Mike's Clockwork Orange House Of Fun

I've been on a total nostalgia kick the past two days at work. I stumbled on my old livejournal I used to write in regularly a while back and it really cheered me up when I was down in the dumps about something the other night. Ever since then I've re-discovered all my online trendy stuff I've done in the past 2-3 years. Things I sign up for, play with for a few weeks, then forget existed. Kind of like....this thing! I think I need to update it a bit more often, and take some more pictures of things. I'll put my Victoria roadtrip pictures from last month up this weekend probably. There's not many since I started to take a bunch, then left the camera in the van while it was at Canadian Tire for "a couple hours", then didn't get the van back for 3 days. But yeah, I do need more pictures. Stealing everyone else's is fine and dandy, but I want some of my own for a change.

Can anyone tell how bored I am right now? What a brutally boring 3 day week of work.

Ok, this is copied directly from the Oratory (my wrestling website) and pasted here. So some of the names and references might be confusing, and none of you know Cash (ok, a couple of you do) but it's time for the King Of Random to update his blog. ENJOY.

 

 

I think this is officially the longest written column in history. We started this thing in May 2005 when the trip was over, and we finished…today. And it’s ALL Cash’s fault! Nah, I’m kidding. We both got lazy on this. But the stories are still funny I say, so I think it’s something people might enjoy. As a quick background, we decided last year to go to an ROH double shot in Dayton and Chicago. I flew to New Orleans on a Thursday morning, and flew back to Edmonton on Sunday night. In between we drove to the Midwest…and back. Like the teaser said, it’s not too much wrestling related. And some of the inside jokes might be lost on people not in the Oratory forums. But it’s stories from the road going TO a couple wrestling shows, so enjoy!

Mike: Well, my journey got off to a rotten start. My flight from Edmonton to Houston (and then Houston to New Orleans) was at 6:50am, on a week I’m stuck on night shifts at work, scheduled 7pm-7am. Now, I could have called in sick for my Wednesday night shift and just slept for the trip, but I figured since I work 5 minutes from the airport I might as well just go in and avoid having to make up the time later. I woke up the day before the trip to head into work feeling a bit sick, like a flu was coming on. Just perfect, that’s what I really wanted on a massive road trip. But I loaded up on pills and made it through the shift until about 4:30. I headed to the airport nice and early, thinking there would be a lot to do. When I went to Mexico, I wasted a bunch of time in the arcade and the bookstore in the airport and figured I would do the same. Little did I know when you’re going to the U.S., you’re not allowed to mingle with the rest of the airport! They actually have the U.S. flights in a sealed area away from anything else with only a coffee shop to go to. And it didn’t open until just before my boarding time. Good times sitting there just listening to my ipod for a couple hours, let me tell you.

I finally got on the plane and boy did I sleep. The 4.5 hour flight felt like 10 minutes. I landed in Houston and tried taking out some American money at a bank machine. Damn thing tells me I have insufficient funds! What a load of crap. I figure the machine is broken so I just leave it until I get to New Orleans. I'll get back to this money issue later. I get on my flight and I’m stuck sitting beside a huge dude. I mean big, like 500 lbs big. Nice guy though, he started talking to me and we got to sports. He noticed my Oilers hat and started talking hockey a bit. It was a short flight, but he made it fun. I finally got to New Orleans, one of the places I’ve always dreamed about visiting. And as soon as I leave the Arrivals area, there I see sitting on the floor, practicing Nashism, my fellow Asshole Cash

Cash: In an interesting turn of events, my start for the trip was off to a pretty horrible start too. I had a paper due that day for my 19th Century Gothic and Horror literature class about the novel Dracula and the poem The Vampyre by John Polidori… and it was due the day that I was supposed to leave to pick Mike up at the airport. Of course, as some people at the Oratory forums will remember, I had done a paper the quarter before and made a thread about the experience as I steadily went crazy. This paper was no exception. I waited until the last minute and tried to do it… but floundered. I finally finished the paper around 6:00 a.m. and proceeded to take a thirty minute nap before finishing up on my packing for the trip. I got on the road around 9:00 in the morning to go and pick up Mike and trekked the 336 miles to the New Orleans International Airport.

Once I made it to the airport and parked, I checked my watch… saw that Mike wouldn’t be in for around twenty or so more minutes… so I leaned up against a pillar to catch me a quick nap. The reality of the situation is that you can’t really take a nap when you’re right next to the place where all the people exit in an airport. You have the kids running to their grandparents, husbands and wives meeting back up after a business trip, and just general chaos. I got ten minutes of sleep or so and then Mike ambled through the gate. He was pretty easy to recognize as he is Canadian and thus looked funny and lost. After we met up, he mentioned something about needing to get money out of the a bank machine since the one in Houston didn’t work. Of course, being the nice guy I am, I laughed at him for his misfortune in Houston and then we found a machine. He tried to get money… and had no luck. His face pretty much went white and Mr. Cool Under Pressure started cussing like a sailor as I sat there and continued to chuckle at his misfortune.

Until I realized that if he didn’t have any money, we weren’t going to go anywhere since I couldn’t possibly pay for both of our ways. All the sudden, it wasn’t so funny anymore and had become rather serious. As he was on the phone trying to get in touch with his bank, I coolly hid my impending panic by reading a newspaper and commenting on the weather in Chicago and Dayton. Wait, why am I telling you this story? Mike is the one who actually had it happen to him!

Mike: Oh boy, the money story. What a crock. We sat there in the airport, and panic is almost setting in for me. What the hell do I do if I can’t take my money out? I tried calling the number on the back of my bankcard, but it’s all computerized. So I tried calling home, and no one is there. Heck, I tried calling a couple friends, just to try to get SOMEONE to look up the number for my bank in the phonebook. I decided to try to call the number again on the card, and in a fit of rage I just pushed all the buttons at once on my phone. Suddenly I hear “We are now connecting you to a customer service agent.” Woohoo! I get through, explain what’s going on, and the guy told me my limit is set to $1000 withdrawals in Canadian dollars each day, but only $100 American. Yes, cue the exchange rate jokes. He changed it, we went back to the machine, and seeing that money come out was the happiest sight I’ve seen in ages!

We then got semi lost in the baggage claim area looking for the Continental section, but we finally found it. After my bag comes out almost last, we head upstairs and outside for my first taste of hot weather since I was in Mexico in March! In fact, in snowed just before I left home, and I’m coming outside to the southern heat. I was in heaven. We got to Cash’s car (which is a nice ride I must say) and off we were to the French Quarter so I can be a tourist! We parked, I changed out of my warm Canadian clothes into some shorts, and off we were to hit the city. I must say, Cash seemed to know his stuff and took me to a lot of great places around town. There was so much to see and do in New Orleans.

Cash: I’ll just outline what we did in New Orleans for you peeps, it’s more exciting to hear it from a person who hasn’t seen stuff before. The basic plan I made was to give Mike a crash course in New Orleans. Driving into the city, I pointed out the cemeteries, which are something that people always get a kick out of. During the day, we went down the artsy street (Royal Street) and, of course, Bourbon Street – both of which are in the French quarter. It’s so different during the day, you need to see it at both times. The only thing I really obsessed about though was getting Mike to Mother’s Café. It’s basically a small place that is famous world-wide for it’s local food. I rank it as my second favorite place to eat in New Orleans (Antoine’s is my favorite, but it is around 75 bucks a head… that’s a million in Canadian money, and you know how hard it is to get their banks to give us money). We did the Mother’s thing and then moseyed on over to the quarter again, running by the Mississippi river front and just generally meandering around. You really need to do that in New Orleans. Don’t have a concrete agenda, just wander around. You’ll see something that is interesting, no matter where you go. Once it started to get to twilight, we rode the St. Charles streetcar, which is something I personally haven’t done for years. We went to the end of the line and then came all the way back to the quarter. Basically, this allowed us to see the Garden District (where the BIG houses are).

Basically, we just hit up all the famous places that I could think of and then wandered around some. We didn’t go to the Riverwalk, because frankly, even though Mike is pretty feminine, I don’t include shopping on my tours. Of course, New Orleans is primarily known for it’s night life, and fittingly, dusk fell on us while we were riding the streetcar back to the French Quarter. So, during the day, we saw big houses, the French Quarter, places we’d pop into during the night to get drinks at like Pat O’Brian’s and the hand grenade place. Mike got to see an interesting contrast to how people are down here in the South compared to up North while you’re riding on public transportation (we actually… like… talk to one another and visit instead of sit there and keep to ourselves). He’s the new guy though, so HE can tell you all about the night time festivities!

Mike: Yeah, New Orleans was pretty amazing. For those that haven't been, check it out sometime! I was just thrilled walking around in shorts while back home the ground was still covered in snow and freaking cold. Everything there was just so interesting and different from what I've got here in Edmonton, from the city itself, the people, the food, everything! I'll admit, I was quite surprised to have random people just start up a conversation on the street car with me. Anyways, there was just so much to see there, I wish I had more time to enjoy it all and soak it all in. As it was, I got into New Orleans around 1:30 and we had to leave around midnight or so. It was a fair amount of time, but not even close to really see all there is to do in the city.

Anyways, after seeing all the big sights in town, it was off to the one thing I was most excited about the whole trip: partying on Bourbon Street! We just cruised the street a little first and he showed me all the neat places along the way. It's funny, the whole street seems to go in a pattern: bar, strip club, souvenier shop. Toss in an occasional restaurant and voodoo shop, lots of bright neon lights, and there's Bourbon Street! Keep in mind, this was a random Thursday too, and the place was still busy with people partying. First stop was one of the many slush bars where we found a drink called a Triple Bypass. Being Teddy Hart fans, and Cash using the character in oWa, we just HAD to get that one. From there we walked in and out of a couple bars, and even saw some of Smackdown on TV. At one bar with a flaming water fountain (VERY cool by the way) Cash decided to call the Oratory's own James IV. He talked to James while I grabbed a super cheap beer from a bar and chugged it down. I said my hellos and it was off to the Hand Grenade place for another drink. We took our hand grenades (it's a wicked drink in case you're thinking we're carrying military weapons here) and made our way towards the riverside again. We sat around a while, talking about baseball, amusement parks, and just about anything else before heading back to party central.

By now I've got a nice buzz going, so it was time for Pat O'Brians and the world famous Hurricane! Freaking awesome drink, one of the best I've ever had. I hear Lauren C. doesn't care much for them, so this is where I figured she must be crazy. By this time we're both a little drunk, so after walking the streets some more, checking out some music stores for CDs, it was time for Cafe Du Monde and Beignets. Good GOD are those good. Again, for those unaware, it's french doughnuts covered in powdered sugar. Sounds simple enough, but the taste is out of this world. We ate, sobered up, and a little after midnight it was time to hit the road to Dayton, Ohio!

Cash: As always, driving at midnight is a ton of fun. Yeah, it’s dark and stuff, but who really cares? It’s nice to get in the areas that aren’t very well lit and then see a city like Nashville in the distance lighting up the sky. Basically, that’s all we did was drive. It was a long ways to go from New Orleans to Dayton… 855 miles and a little bit to be exact. Think about it… you have a southern kid and a Canadian in a car for that long and they’re libel to come up with SOME sort of solution to the world’s problems, eh?

Wrong. We just talked sports and gossiped about all the people on the Oratory forums while raving about how awesome a city New Orleans is. Then we raved about how cool Nashville was at night and even entertained driving the strip until the two of us decided that we would probably wind up getting lost in Nashville and never make it to Dayton in time, just because we wanted to be able to bum around Dayton for awhile. Keep that in mind. Mike and I wanted to bum around Dayton, Ohio for awhile because there is stuff to do in Dayton. That will be important when Mike starts his next section about how exciting Dayton is.

Anyways, we were driving and finally decided to stop in a small town called Bonnyville in Kentucky. This place was off the beaten path and we just wanted to use the restrooms and grab some cold drinks and snacks. Never before have I been so wrong about a gas station being right off the interstate. We wound up going miles down a curvy road just to get to the place. So, we pull in and it’s this hole in the wall gas station. Being the southern gentleman that I am, I give Mike advice before we get out of the car:

“Don’t talk.”

Why? Because, as horrible as this sounds, when you’re in the foothills of Kentucky, in the middle of butt-fuck Egypt, you don’t need to be sounding like a Canadian tourist. Xenophobia is fun for children of all ages really. I’ll tell you my part of the story because it is pretty funny. Then I’ll turn it over to Mike so he can fill in the gaps for his end. I go back to the place, use the facilities and then hunt down some cold beverages. To my freaking AWESOME surprise, they have RC Cola… in a bottle. I repeat, RC Cola, in a bottle. So, I grabbed that, a moon pie, and some chips and walked up to the checkout. There were these old men sitting in the corner at a table and I’ll admit, I chuckled some because I was joking around with Mike earlier about how old men hang out in gas stations in the South. I go to buy my stuff and the woman at the counter talks to me, so I speak back and all that and the guys at the table ask me where I’m from because my accent sounded different. It took everything I could to stop from laughing at that too, but I said I was from south Louisiana and they just nodded at me and went back to what they were doing.

Then, I waited for my Canadian buddy to come to the front so I could watch the festivities.

Mike: Cash went to the bathroom first in that station, so I just quietly tried to be invisible outside the door waiting for him. A woman working there walks by and goes “Are y’all waiting for the bathroom?” Taking in Cash’s advice, I just nodded quickly. She points me to the back room and tells me I can use the employee bathroom. I just quickly go back there and go inside…and it seems “employee bathroom” meant “somebody’s room”. Well, it was a typical size store bathroom, but with a shower and bathroom supplies, drugs and clothes ALL over the place (kinda looking like my bathroom at home). Anyways, I use it and grab a drink from the cooler and wait behind Cash to pay for stuff. I get my stuff rung in and the lady goes “Hope y’all have a nice day”. Knowing I should say SOMETHING, I mutter “Thank ya” in the WORST southern accent anyone has ever heard. We make it to the car and Cash is almost in tears laughing, while I’m becoming religious and thanking God I survived.

So we made it out of Bonnyville alive, and it’s back on the road. We pass a Six Flags later on in the morning, and I think we were both seriously debating skipping ROH to go there. We didn’t, and finally crossing into Ohio and Cincinnati. It was about 11:00am and we were finally getting close on the night that seemed like it would never end. And around noon, we pulled into Dayton…mission accomplished. With a good 7 hours to spare! Time to see what Dayton Ohio had to offer.

First we decided to find the building for the show, just so we’re not rushed later on. That took a good five minutes, it was easy. So we just went down the street, checked out a second hand music/movie store and got some Taco Bell. And it was time to check out what Dayton had to offer baby! So we drove around for a bit…and didn’t see anything. Drove through downtown…nothing. There were no malls. No cool looking stores. Not even a freaking Wal Mart to check out. THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO AT ALL IN THE ENTIRE FREAKING CITY. The most exciting thing we saw was a cool looking water fountain thingy. But that lasted about a minute and then it shut off. So after about half an hour of driving around, we just drove back to the arena. And sat there. Hell, the truck with the ring equipment wasn’t even around yet. Around 3:00, it was more boredom than we could bear. So we drove to the University campus in town, thinking we could maybe walk around and check things out. But no, we couldn’t find a parking spot for the life of us. So it was back to the arena…again. Only 3 more hours now till showtime! Yay! We took turns napping in the car, walking across the street to the hospital to change into clean clothes, and finally hanging around an antiques store nearby. And STILL time crawled by, it was not even 5:00 by now. We tried calling people we knew to get phone numbers of the others coming to the show, but no luck on that front either. We decided to go for a walk, and we saw a Cold Stone ice creamery! Horray, something good! So we start walking and just outside the store we hear a voice.

“Hey assholes!”

Now, keep in mind this was last year in the height of “Assholes Inc” on the forums. So obviously we were excited! One of the crew was there! Both of us turn around with big smiles on our faces…and there’s some older black guy standing there. Now I’m thinking the only black guy we knew that was coming to either show this weekend was Airplane Radio. And I thought he was only coming to Chicago. And I didn’t think he was that old. Anyways, we both have confused looks on our faces by now, and the guy talks again.

“You assholes got any spare change?”

Yeah, how about no when you ask like that. How freaking random is that though? It was bizarre. So we get our ice cream, and out of nowhere, a few blocks away from the car still…huge rain storm hits. We sprint back to the car for shelter, continuing to wait in this boring, horrific town of Dayton.

And then…the fake Adam Karabel arrived.

And you know what? That’s a great cliffhanger for part 2. I promise this won’t take a year and a half to do, I’m bugging Cash till this is done. So look for part 2 very soon, and in the meantime, hope you enjoyed this.

Justin and Lori mailed me their honeymoon pictures so far, so I threw them up here for everyone to see. Enjoy!

Well, here I am sitting here, watching the first 3 Harry Potter movies tonight, waiting to see the new one tomorrow. Should be extremely good looking at the previews too. Potter rules all of you!

 

What a rough week though. Of course when you don't work weeks don't really matter since everyday is like every other day, but still I'm happy to see the weekend and push all this stuff this week behind me. I haven't even had time to breathe lately.

 

Oh, and if anyone's bored and looking for something to read, here's my latest column for the site I write for.

It's wrestling related (makes sense for a wrestling site!), just so you're all forewarned.

So I finally cut my hair today for like the first time in 8 months. I don't even look like the same person that I did this morning. Now that I have my hair back to the way it usually is, I can't believe how freaking long it was. It's quite cold going outside now, that's a bit of a drawback. But on the plus side, I look slightly less like a homeless bum. And at least most of the formerly blond hair is gone for good! I dyed it last week to a brown that's fairly close to my color, but not quite. But I'm almost back to normal now.

 

After looking back at our road trip stories last night, me and Cash both became quite sentimental and we might write up little stories of our adventures tonight for fun. If I do, I'll post here for y'all to see.

Eddie Guerrero died yesterday morning. For those who don't know who he is, he's a WWE wrestler, and one of probably my 5 all time favorite wrestlers. Those who know me know how I love wrestling, so it's been a tough couple days. It was just such a shock, it came out of nowhere. I feel maybe worse than when Owen Hart died. I don't cry often, but good lord did I cry a ton tonight watching the tribute show. That was the hardest thing I've ever watched, but it was more than worth it.

 

RIP Eddie, thanks for the memories.