Icebox Records

Yeah, whatta vaca­tion. Fuck­ing hell. Migra­cion took for­ever in San Jose air­port, they fully dis­sected my back­pack, going so far as to unstitch some of the stitch­ing, think they may’ve had a laugh at my vat of pomade, and then I finally meet up with my pals Drew and his wife Jesse, we get into a cab which dri­ves like a methed up bat out of hell, blow­ing red­lights, flick­ing ashes back at us in the back­seat, mum­bling some­thing about cozy feet or some­thing that sounded like cozy feet, and then he drops us off at 35 Calle and 10 Avenida, which is still a few block from their apart­ment, what­ever …  but then HE SPEEDS OFF WITH MY BACKPACK!!! All I got is this god awful tourista fan­ny­back which can barely hold my pass­port and money, which luck­ily it had. But my cam­era, and clothes, and great gifts for my friends, FUCKING GONE, picked apart by a bunch of scruffy cab­bies some­where in a under­ground garage in San Jose.

Any­way, that’s some­thing, sure, but it gets worse.

We get back to the apart­ment after talk­ing with la poli­cia, which is obvi­ously going to be of no help, and we eat, then Drew and I decide to be pigs and go out for some beers and guaro (sug­ar­cane fire­wa­ter) … and after a few hours of sip­ping and gawk­ing, we get into a small dis­cus­sion with a few ticos, Andres and Pablo, regard­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Iraq. I knew it was get­ting off to a bad start when Drew slur­ringly says, “Well why the hell shouldn’t we police the rest of the world?!? They Obvi­ously can’t do it them­selves…” Suf­fice to say, they invited us out­side … we remained within the safe warm bosom of El Celio (the bar we were at) and even­tu­ally, after much machismo and bravado, they left. After a few more rounds, we head out, and we’re stum­bling down these lit­tle windy streets and the rain’s really com­ing down and he’s got a rain­coat and I don’t because some cabbie’s wear­ing mine at the present moment, and all of a sud­den, BAM! Glass shat­ters and Drew screams, I spin around and its fuck­ing Andres and Pablo, and Andres has just smashed a bot­tle of Impe­r­ial over the back of mi companero’s cabeza (so much for polic­ing the world), and he’s hold­ing the back of his head and curs­ing a storm, then, flash, he jets, he runs like a fuck­ing ghost in a hur­ri­cane, he’s fuck­ing Swayze, and I’m there, a lit­tle con­fused, look­ing plead­ingly with the two attack­ers. They advance at me, I flinch (I’m sure), then laugh men­ac­ingly and walk off, pat­ting each other on the back and dis­ap­pear­ing into a street­light­less night. Huh. So there I am, shaken and tipsy, alone after 3 and a half hours in Cen­tral Amer­ica, with no idea of where the fuck I am … no phone num­bers, no idea of any­thing. I start head­ing in the gen­eral direc­tion my yel­low gazelle of a friend ran in, look­ing for pos­si­ble blood trails that may lead me home to my lack of bag .…

… any­way, luck­ily enough his wife is the bet­ter half and came out look­ing for me and found me sit­ting on foot­bridge smok­ing the last of my amer­i­can cig­a­rettes and hum­ming the melody of that mog­wai tune called “Yes! I am a long way from home!” … I won’t admit it tomor­row, but I think I might’ve been tear­ing up a little …

Fuck­ing A. I think I’m going to go and buy a rain­coat now. Enjoy Amer­ica while it lasts, folks.