Archive for the 'USOMFA Tour ’10' Category

11
Aug
10

USOMFA Tour ‘10: This Is The End… My Only Friend… The End…

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I had a lot planned for the USOMFA Tour – in-depth interviews, investigative profiles, daily updates, you name it, but the truth is I never got around to actually writing any of it.

That’s the thing about holidays, you make all these plans about how you’re going to spend them and then before you know it they’re over, you haven’t done any of the stuff you had planned and life’s moving on.

My brain is having none of that though. For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing chronic jetlag and it ain’t pretty. Here’s an intricate graph I drew to illustrate my sleep patterns since I left America on Saturday:

 

 

And here’s an equally intricate graph I drew that shows how many people give a fuck about my sleep patterns since I left America:

 

 

You could have at least faked some kind of interest guys, seriously. You could have at least done that for me.

A big question on everyone’s minds though has been “How did it go meeting J-Rab’s parents and brothers for the first time, I mean you guys have been dating for what, like three years now? That’s a flippin’ LONG ASS time to not have met her parents, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

Well the great news is that it went really, really well. J-Rab’s parents are warm, friendly and very easy to get along with, which is more than I can say for DEATHCAT!

 

 

All DEATHCAT did was miaow angrily at me and threaten to die (at this point I feel it might be pertinent to mention that DEATHCAT is a 22 year-old feline that is made up of mottled fur, leathery skin and jutting-out bones that send a shiver down your spine every time you see them).

As for J-Rab’s brothers, they are way smarter, more wholesome and a shitload better adjusted than I was at their age. This is a great thing because otherwise most of our holiday would have been spent trawling dive bars to find them, bailing them out of jail, and engaging their enemies in vicious knife fights to the death.

Speaking of which, should you ever find yourself in such a situation, always remember to hold your knife blade-down when stabbing, that way you can stab quicker and harder whilst using your forearm to shield your opponent’s stabs.

 

 

I got back to the office yesterday to find they’ve moved me right into the corner of the room so I now sit with my back to the entire office and am no longer able to surf porn and quickly hit Alt+Tab when I see someone approaching in my peripheral vision. I can’t put into words the profound effect this has had on my morale and motivation in the office.

How is a grown man expected to get through a day’s hard slog without a little lesbian gang-bang action? It just ain’t right I tell ya. It just ain’t right.

In other news, I’ve finally been approached to write material for another site and getting paid for it to boot! If I can just land a few more gigs like this one, I’ll be able to use my writing talent to bring home the bacon, which should free up a crapload of my time to surf porn. A man can dream…

So all in all life ain’t too bad for your buddy ol’ pal Slick, but it’ll be even BETTER if you nominate me for the upcoming SA blog awards.

Best new blog, best post (Klapping Gym Boet) and best overall blog are the ones I’m gunning for, but I can’t do it without you guys.

So click this link http://website.sablogawards.com/2010/ and nominate SlickTiger to fucking KILL EVERYTHING!

I ain’t no Panjo. Set me loose at the SA Blog Awards gala dinner and it’ll take more than a dead chicken and some gentle words of encouragement to get me back in my cage 😉

-ST

04
Aug
10

USOMFA Tour: Dusk Approaching

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On Sunday we went to Rockport, a sleepy little seaside town in Massachusetts and J-Rab and I walked the streets there, ducking into the little shops we found and browsing through the trinkets inside them.

It was a sunny day, one I think we’ll all remember for a long time to come, and walking past a shop window, we saw this shirt:

 

 

Now, with less than 4 days of our holiday left, I’m tempted to take the advice on that shirt and just never go back.

J-Rab and I would drive down south, jump the border to Mexico, find menial jobs to get by and start a new life together. I’d write a lot more in our new life, actually get started banging out some of the scripts inside my head, maybe do some short stories here and there, land a few writing gigs, build my portfolio.

A few years down the track I’d land something legitimate, move back to the States, find that tiny seaside town and rent a flat there.

In summer I’d learn how to surf. Collect a few shells for J-Rab to make some jewelry. Leave the corporate world that I’ve become entwined in so far behind that I’d clean forget I was ever a part of it.

 

 

In about an hour J-Rab’s sister and her boyfriend are both going to leave for the airport and fly back to London and though we still got a few days left, I keep getting this feeling like the best parts of our holiday have already happened and all there is left now is that slow march back onto the plane and back to our day jobs and the thousands of emails that overflowing from our inboxes like a burst sewerage pipe.

Fuck, listen to me, whining like a little bitch. It’s been one of the best holidays of my life and all I’m thinking about is work when it hasn’t even ended yet.

Fuck that shit. I’m going to drink another beer and relax to the fucking max.

Catch you crazy cats tomorrow. Also, NOMINATE ME FOR THE SA BLOG AWARDS (click the badge on the right. Scroll up a little bit, theeeerreee it is…). Or I’ll jab you in the gums with a screwdriver.

Love from your buddy ol’ pal:

 

 

-ST

03
Aug
10

USOMFA Tour Day 9: Trip To Boston

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: USOMFA Tour '10
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I can’t stand those asshole touristy types who move in herds, taking pictures of every damn thing they come across and asking all manner of dumbass questions like “when was this building built?” and “what part of the city is this?” and “what percentage of your burger patties are made up of rat meat?”

I prefer running with child-like glee up the streets and alleyways of new cities, soaking up everything I see and firing off random pictures of cool shit that I come across using pseudo art nouveau-ish composition to make people think I’m smarter than I really am.

Exhibit A: The Docks Where We Caught Our Ferry Into Boston City Centre

 

 

Today we struck out for Boston itself and had a pretty badass time there. The city is very clean and only smelled bad in one or two places we came across, which is much better than say Joburg city centre, which smells like ass and looks only marginally better than the version of South Africa depicted in District 9.

We caught a ferry by the name of “Rita” into Boston harbour which went surprisingly fast and was quite rad except for the part when they blasted the horn to signal we were departing and I nearly shat my pants.

Exhibit B: Rita

 

 

But the second we landed and got off I immediately felt cheated. There, on the other side of the dock was a MUCH better boat that kicked Rita’s fucking ASS!

I present to you Exhibit C: CODZILLA!

 

 

What’s cool about Boston is all the tall buildings that tower above you, reminding you that no matter how important you might think you are, you’re actually less than a speck of dust on the face of the planet when you stop to think about it.

Exhibit D: A Tall Building That Made Me Think That

 

 

All my cynical ramblings aside though, Boston is one killer city. It’s alive and has that distinctive 1st world feeling that SA tries so hard to fake but just can’t match in any way, shape, size or form.

We’re planning a second attack on Boston before we leave on Saturday, so I’ll post some more pics when we do, but until then, here’s a great pic I took of a brass frog that you could even say is a great example of some VERY creative composition.

Exhibit E: Brace Yourself…

 

 

I’m banging posts out like nobody’s business right now so that more people visit the site and vote for me in the SA blog awards (see banner on the right) so tune in at least twice a day for regular updates.

And don’t forget to nominate me! Or I’ll cut you!

-ST

02
Aug
10

USOMFA Tour ‘10 Update: America is FULL of Viruses

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: USOMFA Tour '10
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What happens when you don’t blog for awhile is this crushing feeling of guilt sets in and slowly saps the life out of you until you find yourself blind drunk at 4 in the morning, running around the desert in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine.

Or maybe that’s just me 😉

Thing is, the day after that last post about our flight getting delayed and taking a badass detour on our way to USOMFA, J-Rab’s laptop got hit by about 5 really malicious, bloodthirsty viruses that fucked shit up but good.

Worst thing was I was mid-post when they struck so I look like Mr Badguy, surfing midget porn or something right when shit started going down.

We fought the viruses for a good couple of days during which I put my blogging on the backburner, thinking that it would just be a day or two before we got J-Rab’s machine back to normal. Sad truth is it’s totally fucked in every conceivable way, so I jury-rigged the computer J-Rab’s stepdad uses as their printer server to blog off and here I am, at 10pm on a hot summer night in Massachusetts, finally banging out a couple of words about this crazy trip.

I wish you could see this place, spend a day driving the green and leafy roads that connect one place to the next here because I’m not sure me writing about it is going to do it any justice.

 

 

The houses have no fences here and they’re mostly wooden and have two or three stories. Every third house flies an American flag by the front door and the cars are all fucking huge 4x4s that people drive at considerate speeds down the highways and byways so as not to upset the other drivers.

It ain’t Africa here. You won’t get randomly cut off by some maniac behind the wheel of a taxi and when you stop at traffic lights, there’s no one begging for change or waiting for an opportunity to rob you blind.

Those little things, those are the first things you notice.

When I first got here, I tried to see if I could spot some kind of key differentiating thing between Americans and other people, but came up with nothing. They are no fatter or thinner than people back home, they are no darker or lighter in skin colour and they are no taller or shorter in height.

They’re just people. There’s really nothing distinctly American about them except their accents, but I’m sure there’s a lot more under the surface, but you don’t get that stuff until you live in a place.

We visited Salem on Thursday and checked out the cemetery where the Judge from the Salem Witch Trials is buried, the sick fuck who condemned at least 18 people to death for being ‘witches’.

 

 

Craziest thing is that just around the corner there’s a second cemetery where they’ve engraved a number of stones with the names of the people who were hanged for being witches because they were never given proper graves with headstones.

Among the names I read was John Proctor himself, the protagonist in The Crucible. It was eerie reading his name in stone that day, it was one of those rare moments when the real world and the world of fiction collide and you find yourself in the middle of that collision, changed in some way you can’t quite grasp yet.

And from somewhere deep in my soupy brain, I remembered the words Elizabeth Proctor said to John in The Crucible and smiled.

“You’re a good man John,” she said, “only somewhat bewildered.”

 

 

I’m going to try do this again tomorrow and the next day and the next. My time here is fading fast, I need to capture these crazy days while I can.

-ST

26
Jul
10

USOMFA Tour Chapter 1: The Phenomenal Pilot

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: USOMFA Tour '10
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I tell ya, the tour kicked off on Thursday night to a fucking killer start. It was like something out of a movie, a whole host of shit going all wrong and fucked up, one thing after the next.

Craziest part was the accident that one of our crew members had a few hours before our plane was scheduled to take off. J-Rab heard it was one of our pilots – the poor guy got into a car accident and couldn’t fly.

So they had to get an emergency pilot to take the guy’s place which delayed our flight by 2 hours.

That pilot, the one in the accident, he has no idea what a party we had because of his accident, no idea. If I could meet that pilot, I’d fucking hug the man. I’d thank him personally for the badass time we had, a lot of which I filmed on my cell phone and am panning to cut up into a nice, shitty-quality show reel and put up for you crazy cats tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s a clue where we wound up for the day because of that phenomenal pilot.

God bless that phenomenal pilot.

God bless his phenomenal pilot soul.

 

 

Watch for the video party people, it’ll be epic 😉

-ST

22
Jul
10

A Vision Of USOMFA

By SlickTiger 4 Comments
Categories: USOMFA Tour '10
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William Blake. Now there was a crazy fucking cat. The dude used to sit naked in his garden with his wife (also naked) and re-enact scenes from his favourite plays. He also used to experience intense visions in which demons spoke to him and in one famous incident, gave him a guided tour of the afterlife.

 

 

Me, I get visions too, but they’re usually after I’ve drunk the house dry and I have to resort to straining meths through bread to get a few more kicks before the police come.

Tonight at 11.30 I get in a big ‘ol steel bird and fly the fuck to America. It’s my first trip over there so my head’s been spinning with all kinds of crazy-assed scenarios, like a mental collage of every American movie I ever watched, because I have no idea what it’s going to be like.

American food. What’s it taste like? What are the people like? Fuck, what’s jet-lag like? I’ve never even experienced jet-lag, hells bells!

More than that I’m thinking about J-Rab’s family who, I’m finally going to meet after three years of dating their belter of a daughter and sister. What are they like? Will they let me drink meths in the house?

Does America even have meths?

 

 

The next post I bang out will be on American soil and I plan to stack it to the max with a whole bunch of pics so you guys can see the crazy shit me and J-Rab got up to. Keep in mind there’s a 6-hour time difference though, so I’ll be blogging from the past, hitting you with posts at all kinds of fucked-up times, that’s how we roll in America.

Too fucking crazy guys, FUCK I’m excited as a kid at Christmas.

So think of me as you’re drifting off tonight, I’ll be way up there in the clouds somewhere while you’re counting electric sheep, en route to Amsterdam for a 4-hour stop over and then straight to Logon Airport in Boston to meet the parents.

One last question before I go though – Arcade Fire, The Black Keys, The National, The Dead Weather or Kings Of Leon?

Choices, choices 😉

Later party people.

-ST

15
Jul
10

SlickTiger Industries Presents: USOMFA Tour ‘10

By SlickTiger 1 Comment
Categories: USOMFA Tour '10
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Guys, some pretty earth-shattering news. Please sit down for this.

In exactly one week’s time, I’m climbing into the belly of a giant steel bird and heading for the United States Of Muthu Fukkin’ America (USOMFA) for the first time in my 26 years of being alive.

I know, crazy hey? They actually gave me a Visa, and not just any Visa, a TEN YEAR Visa motherbitches!

Even more hectic than that is the fact that after nearly 3 years of dating, I’m finally going to meet J-Rab’s parents and twin brothers. We’ll be staying with them over in the USOMFA for a full two weeks – sound like the plotline for a slapstick block-buster comedy starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Nero? You bet your ass!

 

 

While I’m over there, I’ll be launching SlickTiger Industries’ latest initiative: USOMFA Tour ‘10.

Catchy title ain’t it? Yeah, I’m pretty amazing like that.

I’ll be getting to the bottom of this crazy-ass place they call the USOMFA and really figure out what it’s all about, the people, the places, fuck, everything.

Whilst on the USOMFA Tour ‘10, you can expect in-depth interviews and profiles the likes of which have never been seen on this site before. It will be like you’re right there with me, living the life of an actual American, taking in all the sights and sounds and getting to grips with the state I’ll be visiting: Massachusetts baby!

How do I feel about the trip? Pretty damn excited. Am I nervous about meeting the parents? Hell no! I have it on good authority from one of J-Rab’s oldest friends that they’re exactly like the Weasleys from Harry Potter, so I got nothing to worry about.

 

 

This is going to be real-time, real-life, hardcore investigative citizen journalism at its very finest so yeah, just be careful reading it or your head could explode with awesome.

So if you guys have any suggestions of stuffs to check out in Massachusetts (I’ll be staying in Essex), lemme know. And if you happen to live in Essex then fer chrissakes drop a mail to tellthetiger@gmail.com and let’s hang out!*

-ST

*As long as you promise not to kidnap me and make lampshades out of my flesh