Josh Reynolds

From my brother: Ask a Mexican.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 7/10 correct!

Spelling Bee tomorrow at Freddys! 8pm!

Got questions. Email me.

More talk about the Wilburys here at Taaffe. We tried to come up with the "evil" Wilburys the other night and we came up with this:

Rod Stewart

Elvis Costello

Sting

Evan Dando

Carlos Santana

Your thoughts?

Alternate pick: Dave Navarro

So after Tikal Sterling and I took a bus to Poptun where we stayed at a place recommended by my friend Marike called Finca Ixobel.As you can see from the web site this place has some awesome things going on. It has caves you can explore, including one with underwater rapids, it has tubing trips, it has horseback riding, I mean there is a ton of stuff to do. Unfortunately, the first night we got there too late to do anything so we had dinner there and met some of the characters who were around including Mark and Kathy. Mark was visiting because he and the owner of the Finca "were the first gringos in this area back in the 70's" and he told us all about how he had built his own boats and sailed around the world twice. His hands were crazy gnarled as well and he claims it was epoxy resin poisoning but both Sterling and I googled this and were not able to really find any evidence of such a thing so who knows what the real problem is. Regardless, his hands were crazy messed up. Despite having spent all this time in Central America he really had not that much Spanish ability and his accent was horrible. His wife, Kathy, wore traditional Mayan outfits and I don't think spoke much English at all. So I get the impression that one of the secrets to their ten years of marriage was her inability to really understand him. He talked and talked and at one point I had to pretend to go to the bathroom and when I got back all I heard was Sterling saying "Oh man, I REALLY love the sound of chimes." I sat back down and it was hard to keep from laughing really hard since I figured he was just sort of fucking around but it turns out later on that I found out that Sterling really does love chimes! You think you know someone and then....

That night Sterling and I stayed in a house on stilts on the grounds. In the middle of the night I woke up to Sterling barfing his guts out into the trashcan. "Oh man, that sucked.". Sterling didn't do to much leaving the room for the next two days due to being sick and the weather at the Finca turned miserable. It rained and was a little chilly the whole time. So there was no activities to do. I read a lot. I read The Remains of the Day and I finished a book about the Arctic. I also read the Readers Digest condensed version of the Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

At night they opened up the bar there and I went and drank some beer and hung out with some of the other travelers. Boy, was that depressing. It was like, I am going to have to hang out with these kinds of people for the next six months while I'm on my trip? One guy did some fire dancing. I stand by my assertion that I have yet to meet someone I genuinely like who does fire dancing. The same hippie that was doing that got into a conversation about the evils of insurance. The last thing I need is some 25 year old numbnut hippie lecturing me about insurance.

The last night we were there and I was sitting with some of the people and I kept thinking "Please people! Step up to the plate!" but no one was. Everyone was boring me to tears. Then these five Guatemalan guys who showed up and the bartender said "Oh man. The Gallo sales guys." Apparently these five guys were traveling around Guatemala trying to get Gallo on tap into bars and for some reason they stopped off at the Finca. I started hanging out with them and they started pounding and I mean POUNDING shots of tequila and Gallos. So I sat there for awhile and then the leader of the guys who spoke a little English and I started talking. We talked about the New York Yankees and gave each other some simple English and Spanish lessons. Like I was teaching one guy to say "My name is James. I am from Guatemala. I work for Gallo." and they were teaching me to say, well, I don't really remember but what I do remember is that everytime I was like "Ok, time to go" there would be another beer shoved in my hand. Finally the bartender closed up and just left us there. He said "Good luck" and then just left. We hung out for about another hour and then I went to sleep. It was pretty awesome.

This piece about the OC is brilliant.

By the way, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. My favorite Valentine's Day story happened about four years ago when I was hanging out with my friend Aaron at a show and I was complaining about how I was having zero luck with women and he was like "Oh, it's not THAT bad.". Then our friend Jane came around handing out candy hearts and Aaron got oen that said "Be Mine" and Sterling got one that said "Kiss Me" and mine, well, mine was blank.

I know everyone is awaiting word on Guatemala so here it is. It was a 5 hour plane ride there and as soon I showed up I met up with Sterling and we went to eat at the food court of the of Tikal Futura which is a mall in downtown Guatemala City. It's right next to the Guatemala City Hooters which I wanted to go to but just didn't have the time. After I had my Taco Bell, which seemed like it would be the best bet because I already understood what all the food was and it seemed like it would have a minimum of actual interaction unlike Subway where Sterling went. Since my Spanish is non existent I wanted to limit showing how ignorant I was.

After we ate we took a second class bus on a 12 hour ride to Flores so we could go and hang out at Tikal. The bus ride was insanely crowded at times and we were stopped twice in the middle of the night, once by the cops and once by the military. Perhaps they were looking to stop illegal immigration? Looking for a fugitive? Who knows.

Tikal was pretty neat and got better in ascending order which was nice. The first thing we saw was just some broken down old building which was not very impressive. However, the next part was the town square of sorts I guess and we walke up one of the pyramids and that was pretty cool. But then we went to Templo Four (I think) and walked up thw ladder/stairs on the side and when we got up on the top you could see the entire tree canopy and also see the entire Tikal complex so you'd just see all these pyramids sticking up through the trees. Totally impressive.

Next: Finca Ixobel and fire dancing, Gallo Beer salesguys, Sterling gets sick and talks about loving chimes.

Man, no more Pig Champion. The passing of a true legend.

In happier news, I'm going to Guatemala tomorrow!