Why people from Belgrade would probably really relate to bats

"Did you sleep a lot when you first got to Belgrade?"

My best friend from Serbia, O.G. Zoka, asked me that tonight, the first time we'd seen each other since April 2007, after I told her how long it had taken for me to make it here, from Texas to Serbia.

"Well, yeah," I said, "but it's fine. I was super jet lagged --" I paused, remembering that people who speak English as a second language don't necessarily know what terms like "jet lagged" mean. "Do you know what jet lagged means?"

"Da, da," she said.

"Okay, cool. So I was super jet lagged, and I went to bed at like 5:30 the first morning, and around 4:00 last night," I said. "But since I'm still on U.S. time, it's no problem, because I can go to bed at five, but since I work from 2:00-10:00, I can get up at like noon, have kafa, chill, and I have plenty of time to get ready for work."

As I've told dozens of people so far, with a job this flexible, in a town this night-oriented, I could get used to this schedule.

The Three Black Catz Hostel is a place where time ... slows down. That's what the new Aussie guest Lucas said tonight after he arrived, scratched his balls, and realized four hours had gone by in the mean time. It's a black hole. The One Black Hole Hostel. Anyone who is good at drinking and telling stories is unable to leave. It's the greatest place ever. It's my Balkan home sweet home. And for the next two weeks, I'm home.

Peter, a.k.a. Pete, one of my Black Catz brate's from my second stint at the Black Catz in December 2006, is here too. We're both here for Exit: my first time, his many'eth. Pete understands the beauty of the Black Catz, and of Belgrade.

"I got really, really nocturnal last year," Pete said. "Like ridiculously so. I'd get back from clubs, then I'd start drinking rakija," -- that's the ultimate Serbian spirit -- "and I'd start going to sleep at two, three..."

Wait for it.

"... in the afternoon."

There ya go.

That is the schedule at the Three Black Catz. It's an exercise in human nocturnal...ness. And it's beautiful.

The smell of Serbia.

The first thing that hits you when you walk from the plane into the terminal at Belgrade's international airport is the smell of stale cigarettes. Like what your grandmother's shag carpeting used to smell like when you were a kid. You're pretty sure she had stopped smoking by then, but the smell was still there, and it's the same with the airport in Belgrade. Everywhere you turn, No Smoking stickers, peppered with air bubbles that show the haste with which they were applied, warn you that Serbia is trying to modernize. Modern societies don't have people smoking in their international airports anymore, after all.

But it still smells like cigarette smoke. You can make a push towards European integration, but you can never take the street out of the dog. Old habits die hard in the Balkans.

By the time I'm making these observations, I've already made two new friends.

It was the final leg of my Houston-London-Munich-Belgrade airplaneathon, and finally I had a window seat. Only, it's occupied. By a Serbian woman. Who is sitting next to her large Serbian husband.

Being an exceptionally nice guy to strangers, I let her keep the seat and settle down into the aisle. I probably shouldn't fall asleep again anyway, I tell myself. That's already happened twice so far, and at this rate, I'll be going to bed after the sun rises in Belgrade (not that there's anything wrong with that).

The man in the middle is also sitting in a third of my aisle seat. He doesn't seem to see anything wrong with this arrangement. I do, and I briefly consider tapping him on the shoulder to ask for some freaking space. But then I remember two things:

1) I'm officially in the Balkans, even though we're sitting on a tarmac in Germany, so I shouldn't expect a European decorum.

2) I used to live in Africa, where public transportation makes a sardines can look more spacious than the hotel from "The Shining." I need to quit being such a kuma.

So I restrain myself, and embrace the intimacy of his jelly rolls. Still, though, my initial impression of the two Serbs is a negative one: crude, rude, unaware.

Within half an hour, we're talking about how they're going to give me a ride to my hostel from the airport, and my impression of Dragana and Nebojsa is an entirely different one: charming, full of life, and so courteous it makes my teeth hurt.

This is the beauty of the Balkans.

Our friendship begins when I pull out my Teach Yourself Serbian book and ask a question about grammar. Serbian is hard as shit, and is not a language many foreigners take the time to learn. If you know even a tiny bit, you will earn mad street cred. Even if it's samo malo, just a little, which is all I can speak. Show the people here that you care even a little about them, and they will do anything for you.

Including giving you a ride from the airport to the town center in their friend's car.

Like I said, my Serbian consists of samo malo, only a little. I don't understand shit. But I can hear when English phrases pop up in the middle of conversations in pretty much any language.

For example:

"Serbian Serbian Serbian give a leeft Serbian Serbian," Dragana said to Nebojsa (two uber Serbian names, by the way).

"Serbian Serbian," he muttered back. To a Balkan new kid, it would have sounded like Dragana was trying to convince Nebojsa, and that Nebojsa was shooting her down, since the way people speak here makes them sound rather disagreeable. It's the opposite of Africa, where a simple greeting will cause the African to break out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, as if every Joe Blow on the street is a regular Jerry Seinfeld. But you can't let the appearance of things trick you into thinking that's the way it is. The Balkans are all about appearances, layers, and then the actual reality, buried deep below.

Far from shooting her down, Nebojsa was fully endorsing Dragana's plan to give me a leeft.

"It is small car," she told me, "so we will see. But this is why I ask you how much luggage you have."

I had known that's why she'd asked, but I acted pleasantly surprised nonetheless when I heard Dragana say "give a leeft" in the midst of her Serbian conversation with Nebojsa, who was still sitting in a third of my seat. The truth is, I knew from the moment his eyes had lit up at my question about the proper context for using Ja sam versus jesam that they were going to offer me a ride.

The first thing Dragana did when we stepped outside from baggage claim was light up a cigarette.

And they weren't lying; it was a small car. But all cars are small cars in Serbia. My favorite kind, a remnant from the socialist Yugoslav period, is called a peglica (peg-leet-sah), or "little iron" in English.

The driver either didn't speak English or was too shy to speak English. But she was beautiful, which is a synonym for "she's from Serbia and is under 30." Serbian girls are the most beautiful in the world, but years of cigarette smoke, trials and tribulations make the Serbian M.I.L.F. as rare as the Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat.

The road from the airport to New Belgrade was pitch black. The beautiful girl driving the car was listening to Serbian turbo folk, the equivalent of a Texan listening to David Allen Coe, except instead of being all right music, it's the worst music ever. At least the volume was turned down low. Most of the homes that we drove past had no lights on. I thought about asking why that was the case, then I decided against it. The last conversation I wanted to start was the "Did you know how much we suffer as Serbs?" conversation. I'm going to be here for two weeks, and there will be plenty of time for such talk.

Balkan homecoming.

"Yo, man, how much are you excited?! For Balkan again... Be prepared."

That's the text I got from O.G. Zoka last week. In just a couple of hours, I'll be on a plane, bound for Belgrade, Serbia, back to my Balkan Home Sweet Home.

It's been over two years, but ja sam spreman.

My stay in Belgrade will be interrupted by a nice little trip up to northern Serbia, in the historically distinct Vojvodina region, to my second favorite Serbian city, Novi Sad. Exit Festival, from July 9-12, is going to be the shit.

It helps that I have the coolest job ever, with employers as flexible as Mary Lou Retton. All I need to punch in is an Internet connection, whether that's in the office in Austin, in the rainforest of Brazil, or the smoke-filled den of the Black Catz. That's why I can go to Serbia for two weeks and only take three vacation days. If I'd really known just how flexibile they were when I bought my ticket, I may have just gone for a month.

I know I haven't been writing much lately. Crystal, I apologize. I will be picking my game up for the next two weeks, for sure.

Zato idem u Beograduuuuuuu.

If you're Farrah Fawcett, you are pissed right now.

Two reasons:

1) "Thanks for stealing my dead celeb thunder, douche."

2) "For the rest of everyone else's lives, every time anyone pictures me, they'll picture Michael Jackson, too."

"... and get your Gatti's pizza--"

And why I'm a slave to the international consumerist conspiracy

There are certain questions that have obvious answers. Of course, I'd like a cupcake. Of course, I'd like a cold PBR. Of course, I'd like to go to the Astros game with you.

And of course, I'd like to sing the jingle in a Mr. Gatti's commercial.

Until I ran into her at Kathryn's birthday party, I hadn't seen my friend Lauren since probably ninth grade. We had a lot to catch up on, such as how each other's Y2K celebrations were, and how things had been since we'd gotten our drivers licenses. So we made plans to meet up at Jo's Coffee Shop on Congress the next day to fill each other in. Not 20 minutes after I showed up, we were approached by a four-person camera crew, who took one look at the two of us and thought to themselves, "These are the exact types of people we want to help us sell Gatti's pizza."

Obviously, though, they didn't think too highly of our ability to sell. Lauren's lines were cut to "twenty-two, twenty-two," while mine got cut short by, as John put it, "the rappers." And the only person whose entire rendition of the song surived edit in its entirety -- the guy with the Mexican flag guitar at the end -- is maybe the biggest douche bag in the state of Texas, "right now, riiight nowww."

But whatever. I'll take it, man. I'd never been on a commercial before. I'd gotten some face time on Charlottesville local news a couple of times, and was on CNN International shaking hands with George Bush in Tanzania, but certainly no one had ever asked me to sing for them on camera. Naturally, I was stoked on popping that cherry. I can't tell you how many calls/text messages/Facebook posts I got about it, with most stories following a similar line: "Dude! I was at this bar with my friends, and all of the sudden I was like 'Dude! I know that guy!'..."

Clearly, I'm going to tell everyone I know about it. Being in a Gatti's commercial is the greatest thing ever. And 99% of people agree. But there is one who doesn't.

The same girl who told me that sports were all about "nationalism and war."

Ahhh, Lindsey. Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey. When will you stop giving me fodder to write about?

First go read about the incident from a few weeks back, when I was trying to watch Game 6 of the Rockets-Lakers series in peace on my front porch.

Now you're ready for the update.

About two weeks ago, after the first confirmation that the Gatti's commercial had been spotted by some of Lauren's friends, I was telling the story to all my neighbors, and I was excited: ME! ON A GATTI'S COMMERCIAL! THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER! Everyone agreed: Yes, this is the greatest thing ever. You! On a Gatti's commercial! Please tell us more.

These are the types of environments in which haters love to hate: when everyone else is excited.

"But that's just ... consumerism," came the barely audible voice. Lindsey speaks very, very quietly, like you're listening to a song on your computer with the headphones plugged into the jack, only, the headphones are sitting on the table. I could tell she was making some type of revolutionary statement, but I couldn't pick out the words. So I asked her to repeat herself.

"That's, like, consumerism."

Still, couldn't hear. One more time, I told her.

"You're just like, feeding the cycle, and numbing their brains so they'll want to buy pizza."

Oh, God. Here we go again.

"Lindsey..."

"That's just ... consumerism," she said, cutting me off.

I took a sip of my beer and rolled my eyes. Everything inside of me was screaming, "Let it go, dude. Just let it go. Just let, it, go."

But I just couldn't do it.

"What in the world are you talking about?" My voice was getting agitated, a la the time she implied that watching the Rockets-Lakers game was akin to going to a Nazi Youth rally. "They're trying to run a business! They want you to know, 'Hey, we sell pizza. Come buy some. From us!'"

You know those people who like to make ridiculous comments that they know will rile people up, and how they just don't listen, to anyone other than maybe Alex Jones? When you come back at them with some sort of demand that they explain their ridiculous comment logically, they just spit back more ridiculous comments that don't relate at all to your request. It's like they're not even processing your words. Their brain shuts off, and all they remember are the dogmatic mantras of wannabe revolutionaries, with buzz words such as "nationalism," "conspiracy," "truth," and, my favorite, "consumerism."

"I just don't like, want to be a part of that ... just the ... it's consumerism."

We were at a restaurant at the time, by the way. And she was consuming things.

"Have you ever ordered a pizza?" I asked, trying to end this debate before it really even started, with a walk off grand slam.

Lindsey looked rather uncomfortable in her seat. I don't know if she just doesn't learn from past experiences, or if she thought something had happened to me since the Rockets lost Game 7 that had changed my personality, from one that calls out people on their revolutionary bullshit to one that doesn't. But she was certainly a sad sight to behold as I unleashed on her, so offended was I that anyone dare not to think that me being in a Gatti's commercial was the greatest thing ever.

"Yeah..."

"Okay!" I threw my arms up in the air, like I'd just made field goal. "You're a consumer!"

It should have ended there. But it didn't. She continued to whisper anarchic comments to herself, as she clutched the debit card she was going to give the waitress, so that she could engage in consumerism. I couldn't hear anything she was saying, but it doesn't take a deaf person to read someone's lips when every third word is "consumerism."

"Let it go, Bayless," the angel on my shoulder said. "Let it go."

But I couldn't.

"How are you going to pay for the food you're eating right now?" I asked, thinking that maybe this would open her eyes to the massive hypocrisy that embodies her existence.

She showed me her debit card.

"Okay. Consumerism."

She bashfully looked down at the table, and kept muttering things about consumerism.

"Did you make your own clothes?" I asked. Silence. "Did you weld together your bike frame?" Silence. "Did you.."

"It's like, numbing their brains," she said, in the meekest act of defiance possible, yet still defiant.

The best part about Lindsey's theory that I help numb people's brains by singing the words, "and get your Gatti's pizza," on TV, in exchange for a coupon for a free pizza, is that I'd bet that her own brain has been numbed by doing massive amounts of synthetic drugs. The girl is a walking, talking example of why you should just say no to things that don't grow from the ground.

"Well Lindsey," I said, "you'd be happy to know that in exchange for doing the commercial, I got a coupon for a free pizza. So it's the exact world you'd want to live in: the barter system, where the currency is food!"

The end.

Barton Springs, books on the Balkans, and boobies.

To the handful of devoted readers, I apologize. I stare at a computer screen for a living. When I come home, the absolute last thing I'm trying to do is stare at it as a leisure activity as well.

I do have a lot of stories, though -- that hasn't been the problem.

Like yesterday, at Barton Springs.

Barton Springs is my favorite place in Austin, and certainly one of my favorite places in the world. It's my memory of childhood summers on the Guadalupe River crossed with a neighborhood swimming pool, with a New Deal era public works project emanating from every slab of concrete and blade of grass on the lawn that rises above it. The water is cold, perfectly cold. Living in a sun colony like Austin, it's the perfect antidote for loving to ride your road bike every chance you get. Sure, it costs $3 to get into the nice section, but you could always try to sneak in, or get a friend to come stamp you with some spit and a reverse, prolonged high five.

Plus, there's always the section on the other side of the chain link fence, which has less than half the depth as the yuppie part, thanks to the dam that separates the two. That section is waist high and free to all. It's full of dogs and their owners, most of whom call their dogs perros. I call that side the swine flu section.

I prefer to go to the pay section, because it's nicer, you can sit on some grass rather than rocks, the water is dive-able, and there are more hot girls around than a sunny day in Belgrade, Serbia.

(Okay, maybe not that many. But there are a shit load. Trust me. And they're all in bikinis.)

Barton Springs is my favorite place in Austin.

But I hardly ever go there. Why? Why don't I ever go there? It's like going to college and not taking advantage of the free CD's and DVD's you can rent from the library. I live maybe a five minute bike ride away, and the final leg of that ride -- the part that takes me flying directly into the Springs' back side parking lot, and right up to the entry gate -- exists in the form of a hill that bombs so hard I wouldn't be surprised to find out gets me going at speeds of up to 35 mph. (I totally pulled that number out of my ass, by the way. But I do fly down that hill.)

All this, and I take advantage it maybe 1.5 times per week.

"Screw it," I said to myself yesterday. The cop out I always have is, "Oh, I'll only be able to go for an hour or two if I cruise over there after work." I like to read books when I go to the Springs, so the free-after-9 p.m. deal doesn't really appeal all that much to me. "Three bucks wouldn't be worth it," I tell myself.

"Screw it." And I pedaled past Kinney, past the base of that hill, and right towards the front gate.

It's my favorite place in Austin.

Okay, so I'm sitting there. No one is really around -- maybe three people, total, on the entire expanse green grass (which is actually a pile of brown dirt at the moment, but it's usually green grass). Everyone else is in the water, down by the diving board, and I am reading a new book I got on the Balkans, sitting by myself, leaning up against a tree.

This is the part where I see the sexiest girl at the whole place walking up, looking like a complete gangster, when she stops, maybe 20 feet away from me, drops her bag, looks around like a person who is in a very familiar and comfortable place, and proceeds to take off her top.

Aaaand she's not wearing a bra.

Suddenly my 600+ page epitome on Balkan history from 1804 to 1999 isn't so interesting. Stories of Ottoman pashas and Serbian peasant revolts don't exactly do the same thing to my kurac as the sight of a very beautiful, very topless babe chilling right in front of me, totally at ease with the fact that I'm clearly staring right at her breasts, like we're in Europe or something.

For all you Serbian speakers out there, you know what I was thinking: Zelja mi je pusta da ti svrrrrrsim u usta! (Sorry, I can't get my format to get the Z or the s right; I know it's slightly misspelled.)

I look over at the 40 something year old dude that was sitting even closer to her than me.

He's pretending like nothing out of the ordinary is going on.

I look back at her; she seems to not even notice me.

My eyes quickly avert back to the pages of the Balkan book. It is a mammoth: 662 pages if you count everything up until the glossary, notes and bibliography; 726 if you count it all. I pretend to read a few more lines: "Are the former Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina excluded from the Balkans because they were annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908, before the Ottoman collapse?"

The answer: boobies.

"It was not until the end of the Great War that a new layer of meaning was imposed on the term. 'Balkanization' was first used by journalists and politicians not to describe the political fragmentation of the Balkan peninsula but the emergence of ..."

Boobies.

"... several small new states to replace the Habsburg and Romanov empires. It would have been just as accurate to label this process the East Europeanization or even the Balticization of Europe."

Or you could call it boobies.

No matter how hard I tried to read -- 732 pages if you also included the introduction;740 if you count the series of maps at the beginning -- all those words just ran together into one word, repeated over and over again: "Boobies boobies boobies. Boobies."

I mean, it's not like these are the kinds of boobs that you see and think to yourself, "She's got a nice ass, though." No. They are the kinds of boobs you see and think to yourself, "Nice, Bay-LESS!"

They are perfect. But now she's walking away. And I'm stuck there, in the dirt, with a few blades of grass, some irritating, solitary ants, and my Balkan history book -- 734 pages if you throw in the acknowledgements.

Boobies! Nooo!

Never have I been less enthralled with the Balkans. Like I could concentrate on Selim III. Who cares about that dude? I stared vacantly at the page, staring at the same line for about five minutes, while an entirely different vision was being played out in my mind.

After about ten more minutes of this, with ants periodically picking away at my toes and inner thighs, and no sign that the sexy mystery girl was going to return, I packed up to leave. In half an hour at Barton Springs, I read maybe ten pages. That's 10 cents a page -- and most of them were read during the first 20.

The sun was setting anyway, I thought to myself.

And that's when I saw her again.

And she's doing yoga, now.

Standing with her back to the pool, I was able to confirm that yes, they also look good from the profile.

They look even better once she turns around and looks me in the eyes as I walk by: I'm pretending to be casual, while she really is casual. This is your chance, Bayless! But how? How do you approach a girl like this? I briefly consider using the line, "Hey, I'm topless, too!" while looking all surprised, as if we had something in common, but then lose the nerve. I mean, it would be hard enough to get the balls to approach a girl that much more badass than yourself when she's just chlling, but while she's doing yoga?

You can't. You just can't do it.

By the way, I've passed by her little spot in the shade of the corner by now, and she is standing on her hands and feet, back arched, boobies pointing towards the heavens. This means that her eyes are pointing back away from the pool, which in turns means that she can't see me come to a complete stop, turn around, gawk for about two full seconds, commit the image to memory like I'm saving a file, and then walk on down the path, shaking my head to myself at how incredibly badass any dude must be who snags her.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Naw man, you CAIN'T! You cain't!"

That's what the jovial, semi-ghetto black dude yelled back at me when I told him this whole story at H-E-B 30 minutes later, while we both waited for our deli meats to get cut.

"You cain't approach uh girl like dat. You cain't!"

He gave me daps. His friend, who was working behind the counter, gave me my turkey, and my cheese. And I thought about those boobies, and if I'll ever have a chance to approach the girl whose body they belong to.

Safi sana, bwana.

As every passing day becomes one more day since I came back from Tanzania -- the one year anniversary lurks around the corner -- my fear of forgetting my Swahili grows bigger and bigger. Siwezi kusahau... I worked so hard to learn it. What will I do to impress people in conversation starters if it ceases to be true that yes, I am a white boy who speaks no other foreign languages besides some random African one?

I don't play guitar. I'm not related to anyone famous (sorry, Mom, you're not famous just yet). I do look like the kid from "Stepmom," but that's not exactly a conversation starter. The easiest thing to do is just try my best to remember Swahili.

And so, I regularly hold conversations with myself. In the car and in the shower -- those are the two most frequent locales.

"Oya, mambo vipi?" "Yo, what up?" I ask my imaginary friend. He's a cab driver in Austin, and I can tell he's from Tanzania by the music he's listening to in the front seat.

"Ah! Unaongea Kiswahili?" he asks, a ridiculously large smile taking control of his face, and beaming at me through the rear view. "Ulijifunzaje?" "How did you learn it?"

"Bwana mimi MBONGO MWEUPE -- niliishi Tanzania kwa zaida ya mwaka."

"Kweli? Sehemu gani?"

"Arusha."

"Ah! Aisee mimi natoka Arusha -- Ngulelo."

"Kichaa -- mimi nilikaa Tengeru kwa miezi sita kabla ya kuhamia mpaka Kijenge Chini."

"Kijenge Chini? Karibu na --"

"Impala."

"Ndiyo, karibu na Impala! Ah! Safi sana bwana, safi sana."

Sorry, I forgot you were there. I was just talking to my friend -- he's from Tanzania.

I love when people say "safi sana bwana" (say it with me: sah-fee sah-nah bwah-nah). I always use that in my make believe conversations. It means "very clean, man" in the literal sense, but it's more akin to being like, "nice, man."

You should see me when I get into these conversations. They can last for upwards of ten to 15 minutes, involve lots of hand motions and fake laughter, and can get pretty deep. They are real conversations. When I tell people that I do this, they usually look at me the way you'd look at someone if he admitted to liking the song "Mmm Bop." (I know this because I've told people that I like "Mmm Bop.")

"Cool man..."

So you could imagine how excited I was to get woken up this morning at 6:15 with a phone call from a non-U.S. number.

I thought I was dreaming, I was so tired, and so confused to be seeing that country code show up on my screen.

2...5......5?

255!

"Oya!" I screamed, though still asleep. "Mambo vipi?" It was like clockwork.

"Niaje??" a familiar voice came through. It was Bariki Mdogo, 'Little Bariki,' my wannabe thug friend who looks like an eight year old in a 16 year old's body, but who is actually older than me.

"Bariki Mdogo!" I love that guy. He was with Hunter, who moved back to TZ the day I moved to Austin. I am jealous of Hunter sometimes. I mumbled something about being too tired to speak Swahili, and then, just as I was getting ready for a long talk, the phone cut out.

When conversations get cut off in Tanzania, it's not because of a bad connection. It's because the few dollars of credit you can afford to buy that day -- or week -- have run out. No one talks on the phone for more than a few minutes in TZ.

It's a lot cheaper to just talk to your friend in the shower. Much more safi sana that way, bwana. Very clean.

Bryson "Bayless" Parsley

So I have this next door neighbor, her name is Ezra. Ezra moved in maybe two, two and a half months ago. Not sure exactly. But it doesn't matter. The only point in you knowing that is so that you recognize a simple fact: Ezra has lived next door to me for some time.

The first month or so, she called me Bayless. Then, for reasons completly unbeknownst to me, she switched to calling me Bryson. I wrote about this a while back. This is the update.

"Hi, Bryson," she said with utmost sincerity and kindness, again, about two days ago. Ezra always, always smiles at me when she says hello, and it comes across as a real smile, not some "Hiiiiiii, Bryyyyyyson!" smile. I was happy to hear this the other day because it showed that Ezra's friend had kept the secret that I asked her to keep. I want to see how long this can last.

Here is the game:

From now on, whenever Ezra is around, my neighbors have been instructed to address me as Bryson. Without exception.

But what happens when inevitably she hears someone slip up and call you Bayless?

Easy: "Oh, yeah, Bayless is actually my nickname. I don't even remember how I got it; it's what my mom used to call me when I was little. Yeah, most people call me Bryson, but a few do use Bayless."

Boom. It's funny because it could last my entire lifetime. And I would be prepared to go along with this story until the end of it.

Some of us have to work for a living.

There was a piece of white computer paper taped to my front door two days ago when I got home from work. The last time I saw a piece of white computer paper taped to that door when I got home from work, it was a notice of if-you-don't-pay-me-a.s.a.p.-you're-evicted. So I don't like seeing pieces of paper taped to my door when I get home from work.

I hopped off my bike, still panting, and rolled my baby -- also known as my sweet road bike -- down my front porch, which is lined with wall-to-wall free Craiglist seating (a 12-foot church pew and a classy, blue diner booth bench), and up to the front door, and the white piece of paper.

"What will it be this time..."

Okay, so I don't get it: I don't pay a single gas bill yet, in four months of living here, and they're gonna tell me now that a debt collection agency is after me? I thought gas was ... was .... free! I swear!

"Shit..."

Then I read the note.

It was just a warning to all residents that the water would be turned off sometime the next day for sewage repairs.

"Nice!"

Free gas is the only way to go.

My neighbor Alex came outside about ten minutes later, and I brought up the water cuts. By that time, I noticed that pieces of white paper had been plastered atop every door in the entire compound.

"Yeah," he said, in the most Wisconsin/Michigan accent you're going to find in these parts. Alex is as laid back as they come, too, and he speaks like it. "Better make sure you get your shower in tomorrow before 10."

Before what time?

"Before what time?" I asked. "Do you really wake up at 10?"

"Yeah man." Alex was standing in the parking lot next to Carl, (or is it Karl? Hmm. Not sure. He's from Sweden), who I see every morning as he gets in his car to go to work (he still doesn't know my name, and calls he "bro" or "brother"), while I'm having coffee on the diner bench, reading work emails.

"Dude," I said, "some of us have to work for a living!"

I had been waiting my entire life to deliver that line. And now, just like when I got filmed today for a Gatti's Pizza commercial singing their little ditty for the camera, I can cross yet another thing off of my life's list.

"And the ROCKETS RED GLAAAAAARE!"

(The bombs bursting in aaaaiiiiir!)

(Gave proooooof, through the niiiiiight, that our chances are still there.)

I don't have a TV. That's not entirely true. I do have a TV. But I don't have cable. So I can't watch my TV.

I do have the Internet though, and I just found out that I can watch pretty much anything I want on a live stream through www.justin.tv, which is why I am sitting out on my front porch right now, facing the parking lot of my little compound here in Austin, a town chock full of hippies, recycling bins and granola, as I watch the Rockets put the finishing touches on a must win Game 6 against L.A.

Then, there is Lindsey, my nice, soft-spoken neighbor, who has taken it upon herself to personally stop by and ruin my buzz.

"Hey, Bayless." Lindsey is the type of person who will greet you, and then stand there, with a slightly deranged, crooked, yet harmless smile on her face. She will stand there until you greet her back. No matter how long it takes.

"Hey," I say, hardly averting my eyes from the screen of my laptop long enough to even register her presence. "I'm watching the NBA Playoffs right now."

Lindsey is an Austin artist, which is a pretty standard description of the types of people that live in this town. Artists, musicians and people who know how to assemble bikes: these are the three subsets of humanity that make up about 98 percent of the populace in the Texas capital. Most of these people, as you could probably guess, do not watch the NBA Playoffs.

"Sports?" she asks, as Luis Scola picks up a huge rebound off the Battier miss, and puts it back in for two. Houston tore out of the gates, just like the last time we played at Toyota Center, in a Game 4 blowout that evened this second round Western Conference series at two. After starting tonight's elimination game on a 21-3 tear -- we came into Game 6 down 3-2 after L.A. answered our beatdown with a beatdown of their own at Staples Center -- the Lakers have crawled back in it, mounting a furious third quarter comeback to cut the lead to a single bucket. But we're still hanging on. And I'm trying to focus. "Don't you think sports are just a way to distract us, to make us think that life is all just a big competition?"

No, I was tempted to answer. I think unathletic hippies are a distraction. But she is a nice girl, the type, though, that states with 100 percent certainty and not a shred of evidence that George Bush planned 9/11, and I know she's not ready for a real conversation on this issue, at least not with me. It'd be like a dad actually taking his six year old to the hoop and then feeling like a big man about it afterwards.

"Uhh..." I thought of how I could answer her question without being a complete dick, and finally decided upon, "Well, it is a competition, Lindsey."

Sports, and life. Both are a competition. We can help each other out here and there -- I open doors for people, and say please and thank you, and I try to tip people whenever there is a tip jar -- but like Pearl Jam screams, "It's evolution, baby."

"Sports are just, like ... nationalism," she said. Deep, I know. This is Austin. "It's just a way for people to prepare for war, and conflict, and..."

"GET THE BALL, SCOLA! GET IT!"

Look how angry Luis looks ... must be because he's wearing his Argentine national team jersey

She flinched momentarily. I don't think Lindsey knows how to scream like that. It's how someone would scream in like, a war.

"Why can't we as a culture focus on cooperation, and not try to be competing all the time?" she asked. Why not just go ahead and ask what the meaning of life is? I'm sure the next time I'm clearly focused on something else she'll pose that one for me -- maybe when I'm changing a light bulb, or vacuuming.

"I don't know," I mumble, pumping my fist as Aaron Brooks takes it to the rack for two.

I had pretty much the exact same conversation once with a girl who I was trying to hook up with while I was in college, when she tagged along with me and my friends to a Virginia-Florida State basketball game. A girl I'm trying to get with will get more of a pass to spout off anti-sports propaganda like that; a girl I'm not trying to hook up with, however, will get served.

"Lindsey, you don't know what you're talking about."

I could see her lingering, right below the railing on my porch. But I wasn't focusing on her.

"I just think sports are all about ... nationalism."

"Lindsey," I said, with a voice as monotone as Stanley's, "You have never even played sports. You don't know what you're talking about."

"I mean, I played sports when I was young," she said, "until they got all competitive, and, and..."

"KOBE, YOU ARE A BITCH! YOU ARE A LITTLE BITCH, KOBE."

"Nationalism... war... competition...." She was talking to me, I think, but I can't be sure, because I wasn't really listening to her babble.

Typical sports fans...

"Lindsey," I said, "sports are something that transcend national boundaries. Sports bring people together." I told her about how they give me goosebumps, about how much they've taught me about life. I told her about the bond I have with my father, and how large of a role baseball has played in that. I told her about Tanzania, and how that court at Soweto was the only place where people didn't view me as a white man, or as an ATM machine, but as a human being: Can you ball, or can you not?

Bet you can't tell me who's black, white and Arab in this photo, can you? And that is a beautiful thing.

Sports are an equalizer, a unifying force in the world. Competition exists, but that is not why people truly love sports. Real wars are markedly different forms of competition.

"Have you ever played on a team, on a real team?" I asked.

"I played sports when I was young, but--"

"You don't know what it feels like to bond with teammates, to have a common goal, to work for that goal to and win together, or lose together," I said, just racking up the tallies. It was like Bayles 8, Lindsey 0 at this point. "Sports are not about nationalism, either. I don't even know what that sentence means. I do find it a little weird, though, that we have to sing the National Anthem before games." I mean come on, that is a little weird. "And I think it's a little scary that they do fly overs with F-16's and stuff." Or have General Petraeus flip the coin at the Super Bowl, for that matter. "But sports are about coming together, Lindsey. Stop being a hater."

"Playing sports, maybe," she said, backtracking, though judging by the slight slur in her voice, she still didn't seem to quite understand that she had just waded into shark infested waters wearing a blood soaked wet suit. "But watching them? It's just about..."

"Nationalism? War?" I asked. Still staring at the screen.

No wonder the rockets won Game 6. They've got a Chinese nationalist and an Argentine nationalist ... and they're angry! Grrrrrr! Sports! GRRRRRRR! WAR!!

"Lindsey, I don't even know what that means, what you're trying to say. OH COME ON THAT WAS A FOUL." My eyes had drifted over towards her temporarily, but that no-call brought them right back to the screen. We have to win this game or we go home ... or stay ... home. "What you're doing right now Lindsey is called 'being a hater.' Stop being a hater. You don't know what you're even saying."

"It's just me asking a question," she said.

"No. It was you telling me sports suck. It's being a hater. Do I tell you art sucks? No. Do I tell Steven that music sucks? No. I am not a hater. You are a hater. On the streets we call it 'drinking Haterade.'"

"You spend a lot of time on the streets?" Steven, our other neighbor, interrupted, from his spot on his front porch about 15 yards away.

"Yeah, dude," I said, pounding my fist into my chest. "Me and Obama."

"Nice." He laughed, as he strummed his guitar.

"I just think sports are..." Lindsey would not give it up. She cannot give it up.

"You know what you're doing right now?" I asked rhetorically, using it as a trigger for me politiely telling her to quit being such a bia bia. "You're doing what so many people in this city do: you're soooo 'open minded' that you're actually closed minded.

"Don't be like that, Lindsey. Don't do that."

"I'm not hating," she said. "It's just ... nationalism."

It's just ... Austin.

But at least the Rockets are taking it back to L.A., baby.

It makes no sense.

I started to type the sentence, and it hit me. Why it took 25 years, two months, and however many days to come to me, I have no idea. But it hit me this afternoon.

Why do they call them "armed gunmen?"

They're gunmen, so obviously, they're armed.

"Why do they call them 'armed gunmen'?" I asked. "I mean, they're gunmen. They have to be armed."

I think out loud from the safety of my little cubicle pretty often, and usually I get at least one response. There are four people that can hear me.

No one responded today. Just silence and the sound of tapping computer keys in that part of the office.

Then I deleted what I'd written, and just went with plain old "gunmen."

Why I love Austin:

I woke up today and went to Barton Springs. I swam in a cold, wonderfully refreshing natural body of water, and I read my book, learning about the Ottoman Empire's international situation in the first decade plus change of the 20th century. Then I went to work, my part time gig serving beers on a party boat on Lake Austin. It was a UT graduation party hosted by a most openly gay kid named AJ, who invited all of his 20-something year old (flamingly) gay friends and their hot, available female cohorts, who had no one to focus their attention on but me and the three other straight guys at the party, a.k.a. the only ones who ordered beer instead of "frozen margaritas." This caused me to rethink my stance on Brian's idea. After this party, while the boat was taking over an hour to cruise back to its dock, we put it in neutral, jumped off the roof and swam in Lake Austin underneath the full moon, while we were blaring Lee Scratch Perry dub tracks from the P.A. and counting our blessings to be alive. There wasn't another person in sight. It was perfect.

But now we're flashing forward to the very end of the night, when I'm walking past my office building (the one for my real job, one that doesn't allow me to go swimming at the end) on Lavaca. I'm walking past my office building at 2:15 in the morning because I'm coming back from a bar in the general vicinity of where I work, which means I park for free, in the garage. I will walk five thousand miles to take advantage of free parking.

I always wonder if anyone has ever noticed this by watching the CCTV videos.

Bars close at 2 in most parts of America. I'm not sure what the policy is in Louisiana.

There are four of them, and they're walking towards us -- it's me and a friend of a friend named Nancy, my guest since Thursday, a fellow world traveler and an opportunity for me to try and chip away at the immense debt of hospitality I owe to humanity in general for the countless free places I've been given to stay in my day. Nancy is British, and she was 15 when I was born. She is the shit. All I hope is that I was able to show her a good time in Austin, a place she had never been until now. These four dudes from the Bayou helped in that mission, I hope.

"Yo," the ringleader says, "we're tryin' to find the PARTY around here, man! You know where one's at?" He spoke in that sort of ghetto-rural, but not quite full blown wigger accent, one that's quite common in many parts of the world where the local Dollar General doubles as the Friday night hangout.

"I think most of the parties are closed, man. It's already after two."

This did not seem to make much sense to them.

Neither did the empty coconut shell I was holding in my hand.

About 20 minutes before this, Andrew had found it on the street. I kept it with plans to turn it into an ash tray, just like the one Hunter and I had in Tanzania (which, ironically enough, came from a coconut shell we found on the ground). And I was tossing it up in the air to myself as I told these four guys from Louisiana that there were no parties to be found.

"Is that a coconut shell man?" one of them asked.

"Yeah man," I said. "This is Austin! Duh!"

"We're from Louisiana, man!"

(Which you already know.)

"Listen, y'all," I said, as my last words, "I do not know of any parties going on, but if you continue walking down this street, and keep asking people like you just asked me, I know that with your can-do spirit, you will find that party."

This led to raucous applause. I turned to walk across the street, just in time to see this:

"I'm goin' get my F***IN' DICK WET!!" And then he threw his bottle of water against the sidewalk and yelled, "Whooooo!!!"

Geaux get 'em, Tiger. Geaux get 'em.

Pulling a Bayless.

I met a girl last night, a friend of a friend, who's riding her bike from Austin to Alaska this summer. I'd heard stories about her before, and was extremely excited to meet this person in the flesh. Anyone who has the balls to ride their bike from here to Alaska is a badass, and I want to be their friend.

So there we are, and I'm asking her questions about her bike trip: how long it will take (70 days); how much has she been training to get ready (starting in December, she rides at least three days a week, between 25 and 60 miles each time, depending on the day); which route will she be taking ("I'm going through Central America," she said, "through Colorado," before I explained to her that she shouldn't phrase it that way, porque me confunde); where is her final destination exactly (Anchorage); stuff like that.

And then, someone else chimes in with a question:

"What are you doing this for?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In high school, it was called "pulling a Bayless." Anything that was said which made fun of/spoke irreverently about another race, religion, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, person's mother, anything -- but only if it was said right in front of the last possible person you'd want to hear -- was "pulling a Bayless."

Borat pulls Bayless' all the time, except he's doing it on purpose.

Let's be clear: I'm not a racist, I'm not a sexist, I'm not an anythingist. I'm honest, with myself at least -- and I try to be honest with other people as well. And honestly, I think it's funny and somehow morally justified to make fun of everyone, without exception, because that, my friend, is the meaning of true equality. It don't matter if you're black or white or a freak like Michael Jackson. I will make fun of you, just slightly less than I make fun of myself (but for some people, I will rip on you much more than I could ever dream of ripping on myself -- you know who you are).

This, by the way, was especially true in high school, when I was a much bigger asshole than I am today. This was when the phrase "pulling a Bayless" was coined. I could try and say that I just couldn't catch a break back then, that it was simply a four-year streak of bad luck, but it's also true that I was constantly putting myself in a position to get caught saying something stupid, because I was saying stupid things with a much higher frequency in those days.

"You could ... assume everyone was gay, and not say anything offensive," Dwight once told Michael in "The Office," in the episode when it was revealed that Oscar was gay, and Michael was all torn up about having once called him "faggy." "Yeah," Michael answered, rolling his eyes at what he thought to be an incredibly dumb suggestion, "I'm sure everyone would appreciate me treating them like they were gay."

I just tried to find that clip on entertonement.com, but it wasn't there. I did, however find a Dwight clip where he himself sort of pulled a Bayless ... only it wasn't in front of someone whose mother had actually died of cancer, and therefore, it wasn't a Bayless at all.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"What are you doing this for?"

We're back at the original scene now, by the way.

"Oh, cancer research," she said, matter of factly.

"Yeah, right," I thought. "And I lived in Africa for over a year because I had always had a burning desire to help Tanzanian oprhans, and not because I just wanted to chill with my best friend in a foreign land, and would have taken any job that would have allowed me to do that."

"Oh come on," I said, cutting in, "you didn't do it for cancer research. You did it because you wanted to ride your bike to freaking Alaska, dude!"

I thought it would draw a laugh.

"Actually I lost my mother to cancer, so..."

But I thought wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Cue the crickets)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not knowing what to say, I tried to make a joke to make up for the failed joke which had gotten me into this incredibly awkward situation in the first place.

"Wanna get away?" I asked out loud, looking in the distance.

Then I began to apologize profusely.

I felt horrible. Who makes a cancer joke to a girl whose mother died of cancer? Come on, Bayless! What are you DOING?

I kept apologizing, profusely.

"It's okay, it's okay," she assured me. "It's fine." A strange scene: a girl who lost her mother to cancer, trying to make me feel better about it. I am going to Hell.

I kept apologizing.

The look on my friend's face -- the girl who had introduced me to her -- said it all: "You are an idiot."

"I could hear it coming," she said later on while standing in line with my British guest I have in town at the moment. "And I was trying to stomp on his foot, but then I realized, it was already in his mouth."

"It would have been so much funnier if she had just reacted really, really poorly to that," Jamison was telling me simultaneously, when it was just the two of us rehashing the event that had just transpired, and wondering out loud if the image of my Uzbek-asshole face would be her motivating force as she pedaled up the formidable mountain chain that cuts across Central America.

"Yeah," I shot back, "it would have been funnier for YOU!"

I was glad to be holding a beer at that moment. I drank it very fast.

And before leaving, I made sure to find this poor girl -- an inspiration, a selfless person, the opposite of this guy -- and apologize, again. And again. And about three more times after that.

"I promise," she said, "I'm fine. Don't lose any sleep over it, all right?"

"That's why I'm about to buy another beer," I said.

There's a reason why Borat was such an easy character to play.
It's because people like this give South Asia a reputation for not knowing the what the hell is going on.


I came across this photo in an Argentine newspaper this past Tuesday. It was taken in Islamabad, Pakistan.

According to the caption, it was also taken at an anti-Taliban rally.

"Someone desperately needs to explain to these guys the nuances of the English language," was the first thing I thought.

Later that night, I was on Skype talking to a guy who lives in New Delhi. His name is Bahar, and he is a photo editor for the AFP, sort of the French version of the Associated Press, in charge of South Asia. I was interviewing Bahar for this story I'm writing about him for a UVa alumni magazine. Not realizing that this photo was an actual AFP photo, I excitedly began to describe to him what I had come across only hours before, about to reach the point in the story where I start mimicking a high school cheerleader when he cut me off:

"Are you talking about the 'Go Taliban Go' one?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "How did you know? Did you see that?"

"Yeah," Bahar said, chuckling like a person who knows that the next words out of his mouth are only going to cause an even bigger commotion, "I edited that photo."

You can guess how I reacted to that.

He laughed as I yelled into the microphone. "I actually have a lot of other photos from that series. One of them has a guy with a 'Go America Go' sticker."

He promised to email it to me when he gets back from Kashmir. And I promised to print it out and tape it to my fridge.

Being a third wheel sucks.
Being a third wheel at a gay bar? Worst idea ever.


My Friday night was like a mixture of "A Night at the Roxbury" and "The Sandlot." From 11 to 1:30, my friend Brian and I rode bikes all around Austin, and we didn't even have a bed time. We rode around the lake, we rode around downtown, we even went into a bar at one point and had a drink. Brian was hoping our bike helmets, the antithesis of the standard hair-gelled, Afflicted Friday night culture in modern, metro times, would actually get us girls. I suspected this was wishful thinking. I was proven correct, and the bike riding continued.

Once we had gotten back to the lake, Brian's phone started buzzing. He pulled it out of his pocket to read a text message from his back up plan, some girl he probably met on Craigslist or Adult Friend Finder.

"Hey man," he said, as we were about to pedal across the road, "this girl is trying to get me to come meet up with her at this gay bar."

And, hold up, wait, let me guess: he wanted me to come?

"Wanna come?"

Ding-ding-ding! Tell 'em what he wins, Bob!

A chaaaaaaance to be a third wheel at a gaaaaaaaay bar!

Not a line on my face moved as I stared back at him.

"No," I said, with an expression as blank as an untouched canvas. "I don't."

The last time I had to play third wheel, coincidentally, had been at the very bar where Brian's bike helmet theory had just failed. It was in January, right after I'd moved to Austin, and my host family (this is how Tony referred to himself for the first three weeks I lived here, since I was crashing on his couch) had been trying to get a big group to go out to the Lucky Lounge. I tagged along. It was only once we were in the car going to pick up Tony's then-lady friend that he let me know, everyone else had bailed. It was just going to be the three of us that night.

I thanked him profusely for the opportunity to feel so awkward, before moving to the backseat and eeeee'ing the shit out of him.

The ensuing three hours were extremely uncomfortable, as Tony's girl tried to make me feel more included by periodically giving me seductive eyes, offering to buy me champagne, letting loose with Spring Break type howls, and doing her best to sexily dance in front of me in equal proportion to the amount of time alotted to Tony, with whom it was understood by all she would be going home that night. She thought I would feel left out or something, I guess, if she didn't make me think that yes, oh yes, you have a chance, Bayless.

I felt uncomfortable as a third wheel in that scenario. Just try and imagine how I'd feel as a third wheel at Oil Can Harry's.

So we rode bikes back to my place.

And then, after hanging out for about half an hour, once all the bars, even the gay ones, had closed, Brian went over to his back up plan's house.

And since I do not have a back up plan, I went to bed.

The end.