Touchdown, The Chipster!

So I’ve landed here in the United States of America. Land of the free, home of the brave, and the range where deer and the antelope play. I’m holed up in my hotel room across the road from the conference centre. I'm writing this on the fly, so I can't promise any great insights or clever word play. What can I say is that American is everything I thought it would be and then a bit more. There are strippers as far as the eye can see. Tall strippers, little midget strippers, fat strippers, thin strippers, equal opportunity strippers. I’ve even met some strippers for the blind, though for some reason they seem very wary of physical contact. They wouldn’t shake my hand unless I paid them five dollars, which I thought was a little too steep for an old fashioned handshake.

I really feel quite small and insignificant compared with some of these American strippers. Being big in Bangor counts for very little when you're surrounded by people who have stripped for Presidents. I was in the lift – sorry, elevator – with a guy whose whole act is based around putting his clothes on. Oddest thing I’ve ever heard. He calls himself the anti-stripper and begins his act stark naked and proceeds to get dressed in whatever outlandish costume his audience chooses. He told me that this usually ends with him dressed in either a tutu or as Ted Kennedy. I don’t know what this says about his audience but it’s making me wonder how my Neil Kinnock routine will go down.

There’ll be more chance to report after I’ve had a good sleep. The flight over was a tedious eight hours until we landed. Then I had trouble getting into the country. I should never have had ‘professional thongman’ written into my passport. The customs officials debated long and hard if this made me a ‘desirable’. I told them that I’m hugely desirable back in Bangor, not least to a certain Romanian who I left crying at the airport and promising me that she won’t be hoarding any more vegetables while I’m away. For some reason, this seemed to decide the matter for them. Or at least, it persuaded them to subject me to a full body cavity search. I'll be honest and admit that I never knew I had so many cavities. It was the sort of interesting thing to learn about yourself that actually makes it well worth the inconvenience. I’ll spare you the unsightly details but I can assure you they found nothing of interest though the fellow who performed the search did say that he didn’t need gel on account of my body having the most oil he’s ever seen in a man.

Now I really must change out of my travel thong and get some sleep.