Hahaha. These two girls were the other people on our team of six that we'd just met. They had never done body shots and couldn't stop giggling at the prospect. The girl in green went first and opted to try the "cleavage pour" method of receiving a body shot! Hahaha. Soooo good!
A little before 5pm, our team that had split up into groups in order to maximize the number of things we could collect, reconvened at Taco Chulo in order to rack up some big points! The item in question? "10 Points for a team member doing tequila shot at taco chulo (+5 for each additional TM. +5 for body shots)" We, of course, all opted to go for the extra 30 points and do body shots! I requested 6 shots of the absolute shittiest and cheapest tequila they had and the bartender proudly held up this bottle of LOS GENERALES! Hahah. Perfect!
Hahaha. On my flight back to NYC from Abu Dhabi I sat next a restless, grumpy older man from somewhere in Africa. He couldn't seem to get to sleep and opted to eschew the airline-provided sleepmask in favor of dramatically re-throwing a huge blanket over his head and sighing EVERY TWENTY MINUTES FOR THE ENTIRE FOURTEEN-HOUR FLIGHT. Hahaha. Here's me giving him very worst stinkeye after he elbow-jostled me awake for the TENTH TIME!
People would bottleneck up at some of the particularly steep parts and it gave me time to snap some pics that I think give a better perspective of the climb down.
I made it to the very summit with about 20 minutes to spare before sunrise. It was amazing to watch the bruised, purple sky slowly light up with pinks and yellows.
...other friends! Hahaha. I forget this guy's name, but he was hilarious. He was like one of the few guys in the town who was super into bodybuilding and was excited to have someone puny like me to flex-down next to. This photo makes me laugh every time I look at it.
I found a small table by myself, ordered a pizza and a big frosty mug of beer and was reading a book when these three characters came over and asked me if I wanted to join them! Who could say no to that? From L to R: My new friends Thomas, Maria and Mohamed!
Maria was from Sweden and approached me because she pegged me for a fellow Swede. She was a self-proclaimed "cougar" who came to Egypt on vacation after a terrible divorce, met Mohamed and fell in love and they'd been together for a couple years. They explained to me that they were working on getting Mohamed a visa so he could live in Sweden, but that everyone was skeptical about their love and thought it was some kind of scam to get a visa!
Check out what the rest of Luxor looks like! The "touristy" parts of town and the waterfront esplanade are all very modern. But the vast majority of the town looks like this! Dirt roads and chaos!
While most of the site is "open-air," a few of the smaller, enclosed temple's roofs have survived and you can go inside them and get a sense of what the other rooms felt like when they also had roofs.
There were sections of the temple where every single supporting column had a huge statue in front of it! Check out the guy walking in front providing scale!
Here's me saying goodbye to Ahmed after we got back to my hotel around 4pm! This guy was the best! Despite only knowing a few words in each others' language, we managed to talk all day for an eight-hour road trip. Thanks again for driving, Ahmed!
And just in case you're not convinced that he's a badass yet, Ramses II name in Greek is Ozymandias, which means he's also the inspiration for Adrian Veidt's character in WATCHMEN!
Here's a picture of our descent into the burial chamber via a secret shaft that's hidden in the side of the pyramid! The shaftway is only 3' tall, 4' wide and goes down for over 200 feet at a 27-degree angle. I only took this one picture because it was such hard work hunching my way down the shaft in the crazy-heat!
..and here's the view from the plane! It's crazy when you look out an airplane window and you're like "Oh yeah, I recognize that from looking at THE GLOBE."
Dude, you gotta love the Fatty! Check him out here doing the old "I will shoot you with METAL!" move that he probably saw Billy Sheehan do in a Mr. Big DVD box set that he probably totally owns. Hahaha. SOOO GOOD!
Lani saw what was going on and wasn't about to miss out on all the hot MAN-MILK action. (The best part is how Lani's delicately squeezing with her thumb and forefinger. Hahaha).
After you're done laughing at this photo, make sure you look at Niki's right ass-cheek - the shutter was clicked right at the moment of smack-impact and you can see the shockwave traveling across her bum!
On Tuesday night I went out to dinner with two of my most favorite former co-workers ever, Mike & Court. This picture makes me so happy. Our "one after dinner drink" quickly turned to five and then six. And then things got ugly.
Then later that night I took a ride up to Pat's Bar in Landing to visit Scott, who after years on the waiting list, is finally a regular bartender at Pat's!
Ta-da! It's hard to tell from this photo but it's a picture of an Atari 2600 joystick with a banner underneath it that says "OLD SCHOOL." (It also says something underneath in binary: 0011010000110010. Which if you convert to ASCII is "42." Maybe a Hitchhiker's Reference?)
After we'd finished climbing around on the rocks, I suggested a jumping photo! Right after I'd taken this one, a guy walking by on the beach saw what we were doing and offered to man the camera so that I could be in the shot to!
I showed him my camera and explained how you have to time it to compensate for the slight shutter delay, and this is what he shot on his very first attempt! Well done, sir!
...like SHOOT THE FREAK! Hahaha. When the weather is nicer, this charming little alley is manned by a guy in a mask and other protective gear and he runs around this alley hiding behind garbage and other debris while the good citizens of the boardwalk pay money for the privilege of shooting him with a paint ball gun at close range!
"Play your cards right, yeah, and in a couple years time, you'll find yourself here...in the HOT SEAT." Here's me giving Gurj our very favoritest moment from The Office EVAAAAR!
Lawrence, Mandy and Michael! At first I thought Mandy and Michael were sharing a floating red leather hat, but that's when I looked closer and noticed Mr. Creepers McPeepers getting his L U R K on in the background.
Major controversy erupted when someone drew a "all teams compete" card and each team had to select a member to try to get their teammates to guess the clue "Jewish." Here's Meredith holding up the winning drawing, in front of her all-Jewish team.
On Saturday morning, I was (obviously) feeling a little lazy and elected to skip the whole "getting dressed" nonsense and go directly to reading cool articles on the interweb. I guess I lost track of time and was sitting there long enough for Meredith to grab my camera and take this totally sneaky photo of unaware-me browsin' in the buff. After years of posting all sorts of compromising and embarrassing photos of friends and strangers alike, I figured it's only fair to post horribly embarrassing pics of me as well!
...so a bunch of us piled into the elevator and decided to walk a couple more blocks downtown to check out some other PR-event kind of party that someone else knew about.
...but I mean, seriously, c'mon. Even if you hate vermin, there's no one in the world who can't say this picture of two rats spooning each other in a box isn't ridiculously cute. (PS - If you count the intertwined tails, you'll realize there's a third rat cuddled up in the box behind these two love birdsrats.
On Monday, I hooked up the TV and stoked to see that our previous tenant had forgotten to cancel cable! FUCKING SCORE! I was, however, quite shocked to see the new HBO On Demand line up for November. Designa Vagina? Pumping His Grundle? Holy shit, right?
Kids growing up today must have it so easy - they can just turn on the interweb or HBO On Demand and pretty much see EVERYTHING. Back when I was little, if I wanted to see some some titties I had to wait until the end of the month and then go down to the Cumberland Farms (which is the north Jersey equivalent of 7-11) every day and sneak around back and go dumpster diving - hoping we'd hit the jackpot and arrive on the day that they threw out all the n00dy mags from the previous month! (We used to sell all the extras to kids in Middle School - $5 a mag!).
It was either that or wait until everyone went to bed and stay up for hours watching the Spice Channel hoping that the "scramble" would clear up long enough to see a tit! Hahaha.
Hahahahaha. OMG. I wasn't at this party, but Leigh emailed me this photo the next day and it's so good that it needed to be posted here. (PS - Leigh, what are you drinking? Is that a giant glass of Scotch??)
...this totally dirty-by-accident photo! Holy moly! But one thing's for sure, it certainly clears up any doubts anyone had about Lisa's ability to, ummm, work the mic.
Creative costumes are great and all, but in my opinion, the best thing you can do for a work Halloween costume is to dress up as one of your co-workers! Check out Christine, who came in dressed up as Ian! She gets awarded some pretty serious "I have big balls" bonus points because Ian was her boss!
Which the locals affectionately refer to as "The D.P." (which is accidental comedy gold as far as I'm concerned).
When most people think of New Jersey, they think of Guidos and horrible orange-women with belly-jewelry. While that's certainly something that Jersey should be famous for, what most people don't realize is that if you go into any part of western NJ near the PA border, Jersey is totally filled with rednecks! The DP was the embodiment of Jersey redneckness. We walked in the place and it was filled with bearded men wearing cowboy hats singing along to the country music that was blasting over the PA. Scott looked like he fit in, but me, I looked like someone in need of an ass-kicking so we only stayed for a beer.
