Drunk By Drunk Drunk: SXSW Coverage of Days 3 and 4.

So after getting, you guess it, way too drunk on both Wednesday and Thursday, I’ve decided to combine days two and three into one entry because my memory is somewhat fucked. Anyway here goes…

Wednesday, Day 3.

I met up with some friends and headed out to Rainey street to drink free beers (as is the custom). We catch a 70s esque hard rock band from Austin. Their lead guitarist looks a little like Gary Moore in his latter years.

2pm- We do the 15 minute walk to Mohawk  in the searing sun to see Trash Talk, the hardcore band that hangs out with Lil Wayne and Tyler, the Creator.  The circle pit is furious, and people hurl cans of beer from the balcony. This pisses off the lead singer, who calls out a beer can thrower and leads the crowd in a chorus of “fuuuck yooou, fuccck yooou”. He then takes bong hit on stage and crowd-surfs to the bar to pounds a few shots o’ whiskey. Everyone is thoroughly impressed.

4pm- I am thoroughly sun-burnt at this point. We hit up FIDLAR’s set on the east side. The band is super tight and accomplished considering 90% of their songs are about getting fucked up on one substance or another.

 Along the way, I see a band play an entire set with the lead singer balancing a PBR on her head. The rest of the day is sort of a blur at this point, which transitions nicely into Thursday.

Thursday, Day 4.

2.pm I was anticipating Thursday to be my favorite day at SXSW, well, at least musically. I kicked off the day by catching “slob-rock” heros King Louie and the Missing Monuments at an showcase put on, oddly, by the Louisiana Board of Tourism. Beer was incredibly cheap, and they put on a kick-ass show.

4pm – We get in to Bass Drum of Death as they’re just about to play. Lonestars at Clive Bar are $6, which is completely unreasonable, and they should be ashamed of themselves. BDOD play well, but the crowd is pretty crappy and is clearly there to see somebody else.

5pm – On to The Thermals, who are, even after 10 years of playing non-stop, quite possibly the happiest band in the word. The drummer got out from behind his kit to lead fist pumping, culminating in a stage dive during bits of the song where he’s actually supposed to be playing.

This is where it gets a little hairy. I think we went to see the Eagulls at Cheer Up’s, but they were a no show. We ended up staying for Nu Sensae, the most 90s band at SXSW. Their singer/bass player wailed enough for Todd to buy their vinyl on the spot. How the vinyl survived the rest of the night is a mystery.

8pm – We go and see the Oh Sees at Hotel Vegas. I get talking to this German guy who gets me into the artists green room. We laugh at the fact that the only food left was this huge bowl of salad, as the Americans had stuck to the beef tacos. Seriously, the salad was massive:

My new friend then proceeded to load my backpack up with as many oranges as possible, around 25 or 30. 

Thee Oh Sees play and the marquee starts to collapse after some guy crowd surfs over to the support beam and does a pole dancing routine on it. I start to wonder if I’ve received brain damage at this point as I get a searing pain in my frontal lobe, which is apparently the bit of the brain that deals with personality and acting reasonable in society (no really, it does)

1am Someone gets word of a party happening on a bridge over the lake. We walk for what seems like hours and cross over some train tracks. A local guy tells us not to get so close to the tracks, as a container had flown off a moving train just last week. We catch some post-hardcore band playing and their PA system dies, leading to them screaming their lyrics sans microphone. This increases their emo-ness exponentially.

2.am- I finish the night drinking moonshine from a guy’s brown paper bag at the Barton Creek Saloon. Some guy tries to start a fight with Valadez because we all refused to give him a ride home,  because none of us had cars.

Fin.

Drunk by Drunk Drunk: Day Two SXSW Coverage

Tuesday was supposed to bean "off-day" as there weren't all that many day shows and I really needed to recover from the night before. But against my better judgement, I decided to forgo my daily nap and head straight downtown. Welcome to day two.

3pm Had a couple of busts trying to find free booze, but we stumbled in on Jim James being interviewed at a small bar on Rainey street which was pretty rad. Whilst gathering our bikes to leave, a cop, yes a cop, talks us in to going to the Blackberry showcase because there's free beer.

3.30pm We are offered a choice between Dale's Pale Ale (delicious) and Bud-lite (terrible, obviously) for free. I curse the amount of people drinking bud-lite. We pound a couple of Dale's and the worst tasting red wine I've ever encountered (hey, I was trying to mix it up). I felt bad drinking on Blackberry's dime considering how much money the company's lost over the last couple of years.

4.30pm.  We head over to Handle-Bar to hang out with Valadez's friend Andrew (of Mother Falcon). There are more free beers. We learn from a guy there to RSVP under several fake names to get more drinks tokens. It works, and he does it for the sixth time.

6.00pm We decided to cue up for Wavves and Japandoids at Viceland a full two hours before doors open. This proves to be a wise move, as the line soon wraps around the building. A bunch of jerks try to cut in line and succeed, all while my friends and I loudly tell them to fuck off.

8.30pm It looked like it was going to get ugly in the line, but the cops show up and everything settles down. We all get in. Within 10 minutes of getting in I have a beer in each hand and two slices of pizza. All animosity towards the jerks that cut the line dissipates. I was weary of the "complimentary drinks' moniker on the poster, thinking it was going to be one or two beers each. Turns out Vice knows how to throw down and it's an open bar the whole night.

10.30pm Wavves takes the stage after two hours of 500 kids and free beer. All hell breaks loose. The already thin security staff tries desperately to keep people off the stage. The head security guy, a 50 year old bespectacled African-American, has a terrified look on his face. He probably thought "it never used to be like this back in my day." He gestures to the other security staff to close the show down. I can see why he's getting worried, it was getting dangerously close to Hillsborough territory.

The sound is atrocious; Vice obviously spent all of their cash on beer and opted to borrow a PA system from a local Bar-Mitzvah. Nathan's guitar keeps cutting out, but no-one seems to mind. They play a few new tracks of their new album. Nathan starts shredding over some guy that managed to flop face down on stage. I managed to hi-five Nathan in between said shred.

12.00am. Japandroids are up next. Just like Wavves, they curse out the security and actually force them to leave the stage entirely, leaving two sound guys as the last bastion of security.  It's basically a house party at this point, with multiple fat guys crowd-surfing. Japandoids talk shit about the US (as they're from Canada). Everyone is hi-fiving. Brian king is on the sound guy's shoulders ripping a solo. They fall over whilst the other sound guy tries desperately to keep the monitors working. Despite the absolute pandemonium, no-one, not even the sound guys, are getting angry. Best crowd atmosphere yet. Everyone had been waiting in waiting in-line for ages, and was obviously there for the music.

Definitely a feeling that we were all witnessing something special. 

A nerd jumps on stage, takes a picture of the crowd, and is immediately thrown back into the mix, much to the delight of everyone.

I am soaked entirely in beer and my legs and shins are fucked from being pushed up against the stage. I spend the rest of the night talking Malort with a bunch of Chicago-ians.

Drunk By Drunk Drunk: SXSW Coverage, Day One.

I've decided to resuscitate the old Redcoat blog in order to bring you up to date coverage of SXSW from an Austinite's perspective. Forgive the poor spelling and grammar, this shit's straight from the source, and I'm probably still drunk when writing it.

Any-who, here we go, here's my first day at SXSW.... 

2pm Get off work and cycle down to the convention center. Someone is flying an unmanned drone in the Vice showcase thingy.

3pm. we start at this jabroner bar on sixth- my friend Dax knows the bartender so we get free shots and beers.

4pm Already 3 shots in. We get to Hotel Vegas because it says on the poster that there's free booze. turns out the free booze is whiskey shots for 10 minutes every hour. More shots are consumed. I mix my whisky with a PBR to make "bourbon aged PBR". This amuses me and my friends immensely. A 60s psych band plays. All of the members look like could have been in Urban Cowboy.

6pm. We see Driver F play at the T-Mobile stage. The amount of corporate branding is sickening. The band playing before are the most jabroni, corporatey band ever. We laugh. Driver F plays. They were good.


8pm. Johnathan Valadez and I ditch Dax and the others to find this secret Volcom party at an ad agency. We circle round where think it is for ages before some guy with a ponytail says that 'yeah, he knows what we're looking for". He looked official, so we follow him up this multistory car-park. I door guy says we need to be on the list, but our new friend just waves us in. Afterwards we realized he probably didn't work there.

They have this stage set up on the 13th floor overlooking the city. There are unlimited free Shiners and lo and behold, Thee Oh Sees show up and play a barnstormer of a set. My shirt gets ripped straight down the front, many beers are thrown.

10pm. We try and make it to Mohawk but Valadez falls off his bike just as one of our coworkers drives past. My phone is dead at this point and I lose the aforementioned Valadez so I decide to call it quits to go get some tacos. I get a flat tire on my way back.

And thus concludes day 1 of 7.

How an Entry Level Job Scam Had Me Almost Move to Nashville.

I noticed I needed to get a new job after my tax return indicated I made less than $18,000 a year. Which, according to poverty guidelines, makes me $4000 short of the poverty line (sort of). Well, this got me thinking; I could continue to be a college town bartender making 2.13 an hour and clearing up sweet smelling regurgitated margaritas, or I could get a real person job.

After a month or so of relentless internet job searching I have concluded that there are no real jobs on the internet. 

Most of the job offers I got were scams centering around the old selling steak knife sets to complete strangers ponzi-scheme. 

First of all, who the fuck buys stuff from door to door sales people now days? The elderly? The cripplingly lonely?

And to get around the fact that well, no-one has ever wanted to be a door to door sales person, they mislead accordingly. One trick is to use as many professional buzzwords as possible to spell out the most basic of information. For example, I received this email yesterday.

As an Insphere Agent, you'll be able to provide a consultative product approach to create an innovative solution that best fits the needs of each individual client. A multi-line product portfolio also provides an increased ability to cross-sell existing and new clients. 

What it's actually saying: You will be working in a call center. Your "clients" will be a bunch of fucksticks that can't turn on their computer without suffering a minor brain hemorrhage.  

Now that's talk about Nashville Business Consulting. They called me in for an interview. Luckily, I researched them before buying a plane ticket to Nashville. Here's what I found:

They don't pay you, and more bizarrely, they participate in terrible, terrible team building exercises.

Needless to say, I ain't goin' to Nashville.

Break News! American Ad Agencies are a bunch of racist, sexisit

After being exposed to American T.V for seven months now and enduring a stream of awful shows and truck adverts complete with huge manly letters falling from the sky, I noticed that interracial couples were completely absent.



This article does a pretty good job of providing examples to the contrary, yet something seems amiss. The TV we get down here is going to be different, and I bet advertisers up North don't have to pander to the lucrative racist Southern dollar.

This is where I get to say a big fuck you to the ad agencies and their clients.

Ever since Mad Men blew up, the perception of the ad (wo)man is that of a creative genius, combining a Machiavellian brand of psychology with the vision of an artist.

This is utter bollocks.

The ad agencies have been and will continue to peddle to the lowliest dregs of culture. For example, here is a hilarious Miller Lite commercial.




Oh, I get it. It's funny because he's a weak vagina-man for not drinking Miller lite. By the same logic, does drinking 20 Miller Lites give you cumulative manliness? If so, that time I drank a case of the stuff, vomited in a sink and fell down a flight of stairs was, in the perverse mind of the ad agencies, the same level of manliness as ripping a crocodile's tongue out and clubbing it do death with it.

This may seem off topic, but one has to really point out the absurdities to really show how fucking bad American commercials are. While the gender marketing and outright sexism of the commercials highlight the sleaze and bigotry of the ad companies and their clients, the lack of interracial couples in adverts shows their cowardice in challenging the remnants of Jim Crow. After all, why risk annoying the rednecks who swear by your otherwise shitty product?

Ad companies please stop insulting women, men, minorities and, my intelligence.

Business Class is the Perfect Marriage of American Isolationism and British Anti-Socialism

I had the pleasure of being bumped up to business class during my recent London to Houston flight. What I didn't realize is that amidst the pampering and cocktails (Yes Kanye, I have in fact drank champagne on the plane) is that business class is hilariously awkward, even more so than sitting next to a repugnant bloater in economy class. The reason- the optional screen that seperates you and one other person.


The problems start soon after takeoff. You are faced with a decision; put the screen up and look like an elitist dick, leave it down and feel like an invasive twat, or do nothing and see who blinks first. Fortunately, the other guy reacted first by pressing the button. The two seconds it took for the screen to rise were just enough time for him to give me a "Sorry, you invasive pleb" smirk. But I understand it! The screen serves as a physical barrier between two people that would only have the ability to make awkward small talk anyway. And everyone knows that the British hate talking to strangers in close proximity more than anything, especially so if the guy sitting next to you is potentially a Texan.

So I abandoned my quest at connecting with my business class travel mate and settled in to blessed isolationism. And yes I hate to admit it, but whacking that partition up after the stewardess brought me another flirtini was sort of gratifying in a Jabrone-Thoreau way.

The Big Easy

I lost all my money in New Orleans. No, I don't gamble and no, I didn't misplace my wallet (actually, I did - more on this later). I literally drank THREE HUNDRED dollars worth of TWO DOLLAR beers....IN THREE DAYS. This I believe warrants caps-lock shouting.

Because all of my time there congealed into one big bolus of drinking, I've decided to share my favourite memories of New Orleans. However, as I lost complete control of my quango stick at around 4am, I will leave you with a guest writer who was there, to fill in the gaps.

(Un)fortunately, few pictures survive of the evening and the ones that do don't make much sense. What we're left with is a skewed narrative......

We arrived at the hostel at around 4pm, drinking beers. We decided to attend a St. Louis Slim gig on Frenchmen Street. On the way, we decided to stop off and order wine by the pints. This was no ordinary wine; it was truly the piss of Satan that had been fermenting in his goat bladder for several weeks. During the stop off, one of the guys from the hostel tried to reach behind the bar and pour himself a beer. Obviously, this did not go down well with the bartender who clotheslined him off the stool he was sitting on. To emasculate him further, the bartender bitch slapped across the face and drug him out.

This was all fairly standard New Orleans behaviour as we begun to find out.

Fast forward 20 minutes and we're at the Spotted Cat Club. I'm doing shots with the bassist from the band. One of the girls in our party is on stage playing trumpet, although she's never picked up one in her life. This is where it gets a little hazy, and henceforth the baton gets passed.

------

Shortly after the trumpet solo finishes, we move on to the next club where Josh continues his devil-may-care pace. After bellying up to the bar a few times, he finally returns to the group with a pint. A pint of straight scotch.

Finally, drinking at a reasonable pace.

It is at this point that Josh then grabs the nearest girl (read victim) he sees and drags her to the empty dance floor where the zideco music completely takes his brain for the next hour. As the group trails out for the next bar, Josh goes too, leaving a trail of his own.

Credit cards, bits of cash, and oh yeah his wallet were just a few things left in the path.

I pick up his possessions and put them back in his pocket, but as soon as we walk into the next bar he repeats the fumble. A man noting Josh's drunk state then approaches (not knowing that I had taken Josh's wallet moments before) and this is the conversation that follows:

Shady Guy: You know man, you really ought to be more careful with your money many, people might try to take advantage of you

Josh: DRSHGaokgha....YEAH MAN.

Shady Guy: Well I was just looking out for you friend, here let me get you a drink. (At this point he hands him the drink in his hand) You can't really count so give me what's in your pocket and I'll count the change...

Josh: Chugs beer, reaches in pocket pulls out all that is in them-a bit of lint, hands it over and walks away.

A million pints in and still out hustles a hustler.

But its the walk back to the hotel where the real party began. At this point Josh is not so much man as he is drink, so while maintaining ability to bring glass to mouth, he has now left the less important functions, such as walking and thinking to Alice, Flavia and I.

At this point I should note that as you walk along Bourbon St all you will smell is piss and vomit because that is the cocktail that lines the gutter day and night. Upon hearing Flavia shout "Party in the puddle!" Josh proceeds to splash, frolic and soak in the gutter.

The novelty of this was soon replaced, however, with Josh's next drunken conviction-that "New Orleans is THE BEST TASTING city in the world." When I asked him to prove it, he then hurled himself onto the hood of a Jeep truck and licks it.

To complete the mental image, while all of these events are transpiring, Josh was constantly stripping off his shirt and chucking it at me, then moments later looking at his bare chest, then frantically asking what has become of his shirt.

Such ends our first night in New Orleans.

Redcoat's Handy Guide to Receiving a TABC Certification

Hello there! Want to work in a bar in Texas? First, you will have to take a tedious and pointless online course - the TABC. Luckily for you, I have already completed mine. Keep reading for my handy tips and pointers not only for passing the TABC, but for being a a super-awesome Texan bartender! I have included screenshots from the actual course for your viewing pleasure.

Intervention

Refusing to serve someone is called an 'intervention' according to the TABC. Intervention? I thought intervention was the process of confronting an alcoholic (as seen in hilarious fashion here). Because if you're underage or drunk in Texas, you are powerless to your addiction. So much so that as a bartender, you are legally responsible for the wrong doings of every drunk in your bar. And as you work in a bar, that's going to be a fucking tonne of drunkards. The writer of this guide recommends saving now for those pesky lawsuits!

Minors

People under the age of 21 will sometimes seek to drink alcohol. Luckily, the TABC gives us subtle hints and tips to identify these persons. The picture below is a perfect example. While not mentioning it explicitly, minors caught with alcohol are likely to be:

A. Homeless

B. Dirty

C Anarchists with hand tattoos.

D. Un-American

Underage males may be hard to identify due to facial hair. But don't fret, as identifying underage women is easy breezy- simply stare at their tits! Don't believe me? Think looking at tits can't be part of a paid position? Look at the picture below.

It says to look for "underdeveloped appearance of girls." Remember, when a woman with a B cup or less wants to buy a beer, refuse to serve her with discretion, as her undeveloped chest may be a source of embarrassment.

Minors these days can also be identified through the latest fashions, such as class rings (?) and yes, school uniforms. The school uniform in particular is a fashionable ploy to double-bluff you, the bartender. Don't hesitate to intervene.

Intoxication

You must be able to identify those who are intoxicated. As the limit for intoxication for someone of my weight and gender is around 3-4 bottled beers, 95% of the patrons at your bar will be intoxicated. You might even be intoxicated whilst reading this.

Signs of intoxication may include:

A. Poorly constructed briefcases stuffed with underwear.

B. Looking like a sex offender whilst being trapped in a psychedelic nightmare.

And if you get caught selling to minors, you only get a year in jail and a $4000 fine for the first offense! (side note: You probably get less jail time in the U.K for punching a police officer in the face with a brick).

It's not all bad though. Just think of the hunky members of law enforcement just waiting to apprehend you.

The Worst Place I've Ever Stayed

I am a reasonable man. I don't require fancy furnishings, cable TV or even a working trouser press. Baring this in mind, I can safely say that the North Austin Plaza 'hotel' is the worst place that I have EVER stayed.

To put this into some sort of perspective, the shady motel that we stayed at in Lubbock- a place that has the honour of having the highest gonorrhea and chlamydia infection rate in the country FOR TEN YEARS STRAIGHT - was better.

We were greeted by a a chalk outline of a person at the bottom of a small flight of stairs akin to the murder scene from a film noire. The outline, with its bloated limbs and head looked as if it had been booted off the top step and landed flat on its face. Odd, but relatively harmless I thought.

Looks as if Joseph Merrick's long lost great grandson fell down a flight of stairs

We were on the bottom floor. As I dragged our case of beer from the car I noticed that all of the handles had been broken off the room's doors. Our roof seemed fine enough except for the smell- a mixture of sweat and week old wet towel.

Little Friends

The real fun started when we noticed something crawling across our sheets. After seeing something small and squishing it and having it ooze human blood, it hit me that we had bed bugs. A quick check under the mattress revealed a small infestation of the fuckers. Bed bugs? I thought they only existed in third world shit-holes and cheap package holidays to a'Spaiyn [sic].

We told the woman at the front desk, who moved us to a different room. The look on her face seemed to say "aw fuck, not again'. Sadly the new room was devoid of our little friends. However, it contained a smorgasbord of new 'treats'.

Trucker Love

The first treasure the room held was a series of white stains on the bed's brown blanket. Madison at this point informs me that the motel isn't required to wash the blankets in between customers. It seemed that the only thing standing between me and a night in Billy-Jo's love juice was a well informed American. Confirming my trucker-prostitute scenario, was a large toothpick (especially large for gap-tooths I presume) to the left of the bed.

Family Friendly

'Do you and your family want something juicy and delicious to eat? Well here at the North austin Plaza Hotel, we highly recommend Bikini's Sports Bar & Grill-where tits, fried chicken, tits, tits, burgers and tits meet! So much so, Bikini's tit adorned menu will be the only menu in your room!

[Side note]- Bikini's hilariously describes itself as the 'the fastest growing sports bar and grill concept' - like having half naked women serving food and beers is some sort of new glorious new enlightenment. Furthermore, on the about us section of their website the founder Doug describes his moment of clarity:

While sitting at a bar on the Australian coast... an attractive server approached and asked, 'wanna beer mate?'. At that moment, all Doug could do was smile. Life suddenly made sense to him. He thought to himself, 'This is a nearly perfect combination: relaxing, drinking, sports, girls..."

Holy shit! Doug's experience of Australian tits and beer were nothing less than a religious experience. Move out of the way clothed, unattractive waiting staff of the geocentric world- Party Copernicus is here with tits and beer!

Pictured: party.

Until next time......

Thoughts on leaving College Station

I have finished my year long tenure at Texas A&M University, and as a fitting send off I tried my hand at the ring dunk. The ring dunk is traditionally done at the beginning of senior year, where students have to earn their aggie ring in the most mainly way possible short of strangling a bear for fun- by chugging a fuckton of beer. This metric fuckton of beer, or a pitcher in layman’s terms, took me around 50 seconds to drink.

The first forty seconds were smooth sailing. Well, if burping back into a drink you’re drinking is considered smooth. Around the 30 second mark I started to feel nausea. By 40 seconds that nausea had turned into full blow panic nausea, which is only experienced by weak flyers and those who are lactose intolerant at a frat hazing session. I finished the chug victorious. A bloated, vomiting inebriated victorious at that. You can view the video here

On a more serious note, my year here in Texas has probably been the best in my life. It’s given me opportunities to do stuff that I’d never thought I‘d do. I finally got my own radio show. I saw Vegas. I started to write. And I even managed to convince a girl to have sex with me more than once. This year has also given me motivation to not be complacent in my final year of university. Hopefully I will get around to forming the Victorian society in all its absinthe tea party glory.

I’ve had great teaching this year. On the off chance that they’re reading this I’d like to thank David Myers and John Tyler for helping me to expand the breadth of my knowledge and to realize that higher education isn’t just about drinking and disgusting sex. Your enthusiasm, passion and effort will be sorely missed next year.

Oh yeah, and I also learnt the true value of the beer pong slam dunk:

Redcoat Gets Arrested (Nearly)

I made a prophecy at the beggining of the year and well, last night it was fulfilled. Now I'm a fairly law abiding citizen, I do not get into fights or steal things. But I do like to get inebriated. And if that's a crime, then I'm guilty as charged. Unfortunately in the United States being drunk under the age of 21 IS a crime for some reason or another. I blame the Christians.

I'm not sure if it's the pickup, my jacket or the grainy picture quality but this picture looks amazingly 70s

This small little predicament started when a gangly guy at the bar (he shall now be referred to as 'Gangly') tried to hit on a friend of mine using lines from the freakin' Game. Come on Gangly, everyone and their mothers has read that book. So I did what any normal human being would have done; I laughed in his face. This move had got me in trouble once before where this guy threatened to beat me up, but that's an entirely different story all together. Gangly responds negatively by getting into my face, his hopes of scoring sweet, sweet ass dashed by my daring mocks. I stood my ground because well, I was approaching blackout drunk. Gangly then hollers over to a nearby policeman, telling him that I was overly intoxicated. Firstly, who the hell starts an altercation and then calls the cops over. Secondly, WHAT THE HELL were cops doing patrolling a bar? (Note. apparently, this is normal procedure in the bigger bars/ glorified shacks). I swear if I ever see that guy again, I am going to kick him in the balls from behind and run away. Because you know, he probably has a gun of sorts.



The police officer led me outside, trying to encourage me to bring my beer outside (this would have encriminated me further and resulted in a bigger fine). I declined, and left the frosty Bud on a table.
Now the following diaglogue is completely real and verified by a sober witness (Note: Obviously I had to change some details for legal reasons. I'm not that dumb people.). The cop in question was young, uptight and full of douche.



COP: Ok Mr Jenkins, what's your first name? (I was using an ID I had found)
REDCOAT: James (At this point I was swaying slightly)
COP: And your middle name?
RED: Er Fuck, w.. Fuck Pet..


I can't remember the middle name on the ID. But wait. Now I remember, there is no middle name. The stupid cop is obviously trying to trap me. I proudly announce this with as much swarve as I could possible muster:


COP: It says here 'Benjamin'. Now where are you from Mr. Jenkins?
RED: England. Yeah, wait fuck. Ah fuck. Sorry officer, pardon my French
COP: So wait, now you're telling me you're French?
RED: Ah, no. It's an figure of speech.
COP: What's your address?
At this point I started to become incredibly annoyed. I couldn't understand why my accent hadn't got me off the hook. I didn't know what I was still doing there. I wanted to go home and pass out face-down.
RED: It's in England, what the hell does it matter to you?
COP: You do know this is all being recorded (He gestured to a small audio recorder clipped on to his belt)
RED: Can I have a copy of the tape for novelty purposes?

He rejected my request.

At this point I pretty much blacked out. A witness mentioned how I called the cop a fag under my breath after accusing me of being French. Luckily, he chose not to arrest me for it-- Thanks first amendment! But I did get slapped with a $480 fine. That very $480 could have paid for my trip to Arizona (ASU! ASU!), ten bottles of premium whiskey or TWO of these:

That's an outdoor kitchen to you uncultured baffoons out there

I also got to go to the municiple court house, a place filled with reprobates. Actually, playing match the person to the crime was sort of entertaining.

New Semester, same old.

I've been back in Texas for a week now after a month long refreshing stay in London. Which was nice, as it allowed me to have a month off of the grease and pig snout diet I have come to know and love over here in Texas. Seriously, I would take a nap after a particularly greasy hamburger and wake up with a face caked in a reflective sheen.

I will also miss my classes from last semester, as they were a mixture of highly interesting and downright hilarious. I have already mentioned my creative writing class before, but I failed to mention the fact that towards the end of the semester, we had to review each other’s stories. A favorite game of mine was to read the story and match a name to the face. The weirder and creepier the story, the weirder and creepier the person involved. And believe me, there was creepiness.

It also got pretty brutal towards the end where previously watered down critiques gave way to abuse and mockery. Obviously I preferred the latter, chiming in as often as possible.

Unfortunately that's all I've got for now. But I promise to keep churning out blog posts despite the fact that my laptop is missing the 'o' key and turns itself off with the slightest of movement. And I still don't have health insurance, so hopefully I don't get hit by a pickup truck in the next couple of days.

Oh, and one final post script. My radio will be returning extremely soonish, so stay tuned (literally)! And as a taster, check out The Strange Boys. They're awesome.

Well, it's been a while. No, its not because I've been lynched, tarred and feathered and left to roast in the baking sun; but rather the "O" key on my keyboard is broken and I have had a metric fuck-tonne of work to do. Oh yeah, and I went to the new Dallas Cowboys staduim, which effectively shat upon all other stadii I have ever visited. More of this later.

Firstly, I have to report something a saw posted on numerous walls in the library; R-word awareness week.

What retarded photoshop skills

Yes that's right, it is indeed a campaign to erase the word retarded from our vocabulary. What a ridiculous idea; I am already fully aware of retards. Ok, that was a cheap joke; but this campaign bothered me on deeper levels. For starters, the whole campaign just reeked of trivialization and patronization of the disabled. I mean, why spend large amounts of time raising awareness of a term people already know as being mildly offensive (hence its use as an insult) when you could actually be working with and for the disabled through charities and such?

Philosophy aside, their site - http://therword.org/ is full of unintentional hilarity. The first paragraph sets a scene where two guys in Walmart were overheard saying “I don’t know why they let people like that live.” on the subject of a disabled 8 year old. Well, what where they expecting? This was in WALMART for christsakes, where the average patron has at least two teeth missing and a brain swiss cheesed from too much moonshine.

They then go on to badly miss the satire in Tropic Thunder, compare the usage of the word to the Holocaust and lynchings and then, finally, to play their trump card... MENTALLY DISABLED BAREKNUCKLE BOXING IN NONE OTHER THAN TEXAS. At that point, my mind just gave up and I laughed at the absudtity of a good ol' organzied 'tard fight.

Also, It's funny that the R-Word movement would gather momentum particularly in Texas, a state which has no trouble whatsover in executing them! /end cheap jokes.

The mighty Aggies play at the Cowboy Stadium

Yes, I went to go watch A&M get completely dismantled by the inbreds of Arkansas at the brand new Cowboys Stadium. Let me start by saying that tailgating (pregame drinking and bbq) is always fun. Yet some people take tailgating to new levels- one group had an entire pig smoking on some ridiculous contraption.

It also must be noted that only in America could the worlds largest HD T.V be put in a sporting arena in such a way that most people are watching it, rather than the live action happening down on the field. Don't believe me? Look for yourselves;

Things I've seen and done

I have done a plethora of new things in Texas; some of them have been particularly Texan, some particular to the American college experience and all of them hilarious.

Dip

Dip or chewing tobacco is categorically the most disgusting thing I've done here. Firstly, you look like an inbred with a grotesque chin tumour retaining the benefit of having a literal shit eating grin. Secondly, if you end up swallowing the thick brown sludge, you will vomit. Dip does not take any prisoners.

Moonshine

I've got a bottle of the proper stuff back in my truck, proposed the hillbilly.

No, this was not the opening scene to a Texan remake of deliverance. This was a casual Friday night at the the Sigma Chi frat house.

For something brewed in some random redneck's uncle's garage ( known locally as a carhole) and teetering dangerously close to 100%abv, it didn't taste too bad. I remeber very little of the night post homebrew consumption

The best mode of transport ever

There are some contraptions in this world that make you stop and think Why the hell didn't I think of that first. I'm talking about things like the zip, or maybe this shoe.

Well today I saw someone riding the grandaddy of ridiculous (and red neck) contraptions. Behold the beer cooler scooter:



I saw this thing going a steady four miles an hour DOWN A MAIN ROAD, DURING THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. He then preceded to get his drunk ass pulled over by the cops. I simply cannot make this shit up.

It's like Jerry Garcia in a pouch, man.

Wow, what a week.

I will remember this week for a very long time, maybe my entire life. It was the week that I finally went to a full on, backwards cap, polo shirt wearing MOTHERFUCKING FRAT PARTY. At first, I didn't think I could handle it. The red cups, the bellowing, the relentless beer chugging. I thought I was about to do a fucking scanners. A fucking scanners, man.

But I was no loose cannon. I pulled it back and pounded enough Keystone light to make even the the most weathered Chad, Brad, or Cody feel inadequate. And as I couldn't possibly do this level of funny justice, I took my camera along.

Class

I won't regale you lot with my classes (they are all pretty much awesome) except for one; creative writing.

The professor struts and bobs into the room. Shit he looks familiar. Then it hits me; he looks identical to 60 year old Jerry Garcia. Things were about to get ridiculous.

Rocks and Islands, man.

I'm deadly serious, we started off with a discussion of the usage of metaphor in various 70s rock songs.

I am a rock, I am an island he proclaimed, quoting a famous Simon and Garfunkel song.
"
Wouldn't it be awesome if they played the song dressed like a rock and an island?" mused the professor, laughing at his own statement for the best part of twenty seconds. No one else laughed.

My god I thought, this man has consumed more drugs in his life time then all of the children's T.V presenters of the 40 years put together. And then some more.

People say the darndest things.

There's nothing better than laughing at someone when they've just said something ridiculously moronic. Well actually, maybe midgets; they really tickle me pink. Being surrounded by freshmen, I have had to laugh internally on many occasions.

Here is a sample of some of the conversations that I have had over the last week:

girl, on seeing my guitar: Hey, so do play guitar?
me: No, It's actually just for show.
her: oh...

What I really should have said was No, I actually only use to to appear cool and thus to lure girls into my sex den. After I lure them to said sex den, I tend to use duct tape to subdue them and then hide them in a closet for a week. After a week, they tend to smell so I throw them out.

In a similar vein, this conversation transpired with a girl on full academic scholarship.

Her: Wow, you guys have British accents. Are you from Britain?
me: No, actually I'm from the Sudan. Salaam aleikum

But my favourite exchange actually came from two of my English buddies. I will let them remain nameless to hide their shame.

Guy: It's funny that so many people speak Mexican around here.
me: Speak Mexican? Don't you mean Spanish?
girl: WHAT? They speak Spanish in Mexico?!

At that point, my palm hit my forehead with enough force to split the atom.


But I too have not been immune from the tomfoolery bug, as shown by what I wrote on somebody's white board down my corridor:

Texas Does Camp.

I am currently holed up in my room, trying to avoid the melanoma machine that is the Texan sun. The dorms are pretty lively today as freshmen have started dumping off their stuff on route to Fish camp. Fish camp, although sounding like a a prison primer course, is actually an indoctrination camp aimed at filling (heh, another prison rape innuendo under my belt) freshmen with the Aggie spirit.

Anyway before becoming an afternoon recluse, I had a wonder around campus and came across the campiest statue I have ever seen:



What we have here is supposed to be a testament to the integrity of the engineering department, but in reality, we have a man in an open flowing top wrangling a large pole. The reasons for such wrangling are currently unknown.

School Spirit; Dead dogs and Cowboy Orgies.

I can understand that some schools have traditions, but here at good ol' Texas A&M these traditions often border on the weird, the absurd or the downright creepy. Without further adeau, here are the two oddest traditions that I have heard of as of yet:

The Midnight Yell.

Before the game with the University of Texas, the biggest game of the year, over 20,000 students congregate in the stadium and participate in a group yell. This on its own doesn't seem very strange at all. But this is fucking TEXAS, and more specifically this is TEXAS A&M- of course it gets weirder. Firstly, everyone is instructed to "hump it". You have to literally bend over and scream, a practice also taken up by the friendly population of the Texas State Penitentiary. To ramp up the absurdity even further, all the lights in the stadium are turned off and everyone makes out. Now to me, the gathering of coeds with the pretence of making out in the dark can only lead to three eventual outcomes:

1. Orgy.
2. hot cowboy man love.
3. random acts of violence (my personal favourite, which is probably a good indication of why I'm still single/ Not a gay cowboy.)

The Midnight Yell... probably.

Reveille, the Texas A&M Mascot.

Reveille is the pride and glory of Texas A&M. The full bred American Collie even holds the rank of a Five Star General in the cadet corps and must be referred to as Ma'am by all. It then comes as no surprise then that I got weird looks from my Residential Advisor when I posed the hypothetical question Would I get lynched if I rolled up and punted Reveille in the face? The answer was an unconvincing no by the way.

The idea of having a mascot is pretty cool, but as this is Texas A&M it gets way weirder. Up until only recently, a cadet would have to be stationed in the cememetry where all the the previous Reveilles are buried. He would then have to read out the football scores to the dead dogs. That is pet cemetery level insanity. What do they expect is going to happen, a zombie paw breaking the earth's surface in celebration? A muffled undead bark-moan?

Regardless, these absurd traditions really help to create a unique school spirit that even the most cynical redcoat can get behind.


EDIT: The Texas A&M merchandise is completely ridiculous and awesome. I don't want to ruin any suprises, but you guys back at home are going to get some pretty cool shit come christmas time.

First encounters - Lessons on rape avoidal and tumbleweeds.

Well as this is my first post on this here shiny new blog, I should probably attempt to answer why the hell am I writing a blog about the experiences of a simple Londoner in the Lone Star State? Well admittedly, I'm doing to keep my family and friends updated on my life over here. But also, I believe the quirks and hilarity (some of it intentional, most of it not) of this unique and charming land need to be shared by a complete outsider. Just watch some old King of the hill episodes, and you will see what I mean.

And So it Begins...

I have now been in Texas for exactly a day, and yet so much funny has already happened. It really started in the airport, where the legions of moustachioed Texans started to become irate over the ridiculously long passport control cue. over my shoulder I heard this gem from an elderly gentleman:

I can't remember anything as bad as that passport control. Actually maybe 'nam. And definitely when I got married, but that was over 30 years ago

Holy shit, genuine 'nam jokes before I even legally entered the county? Awesome.

On my full first day day, I had to go to the international student orientation. Already tired from jetlag and a mystery steam train waking me up at 4,5 and 7am (I don't know what the fuck that is about either), I had to deal with the orientation, which by all accounts was a real shitfest. My god, it was one of those long informing type lectures that had me wanting to kick babies in the face after only 30 minutes. The entire process went on for FIVE hours.
Admittely, some genuine hilarity did come from a lecture given by a little police officer whose name escapes me. It was something Mexicanish. Anyway, she lamented about the effectiveness of using "howdy!" as a deterrent to possible rapists. What the fuck? If I was (hypothetically) going to rape somebody, a quick hello would not force me to flee. In fact it would seem like a sort of open invitation. Sorry, I digress...

She then went on to say that you should note that certain features on individuals can be regarded as suspicious. She actually claimed that moustaches and beards made men potentially dangerous. I bet Burt Reynolds would have something to say about that.

Burt Reynolds, potential rapist.

The other thing that bares a quick mention is the fact that fellow Englishman Tom and I, have yet to find anything to eat except for ridiculous fast-food. Seriously, we walked for four hours today and the healthiest place we could find was a Subway.

Diabetic coma and anginas, here I come.



P.S. I saw a real-life-honest-to-fucking-god tumble weed today. Most triumphant.