On the Road

In an effort to prove the iPhone was worth something without a signal or wi-fi, I kept notes of our adventure across the Italian countryside. Here they are for your enjoyment in chronological order.

Paul Blart Mall Cop without sound is like Paul Blart Mall Cop with sound. Terrible.

Mall Cop, I would give you the Xtreme Sports Gang. I really would. But the skateboard guy? Really? A skateboard?

Milan is make out city. Like, not even subtle. Just BLAM 30-second throat spelunking in the middle of the street just like it was not, actually, the middle of the street.

This trip marks the first time I have ever seen Scott drink coffee without complaining about how awful it is.

This child who speaks German is the most unwholesome thing I have personally experienced.

Italian Hugh Jackman runs this hotel.

Milan is also smoke city. Someone should tell them it’s not the 1940s anymore.

Spanish John Cusack is at the table next to us.

Horse tastes better than cow.

Everyone here is thin. The people who are not thin are thinner than our thin people. The people who are fat are tourists.

Early morning construction = no sleep followed by burst water main = no shower. Excellent way to start a convention appearance!

Italians do not believe in free wi-fi.

Italian birds dig my American shoes.

Turns out liver is wonderful with pasta.

Never drive in Italy. Never park in Lucca.

The waiter is Bruce Springstein. I shit you not.

This kid. This kid is a hard blinker. Like the blink itself is a surprise that he must flinch away from with an additional double blink. Life must be exhausting for this kid.

Do not have sex with Dan (poo shower and pretzel butt)

You know how you’ve joked about being taken somewhere to be killed? You have to take it back unless you were being driven up a mountain on a twisting dirt road with no rails or room for oncoming traffic and nothing but blind 180 degree turns in a van too large for the road by an Italian who is just chipper and tipsy enough that everything he says sounds like a very sincere threat.

We will sleep in a monastery tonight if Michele does not kill us first.

The nuns are very nice.

If you sucked all of the sound out of the world it would not be as quiet as it is here.

Our rooms are actual monastic cells!

Oppressively quiet.

Maybe there’s a TV in that cabinet.

🙁

I cannot say this is the most uncomfortable bed in the world but only because it’s identical to every other bed in this place.

Italians are very open about nose picking.

There are only designer glasses in Italy.

Never turn back on Dan (poo shower/pretzel butt)

Turns out boar is also delicious. Still a horse man though.

Milan may be a fashionable town, but you go to comic shows to catch the real cutting edge. This just in: mullets are the new black.

Some outfits are inappropriate in all climates.

Tuna sauce is much better than its own name would have you believe.

Autogrill is everything that’s wrong with America.

In Italy, emergency lights mean “Whatever I’m doing, it’s legal.”

There are two things you can have with every meal in Italy. Wine and Nutella.

VERY open about nose picking.

“Sip it till its rancid.” I don’t even remember the context.

This obnoxious NYC lady and her moron elderly parents who (after what is now a 10 minute argument) cannot grasp that the dollar and Euro do not convert 1-for-1 are so dumb it makes me ashamed to be an American abroad.

The Biggest Loser: getting people to cry so they’ll stop eating their feelings?

Hotel for Dogs. They would have to show this to an audience that would literally die if it walked out.

Kind of wish I had an emergency exit row…

Nothing about this movie makes sense. Let’s try it with sound.

Big mistake.

James Burke, your audiobook will save me from the Hotel for Dogs.


And I’m Sick

Italy was amazing. Our hosts pulled out all the stops and made us feel like we never left home. I will be talking about this trip, to the irritation of everyone I know, for the rest of my life. But I came back sick. It’s not Swine Flu (whew!), but oh man did it make the nine hour flight from Milan to JFK a treat. Especially since I got literally no sleep the previous night due to my core temp spiking and crashing like a roller coaster. And every night previous to that I was lucky to score four non-consecutive hours of sleep. Apparently I’m hardwired into EST, because no matter how hard it was 1am in Milan, my body was all, “Nope, it’s 6pm moron, you’re not sleeping.”

So, yeah. The exhaustion, weather, and travel just caught up to me.

Blah blah you don’t care, let’s get down to biznazzzzz.

Comics are off this week too. I need to recuperate. I’ve got a weird foreign disease roiling around my chest and no health insurance – I’m not going to push my luck. It feels like I’m already through the worst of it, so we should be back on track next week. In the meantime, I’m going to sit in bed and read and sleep.

…and probably work up a blog post about how amazing the trip was before I got plagued.


I’m back

Made it back to Orlando. Need sleep now. Details to follow post coma.


Ciao!

Oct 27th – Nov 2nd I will be going to, in, or coming back from Italy. If all goes well, I will not contract a horrible disease in my travels and 8BT comics can resume upon my return. But the fact is I’m overdue for a cold and I’m going to be in a crowd the size of SDCC in one-third the space of SDCC. Why anyone would want to afflict this beautiful town with that kind of rabble is beyond me, but what the hell, I’ll go.

Not sure what kind of connectivity I’ll have over there. Apparently Italian cell phone signals are made out of actual gold that’s carried, by hand, through a network of underground tunnels lined with gold and originally dug by the kings of Europe using golden spoons. When the signals arrive at the only relay station on the continent, the Pope himself transmits your message via (golden) teletype to a satellite (also golden) originally put into orbit by a rocketship (solid gold) powered by fuel derived from the remains of every single saint.

At least, that’s the only way I can plausibly justify the international rates on my plan. I mean, seriously. These are kilobytes, not grams of plutonium.

So, I dunno. There may or there may not be updates from the road. My stupid Twitter account would probably be the best way to keep track of that. Either way, I’ll see you jerks next week.


Looking for Artist submissions

I was planning initially to thank each person individually for submitting their artwork to me for the comic project Brian had mentioned. After getting literally hundreds of e-mails this just is not possible. I wanted to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who sent their art in. I think I’ve seen more art styles this week than I have ever seen before. A lot of you are VERY talented individuals. We’ve narrowed down the field to two or three people we’re looking at (you know who you are). Again, the responses have been overwhelming and I would like to say “thank you” not only to the readers of this site, but also to Brian to putting out the call. Of course this does mean that any future projects I may hopefully have, I’ll be looking to Brian to put the word out again 🙂

                                                                                 -John