UK Tour 2009 Day 1

Hi.

I woke up today at 3 pm.
Refreshing.

I slept like a sweaty dog last night,
confused, hot, tired, sleepless.

Jet lag, basically.

I don't normally struggle with it so bad,
because I am blessed with a gift.

I can sleep on planes.

Shit, I can sleep on the bus,
I can normally fall asleep anytime
I sit down somewhere relatively soft.

I dozed one time while I was getting my hair cut.

But this flight, this one was different.
In all my travels, this was undoubtedly the worst
flight I have ever taken.

(cue rustic French music)

I flew Air France.

I was very excited,
French food, French wine,
it gives the whole trip a bit more European
feel than my usual Delta flights.

I forgot, this also meant I would have to deal with French people.

Now, you must keep this in mind,
take any group of people, any ethnic group,
age group, social economic group, anything.

Cram them all together in a plane for 14 hours,
and the stereotypes will float to the surface like cream.

It's just the odds, man, the stereotype roulette.

The flight attendants were beautiful, and unnecessarily sexy.

I fell asleep at one point when I was supposed to buckled in,
and I awoke to find the flight attendant reaching across my lap
to find my buckle. She smiled, I was confused, but delighted.

So, stereotype number 1, French women are sexy and forward.
Check.

Let's move onto number 2.
French people smell bad.

They do.

I'm sorry, but that was my experience.
On a long flight crammed together,
French people smelled like armpits and Chinese food.

They seemed to have the heat on,
it was hot as balls on that plane,
as if to encourage their stereotype,
to let their true nature shine.

After a long repressed holiday
in Los Angeles, let's crank up the heat
and sit close together so we can stink together
and sing French songs.

Stereotype number 3,
French people are rude.

Yup, they sure as fuck are.

It's hard to explain, it was a constant
arrogant snubbing and not caring about
fellow passengers. Highlighted by the man
sitting next to me.

On a plane full of beautiful young French woman,
I was plopped down next to a fat gay Frenchman.

I was behind a 75 year old French woman who thought
her leather jacket belonged draped behind her chair,
over my TV, and knocking over my fresh beer.

I was in front of a French descendant of a different
family line than Napoleon's.

He must have been 6 foot 2. And he kept
his knees in constant, rocking motion
pressed into the back of my chair.

The fat gay man next to me ate every morsel
of every meal, and brushed the crumbs off his belly
with complete disregard for the fact that he was quite
literally brushing them onto me.

Muttering in French, he would stretch out
his body, arms, and legs, across the invisible border
of our chairs. His pillow nudged into my neck, his hot
French breath on my face. He was awful.

But it's this weird combination of cheerfulness and arrogance,
almost as if the French are happily rude.

It makes it hard to truly hate them.

I have a philosophy on airplanes,
on trains, on any kind of cramped travel,
or maybe even life in general.

It ain't that bad. And when it is, it will be funny later.

I kept chuckling to myself when someone would
just walk right past me waiting in line for the bathroom,
and just stand in front of me and go next.

I would say, excuse me, they would say something
in French and smile, and that was the end of it.

When that lady threw her jacket into my beer which
then spilled on my leg, I almost lost it, but I laughed in the end.

I laughed, because through it all, any mild inconvenience
cannot take away from the fact that I am flying to England
to play shows, that I have food, and clothes, and a place to sleep,
and I'm not in the army, and I'm not being abused, and there are a lot
of things that I have to be thankful for.

And, at least I'm not French.

-p