Hitting the Snooze Button ... on Life

"My name a Borat. I like you. I like sex."
-the opening lines to, "Borat," the funniest movie of the year.

During my first tour of Belgrade -- before I had fully realized what a black hole the Three Black Catz really is -- Dragana took a group from the hostel to see the new movie "Borat." I started to laugh before the opening credits began to roll, and didn't stop laughing until long after we had left the theater.

Then, there was Carmel.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," she said from her seat in front of the broken mirror. "I just don't find humor in other people's misfortunes."

"Really?" I wasn't sure I understood what she meant. Doesn't ... like ... Borat?? Impossible. "That's strange, because I think other people's misfortunes are incredibly funny."

They are. Anyone who denies it is in denial. Carmel, for example.

Judging by the tone of her voice, though, I could see it was stupid to try and convince her.

"I guess we just have different sense of humor," I said, extending the olive branch.

She refused it.

"It's not that they're different," my Kiwi surrogate sister said. "I just think that my sense of humor is higher than yours."

Anyone who knows me knows how I took that comment.

Carmel later retracted her statement -- not because she ever really grasped Borat's genius, but more due to my pit bull-like ability to not let things drop. I continued to make Borat references at every possible moment, and Carmel continued to not find them funny.

If only she had been here with me this time.
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I have now had two surrogate families in my two stays at the Three Black Catz, a place that has sucked me into its black hole both times. The families have been similar, but there is one glaring difference:

In this group, no one has a higher sense of humor than me. That's because Borat is a god.
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This is an inside joke that cannot be explained in words. If you haven't seen the movie, or Da Ali G Show, just stop reading. You won't get it.

But if you understand the brilliance of what Borat represents, I have only one thing to say.

Niiiiiiiiiiiice.

All four of us -- Kris, Vincent, Peter and I -- speak English. But we also speak Borat. Fluently.

When good things happen, it is a "great success." When a hot girl is spotted, it is "very nice, how much?" Any pause in any conversation is broken with, "in my country there is problem..." "My brother Bilo" is the imaginary fifth brother to our family. You'd think that all four of us were widowers, since we always lament that "my wife, she dead." I say lament; I should say "celebrate," since that statement is always followed by "high five!"

And of course, there's the bread and butter: "Sexy time!"
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I never thought I'd actually be able to use any of the lines in a conversation with someone who didn't understand. Then we met this Belgrade homeless guy.

He spoke some English, but not much. That didn't stop him from trying to talk to Vincent and I, as we walked with him in the cold to buy a 2 liter bottle of pivo.

"My wife," he said, flanked on both sides by two new friends. "My wife ... my wife...." He was struggling to continue the sentence, so I helped him find the words.

"Your wife is dead??"

"Yes!" he said, pretending that's what he was trying to say, though it was obvious he didn't get it. "My wife is dead."

Vincent took my alley-oop lob and slammed it home.

"High five!"

I don't think I can describe to you how funny it was to see this homeless man enthusiastically dishing out a pair of high fives. Incredible.
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Then there is Andrea, one of the Serbian neighbors who chills at the Three Black Catz full time.

Andrea, too, loves Borat. It goes without saying that he has had a great time in our company the past ten days or so.

"Sexy time, sexy time," he says out the blue -- all the time -- in his Serbian accent. "I am from Kazakhstan! I like sex!"

Andrea's English isn't as good as Mladen's or Dragana's, but it doesn't matter. He can communicate with us in another language.

The language of Borat.

"Sexy time!"

Which brings us to the following MySpace photo of another neighbor that spends time at the Three Black Catz. I felt the need to make it the desktop background on the hostel's communal PC.