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INTRODUCTION
The week before we left for India wasn't a good one. First I got knocked off my bike by a guy who had parked his SUV and opened the door without checking his side mirror. (I had my LED bike light, which is really bright, so he must never have bothered to look.) And then he had the nerve to blame me for biking too close! After a $500 visit to the hospital to have my knee checked out, I was declared fit to travel, and indeed, after a few days I was no longer limping.
And then, later in the week, Megan was using a phone card to call pharmacists in India to see if they had some medication that we were having trouble finding for cheap and she accidentally dialed 911 and then hung up. A few minutes later about eight police officers showed up asking if everything was alright. They asked to search the house, presumably for signs of struggle or for dead bodies or something. But since the apartment was such a wreck due to our packing, there was no way they could have deduced struggle or found dead bodies even if there were any, and indeed they left after a minute.
And then there was this unfortunate mess which I wrote up at the time....
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Sat May 30, 4:46am -- Los Angeles
We leave for the airport in T-minus 41 hours and I am bathed in negativity. At present, I am sitting on the toilet in my apartment's bathroom typing on the notepad computer that I will be using on the trip -- one of the many weighty pieces of technology I'll be lugging along. But that's just how I do it.
So back to the negativity. I've been down on this trip from the get-go. It's fucking insane that we're going to India in summer. The average temperature is going to be 100 degrees. I don't sleep well when it's hot, let alone when I'm in a strange land sleeping in strange conditions, paranoid about getting bit by malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Besides the heat, I've been obsessing over the possibility of taking home a disease. Having been laid off three weeks ago, my insurance runs out at the end of the month, meaning Monday. Though they were kind enough to supply me with some of the immunization shots I needed for free, they're not of the mind that anti-malarial medication is a preventative. In fact, I received a letter from them stating that my preferred medication, Malarone, would only be supplied in the event that I came down with the disease. So in other words, the drug that I need to prevent malaria will only be covered should I get malaria. Fucking geniuses.
Tomorrow I'll be getting the third best thing, something that the insurance will cover -- some sort of antibiotic. The side-effects for this one include cramping, diarrhea and sun sensitivity. As if I wasn't already pale and Irish/German enough. But that's nothing compared to Larium, the second best anti-malarial on the market. That bad boy touts some nasty side-effects, including sleeplessness, hallucinations, and in rare instances, psychosis. Yowza.
I've been asked over and over why I'm going on the trip, and the answer is, "I don't know." I've never had much of a desire to go to India. Sure, I like the food, and the culture has supplied the world with amazing art, philosophy and religion. But the movies? With the exception of Satyajit Ray, I don't know of anything out of India cinematically that isn't pure, distilled, melodramatic crap. And the music? Oh lord, I'm not sure how anyone who didn't grow up hearing those squeaky female yowls could get used to it. Except for maybe Yoko Ono.
Okay, okay. I'm really deep in negative bullshit now. Busting on an entire sub-contintent's entertainment. Hell, I'm the one who went to see The Apple at midnight at the Nuart. There's some hellishly bad musical cinema. But oh, was it delightful in its atrociousness! I used to delight in getting high and watching bad movies. The Apple is easily the best stoner movie next to the all-time champ Tommy. And I didn't even need to be high to have my mind warped by The Apple. Just the costumes alone had me slack-jawed. And that "I'm Coming" song! Simply the most un-ironic song about sex ever, complete with dancers performing "erotic" choreography. Fantastic.
email: ryan[at]monkeyduck[dot]com
