“Life is Good.” (original release:3/14/06)

well then.

I don't know how it happens. I think the universe drops these people in my lap. . . who knows.

Tom- the cabbie comes to get us.. he is a stout and gruff man with longish greasy grey hair and a bald spot on the top. He wears dark aviator sunglasses. He dives a lincoln.

John sits in the front seat, and me in the back. I give the guy the google map and we are off.

Within minutes, we find out the following fun facts about Tom:

tom came to orlando after his divorce to stay for three weeks, 32 years later, he is the world's most overstayed house guest
tom has a walkie-talkie, a pager and a cell phone, all of which he used simultaneously while driving.
tom had some shady phone calls, of which he says: "ill hit you back when im *clear*, ive got a 5-9"
tom offered to keep our luggage until we went back to the airport
tom told us we could pay him for both trips at once when he dropped us off
tom was in the army
tom used to hunt, until he came home from the army
tom is a licensed private investigator.
tom has been approached by the KKK, he is not afraid.
tom threatened members of the KKK with his "crazy eye"
tom thinks every cop and fireman in orlando is "on the take"
tom thinks the tv show "the shield" is real
tom says "i can show you things you'd never believe"
tom is in touch with the dark underbelly of Orlando
tom's colleague's wife is cheating. tom knows who with. tom won't tell.
tom's crowning career moment is capturing a man who raped a 74 year old invalid in 1978
tom is crazy after coming out of the army
tom likes women
tom is homophobic
tom prays each night that his sons don't "turn gay"
tom thinks his only daughter is addicted to shopping


tom is our new friend. tom wants us to come back to orlando to write his memoirs :)

travel story (original release: 11/9/05)

so, the cab came to pick me up at the facility.. .i quickly realised that my driver may have a cognitive impairment.. and i was worried..

i couldn't understand much of what he was saying.

i got really worried when pulling out of the parking lot, he turned to me and said:
"how do i get to the highway from here?"

oh god, what have i gotten myself into.

after 10 minutes of somewhat erratic driving, and more than a few white knuckles on my part, he reveals to me that he was robbed at gunpoint, shot in the abdomen, in a coma for three months, and woke up half paralyzed with a stroke.

then he made some joke about his girlfriend (the cab controller on the cb) as we passed the projects.

interesting guy.

got to the airport, flight delayed by an hour due to a faulty altimeter. everyone in the concourse flew into a rage.

i sat next to an angry giant who did not want to release his coat and farted obviously in my directions several times throughout the flight.

Announcement

"Will the owner of the red magnum, license plate: 'Machiavelli 2' please contact the nearest gate information."

the things you hear while sitting in an airport :)

Morning Story: Elevator Entrapment (original release: 3/29/02)

girl gets in elevator. girl sees another person trying to catch the elevator. girl presses the "door open" button to help the boy catch the elevator. boy pushes the button for floor five. boy stares at girl. girl stares at the door.

boy says: "you are not from the south are you?" in a thick russian accent
girl replies "no."
boy: "i can tell."
girl:(with a giggle at the rediculousness of the previous statement) "how can you tell?"
boy: "you are too pretty to be from the south."
girl:
boy: "no, I can just tell that you are not from here, you don't look like you come from the south."


elevator door opens. girl gets out as quickly as possible without letting on that she is doing so.

girl:"have a nice day. freak."

Image: boy with a goofy grin on his way up to floor 5.
girl: "i hate elevator rides"

Transatlantic Scandalism (original release: 2/21/06)

a (not so) quick story on my travels home. . .

so, i make it to my gate (B10) in milan just in time for boarding to begin. I am close to the front of the coach cabin, so i was amoung the last to board. the gate agents called zone 6 and i get in line.

that's when the trouble began. . .

I got in line behind a man who was quite fidgety. He seemed to be in some sort of distress. I immediately identified him as an American because of the way he was talking and the oversized, high-end hip hop threads he had on. the line inches forward. he keeps turning around, looking over my shoulder. i turned to see what he was looking at, and saw he was looking at his traveling companions. . a woman, three children and an older couple across the terminal, about 100' away.

as the line was getting closer to the gate door, the man became more and more agitated. he finally turns around and screamed to his companion "Bring me my ticket, b**ch!" As he was screaming out of the left side of his mouth only, a wall of gin fumes hit me in the face like a brick wall. the man was clearly hammered. The woman screamed back to him "F**K you, *****!" (can't bring myself to type it)

I began to get uncomfortable as he murmured a series of explicatives under his breath about the woman, thinking to myself "i really hope im not sitting next to this guy, if i do, ill ask the agent if i can move" He was so angry.

the closer we got to the ticket taker, the more agitated he became, and just as we reached the front, i heard a deafening sound, and turned just in time to see a wild-eyed woman running full bore straight at me. she was wearing a faded black tshirt, dirty jeans and untied timberlands, her hair was wild and unkempt. she looked as if she had been sleeping under a bridge for a week. she handed the ticket to the man, and they had a vicious argument (that cannot be repeated in mixed company) just in front of the jetway door. That is when i heard the whispering behind me...

"could it be?" "is that them?"

I started to think the woman looked familiar. I had to be sure. She was the last to give her ticket to the agent before me, so i glanced at the top of the stack of torn ticket stubs and there it was....

"HOUSTON/WHITNEY : 1B"

i handed my ticket to the same gate agent and watched as my torn stub covered hers... I was officially in the twilight zone.

I turned to two american snowboarder kids behind me and said.. "is it true.. is it whitney and bobby?" they replied, "yeah, and that is the best thing that could have happened, I can't believe i just saw them fight in real life." the three of us boarded the flight just behind the dynamic duo, at a relatively safe blast radius of about 15 feet.

The flight was relatively uneventful, mostly because they were in first class and not anywhere near me.

The flight touched down in Atlanta, and i was disembarking. As i walked through the first class cabin to get out, i suddenly remembered that they were on my flight (10 hours of chick flicks had washed the memory from my brain).. because the first class cabin looked like a war zone. they may as well have simply decommissioned that plane, because the area where they were sitting was trashed. it was the first time in my life where i actually considered myself lucky to be in the coach cabin.

I thought (and hoped) that that would be the last of my interactions with the pair...

but it got worse.

As i was walking down the long corridor (in quite a bit of a haze) toward customs, i saw a blur of a woman streaking toward me talking to .. apparently no one. it was only as she was passing by me that i realised she was not speaking english, nor any other language of this world... just a sort of made-up jibberish. bobby was leaning against a waterfountain on the opposite side of the corridor mumbling under his breath.

again, i thought (and hoped) that encounter would be my last. but, no, i couldn't escape.

at the atlanta airport, you have to go through security (metal detectors, bag scans, passport check) when coming back into the states. i was in line at security.. thanking the lord that the pair were stuck behind me in customs (i thought).

a few people hit the metal detector ahead of me. i put my belt and both jackets on the line, and i go through. Who do i meet on the other side?? but bobby brown getting his bag searched and whitney in one of the glass cubes where they make you wait in line to be searched. again, i was crammed right up next to mr. brown, while his bag and whitney's purse was being searched. the inside of whitney houston's purse is something to behold, to be sure. i was trapped, because i had to put my belt and coats on and gather my stuff.

mr brown looks at me, shakes his head. the security woman was not american, and had no idea who these two were. bobby looked over at whitney in the glass cage and says "this B**ch is taking all my lighters." i looked over and saw a small pile of 7-8 lighters. this apparently sent her into a rage. she jumped up and ran over to where the bags were being searched and got into a screaming match with the security guard about them being home and how they got all their lighters taken away when leaving for milan, and now that they were home they were getting them taken away again, and it was bulls**t. She looks over at me as if to say "back me up here, lady" but i pretended not to speak or understand english. then she said to bobby "get our lighters, we're getting out of here" .. it was a screaming match. and i was trapped. i packed up as fast as i could.. and got the hell outta there.

20 minutes later, i saw a few flash bulbs go off in the distance, and saw the couple leave the airport with minimal paparazzi effort. whitney had a long mink coat in tow, and in the interim had put on a stylish hat and tied her shoes. . . they waved quickly to a couple of fans/photographers and were finally out of my life :)