Which Way is West?

Leaving Miami and the rich white adolescent Spring-Breakers behind in their other-world of yachts and designer clothes and agonising coolness, we stop in Key Largo previously described to me as one large sprawling gas station.  It is, but we are here for one thing only, the Dolphins.  If Key Largo missed out on the aesthetic beauty of the Keys it makes up for it in hospitality and friendliness.  It is in its interest after all.

We have sundowners at Snapper’s which the enthusiastic bell boy had effused about in that wonderful Life Is Great American attitude.  Unfortunately he must have missed the geography elements of his high school education as we were in fact sitting on a deck listening to a Jimmy Buffett clone facing east.  Ho hum this is America and the service is terrific so we’ll have another mojito – there will be another sunset tomorrow.

The other masculine element of our family is doing good deeds in Kathmandu with the school and Mr. Jules is missing him – way too many beavers and not enough testosterone.  He can, however, indulge in his favourite guy sport described by the best writer of all time Dave Barry, as Standard Guy Remote Control Procedure (SGRCP).  This entails the following:  As soon as you enter a hotel room you lie prone on the bed facing what in Starbucks language is the Venti of Tellys and channel hop.  The instant a “commercial” comes on or a programme on anything remotely of female interest such as home decorating, fashion, celebrity news you change.  As the only male on our trip he now has complete Remote Control Dominance without any major complaints from us estrogens who are too busy dominating the bathroom.

Dave Barry, My Hemingway, lives in Florida and writes for the Miami Herald and in today’s column has come up with a novel way to solve Florida’s voting kerfuffle by holding a “texting” primary. It’s a genius plan.   A prime-time TV show, hosted by someone similar to our enthusiastic geographically-challenged bell-boy, tells a few jokes then invites Floridians to text in their votes.  It would all be over in half an hour!  McCain can give his inaugural address, that he wrote a few months back when the children started fighting and Obama and Clinton ”will continue their bitter struggle and reach the point of hostility where the debate will consist entirely of spitting.”

Dave Barry a genius who knows where the sun goes down.

Copyright Jules Ritter March 2008

PS Saw on a T-shirt in Key West:  Vegetarian is an old Indian word for “not good at hunting.”