So I’ve been kind addicted to YouTube lately — last night I was searching for some old wrestling videos, plugging in some names and seeing what comes up … and came across this internet classic. This may be the first time I’ve laughed out loud at a video since, well, you-know-when …

This is an excerpt from an unscripted interview with 80’s wrestling icon The Iron Sheik, speaking about the good old days of Wrestlemania, selling out stadiums, etc. All seems to be on the up-and-up … until the first time he mentions the name “Brian Blair” — that’s when things take a turn towards gonzo-ville. Not sure if a synapse misfires in the Sheik’s brain or what, but he starts to stare straight at the camera and reverts back to WWF interview style, with notable exceptions:

1. he no longer has WWF’s censors and interview coaches at his disposal (picture cameraman with eyes rolling “no Sheik, you can’t say that on TV. Take 26!”);
2. he genuinely HATES Mr. Blair, LOL …. ;
3. he is supremely confused, especially in matters of his own sexuality (see below).

I don’t dispute the Sheik’s characterization of Mr. Blair (the Killer Bees were a bit YMCA), isn’t it strange that he intersperses “gay” and “fag” with threats of himself performing straight-up, “old country way,” prison-style sodomy? Is this not the pot calling the kettle black? Especially considering he cemented his Persian gimmick back in the day with pointy-tipped boots? Not to mention the most homoerotic finishing move ever, the camel clutch ???

Mr. Blair is currently resides in Florida nursing a career in local politics. His page on the county website lists his office phone. Ummm … not that I condone crank-calling, but … I think I have found just the person to deliver such a call if it were to happen (BTW check out this guy’s delivery of the last line before he takes a swig from his beverage - classic).

This vid has two parallels with the Warrior in terms of greatness, IMHO:

1. It delivers funny catchphrases delivered in rapid succession (”break your back” “worse
   than Michael Jordan, er, Michael Jackson” “God, Jesus and Mr. McMahon”
   etc.)
2. It spawns imitators and propagators, who claim these lines as their own and seed the internet with them (see beer-swigger above, the Sheik’s equivalent of this little warrior)

There’s another excerpt from this interview, arguably funnier than this one, where the Sheik tells the story of booting the “old douchebag” Fabulous Moolah from his car after she took issue with his use of “the medicine”. At the end of the clip, the interviewer calls out the Sheik for another transgression — spreading rumors about Wendi Richter being a lesbian when she wouldn’t give it up to him. Look at the Sheik’s expression when he gets called out for this.

Am I not always playing catchup on this thing? Much as I’d like to construct little stylized short stories out of all the little mundane occurrences in my life, there’s just not enough time in the day to do so, between being a full-time CIA operative, washing and detailing the purple van, and catching up on all the God Warrior videos … add to that eating, swimming, walking, taking pictures, vegging out, dicking around on MySpace … as well as, you know, having the experiences from which stories arise in the first place … well, you get the idea.

So. It’s time for a wrap-up post, of all the things that, in a perfect world, would get their own posts. But alas … here goes.

June 29 — Stacey has moved back to Arizona. We packed up the belongings out of her house and into the truck, and she headed to Tucson. The reasons are not really for me to publicize, but let’s just say she’s gone a better place and this makes me happy. Though for my own selfish reasons I wish she was still here … if I can say that I can count my close friends that live in the area on one hand (possibly two), then I just lost a toe — I mean a finger (sorry things were getting weepy, had to toss in the Lebowski ref).

I did, however, get a parting gift — a homemade wine rack, which is now occupied by three uncorked bottles: a pinot, a chardonnay, and, uhhhhh … the other white … (runs to kitchen … back) a sauvignon blanc. Yes, a real wine connoisseur I am (Trader Joe’s, cough) but all I know is that I’m not drinkin’ any fuckin’ merlot!! (Sideways — aren’t we full of movie refs tonight). No serious. The reds are underrepresented, so uh, when you come out to DC … wink, nudge :-) … bring some love.

July 3 — for some odd reason I drove my car west on I-66 for about two hours, far enough to escape the clutches of DC, and plopped down in a hotel room in Front Royal in the Shenandoah Mtns. None of this was really planned, I just did it. Improvised rough plans were to relax, swim in the hotel pool, relax, maybe use the free wi-fi to post to blog (never happened), go walking in sleepy downtown, relax some more, get to bed early and hit the Shenandoahs at the crack of dawn for a killer sunrise. As the hours ticked away during the night, I realized the sunrise wasn’t in the cards (5AM is particularly difficult to nail, can’t stay up that late - or get up that early) so, for some odd reason I left the hotel and drove into the Shenandoahs on Skyline Drive in the middle of the night. So — couldn’t see shit (surprise!), like the Alps and the Grand Canyon before it, I experienced the Shenandoah Valley for the first time in complete darkness, and like those times, it was more rewarding than might have been expected. Staring out over the valley from an outlook and seeing the twinkling lights of the village below. This was very nice, not a sunrise, but an experience nonetheless. Drove the two hours back to DC.

July 4 — I thought I’d be able to see the fireworks on the from my balcony as it faces the National Mall. Pulled out my big comfy chair and waited, when the first ones exploded, it was clear that the y weren’t going to clear the height of the apartment building which obstructed their view. So … walked out of the building and down to the marina for a clearer view. Gorgeous.

July 8 — Ness scored some amazing tickets to the Nationals/Padres game at RFK. "Diamond club box seats", right behind home plate, parking right in front of the stadium, the ushers taking your orders like waiters, and a killer brunch buffet served in a reserved area before the game. Classy stuff. Worth every penny.

July 10 — Miriam swung through town on a recent trip. Showed her some the inner workings of one shady federal institution where I work, followed by a nice dinner at outdoor tables at Belga. Drank copious quantities of Hoegaarden, love it. So did not steal the glass however. And I so gotta get that glass.

July 14 — Shot up to Jersey for the final viewing of the house I grew up in (in which I grew up? Bork!), before it falls into the hands of some dorksided person forever. Took lots of pictures of the obsessive variety. So much work has been done, it really looks so different. Looks great in fact, ready to sell. I’ll be so happy when this is over, so my parents can "live light" in Delaware. Living light is a great place to be. And Delaware is just strange. Wawa anyone?

A couple Sundays back, my brother Rob scored some tickets to see Calexico play in Philadelphia at a club called the Trocadero. Psyched to go to Philly for a show (hadn’t been in ages) I called up Ness and we headed up to PA, about a three hour drive. It was a relatively uneventful trip, despite a rainstorm earlier in the day, the weather was relatively clear, we were both in cheerful moods as we played little car games, swinging through Delaware to get Rob, we arrived in Philly. Everything was good.

The Troc is a beautiful converted theater, a great place to see a show. It brought back memories to all of us of our own favorite converted theaters in different cities: to Rob, it was the Beacon Theater in NYC, to Ness, a place in San Diego (can’t remember the name). To me, it was a dead ringer for the Rialto in Tucson. This parallel grew stronger in my head the longer Calexico played their Sonoran rhythms and horns paired with a southwestern-motif video in the back.

They so transported me, I was convinced that when I walked out the club, I wouldn’t be on Arch St. in Philly’s Chinatown, but on Congress St. in Tucson, breathing in the desert night air while feeling the heat rise up from the pavement. Maybe stop in at the Hotel Congress afterwards, or the Grill for a bite, or head down 4th Ave for a spell. Arid, dusty streets. Chilled-out, laid back — Tucson at night.

However, despite clicking my heels together several times, it was still steamy Filthy Phil when we walked out of the club. Don’t get me wrong, I dig Philly and wanna get to know it better. But it’s a jarring contrast, when I just wanted a desert fix.

On the east coast, lightning dissipates mainly inside the clouds , causing a flash of light in the sky more often than an actual bolt to the ground. I was explaining this to Ness after the show as we got on I-95, as the sky starting flashing up ahead. Thunder followed. The first drops fell right around the Delaware line so I flipped the wipers to low. As we passed through Wilmington the rain got harder. I flipped up to medium.

Within five minutes, the wipers screamed in agony, as angry water pissed down on the interstate, washing away Calexico and all the cozy desert goodwill that they brought … not to mention the lines in the road, as the whole thing became like driving through an extended car wash at 60 MPH, water spraying on the windshield from the sky, from the ground, and from the tires of rigs helmed by truckers from the land that CDL forgot.

Eyes bulging out like Don Knotts on meth, and with genuine fear of hydroplaning, I pulled off onto an exit, my east coast upbringing reminding me that storms rarely rage that hard for too long. Inevitably, the storm would subside, losing at least some of its energy. Except that it didn’t fucking happen and I spent the next two hours shitting myself, retinas suctioned to the windshield.

I got back to DC at 2:30 to find the garage in the high-rise basement — flooded. Half the streets — flooded. Went to bed and called in sick the next morning. The next four days it just kept raining, and not gently. The Post called it an "atmospheric traffic jam", and what bitter irony that like many infamous traffic jams, it set up camp directly above I-95.

While writing this post, I’m plugging words into Technorati: "DC" "rainstorm" "2006" — trying to gauge some other folks’ experiences of the storm. I just came across
this comment to a blog article in Huffington Post:

"I prefer to think of it as God’s ‘Big Flush’ … and I hope He doesn’t jiggle the handle."

After leaving my parents place in Delaware around midnight a few weekends back, I drop into the local Wawa convenience store for a drink and a bite before hitting the road. It is there that I bear witness to the strangest cast of characters. Don’t think I’ve seen so many characters in such rapid succession since walking the Reeperbahn in Hamburg.

Any convenience store that shares a name with a guitar pedal used to make drug-induced music should expect its share of neighborhood kids under the influence. And so into the store they come, tripping through the front door then dispersing, flying around the aisles like fruit flies in the vicinity of a trash bag. One flush-faced kid, clearly stoned out of his gourd, and fresh from a Big Lebowski viewing, starts marking up a Delaware lottery ticket with one of those little pencils. His friend, crading a carton of cookie dough ice cream under his arm, blurts out "mark it 8, dude" (see Lebowski bowling alley scene). His other buddy, doing his best Walter Sobchak, leans over and says "mark it ZERO. Dude.", then, holding up the only firearm at his disposal (a 100 Grand bar) and said with a straight face "Smokey …. you’re entering a world of pain." That’s when all the fruit flies lost it, as did I.

Reeling inside of a second-hand high, I slide my debit card through the reader. That’s when I’m jolted back into reality by the militaristic bark from the checkout lady behind the counter:

"THAT"S NOT GONNA WORK HON!!!"

Huh… what? .. uhh…no yogurt? I look up at the woman with a deer-in-headlights expression.

"Hon, that’s not gonna work. You need to wait till I’m done scanning and have it all totalled up." She finishes up, then points and orders. "OK do it now."

Meanwhile the stoners are making paper airplanes out of the lottery tickets and throwing them at each other. "OK," she says, "go ahead and enter your PIN." Bewildered by her Buzzcut-ness, I start to stammer out, inexplicably, my PIN number. She says, "No, hon, you keep that to yourself. Just type it into the reader."

The man behind me, looking like an Aussie bushwhacker, a geographical oddity holding a glazed doughnut and a bottle of anything, yelps at the cashier, "well, you may not want it miss–" then turns to me "–but you can give me your digits anytime you want. I’m all ears." He then lets out a cackle that sounds like hyenas mating. One of the kids says, "I think he wants your number dude." So I turn to him, batting my eyes, and say "Are you propositioning me?" He says "Your PIN digits, bud. Do I look like some kinda butt-pirate to you?" Well, no, I’m thinking, you look like a bushwhacker who needs his army-navy store account revoked. But anyway, I mutter "555-1212" and walk out of the store, shaking my head.

The fruit flies follow me out the door. As I get into the parking lot, there’s a minivan parked with the sliding door opened to reveal two young girls, up way past their bedtime, sitting in the car clapping their hands together and chanting "Bo-bo–skee-wotten-totten … ah-ah–ah-ah … boom-boom-boom … "

Boboskeewottentotten? They still do that? I remember the girls on the school bus doing that in the 80’s but I guess it’s still kicking. They look at me and say "What’s your name?". "Rick" I said. Receiving the cue word, their hands go to work. "Rick-rick-bo-bick … banana-fana-fo-fick .. . me-my-mo-mick … Ri–ick." I smiled.

The fruit fly behind me peers into the van (he heard the word "banana" perhaps) and points his candy bar (now a Snickers) at the girls. "Stop clapping" he says, waving the candy bar. "You’re entering a world of pain."

"What-EVER?!" one of the girls replies. "Why’s your face so red?" said the other girl. His two buddies look at him and start laughing and the girls start up again "Red-face … bo-bace.. banana-fana-fo-face … red-face ….. "

"OK I’ll see you later" I say (nobody was listening), I jump in the car and get the hell out of dodge. Wawa …. what the fuck?

As I head down I-95 I start slapping the wheel uncontrollably and making little-girl rhymes out of every town named on an exit sign. I wake up the next morning and I can’t move my hands.