Friday, April 28, 2006

You may remember a while ago that I wrote about trying out for (and acquiring) a part in the Toyama Charity Show. After that I didn't write anything about it. For four months. Some perceptive readers have asked me how this whole venture is going. I recently wrote an open letter to the two directors of the Charity Show that I feel adequately sums up my experiences thus far. Enjoy.

Dear friends,

Hello, my name is Brad Griffith, I play the part of Tree Number 1 and Guard Number 1 alongside the indomitable Geoff Davies. We are usually drunk during practice. You may also remember me because it was I that suggested we take upwards of 500 dollars from the profit made on the Charity Show and use it to fund a booze-cruise cast party. I stand by my assertions that the two charities that we are donating to will not miss it: The UN Sack Lunch Program is already doubtless receiving millions in kickback from the Oil For Food scandal, and the World Guide Dog Foundation could at least take a 250 dollar hit since I remember reading some report somewhere that said all blind people are totally loaded. The choice, however, is up to you.

I am writing on behalf of myself as well as my co-star Geoff Davies to ask of you, nay, plead with you, nay again, beg of you to please not assign us with any more responsibility. It has been made abundantly clear that the two of us are single-handedly running this entire charitable operation into the ground already. We clearly cannot be trusted at all. It took us five months to memorize a collective ten lines. When we attend practice we are running solely on coffee, peanuts, beer, and adrenaline. I’d like to call your attentions to a few cases of our ineptitude:

Exhibit A: We are always leaving on “bathroom breaks” to the nearest convenience store. I am not going to kid myself into thinking that we’ve fooled either of you. You are smart people. We are not. What could have tipped you off? Could it have been our girlish giggling? Perhaps it was that one time I loudly whispered to Geoff, “Hey, let’s get more beer,” before demurely asking for a fifteen minute toilet break.

Exhibit B: The fact that not once in five months have we ever been on time to practice. Not one time.

Exhibit C: The fact that, despite having practiced at the Kureha location four times now, we still cannot find the goddamn room.

Exhibit D: The fact that, up until last week, everyone in the entire production knew Geoff Davies’ lines except Geoff Davies.

I could go on and on, but no doubt you are aware of the complete spectacle we make of ourselves every Wednesday and Sunday. You have both shown yourselves to be paragons of patience. The real “charity” shown in this charity show is demonstrated weekly in the simple fact that you haven’t kicked both of us out on our asses.

In fact, far from being relegated to the waterboy and sweat-mopper positions, we seem to actually be acquiring more responsibility. Just last practice we learned that we would be memorizing an entire song, for instance. Now, we will do our very best here and we will succeed, no doubt, because doe-eyed orphans are counting on us and because that's the kind of men we are, but what we think you should rethink is assigning us to the roles of Pixie #1 and Pixie #2 as well. Although there are no lines for the prancing pixies, there are a myriad of dance steps that are very hard for two goliaths like ourselves to memorize and perform.

Now, I don’t know many things for certain in this life, and my experience as a JET has taught me that I know even less than I once thought, but I do know this: If you make us try to memorize the pixie dance, it will be the death of the charity show. It might just also be the death of everyone involved as well. Even the orphans, somehow.

As time progresses and we get closer and closer to curtain call, you might be tempted to think we will change our foolish, fast-living ways; this would be a mistake. We are what we are: And what we are is one massive liability for this organization.

Thus far, damage has been minimized. Should you see it fit in your directorial ways to make us try this Pixie thing, or, heaven forbid, give us any more responsibility, well then, God help us all.

Respectfully yours,

Brad “Rosencrantz” Griffith
Geoff “Guildenstern” Davies





Needless to day, they made the right choice about the Pixie thing.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

I’ve taken to tearing my face up while I sleep. I go to bed just fine, but when I wake up I have several red tears on either side face from my eyes to my chin. I’ve worked out that these are most likely from the uneven edges of my nails. A few days ago one of these red lines was even partly scabbed over. My face then stings all day. This is disconcerting for several reasons, not the least of which is because I have an abnormal fear of sleep-(anything): sleep-walking, sleep-talking, sleep-laughing, sleep-burping, sleep-farting, sleep-vomiting, anything at all that a person can do not of their own power. It’s just weird.

Dreams are strange too. I’m not talking about MLK Jr. style dreams, those are just fine, I’m talking about the “I’m driving around under the ocean in a car naked, but it turns out it’s not a car, it’s a delicious McDonald’s Filet-o’-Fish Sandwich etc.etc.etc” stuff. What the hell is the point of all that stuff? It’s totally unnecessary.

Think of all the bad dreams you’ve had, or barring that, think of the last bad dream you had. I bet you can. I can remember mine, it was about snakes. Gross.

Now, think of all the good dreams you’ve had, or barring that, think of even the last good dream you had, a dream where you can remember being really happy. I’m willing to bet you can’t remember it. I’ll tell you flat out that I haven’t had a great dream in a long while. The last really great dream I had was when I was 14 years old and I thought I was in Disneyworld, but then I looked around myself and I WAS IN DISNEYWORLD AND IT WASN’T A DREAM! Man, that was awesome.

But anyway, the purpose of that little exercise was to illustrate how worthless dreams are. If they aren’t bad, they are stupid. Sorry children. Everything you’re parents tell you when they tuck you in to bed is a lie. Especially that peeing the bed at age 15 is normal. It only becomes normal again in college.

Back to topic: so I bite my nails, and then my subconscious thinks it’s just hilarious to make me rake their jagged edges down my face while I’m asleep like I’m some sort of wailing woman. That’s just great.

I must be a psycho when I sleep. I already have to wear a bite plate because I’ve managed to grind my K-9’s to nothing over the course of two or three years; rather than point down like they are supposed to, they’re actually slightly concave. Makes for a nice even smile, but technically speaking, I am now officially more suited to chewing cud than tearing meat. That was my first tip off that perhaps I take out the aggressions of the day subconsciously; when my dentist looked into my mouth and went, “Good God! What happened to your teeth?”

So I was looking at the welts on my face in the mirror this morning and I got to thinking: what the hell do I have to be worried about? What on God’s Green Earth do I, Brad, have to worry about? Huh? Huh subconscious? You in there you rat-bastard? You hear me? What am I worried about? You’re the one going all horror-show on me, so why don’t you just come out with it you cocksucker!?!

Silence. It’s Infuriating.

Seriously, let’s take stock here:
Easy job: check
Financially sound: check
Fabulously good looking (sans welts): check
Having fun in Japan: check
Low stress work environment: check
Rockin’ family: check
Dreamy eyes: check
Nice facial hair growing abilities: check
Have a student that requested I henceforth refer to him in class as “April Fool”: check
Have another student that requested I call him “Train”: check
Have another student that requested I call him “Ferrari”: check
Have still another student that requested I call him “Number 13” (honest to God): check


All check out as awesome, and yet the red lines running down my face tell me things aren’t adding up somewhere.


I don’t get it myself.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

For some reason the Japanese prefer bathing together more than they do alone. Why this is the case has eluded me in all of my nine months here. I liked to bathe with other people too....when I was three years old and my mom took rather embarassing pictures of me and my cousins in the bathtub. I believe I might have peed at the time. Regardless, the point is, that was the last time I bathed with others...until I came to Japan, that is.

I gave it another shot in Nagano, after a long day of Snowboarding. "Hell," I thought, "why not? It can't be that bad, can it? I mean, everyone here does it, right?"

It was, uhm, well, it was...it was ok...

It was called an Onsen, meaning that it was a naturally heated sulfer water bath. You can always tell an onsen because it smells like poopy farts. For some wierd reason, however, God saw it fit to make this sulfuric water somehow cleaner than normal water. Go figure. Funny guy, that God.

So, you get totally buck-ass naked in the changing room and then you go into this outer chamber and wash your bits and pieces. In this onsen we squatted on buckets in rows, sort of like a prison. Pretty wierd, but we're still ok here, it's no big deal. It's just other dudes shlongs. Grow up, right?

Once you're all clean you go into the bath chamber. So I walk out into the bath area....and see about fifty dudes piled inside a 10x20 foot little pool. Hmm. Well, can't back out now, right? Just take the plunge into the pool full-o'-dong. So i did.

I later learned that I made my first mistake when I walked over to the bath. You see, you're supposed to cover yourself up with the tiny towel that they give you, but I just flopped on over in front of God and everybody. I believe I might have even pumped my elbows. Oh well.

So you're in the bath, right, and now comes the slightly awkward time where you jockey for personal space, which, in this particular case, was almost non-existent.

"Hey man, stop touching me. Are you touching me?"
"Move over a bit for Chrissakes. Is that your elbow?"
"It certainly is not!"
"Did you just touch my ass?"
"I hope not. That was me that hit your thigh there, though."
"Well then who just touched my ass?"
"Dude, cover yourself for heavens sake."
"It's not my fault! I'm very bouyant!"

And so on.

I later learned that my second mistake was not having a second towel. I got my little toilet-paper-square of a towel soaking wet in the tub, so then what do I do? I gotta dry off with something after the post-wash-washing, right? Well, I was SOL:

"Hey man, can I borrow your towel?"
"Just hold on a minute, I have to dry myself."
"You've been drying yourself for twenty minutes, C'mon man, I'm just, like, hanging out here."
"Well maybe you should have brought another towel."
"I realize that. But it's a little late now, isn't it?"
"It's not a big deal, grow up."
"I am grown up, i'm just cold, that's all, it's not normally that size."
"That's not what I meant. Here, you can have it now."
"I just saw you dry your ass on that."
"Do you want it or not?"
"Yeah. You're a pretty clean guy, i suppose."

So it was a comedy of errors. And although it was relaxing for a bit, I guess, I told myself that if I was ever going to go to another Onsen, it's going to have to be at an off-peak hour, to say the least. I hear that in Hokkaido they have an Onsen that a bunch of Monkeys go in and use as a toilet. It's very popular. Perhaps I'll have to check that one out. (cough).

But yesterday I decided to chance the whole deal again.

I went with Obata, (whom I will I will no longer refer to as my supervisor, and will henceforth just refer to as my friend) to a totally shit-kicking public bath in Toyama.

This place was unbelievable. They had themed baths for crying out loud. There were two baths specially gussied up for the cherry blossom season: in one they had smashed up a bunch of cherry blossoms in order to color it pink, and in the other they had smashed up some sort of fragrant seaweed to color it green.

In addition to those baths, they had one that was like an easy chair surrounded by hot water, another in which you sat in a giant cereal bowl of hot water, and yet another where you chilled on a hot marble rock slab with three inches of steaming water flowing around you. Aside from those, you could also go into this one pool that was as hot as balls, seriously, it was out-of-control hot. Then, of course, they had the "electric bath" in which they ran a low voltage current of electricity through the water. Now, I'm not sure who thought of that idea, but it is clearly not safe. It's awesome, but it is not safe. Who the hell was the first Japanese person to try that one out? Who in the world said "Oh, here we go, I got an idea. You know how we always sit and chill in water? Well how about this, let's electrocute ourselves!! Eh?! How about it? People have done it before, right? It'll be like dropping a toaster in the bath, except we won't die!"

My kidneys went numb and all the hair on my body stood stick-straight up. Yes, all of the hair. Needless to say, I loved it.

There was practically nobody there. We had whole baths to ourselves. I didn't want to leave.

In one night Obata managed to show me that the Japanese public bathing experience can be worth fighting and dying for. And given my failure of a first experience, I have five words for him:

Well done, sir. Well done.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

I’ve received many thoughtful and pithy compliments about my blog entries over the months, and I cherish every one of them, but it would seem that while I may have a grassroots fan base that supports my writing, the institutions of “higher learning” do not; Every single one of the MFA programs I applied to rejected me, and all but one of the M.A. programs did as well. CU, my hometown school, saw it fit to put me on their waitlist indefinitely. Thanks guys. Suffice to say, going to school for writing is not what I will be doing next year. On a totally unrelated note, I now find the idea of “learning how to write” patently ridiculous. Except for at Florida University. Florida had the foresight to accept my ex-roommate Dan. Good luck with that, Dan. You bastard.

Now, as a means of coping with ten straight rejections trickling in every week over a two month period, I did what every red-blooded writer does: I destroyed my body. It’s a good thing that I got denied when I did, because rather than do what I would usually do when facing rejection, which is sit inside my cell of an apartment swilling Jack Daniels on the toilet, I was instead able to go out and celebrate my failure with a whole ton of Japanese people at the annual Hanami Festival for cherry-blossoms.



That’s right, ‘tis the season for the elusive and deadly cherry-blossom.

The Japanese go apeshit for these trees. If you ask them why, they’ll probably say it’s because the pink blossoms are so beautiful, or because their blooming signals the oncoming of spring, or because the short and beautiful lives of the blossoms are like the short and beautiful lives of the warrior-poet samurai of old and blahblahblah. These are all lies.

They Japanese love these blossoms because when they bloom, it means that everyone can go out and sit under them and get wasted during the middle of the day, every day, for two straight weeks. It’s the most ruckus season of the year. Anything goes. Often times fights break out between wasted groups of Japanese kids, and the alcohol loosens all the Japanese up so they can suck each others faces willy-nilly. It’s like a nationwide kegger, or it would be, if the Japanese had kegs and could drink more than two beers without falling on their faces. Mind you, I’m not much better. The days usually started something like this:


Look at how dapper we are! All smiles and cheer. Never mind that I am dying inside...On the outside I look fantastic! Soon enough however…



I’m slurring out a coffee order and listing heavily to the left and I've got wine dumped all down the front of my jacket and a blow up-bear doll around my neck. That poor, poor girl. You see? Don't you see? Just like that. That’s how this festival works. It’s like lightening.

One moment you are laughing and being jolly with a Japanese guy dressed up in an elmo suit…



And the next moment that very same Japanese man is passed out and rolled up in a tarp like some sort of Tickle-Me Sushi.





Once again, for those of you that might still not quite understand; Here we have Brad prancing around a piccolo player:




And moments later, here is Brad with a samurai top-knot hairpiece sitting down because he feels a little bit dizzy from prancing around a picollo player:





Remarkable. Truly.


For two weeks it was like this, every day the Japanese took the party to the streets and the parks, and every time they saw us foreigners they cheered and shoved hooch down our throats. We only joined in on the weekends, but that was plenty for me. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the best days for drinking were Sundays, so all of us JET’s were just wrecks for work on Mondays. This Monday as I was walking to school assembly, Obata stopped me.

“Hey Brad, for class todaWHOAH! Did you go out drinking this weekend?”

“Why yes! How could you tell?

“Have some gum,” he said.

He gave me some of that Japanese super-gum he uses to cover up his habitual smoking habits and quietly chuckled at my pain.

“Hanami,” I said.

“Hanami,” he said, nodding.

Thank God those damn trees flower for only two weeks.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

A shakedown is coming for the Toyama-Ken JET community; as those of us who are not re-contracting leave, the government silently absorbs a few of our jobs here and there. It has now been decreed that every public school JET be teaching regularly at a minimum of two separate schools every week. Overall, the number of JET’s here will shrink next year. Those in the public High School system, who are generally pretty busy to begin with, will now have even more work. This makes them a little pissed. Here’s the thing though. Guess how much this will effect whoever takes over my job?

None. Not at all.

I’m private. I do nothing to begin with, and as of next year my replacement will continue to do very little work, all the while he (and it will be a guy) will be living five minutes from the one and only school he is required to teach at. I went from having to teach 11 hours in one week to having to teach twelve this semester. Whoopdie-do. Meanwhile we got guys like Dave Edwards teaching half of my weekly scheduled hours in one day, and they are making whoever his replacement is pile on a few more for good measure next year.

Please don’t mistake my tone here. You might think I am genuinely shocked at how superfluous I am, or perhaps that I am even disappointed at how little of an impact I will be making on the children I try to teach. No no no. I’m laughing all the way to the bank. And I really do. Once a month. I laugh the entire trip. On my scooter.

Hahaha! Turn left out of the apartment!

Hahaha! Turn right at the first stop light!

Hahaha! Go straight!

Hahaha! Turn right into the bank!

Hahaha! Deposit! Deposit! DEPOSIT!!!

Koho does not need me. My job here is just barely justified, and that is a fact. The only worthwhile thing I think I do here is show the kids that Americans are living breathing people, and not all of us pack heat all the time. However, for the sake of my successor and whoever follows him, I hope they don’t figure it out for a long time. Koho is a delightful little school full of zany teachers and madcap children. It’s like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for Slightly Slow Children. They also give me a lot of freedom. Others should be so lucky.

But anyway, on to today’s topic: It’s finally happened. School has started once again. While it’s true that I teach only 12 hours a week, I had become accustomed to the lifestyle of teaching virtually nothing for four months. Since I came back from the US in December, I would venture to say that I’ve taught perhaps three collective weeks of normal classes. It’s time to change that, however. The new kids are here. The new teachers are here. We’ve had the “first contact” ceremony between the old students and the new students, where they all line up facing each other in the gym and yell out a few things and bow. It’s reminiscent of High Noon. Or, I suppose since they never actually touch each other at all and it’s very choreographed, it’s a bit more like West Side Story. Anyway, the point is: It’s Game Time.

It is such Game Time that they have asked us all to update our personal slogans that go on our nametags. I’m going to take you through the slogans that we in the English Department have chosen for our nametags:

First we have Sakai-Sensei. She is very smart, and has a very good, working knowledge of the English language. It is reflected in her nametag:


Look at that! The comma is in the right place! The apostrophes are correctly positioned as well! On top of that, it’s a good slogan. Well done Sakai, well done.


Next we have Morioka-Sensei:

What this boils down to is “Do Your Best Everyday.” You can see the “best.” It’s sort of a hybrid thing, cheating a little, but whatever. The kids can’t read English anyway.


Now, Mochizuki-Sensei:


Not quite sure what she’s going for here, but I appreciate the effort and the one-hundred percent English. I think what she wanted to say was something to the effect of “Let’s all do our best!” but, of course, what came out was a command for all the students to do her best. Come to think of it, that sort of makes sense in a strange way, I suppose.

Next we have Nakada-Sensei:

Simple. Effective. A little bit David Brent-ish, perhaps, but good nonetheless. What are we if not sincere?

Here was my slogan last year:


Lame. Boring and lame. Generic, off-the-shelf, contrived trash. I swore I would do better next time. Look at the care-bear style stickers. I was ashamed.


Here is my slogan this year:


That’s the ticket! Look at the bold blue lettering! No exclamation mark for me. No sir. Even the sparkly stickers now take on a new meaning, it’s like “Hi new kids! My name is Brad, I’m a friendly, approachable white boy! Look at my hair! It’s spun from gold! Come on into class and take a seat! Have a sticker! FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.

Hilarious on several levels, not the least of which is because “failure” is a VERY PROBABLE OPTION here. Absolutely no-one else gets the joke though. Story of my life.

Monday, April 03, 2006

And now, we continue with our series on B&B's R&R in Thailand with Part 2: The Hua Hin Experience.

We cruised south in a rented Mercedes driven by a dictator looking fellow that had the courtesy to leave us alone in our hungover misery. It's a good thing we were travelling at speeds in excess of 100 miles an hour and made the 3 and a half hour trip in just over two hours, or I probably would have lost it all in the car.

Now, if it weren't for the intermittent paper trail, you could easily convince Bryan and I that we were never actually in Hua Hin, it was getting that bad (is he joking? Who knows?), but we do actually have several memories and a few pictures to sustain us.

Like this:


Which eventually turned into this:



I'm not quite sure when these were taken, but I believe it was around noon. The setting is the Peony Hotel, our home for our four nights in Hua Hin. The hotel bar was called the "Lucky U" and the girl who was the head waitress was, believe it or not, called Lucky. We told her that "Lucky" didn't sound very Thai (sounds more stripper to me), and asked her why she chose that name, to which she replied:

"Because Lucky You (pointing at me) and Lucky You (pointing at Bryan)."

"Ahhhhhh," we both said, nodding at her sage explination, which I only now realize makes very little sense. I should have asked her if it was me that was lucky or her, but instead I ordered another beer.

We had several rendezvous with the bar staff at the hotel and by the end of the trip they no doubt thought we were total asses. At one point we found ourselves in the Lucky U again and I called Lucky over.

"Excuse me, Lucky?"

At which point she probably rolled her eyes.

"Yes?" She said, "Another beer?"
"No no. Well, yes, but that's not why I called you. Could you tell me what day it is?"

She looked at me in silence for a moment and then over at Bryan. Bryan looked right back at her.

"Actually, I was wondering myself," he said.

"It's Tuesday," she said.
"Ahhh, Tuesday," I said, "Bryan, it's Tuesday."
"Tuesday. Of course it is."
"That's great. In that case we'll have another round please. Thanks Lucky, you're a gem."


Hua Hin is a great little spot, it has character, the people are very friendly, and the beer is cheap. As far as I can see it has only one strike against it: Fat Europeans Wearing Swimsuits (or not wearing them, as the case may be.)

I'm just going to throw this one out there on the table, take it as you will:

Europeans are gross.

Sure, the young ones are ok, i suppose. If you're under 30 and you want to go topless on a beach, that's fine by me, the problem is it's never the young ones that do it. And if you're a dude, odds are you're wearing a speedo no matter what your age; and unless you're Ian "The Thorpedo" Thorp, or a competition swimmer of similar status, get your fat ass out of that speedo and into a decent pair of trunks.

All of them sit out in the sun until they are a hairy, glistening, sweaty lobster red, and not a one of the women (old or young) shaves their armpits, the mere thought of which just made me throw up in my own mouth a little bit, even while I sit here writing this, far far away from all of them.

Gross. Just gross. Unnaceptable.

Every day around 1pm we would go to this beach bar that I can't remember the name of and sit and drink and chat with the locals for hours. To call it an actual "bar" is being a bit generous. It was more of a "drinking shack," but that's cool, because drinking shacks are cooler than bars anyhow. At that shack we met this guy, one of the bartenders:


This guy, along with another fellow, dared us to fill our entire table with empty Singha beer bottles. We came damn close (with a little help from Charlie, another rocking Toyama-ite that came to visit us). Either way were falling all over ourselves when we had to go visit our tailor for the final fitting of our suits.

I think you can chalk up our tailor as another in the group of people that weren't too sad to see the back of us. Of our four fittings, we were only really functional in one of them.

Bryan decided to go with two suits, both of them pimping. Here is a picture of him holding his head in one of them. I'm not sure what he said to me, but I think it was something to the effect of "get me a trashcan."
Here's me. I opted to go for the cream colored linen suit with a pink striped shirt, Don Johnson style.


There are a couple of things I want you to notice about this photo: The first is how tight the pants are. Serious nut-huggers. At one point the tailor dude said, "yeah yeah, we know you're big." The second is the poor tailor girl in the back. I wonder why she looks that way? Could she have seen my nuts?

After our final fitting we wandered over to a rock bar and tipped the unbelievably talented lead guitarist a ridiculous amount of money to play a spot-on cover of Europe's The Final Countdown. It was perfect. Then we found ourselves in a dance club. It wasn't that sweet. I remember seeing one lady-boy's shirt falling totally off his/her fake boobs without him/her noticing it. Gross. I guess they lose feeling in their chests when they hack it to pieces and shove silicone bubbles inside of themselves. Go figure. Small price to pay to look like a wierdo though, right? Am I right?

At one point Bryan went to take a piss and then came back and tapped me on the shoulder:

"You have to go into the bathroom."
"What? Why?"
"Just go."

So I went.

It looked pretty damn normal, so I sidled on up the urinal, whipped it out, and started whizzing when all of the sudden someone grabbed my neck.

Two things went through my head at this moment. The first was "I am going to die here in this club." And the second was "How clean are these dudes hands?"

Then he cracked my neck, loudly. First one way, and then the other, while I was peeing. Sure, it felt awesome, but still, mess with a dude when he's peeing in the US and you stand a good chance of getting shot.

After cracking my neck he set a warm washcloth on the back of my neck. As soon as I finished up, he took it off and told me to put my hands above my head. For the breifest of moments I thought I was going to be robbed after all, but then he picked me up from behind and cracked my back. This tiny thai dude actually picked me up and cracked my back. Unbelievable. That alone warranted the tip.

All in all I think I preferred Hua Hin to Bangkok, mostly because it was a beach town, and we were the young American superstars wherever we went. Bryan was even called out a few times because he has what I have since come to learn is called the "Michael Owen Factor," meaning that asian people think that he looks exactly like Michael Owen (also known as "Saint Michael" or "The Boy Wonder"), a pro-soccer forward that plays for Newcastle United and England's national team. He tells me he gets this all the time in Japan, too. Whenever I look at him I just see him for the scurvy dog that he is, but hey, I'm not a thai chick. I do know this: he's a hell of a guy to drink across the world with.



It was everything we were looking for in a vacation: a lot of sitting, a lot of drinking, and a lot of being real, real sweet.