Gomer Pyle – part 1
Evening in Fort Wayne – mosquitoes. Evenings in New Orleans French Quarter – prostitutes. Okay, so perhaps that’s a bit extreme, but I’ve never felt so “aww shucks!” Midwestern than walking down Bourbon street this trip. First off, I didn’t notice any difference between the amateur bead-gathering inebriated tourists and the wampum-for-humpum professionals. My brother and I were talking to a local who’s job it was to stand in the middle of the street with cardboard sign trying to point people into “his” establishment. I’m not sure exactly how we started a conversation with him (couldn’t have been the friendly effects of alcohol) but once you got beyond the “uni-bomber” / “Howard Hughes in the final days” appearance, he was actually a pretty nice guy. It’s not that we meant to talk about prostitutes but the conversational choices turned out to be the cardboard sign, beer, breasts, or prostitutes. It’s not that we chose “prostitutes” either but I think it must have been his favorite because that’s where everything ended up. The end result was a crash course in prostitute identification and after exhausting the rest of his conversational topics we walked on down the street with our new-found “eyesight”. It was amazingly like the 80’s movie “They Live”. If you haven’t seen it, then just imagine a really warped version of “Where’s Waldo”. I can’t wait until they hold our conference in New York or L.A.