“Be very quiet, girls,” Doc told us.
“Do you think he just got off the elliptical?” Sue whispered. “Is that why he’s so tired?”
We were all standing up in the jeep taking pictures, Rex included.
“Has this ever happened before?” Rex asked Doc, who confirmed this was indeed a first. There was a little tiny gift shop to the right of the gym, and a woman opened the door quickly to hang a sign that said CLOSED. Then the lion woke up.
If you look closely, you can see the gym equipment in the background. The best excuse ever to blow off working out.
As it turns out, our picture taking wasn’t what woke the lion up. We heard loud squeals and roaring behind us, and when Doc spun the jeep around we saw two lions killing an impala. Before we could blink, eight more showed up, including our friend from the bridge.
Three other safari jeeps pulled up and shut their engines down. Everyone had their cameras out and were taking one shot after another of what none of us could believe we were all witnessing… while I tried to document the scene with my BlackBerry. Then we heard the trumpeting of an elephant and looked in the other direction to see this mama rounding the corner.
The lions started to scatter, and I finally saw what I had been longing to see since arriving in Africa: an elephant charging toward me.
When a few of the lions stuck around to finish off the impala, the elephant picked up speed and was in full stampede, waving its trunk around and knocking down a tree. It was fucking amazing.
This was a spectacular thing to see, and the fact that it happened on our very last day of safari made me feel like something was finally going right in my life. Even Rex’s jaw was on the floor. He told us this was only his third live kill in eight years. We sat there stunned for almost an hour after the elephant had roamed the area making sure she had cleared out all the lions from camp. Elephants truly are the kings of the jungle, and I had never felt closer to Aretha Franklin in my life, and I didn’t want to pay homage to her without paying my respects.
We left later that day. Sue and Hannah were headed back home to LA. Rex was headed to visit his family somewhere in South Africa, and Shelly and I were off to the Bahamas to visit some friends and reacclimate to life above the equator.
The only disappointing thing about Africa was that I did not have sex. I deal with the memory of that rejection every day. Well, every other day.
Respect.
A year later Rex came to Los Angeles and visited us, and this is him signing his rights away for me to use his real name in this book. He and Lilly are still together and very happy. Lilly, I apologize for throwing myself at your boyfriend.
If you’d like to go on an adventure with Rex, this is his business card. Don’t expect penetration.
TRAVEL ETIQUETTE
If you are traveling with a male companion for the first time, always bring your phone to the bathroom. If you go to the bathroom and happen to have an explosion, you can always blame it on a funny ringtone.
When renting a car from a public rental service, do not hit any other cars while still in the rental lot, even if you’re trying to be funny. It’s not worth it.
Listening to NPR does not make you smart. Mentioning that you listen to NPR actually makes you dumber.
When dealing with foreigners, pretend you are Canadian.
When dealing with Canadians, pretend you are Armenian.
When dealing with Armenians, run.
It’s impressive to know the difference between kilometers and miles, or Celsius and Fahrenheit, but it’s not necessary or really even helpful.
If you don’t know how to swim, don’t tell people.
It isn’t acceptable to paddleboard in a hotel pool when other guests are swimming.
Don’t talk to people about camping.
Don’t try to show off when you’re skiing.
Do not take ecstasy on a military transport to Guantanamo Bay, even if you are doing some charity work as part of a USO tour. It’s disrespectful to the troops and to the prisoners.
CHAPTER 6
THE BAHAMAS
I pride myself on having a lot of elderly friends. Two of the main liners who comprise that constituency are a Jewish couple called Shmirving and Shmelly Shmazoff. I became friends with Shmirving, because he found out through one of his subordinates that I was an asshole, and like any older Jew who relishes the abuse of a younger woman with large breasts, he wanted in on the action.
Shmirving is a big figure in the music industry and not a very big figure in person; he was an inch taller than Chuy, but that was prior to Chuy having his legs surgically extended. He is a white, sixty-something Jewish nugget who basically looks like a blond raisin. I’m not sure exactly what he does (I’m not sure exactly of what I even do) but he represents—in some capacity—everyone from the Eagles to Ryan Seacrest to Christina Aguilera.
Shmirving was a board member of Ticketmaster, which runs mostly everything involving live events, including Live Nation, the promoter that handles all of my stand-up tours.
There is a hairy gorilla in charge of the comedy division at Live Nation who goes by the name of Geof Wills. I make it my business to harass Geof on a fairly regular basis, either for having parents who spelled his name the wrong way, or by putting photos of his back on my television show to illustrate the benefits of electrolysis. In Geof ’s case, there were none; his hair grew back thicker and sadder. It’s unfair that men who have the hairiest backs and the weakest bodies have the least amount of hair on their head.
This is the nugget on his private plane inhaling deli meat, forcing his poor little enlarged heart into overdrive.
Why transplanting back hair onto the top of a man’s head isn’t a commonly practiced procedure is mind-boggling. Why pubic hair transplants is not an additional option for those who lose their hair prematurely is even more mind-boggling. I’ve never met a man who didn’t have some pubic hair to spare, and there’s no reason obvious to me as to why it shouldn’t be used on a man’s head to give him back the confidence he lost when his hair fell out.
Geof and I in my office getting ready to put him on the show and reveal to the world that electrolysis doesn’t work for everyone.
Not to sound like a proctologist, but why shouldn’t I take the lead in informing the public about what can be not only an important innovation but a full-blown game changer. The only potential hiccup I can foresee is if one’s hair is straight or blond, forcing one to mix in tufts of dark pubic hair.
So maybe not everyone is a candidate, but redheads certainly are. The idea of a balding redhead finding any other hair match superior to the one surrounding his penis region is not only improbable, it’s unheard of.
Take, for example, a redhead who doesn’t have the typical curly, bright orangey-red hair on his head but the weaker, lighter orange instead, and is considered a redhead only because no one bothered to come up with the term “orange head.” Even the weakest of species deserves an identity. As if orange heads haven’t been through enough, they have to go through life with thinning hair from practically the time they’re born until they’re wiped clean by age thirty. Even these men are candidates because they can still take their curly pubic hair, flat-iron it, and install it into their head. There are keratin straightening procedures and Brazilian straightening procedures that can take down the coarseness and the curl from any pubic hair and make it look like head hair. And if the candidate’s pubic hair grows straight, which is fairly uncommon and also sorrowful, they get the added bonus of saving the money they had set aside for the hair-straightening keratin treatment. Bottom line: this is the kind of thing hair scientists should be exploring, and I’m not going to back down until I see some movement in the pubic community.