Silflay Hraka

I’m stuffed. Stuffed, stuffed, stuffed, stuffed, stuffed. After another long day spent shopping topped off with dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse. You’d think we’d never seen food before. We gorged. We knew we were over-eating but, in true American fashion, we continued to allow the meseros to bring skewered meats of all flavors and textures. And when we were done with the meats, we partook of the fruits and the desserts and the coffees and debated getting fresh plates for more meats, just because we could.

Thankfully, we didn’t start over again. We practically rolled out of the restaurant and each of us has been griping about an overfull tummy every since. We sit and wallow in lethargic silence, watching television and catching up on the news. I feel we are soon for bed and I for one look forward to it greatly. Unfortunately my place of respite, the fold-out sofa, is occupied by my fellow wallowers.

Tonight’s television fare is much different than last evenings. Yesterday was “Jackass 2″. Tonight is “Bridget Jones’ Diary 2″. I shudder to think that I may have to turn in my man card after this trip.

I do have one important tidbit of information to share, however. I have purchased my first wall ornamentation. Actual pictures to hang upon my actual walls. I am moving to a higher plane of bachelorhood, one that involves being able to decorate my own home. It’s been a long time coming. Those of you in Atlanta will have to come by and give me your opinion of my selections.

On that note, I bid you all good evening. I’m struggling to compose even this simple bit of prose through the fog of spitted animal flesh I consumed this evening. Wish you’d all been here to share it with me.

Contrarian takes on 300, from uber geek-chic author Neal Stephenson,

They were much better balanced between men and women than I’d expected and, racially, looked like a fair cross section of Seattle’s populace. Over the next couple of hours, they enjoyed “300” with roughly the same level of energy and audience participation as one would expect in an N.C.A.A. Final Four game.

The film contains a lot of over-the-top material, reflecting its origin in a graphic novel. As often as not, when I found myself rolling my eyes at something particularly mortifying (the tactical corpse-pile avalanche, the Persian executioner with serrated fins for arms), the crowd reacted much as I did, some even hurling catcalls from the balcony or blurting their own lines of dialogue. It was all pretty festive for a movie about ancient history in which almost all of the characters end up dead.

and a Greek Anthropologist.

Zach Snyder’s 300 based on Frank Miller graphic novel is a very good film that ranks up there with Andrei Konchalovsky’s made-for-TV The Odyssey as one of the best film dramatizations about ancient Greece in the English language. This is no effeminate and whiny Alexander but a fairly accurate portrayal of Spartan spirit, although visually highly stylized and fairly loose with history as one might expect in a 2-hour dramatization. Thankfully, we get no downright laughable “Port of Sparta” moments as in Troy and the major distortion, i.e., the negative portrayal of the Spartan ephors can be forgiven as a dramatic device.

Here we are in lovely Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a few days of rest and relaxation. Many people blessed with a few days at the beach with friends would leave the laptop behind and cut all ties to the outside world. Those would be other people. There are no fewer than three laptops here at the condo and we’ve got a free wi-fi connection. So far we’ve had a few drinks, been to Broadway at the Beach and spent countless hours surfing the Internet and reading the news at each other. It’s like there are four of us and we’re all married to each other.

Actually, I don’t think we’d have it any other way.

While I enjoy being at the beach and being away from work, I miss Atlanta and I miss my new-found social life. It doesn’t help that I’m the only guy here with three women. Okay, that doesn’t sound right. It’s not that I mind being the only guy with three women. It’s just that the odd man out always gets a little extra abuse. But they’re old, good friends and we all understand each other and nobody takes anything personally.

Right now we’re home watching “Jackass 2″ and recouping from a day of shopping at Broadway at the Beach. We don’t have a lot of recouping to do to be honest. We slept in until 9:00, lazed around until noonish, went out for lunch and a trip to Target, went to Broadway at the Beach, did a lot of window shopping, had dinner at Margaritaville and came back home. We’ve not even stepped on the beach and I’ve only seen the ocean from afar, but it’s been coldish so there probably won’t be much beach-combing.

The drama of the trip to this point has been my drive down here from Atlanta. It’s a 6 hour trip on a good day and yesterday was not a good day. For one, I planned on leaving work at 1:00 p.m. and got hit with last-minute tasks and didn’t get away until 2:00. A one hour delay isn’t too bad so I wasn’t too upset with that.

The bad part didn’t happen until I got to the South Carolina border. It started to pour down rain and I heard this knocking sound coming from under the car. It was loud and very abnormal. I thought I might try to keep going and see if I could make it all the way without having to find a garage but I was four hours away still and didn’t feel good about the noise.

I pulled off in Aiken, SC, did a visual inspection of the front driver’s side tire (the source of the noise as far as I could tell) and, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, got back in the car to continue. I decided to see if I could find a garage before getting back on the Interstate but didn’t like my chances at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday.

God was on my side, however, and I found a little out-of-the-way garage a few miles away from the Interstate. There were several mechanics hanging around jawing and I asked if they had time to look under the car to see if they could identify the source of the noise. The conversation went something like this:

Me: (breaking out the deep Southern accent as a defensive maneuver) “Hey, fellas. How ya’ll doin’? Man, I’m glad I found you guys. I got this knockin’ coming from the left-front tire and I have to make it all the way to Myrtle tonight. Somebody have a time to take a look at it?”

Fella #1: (walking up from the passenger side of the vehicle) “Don’t need to look under the car. You gotta’ flat tire.”

Me: …

Fella #1: “How long you been drivin’ on that tire? It’s flatter’n hell.”

Me: (calculating…then lying.) “Uh…three or four miles I guess. I pulled off the exit as soon as I heard it.”

In reality, I’d probably driven up to 10 miles with this noise. I was going 75 miles-an-hour down the Interstate when I first noticed the noise and noticed that the car was shaking a bit. I slowed down to 70. I mean, I didn’t want to do any permanent damage to the car or anything. I thought perhaps a lug nut or two had come loose. I thought maybe I had a busted CV joint. On the driver’s side. I did not think I had a flat passenger side tire.

Okay, I probably didn’t go 10 miles. Maybe 5. But I was going fast, so I can’t be sure. The tire didn’t just have a hole in it. The belts had collapsed. Looking back on it, I feel certain that God was looking out for me as that tire should’ve exploded and I probably should’ve been in a horrible accident. This provides me with one more piece of evidence that I am favored of God and, because of this, I am bullet-proof.

Anyway, 15 minutes later, I’m back on the road and the car is surprisingly quiet. It made me wonder if that tire hadn’t been in bad shape for a lot longer. I feel much more confident about the long ride home, however.

So, here I sit, watching Jackass and blogging at the beach. Life doesn’t get much better than this. All I need is a pretty woman to share it all with. I mean, one that isn’t just a friend.

Maybe next time.