i keep a diary

October 24, 2003

European Vacation Part 7: First Day in Crete!.

After bidding farewell to the Ross Ogre, we claimed our bags and headed over to the rental agencies to see about getting a car for the week. By the time we took care of bidness and headed outside to locate our car it was 7:15am.

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Here's our car for the week! A Peugeot 307 hatchback. Check out Fatty enjoying the warm Cretan breeze on his face (which was such a nice change after having been in London freezing our asses off not 10 hours ago).
crete ˆ rental car ˆ fatty
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Being that all the road signs were in Greek, we elected Chris to drive. We packed up the car, busted out the map, and started the 80 kilometer drive from Heraklion to Rethymnon.
driving ˆ rental car ˆ chris a ˆ fatty
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I was so stupid-tired at this point my head was buzzing and I could barely keep my eyes open.
tired ˆ me
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We were in bad shape all around.
grant
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We stopped at a gas station to get some water and snacks (and so Fatty could do a quick flex-down in front of the car)...
gas station ˆ rental car ˆ fatty ˆ grant
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...and were totally blown away by the landscape.
crete ˆ grant
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The road we were traveling ran through the mountainous, northern coastline of the island. Out the left window all we could see were mountains with rows of olive trees haphazardly planted. Out the right window were more scraggly mountains that dropped off right into the sea.
crete ˆ driving
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So. Tired. Must. Sleep. Soon.
driving ˆ rental car ˆ chris a
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Our resort, The Leoniki Residence, was about 5 km outside of downtown Rethymnon in a little village called Platanias. The place was amazing. Way nicer than any of us expected. Here's cranky Grant crashing out on the couch while Chris sweet-talked the check-in lady in Greek. We got our into our condo, grunted an approval regarding our accommodations, dropped our shit on the floor and immediately went to sleep.
tired ˆ grant
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Fast forward nine hours! (That's right, all our traveling had finally caught up with us and we were zonked). It's now 6pm and we've all had a nice sleep, gotten showered and dressed. Here's the view of from our hotel lobby as we prepared to check out the beach (across the street and behind that row of buildings) and then find something tasty to eat.
crete
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Chris on the beach!
beach ˆ crete
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Sunset on the strip. We ended up grabbing gyro sandwiches at some tiny, outdoor snack shop right down the street from our place. Our cute waitress, Ludmilla, was Kazakhstani and when she found out we were from New York City, started telling us about how she lived in the New York City area for 18 months as an au pair but after getting transferred to like 5 or 6 different households, her visa application was denied and she had to go back to Kazakhstan.

We asked her to elaborate and she launched into all these totally crazy stories about husbands falling in love with her, kids lying about her beating them, etc. Seriously, if you can think of any bad thing that a nanny can do, she was pretty much accused of doing it. At first we were sympathetic, but by after the 4th or 5th story (each that was delivered as she made visits to our table checking up on us) we decided that there was no way so much bad luck could befall one person in such a short period of time, quickly paid our check and got the hell away from (the girl we'd since nicknamed) "The Babyshaker" as quickly as we could.
crete ˆ sunset
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Right after eating, we decided to do grab some groceries for the condo. (If you take our collective will-power and combined it, it would be equivalent to the will power of a cranky six year-old with ADD. Therefore, grocery shopping is an event we recognize can only be undertaken upon full stomachs!). Right when we walked into the store, we quickly got distracted by absolutely amazing rack of "SOUVENIR FROM GREECE" buttons. Here's just a few of our faves: Grant holds up "Suck My Bell End" (for all y'all not familiar with this charming British colloquialism, a "bell end" is the head, or "glans" of the penis).
wtf ˆ grant
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Chris (being Greek) demonstrates the proper way to wear this "Can I Lick Your Clit?" souvenir from Greece.
tongue ˆ wtf ˆ chris a
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And then, always a big hit with the ladies, there's the incredible "Show Us Yer PISS FLAPS" SOUVENIR FROM GREECE button. Seriously, if you're having a difficult time meeting people at parties, you need to get yourself one of these buttons. It's a no-fail conversation starter!

We actually purchased all three of these buttons in hopes that the person who woke up one morning and thought to themselves, "Hey! Wouldn't THAT make a GREAT souvenir button?" has since become a rich man.
point ˆ wtf ˆ grant
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After putting we put the groceries away, I laid down to take a quick nap before we headed out for the night and woke up just in time to thwart Grant's plans to seriously brain me. He was leaning in to get better sack-to-face proximity, saw that I was waking up and fired off this creepy pic in a panic as he realized I was just about to clobber him in the nuts. (And by the way, what's up with your balls dude? You may have almost brained me but at least my new nickname isn't "Wally Weirdnuts").
brained ˆ me
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Around midnight, we finally got motivated enough to all hop into the car and drive into downtown Rethymnon. We sat at an outdoor cafe right on the water, had some coffee and chocolate cake, then around 1am we started roaming the streets looking for some interesting bars or clubs to hit.
crete ˆ chris a ˆ grant ˆ me
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One of the first things we noticed: apparently Rethymnon has specifically designated "pedophilia" areas. Progressive!
best ˆ pedo ˆ sign ˆ thumbs up ˆ grant
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Buddha Cafe, the first place we popped into, was booming. But as we'd been told, we'd arrived in Crete about a week past the end of the "tourist season" and excluding a few people that we managed to pick out as fellow travelers, 98% of the people there were Cretan (the photo above represents the one, small clique of foreigners we saw out that night).

So concerning the locals, the first thing you should know is that Cretan women are among the prettiest I've ever seen in the world. Seriously, we were blown away. Here's the breakdown: 80% of them are drop dead gorgeous. 10% of them are just regular gorgeous. And the remaining 10% are maybe a little funny in the face, but they've still got ridiculous bums. Which brings me to point number two: 100% of Cretan girls have badonkadonk, J-Lo, pornstar asses. When viewed from the side, all of their bums look like the letter C. We nearly lost our tiny minds. We were like how could we not have heard about the asses here? Which brings me to the last point about Cretan girls: 100% of them wanted to have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FOUR OF US.

Chris talked to some of the local boys in Greek and then he explained to us that because Rethymnon is a tourism town, it's apparently taboo for the local girls to be interested in visiting boys because all the local boys will think she is a slut and won't want anything to do with her. *sniffle*

I Keep A Diary Productions proudly presents a new movie soon to be sweeping theaters everywhere: I DANCE ALONE! Starring:
bar ˆ crete ˆ crowd
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Grant "Wally Weirdnuts" Stoddard!
crowd ˆ point ˆ grant
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Brian "I want to dance with somebody" Battjer!
crete ˆ crowd ˆ me
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Chris "The Greek" Apostalou...
crete ˆ chris a
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... and of course, David "The Fatty" Fateman!
fatty
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Here we are, four dudes surrounded by nothing but totally hot women from a Greek island who want to have NOTHING TO DO WITH US. Liberia's got nothing on us, THIS is hell on earth.
chris a ˆ fatty ˆ grant ˆ me
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With no girls in sight, here's Grant blatantly busted leering at me. So gay!
grant ˆ me
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With our hopes of banging tons of hot, slutty Greek girls utterly shattered, we moved on to another club (this one called Arabia) hoping to find some hot, slutty girls on vacation from elsewhere. Instead we were met with more hot Greek-girl indifference.
crete ˆ laser
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But hey, at least the new place had lasers.
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Woooo! Lasers!
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After we were done with the laser show, he headed back to the streets to look for something fun to do. Having totally given up on any of us scoring some "Haha" for the night, we decided to do what we do best: Take. Stupid. Pictures. Yeah! Here's Grant doing his first DLR-Kick (That's David Lee Roth) on (off?) Cretan soil.
dlr kick ˆ jump ˆ grant
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Chris opted for the old "Sure is windy here in Crete!" trick by hanging horizontally from the "Child Molester Zone" sign pole we'd seen earlier.
pedo ˆ sign ˆ windy ˆ chris a ˆ me
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Bonus close-up! Still going (albeit slighly more red-faced)! Chris can hold himself like that for like 10 minutes. It's insane.
best ˆ windy ˆ chris a
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After a quick lesson from Chris, Grant wowed us all with his ability to do the "It's Windy!" trick!
windy ˆ chris a ˆ grant ˆ me
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Lacking both the lower-body flexibility to execute a proper DLR kick and the upper-body strength (believe it or not!) to hold myself horizontal from the signpost long enough for someone to take a picture of it, I had to resort to the really lame "Look at me I'm hanging from a window" pose. Booooo-ring!
climb ˆ me
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Not wanting to make me feel bad, Chris was quick to throw down with a quick "See, not only pussies have to hang from window?" show of solidarity. What a fuggin guy, eh?
climb ˆ chris a ˆ grant ˆ me
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After our quick half-time show, we decided to try our luck in one more bar. Upon returning from the bathroom upstairs, Fatty actually managed to capture with his camera the Force Field that was physically preventing all girls from seeing us (nevermind actually letting them get close enough to dance with us). Once he showed us this pic, we knew we'd better just call it a night.
photoshop ˆ chris a ˆ grant ˆ me
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On the way back to the car a little after 3am, we found another sidewalk snack shop and decided to get something to eat. We all ended up ordering the Cretan equivalent of (my favorite bo-bo NYC food) the infamous Rosario's "Frankie and Cheese." (special shout out to the Crowley brothers, Dens & J Crowley, who have both frequently use their web pages to expound upon the most excellent deliciousness of this culinary wonder of the Lower East Side)
crete ˆ chris a ˆ fatty ˆ grant ˆ me
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Greek for "Tasty Pigs???"
pig ˆ sign ˆ wtf
All the girls walking by us on the street were wearing ridiculously tight pants (to showcase their bums) A great side effect was that half of them all had these totally obscene cameltoes in the front. At one point, a girl walked by our table with such a big, visible mooseknuckle an atypically crude Fatty exclaimed "Oh my god! Look! It's so big it looks like she's got a pair of nuts in her pants!" He then performend an on-camera demonstration of how he'd like to "nuzzle all of their Greek bunches."
video ˆ fatty
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On the car ride back to our resort, Grant suddenly started yelling "PULL OVER! PULL OVER!" I freaked out, thinking I had accidentally clipped a Cretan nun or something, screeched to a halt only to have Grant point excitedly out his window and say "Look dude, it's my store. It's called "Grant!" See? We totally gotta get a picture." (The best part of this picture, if you look carefully, you'll notice Grant is using both hands to point to himself. Hahah).
sign ˆ grant
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Ok. So check it: We're a few blocks from our resort and we suddenly notice a sign that wasn't lit-up earlier in the night. "Anyone object to seeing an, ummmm, Live Show?" I asked the car. No one seemed to mind, so I pulled into the parking lot. After seeing what the regular local girls' asses looked like, we couldn't wait to see the asses on the local stripper girls!

We rushed inside like giddy morons only to be confounded by an empty stage (complete with empty stripper-pole in the middle) next to a bar where a few older Greek man sat nursing drinks. We decided to sit down at the group of couches next to the stage and have a drink hoping things would pick up. No sooner had our bums touched the faux-leather of the overstuffed stripper-couches, did four girls simultaneously appear on our laps out of NOWHERE! Seriously. If you told me that they dropped from ropes out of secret trap doors inthe ceiling, I'd believe you. It was insane.

After giving us a moment to compose ourselves, the girls introduced themselves. Upon hearing their names, it became apparent that these weren't local girls. In fact, they all were from the former Soviet Union (at which point we started frantically looking around to make sure we weren't about to get Shanghaied by their ringleader, The Babyshaker!).

The girls suggested (more with gestural pantomiming than actual words) that we buy ourselves, and them, a round of drinks. We obliged and then watched the girls toss them down like sailors and ask (mime) for another. While Chris and I exchanged awkward glances, Fatty and Grants' "strippers" somehow managed to pry them away from the group and persuaded them to fork over more Euros for private dances at another cluster of couches a few yards away. Chris and I held our girls at bay and tried to make polite conversation (while at the same time trying to keep an eye on Grant and Fatty to make sure they didn't get their kidneys stolen). The two girls we were with literally didn't speak any English (or Greek for that matter). After learning their names and their respective countries, Chris took a stab at starting a conversation:

Chris to his Stripper: "Soooooo! You ever been to the States?"
Chris' Stripper (excitedly): "Ah! You wanta the sex? €100 Euros!"
At which point we realized, "Hey! Wait a minute! This place isn't a stripclub!" We started giving Grant and Fatty (who at this point were both getting gouged another €20 each for their 2nd lapdances) the frantic "Let's get the fuck out of here!" nod to the door and got up to leave.
sign ˆ stripper
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Live Show gets the thumbsdown! Here's us in the parking lot trying to assess the financial damage. Our four Russian "strippers" managed to fleece the four of us for a grand total of €120 in less than 20 minutes! And we still didn't manage to see any heines! We hopped in the car to drive the remaing 1/4 mile back to our resort, and in the moment of silence after we were finished laughing hysterically at what had just happened we all heard Grant say quietly to himself: "Hmmmmm. A hundred Euros, eh?" Hahahahaha.
best ˆ crete ˆ sign ˆ stripper ˆ thumbs down ˆ chris a ˆ fatty ˆ grant ˆ me
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So at 5:45am, we're all in the condo's living room still laughing about "Live Show" and we see all these flashes coming from the bedroom. We raced in to find Grant taking pictures of himself in his underwear in the mirror! We were like "What are you doing?" Grant: "Taking pictures of myself in my new underwear." Us: "Why?" Grant: "So I can see what I look like in them!" Us: "Yeah dude, but it's a mirror! Can't you already see what you look like in them?" Grant: (Says nothing. Looks at the floor).
mirror ˆ undies ˆ grant
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And just because I know Grant's got so many fans out there, here's the pic that Fatty took of him when we ran into the room to see what he was doing. Oh, and before I forget, later that night I had just fallen asleep when Grant's chuckling from the bed next to mine woke me up.

Me: "What's so funny?"
Grant: "Oh, I was just thinking about what I'm going to say to Valencia next time I see her."
Me: "Valencia?"
Grant: "Valencia. That was my girl's name at Live Show."
Me: "Oh, right. Valencia. Well, what are going to say?"
Grant (pretending to have a conversation with Valencia): "Oh, hi Valencia! Yes, It's nice to see you again too! Me? Oh, I'm fine. Yes, yes, just great. What about you? How are you doing? Oh, you're fine too? That's wonderful! What's that, Valencia? Would I care for a drink? No thanks, I'm not thirsty tonight, but... [loooooooong pause] ...how about you jerk me off for thirty Euros?"

Holy shit, I laughed so hard I almost had a heart attack. Thus ended our first day in Crete. Nighty-night!
manties ˆ undies ˆ grant