3 For The Road

Hey all,
Haven't written anything in, if you ask me, far to long. I've made a promise to never stop but as they say- making a promise is one thing, keeping it is another. The truth is: I've never had so much fun doing the work I'm supposed to be doing. For someone who should be a writer I always have such a hard time writing. In the few weeks before I traveled home to Boston for the Holidays I was on a mini-writing-tear. I even found myself thinking, "that'd make a great blog." (That last phrase ranks number two on the "things I never thought I'd think list." Right up there with asking myself, "where's my machine?" Sincerely referring to a "blazing 7s" slot machine in a casino while gambling in Las Vegas.)

Anyway, happy to be writing, whether it's just an exercise or whatever the case may be... Hello again.

I thought I'd reaquaint myself with the process by easing in with a couple of short short stories, accompanied by personal pictures. A trinity if you will. And I hope you do. I realize that I have written a small deal about our travels across the Globe in the last year but I haven't actually captured our experience as well as I should have, Yet... I will. My plan is to get to that in a few months time. There are so many stories to be told but for now, these.

This first one traveled a long way from New Orleans to get here. Back in April we passed through Louisiana and spent a couple of days there, hanging out, with our good friend Tom Dustin. After a few nights of debauchery we put Tom on a plane back to Boston and found ourselves in the middle of the Big Sleazy with a hankering to dry out from all of the crazy drinking. We made a mad-dash to find a fun way to spend our time. We came up with a really good idea. Vampire Tour. Upon consulting a touristy brochure we saw that we had almost no time at all to use the map and run down to the meeting spot. When we got there we were greeted by a guy in a goth gettup. It only makes sense, right? For a guy to be dressed in an appropriate costume? He made it look good too. I thought it was all part of the tour until I saw the picture I had taken of him and my heart stopped.

Cuh-razy-spookey...
This next one was also taken in Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans. The three of us: Tom, David, and I took a ride to the outskirts of the city to go on a Swamp Tour. It was a great albeit laid back experience. (Someday soon I'll publish my Tom Dustin retrospective from that trip.) We expected to see many alligators. Instead we just saw one. Giant. Alligator.

El Whoppo!


El Whoppo is a sixteen foot alligator many believe to be the largest on the planet. "Many" doesn't include my brother David or Tom for that matter. They believed "El Whoppo" to be one of the largest fake alligators in the world. To complicate things further when we were done searching for gators, 20 minutes later, the driver took us back to check out El Whoppo one more time and he was facing in the other direction.


Not two to be easily had, Tom and David reasoned that the swamp tour must employ some nutty Cajun in another boat who rushes out there to turn the old rubber El Whoppo around. Either way you couldn't have paid me enough money to take a dip in that water. It may not show in the photo but that mother could easily have eaten my six foot frame whole. No death-roll necessary.

Finally, this next one is a little blurry. For that, I apologize but the story is as sharp as the knife I'm licking. (Why? Because I'm teaching you how to creep people out. Is it working?)

Anyways, let's take a trip to "Graceland." Here it is the day after Elvis' birthday so why not visit his overpriced (the admission not the property) and multi-trophied home. While we did get pictures of ourselves striking "King Poses" all over the joint,


what I really want to write about is The King's reading habits.

It seems that the big E really liked to read. An obsession with books you may call it. I was curious because that's an obsession I share. It seems that good old Elvis couldn't leave home without a trunk full o' books. He'd take that trunk ever'where: on the plane, to his gigs, whenever he had a peanut butter and banana sandwich... I'm sure the trunk was always nearby. (Or so the little audio guide told me.) Also, when we came to his old desk there was a book, under glass, that Elvis had read at one point. I guess Elvis was very fond of underlining and taking notes in the margins. Much to my extreme delight the book, under the glass, was marked up. (A picture of it is below. Unfortunately it was impossible to get a clear shot of it through the glass. So, I'll translate for you.)

The chapter title was:
The Coming Aquarian Age And The Emancipation of Women

And here was a paragraph Elvis had particular interest in:
a retrospective glance over the events of the past century and a half will be enough to show that great changes have already taken place in the mental outlook of humanity at large, and more particularly so in the position of women.

In the margin, Elvis' note for the underlined passage was simply-
KARATE

Happy Belated Birthday Elvis! And as for you. Thanks for reading,
-Chris