …. NO PLEASE! NO I… NOOOOOOO!
Today’s destination is the national Air and Space museum, again we receive an airport style super thorough search which stops just short of him pulling on the trust latex glove and going for the ‘deluxe’ search.
The museum itself is pretty damn thorough to be fair, covering the bases from lunar modules to the Wright brothers’ plane. Inevitably – ok and partly because of my need to compulsively read everything put in front of me – we get split up and me and Mike literally search high and low for the others. After looking absolutely everywhere I follow a Ross-based hunch and find them in the resident overpriced McDonalds.
Nely reformed, in the big bang section we find the local freak reading the entrie exhibit to his camcorder. As a poor innocent bystander wnaders past they’re practically kidnapped by the crazed idiot, explaining that it’s ‘her’ (his wife I presume, from her looks of shame and thinly-veiled loathing of him) dad who invented the thing and it’s his exhibit, telling him through the camera that someone is looking at his exhibit. I et he hates his son in law.
As it closes I scramble to the toilets for a last-minute piss, but in a cunning trick they’ve reversed all the escalators to make them go down and for some ridiculous reason there’s two women’s toilets downstairs but no men’s; clearly the museum was designed by some sadistic Germaine Greer-esque militant feminist.
We sit on the bench in the mall and decide against going back to the hostel before tea. We head back to good old Chinatown for tea, Peking duck aplenty, although everyone’s just about eaten theirs by the time mine comes. Mike has a pleasant encounter with the hot sauce in the meantime.
On the way back we re-realise how bad the begging problem is in DC/ It seems they fall into broadly 3 categories:
1. The plain old, looks-miserable-next-to-their-cup variety, the sort we’re generally familiar with in Hull. Your common or garden tramp.
2. The more vocal equivalent of type 1. They’ll generally shake their cup and ask for change from their begging spot or actively solicit strangers or vulnerable looking tourists (i.e.- us) with a ‘chu got a dollah mistah?’
3. The Trojan horses of the begging game. They’ll enter your zone of trust with some fawning bullshit such as ‘Oh you guys da shit man! Chu guys all Swedish/in a band/like soccer/massage parlours?’ After the extended bullshit tirade they whip out the punchline, like they just happened to need it that day: ‘Oh by they way, er… chu guys got a dollah?’
Day 12
Again just me and Mike hit the breakfast challenge. Super Robo Dinnerbeast is again present, as irritable and wrathful as ever. Highlights include being greeted by a ‘suh where cho TIKKIT?!’ which I’m sure she decides to ask on the spot just to piss me off. Anyway I’m last to get my breakfast and give her the ticket; I briefly put down my tray and go back for coffee. I’m then greeted again by the scowling, stony black surface of her craggy features demanding ‘yo tikkit’ no later than 5 seconds after I gave her it. Realising I’ve managed to foil her infernal ploy, she makes a sudden accusatory u-turn, out of nowhere pointing the finger that, ‘bud I jus’ saw chu git sum dem MUFFINZ!’ Her muffin obsession, it seems, has driven her to the extent of delusional paranoia, since I hold only one measly bagel intended for toasting. She is, as Ross would say, off her tits. Or, as Tom would say, tapped as a twat.
After hitting McDonald’s for lunch and being accosted outside the toilet by a seemingly innocuous black businessman in tha name o’ tha LAWD (which now makes it a rate of 100% for people on the street being nice to me for an ulterior motive) we head down to the capitol. The walk is fairly casual and once there we laze about in standard fashion, i.e. me writing/reading and Mike falling asleep. In the midst of this we find a band setting up which, with a prompt tooting of horns and bong of bass, soon strikes up th ebig band jazz tunes of ‘Airmen of Note’. They’re damn good to be fair. Mesmerised by the drummer’s truly badass jazz beats I move further toward the front. Eventually Ross comes over to sit with me and Mike. this isn’t because of any sudden interest in the band, however, but to tell us, unsurprisingly, that he wants to go get something to eat. Eventually, he coaxes me away on the assurance that there won’t be a drum solo. On this occasion, I trust Ross’s sudden and surprisingly in-depth knowledge of military jazz band procedures for some reason. Then as we’re about half a mile off I hear it: the distant machinegun clatter of rimshots and hi-hat hits that constitute one bonafide drum solo.
We head earnestly toward the pizza place we earmarked earlier only to find the kitchen shut at 9. Cursing, we head for the nearest not-ridiculously priced restaurant, which happens to be an Indian.
Day 13
Due to the steady build-up of knackeredness of the last few days, today we all sleep in and miss the delights of breakfast.
First item on the agenda is Greyhound tickets. The trip there, even with only small bags, is little short of exhausting. Upon arrival, we’re delighted to find the service to be on exactly the same level of competence, professionalism, intelligence and politeness as the rest of America’s service sector employees, i.e. – fucking zero. The gormless bitch clearly went to same training class as the dickhead in Madison Square Gardens who sold me two tours when she finally tunes into reality from dozy bitch fm, looking us over and summarising: ‘so dat’s five tikkits? Fo today?’ I despair. I really do.
We head back the way we came, obtaining a hot dog combo meal from one of the omnipresent Sabrett vendors. He makes it into my prestigious list of people I don’t instantly loathe by his rare utilisation of ‘thank you’.
Somewhat lost for things to do on the way back I propose putting into action my long-suppressed plan of going to the Dupont Circle. After some uncertainty about the metrobus schedule, we’re soon packed into the tinbox of dreams alongside its usual coterie of killers, rapists and old people. Due to heading outside of our familiar district I painstakingly plot our route on the fly on our USA book whilst glancing at the signs. Ross decides as we come near to our destination to approach the robotic negro coachman to actually find out where we get off.
To be honest, I think the lonely planet guide was perhaps being a bit generous in its description. Dupont circle – well, what we see of it – isn’t, at first glance, the veritable Park Lane it describes it as, full of tweeting birds or poets with cashmere sweaters draped around their shoulders musing in the shade of a tree. We head to Kramerbooks which is, to be honest, the main reason for the visit. My youthful fantasies of a super-cheap indie bookstore brimming with rare books aren’t wholly fulfilled though I must admit. There’s a café there, and the shelves are positively brimming with pretentious literati on their lunch hours, but the prices are basically rrp – well, are – and I snag a Wodehouse and a Chesterton, Mike bags an Ishiguro, enthused by the book he did for Cyborgs and Clones and Ross plumps for the solid meat of Stephen King. Outside we sprawl out on the grass in what I presume is the actual circle part of Dupont circle. I realise that the idea of reading on the grass under a tree is, in fact, a lot better than actually reading on the grass under a tree. Unable to keep my concentration due to ants infesting my being and random prickly, spherical shit in the grass I roll about restlessly. The tree itself is also a wholesale failure at its only purpose: giving me shade. Meanwhile, Ross appears to be being sold drugs by a gang of whacked-out, hoodie-wearing smackheads with dilated pupils.
On the night we finally hit that pizza place , in the hostel, prepare at last for the south-bound trek.
Day 14
This morning we realise that, largely, our preparation falls into the popular category of ‘can’t be arsed’ as we brace ourselves for a parting meal with breakfast beast. Highlights include: Chinese girl reluctantly tiptoeing up to the coffee machine, meekly motioning towards it when the black moon orbits, rounding on her with an enraged ‘WHAT CHU WAN’!?’, and also Ross being absolutely bollocked for not having a ticket even though he’d already given her it.
Today most of our time is spent whiling away the hours. Me and Ross tramp out in the heat in search of snacks and Bowering, like the last few days, sits down awaiting a response from the traditionally incompetent police. Despite the admittedly presumptuous pointing of fingers at the dorm-mate I secretly nicknamed Abdul La Fontaine (for his combined Franco-Indianness, conversing so chummily with the other two gallic bumboys who shared a bunk in the dorm while erstwhilely ignoring us entirely) the consensus appears to lean a little more towards the scampering Latino cleaners who scurry about the place like some kind of Mexican oompa-loompas as being the culprits of the combined ipod and tshirt theft. The policeman actually arrives about 2 hours after DCPD said he would (which, by police standards, actually makes him early) and acts as though he’s looking at some kind of depraved crack-house as he eyes me up and down with evident disgust as I placidly eat my bright green ice-lolly when he suddenly yells ‘YOU CALL THE POLICE?!’ Once inside he isn’t ashamed to say he doesn’t know what the hell the place is (although he stops short of admitting he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, which he clearly doesn’t) and squints suspiciously like it’s some kind of satanic cult headquarters.
We embark for the 5 pm bus at about 3, and arrive there after a pained and sweaty journey at roughly 4, collapsing in a pile of sweaty t-shirts and overloaded luggage. Learning from our previous mistakes I shift my bag into an altogether less ambiguous position, namely right in front of the gates to appropriately give off that ‘fuck right off mate, I was there first’ message.
We board nearly first in line and are slightly disappointed at the lack of MEGA LEGROOM this time. Like long distance runners, we try our best to pace ourselves for the journey, although we pass through Virginia I find it increasingly hard not to instantly fall asleep just due to the fact that I’m on a bus.
About 5 hours in we arrive in Charlottesville and, unlike the other stops we actually have to get off and take our bags. I didn’t actually realise this and begrudgingly haul off the massive cowsack and drag it into the dingy, small-town Greyhound stop at about 10pm. The stop is scheduled for about an hour and, after briefly marvelling at the price plummet of vending machine cans compared to those high flyer machines in DC/NY, we stand, like the scraggy sleep-deprived sheep we are, mill about outside( the stop is so small it closes at 10pm) and await the bus. Soon it comes and, with a sigh, we get ready for the familiar rigmarole of boarding and throwing the bags in the hold. But wait. Something is amiss. Nobody is getting off the bus. Intently as I look, all I see are their fat, snug, contented faces as they’re sprawled out snoring, guffawing, stuffing their faces or doing both, spraying cheetos all over the seats in front. The driver comes out and the crowd reacts with confusion as the clearly inept woman driver flails her arms and clearly tries her utmost to dodge any type of responsibility for anything. After Ross enquires, however, it turns out there’s another bus coming soon. That’s ok then, we just got mixed up. All is well. The other bus finally arrives, pleasingly bigger and it appears to be – most importantly – empty. Upon closer inspection, however, they’re just blacked-out windows. Soon after realising this, the bus stops and the lights flick on, revealing the same sickening panorama of obese tramps who populate the Greyhound lines. It’s ok though, because surely they’re just about to get off. They don’t. Agitation increases markedly. As the driver emerges I groan at what’s surely to come. Clearly cut from exactly the same cloth as the mindless ‘huh?’ merchants serving me across the continent so far, I see her stupid braided hair and utter a silent sob of despair. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. She attempts to liaise with her flock, although surely she should know how many – in this case NONE, lucky us – are getting off. She moves slowly from the stance of ‘I dunt know nuthin’ bout nuthin’ mista’ to the not-too-distant ‘hey ah jus’ do wha I’m tol’, can’ts do nuthins fo ya’ (America’s answer to ‘computer sayas no’ girl) and – bless her warm, selfless, heart – makes her best attempt to climb back into the cab and leave all us 20 satisfied customers with a ‘shit happens’ shrug. We basically shit ourselves and consider our options. Thanks to some bizarre turn of fate, our recently departed English dorm-mate from DC actually steps off and tells us there’s actually a hostel 8 miles from here and he might be able to get us a lift there. Thing is, we need to get to that comfort inn in Nashville or else we lose all we’ve put down on it. Thankfully the previously irritating boisterousness of one of the crowd now becomes useful as he actively engages the feckless, dead-eyed cow and manages to convince her that we won’t sue her for slightly banging our heads if she lets us sit in the aisle. We file in past the gauntlet of chubby, sweaty limbs and sit down. I cannot believe that we are actually doing this. I go for the clutch-knees-to-chest-and-pretend-I’m-not-really-stuck-in-a-bus-aisle-for-potentially-ten-hours position. Sleep is pretty much impossible though, so I converse with a fellow prisoner behind me who’s Texas bound. He is – or was – an art student and is a fan of comic books as well as, it seems, the sound of his own voice, which is something of an irritation since he’s packing some seriously chronic halitosis. We have a fairly good conversation about Preacher though. After what seems like a trillion agonising lifetimes, some people actually get off at the next stop and me and Mike, being the last in and therefore first in the aisle chain gang run greedily to the first empty seats. There are a few more stops after in which – when we open our bleary eyes to take in the freakish Southern mutants that populate the Tennessee truck stops – we’re pointlessly ushered off the bus for it to refuel or something because she crack under pressure and has a PMT hissy fit, making us get out so she can remember what side the petrol cap is on.
Sunday 19 April 2009
Days 5-8
Day 5
Hot again. HOT. Although this fails to prevent me from still taking my umbrella out thanks to prevailing paranoia and pessimism.
Although I am informed of this later, the day begins with Mike both baring and slapping his arse in the face of both a sleeping Chico and a wide-awake Serbian guy, who, presumably, was paralysed with fear and mentally scarred from that moment onward, unable to sleep for the fear of hideous recurring nightmares about a planet-sized hairy arse descending from the skies to engulf him.
The landmark we hunt from the off is the elusive CBGB's, made all the more elusive by the fact that it doesn't actually exist anymore. We were aware that it'd closed obviously but, little did we know that it's literally no more than a shell now, with the famous canopy gone and just a shutter and assorted graffiti in its place. The anti-climactic pilgrimage actually takes all day (well, until around 5) and we finally canter on back to
Got the Greyhound tickets earlier on also. That was a pain in the tits which I do not wish to recall anytime soon.
Back in
On the night we actually stayed up in the social area for once with a few beers. Like a dehydrated man at an oasis, Mike gulps back countless bottles in the blink of an eye. An impulse purchase at approximately
Bowering- What the hell's that? (poking the item)
Mike- Don't! It's soft, it's nice, it's Marble Cake!
Day 6
We finally check out of the illustrious Broadway. A cursory check upon waking shows an absence of
We enquire about booking one more night for the Friday we get back from Niagara, and are met with a curt 'no' from the wiry looking girl who is in place of the hulking, maternal form of the mucho-grande mama sita we'd been used to so far. Somewhat dejected, we leave our bags in the common room. One thing we've learned is that stacking them like some kind of miniature luggage Stonehenge seems to be an effective security precaution (then again, that's going purely on the logic that they haven't yet been ransacked by crack-addict gangstas and hobos, which probably isn't the best line of reasoning in the world) and head grimly in search of another hostel. Unsurprisingly the shit-brained Missy Elliot lookalike at the counter is as useful as a lump of coal, so we head on to the
We muse on what restaurant would actually allow us and our MEGA BAGS into their establishment, and after gingerly entering a Chinese and eventually brokering a deal regarding the bags (pile them all up against the wall, unsurprisingly) we finally sit down and tuck into the likes of 'chicken stick' and other such oriental delights. With a charmingly American obsession with tips combined with a Chinese lack of politeness or awareness of social etiquette, the waitress (or whatever the hell the paunch-faced crone is) decides upon the angle of simply not leaving until we'd paid a tip for the martyr-like trip the waitress took once to the soda machine (the rest was self service) kindly reminding us with a banshee wail of 'TEEEEEP!' whilst jabbing the bill with her leathery sausage finger. Timeless.
Onto the Greyhound station and we arrive well in time, sitting suitably rogueishly against the wall on our bags. Eventually, however, it does occur that, although looking rather cool, I'm not sure whether we're actually in the queue or not. Some bus-dude official eventually splits out the queues and we hastily charge to the front, pushing past the gaggle of slack-jawed negresses which earns us a veritable lifetime of mucky looks and girl-from-the-street aphorisms. Example:
(me to Ross) – So ours is definitely at 10.45?
(Ross) – Yep.
(clearly arsey Oprah lookalike) – Uh huh. Is that so? (adopts raised eyebrow, hand on hip, I'm-an-interfering-skank-bitch posture)
(me) – Well… yeah.
(bitch) – Oh rilly? Uh huh. I guess so. We'll see.
Well I'd fucking hope so you idiotic, rubber-faced skank, considering you've just made a complete idiot of yourself by unsuccessfully trying to force your queue position agenda into the incompatible topic of when the frigging bus departs. Word.
Day 7
The Greyhound may well have been our hotel for the night, but it was by no means as good as. We all stagger off the bus, bleary eyed and smelling faintly of vintage tramp, and soak in the fact that we've been dropped off in what, to all extents and purposes, is essentially Nowheresville, USA. The shop next to us is one of those that's the equivalent of a toothless fat bird laying it all out on desperate display – tottering round in kitten heels and a handbag full of condoms. Anyhow, it appears to be all at once a shop, deli, atm, clothing store and, (wait for it) a daredevil museum. Oh yes.
We get our bearings and head out in the slowly intensifying heat towards Niagara Falls itself making our way to some kind of Scarborough-esque coastline studded with 25 cent viewing binoculars overlooking what we later learn are the American falls. Ross manages to tear the already badly trailing strip on my trousers even more to the extent that I now appear to be walking some kind of small, invisible dog everywhere I go. I spend the next 20 minutes or so attempting to cut the strip off my cargo trousers using a pair of nail clippers I got in a Christmas cracker whilst simultaneously being jostled and stared at by droves of stereotypical yank wank tourists and their vile offspring. I reflect on the ridiculousness of my situation. Only I could actually be doing this at
We make it up to the as yet unopened ticket booth as a plump woman pops in, promising to 'see you shnortly!' which, for the record, is probably the closest I've come to vomiting from the sheer level of cheesy, American, faux-jollity so far. This really should be a federal offence – despite being practically a national requirement along with its polar opposite of also being rude and fucking incompetent – allowable only if said with the actual intent of being punched in the face , and, if not, punishable by a punch in the face. Anyway, I notice she directs this only to the camera-wielding, capped and sandalled congregation of retirees and the white, middle-class nuclear family to the right of us. However, since we actually have the money, they technically have to let such deviants as ourselves in and we trudge in, shuffle into the lift for the awkward situation of looking at the park employee but listening to the smarmy narrative of some Z-list American actor being pumped through the speakers. Once we're at the level of where the dock is, our luggage once again adopts the
Basically, we sail out and hover near the two waterfalls, though I suspect the sadist Captain deliberately chooses the spots in which i'll get the most wet. I'm one step ahead of him however, and foil his sick scheme through deft adaptation and manipulation of the poncho around my glasses in a somewhat ninja-esque manner. We get back and, as usual, Ross insists on climbing the extra bit to the highest, wettest, and most awkward spot for what I suspect is purely to capture another vagabond-across-America/strong, silent, wanderer moment of himself on camera. We then ditch the ponchos and head out into the park bit, again cursing the bodybag-like weight of our luggage. Congregating around a tree, we once more lapse into the by now familiar regime of bumming around, reading and sleeping. One by one we drop like the victims of some kind of sleep sniper, and, I have to admit, compared to the agony of attempting to sleep in a Greyhound seat, having a huge, gnarled tree stuck in my back is fucking beautiful.
After about an hour and a half of tree-dozing I flicker awake slightly and realise how bloody stupid it was for us to all drop stone-cold asleep with all our worldly belongings in a public park in a foreign country. I pat my pockets quickly and find nothing. Shit. It seemed fate had only been biding its time, lulling me into a false sense of security before truly whipping it out and full on pissing all over me. The growing feeling that my ever-present paranoia is actually justified this time sends me into a panicked frenzy, tearing into my luggage as I struggle to comprehend the sheer stupidity of me leaving my wallet in my pocket and the ramifications of what having no money in a foreign country means (answer: you're fucked) when I find it in a side pocket I don't remember putting it in. I almost pass out from the relief.
After we rouse ourselves once more (my life or death panic having caused only a half-opened eye and a sleepy chuckle in Ross) we doss about a little more, striding to the café for pleasingly rip off prices as Bowering realises the power of branding as he purchases his M and M brownie. We then go to sit on the benches by the
On the ride back we speak to Anya, who is English, does law at
Day 8
Actually arrive a little earlier than we expected, and we trudge out of the almost entirely dark bus terminal into the unforgiving
However, this is easier said than done. Ross and Bowering zoom to their respective floors to hunt down a bathroom and me and Mike decide upon the 2nd floor stakeout option, holding the fort in the waiting area and keeping an ear open for any opening doors. This is by no means as easy as it sounds however, and although the rare sound of an opening door reaches us like a bell to Pavlov's dogs, we can't compete with what seems like almost supernatural speed and precognition as the shower-using residents swap over like half-naked bullet trains. Mike is creased over in colonic agony until, by some kind of mistake surely, a bathroom is left open for more than 10 seconds. My sage-like patience is then tested even more, and the knowledge that Mike is helping himself to a comfortable and extended shit does little to console me.
After what feels like an eternity of hot, stinky torture, I drag my two cattle-sized bags along the narrow corridor past a haughty looking girl (no response to a cheery 'sorry!' and no surprise either, ha!) just to humour myself. Yet, at the heavenly light at the end of the tunnel I see an open door and dive in, unable to believe I'm finally there. I'm sure there's some kind of Confucius-like proverb for the fact that, at that moment, the soaked and slightly grubby box sized bathroom was an absolute oasis in the desert, but I was so relieved I really didn't care. Similarly, after a shower and extensive purification, changing into clothes only marginally less worn and disgusting made me feel like the cleanest and sharpest hombre on the block. I finally emerge and greet Mike by the windowsill, just absorbing the fact that, yes, we are actually clean. Ish.
After dumping our bags in the hold (the surly, clearly displeased looks of the security ape cause me to abandon my last ditch search for my umbrella, something I bemoan for hours until realising it hasn't rained) we head to Penn station – Jersey bound.
We goggle initially at the $40 charge from the tyrannical Amtrak (only 10x what we initially thought!) but then find the NJ transit machines who charge a more agreeable $24.
So we board the train and head for
Ok, so I was wrong.
Head back to the station in the still unforgiving sun and thank god for the plucky black girl who keeps the resident hobo sponger con artist distracted with tales of how you can actually get the train without paying no it's true you just say you lost your ticket or fall asleep when they ask you or hide and whatever I've done it before it's ok. Despite her good intent she doesn't appear to realise that he has absolutely no intention of any such thing; any money he gets is either going straight down his neck or jammed straight into whatever working veins he still has left.
On the train back a woman frantically flaps for my attention. Confused, I step out of the way not realising what she wants but instead she turns her demented rambling on Bowering. Turns out she was actually commenting on our clothing and how it had all changed in the last 2 months since she'd been to NY. She paid particular compliments to our white shirts though, at last count, we're wearing brown, black, green and blue. Her drunken stumbling off the train somewhat clears that one up. Back at the illustrious CPH we suit up and head out like our primordial ancestors in search of FOOD. We agree to head out to the
We finally decide upon 'la famiglia pizza' as our eaterie of choice and get on to ordering. The guy who serves me looks like some kind of old-school, 40's Italian mobster who, after my request for a 10" pizza, embarks on an epic oratory of why I shouldn't buy a 10" pizza, citing size, cost, time taken for preparation and overall inconvenience as convincing examples of why the ten inch is not the choice of the wise pizza consumer. I eventually relent and opt for his recommendation of a variety of individual slices. Mike steps up next, and cheerily requests one 10" pizza please.
I look at the guy.
His eyes roll.
Once inside and sat down, we're lambasted with more sob stories and transparent begging tales by hassling sign-bearers than I ever have in a restaurant before. I'd say this is largely because I've never actually been harassed for money whilst eating a fucking meal. The first contestant emerges from the shadows with a grubby but clearly legible sign. Apparently he's deaf and just trying to earn money for his family, although I think he's being a bit generous using the word 'earn'. Me and Mike fob him off with a dollar and receive a business card sized guide to the signing alphabet. What a well kept secret it must be, those suckers taking sign language courses at college obviously missing out on this fast track to bilingualism. Admittedly, my mockery of his methods rings a little hollow since I actually gave him money, but such is the benefit of hindsight. It occurs to me that he goes to particular trouble not to speak, as if being deaf automatically renders you dumb. And since when did deaf mean you couldn't get a job at all?
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