Killing Batteries

Due to my grueling schedule of world class scuba diving and seven course meals here in Micronesia, I’ve only just learned that nominations for the annual Travvies blog awards opened last week! There’s only one more week to nominate me! Run, run!!!

For the second year in a row, the Travvies are being run by Upgrade: Travel Better, which is good news, because that means he can’t be nominated and boy do I hate competition.

If there’s any doubt about how to nominate me as much as possible, please read the rules. Otherwise, please feel free to stuff the ballot box for me in the following two categories:

Best Travel Blog
Best Single-Author Travel Blog

Now I lavishly whored myself out last year for the Travvies and I was handily defeated by some yahoo calling himself ‘The Cranky Flier’. My loathing for him would be all consuming if he didn’t turn out to be a really nice guy. God, I hate nice guys. So difficult to loathe…

So seeing as how Cranky is already dominating the nominations, and he’s still flush with pride from having been recently named as one of the ‘50 most powerful blogs in the universe’ or some such ego-trip, I think it’s time to take this guy down a few pegs. In the nicest possible way. Love you, Brett! You jackhole.

So please take 30 seconds out of your busy blog reading schedule to nominate me for both the Best Travel Blog and the Best Single-Author Travel Blog categories. In fact, I’ll make it easier for you and not run this post over 1000 words like usual, so you’ll have several spare minutes to nominate me and any other blogs you see fit while you’re at it. Except that Cranky guy.

Oh, he’s a little cranky, is he? Buddy, I’m full-on pissed off! Put that in your carryon bag and stow it!!

Sadly, this is only the beginning. After the nomination phase, there’s final voting phase, so I’m afraid I’ll be bugging you about this again soon. Think of it this way, the sooner you nominate me, the longer it’ll be before you have to go back and vote for me. See how easy I’m making it for you? One might even say I’m saint-like if one didn’t already know that I’m on the Vatican’s blacklist. Popes are so sensitive sometimes.

Greetings from the hot, sunny, duty free paradise that is Guam!

My five day “familiarization tour” is coming to a close. It’s been a lot better than I’d expected in virtually every way. Furthermore, I think I may have stumbled upon an earth-shaking revelation: I haven’t actually crunched the numbers yet, but I have a solid theory that a week in Guam is actually cheaper than a week in Hawaii, never mind the dry heave difference in plane ticket prices. At the end of the week, after you factor in accommodations, food, on-island transportation, activities and, of course, shopping, I think when you reach the bottom line the added expense of the plane ticket is equalized and Guam has the advantage. There’s still the little matter of it taking nearly two days to get here and back - two days that you’re not sitting on a beach with a primary-color cocktail in one hand and your sun reflector in the other - but that’s something to debate in another forum.

I’ve been treated very well on Guam. The natural friendliness and common courtesy of the residents has been vastly magnified by the treatment I’ve received at my “home,” the Sheraton Laguna Hotel.

The Guam Visitor’s Bureau is keen to boost tourist numbers from the continental US and my little but powerful magazine is a bull’s-eye in terms of hitting their prime demographic: moneyed, intrepid, frequent business travelers. The Sheraton concurred, agreeing to host me for an unheard of six straight nights. The Sheraton, just opened in April of 2007, looks new, smells of mahogany and natural oils and is operated by a staff with NASCAR pit crew teamwork and precision.

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Sweet Jesus, do I ever hate research. I mean I really hate it. I like to do research about as much as the idiots setting United States foreign policy right now, meaning not at all – or occasionally allowing fantastically unqualified, arrogant f*ckwits to do it for me.

It’s just so spirit sapping and boring. More importantly, time spent researching is time that I can’t spend writing hilarious, rumor-based criticism of various countries that rhyme with ‘Pitaly’ and ‘Pomania’.

But I do the research anyway. Why? Because I’m all-man, that’s why. I suck it up, eat two valium and do my duty for the sake of my art. However, this week pre-research has unexpectedly backfired on me, sparking a career-defining moral dilemma.

I’m leaving on Thursday for two weeks on the Micronesian islands of Guam and Saipan. Like the dedicated, vigilant professional that I am, I started researching a few days ago and inadvertently stumbled upon the web site Saipan Sucks, which is an apparently fact-based smear job on Saipan’s people, government and visitors. The vivid and epic pictures painted of greed, ineptitude, corruption, depravity and xenophobia haven’t done any favors for my pre-trip optimism.

I long for the days (last week) when, told of my upcoming trip, people would ask “So what’s Saipan like?” and I could honestly say “I have no f*cking clue”. Now I have to say, “Well, it appears to be a gorgeous, sandy, blue-watered backdrop to greed, ineptitude, corruption, depravity and xenophobia. Good times, eh?”

Fortunately for everyone, I am a clear-headed, open-minded, crack journalist who recognizes that just because someone wrote something on a web site, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily true (unless I wrote it). Still, it’s difficult to be totally impartial in the face of so much bad island juju, where I’ll be trapped like a plump and savory dog for six nights if any of it turns out to be true.

So, having learned this difficult lesson, I wonder if it isn’t in fact my duty to not research destinations before going? Just letting my personal experiences (and the local tourism bureau) guide my writing, without any chance of me being swayed by pesky political and social injustice? Wouldn’t I effectively be ruining my article if I researched anything? Should I never research again and just make stuff up and/or thinly paraphrase marketing copy in order to keep my objective journalistic integrity?

You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. But being damned if you don’t take less effort, so the choice seems clear.

[NOTE TO MY EDITORS: I’m totally kidding. I research stuff when the occasion truly calls for it. Like that ever happens…]

The follow sage advice was forwarded to me earlier this week:

“The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans. On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. It’s speaking English that kills you.”

Where did this idle piece of Dilbert-caliber cubicle wisdom originate? Why it was Sergio Pizziconi at the Italian Ministry of Public Education of course! Speculation about whether or not composing clever email forwards is an appropriate use of Italian Ministry time aside, Mr. Pizziconi has tweaked a subject that has long vexed me; that being why the hell are we English speakers so damn fat and sick all the time? It’s not just America and the UK… Just this week I read that Australia has had to start ordering extra-wide ambulances to accommodate their increasingly giant asses.

Oh I know this can all be satisfactorily explained away with subjects like not enough exercise, crappy diets and ludicrous over-use of medication, but most other developed countries in the world have similar problems and they’re all living to be 110, so why not us?

Examples:

• The average Italian or Spaniard won’t walk more than 200 meters in one go (mostly because they’re all wearing shoes that used to be employed as torture gear in feudal China).
• Considering their cholesterol-infused diets, Eastern Europeans should be dropping dead by the thousands.
• And, sweet Buddha, the smoking going on in most places should be snuffing out whole cities (I’m quite certain that 18 months in Romania took about 10 years off the longevity of my lungs).

So what’s really going on here? Why are English speakers so delicate while the rest of the world is so resilient?

And don’t tell me it has anything to do with the wrath of God. That’s a given.

If so, would you care to share the tale?

I’ve been assigned the dubious task of writing an article about what to do if you’re arrested abroad (my editor seemed to think that I’d know a little something about this) and I’d like a few anecdotes to include in the piece.

This is for an American audience, so I can only take submissions from Americans.

I’d like to hear where you were, what happened, how it was resolved and, most importantly, what resources you used to get to that resolution.

Events that occurred in Mexico especially welcome, since that’s (by far) the place where Americans are most often arrested. Also desirable are any stories set in Third World countries and places where there is no US Embassy.

I’m also looking for a few anecdotes about being detained and intimidated into a bribe situation, which actually is something I could write about at great length from personal experience, but I’d like to hear others’ stories too.

I’m trying to crank this out in the next few days. If you’d like to help, please email me at the address below. Anonymity, if you so wish, is guaranteed. Thanks!

For those of you that weren’t waiting in line at midnight, Lonely Planet’s latest edition of Tuscany & Umbria hit the shelves recently and through the magic of sub-standard mail delivery I just got my hands on my free author copies a few days ago.

That’s right, author copies. Why? Because I helped write that bitch, that’s why. Pages 213 through 308 to be exact.

As I’ve confessed here repeatedly, my being thrust into the brass ring of guidebook writing jobs was the direct result of an untimely bacterial lung infection (not mine) and using up about a decade of banked karma by conveniently being in Italy and doing nothing particularly important at the time. Seeing as how I was a sub and the regular (infected) author’s text was in such great shape, I hesitated to alter too much, but vast quantities of coffee during that panicky write-up interval and my uncontainable goofball humor repeatedly got the best of me.

Some of my more notable zings that somehow made it through editing include:

• Used the phrase “stupid Florence” (p237, 2nd column, last paragraph)
• Compared the rough port city of Livorno to a grade school girl bully (p213)
• Used the phrase “screw-the-Pope” (p295, 2nd column, 2nd paragraph)
• Slipped in a sarcasm-rich box text about Saint Catherine of Siena, entitled “Mom! Catherine’s Consecrating Her Virginity to Jesus Again!!” (p245) that eventually inspired the post “Good for nothing kid or future saint?”

Also, I must say that I hit the Eating sections hard. I heroically managed to dine in nearly 70 Tuscan restaurants during my 31 days on the road for this guidebook. There were times that I reeked so much of truffle oil that dogs came running out of the hills and gave chase as I drove by. I spent over 150 euros on gelato alone. I drank enough wine to earn a lifetime membership in the Pope Paul III Wine Appreciation Club.

I’ve had precious little free time to do more than skim my chapters and admire the “smoochy” picture of me in the front “On The Road” color section, but I know for a fact that my co-authors are all geniuses, so their sections are probably at least as good, if not better than mine – minus copious snarky comments about popes and Florence.

There’s already been a flood of positive reviews about the book online. Here are a few quotes:

“This guidebook changed my life. I’ve arranged to be legally wed to it.” – Leif Pettersen, Amazon.com

“I don’t know what’s better, this guidebook or porn.” – User “love_of_your_leif”, Travelers That Love Porn Dot Com

“This guidebook is what you would get if you took DNA from Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Michelle Hunziker, put it all in an incubator with 452 blank pages for nine months, then fed it with Diablo Cody’s breast milk.” – Genetics Society of America Book Review

In closing, having taken all factors under careful, impartial consideration, I declare that this is the greatest guidebook in the history of the universe. Twelve out of five stars, plus the KB Seal of Pure Genius Awesomeness™. Get it now before the first printing sells out and you can only get copies on eBay for $2,000, sold by some company calling itself Leiftime Book Brokers.