Afghanistan ’08- Day One
Actually, day one was mostly spent on (or waiting for) planes. I flew from LA to NY then transferred to a flight from NY to Frankfurt with ridiculously small seats. My seating companion on the latter flight was a wannabe Borat who liked to chat. Luckily, the only open seat on the flight happened to be next to his buddy so he spent most of the flight there, giving me some room to stretch out. He returned toward the end and said, “I like make present for beautiful woooman” and gave me a box of chocolates. I thought it was kind of strange that he happened to have an extra box of chocolates on him, even more strange when he said he had four more boxes. Apparently Borat’s a playa (as in “player,” not a Spanish beach).
From Frankfurt we (the other comic and I) rode about an hour to Ramstein AFB, which is where I spent a night when I toured the Balkans a few years ago. Somehow on the last trip I must have missed the fact that the German word for “exit” is “ahsfart” so every time I passed an “ahsfart” sign I couldn’t help but giggle. I’m so immature.
The other comic’s name is Ira Proctor and we spent the morning trying to catch a flight to Afghanistan. It kept getting delayed and in the afternoon they finally told us to come back at 3 am so we checked into hotel rooms and got some sleep. Now we’re just waiting to see if we’ll get on that flight. Hopefully we will and the next time you’ll hear from me I’ll be in Afghanistan. And hopefully it won’t be on a grainy video with me holding that day’s newspaper.
Ok, time for me to ahsfart.
Dude, please tell me they did not send a Jew to Afghanistan and you’re traveling with him. Did you see A Mighty Heart? I’m hoping his parents just had bad taste in names and thus named him Ira, the name of an 86 year old man.
The booker mentioned that there have been a few occasions when comics’ luggage got lost in Germany- and they happened to be comics with Jewish names. I like to hope that’s just an unfortunate coincidence. But let’s face it, when traveling between America, Europe and the Middle East almost any name can present a problem in one location or another.