I have a troubling confession to make. I really like airport Bloody Marys.

Not because they taste good; they manifestly do not. Least of all in Heathrow, where what you will get when ordering one of these is a glass half-filled with vodka and tomato juice, and then a bottle of Tabasco, a bottle of Worcestershire, and a pepper shaker. Hey, thanks! You fucking limey creeps. Incidentally, fuck you, Terminal Five. Heathrow's new Terminal Five--roughly the size and shape and carrying the same charm as Winston Churchill's dead, grotesque liver--is thoroughly and wholly the living international shits.

Let's clear this up: Terminal Five handles most if not all of British Airways' international traffic. When you deplane, you are immediately herded onto these godforsaken little trams, and then you take a ride to the terminal itself, a ridiculous gulag of a building with this preposterous sign posted outside of every door: "It is unlawful to smoke anywhere inside our outside of this building." I've got news for you, Terminal Fucking Five: I broke the law several times today.

(I actually broke the law while in Terminal Five itself. When I was taking a shit in the bathroom outside "Huxley's," the impressively inauthentic English airport pub, I hotboxed a good four puffs on a cigarette because I exhibiting early signs of nicotine psychosis. One of those signs is ordering a Bloody Mary from Danish waiters working in Heathrow's abominable Triumph of the Will-styled cathedral bars.

Oh, and here's an actual conversation with a waitress:

"Is there a smoking area anywhere in here?"

"You cannot smoke anywhere in here."

"Oh. So I guess I'd have to go outside to smoke, then."

[Puzzled and pitying look] "You cannot leave, sir."

This is actually true. Unless you are vomiting blood, or have a thorax full of chestbursters all erupting at once, you cannot leave Terminal Five. Terminal Five is, quite literally, Hotel California. The Brits have settled on a fairly literal definition of the word "terminal": It will make you want to die.)

Anyway. Airport Bloody Marys. I don't know what it is about these terrible things, but I always must have them prior to boarding a plane. Part of it is the wan little celery garnishes and the microcephalic sword-impaled olives, and most of all, the abrasive chemical peel you get in your mouth from the wretched seasoned salt they rim the glasses with. All of these terrible details wake up my lobes and tell me: TRAVEL IS AFOOT! Plus, they help me deal with ancillary issues, such as settling into my BA seat only to find out that my next nine hours of air travel will be unadorned with such fripperies like a working set of earphones. When I went to plug in the 'phones, the entire jack caved into my armrest, causing me to spontaneously order six whiskies and then watch seventeen silent dumbshow reruns of Martin in a stuporous gloom.

I'm just kidding. I fell asleep. I'm stupid, but I don't hate myself. Not that much.

The only other in-country travel that we faced while in France was getting from Paris to Avignon via the astoundingly awesome TGV train, which travels so fast that you get to watch time dilate. We greeted our train at the Gare de Lyon with an hour or so to spare, so naturally we settled in to . . . the cafe/bar at the train station's soaring outgoing depot. The wife had an espresso while I opted for a beer. We settled in and watched all of the charming bustle. Ten minutes in, I picked up my beer and brought it to my lips. But I noticed something.

"What the fuck?" I said. The wife beetled her brows at me, questioning. I wheeled my beer glass around this way and that. There appeared to be tiny little slugs in my beer. "What the fuck?" I hissed again, showcasing my firm grasp of this uniquely American idiom. I peered at the tiny slugs. One appeared to be clinging listlessly to the rim of my glass. I picked at it.

"Slippery fucking thing," I grumbled. It kept sliding out of my grasp. What the hell was going on? I finally got a hold of the damn thing, but then it promptly dissolved in my fingers and fell like an ectoplasmic nightmare into the depths of my beer, creating a noisome cloud.

Gare de Lyon's upper depot is basically open-air. Trains come in and out on one end, passengers do the same on the other. There aren't any doors. There weren't any slugs in my fucking beer. One of the dozens of pigeons that make their home in Gare de Lyon had taken a desultory shit into my glass. And I had just spent ten minutes fingering a good quantity of it--had, in fact, come bare seconds away from drinking it. I suddenly glared up at the ceiling, staring at these hateful little fucking vermin, and then I had to laugh. The wife called over the waiter, and, her normally very good French failing her, pointed at my beer, then at the damned birds and said, "Ah . . . . pigeon . . . ah, boom?" Here she mimed a bomb drop. The waiter smiled easily and motioned me to hand him my glass and promptly replaced it. I noted clinically that he did not wear a hat; I doubted that this was his first skirmish with the evil avian bombardiers lurking above. I peered gloomily at my shit-beslimed fingers and sought out a bathroom.

And one last thing about Gare de Lyon. When we came back from Avignon, this station was also our point of disembarkment in Paris. So we got off the train--and we could not leave the station. We walked towards the "Sortie" signs; they took us deeper into the bowels of the terrible place; we soon found ourselves staring at subterranean train stations threatening to take to places prefixed by the word "Aix." We scrambled back upstairs; the wife spotted a sign that said "INFORMATION" with a helpful arrow; it pointed to a blank brick wall.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" I screamed. Nobody cared; the noise was incredible. Everyone was rushing everywhere and nowhere at once. Any direction could have possibly been the correct one. We ran up against a bank of alarming turnstiles; more trains. These promised to take us to towns named Glottal Stop and Swallowed R. We shrieked like bats and ran in circles; I contemplated asking the nice man in full camo gear for directions, but was given pause when I noticed that he carried not only a professionally terrifying moustache but also an automatic rifle that he cradled with no small amount of paternal warmth.

We finally emerged from this Gehenna thanks to some Parisian fellow that the wife managed to buttonhole: "GO LEFT! GO LEFT!" he screamed insistently, though it is possible that this was simply his local exhortation to vote for Barack Obama. We blinked as we staggered outside, and then hailed the worst cab driver in existence; he dropped us off three blocks from our hotel, saying, as far as we could tell, that he could "see it from here." The cab smelled like degraded polymer chains.

Exhausted, depleted, we finally discovered our hotel. And, the next morning, on the flight back home, I watched The Dark Knight. Not bad! At least my headphones worked. Halfway through, the steward offered me some inedible thing purporting to be a sandwich; I think it was alleged that it contained some sort of marmalade. (British people: I know American food is, on the whole, laughable and dispiriting, but is this a competition?) I politely declined and asked: "Can I get a Bloody Mary?" It was perhaps eleven o'clock, local time.

Bless him, he only paused for a moment.

HELLLOOOOOO EVERYBODY! The wife and I are back from France! Did you miss us? HOLLA IF YOU MISSED US!

. . .

HOLLA!

. . .

GOOD TO SEE YOU TOO! Anyway, sorry it took a while to get back to writing. I'm still kind of temporally fucked up from the trip. I've been back to work for two days now, and that's been oddly okay--no shootings yet, except for that Mary bitch with the motor disease or whatever--but it turns out that my geriatric nap schedule has been somewhat thrown into disarray, and now whenever I attempt my usual evening sleep period during when "How It's Made" comes on, I get this weird sensation that slavering wolves are breathing on my genitals, and I just lie there and sweat. I trust this will pass.

We had a great time over there, of course; we spent four days in Paris then a week in Avignon. A real writer would recount the entire trip in a roughly linear fashion, going off of his copious notes and dedicated scribbles. I, of course, cannot be bothered with that shit, so over the course of the next few entries, I will recount various vignettes and anecdotes in a more or less completely broken and incoherent fashion, so that the entire narrative will, eventually, come to light in a postmodern, fractal kind of way--think Pynchon, think pointillism, think CSI: Miami. Or do what I do and renounce thinking entirely.

Our first few days were spent in Paris, waiting for the wife's appalling fortieth birthday to pass, which it eventually did, much like a kidney stone, causing me to clutch my penis in horror, realizing that my old lady was, finally, genuinely old. Oh well. We tried to pretend to enjoy ourselves anyway.

We were staying in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, locale of the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides, Musee D'Orsay and Rodin, and several fragrant public toilets--good for taking a hearty shit in provided that you're too hoity to get down on the sidewalk with the dogs and just leave it there.

Right around the corner from our hotel was our adopted cafe, the Cafe Du Marche, whose busy staff rarely managed to ignore our hideous French; we enjoyed started our days there, with the wife enjoying an "EX-PRESSO!" and me more often than not sipping a Campari.

As many people have observed, Paris is a crazy dog town, and we, being dog people, enjoy dog-watching even more than people-watching. One fellow on a particular morning sat down with his tiny little graybeard black dog in his lap and ordered a coffee. The dog was adorable. The dog was also the most fantastically caniopathic dog I've ever seen in my life: he hated every single other dog that came within five yards of his lap-ambit. He would be sitting there placidly on his owner's lap until he spotted another dog pretty much anywhere (and he was preternaturally good at seeking them out) at which point he would stiffen, chuff indignantly for a minute, growl and then FREAK THE FUCK OUT, writhing in his owner's lap like a sack full of angry eels, barking and howling as if someone had suddenly stuffed its asshole with a quantity of cilantro. He was outstanding. I'm pretty sure he was Napoleon brought back in tiny dog form. The other dogs looked at him lazily in any case, often stopping to take a desultory shit on the cobblestones, offering their professional opinions as to the efficacy of the tiny dog's threats.

Not that people-watching ever disappoints, especially in Paris. Particularly, for some reason, the old ladies. It must be said that Paris, pound for pound, contains the most undiluted concentration of hilarious crones that I've ever seen anywhere in my life. They are, quite honestly, incredible. On any given afternoon on the streets of Paris, you will witness the most astonishing collection of grotesques, gargoyles, termagents and just plain caricatures than you would believe; this was just at the Marche cafe. I saw things such as an upswept dye-blond beehive-cum-pompadour with half-inch long visible roots, wraparound designer sunglasses, pleather jackets with "NO MERCI" on the back, and high-heel leather boots with a crosshatched rhinestone design. Unfortunately, I saw all of these on the same woman at the same time; she of course also yanked along with her a tiny little dog whose only clear purpose of existence was to be stepped on by passersby. Watching old ladies in Paris is like owning free tickets to a Commedia del'Arte show every day for free: Columbinas tottering around with their little mewling canine Punches.

One day at Cafe Marche, watching the street show scroll by, I noticed that they served hot chocolate ("chocolat chaud"). That sounded nice. What also sounded nice was some rum with that. I flagged a waitress; the wife ordered some coffee, and then I gasped out in my typically horrific French: Je voudrais un chocolat chaud avec rum!

She looked at me as if I had opened my mouth and a plague of moths had flown out. Rum? she said, looking alarmed and not a little horrified. Oui! I replied, showing her my molars. She retreated inside a little shakily. She came back seconds later.

Rum? she asked again. I nodded. She motioned for me to follow her inside, clearly wondering what the fuck I was talking about. I followed her in. A bartender was drying glasses, staring at me warily. I turned to the wife. "I cannot possibly be the first person who ever asked for a hot chocolate and rum," I said. "Maybe you are," she chirped. Fuck you, Jack, I've got my coffee, was the clear subtext there. She was enjoying the weirdness.

I examined the bottles behind the bar and beheld no rum (the wife claims she saw some, but I didn't). Then I saw some whisky. "Whisky OK!" I cried, pointing at the bottle. The waitress looked, if possible, even more stricken now, and the bartender pulled a truly disgusted face, raising his pained eyes to the ceiling as if to seek answers from the mottled tin above, grimacing when the Gods did not immediately favor him with a suitable explanation as to what the stupid fucking American could possibly be asking for. C'est bon! I hollered defensively, and witlessly rubbed my stomach. The bartender stared flatly at me. He and the waitress chattered for a moment and then seemed to settle on a game plan; the waitress motioned us back to our table outside, clearly still unsettled by events.

We waited. I wondered what the hell was the problem, but right then my drink showed up; the waitress wore an expression that I figured was similar to the one worn by whomever had to serve Socrates his teacup. Merci! I said.

After the first sip, I realized what had gone horribly wrong, I'm pretty sure now. If I'm correct, my huge mistake was ordering chocolat chaud avec rum (or, later, whisky). What I should have said was chocolat chaud et rum/whisky. "Avec" means "with." "Et" means "and." PISH TOSH, right? Well, not so much. By ordering the hot chocolate "with" rum/whisky, what I had signalled to them was: replace the water you'd normally add to hot chocolate mix entirely with booze.

I was served a hot chocolate not with steamed water but with 100% steamed whisky. They must have used close to four shots; I nearly sent my first mouthful into my wife's hair in a concentrated jet. It was, of course, fucking awful. After a giggling half-dumbshow with the waitress explaining the misunderstanding, she burst into delighted gales of laughter and let the bartender know what the mix-up was. After that, my disgusting alcohol bomb became the topic of much hilarity: the waitress would periodically make a show of mopping my brow; I would periodically ask her to call me an ambulance or curse her for poisoning me. I worried what I was going to be charged for the awful mess, considering how much booze must have gone into it, but they apparently decided that its humor value more than made up for the whole episode, and only charged me five euros and some change.

Two days later, we were back at the Marche. A woman on a motorcycle screeched up to the outside seating area and pulled off her helmet, shaking out her long hair. It was the waitress. We grinned and said our hellos.

"You are not dead!" she cried. C'est bon!

Indeed.

Because of extremely favorable economic conditions as of late, the wife and I leave for France in a week and a half! We're looking forward to missing this oncoming shoulder season that Hollywood has planned in favor of staring dully at euros flying out of our pockets and doing hasty back-of-the-envelope-if-we-can-afford-envelopes equations to determine how much debt we're racking up. Whee!

In other words, it's high time I prejudged a bunch of what you suckers will be watching while we empty our pockets at some of Avignon's finest couple-friendly brothels.

Saw V

NOBODY TOLD ME THAT COSTAS MANDYLOR WAS PART OF THIS FRANCHISE! I gave up on this repellent series right after Saw II--which I think we watched in the same month that we endured the cheerless moral vacancy that was Hostel--for the usual reasons. There's no reason I'm going to put up with this fucking shit. It's the Faces of Death of this goddamn decade, and I'd sooner gnaw on live rats than . . . no, scratch that. I have more respect for rats than I do for the ghastly bastards that churn out this horrid garbage. So I'd sooner gnaw on the filmmakers.

That said, Costas Mandylor! He was on "Picket Fences"! Remember? Does Tobin Bell repeatedly shove glass rods up his urethra? I might have to reexamine my position on these films. Mainly because I seriously enjoy typing "Costas Mandylor."

W.

I think we can all agree that Oliver Stone, as filmmaker qua filmmaker, is primarily noted for his nuanced point of view and his easy touch as a humorist. It's ginger, light-hearted movies such as Platoon, Natural Born Killers and JFK that have ensured his legacy as the rightful heir to, say, Woody Allen and Billy Wilder. So it should come as no surprise that . . . listen, I can't even finish this sentence at all.

Stone is not entirely without gifts; he can fashion a fairly harrowing scene when moved to, and he has an occasionally interesting eye when it comes to framing. Unfortunately, he is also frothingly insane. The idea of him crafting some foamy comedy about our (also unfathomably demented) president is roughly along the same lines as assigning Costa-Gravas directorship of the next American Pie sequel.

(Now, horribly, I'm imagining some debased blowjob scene where Sally Field is going down on Jason Biggs. I hate myself.)

Max Payne

It's The Happening meets Constantine meets Hitman!! What on earth could possibly be better than that? IT HAS BEAU BRIDGES IN IT! Granted, he's no Costas Mandylor, but who is? I mean, other than Costas Mandylor.

It also has Ludacris and Chris O'Donnell and Donal Logue!

Seriously, do you think the casting directors all got together over an apple pipe in some back room and went, "You're kidding. They bought that?"

(BONUS DVD RENTAL NOTE: The wife and I genuinely enjoyed Hitman. We consider it the finest video-game movie adaptation to feature Timothy Olyphant and digitized pubic hair released to date.)

The Secret Life of Bees

Cast list includes:

Queen Latifah
Jennifer Hudson
Alicia Keys
Sophie Okonedo

UNCOMFORTABLE! Too many black people. Also, bees.

Upon further review:

Dakota Fanning
Paul Bettany

Well, that's certainly adding some cream to the coffee. Listen, are there any robots in this?

Sex Drive

Astonishingly, Judd Apatow does not appear to be connected to this film. Disappointingly, neither does Costas Mandylor.

The wife and I have returned from Vegas. Even though Vegas undergoes near-constant change, the city itself really doesn't. What's mostly interesting to me about Vegas is the fact that it manages to convince you--a visitor--that it isn't as absurdly fucked up as it is. While you're in Vegas, ostensibly enjoying yourself, you don't notice the incredibly strange things, such as your eternally dripping faucet--in a desert--or the fact that you're hanging out in warehouse-sized Skinner boxes without windows or clocks, being served alcohol relentlessly and congratulating yourself on this fact while you slowly go broke. Fountains and seafood abound everywhere in this ridiculous, blasted skilletscape. It's like if you went into the Amazonian rainforest and were completely unsurprised to round a trail corner and find a Portuguese bank.

Only in Vegas could you possibly do something as self-abnegating as agreeing to go to an establishment as repulsive as Coyote Ugly, only to have the plasticine bar staff order you onto all fours and bark like a dog for a free shot. Not that this happened to me: it happened to D. Later that night, D. ingested some food that had peanuts in it and went into anaphylactic shock. It happened the night before the wife and I arrived to join everyone, and obviously, I was sad to have missed it; I think it is the quintessential Vegas experience.

I was told this story, by the way, while enjoying the discharge of a six-foot-tall bonglike thing apparently called a "beer tower." I'm a little surprised that nobody has opened an entire casino called "Beer Tower." Maybe next week after they disintegrate the Stratosphere with lasers. (The Stratosphere is so notoriously awful that they'd probably neglect to inform the guests first, immolating and/or crushing several thousands of people too cheap to spring for some place classy like Harrah's, where we stayed. [Harrah's is a gloomy, cheerless dump.])

The long weekend progressed as you might imagine. We were there to attend the wedding of C. and L.--and, really, fuck this initial nonsense. It irritates me too anymore, except when I can't think of what else to do. Let's call the groom Corny Eely and the bride RILOR, because it pleases me to think of her as the world's sweetest robot intelligence. Corny Eely is just a Googledodge, and how I also enjoy referring to him, as I am a fucking idiot.

The first night was spent, of all things, gambling. The wife made it to a little after two, while Corny and I, in a truly heroic exhibit of drinking and not sleeping, made it until after four AM playing craps. No less than three times during that epic night, Corny looked at me, shuffled his many chips and said, "Well, ready to call it a night?" And each time, my response was, "We just ordered beers." And he replied, each time, "That's true." Free beers. So we soldiered on, until I was forced to struggle up to my room and bid good-night (or, I suppose, morning) to Corny, who tiredly waved and then proceeded to go back to the ridiculously terrible O'Shea's to play craps for another two hours, eventually winding up with $700 in winnings on the evening.

And the next night was the bachelor/bachelorette parties, of course. I'm not allowed to talk about the details of the bachelor party because of that GUY RULE of silence, but I can share this: for the first time in my life, and I fervently hope the last, I was heard to tell a bartender, "I need fifteen shots of Jaegermeister." Then later we drove out into the desert, bent a bunch of hookers over the guardrail and fucked them stupid, then bludgeoned them with garden hoes and dumped their bodies in Lake Mead. But like I said, I can't really talk about it.

The wedding itself was fairly unremarkable, not because it was unimportant, but just because the good people who work at the Flamingo churn out weddings like a Chicago sausagemaker. Get in! You're married! Get out! Most of us there were chewing this incredible gum that our friend L. had discovered: it was peach Sangria-flavored. So that was classy; while Corny and RILOR tied the knot, half of us were on the bench chewing booze gum like a herd of docile, mildly alcoholic cattle. It was sort of fitting. At the end of the 20-minute-ish ceremony, the officiant was seen, upon leaving down the aisle, to give a thumbs-up to the automatic camera filming the event and stage-whisper, "The end . . . and the beginning!" I like to think that Uwe Boll scripted that and was beaming in the editing room.

Corny and RILOR had the reception in their suite at the Flamingo, which we all gawked at, particularly at the TV display that was embedded somehow in the bathroom mirror. A couple of us wandered into the shower to sit on the little marble bench where you could watch the TV as well--because, you know, we're rubes. Toasts were made, naturally, with the best man's being notable--for one because the best man was a woman, but also for her frequent frustrated cries of "Shit!" because she kept tearing up. Congratulating her after the fact, she moaned and pointed at me, saying "Fuck. Blogger."

We're back home now, after a particularly hellish Sunday morning spent struggling to get up at 7:00 AM to make our flight. We had a good time, but as with all things Vegas, it was tempered with grimness. It's hard to ignore this underlying aspect of a city as debased as Las Vegas: the octogenarian fungi mechanically playing the slots; the hordes of bored Latinos paid to stand on the sidewalks and try and hand out cardvertisements for escorts, wearing their awful t-shirts with phone numbers and legends proclaiming "Call and she'll COME right over"; restaurants branded with Toby Keith's imprimatur; yardfuls of pina coladas.

I swear to God: heading up to the Flamingo suite for the reception, we shared a partial elevator ride with a local. He carried an oxygen tank complete with the little nostril tubes. Nice guy; he asked us where we were from and wished us good luck when he exited a couple floors before ours. There was another fellow waiting to get on. He carried an oxygen tank with him. "Hallo!" he wheezed at us, clanking his iron cylinder aboard the elevator car.

I stole some looks around at my friends. Presently, people realized the coincidence, and we shamefully grinned. But I think that a few of us almost didn't notice.

On Thursday, the wife and I take off for the promised land: Las Vegas. Las Vegas. The land of milk and honey! No, wait. It's actually the land of ruined daquiris and crusted semen stains. Well, whatever. Some friends of ours are 1. huge Vegas fans and 2. getting married, so you see where this is all coming from. "By the power vested in me by the Nevada Gaming Commission . . . " and all. On the other hand, there's like thirty people or so all coming down for the festivities, so it should be a good time. The only way to take on Vegas is to travel in packs. You know, hence the Rat Pack. They traveled in groups to prevent Mafioso sten-gun attacks on Sinatra, and to make sure that roving rednecks couldn't string up Sammy Davis Jr. from a streetlamp.

See, the last time we were there was for our first anniversary, and it was just the two of us. This was a horrible mistake in that it was just the two of us. My awful persona that I've adopted here on this blog to the contrary, I'm just not capable of being a giant asshole in public--usually--and the wife is a freakishly wonderful person in every way, and that's no way to take on the demented fuck-scream that is Vegas. One needs to be insulated, one needs a posse, if only just because being in a group of people--particularly when those people are all actors and sketch comedians--allow one the freedom--nay, the responsibility--of becoming a complete and total shithead. This is what friends are for. Would you ever scream "SHOW YOUR TITS!" in New Orleans if you weren't surrounded by your pals? Of course not. Similarly, in Vegas, being surrounded by your friends means never having to feel bad about taking a shit in the big planters outside the Venetian while braying like a donkey. It's what you do.

The first time I ever visited Vegas (as an adult) was in 1999 or so; I had organized the trip just on a lark, and there were about ten of us, I think. We just went because, well, what the fuck, why not?

On the flight down there, J. creeped back to where we were all sitting, away from his girlfriend, and showed us The Ring. "I'm asking her to marry me," he unnecessarily explained. Well, awesome! Our little jaunt now had a cool narrative! Of course she said yes.

So then: the bachelor party. Which, since J. hadn't told us about, was completely unexpected. And nine years ago, I was much, much poorer than I am now. AND, of course, the cardinal rule of bachelor parties is: the groom pays for nothing.

J. naturally wanted to go to a strip club. In fact, he wanted to go to Glitter Gulch. I had no idea what to expect.

We got there, and J. promptly emitted a piercing shriek of glee and ran off to receive the first of what turned out to be a staggering number of lap dances. A comely lass approached our group and exclaimed, "Hi, fellas! Welcome! That'll be ninety-eight dollars." As in: apiece. What that got you was two drinks and the ability to stagger around in a daze while chicks clambered onto your table and shimmied. Dazedly, I pulled out my debit card and handed it over; entering a fuguelike Monkeybone-style universe, my credit card grew a cartoon face and laughed at me.

I was pretty rattled. Rattled enough that, when armed with my watery Budweiser and when confronted with my first dancer of the evening, I shot my arm out and immediately shoved a fiver into her G-string. She raised her eyebrows at me and said, "Oh, boy! Fast mover." Then she left. Ten seconds of girlflesh, and then the awesomely insulting realization that I was supposed to let her dance for a while before rewarding her. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see J. receiving his nine hundredth lap dance, burying his head reverentially into the dancer's cleavage. I imagined shooting J. in the face with a bazooka and playing with his discarded teeth.

In my storied career, I realize now that I should just stay away from strip clubs.

There is, so far, no indication that our groom has any intention of hitting a strip club, thank God. We'll be apparently spending most of our time in Old Vegas hitting the fifty-cent blackjack tables and getting hit with hammers by demented locals intent on stealing our shoes, which sounds pretty good. We'll be with friends. So when I take that giant shit into some hotel planter, it will be a friendly voice that announces, "Skot, that's an Escalade's sun roof." And, because we're all friends, I will elatedly scream, "SHOW ME YOUR TITS!" And then Kirk will sigh and bury his face in his hands and vow never to go anywhere with me ever again.

On Saturday, the wife and I had YET ANOTHER GODDAMN WEDDING to go to. With that screamed said, it was a delightful affair, full of joy and all that shit. No, really! Don't for one instant think that I'm not slagging on it like I normally would just because I have several friends (read: three or so) who actually read this blog. It is easily the finest wedding that I've ever attended where I was, prior to the main event, offered a kazoo.

It was an outdoor wedding down at Colman Park, which necessitated a ten-minute walk or so, which was fine for me--I merrily smoked--but less so for the wife, whose calves complained the next day what with the heels and all. It was also less then ideal for R., whom we gave a ride to, and whose disastrous knees are hollering still. My lungs = awesomer than heeled feet; calcified legs. Fuck you, joints!

Outdoor weddings are tough, you know? It was a gorgeous scene with perfect weather; I had a beautifully unobstructed view of a bridge in the distance where I could see trucks hauling what I assume was bales of pornography over the water into downtown Seattle. The water lapped gently against the shore, creating a lulling susurrus of sound that nicely obscured the words of every single non-actor who spoke at the affair, which was most people. Many of the small children in attendance were really taken by the surf, and begged to be dangled over the stone railing that overlooked the water; their parents, for the most part, obliged by dangling the children over the water. I silently wondered how many of the parents were tempted to drop these children, thinking, "Fuck parenting. I want to go to Spain." SPLOOSH! To their credit, no children were actually discarded on that evening.

The mime show continued with occasional audibility. The officiant--self-proclaimed ninja of that wonderful Internet institution the Universal Life Church (I myself happen to be a registered Druid)--did himself proud with a clear, ringing voice, and things proceeded apace when . . . this really great thing happened.

The wife and I were positioned exactly behind the groom--whom I will call "Joaquim"--and opposite the bride, whom I name "Spudge." Joaquim and Spudge are about as nice a couple as you could ever ask for, and totally game for most anything, so it was sort of perfect that this happened, which was this: as we stood there, lock-kneed and attentive, all of a sudden, right in front of us, this golden streak whizzed past us. It was an Irish Setter that had been playing in the water, and like a glorious missile, he streaked past us, right in front of us. He made a beeline towards the small little stage holding the wedding party and the family, and screeched to a halt right in the center of the proceedings. And shook himself mightily, throwing water over everyone and all in attendance. And then he shot back out of there like some divine, damp canine bullet.

Everyone broke up, because what else can you do? I think every wedding from now on should feature an overexcited wet dog intruding and shaking the shit out of himself right in the middle of everyone maundering on about THIS IS THE MOMENT and all that. I also think that this should also occur in the middle of all funerals. Fuck, I think wet dogs should intrude on all important events, like, say, sex.

"Oh, God, baby, your dick is so smooth . . ."

"Ungh. Yeah. I've been sanding it . . . "

"Yes! Yes! Yeaaahh . . . "

(A wet dog comes barreling in and shakes itself off.}

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

See? Awesome. I hope Joaquim and Spudge got wet-dogged on their honeymoon opener.

And here I said that I wouldn't shit all over their wedding. Way to go, me! It really was a fun time. Also, environmentally sound! Seriously, this was the greenest wedding ever. The caterers only served local, organic food that had been killed with the jawbone of an ass, or something, and the plates and utensils and even the drink glasses were made out of some mysterious corn mash that could be melted down into goldfish. I think. I might have the details wrong. Even the DJ only played Radiohead and REM. There's nothing like a warehouse full of white people jerking awkwardly to "Planet Telex."

I honestly wish them a gorgeous future full of wet-dog-shaking fantastic sex.

POSTSCRIPT: A little late, I guess, but hey. My tens of readers might have noticed my tendency towards hyperverbalism over the years, along with a certain unwillingness to edit, or, more fairly, to just fail to shut the fuck up. With this in mind--sort of--I acknowledge and grieve for the loss of David Foster Wallace.

I say that and yet I do confess that one of my first thoughts upon learning of his suicide by hanging was this: "You left your wife to find you like that? You fucking asshole." I waited to feel bad, and, after a while, did, I think.

Wallace was, to me, a thrilling stylist with a precariously high-wire voice. Who didn't get exasperated with all of those motherfucking endnotes? And yet who didn't read them all? (I sure did.) I charged through the spectacular Infinite Jest, two bookmarks and all, right up through the complete collapse of an ending; I carried that fucking brick around for five goddamn days, breathless to see where it was going; infuriated that it led to a deserted, gray beach. It is less a novel to me than it is a fireworks show, which sounds like I'm cheapening the novel, and maybe I am, but it's the moments I remember more than I do the overall work: videophony, football punters, and the simply sublime section on Eschaton.

I don't know. I found myself tearing up today reading various sendoffs to the man; there's a five-hundred-plus Metafilter thread about him. I didn't read everything he wrote, but I did read some of his coughs and hem-haws like The Broom of the System and Girl With Curious Hair as well as his frankly great essay collections such as A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again, which, to my mind, are the best things he ever did, even when I think he's completely full of shit.

I'm going to miss him. And you can't blame him for this, but I'm going to take this from him, for now: I'm going to try to keep failing to shut the fuck up.

The wife and I celebrated Labor Day, of course, by forcing labor upon our friendly neighborhood bartender at the Bar That Shall Not Be Named.

"Kevin," we said--see how bold I've become! Names and everything!--"Kevin, labor for us. Make us Lillet cocktails. Bring us warm nuts. Then do some jumping jacks. You will begin after our timed handclaps. Begin!" *clap clap clap*

We got everything but the jumping jacks. Washington State has some slack-ass bartenders, if you ask me.

As we sat there, nursing our first drinks, two lovely ladies entered. I would estimate their collective age to be nine hundred years. "Hello, ladies," said Kevin.

"WHAT?" The first lady bellowed. Here is where I began to love them. They sat down two stools away from us, gingerly climbing up on the things with spiderlike care and precision.

Kevin calmly put down a couple of drink menus in front of them; they picked them up and peered owlishly at them for a moment. The second woman slapped it down on the bar after the most cursory of glances. "I can't read this damn thing."

"It's dark in here!" cried the first. She craned her neck at the ceiling, as if searching for a lost sun. (It is a dark bar.) Presently, Kevin returned.

"Do you ladies know what you'd like?"

"WHAT?"

Kevin is a wonderful bartender. "DID YOU FIND ANYTHING YOU LIKE?" he patiently howled into their faces.

"What's your house vodka?" asked lady #1.

"Our well vodka is McCormick's," replied Kevin, making sure to put a little stink on "McCormick's," since, you know, it's disgusting. "But we also have--"

"I don't give a damn. That's fine."

Kevin couldn't quite let it go. "Did you want a garnish with that or anything? A twist, or a slice of lime . . . ?"

"You could put an olive in it and I'll pretend it's a martini if you want."

Here the second lady piped up. "I'll have a whiskey rocks. You don't have to tell me what it is. I don't want to know."

Kevin slumped and poured their drinks; I sat silently on my stool and tried to hold myself together. I loved these women.

After a little while, I decided I needed a smoke, and lady #1 happened to follow me out for the same. There is a cordoned-off patio outside the bar, and I usually go outside of it so as not to blow smoke at people who might not appreciate it; she joined me, clutching her miserable, terrible vodka rocks.

"You can drink out here, outside?" she asked, dipping her head to indicate the cordoned patio area.

"Well . . . you're actually not supposed to take your drink outside the patio area," I said in a friendly voice. "You could get in trouble if Kevin sees you."

"Trouble," she said acidly. "You tell Kevin good luck with trouble." She smoked hungrily--is there any other kind of smoking?--and shook her glass at nobody in particular. "This is a nice place," she pronounced. "I like it. There won't be any trouble. I'm a little old lady." I had nothing to rebut this particular argument, so I clinked her glass and said, "Indeed."

"You're a nice little fellow," she said. I stood a full eighteen inches above her, but yeah, I'm no giant. "Well, we try to be nice here," I replied.

"You do!" she agreed. We went back inside. Her companion was staring deep into the depths of her whiskey, apparently trying to discern some molecular activity with her incredible, goggle-like glasses; her eyes, when she looked at you, looked like emu eggs.

"Welcome back!" she cried. She seemed genuinely delighted to see us return, as if we'd survived some alarming safari adventure rather than just wandering outside to lean up against the newspaper machines and share a smoke. She had that great old querulous old-lady mouth thing going on where at any moment she could possibly either burst into tears or gales of laughter.

Eventually, they finished their terrible drinks. Settling up was next.

"I've got it!" cried the first lady. The second lady gave no appearance of hearing this, and casually pulled out a ten (their bill: six dollars).

"No, I've got this one," she said over the protests of lady #1, who had only a twenty.

She leaned over to me. "She lives next to me. She has two cats. If she doesn't get me back, I'll kill them." And she smiled.

"What did you say? You said something about my cats!" wailed the first lady.

You hang around the right places, and all of a sudden you're in a Roald Dahl story.

"What did you say about my cats?"

I hope they live forever.

Watched this weekend: The Bank Job, with good old Jason Statham stolidly refusing to act as usual. Verdict? Surprisingly not very terrible! I mean, it wasn't as life-changing as the frankly incredible Crank, nor was it as 80's-saxophonically transporting as The Transporter, but it was a thing that didn't manage to horrify me, unlike the jaw-dropping Uwe Boll choad-poker In the Name of the King. Well done, Jason!

And then along comes Death Race, apparently for the sole reason of restoring Statham's singularly depressing reputation for allegedly acting in whatever nauseating thing that presents itself. Let's prejudge it first up.

Death Race

Let us not speak further of Statham, nor let us mention Ian McShane, because . . . let's just not. Let us instead discuss Joan Allen, who has gotten a laughable amount of weird press over her appearance in this astounding pile of crap. Some critics seem personally affronted that Joan Allen has deigned to appear in this drag queen of an action movie.

This kills me.

Does it occur to nobody else that Joan Allen was dying to do a movie like this? Why not spend a couple hours chewing on this cinematic bacon when all she's done for the last fifteen years is play these emotionally brittle fucked-up broads? Here's an abbreviated list of some of her previous movies:

Searching for Bobby Fischer
Nixon
The Ice Storm
Face/Off
Pleasantville
The Contender

Jesus. I'm surprised she hasn't just moved to dom-porn yet. Twisting Jason Statham's nuts seems like a moderate exercise considering the logical alternatives.

Babylon A.D.

IMDB tells me:

Veteran-turned-mercenary Thoorop takes the high-risk job of escorting a woman from Russia to America. Little does he know that she is host to an organism that a cult wants to harvest in order to produce a genetically modified Messiah.

With Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Gerard Depardieu and Charlotte Rampling. I predict that this movie will make eight hundred billion dollars at the box office. If I have any quibble with this movie--which I predict is going to shatter every cinematic record in history--it's just that I wish they had found a way to include Alan Alda in what is otherwise a spectacular, sense-making cast.

Traitor

Aptly named! Don Cheadle not showing off dialect work? Traitor, indeed. If you love America, you will not see movies where Don Cheadle doesn't speak with an accent. Disgusting.

College

Awesome. Why not just call it Movie? Or, say, Boobs? Or how about But If We Came In Their Faces, It Would Be Porn? I'm just trying to be helpful.

I'm obviously not the target audience here, but I'm also struggling to think of who is. Is it really college students? And if so . . . are they taking their dates with them? Are their girlfriends really going to put up with this shit? And if so . . . why? Do they hate themselves? Or do they like vengeful after-movie hate-fucking? It's a confusing world.

I can't really talk. I once took a girlfriend to see Bonfire of the Vanities. She rightfully broke up with me a week later. Still.

Anyway, all that said, I do recommend this film to anyone--and I know you're out there--interested in following the career arcs of talented actors such as Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell, Carolyn Moss, and most especially Wendy Talley, who, as "Kevin's Mom," I can only assume has got it going on.

Bangkok Dangerous

I . . . I'm so tired.

The funny thing is, while there are certain movies that I'd sooner die than go see in the theaters, there are movies like this that I also think to myself: I cannot fucking wait for this to hit pay-per-view. It's strange how many of these movies seem to feature Nic Cage.

Disaster Movie

Needs more Nic Cage.

Really, these goddamned fucking blighted legfucking garbage scows just make me channel my inner Travis Bickle.

Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up.

Here is a man who is standing up. I will not take this fucking shit any more. Joan Allen is standing right here with me: she's a strong woman who is also saying "I will not take it up my professionally tensed ass any more! I will star in wretched projects like Death Race rather than playing neurotic housewives for the rest of my career!" We stand side by side; over there, out from the wings, comes Nic Cage, waving his proud mullet. WE STAND TOGETHER, OR SOMETHING!

Meanwhile, the assholes who unleash shit tornadoes like Disaster Movie on us--I see that the movie visually quotes at least five different non-disaster movies--just repurpose Travis Bickle quotes right back at us:

I got some bad ideas in my head.

As I type, the tiny little whores are finishing up their uneven bars competition, and Nastia is stalking around looking like someone took a dump in her hair, probably rightfully so, given the inanity of the minutae involved in Olympics scoring, which once again makes me want to erupt into a ridiculous rant about non-objective Olympic events, and which also makes my wife sigh and wander distractedly over to the whiskey bottle.

Every year I tell myself I won't watch the Olympics. Every year it's a stupid lie to myself; I always watch. What the hell do you do with shit like gymnastics? It's not like Michael Phelps, where the question is easy: who got to the end of the race the fastest? It's not like ping-pong or volleyball where it's: who scored the winning points first? With gymnastics and so many other sports, it's: who was more awesome? Which is obviously where it gets sticky and fraught with all kinds of nonsense, and where I start to go crazy.

I curse the Olympics even as I watch. What other bizarre pageantry-laden event could actually find me agreeing with that foaming, manic werewolf Bela Karolyi as he hollers thickly about the laughably underaged Chinese entrants? GO, BELA! I think to myself. Then I remember: He is a raving madman. What's wrong with you? Indeed.

What other international circus of madness could possibly persuade me to watch--as I did earlier today--something as comprehensively stultifying as a rowing competition? Not to take anything away from those fine competitors, but who wants to watch rowing? If it's all about a bunch of people rhythmically pistoning away for ten minutes and grunting with effort, I say let's see some Olympic group masturbation. In 2012, we can make it happen: ten-man Come on A Cracker. Non-medalists have to eat the cracker.

I was talking with the wife about this a little bit, and I guess here's what gets me about the Olympics, maybe what some would call the Olympic Spirit^TM. It's this: say you're an Olympic-class swimmer; say you're from Greece, or Georgia, or Cyprus. Wherever. Repeat that to yourself for a moment: you're Olympic-class. You can kick everyone's ass you know, everyone in your own country. Hell, you can kick the ass of everyone in the world except for maybe a dozen other people. This is how good you are: you're better at what you do than everyone in the world except for a vanishing fraction of a number of people. You're essentially a superhero when it comes to this one thing, this one exceedingly specialized talent that you've spent years and years honing to perfection. Again: hardly anyone on the planet is even remotely as good as you at this thing you do. In this example, swimming.

So there you are. Nobody else in the three or five or ten million of your home country's populace can touch you in the pool. Literally: you'd just fucking swim away from them while they paddled like drowning dogs in a notional game of Marco Polo. You secretly think to yourself: We should make Marco Polo an Olympic event, because I would kick everyone's asses. Frankly, you're ridiculous.

And so, of course, you go to the Olympics. You travel halfway across the goddamn fucking world, because in your insane, wildly circumscribed, strange world, you're practically untouchable. A dozen people can do what you do, and that is: swim like a crazy motherfucker with a turbine lodged up your ass. And you look over and see Michael Phelps. And you realize: you are dead.

So here's what it's come to. After years--decades?--of busting your ass, you're about to be utterly demolished by some goddamn freak who eats nineteen dead dogs before he even gets out of bed; this bloody mutant who looks like his hands were grown in a vat; some infuriating yokel whose heart vomits oxygenated blood into his system like Chris Holmes after a distillery tour.

Realize that barring something like a freak stroke or a lightning strike that there is nothing you can do about this. All you can really do is stare hopelessly at this gormless nincompoop and know despair. You're going to get your ass handed to you, probably on a tarnished platter, maybe with a rancid maraschino cherry lodged in the asshole if Phelps is feeling nice. After all this, all you can do is maybe hope to be in the same frame as him as he trounces the fields, and probably not, since you're from Cyprus after all, and so are not worthy of any of NBC's precious film. You're about to be carved up badly; everyone knows this. This is what you've worked for: ignominy.

What do you do? Well, you get in the fucking pool, don't you? Hey, everyone loves a Cinderella story, right? It could be you! Right?

Nah. It's not going to be you. You get into the pool anyway. You bust your fucking ass, too--it's amazing, really: you swim the meet of your life. You get demolished, of course. It isn't even close. Nobody is surprised. In fact, nobody cares about you at all. Nobody even mentions your name.

Years you spent doing this. You're one of the best in the world. Nobody cares. You're a footnote at best. You're done, by the way; your event is over. You're peeling off sheets of dead, chlorine-toxic skin while Phelps is over there getting sucked off by some NBC flack, his eyes pinwheeling goonishly in his sockets; later, he'll fuck a bunch of Swedish racewalking entrants while eating a pizza.

You might get to say hi to LeBron James, maybe. A year from now--no, a week--, you'll be forgotten. Were you even remembered? You don't know. Four years later, hey . . . why not try again?

I love you for doing this.