Weird Shit From Russia!

[Currently Listening To: Talking Heads - Remain in Light]



By now it's no secret that I spend a lot of time traversing the globe. I've been to a lot of countries, and seen the type of cool shit you expect to see in foreign lands - old buildings, exotic food, etc. But since I'm always traveling on business, finding myself in major cities with little time to thoroughly explore, my favorite way of discovering other countries has been to mine them for weird shit. The States have become such a wasteland of blandness, such a vapid expanse of corporate sameness, that any opportunity I can find to score some strange foreign crap is more than welcome. To that end, something I often find dismaying about the world outside of America (here's a handy map for those of you confused as to what that might be) is the alarming lack of weird shit. The angry beast of globalization has spread its red-white-and-blue blandness across the earth with insatiable aggression, ensuring that in exotic-sounding places like, say, Budapest, where I am right now, there's still a Burger King down the street, The Simpsons Movie at the local cinema (in English), Coke Zero in the vending machines, and "My Humps" playing loudly on the radio. Like cultural HIV, America continues to spread unfettered.

I love Japan because it's one of the few places I've been to whose uniqueness seems impervious to the American disease, managing to filter U.S. influence through its own bizarre cultural lens and present it as something entirely its own. And for the same reason, it was a pleasure to recently visit Russia for the first time, and find with much relief that there still is some weird shit in Europe after all (although the rest of Europe likes to exclude Russia from the precious title of "European," geography places Moscow and St. Petersburg firmly within the boundaries of the European continent).

To an American, Russia seems a strange and backwards place - a country struggling to get its shit together after centuries of chaos and turmoil. Things don't seem to work the way they should, no one seems to have discovered deodorant, and you are warned from the beginning that corruption is rampant: Stay inside the main cities, because more or less anything goes in the outskirts, and you're likely to be kidnapped. Keep your passport on you, because if you get stopped by the corrupt police and don't have it, they might kidnap you. Don't take taxis, because many of them aren't real taxis, and they'll kidnap you. We had to fly from Moscow to St. Petersburg instead of driving, because on the country highways, sometimes you'll find a broken down truck blocking the road. Stop and get out to help, and you'll be met by men with guns, who will kidnap you. Kidnapping is apparently all the rage in Russia. It's also, by its nature, a terrifying concept, mostly because it's so vague. The term "kidnapping" describes only the act of being taken away itself, and leaves the rest of your life after that point open to any sort of possibility. Will you get killed? Anally raped? Held for ransom? Sold into prostitution? The future is an open book! With all of that in mind, I stuck to the central parts of Moscow and St Petersburg, and found them to be refreshingly nice places, especially for a country that completely collapsed a couple decades ago. Sure, you can't drink the tap water, but come on - baby steps.

So now, sit back, and let me now take you on a wonderfully xenophobic tour of the strangest moments from my extremely brief and limited Russian experience. For your enjoyment, I've decorated this post with deliciously homoerotic stickers I found of this mulleted Russian pop star. Mullets, by the way, are still high fashion in Russia. Anyway, let's begin...

The People.................

There are a handful of stereotypes about Russian people, and at least one of them is true: those fuckers like to drink. As soon as they get off work - and sometimes before they get off work - they flood outdoor gathering areas and chug beer and vodka on the streets like there's no tomorrow. On my first night in Moscow, while walking through an underground passage near Red Square, my friend and I encountered an absurdly drunk Russian dude, dancing to terrible techno music and shouting loudly. He was wearing one of those big furry Russian hats, and his shirt was unbuttoned, exposing his pasty, sweaty gut, which jiggled as he danced. This is him:



He leapt in front of me and yelled something about Russia. He seemed to desire some sort of response, but I can understand Russian about as well as I can menstruate, so I was clueless. In a situation like that, what else could I do? I handed my camera to my friend, and started an impromptu Russian dance party. Homeboy put his big furry Russian hat on me, and for approximately forty five seconds, we partied like few have partied before. Scope the unbelievably hot dance moves:



That was pretty much the high point of my entire time in Russia.

The Food.................

I'm still not exactly sure what exactly constitutes Russian food, but expectedly, meat plays a heavy role. So how could I pass up a restaurant with an incredibly straightforward sign like this one?



As soon as we saw that, there wasn't really any other option for lunch that day. Inside, the waiters wore strange fur hunting outfits, and every wall was decorated eerily with dead animals and primitive weapons. The whole place was a sort of morbid celebration of carnivores where animals stared at you while you ate their relatives. Near our table were creepy squirrels on the wall, and a genuinely terrifying wolf:



The selection of meat on the menu was no less bizarre than the decorations:



I was going to avoid stating the obvious, but fuck it: "Beaver with cowberry sauce" might be the best new euphemism for a menstruating vagina since "muff marinara." And of course, I tried it. When it Rome, right? Bear was actually my first choice, but they were out. Big rush on bear. So beaver it was. You're probably wondering what cowberry sauce is, and I'm afraid that after eating it I'm no closer to having an answer for you. I can, however, assure you that beaver meat is without question the most nauseatingly awful thing I have ever had the misfortunate of putting in my mouth. I've eaten some gnarly shit in my time, and I have a seemingly iron-clad stomach when it comes to weird food, but this time I nearly puked before the meat even hit my throat. It was impressively terrible. It tasted like disease. Like pure, miserable death. Pretty much what I imagine rat meat tastes like. So, lesson learned: If you ever see beaver on the menu and you're feeling adventurous (or just want an excuse to make a sophomoric sexual pun), don't do it. You will be very sorry. Try the wild boar instead.

The Arts.................

One of my favorite things in Russia is how they've adapted the beloved tradition of the matryoshka - the Russian nesting dolls - for the 21st century. In Russian souvenir stands, the variety of hand-painted matryoshkas ranges from quaint and traditional to utterly, fantastically bizarre. Consider, for example, my new prized possession, the George W. Bush Russian Doll - complete with the "I'm a fucking tool" cowboy hat that characterizes our great President so very well:



That's just the beginning, though. Strangely, Osama Bin Laden has been immortalized in Matryoshka form, with other terrorists and dictators nesting inside him:



You can also find dolls for various Soviet dictators, British and French politicians, and even a Bill Clinton matryoshka with a doll inside for each of his many women. None of them, however, can compete with the selection of dolls from the music world:



The greatest compliment I can give the Russian artisans who created this unique masterpiece is that they have captured with alarming accuracy the spiritual essence of Freddie Mercury's overwhelming gayness. You can almost smell the butt sex. Here's another stunning masterpiece:



When I was a wee child, if a magical fairy had come down from the stars and told me that some day, my journey through life would somehow bless me with a genuine traditional matryoshka doll adorned with a hand-painted portrait of Jon Bon Jovi in all his trashy 1980's glory, and that if I cracked him open it would reveal yet another doll featuring Richie Sambora's stupid fat face, I would have said "No, magical fairy, you are a liar, for I could not imagine a life so good for myself." And yet, here I am. But alas, it gets even better. For even as I delighted in the glory of the Bon Jovi Russian doll, I knew not that my next discovery would be...

THE MANY FACES OF MICHAEL JACKSON RUSSIAN DOLL PLAYSET (OR: THE GREATEST THING EVER CRAFTED BY MAN):


Look at it! Feast upon its greatness!! My favorite part is how only the last and tiniest doll portrays Michael when he was still black.

If my funds had been unlimited, I probably would have bought every bizarre Russian doll the country had to offer. Some of the other ones I saw included Britney Spears, Elvis, Metallica, Kobe Bryant, Madonna, AC/DC, Depeche Mode, and many more.

Assorted Weird Shit................. Here are some miscellaneous photos of weird shit from Russia: These are some super cool Russian music dudes. Most importantly, check the terrifying guy at the top. He wants to eat your soul. It was really nice of Kevin Smith to lend a hand on the bongos, too.
Loosely translated, this Russian t-shirt says "I don't drink with gays." Tied with this for best Russian t-shirt ever.	Speaking of homophobia, it's ironic that the Russian police force, often criticized for violence and discrimination against gays, has "HOMO" written backwards on all their uniforms. LOL @ TEH HOMO PATROL!!!!1
I guess Jessica Simpson has fallen on hard times lately, as she's apparently been forced to take up work as a Russian escort.	This is my new favorite drink.
Here's a strange and incredibly unpleasant-looking trans-species stuffed animal, which I can't imagine has any effect other than to frighten children.	Look how tough this dude thinks he is with his Yoda tattoo.
This is a statue that was on the street. Children were getting their pictures taken with it.	Like Germany, there's a lot of highly questionable fashion in Russia. I saw more than a few women dressed like my Grandma's couch.

Well, that just about concludes our tour of Russia. I'm confident that it accurately represented all aspects of the entire country. If for some reason you want more, I took some arty tourist photos of Moscow and St. Petersburg and put them up here. They're actually very beautiful cities.

And before I go, please enjoy the unique musical stylings of an old Russian dude playing Celine Dion on a saw, interrupted by a strange dancing man:






EDIT: I can't believe I forgot about this - just a few hours after my tragic encounter with beaver meat, I saw this t-shirt at a souvenir stand. I have no idea what it says (my bet is on sexual innuendo), but it was so eerily appropriate I had to pick it up:

More Curiosities From Japan's Porno Shops

[Currently Listening To: UNKLE - War Stories]


Tokyo's Akihabara neighborhood is a sort of Mecca for consumerist nerds. Anyone obsessed, as I am, with toys and gadgets, electronics and video games, robots and action figures would be hard pressed to find a greater place to whittle away their life savings. Last month, I lost myself in Akihabara's endless neon labyrinth of awesomeness for many hours, dashing around wide-eyed like a kid in a candy store. Every corner I turned in every shop was a new discovery of some wonderful thing that I desperately needed more than anything else in the world, although I hadn't known it until then. I left that shiny paradise a much poorer man than I had entered - but I didn't leave it without another trip to the legendary seven-floor adult superstore I discovered two years ago on my last trip to Japan. And since the bizarre treasures I brought home from that trip proved so popular, I figured it's time for another round of show and tell from the the dark, horny underbelly of Tokyo.

It's unfortunate that the giant porn store doesn't allow photographs, because it's hard to capture the uniquely creepy atmosphere with words alone. I think most Americans feel a bit uncomfortable browsing any sex shop, but Japan turns the Weird-O-Meter up a few notches, especially in this store. As with any shop in Tokyo, space counts, so an impressive amount of merchandise has been Tetrissed into narrow little aisles. Any amount of foot traffic in the store makes it extremely difficult to move around, forcing you to silently negotiate an awkwardly physical passage with anyone in your way as you attempt to navigate the claustrophobic walkways. This means you'll have to acknowledge the Japanese businessman carefully studying a strap-on dildo far more intimately than you'd probably prefer.

To make things worse, the store is almost dead silent, except for the bondage floor, where the unnerving soundtrack is the signature high-pitched wail of a Japanese woman crying and screaming from horrors unknown. Unknown, at least, until you notice the television in the back corner, where said Japanese woman, her naked body dripping in hot wax, is being led around someone's basement on all fours by a leash. Her endless crying would seem to be the result of the thirty or so metal clamps attached mercilessly to exactly the last parts of one's body most people would ever choose to clamp. Behind the cash register, polaroid pictures cover the wall the way a New York deli would post pictures of celebrities who had stopped in for a bite to eat. Except, instead of pictures of the cashier giving thumbs up next to Jay Leno or Regis Philbin, these are pictures of the cashier tied up and ball-gagged, bent over with a leather-clad woman sticking various objects into his hairy Japanese ass. It seemed the photos were souvenirs from some sort of bondage party held by people who work at the store. I was never more thankful for the Japanese aversion to touching hands when exchanging money.

Unfortunately, most of the weird new treasures I found this time around were too expensive to buy, and I couldn't photograph them in the store. But alas, through the magical tubes of the internets I was able to find pictures and even links for almost everything I saw, so let's begin the tour...


The Plasma Sperm



The Plasma Sperm is a home microscope kit designed especially for men to view their little testicular tadpoles up close and personal. That's right boys - next time you blow a load all over your stomach looking at celebrity nip slip galleries, don't reach for that dirty gym sock - reach for the Plasma Sperm, and see how your little swimmers are holding up.



I actually bought one of these, but it was a gag gift for a friend, so I was sadly unable to personally test out this ingenious device. However, from the looks of it there seems to be nothing to differentiate it from any other home microscope, save the spectacular packaging.



Unable to read Japanese, I can't exactly tell you what their selling points are with this thing, beyond the irresistible novelty of seeing the would-be offspring you've sentenced to death by Kleenex. This website seems to be selling the Plasma Sperm as a cost effective tool for men with potentially low sperm counts who are trying to conceive a child. But since I don't know Japanese, I'll turn to Google's trusty translator for help:

"This actualizing price low with the contents which are the high function where also the professional is surprised! [sutairiishiyu] design the near future forum the [ku] the [ri] increases the intellectual search heart of the man immediately. In present! In experiment! In investigation! The door to the micro which participates with all scenes."

Ah, that explains it!


Strange Masturbatory Devices

Last time I told you (in way too much detail) about the popular Japanese "vagina-in-a-can," or Vagican, or Cangina as it was later coined. You can see a wide variety of Vagicans on this page. The Vagican is an unapologetically economical masturbatory solution, and thus lacks some of the bells and whistles of more elaborate artificial vaginas. That's where the Vagican Vibrator comes in:



Just insert your favorite Cangina into the machine, and instantly you have a vibrating Cangina! It's kind of like an erotic paint shaker. The translation calls it the "Electric Man," and the best part is that it's not just for Canginas - it's also for rubber hands, creating an amazing vibrating handjob machine:



Or if that looks a little too vanilla, try this uncomfortable-looking ball-grabbing device - I call it "The Clapper":




Anime Love Dolls

One of the more interesting new additions at the sex shop was a section of life-sized love dolls. Love dolls are a sex toy staple around the world, but like everything else, Japan adds its own creepy twists - like favoring plush dolls that look like pubescent anime characters:



The product page for this doll details its eerie face, which will be staring blankly through you as you make love to its unique interchangeable vagina. An interchangeable vagina, you say? How does it work? Once again, Google Translator explains:

When the underpants are made to disperse, the hole for hole installing opens. Because hole hole diameter 45×30mm is small, “the love body Kumi private hole” of selling separately is agreeable.

I see... But what I want to know is how do you wash something like this? It's plush, which is fabric, so there's going to be a certain amount of absorbency when it's exposed to, say, the various excretions of a profusely sweating overweight Japanese man crushing poor Kumi under his weight as he furiously pumps his hairy little ding-dong into her "private hole." It sounds like a recipe for something that doesn't smell very good after a few uses.

If you're looking for something more realistic terrifying, you might want to try this... thing:



This lovely armless lass and her friends (seen at the top of the page) come permanently fixed in a pose that never says no, and an interchangeable face only a serial killer could love:



It also is home to the world's least sexy artificial vagina:



This comic, from the detail page, explains everything you need to know about these high-tech artificial orifices:



These dolls are highly customizable, so if you want to channel your inner psychopath by taking off the doll's limbs, reducing its breasts to undeveloped nubs, dressing it in little girl underwear and giving it a face that says "please Daddy don't touch me there" - you're in luck!



Most terrifying of all is this thing, a doll that should be murdering people in a bad '80's horror movie, not being lusted after by lonely Japanese men:



This doll has, according to its translated page, an artificial hymen for you to break. They really did think of everything, didn't they?

All of the above dolls are fairly deluxe, and will run you into the hundreds of dollars. But if you're on a budget and still need something life-size you can desperately pretend is a real woman, check out the wide variety of weird blow-up dolls. Thankfully, they still retain the creepy anime face:



And, if you're on even more of a budget, you might just want specific parts - like a personal titty-fucker, or a grotesquely hairy rubber rear end vagina thing, or a pocket anus, or a curious little guy I like to call "The Pirana Plant".


Something For The Ladies

Fear not girls, Japan hasn't left you out, and it understands that your desire to masturbate can happen suddenly, where you least expect it. That's why you need to carry your vibrator discreetly - say, disguised as a zuccini, or better yet, an ear of corn:



No one will think it's weird if they see an ear of corn in your purse. Or a carrot, or a banana.

If vegetables aren't your thing, maybe fingers are. Not just any fingers - vibrating fingers molded directly from the hands of a famous Japanese actor - specifically, this guy:



Oh, and in case you were worried, Japan is still the leading producer of the world's cutest vibrators:




Capsule Figures

Toy figures definitely aren't just for kids in Japan. Like last time, I tried my luck in one of the adult-themed capsule toy machines. This time I got a tiny plastic tied-up girl, complete with a box of "accessories" (for size reference, those are laptop keyboard keys behind her):



As strange as it is, the attention to detail is impressive. The girl's box of fun includes what must be the world's smallest sex toys - several dildos, a butt plug, a speculum, anal beads, and the always useful bottle of lube:



All that's missing is a miniature butt funnel.

Well, that's all for this year. For more from Japan's dirty side, keep exploring this site, or just go here and cry yourself to sleep tonight.

P.S. - Even though it's better suited for my previous entry, I can't help but include this Japanese man wearing boobs on his nose. Because Japanese men with boob noses are always funny:

Japan Super Happy Fun Time First Part! Mega Fun Costume Party Explosion!!

[Currently Listening To: Queens Of The Stone Age - Era Vulgaris]

If you've been here a while, you're probably aware of my love affair with Japan - in particular my keen interest in its unnatural abundance of weird shit. I'm far from being one of those mouth-breathing gaijin boys who immerses himself in anime, jacks off to tentacle porn, and is known by a Japanese nickname on internet forums (okay, maybe once I jacked off to tentacle porn, but I swear I was drunk); I just find Japan to be an incredible place with a culture so unique and far-removed from Western sensibilities that it can truly feel like a different planet. Most importantly though, everything in Japan just seems like a lot more fun. Hell, even parking is more fun in Japan.

We dined at a popular theme restaurant called The Lockup, where you are handcuffed and escorted to a prison cell to dine in. Skulls decorate the dungeon-esque walls, and specialty drinks come in syringes and test tubes. We found many, many arcades (long dead in the States, but thriving in Japan) with amazingly sophisticated photo sticker booths, which resulted in grotesquely awesome pictures like these:



I should add those aren't Photoshopped in any way at all - that's exactly how they come out of the photo booth after some fun touch-screen customization. Why we don't have shit like that over here is beyond baffling to me.

Of course, the best part for a nerd like me is the toys. Japan, without question, is home to the coolest and widest selection of toys in the world. So cool, in fact, that some of the toy stores have to be guarded by giant terrifying Japanese puppy monsters:



I went to several multi-level toy stores, notably Hakuhinkan in Ginza, and Kiddy Land in Harajuku, trying to keep my bank account in tact as I gazed in wonder at the endless aisles of incredibly cool stuff. At Hakuhinkan, a whole aisle of goofy Japanese masks and party outfits revealed that Japanese costume parties are probably way more fun than American ones - if for no other reason than the strange popularity of creepy drag costumes for Japanese men:



Although, far scarier is this Japanese Michael Jackson costume I found:



When I was a kid I loved Michael Jackson so much that I dressed up like him for Halloween one year. It's scary to think that my six year old self adored Jacko so much, that if I'd somehow met him, he probably could have talked me into letting him touch my peepee with minimal hassle - no Jesus Juice required. Call me a cheap date.

Anyway, in looking at some of the pictures I took of the costumes, I noticed a web site listed for the manufacturer. That led me to the oddly-named JIG Paradise, a Japanese costume catalog with the most incredible assortment of funny/creepy photos of costumed Japanese men perhaps ever assembled. For example, check out Japanese Britney Spears, looking almost as ugly as the real thing:



Japanese and rockabilly always make for humorously awkward bedfellows:



Even common costume fodder like the trusty "muscle chest" outfit seems much more exciting in a Japanese package:



And then there's these guys:



The costume on the left, in case you're wondering, is a takoyaki - a fried octopus ball - a hugely popular Japanese snack, and a gooey, vomit-enducing nightmare to even the most daring Western tastebuds.

But if that's all a bit too mainstream, maybe you want to attend your next costume party as a cannibalistic turnip, or a... red... thing? What's that meant to be on the right?



And for that matter, what the hell are these costumes? Other than some kind of tree from a Dr. Seuss book, I can't even guess what these might be:



Strangely, the most popular costume in Japan seems to be the simply-titled "party costume":



The party costume a one-piece, one-color outfit worn by dancing, large-headed men whose little ding-dongs poke out playfully from underneath:



Add some metallic colors and face paint, and you get something straight out of my nightmares:



What would you do if those two dudes on the right approached you in a dark alley, just smiling, saying nothing? I would pee in my pants and sob uncontrollably is what I would do. I expect to see them showing up in the next David Lynch movie.

Spend some time browsing around "JIG Paradise" for more awesome photos - they even have costumes for your penis:



Damnit Japan, you've really thought of everything.

Story Time: The Best Little Whorehouse In Amsterdam (Or Not)

[Currently Listening To: Bill Hicks - Salvation]


     In addition to being solicited by one of Boy George's mantoys and watching a transvestite sex show in jaw-dropped disbelief, there were a couple other bizarre stories from Europe that I'd meant to write down at the time, but never got around to. This is one of them... (this is a long post, but I had some time on an airplane this evening and I wanted to write this down so I wouldn't forget the details - read it or don't read it, I don't give a fuck)

     At some point in the middle of our European trip, we stopped in Amsterdam for exactly one night off before we were to catch a flight to Spain the next day. We were tired from traveling but determined nonetheless to make something of the few hours we had in a city with a reputation for trouble. So myself and a couple friends set out on foot towards the famed red light district, where adventure surely awaited us. Or did it? We quickly discovered that even Amsterdam, the city of sin, is dead as balls on a sunday night. After an hour of walking, the novelty of looking at weathered hookers standing in little red fish tanks was quickly fading, and all we wanted was someplace to sit down and have a drink - but every bar seemed to be closed or closing. Only one dingy-looking tavern on the corner of a dark sidestreet showed signs of life - in fact, it was overflowing with loud, drunken European men. Even from the outside it looked filthy and cramped and potentially dangerous, but damnit, it was open, so we decided to give it a shot.

     The entrance to the bar was a tunnel of large, scarred, skinheaded British rugby thugs whose boisterous drunken conversations gave way to silent scowls when we - three pale, skinny, black-clad Americans - squeezed our way past them to get in. Clearly, we were not particularly welcome in this place, but it seemed like it was too late to turn back at that point.

     The bar's interior was truly a wretched hive of scum and villainy; a dark, narrow, rotting dump of a place which looked as old as time and smelled even older. The musty, humid air was thick with cigarette smoke which, along with the succulent aroma of stale beer, vomit, and body odor, seemed to have been collecting on every surface of the room for two hundred years, unchallenged by proper cleaning or ventilation. From somewhere in the back, a dying jukebox blasted a cacophony of Irish drinking music cranked too loud for the capabilities of the weathered speakers. All manors of unsavory characters filled every corner of the room - laughing and shouting and drinking heavily - and many of them cast their eyes suspiciously upon us as we walked in. I felt like C-3PO stepping into the Mos Eisley Cantina - I was half expecting one of the bartenders to point at us and say, "we don't serve their kind here!"

     We sat down reluctantly at the bar, still taking in the breadth of our surroundings. As I adjusted my stool, I accidently bumped gently into the back of a rather large man next to me. He spun around and glared at me with a soul-piercing look of death and said, in the thickest of consonant-free cockney accents: "watch it." I sheepishly apologized and scooted my stool so far in the other direction I was practically sitting in my friend's lap. It was definitely time for some drinks. My friend Dave got the attention of a wiry old man bartender with a big hook nose, a horseshoe of stringy white hair, and an apron so filthy it was stained in colors I didn't even know existed. He spoke no English but understood the word "vodka," and that was all we really needed. He presented us with three shots (mixers, I presumed, were a foreign concept here) which we quickly gulped down (it was the cheapest, most throat-searing vodka I've ever tasted) and asked for another round. The bartender took our dirty glasses, dunked them in a sink filled with dark brown dishwater, and set them back in the stack of clean glasses, where they were immediately picked up by the second bartender and filled anew for some other customers.

     After a couple rounds, we eased up a bit and began to enjoy the atmosphere, spending the next hour or so people-watching, bullshitting, having a great time. By that point the crowd was thinning out, and at 2am the bar's bright overhead lights turned on, announcing closing time in the most disorienting of ways. The question, of course, was now what? Surely there must be somewhere else to go and continue our night. My friend Jason, a couple shots drunker than Dave and myself, called for the attention of the other, English-speaking bartender. He was a large middle-aged man with an accent of undetermined Eastern European origin. He had a barrel chest, a leathery face, a buzz cut, and a bowling shirt with the name "Frankie" embroidered on the breast. He walked over to us, keeping one eye on a trouble-making drunk over in the corner, and told us "no more drink, bar is closed."
     "No," Jason explained, "we want to go to another bar. Do you know anywhere around here that's still open where we could get a drink?"
     Frankie thought about it for a minute, then nodded slowly and said, "yes, I know of good place."
     "A bar?"
     "Yes. It is sex club. But it is bar. It have drinks. It good."
     We looked at each other suspiciously. Jason asked if there were any normal bars still open.
     "No," Frankie replied, "bars all closed. Only sex club open now."
     "But it's a bar, right? I mean, they serve drinks?"
     "Yes, yes, it bar. Drinks. I call car for you. I get you there. You get there, you tell them Frankie send you." Frankie flipped open a beat-up cell phone from his pocket and disappeared to the other side of the bar, apparently making a phone call. Dave and Jason and I huddled together to discuss. Jason assured us that he'd been to one of these "sex clubs" last time he was in Europe - that it was just a bar, but with girls hanging out who you can purchase and take upstairs if you'd like.
     "If you don't want any girls," Jason told us, "you don't have to get any. We can just sit there and drink."
     "So it's a whorehouse?" I asked.
     "No, well... I mean, yeah, but it's classier than that. It'll be just like any other bar. Look, it's the only place to go right now, and it'll be an adventure."
     Dave was not convinced - rather, he was beginning to panic: "That guy is calling us a fucking car right now, and if we get in that car, we're dead. Do you see that guy's watch? That's a fucking ten thousand dollar Rolex. You think he makes that kind of money washing dishes behind a bar? No, he makes money robbing naive tourists like us. We're going to end up in fucking pieces inside Frankie's trunk."
     "Dude, I don't think he's making that much money from robbing tourists. I mean, how many tourists would even come in this place?"
     "Oh come on - 'Frankie sent us'?? That's fucking code for 'gut these witless Americans and dump them in the river'!"
     Just then, Frankie returned, and said, "I have arrange for you. Car is come to get you."
     "Actually," I said, "if you could just give us the address, we'll catch a cab there - we need to, uh, pick up a couple friends."
     Frankie shrugged and said he would get the address for us, then disappeared again.
     "There," I told Dave, "now we don't have to ride in Frankie's car."
     "I still don't trust this guy."
     Frankie came back with an address of gibberish Dutch street names scribbled on a dirty napkin. "You go here, you tell them Frankie send you." Thanks, Frankie. Then he leaned forward, and said, "Tell me - you are in band, no?"
     "Uh, yeah," I said, appeasing him. "Yeah, we're in a band." We weren't, of course, but I guess we looked the part.
     Frankie's face lit up. "I knew this! I am friend with many rock and roll band. Last week I meet Keith Richard from Rolling Stone!" He ducked down behind the bar and pulled out a photo album, then leafed through it until he found a photo of himself standing next to the corpse drummer from The Rolling Stones. "You see? Keith Richard!"
     "Oh, wow. Cool, man. Real cool."
     Frankie beamed, clearly very proud. "I have to clean up bar now. In thirty minute, I see you at club, and then we talk."
     Yeah. Sure. That'll be great. I can't wait for our talk, Frankie. We said goodbye, headed out to the street, and grabbed a cab.

     On the ride to Frankie's mysterious sex club, we grilled the cab driver for clues about our destination. He told us that there were about five of these clubs in the city, some of them more expensive than others. This one, he told us, was not one of the expensive ones. We weren't sure if that was a good or a bad thing, but what did we care - all we wanted was a fucking drink.

     The cab came to a stop on a dark, residential-looking street. "This is it," the cab driver told us.
     "Um... where?"
     "Right there." He pointed to the unmarked door of an apartment building, indistinct from a dozen other doors of a dozen other adjacent apartment buildings. There was no sign, no people outside, no lights on in the windows - no evidence at all that this was anyplace other than the residence of someone who had long since retired for bed. Still, we got out of the cab, determined to investigate. Jason knocked on the door..... Nothing.
     Dave was flipping out: "Dude, this is fucked, this is fucked, we're going to die right now for sure."
     I was beginning to agree, as Jason knocked again with no results. "Yeah, this is pretty weird. We should get out of here." Jason nodded, and we turned to walk back towards the cab.
     Just then, from somewhere above us, a voice shouted "Hey!" We stopped and looked up - a rugged-looking old black woman was leaning out of a window on what must have been the third floor, peering down at us.
     "What you want?" she yelled in a gruff, heavily accented voice.
     "Uh... is this a bar?"
     She paused. "Frankie send you?"
     "Um, yes. Frankie sent us."
     She slammed the window shutters closed. We all gave each other the same look of "what the fuck is going on here?"
     "Dude," Dave said, "let's get out of here. This is fucking weird."
     I glanced over at the cab driver, still waiting for us at the curb. "Yeah, let's go."

     And then, just as our minds were made up, the front door swung open, and there was the old black woman, standing there leering at us. She was probably sixty years old, and had frazzled black hair with streaks of gray. Deep dark circles hung under her eyes, and what few teeth she still had were crooked and yellow. She was wearing a faded silk slip - something that might have been sexy when it was worn by the woman who originally purchased it, thirty years and seven owners ago, before it was retrieved out of a dumpster by the beast who stood before us. It had stains of unknown origin scattered across it, and one of the straps was held together with a safety pin. From the bottom of the slip emerged a pair of scrawny, veiny legs, capped by the filthiest pair of slippers I'd ever seen. "Come in," she told us, in a tone used more commonly for demands than invitations.

     We exchanged glances - should we go in this creepy place? My every instinct was screaming "run for the fucking hills." But Jason, buzzed and adventurous, stepped forward. "C'mon, how bad could it be?" What we saw inside hinted at the answer.

     The room we walked into was dark and empty. There were no people, there was no music. There were no signs of life. In one corner, a ripped up old couch sat next to a dying plant. The other side of the room was mostly occupied by a shoddily-constructed bar with five or six almost-empty bottles of nondescript liquor sitting behind it. Another corner of the room had a pole in it - the stripper kind, not the fireman kind. The air smelled like cigarettes and death.
     "Sit down," the old woman told us.
     "Wait," Dave said, "is this a bar? Is this a club?"
     "Yes, it is club."
     "Are there... people here? Anybody?" I asked.
     "Yes, people here. Sit down. I call girls for you." She disappeared down a hallway and up some stairs.
     We sat down at the small bar and laughed nervously. "What the FUCK is going on here?"

     Then, a shorter, fatter old black woman emerged from the hallway, and walked behind the bar. Acknowledging us only with a disinterested glance, she flicked a switch that turned on an overhead light, which momentarily illuminated the dark room, then flickered, and fizzled out. She pulled out a remote from behind the bar and pointed it at a tiny television mounted high up on the wall above the bar. A fuzzy image wobbled into place on the screen - some sort of European music video was playing. It wasn't up very loud, but at least finally there was something other than dead silence in the room. The woman set glasses down in front of each of us, and then looked at us expectedly. Oh, I get it, she's the bartender. "Vodka," Jason said. Dave and I nodded.
     The woman poured our drinks from a plastic bottle with the word "vodka" written on it with a Sharpie. We toasted, "to Amsterdam," and emptied the glasses quickly. The woman filled them up again and said, "So. You know Frankie?"
     "Yes," Jason said, "we met Frankie tonight. Uh, nice guy."
     She nodded unenthusiastically. We did another shot. Dave, still nervous about the situation, sat down on the dirty couch, his eyes darting around suspiciously.

     Just then, a woman came in from the hallway, and slumped down on the stool next to me. She was probably 21 but looked 40 - rake thin and pale, with greasy unwashed hair, a wart on her cheek, and teeth so yellow they were closer to brown. An expression of disdain carved creases into her weathered face as she sucked on a cigarette like it was oxygen at the bottom of the ocean. And she just sat there, looking straight ahead, not acknowledging us. Squirming awkwardly, I turned towards Jason and Dave and joked, "back off guys, she's mine." Jason snickered. I turned back to the girl and decided I might as well make this entertaining. "Hey there," I said, in the lightest tone I could muster. She continued smoking, without looking at me. "So... uh... where you from?" She turned her head towards me, scowling, giving me the death stare.
     "Mars," she replied bitterly, in a tone you might use to speak to someone who had just killed your mother.
     I chuckled awkwardly. "Mars, huh? It's, uh, pretty hot there this time of year, isn't it?" She grunted unintelligibly and resumed her smoking. For a girl who was expecting me to solicit her for sex, she really wasn't selling herself very well.

     At that point two more girls came in from upstairs, both of them as hideous and unfriendly as the first. One sat down next to Dave, and the other next to Jason. No one said anything. The atmosphere was getting creepier and creepier. I turned to Jason and whispered, "I think we're all getting AIDS just from sitting here. We need to get the hell out of this place. At some point they're going to expect us to pay these girls for sex, and I don't think they're going to be happy when they realize we're not interested in that." Jason nodded. But just as I was getting up to tell Dave the same thing, the old black woman reappeared, and said, "You have girl now. Rooms are upstairs. More girls coming." We all glanced at each other.

     Suddenly the doorbell rang. Now what? Frankie? "I hope that's not Frankie..." Jason mumbled.
     "It is more girls," the woman said, moving towards the door, "I call more girls for you." Great, just what we need. She opened the door, and there was Frankie, wearing a clean shirt and a shiny gold necklace. He said something unintelligible to the old woman, and then the plot thickened: They embraced, and kissed sloppily and passionately. I think I threw up a little when I saw that.
     Frankie looked around and smiled. "You are here! Good! Many beautiful girl for you. Have fun with girls. Then we talk. Much to talk about. I want know about your band."
     Dave, starting to freak out, did exactly what I hoped he wouldn't do, and explained to Frankie, "Look man, we actually don't want any girls tonight. We just wanted a drink. So..."
     "What you mean no girls!" Frankie interrupted, sounding offended. "You must have girl! It is Amsterdam! This is sex club! You will take girl. This one," he gestured at the putrid troll sitting next to Dave, "she do anything for you. Beautiful girl."

     So at this point we find ourselves in a bit of situation. We're in a foreign country, in a seemingly vacant part of town miles away from our hotel, in the creepiest whorehouse in the world, without any means to call a cab, being pressured by a large Russian man to have sex with possibly the ugliest girls in Europe. How the fuck were we going to get out of this one?

     The doorbell rang again. "Ah, that is girls," the old woman said. She opened the door, and to our surprise, it was the cab driver. The cab driver! The fucking cab driver came back. To this day, I do not know why he returned, but it didn't matter. It was a Godsend. His arrival was like some sort of divine intervention. Thank the fucking Lord, I thought to myself. We're saved!

     Immediately I jumped up from my seat. "Oh, hey, Jason, there's the cab driver! Remember you forgot your jacket in the cab?" He looked at me, confused.
     "No, I di--" You could almost see the light bulb illuminate above his head. "Oh, riiiight! My jacket! Yeah, let's go look for that!" We quickly shoved our way past Frankie and the woman and ran outside to the cab. "We'll be right back, just getting something from the car!" The cab driver, confused, followed us outside and watched us leap into the back seat of the car.
     "Come on!" I yelled at the cabbie, "let's go!"
     "You... you want to leave?"
     "YES!!"
     "Fuck, where's Dave?" Jason shouted. Dave hadn't followed us outside.
     "Fuck fuck fuck!" I jumped out of the car and ran to the doorway, leaned in, and said "Dave, we need your help with something out here!" He shrugged and came towards the door. I grabbed his arm and pulled him outside. "Come on, dumbass, we're getting out of here!"

     As we piled into the cab the woman had caught on and ran out the door screaming "Where you going!! You can no leave!! I call girls for you, you have to pay!!" Like a scene from a movie, I yelled at the driver to "step on it" as the woman ran towards the cab. The car peeled out, and we laughed hysterically as we watched the woman run down the street after us, cursing and screaming, with Frankie standing behind her dumbfounded.

     On the ride home, we couldn't stop laughing, about Frankie and the creepy ugly prostitutes and the dingy bar and how, at the end, Dave had actually thought we were going to the car to fetch Jason's jacket. The driver asked us if we wanted to try a better club. No thanks, we told him. We'd had more than enough of Amsterdam.

Doing battle with Japanese toilets - and other oddities from the East

I had some other non-porn-related items of interest left over from my trip to Japan that I hadn't gotten around to posting - so I'm going to do that now.

First of all, Japanese people take pooping very seriously. My hotel room was equipped with one of Japan's notorious electronic bidet toilets, which I affectionately refer to as the Robotoilet. It features a heated seat and a wireless LCD control panel. This is a close-up of the control panel:



The buttons at the top control Robotoilet's most exciting feature: a little motorized device which extends out from underneath the toilet seat and shoots your puckered brownhole with a blast of warm water, sending a brief shiver up your spine and leaving your formerly poop-encrusted asshole feeling oh so fresh and so clean. The sensation is odd but not entirely unpleasant, although it's alarming how accurate the device's aim is. You'll see in the picture that the icons on the buttons represent butts, and water spraying at said butts. I never pressed the pink "bidet" button - that one's for the ladies - but I assume it's the same thing, only aimed a bit differently to target a different hole. In retrospect, since I don't have a vagina it probably would have sprayed my balls, which might have been interesting. Ah well, live and learn.

Anyway, when you've decided that your bits and pieces are good and clean (it's up to the user to determine how long the spray continues), you can finish up with a gust of warm air that comfortably blow-dries your ass. I have absolutely no idea what the LCD panel is meant to display, but maybe it has something to do with temperature of the drier or the heated seat (which, by the way, is a much nicer luxury than you might imagine).

I was so fascinated by the ass-cleaning Robotoilet that I wanted to see it in action when no one was sitting on it. I tried pressing the "wash" button with the lid open, but nothing happened. Robotoilet, it seemed, had outsmarted me, by way of a sensor somewhere which informed it that no one's asshole was present to receive a cleansing. So I waved my hand around near the toilet seat, continually pressing the button until I found where the sensor was. You see that, Robotoilet? I'm smarter than you after all. Holding my hand over the sensor, I watched in delight as the little spraying device extended mechanically from within the toilet, and took its position a few inches underneath where a dirty butthole would normally reside. This is so exciting! It's going to spray! And then it sprayed - all over me. Robotoilet, angry at my sphincter deception, had retaliated with a powerful blast of water! The pressure was far greater than I'd anticipated, and, without an ass to break its trajectory, the stream of water shot high above the toilet seat and out onto my pants and my shoes and the floor. This photograph I found at Wikipedia illustrates the situation pretty well, just imagine me on the receiving end of that spray:



Robotoilet: 1. Rob: 0.

But if Robotoilet is the pinnacle of pooping luxury, the traditional Japanese "squat toilets" are, to use a terrible pun, the dumps. The squat toilets are often found in public restrooms throughout much of Asia, and, instead of the chair-based toilets we're used to, are built into the ground, requiring one to squat over them in order to take a shit. This is what they look like - this is not some kind of urinal, or bidet, but an all-purpose toilet:



I'd heard about these before, but I was strangely excited when I saw one (so much so that I took that picture) - it was one of those "Oh look it's funny how foreign people go poo" moments. Observation, however, was not enough. I wanted to try this thing. I wanted the full experience. So I waited, and waited, and waited, until a rumbling in my bowels told me the time was right, and I rushed to the nearest squat toilet for a one-of-a-kind immersion into Eastern culture. As it turned out, it wasn't as easy or fun as I'd imagined. Maybe I have weak legs, but squatting over something so low was extremely tricky, particularly while concerning myself with keeping my ass out far enough to avoid shitting all over my pants. I had to stabilize myself with one hand against the wall while my skinny little trembling legs (my bad knee didn't enjoy any of this one bit) fought to keep me from collapsing into a pile of my own fecal matter. The sheer effort involved in preventing poop from falling onto my pulled-down pants left me convinced that I was doing something wrong. Do Japanese people take their fucking clothes off when they do this? Do they have some kind of third leg we don't know about, to prop them up? How else does this set-up even begin to make sense? What the hell happens if you have explosive diarrhea? I left the toilet stall with a sore knee, a great deal of questions, and a strange new affection for my old nemesis Robotoilet.

For everything you ever wanted to know and then some about Japanese toilets, check out Wikipedia's page on the subject.

Now let's move backwards up the digestive tract to the subject of food. Japanese food, as you know, can be exceptionally good. It can also be incredibly, inedibly horrific.

I am adventurous when it comes to unusual food - I'll try anything once, just for the experience. Of the many weird food items I punished myself with in Japan, by far the most horrible were "octopus balls." I found them at a small stand in Shibuya which exclusively served these delicious treats - and how could I see a big sign that said "octopus balls" and not need to know what all the fuss is about? I thought maybe they'd be some sort of fried thing, like calamari. I like calamari. Instead, octopus balls were doughy, gooey balls of octopus parts (lots of tentacle chunks and suction cups) and unidentifiable slime, covered with soy sauce, mayonnaise, and unbelievably smelly fish flakes. If that sounds bad, I can assure you that eating it was a thousand times worse. And the smell... Oh God, the smell. I made the mistake of attempting to eat the octopus balls in a car, and the stench of dead fish became so unbearable I had to throw them out the window.

A similar snack we discovered was a giant bag of squid tentacles, sold on a rack alongside potato chips and chocolates. We saw the package - pictured below on the left - and couldn't believe that we'd open it up and find exactly what was shown on the front. Well, we did - the contents of the package are picture below on the right.



They didn't even look real, they looked like rubber toys. They tasted like rubber toys as well, but slimier and fishier. Yes, I tried one. I regretted it.

Tentacled snacks aside, even a couple days of good Japanese food left us craving something familiar. So when we passed a Shakey's Pizza - the last thing we ever expected to see in Japan - it called to us with the promise of delicious American comfort food. I wouldn't even notice a Shakey's Pizza in the states - it's not even very good pizza, I don't think I've eaten there in years. In fact, do they even exist anymore? Whatever the case, Shakey's suddenly seemed like the best thing in the world. Unfortunately, the familiarities we were so craving were nowhere to be found. Shakey's served its pizza buffet-style, with several options laid out on a table for you to pick from. Missing were the staple selections like pepperoni, cheese, sausage, etc. Instead the pizza varieties included: tuna & corn pizza, squid & pork pizza, and egg & seaweed pizza:



Thankfully we found a KFC later on, where we were able finally satisfy our craving for shitty American food, and also where we found the adorable Japanized Colonel Sanders:



At one point we went to a weird little amusement park in the middle of Tokyo. We rode on some cheesy rides, played some carnival games, and stumbled upon this incredibly bizzare scene.

We also encountered the highly mischievous French Fry Man, who guarded the french fry stand and seemed to enjoy eating pieces of his own head:



And we got some weird little pastries of peoples' heads, one of which had been lobotomized to display his delicious brains underneath:



And we saw some Japanese wanted posters, which take the curious approach of making their criminals look incredibly unthreatening by cutting out their heads and pasting them on undersized cartoon bodies:



Those guys are definitely guilty. Especially the one on the upper right. He looks like he's spent some serious quality time with the butt funnel.

Okay, that's all I have from Japan. Time to get some sleep.

Curiosities from Japan's porno shops.

As everyone is well aware, Japan is absolutely brimming with bizarre shit, particularly when it comes to adult material. Tentacle rape, bestiality, people shitting on each other... They've got it all. So when I stumbled upon a seven-floor adult superstore, I knew I was going to walk out with some amazingly weird stuff.

First, though, there's plenty of pervasive material available right out on the street, before you even make it into a porno store. For example, these delicious-looking treats I found at a market - "Yokohama Bust Pudding":



I like how, the way the packages are set up, the girl on the right appears to be scowling at the girl on the left, as if jealous of her younger, perkier pudding breasts.


In Japan, vending machines are EVERYWHERE. Soda, candy, porn, dairy products... You'll find it all just a button-push away (This site catalogs some of the more unusual vending machines in Japan). Thankfully, this also includes machines that dispense capsule toys, which seem to be hugely popular in Tokyo. Unlike chintzy American capsule toys (cheap digital watches, plastic rings, etc), Japan's are incredibly cool and come in endless varieties. From capsule machines alone I got Excruciatingly detailed tiny little classic Nintendo systems (here being enjoyed by Wolverine), a Spider-Man figure, 3D Mario Bros. magnets, a monster trapped inside a cube, a miniature video game table (with fully working game), glowing Star Wars light saber keychains, and robot pandas being controlled by real pandas.

But amidst all of that, side by side with Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z, are adult-themed capsule toy machines which dispense little figures of partially naked girls doing all manors of unsavory things. Of course it's random so I felt compelled to try my luck and see what the porno figures looked like. The ones I got ranged from basic assortments, like girls showing their boobs and masturbating...



...to more illicit figures, like this one:



Yes, she's tied up to a post. Yes, her tit is falling out. Yes, that's a Kabuki mask between her legs. And yes, she comes with a collection of intricately-detailed little dildos. Amazing. However, easily the most disturbing assortment of adult-themed capsule toys involved doe-eyed, childlike girls in suggestive poses. This was one of the more expensive machines - 500 yen (about five bucks) for one toy, but it was certainly worth it, as I now own my very own toy of a little girl squatting to pee:



How fucking creepy is that? As you can see from the flyer included in the capsule (note the kiddie crayon font), the other toys in the assortment include little girls spreading their legs, little girls sucking suggestively on popsicles, and little girls dry-humping their teddy bears:



Incredibly, incredibly disturbing. And let me remind you, I didn't find these in some seedy back alley - all of these machines were right on the sidewalks in busy shopping areas.

Of course, capsule machines aren't just for figures - I found a vending machine called "Men's Gold Ticket," which offered an assortment of little sex toys for men, like little rubber vaginas and anal beads.



Unfortunately, the one I got wasn't very exciting - just some sort of French Tickler thing, with a little bottle of lube:



But sometimes all the French Ticklers in the world can't stop that lonely feeling, so you could always try your luck at a capsule machine that dispenses girls' phone numbers for you to talk to - I didn't actually get one of these, but it appeared as though each capsule includes a photo of the lucky lady, and a number to get in touch with her:




So if I found all that amazingly ridiculous stuff out on the street, what awaited me in an actual porno store? Of course I had to find out. The seven story adult megaplex included a floor for sex toys, a floor for magazines, two floors for DVDs, a floor for condoms and lubes, and even a floor for costumes. Japanese men love them some role-playing, so you can buy all kinds of elaborate outfits to suit your wildest fantasies, most of which appear to be based on popular anime characters.

In the condom and lube section, I found an assortment of funny manga-inspired condom packages - like this one, called "SACK 2":



I like the numerous phalluses on that robot, and also the writing at the top: "TRY NEW TYPE CAN YOU SURVIVE? 12 TIMES" Is that challenging me to survive safe sex twelve times? What, in a row? How do I survive, by not getting her pregnant? Not getting the hiv? Whatever the case, I hope I can survive - although I have yet to put my SACK 2's to good use.


On the sex toy floor, there was a large wall with dozens and dozens of cans - all of them in different colors and sizes, and all of them with different naked cartoon girls on them. A great deal of Japanese men were perusing this wall, carefully studying and comparing the different cans before making their decision. With nothing in English, it took me a few minutes of analysis to figure out that the cans were actually fake vaginas. They were all similarly priced - suspiciously cheap at 5-600 yen - so I wasn't sure what the difference was, except the girl on the outside. I guess you were meant to pick which naked anime girl you liked the best, and fuck this plastic can while fantasizing about her. Interestingly enough, none of the cans were very long - maybe six inches at the most. I was trying to avoid the whole Asian-men-have-small-penises thing, but they kind of handed it to me on a silver platter. Anyway, this is the vagina can I bought:



Yes, I bought one, purely out of curiosity as to what might be inside. Well, this is what's inside - a smelly, pre-lubricated Styrofoam opening:



Sexy, huh? Just like the real thing. I don't know what I was expecting when I opened up the can, but it certainly wasn't that. I guess that explains the low price - they're meant to be disposable, you fuck it a couple times and then get a new can.

This reminds me of a story I know I'm going to regret telling, but here goes: Quite a few years ago I was passing through New York for some reason or another, and one night I went out bar-hopping with a couple friends. We stumbled out of the last bar around 3am, drunk and giddy, laughing and tripping as we walked back towards our hotel. On the way we passed a porno store, which aside from the occasional pizza place was the only thing open at 3am. I'm not sure why - I think one of my friends wanted to buy a magazine - but we went in, and annoyed the shop's patrons by picking up every ridiculous sex toy and laughing about it loudly. The most absurd thing we found was a large plastic beer can - meant to look like "Coors Light," or something, but much larger - and when you unscrewed the cap at the top, there was a latex vagina inside, that you were meant to stick your dick in and fuck the can. Well, not really "fuck" the can, exactly, but masturbate with it. Same concept as the Japanese ones, but more elaborate. In fact, this is pretty much exactly what it was.

So of course we have to buy the beer can vagina, because we're drunk and it's funny, and we figure we'll find some entertaining unintended use for it. So we paid for it and continued on our merry way back to the hotel. Once there we said our goodbyes and retired to our rooms, and I realized that somehow I'd gotten stuck carrying the bag from the sex store. I set it down on the desk and didn't think much about it. That is, for a few minutes, until I found myself sitting on the bed in my hotel room, drunk and lonely and sexually frustrated, and I kept staring over at that stupid beer can vagina. "Maybe I should just try it. Just see what it feels like..." I mean, why not, right? You know. Just for kicks, right? So you know what? I fucked it. Yeah. I fucked a plastic beer can. I fucked the shit out of that can. And you know what? It felt alright. It did the trick. That is, until it was all over. Until the moment after, when I was hit by a sobering freight train of humility, looking down at my dick stuck inside a latex vagina housed in a plastic beer can. Moments like that you start to question everything - "How the hell did it come to this? Who am I? What am I doing with my life?" I probably sat there for an hour, silently with my plastic lover, pondering my existence.

The next morning, when the subject of the previous night came up and someone said, "oh, where's that funny beer can thing we got? Rob, you had it, right?" And everyone looks at me, and I just stare at them for a moment, and then say, "...I fucked it. I fucked it and I hated myself, and now it's gone." There was a slight pause, followed by uproarious laughter. The ridicule took months to subside.


Anyway, back to weird Japanese sex toys. This next one was a heavily featured product at the store, clearly a very popular item. It's a clear plastic funnel meant to be inserted into someone's ass, and it comes with a little flashlight to shine inside the ass, and, well, look around. Ya know, see what's going on in the ol' anal cavity. Here's the sign with the product itself down below:



Yes, behold the butt funnel. There was a sign next to it which said, "This is truly amazing! See the things which you have never seen before!" You know, you're right, I have seen a lot of things, but never the inside of someone's rectum. And is that really such a bad thing? Is that something I need to see? I'm not sure, but I bought the funnel, so the option is always there. That's one of those things that, if you really wanted to look inside a girl's ass via the butt funnel, how do you bring that up? "Hey, baby, so, I was thinking... Uh... You know, I just love you so much, and I want to see all sides of you.. You know, from the inside out... so, you know, I was thinking it would be really romantic if I, you know, spread your asshole open with a plastic funnel and shined a flashlight inside your gaping rectum. Would you like that, baby?"

The illustration on the package is fucking fantastic:



Look how embarrassed she is! "Oh no, don't look inside my butt! Tee hee!" Amazing.


Last, but certainly not least... There was a rack in the porno store with dozens of little packages hanging on it. Each package had a photo on the front of a cute Japanese girl, dressed like a schoolgirl or a maid or a nurse or Sailor Moon or some shit. In each photo, the girl's panties or pantyhose were clearly visible. And inside the package was the girl's (presumably dirty) actual panties or pantyhose that she wore in the picture. Okay, that's weird enough on its own, but the best part was over on the side of the rack there was one package with a sloppy polaroid of an ugly, pantyhose-wearing Japanese girl. It stood in contrast to the cute young girls professionally photographed on all the other packages, and as a result it was marked 50% off. Discount used panties, dude. Unwanted goods. I started laughing right there in the store, which earned me a scornful look from the shopkeeper, who clearly took the panty selection very seriously. I wondered if maybe the ugly girl was his girlfriend, and he'd talked her into letting him sell her panties at the store, to see if they could make some money on the side. Apparently it didn't work out too well, and she had to come down in price:



So there you have it. Now that I've purchased all this crazy shit, I'm all set for a hott night of masturbatory heaven - fucking a greasy styrofoam opening while I sniff some crack whore's crab-ridden pantyhose and examine the insides of my rectum.

Japan - I love you, man.

UPDATE: MORE Curiosities From Japan's Porno Shops!

Back from the Land Of The Rising Sun... almost in one piece.

Presently I am once again on an airplane, already bored senseless only a half hour into my 13 hour flight from Australia back to LA. I just endured one of the most ludicrously long journeys through airport security I've ever experienced. It started when I made the mistake of trying to carry on board my $150 Star Wars Master Replicas Force FX Luke Skywalker Light Saber that I bought in Melbourne, instead of checking it with my luggage. This light saber is the coolest thing in the world, it lights up and makes sound effects when you swing it around, and basically just kicks all sorts of ass. Even right now if you're reading this and thinking "what a fucking nerd" - which you undoubtedly are - I can guarantee that you would change your tune if you saw this thing in person, and instead say, "holy fuck I want one." I do not, however, advise trying to bring it on an airplane with you. The mongoloids at airport security were baffled when they watched it pass through the x-ray machine, and took it out of the box to inspect it suspiciously. I told them that I didn't want to check it for fear of it breaking, as it was a gift for my little brother. Of course, I don't have a little brother, but I figured that would garner more compassion than the sad reality of a full grown man playing with a light-up laser sword. But it mattered not, the light saber was clearly a major security issue, and required the undivided attention of a whole group of people with various badges on. And so was assembled a crack team of highly trained security professionals, with whom the good people of Australia have entrusted their airborne security, who spent a half hour looking it over, turning it on and off, discussing whether or not it could be considered a weapon. When they couldn't reach an initial conclusion, they called upon the expertise of their superiors to further study my menacing plastic stick and join in the debate over just how lethal it actually might be. Rolling my eyes, I tried gently to remind them that although the magic of Hollywood special effects made it appear as though light sabers could cut the arms off a Wampa with the flick of a wrist, that's only in the land of make-believe, and this CHILDREN'S TOY I was carrying was really just a big plastic glowing cylinder which could in fact inflict no damage at all to anyone whatsoever in this or any other universe. Still, they were not convinced. I actually heard one of them say that she'd heard light sabers were very dangerous. Are you fucking with me? Is this a joke? Is Ashton Kutcher about to pop out with a hidden camera and tell me I'm being punked? Only memories of the worst airport security cavity search horror stories kept me from screaming in exasperation, "YOU FUCKING IMBECILES, THIS IS A TOY!! A HARMLESS PLAYTHING FOR CHILDREN AND AGE-REGRESSED ADULTS!! IT IS NOT A REAL LASER SWORD!! SUCH THINGS DO NOT EXIST!" The least retarded of the security monkeys told me it was less the actual threat of the light saber, and more the perceived threat of the light saber to paranoid passengers (fifteen minutes prior I would have had to ask if there really could be anyone stupid enough to see a toy light saber and perceive it as a threat). He told me that, particularly with my face sliced up as it is (I'll get to that later), I might look pretty menacing on a plane wielding an illuminated "sword." I argued that me standing in an airplane threatening the passengers with a glowing stick would unquestionably be the shortest, most ludicrous, and least-successful hijacking attempt in the history of modern transportation. Still, the vigilant security team at the Sydney airport stood unwavering in their decision, and insisted on checking my light saber as a "security item." Unbelievable.

Next up was the second check point, at the gate, where a security person looks at your passport and boarding pass, and then "randomly" decides if you can carry on about your merry way, or if you'll be sentenced to fifteen minutes being felt up while some lunkhead carelessly rifles through your belongings. No surprise that I was "randomly" sent over for the full treatment. Yeah, me, the kid wearing black with his face all mangled - of course they're going to pick me. Ol' scarface looks like a trouble-maker, for sure. I joined a long line of other misfits who were clearly chosen one hundred percent arbitrarily: A lanky stoner kid with long hair and dark sunglasses, an asian rock chick with camo pants, an Indian woman and her daughter, and a tall brown-skinned bald man of undetermined ethnicity. Meanwhile, a steady flow of clean-cut white people proceeded past us without delay.
When it was finally my turn for the cavity search, I discovered why the line was moving so slowly: The girl checking the bags couldn't have escaped being officially classified as mentally retarded by more than a few IQ points. As she looked through the many strange and potentially hazardous items in my bags, the conversation went something like this:

Her: "What's this?"
Me: "That's a hard drive."
Her: "It's a computer?"
Me: "No. Well... No."
Her: "Does it turn on? Where's the screen?"
Me: "It doesn't have a screen. It turns on if you connect it to a computer."
Her: "Well what does it do?"

Have you ever been asked a question that's so simple you have no idea how to even answer it? Something that blind-sides you with how complex it is in its noncomplexity, and you don't even know what to say? How do I describe to the fucking missing link here what a hard drive is? How do I even begin to approach that? "Um... you... you put stuff on it? I don't know." Thankfully, she didn't want to venture down this bumpy road any more than I did. Our conversation continued:

Her: "Hmm... okay... What's this?"
Me: "That's a battery charger."
Her: "How do you put batteries in here?"
Me: "It's not for alkaline batteries. It's for a battery pack, for a camera."
Her: "You charge a whole pack of batteries at once?"
Me: "No, it... Yes. Yes, that's what you do."
Her: "Oooh, is this one of those Playstations?"
Me: "It's a PSP, yes."
Her: "Is it cool? Is it like a Playstation?"
Me: "Yup, like a little Playstation."
Her: "How much does it cost?"
Me: "Um, I don't know. $250, or something."
Her: "That's an awful lot... Does it play DVDs?"
Me: "Look at it. Look at this size of it. It clearly, unquestionably, is smaller than a DVD. How, then, in a world bound to the laws of physics, could it possibly play a DVD, you utter retard?"

Okay, I didn't say that last bit out loud. But oh, how I wanted to.

The flight I'm on right now is returning me home from a week spent in Japan, which was a fantastic time despite some drunk asshole smashing a beer bottle across my face one night on a street corner. Yeah, good times. He was fucking with these two girls I was talking to outside the bar we'd been at, and I told him to fuck off, leave them alone. So he starts getting in my face, talking like a fucking wigger (he's American, go figure), and I tell him again to fuck off - not trying to anger him, just genuinely trying to diffuse the situation. It may come as a huge surprise to some of you, but I'm not much of a fighter. I'm actually rather skinny, and probably punch like a girl (although I wouldn't know, because I've never punched anyone). But at the same time, I'm also too ballsy for my own good, so when this guy took things up a notch by shoving me, I instinctually shoved him back - hard - and started to once again tell him to fuck off, and that's when he pulled a bottle out of nowhere and shattered it across my face. It didn't knock me down, or even phase me much, as I think he was expecting (thank you Jack Daniels), so he ran away. Fucking bottled me and ran, just like that, like a fucking pussy, with me screaming at him as he disappeared around the corner, "what the fuck was that, you fucking wuss!! Get back here!!" Thinking I'd escaped unscathed, I turned and looked at the girls, who were cupping their mouths in horror. That's when I put my hand to my face, and found it to be gushing blood. There was a LOT of blood - I mean, fucking pools of it cascading down to the sidewalk. My clothes were covered in it. I ran back into the bar, hand to my face, plowing through the dense crowd of people trying to get to the bathroom to find something to stop the bleeding. People screamed in horror and jumped away from me as I moved past them. I was leaving a trail of blood the whole way through. I got to the bathroom, and of course there weren't any paper towels. By then, though, someone who worked at the bar had caught up with me and brought me a towel. Long story short, I hopped a cab to a nearby hospital and got all stitched up - seven stitches on my nose and cheek - and woke up the next day with a black eye and a swollen face.

This is me outside the emergency room:



And this is me all stitched and bandaged up:



Lookin' good, no? Yeah. It's real fucking fantastic. I actually scare children now. I frighten babies. I was in an elevator, and a woman was in there with her baby, and the baby looked at me and I smiled, forgetting that my face was covered in bandages and dried blood, and my eye was the color of a plum. The baby just looked at me, eyes wide with horror, and you could see the emotional buildup. You could see the pressure rising as the tears welled up. You could see the dam about to burst. And then, all at once - screaming. Crying, sobbing, ear-piercing shrieks of terror. A cascade of tears. All because of the scary gore-faced man. The mother, alarmed, scowled at me, the source of her precious child's misery. Yes, sorry Ma'am, I should have known better than to make eye contact. I'm terrifying. Sorry. It's a humbling feeling to look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I make babies cry." I should just play it up. Just roll with it. Get me an eye patch and a hook, and walk around limping, laughing maniacally and saying "ARRR!! Stay away, kiddies! I'm Scarface The Horrible, and I eat little children for breakfast! ARRRR!!"

But, looking on the bright side, I'm going to have a pretty rad scar. I get the stitches out later today, so maybe I won't be quite as frightening.

Other than random acts of violence, though, Japan is a fantastic place, and I never feel like I've spent enough time there. Unlike Europe, Japan doesn't share the same western roots as America, and therefore is one of the few places left that truly feels like a different world. Walking through Tokyo is like being in the future - but not America's future, which is almost certainly a smoldering radioactive wasteland - rather, the future of a society that has its shit together. A densely-populated metropolis that still manages to be clean and largely devoid of crime. People who are polite and respectful, and who take pride in their work, no matter how menial their job might be. A culture that's rich with tradition but isn't held back by it. The antithesis of America's selfish, lazy, rude, excessive, greed-driven culture. Oh, and they have really cool toys. Lots and lots of really cool toys. I am returning from Japan at least a couple thousand dollars poorer, but far wealthier in the currency of neat stuff. My bounty includes a new digital camera, a host of unreleased video games, a giant Optimus Prime figure, a variety of incredibly bizarre Godzilla toys, some evil robot panda bears, a tiny puppy that lives inside a cube, tons of weird little Nintendo toys, and best of all... Little radio-controlled robots that play soccer. Okay, it's cooler than it sounds. Time to put up more toy shelves.

I'm going to post more really insane crap from Japan, probably tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy this video I just found that I thought I'd lost - a creepy midget woman with most of her teeth missing singing songs on the streets of Amsterdam.

Random fun from Europe

Alright, so I haven't exactly stuck to my plan of journaling my trip through Europe. Really, it's been a bit hectic, so only now that I'm back home am I finally getting around to typing something up. Mostly I just want to put up pictures of a bunch of ridiculous shit I came across in my travels.

First of all, during a fit of boredom in Germany, it was decided by some friends of mine that shaving my head into a mohawk was absolutely necessary for our time in Europe. I didn't object, since it's the kind of ridiculous thing you can get away with in Europe. It's not ironic yet over there, it's still cool from ten years ago. I've since shaved it off for my return to America, because if you have a mohawk in Los Angeles you're just another ironic scenester dipshit. And yes, that includes faux-hawks, which are somehow still worn seriously despite their quick descent into mall fashion, which signals the bitter end of any idiotic hair or clothing fad. But for posterity, here's a picture I took while the 'hawk was still fresh:



Yeah, it was full-on Taxi Driver, it ruled. Of course now, without the mohawk, my hair is shorter than it's ever been - crew cut style - and I look like a fucking asshole.

Although not as big of an asshole as this guy:



We went out to some club in Germany this is the way the dudes dressed. I wish the picture was better, I was trying to take it over someone's shoulder so he wouldn't catch on that I was photographing him.

Europeans in general have some pretty ridiculous looks going on. Like this guy in Austria, walking around shopping, wearing a tucked-in polo shirt, boxer shorts, dress socks, and dress shoes. No pants:



And, on a different subject, here's a very bizarre statue that was in an airport somewhere, and me doing my best Michael Jackson:



And here's my favorite European candy bar:



Somehow, while in Europe, I was accidentally privy to a number of hilariously awful musical performances. Consider this hair metal cover band at a club in Sweden - the most disturbing part was how into it everyone was. Not even the slightest hint of irony was present. I had great footage of a midget woman with most of her teeth missing singing old jazz songs on the streets of Amsterdam, but somehow I seem to have accidentally deleted it.

The best, though, was in a weird, mind-numbingly boring town in Finland called Vassa. For some reason we spent an unGodly amount of time in Vassa, which is far enough north that during the summer it never gets dark, and in the winter it barely gets light. For this reason, we were told, Vassa has one of the highest suicide rates in Europe, although personally I would say it has more to do with the town itself, because we were all ready to kill ourselves after a few days there - darkness or light aside. In our boredom in Vassa we constructed an elaborate theory about how the whole town was not reality, but actually an early version of The Matrix. A beta test while its creators were still attempting to perfectly simulate the real world in a computer program. The architecture in Vassa was so plain - particularly in contrast to the rest of Europe - it was like the way buildings looked in early computer games, with not enough textures mapped onto the surfaces, not enough polygons to create detail in the structures... Anytime we heard music, it was an utterly bizarre mish-mash of obscure American pop songs from decades past. It was as if the programmers of The Matrix had looked up hit songs to populate the airwaves of their artificial world, but hadn't figured out how to put them in context. They hadn't figured out that no one listens to Ace Of Base and Chumbawumba anymore, or that radio stations aren't supposed to play Metallica and follow it with something off of Ringo Starr's solo album. Movie theatres were only open on certain days. The mall didn't have any name brand stores in it. McDonald's had weird names for all the hamburgers. Night time didn't last long enough - and, for that matter, didn't really happen at all. It was like reality - but not yet perfected. In one of the clubs we went to, the people danced without flair or interest, kind of turning lightly back and forth with their arms out, the way background characters in a video game cycle through the same stiff motions over and over again to create the appearance of liveliness. In fact, you know the characters that stand in the background and cheer you on in Street Fighter 2? You know how they only have one facial expression, and only two frames of animation, where their arm just goes up and down like they're cheering, over and over and over again? That's kind of how everyone was in Vassa - background characters in the Matrix, running through their pre-programmed motions.

But anyway, the best - and worst - thing in Vassa was an entrancingly awful bit of public performance art that we stumbled upon in the town square. It was a grid of bland, 30-something, secretary-like women methodically line dancing. It was the most captivating thing I'd ever seen, I sat and watched it for a good half hour. What was amazing was - like everything else in Vassa - the droll and colorless way the whole thing was presented. The women were dressed plainly, like moms from a lower middle class neighborhood - and they just ran through the motions with blank looks on their faces, never smiling or showing they were enjoying themselves on any level - staring into space like zombies. Like they were being controlled against their will by some evil hick puppetmaster who got his jollies by forcing ugly women to line dance. That was, of course, until the man in the red shirt showed up. He stepped in for one of the women, and the dude fucking owned that stage. Look at the way he dances. Look at how focused he is. He was in the zone - you could see it in his eyes, and in the way he moved. His devotion to his craft shined through in every nuance of his finely-tuned routine. We walked away humbled, astonished... a little bit less certain of our place in the world.

Here's a picture of a fat kid who likes sausages:



This sticker was next to the toilet in the little bathroom on a bus:



It instructs you how to pee and how not to pee when you're using the bus bathroom. Notice that you're not supposed to pee onto the closed lid. That would be bad. Thank you, helpful toilet sticker.

Europeans have a fucking wretched concept of sandwiches. Two pieces of white bread, a lot of butter, and one slice of sweaty meat. That's a sandwich. Either that, or a whole fish, cold and clammy and stinky and covered with skin, sitting in a bed of onions between two rock hard pieces of bread. Take one look at this, and you'll see why I ate at McDonald's more in the last month than I probably have in the last five years:



Of course, maybe I should have ordered this:



Ha ha, see, it says ass. See that? And it's food. It's like food named after a butt. Ha ha, get it? Funny, right?

European pizza sucks too. Well, we didn't go to Italy, so I can't speak for them, but everywhere else had shitty pizza. Oh, and when you order pizza at a restaurant, they don't fucking cut it into slices! They hand you a big, intangible disc and expect you to sit their with your fucking dinner knife and cut it up. It's so ludicrous I can't even think about it. Attention Europe: Over here, in the Land Of Tomorrow known as America, we have invented a magical shiny wheel - yes, a wheel, kind of like the ones on your horse buggies, but smaller, and sharper - and this magical wheel, in a matter of seconds, can transform your big clumsy pizza into smaller, triangular pieces that you can actually hold in your hands and eat! I know, I know - it sounds crazy! But it's true! Look it up some day - along with air conditioning and ice and orthodontists.

I'll admit, though, that Europeans have us beat on pizza box art. Check this guy out - look how excited he is to be making a pizza.



He looks like he just smoked some meth and he's completely whacked out, frantically flipping his pizza and talking super fast: "HEYYOUWANNAHAVESOMEPIZZA I'MMAKINAFUCKINPIZZAOVERHERE !LET'SEATSOMEFUCKINGPIZZA !FUCKYEAHI'MGONNAPUTSOMEFUCKINGPEPPERONIONTHISSHIT ANDWE'REGONNAHAVEPIZZAIFUCKINGLOVEMAKINGPIZZA!!!" And look at the family in the back - from left to right it looks like Harry Potter, Juliet Lewis in that movie where she plays a retard, Super Mario, and the anorexic sister from Growing Pains with her big secret-hiding sweaters. Look at how big her fucking head is compared to Retard Juliet Lewis.

I was riding in the back seat of a car somewhere, and I was looking out the window, and it was really pretty out, with the sun setting over some mountains... So I pulled my camera out to take a picture through the window, and I was trying to angle it so the reflection of the camera wasn't in the picture, and I clicked it, and it got my reflection, instead. And the completely accidental result is the new GAYEST PHOTO OF ME EVERRRRR:



Dude, just blow a load on my face right now. Fuck, that's gay. No, I didn't Photoshop that shit, that's straight out of the camera.

Anyway, I saved the best for last. Remember that giant gummy bear I found in Germany that I was so psyched about? Well fuck that gummy bear. That gummy bear is nothing. That gummy bear is a puny little insignificant insect. Just a speck of worthless dirt compared to what I found in Sweden. Behold, if you dare, the OMG BIGGEST GUMMY CANDY EVER IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD...

THE GIANT GUMMY RAT!!!!



Yes, that is actually one giant gummy candy. Can you fucking believe that? It was heavy and slimy and smelled like fuck, but it was awesome. I didn't even attempt to eat it, nor did I attempt to bring it back to the states with me. Instead, I left it sitting in the bathtub of my hotel room in London, for some unfortunate maid to stumble upon and wonder what the fuck it is:



Okay, that was all a bit schizophrenic. I'm still jet-lagged. I'll post something more cohesive later. Time to go catch up on all the video games that have come out since I've been gone.

I'm such a tourist!

I have a lot of fun ridiculous stuff to post here, but I haven't had any time recently. Too much traveling and work and fun. Maybe I'll get around to it tomorrow. In the meantime, however, you can look at some photos I took in Vienna and Paris. Mostly I posted these for my family, who always bitch at me about not sending postcards when I'm overseas - but you can look at them too, if you feel like it. I'll add more to this page when I take some more pictures:

Pictures from Europe

Naked transvestites and giant gummy bears (unfortunately not at the same time)

So once again I'm in Europe, traveling on business, and I decided I should make some sort of attempt to document my adventures, trivial or otherwise. I came away from my last major trip to Europe - some five years ago - wishing I'd kept a journal that I could look back on years later. This time I'm going to do it - or, try, at least (my ambition may never make it further than this entry), and this is much more for me than it is for you, so don't bitch at me if the entries to come are less ridiculous, mean-spirited, or entertaining than what you've come to expect.

With that said, I'm somewhere in Germany today - exactly where, I'm not sure. Outside the window of the bus I can see a lot of trees, and the occasional cow. It's a cold and gray afternoon outside, which is nothing less of what I've come to expect from Europe in the summer. Walking around earlier reminded me of the that first Autumn day in New York when you have to put a sweatshirt on to go out for lunch, and on the walk back your fingers are getting a bit numb, and you realize that the beautiful warm afternoons of early Fall have come to an end and the long, cold winter is just around the corner. Except, of course, that it's June right now.

The other night I went out exploring in Hamburg with a couple friends, and after several failed attempts to find entertainment at local bars, we found ourselves wandering the sex district of Hamburg - specifically, a large street (the name of which escapes me) well known for porno shops and strip clubs. Hamburg is one of Europe's capitals for all things seedy, and is apparently the origin of all those disturbing German porn clips you've seen on the internet of girls farting on each other and the like. Naturally, then, we were in heaven perusing the German video stores, and came out with a stack of hilarious DVDs which will likely get us arrested passing through customs. There is one called "FREAKYDICKS," which features men who have mutilated their penises beyond recognition (and the women who love them). Another, "Extreme-Power-Video: Scheiss- und Fickorgie," is mostly old people taking dumps on each other.

Still, it was the theatre that proved the most entertaining. After popping our heads into a couple of very underwhelming table-dancing clubs, a doorman persuaded us to enter his theatre, which he guaranteed would give us a show we would not soon forget. He told us that the boring table-dancing places we had been "are kiddy familyshow! Not even vagina in those place! Mine show is German sexyshow! It is everything! Vampire! Dildoshow! You will not disappoint!" Wait a minute... Vampires? Dildos? Curiosity got the best of us, and we went in. The place was small and dark inside, with a little cabaret stage and a seemingly inappropriate audience of mostly businessmen and middle-aged Asian couples. On the stage, a woman with short, dyke-ish hair dressed in lingerie was doing an uninspired lip-synced performance of "All That Jazz" from Chicago. We took a seat in a dark corner on the left side of the stage, and a grumpy old lady came over to take our drink orders. "What to drink!" she shouted at me. "Diet Coke?" I requested. She just looked at me, and said "Beer?" "No, DIET COKE." "Beer?" "No... COCA. COLA." She just looked at me angrily. "Okay, fine. Beer."

Meanwhile, the woman on stage was slowly removing her lingerie in a fashion one might describe as "teasing," were she even mildly attractive. It was typical burlesque crap, nothing bizarre or exciting as we had hoped to see in a seedy theatre in Hamburg. She reached full nakedness at the end of the song and the curtains closed to a gentle applause, with no sign of vampires or dildos. Perhaps we'd been ripped off. We contemplated leaving, but decided to give it one more chance. After a few minutes, the lights dimmed, the curtain opened, and a mediocre German girl with bad teeth stepped out, wearing a sort of stylized school girl costume, again performing a song by way of lip-syncing to a tape. I recognized the tune as one of Janet's songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and sure enough, out came Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry's famous drag queen character from the film, for those unaware) to join in the performance. Oh, and what a sight he was. He was a hideous, fat, 40-something German drag queen with shaved eyebrows, a bad wig, and a DIY make-up job not worlds away from that fat secretary's on the Drew Carey Show. He was wearing a tiny speed-o, a garter belt, high-heeled shoes, and half of a corset which his flabby man-tits spilled out of. His entire body appeared to be freshly shaved, giving his lumpy skin an odd sheen under the stage lights. The speed-o, at least two sizes too small, wrapped like tightly-stretched cellophane around his manpackage, displaying with perfect clarity an oddly-shaped lump which protruded awkwardly from beneath his corset-restrained belly. It looked as if he was either stuffing his speed-o or had a bloated, lumpy penis worthy of a scene in "FREAKYDICKS." His only real resemblance to Dr. Frank-N-Furter was that he was a drag queen, but he performed the character's titular song from the film nonetheless, prancing around the stage as he did so, and then stepping into the audience, where he lap-danced a couple of German businessmen and even kissed a bewildered Chinese guy (whose wife laughed and clapped with delight) before returning to the stage to finish his performance. It was like watching a trainwreck, this fat old German dude with his mysterious penis bulge, his wig occasionally falling off to reveal a shiny bald head. But it got even weirder.

"Janet" re-appeared on stage, and the two of them did a duet - another song from the film. By the time they reached "Creature Of The Night," Janet had been stripped naked, and it became painfully clear what was about to happen. Frank-N-Furter laid her down on a prop couch which decorated the shoddy stage, and then he fell to his knees and buried his face between her legs. She, looking as bored as you might imagine, continued to lip-sync "t-t-t-t-t-t-tooouuuch meeee" as the fat bald transvestite lapped away at her beef curtains with the tenacity of a thirsty dog at a water bowl on a summer day. This went on far longer than it should have, and then Janet sat up, and Frank-N-Furter took position in front of her, his lumpy speed-o at eye level to her. The music blended out of Broadway cabaret and into bad German techno as Janet reached her fingers around the elastic of Frank-N-Furter's speed-o, and slowly pulled it down. What emerged from beneath the black spandex was a horrifying monster of a penis. It was not particularly long, but it was fat and lumpy at the base - probably as wide as a fist. It looked as if a thousand bees had stung it, or elaphantitis had just set in. Oddly, though, it tapered off significantly towards the end of the shaft, ending in a floppy, uncircumcised nozzle of squishy pink. All I could think about were the giant sand worms from the movie Dune, burrowing out of the ground to attack their prey, much as Dr. Frank-N-Furter's underpants worm had now burrowed out of its sweaty home to feast upon its own prey. The girl took the flaccid flesh lump in her hand and awkwardly stuffed it in her mouth. She bobbed back and forth, attempting to lure it into an upright position - and, like an unholy demon awakening from slumber, it began to rise. Frank-N-Furter, meanwhile, held his head back, making forced grunts and moans of pleasure.

Throughout all of this I sat in jaw-dropped horror, occasionally exchanging glances with my equally horrified friends. I had seen a show similar to this, years ago in Amsterdam, although it lacked the Broadway pizzaz and was kept at a fuzzy distance by virtue of my being incredibly high on mushrooms. This time, however, I was stone sober and a mere seven or eight feet away from the action, incredibly disturbed and yet utterly transfixed. By now Frank-N-Furter had mustered up a crooked boner, his little purple helmet peeking out from behind a blanket of puffy foreskin. He laid his victim down on the couch, climbed on top of her, and began thrusting away clumsily, while Janet feigned interest, holding on to his flabby sides.

So at this point I'm thinking: I've been in Europe for half a day, I'm jet-lagged and delirious, and suddenly I'm watching a skanky girl and a very ugly transvestite have awkward sex on stage in front of me to bad techno music, while middle-aged Asian couples watch with great interest. How is this my life?

The on-stage fornication continued for an ungodly amount of time, changing positions occasionally, until "Let's Do The Time Warp Again" crept up out of the thumping techno beats, and both cast members resumed lip-syncing, this time in the midst of their uninspired love-making. It had transcended from gratuitous to absurd, and I couldn't help laughing. As the song came to an end, Frank-N-Furter removed his creature from its den, helped Janet to stand up, and both of them took a naked bow to a golfing round of applause from the delighted crowd. The curtains closed, and I could do nothing but look at my friends in disbelief, and we all just started laughing. There was clearly another show on the way, but we decided one was probably enough for a night. On our way out, the overzealous doorman stopped us, asking "why you leave so soon? It was not good?" No, no, we assured him, it was very good, but we're tired, and need to go home. "But you cannot miss vampireshow! It is next! It is the star!" He pointed to a photo on the outside window of the theatre, which showed a pony-tailed man in a ridiculous vampire costume, fake blood running down his chin, his wide eyes peering at us. As tempting as it was, we told the doorman we needed to save something for our next trip to Hamburg. Whenever, if ever, that might be.

The next morning was far more mundane. I spent some time walking around the city, and quickly remembered that metropolitan areas in Germany are about as interesting and exotic as Cleveland, Ohio. Most of Europe is like a bootleg version of America, anyway. It's the same shit, but not as good. Nothing works quite right, or tastes quite right. CD's cost too much, movies come out months too late, the power outlets are cumbersome, Coke is always warm and flat, television is shitty, phones are weird. Nevermind that Americans are arrogant, fat, lazy, white trash pigs - at least we've figured out that warm soda tastes like wet balls, and you have to put more than two ice cubes in there to keep it fucking cold. Europeans can bitch about America all they want, but when you come over to Germany and everything is McDonald's and Burger King, the latest Brad Pitt movie is playing, CSI is on TV, 50 Cent is topping the charts, on and on down the line... it makes this place feel irrelevant. Make your own movies, and cook your own fucking hamburgers, or shut the fuck up about how much you hate us and continue to happily mooch off of our pop culture.

I did, however, come upon at least one fantastic thing that you don't see in America: An entire store devoted to gummy candy. They had every kind of gummy you could imagine, and in massive quantities. They even had my new prized possession - THE WORLD'S BIGGEST GUMMY BEAR!!! Behold its glory:



Okay, so maybe it isn't the biggest in the world, but it's the biggest one I've ever seen, and I'm happy enough with that. I also got several gallon-sized bags of fruit-shaped gummies for only a couple bucks each:



Or, at least I think they were only a couple bucks. No one really gave me a solid answer on what the conversion is over here, so I either spent twenty bucks or two hundred bucks at the gummy store... Either way, it was worth it.

Time to bundle up for another 45 degree summer evening in Germany!

Smoking fags in London.

So I've spent the last week or so enjoying bad weather, bad food, and bad teeth in lovely London. I don't really romanticize London the way a lot of people do - I've only been there on business travel, and the charms of a foreign country tend to get lost in that environment, so more often than not I've come away viewing England as a dreary, silly place where the bars close too early, the meat tastes like tree bark, CD's cost thirty dollars, and I can't plug my Game Boy into the fucking wall without it exploding (five years ago or so we fried a Nintendo 64 in a frenzied attempt to feed our addiction to Super Smash Bros). But this time, after the rain cleared (however briefly) and I had the opportunity to explore the town a bit and have some fun nights out, I came away thinking maybe this place isn't so bad after all... If only someone would send it some orthodontists. And somehow, like every other time I've stayed in London, I managed to get a couple good stories out of it involving ridiculous situations with obscure celebrities (ask me sometime about Tom Jones making out with some skeezy British chick behind a couch in the penthouse at 5am).

The hotel I stayed at is the type of posh, ultra-modern, Ian Schrager style-over-substance wallet-drainer where the bellmen are black-clad aspiring models who fancy themselves too good-looking to help you with anything, and a Snicker's from the mini-bar will cost you eight dollars. The hotel bar is a roped off, guests-and-important-people-only type of deal, and models are usually stumbling in and out of the elevator at 3am. But damned if it isn't conveniently located, so I found myself in there almost every night, begrudgingly adding $20 drinks to my room tab over and over again. As of this writing I haven't seen my final bill, but it's not going to be pretty. It's funny how easy it is to forget about the exchange rate after a couple drinks. "Oh, it's eight bucks. That's a bit pricey, but what the hell." Except it's not eight bucks. It's eight pounds, which is sixteen bucks. And you just bought three of them. Dumbass.

Anyway, so one night we wander into the hotel bar and see that a good portion of it is being monopolized by none other than Boy George and his harem of man-boy playthings. My friends and I took an empty booth in the corner and couldn't help but keep an amused eye on the lavish cornucopia of faggotry that was on display at George's table(s). There was also an extremely drunk, and probably high, woman dancing frantically by herself in the small open floor space. She was twirling and squealing and singing entirely different words to whatever music was playing, and then she twirled into our booth, and sat next to my friend, and started telling us that she was a bumble bee, and she needed to fly, but she'd sting us if we weren't careful, or some other such nonsense. This seemed like a good time to get up and order another drink, so I wandered over to the bar. While I was waiting, a man standing against the bar next to me, sipping a martini, looked me over a couple times and then said hello. He was dressed very GQ, with tan skin and about as much stubble as that guy from Coldplay, and he had a low, creepy, Jude Law British accent. He made some small talk before asking me if I knew George, gesturing at Boy George. No, I said I didn't, and he told me that he was an old friend. That should have been the first sign of trouble, but I wasn't paying attention at the time. He then made some comment about sexuality, and asked if I was gay. I made the mistake of joking around with him, saying: "Oh, I like the girls. Well, for the most part." "For the most part, eh?" His interest was far too piqued, but again, I didn't notice, and continued to joke: "Yeah, you know, I smoke a bone or two every once in a while, just for kicks." He laughed, and said: "Oh really?" Um, no. Not really. I told him I was kidding, that I'm straight. But it was too late. The damage was done. His foot, he felt, was in the door - the back door, if you will, har har - and it was time to fight his way in. He asked me if I'd ever been with a guy, and I made the mistake of telling him the truth: No, I haven't. I probably should have said yes, because I think the tantalizing opportunity to be the first was tremendously exciting to him. The wheels were turning in his creepy little head. Oh, the possibilities! At this point I was well aware of what was going on here, and made an awkward escape into conversation with someone else. But he quickly re-appeared, and asked if he could buy me a drink. Oh, no, I don't think so, I'm okay. That's what I told him, but he wasn't going to take no for an answer. So I said okay, yeah, buy me a drink. Mostly to shut him up. He disappeared for a bit, and I thought maybe he'd forgotten about me, when suddenly he made a grand re-appearance.

He slithered up to me, drink in hand, and said, with his eyes looking dead into mine: "You know, you're very attractive. I'd quite like to blow you." Now, unfortunately no amount of words could describe how creepy that sounded in his particular voice, with that debonair accent. I was kind of taken aback. What the hell do you say to that? I laughed awkwardly and again tried to turn it into a joke, by pointing at the drink and saying, "Ha ha, well, uh, I haven't had quite enough of these yet." That was a stupid fucking thing to say. Very seriously, he responded, "Well how many will it take? Because I have a tab running." Still chuckling awkwardly, I told him I appreciated his forwardness, but really. I'm into girls. Really. He rolled his eyes, as if my sexual preference was not even remotely a factor in the situation. "Come on. Trust me, it'll be the best blowjob you've ever had." You know, that's entirely possible. I wouldn't know, and I don't plan to find out. Not tonight, at least. So he backed down for a moment in favor of a different approach, which was revealing to me that he's some sort of gay porn star in England. Great. I tried using this to turn the conversation away from my penis being in his mouth, and we had a brief chat about the levels of censorship in British porn. And then Boy George walked by, and said hello to Mr. Gay Porn Star, and asked how he was doing. "Not bad," Mr. Gay Porn Star replied, "just trying to convince this straight boy how much fun he could have with me." Boy George looked at me, cocked an eyebrow, looked back to Mr. Gay Porn Star, extended his hands roughly a foot apart from each other in a gesture of measurement, and said, "does he know how fucking big you are?" Mr. Gay Porn Star just looked at me and shrugged and said, again in the world's creepiest voice: "Well, I am a porn star for a reason, you know." Oh Lord. How do I escape this? Now with Boy George's support, Mr. Gay Porn Star continued his assault on my heterosexuality: "Trust me, it'll be amazing. You just lay back, close your eyes, and think about a girl. You'll never know the difference. I could be out of your hotel room in ten minutes." Jesus Christ. Really, ha ha, um, it's okay, but really, thanks for the offer. "I really love blowing straight guys. It's a sort of hobby of mine. And I give incredible blowjobs. It really will be the best you've ever had. Just ask George!" Oh, fucking hell. Now I've got this atrocious mental image of Boy George's lumpy old skinlog in this dude's mouth, with his long old man balls drooping off of his chin. I can't drink fast enough. Please, someone ssaaaave meeeeeee.

And then, like an angel from Heaven, who suddenly appears? None other than crazy bumble bee lady, who twirls her way right in between me and Mr. Gay Porn Star, screaming nonsensically along with the music. And that was my escape route. "Hey there!" I say delightedly to the crazy lady, "I guess I owe you that dance now!" "LET'S FUCKING DANCE!!" she yells back, and I twirl away with her, mumbling something about thanks for the drink to Mr. Gay Porn Star. And then, instead of dancing with the crazy lady, I get the fuck out of there, and feel like I need a thousand showers to wash that dude's breath off of my face.

Ah, London. You don't disappoint.


P.S. - Because I really want a front row seat in Hell and still can't stop making fun of Terry Schiavo, please enjoy these two links:

Terry Schiavo's Blog

Photoshop Terry Schiavo on to Album Covers