Important Paper Things and Historic Bum Tours

So I was in Washington, DC with a friend, and we had to decide what to see with the little free time that we had. If you're an American, you probably are already aware that there are a lot of really famous, important things to see in Washington, DC. But because you're an American, this also means that you have no idea what these things are because, like me, you were educated in America. If we had grown up in some smelly little country in Europe, you can bet that we would know all about this important crap about our own country... but on the other hand, we wouldn't have cell phones or toilet paper. And really, which would you rather have -- a meaningful education or toilet paper?

So we only visited a couple of places. First, we went to some big building (the National Things Emporium, or something like that) where they've got the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I was kind of excited to see these important documents because I've heard of them before. Well, excited probably isn't really the right word.... let's see.... assiduous.... that's a nice, smart-sounding word. I have no idea what it means, but it'll do. I was kind of assiduous to see these important documents.

The problem with going to see the Declaration of Independence is that.... okay, you know when you're watching the nightly news and they have one of those special reports with the groundbreaking revelation that Americans are fat? You know those reports, right? The ones where they film from the neck down a bunch of morbidly obese tourists waddling to and fro. Well, the place where the Declaration of Independece is displayed -- this is where they film those people. And you can't even get close to seeing either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution because you've got the fattest of the fat American families standing and wheezing in front of you. And even if you were able to squeeze your way through this sea of flab and make it close to the display case, you wouldn't be able to see any of the document anyway. You'd just see a bunch of gooey human fat rolls draped over the glass where the documents should be.

Except for the Bill of Rights. You can always get close enough to see the Bill of Rights, because nobody gives a crap about the Bill of Rights. And that's a shame, because it's a very important document. As I'm sure you all remember from your classic American education, the Bill of Rights is the thing that Abraham Lincoln wrote, which basically said that we should free all of the slaves and go kill all of the Indians instead.

And speaking of Abraham Lincoln, our other key destination in Washington, DC was the Betty Ford Theater, where Lincoln was shot by some stupid hillbilly NASCAR idiot. That was kind of a creepy experience. They even had a pillow with his blood on display. And I was able to get right up next to it because an ice cream van pulled up outside of the theater, and when all of the bloated American tourists heard the music, they all ran outside like a herd of injured sloths.

However, the best part of the Betty Ford Theater was outside. My friend and I were standing there looking at the building and talking quietly, when this bum walks up and starts explaining every detail of the Lincoln assassination. I'm not kidding. He just walked right up to us and said, "You know how John did it, don't you?" He kept referring to John Wilkes Booth as "John," like it was his cousin or something. "John walked right in there, and he opened the door, and John shot Lincoln in the head, and then John jumped down on the stage, and then he yelled, 'Sigma Delta Kai,' which means, 'Fresh Fish!' And then John broke his leg, and then he ran out the back, but John didn't have a horse, so he took the bus..."

I swear he talked for 15 minutes. And I only caught a few sentences here and there, because he kept going over my 100-word attention limit. Every few minutes or so, I'd look over at my friend, who was doing his best to follow the bum's dissertation, and I just kept thinking, This is the best educated bum I've ever met. I'll bet he's from Europe.

And when the bum finally finished his reenactment of the Lincoln assassination, I told him how I once went to Dealy Plaze in Dallas and reenacted the Kennedy assassination in my Toyota 4Runner. Then he asked us for some change. And we gave him some.

I have no idea if anything he told us was accurate, but I like the effort. Too bad that guy wasn't around when I was in school. Sure, I may still have had a crappy education, but at least it would only have cost about seventy cents.

If nothing else, that Washington, DC bum raised the bar for bums everywhere. No more freebies as far as I'm concerned. The next time a bum comes up to me and asks me for a quarter, I'm gonna say, "Sure, no problem. But first, explain the Magna Carta."

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Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Visiting Italy, Except for a Bunch of Other Stuff that I Learned from Other Places

Last year, we went to Italy on vacation. Since we didn't quite use up all of our retirement savings paying for that vacation, we decided to go again this year to see if we can position ourselves for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and move into a cardboard box. Here is what I learned on my almost summer vacation...

1. How to Pay for a Taxi Ride from the Milan Airport to a Hotel. Step one, sell a kidney. Those are worth a lot from what I've heard. Step two, exchange your American dollars from the kidney sale for euros, the commie currency that is used in Europe. Currently, the exchange rate is: 1 euro=3 cents. Step three, sit in the back of the taxi and get very nervous watching the euro counter thing move faster than that big spinning wheel that Bob Barker has on The Price is Right. Step four, try to re-calculate every 12 seconds how much of a tip you have to give the weirdo taxi driver in order to avoid being shot. This is where your fifth grade math skills would come in extremely handy, if you were actually able to remember your fifth grade math skills. Step five, when you arrive at the hotel, hand the weirdo taxi driver all of your euros in your pocket. I swear to God, I gave our taxi driver 90 euros for the ride from the airport to the hotel. That's $52,287.19 to you and me.
2. How to See the Original Painting of the Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci. I have no idea. Apparently, you're supposed to plan ahead and make reservations or something like that. Of course, we didn't do that, so we never got to see the painting. That was a big disappointment because a couple of years ago I solved the JFK assassination controversy simply by visiting Dealy Plaza in Dallas. I was hoping to solve the DaVinci Code controversy as well by seeing the original painting. So instead of going to see The Last Supper painting, we went to a store and bought Jodi a purse.
3. Why Jodi and I Belong on Tours Rather than Organizing Our Own Vacation. The bulk of our vacation was part of an organized tour with the American Horticultural Society, but we decided to go a couple of days early and try to do some things by ourselves. We found a small newspaper in our hotel that talked about a botanical garden somewhere in the area. I thought that might be a good idea because flowers make Jodi happy, and most botanical gardens don't sell purses and shoes, so that would make me happy.
   
   We asked our cranky hotel concierge how to get there. He told us to get on the subway and get off at a certain station. We finally found the subway and stood in front of the subway ticket machine and stared at for a full 10 minutes like a couple of deaf mutes holding a digital camera. Then some filthy lady, a subway troll apparently, came up and started to help us. Like the idiot that I am, I started handing her euros and she put them into the machine. She pushed a bunch of buttons, gave us a couple of tickets, and took all of our change. So we basically paid 10 euros (13,000 American dollars) for tickets that would take us to our station about a mile away.
   
   Inside the subway car, we held our breath to minimize the intake of urine and small pox into our lungs. We exited at the station that the cranky concierge told us about and found ourselves in a part of Milan that looks like a retirement community for 7 Eleven workers and crack hos.
   
   We walked about a block in our khaki American outfits, got scared, and rushed back to the subway and then to the hotel, where we spent the rest of the day watching European television.
4. European Television Sucks. I know that stereotypes are not politically correct. However, they also happen to be true, so bite me. Anyway, there are some things that Italians are better at than any other culture. Food is one thing. These people know how to eat. Americans, on the other hand, have no idea what they're doing with food. On the other hand, Italians (and pretty much all other Eurpopeans for that matter) suck at television and entertainment in general.
   
   Half the channels show soccer games. I don't know about you, but I can just want guys kicking a ball back and forth to a 0-0 tie game all day long. On one channel, they even had guys playing soccer on sand. It was Croatia versus France. That right there is reason enough to start bombing those countries.
   
   They also like to show water polo on television, which adds new meaning to the phrase "shallow gene pool."
   
   On one channel, they had a bunch of guys wrestling each other... in the dirt.
   
   They were wrestling each other in the dirt.
   
   One more time.
   
   They were wresting each other... in the dirt... and it was televised... with announcers.
   
   You can also watch 7th Heaven or old Kojak reruns in Italian.
   
   They also like their game shows, which, for lack of a more elegant term, look completely retarded. The German and Japanese programs looked especially disturbing. It usually involved a lot of shouting and frantic audience members waving towels in the air. I'll be very surprised if the Fourth Reich is not just around the corner.
5. George Clooney has a Villa on Lake Como. Most of Italy is absolutely visually stunning. One of the greatest places I've ever been in my life is Lake Como in northern Italy. Once we were in the safe confines of our tour group (average age 152), we found ourselves on a boat on Lake Como. Our guide was telling everyone about all of the historical villas as we passed them. She'd be saying something signficant about Mussolini or some important church built in 1573, and most of the people on the boat would barely respond. Then she pointed to a particular villa and said, "George Clooney lives in that one right over there." Every old person on that boat (even the men) jumped out of their seats and started shouting like teenage girls and snapping pictures of the villa. Lesson learned: The next time an old person claims to not be able to climb up on the roof and install a satellite dish because they have a bad hip, they're lying. Just tell them that George Clooney is up there and watch what happens.
6. The Shround of Turin is in a Box. This pissed me off. Not only was I going to solve the DaVinci Code, but I was also planning to solve the mystery of the Shroud of Turin. But here's what they don't tell you until you travel all the way to Turin... they will only let you see a lifesize picture of the shroud. The real shroud is supposedly encased in a big box in this church. You walk in the church and make your way to this little area where a gigantic rectangle box is displayed behind a glass wall. How am I supposed to solve the mystery of the shroud if all I can see is a box? For all I know, the box is empty, or it's filled with marbles or scrunched up newspaper. What a gip.
7. The Egyptian Museum in Turin is Word Famous. If you go to Turin, Italy, you can visit the Egyptian Museum, which is world famous. Of course, I had never heard of it before, and neither had anybody else in the group. But it's world famous, that's what they tell you. It's like Tommy's Hamburgers, which is also world famous... in Southern California.
8. There is No Ice or Dr. Pepper in Europe. Just fair warning. But then what do you expect from people who play soccer in the sand?

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Germany: This Explains a Lot

I'm part German, part Polish. As I've told many people over the years, this explains a lot about why I am the way I am. Being part German, part Polish essentially means that I would like to rule the world, but I can't find my hat.

My German ancestors came to America in the late 1800s and helped establish a small town in Kansas called "Munjor," which is German for "Where is everybody?" Last week, I traveled to Germany on business. I went to Wiesbaden, which I is German for "Trade Show."

As far as I know, I'm the first person in my family to go back to Germany after all these years. Of course, like all Americans who travel to Europe, I kept the time-honored tradition of not bothering to learn a single word of their language, whereas almost every one of them knows multiple languages, including English. This made me a little apprehensive because I thought that the Germans would hold that against me and think I was an ignorant, lazy American (which I am). Fortunately, my good friend Sean, who grew up in Germany (before his family immigrated to a trailer park in Red Bluff, California), instructed me, "If anyone tries to give you any crap, just remind them that we won the war." Sean would make a really good diplomat for the United States, don't you think?

GERMAN AMBASSADOR: Vee zink zat America needs to do more about zee global warming.

SEAN: Shut your smelly Kraut hole! We won the war!

The first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane and into the airport terminal is that they have smoking areas set aside for people in the airport, just like we do in America. The difference is that we put smokers in a glass room and shut the door so that we can observe them like penguins at the zoo. But in Germany, the smoking area is a pole. The smokers just huddle around a pole in the middle of the hallway and suck on their cigarettes, while all the non-smokers walk through the deadly wall of smoke. German ingenuity.

The second thing I noticed was that there was no trash anywhere. Also, whereas we have a restroom every 12 feet in America, they have one bathroom for the entire airport in Germany, and it took me 2 hours to find it. I assume that the German government has sufficiently frightened the people with the message of "No littering and no peeing! Get up against the wall and wait until your number is called!" This, of course, immediately brought back some happy childhood memories, because that's pretty much what my dad used to say to me after making me kneel on the floor heat vent in our house whenever I would do something bad like set Ted on fire.

So right away, I felt this incredible sense of familiarity when I arrived in Germany. Part of it was the fact that everybody in the country looks like my German relatives from Great Bend, Kansas. I don't know what the country's motto is, but I think it should be: "Land of 80 million Uncle Virgils and Aunt Florines." And part of it was the "don't color outside the lines" vibe that I sensed, which immediately made me think of the cranky nuns at Sacred Heart Catholic School, who used to teach me about Jesus' eternal love by saying "SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!" Half the time I was in Germany, I expected Sister Verda to come swooping down out of the trees in her scary Batman nun uniform and beat me to death with an oak branch.

It was very easy to spot other Americans in Germany. There are four dead giveaways:

1. They don't look like any of my relatives.
2. They're the only ones wearing khaki.
3. They ask for ice. (America is the only country in the world that has ice. I don't know what other countries have against ice, but they hate it. And if you ask for it in a restaurant, they give you a mean look and write down your passport number.)
4. They're the ones who are morbidly obese and constantly sweating.

I liked Germany. I really did. It was just different. It was the minor things that I noticed most. Tiny cars. A thick mat-like thing on the bed instead of a blanket. Laundry detergent in tubes. Concentration camps. You know, small things like that.

I'm just glad I'm not a woman and didn't have to try to buy tampons while I was there. God help you try to pick something off the shelf. Because the packaging would invariably say something like Der Schligen-Hausen Gernischtenict Von Maxi Schweinschnusen. And then you'd open it up and it would be sandpaper tied around a brick with fishing wire.

And thank God I had someone to help me order food in the restaurants. If I'd been on my own I would have ended up eating midget feet dipped in cheese.

Just the names of the restaurants can be scary. Twice I ate at a place called "The Ratskellar." Now as a general rule of thumb, I usually avoid eating at places with the word "rat" in it, but I was at the mercy of others, so I went with it. The food was actually pretty good and, as far as I knew, had no rat bits in it. I was told that Ratskellar is a common name for restaurants in towns where the establishment is located under the city hall. Apparently, the German phrase for "city hall" is "rat haus" (which sounds appropriate). And the area under the city hall is the "cellar," so when you put it all together, you're eating in the "rat cellar" or "Ratskellar." Get it? I think we should do that in America. We should call city hall the "asswipe building," with restaurants underneath that are called the "Asswipe Basement Grill" .... Maybe not.

The biggest misconception about Germans is that they're jerks, especially to Americans. That's not true at all. Everyone I met was incredibly nice to me. The people were great. I think the problem is that non-Germans hear Germans speaking and it always sounds agressive and mean. It's their language. The words all sound like you're trying to start a fight.

So somebody comes up to you and says, "SCHNEIGICHTEIN GER BLITZKRIEG SCHLUNGENTRISCHTEN UNG DICTCH NICHTSTUSCHTEN!"

And that sounds like they're saying, "I WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY! AND I WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY'S FAMILY! WE WILL GRIND YOU INTO SAUSAGES AND DINE ON YOUR ENTRAILS!"

So you say, "I don't understand. I only speak English."

And they say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I was just saying that butterflies are very pretty."

So that's where I think people have gotten the wrong impression about Germans. It's their language. Yes, Hitler was a very bad man, and just about everything he said and did was vile. But if you went back and translated some of those old news reels from World War II, it wonder if there were times when he was actually saying...

"SCHTUNGFRIESEN SCHREEGEN YURGEN DORGEN FRIEGEN NIHCHTHTHT FROG SCHTUSSTEIN BLEEGEN NEEGEN!!!!"

You know, sometimes I wake up in the morning and all I want is a big stack of pancakes.

"GER DUNGSCHTEEEGENSTEIN GENICTHEIGN SCHTUBEN-VON-DER-UNG-SCHTRICHTEIN!!!!!!"

I like them with strawberries. Ooooh! And poppyseed muffins! Mmmm.

"FRIEGEN STCHEEGEIN BUR GOERINGS HAUSEN DUR STUBENFRIGERATOR SCHWEINESHAUSFRIESEN-URGEN-MURGEN-LURGEN!!!!!!!!!!"

I got an idea. Let's all go to Goering's house for breakfast. C'mon everyone, follow me!... Oh, and let's kill all the Jews.

I don't think the Germans today like to talk about Hitler very much. And you can't really blame them. He's kinda like the hillbilly cousin who gave the entire family a bad name because he molested all the neighbors' pets. It's kind of hard to get the neighbors to come over for dinner after something like that.

But aside from the Hitler thing, I like Germany.

For me, maybe the best thing about Germany is that it's the only country in the world where every single person says my last name (Stoecklein) correctly on the first attempt. In America, nobody has ever said it right, except Germans I meet who happen to be visiting America. So, I was thrilled whenever anyone there said my name. Well, at least that's the way it was until one night...

I was having dinner with some German colleagues. For some reason, the dinner conversation eventually came around to the meaning of names. I learned that everybody's name at the table meant something like "Defender of Truth" or "Radiant Blossom of Eternal Sunshine." I told them that I had always read that my first name (Paul) means "Small." That's it. "Small." Not "Loyal and Handsome and Every Once in Awhile Small, but Mostly Handsome." Just "Small."

Then I said, "I just wish I knew what my last name meant."

And someone said, "What's your last name again?"

"Stoecklein."

And they all said, "Little Stick." And then everyone laughed at me.

This is not good. My name means "Little Stick"? All these years of mystery about my last name and I finally discover that it means I have a little stick? Great, thanks a lot! That makes me feel so good about myself. And to make matters even worse, if you tack the meaning of my first name onto the front of that, it means I have a "small little stick." Beautiful. Thanks, Mom and Dad. Appreciate it. Why didn't you just name me "The Boy With the In-Grown Penis"?

So in the same way that today's Germans will never get over the fact that Hitler murdered millions of innocent people, I will never get over the fact that my name means "really tiny wee wee." But I am German, and that is the cross that I must bear.

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Bonjurrrrrrrrrrrrrnooooooo

Just returned from a trip to Italy last week. It was a very expensive Christmas present that I gave to Jodi this past year in order to build up enough husband points to offset the profoundly stupid things that I know I will inevitably do over the next year. If nothing else, after 15 years of marriage, I've learned to plan ahead.

Day 1 - Three Flights and a Billion Miles Later

To get to Italy, we had to fly on three different planes. Even Charles Lindbergh only needed one plane 60 years ago to get from North America to Europe. I don't know why we needed three.

On the first flight, two business guys sat right in front of us. It was the worst possible situation. You know how awful it is when you have to sit next to a stranger on a plane who won't shut up, who wants to do nothing but engage in small talk with you? Well, it's almost worse when there are two of those creatures in the same row, sitting right next to each other. Two guys that just love small talk and can't get enough of it. That's what we had sitting in front of us. So for the entire flight it was:

GUY #1: What do you do?

GUY #2: I'm a meat broker.

GUY #1: That sounds fascinating.

GUY #2: Oh, it is. I can't talk about meat enough. What do you do?

GUY #1: I'm an I.T. guy.

GUY #2: Really?!! You're kidding! How unusual! An I.T. guy! I love hearing about I.T. policies and procedures! Please continue! What else you got?

GUY #1: Well, I'm an I.T. guy, and I have 2 brothers and a sister, and I was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois. I first fell in love with I.T. policies and procedures when I was 7 years old and...

GUY #2: Wait a second! Did you say 2 brothers and a sister from Peoria, Illinois? Wow! I have 3 sisters and 2 brothers and was brought up in Mesa, Arizona. We're practically twins! Anyway, sorry to interrupt you about the I.T. policies and procedures. Please continue and don't leave out any details at all! I'm getting wet just thinking about it!

I hate small talk with a capital "H." I think it's the third dumbest invention in the history of mankind (right behind NASCAR and celebrity poker). There is no point whatsoever to small talk. It's meaningless conversation that consumes way too much time and energy. And it's excruciatingly boring (except for a certain brain-dead segment of the population, such as the two guys sitting in front of us). No interesting facts, no amusing anecdotes, no tidbits of wisdom that I'm certain to recall later on my deathbed—just mere useless data.

I think that there should be a law requiring 3X5 cards be installed at every location in the world where there is a danger of engaging in small talk with a stranger. That way, if someone feels the overwhelming need to talk to a stranger, the 3X5 card will ensure that nothing about the weather or someone's pointless career will be discussed. The cards would be designed to force conversation that might actually be interesting. The way it would work is that you'd make eye contact with the other person, observe that he or she desires a conversation, pick up one of the handy 3X5 cards, and say:

"Okay, let's see what this card says... Alright. You're being held prisoner by an armed lunatic in the backroom of a Quiznos, and in order to save the world from complete annihilation you must comply with one of the lunatic's two demands. Would you rather (A) eat your new infant's face covered in cheese or (B) have sex with Rosie O'Donnell? What a great topic! Personally, I'd rather eat my baby's face, because at least then you'd get cheese. What would you do?"

An interesting conversation would therefore ensue... or else the other person would abort the conversation immediately. Either way, it's a win-win situation.

Our second flight took us to New York. When the plane landed, Jodi was trying to get one of our bags down from the overhead compartment, and some jerk who couldn't bear to wait another 3 seconds almost knocked Jodi over as he hurried past her. I was going to defend Jodi's honor and yell at the creep, but then I remembered that we were in New York, and they kill people in New York.

In the international terminal at JFK, we went to Delta's Business Elite lounge to wait for our third flight. This is a secret lounge in the airport that is open to anyone flying Business Class on a Delta flight. The lounge has free drinks and food, comfortable chairs, televisions, priceless tropical plants, cliff divers, tennis courts, jacuzzis, scuba diving, slaves, and candy. In front of us, there was an Italian guy who was trying to get into the secret lounge, but they wouldn't let him in because he wasn't flying Business Class like we were. Jodi felt bad for the guy, so she invited him to join us in the lounge as our guests. I was apprehensive, because even though this guy was Italian, we were in New York, and they kill people in New York.

Once inside the secret lounge, we made foreign small talk with the Italian guy, whose name was Leonardo. I was just about to kill myself from the small talk when we found out we were on the same flight and then showed him our itinerary for our trip to Italy. Suddenly, we had something in common, because as he looked through the itinerary, he noticed that we would be visiting Bassano, Italy—the town where he lives, believe it or not. Before I knew what had happened, we had agreed to go to dinner with him on Tuesday night when we were in Bassano. I started preparing 3X5 cards immediately.

Our third flight from New York to Italy took 7,403 hours.

Day 2 - Asolo, Italy

At first I thought this little town was pronounced ASS-OH-LOH (as in, "My ass is oh so low"). But it's actually pronounced AHHHH-ZO-LOH (as in, "Where the hell is Ahhhhzolo?").

It's an incredibly cool little town that time forgot in Italy. Jodi promptly informed me that we would be moving to this town right after the vacation. The town makes you feel like you're back in the Middle Ages. Curving streets that are 4 feet wide, with 1,000-year-old walls and buildings on both sides. Cars speed down these roads, and you find yourself diving into windows and clinging to walls to keep from being squished. And yes, cars come in both directions. They can do this because in Italy the average car is only the size of a washing machine. And somehow, nobody ever gets into a car accident in Italy. In the United States, we have roads with 18 lanes and each lane is 25 feet wide, and we still manage to have a fatality ever 2 seconds, because in America we have not yet learned how to talk on the cell phone, drive, and eat gravy at the same time.

One of the very first things I noticed in Italy is that Italians look very different from Americans. Italians look cool. They all have week-old black stubble on their faces, smoke cigarettes, and say things like "Prego" and "Ciao." The Italian men look cool too. However, I've noticed that a lot of Italian men have taken to wearing orange pants. I don't care how cool you normally are—orange pants are just stupid, no matter who is wearing them.

You can pick out an Italian from an American from 500 meters away. One dead giveaway is that Italians on average weigh about 140 pounds each. As we all know, you have to add at least another 0 to that figure for the average American. There's nothing more embarrassing than to see a herd of fat fellow tourists waddling toward you with cameras flashing at everything in sight and enormous fanny packs filled with extra packs of film and Snickers, while hearing the familiar mating call in a Midwestern accent: "Bonjurrrrrrrrrrrrrnooooooo! Bonjurrrrrrrrrrrrrnooooooo!"

Jodi and I were traveling with our very own tour group. It was a group of people belonging to the American Horticultural Society (of which Jodi is a member). Their plan was to travel around the northern part of Italy and look at old gardens and buildings. My plan was to eat pasta. And eat pasta I did. By the end of our vacation, I had managed to add enough weight to produce a beautiful set of buxom Phil Mickelson man boobs. I feel like I'm going to start spraying milk at any moment.

On our first night in Italy, we met the other people in the group for dinner in the hotel. The average age of a member of our group was 812 years. At our table, we had dinner with a very old lady who kind of had a Bette Davis vibe. She looked like she just stepped out of the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and was about to beat us to death with her cane. Then there was a little old 5-foot-tall lady with a gray tuft of hair. We couldn't remember her name, so we always just referred to her as "Cranky Old Bitch." Then there was an old couple—a man who talked very loudly and a woman who ironically had the volume of her voice permanently set somewhere near "Mute." I never had any idea what she was saying to me. Her mouth would open but I couldn't make out the words. It sounded like she was saying, "I buried my first husband in our basement. Do you like Satan?" I really couldn't hear a single word, so I just kept saying "Yes."

Day 3 - Villas Out the Ass-oh-lo

We climbed aboard our little tour bus with the senior citizens and went to various towns and cities to look at villas, which are basically very old, ornate Italian palaces where very rich people live. But these are different in a couple of ways from the palaces in America where rich people live. First, in Italy, most of these villas are the homes of various counts and contessas, who are kind of like royalty. In America, most of our palaces are the homes of Tori Spelling and Shaquille O'Neal, who are kind of like royalty. Second, in Italy, these villas have remained in the same families for 5 or 6 hundred years. In America, most families can't stand each other enough to maintain a link for 5 years, let alone 500 years.

Each time we went to a new town to see another villa, Jodi announced that we would be moving to that town after the vacation. Every time we saw a villa, we didn't think there could be a more ornate, beautiful villa in the world. And then we'd go to the next villa, and it would be even better. But the somewhat sad part of this is that you got the feeling that the counts and contessas didn't seem to be as important as they used to be back in the good old days. They once had power to go along with money, but now it seems that they're a lot like average people. They have all resorted to giving tours of their homes and selling souvenirs to fat American tourists just so they can afford to maintain the villa and keep it in their family. You'd tour the estate and then go to the gift shop, where the contessa would be working the cash register. It's kind of like going to England to visit Buckingham palace and having Prince Charles change the oil in your bus before you leave.

At 7:45 p.m., Leonardo (our new Italian friend that we had known for an entire 57 minutes), picked us up to take us to dinner at his friend's restaurant in Thiene, Italy. Fortunately, Leonardo is a sales representative, which means that Jodi and I didn't have to do much talking, because sales representatives don't know how to shut up.

Halfway to the restaurant, Leonardo started complaining about how his car was handling and pulled over to check it out. As he stepped out of the car, I thought for certain that the next time I saw Jodi was going to be in the trunk of the car. Leonardo kicked all four tires and then returned to his seat. Apparently, he had received the same formal education in automotive repair that I had.

At the restaurant, Leonardo ordered dinner, translating for us as he talked with the waitress. I'm still not exactly sure what was ordered, but 30 minutes later, there was a crawdad/scallop thingy on my plate with the head still attached, looking right at me. This was accompanied by a small dish of Italian snot phlegm.

Then we were serenaded by an old guy playing a guitar. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses, but only one side had the shaded glass; on the other side it was missing. If that's not romantic, I don't know what is.

Leonardo told us that the meal would be free because he had brought his friend, the owner, some cigarettes from America. Now I knew for sure that Leonardo was a sales representative, because that is exactly the kind of thing that my friend Sean would do. A squishy crawdad head in exchange for a carton of Pall Malls; you can't beat that.

Part way through the meal, we met his friend the owner. He looked a lot like a character in the first Godfather movie. He looked like the guy who played the father of Al Pacino's first wife in Italy. To make matters even more surreal, earlier in the day Jodi and I had visited a villa previously owned by a family named... you got it, Corleone. So Leonardo told this to his friend in Italian as we listened and smiled. I kept hearing stuff like, "Il duce mone prosciutto Corleone il tiempo ford festiva il villa eh Corleone fredo spumoni Corleone mama mia Corleone."

And every time our friend said the word "Corleone," the owner would raise his eyebrows and nod at us like Robert De Niro. I had the biggest urge to turn to Leonardo and say something like, "I want you to translate for me. Tell him... Jodi and I are strangers in this country. And we meant no disrespect to you or your daughter. We are Americans—hiding in Thiene. We want to meet your daughter, with your permission, and under the supervision of your family. With all respect."

On the way back to our hotel, Leonardo again suddenly pulled off the road and into a closed gas station. He said, "Scusi. I must take care of something." He got out of the car and walked past the bushes behind the gas station for a few minutes. Part of me expected him to come back with a baseball bat and blood on his shirt. Fortunately, he returned to the car moments later smelling of poo.

Leonardo turned out to be a very gracious, hospitable man. I'm very glad we met him. On the other hand, by the end of the evening, I couldn't shake the feeling that Jodi and I were now somehow indebted forever to the Italian mafia.

Days 4 through 11 - Cool Old Stuff, Graffiti, Laundry, and the Plague

Italy has a lot of cool old stuff. It's everywhere you look. They got stuff that's older than some of the people in our tour group. I don't remember a lot of details; all I know is that I saw a bunch of old stuff in Italy.

What really surprised me is that there's graffiti on a lot of this cool old stuff. If I had a kid and he spray painted a 700 year-old-building, I'd spray paint his entire body purple, hang him upside down in front of his favorite skateboard store, and beat him to death with a piñata stick.

I don't get graffiti. I don't get it on so many levels. I don't understand why illiterate teenagers want to advertise the fact that they're illiterate. I don't understand why parents don't beat their graffiti-spraying youngins senseless. I don't understand why there isn't a really good law to do something about it. It's simple. All you have to do is pass a law that says if you get caught spraying graffiti, we cut off your peter and sew it to the top of your head. Then the little criminal would be forced to go speak at every school in the world and say, "I was like you once. I sprayed graffiti. But I got caught. Now I'm a dickhead. Don't spray graffiti. Don't be a dickhead." I guarantee that if we get enough little dickheads traveling around the world spreading that message, we'd soon live on a much cleaner planet.

Speaking of being cleaner, midway through the trip, we started to run out of clean clothes. So we decided to have the hotel launder and dry clean them—5 days worth of dirty clothes. And it only cost us 223 Euros. This translates to something like $1,300.00. I am now officially an international idiot.

It was also at this point that I contracted the Black Plague. So I paid 7 Euros ($492.00) for a box of Italian plague medication that did nothing but keep me awake and ensure that I would enjoy all the many wonderful symptoms associated with the Black Plague. For a day or so, Jodi continued looking at old stuff with the old people while I stayed in the hotel and watched Italian soap operas and paid 10 Euros ($799.00) for two bottles of bottled water from the minibar. I was a sick Euro idiot.

The Ultimate Question

In the end, I have to say that, for the most part, Italy was one very cool place, and I highly recommend that you go there and see all of their old stuff—that is, if you have 8,296,293 Euros ($1,987,234,961,297,397,234.99) to spare. I have so many fond memories and images from this vacation. But if there is one moment that stands out most from our trip, it is this:

One day, our group traveled to the city of Padua. We walked through the streets until we came to a very old church. We were told that, as soon as we stepped on the church grounds, we were no longer in Italy, but in the country known as the Vatican. This little plot of land is apparently one of just a couple of places in the world (in addition to the pope's house in Rome) that is officially part of the Vatican.

Of course, by the time we arrived at this place, everyone in our group had to use the bathroom. We were directed to an area off a courtyard at the bottom of some steps. There was one bathroom for men, and another for women. When you walked into these rooms, there were holes in the floor. These were the toilets.

I quickly thanked God that I am not a woman.

By the way, this was the only place on our trip where we experienced this phenomenon—only in the Vatican area.

Jodi did a nice job of illustrating for me what the women experienced in their room. Apparently, one at a time, they had to pull down the top part of their pants and then lift up their pant legs to keep them from scraping along the Holy spooge on the floor. Then they had to squat as low as they could and slowly back up to the Holy hole (BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP). After they finished... uh, spraying, there was a Holy woman with a Holy mop who would sweep over the Holy spooge to prepare the Holy hole for the next victim. Then each woman would return to the hotel and burn her clothes and shave her head.

Very vivid memory for me. I'll live with that forever.

But I guess it's not such a bad thing altogether. At least it serves one very important purpose. It finally provides mankind with an answer to life's ultimate question:

Q: Does the pope shit in the woods?

A: No. He shits in a hole in the floor.

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South Carolina—No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem

If your family is planning to take a vacation to South Carolina this summer, I have a wonderful suggestion that is sure to make your trip a much more pleasant and enjoyable experience. Consider Alaska.

Jodi and I had the opportunity to travel to South Carolina (a.k.a. The Surface of the Sun) just last week. Whether it was reading the 20 billion religious billboards along the highways or swerving around road kill every hundred feet, there was plenty to keep us both quite busy during the entire journey.

South Carolina is “The Palmetto State.” When we first drove across the border into South Carolina, we had no idea what a palmetto was. But we quickly discovered that a palmetto is a freakish-looking inbred child between the ages of 0 and 12 that doesn't wear shoes or have eyebrows. Palmettos come in two sizes—“extra extra small” and “triple large gargantuan keep your fingers inside your pockets if you know what's good for you.” Before you leave South Carolina, be sure to pick up one of these conversation pieces at one of South Carolina's many fine gift shops/rest areas.

Our first stop in the Palmetto State was a nursery called Roses Unlimited that, you guessed it, just sells roses. (Guess whose idea it was to go there.) Roses Unlimited is located just outside of Laurens, South Carolina. As we turned down the long dirt road leading to the nursery, I couldn't shake the expectation that, at any minute, Ned Beatty was going to dart across the road—naked and crying—trying to flee the clutches of a gang of adult palmettos.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Instead, we arrived safely at the nursery, where we saw thousands of the most beautiful roses in the country. But on the other hand, whoopty-freaking-doo. They're just flowers. It's not like it was a root beer factory where we got to take home all the free samples we could carry.

Speaking of root beer, there are hundreds upon hundred of five-star restaurants. Unfortunately, none of them are in South Carolina. But that doesn't mean we went hungry. One of our finest cuisine experiences took place at a little restaurant located just past a billboard that said, “Accept Jesus… or He will kill you.” Locals raved about the eating establishment, so we decided to give it a try, even though we had never heard of it before. It was called McDonalds.

As we entered the plush foyer and admired the decor, we noticed many local citizens enjoying their McScrotums and speaking in their native tongue. I couldn’t understand a word they said, but it was probably about how they all just came from lynching someone that they snatched off of a riding mower. One truly had the sensation of being in the old South again.

As Scarlett O'Hara and her 50 rolls of fat took our order, we noticed a young palmetto staring at us as it licked ketchup directly from a little paper container. We patted the palmetto on its dorsal fin, hoping that it would go out to the playground to join the other palmettos, which were busy scalding their flesh on the Ronald McDonald slide. Then we realized that the parents of the palmettos probably told their youngins that the playground was actually Disneyland. After all, burning your flesh on the Ronald McDonald slide probably isn't so bad if you think it's really the Matterhorn. I could only imagine what else the parents were saying to their children: Hey kids! See that large Negro cleaning the bathroom over there? That's Pluto!

Then we noticed that the Ten Commandments were posted on a wall of the restaurant. Well, I think they were the Ten Commandments. I didn't actually read them all. They might have been rules for the employees… Thou shalt wipe your nose on your arm. Thou shalt have a really piss poor system for taking and distributing orders. Thou shalt bring your palmettos to work with you. And so on.

All in all, I would consider our trip to South Carolina a very successful one. And by “successful,” I mean “At least we weren't raped and left for dead in a ditch.”

And as we drove down the highway and approached another state, we pleasantly passed the remainder of our time in South Carolina by reading all of the inspirational billboards:

• God loves you just the way you are, unless you’re not one of us.
• Please join us for our religious whackjob oyster fry and book burning celebration on July 15.
• Jesus loves the little children—except those who get pregnant and have abortions. Those He wants DEAD. Do you hear me?! DEAD!

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