The Ancient City of Ephes...ooohhhh, look, a cat!
Some guided tours just struggle to captivate the minds of the A.D.D. Generation

Hey, Ankara, ever heard of Rustoleum?

"That was back when you were six," my mom said the other night at dinner, looking across the table at the-little-girl-who-is-slowly-developing-womanly-curves named Garland.

Louise -- or "Mamalou," as that aforementioned budding flower and her friends have taken to calling my mother, deciding that any wife of The Bob needs a nickname -- was telling a story about something Garland and I had done around 1996 or '97, just after we had moved into our new house on Garnet. The Bob -- the one bankrolling the lamb kebabs on our plates, in our mouths and in our stomachs -- was sick, lying in bed at the hotel.

"And Bayless was..." eyebrows scrunched, eyes aiming upwards, my mom pretended to be hard at work doing mental math.

"Also six."

Whammo!

"It's hard to believe you're 16 now," she said as the laughter died down. "And hard to believe that Bayless is..."

She caught herself before finishing the sentence: Another dramatic pause. Looked at me; looked at Garland; looked at the situation objectively. Based on the events that had taken place that afternoon at Pergamon, it was clear that another sarcastic joke was on the way.

"Still six."

On fire, Mom. Absolutely en fuego.

My mom had not been too impressed by her 22-year-old son's inability to concentrate that day. I had been way more focused on the timing of my attacks on Garland's heels -- and unbuckled knees that needed buckling -- than on stories about the ancient Greeks and Romans who had lived in Anatolia. My performance was very sixish, true, which hadn't been a very good display of maturity for our sixtyish tour guide, Eti.

I suspect that The Bob and my....

Ooohhhh, wait. Look at that cat!!!

How can you not be drawn to the cute little kitties? Look, it's licking its paw, but it looks like it's singing into a microphone!! As Garland and her cheerleader friends would say, "Awwwwwwwww!"

Sorry.

Back to what I was saying: I have a hard time concentrating sometimes.

But what am I supposed to do? As the last undiagnosed member of the A.D.D. Club left in America, a third day of all-day guided tours was just too much to ask. Without being allowed to wander, my mind cannot absorb that much information. So wander it had done.

And wander it would do some more. Round 4 -- Ephesus -- was on tap for the next day.

I'm still six?? Sorry, but Garland didn't perform much better during Round 4.

And if you thought my performance at Pergamon was bad, think again.

I remember Eti telling us right off the bat that Ephesus, an incredibly important Greco-Roman metropolis of old, was famous for seven "first's." As in, it was the first in the world at seven remarkable things.

Let's see what I can pull out of the bag*...

• street lights
• temples dedicated to Roman emperors
• hot water in homes

*keep in mind that you must attach the word "allegedly" to all of these bullet points


And I'm spent.

I was just way too interested in the "Wes Petticrew" stray cats who "run s**t" in Ephesus to focus on anything else.

You can't stop them. You can only hope to contain them.

"You're in about 20 photo albums now."

My mother had just watched in amusement as half the horde of Japanese tourists behind us snapped away at the frame of me petting one of the Wes cats. They couldn't get enough. Forget about the ancient sculptures and rich history which was literally at their fingertips; the Japanese tourists wanted photos of some random white kid and a stray cat.

That's why I love the Japanese: We see eye to eye.

(But only if the sun is pointed into mine, and I'm not wearing sunglasses).

The Japanese are the only other people on earth who share my fascination with stray cats, and they take only slightly more photos-per-second than me.

Take today in Cappadocia, for example. Sitting in a roadside tourist tea shop with my mom and our new guide Oktay, a bus load of them pulls up. Their guide comes inside, alone, and immediately starts venting his frustration in Turkish. None of the people he was leading have followed him in. Oktay's translation told me why.

"He says he just can't understand how all of them can take so many pictures of cats."

I looked over at the Japanese-speaking Turk. He looked pretty annoyed as he drank his çay, shaking his head in bewilderment.

"Allll day," Oktay continued.

I glanced outside: At least ten Japanese, each with a big smile on their face, like always, snapping away at two cats who looked as confused as the baffled guide sitting to my left.

"From all different angles!" he concluded.

I could publish a book of all the Japanese tourist group shots I have accumulated this trip: Rhere's Raldo? By Bayress Parsrey

I can understand why Eti got a little annoyed with me.

"It was like she was our teacher," Garland said in retrospect, referring to the infamous "The longer you take to take a picture, the later we eat" comment. "Like she was punishing us or something."

Cats, Japanese, and then Garland's tumbling -- Eti was facing some stiff competition for my attention span, and I don't think she appreciated it very much.

Is that a logo for a jam band, or a warning of the incredibly violent death that awaits anyone unlucky enough to slip from the edge of the theater walls?

"The things a little sister will do for you," The Bob said after his youngest daughter, a star JV cheerleader who should be a star varsity cheerleader for our alma mater, tried to imitate the pose of the "Shakedown Street"/"You're going to die if you slip" warning sign posted on each side of the stage.

The left leg could be a little straighter, Garland.

And I haven't even gotten to the potty humor from Ephesus.

Pergamon, Turkey.

Alexander the Great. One of Alexander the Great's generals, who receives it when his boss dies. Inherited by Rome when somebody else important dies, later on.

And that's about all I've got for you.

I wish I could tell you more about this ancient city, but I honestly just can't remember anything else.


Though he got sick and couldn't even make it out of his bed that day at the Izmir hotel, my dad had already thrown down the cash for a nice tour guide named Eti to make the drive to Pergamon and show us the ropes.

Unfortunately for Eti, I come from the A.D.D. generation.


She lost me at 'hello.'


"As you can see, the barrel vaults to your right are typical Greek architecture. The Romans, who invented mortar only much later, were able to pick up on Byzantine ..."

Attention ..... "building styles, and really..." .... is .... " improve upon...." .... drifting ... "their lack of..." ....

Wooooooow, look at the colors!

...away.


I do wonder, though. When was it, exactly, that human beings officially began to suck at building stuff?


I doubt many people will be visiting Southside Place, USA 2,000 years from now, to marvel at ancient American architecture.

That is, of course, unless the metal roof from 3764 Garnet survives the nuclear holocaust that takes place between now and then.

Happy New Year.






Iyi yillar is Turkish for "Most Overrated Holiday E-ver."

Daaaa Bob!

Never try to wake a bear in hibernation.

It doesn't work.

Louise Parsley is woman.

Roooaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!

HEAR HER ROAR!

This is my sister.

Very nice, how much?

Garland is number 4 prostitute in all of Kazakhstan!

Sexy time!


Wa wa WEE wa!

Great success. Dequi.

"He burned my head!"

More Serbia stories -- I could only hope to write them all down -- will come later. For now, let's focus on the present.

The Bob, my mom and Garland have been with me in Istanbul since Wednesday. But all The Bob has wanted to do since arriving was make a visit to the hamam.

"The Buddha" -- Haven't I seen this statue before in the Chinese food restaurant by my house?

I've been to two different Turkish baths in Budapest. Those are basically really nice, really old school swimming pools, with a steam room attached. There's nothing Turkish about them. From now on, I'm referring to those as "Austro-Hungarian baths."

A hamam -- the real Turkish bath -- is a pretty much a cross between a spa and an all guys BDSM conference. You lounge in a room with a bunch of other sweaty dudes, all wearing only a Turkish loin cloth, and wait your turn to get manhandled by a sweaty Turkish man, also wearing nothing but a Turkish loin cloth. When your number is finally called -- trust me, there is no rhyme, nor reason, to how they select who is next in line -- he simply grunts at you to follow him to the nearest available spot on the heated, circular slab of rock situated smack dab in the middle of the room.

The hamamer (I made that word up) who grunted at me was just about to strap a rubber ball in my mouth when some other hamamer came up, and basically tried to cut in on his colleague's game. The new guy just swooped in out of nowhere, and he started to take control of the situation. This was much to the chagrin of my original man. Shockingly, an argument ensued.

I'm not sure how many of you have ever heard the Turkish language spoken, but it is without a doubt the closest thing to organized gibberish known to man.

"Jamukah payukah, JAMUKAH PAYUKAH!"

"Shabbaday boo, kodoyay pah!"

"Kadikoy shoo lay nah! Rah tahh boo boo rah!"

This is going on right in front of me, and I don't know what to do. Sitting in only a towel, a first-timer to the Turkish bath(house) scene, desperately looking across the room at The Bob, whose eyes are shooting back a "What the hell did you do," my eyes answer in turn: "Nothing!" It was, without a doubt, the first time in my life that I'd ever had two sweaty, hairy, old Turkish men -- in towels -- fight over the right to rub their powerful hands all over my body, for money.

The intruder won the argument, and proceeded to go to work, but my original man wasn't happy about it, and kept making snide remarks in gibberish throughout the session. For about 15 minutes, though, my new guy treated me like his own personal rag doll -- soaping me up, cracking my back, wantonly attacking various pressure points, contorting my neck every which way, and indiscriminately pouring buckets of piping hot water on top of my head, without warning.

Most people don't complain about the rough treatment -- either because they're so rough-and-tumble that it doesn't bother them, or, like me, because they're too intimidated by the chaotic environment to speak up, especially in a language no one in authority is likely to understand.

But there was one guy...
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I saw him after I had had my post-steam room massage, which was also pretty damn rough, but slightly less public. I was coming out of the shower, and was being draped in towels by the Turkish towel man: One for my waist, one for my head, one for my shoulders. This dude, who was coming out of the room in which I had witnessed the argument over the rights to my body, was absolutely jacked. Absolutely zero body fat. He was like an extra on MTV's "The Grind." Designer hair cut, ear rings in both lobes, tattoos that screamed out, "Badass," it was the kind of guy you would never want to mess with. He had nipple rings, for Christ's sake. And though it is almost January, his body was perfectly tanned.

And then he opened his mouth, and it was, well, not what I was expecting.

"Excuse me, do you speak English?" he asked the man putting towels on me.

His voice made Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" character sound like Andre the Giant. That means that he sounded gayer than San Francisco -- not that there's anything wrong with that!

"No, Turkish," the man answered. "Problem?"

Bruno was hot and bothered. Just as he began to vent, the door opened behind him, and out came a fat, hairy Turkish hamamer, who looked very similar to Borat's sidekick Azamat.

"That guy," Bruno complained to the man who had just told him that he didn't understand English, "BURNED my head!"

I immediately started to laugh. Immediately.

"The water, it's too hot! He burned me!"

Towel guy started questioning Azamat in Turkish. Azamat motioned towards Bruno, and started going on about something, in rapid fire. The two of them volleyed back and forth, in Turkish gibberish. I stood there in my multiple towels, cracking up. Bruno tried his best to look injured, but succeeded only in resembling some kind of pampered, Paris Hilton-style chihuahua, whose bowl had just been filled with dry dog food, instead of gourmet canned stuff.

Then, the manager came in.

"Kashashabady tayla di??" he asked towel guy and Azamat.

"Sta! Kalaby! Shadasheedekoy!" Azamat screamed. He glared at Bruno.

"Fa dee lay loo pie?" towel guy shrugged.

"He burned my head!" Bruno interjected, pointing at the accused. "Don't you know how hot the temperature of the water is??" As if they heated it up especially high, just for him.

The manager said something to Bruno to try and calm him down, which I couldn't make out because I was laughing so hard, virtually unable to move, I was clothed in so many towels. But Bruno wasn't having any of it.

"No! I don't want ANY massages from you people!" He was pouting at this point. "He burned my head!" Azamat looked like he was ready to rumble with this nipple-ringed American.

That was when I was ushered out of the room, sadly. But I was still laughing when I made it to the little compartment The Bob and I had left our stuff in.






And I will always associated my hamam experience with my memory of Bruno, and his rather surprising voice.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

And the award for the best way not to get a girl goes to....

I almost forgot to tell the GREATEST Belgrade story of all time.

I don't understand why everyone films me all the time!

And of course, it involves Pete.

Stop filming!!

And it also involves the "Sexy time!" neighbor chick who was less than thrilled with my executive decision to post her MySpace picture on the Internet a few weeks back (although, isn't a MySpace picture already on the Internet?? I'm not really sure I understand where she's coming from).




Quite frankly, this neighbor-who-is-to-remain-anonymous is a good-looking feminina. So when she walked into the Three Black Catz for the first time, with all four of us brates all sitting around the table, the unanimous reaction was pretty amusing to see: Silence. And lots of staring.

Gawking, if you will.

I was content to just continue gawking. But Pete, who had been trying to learn a bit of Serbian whenever he was sober enough to read his Teach Yourself book, wanted to get to the heart of the matter.

He started to speak to her in a language that only he could actually understand.

Here's what it sounded like to onlookers:

"SerbianSerbianSerbian, uhhh, SerbianSerbian, uuhh, Serbian." Anonymous neighbor chick just squinted, not understanding. Pete continued. "Me?" Points to himself. "Ili, Kris?" Points to Kris. "Ili, Vincent?" Points to Vincent. "Ili, Bayless." Points to me.

I looked at Vincent and Kris -- they had no clue.

Neither did the neighbor chick.

"Excuse me, what are you asking?"

Pete looked at her impatiently, and translated what he had just said into English. "Which one of us do you want?" he blurted out.

I am just glad I hadn't taken a sip of whatever it was I was drinking at the time, because it would have gone all the way to Republika Srpska, I started to laugh so hard.

WHICH ONE OF US DO YOU WANT???? REALLY??

No one could control their bodies, it was so funny. And so random! Out of nowhere.

But we were still waiting on an answer.

"No one," she said, and then proceeded to get online to talk to her e-love. Sexy time!

БEOΓPAД.

The White City.

Belgrade.

Beograd.

You say tomAEto, I say tomAHto.

How did Vincent get Dragana's first-ever "Guest of the Month" badge?


"He's always washing dishes," she claims.

SO AM I, DRAGANA.

This is outrageous.
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Pete, passed out, has no idea what's coming.


"My name's Kris, and this, is the Morning Slap."
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Both of these poses sum up Pete and Vincent, respectively.

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Serbia.

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