4.22.05

Before I begin this monkey entry, I’d like to apologize for the lack of updates over the last two months. My life has changed dramatically in a way that will literally have repercussions that will resonate for years to come. These are very personal changes and I really don’t feel comfortable discussing them here, but please understand that life has been chaotic, sad, and wonderful all at the same time since shortly after the last entry. Not that life is every really boring or easy, but things are beginning to somewhat returning to a state of semi-normalcy and I hope that my monkey entries will also return to some type of consistency as well. Summer is coming which means trips, outings, and even more exciting, life-altering changes occurring. So keep your eyes on this website and enjoy.

Now, on with the latest monkey entry…

If you ever go on a trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee, heed these words spoken by Cub Scouts everywhere: “No means no, Scout Leader Dave.” Wait, not those words. These words: “Be Prepared.” Although, I guess the other words are just as important to heed too, no matter where you’re going.

As I packed for my trip, I, as an ex-Cub Scout with a touch of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, included everything I’d need for whatever non-life-threatening emergency I might encounter: an extra t-shirt, an extra pair of socks, an extra pair of boxers, my contact solution and cleaner, and should I become addicted to pork rinds – which is entirely possible in the South – I even brought a daily vitamin to make sure I’d still be getting any nutrients not supplied by eating an all-pigskin diet. I thought I had planned for everything.

There’s something you probably don’t know about me: I moonlight as a Rockette. Another thing you might not know about me is that I’m severely allergic to evergreen. “Evergreen?” you say. Yes, evergreen. On a list of weird things to be allergic to, evergreen has to be towards the top, right next to Yellow Dye #5 and Mormons. Due to my secret, shameful illness, our family was always stuck having to decorate a plastic tree during the holidays and…um…hmmm…well, I can’t really think of any other disadvantage to being allergic to evergreen. Unfortunately, because this allergy is so rarely a problem and so incredibly dumb, I never think about it until I spend the weekend in an apartment complex in Tennessee surrounded by a veritable evergreen army.

Much of the weekend involved blowing my nose and popping 24-hour Claritin pills that lasted for about 2.4 hours. Luckily I was breathing through my mouth so much that everyone thought I was a local. Ok, ok, that was harsh. In reality, the people of Tennessee were very nice, polite and almost every one of them was at least closely related to Homo sapiens.

Luckily I wasn’t locked in mortal combat with my nasal passages all weekend – I was still able to do all the fun things that our friend Nate had planned. I guess technically Nate didn’t have anything planned, but I was still able to do all the fun things we decided to do after sitting in the living room throwing out ideas for twenty minutes. I was able to find some refuge because most of the things to do in Chattanooga are located in the mostly brick, mortar and concrete area known as “downtown”. There’s nary an evergreen tree in sight, let alone gigantic hordes of them just sitting and waiting in ambush to clog up my sinuses.

On Friday night, the first thing we did after arriving at Nate’s was go downtown to have dinner. Actually, I guess the first thing we did was go on a beer and food run so that we would be sure to have enough supplies for the weekend. Then we went to dinner downtown. We ate ribs at a place called “Sticky Fingers”, which sounds dirty but it’s not. While there we got to know Nate’s new lady friend, Pam, and catch up on what we’ve all been up to since we last saw one another almost a year ago.

After dinner, we headed to a nearby bowling alley for some cheap 10-pin action. We knew we were in trouble when Pam had to get her bowling ball, “Stella”, out of the trunk. However, JK surprised us all – including himself – by beating everyone rather soundly in our first round. As the second game began, though, the multiple pitchers of beer began to take affect, so Pam and Stella walked away with an impressive win. I almost broke 100 on the second game. You have no idea how incredible that is.

With a few dollars left to spare (no bowling joke intended), we decided to play a few games in the arcade. For some reason everyone wanted to play Skeeball. Normally I’m all about SkeeBall, but I’d just spent the last 90-minutes rolling a ball down a small corridor, so I was more in the mood to shoot things. After blasting terrorists for a while, in what was apparently a near-replica of the Denver International Airport, we decided it was time to head home. Those Skeeballing folks had done well enough to get about 80 tickets to their names, which obviously had to be spent at the prize counter. A few minutes later, five grown-up vampires with fake plastic fangs made for children with much smaller mouths, were driving down the streets of Chattanooga. It’s really hard to talk with too-small vampire teeth in your mouth, but we tried anyway.

Once we got home from bowling, we spent a better part of the evening drinking beer, gin and tonics, and watching one of the most incredible films you’ll ever lay your unworthy eyes upon – Wild Zero. The movie is essentially a rock n’ roll, superhero, zombie movie. It stars three Japanese guys who make up the band Guitar Wolf, who are sort of a cross between Elvis and Joey Ramone with a little Roy Orbison thrown in for good measure, but mainly in the sunglasses. (Oddly enough, I’m working on another monkey entry that involves me seeing these guys in concert, so they’re suddenly becoming omnipresent in my life.) The film is terrible, but it doesn’t really give a damn what you about it, which means that it’s cool in my book. Best of all, the DVD comes with a drinking game requiring you to imbibe whenever someone says “Rock N’ Roll”, combs their hair, or there’s fire on the screen. Playing by these rules, most of us could barely make sense of the end of the film. Not that the end makes a whole lot of sense even when you’re sober.

Saturday we were woken up by the smell of eggs and sausage. Pam had cooked us up some “grub”, as I presume they call it in the South, and we had no problem wolfing it down. After another session of sitting around for thirty minutes watching Nate’s younger brother, Ben, play Halo 2 and throwing out ideas on what to do that day, we decided to go to the aquarium downtown. See? Everything takes place downtown.

The aquarium was great. Big fish, little fish, red fish and blue fish swam through massive tanks recreating the animal’s natural environment with plastic molding branches and leaves. One of the main draws of the aquarium is their seahorse exhibit, which was really amazing to see. My personal favorite was the “Kelp Dragon”, a seahorse designed by either God or some stoner kid after a night of hitting the bong. Sometimes I wonder what the difference is. The horse looks like a floating piece of kelp, which also happens to be its preferred living environment. The leafy look - which is, like, SOOO last Spring - keeps it expertly hidden from predators as long as it doesn’t get lost and wind up living near polka dots; then it stands out like a drag queen who didn’t “tuck under” and is wearing a dress 3 sizes too small. After the aquarium, we headed across the square to Ben and Jerry’s for some ice cream lovin’.

Unfortunately, we left the “Evergreen Free Zone” and returned to the Ewok village, where the locals attacked my nose like Wickett W. Warrick attacked a Stormtrooper in the Battle for Endor. Wow, that was the weirdest, lamest geek reference ever. Luckily, when we got back to the apartment, we decided to go to the pool, which wasn’t quite so surrounded by the evil, giant, radioactive Christmas trees. So instead of sniffling and sneezing, I got to watch the others shiver, shake, and generally freeze their butts off. A good time was had by all and, yes, JK did hurt himself falling into the pool. Our trip was now complete.

Swimming took up most of the afternoon, so we ordered pizza and relaxed for the rest of the day. This meant that I was spending hours in the apartment, being bombarded by an evergreen assault. More Clartin were popped, more frustration mounted. By the time some of Nate’s friends showed up for a small gathering he had planned, I was feeling anything but myself. I was spacey. I was stuffy. I was generally pretty miserable. But, I tried to make the most of it and talked to people as much as I could. I was not, however, going to try playing the home version of “Dance Dance Revolution”, which is one of Nate’s masculinity’s mortal weaknesses. Not because I was afraid of making a fool of myself (which I surely would have), but simply because I was having a hard time breathing while sitting on a barstool. Trying to breathe while doing the white man’s overbite on a plastic mat at 120 beats per second would have probably killed me.

The folks that Nate invited all seemed very nice and very fun. I got to see Tennessee Tayam again, who was along for one of the most insanely fun weekends of my life a few years ago. I was also introduced to James, whom I had seen running around Halo 2 all weekend using the moniker “Mr. Diesel”. He had found out only a week before that “Diesel” was also used as slang for a butch lesbian. Poor guy. Another standout was “Wayner”, a big Southern boy with a quick wit who might be joining us for our yearly float trip this summer.

Almost everyone left around 12:30, which is unfortunate because the photos I’ve included with this entry might be the first time they’ll have seen Nate wearing an empty beer case on his head like a knight in shining cardboard. See what happens when you bail on a party early?

Around 2:00AM, well after the last party guest had gone and even Pam and Ben were asleep in their beds, Nate, JK and I wound up walking around outside a little bit. The weather was beautiful even that early in the morning and we found ourselves down at the end of a slight hill where the apartment managers allow residents to park their boat trailers. A few years ago Nate bought a small water craft, so he pulled back the tarp and we climbed inside. There we sat, drinking beers, telling one another about our lives as they stand and where we’re headed. Of course there were the disappointments, the wantings, and the unknowns, but overall I think we decided that life wasn’t too bad for any of us. And even with all those unknowns, the future looked just as bright. Then Nate peed on the side of his boat and ruined any kind of Norman Rockwell moment we might have taken away from the experience.

The next morning JK and I got up and around and made the hellish trip back to Missouri. Its six hours and some change with much of it leading us through the most boring strip of land on the American Interstate Highway System – Southwest Kentucky. There’s nothing there except grass, trees, and…umm…hang on, I’ll think of something. Nope, sorry, there’s nothing else there. It’s boring.

Overall the trip was great. It was really good to see Nate and Ben and to finally meet Pam. The drunken antics of the crew made the weekend enjoyable even if I couldn’t breathe for much of the time I was there.

So when packing your things for a seemingly innocent weekend jaunt to the Land of Dixie, know that you are also going to The Land of Spores and Pollens – and not the fun kind, either. Forget the extra t-shirts and boxer shorts, I would recommend including the following in your suitcase: Kleenex, eye drops, Nyquil, Extra Strength Claritin or Alavert (whichever totally insufficient medication you prefer to waste your money on) and a set of good, sharp garden shears should you decide to just give up and lop off your own nose (spiting your face is optional).

To check out the pictures from this raucous weekend, click here.

Space Monkey X