floorpie

It occurs to me that I spent an inordinate amount of time writing about bathrooms. I’m not sure if that proves that people can write about anything, or that I should quit blogging all together.

I’m in China, and I’m sick, and that sucks. I’m not desperately ill, but I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not but they speak Chinese over here. They also write, perhaps coincidentally, in Chinese. I’m not so hot with either.

So, assuming I do get the energy to drag myself to a 7-11, I’m going to have difficulty figuring out what box is cold medicine and what box is a home pregnancy test (an adventure either way!).

Luckily, being a past Boy Scout, I came prepared and brought cold medicine with me just in case. Here’s hoping it outlasts my cold.

I think I can sum up the difference between China and the United States in one word. That word is:

bathroom

Now look, both countries have their (pardon the pun) crap-ass toilet set-ups. The US has their ripe porta-potties, and China has their indescribable squat toilets; but when you want to look at the best of both worlds, where else better to start than the gateway to the respective countries, the airports?

LAX is arguably the busiest airport in the West, as is Check Lap Kok of Hong Kong in the East. The bathrooms in these airports see millions of bums a year. For many, it is the first or last impression of the country in which they reside…and I gotta tell you, if I was just leaving my first trip to the US to go back home to Hong Kong, I would be saying Good Riddance to the Melting Pot.

Let me put it more plainly: The men’s bathroom in the international terminal of LAX is the worst bathroom I have ever seen outside of:

1. the aforementioned porta-potty
2. any of the hundreds of dug for myself whilst in the woods, or
3. “Mr. Poopy”, the portable toilet that we had when some college friends and I went on a mountain biking/white-water rafting trip. The guides carried the thing around with us for the whole week, and it serviced something like 10 people (oh, imagine a small box with a toilet seat on it. Congratulations, you’ve just imagined a Mr. Poopy!).

Mr. Poopy, by the way, was not without it’s charms, as it was often set up in some bucolic Utah meadow, and it did have a friendly name.

Men’s bathroom in the Tom Bradley International Terminal of LAX, however? Completely without charm. The 4 urinals are selective clogged with gum, paper towels, and/or socks(?) a t-shirt(?) I have no idea. The urinals are out. There are 3 stalls:

Stall 1 is relatively clean…but has no door.
Stall 2 is considerably less clean with toilet paper piled up around the back of the toilet in what appears to be an attempt to soak up a slow leak. The door of stall 2 has no lock, but doesn’t need one as the door doesn’t actually close, and is covered with some sort of biological matter that I don’t care to dwell on the memory of.
Stall 3 is the handicap stall. This means that Stall 3 has the most room in which to dump all of your trash in. There is the requisite toilet paper everywhere, but also some fast food containers (people are eating in here?!), empty or partially so drink bottles, random scraps of paper, more clothes…it’s disgusting.

Now cover everything that you’ve just seen in graffiti, and you’ve done it. Welcome to the United States! I walked into this place before my flight to Hong Kong, and literally walked out 45 seconds later laughing my ass off. I had made the decision that I would instead hold my business…my serious business…for 15 to 16 hours and wait until I was in Asia. And when I did get to Asia, what a wonderful contrast. This bathroom had no graffiti. All of it’s doors were functioning, and in fact closed with a satisfying and precise click. The floor was so clean that I would have eaten fast food off of it. I wanted to stay forever. I want to be there now, in fact, just to hang out. That pretty much does it for America. Good game, but we’re done.

So last night I had chills for 4 or 5 hours and kept coughing. I had felt fine all day until about 3. This morning, no more chills, but I’m either mildly congested or just about to be much more so. Plus, there’s the sweating for no obvious reason.

Obviously, I must be going to be China.

I’ve been to China, or traveled in general, so much now that I don’t stress out about packing. I leave tonight and have yet to do anything, but that’s OK. I’m just hoping that I don’t have a fever and get quarantined!

So I’m pretty much addicted to Facebook now. Checking it every day, writing messages, making wall posts, playing poker…it goes on and on. It’s kind of sad, really. The real problem is that I don’t have that many (virtual) friends, and it occurs to me that the reason for that is that all of my real friends are my age. That being the age where you are married, and have kids, and don’t have time for childish pursuits such as Facebook.

Pardon me while I weep for a second.

So yeah, Facebook is the new black.

Speaking of being a dork, I’m going to China again next week. That’s not the dorky part. The dorky part is that, in the parts of China that I go to there is nothing to do other than (at least until my Chinese get better):

.: melt in the humidity
.: work out alone in the hotel gym
.: walk around the town and get stared at
.: watch TV

The problem with the last one is that there are exactly 2 TV stations broadcasting in English. One is some weird HBO channel that is the real HBO, but plays movies that even the US HBO won’t play at 2PM on a Wednesday. Movies where giant snakes attack a highschool basketball team, or where the dialog is so awkward and stilted that you end up yelling at the screen to just shuttup shuttup SHUTTUP! The other is the BBC world news, which isn’t so bad except that: it replays every couple of hours, and it’s only BBC World News for a few hours a day, and then it reverts back to…well I don’t know what it reverts back to, it’s all Chinese to me. AND, the hours that it’s on are a moving target; I cna never seem to find it at the same time on the same day.

SO, because I travel relatively often, I’m trying out a Slingbox (it’s on loan from my friend). So far, I’m totally enamored. TV on my laptop, anywhere? Awesome.

And here’s the dorky bit: The TV in my living room is on, playing the DVR’d Mythbusters that I wanted to watch, and I’m in my bedroom, typing this on one of my two laptops, watching the same program on Slingbox.

sigh

And there’s some lag between the DVR, and what I see on my laptop, as the signal whizzes out of my network connection and then back in again. So I can hear the TV in the living room a few seconds off the laptop right in front of me, creating this cacophony of dorkiness in my apartment.

Oh, and it’s a gorgeous day outside, too.

Now, to get Netflix running at the same time…

So I’m off to China…again. I won’t be leaving until week after next, but this makes my…well, to be honest, I’m not sure how many times I’ve been to China.

It’s not that many compared to other business travelers. I don’t think I’m even in double digits, yet; but, any time you spend more than 10 hours in a plane to go to a place that you’re not going for pleasure it’s a kind of a big deal. I don’t really mind going, I even enjoy it, but I start to get really bored when I stay more than a week or so. The area I go to is not a tourist section, and my Chinese isn’t good enough for me to really strike out into the countryside alone…so I spend a lot of time in the hotel. A LOT of time. Partially, this is because of the language problem, and partially because the times I typically go the outside temperature hovers around, roughly, 200 degrees with 5000% humidity.

This time, though, the weather should be pretty mild, and I’ll only be able to stay a week because Chinese New Year is right around the corner and if I don’t leave before then there will be no one left in the city to take me to the airport.

The Stache: Day 6

The mustache is coming along. I’ve never really grown any facial hair because, as a rule, I don’t dig it. I did shave before I went to CES for some made-up reason about needing to represent my company or something, but as you can see from the last picture (taken 10 minutes ago) I’m back to my pre-CES stage (the 5th pic).

When I was laid-off, I flirted with the idea of growing a beard. “Why the hell not?” I thought. “I don’t have anything better to do.” But there’s something even more depressing about growing a beard whilst already depressed, so I quit after 4 or 5 days.

So why am I growing one now? Well, you’ll just have to keep checking back and find out.

OK so CES was last week which means that this year I saw a 150″ plasma TV instead of the mere 130″ one I saw last year. I’m a product designer. I work in the consumer electronics field. I’ve seen everything before you have. Therefore, I’m jaded. It was still good to go, though, if only for the residuals of CES. In this case, said residuals were:

.: losing a good chunk of money at the blackjack table. This sounds like sarcasm, but it’s actually a good thing. Any time I get to play cards is a good thing. Does that sound like I have a problem?
.: The Peppermill
.: The Rio buffet. Unfortunately, the Rio seafood buffet was closed for remodeling, but that didn’t stop me and my friend from destroying the dreams of many many crabs at the normal one.
.: Roxie

But who is Roxie you ask? Roxie, friends, is a Las Vegas hooker.

One thing to note: I have never, nor do I plan to, taken advantage of the services of a lady of the night. Oddly, though, I have had an astounding number of opportunities to. Be it the random girl looking for money for blow in Santa Cruz, the wave upon wave of “karaoke” girls in China, the probably not legal but tolerated working girls in Madrid, or the now Roxie…I’ve had plenty of opportunity, I’ve just always liked to think I should be interesting and attractive enough to not have to pay for it.

I’ll leave out the comment about how you pay for it, one way or another, with every girl you’re with. Oops, I commented after all.

Anyway, Roxie (her real name is Roxanne, see. Really! I asked her! It must be true!) and I met at the Hard Rock where my shirt was slowly being stripped off my back by a series of 4-card 21’s and busts. I had noticed her earlier at the bar, and then again in a group of guys chatting her up, and then now at a slot machine 5 feet from me. I remember thinking when I saw her surrounded by guys, “Poor girl, she’s like one of 10 girl in this place and she’s surrounded by CES dorks.” An aside, since when does the Hard Rock only have 10 girls in it? It was very strange.

At any rate, Roxie is a hot little Asian girl, which, along with blonds, brunettes, and redheads, is my favorite type of girl. My friends and I are trying to decide where next to go (because this place is dead anyway), so I take that opportunity to walk up to Roxie and start talking. I’m charming, I’m witty, I’m hilarious. It’s amazing! I’ve always been reasonably good at talking to girls, but I’m doing really really well. I gain confidence. Self-respect. I am a minor god amongst mere mean. I’m doing so well that a few of my friends wander over to ride my coat-tails. “Dave’s talking to a hot girl,” they think to themselves, “Let’s get over there!”

It’s pretty clear by this point that I’m the shit. There’s no doubt that I will clearly be “hooking up” tonight as the kids say. At the height of my bravado, I make another pithy, genius observation and point out how it must have sucked to be one of ten girls in the whole place that night. How she must be constantly hit on by dorks like me (charming self-deprecation). She says, “Yeah, every girl you meet tonight will be working.” Then fixing me with a meaningful look, “Yup. Every. Girl. Will be working.”

OOOOoooooohhhhhh.

I choose to believe I’m still charming…even if it IS her job to think so. I’m savvy. I go with the flow. We talk some more, I get her phone number (what?!), she hangs out with my friends for a while, we leave her and go to the next place. Then, the curiosity strikes, and the text messaging starts. Surely I can get her to just hang out for the hell of it, right? Wrong. Back and forth from the hours of midnight to 3:30, she asks me if I want a “date”. I say well of course I do but I’d rather you just meet up at The Peppermill.
It will cost you.
Of course, what kind of damage are we talking about?
$500/hr
I just dropped your fee at the blackjack table. Come hang out instead.
Use your credit card. Go to the ATM 🙂
You’re worth it, but I have rent to make in LA. Let’s get something to eat
No, I need cash.
Too bad, maybe next time.

And that is how I have a working girl’s phone number and know that she goes for $500/hour. FIVE HUNDRED AN HOUR! If I’m paying that much, there better be something cool I don’t even know about, yet.

So what have I been doing, lately. I’ve been in mourning, mostly. Not for a loss of life, thankfully, just the loss of my soul…which in retrospect, I think I dropped a long time ago. It’s about a girl, of course. THE girl, really, or at least it feels that way. Life isn’t fair, bla, blah, blah.

In the interim, I’ve done some stuff. I’ve gone to art exhibits, I’ve been the saddest person at parties, I’ve gotten out of bed to head back out into Hollywood and end up drunk and on a couch and able to forget a little bit, I’ve had pizza at 3AM, I’ve gone to the Viper Room to honor the Phoenix and see the greatest rock band on Earth…and I’ve worked.

Jebus have I worked.

Next week is CES in Vegas; a mecca for the tech dorks among us, and for a product designer like me, the place you go to show off your wares. It’s like a comic book convention, just more well-funded and international. The thing is, it’s in January. All of your real stuff already came out in time for Christmas, and the new stuff you’re working on isn’t ready, yet. But you can’t show up to the party empty-handed, right? That would be just rude. So you make prototypes. You use smoke, and also mirrors, and you create the illusion of well-made finished items that impress and amaze your friends. And to do that, to impress and amaze your friends, takes a lot of work, and a lot of skill, and a lot of time. A lot of time. 18 hour days. Working on the weekends. Working on the holidays.

But it’s over now and I’m going to Vegas Monday/Tuesday…and I’m going to enjoy it if I have to force myself to. I won’t be sleeping.

Oh, and I’m growing a mustache for an unrelated reason. It’s deliciously terrible.

Last night I went to VAMP the Lounge to see a friend of mine perform in a burlesque show. For whatever reason, I’d put it off for something like 8 months, and it was time to pay the piper.

VAMP is on the Queen Mary. Yes, that Queen Mary which I haven’t been to since I went on a school tour there something like 20 years ago. All I remember from that trip is that you go down to the engine room and see one of the huge propellers sitting in the water, unmoving…it was a creepy feeling looking down into the still water and knowing that that propeller had been sitting like that for a long time, and would continue to do so for a long time after. And that’s the Queen Mary.

Fast forward 20 years and it’s kind of surreal. There’s a club in here? Wait, and a hotel? But on a boat that doesn’t move.

I was a little early so my drafted friend and I went into the bar to wait. I have never scene a more eclectic bar crowd in my life. There were the 30-somethings out for a night on the town. There were hipsters wearing fedoras and suspenders looking like they were on their way to a swing dance class. There were the 40-something married couples dancing poorly. And there was a mullet. And all of this was lorded over by THE raddest lounge singer: an overweight Italian(?) guy in tight black pants, and a fully sequined red shirt. He sang Frank, he sang Elvis, he sang mother f’ing Whitney Houston! You know the song.

At this point I wasn’t sure whether I loved it or hated it, but the red sequins were pushing me firmly towards love.

The show started, my friend was amazing, her friends were amazing, hell even the waitresses were amazing. Who knew burlesque could be so much fun? They danced to the typical loungey strong women songs, they did the nude shadows behind the curtain stuff, they went out into the titillated crowd, they danced their (small, tight) asses off. It was rad. It was so incongruous with it’s surroundings. Why are we on the Queen Mary; but on second thought who the hell cares?

You should go. You should take your friends. You should especially take your uptight friends and give them a little thrill.

And if you happen to know one of the dancers, that’s a plus, too.

This is how you know that one of your best friends, an attractive girl (space space) friend of yours whom you’ve known for over 10 years is, and always shall be, your good friend. She says the following sentence to you while on the phone, driving to the movies:

“I was talking to my gay friends last night. I’ve never done this, but has one of your girlfriends ever licked your taint? Do you know what a taint is?”

And I’ll tell you, my friends, I have a lot to say on the subject.