PERU - MAY, 2010 - PT. 1

I hoped I'd gotten everything. I had a checklist of things to take, but I didn't really use it. Instead, it sat there on my desktop with a hundred other things that I never remember to look at until it's too late.

Ready or not, I was on my way to the airport at 6 am on May 8. I met Casey, Clint, Nathan and Richard in front of the Frontier Airlines desk where we checked in and made our way upstairs. We had a layover in Denver on our way to NYC, and while I wasn't especially hungry, I knew we were in for a long day so I stocked up on some bagels for the ride. Soon after we boarded the first plane, I was asleep and didn't wake up until we were landing. Went by quick enough, and I hoped that most of our plane rides would be like that.

We had just enough time in Denver to get burritos and back on the plane. Richard and Clint were seated a little ways ahead and behind us, so Nathan, Casey and I partied on our row for a couple of hours. We acted out with Pepsi and I tried to keep the party going by ordering chips and salsa from the flight attendant. But you know what? Fuck Frontier Airlines. Not only were the chips and salsa $3, but the salsa had milk in it. Nonfat dry milk. That's not common. And now I was stuck with it. That kind of killed the mood and we all took naps the rest of the way to New York.

Once we landed in NYC, we had some decisions to make. We needed to meet up with Brook and Adam (who had flown in earlier), we needed to eat and we needed to get from La Guardia to JFK. All of this had to be done in five hours. Anywhere else in the world, we probably would have been okay, but with traffic and a million other factors, we weren't sure if we had the time to spend figuring out busses, subways and cabs. So we rented a mini van and drove straight into Brooklyn to eat at Vinnie's, which is some of the best pizza I've ever eaten. We caught up with Dan, Bill, Kristin, Kyle and a few other friends but were soon headed to JFK for our international adventure to begin.

JFK to Lima was supposed to be a seven hour flight with a quick one hour layover in Ecuador. Unfortunately, that didn't quite happen. We were scheduled to leave at 11:55 pm, but an announcement came on saying the flight would be delayed for an hour. None of us were really concerned, but Casey went up to check what that meant for our connection. He was assured that since we were using the same plane for the last leg, we'd be fine. He came back, filled us in and we waited another hour to board.

Once we were on the plane (the nicest plane I've ever been on), at close to 1 in the morning, I sat down and immediately fell asleep. I woke up for about 20 minutes in the middle of the flight to listen to the two women next to me talking loudly in Spanish, then went back to sleep. I woke up as we were landing, got off the plane and started walking towards the boarding area.

About halfway through the exit terminal, we were met by a woman that worked for LAN airlines. She had a printout with her that had all of our names on it, as well as another group on their way to Peru. She informed us that we had missed our connection flight and we wouldn't be able to get another one until 5 pm. And then we would have another layover, eventually getting to Lima sometime after 11 that night.

Not thrilled at the prospect of having to hang out in the airport for 8 hours, we stood around thinking about what we were going to do. Then the woman told us to get in the customs line and then pick up our bags from baggage claim. She stayed with us most of the way through, occasionally checking in with her superiors via walkie-talkie. After we had our bags, she had us follow her to the front of the airport where she informed us that she had a car waiting to take us to a hotel.

This is where it got a little sketchy, only because she told us we had to take everything with us, while the other group that was delayed was allowed to check their bags for the next flight. Standing out front of an airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador didn't seem like it was dangerous or anything, it just didn't quite sit right.

This is the reason it didn't sit right: We found roundtrip tickets from New York to Lima, Peru for $250. Not sure if it was a glitch in their system or something, but that's the price we paid. We had a sneaking suspicion that since we found that deal, LAN was going to try and jerk us around and have us keep missing flights until we coughed up a few hundred more dollars. We felt like this was the beginning of that, so we were a little apprehensive about leaving the airport.

Nevertheless, we got in the van anyway. We rode through the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador and it looked like every movie you've ever seen about the slums of a South American city. As we got deeper and deeper into the heart of it, the worse it got. Then we pulled up in front of the hotel. The building looked nicer than anything we'd seen so far in the country and there were heavily armed guards at several points surrounding it.

As we walked into the lobby, all of our fears and apprehension went away immediately. It was one of the nicest hotels I've ever been in and the two women at the front desk had another paper with all of our names on it and everything that needed to happen between then and when we needed to be back at the airport.

The first thing we found out? We were all getting our own room. Or at least, they tried to give us all our own room. Everyone paired up and shared one, but I was the odd man out and ended up with a room all to myself for the next six hours. They also gave us two meal vouchers; one for breakfast and one for lunch. She gave us directions and keys to our room and told us where we could find the in-house restaurants. We needed to be back in the lobby ready to go by 3 pm in order to be back at the airport in time.

Everyone raced up to their rooms, showered and changed an met back up to go to breakfast. We had half an hour before the buffet ended and we wanted to make sure we used those meal vouchers. As we walked through the door, the entire restaurant stopped and stared.

It was Mother's Day and the place was packed. Families all around, no table had fewer than six people at it and they were all dressed to the nines in their Sunday best. We were in jeans, t-shirts, camo shorts and jerseys. Not to mention covered in tattoos. Everyone watched as we were led to our table, sat down and proceeded to stare at us through the entire meal.

This is also where Nathan and I got our first glimpse of our limited breakfast options in South America—bread, jam, tang and bad coffee.

After breakfast, we wandered the hotel for a while and ended up deciding to swim. This caused more of a commotion than breakfast as six heavily tattooed Americans in Speedos wandered through the hotel pool. It was in the courtyard of the third floor and could be seen from just over half the rooms in the hotel. Every six seconds, a different window had a new set of eyes watching and the hotel staff kept wandering through in awe.

After a few hours of lounging around after the pool, it was time to check out and head back to the airport. As we were in the lobby, one of the receptionists told Nathan that everyone at the hotel (except for her, since she knew our situation) assumed we were famous American musicians, but just couldn't figure out which ones and that many people had come to ask who we were. We got a kick out of that.

Back at the airport, it was business as usual. We checked our bags and got on the plane. We had another layover in Quito, Ecuador and it was a short flight from one place to the other. Once off the plane, we didn't feel like sitting around the airport, and since we missed lunch in Guayaquil, we decided to venture out and find somewhere to eat. Outside the airport, we saw a little place across the road called Pueblito Paisa and headed towards it. Our server, who said his name was Medellin and he was from Columbia, spoke no English at all and assumed we spoke Spanish. That may have had something to do with Casey telling everyone that we spoke a little Spanish as opposed to the truth, which was absolutely none. He pointed at his favorite thing on the menu and announced that he'd bring out seven of them. Nathan and I declined and told him to bring only 5. Having looked at the picture, it looked like nothing we were going to be able to eat anyway.

Towards the end of the meal, Medellin finally figured out that none of us had any clue what he was talking about, but didn't seem to mind. We paid our tab and made our way back to the airport. When we checked in at the LAN counter, the attendant had us follow her to another part of the airport where we were supposed to pay the country tax before leaving. She pulled out a manilla envelope full of cash and paid for all of us, gave us our boarding passes and sent us on our way.

While we waited for the plane to take off, Nathan, Adam and Casey got airport massages, Richard took a nap and I ate French Fries before it was finally time to leave.

We landed in Lima, Peru about 11 pm, went through customs (where Casey was the only one to be randomly selected) and met our driver, Marcel, who had waited at the airport for three hours that morning to pick us up, before figuring out that our flight had been delayed. He was a nice enough guy, understood what we were able to explain to him in hand gestures and broken Spanish and took us to our hostel where we immediately crashed.

It took 5 planes and the better part of two days, but we were finally in Peru.

THE END

Not the best ending I've ever seen, but satisfying enough.

HANG YOU UP FROM THE HEAVENS

I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I just heard this song the other day and can't stop playing it.

RETURN OF THE KING

Maybe the 'king' part isn't quite true (or rather, not at all) but I'm back in the good old SLC. I survived the trip, which will probably become a multi-part epic starting sometime this week, an got back in town just in time to watch it start snowing.

The regularly irregular blog posts will begin shortly. Until then, here's a couple of pictures to keep you interested.

I had to pay about sixty cents for that last one. Totally worth it.

IT'S TIME...

See you in two weeks. I hope.

AUGUST 26

The day every hipster/hardcore kid in Salt Lake City will try to get as close as possible, think he might have a shot—and fail miserably.

THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH

Oh hey, another Cracked.com list that I really like. This one is pretty solid all the way through. But I only copied and pasted a little of each bit. I don't want to be an outright thief here. If you want to read the whole thing (and you should, because it's great) head over to Cracked to see it.

SIX TRUE STORIES ABOUT DISNEYLAND (THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW)

6) Communal Employee Underwear - Up until 2001, Disneyland workers weren't allowed to bring their own underwear when they were in character, because normal underwear tended to bunch up and become visible under the costume. Kind of like how some models don't wear panties on the runway, except less "exotic and sexy" and more "destructive of your innocence and everything the concept of childhood represents."

Instead, cast members were issued company jock straps, cycling shorts or tights, which they had to hand in at the end of every day to be washed with their costumes. Of all the perks you can get pre-faced by the word "company," "jock strap" really falls short--way below "company car" or "company jet," and registering somewhere between "company grave site" and "company lube."

5) Flash Mountain - Splash Mountain gained some notoriety a few years ago for being the premier place (outside of New Orleans and Chatroulette) for wasted people to flash their junk. It got so severe that, in order to combat the trend, Disney created a position solely to search through the ride photos for rogue genitalia before displaying them on the video screens. Don't believe us (or just want to observe boobies in reduced gravity scenarios... you know, for science)? Well, luckily some employees started posting the photos online.

4) The Really Haunted Mansion - Apparently it's somewhat common for a person's dying wish be to have their ashes dumped on Disney rides, most popularly the Haunted Mansion.

3) The Feral Cat Kingdom - See, Disneyland has a secret army of filthy and diseased stray cats that roam the park grounds every night. It all started in the early years of Disneyland when ride operators found themselves sweeping mice out of the attractions and restaurants by the plague-full (isn't that a pleasant idea?). The mouse problem went away when someone suggested letting around 50 cats loose to hunt down the remaining mice, who may or may not have sung beautifully orchestrated songs about hope and enchantment while being devoured.

(note - I went to Disneyland a few years ago and there was a stray cat wandering through one of the miniature sets of the ride with the big whale. I always wondered why... until now!)

2) The Yippie Invasion - On the 6th of August, 1970, about 300 members of the Young International Party (Yippies) descended upon Disneyland to protest against stuff and junk or whatever (we literally could not give a shit long enough to look up the explanation). After taking over Castle Rock, the hippies hoisted the Viet Cong flag, marched down Main Street USA and harassed the marching band while sarcastically singing the theme to the Mickey Mouse Club. In response to this minor annoyance, Disneyland did what any sane, rational company would do in these circumstances: Call in the fucking riot cops.

1) Gay Days - Gay Days is a week or so out of the year where the homosexual community comes together as a group at the Disneyland theme park. It's not sponsored by Disney or anything, they just gather there because no matter who you like to hump, everybody likes roller coasters. This is all anything but surprising. Quite frankly, if anybody is out of place at Disneyland, it's heterosexual adults. Somewhere between mincing about in the Enchanted Castle and doing the Running Man with a cartoon duck, you just lose the ability to be butch about anything. If there's anywhere homophobes have to concede to the presence of homosexuals, it's Disneyland.

Disney steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that Gay Days is a thing (despite tens of thousands of participants), but that doesn't stop them from being the target of mass protest, veiled threats and sometimes even implied violence by the religious right (for... failing to stop it, we guess?).

P.S. I still love Disneyland.

THE ART OF THE TEASE

Making movie trailers is probably a lot more difficult of a job than most people think. Sometimes the right trailer can make movies look far, far better than they actually are (examples: Watchmen & Terminator Salvation). And sometimes the trailers are so bad that they don't do a great movie any justice at all (examples: I know there are a few—I just can't think of them right now).

I came across the original trailer for The Empire Strikes Back the other day and started thinking about how different the trailer would be if it were made today.



Recognize that voice? That's Han Solo himself, Harrison Ford, doing his best 1930s radio announcer over a bunch of quick clips.

If someone were to make a trailer for this movie today, I can only imagine there would be a lot of slow motion shots, bad radio or industrial metal and flash cuts all over the place.

IFC.com has a list of the best movie trailers of all time and I've got to say, that most of them I agree with. It's just weird to think about how much these things have changed over the years. But maybe that's just me.

THE MILD, MILD WEST

Cracked.com, if you've never been there, is hit or miss. Sometimes it has some really interesting stories and other times it's just boring and not worth the time spent looking at it.

They occasionally have some well-written lists of random things that interest me—and anyone that knows me knows I love lists about random things that very few other people care about. This week they had one called Six Ridiculous History Myths (that you probably think are true).

Most of them were pretty boring and things that I don't care about. Number six, however, was one I've pretty much known about for a bit, but it still kind of depressed me. It basically says that gunfights in the old west were a crock of shit.

I love westerns and cowboys and all that stuff and I always knew it had to be exaggerated a little bit, but still. A little part of my childhood died today.

#6 Gunfights in the Violent Wild West

The Insanity

A gloriously mustached man sits at a card game in an old saloon, surrounded by cowboys and surprisingly fresh-faced prostitutes. He looks up, and notices that the player opposite him is hiding an extra card up his sleeve. He calls him on it, the word yellow is pronounced as 'yeller,' and pretty soon they're facing off in the city square. There's a long moment before the cheater moves for his hip holster, but he's not fast enough. Quick as lightning, the gambler draws his revolver and shoots the cheat dead between the eyes.

The cowboys and prostitutes go back to their drinks, well-accustomed to this sort of random violence, as the man nonchalantly twirls his pistol and says: "Guess he couldn't read my poker face."

A hundred years of Westerns have taught us that this is how you lived and died in the Wild West. The quicker draw lived to gun-fight another day. It was essentially a roving single elimination rock, paper, scissors tournament that didn't end until you were dead.

But In Reality

How many murders do you suppose these old western towns saw a year? Let's say the bloodiest, gun-slingingest of the famous cattle towns with the cowboys doing quick-draws at high noon every other day. A hundred? More?

How about five? That was the most murders any old-west town saw in any one year. Ever. Most towns averaged about 1.5 murders a year, and not all of those were shooting. You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count: three) and the town's most violent year ever.

As for the traditional Western gunfight as depicted in movies, the inaccuracy of handguns at the time would have made quick-drawing skill irrelevant: It was simply so unlikely you'd hit a guy on the first, second or third shot that it didn't really matter which guy got out his gun first. The closest history got to high-noon show downs was dueling, where people just stood across from one another with their guns out, aimed and fired until someone got lucky, and someone else was dead. Forget about "fanning," rapidly cocking a single-action revolver between rounds like Clint Eastwood does in A Fistful of Dollars. You'd be lucky to hit a henchman if the duel took place in a closet.

Why Do We Believe It?

Because famous gunfighters like Billy the Kid wanted you to believe it. If you've seen Young Guns on cable, you probably know the guy was gunning somebody down every ten minutes!

Well according to sources who aren't Billy The Kid, his lifetime kill count was four. Criminals inflated their murder stats for the same reason guys today inflate their sexual experience: It made them look cool. Towns like Deadwood talked up their violent, lawless natures in order to attract adventurous settlers. Books were written about them and movies were made as soon as cameras were invented, and nobody who'd been out west was rushing to correct the misconceptions because, why the hell would they. A century and a half later, we still love that lie.

We believe it because shooting a nameless bad guy in the heart is infinitely more satisfying than filing a complaint with the cops or writing a strongly worded letter to the editor. No checks and balances, no second guessing. Just you and a gun.

Pardon us, we have a certain Bon Jovi song we need to play right now.


Check out the rest of the Myths.

COLLAPSE 1-SHOW TOUR VIDEO

SNATCHED

Yes, the ocean still terrifies me.

COLLAPSE TOUR: DAY 1 - IDAHO FALLS, ID

Pita Pit Party!

GRAPHIC DESIGNS

City Weekly -- Comics and graphic novels—even obscure ones—become perfect movie fodder.

In the early 1990s, Joe Eszterhas scribbled a movie concept on a cocktail napkin and sold it for millions of dollars. It was the heyday of the “spec script” era in Hollywood, and suddenly, everyone was a screenwriter. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on whom you ask—that era didn’t survive all the bad movies that came out of two-sentence ideas, and studios were once again looking elsewhere for new properties.
Hollywood is almost completely out of ideas. That became apparent when studios started optioning anything from board games to yet-to-be-published children’s books. Eventually, someone ended up in the indie section of a comic shop and a light bulb went off. Comics seemed like the perfect fodder for films and were far less expensive to acquire.

The average moviegoer probably would be surprised to learn some of the movies that have been based on comics or graphic novels. We’re not talking about huge box office hits like Iron Man or The Dark Knight, because those will always be around. Thankfully, most have gotten better than Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher, though there are misfires every once in a while (like Thomas Jane’s Punisher or Ray Stevenson’s Punisher: War Zone).

Well-received movies like David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World were originally graphic novels. Those films were relatively low-budget affairs, but studios will fork out the cash if they see a project able to go the distance. Max Allan Collins’ Road To Perdition attracted Sam Mendes (American Beauty), Tom Hanks and Paul Newman; Universal’s upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a manga-style book from Oni Press, got Michael Cera and director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz); Warner Bros.’ The Losers (April 23) attracted Zoe Saldana, Jeffery Dean Morgan and Chris Evans.

Graphic-lit adaptations also are easily digestible for movie studios during a struggling economy. Instead of taking chances on spec scripts pitched or written by unknown writers that may need to be heavily rewritten or developed further, comics provide a solid, complete story right away. Since comics are, at their basic level, nothing more than words and pictures, the entire book moves along like a rough storyboard for a film. Screenwriters, producers and directors know exactly what they’re getting. They are able to make changes here and there, but the story is ready from the start.

The variety of comics is just as vast as literary novels, and not every comic is about a superhero with a secret identity. There’s something for everyone, no matter the taste.

Comics haven’t replaced the novel as the primary form of movie fodder nor will they. Comic books are usually shorter and more to the point than novels, which tend to run upward of 200 pages—and in a nation of ever-decreasing attention spans, that helps. And sometimes, comics just seem a little more fun. Big-name stars have gravitated to more entertaining and less conventional projects lately. Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner’s three-issue series, Red, topped out at just over 60 pages and is in production right now with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman starring.

These adaptations have been a great thing for the comic industry because it gets more new readers into local shops, and the writers of these books are getting more and more work—both in comics and Hollywood. Mark Millar, based solely on Wanted and the buzz that Kick-Ass has generated, is already moving from writing comics to directing film (although judging from Frank Miller and The Spirit, this might not be the best idea). Brian Michael Bendis teamed up with Zac Efron to finally get his graphic novel Fire off the ground, and Matt Fraction has been on the set helping out with Iron Man 2.

Writers may not be leaving comics for million-dollar paychecks—yet—but they’re not running around town pitching Showgirls, either.

THE CURRENT

Not the band (though they are fantastic) and not the Outspoken record (though that is fantastic, as well) but things I'm currently stoked on.

The Hold Steady

The new record is great. I've been listening to it all morning.

Treme

Might not live up to the greatness of The Wire, but I don't care. I've loved both episodes so far and look forward to it every week.

Peru

It's two weeks away. I'm ready.

DOLLAR TREE RUINS LIVES, FAMILY VALUES

ABC 4 - LAYTON, UT -- Who knows how many others have been sold. A mom asked ABC 4 to take action after she bought a comic book package she thought was for kids ended up having a nudity and violence inside.

“I seen the naked lady and I got mad.” Ten year old Sheldyn Conley loves comic books but knew something was wrong when he opened “The Spectre.” He says, “I just turned the page and I seen the naked ladies so I handed it to a grownup and said, ‘Look at this.’”

On the very first page are two large drawings of a naked woman. There’s more nudity throughout the comic as well as violence. Stepfather Kenny Stong says, “He's a little young to be exposed to that kind of situation or environment, what not.”

Finish Reading...

My favorite part is the quote from the kid (which you can see in the news clip here) "I seen the naked lady and I got mad."

But the best part is that the news treats this as if it's the biggest, most damaging scandal of the past three decades. My response to that is, "this is news?"

There were literally hundreds of far more pressing stories and far more important things going on for Annie Cutler to be wasting her time talking to a Dollar Tree employee about a comic book from 1987.

Creator Jeff Parker issued this challenge on his Twitter page last night: "I want many cartoonists to match a panel to the caption of the Utah comics kid: 'I seen the naked lady and I got mad.'"

I really hope people take him up on that because that would be fantastic.