The Airing of Grievances

Just When You Thought Conan Couldn't Get Any Cooler

He becomes a king-maker (so to speak) in Finland.

At Least You're Not In Russia

If you are like me and think your day can't get much worse than it is right now, you can say to yourself, "At least I'm not in Moscow".  -32 degrees C.  WOW. 

When they are moving the polar bears inside, you know you are in for some trouble.

Cozmo's Run-In With The Rev.; or Racial Equality: a Passion in Three Acts

Overture

Words cannot adequately describe how crappy my day was yesterday.  4:00AM wake-up call for a 6:00AM flight to Chicago and an 8:30AM Chicago meeting.  As soon as I land, I learn our meeting has been delayed until noon because the other side's attorney failed to read the closing documents over the weekend.  There's 3 hours of sleep I'll never see again.  Finally, when we do meet, said attorney starts going off about contract vagaries in a clear effort to continue to stall the deal.  I spend a half an hour yelling at the attorney about him not being commercially driven, then three hours of brain damage while he and our attorney reviewed reps & warranties.  The result?  No deal, at least another week of pain, and my closing-day suit wrinkled - All because of the jackassery of one shitty attorney.  I flee Chicago in disgust.

Act One: Cozmo Sees Eye-To-Eye with The Rev.

Entering O'Hare, I see that all the flights to LaGaurdia are horribly delayed.  Quick thinking and survival instinct instruct me to get on stand-by list for the next available flight (scheduled for 5:00PM) instead of waiting for the 7:00PM.  After suffering many injustices in the security line, I hustle to the gate  I sit down, open up the new Esquire with Howard on the cover - And there he is, sitting across from me in front of Gate K-3 and the Mont Blanc store, The Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Epilogue: A Story About Golf

“Double Malibu and Coke, please”

The waitress at the Addis Ababa Golf Club starts to make my drink as the punter next me has his attention drawn to the crazy white dude ordering a double at 8:30 in the morning.

“Is this how you’re starting the day?”, he asks.

“Oh no. I’ve been up for hours,” I lie. “I’m pretty much ready to eat lunch, I just want something to help my swing before I get out there.”

He shakes his head.

Q&A Ethiopia Style

UPDATE #3: A final update, for the final post, just above.

Ethiopia Compendium

Sitting Is Being Crippled
Prologue: Selam
Chapter 1: Getting There
Interlude: Malaria Pill Dream 1
Chapter 2: Addis
Chapter 3: Merkato
Interlude: Malaraia Pill Dream 2
Chapter 4: Weyto Tribe
Chapter 5: Coffee Girl
Chapter 6: Bahir Dar Market
Chapter 7: Homebrew
Chapter 8: Ura Kidane Meret
Interlude: Malaria Pill Dream 3
Chapter 9: Gondar
Chapter 10: Bored With History
Chapter 11: Lalibela
Chapter 12: Four Funerals, No Weddings
Chapter 13: The Lessons of Lalibela Market
Chapter 14: Na'akuto La'ab
Chapter 15: Jimmy
Interlude: Malaria Pill Dream 4
Chapter 16: By The Time I Get To Axum
Chapter 17: Yeha Daytrip
Chapter 18: Meskel
Epilogue: A Story About Golf

Q&A Ethiopia Style

Chapter 18: Meskel

The best way to describe Meskel is as equal parts Sunday School pageant, rock concert and Disco Demolition Night at old Comiskey Park.

C'est La Vie

Mrs. Cozmo and I are headed tonight for a long weekend here:

Almost There

It's almost here, the completion of the travelogue that I'm certain has bored most of our readers to death by now! With three, maybe four, chapters to go, how will the saga end? Will our hero make it back to Addis in one piece? Will the void of Western cultural stimulation combine with the psychedelic effects of malaria pills to finally push him over the edge into madness? Will he wind up adopting, Jolie-style, an Ethiopian baby and raise it as his own?

Stay tuned for the remaining posts, coming later this week and concluding early next week! In the mean time, get yourself caught up with the handy Compendium below this post, featuring links to all of the writings thus far...

Chapter 17: Yeha Daytrip

The next morning, I am up early to meet Dawit for the drive out to Yeha. About 90 minutes away, Yeha is an ancient capital of the region and the site of the oldest standing structure in the Ethiopia, a temple believed to be between 2500 and 2800 years old.