It's -5 degrees and blizzarding outside...

Life is a snow storm. Really.

It’s cold, turbulent, and a few degrees below where you wanna go… it’s traffic jams of pissed off people. It's hungry kids in the back seat... It’s incompetent public officials doing a shitty job of cleaning the crap off the streets. It’s an excuse to stay indoors – away from the harsh bite of the outside world... It’s celebration of cancelled workdays, disappointment with forfeited soccer games, and frustration with messy backyards. It’s a foodless fridge with no pizza delivery... It’s beautiful views from your living room window but icy reality when you step out on the porch... It's finally meeting the hot, blonde, underwear model next door but not seeing any skin because it's hidden under eleven layers of clothing and a thick cotton scarf (damnit)... It’s overweight snowmen… It’s a breeze, until all that sticky white stuff gets in the way…

It’s a chance to snuggle at home and let the people you love most keep you warm… until they annoy the hell out of you after 48 straight cabin-feveresque hours… and then, you throw them out into the cold.

Let it snow.

Hot List

The first of regular installments... and, due to visitor requests, this week's poll - Women.

Here's my top 10... plus the first runner-up...

1. Vanessa Marcil
2. Alyssa Milano
3. Eva Longoria
4. Halle Berry
5. Keira Knightley
6. Penelope Cruz
7. Jennifer Love Hewitt
8. Jessica Alba
9. Ashley Judd
10. Kate Beckinsale
RUP Beyonce Knowles

Nice.

Yours?

The View from the Top II...

From top:
Good Morning Eiffel - room 517 balcony, Hotel Metropolitan, Paris, France;
Night Tower - 1st floor reception, Hotel Metropolitan, Paris, France;
Daylight to Redlight - Room 729, Hilton Amsterdam Hotel, The Netherlands;
Midday Brussels - street shot, Hotel Metropole, Brussels, Belgium

Translation

You don’t understand my words,
Don’t recognize my phrases.
The punctuation isn’t right.
Sentences are mazes.

We stutter out the sounds,
Missing all the bases.
Repetitively repeating.
The dialogue erases.

Pick-up lines fall flat,
Punch lines without traces.
Context clues are lost.
We’re forced to read faces.

Talking takes time,
But laughter embraces.
A smile inspires a smile.
We share unspoken praises.

A language without terms,
Expressions fuel the chases.
A touch of wanting hands,
Exchanging secret gazes.

A silent conversation,
Complete with all the phases.
To not-speak with you again…

I’ll search in all the places.

Szeretlek…

From Europe with euro's...

Ok, so I had this plan to document each day of my trek through three of Europe's most fascinating hotspots – Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam - so each of you could relive every powerful emotion, mysterious sensation, butchered conversation, and pounding hangover... but after about Day 3, I realized that no daily diary could do justice to the monumental occurrences that peppered every day of my stay... seriously, it'd be like spending an entire night with three beautiful European strippers and then trying to sum it up in a couple sentences of 12 pt font... wait a minute.....

So yea, anyway.... while the details and devils of the trip will forever remain with my accomplice and me... here are a few thoughts from the Journey...

- You gotta love a place that has Benzo's and Beamers for taxis... When I left the U.S. (from some unsavory locale in the Midwest), a piece-of-crap 1984, orange, Dodge Caravan from 'Roy's Cab' ushered me to the airport... Upon my arrival in Paris, a 2006 platinum silver Mercedes C-class picked me up from the 'taxi stand'.... need I say more?

- Guys don’t ‘pimp’ in France. This town has whipped them into the surly belief that its walls are for Lovers, not Hunters... I don’t know if it’s the overpowering image of the Eiffel Tower in the rearview, the sentiment of Romance that echoes along the Champs Elysses… or something in those damn baguettes… but dudes don’t holla at chicks in Paris… they are either coupled up or content in their ‘friendly’ circles... this time, I embraced the culture, and kept my distance… next time, I'm coming prepared with 5-7 French phrases that I will wield at innocent female passersby... Next time, I'm starting a Revolution baby...

- Laughter sounds the same in every language.

- History and tradition. Architecture and design. Gourmet and Fillet Mignon. Style and Attitude. This continent has an air about it that's part badass, part cocky, part cool-as-hell. And 100% sexy. I like the packed streets, the overcast skies, and the long coats that hide the slimfit Prada mini-skirts... all this topped with cherries of Diversity and Culture that are unmatched... We should all move to Europe for a year... then Africa for two... the Middle east.... Asia...

- Late night dinners. Excessive drinking. Mediocre exercise programs. No steroid controversy. And a McDonalds on every corner… Yet Europeans are STILL so much thinner than Americans. How?? There's only one answer... Legalized Prostitution... It's that simple, really.

- "Window-shopping" for women in the Red Light District is like getting permission from mom to have intercourse with your 3^rdgrade teacher… it’s not only awkward, strange, ridiculous and scary… it’s a bit anticlimactic.. There's no drama... no chase... no accidental groping... And the beam of the neon Red lights are to erections and arousals as Nyquil is to that late-night cough... TOTAL-freakin-suppressant... Trust me on this one... This Red Light District stuff costs about $50, but it's more "gratis" than the middle square on a Bingo Card... and we don’t want that... There’s a reason we seek the forbidden fruit... Because it’s forbidden... Otherwise, we would just settle for the crusty Apples back home in Kentucky.

- I flew 10, 000 miles. Across the Atlantic. Another continent. A different world... And still... out of all the French, German, Dutch, Moroccan, Persian women out there... I STILL attract the Indian girls... now, I'm not complaining... it's just that, you would think a change in environment would spawn a change in female interaction... I mean, isn’t that one of Darwin's laws or something?? In any case, the rendezvous with the aforementioned girls was predictable... mildly exciting at first, aggravatingly optimistic second, and then undeniably unfulfilling in the end... though we still have her number.... hmmm...

- The art of communication doesn’t start with language... and the most important things, they don’t need to be translated. There’s an emotional, cerebral, spiritual wavelength that we all can speak... though it's only forced out at times when we don’t have the right words... or the trusty English to "insert-language-here" Dictionary....

- Forget Beijing in '08... Budapest baby... Budapest.

Scruffy...

You gotta admit...

You gotta admit that, the days you barely roll out of bed after hammering the snooze button 34 times, staggering to your feet on 3.5 hours of uneven sleep, with your unshaven face, your dirty clothes, your un-ironed shirts, your hair that you cut yourself in the morning because your bangs were too long, your eyebrows busting out of your skull like September weeds, your breath smelling like a deadly blend of last night's turkey burger and pickles and this morning's last squirt of three-month-old citrus-flavored toothpaste…

Those are the days you run into the hottest girls.

Struggling into work or stumbling into school, you come face-to-face with the prettiest chicks...you run into your dream woman walking down the halls…you run into the cute intern who’s here for a day visit and an overdue house-hunting trip…you run into the forty-something, flirtatious secretary in the skimpy dress that encouraged you with unsavory eye-contact in days-passed but today bristles by at the sight of your ketchup-stained trousers...

You run into your marketing director that you haven’t seen in two months… you run into that well-kept Biology professor that you've had the hots for since Freshman year but that has failed to notice you in the second row all semester but now engages you in maddening conversation about double-stranded DNA while grimacing in disgust at your unorderly appearance...

You run into your boss’s kids who are visiting for the first time and wanna meet people she works with and instead realize that you’re a grizzly bearded, Osama-Bin-Laden-lookin brown boy…you run head-first into an elevator packed with a devastating combination of hot blondes, upper-management, and campus security...

You run into everybody.

And tomorrow, when you put on that brand new Italian suit or mintly-pressed blouse from the Spring Collection... you aint running into anybody but Chucky the slightly scatterbrained and considerably heavy-set custodian... and even he aint gonna have time for you...

Cuz that's just the way it works...

Lessons from '24'...

Proper pronunciation of people’s first names could deter budding teenaged extremists from playing crucial roles in sinister nuclear plots.

Biting someone in the jugular to free oneself from a torture-chair isn’t usually taught in the Boy Scouts, but should be.

When two brothers - who are Brothas - each become President, suddenly the impending apocalypse makes much more sense.

The short, curly-haired dude with the squeaky voice, rambling vocabulary, and stuffy banker-blazer that lectures your boss should never be trusted…he should be beaten. Zero-tolerance for little-man-syndrome.

Racial profiling occurs almost as often in the hunt for suspected fanatics as it does at the Sig Ep house at major public Universities… except id rather give up my freedom in a detainment camp then miss out on nightly encounters with desperately inebriated co-eds. When’s the Tri-Delt mixer again?

Jack Bauer is badder than Rocky, William Wallace, Bond, Maximus, the Terminator, and even that pretty boy, arrow-flinging elf from Lord of the Rings.

Kal Penn aka ‘Kumar’ aka ‘Taj’ aka 'Akhhmedd' is officially the worst underdog to make it to the Big Dance in Hollywood history… the sheer fact that this dude shares a scene with Jack Bauer is inspiration enough for me to quit my day job, live out of my car on Ventura Blvd, and enroll in some hole-in-the-wall acting class… My cat can act better than this guy... Ok fine! I'm jealous and I'm hating. So what!

Hot, sexy, petite brunettes have no business working in the Counter Terrorism Unit. They should work in the office across from me… in tastefully revealing outfits.

It is ALWAYS an inside-job…

Say..

I liked the way she said ‘papers.’

Dancing off her tongue like an intoxicating blend of tango and ballet...

Curving, in and out... her lips paving the way for the sharp turn ahead.

A hard right followed by a steep uphill climb through her Inhibitions,

Tumbling softly into the creases of her Conversation.

A highway of racing Emotions and bumper-to-bumper Expressions,

Exiting along the passion-soaked boulevard of Expectation and Mystery...

All hidden between a ‘ps.’

I liked the way she said ‘green’…

Hiatus

I’ve been away… I know… weeks? Months? Both…

Sometimes we need to go… just so we can return… except this time with stripes on our coats and purple hearts around our necks… to win some battles and lose even more… to fight...

To redirect... to change the course of the spinning fireballs and shape-shift into another monologue...

To get a new audience... or lose the old one... starting from Square One so we’re sure the right people are listening... and the wrong people are wandering...

Winter-time hibernation to rest up for the coming search for honey…

Better honey.

Time away is good… but only when you come back.

I’m back.