Atlanta Adventures

I arrive in Atlanta, home to Outkast, Ludacris, The Falcons and my good friend Randy Robbins. When booking my flight to Honduras I was first rather peeved at the thought of a 15 hour layover in ATL, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. One could even say that the experience of hanging out with Randy in ATL for a night should have actually cost me a little extra.

I get off the plane, grab my bags, made a phone call to Randy and went and waited on the curb. After about 5 minutes he rolls up in his crisp ’99 Cadillac with some of the wettest tires I’ve seen and a custom plaid sunroof shade that just screams originality. Seeing him pull up in his Cadillac is a good sight and reminds me that dreams do come true. I’ve heard Randy talk about a getting his own Cadillac ever since I’ve known him (about 4 years when we literally ‘ran into’ each other while working at Maggiano’s.)

After getting some initial greetings out of the way, we hop in the car and begin our mini-adventure. Randy explains to me how the 2 main highways in ATL run like the seams of a baseball and meet in the middle. Interesting I think, but where are we going to eat? Randy had 2 places mapped out for us, choice 1: a sushi joint, choice 2: a New Orleans style grill. I am not sure how to politely say that I am not about to eat any sushi that needs to get imported into ATL while I’ve got fresh Seattle Sound sushi at home, but I get my vote out there and we head toward Front Page News (supposedly a great NO grill.)

Randy takes this time to catch me up in his life. This guy is a really solid human being, really involved in his church, strong values, a great personality, and probably the best Colonel Sanders looking broom on his chin out of any of my other friends. Things are going well for him.

I catch him up on my life: travelling super hero, selfless devoter of time to my local orphanage, modeling contracts…. I also think this is a good opportunity to share some of my new knowledge that I had acquired from my new book (230 Things you Thought you Knew But Actually Didn’t.) Turns out Randy didn’t know who was America’s first president or who invented the telephone. You probably don’t either though so let me tell you: Peyton Randolph and Antonio Meucci respectively. Open a book.

We get close to where we are trying to get for dinner and start looking for parking. We see a sign for “complimentary valet” and pull in. Turns out though that the restaurant we wanted to go wasn’t park of the parking HMO and it was $15. After Randy talked with the attendant for a minute to get the scoop on some cheaper alternatives we ended up handing the keys over. I was just about to say something about his sign being false advertising, but then he said that Randy had really deep eyes and I technically could not call him out anymore.

On our way to the restaurant some promoters outside of a new Latin club told us about some drink specials they were running that night and when we asked them where the Front Page News was, the washed out boxer looking promoter pointed us up the street and said, “don’t eat the food.” Randy brought up a really good point that that is probably not the best way to make friends with your neighbors if you were a new club in the area. By the time we sit down it is about 10:10 PM and all they are serving is their Late Night Menu (chicken fingers, jalapeno poppers, etc.) We decide to bail and get a hot tip on a place called Vortex that serves late.

The food at Vortex turns out to be really good. I guess they have won a bunch of awards for their burgers and Randy and I try 2 of their finest. I get a Raging Cajun burger (pepper jack, spicy sauce) and Randy gets an Elvis Burger with a bison patty (peanut butter, bananas, bacon, tomato.) He jokes with the waitress that he thought bison were extinct, she lets out a laugh and says, “nah, they grow them just for us.” Our waitress was a definite character and there were definitely awkward moments in my mind when I wasn’t sure if she was enjoying talking to us or just waiting to jet. Randy broke out his best Michael Jackson food poisoning joke involving a five year old wiener and that seemed to help things. After she left the table I told him my new favorite pickup line, “Do you have any raisins? Then how about a date?”

On the way back to the car Randy ended up recognizing a local rapper and belted out some lyrics with him. When we got back to the car, a different valet came up to us and handed over the keys, Randy started talking with him and ended up going back and forth with some freestyle. Randy also was asked by 2 girls if his name was Scott Johnson, I told them that his name was Scott Tompson. I guess he looked like a guy named Scott that they worked with and they decided they had to have a picture of him.

Rolling down the street Randy brings up trying my pickup line on ATL girls. Randy was up first and he pulled up next to 2 girls walking down the street, “Hey do you have any raisins? Wanna date?” I think her reply was something like, “No, no raisins, but I do have a middle finger for you.”

The pair that he finds for me to talk to is much friendlier and with my perfect delivery, they quickly find themselves laughing. “How do you do it?” Randy asks.

On our way back to Randy’s we get a little lost in the seams of ATL highway system and find ourselves needing to take a toll. Randy decides to give the raisins one more try and belts the following out over 3 lanes of traffic, “You have any raisins? You trying to get a date?” Smile achieved!

It turns out that Randy had just moved into a new house with 2 new roommates. His room had a standard number of corners, 4, but he chose to make a floor-bed for me in the one that had previously been occupied by a ferret. I guess he was excited to test whether he had done a good job of masking all the rodent urine or not. After a good night’s sleep, Randy decides we have time for one last Southern experience before dropping me off at the airport. To the Waffle House!

We roll up to the Waffle House in the Cadillac, stroll into the building and are told to seat ourselves at the jam saturated booth of our choice. Our server comes to greet us and is very pleasant. Her name is Ashley and she is friendly enough to agree to answer some trivia questions. Ashley gets one point for guessing that George Washington was not America’s first president, but she immediately loses that point when her guess for most dangerous animal to man is dinosaur. Most dangerous animal to man.

A ride to the airport later and after a couple of chest bumps I was leaving Atlanta and on my way to Honduras. I know it’s hard to believe that we were able to find so many memories in a time span of less than 12 hours, but hey that’s what you’re going to get when you two playmakers together…. life experiences.

RRR 5/7

Sun, 28 Nov 2004

We made it to day five!!!

I read in my protesting book that if you make it through day five of a protest, then that means you've made it over the hump and everything is downhill from there.... whew!

So today, Sunday November 28, I arrived at my corner at around 5:14 PM after picking up my friend Dan AKA Massachussets Fats. He had offered to go out and support me the previous day and actually called me up and got me motivated to go out to the streets tonight (before he called I had wasted most of my Sunday watching old O.C. episodes and eating Cookies and Cream frozen yogurt.) So I was excited to be mildly productive with my Sunday.

We got to the corner in high spirits and I had given Dan one of my old Red Robin polos so that we could both be in full uniform. The honks were few and far between tonight (I think we only got three) and one ass clown had his girlfriend lean on her horn while he tried to get me to admit that I was fired for smoking too much weed. Despite the low crowd participation Dan and I still managed to have fun by making small talk and deciding that it would be a bad idea to get my hair cut and that I should sport the longness for awhile.

Well about half way through my shift on the street my friend Paige showed up for her shift at work, but she made sure to stop by and say hi before she went in. Immediately after Paige came up to a, some crazy guy with open lacerations covering his face walked by and said something about "argh You got fired from red robin for the truth argh huh?" And I kind of just nodded and went back to talking to Paige because it was obvious this guy was not big fan of showers or being sober. But while he was waiting at the corner for the light to change to cross the street he started talking to Dan. Now I can hear Dan talking to this guy and I can tell that he is uncomfortable and the noble thing for me to do would have been to turn around and help Dan get out of this unwanted conversation, but instead I tell Paige not to move so that I can fake that we're are in a deep discussion so that I won't be bothered. Well this guy "Cuts McGee" starts asking Dan why he's protesting and I hear Dan say, "Well, I'm not the one that you should talk to, my friend here has more of the facts." And this is followed by a not so gentle poking to get my attention, well I knew what Dan was up to and I was not about to get sucked into a conversation with Cuts so I held my ground and continued talking to Paige.

Sometime around then Paige tells me that if I'm nice to the guy maybe he'll give me "Bush." And I was kind of confused, I didn't know what she was talking about. Was "Bush" the new street slang for oral pleasure or did she mean that the smelly ole Cuts might try to offer me a marijuana cigarette if I was nice enough? Well turns out she was referring to neither of these scenarios and actually was suggesting that if I was nice to Cuts, then maybe he'd give me one of his Busch beers that he was carrying around......Well the guy caught his light eventually and ended up leaving but I guess he was trying to get the inside scoop about working at Red Robin from Dan (a person who has never worked at a Red Robin) because he, Cuts, was seriously considering thinking about maybe going in to see if they might be hiring at Red Robin to which Dan's internal reply was "Dude maybe you should think about sealing up some of these gaping flesh wounds on your face first."

Shortly after that and Paige had gone to work and told people that we were protesting, people started gathering at the window to sneak a peek. At one point I turned around at thought I saw a model of the moon rotating around the earth, but it was just our diminutive kitchen manager, Francisco, being dwarfed by our not so diminutive assistant manager, Lori.

The music started acting up after that and the CD wouldn't play any songs after #12 so after I tinkered around with that and Dan let me know he was cold, we called it a night.

Possible slogans:"Sabrina the burger witch" and "King: A Royal Pain" (those being appropriate because our general manager's name is Sabrina King) Any suggestions?

Thanks to Dan!!

Joe

RRR 4/7

Tue, 23 Nov 2004

Today was a very good day. I arrived at my corner at about 6:33 PM on Monday and stayed till 7:54 PM. I got four honks from people driving south, four from people going north, 8 from people going east and 1 from someone going west. I also got three thumbs up (2 from cars and one from a pedestrian.)

Shortly after setting up shop Clint, an employee of Red Robin, came out in his street clothes to shoot the breeze with me for awhile and ask me if I wanted to go to a Health Card class with him the following day.

Then after that I got many more visitors. Becky, the manager for the night, came out to see me, Marissa, the creepy girl down the street, brought her equally creepy roommate to meet me and try and convince to come home with them, and then the highlight fortnight happened.... My friends Nate, Elias, and Andrew stopped by. They (Elias and Nate) came out and did cartwheels and held signs and yelled at cars passing by while Andrew stood in the back with his arms tucked into his T-shirt (I guess he was cold or something and didn't really want to be seen with us since he still works for the Red Robin we were protesting in front of.) Anyway it was great to have a big crowd and that's when the people from the restaurant (employees) came out to kick it, we even had a cameo by freaking MARIETTE GUIDRY!!! It was great, I wish all my days could be that fun. So after Nate, Elias, and Andrew left Clint came back out to stand with me until my CD ran out and we were harmonizing to Oasis' "Wonderwall."

So after I left my corner, I went to work out, and when I got out of the gym I saw that I had a new voice mail. When I listened to it I was elated to hear that it was some guy from Red Robin Inc. telling me that he was calling in response to some complaints he had heard and to give him a call at some 1-800 number. At the time I didn't really think it was weird that he was calling me at 10 at night or that his message was somewhat mumbled, I was just excited that I had got a reaction out of the company. It wasn't until later that evening at our poker game that I realized/found out that it was actually Nate who had called and left a bogus message on my phone. I was slightly crestfallen at the time, but hopefully with a little time I'll be able to get a genuine angry message of my very own.

Shout outs:

I just want to say "what up" to melissa. It was really cool of you to come and make amends after you made a huge Samoan ass out of yourself.

To Carhart and KEXP for sponsoring me in my time of need. For today's best mix of oldies and newbies make sure to tune to KEXP!!

And to Ms. Guidry: Good luck with that new phone, make sure you store me under ASIAN DREAMBOAT.

Joe

RRR 3/7

Sat, 20 Nov 2004

All right burger friends here's the saga of day three:

arrived at my corner of Eastlake and Fuhrman at about 6:23 PM on Friday evening and left at the end of my new CD which was about 7:48 PM. I was working for a good part of the day on my newest addition to my protest, a pretty big banner that was formerly a sign displayed on the roof of the restaurant but now displays my rage. It was made in response to Sabrina's claim that my signs were "too small" and that "nobody could read them."

Javier, one of the bussers at Red Robin, came out to talk to me for a good while and explained to me his plans to go back to Peru for Christmas and work on his 20 acre rice farm there. He doen't know if he'll be able to return. I'm going to miss him. Tim Ausink, one of my old roommates, came and introduced me to Sunny, his girlfriend. I asked him to take a picture, but I left my camera in the car.

Some guy from WASH PIRG came by and noticed my progress in sign size and gave me some advice on what I should do. He told me that I actually needed a permit for my banner because I had to attach a post to it to get it to stand, but that my music was probably okay. He also suggested that I should call a group called H.E.R.E. to gather support for my cause so that it's not just me standing out on the street by myself. I don't think I'll do either.

I think people going south on eastlake are more prone to honking than those going north.

I'm connecting with the young people in the shitty cars and with the older people who have the nicer cars, but still get high.

I can tell when I'm making people uncomfortable. I try my best to keep a disarming smile on me at all times so that people don't think I'm too crazy, but my message does not always get across to them.

Peace to all my Pig Latin speaking peeps,

Joe

RRR 2/7

Hello friends! I am going to continue with the RR saga. There are 7 days total (days 5 & 7 are my favorite.)

"Fri, 12 Nov 2004

Day Two:

I arrived at the corner of Eastlake and Fuhrman tonight at about 7:38. I was afraid that I wasn't going to be able to make it tonight because I had to go up to Alderwood for training on my other job, but luckily it was cut short.

I have to say that day two went a lot better for me and I had a lot more fun. More people came out from the restaurant to find out what I was doing and let me know they are rooting for me. Even the manager that was on duty that night came out to shoot the breeze with me. Rumor around the office is that Sabrina, the GM, DID see me on my first night, only I guess she was talking shit and said that my signs were too small and were not legible, bad move. I guess I'll just have to get a HUGE banner and display that with bigger and bolder letters.... I think some protestin' tunes would be a nice touch too, yeah... next time I'll bring my boombox with some choice tunes, a BIG banner, and some bigger more legible signs. Thanks for the tip Sabrina!

Tonight I stayed out for about 53 minutes because I still wanted to make it to the gym later. I came to the conclusion out there tonight that since I have 4 jobs now, I need to treat this one man protest as a hobby, I need to keep it fun. So any ideas that you have out there to keep it fun would be appreciated. Maybe I should dress up like a big red bird and flail around ......? We'll see.

Shout outs:Mad ups to my boy L-dizzle in Raq-town and his boy Justin, I hope that rash clears up for you J-dawg it's a shame to bench a playa like you just cuz your boys are a little red.

Linda, I didn't mean to call you fat I just meant to say that a girl of your "size/proportions" has NO business wearing spandex... I hope we're cool now.

Until next time little ones, same bat time, same bat channel,

Joe"

Red Robin Reminiscing

Hello friends. As some of you know, I used to work at Red Robin. The story of how I got the job as the yellow-tight wearing mascot is an interesting tale in its own right. That is not the journey I'll be sharing with you today. My 3 years at Red Robin were filled with many, many, many memories (mostly pleasant,) however my departure from that company was less than sweet. I came across some old emails of that experience and thought that I would share.

"On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Joseph Mangan wrote:

So today was the first day of the big one man protest against Red Robin, so I'd thought I'd try and keep you guys posted on the progress.

For those of you who don't know, I don't work at Red Robin anymore because I got fired. Long story short, ever since we got our new General Manager (about a year ago) we've been butting heads and work has not been the fun eutopia it once used to be. On the day I got fired I came in for my shift that I was scheduled for and then Sabrina (the GM) sat me down in the middle of the restaurant to let me know that she was going to be suspending me for three shifts. Her reason for this was because I did not RSG (a thing that is done at Red Robin before our shifts where we go in the back and look over what we are currently focusing on) with a guy named Mike during my shift. The thing is we're supposed to RSG before our shift so that we know what's up, but since we haven't been doing that with a trainer in awhile, I've just been doing it on my own after I clock in. Well anyway I was in the middle of my shift and Mike tells me to go in the back and RSG with him, and I don't for three reasons:

1. I don't really like the guy (think half Snidely Whiplash and half Jar Jar Binks.) Total annoying, snake in the grass, turd burglar.

2. I had already done it. I think the focus that day was 30 second greets.

3. And I was in the middle of getting beverages for my guests.

Well anyway he ends up telling the GM that I refused to go in the back with him and so this is why we were now having this little talk in the middle of the restaurant. So when Sabrina lays out her plan for me, naturally I'm a little upset because I felt like I took care of my shit and if I had been in the back RSGing I would have been neglecting my tables and we would've then been having a conversation about how I need to not neglect my tables. (anyone that knows about the crazy metrics that RR servers are judged on understands)So at the end of her speel she tells me that I'm suspended for three shifts and asks, "So do you agree what you did to Mike was disrespectful?" And of course I said "No" because at Red Robin we are supposed to have an "open door" policy where we are supposed to feel safe saying whatever we want without fear of retaliation, but I guess they changed that rule sometime while I was out because right after I said that she told me that I was fired. So in my mind I ended getting suspended for not RSGing with Mike, but FIRED for telling her my honest opinion. So that's when I decided to stage my one man protest.

The timing of the protest to start today was strategic because tonight was the night of our all team party, so the restaurant was filled with people from other Red Robins who were filling in. It was my hope that they'd see me protesting and then take it back to their restaurants that everything was not OK at the University Red Robin. So I get there all pumped to start protesting, pull up in the Pathfinder at around 5:58 pull out my signs, and am on my corner by 6:00. Within one minute of being out there the first person to respond was some old man in a white car that managed to both honk and flip me off at the same time he was turning a corner. After that though things picked up and people were honking and giving me thumbs up instead of flipping me the bird. I had a couple of people ask why Red Robin was unfair? and it took me awhile to figure out how to explain my plight to the common man, but by the fourth person I had a pretty good version of the story down. My friend Eli even stopped by to show his support and stood out there with me for a good 9 minutes. And at around 7:00 Lori, one of the managers, drives up to the restaurant, sees me, and makes sure to walk on the complete opposite side of the street as she entered. But by 7:30 I was getting pretty cold because I didn't bring a jacket and was only wearing a Red Robin polo team member shirt. So as I started to get the sniffles I figured I call an end to day one and pack it up so that I can be back on the street on Friday.

It wasn't the big media event that I had hoped for and none of the 4 tv stations I called actually showed up, but it was just day one. So here's the start of the great Red Robin Protest and I knew you'd all want some sort of documentation of it. Whenever you drive by someone holding up a sign, just give them a little honk, it's not too much from you but it sure makes being out there a lot more bearable.

I'll be sure and keep all of you posted as my uphill battle progresses."

Let me know if you want me to post how day 2 went....

Memory Lane....

The year was 2000. The city Seattle. I was a new college freshman at the University of Washington and living with 3 people that I knew from high school in a 2 bedroom apartment. Being an only child for such a large part of my life, living with 3 other people was definitely a new adventure. From time to time memories of that year of my life flash through my head and it is one of these memories that I thought I would share today.

We moved into a fairly new apartment complex. The location was really close to the University and as a result there were several college students in our building/floor. Since all of us were from Yakima, it was only natural that our apartment became the social center of our building. People were constantly stopping by to check in and see what we were up to. Us country boys gots mad social skills yo!

On one balmy Seattle evening my 3 roommates and I were sitting around our living room wondering where the night was going to take us. We heard a knock on the door and were glad to see our neighbor/friend, Emad. Emad was half Persian Prince and half hood hustler. He not only showed us how to dress fly and adjust our plumage to attract the hottest birds, but he also showed us how to scam department stores into giving you free Xboxes with no receipt. He was kind of our hero. He stopped by our place often, so when he knocked on our door, asked what we were up to and headed to the bathroom, we did not think twice about it.

So while we continued to debate what mischief we would be up to that night, Zac (one of the roomies) asked us a question, "Hey have you guys been using my mouthwash?"

The three of us looked at each other a little confused... "No Zac, none of us have been using your mouthwash."

Well that answer was not good enough for him, "Well I know that someone in here has been using my mouthwash because I've been monitoring the levels and it has definitely been going down quicker than I have been throwing it back."

The three of us continued looking at each other and wondered how hard times must be for Zac (whose father was a doctor and mom was a nurse) that he would be making such a fuss over a $2.99 bottle of mouth wash.

Nobody fessed up, which led Zac to pull out his big card, "Well, I've got a surprise for whoever has been using my mouthwash. I peed in it about 3 weeks ago so you have been rinsing your mouth out with my urine."

All of us erupted and were frantically trying to read each other's faces to try and get a read on the guy that had been swishing and gargling with Zac's pee. It was at about this time that Emad came out of the bathroom, wiped his mouth and asked, "Did you guys say something about the mouthwash in the bathroom?"

It turned out that Emad had made prepping himself in our bathroom before going out part of his routine for the last couple of months. And you guessed it... rinsing out his mouth was the last step of his ritual. Needless to say, he was not pleased to hear why we were all laughing so hard. The look of betrayal/confusion/disgust that crossed his face could be described as the look someone's face would have if they had walked in on their parents and then been caught in a perma-sneeze. Dry heaves could be heard shortly after Zac's big reveal.

That is not the best part though. After Emad and Zac talked out their differences and Emad was made to understand the importance of asking before putting things in his mouth, Zac had another reveal. Apparently after Zac peed in his own mouthwash, he continued to use it himself!

This latest detail brought the apartment into a raucous laughter and "no you didn'ts" that is only heard when Maury says the following phrase, "D-kwon, you are NOT the father."

Zac's "if it's yours it's sterile" argument did not cut it.

Ahhh, memories...

Have you ever?

Have you ever gone to the gym, had a workout, hit the showers, and then realized that you forgot your towel in the car? You then are faced with that difficult decision of either putting on clothes wet or using the hand dryer by the sinks in a way that they were not designed for (maybe even getting two of them going at once and contorting your body to be as air efficient as possible?(think skin-sail)) You feel all right about yourself until you sense the judging glances of the people that remembered their towels and are trying to get their shave on.

Yeah, me either.

My New Boss

I must be very clear about this. The following lines after this statement are not misguided fabrications, they are solid fact.

This is my new boss at Expedia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og0LWQVIpug. He is riding shotgun and wearing sunglasses. Or with a doo rag: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMGUFbsU9oY.

Butch Mosby is apparently one of the founding members of a European rap group called Black Attack.

My new job is incredible.

I had a dream

Last night....

It was me and Justin Timberlake playing the part of acting rivals (not too far fetched yet right?)

We were on a bus that was full of a boy's choir that was dressed in white shirts and blue jeans. The choir was travelling around Europe and Justin and I would run into them occasionally during our filming adventures. Who was in charge of the choir you ask? Faizon Love (he's on the left.) I think I'm remembering him as the boss at Gimbel's on Elf. Any way, I think there was an element of Amazing Race thrown in there as well because I remember Justin and I racing against each other and at times needing to stowaway on the bus. Faizon would give us a hard time. He was holding a clipboard.

What does it all mean?

Mystery Solved

Hello friends! I have made a very important discovery and thought I would share.

I recently returned from a trip to Australia. This blog is not about that trip though. This blog is about the misery that plagued me when I returned to the best time zone in the world, the PST!

I have returned from internation travel before, but for some reason I could not get back into the swing of things and my ability to throw down Zs West Coast style was severly inhibited. I found myself being wide awake until 5 AM and waking up around 2 in the afternoon. Nothing was working; food comas, unisom, other sleep inducing methods, nada. I was convinced that I was going to have to request to work nights at my new job, but then I stumbled upon the cure for what ailed me one night. I was up late at night reading up on the evils of sunlight when I decided to have a beer. 1 beer turned into 4 and in about an hour and a half I felt a sensation sweep over my body that made my soul jumpy for joy. I was drowsy! I repeated this ritual for the next several nights and before I knew it I was falling asleep and passing "in" to dreamland by 9 PM.

More people should know about this. Spread the word. Alcohol is a magical elixir that not only makes you extremely intelligent and charming in social situations, but it ALSO rocks you gently to sleep when the Sandman decides to sit on his ass for week.

I am up to 5 beers a night, but I can honestly say that booze saved my life.

Let's Talk About.... MOMM (Male on Male Massage)

Hello world. This story begins with a bang! Literally, a car banged into me on the 520 E on the first of February. It was this event that brought me to look for a doctor close to work. My friend, Joel, made a recommendation and I found myself calling Dr Sadri. Joel said that she was "very thorough." When I walked into the office, I must admit that I was very caught off guard. Walking into the waiting room, I could have sworn that I had accidentally crossed some sort of teleport and entered a waiting room in Eastern Europe. Everybody was speaking a different language from Iranian to Russian and I was pretty confident that I was the only "Joe" they had seen since G.I. Joe was taken off the air. After my examination Dr. Sadri asked if I would prefer physical therapy or massage therapy. Seemed like a no-brainer to me, "Massage therapy please." "Great," she replied "I will sign you up with Igor. He is the best, some people pay $150 an hour to be with him. You are very lucky." Lucky. Funny how people have different definitions to the same word.

First day of massage therapy. Enter Igor. I could tell we were going to get along great straight from his icy, “You wait there. 5 minute.” I made my way to the lobby and somehow managed to develop the hiccups in the 8 minutes he made me wait. No worries, I was convinced this would be a funny story that Igor would talk about during his best man speech at my wedding, “Joe good guy, you know. He come to see me, you know. Could not say what wrong with him without jumping like little Slovakian frog, you know.”

He walks me back to his room, asks me to tell him what brings me to see him and asks me to give him the details of my accident. After I told him about my rear end, he instructed me to strip down to my boxers and wait for him under a sheet and that he would be back to take care of me in 2 minutes. I got down to my boxers and realized that due to my incredible skill to shed my clothing, I had some time to kill (on a side note I have recently been trying to do 150 pushups a day) and I figured that this would be a good time to bust out a quick set of 25. Around 18 I thought about what kind of first impression I would make with Igor if he came in and saw me doing pushups in my boxers before I nestled into my sheet cocoon. How would I explain that? "Relax Igor, just trying to make sure I'm as toned as I can be for you before you oil me up." Thank goodness that his time quotes had not become more accurate and we did not have to cross that bridge.

He enters the room, as stoic as a domino, and we get to work. I lay on my stomach and he goes to town on my back. The hiccups end up disappearing and as odd as it may seem, we end up striking up quite the conversation. It turns out that Igor was born in Kazakhstan and moved to Belarus when he was pretty young. I asked him what he thought about the Borat movie and he did not seemed very bothered by it. He said that it mostly caused an uproar with the older population of Kazakhstan, but that he understood that it was meant to be a joke (even though he did not find it to be very funny from a comedy standpoint.) Apparently Igor was also a history/geography buff because he started spewing out dates and directions like nobody's business. Our one difference came when he started talking about the Berlin Wall. All throughout school I've learned that the Berlin wall came down in 1989, Igor disagreed and said that it actually came down in 1990. I did some research when I got home and I encourage others to do the same to come to their own conclusion. We quickly found ourselves gabbing away like two squirrels arguing over a nut. When he was done with my back he asked me to roll over and he would work on my chest/neck. I rolled over and was relieved to see that I wasn't doing a Zoolander impression (you never know...) He finished what he needed to do on my front side and we were done with our 55 minute journey. I was very, very sore and could barely get up off the table. I got dressed, shook Igor's hand and made my way home and thought about my newest adventure.

All in all, I was glad that I let Igor manhandle me. He said that his family has had a special healing power passed down through the generations and I was convinced. I'm glad that he dropped his surly demeanor and became the Chatty Cathy that I have grown to love and I look forward to seeing him twice a week for the next three weeks. Thank goodness for insurance.

I'll Give it a Whirl

I'll start this off with an admission: I am a lemming. Me posting a blog is not cutting edge. I'm definitely not a trend setter and make no claims of being original. But really, are there any thoughts left in the world that haven't been thought or expressed before?

My two inspirations to take on this task are Ryan "Viking Warrior" O'Connor (http://snocon.blogspot.com/) and Christopher "Dog Deserter" Lipe (http://livethelipestyle.blogspot.com/) I consider both of these guys to be extremely intelligent and creative and the intrigue that is sparked when I read their musings is infectious. Cue Prodigy's "Firestarter."

Naturally many questions race through one's mind when starting a blog: Who is actually going to read this? How deep into the rabbit hole of my brain should I take people? How many times a day should I check for comments? You know, the usual doubts/delusions of grandeur that come when you expose a part of yourself to the world. I think that the direction that you take with a blog is very critical and is shaped with your first few posts. Should I focus my thoughts and pump out pure comedy, should I treat this like a diary and type up uncensored tales of my daily grind, or tackle serious social issues? Let's try a potpourri approach and see what happens!

I'm not sure that I will even come close to the entertainment value that Tucker Max brings to the www (tuckermax.com) but we can give it a whirl.