AK All Day Face: The Original

The Original (photo: Andy Klein)

We all know the face. For it's the AK All Day Face. The Original. Version 1.0. A classic.

And now, it's the face that will spawn a thousand faces. Because I'm going serial on yo' asses. In an ongoing series that will be part Touch My Belly (where have ye gone, Touch My Belly?), part Cardboard Gods and all Zombo.com, I'll introduce you to a world of AK All Day faces.* With each one being as uniquely absurd and mind-boggling as the next.

*AK All Day the t-shirt! AK All Day the coloring book! AK All Day the lunch box! AK All Day the breakfast cereal! AK All Day the flame thrower!!!

Over these last nine months, you thought this beautiful picture served no purpose? Oh no. It just set the table for what's to follow in the days, weeks and months ahead. And it will be good. Enjoy.

The vitals
Title: The Original aka v1.0
Subject: AK
Face: The #1
Location: Martha's Vineyard, MA

Throwin' some jealous Kleinballs

In honor of Bill Simmons' first Ramblings since August two thousand and frickin' five (and a very subpar one at that, without any acknowledgement of the nearly three year hiatus), here come some Kleinballs!

If you're living in the US, I'm jealous of you. At least for this past weekend. For it's now Tuesday night here, I've finished two days of work on the week, and you haven't even begun your work week yet! I hope you all Memorialized well this past weekend.

Revenge comes in two more weeks when I get the Queen's birthday off. Yes, yes, God bless her and all that.

Played in my first winter competition for cricket this past weekend, and spent all 36 overs as wicketkeeper. Which means I was doing whatever the hell it is that the guy on the left in this picture is doing. I'll let you know exactly what that is when I figure it out myself.

My legs are freezing. I'm going to sleep.

A postcursor... of sorts

In the beginning, there was The Precursor. The first part of a study to answer an age-old question: Do toilets in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres really flow in opposite directions?

In The Precursor, we found that a toilet in the Northern Hemisphere flowed in a counter clockwise direction. Fascinating.

Then I came to Australia. I grew a ghastly beard. I filmed the follow up to this study (which even at the time I termed as "belated") in the bathroom of my friends' apartment. And somehow never posted it. It's reprehensible, it's completely indefensible, it's bewildering. I know. But now, over eight months since I posted the first half of this experiment on this blog comes the exciting (non-)conclusion that absolutely no one was clammoring for until three lunatics somehow coerced me into action by calling my non-existing Islamic roots into question (don't ask):

Do we need a follow-up to follow up on this? You better believe it.

Subdued joy in Sydney

Jon Lester pitched the 18th no hitter in Red Sox history yesterday.

I wasn't even aware he had a chance to accomplish the feat until the start of the 9th inning. For I was at work. It was about 11:30am. But upon receiving this news, I stopped everything and spent the next ten minutes intently watching MLB.com's Gameday update every ten to twenty seconds. Just the way I've always imagined watching a potential no hitter from Sydney.

So what did I do when Lester finally got it? A big smile, a pump of the fist. I excitedly looked up, considered telling someone, considered getting a little fist bump action from someone, but it quickly dawned on me: it wasn't going to happen. Because by the time I may have explained it to someone, the moment would have passed. Long since passed.

I somewhat depressingly dwelt on this for about twenty seconds and then went back to work.

No one said there weren't any cons to living here.

Catching up

Yikes. Things really escalated there in a hurry. I was pretty much up to date with the postings, then I predictably took far too long to recap Newcastle and work happened. A lot of work happened. My apologies for the gap in posts and for a few emails that have gone left unanswered. I hope to rectify both situations, starting right... now.

So yeah, there was Anzac Day Weekend three weekends ago. That was fun. Some highlights:

• Hit up the casino on Thursday night. Won $690 at the blackjack tables. It was going to be a good weekend.
• Played some two-up at the pub on Friday. (Basically, a bunch of people -- generally drunk -- gather around this big ring in which a few guys stand and flip three coins. Everyone bets with each other on whether they think heads or tails is going to win. It's that simple. And legal only on Anzac Day.) Won my first four flips at $20 each. Oh yeah. Definitely going to be a good weekend.
• Saw U2 3D at IMAX on Saturday. Awesome. And oddly, halfway through the movie, it struck me that Bono can look an awful lot like Robin Williams. And apparently I'm not the first one to see this.
• Went to a Rugby Union match on Saturday night. Very entertaining.
• Had a massive roast with my housemates and some other friends on Sunday: lamb, beef, potatoes (a few varieties), carrots, onions, Yorkshire Pudding (a British favorite) and more. My God, it was a feast.
• Capped it all off that night by watching Rangers-Celtic in the Scottish Premier League, which is the SPL's version of Yanks-Sox, Duke-UNC, Michigan-OSU, etc. And that's when I was introduced to Jan Johannes Vennegoor of Hesselink. Yes, that's the name of a player on Celtic. Seriously. Here's his Wikipedia page. Jarrod Saltalamacchia, eat your heart out.

And last weekend (two weekends ago?) there was the houseboat on the Hawkesbury River. Which was fantastic. I thought ten of us on a boat for three days would be a bit much, but surprisingly, it wasn't too bad. Although on Friday night, our numbers were nearly reduced to nine because I almost got myself killed as I traversed a waterway in our dingy to pick up some of our group that arrived late. It was pitch black, and I had a few in me. Not a good combination. Anyway, I'm puttering along and can see my destination in the distance, so I turn off my little flashlight. Half a minute later, I'm startled as a boat probably ten times larger than mine flies by about thirty feet behind me. The driver quite rightly took me to task for that, and I thanked my lucky stars for the rest of the weekend.

And we're caught up.

Newy pictures and the Hawkesbury

Can you believe it, but almost eight months into Australia and I've just posted my first pictures on this World Wide Interweb thing. So enjoy! A few select ones are below, with the rest located here and here.

My sworn enemy and I in a brief moment of reconciliation.

No, no, no, guys... it's AK All Day.

The longest 40 seconds you've ever experienced.

They're laughing with me... or at least that's what keep on telling myself at night so that I can fall asleep.

This was taken in an elevator. Three seconds later, we all plummeted to our... well, I'm writing this now, so we ended up fine.

Rockin' it out with Shorty.

The establishment that shut down my arteries for the weekend. God bless it.

Thumper returneth.

And now I'm off to spend the weekend on a houseboat with nine others on the Hawkesbury River! I'm going to freeze my ass off, this much I know. Besides that? Well, probably some booze.

The Four Second Scull

You first heard about it here. Now see it here.

Meeting and exceeding expectations, Vol. 3

The conclusion!

SUNDAY: Bringin' It Home

Nothing easy like a Sunday morning today.* We pack up and meet up with the other boys whose apartment is, yes, a three minute walk away from Harry's. So for our healthy and nutritious breakfast, I down pie number three.** By now, they're absolutely disgusting. But so good.

*In fact, I'd argue that most Sunday mornings are note easy. Lionel's on his own there.

**For those keeping score at home, the pies were, in order: (1) The Tiger (beef pie with mashed potatoes, mashed peas and gravy), (2) Chilli Pie and (3) Bacon & Cheese Pie. I went with the Bacon & Cheese Pie on this morning because, well, that's kind of appropriate for breakfast, right?

As we all silently eat, lost in each of our hung over heads, Maz, Shorty and I head off to add up all the scores. And with only one more event to go, we find it's fairly close, with about five or six people -- including myself -- still in contention for victory. So we head back to the group, announce the subtotals and get to the final event:

9. Fumblers Lotto – The simplest of them all. We have 16 pieces of paper in a hat, all labeled with a number between 0 and 15. Everyone draws, from the person currently in last up to the leader. I get a 3. Crap. As far as contending for the title goes, that's the nail in the coffin for me.

After it's all said and done, Tom Rodgers holds on to first place and wins the Inaugural Fumblers-B Decathlon! Congrats to Tomothy for the victory, and congrats to us all for a fantastic event. For those keeping score at home, here are the final standings.

Before I move on, however, a few notes are in order:

1) Maz pleasantly shocked me by getting an actual trophy to present to the winner of the event. And there it is on the left. How cool is that??!? If I were to win that, I'd actually display it with pride. Then again, maybe that's just because I was so close to it. Maybe Tom's already tossed it in the trash. Who knows.

2) For the mathematically inclined, you may have noticed that our decathlon -- which, by definition, has ten events -- only featured nine events. We had initially planned on ten, but when someone forgot to bring their Who Wants To Be A Millionaire board game, we lost an event* and decided that instead of coming up with something else, it would be quite appropriate for a group of underachievers such as Fumblers-B to compete in a nine-event decathlon.

*In retrospect, this may have been a good thing.

3) Finally, and most disappointingly, it was determined earlier in the event that the loser would in fact not have to go into Ken's at Kensington. Which was a brutal blow to the integrity of the entire event. But enough of the boys put up a fuss that we canned the stipulation that the last place finisher go in and instead decided that if anyone finished the decathlon with under 20 points (a woeful and pitifully low number that you'd actually have to try to get under), only then would someone have to go in. And since the person in last place finished with 44 points, well, the mystery of Ken's will continue.

And with that, we split up, got into our cars and headed back to Sydney. For our weekend was over. Or so we thought...

Driving back, we spotted a car in front of us that looked a lot like one of the other guys' cars. And just as we were trying to make out if it was actually his car or not, a large dildo emerged from the passenger window, and began to wave wildly around. And we burst. Because that would unmistakably be Thumper Smith under the guidance and care of Matt Lisle.

God, I don't even know where to begin with Matt or Thumper. Let's see. I guess I can first say that Matt -- or Lisle, as we call him -- is crazy. Certifiably insane. It's seemingly his goal in life to make everyone in a ten foot radius feel uncomfortable. And he does this to great effect, which often leads to hilarity, embarrassment and terror, all rolled into one. And Thumper? Well, he's a dildo. A big, foot-long dildo that's probably a good six inches in circumference. So with your very brief knowledge of Matt, it probably comes as no surprise that he and Thumper often travel together, with the sole intention of producing awkward situations.

Anyway, there's Matt waving Thumper around, which we first thought he was doing because he knew we were driving behind him. And it was absolutely hilarious. But then we noticed that he was only waving Thumper around when his car passed someone on the sidewalk! So he wasn't doing this for us -- he was waving this dildo around at other people! Which of course made us laugh harder. After a few minutes witnessing this spectacle, we finally pulled up alongside the car, and saw Matt with Thumper in one hand and a bullhorn in the other! That's right -- not only was he waving this dildo at people, he's been yelling at people with the bullhorn! My God, he's crazy.

Of course, now that Matt knew we were seeing this as well, he had to up the ante. So he started to get all crazy for and was jerking Thumper off and even tried to toss him into our car at a red light. And this continued. For all two hours home. My God.

Yes. That was a weekend.

Meeting and exceeding expectations, Vol. 2

We left off here. And now we continue on Saturday night, as we pregamed at the apartment before the big night out.

5. Snellfinger – Ahhhhhh, the Snellfinger. First introduced to me when Shorty came to New York in 2005, the game is ridiculously easy to learn and play but impossible to explain. So I won't. All you have to know is that it involves everyone's index finger, a little bit of luck and an awful concoction, which in our case turned out to be two parts rum, two parts vodka and one part Coke. Last man remaining has to drink said concoction. Fortunately, I finished around the middle of the pack with eight points and was never too close to having to drink that ghastly drink. (The guy who did? He didn't make it past 10pm that night.)

6. Scull – They call it sculling, Americans call it chugging. Easy enough, right? We went around the room, everyone had their shot against the clock and then we were all ranked. Fastest time was somewhere in the four second range. Slowest time? That would be yours truly, somewhere in the forty second range. Going in, I knew this would be my weakest event and it absolutely was by a long shot. Not that I actually took forty seconds to actually consume the beer, mind you. For at about the 20 second mark, when it was painfully apparent that I was going to take longer to scull this beer than your average Super Bowl commercial runs, Shorty and Maz took it upon themselves to do all they could to make me laugh. Without their influence? I could have easily gotten into the 30 second range... and still finished in dead last. Good times.

7. BAC & Yack – The event I'd been waiting 25 months to participate in. Literally. First concocted 12,045 miles away in Montreal on an impromptu weekend trip with Dave, Robert and Regan, we found (what was to us) this novelty of a breathalyzer earlier in the day and determined that we would come back to it later to see who was the drunkest. But after a night of trying to incite Quebecois separatist fervor, going to the worst strip club ever in a town renowned for its strip clubs and choking down some sort of an excuse for pizza, we forgot all about it. And I've regretted it ever since, often lamenting with Robert. Fortunately, in the lead up to the Decathlon, Robert reminded me of the contest and I happily submitted the idea to Maz and Shorty (the three of us formed the Decathlon Executive Committee), who loved it and quickly adopted the event.

Cut to later Saturday night. We get to the place where we'll be spending the rest of the night, pay a $10 cover and then... no breathalyzer!!! We were crushed until, well, there was a breathalyzer. So we excitedly gathered everyone (not an easy feat when 14 guys are scattered in a two-story bar) and we all blew. The lowest BAC? 0.072. (Still under the legal limit to drive!) The highest? 0.253. And I blew a 0.140, which I was very disappointed in at the time* but was still somehow good for seven points.

*What have I come to that I'm disappointed with not being drunk enough? Is this my life??!? Ah, whatever... it was a contest. Plus it wasn't even midnight yet! I probably got into the 20s by the end of the night.

8. Picking up – This was a weekend-long event. And the goal was a simple and universal one: pick up. No need to translate any wacky Aussie lingo here. Originally, the idea was to rank everyone based on a mix of success and good stories, but by the time Sunday rolled around and we had to actually rank 14 guys on a very loose and undefined set of criteria, Maz, Shorty and myself -- all just a tad on the hungover side -- gave up and simply awarded five points per hook up. Which resulted in almost the entire group accumulating five points -- including yours truly -- but leaving Shorty on top with ten. No surprises here; this is what Shorty does best. I submit the accompanying picture as photographic evidence of this.

On the way home, I was conned into walking fifteen minutes in the wrong direction all in the name of going to Harry's. My fury and bewilderment quickly turned into pleasure as I scarfed down pie number two on the weekend. And then as we walked another 20 minutes back to the apartment, the rage came back in full force. Unfortunately, there were no pissed off women screaming at us from a hotel window to berate this time.

As I slept away my rage, Sunday morning dawned. And not only would it bring the end of the Decathlon and the crowning of a champion, but also one of the stranger and funnier things I've ever witnessed. We'll wrap this up by this weekend at the latest. I promise.