Excerpt: Later, Skater: On Tour

Friday, June 5, 2009
5:03AM (Los Angeles Time)
9:03PM (Tokyo Time)

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Casper,

Connexus ain't the only one that's not really that available in this country. Ha! Ha! Hello and welcome to Tokyo, Japan. Konnichiwa! More like konnichiwhaaaaa because we are all so dead tired. While there was plenty of time to get some rest on the eleven hour flight over here, it was really hard for many of us to do so.

I had the added joy of having David mess with me off and on the entire time. First, when we're back in Los Angeles he tells the security screener she better check my ID to make sure my middle name wasn't Mohammad. It was funny until she made me take out my lip ring, no doubt in retrobution for his racist joke.

On the plane, I realized I really ought to have ate something because right away once we were airborn, my stomach started to do summersaults. Sadly the pretty but completely chilly flight attendant ladies said that I would have to wait. They cut costs and extra snacks was one of the first things to go. Ugh.

David didn't sit next to me right away. In fact, I had a row almost to myself. There was this white bald guy with glasses buried nose deep in a Patricia Cromwell novel by the window. I guess I figured out the second time people read: When they have to do book reports and when they are on long ass plane trips across the fucking largest ocean in the world!
Anyway, eventually David got bored trying to flirt with Japanese girls who giggled at him, but certainly didn't appreciate him putting hands on their bare legs. They looked like they were wearing school uniforms, but considering it's the middle of summer, that doesn't seem right. Summer school or maybe a summer school trip perhaps? I dunno, I've only been in this country for barely an hour, so I'm sure things work way differently here. Though, the hotel seems normal enough.

I was going to type some of this back on the plane, but David ate up all the battery power insisting we watch a movie called Lords of Dogtown. I have to admit it was tons better than some of the absolute shit they were showing on the plane. The American movie channel had Dragonball. The Japanese movie channel was just plain boring. I think it was a horror film because every time I clicked past it, there were pools of blood and people staring at a dead body on the ground. But no one was doing anything about it! Ha! Ha!

Lords of Dogtown is about skaters, so at least David had good taste in movie selections. We watched it on this website where people upload movies and everyone can watch them for free. It's pretty neat, but I do feel a little guilty sometimes going there.

David didn't make me feel any better, pointing out how much better skaters the boys in the movie were compared to my last event. I rolled my eyes, but didn't say anything.

In fact, I didn't let him get to me, even though he kept picking on me. That is, until he demanded the guy reading the books to pull down the shade so he could get some sleep. I didn't know what his problem was really. Why would he start being so abusive? I thought part of it could just be he was as nervous as the rest of us to be leaving the country. Part of me thought it was because he was trying new tactics to get what he wanted from me. Part of me thought it was just a side effect of the hormone.

I've been thinking alot about that night, Casper. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but considering how terrible I did last time, and how... just unsettled I already feel about being here in Japan, I can't help but think it may help.

It's a single elimination on Sunday, then we have a week before we do it again the following Sunday where two will be cut. So three people are going to not make it out of Japan alive. Ha! Ha! Samauri swords to the back of their skulls for the losers!

No, not really. But it does mean in order to get to go to Korea and the next leg of the Pump Tour, I have to get into the top ten. And to get into the top ten I absolutely have to focus on fundementals and not let all this stuff get to me. As difficult as that sounds, I know I can do it.

But the question really is, do I want to risk doing it without David's help.