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I tried to catch my breath while begging for a room. I told the two ladies behind the desk that I would pleasure them both for a place to crash that night (hell, I told them I'd do it even if they couldn't get me a room), but they laughed when they looked at me, called me gay, and out of luck. They too were booked for the ni-- Wait a tick! There IS one room, one told me after actually doing her job and looking at her computer screen. Somebody must have just cancelled. I asked the price, they told me $130, and I took it. It was only for one night, but I kind of already planned for that happenstance. I was just so glad I didn't have to sleep in my car after partying all the previous night and then walking all day today.

The room was awesome. Thank you, Hampton Inns! You are my new heroes (right behind all those Asian chicks who do softcore pics and post them on the internet for free. I love all of you). A huge king-sized bed, plenty of space to spread out in, and a bathroom with an actual fan in it that I made good use of that night. It was everything that the shitty hotel that I stayed in in Santa Rosa wasn't (granted at pretty much twice the price). I then ate the rest of my cookies, drank the rest of my Gatorade, watched the end of Family Guy, hated myself for actually watching American Dad, and then crashed.

All in all this was the second most bipolar day I had ever had in my life. Like my day in Scotland all those years ago, what seemed to make the good times even greater was the fact that I had bad times either directly preceding or following them. Heading up to Scotland in the middle of a blizzard in December, I was on a train that got derailed, then abandoned at some godforsaken, snowed-in English train station, bussed around Sherwood Forest, got on another train that took 3 hours to even start moving, and then pulled into Edinburgh station in the pitch of night, having not eaten anything since a crappy sticky bun for breakfast at 7:30 that morning. But, that shitty time was followed by me dancing with some hot Scottish lass in the falling snow right outside the station, getting drunk at the Jury's Inn pub, crashing a family reunion in the next room, getting thrown out of said reunion after getting caught making out with some chick who could have been my distant cousin, having a snowball fight with some teenage punks, and then settling down and catching the last half of The League of Gentlemen on the telly. Then the next morning had a ton of other fun stuff, but you get the idea. The point of this is that you have to STICK with what you want and what you're doing in order to get these kinds of things to happen to you. Yeah, I'm sure I would have had just as memorable a day if I got Smelly Melly to come up and party for a few hours, or if I was able to talk Hot Gimp into blowing off her plane ticket and hanging in the bay are with me... But when both couldn't or wouldn't, I didn't fucking cry in my piss-ant soup! I climbed that goddamn mountain and found a magical party-fest in the clouds, filled with alcohol and bratwursts... Oh my God... The MegaPlayboy is right, isn't he. I DID just hallucinate the whole thing. Wow. The fact that I hallucinated the pictures too shows how powerful my mind is. Someday I'll learn to use it for good.

Oh, and in case you forgot or are stupid, yes, the lack of ANY reasonably rated hotel is why I'm kicking myself for not taking Hot Gimp up on her offer of letting me stay at her hot friends' place. Yes, I am a moron.

Day 5: Monday, September 19th
My final full day in the city on the gay began comfortably. I had gotten a much needed 10 hours of sleep and had a pretty decent hotel breakfast (i.e. the bananas weren't soggy). After having the most retarded "Who's on first" conversation with the two clowns at the front desk regarding the subway system and its proximity to the hotel, I decided to just drive my own car to Fisherman's Warf and do the ultimate tourist thing that day. I had them hold my suitcase for me till late that night, then I was off. Off to hopefully stay busy until about 3 or 4 in the morning when I would then head over to the airport and wait for my 6:30AM flight with all the other retards who booked a trip that early in the day.

Parking at the pier was expensive wherever I looked, so I just took a space in the parking deck right across from Pier 39 itself (for only thirty goddamn dollars for all day). I'm a tourist-trap whore, so the first thing I did was get a ticket for the Rock (Alca-fucking-traz), though the first tour I could get wasn't until that evening, so I figured I had some time to kill. I went for a walk up to Coit Tower, then, after I realized just how nothing it was, I went back to the Pier and threw things at the sunbathing sea lions for a while. NOTE TO FUTURE TOURISTS: Don't feed babies to the sea lions. It's just... Wow, it's messy.

After the bloodbath I started walking through all the gay touristy stores on 39, but then something caught my attention. It was a stage smack-dab in the middle of the outside mall, with a couple dozen benches set out in front of it and a clock that said the next show would be in 5 minutes. I was curious, so I sat down and waited a bit. What I waited for was either the greatest actor and comedian who ever lived, or the most bumbling retard who ever thought he could fall ass-first into show business.... Nah, it was totally the second. This guy was just so... Well, let me explain his act.

This genius of slapstick first came out and told us how he was first going to do a really easy, but cool trick for us early arrivers to "Ooooooo" and "Aaaaaaaaah" over in order to grab passers-by's attention and grab him a bigger audience. Okay, fair enough, I thought. Makes sense. Then he did his trick. He had a long piece of thick rope and he dangled it in front of us. Then he whipped the rope in a circular motion and... And nothing. Some morons in the audience started cheering and clapping thinking this was the "easy, but cool trick" the pitiful performer was originally talking about, but the man wiped the sweat off his face (it wasn't really that warm there) and made a gay joke about how that wasn't it, but it was coming and he was an idiot. Then he whipped the rope again. Nothing. Five more fucking times and FINALLY he hooked the rope around itself into a knot. Then he did the "Ta-Daaaaah!" stance and listened to the crickets chirp. Only after he got goofy again and told us to start making some noise did we actually do so... And it was the most obvious "pity-clapping" I've ever heard... But that was only the beginning... Unfortunately.

Also unfortunately he did gather a larger audience, though it didn't seem to help his performance any. The rest of his show went a little something like this (and I may be getting it wrong, seeing as I tried to give myself brain damage about 5 minutes into his act by having the elderly lady sitting next to me twist my camera strap around my neck till it cut off all circulation). There was fire-eating... Eventually. See, he would lower the torch to his lips and open his mouth wide to consume the flame... But just as he'd get the fire to his mouth he'd sputter and pull it away and make a lame comment like "Oh boy, that's uh, that's hot. I know I can do this though." Then he'd try again. And again. Christ! And again. Finally he put the flame out with his mouth and expected thunderous applause from us. Honestly, he was lucky we didn't tie him up with the rope and light his tiny little beard on fire. Little Timmy Jenkins, the pyro kid who lived across the street from me growing up, could fucking eat a full book of matches on fire. If that psycho could do it ANYBODY can!

Next the performer tried juggling; and he wasn't bad, but he wasn't great. He was about as good as your drunk friend at any college party who always picks up three empty bottles at the end of the night and starts tossing them up in the air with pretty good precession, especially for a lush. This guy though only used bowling pins to juggle with. And he dropped them quite a few times. Liquored Larry never dropped his beer bottles. Never.

After fucking up the bowling pin juggling (and pretending that each screw up was part of his getting stupider-by-the-minute act), he picked up three torches and lit them up (with a really bad rip-off of an Amazing Jonathan gag of trying to keep an audience member's lighter). I was laughing too hard by this point (at, not with) to pay attention as to if he actually DID juggle the torches without incident, or if he did in fact light 5 children and old people on fire in the front row (it could have been an unrelated incident).

After that he made several passioned pleas to us all to help him by placing a donation in either of his two buckets that he had sitting out. One boy was apparently too close to one of the buckets though as the fucker on the stage stopped prepping for his next act, walked right over to the child (he was about 11 or 12), snatched the bucket away from anywhere near him, and slammed it down on the stage about 4 feet farther from him... No explanation; not even an attempted, retarded joke about it. Nervous or asshat? You make the call.

The last trick that I remember him trying (and by "trick" I mean pathetic attempt to screw us out of a few greenbacks) was when this guy had another kid from the audience help him put on a straightjacket. To show his thanks to the boy he gave him a DVD of his act since he apparently HATED the child. That right there should have been enough for the cops to shut the man down: child cruelty.

After the act was over (and we finished thanking the Lord it was so), the guy made a pleading speech about how we should donate as much as we could to him since he was trying to get a better agent who could actually get him on Jay Leno or Letterman (that line got the biggest laugh of the day from crowd, knowing full well the guy was living in a lollipop covered world with dandelion waterfalls and puppy clouds), and actually DO something with his life (that didn't involve sucking on a gun barrel). He seemed really sure that he could make something of his existence, but I just couldn't take that chance. So I created a diversion by telling the wannabe entertainer that I thought I saw a nickel on the ground under the stage, and when he dove head first to look for it I grabbed his tip-buckets and shoved them into the hands of the kid who the "performer" previously had angrily yanked them away from. That little punk ran like the fucking wind! And the rotund David Copperfield just cried and started sucking his thumb when he realized I lied about the nickel.