This picture expresses a lot of what I feel about Taiwan. Whatever _that_ means. I had to throw away a lot of old and unwanted clothing that I'd accumulated over the last four years.
And talk about kismet! I was getting my last few things together on my last night in Taiwan, and I find that my chopsticks, MY chopsticks, that I had bought four years ago in Toronto to "practice" for Taiwan, had broken. Yes, Fate, I understand.
So, I went to Mike's on my last night, and I got to be a Scooter Bomb, as I returned Mike's little baby gas tank. Vroom, vroom, BOOM!
My last dinner in Taiwan. A Mikeburger and Guinness. Yummers!
My absolute favorite soap opera, "Everybody Likes to Cry" was on TV at Mike's. That's not the real title of the show; that's just what Katie and I called it. It's an accurate title.
Just like in real life, none of the characters on Everybody Likes to Cry ever look each other in the eye. A lot of middle-distance staring.
See? I fucking love that show.
Then we went to the House for a while. Lisa showed off her Jazz Hands.
BOFF. Take that, Faye.
GOOD TIMES!
Faye. Drunk. As usual.
What a liquor-pig. Oh, Faye.
Me and my wife. Oh, wife, what fun we had.
I gave Jeff a frisbee that Mike had just given me. He proceeded to pour his beer into it.
And then drink from it.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Faye, spazzing out. I forget why. She's probably delirious with glee at not having to see me for a long time.
Oh, Chiang Kai Shek International Airport. How I hate you.
Just thought I'd pop into a bookstore in the airport before I got on the plane. Hey, let's check out our "Bestsellers" section! Brokeback Mountain, Dances with Wolves, okay... The Horse and His Boy... uh-huh... um, Roget's Thesaurus? Two different editions? God damn you, Taiwan. God damn you straight to hell.
This is the plane upon which I escaped.
Ahh, Newfoundland. Best be gettin' down to Marie's, pick up a couple of bottles of Ass Juice.
There's Biscuit.
Patches and Biscuit, conked out on the floor.
Of course, Liz and Lisa weren't about to be outdone.
Coney Island? Already? What? You mean to tell me I was in Newfoundland for two weeks, and all I have to show for it are three pictures? Sheesh. Anyway, Katie and I went to Coney Island... here... in America.
This is Nathan's. It's apparently famous. I dunno. *shrugs* The hotdogs were good.
There were really long lines.
This is where that big hot dog eating contest is.
This is the boardwalk at Coney Island. There's a big beach on the left, there, but you're not allowed to swim because there're no lifeguards on duty. That big thing on the right is a ride where you could jump off with a parachute, but they closed it in the 1980s. I wonder why.
More boardwalk. Coney Island's not even an island anymore. They filled in the creek that separated it from Brooklyn in the '40s. I guess 'Coney Peninsula' just doesn't sound as good.
There's the beach.
And a cruise ship. I think we're going on a cruise sometime. I dunno. Coney means 'rabbit.'
There's this thing called 'Shoot the Freak.' They give you a paintball gun and you try to pick off a guy who runs around in front of you. Sick. I'm going to do it next time, for sure.
Wonder Wheel. Those gondolas in the middle of the wheel roll back and forth on tracks. Eeee.
Astroland is closed.
See? Desolate.
There's the Parachute Jump thing.
We went to the aquarium. Jackass Penguins! You guys remember these from my South Africa trip, right?
Otter!
Nice.
Turtles, rays and sharks.
It was a really big turtle.
Katie. I always think these things are so weird.
Little jellyfishes!
A clownfish and some sort of stick-crustacean.
Jellyfish.
Katie and a jellyfish.
We went to see the sea lion show. I saw a little tiny whirlpool. The shadow of the whirlpool is on the bottom left. The whirlpool itself is in the middle, distorting the reflection of the tree. It disappeared after a couple of minutes. It was so cool.
I don't usually like trained-animal shows, but this one was really decent. The animals didn't do anythin weird or unnatural. They didn't balance on balls or anything, and the show had a really solid conservation message.
One of the sea lions (the one you can't see) got right up in this sea lion's face and started barking at him at one point. The trainers didn't know what to do, but nothing happened.
They swam around,
Jump! Go!
There was a huge goddamned walrus.
Son of a bitch was the size of a car.
Yikes.
Otter go fast!
This was the most ridiculous fish I ever saw. It looked like a Babel fish from Hitchhiker's Guide. This woman saw it and started cackling her head off at it.
RAR! Caimans, which are a kind of little tiny alligator.
There was a baby walrus that had just been born, but we couldn't see it because it was resting.
The beach again, and the pier.
They have a big countdown thing to the next hot dog eating contest. Only 271 days to go!
Hoo. That's a hell of a record. 66 in 12 minutes? Damn, Joey.
Go ahead.
Oh! Excitement! I work at a company called BookLinks. Apparently, we have a nice office, because NBC came and filmed a bit of their show "30 Rock" there. I've never heard of 30 Rock, but I'm a bit retarded when it comes to pop culture, since I was in Taiwan for the last four years. Anyway, that's Edie Falco, saying, "What are you doing? You shouldn't be here!" She's talking to Alec Baldwin, who's down on the sidewalk.
Speaking of my workplace, this is what it looks like.
This is my little cubbyhole. I broke the blue lamp, but otherwise, this is what it looks like.
NBC brought a trained pigeon.
On the right are some extras. On the left are my co-workers, Rubie, Margarita and Mark.
There's Tracy Morgan saying, "What you eatin' other people's french fries for, pigeon? Don't you have any self-respect? Don't you know you can fly?"
"Don't you know you can fly?"
Are these people from the show? I don't know.
Check all the extras!
Oh, my boring, non-film star desk.
Oooh! We went to the American Museum of Natural History. That's Teddy Roosevelt on his horse on the right.
RAR! DINOSAURS! RAR!
Big frigging dinosaurs.
Pegasus. We bought a dual membership, so we can go whenever we want.
Katie and a big, extinct mammal.
The Roc would swoop down from time to time and carry off unwary children.
This is a kami mask from Japan.
St. George. The dragon wasn't as big as it was made out to be.
There was a little display where you could build your own dragon, and it would walk across the screen and breathe fire. This is Katie's.
RAR! DINOSAURS! RAR! RAR! I LOVE IT!
Big-ass turtle.
Angry turtle.
Happy turtle! "Hey! How's it goin'?"
RAR! FISH-MONSTER!
I forget what kind of dinosaur it was. We were in a hurry to get to the Cosmic Collisions show.
Mammoth.
Katie and some mammoths.
Katie can't believe how big this piece of tree is!
It was really quite big.
And now you can see our house in quiet little Glendale. Our apartment is on the 2nd floor of the brown building on the left.
This one. Look closely and see if you can find Katie.
There she is! Here's our cute little apartment, almost in its entirety.
Kitchen!
Computer!
Bathroom!
Video game room. Sometimes Katie calls this the... um... the "living room." I think it's an American term.
This is in the video game room.
Here's the bedroom. The comforter is kind of lumpy-looking. It's not small animals hiding in our bed. Fuck, I hope not.
The other side of the bedroom.
Katie! And Kitty!
Kitty. She's very naughty. She keeps hiding her bow, and Katie gets SO mad. Well, that's it. Now you've seen everything I've seen. Leave comments or write me an e-mail.
