My Amie

Sambaman is snoring in the bed next to mine, singing Anjan Duttta's Bondhu in Portugueshe in his sleep. Anjan is serenading us, alternating with Paco de Lucia between bouts of wine - a 2007 Bordeaux on a tequila sunset over the Miami skyline. The vantage point is room 1424 of the French Hotel Sofitel, where everyone wishes you bonsoir with Cuban accents as you run into the hotel lobby from the crazy high speed tornadoesque winds.

The end is nigh. Sambaman will be dead at 40 with all the four cheeses clotting up his arteries like some much anticipated rain bringing relief to dark naked skin in some forgotten Bengali delta. ArSENik's liver will give through from all the alcohol. I wonder if it will make good patte. In related news, I just learned that the lead guitarist of the Stones, can't remember his name right now, you know the Pirate one. He starts with a K, non? He did a line on his dad. When his dad died recently, he bunched up some of the ashes and snorted a neat little line. And we all know the dude redefines the lines of accepted madness every day. The bar is higher. We have to jump higher. Sergei Fuckin' Boobka.

No wonder the Sofitel is empty. The windows look like the computer screen of a weak Tetris player from the parking lot. Every five minutes or so, thunderous vibrations shake up the room. You collect your things and run and somewhere between the eighth and seventh floors down, you realize you aren't in California anymore and thus the possibility of an earthquake is more remote than getting hit by lightning. You wait for the elevator on the seventh floor, shaking in your pajamas, a Scotch nightcap in right hand. You see the tequila sunset is part of a panorama landscape that is also shared by a canvas of gradient blue across which phallic objects are launched. "An airport!", exclaims Sambaman with juvenile glee. The man spends his free time landing plans amidst snow storms in Flight Stimulator 2.0. If life was a movie, he would save the world one day by landing a plane when the pilots pass out from some exotic Amazonian gastronomical disease, and then walk out to the tarmac in slow motion as the air hostesses, or Space Waitresses (as Chuck P. would call them) pole danced around him (in slow motion) as Steven Tyler raunched up regular family-style lyrics. Enter Papa Samba, who LOVES his first born like he loves aged German wine and he brainwashes Mama Samba to convince her that Sambaman would die from flying one day (and not from the four cheeses). And who suffers? Poor little ArSENik! Sambaman is a plane freak. He goes for a drive to the airport, pays for the expensive parking every weekend and watches planes take off, describing the motion to ArSENik, who is laying it on thick on some thick bartender, not because he wants to go home with her, but because he wants free Jack. It's pure poetry, like the Dude listening to the sound of bowling championship pins going for a spin.

If you have read about our earlier exploits, you'll know we aren't your average trigger happy tourists. We try to blend into the beige of the Miami peoplescape, kinda like that NBC ad that says "We are Miami. Yay!"ArSENik has been spoken to in Cuban accented Spanish like he was Che's long lost illegitimate son with a local fisherwoman, conceived underwater while Ringo was singing about octopus' gardens above the surface. So, we don't go to Parrot Land or whatever it is called. To these two, life is but a milestone of meals - Joe's tonight, Pollo Tropical tomorrow afternoon. And they don't differentiate. The greasier the better, the fattier, even better, beer battered and ArSENik would buy the whole restaurant dinner as if it was Che's birthday. Sambaman, an adopted local of sorts from his undergrad days, tries to show ArSENik Coconut Grove and Miami Beach, but ArSENik dozes off in the uncomfortable Hyundai 2010. He says he closes his eyes to block out the over-exuberant sun that is obviously trying to impress invisible nudist bathers. Sambaman smiles that pilot Orbitz smile and tells ArSENik the reason for his narcolepsy. He informs him he has been talking in his sleep. ArSENik stiffens like a chambermaid asked to do King Louis the XXWhatevaIII's bed during the height of the French Revolution. ArSENik thinks he has spilled the beans of his dreams of Sambaman's hot sister-in-law that plagues him from time to time, where she teaches him Brazilian accented French in a Santa suit. Now this may sound fine to you, but keep in find, Christmas falls in the summer in Brazil. Now, wouldn't any self-respecting female Santa be hot in that fake beard and the red wool. The SIL keeps the fake beard, but nothing else. Let's change the subject.

We are going to Primanti's tonight. It's a local Pittsburgh joint where they put fries INSIDE the sandwich. Brilliant, isn't it? Almost as good as fake white beards! The Rabbit, slogging away at a cool job back in LA is pouting at the thought of Floridian Pittsburgh sandwiches, because the burroughs are in suburban Pittsburgh, but ArSENik reasons 'C'est la vie' (there's that accented French again!). ArSENik is supposed to wake Samba up in fifteen minutes, but the act seems unnecessary at this point because of the barrage of calls from Rio. You see, Sambaman's film is playing at the Brasilia Film Festival, as I write and as he snores next to me, and the whole of Rio wants a piece of him. The festival folks are tweeting the hell out of the film, which is great, except that the Rockstar wants to sleep. If a beautiful French woman offered herself to Sambaman while he was going to bed, he would choose the bed - alone. Don't judge him! We all have our Achille's heels. I am sure ArSENik would choose the Jack in the Frenchwoman's hand when she embraces him, and push her aside for Jack, or Jacques.