1.29.2009

Nuclear Jellyfish ON SALE NOW!

Come on people.

You know you want to.

Buy. The. Book.

It feels good to be bad, and in this case it's so, so easy to misbehave.

Buy Nuclear Jellyfish!

(Thanks y'all.)

1.26.2009

NUCLEAR JELLYFISH ON SALE TOMORROW!

Haven't clicked through to read about the book yet? Haven't been reading my blog posts? Have been living in some state other than Florida for the last month? Tim has pulled together a short video in which he describes Nuclear Jellyfish for those of you who can't absorb anything unless it's spoon-fed via a TV or video screen. No offense.

"We Have To Meet Again"

More tips of the day... left over from yesteray!

Tip Three: Dealing with loud drunks in the next room who stumble in after closing time and disturb your sleep: At daybreak, start calling their room every fifteen minutes. Hangovers will take it from there.

Tip Four: Best travel tool: those twelve-foot-long telescoping letter-grabbers that hospitality employees use to change messages on tall marquees. Got one in my trunk. Guests at the last place I stayed woke up this morning to: “Welcome Hotel Emergency Delousing Team.” The fun ship never docks!

Closing word for the day: Postcards! Don’t forget about the loved ones back home who missed the love-cutoff to come with you. And don’t be trite by purchasing the usual cards from spinning metal racks. Instead, schedule a virtual postcard. What’s that, you ask? I’ll tell you! E-mail those second-tier relatives with a preordained time and Internet site. Then, when they log in, they’ll find one of the many live Web cams positioned around the state. And they’ll see you standing in streaming-video splendor, holding up a personalized greeting sign. The key is finding the right cam. The long-range skyline jobs atop Doppler radar towers aren’t good unless you want to hold up a billboard. But there are plenty others: Sloppy Joe’s, the Cocowalk and Pier 60. Let’s pull one up now! Here’s the sidewalk cam from A1A in Fort Lauderdale, showing happy visitors walking the beach and cool convertibles in the background cruising the strip and . . . hold it, what’s this?

A man in a rumpled fedora has stepped into my view and is holding up a sign:
Serge, We Have To Meet Again.

1.25.2009

So much to tell! So little time!

Star date 937.473.

Tip One: Not a tip, just weird shit I saw today. From the only-in-Florida file: a hooker with a walker on the side of U.S. 1. At some point your heart just isn’t in it anymore.

Tip Two: Capture the memories! You can never have enough extra tapes for home movies, especially around Coleman. I ran out yesterday and discovered Coleman had been using my camcorder to bootleg in-room movies off the TV. I said, Coleman, you can make a perfect copy with the VCR on top of the TV. But he said “the street” won’t respect you.

1.24.2009

Elks and Optimists

Here’s another city line, Elks and Optimists thrilled to see me. But it all comes back to Mahoney and sleepwalking. One minute I’m closing my eyes on the pillow, the next I’m standing over Coleman. With a gun no less! That’s what really scares me. What could I have been thinking? Hope it wasn’t a murder-suicide. I don’t feel suicidal, but who knows what’s going on in my subconscious? I mean, yeah, I’ve given a lot of thought to suicide. Who hasn’t? But it’s within the normal psychological range where everyone else thinks about it on a daily basis, like, remember to pick up some milk at the store and take the trash down to the curb and don’t forget not to blow your brains out. It would be totally against my nature—unless Mahoney’s onto something. What if he and my subconscious know something I don’t? Maybe my pre-amphibian brain sees fate just around the corner, and it would be better to end it myself instead of what they have in mind. Then it would only be logical to take Coleman out first. Because if I’m gone, who would handle his care and feeding? At that point, it would be an airtight mercy killing. Actually, it would be at any time. But I’m not one to play God. I have from time to time, but only when God’s running late. I don’t schedule the killing urge. Society does, like when I buy a new DVD that won’t let me skip through the ads for other DVDs. It’s not even a rental; I own the goddamn thing, and then I have to sit through a fucking Interpol warning until I’m ready to grab the next European I see and shove a bumbershoot up his ass. Hmmm, maybe I should warn Coleman. He could be in great danger. Tell him before he goes to sleep to surround his bed with peanut shells or bubble wrap. No, he sleeps too soundly to hear me. What about mousetraps? No, that would hurt too much. Dang, missed an exit. Isn’t it odd how you can hear your own voice inside your head? My mouth will be completely shut, like now, and I’m hearing these words perfectly pronounced. I can even turn up the VOLUME FOR EMPHASIS. Or yell: AHHHH! AHHH! Yet, outside my head, perfectly quiet. Or like when you’re reading a book and hear the character talking inside your noggin with a voice you give him. Hey, I just thought of something: If it’s internal dialogue in the book, is it doubled for the reader? You know: a character talking inside his brain, who’s also talking inside your brain. Is that why I usually get an echo, echo, echo? What about you, you, you? Missed another exit. Then there are the other voices in my head: Mahoney, regretfully, and God, who’s mainly silent, and the devil, who sounds like Henry Kissinger: “Serge, do it, do it, do it. You won’t get caught. Do it. And while you’re at it, kill Coleman.” I sure hope I’m not planning a murder-suicide . . . Uh-oh, Coleman’s staring at me . . .

1.23.2009

Nice Shelf!

Come on people, how do you think I got so smart? Certainly not by listening to my teachers. I read--a lot. Books, magazines, newspapers. and, because of my super-sized brain, I retain it all. But Tim knows me well--even though I like to streamline my possessions so I can move about the state lightly, there are some books I just won't ever get rid of. Once again, the resourceful Dorsey has broke into my sacred lair to capture on video more of my prized Florida-related possessions.

I'm sad, I pee a lot, I can't nod off....

Star date 574.385

I’m writing this entry in my mind while driving for efficient time management. But there should be no problem transcribing this tonight back at the hotel because I have an excellent memory. Or at least used to. Been forgetting things lately, like at The Last Resort Bar and Dodgertown. Is my mind slipping? Here I am again, tooling down my beloved Florida on another fabulous morning, exactly what I love to do most in the world, watching scenery go by: palmettos, petticoat palms, some guy living in a wheelless Airstream, roadwork ahead, another town, another sign at the city limits telling me the Kiwanis and Moose Lodge are glad I’m here, old billboards, freshsqueezed orange juice, pecan logs, Jesus knows what’s ailin’ me, that cop pulling over a speeder with a pair of checkered flags flapping from the windows of his sports car. Ain’t life wacky? So why aren’t I happy? Look at Coleman over there, blissfully content. Maybe I should do drugs. And how do I explain that nagging feeling I’ve been having lately that won’t go away? What if Mahoney’s right? Or what if it’s all a trick? Of course! He’s trying to rattle me into a fatal mistake by getting inside my head. Well, good luck Mahoney! But how do I explain the sleepwalking? I’ve never done that before. And I’m not even taking those new medications from the TV commercials that CNN says have side effects of people sleepwalking to the fridge at night or waking up behind the wheel of a car going seventy. What’s happening to our republic? We used to be tougher than that. But today the pharmaceutical companies encourage us to whine like babies and take a bunch of pills that aren’t supposed to be handled by women who are pregnant or may become pregnant: My bad cholesterol’s too high, my good cholesterol’s too low, sometimes I’m sad, I pee a lot, I can’t nod off, my legs are restless, my acid refluxes, diarrhea interrupts my active lifestyle, uninvited relatives show up right after I’ve taken a pill to bang my wife, which is why we’re sitting in separate bathtubs on a bluff overlooking a cornfield. But they never consult me. The problem’s obvious; everyone’s too tired to fuck from lugging bathtubs. I know what you’re thinking: Coleman and I have sat in our share of hilltop tubs, but that’s something else. I just see things on TV and want to participate in my times. Like right now I’m applying something directly to my forehead. Had to buy a new stick of that stuff because I wasn’t about to put it back on my forehead after catching Coleman rubbing it on his dick. I said, ‘Coleman, why are you rubbing that on your dick?’ He said, ‘What have I got to lose?’ What indeed.

1.22.2009

Scrapbooking sucks!! But I take a shitload of pictures....

PHOTOS!! PICTURES!! .....of FLORIDA!!

Wanna see the worst of the best from my Nuclear Jellyfish roadtrip with Coleman? You have to do the notorious "CLICK HERE."

I'm getting flashbacks.... and not the Coleman kind

Star date 574.385.

Holy Cow! How could I have forgotten? A whole bunch of stuff happened before this. It all started three weeks ago. I knew I had a feeling something wasn’t kosher—because it wasn’t! Turns out Mahoney’s right about my memory. Here I am bopping along, seeing this chain of events a certain way. But then I just recalled all this other earlier jazz that explains everything! Sorry about that. My mind tends to jump around a bit. Usually it’s from subject to subject. But sometimes it hops around in time. And it can be especially challenging if the time dislocation is fractured, like when part of me ended up in the Bronze Age, and another part in a rerun of She’s the Sheriff. And I’m congratulating these bearded dudes on their spears and helmets, but they just point and say, “Who’s that?” And I say, “She’s the sheriff.” And time’s definitely tricky if you get pulled over by a cop who never studied Einstein. This was years ago, before they wanted to question me for all those, well, you know. Anyway, the officer is writing me a ticket, saying I ran a red light and was speeding. I said, Exactly! That’s why it’s only fair you let me off with a warning. I explained that matter and energy bend the universe, and the closer an object gets to the speed of light, the more time slows down. So by speeding, I was actually trying to obey the law, accelerating in order to stretch out the yellow light. Of course, for it to work, you need to be traveling 186,000 miles a second, and I was driving an old car. Wouldn’t listen. Cost me $200. I digress again. See what I mean? But I think I’ve got this memory glitch ironed out: Everything that’s happened up to now on this trip—let’s call it Part One. And all the crazy stuff I just remembered that went on three weeks before, we’ll call Part Two, which is a superlong flashback that takes place entirely before Part One. Then, when we’re back up to speed, we’ll return to the present in Part Three. Got it? Comprende? . . . Good, because that cop wouldn’t be able to. I’m still pissed. But no sense dwelling on the past. Time’s a-wastin’. Tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

1.21.2009

News from Serge World! and To the Mailbag!

When my collected travel knowledge is finally published as a bestselling book, I’ve decided to simultaneously release a special children’s edition. It’s almost completely finished. I’ve only got the first page, but that’s the hardest part. It’s called Shrimp Boat Surprise. Coleman asked what the title means, and I said life is like traveling on one big, happy shrimp boat. He asked what the surprise was, and I said you grow up and learn that life bones you up the ass ten ways to Tuesday. He started reading what I’d written and asked if a children’s book should have the word motherfucker eight times on the first page. I said, absolutely. They’re little kids after all. If you want a lesson to stick, you have to hammer it home through repetition.

To the Mailbag!
Let’s see what’s here . . . “Mahoney, Mahoney, Mahoney, Cialis soft-tabs, Mahoney, Mahoney, Tiny size is killing your woman’s interest, Mahoney, Mahoney, Cialis, Irish Lottery, Mahoney . . . I know I shouldn’t open this, but the curiosity is killing me . . .

1.20.2009

Shell No-Pest Strip

Tip #3: What ever happened to the Shell No-Pest Strip? Not a tip, just been thinking about it a lot lately. I’d kill to have sat in on the corporate meeting that gave birth to that feel-good product. “What would be an irresistible status symbol to hang over the dining room table?” “I know: a box full of dead flies on a sticky piece of cardboard.”

1.19.2009

Mini bar workaround

Tip #2: Refilling the mini bar. The next morning I tell Coleman he racked up a three-hundred-dollar mini-bar tab. He says there must be some mistake. I say, it’s simple economics. Mortgage companies build into their rates for potential inflation. Mini bars build in for a cataclysmic meteor strike. So we make a supply run. Liquor miniatures are a snap, but mixers are the real killer. Hotels know we’re refilling the mini bars, so they deliberately use short, fat eight-ounce soda bottles that you can’t get anywhere except other hotels. Solution: Fish empties out of the trash and refill with 99-cent generic two-liter soda bottles. Screw the caps on tight and hide in the back row, and the mini-bar guy won’t notice the seals are broken because the fridge’s handle just came off in his hand.

1.18.2009

Traveling with Coleman

Star date 937.473.

Today’s topic is traveling with Coleman. Just substitute that one friend we all have whose level of partying can create its own weather system. But Coleman and I have an understanding. I do my travel thing, and he does his. I’m on a fact-finding mission; he’s on the Booza-palooza Tour. But he never nags, no matter how many photos I take of historic markers. The perfect traveling companion. Not like Story, who’s put me on a two-picture limit, which I grudgingly accept because travel is the art of compromise. But then she demands that Coleman stop throwing up out the passenger window. Now she’s messing with a decade of tradition. Against that benchmark, Coleman’s a treat. Plus he’s value conscious. Once we had to fly somewhere and he checked half a pizza through in his luggage. The downside is motel room damage, which could quickly add up to thousands on the guy’s credit card we’re using.

Today’s Tip #1: Fixing Coleman’s damage. Last week I left him unsupervised, and when I returned, the mini bar was empty and he’d locked himself in the bathroom, screaming about pygmies. By the time I jimmied the door open, he was unconscious in the tub with the snapped-off towel rod across his chest. Solution: Wet squares of toilet paper and wrap them around the anchor-bolts of the ripped-out rod holder. Then, gently push the complete assembly back into the wall. And if you don’t breathe hard, it should stay put until after checkout, when the maid knocks it loose hanging new towels, and hopefully she’s undocumented and pushes it back in herself.

1.17.2009

To the Mailbag!

Uh-oh. It's Agent Mahoney. "I'm going to get you." What a broken record. Mahoney blames me for everything, especially the stuff I've done. To compound it, there's been a recent spike in businessmen mugged at hotels by highly organized crews. And now someone's going after the robbers. So Mahoney naturally thinks it's me, just because I happened to be at all the same places at the same time. I wish it was me (lol).
Mahoney, Maohoney, Mahoney... maybe that explains this nagging sensation I've been having lately, like something really bad's about to happen. Can't quite put my finger on it. And I'm not the superstitious type, which is why I don't like superstitious people. They're bad luck. But everyone's number eventually comes up, and I've already skated through more than my share of tough jams. So just block it out. Enough negative thoughts! I hate them. They suck. They piss me off. If they were people, I'd get a chainsaw and... You're still doing it. Have to bear down. Concentrate: appreciate God's gift of this beautiful day where the Florida sun is shining and my gas tank's full. Now I'm so happy I could burst! Off we go!

1.16.2009

I use it for good, not for evil

Hey, I can't argue with Mister Dorsey on that one. All my souvenirs (you know the legend: started with a cigar box and quickly grew) make me happy, since they remind me of my childhood, and of my favorite places in this awesome, fucked up state of Florida. In Nuclear Jellyfish, Tim even gives me pages and pages of space to expound upon some of my favorites, like my 60-year-old View-Master slides of the Overseas Highway, and my Carolina Snowball statuette. In exchange, I gave him a few minutes to capture my Floridiana collection on video for you, since I use it for good, not for evil.

From the Mailbag

Q: Hey Serge, how did Florida become Dirtbag Central?
A: Because if you pass out in the snow, you die.

Hold the phone. Speaking of passing out, Coleman wants to give a travel tip. "Don't buy any coke from Rico. It's stomped on." Coleman, that's not a travel tip... No, it's not... No, I won't help you get your money back... Anyhoo, where was I? Weirdness. Florida has such a rarified per capita concentration that CNN might as well be the local news. Some guy shot a Wendy's manager over their three sauce-packet limit; alligator attacks naked guy on crack doing back-strokes in retention culvert; driver falls out of car at forty-five miles an hour opening door to spit; smuggler makes it through airport security with monkey under his hat. And if something does happen in another state, it's just a matter of time for the Florida shoe to drop. You say some criminal Rhodes scholar stole Crystal Gayle's tour bus in Tennessee? Gee, where on earth might he head next?

Today's Tip: A three sauce-packet limit is wrong. But pulling a gun is just as wrong. Go to Arby's instead. They understand packet dynamics.

1.09.2009

A shot of Florida, a pint of Florida, a plate of Florida

What's the point of drinking if you can't sip out of something decorated with a bit of Florida? Tim Dorsey reveals the hidden treasures of my kitchen cabinets. And no, "kitchen cabinets" is not a euphemism for anything. Get your minds out of the gutter, people.

1.08.2009

Serge's definition of total happiness

Florida, a full tank of gas and no appointments.

Except all the jerks down here keep making appointments with me. What are you gonna do? Someone has to instruct them. But as I always say, if you love your work, it's not really work. My psychiatrist disagrees of course, because she wants to medicate my ADD and OCD. I said, but those are the most important selling points on a travel writer's resume. We notice everything: bridge weight limits, discarded rolls of carpet padding, beached livestock skulls, plywood signs for pond demolition, bus stop benches advertising discount vasectomies, billboards for laser hair removal featuring chicks with mustaches, witty country church marquees where Jesus battles Satan with puns, dilapidated rural homes with a baffling number of disabled schoolbuses in the backyard, and malfunctioning brake lights on the car up ahead where the hostage in the trunk ripped out wiring. Then my shrink asks about manic depression. I say I'm never depressed. She says, what about when you beat up jerks? I say I'm happy then, too.

I decided to start this service because everyone is always coming up to me and saying, "Serge, you should start a travel service." They actually say, "What the fuck's your problem?" But I can read between the lines. I'm constantly seeing clueless Europeans with pasty legs stumbling around the wrong motels, and I shake my head. Yep, they're going to get robbed. So I run up to them and say they're going to get robbed. Then I say, not me, put your hands down. But they're not thinking straight and don't listen when I explain how to cut their homicide rate in half. But they'd already know that if they subscribed to Serge's Florida Experience! (Free!)

No, I won't take down my Christmas tree

Home invasion!! I feel violated. Tim was skulking about under my Christmas tree. Coleman, I hope he didn't steal your presents (it was just beer and fresh bong water, but still...)

1.06.2009

Every road trip requires some rockin' tunes...

Check out Serge's official Nuclear Jellyfish playlist on iTunes! Yes, songs are listed in the order in which they appear in the novel.