My dad was going on a business trip to southern California, and I decided to go out there on vacation as well, for about two weeks. While Dad was at his meeting, I met up with the son of his friend's, who was a white guy about my age. He was nice enough, but didn't talk much. He looked like a student I met in real life at a conference.

As he was driving me around the city, I asked him if he liked baseball or not. I was trying to figure out how many minimum innings are needed for a pitcher to be considered for a win. But he said no, he didn't like baseball and also said no when I asked him if he played. Conversation was one-sided after that, as I told him about how my dad and I were going to pretty much drive around randomly for the next two weeks. At one point along the road (which was green for some reason), he swerved really close to the edge, which was a sheer drop off a cliff with no railing. I said whoa, do you do that all the time? And he said yeah, that's how we do things over here, and that he doesn't even think about it anymore.

We came across a narrow wooden bridge and we got out to cross it on foot. At the end of the bridge were three girls fighting karate-style with each other. To get around them, my guide jumped down really far onto a lower bridge. It was too big a drop for me, so I waited till one girl knocked the other two off into the water. She jumped down to finish her attacks so I crossed the bridge. The footing was tough, but I made it through and I heard the girls saying "Okay that was good practice, let's start from the top."

The guide and I were suddenly in the town's museum, which focused on Egyptian-style ruins. As we walked around looking at things, I realized I'd seen some of it before for some reason, so I said I'd skip it. There was a large Arch de Triomphe-style structure with plaques and names engraved on the sides. At this point, the guide and I were simply trying to pass the time.

The next part of the museum was a late 1800's style, and I met my entire family there inside a restaurant, which was part of the display. Inside were about ten animatronic figures dressed in period clothing and arranged around a kitchen. When introducing us, they all spoke simultaneously and their mouth movement matched up very well with the speech. Soon, individual puppets started giving us individual orders. Mine were to take some green onion and garlic and to swirl them around in hot soup until they became soft.

As we were preparing the food, an invisible man who was part of the show kept trying to come in. I was ready to karate kick him for no particular reason, but I instead threw some half-hearted punches when I finally saw the door open by itself. I didn't actually want to hit him, I guess. He then revealed himself as a pretentious French waiter-type, though he didn't have an accent. He started to serve us food but evangelized to us the entire time. His argument was that only God could have made it such that humans could appreciate the complex taste of the combinations of food which he was now serving us. I pointed out that some people like single types of food, such as roasted green onion. He was stumped for a couple minutes, during which he stammered a lot. Finally I said, "But I guess that's just the exception to the rule," to which he looked very relieved and continued on. Then I woke up.

posted by Larry at 10:23 AM