Reda Deems Carnie Coffee "Good Shit"

It's not one of my most exciting performances, but I am excited to be on The Berrics. Watch Part One, and Part Two.

Last Christmas we shared a cabin with friends in Big Sur. When I awoke and stumbled to the kitchen, I found one of our friends making coffee. To protect her identity, I’ll use my patented technique of disguising her name by spelling it backwards: Narahs.

“We need more coffee,” Narahs announced. She had poured the entire bag we brought with us into the filter.

I don’t drink coffee when I’m hungover, so I’m not sure why I even cared (or why I even brought coffee?), but I decided to argue with Narahs about the proper methods of making coffee. At the time, my opinion was she was using way too much. The argument didn’t last long, though, because Narahs ended it when she said, “You don’t even drink coffee! We make coffee all day, every day!”

This is why I changed Sharan’s name to Narahs because I don’t remember exactly what she said and I don't want to say mean things about my daughter. But she said something along the lines of, “You don’t know how to make coffee,” and it pissed me off. GRRR...

In hindsight it’s actually kind of funny because I do know how to make coffee and I make coffee almost every day. But the only time Narahs is at our house in the morning during coffee hours is after a night of drinking. And, as I mentioned, I don’t make coffee when I’m hungover. So it’s not my fault that Narahs is a stupid drunk slut and hasn’t experienced my magical coffee making ability.

Because I do know how to make coffee, and I make good coffee. Reda says so. And if there’s anyone who knows coffee, it’s Reda. In the latest episode of “Wednesday’s With Reda” on The Berrics, Reda and Joey Brezinski visit our house, molest my wiener, make fun of the art on the walls, and demand that I make them a cup of coffee. Reda enjoyed the cup of coffee I made him. In Part Two, you can clearly hear him say, “This is good shit right here.” If you know anything about Reda, that’s quite an achievement because he hates everything. But my coffee is good shit. Right here.

There was a lot of silly business that didn't make the cut on The Berrics and I can only assume it's because there was too much cock involved? Joey and Reda molested more than one wiener that evening. As you can see in the photo, my Whale Cock is on the floor in front of Reda, and Joey is holding my Portugese coffee mug that Nieratko got me. It's designed with holes around the rim so the only way you can drink out of it is to wrap your lips around the dick that protrudes from the side. And those are only two of the wieners we were playing with in that room.

To Narahs’ credit, however, she is correct: I am not a coffee fiend or a connoisseur of the beverage and don’t pretend to be. (So that just means she’s not “stupid,” but she’s still a drunk slut.) In fact I kind of hate coffee people. But I do enjoy a good cup of coffee and I learned long ago a proper technique for making one. Notice that it's singular: a proper technique. I know there are other methods, but I don't give a shit about how you make coffee. This way works. It’s so simple I don’t understand why people get so fucking crazy about it. Or why some people can’t make a good cup. I take a Melitta filter, put it in one of those plastic Melitta cones, wet it, and put it over a cup. Then I grind some beans (currently I’m using Trader Joe’s “Bay Blend,” which is what Reda had), put a couple big spoonfuls in the cone, and pour a little boiling water over them, just enough to wet them. I then wait a couple minutes before I pour the rest of the boiling water over the grounds, and, voila: good shit right here.

Witch Bath

Witch Bath is our new favorite game that we learned in Belize.
And your new favorite black metal band. 

“Oh look who finally showed up?” Wende (pronounced Wendy) said from the bar when Tania and I arrived.

“She even cleaned her house for you,” her sister Denise said scolding us.

“Ah shit,” I said. “Sorry. Fuck.”

I felt horrible. I hate flaky people. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. It’s one of my better qualities, but I flaked out that day. We had made a date to play Wii with the sisters that afternoon, but Tania and I decided to take the long walk along the beach to the Coppola resort instead. Tania said she forgot about the Wii date. I didn’t forget about it, but I thought it was just drunk talk. “Ah, they won’t miss us,” I thought. Apparently they did miss us. And it wasn’t drunk talk. And they were pissed.

Wende and Denise are sisters, born in Canada, of Irish descent. They’ve owned the Pickled Parrot in Belize for over a decade. We wandered in our first night in Placencia and ended up staying til after closing. Not sure how or when the Wii came up, but we discovered that we all share a love of Wii bowling.

“Why would anyone go to a bowling alley ever again?”

“I know, right!”

“Real bowling is so stupid!”

So Tania and I were invited to their house the next day to enjoy a few frames of Wii bowling with them. “I’m going to kick your asses!” I boasted. But, as I said, we flaked. And we had to listen to their shit for the rest of the evening. Which we deserved.

We did, however, make two play dates with the sisters that first drunken night. The second one was the following day and involved, believe it or not, real bowling.

“There’s a bowling alley here?” I said. You have to remember that Belize is mostly jungle. “I gotta see this.”

Wende on the left, Denise on the right, at their bar, The Pickled Parrot.

“So are you actually going to come tomorrow?” Wende asked.

“Or are you going flake out again?” Denise asked.

They were really mad. I guess besides cleaning the house for our Wii play date, they even closed the bar down.

“Yeah,” I said emphatically. “Yeah. We’re coming. Shit, sorry.”

Pickled Parrot's Pink Pussy.

The next morning a small crew of Placencia locals gathered in front of the Pickled Parrot to take a bus eight miles north to the neighboring town of Maya Beach. The occasion was Brenda's birthday. Brenda is another Pickled Parrot local. Like Wende and Denise, she was cool. We had a fine time drinking rum punches with Brenda at the Pickled Parrot.

The idea of a bowling alley in Belize becomes even stranger when you take a bus to a bowling alley in Belize. A couple people in our group had, in fact, never been on a bus before. Probably because the bus, a very old school bus, only comes once a day. We got on in Placencia, which is the southern most tip of the peninsula and thus the beginning of the bus route, so the bus was empty at the start. That only lasted a few minutes. By the time we got to Maya Beach, eight miles and 30 minutes later, the thing was packed, standing room only. It seemed to stop every 20 feet and ten more people would get on. One girl that got on emerged from the jungle with a pizza. (Gratuitous grandpa joke: Must have been a pizza “hut” in the jungle somewhere?)

The first stop on Wende and Denise’s Maya Beach adventure was Mangos, a bar/restaurant that everyone said had the best food on the peninsula. They couldn’t stop talking about how good the chef was. It looked good. Tania and I weren’t really that hungry yet, so we just ordered a plate of nachos with grilled shrimp and enjoyed the view and our rum punch.

Tania enjoying the view at Mangos. Below, not yo shrimp.

The thing I will always remember about Mangos, though, was the ring game. Next to the bar, there was a silver ring on a fishing line attached to the ceiling. The ring was around a hook screwed into a post. Denise took the ring off the hook, took a few steps back, and began trying to swing the ring back onto the hook.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?” I yelled.

“It’s the ring game,” she said. “It’s a Belizean thing. You try and get the ring onto the hook.”

“LEMME TRY,” I yelled. I tend to yell when I get excited.

Get the ring on the hook. Looked simple enough. I swung the ring at the hook, and missed.

“What the fuck?” I said to the ring as I caught it on its return.

That was all it took, just one try. I was pissed, and I was hooked (no pun intended). I’ve been addicted to it ever since. I’ve been jonesing for a fix so bad since we’ve been home that I went down to the hardware store, bought the supplies, and built my own damn ring game in our backyard. We dubbed it “Belizean Horseshoes.” (Other names we considered were “Belizean Basketball,” you have to get the hoop around the “ball”; “Belizean Darts,” you have to hit the “dart” with the bulls eye; and “Belizean Wedding,” put the ring on the “finger.”) But, after a short search on the internet, I learned that it already has a name: it’s called either the Bimini Ring Game, or Ring The Bull.

Tania never fist pumps, but she jocked out when she got the ring on the hook at Mangos.

The ring game is popular at bars throughout the Bahamas, not just Belize, but nobody really knows where it came from. Some say it was introduced by pirates, but pirates (butt pirates?) seem to be the response to any question without an answer down there. Others like to say it was invented by Hemingway while he was fishing and drinking, drinking and fishing, sometimes just fishing, but most of the time just drinking. But it doesn’t matter what their story is because the game’s origins can purportedly be traced back to some ancient pub in England called “Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem.”

“Legend has it the game was brought back to England by Crusaders from Jerusalem,” says the site ringthebull.com. “This story appears to have come about primarily from the game being played in the most famous and oldest pub in England ‘Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem’ situated in the cliffs underneath Nottingham Castle. This pub is an old crusaders tavern dating back to the year 1189 AD.”

It’s a nice story, and I hope it is true, but ringthebull.com is a site run by some dude in Cincinatti. (Since the internet says I invented the word “bromance,” I don’t really believe anything on it anymore.) And even if anybody was alive in 1189 AD, there doesn’t seem to be any explanation for the Jewish element in the story. “The Crusaders” makes the story sound very exciting and romantic (much like butt pirates), but—wait, they stole it from the Jews, what? Jews play games? I mean besides Dreidle?

In short, I don’t think it really has a name and you can call it whatever you want. So we’ve decided to call the ring game we learned in Belize “Witch Bath.” 

This really has nothing to do with anything other than I thought this might be a nice place for you, the reader, to pause and enjoy a wonderful painting of a lobster wearing sunglasses and enjoying a Belikin.

The other night, we had a couple friends, Mark and Sharan, over for drinks, dinner, and to try out our new Belizean Horseshoe game (which was its name at the time). Mark also brought his two dogs, Randall and Collette, and a coworker from Connecticut named Carly. Dinner was delightful. Tania made braised beef short ribs with leek polenta and green beans (I would call them haricot verts, as is the fashion these days, but I’m not trying to sell them to you, and I’m not French). But Belizean Horseshoes was the highlight of the evening. As I had hoped, our guests were absolutely smitten with the stupid ring on a string.

“You’ll probably find me out here when the sun comes up, smoking cigarettes and still playing this thing,” Carly said.

It was in fact Carly who was the first person to get the ring on the hook in our backyard. I had performed fairly well on the one at Mangos bar, I had hooked the ring probably a dozen times, but after setting the one up in our backyard I couldn’t hook it once after a half hour of trying. Which made me wonder if I had miscalculated the distances. But then Carly arrived and made it on the hook in just a few minutes (a little too easily, I thought), and we were all shown that it wasn’t as impossible as it first seemed. Mark and Tania then both hooked it a couple times, and I went on to hook it a few more times. Sharan, on the other hand, has yet to experience the joy of landing the ring on the hook because she’s a total loser.

“I fucking hate this game,” Sharan said.

Amid the revelry of the evening, however, an unfortunate mishap soured our merriment. Mark’s dog, Collette, got hit by a skunk in our backyard.

“And Collette’s the smart one,” Mark said as he stood over Collette on our lawn wiping the froth from her lips and cleaning her bloody nose. She not only got the skunk’s vile spray straight in the face, but she got the skunk’s claws straight up her nose. “She has a problem with cats,” Mark explained.

Not to be outdone, Randall raced into the darkness of our backyard and found the wounded skunk himself and was similarly entertained by the animal’s noxious nether regions. While Collette was fine with her first misting, and sat quietly, albeit ashamed, on the patio for the rest of the night, Randall returned to the scene a half dozen more times and received the same result every time. He couldn’t get enough of it. We wondered if it was like heroin to him or something. “You throw up at first, and it burns your eyes, but after that the high is amazing!”

Beckett, as I’ve said before, hates squirrels. He calls them Devil Rats. And skunks, well, he refers to them as the Queens of the Devil Rats. I mentioned this in the backyard at some point, which might have been why Mark, using Randall’s voice, characterized the foul smelling weasel as a witch. “I thought it was a cat,” Randall whined, “but it turned into a FUCKING WITCH!”

Shortly thereafter the term “Witch Bath” was born. It’s what you get when you get hit by a skunk. As in, “Randall and Collette each took a witch bath the other night.”

“That’s a good name for a black metal band,” I said.

And thus the world famous “skunk metal” band Witch Bath was born.

“When do we start practicing?” Sharan asked excitedly.

“Practice?” I said. “Pfft! We don’t practice, we stink!” (That’s two grandpa jokes, if you’re keeping score.)

I further explained that the hard work was already done: we had a name, we had a logo, and we had a theme on which to hang our crappy metal music. Making the crappy metal music to go along with our logo is easy. Anybody can do that, even me and Mark. So all that is left to do is for Sharan and Tania to write some stupid lyrics about skunks, witches, baths, and witch baths. Of course costuming is a major issue for any metal band, but in our case that’s a no brainer also: we’ll all wear black witch’s habits that will be painted like a skunk. With bushy tails and pointy black hats, of course. At the moment I'm busy trying to figure out how to rig the tails so that we can lift them to expose an anus hose that will spray the audience—like Gwar—with skunk juice. Gwar skunk tails are far more important than practice. 

The only thing we need to practice is this fucking shit right here!

 A few days later, while pricing witch hats (they’re expensive!), I had a great idea, “We should just call the ring game, Witch Bath, too!” Mark has admitted having trouble pronouncing the “Belizean” part of Belizean Horseshoes, Bimini Ring Game just sounds stupid like Jenga, and Ring the Bull sounds either vaguely sexual or like a catchphrase on Sports Center. But if someone asked me if I wanted to learn how to play Witch Bath, I’d be like, “Fuck yeah!”

And thus Witch Bath, the ring game, was born. (You’d think we’re pro life with all the things being born in this story, but we’re not.) 

The object of Witch Bath, then, is to get the noose (ring) around the witch’s neck (hook), so that you can drag her down to the river and drown her. The drowning, that’s the “bath” part. Or maybe the object is to get the wedding ring around the witch’s finger (the hook) so that you can marry her and sit in her Jacuzzi cauldron for all eternity? I don’t know. And I don’t care. Use your imagination. If Picasso can call this a guitar, I can call this game Witch Bath.

Red Rum Punch

These juicy green leaves with bright red veins came from a bush, or a tree, that was all over the beaches of Belize. We stayed in a beach shack in Placencia.

“It’s gonna DUMP!”

I must have yelled that a dozen times our first day in Belize. The rain would fall hard at times, but not for long. There was always blue sky right behind the dark clouds that were born over the Caribbean Sea with its Bermuda Triangle and peculiar weather conditions that would make the rain fall sideways. Little flying water coffins.

“You’re going to dump,” Tania said.

It’s true. I am going to dump. No matter what. Even if I died right after she said that, I’d still dump. I’ve been give to understand that corpses void their bowels.

“You don’t tell me when I’m going to dump!” I yelled back at her. Perhaps too aggressively.

We were on vacation, after all, and there was no reason to be starting a fight. We had even taken the precaution of sleeping on our usually assigned sides of the bed: I am on the right, Tania is on the left. That is from the vantage point of a murderer standing at the foot of the bed with a knife in his hand, perhaps a large chef’s knife, and looking at us while adjusting his pantyhose, or ski mask, or whatever costume he had chosen to wear for the event of our deaths. Maybe he wore nothing and wished for us to see his crazy face before we die so we’d always “remember” him, that is of course if memory crosses the divide between this world and the next. I’m of the opinion it doesn’t. I said he was crazy, right? In which case, if he were sans mask, then he would probably be picking his nose as he surveyed us sleeping. I would flick a booger on my victims right before I set upon them. It’s completely unnecessary, but it’s a little added obnoxious touch to an already unpleasant event. I mean, if you’re going to be a jerk. I wouldn’t aim, I’d just flick it like a cigarette in that “Alright let’s do this!” manner that is so popular among action movie stars. And then I’d stab the fuck out of them. Out of us. I’m on the right, she’s on the left, if you’re a murderer at the foot of our bed.

This was the view from the front porch of our beach shack. See that black dot on the beach by the water to the right? It's a bag of trash. It was there our entire stay. We wrote a children's story about it called, "The Li'l Bag of Beach Trash." Which you will enjoy soon.

“You’re on my side,” Tania said as she emerged from the bathroom in our tiny little beach shack and found me on the left side of the bed. Again, from the murderer’s perspective. “You wanna fight again?” she asked. The Amelie soundtrack was coming out of her crappy, tinny iPod speakers.

“Where was that, that we fought because we slept on the wrong side of the bed?” I asked. The song that she walked down the aisle to, “La Valse D’Amelie,” was playing.

“I don’t remember,” she said, thinking about it. “London?”

“No,” I said. We definitely fought in London. That was a particularly bad fight. But I remember sleeping on my side, the right side, right as in opposite of left from the perspective of a murderer at the foot of our bed, but also right as in the correct side of the bed. Because I remember staring at the window all night long, which was on my side of the room, our horrible, tiny, harlequin themed room. There’s nothing like a clown-themed room to exaggerate and mock a domestic spat.

“Maybe Vegas?” she wondered.

“Maybe,” I agreed. “For some reason Vegas was the first place I thought of, too.” She didn’t think Vegas first, but I said “too” all the same. And Vegas seems like a place where you’re supposed to fight with women.

“I just remember that we were fighting,” she said, “and in hindsight, when it was all over, we decided it was because we were sleeping on the wrong sides of the bed.”

“Probably,” I said. Upon inspection, I’ve found that every one of our fights is over nothing and may as well have been caused by sleeping on the wrong side of the bed. It’s as good an explanation as any. “Oh wow! Look at the moon!” I said. It was still light out, but I could see the moon rising over the ocean.

When it would "dump," I'd take pictures of beach trash and whatnot in the room. This is a little piece of seaweed going up Bittman's nose.

“Oh,” she said, stepping out onto our porch, “it’s a full moon.”

Tania got her camera out of her purse and took a picture of the moon in the daylight sky. It was one of those digital pictures you feel the need to take, but will never do anything with. It’s a nice sentiment, but ultimately it’s just a stupid moon picture.

“Are you using the Caribbean Ocean Moon Rise setting?” I asked.

Tania’s camera has all these automatic settings that are oddly specific such as, “Pets,” “Food,” “Babies,” “Fireworks,” “Night Portraits,” “Starry Night Portraits,” “Self Portraits,” “Starry Night Self Portraits of Baby Food,” etc.. I prefer to keep it on the one that uses a martini glass as an icon, “Party,” it says. I hope that every picture I take in that mode will look like I’m at a party. “WOOOO! PARTY CAM!”

“Duh,” Tania said. “What? You think I’d make the mistake of using the Pacific Ocean Moon Rise setting?”

I poured two more rum drinks. Tania lay down on the bed and picked up her Patti Smith book. The Cocteau Twins babbled out of the tinny iPod speakers. Tania thinks the singer sounds like Nell. Jodie Foster Appalachian feral wild child jibber jabber. The surf splashed upon our beach. The faint yellow moon went behind the clouds.

Our first bartender preferred this rum because it was mellower, not so sweet and vanilla-y.

“Jesus,” she said as she took a sip of her rum punch.

“That’s how they did it at the bar,” I said. I watched. I made mental notes. They filled the glass with ice, then some rum, then a splash of punch. Tania found my interpretation a little strong.

“You like that Patti Smith book?” I asked.

Tania said Patti Smith is a good writer. Tania never says that. Even about good writers.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t you ask the murderer at the end of the bed. He’s been reading over my shoulder all night.”

I wondered if the camera had a setting for “Murder.”

Rum punch at Coppola's. Coppola has a resort in Placencia. We walked about three miles along the beach to get to the bar on the ocean and have a couple drinks and watch rich people have really weird forced romantic moments.

Found this sick Neil Blender ramp on the walk to Coppola's. Tania is watching wild chickens in the trees.

Chili's by The Long Beach Aquarium

I'm making my own screen savers.

Tania’s BFF Christy was in town with her kid and they decided we would all take a field trip to the Long Beach Aquarium. I was a little worried because the general consensus in regards to the aquarium is that it sucks. I saw a lot of negative reviews on Yelp.

“Sucks.”
—Shaquand

“Worst 'quarm.”
—Jimarcus

“Very, very, very sucks.”
—Traycedes

“Smells.”
—Lashaunta

“That is so stupid.”
—Nene

The one problem with all of these bad reviews is that they were comparing the LBC aquarium to the world renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium just a couple hundred miles north. Unfortunately, not only does the LBC aquarium suck in comparison, but so does every other aquarium in the world. The Monterey Bay aquarium is beyond comparison, thus it is unfair to judge anything in relation to it. If you take Monterey out of the equation, however, the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific is a fine aquarium with lots of cool tanks. There are sharks, seals, jellyfish, and even playful otters. They also have small troughs filled with sea slugs, and starfish, and other disgusting things that they let you touch. It’s sort of like an underwater petting zoo, but instead of stinky goats, you stroke snot. 

This thing tried to pull me in.

“What are their names?” I wondered to the slug wrangler when it was my turn to stick my hands in the water. She said they didn’t have names. “No names?” I said surprised. “Can I name them?” I asked. Best to ask permission before you go around naming animals that don’t belong to you. Their keepers might subscribe to a Montessori philosophy and are waiting for the animal to name itself.

“Sure, I guess,” the attendant said.

Tania is a black belt at naming seals and other sea creatures, and thus she usually handles this sort of thing, but she thought this would be a good opportunity for me to get my foot in the door and suggested I give it a go. And so here is a catalog of some of the names I came up with:

Slimon the Diamond, Boogers Snot Com, Wet Taffy The Elder, Dear Old Used Condom Carl, Suck On It Sylvester, Jean Luc the Sand Junky, Barry the Bewildering Baltic Blind Banana, Ole Slow Poke (“The Cheetah of the Sea”), Dimitry the Underwater Arms Dealer, Herman the Echinoderman, etc.. 

Bill and Ted were having an excellent adventure.

This is Christy's kid, Preston. "Hey, Preston, make a shark face," I said. "Huh?" Preston said.

"Make a—" "I know, I heard you. God. Hold on, I'm thinking of a good one… okay I got one."

"TAH DAAAH! SHARK FACE!"

 But one of my favorite things about visiting the Long Beach Aquarium is getting to eat lunch on the marina. And in my opinion, there’s only one place to go. It’s a funky little joint with a real deal, south-of-the-border name and the cooking to back it up. This place is going old school and it’s called Chili’s.

Chili’s has been serving up homemade, down home cooking since 1975. And when you walk into the restaurant that is just a short walk from the Aquarium, you’re transported back in time. Your eyes are bludgeoned with a vast array of authentic memorabilia that makes you feel like you are in a cantina that straddles the border between Texas and Mexico.

“You put the knick knack in Knick Knack Paddy Whack Give a Dog a Bone!” I said to the hostess as she walked us to our bangin’ booth. “That’s how we roll, dog!” I said. Tania and Christy et al ordered a bevy of food from our waitress, but the most important item we ordered was the queso. Queso is Christy’s favorite food. She doesn’t eat anything else—actually she eats one other thing, spaghetti I think, but mostly queso. She’s the opposite of a foodie, she’s like a foo. Or maybe even just a fo. 

Leggo my queso, Plato! Or I'll break-o your face-o!

As the waitress placed the bowl of queso on the table, I stood up, pushed my chair back, and made a very dramatic step away from the table. “Whoa!” I said. My body language showed that I didn’t want to get any queso on my money shirt. “I don’t think so,” I said with a hearty guffaw. That’s my lucky shirt that I wear to Vegas when I go out with the boys and we gamble and I yell things in the casino like, “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!” and, “LET’S DO THIS!®©™” (LET’S DO THIS!®©™, incidentally, is my new catch phrase for 2011. I own it.)

Once the cheese was on the table I resumed my place and dug in. “Oh, that is money!” I said with my mouth full of the first bite. “You could wipe that on the inside of a urinal in a public restroom in Flavor Town and I’d lick it off!” 

Next up was the chili. Hey, you can’t go to Chili’s without trying a bowl of their signature red. I rolled my sweatband up my forearm a little further and dug in for my first bite. 

Actually, the Chili looks like the inside of a toilet bowl in a public restroom in Flavor Town. Mmmm.

“This rocks, brother!” I said with beans and sauce dangling from my confusing facial hair pattern like dingleberries off the butthole on a stray dog wandering the streets of Flavor Town. And then the heat started to mount on my tongue. “Wow, man, that chili’s got some kick! That’s the kind of kick you get when you get sent to the Flavor Town penitentiary and your cellmate punches you in the back of the head after he’s done buttfucking you! You should call this ‘Donkey Pun-Chili!’ LET’S DO THIS!®©™”

Finally, the star of the show, the famous Chili’s burger arrived. “Is that 80-20 mix?” I said to the waitress as she set it down before me. Almost all chefs use a mixture of ground beef that is 80% meat and 20% fat, but I always like to say it out loud because it makes me sound like a real chef and not some douchebag that wears his sunglasses on the back of his head and opened some cockamamie restaurant that serves up “collision food”—note that I am talking about food that is neither “fusion” nor “cuisine”—which is a head-on collision between Texas BBQ and sushi. I like to describe it as, “It’s what you get when you strap a rodeo bull and a sumo wrestler to two oncoming bullet trains: a total disaster! YEEHAW! ARIGATO!” Trust me, it rocks.

“Eighty twenty?” the waitress finally said. “Um, I don’t know? I can go check for you, though?”

“Wait a minute,” I said, and I pointed out the window. “Are those two sheep having sex on that yacht?” I asked.

“What?” she said looking where I pointed.

Which was totally in the opposite direction of my plate. While she was looking for my fantasy fucking flock, I stole a fistful of fries and stuffed them in my face. 

“What?” she said turning back around.

But it was too late, my face was filled with fries. "Fistful of fantasy flock fucking face fries!" I’m a crazy guy sometimes. What can I say? “Wham bam thank you ma’am!”

My burger looks like what's in between the legs of my favorite Flavor Town hooker! Guess which one tastes like old fish!

Confused, the waitress left us alone to dig into our entrees. “Look at looky loo,” I said to my burger as I raised it to my stray dog butthole lips and took a big ole bite. “Oh man! I dig that. This rocks man. Get it goin’. That’s what I’m talking about. Winner winner hamburger dinner. You can taste the sweetness of the bun, and the crunchtastic pickle makes me tickle, and the tomato comes through like the national fruit of Flavor Town, and this thing just makes me get down, brother.”

In short, it tasted just like a hamburger, but I need to describe all the various components that make up a hamburger using colorful analogies, alliteration, rhymes, and all manner of blather for about ten minutes or so. When I was finished, I held up my jewel encrusted fist—I don’t wear any gay jewelry or anything, it’s like really cool dude jewelry that’s got skulls and shit on it, grrrrr—and offered it to anyone who happened to be nearby. Getting knuckles from me, after all, is the Quadruple-D equivalent of a Michelin Star.

Quadruple D? Did I not mention it earlier? The newsboys are on the street corners all over Flavor Town yelling the news: I’m starting my own  TV show and it’s going to be called “Douchebags, Ding Dongs, and Dipshits.” It’s going to be off the hook.  

BOOB: AVAILABLE NOW

 "Big Brother," the BOOB press release reads, "was the most infamous magazine in skateboard history and one of its loudest voices was Dave Carnie. BOOB (published by KING PUBLISHING with support from VANS) is a collection of Dave Carnie’s best work in his 14 years with Big Brother—a magazine that not only transformed skateboarding and brought us Jackass, but influenced everything in the publishing world from Vice to Martha Stewart’s Living. BOOB will go down in literary history as the greatest skateboard book, not about skateboarding, ever written."

Now for some quotes from famous people:

“Dave tells it like it is, or however he sees it through his perverted prism. Never compromising, sometimes offensive, always funny.”

—Tony Hawk

“On his best day Dave Carnie isn’t too pleasant. He is often drunk, fairly abusive, and a goddamn awful fighter. He can write like a son of a bitch and is one too. I’m a big fan.”

—Johnny Knoxville

“I met Carnie at Big Brother when the offices were at World in El Segundo and he was the biggest dick. It wasn’t till four years later when he was drunk at Jeff’s apartment that he was suddenly nice to me. I’m not sure how I won him over, but it took years of trying.”

—Spike Jonze

“Idiots often flaunt their idiocy unintentionally, geniuses often flaunt their genius over-intentionally, but it is the truly gifted ones who can deliver their genius through idiocy.”

—Mark Whitely, Slap Magazine

“When I think of Carnie, one word comes to mind: shitbag. Actually, that’s two words, but it looks way better written as one.”

—Jeff Tremaine

To order your copy, touch a BOOB anywhere on this page. While you're waiting for your book to arrive, enjoy a food related sample from the notorious "Kids Issue" that came out in January 1999:  

 

How To Hurt Kids

 

Face it, kids suck. Who likes kids anyway? They're filthy little runts. We should be waging war against them, not for them. What's all this “they're our future” horseshit, anyway? What about the present? What about me? Has everyone forgotten that adults, back in the day, also had the misfortune of falling out of some lame cunt's cunt? It wasn't that hard. It was so easy that I don't even remember doing it. Yet every child who performs this pitiful stunt of bungee jumping out of a vagina is awarded Rock Star status.

“Isn't it cuuuute?” No, it looks like a fucking worm with arms. I hate kids. They've ruined everything: albums come with stupid warnings, car windows only go down halfway, drugs and liquor are heavily regulated, you need a ladder at the bookstore to get to the pornography, and TV and movies are boring. If it weren't for kids and their fragile little brains, you'd probably be looking at a nice pair of tits right now, but no, we can't show tits because of kids. Fuck kids! Let's kill ’em.

In an effort to rid the world of kids so that the rest of us can grow and prosper, I have created some deadly desserts that will, at the very least, injure the little fuckers. Kids love sweets. They fall for them every time. Just as men think with their dicks around women, so do children, in the company of candy, think with their tongues. 

 

The ol’ razor blade in the apple—a classic!
Ingredients: Apple, razor blade, duct tape, glue, and a kid.
This one is a favorite around Halloween, but works during any season. Any ole apple will do, but if you can find one that fell in a pile of e. coli-infested shit you can inflict more damage. Cut the apple in half and then glue a razor blade to one of the halves. Align the halves as if nothing happened and then tape them together. Do this to a bunch of apples until you have an entire sack. Then, go to your local grammar school and hand them to the kids as they get on the bus.

The exploding candy bar
Ingredients: Candy, plastic canister of lighter fluid, a bottle rocket, sealing wax, a cigarette, a match, some tape, and a kid.
First, build the bomb. The diagram is self-explanatory, but remember, the more lighter fluid in the canister, the more the kid dies. Next, buy some candy and tape it all around the bomb. Make sure you choose popular candy. Then, when you find a kid that you want to blow up, light the cigarette (which acts as a time delay fuse for the bottle rocket on top) and give him/her the “candy.” Run away. Helpful hint: if you have time to stake out a location, build a foxhole nearby. 

 

The cobra in the yogurt
Ingredients: One Yoplait Yogurt, one cobra, and one kid.
Kids love yogurt. Replace the yogurt in the container with a ferocious, hungry cobra. Go to your local park and offer any one of the young, rosy-cheeked whelps your “cobragurt.” When they go to open it, they'll think that they're about to enjoy a healthy snack, but—surprise! Cobra attack to the face! Works every time.

Poisoned candy—a classic!
Ingredients: Candy bar, Vanish toilet bowl cleaner, a turkey baster, and a kid.
An issue that I have yet to address in this article is the “don't–take–candy–from–strangers” dilemma. Don't worry about it. Kids are stupid sugar magnets. Their mother (the cunt) could be standing right beside them telling them, “Remember, don't take candy from a stranger,” and they'll still eagerly snatch whatever sweets you have to offer. I can imagine, however, some snot–nosed goody–goody actually refusing your gift. My first inclination would be to strike the little beast, but that wouldn't do either of us any good. So, I would explain that I was a friend and he can accept candy from a friend—works every time. But make sure you poison the candy. I fill a turkey baster with Vanish Toilet Bowl cleaner and ram it into the candy. Vanish does to kids just what the name implies.

Bear trap in the ice cream cake
Ingredients: An ice cream cake, a bear trap, a birthday, and a kid.
Order an ice cream cake at the cake store and request that they replace the ice cream with a bear trap. Most won't do that, so take the cake home and hollow out the bottom. Since you aren't going to be putting the hole back in, you can eat it. Yum! Spread the trap's jaws wide and secure the spring mechanism. It's a good idea to put the candles on the cake before you place it over the trap. Now, find a kid's birthday party, but be careful, because adults in attendance will like ice cream cake too. You don't want to mangle the hands of an accomplished adult, so warn the adults that there is a bear trap in the cake by spelling it out loud—don't worry, kids can't spell. Just say, “T-H-E-R-E-I-S-A-B-E-A-R-T-R-A-P-I-N-T-H-E-C-A-K-E,” then, anyone that is an adult will stay the fuck away from that cake. After birthday boy blows out the candles, say, “Okay, everyone dive in!” (Honorable mention: Mouse trap in the cupcake.)

GERMANY, CHAPTER 6: The Sandwich Thieves

A typical German breakfast buffet.

Nothing got Tania more excited in Germany than stealing sandwiches from the hotel breakfast buffets every morning. Breakfast in Germany, incidentally, is more akin to an American lunch. It consists mostly of breads, meats, and cheeses. No matter how many cups of coffee or hard-boiled eggs I’d add to my breakfast plate, it always looked like lunch. I attribute this to the presence of all the pickled fare that is made available at the German breakfast. Pickles have no place at the breakfast table. That’s not just my opinion, that’s a fact. Lord knows I tried to get with the AM pickle program, but it simply doesn’t work. I found the European custom of drinking beer with ice cubes a little queer, but I’m okay with it, even if I refuse to participate in the practice. Pickled herrings with orange juice for breakfast, on the other hand, is a downright disgusting pairing. It's not natural. You’d have more success trying to mate a horse with a bullfrog. There’s got to be a “thou shalt not” in the Bible about eating pickled herrings with orange juice at breakfast, right? Because that is a marriage that will destroy the family as we know it.

"Meat, meat, meat! She can't afford a cannon. Meat, meat, meat! She can't afford no gun at all." 
(That's some Anthony Bourdain/Henry Rollins shit right there, referencing old punk rock. Easy grandpa, easy. You're "Cool Meter" can't handle your obscure references and seething disdain for mainstream culture.)

We’d each grab enough meat, bread, and cheese at the buffet to make two sandwiches. At the table we’d assemble one sandwich and eat it while smiling at the other guests as if nothing at all were afoot. “Haha, no capers here.” (You actually could spoon some capers over your pickled herrings if you liked—oh! maybe even drop some capers in your orange juice to make a German bubble tea?) And then, very quietly, we’d put together our second sandwich. Next thing you know, POOF! It was gone!

A Sandwich Thief creation.

“I noticed you has had an entire sandwich on your plate not two seconds ago,” I always worried some suspicious fraulein would catch us. “There is no vay you could haff eaten zis sandwich zat fast. So I vonder, vhere did it go, hmm? Fatty?”

We fucking stole it, bitch!

I’d make sure the coast was clear, and Tania would get a gang of napkins, wrap up the sandwiches, and throw them in her purse. “HAHA! THE SANDWICH THIEVES HAVE STRUCK AGAIN!” We’d say that every time.

It should be noted that while ordinary napkins worked great for sandwich smuggling, I found that using vagina bags—wait, what? Oh, apparently they're not called "vagina bags," they're used for disposing of sanitary napkins. Whatever. The vagina bags were in dispensers on the wall in every toilet and they worked great for transporting stolen sandwiches.

While cruising down the Rhine, Tania looks for DEA (Dejeuner Enforcement Administration) agents before she tears into the contraband.

 Stealing sandwiches in the morning is one of Tania’s finest ideas. Because the sandwiches would reemerge later in the day when we were on a boat or a train and hunger had just begun to descend upon us again. The stolen sandwich made for a perfect light—and FREE!—lunch that would tide us over until we got to a proper schnitzel palace.

“Nothing,” Tania likes to say, “tastes as good as a stolen sandwich.”
 
Here’s a travel tip from the sandwich thieves
This is not in a guidebook by Rick Steves
Steal a morning snack, stuff it up your sleeves
When hunger strikes, a stolen sandwich always relieves

This photo has nothing to do with stealing sandwiches, but it is about stealing. I'm not sure if Tania was suffering from a mild case of kleptomania, or if she just enjoyed making her "crime face," but emboldened by the success of her sandwich heists she started trying to steal all kinds of stuff. Here she's trying to steal an entire German castle one stone at a time. The only thing that prevented her from making off with the largest castle still standing on the Rhine and reconstructing it in our backyard was a thunderclap that echoed across the skies at the exact same moment she removed the stone between her fingers from the wall. "Put it back," I said nervously watching the clouds, "you've awoken the gods again." ("Again": as you may remember, when we got married, They (the gods) lit the hills around Big Sur on fire with lightning bolts.) "Fuck them!" she responded. She was obviously crazy and addicted to stealing. I conducted an impromptu intervention and was somehow able to convince her to not only put that particular stone back, but leave the rest of the castle behind. "Please accept this gift we are offering you…" We were not struck by lightning.

GERMANY, CHAPTER 5: The Ballhaus and The Roller Disco

"Do you have anything gayer?" I asked the fraulein.

Before we left, I mentioned to Scott Bourne that we were going to Berlin.

“Let me know if you want a contact,” Scott wrote, “good friend lives there and would roll you around and take you out for a beer.

Do you get this? “You should meet my friend!” I don’t think I’ve ever taken anybody up on it. “New friends” is not on the list. A wheel of parmigiano reggiano is. But I always politely take the friend’s info, promise to look them up, and then promptly throw it out. For some reason I contacted Scott’s friend in Berlin. “Maybe he has cheese,” I must have thought.

The emails between Julian Dykmans and myself were normal enough, so when he suggested we meet at a strange place called “The Ballhaus” for beers and some of the “best schnitzel in town,” I said, sure.

“Hey! All right!” he wrote back. “Nine pm at the Clärchens Ballhaus. Reserved under the name Dykmans. This is funny, like a blind date… To recognize us, here is a pic...”

At the bottom of the email was a grainy picture of an attractive couple sharing a good laugh. They didn’t look like psychos, but then psychos never look like psychos. Which makes it hard for normal people to be normal because the most psychotic psycho always looks super normal. He said something else at the bottom that I didn’t pay much attention to at the time, “You feeling the be-bop evening? Better put on your dancing shoes!”

Julian may have been normal, but the Clarchens Ballhaus was anything but. “What a strange place,” I said as we entered the gates into a large, open courtyard where people were seated at tables, drinking, and eating. Some had spilled onto the street and were smoking cigarettes by the light of the bare bulbs hung from the trees. The courtyard garden had a wild character to it. Whoever cared for it, cared for it only occasionally, if at all. The five-story building didn’t necessarily stand out from its neighbors, it looked like an ordinary apartment building, but there was something strange about it. It felt as if it had suffered under the Nazis, then the communists, but now was the home of a vegetarian, nudist commune.

We stumbled into the dark, narrow, wood paneled foyer and were instantly transported back in time, into a world that I see in Kafka’s stories. Old men dressed in tuxedos with bushy white curlicue mustaches looked as if they had lived in the ancient cloakroom their entire lives. They took our coats and our money. It was very crowded. There was barely room for their bushy eyebrows. Even if I understood German I don’t think I would have been able to hear what they were saying, and they were upset at me for not understanding, so I just handed over some money and in return I received some tickets. I farted in the small, crowded foyer. Another old man in a tuxedo found the name “Dykmans” amongst the scribbles on a crumpled sheet of paper he kept close to his chest. He instructed us to follow him through a narrow pair of curtains. 

German rockabilly for the senior crowd at the Ballhaus.

Inside it was dark and loud, the ceilings were high and the floor was packed with people of all ages dancing and drinking and shouting. Disco balls and tinsel curtains sent sparkles all over the ballroom. Another old ghost in a tuxedo led us to a table in a corner. I wanted to protest because we couldn’t see the action on the floor very well from there, but I later learned that all the good tables have been reserved for centuries by the elderly Germans who come every weekend to let their hair—what little they have left of it—down. My father would have protested, and spit on the floor, but we sat down and took in our surroundings.

I had to use the restroom, but was scared to cross the packed dance floor. I tried to get a piggyback ride at the edge of the dance floor to ensure safe passage to the bathrooms, but I didn’t know how to say “piggyback ride” in German. “Me? (I pointed to myself) I’ll get on your back? (I pointed to the old lady’s back and pantomimed mounting her) Ja? Piggy back ride? Ja?” I’m not sure if the fraulein was telling me to beat it, or if she was trying to tell me there was a saddle in a nearby cupboard, when I heard someone yelling my name in my ear, “DAVE!” It was Julian’s wife, Lou. She gave me a kiss on each cheek and I abandoned the migration. I showed her where Tania and I were sitting. Julian soon joined us. It was like a blind date. I had no idea who these people were.

Julian, I learned, is an old European pro skater. He’s been in the scene for a long time and everyone in Europe knows who he is. He now runs a company called Antiz. On top of being a dashing skateboarder, he’s an interesting fellow off the board. I’d liken him to something of a Euro Ed Templeton, both in age and hobbies. Although, to my knowledge, Julian does not paint nude boys. 

Lou, Julian, pizza, schnitzel.

We ordered beers, schnitzels, and pizzas. We discussed the state of skateboarding, in particular the professional skateboarder’s responsibility to himself and to skateboarding. We agreed that some skaters take more than their fair share of stickers. The food was delicious, but the Ballhaus was so loud I think it was affecting my taste buds. Apparently the tongue is connected to the ears? I had to resist a strange urge to squirt lemon on Tania’s pizza. We soon realized conversation was impossible with all the dancing and the be-bop and so we were forced to abandon ourselves to enjoying the noise. Julian and Lou danced, while we watched. 

Julian and Lou dancing in the center of the Elderly Sea. Below is the Easy Rider.

I have developed an interest in old people dancing, and I can say that some of the most wonderful elderly dancers in the world are to be found in Germany. We had one of Germany’s finest on the dance floor right in front of us. I’ll call him “Easy Rider” because his dancing style consisted of gripping an imaginary pair of “ape hangers” and steering his invisible motorcycle in tight circles around the floor. ER was not afraid to show his affection for younger women. ER touched/groped women in a casual manner not permitted to younger men. I made a mental note of his style for future use.

“A friend of ours is having a party at a roller disco,” Julian announced. “Would you and Tania like to join us?” We were still jetlagged and wanted nothing more than to go to bed, but the idea of visiting a German roller disco sounded like the worst possible thing we could do, so we said yes. Julian said something about a 200 meter track—I’m not sure what a meter is, but 200 of them sounded big. I pictured banked corners and the like. Perhaps even a loop. But in reality, the roller disco was a small room, about the size of a high school gym, with a stage and a bar flanking a wood floor that was filled with people on roller skates going in circles while listening to disco music. Roller skates were surely a form of torture or public humiliation during the Dark Ages, no? Yet we had to pay to strap a pair of those things on our feet. The disco, on the other hand, was free. I would have preferred Bach’s cello concertos.

“Do you have anything gayer than this?” I asked the fraulein behind the counter when she handed me my skates. They were bright, sparkly blue, but I thought I could do better. She didn’t seem to understand my English. “Maybe something white or pink? Weiss?” I know “white” in German because of all the wine. “Nien weiss? Okay. Well these will be fine. Danke.” In hindsight, I don’t think one could find a gayer pair of skates.

Tania drinks her beer at the bar where you're supposed. She got cool Converse roller skates.

“You’re really good!” Lou said to me after I took my first spin around the rink in my big gay skates. Tania agreed. I was impressing the ladies with my roller skating skills, just like in elementary school when I was well known for being the only boy able to skate backwards. I ordered a beer at the bar, put my arm around Tania, and began to explain the secrets of my roller skating skills. I compared myself to the American negroes that were in the videos projected on the walls. My what talent. I was inspired to take another spin when a great commotion occurred on the floor in front of us. It was Lou. She had snuck off while I was talking and caused a crash.

There was a great pile of Germans writhing on the floor. It’s hard to tell the difference between German men and women, but I think it was mostly men. It was quite a pileup*. All caused by a spilt beer. Lou spilled the beer. She was trying to bring it to Julian when she was grabbed by a falling German who pulled her, and her beer, to the floor. There’s a reason why beverages are not allowed on the roller disco floor: roller skates and beer don’t mix. Lou was given a tongue lashing by a German man she won’t soon forget. 

A German Roller Disco employee mops up Lou's mess. The angry German man who cussed her out is in the purple shirt in the center.

“ICH HAT BUMSEN MIT EIN HUHN!” the man yelled at Lou. I’m not sure what he was saying, but he was very angry. He sounded like Hitler. I’m glad I didn’t know what he was saying because if I had I would have given him a swift kick in the schnitzel. Lou, however, was very calm and apologetic, “Ja, ja, ja,” and calmly weathered his storm. She did, after all, deserve a short lecture on the dangers of roller skating under the influence, but the German fellow went a little too far.

“He said I was stupid,” Lou told us after he left, “and that I should be the one cleaning up the mess. He also called me a stupid American.” Lou is Swiss. So that makes him a stupid German. But it made me stupid mad.

“Why I oughtta!” I said through clinched teeth. I scanned the floor for the scoundrel, but he was nowhere to be found. “How dare he!” How can you call someone stupid while wearing roller skates? I’m glad I couldn’t find him because I can’t even fight when I’m not wearing roller skates.

But my beer was on a railing above the roller rink floor. German beer is delicious, but there are so many other ways to enjoy it. I gave my cup a little nudge. Oops. Such a stupid American. “Entschuldige!”

* I have co-written a play with my friend Caleb Plowman called, The Four Ball Pileup. It’s a rather long script, the action taking place over the course of five acts, but the gist of the story is that two nude men in a locker room collide as they turn the same corner and their penises and scrotums become ensnared. The scene in the roller disco, with all those men and women piled upon each other, has inspired me to begin writing the sequel, The Eleven Ball Pileup.

Roller skating to disco gets Julian amped.