My Friend Mark Went To India. I Interviewed Him.

I talked to my good friend Mark about his recent trip to India. Included are references to; elephants, class warfare, having your “junk grabbed,” and the Beatles. Enjoy.


Me: Everyone from George Harrison to Alanis Morissette (who sang “thank you, India” on her song “Thank U”) has been influenced by the culture of India. Now that you are back in the USA, did you have a Ravi Shankar moment?

Mark: Unfortunately, between running the gauntlet of driving to and from airports in Delhi, Pune, Chennai, and Bangalore, I didn't have time to get my 'zen' on. The closest thing I experienced to a Ravi Shankar moment is hearing a Sitar ringtone when hitching a totally impromptu elephant ride on the way to Agra (city of Taj Mahal).

Mark, in red.  Photo (I think) used by permission.

We saw this old guy riding an elephant on the side of the road, and my boss decided it was a good idea to stop the van and ask him if we could take rides for a couple hundred rupees. After some serious Hindi negotiations, and against any better judgment whatsoever, I eagerly volunteered to hop on. Once onboard the elephant with my co-worker and this old guy, we were taken down a trail away from the road where several Indian families came out of the woods to point and laugh at us.


It was pretty harmless until we turned around and the elephant decided to take a dump. Apparently they don't much like things on their backs when going #2 because it started convulsing much like a dog who is trying to scratch a pesky flea on its back. Andy and I were about 5 seconds from getting tossed on our heads until the old driver pulls out a whip and started restoring a little order with the big guy; and started yelling something at us in Hindi. As we were trying to decipher his instructions, his Sitar ringtone from his cell phone goes off and the convulsing started again.


We somehow made it back to the road and my boss had this, “oh shit, I think I'm liable for these clowns” look on his face, and the adventure subsided. This was our first two hours on the subcontinent.

One of your pictures shows you and your group sharing an elaborate dinner. Did it bother you at all that merely steps from where you were feasting there existed abject poverty?

Not really, and that's the strangest thing. The dirt, lack of infrastructure, mass of humanity, and garbage were so prominent everywhere that we felt like we were mere voyeurs watching a surreal documentary. Most of our time was spent in a car, getting to and from each location in painstaking traffic (which included cars, trucks with 10 or more people riding, rickshaws with 6 or more people riding, motorcycles with up to a family of 5, dogs, pigs, monkeys, and cows).


To us it was overwhelming, but the locals of all classes seemed to be oblivious to the surroundings. They go about their day walking through the garbage with a certain peace and dignity. The dichotomy of the class environment seems to be lost on them. It makes the folks here in the U.S. pushing a class warfare agenda look foolish. If you want to see the real “haves and have-nots”, this is the place to look.


That being said, the Indian people are so proud of their culture that they want visitors to experience all the good and lavish things their land has to offer, with no sense of angst whatsoever.

There is a scene in Slumdog Millionaire where it shows the actors filling water bottles right out of the tap in the back of a restaurant. Did you ever burp and fear the onslaught of Delhi Belly?


We were warned ahead of time to make sure all waiters open the bottles of water in front of you, and we never had an issue. Personally, I stuck to bottles of 'King Fisher' beer at every meal to ensure I didn't get sick.

I’ve seen you successfully navigate a packed bar in order to get a twenty-five cent draft beer. How did that type of experience prepare you for the crowds?


It definitely helped me navigate the pick-pocketers at the Taj Mahal. Nothing like walking into a tiny, dark mosque doorway with 8 hands on your junk.

A few months ago, I ate chicken hearts. Glad I tried them, but once was enough. Ready to go back to India or was once enough?

To be honest, I couldn't wait to get back to the states and French kiss the clean concrete. I'm in no hurry to go back, but I would after a year or so. The next time I would like to stay in one city for at least a week. We spent most of our time on planes or driving to and from airports, so it was difficult to get more than a 'surface level' experience of each area. I'd like to go deeper, so I could possibly write my 'Within you, without you'*.


*That's on Sgt. Pepper's, Hot Fire, in case you didn't know.

I did know that. And “Thank U” is on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. (Okay, I had to Google that.)

Riding On Trains With Old People

Recently, I was dispatched by my parents to go to Sarasota, Florida to assist them in getting back home. Not a bad gig if you can get it. It did, however, require me to travel via (cliché coming) planes, trains and automobiles. I was to fly to Florida on a Thursday; drive from Sarasota to Orlando on Friday; load us and their vehicle on the Amtrak Autotrain Friday afternoon; spend the night on the train; arrive in DC on Saturday morning; and drive them home from there. So yeah, a couple of thousand miles in forty-eight hours. I did it – here is the train part.

Boarding

2:30PM – We board the train without being asked for any ID and without one bag getting searched. Zero, and I mean Z-E-R-O security on the rails – just sayin’.

2:50 – The old lady down the car leans her head out of her room and asks me if they have started serving the free wine and cheese yet.

3:00 – They announce that free wine and cheese is now being served in the lounge car. Stampede of old people toward the lounge car begins in earnest.

3:05 – I arrive in the lounge car to what looks like a pack of jackals fighting over an antelope carcass.

3:06 – I go downstairs to the bar for a Sam Adams. (The first of many.)

3:25 - My son Dylan calls me and says, “Dad, we have a major dilemma. Shingles are blowing off of our house.” “Dylan, I am on a train in Florida!” Frantic phone calls ensue. (All is well.)

5:00 – Our call for dinner. You have a choice of the 5:00, 7:00 and 9:00 dinner times. My parents of course choose the earliest one, which means after dinner I am going to have about five hours to kill.

5:03 – We arrive at the dining car and are served salad, dinner and dessert in about twenty efficient minutes.

6:15 – I am back in the lounge car drinking Sam Adams and reading Rolling Stone. Turns out Pete Townshend just sold his all of his publishing for an estimated $30-$50 million. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

7:10 – Two cute blondes sit down at my booth to watch a Dolphin movie. (Not sure which one, the dolphins may or may not have been talking.)

7:15 – The cute blondes mom tells them they have to go and get their pajamas on.

8:00 – I head downstairs to a little slice of heaven known as the smoking lounge. I smoke a cigarette but feel (and smell like) I smoked a pack since it is like smoking with three other people in the middle of a group hug inside a phone booth.

8:05 – 9:00 – I drink more Sam Adams.

My coffin (strap array on the right)

9:30 – Kyle, our porter, turns the “roomette” my dad and I are sharing into a double-decker, coffin sized sleeping berth. The top bunk I will be sleeping in is suspended by an array of what appears to be seatbelt straps.

9:45 – As my dad goes to sleep he says, “Be careful you don’t fall out of that sonofabitch, you’re liable to strangle yourself in those straps.” Thanks, dad, you sleep well too.

10:00 – 6:00AM – I spend a fitful night being jostled around in my crypt while worrying about death by hanging.

8:00 – We arrive in Lorton, Virginia, retrieve the car and drive home.

Mostly, I ask my kids to put away their laundry and take out the garbage. Mine just asked me to come to Florida. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

When Kids Just "Shut Things Off"

Every week day at 3:00 I call home to talk to my kids who are just getting home from school about then. The conversations are brief; how was school, any homework, let the dog out. But sometimes, I relay a very simple request. On Thursday, I asked for the following three things:


1. Take four chicken breasts out of the freezer in the garage for dinner and put them in a container of water in the sink. (Not: Go to the local farm, track down a couple of chickens, slaughter them, butcher them, and prepare chicken cacciatore.)

2. Bring in the garbage cans. (Not: Bring in the garbage cans at our old house thirty miles away. I mean the ones at the end of the driveway that you walked around on your way in the house.)

3. Put your clothes away. (Not: Take your dirty clothes down to the creek, wash them against a rock, dry them on a clothesline, iron them and put them away in order of color.)

If you belly crawled to complete these tasks, it would take five minutes tops – seven if you actually put the clothes in drawers instead of on the floor.

Do I have to tell you how many were done when I got home? I didn’t think so.

When I inquired about this when I got home, and by inquired I mean I yelled, “Dammit! Why didn’t you at least get out the chicken?” The response was, “Sorry dad, I forgot!” What my son meant to say was, “Dad, shut up you ass. And stop yelling, I am playing xBox.”

But he was lying – he didn’t forget. To forget implies that you knew something, and it slipped your mind. Like, “I knew I was supposed to get milk on the way home, but I forgot.” You can’t forget if you never knew it in the first place. (A derivative of this strategy is employed in DC all the time.)

You can only be pissed off about frozen chicken for so long, because as a parent you just make it work. Today’s garbage cans is tomorrows running out at 8:00 at night to get a tee shirt for a school project that is due the next day even though they knew about it for a week and when you are ask him in the car why he didn’t tell you earlier he says, “Dad, sometimes I just shut things off.” Wonderful.

The Airline Reservation "Option" That Cost Me $12.00. (Or - How the Airlines Are Fully Engaged In The "Very Serious Business" Of Screwing Their Customers.)

In my previous post, I talked about the “very serious business” that my parents summoned me to their house for. They had asked me to fly to Florida at the end of the month and travel back home with them to help drive. This precipitated the unenviable task of getting a plane ticket that did not involve a layover in Kandahar.


I was pleased with the most recent DOT regulation that required airlines and travel websites to include all their fees and taxes in the price of the ticket up front, so that when you get to the check-out page of the website, the price does not escalate from $215 to $3,812.

The DOT regulation, however, had one caveat. The airlines were still entitled to exclude “optional fees” from their pricing. Therefore, AirTran got down to the “very serious business” of screwing me.

I found a flight that did not require me getting to the airport while the bartenders from TGIF’s were still counting their tips from the night before and proceeded to the seat assignment page. You have to admit, it is sort of fun picking your seat – it’s like one last vestige of self-determination. AirTran wants you to pay for this.

Here are the options:

1. Priority Seating - $13 – $15. This not only gets you the fancy, up front seats, you get to board first. Outside of First Class where you can get a cocktail immediately, I never understood the rush to get into a seat that has the plush comfort of a wooden folding chair without the lumbar support.

2. Exit Row Seating - $20. If I am reading this correctly, airline safety stops the second the overweight, drunk guy with an extra $20 decides he wants to park his fat ass in an exit row. Call me crazy, but I think this seat should be given to the person who can do the most pushups in the boarding lounge.

3. Steerage Class - $6. This is every other seat in the plane, including the middle seat in the last row next to the bathroom.  (I have a layover, so that's $6 x two legs - amazing this isn't charged by the air mile.)

Now, this is one of the “optional fees,” because you do not have to reserve a seat. The airline will tell you that you are more than welcome to come to the airport without a seat assignment and you will be given one there – if they don’t overbook the flight.

Would you make a reservation at a restaurant, pay up front and be content if you were told that for only a few extra dollars they would actually guarantee you a seat? Would you pay an extra $20 for a really good seat?

But the airlines have been in the “very serious business” of bilking their customers for years, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I am just looking forward to my thimble of Diet Coke and a Gold Fish Cracker.

A Cryptic Phone Call, a High Speed Dash and a Question That Will Never Be Answered

There are times of the day when a phone call from your parents illicit little more than some chat time with mom. Eight forty-five Saturday morning is not one of those times.


The finishing touches to an egg, cheese and sausage sandwich were just coming together – my Saturday morning, after gym meal – when my cell phone rang. The screen displayed, “Mom.” This can’t be good, I thought.

“Hello,” I said.

My dad was on the other end. “You up yet or are you still sleeping?” My dad always thinks everyone sleeps too much. He is cut from the cloth when men were expected to be up and working every single day at the crack of dawn.

“I’m up. What’s going on?”

“Can you come over here this morning? We have some very serious business to discuss.” He didn’t sound like he was kidding. He sounded like he was going to tell me someone was dead or dying.

I asked him if everyone was okay. “Yeah,” he said, “me and your mother aren’t dead or dying.”

I am almost forty-three and have never been summoned by my parents to discuss “very serious business.” This must be what it feels like to be a mafia soldier when the don calls unexpectedly. “Hey thirty-fingers, can you come by the social club? Use the back door and go to the basement.”

My mind became a rolodex and the cards every conceivable eventuality that would qualify as “very serious business.”

I drove over – very quickly – the good mafia soldier. I settled in on the couch – prepared for something disastrous like, “It’s time you know that you were adopted. We decided to tell you because of the possibility that your real father, Newt Gingrich, may get the GOP nomination.”

“Well,” my dad said. Here it comes, I thought. “You know we are going to be in Florida next month. I can’t drive far anymore. Do you think you could come down there before we leave and travel with us back here?”

I wasn’t going to get whacked, Newt wasn’t my father (thank God for all that is holy). The racing thoughts, the dire predictions, the 85 MPH car trip was all to ask me if I could fly to Florida, load my parents and their car on an Amtrak train, ride overnight while we have dinner in the dining car, sleep in a sleeper car, get off the train in DC and drive them back to Pittsburgh.

Why they had to tell me in person, on Saturday morning, after a cryptic phone call is a question that will never be answered.

As I gathered my coat and my mental acuity, I asked if they had alcohol on the train.

“Wine with dinner and drinks in the lounge car,” My dad said. “But we usually sneak on a pop bottle full of Manhattans.” All aboard.

I Have The Need, The Need To Better Understand My New Channels

I hate my new goddamn remote control. Or rather, I hate the fact that I can no longer efficiently navigate my television. After thirteen years, we gave up paying half our wages for cable TV and had Direct TV installed – producing a monumental cost savings. It also produced a monumental problem – I can’t find the stations I want to watch!


I used to have command over the remote like Maverick had command over his F 14 after he had his Godly talk with Goose, clenched Goose’s dog tags and re-engaged the MiG’s buzzing around Iceman. ESPN? Bam – channel 185. Discovery? Bam – 124. History – Travel – HBO? Bam – Bam – Bam! 130, 52 (not in HD), 199.

Now, I am Maverick after he flies through the jet wash yet again and Iceman says, “Maverick is disengaging” and the bald Captain back on the aircraft carrier screams, “Damn it. I knew it!” I am unsure - hesitant. “No, no, it’s no good,” said Maverick.

The only thing I am sure of is the local stations – miraculously they have re-emerged at their long standing original channel number. Channel 2 (CBS – KDKA) is somehow on channel 2. Channel 53 (Fox) is no longer on 109. (I bet there was a good reason to move the local channels on the cable system, but it may just have been a mind fuck.)

But now, I find myself having to relearn that which I hold dear – which is complete command over the remote. A neighbor mentioned that I should make a “favorites” list. But that is like flying on auto-pilot. Maverick never flew on auto pilot. He wasn’t on auto pilot when he requested a flyby and the flight controller said, “Negative ghost rider, the pattern in full.*” No, Maverick was a stick and rudder guy. That’s me. I don’t want a list. If I want to go from Spike TV to USA, I don’t want to have to scroll through eight of my favorites to get there.

So for now, instead of pulling “inverted negative G’s”, navigating my remote like Jester, I am resigned to trying to keep above the “hard deck.” (I said dEck.) The entire thing “takes my breath away.”

(* I never understood the “ghost rider” part of this. After a quick Google search, the best I could find was that “ghost rider” was the call sign for his aircraft. As far as I can remember, they never identified an aircraft in any other part of the movie; they always referred to the pilot’s call sign. If anyone has a better answer to this, please let me know.)

This Is What You Owe The Person Who Loves You

Okay, the last few days have not been the greatest. Garden variety self-pity, gonna be 43 type stuff. So I’m whining to a friend about it via email. Then he sends me this, reprinted with his permission. I’m not sure a more astute observation about love and truth has ever been made.


“so I feel like speaking although I was not asked.


you have two kids. regardless if you like it or not, they look at you. they watch your every move. there are days when they see their hero - days when they see an ass. but they are watching.


good Dave, bad Dave - you are soaking into their brains - into their behavior. into who they will become. it's might seem simplistic, but your boys are becoming you - and that's a huge fucking responsibility.


I know what my dad gave me. now that I know what he was capable of giving me - had he just tried a little harder when I was a kid - I realize I would be a better person if he had just had the courage to be open and honest with me. I wish that he had shown me his truth: the sucky parts and the good parts. if he had told me what sucked in his life, I could have formulated a plan to avoid it.


you are a dad. you have a responsibility to show your sons the best you. they need to see you respond to your dreams. they need to see you struggle to keep your passion alive. they need to see your truth.


warts aren't always ugly.


sorry about this. it's just where I am. I guess my dad couldn't be honest with me 'cause he wasn't honest with himself.”