April: Travel, Triumph, and Tribulation
This weekend, there was a wedding.
Target date: 8 April 2006. kikimoose and chrysoberyl had invited various and sundry friends and family members up to a small wedding. This had been foretold many moons ago, when a great tequila bottle appeared in the sky and several unwise men and women got schnockered with prophecy. Or something along those lines.
Among the guests would be marasca, who currently resides in Japan, and angledge, who currently resides in San Francisco. Their destiny was to spend time at Hotel chaosvizier before travelling to the wedding. Woe unto them. But that's not really the point.
marasca arrived on April 1st. Yes, April Fools. Apparently, the April Fools joke was on her, as she flew Northwest Airlines. Every day seems to be April Fools for them. thereject and I picked her up from Newark Airport on a fine sunny cloudless day. Clear skies, beautiful weather. Yet she arrived almost two hours late because, in Detroit, they told her plane that the weather in Newark posed "dangerous conditions". I think that was an April Fools joke. Those funny guys.
So, despite her 16+ hour endeavor, she seemed up and excited to see white people like myself and thereject, and offered us candy.
The Japanese have some crazy candy, boy howdy. I mean, we all do know that there's lots of crazy in Japan, and we've all seen Pocky and Nekochans and other weird things. But let's really study what she had to offer.
That's right. Contrary to popular belief, Blaxploitation never really died. "Honey Coming"? Oh yeah. It is.
The big yellow bag in the upper right is full of little plastic shots of jello. Just jello. But each one comes with a different cutesy animal on the peel-off top. These two are, apparently, otters. angledge thought they were ridiculously cute and made off with them. Fair enough.
The upper left corner is dominated by Pocky and some of its clones. Pocky comes in Melon and Pineapple flavors in this example; marasca assured us that there were far weirder examples. I wish she'd found the Strawberry Kit-Kats... but I digress. We can also see something called "Pretz" in two varieties. Pretz appears to be a kind of breadstick. The smaller box was labelled "Pretz Roast", which deceived me and thereject into thinking that it was flavored like a pot roast, or roast beef. To be fair, this is not surprising, since the other box of Pretz is definitely flavored with Sweet Potato. Pot Roast couldn't be too far behind, right?
But of course the highlight of the Pocky Clones was Hello Kitty Pink Pocky-Like Sticks. You can see the box there in the middle. What you need to see is the cutesy little cartoon that comes on the back of the box:
Someone needs to photoshop all the Japanese text out so that we can have a caption-writing contest, because this cartoon begs it.
Then there were some hard candies, which we tried many days later. While the bags of cherry-and-plum candies and tea candies were quite pleasing to the palate, the yellow bag in the lower right corner offered a sinister conclusion to our tasting extravaganza. You might be able to see the two flavor ingredients there on the bag: Ginger root and Daikon radish. Yes. Ginger and radish flavored hard candy.
As always, my key character flaw is that I just can't resist eating something unnaturally weird. This will one day poison me utterly, but until that day, I can look back on this day as a foreshadowing moment. I popped one in my mouth and waited a few seconds for the flavor to kick in. Then marasca and angledge burst into hysterics as my face squinchled. Yes, squinchled. A combination of squished, crunched, winced, and wrinkled. It hurt real bad.
I almost had to use one of the bandages that marasca brought along with her. But I was confused by the instruction on the bandage itself: "If on wound to apply soon. It feel fine." Hmmmm.
EDIT: I forgot the best part of this post. marasca also bought a shirt in Japan that summed up everything that was insane about anywhere, ever.
In case you actually cannot believe what you are seeing, this is indeed a woman, in a bathtub, holding a slab of pork. The speech bubble reads "MEATBUS" and the bathtub reads "Like A Pork, FREELIVER". There is discarded silverware on the ground.
I Cannot Make This Up.
Much later in the week, angledge arrived. 6:45 am on Friday sees me at Newark Airport again. Ah, red-eye flights, how you mock us... Nonetheless, consciousness is not an issue for either of us, surprisingly, and for breakfast she commands the power of IHOP, which I am completely down with. She takes a powernap as I acquire Mr. Suit so I can look Mr. Civilized, and then we head into New York City and beeline towards the famous Garment District.
Now, if there's any two people who do NOT belong in Manhattan's Garment District, it would be the two of us. My style of clothing could best be described as "haphazard and uncoordinated", while angledge falls more in the category of "functional and unstylish". angledge did mention the trauma of shoe shopping, and katieledge is waiting for the day when she can set fire to my entire wardrobe. Then again, at least we're not like fizrep, whose skills in buying pajamas are legendary, and who, when we went to Kodos's wedding, bought his shirt and tie 60 minutes before the wedding started. He's a madman! But this tale is not about him.
So there we were, in the Garment District. We were looking for two things: buttons and bling. Buttons because both of us were wearing overcoats that had lost all their buttons and needed replacements. So our inside agent of fashion, katieledge, directs us to all the "special" places where "you can get the right buttons from the right people, if you know what I mean". Thanks to these button stores, I now know that I have Black Marbled Corazo buttons. I'll keep that in mind for the future.
Our button quest was a success. The quest for bling was equally successful, although we were torn when it came to buying a Skull. And I did almost steal one from a window display, because it was huge and made of buttons. And I almost popped one off a belt in another store. And the Skull Necklace was kinda cute. As was the giant Bigjaw Skull. But we avoided the skulls and settled for simple plastic gemstones.
fizrep joined us in the afternoon, and we launched a concentrated assault on the Port Authority's Candy Store. They had a single bin full of chocolate gold coins. We bought them ALL.
Salesperson: Wow.
Me: Is this all of them?
Salesperson: We just got those in.
Me: You don't have any more in the back?
Salesperson: Nope, that's all.
Me: Ring it up. All of them.
One bag of gold chocos later, we head out for lunch, acquire katieledge from work, and begin the long journey to Nowhereonta, NY.
Why did we need bling and skulls and choco coins? Find out when I write my next entry. Oooh, cliffhanger! Shiny!
Target date: 8 April 2006. kikimoose and chrysoberyl had invited various and sundry friends and family members up to a small wedding. This had been foretold many moons ago, when a great tequila bottle appeared in the sky and several unwise men and women got schnockered with prophecy. Or something along those lines.
Among the guests would be marasca, who currently resides in Japan, and angledge, who currently resides in San Francisco. Their destiny was to spend time at Hotel chaosvizier before travelling to the wedding. Woe unto them. But that's not really the point.
marasca arrived on April 1st. Yes, April Fools. Apparently, the April Fools joke was on her, as she flew Northwest Airlines. Every day seems to be April Fools for them. thereject and I picked her up from Newark Airport on a fine sunny cloudless day. Clear skies, beautiful weather. Yet she arrived almost two hours late because, in Detroit, they told her plane that the weather in Newark posed "dangerous conditions". I think that was an April Fools joke. Those funny guys.
So, despite her 16+ hour endeavor, she seemed up and excited to see white people like myself and thereject, and offered us candy.
The Japanese have some crazy candy, boy howdy. I mean, we all do know that there's lots of crazy in Japan, and we've all seen Pocky and Nekochans and other weird things. But let's really study what she had to offer.
That's right. Contrary to popular belief, Blaxploitation never really died. "Honey Coming"? Oh yeah. It is.
The big yellow bag in the upper right is full of little plastic shots of jello. Just jello. But each one comes with a different cutesy animal on the peel-off top. These two are, apparently, otters. angledge thought they were ridiculously cute and made off with them. Fair enough.
The upper left corner is dominated by Pocky and some of its clones. Pocky comes in Melon and Pineapple flavors in this example; marasca assured us that there were far weirder examples. I wish she'd found the Strawberry Kit-Kats... but I digress. We can also see something called "Pretz" in two varieties. Pretz appears to be a kind of breadstick. The smaller box was labelled "Pretz Roast", which deceived me and thereject into thinking that it was flavored like a pot roast, or roast beef. To be fair, this is not surprising, since the other box of Pretz is definitely flavored with Sweet Potato. Pot Roast couldn't be too far behind, right?
But of course the highlight of the Pocky Clones was Hello Kitty Pink Pocky-Like Sticks. You can see the box there in the middle. What you need to see is the cutesy little cartoon that comes on the back of the box:
Someone needs to photoshop all the Japanese text out so that we can have a caption-writing contest, because this cartoon begs it.
Then there were some hard candies, which we tried many days later. While the bags of cherry-and-plum candies and tea candies were quite pleasing to the palate, the yellow bag in the lower right corner offered a sinister conclusion to our tasting extravaganza. You might be able to see the two flavor ingredients there on the bag: Ginger root and Daikon radish. Yes. Ginger and radish flavored hard candy.
As always, my key character flaw is that I just can't resist eating something unnaturally weird. This will one day poison me utterly, but until that day, I can look back on this day as a foreshadowing moment. I popped one in my mouth and waited a few seconds for the flavor to kick in. Then marasca and angledge burst into hysterics as my face squinchled. Yes, squinchled. A combination of squished, crunched, winced, and wrinkled. It hurt real bad.
I almost had to use one of the bandages that marasca brought along with her. But I was confused by the instruction on the bandage itself: "If on wound to apply soon. It feel fine." Hmmmm.
EDIT: I forgot the best part of this post. marasca also bought a shirt in Japan that summed up everything that was insane about anywhere, ever.
In case you actually cannot believe what you are seeing, this is indeed a woman, in a bathtub, holding a slab of pork. The speech bubble reads "MEATBUS" and the bathtub reads "Like A Pork, FREELIVER". There is discarded silverware on the ground.
I Cannot Make This Up.
Much later in the week, angledge arrived. 6:45 am on Friday sees me at Newark Airport again. Ah, red-eye flights, how you mock us... Nonetheless, consciousness is not an issue for either of us, surprisingly, and for breakfast she commands the power of IHOP, which I am completely down with. She takes a powernap as I acquire Mr. Suit so I can look Mr. Civilized, and then we head into New York City and beeline towards the famous Garment District.
Now, if there's any two people who do NOT belong in Manhattan's Garment District, it would be the two of us. My style of clothing could best be described as "haphazard and uncoordinated", while angledge falls more in the category of "functional and unstylish". angledge did mention the trauma of shoe shopping, and katieledge is waiting for the day when she can set fire to my entire wardrobe. Then again, at least we're not like fizrep, whose skills in buying pajamas are legendary, and who, when we went to Kodos's wedding, bought his shirt and tie 60 minutes before the wedding started. He's a madman! But this tale is not about him.
So there we were, in the Garment District. We were looking for two things: buttons and bling. Buttons because both of us were wearing overcoats that had lost all their buttons and needed replacements. So our inside agent of fashion, katieledge, directs us to all the "special" places where "you can get the right buttons from the right people, if you know what I mean". Thanks to these button stores, I now know that I have Black Marbled Corazo buttons. I'll keep that in mind for the future.
Our button quest was a success. The quest for bling was equally successful, although we were torn when it came to buying a Skull. And I did almost steal one from a window display, because it was huge and made of buttons. And I almost popped one off a belt in another store. And the Skull Necklace was kinda cute. As was the giant Bigjaw Skull. But we avoided the skulls and settled for simple plastic gemstones.
fizrep joined us in the afternoon, and we launched a concentrated assault on the Port Authority's Candy Store. They had a single bin full of chocolate gold coins. We bought them ALL.
Salesperson: Wow.
Me: Is this all of them?
Salesperson: We just got those in.
Me: You don't have any more in the back?
Salesperson: Nope, that's all.
Me: Ring it up. All of them.
One bag of gold chocos later, we head out for lunch, acquire katieledge from work, and begin the long journey to Nowhereonta, NY.
Why did we need bling and skulls and choco coins? Find out when I write my next entry. Oooh, cliffhanger! Shiny!