Dave Fox's Outbursts!

Travel and Look Sexy. But Keep Your Shirt On.

Varenna, Italy

I've been in Italy less than 48 hours, and already, strange things are happening to my body.

For one thing, new muscles are sprouting on my arms that I swear were not there when I left Seattle. This is from hauling 762 pounds of tour guide paperwork from Seattle to Amsterdam to Milan to Varenna. Last week in Seattle, a friend looked dubiously at the dumbells on my living room floor and asked, "Do you actually use these or are they just here for show?"

"I do use them," I said. What I meant was: "I use them to remind myself that I wouldn't be so scrawny if I would pick them up now and then."

Travel is a form of exercise in and of itself. I think when I get home, I am going to produce a new exercise video. I will call it the "Dave Fox Accumulate Too Much Crap and Carry it Around Europe Workout."

I also couldn't help noticing when I looked in the mirror last night that I already have a suntan, despite the fact that I have been slathering myself with SPF-30 suntan lotion. This is bad -- not just because I am accellerating my journey into skin cancer -- but also because I am only tanning on my face and neck. Professional tour guiding etiquette prohibits me from prancing around topless. The end result, come mid-August, will be the world's most embarrassing farmer tan -- a beautiful, bronze face and milky white arms. When I get home in six weeks, as long as I keep my shirt on, I will look a little bit more like Mr. T than I usually do. I am thinking about getting a haircut to complete the image.

Our group gathered for our first meeting yesterday afternoon. Taunya, the lead guide, explained that I am a lead tour guide myself in Scandinavia, and that I am assisting on this Italy tour to expand my tour guiding horizons.

"Do you speak Italian," someone in our group asked me as we wandered down to the village ferry dock after the meeting.

"I speak Italian like a four-year-old," I told him. "Like a four-year-old who knows how to order a half-liter of red wine with lunch."

Greetings from It'ly

Varenna, Italy

It's amazing the corners of the planet you can fling yourself into given 24 hours. I'm used to hopping on a plane and ending up half a day laterin Scandinavia's big cities. Rural Italy is another story.

At the airport in Seattle, I was greeted by Northwest Airlines' new e-check-in system, which is designed to save their employees time by not having to help you while you try to use a difficult to navigate computer system.

I followed the directions, entering in the first three letters of my destination, "MIL." I was given three options -- Milan-Lenate, Milan-Malpensa, or Milwaukee.

"Milwaukee," said the man behind me.

I ignored him.

I couldn't remember which airport in Milan I was flying into. I tried to find it on my itinerary.

"What's the matter," the man behind me sneered. "You don't know where you're going?"

"Yes," I said, "I do know where I'm going. I'm trying to find the name of the airport."

"It says Milwaukee," he said. "Just press Milwaukee."

"I'm not going to Milwaukee," I snapped. "I'm going to Milan. There are two airports there."

"Oh, you're going to It'ly! I didn't know you were going to It'ly!"

The man and his wife, i deduced from their matching T-shirts, were on their way to an Alaskan cruise. They reminded me why I have so much scorn for cruise ship passengers.

But I made it on my flight to Amsterdam, which I think took about four days. I couldn't tell, since my watch battery had died. After a six-hour stopover in Amsterdam, I boarded a delayed flight to Milan, followed by a frantic race through the Milan train station to try to catch the last train of the evening to Varenna, a cozy and humid village in Italy's northern lakes district. By the time I finally gt to sit down, I realized I am in unfamiliar turf here -- a huge distance from Seattle both in space and culture. In reality, I arrived 24 hours -- almost to the exact minute -- after leaving home in Seattle. It happened so fast, I'm now wondering, in my jetlagged blur, how I got here.

Time Travel

Hours before I leave for the airport, my watch battery dies. I'm off to Italy -- to my other life as a European tour guide. I can't sit on a ten hour flight with no watch to tell me how many more hours I must suffer before I'm on the ground. Less than an hour before I leave for the airport, I race to the mall to get the battery replaced.

But it's only 9:50. The stores don't open until 10. Making productive use of my time, I pace and practice my obscenities in various languages. I wait. I go inside the mall. It's 9:55 now. There is very little life here. Shops should be opening in five minutes.

I pace some more. Two stores are open: Bath and Bodyworks, and an overpriced caffeine stand. I can buy massage oil and iced mochas, neither of which are going to help me tell time.

It's 10:00 now according to the clock on my cell phone. But that clock is fast. How many more minutes do I have to wait before the shops open? I'm not sure. I pace some more.

My cell phone now says it's 10:08. Where the hell is everyone?

Then I remember... today is not Saturday. Today is Sunday. Stores won't be open for another hour. I have to be at the airport by then.

I just hope my flight is today and not yesterday.

Breaking News: Dave Fox is Lost

Travel humorist Dave Fox is missing and presumed not home. Asked to comment on Fox's disappearance, former US President Bill Clinton said, "Who?"

Fox is rumored to be guiding tours in Italy and Scandinavia. Concerned friends say, however, that given his sense of direction, he is probably in Botswana or Turkmenistan.

"Dave gets lost a lot," said Fox's mother, who asked to remain anonymous.

Stay tuned to this blog for updates.

[Dave's Travel Schedule]

Kill the Stupid Human

Another feline beast has adopted me.

They do this. They show up a few weeks before I'm about to leave the country, demanding to be waited on.

A few years ago before I left on tour, Sputnik showed up meowing one night when I was outside barbecuing. Sputnik was a stray who was eventually adopted by a neighbor who's at home more than I am. Now, Tabby has taken ownership of me.

Tabby lives down the hall with my neighbor, Victoria, who claims to take excellent care of her cat, though Tabby claims he has not been fed in three years and must receive tuna immediately. I have thus far refused his demands, to which he has responded by pouncing on my kitchen counter whenever I am not looking and slurping grease out of the sink.

Tabby also has a game he likes to play, called "Kill the Stupid Human." The way it works is:

1) Tabby rolls around on the floor looking cute and batting his eyes.

2) I, the stupid human, go to pet Tabby.

3) Tabby shrieks, "HA! You think you are clever with your measley fingernails!" He then digs his claws several inches beneath the surface of my skin.

I asked Victoria if it was okay to let him in when he comes meowing at my door. She said yes, as long as I don't feed him. She assured me he would not scratch my furniture. She was right. Tabby has no reason to scratch up my living room couch. Humans scream louder than couches.

Live and Let Diet

The Atkins Diet is a fun weight-loss plan that is sweeping the nation. You must avoid carbohydrates and sugar, but you can eat all the high-cholesterol foods you want, such as 32-ounce steaks, bacon and eggs, and, where legal, delicious whale-blubber-and-cheddar omelets. Eventually, your arteries clog. You then die of a heart attack and get very, very skinny.

"That's disgusting," you say. "You expect me to eat a whale blubber omelet? WITH NO TOAST??!!

[You'll find the rest of this article on my humor website at www.davethefox.com.]

The Digital Bugle: Your Tax Dollars at Work

Five-hundred buglers are qualified by the US military to play "Taps," but with roughly 1,800 veterans and Iraq war soldiers dying every day, there aren't enough bugle players to keep up with all the funerals. So the military has come up with a solution: the digital bugle.

Anyone can play it. Even you. You just hold it up to your mouth, puff out your cheeks like Louis Armstrong, and discretely push a button on the bugle. A speaker concealed in the horn then belts out a pitch-perfect rendition of the smash funeral hit.

According to CNN, "The Pentagon tested the method for six months, before approving it for wider use last year, and reported that most families were satisfied with the experience."

This raises interesting questions such as: What the hell?!?!

We are at war and the Pentagon has just spent six months testing an artificial bugle? Is this good use of Pentagon time? Is President Bush going to play the fake bugle on Letterman before the November election? He and Bill Clinton could jam.

I have a better idea. Instead of inventing fake bugles to replace real ones, the Pentagon should invent a fake war to replace the one we're having. That way we wouldn't have so many funerals and we wouldn't need so many people to play "Taps."

Northwest Airlines Veers Southeast

I'm scheduled to fly to Italy in six days on a Northwest/KLM flight via Amsterdam. I'm feeling kind of nervous following an Associated Press report today that a Northwest pilot on a flight to Rapid City, South Dakota, accidentally landed an aircraft full of passengers at an Air Force base rather than the Rapid City civilian airport.

Oops.

A few minutes later, passengers were instructed to close their shades and not look out the window while the pilot and crew were interrogated for three hours.

According to the AP, Northwest Airlines Spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch refused to identify the pilot or crew. And, the article states, the spokesman would not "say if the pilot made an error."

Mr. Ebenhoch, sir, with all due respect... the pilot screwed up. Royally. You can admit it.

I can't remember the last time I've flown on Northwest, but I remember quite well my last flight on its European partner airline, KLM. The year was 1994, and I was flying from Amsterdam to Chicago. At around noon, Amsterdam time, the first round of drinks was served. Most people were sticking to juice and soda.

A little while later, now two hours out over the Atlantic Ocean, the head flight attendant came on the intercom and announced, "I'm afraid I have a very annoying announcement." The plane had a technical problem. We had to turn around and go back to Amsterdam.

This was followed by another announcement: "Please do not be alarmed if you see fuel spilling off the wings of the aircraft."

Then came a third announcement that there was no time to serve us lunch, but the flight attendants were going to come through with another round of beverages. This time, people started ordering booze.

And the airline encouraged it. They didn't use the usual airline mini bottles. They brought the good stuff from first class back to us peasants in economy class, and started pouring large, stiff drinks for anyone who requested one. I'm not sure what the logic was in getting us all sloshed just before making an emergency landing. If we had to evacuate, sobriety seemed the most logical state of mind to be in.

We landed safely. We spent six hours at Schiphol Airport waiting for a new aircraft. Add that to the four hours in the air on the first U-turned flight, and the total delay was 10 hours. To compensate us for the inconvenience, KLM bought us each a sandwich.

My Ultra-Sexy Voice

After many hours of voice acting lessons and studio time, my voiceover demo tape is finally done. And after many additional hours of swearing at my computer, I think I have figured out how to put it online.

The demo includes me playing a crazy Frenchman, a hyper gameshow host, a hungry cat, and a mild-mannered radio announcer selling everything from tacos to cars.

So... if the technology gods will cooperate, I think you can now listen to the demo online. It's about two and a half minutes long. If this works as it's supposed to, I'll try posting a sample chapter or two from my audiobook.

(And if you are looking to hire voice talent, I'm available. You can e-mail me at blogmail@davethefox.com.)

Blinded in Margaritaville

Why, when you order a margarita with salt, why do they give you a straw to drink it with? The straw goes directly into the drink, bypassing the salt on the rim of the glass.

I found myself faced with this conundrum the other day. I tried using my straw to flick the salt off the rim and into the drink.

If anybody knows an effective technique for removing salt from your eye, please let me know.