CHRIS COEN

There are four seasons in America.  1) Christmas is over, I’m depressed  2) Summer 3)Football and 4) Christmas.  Number four is here.  Crappy Christmas music has already started on the radio.  As much as I hate it, if I’m going to hear it, it had better be Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby.  When I hear Jessica Simpson or Clay Aiken singing holiday tunes, I want to hang myself with tinsel.

I also know it’s Christmas because my wife is getting 3 catalogs a day.  I didn’t know they still made catalogs.  If Montgomery Ward sends one, I’m circling the toys I want!  Unfortunately, they’re all geared to women – 97 pages of clothes and 12 of home goods.  BOOOOOOOO!!!  They should make a men’s Christmas magazine.  It would look like Skymall, but with drinking games and melee weapons.

I try to focus on the good things about Christmas – online shopping so I don’t have to interact with strangers and circle snow covered parking lots for six hours to find a spot seven miles from the store, freeze, then walk into a shop that has the heat on 86, making me regret wearing a coat.  Other good things too, like eggnog.  When else can you drink alcohol milk products?  Maybe Christmas isn’t so bad after all.

I host a show every Monday at Rehab Tavern.  The format is “open mic (or mike)”, so anyone that shows up and signs up gets stage time.  The audience gets free jokes, or at least our attempts, and the comics get to practice/get much needed attention to fill the hole inside.

This week the show started and an idiot was making a bit of a ruckus, trying to heckle me, but too wasted to say anything coherent or witty.  As I was monitoring the time for the first comic, the drunk and his two friends approached me.  The woman, reeking of smoke, spoke first.  “My friend did stand-up in Kansas City and wants to go up.  He needs to go next though, not last.”  Already, I’m agitated.  One thing I’ve learned in comedy – when someone says they used to do comedy in another state, they’re full of shit.  Second thing, you’re the last person to approach and you HAVE to go now?  We will see about that, jerky.

Then the tall one in the group held out some cash.  Suddenly, I was ready to oblige.  “He needs to go now.  Here’s $20.”  I can’t put your friend on now.  “Why not?  I’ll give you $100.”  He can’t go now because I just saw him go to the bathroom.  Unless you want me to stretch the microphone to the bathroom, it ain’t happening.  “OK, next after that.”  Before the cash disappeared, I snaked the money like a viper.  Money trumps principle.

The sauced rube hit the stage after this back and forth.  “You mf’ers stole my identity.  I got my identity stolen.  They gave it back, I guess it sucked.”  Then he stood there for a full minute murmuring he couldn’t think of anything else to say.  “This is hard.  You guys aren’t laughing!  I’m done.”  He walked off.  $20 for 75 seconds of human excrement.  Good job, now go get a DUI like you do every Monday.  His performance actually inspired two regulars to hit the stage and they didn’t do half bad.  Of course, they had personalities and some level of sobriety, so that helps too.

My honeymoon wrapped up in Rome.  I got to see some really cool stuff.  I saw the Colosseum, where men fought to the death for the entertainment of thousands.  Thank goodness we have moved on past that – as long as you don’t count TV.  My favorite shows are Game of Thrones and Walking Dead.  I get pissed if 30 people don’t die each week.

We also saw the Vatican, where the art of Raphael and Michaelangelo was on display.  I was looking at the ceiling in St. Peter’s so I missed the Pieta, my favorite sculpture, but I did get to see School of Athens.  It’s my favorite painting, mostly because it’s on the cover of Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion albums.

After seven nights, we finally craved Mexican food.  Rome has about five Mexican restaurants.  We found one and it wasn’t bad, but try speaking English and ordering Mexican food off an Italian.  They made a solid Margarita, but you can’t really drink too much – not that we were driving, but trying to figure out the Roman bus system is hard sober during the day.  The first bus we got on called out each stop.  The next six didn’t.  We took the subway once also.  My wife said she felt like she was being violated because it was so crowded.  We couldn’t have been closer to strangers if we were on Human Centipede.

We finally flew back.  There was a Euro who smelled like Chili Cheese Fritos and BO who made the flight extra tasty.  At least there was free wine.  I call it even.  Our airline lost one bag and TSA broke a bottle of olive oil inside another, so I lost some clothes.  Welcome back to America!  At least here, the only pickpockets are our politicians – American’s hands are too fat to pick shit out of our own pockets.

The next part of our Italia trip was in Tuscany.  Tuscany is known for wine much like West Virginia is known for oxycontin.  The agenda included a wine tour – I learned about grape quality, how to pick a good year, and to swirl, sniff and swish.  I now do that for everything to show how classy I am.  Busch Light…hmm…2014?  That’s a great year.  My wife really loves when I do it too.  It’s nice to be so much better than everyone else.  Now hand me that box of wine, serf!

This part of the trip was very relaxing.  We were next to an ancient town which was known for towers and being in the video game Assassin’s Creed.  It also had a torture museum.  I treated my new bride to a romantic tour of medieval justice.  Nothing says “I love you” like seeing a vaginal pear and Judas cradle together.

I finally got a beer in San Gimignano.  It was the first time since I was 18 I went that long between beers.

I finally found a Budweiser later in the trip, the only American beer in sight, but due to a lawsuit by a Euro beer, it’s called simply “Bud” on the label.  EUROPE IS SO DIFFERENT!

The only rough part was the final leg getting there.  We got on a bus 9 miles from our hotel, but apparently the driver thought it was more efficient to go to a town an hour in the other direction first, even though the bus and ticket had no such plan posted.  “Oh, you would like to go to downtown Columbus?  No problem, we’re just going to swing by Pittsburgh really quickly.”  Thankfully, I was able to bribe a restaurant worker into calling the only taxi within 15 miles.  When I have a choice between my natural charisma and money, I’m going with bribery.

Our first real stop in Italy was Venice.  Venice was built centuries ago on a swamp to get away from invading barbarians.  Now they welcome foreign barbarians called tourists.  We found out the first key to Italy – trying to figure out public transportation.  You can drive in Italy, if you have the driving skills of Mad Max.  I seriously think if you can fix brakes you would be a millionaire in three months.  They park on the sidewalk, the buses tailgate about two feet of Vespas that swerve in and out, everyone speeds…oh and don’t count on ambulances, they don’t pull over for them.  I think 75% of the people that need an ambulance die stuck in traffic.  Except for Venice, by the way, no cars in the actual city, unless they drive under water.  Don’t get hurt there either.

Venice was pretty cool.  The whole city is over 100 islands with canals for streets.  After walking around, I had to wee.  I went to the water closet and they charged me 1.50 Euros to piss.  This is weird because their streets are basically urinals.  We did a gondola ride also and our gondolier (?) gave us a history of the city.  Thanks to multiple concussions, I remember about a third of it, but most interesting is that it is illegal to build new buildings there.  Like Detroit, in other words.

We had some great food in Venice, plus I found a store that sold Jim Beam.  All was well.  I did learn something though.  The first two days I about had a stroke because no one would bring me the damn bill or more wine.  One place we sat there for an hour.  “They hate me because I’m an American!  I know it!”  I was about to smash a chair until I looked online and found out in Italy it’s considered rude to come back to the table unless asked.  Oh and they don’t tip, so they really don’t have any motivation to come back.  No problem Italy, looks like I’m ordering wine by the liter the rest of the trip.

My new bride and I went to not America for our honeymoon, the part that looks like a boot they call Italy.  I must say, it was quite the trip, but I was pretty overwhelmed by the differences from the good ol’ USA.  First off, they call their cities Roma instead of Rome, Milano instead of Milan and San Gimignano instead of San Gimignano.  Don’t they even know how to speak right?  Ridiculous.

The food was maybe the biggest change.  They eat cigarettes and espresso for breakfast, have a little pasta for lunch with some more cigarettes and espresso, then eat at 9 pm a lot of food.  What’s crazy is the restaurants close from 3 to 7 or 8, so a couple times we got caught unawares and were eating airplane peanuts to survive trying to make it to 8 pm.  One bad part was the water was all bottled so you had to pay for water, with half of that being sparkling water.  Imagine someone giving you a Sprite, then rinsing it out with water.  The good?  Wine is dirt cheap and available with every meal.  Screw you water!

The first night we got to Venice and hit up a pizzeria.  Italian pizza is even different – you have to cut it yourself and the number one topping there is ham.  They primarily eat ham.  Raw ham for an appetizer, ham on pizza…ham is about the tenth best meat, but their number two meat for pizza is tuna, so you end up taking the ham.  I couldn’t find a good pizza choice at first, then I saw frankfurter sausage and fried potatoes.  Finally, some sausage!  I ordered it up and it came out with hot dogs and french fries on it.  And it was amazing.  Wait until rednecks figure this one out, it’s the next sensation in America.

More to come later!