Never fear, i'm still there! (but no longer here)

Hello! If you've stumbled across this blog, you'll be interested to know that I've moved! Both geographically, and online.

Continue following me online at http://maxtkramer.wordpress.com/

I love you.

IT IS DONE.
(Nerd Novel that is)

In Middletown...nothing new

Marissa, Minitruck II (the truck), Minitruck III (the cat) and I made it home in three days. 2900 miles in 3 days is a lot of driving. We got pulled over for speeding every day of our trip. The weather was perfect, traffic was light, the truck ran great. It went incredibly smoothly. I wouldn't want to do it again. I didn't write any profiles on interesting people we encountered on our drive home, because it turns out that there are no interesting people in middle-America. Nope. Just a bunch of bland cookie cutter picket fence white bread dick and janes. It is good to be back in a state where the people are weird. Coastal states have all the characters. It was another culture shock coming back though. We went out in New Haven, and all the people there looked like they belonged on the MTV show Jersey Shore to me. I've got to admit, I almost miss the ski bums, at least they dress with some color.

Marissa and I are all settled in to Brohouse East in Middletown, and we've once again begun the frustrating job search process. It's going...well? I'm going to cheat a little today, and spend the day watching Wildboyz and finishing up nerd novel.

It is nice to have cable TV again.

Goodbye.

As I finish up my last days of work and begin the frustrating packing process, I question the fate of this blog. I mean, look at the title. Can I in good conscience continue my rambling blog about my year abroad in Oregon, if i'm no longer in Oregon? Perhaps not.

We've had a good run though, haven't we?

With all the grace of a baby hippopotamus Bend, Oregon has thundered into a secure place in my heart. Its breathtaking views and wrenching beauty have never ceased to move me. I'm no Thoreau, but when looking at the mountains makes me smile every morning on the way to work, I know i'm in a special place. I've poked a lot of fun at the local population, but honestly all their quirks and oddities add to their charm.

I have a friend here who has repeatedly expressed to me that she has no hobbies. Well darling, you're living in the wrong place. For all its culture, Bend is far too isolated for someone who doesn't thrive on exploring the great outdoors. No matter how many bars and restaurants and theaters open up downtown, Bend will always be a small town in the middle of nowhere. That's why we live here. Go play on the mountain.. Bike the trails. Hike the desert. Paddle the river. Do something positively dirty. It'll keep you young.

Bend, Oregon: fountain of youth.

Thank you for all that you've given me. Hopefully I've returned the favor.

During the my drive home to Connecticut I will take the time to post a couple entertaining portraits of strange people I meet along the way, so this blog will survive at least that long. When I do get back East, I plan on actively publishing more of my stories, including the much anticipated Nerd Novel I've been working on since I moved here, so keep an eye on this page for exciting links and updates about my progress. That's all I guess.

I love you.
- Max Tyson, King of America

Garage Sale

Come to my garage sale today. 61527 milo avenue.

It...leaves the desert?

'Tis true. I am leaving Bend. Going back to CT. My year abroad has come to an end. I'm...sorry.

BUT I NEED TO ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY, which is a papery green substance still found in relative abundance on the sunrise coast. Maybe someday i'll come back, when Bend is once again part of Oregon, and isn't just the northernmost city in California, and consequently subject to all of California's financial woes.

When that happens, call me.

On a related note, all my junk is for sale. Here is a partial list: http://bend.craigslist.org/gms/1468639926.html

On the Kharma

Kharma is a dirty pirate hooker. I spent so much time complaining that nobody from back home ever came out here to visit a Max Tyson in the desert, that when some people actually did come, I was on my way out on vacation myself. Heading back to CT.

Right at the end of last month LaStinky and Luke made a pit stop in Bend during their roadtrip from CT to Santa Barbara. I was both surprised and impressed that they made that detour. Look at a map. You'll be impressed too. They couldn't stay long, since Miss Marissa, Bre, Andy, and I were preparing for our own trip, via aeroplane, to the sunrise coast, but in the short time they were here, a lot of fun got done.

We drank beers, shot guns, mountain biked, hiked, explored caves, rock climbed, drank more beers, ate treats, and fried our brains at Velvet drinking Bubble Troubles and watching "Onslaught", a truly disturbing visual jump cut sequence of horrifying gore and more horrifying 80's porn, set to music. Imagine GirlTalk, but with movie clips. Movie clips that are gross.

Wednesday morning, Oct. 28th. Lastinky and Mr. Luke Marlow return to the road, and Marissa and I headed for the Redmond Airport. You know what happened next America.

(Note: If you don't know what happened next, don't fret. I'll tell you soon.)

Minitruck III

My new cat makes me want to curb stomp bambi. Marissa Kay works at the humane society animal shelter, so it was only a matter of time before she broke down and brought some of the chinese restaurant surplus home. I've got to hand it to her, she did last almost 5 months. Her explanation to me for why we NEEDED this cat was something along the lines of "He's been at the shelter as long as I have, and he hates everybody and is so unpleasant nobody would ever adopt him, but I have a special bond with him!"

My response was of course "Baby girl, you had me at -he hates everybody." What self respecting American male doesn't want a large, mangy, ancient, preferably one-eyed Tom cat wandering around his property periodically killing racoons, coyotes, and small children? I sure did.

UNFORTUNATELY Marissa Kay is a liar. The damn cat is young, healthy, well-groomed and worst of all super friendly. Like all creatures great and small, he instantly realized that I disliked him, and consequently decided that I was his new best friend. The beast follows me around the house, and refuses to sleep anywhere except lying on my face. Throughout the night he keeps everyone awake by wandering the house purring at a volume somewhere between jet fighter take off and marilyn manson concert. As we speak he's perched on my shoulder like a retarded hairy parrot. He steals my food and stinks up the house. He rubs his poopy butt all over my things. He rubs his poopy butt all over me. He flings kitty litter everywhere when he takes a dump, which he does with alarming frequency. Note: His pooties smell BAD, and he farts LOUD.

The hell beasts' only redeeming quality is that I named him Minitruck III. Even though his name is already Fargo. I pray that a Condor bird swoops into our dining room and takes him away to his rocky eyrie to chew up and regurgitate.

PS I'm on vacation and i'm going to CT soon!
PPS I'm finally done w/CH19 of Nerd Novel.
PPPS I'm fairly certain my halloween costume is going to get me arrested. Just so you know.

On the Space

Would Vampires survive in Outer Space?

Red Hot Beef and Bean Burritos

A couple weekends ago we succeeded in our quest to over-indulge in alcoholic treats. Drew especially. If you have the facebook, I suggest stalking Miss Kay's photo albums and enjoying the one labelled "Drew's Downfall". Don't look at the other albums though. They're sinful.

Long story short the silly child thought he could keep up with me in the whiskey consumption arena. Oh he kept up. And then threw up. And then passed out. I spent the rest of my night removing various articles of clothing and dancing under the disco ball in the dining room to Daft Punk. Business as usual.

Last weekend was good too! Marissa and I met up with some of my friends at Velvet, a bar downtown, conveniently owned by my boss. He's an older guy, probably in his 40's now, and he has two little girls, so whenever he wants to do something naughty, he goes to his bar to do it. This past weekend it was watching Team America: World Police.

Velvet is a trendy place, full of well-dressed beautiful people, so I was tickled pink to be sitting with the owner and my raucous group of friends watching a shitty/horribly innappropriate puppet movie and consuming gobs of free food and drink. I think everybody forgot to pace themselves. Mostly because Miss Kay invited everyone (EVERYONE.) back to our place to play beerpong, and they actually came. I lost at beerpong. Yeah, whatever. Shut up. You go home now.

It updates the blog

A few weekends ago: Labor Day. Max Tyson and Marissa Kay saddled up Minitruck II and went to Coos Bay on the Oregon Coast for a weekend camping trip. It rained. We laughed at seals. Stupid Seals. They're like loud squeeky brown sea turds. We walked on some trails. We watched a movie in a movie theatre. We drove far out of our way to eat "the best pizza ever" in Coquille, Oregon.

It tasted like microwaved Digiorno. I can't really blame them though, I don't think Oregon has ever even seen an Italian, or even a Greek person, or anyone with any known history of making good pizza, and the cuisine has suffered accordingly. The most color i've seen in this state over the past year was contained in a freckle. The girl must have forgotten her Aryan Nation Brand Sunblock that day. (Aryan Nation Brand Sunblock! Blanket your skin in a thousand year Reich of protection!)

A couple weekends ago: Nothing noteworthy occured at this time.

Last weekend: Max Tyson had to return to Connecticut for a family tragedy. Other than that the weekend was nice. That is all I'm going to say about that.

Present day: Drew is back in school, I'm suffering through my job, and Marissa chopped all her hair off. We've decided its high time that we all drink alcoholic beverages until our bodies betray us and we explosively project vomit and feces everywhere. Therefore, we are having a party this Saturday night. You're invited.

I have a headache and you can lick my poopstained underwear.

I'll tell you about my life soon though, I promise. It's got jokes in it.

Wednesday

I had the day off yesterday. Didn't do much. Cleaned the house. Took a break from nerd novel. Made up random video clips instead. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0fiWpe_DsY

On the other Friend/Why you may hate me cont.

Where was I? I think I was telling you about how I was the person who went for a long ride with Molly and Jim, Marissa's stepdad, along the cascade lakes highway last wednesday. It was pretty. And there was a waitress at the Cultus Lake Resort where we ate lunch. She was pretty. And quite forward. Without saying a word she made it quite clear that she would not be adverse to a roll in the hay with a certain young gentleman. Now, as you can imagine, this placed me in an awkward position, seeing as how I was sitting across from my girlfriend's stepdad, and next to one of my girlfriend's best friends at the time, and my girlfriend was not in attendance. I am all for some harmless flirting with a pretty girl, but not in such a judgmental atmosphere. I politefully declined the invitation. On the way home we made the mistake of turning onto south century drive, which is under construction, and ended being 18 miles of ragged wet gravel. When you're on a motorcycle, this is a big deal.

I'm bored with this story. Flashforward to the more recent past. Marissa, Madison, and Molly took off to the coast for the weekend, so I haven't spoken to any of them in a few days. Last I heard their campsite was full, so they were sleeping in a Wal-mart parking lot. nana.

Since I was suddenly free from the onerous burden of a girlfriend for an entire weekend I decided to finnnnnally have some fun. This is where you have my permission to hate me. Friday night after work found me wandering around the old mill in ripped jeans, rolled up capri style, and flip flops, drinking whiskey from a flask and red wine from a nalgene bottle, listening to an outdoor ween (wean?) concert and taking photographs of the sunset colored clouds. What have I become? Upset by this painful introspection I left Drew ogling some ladies at the Greg's Grill fire pit and bicycled home. Yes, I rode a bicycle too.

I redeemed myself slightly after work saturday night. Nick and I met Raszler the BeDaszler at Fox's billiard lounge for some cheap beers and cheaper pool. (It was free, the girl forgot to clock us in on our table). Fox's is not a hippy friendly place. It's somewhat trendy, mostly normal, and an all around a good time. I highly recommend it. On the way home Nick became enraged by a gigantic, muraled, biodiesel spewing hippy bus chugging its way through downtown. Where the beatniks mildly irritate me through their laziness, they throw Nick into a fit. As an outdoor education instructor Nick knows first hand about how the Rainbow People, as he calls them, come into a community and destroy the local wilderness, trashing public land and giving nothing back. His rants were about as colorful as the painted bus he was hurling vulgarities at. It all sounded quite bleak to me.

Today is Sunday, so I don't need to do anything. My plans include nerd noveling and hugification procedures at the weight lifting facility. Without having my young lady in the house I've run out of food and clean clothes. I'll keep you posted.

On the other Friend/Why you may hate me

The past week or so has been exceedingly hectic America. I have been slammed at work; the seasonal nature of our product results in violent fluctuations in business. Understandably there is far less motorcycle selling/fixing going on in say December than there is now in August. At least in this hemisphere. Marissa has been a crabby appleton, having slightly over-extended herself, through no fault of her own, by having both friends and family visit Bend at the same time, all competing equally for her time and affection. As the stoic, non-complaining, gentlemanly, and all around wonderous boyfriend, it has fallen to me to entertain her guests while she is otherwise engaged. In the past few days I have gone out to dinner with her stepdad and his mother, and spent some quality bonding time with her friend Molly, a truly lovely and interesting young woman.

Molly's days have been full of beer drinking, white water rafting, long motorcycle rides through the mountains, and all around good fun. All she had to do to come here was get fired from her job and spend her life savings on a plane ticket. Hint America. This could be you too.

Right now i'm getting ready to hit the pool hall with Nick, but I will update you with curious stories and entertaining anecdotes from my week when I return. I know. I'm excited too.

On the Friend

Marissa Kay had her first friend from CT visit us last weekend, so in the ultimate popularity friendship adventure fun-factor joy contest the score is now solidly 1-0 Marissa, considering the fact that she's been in Oregon 3 months and has already had a friend visit (and another scheduled to fly in next week), and I've been here almost a year and only my sisters and mom have visited, and that's just because they didn't have to pay for the plane tickets.

You dissappoint me. Daily.

We had to make the drive out to Portland after work on Saturday to pick up Marissa's friend, (who's last name is actually Friend) which instantly made me hate him, but then I realized we were picking him up from a mathemagician convention, which instantly made me like him. After fighting with his GPS for a short time we finally escaped from Portland, a well known den of evil, and hit the road back to our little slice of paradise in the high desert.

On sunday the Maximus wrote some nerd novel while Miss Kay and AJ went hiking, and then we wandered downtown for a beer at the brew pub and some people watching, and we finished our evening with a bike ride to the depot for some rock climbing, and cold beers at bro-manor. Against my better judgment I was coerced into joining Marissa and Madison and AJ on an ill-advised nighttime trek to Paulina lake in search of alleged hot springs. We found the lake, but after hiking several miles in the dark, we never found any hot springs. No one bothered to research the trip. If we had, we surely would have realized the springs are IN the lake. We drove home defeated.

Monday I worked. The roomates floated the river. Then we played beer pong for a bit. I excused myself early to go to bed, since I knew I had to work once again the next morning. The others did not go to bed. They had friends over. They drank. In fact I believe they drank 1 million beers. So many beers that at some point later in the evening Miss Marissa got out of bed and wandered through the entire house, out the garage and into the back yard, where she proceeded to pee everywhere. Oh and she was stark naked. And there were people awake in the back yard. Perfect. There's nothing like a dishevelled, belligerent, nude girlfriend terrifying the neighbors to make one's night at brohouse complete.

It's all good in the hood.

I learned something four days ago.

On the Weather

It's hot out.

It's the type of hot where your body automatically shuts down seven of your ten most important internal organs, and you hallucinate like you're packing a horseshoe lip of salvia. The hallucination is always that you're rocking back and forth slowly in a walnut and beechwood rocking chair on the veranda of a southern plantation sipping a tom collins and saying things like "it's hot today" and "It's going to be hot tomorrow" while your bosoms heave magnificently. In this hallucination you're a woman. It's that hot.

On top of the heat, there's lightning today. So much heat and so much lightning that although I do be safely inside the house blogging on the "I will write this blog...in Oregon" blog with your esteemed selves, my nuts have drooped and dragged behind me on their endless quest for relief to such a sweaty rank degree that they've been accidently shut out in the front yard where lightning near misses are singeing my pubies as we speak.

I'm very aroused.

I have 24 mosquito bites.

On the Fests

Working my way to the police tape barrier I elbowed another hippie in the face, the satisfying crunch of bone disintegrating sending a pleasant shock up my arm. Stomping a too slow pair of skinny jean wearing, long haired emo wienie boys I carved myself and my friends a spot at the front of the crowd. We were here to watch the bicycle races.

Over the past week Central Oregon has played host to the Cascade Cycling Classic, a multi-stage pro bike race that during the last several years has drawn the biggest names in form fitting shorts and sore grundles, including everyone's favorite enuch, Lance Armstrong. Last night was the final race of the series, a high speed criterium oval race around the main downtown block. As the final race, with the shortest track, the biggest crowds and the most desperate racers this race promised to have the highest potential for carnage, therefore being a must-see event for the vast majority of the Bend population.

As soon as Miss Kay, Nickmate and I had established our post on the inside edge of the last turn in the oval before the finish line the spotters whistles began blowing shrilly, announcing the arrival of the pedaling horde. Vanguarded by a referee astride a flashing BMW motorcycle they began wizzing around the turn, the collective hiss of a thousand bike tires running over the pavement at speeds above 30mph sounded like nothing so much as the mother of all bee swarms, or perhaps a locust horde of apocalyptic proportions.

Eagerly I watched the tightly packed mass hurtle around the turn, the flashing colors of the crowd making me dizzy. Yet I dared not look away. Right when my hopes began to fade it happened. The best possible occurence occurred. With a twitch and a shimmy one of the central riders bikes wobbled, and went down. At the speeds they were riding, packed as tightly together as they were on the turn, his fall was unavoidably catastrophic.

Oh the violence! Bikes by the untold dozens flew through the air, the shriek of mangled carbon fiber and steel mixing with the sound of bones snapping like stale bread. Tightly dressed bodies skidded along poorly maintained central Oregonian asphault, shedding skin faster than a python special on the national geographic. Unlike the snake show, this skin did not fall off to reveal shiny fresh scales, just pulped muscles and shredded tendons and guts and black stuff. Clapping my hands hard enough to sting I laughed until tears streamed from my eyes, and I might have actually pooped myself a little.

The only thing better than seeing one skinny hippie bicycle rider eat shit is seeing an entire column of them do it, while their adoring hippie fans wail and moan and tear their dreadlocked hair out by the roots. It was a perfect night in Bend.

Or it would have been if that had actually happened. Instead what happened is we battled our way through the smelly patchouli-oiled white bread west-side bend-elites to see the promised carnage, only to watch several successful, very non violent laps by the bikers, whereupon we grew bored and fought our way down the sidewalk to Sidelines sports bar, where we enjoyed a few cold ones and some greasy fried food. Choosing to avoid the crowds upon exiting the bar Marissa and I bombed out to the old mill in our gasoline powered, smog producing motorvehicle to watch a talkie in the theatre. We saw the new Johnny Depp gangster flick. It was alright.