-Taking vacations used to be so easy.  As a kid, you’d go to Disneyland or the Grand Canyon.  It was fun and relaxing.  Then came college and Spring Break madness.  You’d be on a liquid diet for seven days and not remember a thing.  But still, there were thousands of Spring Breakers there with you.  None of those experiences could prepare me for the mind-bending vacation I just took to Rio de Janeiro and South Beach.  For ten days my buddies and I took our bodies to the limits of alcohol, sun, and chicas.  I think my roommate and fellow traveler Brian said it best when he remarked, “It’s not a vacation, it’s a war.”

-Let me just set the scene for you.  It is dead winter in Rio right now, meaning it is 82 degrees and balmy every day.  The national uniform is a thong bikini.  Beers costs less than a dollar American.  They don’t speak a lick of English.  And every person we talked to before we left said it was the greatest place on earth.  I was at the bank the day before we left getting some traveler’s cheques and the teller was going on and on about how he got double-teamed in Rio.  In the middle of the bank!  Later I went to CVS to get some last minute items – suntan lotion and condoms.  You always know it’s going to be a great trip when those are the last two things you need to get before you leave.

-I found it very amusing that when you’re on vacation, everything is really cheap except for the things that the locals know only Americans will do.  For instance, in Rio, a beer is like a buck, a blow job is only 20 bucks, and hang gliding is like 700 dollars.  I’m like, um, I’ll just take a beer.

-The language barrier when traveling abroad is also a very difficult barrier to overcome.  We spoke English and a little bit of Spanish.  Brazilians speak Portuguese and a little bit of Spanish.  When you are having a conversation that goes from English to Spanish to Portuguese and back, you can bet most everything will get lost in translation.  The best is when you have a whole conversation and you think the other person is understanding you and you go on and on and finally ask them how they feel about something and they’re like, “Um, yes.”

-Ever notice that when you are staying in a hotel and you call to get a wake-up call you are so nice about it?  “Excuse me, can we get a wake-up call in room 1912 for 9am?  Thanks so much, have a great night.”  But when the phone rings the next morning at 9am when you’ve only been in bed for two hours you pick up like, “Who the fuck are you and how dare you call me so goddamn early!”

-Every once in a while we would run into girls at a club that spoke a little bit of English.  Thinking we were very creative Americans, whenever we encountered this but wanted to talk about the girls without them understanding, we simply talked like Jay-Z or Snoop, that way the locals wouldn’t understand us.  I was like, “Hey Brian, dizyou thiznink thizose hizzoes izare hiznot?”  And Brian would say, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

-I traveled with five other guys and we brought six cameras wherever we went.  So then we had to ask someone to stand there and take pictures of the six of us with all of the cameras.  It’s funny because when you’re standing there, all you really care about is that the picture taken with your camera comes out.  For all the other ones you’re making funny faces and punching the other guys in the balls.

-One guy had the most annoying camera.  You know that camera that flashes once but then doesn’t take the actual picture until like ten seconds later?  Everyone starts to leave and then the second flash goes off and you’re like “Ohhh, I wasn’t even looking!”

-I got a fake tattoo on the beach in Rio.  The woman said it was Chinese for the letter “K.”  I’m pretty sure it was Portuguese for “I just hosed you.”

-Surprisingly, my friends and I, being the drunken former frat boys that we are, did fairly well with the local women.  Well, it took us a few days.  You see, “What’s up” in Portuguese is “Tudo bem.”  Since Brazilian chicks are infinitely nicer that New York chicks, if you say what’s up to them they are generally responsive.  Unfortunately, for the first couple of days we were mistakenly saying “Todo bang,” which translates roughly into “Let’s all fuck.”

-There are a lot of nude beaches in Rio, which was very very nice.  The only thing is, it’s kind of hard to kick game to a girl on a nude beach.  That’s because, for guys, our two primary goals – getting a girl naked and lying down – are already accomplished before we’ve even said anything.  You have to start all the way at step three, i.e. “todo bang.”  Needless to say, after a while we went back to the regular beach.

-After night after night of trying to communicate in broken Spanish, you start to forget some people speak English.  One day I needed a pen so I asked Brian, “Tiene una pluma?” and made the international sign for writing.  He was like, “I speak English you fuck!”  Oh, yeah, forgot about that.

-In the end, I think we changed Rio for the better.  One night at a bar I took a particularly nasty tequila shot and proceeded to boot all over the floor.  I lift my head and literally the entire bar was staring at me, laughing and cheering.  I guess they don’t have fraternities in Brazil.  Also, in the hotel we stayed in, the staff eventually got used to us barging in to the 6am breakfast buffet straight from the bar.  By the last night the hotel had manned the buffet with a bartender, security guard, and janitor with mop and bucket, just for us.  Needless to say, they were all needed!

-I’ve noticed that airport security coming into the United States is a lot tougher than when leaving it.  When I came back to the US they asked me a million questions and searched my bags.  When I left the US they were like, “Are you a bad guy?  No?  Good.”

-And everyone always make such a big deal about the duty-free shop.  “We have to go to the duty-free shop, we just gotta!  There’s no duty!”  Since when was duty such a problem?  I never noticed duty before.  I don’t pick up a pair of jeans at the mall and say “Oh wow, there’s way too much duty on this!”  I guess they can get you to believe anything when you’re trapped in an airport all day.

-As if Rio wasn’t enough, instead of coming home to New York, we flew from Brazil to Miami to spend a few more days on vacation in South Beach.  We stayed at a hotel called the Delano, which I didn’t know beforehand was THE hot hotel in South Beach.  It was fucking ridiculous.  You needed to be on a list to get a chair at the pool!  There was a bouncer there with a clipboard and everything, even though we were guests at the hotel!  The bouncer asked if we knew anyone so I dropped my own name.  It didn’t work.

-When we finally made it to the pool, I can honestly say it was one of the most ridiculous scenes I have ever seen.  Money being thrown everywhere.  Topless fake breasts everywhere.  I swear it was right out of a P. Diddy video.  It was awesome.

-Speaking of P. Diddy, I was thinking the other day that the way he dresses now is kind of like the way I dressed in 7th grade.  You know, he’s got the hat that’s too big, t-shirt that’s too long, old school Nikes.  Yeah, just like me, um, except for the twelve Lamborghinis.

-So all in all, it was a vacation to remember.  The kind of vacation where the guy at the photo shop gives you a smirk when he gives you your pictures back.  The kind of vacation where you only tell your parents half of what really happened.  The kind of vacation where you need a vacation when you come back.  And the kind of vacation that you’ll never forget… but you can’t remember a thing!

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-When you walk into an apartment, don’t you immediately assess whether or not it is nicer than yours and then say, “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, how much do you pay?”

-I hate bar soap.  There’s just something about bar soap.  You know when you’re in a bathroom and you’re washing up and you’re looking for the liquid soap and you just can’t find it but then you look to the left and spot the dish?  The dish with the slimy bar soap just marinating there?  First you have to pick it up and wash off the slime and the last person’s grime.  Then you have to somehow manage to lather up your hands without that slippery sucker flying out of control.  And finally you have to try to put it back in the dish without making a mess all over the sink.  Bar soap is a disaster waiting to happen!

-This week would have been my first week back at school.  Oh college, how I miss you!  I’ve found that college kids assume that anyone who looks remotely like they are between sixteen and twenty-five years old is also in college.  I was visiting my sister at school and her friend asked me what college I go to.  I was like, “Well, I graduated two years ago from Penn.”  He was like “Oh, sorry to hear that.”  Like I died or something!

-Do any other recent alumni out there get the feeling that if they applied to their alma mater now they would get rejected in a heartbeat?

-I don’t think there is any more dramatic change than from your senior year in college to your first year of work.  I really feel for all of you out there who just graduated and are now relegated to a cubicle of doom.  But don’t worry, “grabbing a drink after work” is just as fun as “let’s throw a ten-keg jam.”  Yeah right, suckers!

-Some people I know say that they get way more hungover now than when they did in college.  That’s because you have to get up at 7am to go to work!  Remember 7am in college?  You got up, took a piss, took three Tylenol and went back to sleep for ten hours!

-But look on the bright side.  At least now that you’re working you have something to take a break from when the weekend comes along.  In college you were like, “Ah, Friday, thank God!  Now I can take a break from…um…partying?”

-Ever notice that whenever there is an empty space in a room or house, a college kid will always say, “Hey, let’s put a bar there!”

-College kids have such a warped sense of morality.  I love hearing college kids complain about how much college sucks now compared to when I went.  They’re like, “Yeah, it sucks because they won’t let freshman into the bars anymore and they arrested that guy who makes fake IDs and the liquor store won’t sell beer if you’re underage!”  I’m like, um, you do realize that all of those things are illegal, right?

-Sometimes I wish I went to a bigger school than Penn.  Because I’ve pretty much met all the cute girls that I went to school with.  My buddy Claudio went to Michigan and now he runs into hot chicks in New York that he graduated with but had never even heard of before!  Damn, I’m completely tapped out!

-Now that my sister is happily a junior at Dartmouth, I can relay a funny story about us.  When she was applying to a different school, I drove her to an interview at some alum’s house and then waited in the den.  A young woman came in, only a few years older than me, and started to chat.  Since the alumni interviewer was fairly old, I asked her if she was his daughter.  She responded, “No, actually, I’m his girlfriend.”  Can you guess if my sister got in?

-Have you ever gone to your local deli or pizza place and the owner of the place is there that day and all of a sudden the workers aren’t as talkative and they give you less food?

-You know in some fast food restaurants they have those tiny cups that you squeeze the ketchup in to?  Can you tell me why they can’t make the cups a little bigger?  Now I have to fill up ten of the cups just to get enough and then carry them to the table by sticking each of my fingertips into the ketchup.  There’s got to be a better way!

-My mom is always “finishing the roll.”  Her camera has twenty-seven pictures, she’s only taken fifteen of them, but she really wants to get them developed, so she’s snapping pictures of me in the kitchen, the front door of our house, the lawn, our neighbors’ car.  In all of our family albums, half the pictures are of us and the other half are of inanimate objects that she finished the roll with.

-Does anyone ever get through without being told “All representatives are currently assisting other callers”?  What about the very first guy who calls at the beginning of the day?

-I just got a new pair of sneakers.  One problem, though.  The laces are way too long.  It seems like the last five pairs of sneakers I bought have about two feet too much lace on each side.  I can’t make a normal human bow with these things!  I think they give you just enough laces to tie your sneakers so that you have enough left over to hang yourself after you keep tripping all over the place.

-I fight a daily struggle.  I battle in the morning and I fight again at night.  It is my own personal war to keep the top of the toothpaste tube clean.  You know when you get a new tube you make that sort of silent promise to yourself that you are going to keep it clean this time?  But sure enough, two weeks later you’re just screwing the cap right back on to the overflow so that it squirts everywhere.  Damn you Crest, damn you!

-Do you have that really cool white shirt that you wear a lot less than you want to?  That’s because when you put it on to go out, you know that no matter what, you’re gonna have to get it dry cleaned.  I have this great white shirt, but the morning after I wear it, I always find it on my floor with like a red splotch on the front and a tread mark on the back.

-OK, this is a subtle one.  Have you ever put your arm around someone or held someone’s hand and then it becomes sort of awkward to let go?  You kind of pretend like you need the hand for something else and kind of let go real quick?

-Ever notice that in every news story about the stock market plummeting they show a picture of a trader on the floor of the NYSE holding his hand on this head and looking all dismayed?  Is this supposed to paint an accurate picture of how the market as a whole is feeling?  I always think, for God’s sake, the guy in the picture could just really have to take a crap or something!

-This is a public service announcement for the makers of Skyy Blue, Bacardi Silver, etc.: what the fuck where you thinking?  Did you even do any test marketing?  Did you really think the young urban male market of which I am a part would even so much as try your product?  Look at your commercials.  Sure, if I was at a beach party where there were chicks in bikinis around a bonfire and the only thing to drink was your product, then, yeah, I guess I might have a couple.  But that never happens!  Do yourself a favor, go back to the drawing board, and then come back with the same product, only target it to a different audience.  And definitely change the name.  How about this?  “Chick Drink.”

-You know who pisses me off?  People playing pool at crowded bars.  They always give you that dirty look when they’re trying to shoot because you’re standing behind them.  Listen buddy, I came to drink, not watch you play your girlfriend in pool which you suck at anyway.  Hey, want a Skyy Blue?

-And, finally, I just enrolled in a new health insurance plan.  They make you choose a primary care physician.  How do they expect you to make this important choice?  From a list of literally thousands of doctors in New York, listing only name, location, and medical school they graduated from.  How the fuck am I supposed to choose a doctor from this?  So first I eliminated everyone who graduated from the Barbados School of Medicine and anything like that.  Then I just looked for the female doctor in my neighborhood with the cutest sounding name.  I chose Dr. Jamie Simpson from Duke Med.  Turns out it was an old man.  Fuck me!

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