The Mighty Ducks took flight for the first time last night, our opening game coming less than a week after our first practice. We play soccer, but it felt more like the opening weekend of hunting season.

If you want to put a positive spin on it, no 5-1 loss is ever going to feel as close as yesterday's defeat at the hands of River Oaks Baptist.

But it's like Gordon Bombay said: "Ducks fly together."*

*If you haven't seen the movie, you won't get it.

In Emilio We Trust.

When two of your players -- including the ringer, Wang, whose name I will sadly never get to yell now -- quit before the season even starts, "Ducks fly together."

When you're left with a roster of only 12, leaving us with no subs, should anyone not be able to make it (as happened last night), "Ducks fly together."

When you only take a total of three shots on goal, two less than the number scored by the other team all night, "Ducks fly together."

And when everyone is dead tired by the half, since they're all in fifth and sixth grade and playing on a FIFA sized field ...

"Do I have to play?" Our left midfielder was sitting on a cold metal bench, and her cheeks were steaming hot. Flushed and red, she was panting like a dog on I-10 as she clutched her water bottle.

"Yes," I said. "You have to play. We only have 11 kids. You have to play." Everyone else, except for our goalie, was exhausted as well. As a matter of fact, another midfielder had asked if there were water breaks during the game, about three minutes after the opening whistle. The girl with the flushed cheeks well aware that we did not have anyone to sub in for her.

"But..." she was clearly beat as a street, but so was everyone else. "Can I just sit out this half?"

I stood there staring at her, trying to decipher if she was playing dumb like a fox or was being sincere. Did she think this word trickery would work on me, or did she really not realize we only had one half remaining? The girl goes to private school. But then again, she is only 11. I couldn't tell.

"There is only one half left," I said, before briefly explaining the concept of quitting versus quitting on your team. "You're playing."

Ducks only fly together if they admit they're ducks. Before the opening kick -- actually, up to the moment that Matt and I had to get off the field so the game could commence -- there was continued dissension as to whether or not this was the case. Not about what positions they were playing, or questions about where they should be standing on the field, but about what our team name is. If you'll remember, there is a strange obsession with Mexican food among the players on our roster.

"All right Mighty Ducks, let's go!" I yelled as my co-coach and I jogged towards the sidelines.

"Noooo! Not Mighty Ducks!" came a chorus of 11-year-old girl voices.

I stopped jogging.

"Yes. Mighty Ducks. We are the Mighty Ducks. I don't want to hear any more on this topic." And tried to just keep moving, as if that would add some sense of finality to the dispute.

"NOOOO!" The ref was standing there with the ball, staring at us. The other team, they were all ready in their positions. They seemed to be on the same page regarding their team name. We weren't quite ready for the season to start, it appeared. "Tortiiiiiiillas! Can we just say Tortillas and y'all say Mighty Ducks?"

I had turned back around at this point, slowly inching my way towards the sidelines, in increments. "NO! MIGHTY DUCKS! END OF ARGUMENT!"

There was continued discussion among the girls most vocally opposed, but I nipped it in the bud. "We will talk about this after the game. For now let's just concentrate on playing!"

Which brings me to the reason I was so proud of our team during halftime. They finally caved.

"All right y'all, we're only down two goals, we can tie this thing!" I yelled as we brought it in for "Mighty Ducks on three," right as the second half was set to start. I was expecting a repeat of what has happened at both of our practices so far: Matt and I yell the real team name with our deep, 24-year-old man voices in an attempt to drown out the sea of high, 11-year-old girl (with a few boy) voices screaming whatever they would order at Molina's. But that's not what happened.

"ONE, TWO, THREE!"

"MIGHTY DUCKS!"

I was blown away. All 11 of them, plus the two coaches, together.

"That was amazing," I said to Matt, as our kids jogged back onto the field into their assigned positions, which they seemed to take only as suggestions. Once the ball got rolling, it devolved into a display of how much everyone was willing to run after the ball, or stand around hoping it would come to them.

Down 2-0, we went out and got outscored 3-1 in the second half.

But it's church league. I really could care less if we win or lose. All that matters is that I can use the Emilio Estevez quote now to motivate them. Ducks fly together.

Oh, and I am going to tell them to call me Coach Gordon Bombayless from now on. Gotta milk this baby for as many jokes as possible.

"Two, four, six, eight! Who do we appreciate?

The Blue Tortillas!"
No. This is not a democracy.

Our first practice in the books, and only the one ice pack request. To paraphrase Frank the Tank, all in all I'd call it "a pretty good little Saturday."

My career as youth soccer coach has begun.

"Our team name is the Mighty Ducks. There will be no discussion about this."

Let me just say, coaching Little League, which I did three times at UVa, is way better. Any excuse to wear a baseball glove, spit and openly scratch my balls, while being granted access to 19 oz. bats with which to bomb home runs during post-practice home run derby sessions with my best friends, a.k.a. assistant coaches, is worth it. Especially on the days when, batting lefty and doing my best late 90's Griffey impression, I connected with one from the opposite side that left the park.

Pingggggg! God I love coaching Little League.

I like soccer, too -- I mainly just like the World Cup and Champions League -- but I am not really a soccer guy.

What I am is the guy who knows that a two-month commitment to coach his younger cousin's team is the least he can do for an uncle, her father, who took him to Asia on a two-week business trip last year, and paid for him almost 100 percent of the way. Sure, there was some "healthy family pressure/manipulation," as I call it, when being asked to take on the team-without-a-name. But like I said, it's my way of repaying the debt.

Our team name is the Mighty Ducks. End of discussion.

Only Twerner and I really appreciate the joke. The players, if they've even heard the phrase, are too young for it. The parents, they just don't see the humor really. But isn't that about hockey? Yeah, it's youth sports. Good enough.

Of course, we're dealing with fifth and sixth graders, most of them girls. If they don't like the team name, they let us know. And they don't like the team name.

"We don't like 'Mighty Ducks'! Let's be the Tortillas!"

"Yeah! The Blue Tortillas!"

"We're not the Tortillas," I deadpan. "We're the Mighty Ducks."

"Let's be the Tacos!"

"You guys, that is so racist," I try. "What, just because someone speaks Spanish, oh, they like soccer?" No one gets the joke. They're all 11-year-olds.

"Tortillllllllas!"

"Y'all don't seem to understand," I say. "We choose." I look over at Twerner, and point to him, then back towards my chest. "You guys don't have a say in this matter."

"Let's put it to a vote," one of the girls says.

"Yeah, VOTE!"

"No."

"Majority rules," another says in a tone of voice I'm almost positive you have nailed without me even trying to describe it to you.

"Yeah, in some settings, you're right. But not here. We are the coaches. We decide. We are the Mighty Ducks."

"But this is a democracy," brainiac to my left blurts out.

"Actually," I say, relishing the opportunity to play brainiac myself, "it's a republic." The temptation to make a joke about Florida 2000 was strong, but I knew they would just stare, not understand, and yell back something about enchiladas.

We got to practice forming a wall, though. That was entertaining. The four guys in the mix, for some reason, actually argued with me when I told them all to cover their balls. As in, I had to almost yell at them to convince them to cover their balls when someone was kicking a ball at them from ten yards away.

"Why is this difficult?" I asked out loud, to no one in particular. "Why am I having to argue on this point?"

To the girls, I said, "Y'all can put your arms wherever you want." I have no idea what they would normally coach girls to do in this situation. But I know they don't have any balls that need protecting. That's the kind of personal experience I bring to the team.

My favorite part of our first practice, however, has to be the introductions during stretches. They already all know one another -- everyone goes to the same school -- but Twerner and I know just Diana, our common cousin. So we had them all go around the circle saying their names, what grade they were in, and who their favorite soccer team was.

No one knows any soccer teams, though.

Okay, fine, tell us your favorite player. (What kind of person hasn't ever heard of David Beckham? The when-in-doubt option.)

No one really knew any of those, either. In fact, I'd say easily half the team couldn't even name a single soccer player that doesn't play on the Blue Tacos. Those that did? David Beckham, Mia Hamm, Mia Hamm, Beckham, Hamm, Hamm, Hamm ...





To find a kid in Africa or Europe that couldn't name a single player other than these two would be like finding a kid in America who had never heard of video games. As in, such children don't exist in those distant lands.

There was one kid who did impress, though. He went last, so you know he was feeling good about himself as he saw player after player crumble in the face of such a difficult question -- We've got to know a soccer player's NAME to answer this question properly? He told us his name, his grade, and then, something other than Beckham:

"Ronaldhino."




I just reached over and gave him a high five.

"Nice!"

Our five awkwardly connected. We kind of missed, but not really. It was a moment I wish I could do over, because going in for the repeat five is just awkward.

At the end of practice, we tried a "MIGHTY DUCKS!" on three. Instead, it was Twerner and I yelling "Mighty Ducks" at the top of our lungs, so that we could drown out the voices of opposition, who were yelling about some Mexican food, I'm not sure which.

Our first game is Tuesday. My uncle recommended I look online for some duck patches of some sort. Preferably iron on.

NYPDriscoll.

"So... basically, could you kick my ass right now if you wanted to?"

Driscoll never did inspire much fear, at least not of physical pain, in me when he was my R.A., and I an 18-year-old first year -- (we don't say "freshman" at UVa, because we're better than you) -- putting soiled rags and interactive paper women on my R.A.'s dorm room door. But this was not the same Driscoll who led icebreaker games and held court over our Humphreys dorm council meetings. That was English major, Jefferson Scholar Driscoll.

"Yeah, basically," he said after a moment or two to reflect. He was smiling, but wasn't kidding.

I had noticed that his hand shake was much stronger now. Or maybe I just didn't remember how it felt when I shook it for the first time just over six years ago. But Driscoll, short Driscoll who loved U2 and wore ties to football games, definitely carries a certain aura with him these days: Don't even front. I will hurt you.

That Humphreys was the best dorm in UVa history was never in doubt -- we had the No. 4 overall draft picks in both MLB and NFL drafts (D'Brickashaw Ferguson, who has started all 32 games of his career as an offensive tackle for the Jets, and Ryan Zimmerman, who lived next door to Driscoll, and is now the third baseman of the future for the Washington Nationals), the hottest girl in our class (who my best friend later dated), kids named Phil Jackson, Robert Downey and Seth Green, Hot Dog Man, Wes the Original Beach Kid, a badass who beat cancer twice, and the real life nephew (therefore, the real Fresh Prince) of Uncle Phil from "The Fresh Prince." Yeah I'd say Humphreys dominated.

But it was really our hall that led the way. Humphreys First Left. And it was headed by Driscoll, an R.A. who was firm but fair, who never went out of his way to get anyone in trouble, which was why everyone respected him.

On 4/20, for example, it was becoming way too obvious what holiday we were celebrating in Hot Dog Man's room (hint: it wasn't Hitler's birthday). So Driscoll tried knocking to warn us that other R.A.'s passing through may not be so fun to deal with. But instead of a reply, all he heard in the seconds that followed were the sounds of a muted gathering and a panicked Wes, spraying Lysol all over the place with abandon, like it was DDT and his door was a jungle in North Vietnam. Driscoll is not an idiot. He just went back to his room, opened up his Pleistocene era IBM laptop (which just recently died, I discovered) and logged onto AIM. Tom was also logged on. A few moments after the coast was declared clear, a message popped up on his screen. It was from our R.A.: guys, it's pretty obvious what you're doing in there. please just go to another room.

Driscoll wanted to smell no evil.

Would your R.A. have done that? Better question: would your R.A. have done that... and then become an NYPD officer?

I just couldn't believe it when I first heard in March -- Tipton, from Humphreys second right, had sent me a Facebook message after he ran into Officer Driscoll on the streets in New York. I wrote back asking if it was a joke. Driscoll?! My R.A.?! The dude who hated getting kids in trouble when other people in his position got off on it?!

"you better believe it," Tipton replied. "also, he made a remark about how it wasn't enough for him to police the hallways at dorms..."

It took some networking, but I was able to get a hold of Driscoll's number just before I left NYC to come home.

"When I see you I am going to take a bong rip and blow the smoke right in your face," I texted him, the first he'd heard of me in maybe three years. I always loved to mess with Driscoll.

He answered the text, probably said something to himself about how little I'd changed, and disregarded my provocations.

So I kept messing with him.

"Please don't search my bag when we meet up tomorrow," I said when we actually got to speak on the phone.

"Ya know," he said in a voice that only slightly betrays his Queens roots, "that right there is enough for probable cause, just so you know."

Driscoll wasn't in uniform the day we met up, sadly. He was still working, just in court, so he looked like he could have been coming from any office job, or a Strake Jesuit assembly, or a baptism. But he was still packing heat, and still had the badge. We had lunch at a Cuban restaurant; he paid. Then we grabbed a coffee; I paid. If you're ever poor and being subsidized by a friend who knows you're poor, and you want to make yourself feel better, to trick yourself into the notion that you're carrying your weight somehow, always offer to pay for coffee. It's cheaper than food.

I paid for Driscoll's coffee, and we sat in a park next to City Hall, on a bench that started in the sun, that slowly drifted into the cool embrace of the shade. We talked, and talked, and talked. Where to start? It had been so long. I hadn't even known he'd been in the academy when I was still in school. He knew just as little about what I'd been doing -- the Balkans, Africa, wow. I was fascinated as Driscoll talked about what he has learned about humanity, government, law, "the real world." He loves that phrase. He said it maybe ten times. The context of "real" for him was completely different, but the lessons he'd learned, it sounded very similar to the realizations I myself had come to over the past two years.

The words I'll never forget are "abject disasters." That's how he paraphrases the story of people. Humanity is abject disaster. I thought of Bosnia. I thought of Kenya. I thought of shaking hands with George Bush, and all the people who have perished in those lands, and because of those hands. I thought of a thousand places and faces, all at once, all on that bench, that were once real in the flesh to me. Human beings are abject disasters. I agree.

And yet...

And yet.

Lots of us are insulated from the types of things that would drive people like me and Driscoll to this state of mind. I know it wasn't like this for him, the son of Irish immigrants, but I grew up living in an affluent neighborhood, riding in nice cars with excellent sound systems, eating out and getting new cleats for every sport, every season. I knew life was hard for people not as fortunate; after all, my dad always made sure to mention these people in our nightly prayers. And sometimes we would go volunteer at a soup kitchen. A couple of times. Maybe just twice, actually. Both on Thanksgiving. But I didn't really get it. We don't even have black people in my neighborhood. Maybe one family. But they're not quite like the black people my dad was mentioning in those prayers.

Driscoll's a cop on the Alphabet City beat, and I'm a wanderer on the Eastern Europe/East Africa beat, and we both know that humanity is not pretty. We sought out a reality that doesn't fall in line with the one we were subjected to at UVa, or that most UVa grads experience in the jobs they typically take upon graduating. And we learned, in a way that we can't forget, just as you can't forget the feel of a nice breeze, or the warmth of a beautiful woman's bed, or the pain of a lost loved one, that life is hard for most people. That includes Americans. Hard. And it brings out a side in humans that is almost enough to make you lose hope. They are violent, and selfish, and drunk, and irrational. It makes you want to throw up your arms and say fuck it, what's the point?

It's when you reach that point when you have to find a reason to not quit. Perhaps this is the point of life: finding a way to just keep going. Forget saving the world, or policing it. Just waking up every day, getting out of bed, no matter what may happen from that point until you go to bed at night -- that is a quite a mission.

Driscoll? He may disagree with that statement. His mission, after law school, is to land a job in the U.S. Attorney's Office. The anti Gonzalez.

Me? I just want to write a book, man. About humanity, and these lessons I've learned the past two years.

Maybe I should amend what I said earlier. Maybe the mission, the point of it all, isn't just to keep breathing. That would make life pretty dull, wouldn't you say? If you want to maintain your sanity in the midst of all these abject disasters, maybe the key is to be able to analyze all of our issues while laughing about it, as calloused as it may seem. That is my mission in this book. That is what I am going to be doing for the next year.

Today is my first day of soccer practice.

I haven't said that sentence since I was 16 years old -- I quit midway through that season, my junior year at Strake, after scoring a goal on a meaningless PK in the final seconds of a 7-0 victory. I hated my coach; he hated me; and I figured it would be nice to go out like Ted Williams. Turning in my jersey the next afternoon in his office -- I was quitting to play a new sport at my school, lacrosse -- meant that the last kick of my life would be a goal.

I would have used MJ in that analogy had the Wizards incident not taken place.

This time around, I'm coaching. Twerner and I are the coaches. Diana, a sixth grader on the team, and the reason I even got asked to do this by my uncle Dan, is a cousin to both of us, through marriage. What does that make Twerner to me? My cousin's cousin? Is this the context you use the term "once removed"?

Fascinating times we live in.

I was really excited when I first found out I'd be coaching 5th/6th grade girls soccer at AOS, until I found out it's not girls soccer. Tell me something: what kind of 11 year old dude is playing on a team that's majority girls? It's about 40 percent male, the make up of this squad.

At least one of the kids, Stephen, has the last name Wang.

"God DAMNIT WANG!'

Can't wait for that.

We're in charge of team names, Twerner and I, and that annoying statistic now kills my "Ladybugs" idea. There's only room for one Jonathan Brandis.

"I say we either do Mighty Ducks or the Little Giants," Twerner said on the phone today, before asking me if I had a whistle, or a ball, or anything at all, a few hours before our first practice.

"Definitely Mighty Ducks."

"Yeah, and that way, we can get all the parents to just go, 'Quack, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK!'"

Expect tons of great stories about the Mighty Ducks over the next two months.

"Alcohol is not classed as a performance-enhancing substance and is not formally prohibited in athletics competition."

No, no it's not. Ivan Ukhov, why do you have to be so ... Russian?

John McCain looks like one of the humans whose body had been inhabited by aliens in "Men in Black." Parts I and II. Any sort of walking or swiveling simply makes him give off an FDR in his 4th term vibe.

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Hey did you hear? John McCain was a P.O.W. in Vietnam.

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"When you've lived in a box, the world becomes clear. No time for petty, no time for wrong. Only time for right." - Fred Thompson.

How does being a P.O.W. make you right about everything?

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I mean honestly, John, how many months do the doctors give you? I hope you people out there who tell me that "Barack Obama is a Muslim" -- without being able to cite any written works besides an email whose subject begins with "FW:" -- are ready for a woman who has been the governor of Alaska for almost two whole years to take that oath of office within the next four.

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"My country saved me... and I will fight for her so long as I draw breath, so help me God."

If I'm John McCain's speech writer, I'm not bringing his eventual death to the attention of the audience.
Did the people running this convention go back and time the length of applause and awkward "Thank you's" in Obama's acceptance speech, and then mandate that John top that?

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"U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" - the crowd, for no apparent reason, in the middle of McCain's intro.

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Cindy looks like she has just taken two Vicodin's an hour before, all the time.

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"U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" - the crowd, for no apparent reason, right after his intro.

(We're all Americans, guys. You don't have to "live in a box" to be American.)

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"In truth, [Cindy] is more my inspiration than I am hers." - John McCain.

Who was your inspiration when you "lived in a box"?

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"And she doesn't want me to say this but she's 96 years young."

Translation: "I'm not that old. Look at her!"

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Why do the signs people are holding up say "Peace" on them? What exactly does this have to do with Straight Talk McCain?

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"We're Americans! ... We never hide from history; we MAKE history!"

This, ladies and gentleman reading from overseas, says it all about us.

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What is this McCain-centric country song?

"We're all just raisin' McCain!"

There must be some play on words I'm just not getting.

On Facebook:

1) I recently (not that recently, I suppose, now that it has been almost a month) had my second successful "Facebook Fakeout Birthday," on August 6. What makes it especially amusing is that I received 37 wall posts about it this time around (only three less than the inaugural bash), with only a handful of those being sarcastic or trying to blow my spot. My former history T.A., who knows the significance of the date I chose to fake people out with, August 6, 1945, simply wrote, "and hiroshima goes boom." And I had a couple of cousins, once again, enthusiastically wish me a happy birthday.

I also had one girl from New York, who fell for it hard last year, when I turned 62, take the time to write me a personal email in congratulations of the big day, since my Wall was cluttered with "screaming Bayless fans," and she wanted to show that she really cared. In her email she wrote, "You are probably also getting a lot of shit for crying wolf back in November or whenever that was that you faked your facebook birthday. So I'll stear clear of that."

It's called out-thinking yourself. And it makes me smile to know that I got her twice now.

2) I finally got to ask the question that has been bugging me for some time now: What icon shows up for people who break off engagements when this news becomes public on the News Feed?

I've been interested in the business of bad news icons for some time. But I caught a boon when my cousin broke off her engagement last summer, right before I left for Tanzania. Her engagement party was promptly converted into my going away party. Now that it's been over a year, and she's more than over it, I finally got to ask her: "Was there an icon of a broken ring next to your name when you broke off your engagement?"

She didn't check to see, was her response.

Great. The wait continues.


*Now that I see that they no longer do broken hearts, but rather entire, intact hearts for break ups, I guarantee my dream of hearing "Yes" to that question will never be fulfilled.

The WILTHATA Vice President

Is it just me, or is Sarah Palin kind of hot?

Wouldn't mind her keeping me warm during those dark Alaskan winters, in sickness and in health, till death do us part

Well it's obviously not just me. Apparently there is a magazine called "Alaska" that actually exists.

And there are the people who like to call Palin a MILF. And the ones who, in true American Dream style, immediately got to work on trying to make money off of this assertion.

But let's get something straight: Sarah Palin is not a MILF. This picture, I found out after a little bit of research, is not actually her. (Google Images is not always 100 percent accurate.)

But with McCain at such a fragile old age, I wouldn't mind if it was!

Maybe, because of the fantasy points it brings to the table, you could call Palin a VPILF (this joke sure would've been a lot more fitting had www.whitehouse.com still been a porn site, like it was when I was in high school). But she's not a MILF. Sarah Palin is a WILTHATA.

I think "MILF," for as amazing a term as it is, and for as thankful as I am to the makers of the "American Pie" movies for bringing it to the attention of the world -- (honestly, what did they say to describe hot moms before this word?) -- is the most overused word in the American English vernacular. Those who say it typically run on the younger side: they range from high school age to the "I frame my Phish posters now," post college, fifth year frat scene age. This is because most dudes of this demographic don't have any female peers who qualify for moms they would like to bleep yet. The chicks they're usually doing are actually a bunch of GILF's, plain old girls.

When you hear one of them say, "Man, McCain's chick is a MILF, man!" it means they would like to tap her halibut right then and there, without hesitation, as if she were on par with the hot girl in their chemistry class. But I doubt a very high percentage of 14-26 year olds really mean that.

You see, true MILF's are actually very rare. Often times, a hot mom is simply "good for a mom," but that isn't the same as Angelina Jolie, a mother herself, who is maybe the hottest woman alive. Angelina Jolie is almost too hot to be called a MILF.

That's like saying Michael Jordan is a Hall of Famer.

Mary Louise Parker, on "Weeds." Now that is a MILF.

The photo that comes up beside the definition of the word in Webster's.

Sophia Loren, not so much.

Warning: Those with pacemakers, beware.

I mean, at age 73, just one year older than presidential hopeful McCain, she looks better than anyone else on this earth old enough to remember the death of Il Duce. And my friend Jeep would probably label her a "GrandMILF." But that's just gross. Loren is the perfect WILTHATA -- if I was 73, and that was who I slept next to every night, I am a happy, happy man.

To shore up the shortcomings of our language when it comes to fully expressing ourselves on this matter, Hunter and I decided while we were in Tanzania that we needed a better and more accurate term than "MILF" for the moms that we find attractive, but "for a mom."

WILTHATA: Wife I'd Like To Have At That Age.

As in, when I'm 50, or 60, or even 72, if my wife looks like that, I am chillin.

The future FLILTHATA?

John McCain knows what I'm talking about. He's married to a WILTHATA. And he's hugging on one for the rest of his campaign, too.

His thoughts right now: "I love photo ops."

The most prime example of a WILTHATA? Easy.

Admit it, gums and all: If you're Katie Couric's age, you are stoked on being married to a relative babe like this.

Especially with that $15 million a year from CBS. Now that is a wife I would definitely like to have at that age.

Kurt Warner doesn't need the money. Or the looks.

This is what I would call "busted."

His wife Brenda is more of a YCHH. A You Can Have Her.

Welcome Home, Danger

What is that first word, a type of reindeer as would be written by the band Korn?

I had many nicknames in Tanzania. My favorite, by far, was Hatari. It means "Danger" in Swahili. The reason I had that name has nothing to do with my intimidation index; it comes from an incident that took place early on in our time in Patandi, when I made an incredible shot on the village basketball court and a little kid yelled out "Hatari!"

My dad, who misses me when I am not here, wanted to welcome me home, so he had a banner made. A banner that would say "Welcome Home, Danger," in Swahili. So he emailed my friend Peter, who lives in TZ, to ask how one would say that. Peter's answer was correct: "Karibu Nyumbani, Hatari."

The Bob's transferral of Peter's sentence, however, was not correct.

Notice the 'O' in Karibu?

Ah, Dad. Don't stress. It makes the banner funnier, and more worth keeping.

B.O. and the problem of coming home.

A little over a year ago, right after getting to Tanzania, I got on board a cramped daladala for the first time, and was overwhelmed by the stench.

It was body odor. But not just your standard, run of the mill B.O. It was B.O. my God, I can even taste the foulness when I try to breathe through my mouth level body odor. To be smothered by Molly Shannon's arm pit would not compare. This was even worse than Italy the previous summer, when Laura, Micah and I had taken the slow train from Florence to Pisa, sweating bullets in the rickety car that lacked air conditioning, but which was filled to the brim with standing, begging gypsies and seated, glistening passengers, none of whom were wearing deodorant. No one wears deodorant in Europe. I wrote in my journal back then that the Italians needed to make a choice: either you don't have A/C but do wear SpeedStick, or you forgo the SpeedStick and install A/C. But if you're in Western Europe, where you can afford it, you've got to pick one.

Those were my thoughts in the summer of 2006, when I was still very much in American mode. Americans find the smell of B.O. to be repulsive. All Americans wear deodorant.

In Africa, there is no A/C, no SpeedStick, and people don't bathe all that often. So that first daladala was especially repulsive. It made Italy seem like a huge, boot-shaped bed of roses. It's all relative, these declarations of what smells good and what smells bad.

The days passed. Weeks passed, then months. Then a year. All the while, I was getting on daladala's, I was cramming myself into a space not meant for a 6 ft., 170 lb. man, I was inhaling the aroma. L'eau d'Afrique. It is the smell of original humanity, before Clorox and breath mint strips sterilized the scene. It's all relative. Everything, not just B.O. If you spent a year in Tanzania, the same thing would start to happen to you. You would begin to forget that this isn't the way everyone smells. You might even start to .... like it.

"Oh God," Miguel said. Those were the first two words he had for his high school best friend, whom he hadn't seen since New Years. Not, "Welcome back," or, "How was...," or even "What's up?" It was the smell. Of my body. And the invocation of the Lord's name -- does that count as taking it in vain?

"Oh God, you freaking smell." I think he chose freaking because my parents were standing right there.

But Miguel was right. In this context -- my family's kitchen in an affluent neighborhood in 713 Houston -- I did smell.

"I know man," I said, "I had to wake up really early this morning and rush to the airport to make my flight on time, and didn't have a chance to get in the shower." Which was true. What was also true was that I hadn't showered for two days before that, either. And that I no longer wear deodorant. No one in Africa wears deodorant. And I kind of look Italian.

Andrew, another one of my boys from Strake, went in for the real thing nonetheless, and he didn't complain about the B.O. His mother is Italian, though.

"I felt really bad for the people sitting next to me on my flights today, too," I told them. Ben was there, too. I lifted up my shirt, an electric looking textile of red, green and gold, with a Rasta zebra on front and back, to stick my nose down in there and give it a sniff. All I smelled was ... how human bodies smell. That's me still in African mode. I just shrugged my shoulders. Seemed all right to me; I needed to consciously remind myself that, at age 22, I would have vehemently disagreed.

"Oh, so you were THAT guy," Miguel threw back. He looked annoyed, almost as if it had been him who had had to endure a leg of sitting next to I-just-got-back-from-Africa,-can-you-tell-by-my-shirt guy, either the quick hop from JFK to Cincinnati, or the longer push from Cincinnati to IAH (I don't know the airport mnemonic for Cincinnati, nor would I know how to spell Cincinatti without spell check).

"Yup, I was that guy."

And that is something I'm going to have to work on, now that I'm home for the indefinite future: not being that guy. The "This one time at band camp" guy. Because people don't give a shit about that.

"This one time, in the Balkans..."

What are the Balkans?

"This one time, in Tanzania..."

Like the Tanzanian Devil?

The reason culture shock is harder coming back isn't just because the pace of life goes from Sid Bream to Usain Bolt. It's because you feel like everything you just saw, everything you heard, everything you tasted and felt and hurt and loved and cried and laughed and read and shat and lived ... none of it is real. Not anymore. Everything became a memory, a ghost experience, the second you left that realm.

Like it never happened. And you can see it in the eyes of the ones who don't understand why you don't understand that you freaking smell when you get off the plane. You're trying to make them feel what you felt with your voice, with your eyes, with your facial expressions and hand movements and enthusiasm, and they just can't. They look back at you, feign interest, and take a puff of their cigarette, or a sip of their beer. And then they ask if you saw the Astros game that night. (Which I did, and which I was very happy about, since Berkman had his first career walkoff, but which has nothing to do with the story I was just trying to tell).

You change, the others stay the same, and you have no right to judge them for that. I am a very different man today from the boy who got on that plane to London on June 6, 2006, headed for the World Cup.

For example, I look like a movie star now (or at least that's what Anna K. says).

And I can't expect people to give me props for that, or bow down and beg me to tell them stories. For looking like Shia, or for being a world traveler. All I can do is try to readjust without forgetting. Assimilate back into what used to be the only culture I knew, without losing the lessons I've learned over the past two years from cultures I'd barely even heard of until I arrived.

And maybe put on some deodorant every now and then, just for others' sake.

Did all that really just happen?

All that, as in, Africa.

From the Brooklyn Bridge, it sure seems like it didn't.

I've been in New York since Thursday. But I only realized that fact yesterday, in a way. Yesterday was tough.

I finally had time to be alone; Central Park. For four hours, without moving. Time to digest, mentally, all that has happened to me in the past year, all that I have seen, smelled, felt, lived. It wasn't quite meditation, but I sure wasn't talking. And I sure didn't feel all too connected to reality, as I peered through the haze into the faces of strangers, and wondered if they ever wondered. I was in a haze. It was overwhelming. It was a different version of reality.

The stimuli of a modern Western city are astounding. No wonder we're all A.D.D. Our very way of life screams at you to keep moving. With an exclamation point, keep moving! Skyscrapers and vast amounts of white people -- move! Cell phones and iPods -- move! Tattoos, honking horns, English newspapers, rude cashiers -- move, move, move! People, they walk by without acknowledging one another -- no time. A smile is a sign of weakness, or of stupidity, perhaps -- who the hell are you?

Giant buildings and edifices and institutions, they appear on the surface as grand monuments to our place in human history; they act as monuments to the greatness of our way of life. This is the end goal. This is why we promote development in the third world. Everyone, one day, wants to be like this, like us. A sort of concrete Garden of Eden. The skyscrapers are the trees of life. The monuments, they are simply testaments to our new covenant with the Creator: We are the new children of Israel. When I look at them, though, they seem as sturdy as paper, destined to come crashing down like a scene out of Revelation, minus the fire and the brimstone. If there's anything I came away from Africa with, it is a sense that the meek shall truly inherit the earth, some day. Even if it seems like the going can't get any tougher for people living in mud huts in the modern era, I have a quiet belief that when it's all said and done, those people will still be around when we're long gone.

If they want development, I think it's all well and good. I just want to make sure that the African people realize the pot of gold they're after, it doesn't bring all the answers. Nothing gold can stay.

But in the meantime, I'm trying to keep myself from going crazy. I need something to stabilize my emotions -- I just need to watch a baseball game, chill, drink a beer. I've never been to Yankee Stadium, one of those paper monuments I was referring to earlier. But I'm going tonight -- I've got two tickets to the Sox game. That should get my mind right.

Just a few photos from my most recent trip. We aborted the plan to go to Gombe and see the chimps when our plans to ride the train across TZ from Dar was thwarted by the lack of a train until Aug. 10 -- this was on Aug. 2. So we instead took off for the north, along the Swahili coast, which is a part of Tanzania richer in culture and history than the entire Tanganyika hinterland combined (maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much). That's Islam, for you. They wrote things down, and they knew about the wheel.

From Dar to Tanga, Tanzania, a two-hour daladala ride to and from the best-kept-secret beaches of Pangani, and across the Kenyan border into Mombasa. It was a good eight days. Although I must admit: I am tired. Really tired. In the cabeza. I just want to chill, seriously, for the next week before I leave for NYC. But moods of future joy, right? I'm back in Arusha for yet another breather, no more than two full days once again, before another adventure starts tomorrow -- climbing Mt. Meru, our backyard mountain, which, buzzkill alert, I have recently discovered to have been a fictional mountain in Buddhist lore.

But I'll take it.

Here are two classic pictures.

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From Pangani.





(the following conversation took place in Swahili).

Old Muslim man: "You look like me!" (as he gestures towards my beard)

Me: "It's true!"

Old Muslim man: "HA! HA! HA HA HA!"

Me: (reciprocating laughter) "Here, let's take a picture together!"

and then

"Don't be shy! Touch my beard!"

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From Mombasa.

I was just taking a picture of this classic graffiti, when they all yelled "Picha!" and I motioned for them to stand still.

Don't Hate Da Player, Hate Da The Game

I love the symbolism -- these types of kids usually ask for money any time they see a Mzungu. But you can't get mad. You can't be a playa da the hater.

The King of Kings, Lords of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah's Toilet.

And how I sat on it last week in Ethiopia.

Such an awe-inspiring word mixed with such an awe-deflating word. It's just funny to picture "The Emperor" having to wipe.

Sometimes, you don't even need words. You just know.

"This is what I'm thinking, and this is what he's thinking." Making eye contact is only a confirmation; it's not what triggers the thought.

There the two of us were, alone in the fifties style bathroom of the former Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I. Not even a fake razor or bar of soap, or even an empty roll of toilet paper was inside with us, much less a guard. It was just me and my friend Bino. The only thing keeping us from doing what we knew we weren't supposed to do was a single piece of white string acting as a cordon, and the honor system.

"Yes," Bino said.

"No," I answered, envisioning the living conditions of an Ethiopian jail. "No..."

Then we made eye contact. Life only gives you so many opportunities to add to your "Amazing Conversation Starters" collection, and the window of opportunity for picking up a gem such as this was closing fast. Time and again in my 24 plus years on earth, reminding myself of that fact has led to me doing something my father would shake his head at; this moment was no exception.

"...Yes." And I pull out my camera from my pocket. I never leave home without it, and it is for reasons such as this. I hand the worn, black Lowepro case to Bino, who wastes no time opening the Velcro flap.

"Go tell Mary to watch the door," he says.

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Bino swears it was the first time he had been there and not seen a guard in the bathroom keeping watch. The reason he's been there multiple times is because he lives in Ethiopia. Bino's real name is actually David -- my former roommate. David Rabinowitz, pronounced bih-no, not, as The Bob likes to think, in a more Southern Texas accent than usual, beye-no. Just wanted to get that straight before we proceed. This was the fourth time I have seen him since we graduated in May 2006: Dubrovnik, Prague, Arusha, Addis Ababa. But it was the closest we had ever been to the toilet of a former monarch.

"Please Do Not Touch," in Amharic. (I assume).

Or the bed of a former monarch, for that matter.

Where the magic happened with his busted wife

Why security would leave those two places unwatched is a mystery to me. They were all over me downstairs, when I was first told that photography was not allowed, despite the fact that I was merely taking pictures of some of the placards describing bits of general Ethiopian history from the reign of His Imperial Majesty (H.I.M.). Just after snapping this shot, I was caught and reprimanded.

"You no peek churrs."

If you read about the insane level of pomp and protocol and unyielding deference to His Majesty in Selassie's court, as described in Richard Kapuściński's The Emperor, you would probably agree with me when I say that I would not be surprised at all to discover that H.I.M. had a toilet paper bearer to hand him his TP in a similar fashion.

"Why?" I asked, genuinely puzzled. It's not like I was harming anything; there was no flash, and I wasn't standing in front of the Mona Lisa or the Rosetta Stone, or anything like that.

The guard, shockingly, had run out of words in English. He was unable to explain the reason for their policy against cameras, unless I was prepared to learn Amharic in three seconds. Me asking "why" was pointless. I should have saved that question for when I got to the bedroom and bathroom, when I found myself completely left to my own devices. As in, "Why would you leave me to my own devices with such a temptation as this? Adam had a better shot in that garden than I have now of resisting."

They're just lucky I'm not a voyeur, because I would've clearly tried to have a go at it there in the "king" size (hi-ohh!) bed with Mary; if I was a gay voyeur, I probably would have made a pass at Bino. But since neither of those labels apply to me, I went for the conventional next best thing: sitting on the Emperor's throne.

The honor system worked at UVa; it did not work here.

Especially for anyone with a remote interest in reggae music. For people like these, pulling your pants down and sitting bareback on the former toilet of the Ras Tafari -- Selassie's name before his coronation as Emperor in November 1930, which explains the origins of the dreadlocked Jamaicans who first described themselves as Rastafarians -- is indirectly touching butts with a legend. If you've talked to me for five minutes, chances are you figured I have a remote interest in reggae music. And by that I mean I am obsessed with it. I am not, however, a Rastafarian. Why? I don't think that touching butts with H.I.M.'s throne is indirectly touching butts with the living Christ (even though Selassie is reputed to have died in 1976, allegedly strangled by the very man who deposed him, Colonel Mengistu Haile Maryam, true Rastas believe that "Jah [still, more than 30 years later] live!"). But I disagree; I don't think H.I.M. was God, or even "Jah." Not any more than I believe every one of us to be God, or Jah, at least. But I understand that some Rastas could/definitely would take my actions as blasphemous or disrespectful. For that, I apologize.

(If it makes you feel any better, I make fun of all religions equally. Except for Islam; I don't wanna get Danish Embassied, after all.)

The exhibit is without a doubt the highlight attraction of the entire Museum of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. It is, after all, probably a place where Selassie spent a lot of "Haile Time." And as one of the rare Ethiopians during his reign (1930-1974) to be literate, the thought that perhaps he may have read about himself as Time's Man of the Year in 1936, while dropping a fat deuce, thanks to some delicious key wot and injera, is just too delightful to even stand.

Haile Time...'s Man of the Year

Do I feel special? Yes. Because I am willing to bet that not even Josip Broz Tito, the Father of Yugoslavia got to park his can where I did.

"And in case you have to go, Druže Tito, this spear also acts as an arrow pointing towards the guest bathroom."

The Emperor's real imperial throne was made of wood and ivory, rather than light blue plastic -- (But I mean, can we get the man at least a little gold on that thing, perhaps on the flusher? He's the freaking anointed ruler of the Ethiopian Empire; he's got roots tracing back to King Solomon! Hook a Hamito-Semitic brother up!). That baby was stolen by the Italians during World War II and not returned for a few decades. These days, it's sitting, un-sat upon, in the main display room of a different museum down the road, the National Museum of Ethiopia.

Sitting at the right hand of the Rastafarian Father would seem a little humbling, wouldn't you think? (Someone suffered from Napoleonic syndrome, though, eh? Selassie was around Tom Cruise's height.)

(The National Museum, in case you were wondering, is normally where a replica of Lucy, the 3.5 million year old Ethiopian chick known locally as "Dinquinesh" - "Thou art wonderful" - is on display. But these days, she's in .... are you ready for this? .... Houston, Texas. My hometown, of all places. I actually got to see her [I thought it was really her, and not a replica, though I could be mistaken] last January at the Museum of Natural Science, only hours before I went to the airport to fly back to Tanzania. Neither Mary nor Bino have been so lucky. To be from Texas, and to see Lucy.)

While the "real" throne was off limits, the one used for Haile Time in what used to be the Gannana Leul Palace, but which, along with all its surrounding grounds was donated to the then 12-year-old Haile Selassie I University in 1961, was left as wide open as Plaxico Burress in the end zone in Phoenix. (The school and museum are now situated on the campus of the rechristened Addis Ababa University.) Bino says it was because the power went out that the guard temporarily disappeared. I don't see how that would be the case; but I have no alternative hypothesis that sounds any better. All I know is that we had a window. And that we only had a finite amount of time before that window shut.

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"Wait," I said, considering a last minute abort as my heart rate quickened and my breaths became short, "what about a surveillance camera?"

"They don't have any cameras in this country*," Bino shot back, omitting the, "you idiot" finisher to that sentence, a truth he figured was self-evident. There was one camera, however, in that bathroom -- in Bino's hand -- and it was now on and ready to go. Mary was guarding the entrance from the master bedroom. They were all waiting on me.

Here were the four scenarios that were causing my heart to beat as rapidly as it was at that moment, any of which were likely should I get caught red handed, or pants down:

a) getting beaten to a pulp
b) getting beaten to death
c) getting thrown in Ethiopian jail, or even worse,
d) all of the above.

But the more I stalled, the higher the chance was of a, b, c or d coming to fruition. So I just did it; I undid my belt and pulled down my Carhartt's, quicker than the man who engaged in the quickest quickie in the history of quickies.

And I took my seat on the throne, ready for my coronation. Don't be fooled by the stupid look on my face; I was as paranoid as a red-eyed Rasta in an airport metal detector.

Soon to be framed on my parents' infamous "Wall of Fame," in the downstairs bathroom at their home in Houston.

If only I had had the hot dog suit.

If only I had had to poop, really. WOW, that would have given the story a little extra oomph! And let me tell you, with the way my body reacts sometimes to the Ethiopian cuisine, mixed with Ethiopian coffee, I could have left a serious mark in the blink of an eye. And you know I had toilet paper with me -- this is Africa, y'all. You never assumed a place is going to have it, because they never do. Even in the Emperor's former palace!

It's probably good that I didn't have to go, though. As it stands, no one is the wiser that this sacrilege even took place. But had I, as The Bob would say, "crossed the line?" Forget the obvious evidence that would have been left behind -- where would I have left the TP? Ethiopia is unique to all the countries I've ever visited in one respect: you don't flush toilet paper down the toilet. You throw it away. It's a testament to the incredibly shitty (hi-ohh!) pipes they've got transporting their shit to the sewers -- that's what Bino says about Addis, at least. My CouchSurfing friends that Mary and I stayed with in Gonder, Ruhan and Karlijn, say it's because they've got a direct link up to a septic tank that isn't designed for any .... non organic waste.

Thus, "the green bin."

ALL* (*underlined) TOILET PAPER IN GREEN BIN PLEASE :)
Really, though. All.

Judging from the color of the little pond outside the main entrance to Selassie's old palace, I wonder where exactly the imperial poo was being sent to whenever he flushed his non-gold flusher.

Gyewww.

Just a theory.

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P.S. In the same museum, a close No. 2 on the coolest exhibits is this, "Banna tale: Not knowns what should be known."

I'm assuming it sounds more poetic/is much more profound in Amharic.

Let me type it out for those of you who have a hard time reading:

Once upon a time a husband and his wife lived together for a long time without children. In their old age they had a son. When he grew up they decided that their son should be married and they found him a girl that might be suitable. He then married her. After they were married they didn't know how to go about making a baby. One day, when his mother was climbing a ladder, the son who was lying on the ground noticed something between his mother's thighs that he had not seen before. He asked his mother, "What is it?" When he was told that his wife also had that thing, he argued that he had never seen it.

"How come you do not know about this after all the years of marriage?" his mother asked.

"My wife shows me only her toes," the son replied.

"Tonight, check if your wife has the same thing as I have," she said.

The son went home that night and saw his wife had the same thing as his mother. He was happy and he kept watching over his wife day and night. One day war broke out in the area and all the inhabitants fled. So he also left with his wife. While fleeing he asked to his wife, "Did you forget to bring our thing?"

"I left it at home," she told him.

The husband thought it was true and, while running back to get it back, he was killed in the war.

Love, deceit, sex, looking up mom's skirt to catch a glimpse of her "thing." Ladies and gentleman, Ethiopian culture!

*A few days later, we went into a convenience store that had a surveillance camera.

"Dude, live it up. You guys are about to do more traveling in the next few weeks than most people do in their entire lives."

That's what Peter had to say yesterday over a cold Castle (pronounced Cas-tell by Wabongo) within one of the many Mzungu lily pad enclaves in Arusha. Hunter and I are men on the move, though not on the move in the same directions. We got down from Mount Kilimanjaro two days ago. I leave this afternoon for Ethiopia for three weeks; he's still got a little more time to decompress with his family, before Anne and Hank (that's right, they've finally broken me of my Southern affliction, addressing all wazee as "Mr." and "Mrs.", much like a six-month old puppy still chews on couch ends) head back to the States. That's when he and his sister Sarah will set off to do their thing in Rwanda and Uganda. Me? I'll still be in Ethiopia, a.k.a. Zion, a.k.a. the New Jerusalem, a.k.a. the place I've been wanting to go for muchos, muchos años, since long before writing my college history thesis on Jerusalem's role in reggae and Rastafari.

(hint: the reason those things are even remotely related has to do with a town called Axum, the epicenter of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, located in the north of the country near the Eritrean border. It is there that all Ethiopians and Rastafarians alike claim that the lost Ark of the Covenant resides, hidden within the holy of holies in the St. Mary of Zion Church. It is there that this guy is going to go. It is there that I will not be allowed entry. But at least I can say I came as close to the thing as I possibly could.)

These past few weeks have been crazy for me -- a week long safari with my family, the end of my job, a five-day hike of the tallest free standing mountain in the world. Oh, how I wish I had just one more day in Arusha, so I could write about them all, give them the attention they really deserve. But as Michael Scott once said, "No time! No time!" This Zion Train's got to keep on movin'. My time in Africa is winding down, fast. Real fast. And I'm sucking out every last drop.

I get back from Ethiopia August 1; I leave the next day for Dar es Salaam, from where I'm trying to catch a train across the interior of Tanzania to Kigoma, a town Che Guevara used to chill in during his days trying to spread the revolution to the Congo (the first line in his memoirs about his time there were, "This is the history of a failure," so I don't think he had very good memories of Kigoma). From there, there's a chance my friend is gonna hook it up for a chance to see some chimps -- she works for the Jane Goodall Institute, and for that week "so do I." A ferry across Lake Victoria to Uganda is in the works. I see Rwanda in the horizon. I see the River Nile. I see awesomeness. And I see the grand finale, Mount Meru.

Mount Meru is going to be the culmination. Hunter and I have been wanting to climb it all year. Every day it stares us right in the face, our hometown mountain, the center of the universe, or so the Buddhists say. When we reach its summit, only three days before we're supposed to leave this continent for good, well my friends, I think you could say that that is how the script is supposed to end.

When I get home, I have decided, I am writing a book. I no longer say the words "maybe," or "thinking about," or "we'll see what happens." That's loser talk; I am not a loser; and I only get to live one time, right? There's no point in not doing what I feel I need to do just because the odds are stacked against me. Ever heard of Kurt Warner? So I am writing a book, about the last two years of my life, mixing in my own personal experiences, anecdotes and theories with a healthy does of historical context.

I don't care if it gets published or not. I do, but I don't. Meaning, if it doesn't, I won't be mad. I'll just publish it myself, the beauty of the 21st century. To treat it as a glorified thank you note to send to all those who touched me along my way would not be a half bad worst case scenario. From England to Germany to Holland, Denmark to Norway to Spain; Switzerland, France, Italy; Hungary and the Czech Republic, to Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania; to Turkey, Singapore, Vietnam and China. But especially to those in Serbia and Tanzania. Those are the two places that really hold special places in my heart, til Kingdom come.

These last two years have changed me in ways that I never could have expected. I am a better person as a result. My eyes are opened wider. And I am going to make the most of what I learned.

You've got to start somewhere on your dream, right? It doesn't just happen to you. You have to grab it. Okay then. My dream is to be a writer of books, books that people read, about travel, about history, about funny things that happen along the way. And that is what I am going to do. Starting in September, when I'm back in Texas, with no money left in my bank account, with no plans on the horizon, but with a whole lot of stories to tell, I am going to get to work.

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p.s. Apparently the Ethiopian government has put the blogspot website on its websita non grata list, so, yeah. Wouldn't be expecting to hear much from me for the rest of the month.