The Big Cheesy

How is it that I can spend 2 months wandering Southeast Asia, eating mostly street food, brushing my teeth with tap water, and drinking alcohol every single day, and come back feeling fine, thin, and without any stomach ills, yet a mere three nights in New Orleans and I still feel hungover, with stomach pangs and look like I haven't slept in weeks? What a great, fun, hilarious place. And while a few of my friends had their wallet/credit cards stolen, no one was arrested or kicked out of our hotel rooms, so I suppose all's well that ends well.

A friend of mine is getting married, and several of our friends have been throwing bachelor parties of late. We've done Las Vegas a few times, so it seemed that a change of pace was in order. Was it ever.

As I mentioned, one of the guys lost his wallet at some point on Friday night, under circumstances that are still uncertain to all of us (due to the obvious condition that results from several hours on Bourbon Street). My friend realizes that his wallet is stolen, and that he cannot (a) get any money for the rest of the weekend, or (b) get on the airplane on Sunday. I suggest he call his woman to see if she can FedEx him his passport. The one-sided exchange:

Hi.

I'm never going to see you again.

I lost my wallet somehow last night.

I'm not sure.

Well, people were yelling at me, I don't know.


Well, my friend then decides it is appropriate to call and place and incident report with the security guard at the hotel. The guy gets there, and he's a good sport, as we all have a sense of humor about this whole affair. The guy asks us if we are sure that it isn't in the room (suggesting that perhaps my friend hid the wallet from himself the prior evening). So, he pulls up the mattress from the bed.

And there it is.

No, not the wallet, but three hard core gay pornographic magazines. After the guard has regained his composure, he calls Housekeeping. "Hi, Christina, you might want to tell your staff to be a little more careful when cleaning the rooms, a guest here just found some porno mags in between the mattress. Yes, gay porn magazines were in the room."

It actually gets better. This same friend goes to the airport with no money and no ID to get on the plane to fly home. Of course, at this point the boys decide to create one for him. On the bottom of a pizza box. And he walks up to the TSA officials with this as his ID. Unsurprisingly, they pull him out of line. Surprisingly, after a thorough investigation and search, they let him on the plane.

And some idiot spent all night Saturday walking around with a feather boa, a Thai tribal hat and several strange women. Not that I know him.

As you can imagine, most of the weekend consisted of gallivanting about New Orleans, drinking too much, sleeping too little, and spending far too much money. You can see some of the action on my photo page. I had quite a bit of fun at the karaoke bar - that's me in the Von Dutch shirt singing "It's the End of the World as We Know It" at the Cat's Meow - a rather fun bar, as best as I can recall.

Anyway, I'm now a very big fan of New Orleans. Anyone else got opinions on the place?