If It's Such a Small World then Why Have I Been Sitting on This Airplane For Twelve Hours?

By Mad Dog

A humorous, quirky, and unique look at the world, its people, and their cultures. Seventy-seven columns culled from Mad Dog's travels through the United States and the world, from a four-week coast-to-coast car trip to an extended stay on Bali, from the coronation of the Slug Queen in Eugene, Oregon, to flirting with a Russian spy in Cuba. It's a view of the world as you've never seen it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mad Dog
• Release date: Jun 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781370070541

Book preview

Taking a vacation is good for you. While this may sound obvious, it’s still reassuring that the well-respected journal Psychosomatic Medicine has validated the concept, and if anyone knows whether something’s all in your head or not it’s them. They reported that Brooks Gump, a researcher at the State University of New York at Oswego who must be tired of people asking how his brother Forrest is, figured out that taking a vacation every year can reduce your overall risk of dying by 21 percent and your risk of dying from heart disease by 32 percent. Thus, if you take five vacations a year you should live forever. If you take six or more you’ll live even longer.

I’m lucky in that all I need to work is my laptop, a power outlet, a phone jack, and the telephone number of the nearest IBM tech support office. That’s why over the years that I’ve been writing a weekly humor/commentary column I’ve been able to travel a good bit, and in the process amass enough travel-related columns to fill this book which hopefully will sell well enough to at least finance another trip, even if it’s only to the International House of Pancakes. You don’t have to go all the way to Sweden to eat Swedish pancakes.

All the columns aren’t, strictly speaking, about travel. Some are about different cultures. Different peoples. A different way of seeing the world. Unlike the travel magazines and newspapers, I think travel encompasses more than just information about destinations. After all, how many articles can you read about hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, places to shop, and sex clubs? Okay, you can never read enough about sex clubs, but you get the idea.

Most of these columns are included in their original form. I thought about updating them since pop culture, political, and news references get dated, but I was lazy and didn’t. My rationalization is that they capture a time, place, and state of mind that should be kept intact, like little time capsules which bring joy into our life and a smile to our face as we remember those wonderful days gone by. I sure hope this argument convinces you as easily as it did me.

So go ahead and see the world through my eyes. Then count your blessings that you don’t have to live inside this brain like I do. Then put down the book, get out of that La-Z-Boy, and go see the world for yourself. Who knows, you just might live a little longer.

Mad Dog

Bali, Indonesia

October 6, 2000

It’s eight years later and I’m finally getting around to putting out a revised and enlarged edition. To be honest, only a few words have actually been revised and they’re in the introduction and author information at the end. The book is the same size, so that’s not the part that’s enlarged. Not that size matters. I have, however, added the thirteen Bali, Hi! installments that hadn’t been written when the book originally came out as well as columns about Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Isla Mujeres, Hearst Castle, and a half dozen others. Plus two illustrations if I may be so presumptuous as to call them that. I’m sure it was all worth the wait.

Mad Dog

San Francisco, CA

June 2008

AN AMERICAN

MAD DOG IN LONDON

London’s a funny place. It’s a city where the babies and the old men look exactly alike—ruddy complexion, only a couple of teeth, and a blank stare. It’s a city where banks routinely lose money in your account, though being the civil bunch they are they always apologise, as they spell it. And it’s a city which has few public trash cans, not so much as a precaution against IRA bombs as they claim but as an excuse for the incredible amount of litter and trash on the streets. Though come to think of it, it might just be a tradition.

London, you see, is steeped in tradition. Westminster Abbey has been the site of every royal coronation since 1066. The Royal Opera House has been in use since 1732. And London’s greatest Kodak Moment, the Changing of the Guard, has been happening like clockwork since the first bear cub sat on a guard’s head and they called it a hat.

But that’s not to say things don’t change here. During the Changing of the Guard they now carry assault rifles instead of single shot muskets. And during the ceremony the band plays a rather striking version of Hey Jude. Really. Forget saving the Queen, let’s make sure Sir Paul gets his royalties.

Pubs are another great London tradition. At first glance they all appear to be pretty much the same, but this isn’t true. The secret to telling a good pub from a bad pub is easy: the name. The best pubs are named after two totally unrelated things. The more oxymoronic the non-sequiter the better. The Slug and Lettuce is a good pub. The Star and Garter is better. The King’s Head and Eight Bells is even better yet. Do stop into a pub if it’s named The Thick Green Snot and Hacking Cough, Thrice Testy Twits, or Free Sex For the Asking and What’s It To Ya, Mate? Beware of pubs named McPint, Ales-R-Us, and the International House of Suds.

To give you an idea of how seriously the English take their drinking, walk up to any pub at lunch time and you’ll see a crowd standing out front with pints in their hands and not a lick of food to be found within thirty metres, which is an English measurement that equates to in the next county. This is even true in Tower Hill, London’s financial district, where the well-dressed bankers and brokers can still be found clustered outside the pub at 2:00 P.M., drinking and chatting and asking each other Wot say we go back to the branch ‘n’ sell off a bit more of the Empire, ay mate? This may go a long way towards answering how the banks manage to lose your money.

Speaking of food, English cooking pretty much lives up to its reputation. The Indian food was excellent, the turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce at Waterloo Station was the first I’ve found that resembles my favorite post-Thanksgiving treat, and the crispy pork belly was actually much better than it sounds (so quit making that face). The more traditional fare like chicken and mushroom pie, sausage rolls, and fish and chips are, well, rather unexciting.

Some of that’s due once again to the English sense of tradition. Take fish and chips. They not only fry their chips in the same oil they’ve been frying the fish in, but being the great traditionalists they are they haven’t changed it since the 15th century when Henry V dumped it on the heads of the French at the Battle of Agincourt.

A little food history: The Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey was made for King Edward I and all but two English monarchs since 1308 sat in it when they were crowned. Until they gave it back in 1996, the chair rested on a large rock called the Stone of Scone, which the English hijacked from the Scots in 1296. To remind themselves of this stone, the English regularly eat dry, tasteless, hard-as-a-rock biscuits for breakfast called scones. As I said, it’s all about tradition here.

And well it should be since England has a long history. Anything newer than the 15th century has the prefix nouveau attached to it. This is, incidentally, the only thing they’ve borrowed from the French other than French fries, which they renamed chips on principle. In the U.S., on the other hand, we consider anything from before 1982 to be old, which helps explain why there are so many movies being made from bad 1970s TV shows.

Communication is a problem in London. Signs are in English, the people speak English, yet communicating is almost as difficult as it is in Estonia. The first time I walked through the tube—also known as the underground, or subway to you—I was approached by a man asking for directions. His accent was thick, yet I understood that he was lost and unable to read as he asked which train he should take. My friend Kelly told him how to get to his destination. No, that’s not right, the man muttered as he wandered off to ask someone else. That’s not right at all.

I suspect he just didn’t understand us, which wouldn’t be surprising since even the English can’t understand each other. That’s because every person in London has a unique accent. The only thing their speech has in common is that they all drop every fifth letter, and that’s only because it’s a law and they don’t want to mess with the Bobbies, Royal Guard, Beefeaters, traffic wardens, or anyone else in uniform, and trust me, every second person in London wears a uniform. Thus Chiswick becomes Chisick. Worchester becomes Wooster. And help is shortened to hell, as in, Oh hell, I give up.

I was sitting in a tea room in Leicester Square (pronounced: Lester Square) sharing a small table with a young Irish woman who was reading a book of limericks in order to make sure everyone knew she wasn’t English. She asks the waiter for another cappuccino, which he promptly forgets. Or possibly ignores since she is, after all, flaunting her Irishness. When she reminds him of her order he asks if she still wants it.

Excuse me? she says, not understanding him.

D’ya still wan’ ye coffee?

After several rounds of this I jump in and explain to her what the waiter’s asking. Apparently it takes an American to interpret between the Irish and the English, which may go a long way towards explaining the situation in Northern Ireland. Actually it was a lucky guess on my part, it happens to be the first thing I’d understood all day.

But the English do have a simple, direct way with signs. Way Out is an exit. Give Way means yield. A flyover is an overpass. And the space between the train and the platform is a gap, which is why you hear announcements and see signs painted on the platform that say Mind The Gap. Either that or The Gap is paying the government big bucks for advertising which is how they can afford to pay royalties to Sir Paul every time they have the Changing of the Guard. If it was Paris it would be mind the crap, but we’ll save a discussion of the French mode of carefree dog walking for another time.

SLUGGING IT OUT

IN OREGON

Slugs aren’t pretty. Politics isn’t pretty. Therefore electing a Slug Queen must be one of the unprettiest sights us higher order mammals can conjure up in our imagination, which as we all know is the only thing that separates us from other animals. Well, that and the desire to watch Baywatch Nights. I’m here to tell you that it’s all true.

Okay, maybe not all. I can’t vouch for Baywatch Nights, since the truth is I’ve only watched a half hour of it one time. That’s how long it took me to realize that they were more interested in ghosts and demons and spooky stuff like that than they were in wholesome entertainment like beaches, surfing, and lots of well-filled bikinis. Hell, the demon who was possessing the fourteen-year-old girl on the episode I saw never once ran down the beach in slow motion. On the other hand, I can attest to the glory of the 15th Annual Competition and Coronation of the Slug Queen because—yes!—I saw it with my own eyes.

[NOTE: To be technically correct, it’s the S.L.U.G. Queen. It stands for Society for the Legitimization of the Ubiquitous Gastropod, though I’m convinced they made that up after the fact. But to save periods—which are reportedly about to be placed on the endangered punctuation list along with semi-colons, hyphens, and those curly brackets nobody knows what to do with—I’m going to stick with the vernacular: Slug.]

The Slug Queen is to Eugene, Oregon what Miss America is to the United States. Except luckily none of the Slug contestants wore two-piece bathing suits like they’re letting them do in the Miss America contest now. It shouldn’t surprise you that there’s a Slug Queen. After all, somewhere in this fine country of ours there’s a Miss [fill in the blank] to meet every need. There’s Miss Better Boy Tomato, Little Miss Oilwell, Miss Hot Tub De-scaler, and probably even Miss E. Coli. There used to be a Tobacco Festival Queen in Richmond, Virginia but everyone stopped entering the contest when word got around that the winner couldn’t get a date afterwards because guys were afraid of getting cancer from her, and that was in the days before we were aware of the dangers of second-hand dating.

It’s fitting that the Slug Queen reigns in Eugene. This is, after all, the city that has a Saturday Market filled with genuine hippies coming in from surrounding communes who haven’t seen a calendar or hairdresser since 1970. It’s a city where more people believe Jerry Garcia’s still alive than think Elvis is. It’s a city that places stickers near the crosswalks explaining that when the man walking lights up you can cross and when the orange palm lights up you should stop, yet has the presence of mind not to do it in Braille. And it’s the city that’s home to Oregon Yurtworks, a company dedicated to making modern versions of the circular Mongolian home, hopefully without the yak skins.

Five people vied for the title of Slug Queen this year, and two of them were men. This shouldn’t come as a shock since a recent survey by Carvel (the people who make ice cream whales but—gasp!—not slugs) found that when making a wish before blowing out the candles on their birthday cake, 61 percent of all boys younger than age ten who wished to become superheroes wanted to be Catwoman. This is true. Sad, but true.

The contestants for this year’s Slug Queen included Slugareina (who did a slimy variation of the Macarena), Birtha (the token pregnant contestant), Princess Paulina (a guy in a wheelchair), Visca and Gastropia Nudibranchia (Siamese slugs attached at the dress), and Slugmistress Bagonda, a 6-foot 4-inch guy in drag who won the crown this year after having failed in two previous attempts.

Lest you think this is all fun and games, the Slug Queen does much more than strut around downtown Eugene one night in August wearing a short skirt made of duct tape (as Bagonda did). Official duties include appearing at the opening reception of the Mayor’s Art Show, riding in the Eugene Celebration parade, appearing at the Parade Awards Ceremony, presiding over next year’s competition (as the previous winners, called Old Queens, did this year), and spending the rest of his/her life living it down.

The competition itself is short and sweet. They’re judged in three categories: costume, question, and talent. It’s over in about ninety minutes. If only the Federal Election Committee had been there they would have seen what a clean, simple system this is. Contrast this with the 2000 presidential campaign, which was unofficially launched in 1997 when 1,200 people showed up at the Midwest Republican Leadership Conference in Indianapolis and every one of them declared their candidacy. Just kidding. Actually it was only such exciting prospects as Dan Quayle, Steve Forbes, Lamar Alexander, and Alan Keyes that did. But at least they agreed on a campaign theme: Déjà Vu Into The 20th Century.

Here’s my proposal: I say we have the presidential candidates go to Eugene on Election Day, dress up in silly costumes, put on three-minute talent skits, and answer one off-the-wall question posed to them by an old Slug Queen. Then we can all go to the polls—or even better, raise our hands and scream—and vote for the slimy candidate of our choice. Personally, I can’t wait to see how Steve Forbes looks in a duct tape dress.

SEEING THE WORLD

THROUGH A VIEWFINDER

One of the great discoveries you make if you take a cross country road trip, aside from how handy an iron can be to warm up that leftover oyster Po-Boy that’s been under the seat since New Orleans, is that there are way too many people with cameras.

Everyone, it seems, has a camera around their neck. Simple one-shots, expensive SLRs, video cameras, digital cameras, and now the ubiquitous disposable. These cardboard cameras are the greatest invention since air vending machines at gas stations. And possibly the most appropriately named, since for most people the cameras are so disposable they lose them before they get the film developed. That’s why I wish they’d start selling cheaper versions without film. It would let me continue to embarrass people by making them stand in front of Mt. Rushmore smiling like they’re about to get a root canal without anesthetic and, since I know within hours I’ll have misplaced the camera, I can sleep better knowing I saved money since the pictures will turn out exactly the same as if the camera actually had film. Nonexistent.

Everywhere you go you hear the clicking, see the flashing, and watch as people take photographs of the Statue of Liberty, the French Quarter, and the tumbleweed that looks like Ellen DeGeneres. Face it, there are already millions of photographs of virtually every inch of this country in books, tourist pamphlets, and travel guides. I dare say, damned good ones too. Are yours really better because your finger clicked the button? Personally, I think the person who shot the photos for the postcards did a pretty good job, and at twenty-five cents a pop they’re quite a bargain. Besides, I can always personalize it by drawing a crude stick figure that’s supposed to be me hiking way, way, way down the Grand Canyon trail when in fact I stopped after about a half mile, just about the time it became hard to tell the difference between the mule droppings and the mud.

I worry that people with cameras are only experiencing a small part of what’s going on. There’s a reason the phrase is Stop and smell the roses not Stop and take a photo of the roses. While focusing through the tight little viewfinder, the camera people are missing everything else that’s going on. This is especially true of those with video cameras, which have become as common as T-shirts which say, My parents went to Myrtle Beach and all I got was this lousy T-shirt that’s covered with this morning’s Grand Slam breakfast from Denny’s.

For some reason people with video cameras seem to think every moment is worth documenting. Either that or they own stock in Maxell. They follow the family as they walk down the sidewalk towards the Alamo. They hang out the window as they drive along miles and miles of barren desert. And they slowly pan along tourist information signs so they’ll be able to read it when they watch the video at home because they were too busy taping to read it in person. Ah, were it only to read: Caution, videotaping this sign is punishable by making you watch all your vacation videos in one continuous sitting.

Do people actually plunk themselves down and watch the 372 hours of videotape they took of their vacation at Lake Nothing-Happens? And why do they feel compelled to subject their about-to-be-former-friends to it as a nice break from playing Trivial Pursuit—the Dairy Products Edition? While photographs capture Kodak Moments—or so we always hope—video tapes relive the experience in all its agonizing detail, the kind of detail that makes one yearn for the delight of an all-weekend My Mother the Car marathon.

Of course I may be wrong. After all, people do watch a lot of television. If you’re an average American you watch 1,600 hours of TV a year. That’s more than four hours a day, or approximately half the time you spend pretending to work. Add to that the fact that more than half of us regularly watch TV while eating dinner (which next to chunky style sour cream is the primary cause of indigestion in this country), and you start to wonder if the act of seeing your vacation on the TV screen is validation that it actually happened.

That may explain why people love posing the family in front of tourist spots. It’s a way of saying We were here. Either that or, Ansel Adams be damned, they really think the view of Yosemite Falls is improved by their presence. Hopefully they’ll confine this habit to their travels here at home, for if they try it in Afghanistan they could be arrested. Not long ago the Taliban religious army banned the photographing or filming of people, saying photography violates the beliefs of Islam. You know, you have to admire any religion that helps ensure that an evening with friends who just came back from a vacation at the Arabian Sea won’t include four hours of watching them smile as they get knocked down by another wave.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s time to sit down and write a letter suggesting this ban to my Congressman. Nah, he’s probably busy videotaping his family as they leave the house and get in the car, ready to go on vacation. Wave everybody!

IT’S NORTH, IT’S WHITE,

BUT IS IT GREAT?

I just spent three days exploring a very small part of Canada by car. Obviously it’s not fair to judge an entire country based on such a limited experience but I’m going to do it anyway. Hey, it’s my job.

Canada, for those of you who slept through four years of geography, is the big country to the north of the United States that Bob and Doug McKenzie made famous. It encompasses 3,849,674 square miles and is inhabited by 427 people, putting it on par with the Atlantic Ocean. The good thing about it is it keeps the Arctic glaciers out of Minnesota. The bad thing is that it’s too much like the United States, and I say that in only the most derogatory way.

Canadians are very much like Americans, except of course they’ll beat you to a pulp with their hockey sticks if you even think about saying that. They speak English and yes, they do say eh at the end of most sentences, though it actually sounds more like aye? with the emphasis on the question mark. French is common there. While I didn’t hear many people speaking it, I did listen to French radio stations, watch French television, and eat a lot of French fries, usually served with cheese curds and gravy. Really. Road signs are in both English and French, which is like being in class and having the answer on the front of the flash card right next to the question. Canada is one big pop quiz. An open book one.

Their English does have its differences. Gas stations are called gas bars, pawn shops are hock shops, and Indians are called First Nation, or aborigines, as in the 20th Annual Aboriginal Hockey Tournament which was held in Sudbury right before I got there. Honestly. I like First Nation much better than our politically correct Native Americans. Not to quibble, but even though they were Americans before I was, any scientist will tell you they’re not native, they migrated here too. It just happens that they made it here a few thousand years before my grandparents. While First Nation would be an improvement, I vote we opt for Previous Owners and be done with it.

As in the U.S., their basic currency is the dollar, though the paper money looks like a kid drew it with a spirograph. Also as in the U.S., I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio, proving that their dollar coin isn’t the only loon in the country. Luckily there are things there that aren’t in the U.S.—hey, any country where I can buy Cadbury Crunchies is okay in my book.

My first Canadian experience was in Sault Ste. Marie. The Canadian one. Both Canada and the U.S. have a Sault Ste. Marie, or Soo as everyone calls it. The two Soos would be one were they not separated by a river, a bridge, and unfriendly customs agents.

Where are you coming from?

The United States.

Why are you going to Canada?

It’s not the United States.

When did I forget how to smile?

Why are you asking me?

Have a nice trip. Next!

Soo, Michigan and Soo, Canada are reminiscent of Minneapolis and St. Paul, except in this case no one could come up with a second name. Actually, this is nice because it lets you ease into being in a foreign country without the shock of finding yourself in someplace called, say, Moose Jaw. (NOTE: Moose Jaw is a real city, only it’s in Saskatchewan which is much farther west and a lot more fun to say than Ontario.)

My first Canadian heart attack wasn’t from one of their omnipresent buffets, it was when I left Soo2 and headed towards Sudbury, which I knew was about 180 miles away. The first sign I saw said Sudbury – 285 and I thought, Oh my god, this is going to take a lot longer than I thought! Then I realized it was kilometers. It’s amazing though, how quickly we adapt. Before I knew it I was thinking in kilometers, much as I adjusted to the temperature being in Celsius and the food being inedible.

There aren’t many tourists in Canada in early March. I started to wonder who actually does