Over thanksgiving weekend I went to Cincinnati to visit my recently relocated brother, Jason. Here’s a few stories from my time in the jewel of the mid-west.

Cincinnati is not somewhere I ever really dreamed of going, but Jason is there and he had a good trip planned. Fly in on Thursday. Have a small Thanksgiving dinner and campfire with his stellar employees on Friday. Learn to blow glass in his shop on Saturday. Bengals vs. Browns game on Sunday. Fly home to Phoenix on Monday.

Jason lives in a super nice house in the middle of a crack neighborhood. Which is what every neighborhood seems to be like in Cincinnati. Every street was super nice house, crack house, crack house, super nice house, crack house. The house is owned by the owner of his glass shop, who is apparently a hoarder and flamboyant homosexual. But all the hoarding was done offsite in random warehouses around the city, so the house is super nice.

The post-Thanksgiving dinner and campfire was a good time. Although, anytime I’m around a group of people that work together, I spend most of my conversational skills trying to get people to talk about shit other than work. And half my conversation skills amount to a level 1 or 2, which raised up to about a 5 or 6 when I had a few drinks, then got back to a 0 or 1 when the slurring started.

On Saturday, I woke up with a wicked hangover. Jason informed me that nothing cures a hangover like working in a glass shop. He was right, in the sense that I sweated so much I barely noticed I was alive. Learning to make some glass cups and paperweights was a really awesome experience. I have a picture of Jason turning some glass in the furnace, but there are tons of those everywhere. So, I won’t even bother. Maybe I will get around to drawing an artist’s rendition of me turning glass.

That night, Jason and some of his coworkers and I went to a bar or three. Somewhere along the way we were playing billiards and around the third game is when things get a little fuzzy. There was a stranger who looked like he was in the band Nickleback. He kept trying to challenge us to “play for the table.” Probably because we were terrible at pool and were taking forever to leave the table. Eventually, Nickleback convinced us to play against him for the table. After he won, things were getting really fuzzy, but now we could at least sit at a table on the patio. A few more drinks and we decided it was time to go, but I had one more thing to do. I figured maybe I should go apologize to Nickleback, in case I had been rude in my drunkeness. On my way to the billiards table, I saw that Nickleback and his friend had their backs turned. I changed gears and grabbed the 3 ball off the table. I didn’t feel like apologizing anymore.

The next morning, I was double hungover. But we had a football game to attend. Jason told me we would be getting the tickets from his boss. But as the morning continued, the plan unfolded into us going with one of Jason’s less intelligent employees. Jason was excited for me to meet this guy, because of his lack of mental prowess. The kid was nice, but his dad came. Who was awkwardly insulting to his kid the entire game. Additionally, he kept pointing out that I am a Browns fan and trying to talk shit about that. I had to keep reminding him, that the reason I am a Browns fan, is to avoid just such a conversation. Because I really just plain don’t care. The tickets were awesome and we had a gift card that could be used at the bar. I had a couple whiskey cokes, which unfortunately made me uncomfortably drunk.

Jason had this neighbor who was a tiny, old black dude. According to Jason he just sat on his front porch drinking all day. When he sees someone smoking crack down on the corner he walks down and takes a few hits. Then he returns to his porch and keeps drinking. I looked at that and thought “man, that… is… so… awesome!” In retrospect, I shouldn’t have felt that way. Between this and being uncomfortably drunk at the football game, made me think I should stop drinking for a while.

I lasted about 6 days and 23 hours. But I do need to get my life together. Seriously.

When I was in high school, my friend The Hefe, was eating at Del Taco when a suspiciously hot and tall female drops a note on his table before walking out. According to the The Hefe, he looked at the note which read something like “Hey you’re cute. Call me” with a phone number. He looked up at the woman in the parking lot and when she turned he saw a giant Adam’s apple. He crumbled the note up and dropped it on the ground. I like to add a little ending to that story where the alleged she-male starts crying and calling him a brute. It’s a pretty touching tale of surprise and tragedy with an M Night Shymalan ending. Ticked off trannies with knives is not like this story.

TOTWK (secret of the ooze) begins with a crew of drag queens being catty and talking about different dudes they are eating and Mexican food they are banging. One of the he-shes, Bubbles, shows up with a black eye and the house mom has to help her with some makeup and a steak before she can go on stage. The stage show happens, and this is the first point Bob said “So… those aren’t girls?”

The Ed Wood crew goes to the bar after their intense dance number. Here they are served by a waitress named Helluva Bottom Carter. Get it? Two of the X amount of hermaphrodites convince our main tranny, Bubbles, to go to an after party for a double dose of dick. The after party is at a shitty warehouse where despite Bubble’s apprehension they walk right into a trap where our new villain, Boner is waiting to ambush them. Here’s the thing about boner. He’s clearly Bill Paxton.

Which means Bill Paxton has been killed by an Alien, a Predator, a Terminator and a Ticked off Tranny with a Knife (spoiler alert).

Trannies!? Game over man! Game over!

So, Boner Paxton kills all of the lady-boys in various methods including baseball bats and knives. And the scene fades to black.

Bubbles wakes up in a hospital with 2 of the 5 lopitoffofmes discussing how Bubbles is in a coma and what a tragedy it was. Like it was a terrible, supernatural dream that a group of people experienced and have now tried to forget about, except a  couple people survived and have now decided to never speak of again. This is where I have a problem. They should have picked terrible forshadowing dream or horrible tragedy that the cops can’t help them. The only explanation then becomes either the film takes place in Detroit with the cops from Hobo with a Shotgun (a surprisingly likely scenario) or Boner Paxton is the most brilliant, sexually confused rapist in the world. Instead, they explain nothing and hate Bill Paxton. How do you hate Bill Paxton? He’s so dreamy.

Even dreamier in the Canadian tuxedo

Bubbles gets patched up by Dr. Phil Latio and his nurse Connie Lingus (get it?) and Bubbles is ready to get back on stage. Only now s/he’s having flashbacks to the traumatic night which may or may not have happened.

Boner Paxton decides to start creeping around the drag shows again, to prove to everyone that he is definitely not into the cock. When Bubbles sees him s/he has a super flashback and decides that enough is enough. This is possibly the weirdest part of the movie, when Bubbles and the other Eddie-Murphy-chaperones go martial arts training in the forest with the drag club owner, Fergus. It becomes a bizarre spoof of Kill Bill with more gay jokes.

After the short training montage the best-of-both-worlds crew gears up, mostly in makeup (this is the second time, Bob asked “so… you’re telling me those are dudes?”) and stake out Bubble’s house. Boner shows up and our transgender heroes use every manner of sharp object to kill Boner and his gang.

It had every element of a Michael Bay movie sans the explosions. The story would have been ridiculously dark if it hadn’t been filmed on a VHS camera and been filled with bad she-dick jokes. I suppose there was some hidden message about beauty on the inside or something… The whole movie was surprisingly forgettable, that could be the booze’s fault. There weren’t any great jokes, they had to use cheap camera tricks for kill shots and the drag show parts seemed forced. But I feel bad, because the movie was clearly someone’s little pet project, I just don’t understand why. I guess it makes about as much sense as a Total Recall remake starring Colin Ferrel.

And really, there should have been some nudity. Those fem-dudes paid a lot of money for perfect tits they should show them off. No homo.

I’ve even found myself announcing it to people ranging from friends to distant acquaintances. The first reaction I usually get is “Please, take a step back; you are in my bubble” then I get, “I didn’t know you write.” The reason for which is directly related to the second question that is asked: “What’s it about?”

CHUD stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. Most of Earth’s population has vanished and turned into the CHUD creatures while the rest of humanity stands on the brink of extinction. Its a post apocalyptic drama following a few of the survivors and their battle with CHUDs and other humans. Like a zombie story, except I created my own creature.

Everytime I describe it, I realize how much of a fucking tool I sound like. I’m an out of shape nerd with long hair and a beard that wrote a sci-fi novel about post-apocalypse America. As if that wasn’t enough, I went ahead and created my own creature since zombies weren’t good enough to fill the expanses of my vast and imaginative drama. I should have just written a reference book for the physics of Star Trek and signed my declaration of celibacy.

To me, the book is more than that. It’s about social motivations and the way we protaganize who we want with single words. Or at least that’s what I’ve told myself. I usually don’t say this part, because the person I’m describing my book to lost interest when I said “book.”

People have seemed to ask “So, when do I get to read it?” or “What happens with the book next?” or “Why won’t you just take the duct tape off and let me go? I promise I won’t go to the police.” The answer to all three is editing. Which is a huge pain in the ass and even less interesting to talk about than my plot synopsis.

But for this one moment, I get to brag to myself and the internet. I completed the first step of something. I feel like it is a gimpy, metal leg brace first step. But it’s still pretty metal.

This trailer was fan made that won a contest for Grindhouse, the glorious set of movies made by Rodriguez and Tarantino. Before you start handing out academy awards based on that trailer alone and the title, read the review over at Bob’s bad movie blog. http://bobsbadmovieblog.wordpress.com/

The movie starts with the hobo riding the train and doing hobo like things. It’s basically the true story of the beginning of Ben Affleck’s career. He has everything; a harmonica, a stick with a bundle tied to the end and those crazy hobo eyes. The hobo rides into Detro… I mean, Helltown. Helltown has really improved since Eminem left, the streets are only slightly filled with trash, the town is run by a crime lord named Drake and the citizens live in fear. The hobo watches Ricky from Trailer park boys get decapitated while his neck is sticking out of a manhole through the cover, not by accident. After that, I have a new fear of manhole covers. This is when our hero is at his lowest. He has no home, no job, no money and he is in a strange new town where Canadians are decapitated at random

After the hobo watches those horrors unfold, he finds a pawn shop and a beautiful dream emerges. He dreams of mowing people’s lawns and living a peaceful life on well tendered grass. To make money, he tries panhandling across the street from Drake’s evil hideout. When he sees that some evil gutter punks are harassing other hobos and taking them into Drake’s bar, he equips ‘Sock Full o’ Quarters’ (8.76 DPS 8 SPD DUR 3/16) and enters the bar after them. Inside, he sees Drake and his two evil sons, Ivan and Slick, torturing hobos for fun. He also notices the hooker with the heart of gold, Abby, about to enter into non-marital relationships with Ivan. And she was probably going to get murdered. The hobo uses Sock Full o’ Quarters, it’s super effective. The hobo takes Ivan to the cops, where he learns the cops are in on the corrupt evilness that runs Detroi… I mean Helltown. They carve “SCUM” into the hobo’s chest and dump him in the trash can. This is when our hero is at his lowest. He has no home, no money and he now has some pretty sweet scars on his chest.

The hobo finds Abby, who uses her gypsy healing powers of whiskey to cure his cuts. Rutger Haur shines in this role as he somehow managed to learn hobo language and go on a crazy rant about bears. Anyway, the hobo gets money by chewing glass for the bum fights guy. Then takes the money to the pawn shop to buy the lawnmower (I hate the way both of the last two sentences are structured, but that’s the best way I can sum up). The pawn shop falls under attack from robbers, threatening to kill a woman and child. The hobo sacrifices his dreams of a lawnmower for the easily accessible and fully loaded shotgun hanging from the wall. After killing the robbers, he goes on a full on murder boner kill spree; killing pimps, drug dealers and pedphilic santa claus. The hobo starts getting media attention and Drake wants to set an example. So, he sends Ivan and Slick to burn a busload of kids. This sends a message to the residents of De… Helltown to kill all hobos on sight. This is when our hero is at his lowest. He has no home, no money and his hobo brethren are being killed in the street. Its a good old fashioned hobolocaust.

The hobo tries to leave town with Abby, but Ivan and Slick show up to hack saw some heads off. After the epic battle, Abby is badly wounded and the hobo has to take her to the hospital. Meanwhile, Drake has summoned The Plague (which are a Nazi version of Daft Punk minus the techno). The Plague shows up and kicks the hobo’s ass into a coffin that they take with them to their lair. This is when our hero is at his lowest. He has no home, no money and he has been apprehended by some evil robot fuckers.

I won’t tell you the epic conclusion. Watch this movie. It is fucking ridiculous. If you’d like to kill your guts (and a few brain cells) play the drinking game too.

Drink everytime

• Someone dies
• Someone says “hobo” or “homeless”
• A shotgun is cocked

Portal is the epic tale of being a human lab rat working your way through puzzles for the amusement of Aperture labs. The main character has a portal gun which can fire a blue portal and an orange portal on any white surface in the rooms. When you walk into the blue portal you come out the orange portal and vice versa. You have to use the portals get to parts of the rooms that would be unreachable by anyone other than spiderman or possibly an orangutan mixed with Lebron James. There’s puzzles that involve getting a weighted companion cube from an unreachable area to a reachable area, or using a set of portals to get behind some murderous auto turrets. The physics that become involved with the use of portals can occasionally go into the ridiculous, which is fun, but can be dangerous. Being drunk while playing late at night can cause some serious nausea and frankly, nightmares. And don’t bother trying to play the co-op mode with someone with severe ADD (or its hyperactive cousing ADHD). Like The Hefe.

The game seems pretty simple at first glance. Its the little details that the devs added that push the game from a simple puzzle game to an epic tale of betrayal, love and robots (and robot love betrayal). The story advances itself by putting the player in a speechless observer’s point moving through the world and gathering the information as it is presented. Which is the best type of story telling. A main character with no voice and personality reflects the person playing the game, who has no friends and no social skills to give the ability to speak. The best games truly represent this: Grand Theft Auto 3, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World. The main characters never speak and would actually have nothing better to do (except attend local science fairs and plumb).

Getting back to Portal 2. The game picks up where Portal 1 left off (go figure). The main joke through Portal 1 was the promise that at the end of the tests you would be enjoying cake and possibly confetti. Begin Portal 2 and there is no cake. Just a destroyed lab and a robot voiced by Stephen Merchant trying to help you navigate through the rubble. You put the new British robot in place of the old British robot (GladOs) just in time for shit to get real. Stay with me here, because this is where my writing gets about six vodkas deep and a bit retarded. GladOs points out how retarded of a move that is while Merchant robot dumps the main character into a part of the lab that hasn’t been touched since the 60′s. No really, you get dumped to a straight up Dr. Thadeus Venture laboratory. All of which is narrated over a prerecorded loudspeaker by JK Simmons. All of which ends with a final battle against a robot with a British accent. Really, its how every story should end ever… Wesley.

Honestly, there’s no way to describe how good this game is until you’ve played it and popped a big fat rubbery one for it. It has everything, robots, partial nudity, portal technology, and has even spawned portal porn. The main glaring problem it is missing is replayability. Which is okay for me because I have such ridiculous AD – hey let’s go ride bikes.

Most of the other regulars sat around the bar. A few old men with a few teeth and less brain cells, the woman in the electric wheelchair that had shit her pants and the couples that found the Rail so romantic. Angie was working the bar. She had a pretty face, but a lazy eye from when someone had smacked her too many times. On a quiet night like this, with the regulars, Angie and good company, the Rail felt more like home than home ever could.

A drunk walked in from the street. He was in his thirties, white with Asian symbol neck tattoos. He stumbled in with the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach. That’s when you lean back and stare at your own feet, as though they could betray you at any moment and leave you in the gutter. You concentrate on them, with those bastard hands far away at your sides. You think “left foot. Right foot. Rinse. Repeat.” He was a pro; he made it up to the bar and took a deep breath.

“Budweiser, please!” He yelled to Angie. She looked at him for a moment, but was a good bartender and didn’t hesitate to grab him a beer. “Thank you much.” He said. The drunk breathed heavy and took a frothy drink. I was at the table directly behind him and planned my escape route if he decided to start swinging punches; or worse yet, started vomiting.

The drunk didn’t puke though. Instead, he set his beer down and approached the woman in the electric wheelchair. There were some loud noises that came from his mouth at the lady in the wheelchair, but I didn’t pay much attention.

A few minutes later the drunk was done with the wheelchair lady and had stumbled over to our table. “Hey there, guys.” He said while wobbling.

“How’s it going man?” I asked.

“She doesn’t know, man.” The drunk replied.

“What?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“Who doesn’t know?” I was all of a sudden very interested.

“She.” He said and pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. “She doesn’t know, man. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. SHE DOESN’T KNOW!”

“Alright man. Don’t forget about your drink.” I said and pointed to his beer at the bar. The drunk turned to the bar and stumbled bow legged back to it.

He mumbled to the patrons next to him for a few minutes. Then pointed at them “SHOTS!” he yelled.

“No thanks. We have to drive in a few minutes.” The couple replied.

He grumbled and pointed at me. “SHOTS!” he yelled.

“Sorry man, someone’s got to drive the school bus later.” I said and shook my head.

He took a minute to process whether or not I had been drinking before mentioning driving the school bus. Then, he determined those thoughts weren’t worth the few brain cells that he was functioning on and pointed at Kevin. “SHOTS!” he yelled.

“Aw no, man. I’ve got to work in the morning.” Kevin said.

“Work?” The drunk yelled. “Let me tell you what I do.” He put one hand up in a vertical post above his other hand. “I get up. Then, I go to the bar and do this.” He slapped his vertical hand down against his arm in a loud smack. “All the time. It’s the best life ever.” I smiled with a touch of envy.

He turned back to Angie. “Jaeger!” he shouted.

“No. I think you’ve overstayed your welcome.” Angie said. I wasn’t sure if the boot this man was receiving would result in violence. I pushed my chair back from where he stood and prepared for anything. “Finish your beer right now and leave. Or set it on the bar and leave.”

The drunk focused every muscle in his head. Every synapse in his brain was firing on all cylinders. “I… think … I should… leave this here.” He said and set the half full beer on the mat.

He turned to the front door and put his left foot forward, then his right foot. His feet did not betray him and he stumbled out back into the wild Phoenix landscape.

Here’s some history that I made up about the islands. They were discovered by Captain Cook, who was the son of a pirate and a viking. Which made him one of the deadliest men on the sea. He battled through a hurricane that lasted over 14 years to make it from Hawaii to the islands. After the hurricane he tamed the mighty Kraken and used it to conquer the people of the Cook Islands. He gave them a hybrid language of Polynesian and Klingon and let them go about their business. The islanders seemed pretty happy until the Christians showed up a few years after that and guilted everyone into liking their god. A few years later and I had arrived to save their souls.

The main island, Rarotonga, was amazingly nestled in a barrier reef. Which provided beautiful beaches and better lagoon water. The water was a constant 80 degrees while the outside air fluctuated from 60 to 90 degrees. So, yes, it kicked ass to go swimming and sit on the beach.

Our hostel was right on the Southeast beach of the island known as Muri beach. We were able to walk out the door of our room and go straight to the above mentioned beautiful beach. The hostel had about 15 people staying in it. A handful of Germans, a couple racist Brits, some kiwis (that’s New Zealander, but its not racist) and an Aussie. They were good people that were pretty fun to party with. But I think they were kind of scared of the two brown Americans that were constantly drinking. I did have to warn the racist Brit not to tread on me. In fact, my exact words were “Don’t you fucking dare tread on me. I will go America all over your ass!”

Right next to our hostel on the beach was the office for Koka Lagoon Cruises. A few locals worked there taking people on boat tours around the lagoon to a smaller island and some snorkeling. We weren’t really sold on the cruise thing until the locals came around one night for some drinking with all the hostel visitors. Although, it was pretty evident it was less “drink with the tourists” and more “let’s try to bang the tourists.” It worked for at least one of the locals named Pau Pau (sp?). One morning no one could find the Aussie that was staying at the hostel. Until she rolled up on the back of Pau Pau’s scooter. In her words “the scooter ride of shame.”

One of the days, while walking out of the town we came across a spray painted sign nailed to a coconut tree. Just the two simple words – Beach Bar. The greatest things that could ever be combined. Throw in tacos and you will never leave. We walked down the dirt path to the spot where the beach bar was supposed to be. It was a few planks of plywood covered in tarp with a few more planks of plywood for a canopy. A single gentleman sat eating a bread sandwich (that’s two pieces of bread with bread in the middle). He was a heavier set local man, with about 5 teeth. He didn’t speak much English but had a fairly terrifying laugh. He showed us to the beach and kept repeating something to the effect of “You hide your stuff while you swim. Or someone come by and take it.” Then started laughing again. We smiled and nodded until he laughed his way back up to the plywood shack. Probably to go get the chainsaw and gimp mask. We walked down the beach a little ways and snuck through someone’s backyard to get back to the road and away from whatever that was. Total Macaluso move.

Artist's representation

The next day we rented a couple bikes and went around the entire island. Yeah, I biked about 25 miles, no big deal. Okay, they were electric motor bikes, which are awesome. They are like half assed exercise for the lazy man. And really, what do I look like? A guy that’s not lazy? I’m honestly considering buying one of these electric bikes. Maybe I could find a BMX one and get back into racing. Anyway, the ride around the island was pretty rad, because we could stop at a beach, go swimming, decide that beach wasn’t beautiful enough and move on a more beautifuller beach. Rinse. Repeat.

One of the bummers of the island was the restaurants and bars. The locals didn’t really go out to them, so there weren’t any real local spots. The food was all geared toward tourists, especially Kiwis (still not racist). So, a lot of burgers and fish n chips that were grossly overpriced. The bars were priced slightly better, but almost every one of the bartenders used a jig or similar measuring device to make cocktails. The best bars we went to were the Cook Island fishing club and the Roadhouse.

The Cook Islands were a really beautiful getaway for the week I went. My next trip I think I will go somewhere with more things to do besides be a beach bum. I’m certainly not complaining about being lazy for a week. But I like my vacations to have a little more bullshit to break up the bullshit.

We wandered around downtown looking for food for a couple of hours until our buzz had run out and we still didn’t have food. We went back to the 107 bar and had another drink while we considered our options. Then we went across the street and ate at the ramen noodle bar right there. The noodle bar was really good and I was able to counter act the walk off buzz with a bottle of sake.

After once again returning to the 107 bar, we learned of a pop up drive in movie event happening at a parking garage down the street. This week they were showing Grandma’s Boy and more importantly, it was BYOB. I love Grandma’s Boy, because every stereotype they make about working at a QA office is entirely true. Except for the part where they make a suggestion to the developer and he actually takes it seriously. We grabbed a couple drinks from a local fancy pants wine shop and walked down to the parking garage. It was exactly as advertised, great movie, lots of people drinking and smoking pot and an overall good time. By the end of the movie I was pretty shit-house and went back to the hotel to crash out.

The next day we went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I’d been there once before on a long road trip with an old friend. I remember it being fucking huge and full of classic fine art. This time we went specifically for an exhibit of Tim Burton’s art. It cost extra to get into that exhibit but we paid it and waited in line. This sorority girl and her daytime one date were behind us in line. The girl talked so fucking much, so fucking loud. Her secondary-dick-hole flapped so much that at the end of every sentence she literally gasped for air as though she had been drowning. Which was an appropriate reaction for her, because I definitely wanted to hold her head under water. On a few occasions, I wanted to turn to the guy and say “No pussy is worth that.”

After what seemed like days, we finally got into the exhibit. The sorority girl and her sentient penis walked in to the first room and walked out. The exhibit was crazy packed, but totally worth it. All kinds of sketches from Burton’s early years. All the way to all of his input on all of his movies. The costumes from Batman and Edward scissorhands were there. Along with a slew of animation figures from Nightmare Before Xmas. The whole thing was one of the coolest exhibits I’ve seen this year. It really showed how involved Burton was in the movies that he made that were really good. Movies like Planet of the apes had a smaller amount of pieces. If you get the chance and you’re around LA, definitely go to this exhibit.

The next day, I was off to the island.