Squeak

Last night was incredibly distressing for me. I came home, drunk and was faced with a huge moral dilemma.... let me explain.

Regular readers will know of my New York nemesis, that's right, The Mouse, or to give him his real name (as christened by Anna Marshall) 'Rodrigo.' Rodrigo has been the bane of my existence for 9 months. He wakes me up in the middle of night rustling in my bedroom. He pokes his head out when we have guests over. He scares off women, he taunts me by strutting around the apartment like he owns it and worst of all he outsmarts me and moves the traps I set for him. I have given up on beating him.

Last night whilst at work the exterminator came over to our house, unbeknownst to me, and laid some traps. Good luck mate, I thought, Rodrigo is one tough cookie, you wont catch him.
As usual I had too much to drink after work and returned home at 3 am. As I walked in I noticed the traps the exterminator had set, they were more advanced than the store bought ones, impressive I thought..... then I saw it..... Lying on a sticky mat was Rodrigo... caught. He was struggling to break free, horrified that he had been captured. I took a moment to compose myself and weighed up my options. Should I unstick him and let him go free? Should I walk 10 blocks and then let him go free? Should I leave him overnight to starve? Should I squash him? One thing was for sure..... I had to kill him.
I searched online for advice and I found it.... boy did I find it. I looked down at Rodrigo, he was suffering bad, he had wriggled so much that he was bleeding and was obviously hurt. He looked so harmless and cute. I welled up thinking about what I had to do... It was my very own Sophie's Choice.
What happened from then on is something I'm not proud of, but remember I was drunk and Rodrigo had terrorized me for months.
I boiled the kettle.
One the water inside was at the desired temperature I poured in some washing up liquid and poured the contents into a bowel.
I looked down at Rodrigo, he just stared up at me.. helpless.
I couldn't bear to do it.... the water was cooling down. I made a snap decision. I placed the bowel outside the apartment in the hallway. As I walked back inside I reminisced about all the times me and Rodrigo had had together. The first time he ran into the girls bedroom and I didn't tell them. The way me and him used to team up to scare Anna. The times we would both just sit there and watch TV.
I looked down at him, no longer an adversary... but a friend. He looked back at me with those big beady eyes as if to say 'Rob... it's me Rodrigo.... don't do it.' But it was time.
I lifted up the sticky mat and carried it out to the hall. I look at Rodrigo one last time, said goodbye, then flipped the map upside down and placed it in the boiling soapy water.

Rodrigo Mouse passed away in the early hours of the morning on November 18th. He is survived by three housemates in Apartment 3.

My Kinda Town

So after last weekend in London this weekend it was off to Chicago with Dylan to meet Sammy and Dean.

Now there are many places I could start with the review of the weekend. The crap shower in the hostel, the hot receptionist in the hostel with the icy icy heart and come to bed eyes, but instead I'm going to start with Brunch.

On the flight to The Windy City Viner and I were mapping out exactly what we wanted to do once we landed and both of us agreed that the way forward was a pot of Brunch. So once we checked into our ghetto hostel the first thing we asked was where was good for Brunch, a few options were gathered and then we met Dean and Sammy and headed out for some well deserved food.

The restaurant we went to was called Orange, indeed it was life changing.

Perhaps it was the excitement of the four of us being together, perhaps it was dizziness from having not eaten, but needless to say we were in a stupid mood. Our waitress slinked over to the table and the first thing I noticed was her T-shirt. At first it appeared to be a plain pink shirt, however on closer inspection it bore the image of a Liger. Now for those of you that don't know a Liger is the result of when a Lion and Tiger have a baby.

Somewhat blown away by our waitress' bold support of such a bizarre creature I launched into a conversation with her about Liger's Even when she looked at me like I was crazy I carried on, spouting Liger facts left right and centre. The boys thought I was nuts.

After our Liger chat we ordered our breakfast, I had a steak.

The next day at about 11 we had hunger pangs. The unanimous decision was made to revisit Orange and the Liger. However we were to be disappointed, the Liger was not wearing her colors today, her dedication to the Liger cause wasn't as strong as we thought.

On our last morning Dean, Dylan and Sammy begged me to go somewhere else, but I stood firm, the combination of cucumber water, Eggs Benedict and Liger enthusiasts meant we were only going to one place.

If I could buy shares in that restaurant I would.

When in Chicago you have to do something Chicagoey, so we decided to ascend the Hancock tower in order for a nighttime view of the city.

The que to get into the lift was ridiculous, however it did spawn an interesting question 'If you had to be one tall building what would you be?' The game descended into anarchy however when used it as an opportunity to take the piss out of Sammy.

Finally we made it into the lift and after a quick ride we were at the top. There was but one problem, we had ridden the elevator the restaurant and bar as oppose to the viewing deck. No worries though we would stay and grab a drink. The wait to get to the bar was half an hour. Fuck that!

The viewing deck was just 2 floors below, but in order to get to it we had to go all the way back to the bottom and then all the way up again.

More waiting in line. Finally we reached the ticket stand where the unfunniest man in the world cracked a couple of very unfunny jokes.

We were all set and ready to go when we looked back to see Dylan milling around. He was trying to get a free ticket with his media card. Unsurprisingly he didn't.

As we waited in another line to get to yet another lift we were told we had to have a photo taken. Even if we didn't want to the 4 of us had to stand in a line and have our photo taken infront of a superimposed background of the Chicago skyline. We did. We didn't smile.

In the lift on the way up we were feeling particularly stupid and cracked jokes in the crowded lift about having bad stomachs and generally acting like 5 year olds. We got out the lift 45 minutes after we had been two floors higher to have a look at the view. It was nice, was it $20 nice? Probably not.

After twenty minutes we had to wait in another que to get the lift back down the tower. By now we were wondering if we would ever get out of the bloody Hancock building. After a quick photo session where infront of another superimposed background where we pretended to be jumping off the building we were back in the lift going down. Finally our immaturity reached new levels when the voice over the PA shrilled 'Now you've been to the top and know the Hancock tower a bit better you can call it by it's nickanme.... Big John.' We started uncontrollably giggling as the 10 year old boy next to us rolled his eyes.

I won't bore you with more details, I'll leave that to Dean and Sammy, whose blog you can follow here http://deanandsammy.blogspot.com/

It was a great weekend spent with 3 guys I have been friends with since I was 7 years old. The photos will surface in a few days, the others took just a few.

Gilbert's Know How To Party

So this weekend I was back in London for brief celebratory visit. It was time for my little cousin Andrew to have his barmitzvah and become a man.

Our tale begins on Thursday morning at 6am as my father came bounding into my room to wake me up. We were off to synagogue... hurrah. Bear in mind I haven't been there for 2 years, I'm a bad Jew. You see on Thursday morning Andrew had his first call up and read from the torah for the first time, thus making him a man. After he had sung so beautifully my Uncle Michael asked me to help dress the Torah. To be more precise, I had to lift it. This is no easy task, that thing weighs a ton. I joked around and said 'what's the worst that can happen!?' Well the worst that can happen is I drop it and everyone who sees would have to fast for 7 weeks. The pressure was on. I walked onto the bimah and shakily hoisted the torah skywards. Wobbled a bit and then sat down. Phew. I turned to look at the Ladies Gallery where my Mum was sitting. I called out to her 'Are you proud Mum!?' She wasn't.

Thursday morning was amazing and I achieved something I have never achieved before. I ate 3 breakfasts. Yes.... 3. Before Setting off to listen to Andrew I wolfed down a bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in order to give me the desired energy for that time of morning. After Synagogue there was a brief but sugary selection of treats in the lobby. I made my excuses and managed to eat 4 to 5 of those. Fantastic, it wasn't even 8am and I had managed to eat two breakfasts. Then, like music to my ears I heard we were going back to Aunty Shelly and Uncle Michael's for breakfast as everyone was hungry. Now I wasn't hungry but two breakfasts wasn't going to be enough. A plethora of bagels and smoked salmon back at 17 Pine Grove meant that by 9:30 I had achieved the seemingly impossible, I had eaten breakfast 3 times.

The Friday night dinner at our house was a lovely affair. All the family together (that's nearly 50 people btw.... we're a big family), speeches made, jokes cracked, but more importantly... Duck Rolls eaten. Quite simply the Duck Rolls being handed out at my house on Friday Night were the greatest thing I have ever put in my mouth. Vegetarians can go fuck themselves, this stuff was golden. I must have eaten a good 10 of them. In fact they were so good I had them the next day for dinner cold.

The Saturday was fantastic. I'm not going to go into the details of Andrew's performance, but put it this way, I was bloody proud. That kid made me shed a tear! After his barmitzvah we decamped back to the Gilbert's for Shabbat Lunch.

As I walked in I almost got an erection. A waitress wandered up to me, stuck a platter in my face and said 'Duck Roll?' That was the second time I cried tears of happiness that day.

It was then onto the Sunday. Party time. Despite the histrionics of my to sisters with regards to being ready in time we were at the venue with minutes to spare. Photos done and it was time to begin the party.

I won't do the party justice by describing it here for you. Instead I will focus on one facet of the party... the Vodka. And by the Vodka I mean the means by which it was distributed. After all the speeches were said and done we headed to the dance floor where we were met by a vision. Three girls dressed in outfits the Rabbi would not have approved of, despite it being his birthday, with Vodka bottles strapped to their waists. It was on. Immediately I sought out Andrew Myers and Broando, they were two steps ahead of me, they each held an empty shot glass in their hand and had already decided their favorite Vodka giver. It was at this point I reminded them they were married with kids. After a few more shots we had built up a rapport with the girls, one of them was a model who had done a few glamor shoots. We nodded inquisitively as she told us this, as though she was a learned professor at a Museum telling us about how the Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. Actually if professors looked like that I would have done much better at University. We had a mission, find out her name. With all the stealth of James Bond (drunkenly asking her what her name was) I unlocked the secret and two words came rolling out of that oerfectly formed mouth of hers..... Sammi Pennington. Like a flash I was off to report my findings to Andrew and Broando. Three minutes later they came bounding up to me like a couple of twelve year old boys who had found pornography... except they were men in their thirties who had discovered pornography. A quick google on Andrew's phone had revealed the gold mine, Sammi Pennington's nude photo shoot. As the party wrapped up with everyone singing 'We Are The Champions' a little part of me felt like a Champion.

In reality though there was only one boy we were singing to. Andrew Benjamin Gilbert, that was a great weekend!