Another weekend away from Nashville complete. Traveled to Atlanta once again to visit Ryan and Marcy while they are in town. As usual, it was great to see the 404 crew, but this round did have its share of bumps in the road.

The party began around 6 P.M. on Saturday with Kerry, being the chef that he is, flying around the kitchen tossing ingredients into a bowl of meat that would become far too many burgers to count on two hands. A certain party guest noticed that he was adding soy sauce to the mixture and commented on it by pulling his eyelids to the side ala 6th grade and saying something about it in a forced attempt at impersonating an asian person’s linguistic style. I was immediately offended by his lack of taste, but decided for the sake of the party and all members involved to pretend that it didn’t happen and give him the benefit of the doubt.

It wasn’t long till this person started up again, making repeated derogatory statements until I could no longer handle it. Still not wanting to ruin the party, I quietly commented on his attitude and excused myself from the party till he left.

I don’t consider myself too touchy a person. Among the right people, insults can be a source of amusement and diversion. This guy, who has studied and taught a particular wholly Japanese martial art for many, many years offended me greatly though his outrageous disrespect for the culture that brought him something that he purportedly holds very close to his heart. The fact that he probably knows more about Japanese tradition, culture and history only served to amplify my anger and disgust towards him as he repeatedly slandered my ethnic background. If he was totally ignorant of what he was saying, being taught only from movies and TV, it would have been much easier to forgive and forget.

From the way I watched him interact with the people at the party, I could tell that he is far more socially inept than I claim to be. From the few conversations with other people I overheard, his remarks were so forced it was slightly embarrassing for all parties involved. I suppose that it was this insecurity, and not a true ill-will towards “japs” that drove him to talk in the way that he did.

The weekend was not all conflict and road bumps. Ryan and Marcy are as cool as ever. The usual suspects went to the mini-golf course and had a blast. Everyone was in high spirits, talking, laughing, running around and getting generally rowdy. While leaving the place, a spontaneous game of Capoeria erupted between Dan and I, as has been known to happen from time to time. I was pleased when some passerby’s momentarily stopped waking and started singing Capoeira songs.

The next day, while everyone else was at the Atlanta car show, Dan and I started walking around Kerry’s neighborhood. At some point I decided that we should walk towards the huge buildings off on the horizon. To my amazement (and amusement), two and a half hours and a bottle of sobe later, we end up downtown. I let Kerry know that we were totally lost and that after the show, he should pick us up so we don’t have to walk the (supposedly) eight miles back to the car. We played more Capoeira and generally fooled around with backflips and such till the downtown extraction was made an hour or so later.

The drive back took longer than any Atlanta->Nashville drive ever should. It included, stopping at a Japanese grocery store, getting lost for 20 minutes or so, taking the worst possible route (think 20-40 miles of nothing but strip malls) back to the highway, stopping at the most sketchy gas station/truck stop ever, getting approached by a guy who immediately lifted his shirt and asked me for money, stopping again for medicine to stop my killer headache, being told by a rather cool gas station attendant that stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to drive or play the lotto, being told by that same attendant that if I buy a lotto ticket, she would kill me, and other details (mainly about the first gas station/truck stop) that are either too grotesque or too weird to recount.

Like I said, a great weekend with a few bumps in the road.