Please hang up and try again.

I will never make fun of people who use pay phones again.
Probably.

Until recently, I thought pay phones were for the kinds of people that likely shouldn't be making phone calls in the first place.
Either that or for people who shouldn't be making movies in the first place....

Alexander the no so great.

Maybe it's just me but I've never walked by someone on a pay phone and thought "Man, I hope they're calling me." 

But this all changed when a pay phone recently helped remind me of something I had forgotten.

"Excuse me sir could you please repeat that? I'm having trouble hearing you. Maybe you could go somewhere more quiet?" Her words, while phrased JC Penny neutral, dripped of that special kind of irritation you only get when calling 1800-pleasehold numbers. The lady on the other end of the phone was from MasterCard and she had the all the warmth of the waiting room at an abortion clinic.

Nothing kills like abortion jokes....

I'm sorry?

Annnnnnyways.......

You're welcome for holding

Just getting her smarmy voice on the line had been a battle. I had already plugged a hand full of different sized pesos into this graffiti magnet of a pay phone while trying different arrangements of international prefix numbers. All of these, ending up with the same spanish recording that I'm pretty sure could be Google translated to "Fuck you very much good bye.
I am Jack's soaring blood pressure. What the hell am I going to do if this doesn't work?!

And then it happened:


Finally, a real human voice. I was through. I had broken on through to the other side.

"I said my credit card has been scammed and I need you to put an immediate hold on it!" but even as I said it I knew she couldn't hear me. I might as well have been Ahab calling from inside a whale.
Frustration building.

All she could hear was the little old street musician playing his madness-inducing music box a meter away from me as he busked for changed. The very same "musician" who had been playing this very same ten second long ice cream truck jingle on loop outside of my bedroom window for every day since I had moved in a week ago.
I was dangerously close to making like Nicholas Cage's acting chops and losing it all together.

Serenity now.

I tried saying it again. I covered the mouthpiece and yelled "My credit card has been scammed!"

Nevermind! I want the blue pill!

And then before she could respond, the music finally stopped.

And that's when the earthquake started.

Let's rewind a month shall we?

I was back in South Africa, ticket in hand, about to board a plane to Miami. Saying goodbye to the great friends I met there and to the city of Capetown that I had called home for the last three months was a particularly hard one.

That's what she said.

My three months in Cape Town had been three of the best months of my life. I could easily go on about my travels there, but I'll save that for another post. SA was jammed packed like a little burrito full of adventures and great new found amigos, I could easily see it being a place I settle down in one day. Thing is, I guess I'm not ready to settle down just yet. Still too many empty pages staring at me in the passport. So here I found myself at the airport, watching all of my possessions packed in a single suitcase roll away on the conveyor belt once again. As usual, it was a little hard letting go.

I'll never let go Jack!

But as the 80's hair ballad goes: Here I go again on my own... and so I did.

I flew into Miami International and was met by the big unabashed smile of my always there for me father. Side note: If ever you need to rely on a guy; old Sexy Dexy is the perfect Who wants to be a millionaire lifeline. Sure, he may show up with his shirt on backwards/inside out, covered in please don't hug me stains and smelling like he rode a goat from Burning Man to get there...... but I'm lucky to have a Pops who's there for me like Dexter seniór.
So of course we went back to his retirement complex to hit the pool and pick up chicks. Fifteen minutes later I was bored out of my mind like Bush in a library and ready to jet back to the airport. Don't get me wrong, I love my Dad and it's nice to hear his cyclical/interesting stories but I belong at his retirement community like Jay Leno belongs in comedy.

Soon enough I said good bye and traded in the old people smell for more airline food to find myself in Toronto.
Sans jacket. Muchos snow.

Regret is a funny thing.

Ahhh Toronto. You are like that movie Frozen....only with less singing and more eclectic poofy scarfs. Yet, while you are angrily cold in weather, you're warmth is in the smiles of old friends and quickly enough, you gave me a jacket for my back and a proper Canadian beer for my hand.

"Are you guys laughing in English or Chinese!?"

I spent a week catching up with good buddies who were gracious enough to let me home their couches in exchange for exaggerated South African adventure stories. A week well spent, Toronto is another one of those cities I could easily see myself calling home.
Just not yet.
And so faster than an online sellout for Cochella tickets, I was back in the air, this time ditching the jacket for a sombrero and heading south to the land of the no shame afternoon nap:
Mexico City.
Realizing I was going to live in an entirely new culture; I decided it would be respectful and smart to show up educated on the ways of the locals.
 So I did my homework.

Months earlier while in Cape Town, I had set myself up with another modelling contract, this time in Mexico City and as is standard arrangement, when I got off the plan, a man holding a misspelled "Kebin Patje" sign picked me up and brought me to my new casa.
Now, after years of doing this whole model to travel pony show, I have no illusions when it comes to the apartment the agency sets up for me. It's invariably a tired, run down apartment, furnished with bunk beds that are crammed full of Russian models who smell like cigarettes and who speak english but chose not to.

This pic usually doesn't make the portfolio

This apartment however was a game changer. A whole-nother-level of suck. It looked like it had just gotten out of a relationship with Chris Brown.
Being inside it was more depressing that reading YouTube comments.
It was a crack house. To be fair, nobody in the house was actually smoking crack, but it was the kind of house that made you think that maybe you should start. It was a 3 bedroom apartment that housed 15 people. The place was packed tighter that a crack-filled piñata at Rob Fords re-election party.
As I opened the door to what would be my room, the door fell off the hinges onto the floor in a perfect foreshadowing what my working relationship would be like with my new agency.

Like Bruce Wayne needing therapy: the writing was on the wall.

But I mean literally. There was actually a lot of writing on the wall.

I don't think I swore enough in this video

So two weeks later, after a lot of carefully worded emails, I finally managed to get out of my contract, said hasta luego to the crack house/bat cave as well as agency and headed out to make things good again.

Green means good.

Soon enough, my newly appointed broski German Will and I found a great new place in the madhouse that is down town Mexico City. We also found a new agency to represent me and get me working. The new place was perfect.....even if the street came equipped with weirdos dressed like hungover Mexican Avengers who didn't make the tryouts.

Side note: Since when have I had a stutter?




Slightly weird? Sure, but I chose to see it as "quirky" and besides; there was even this little old man playing a music box outside our place for us when we moved in.
How nice of him.





So ya, things were looking up. Only problem was that the new agency wasn't advancing me weekly money (standard practice for most contracts) and I had yet to be paid for my Cape Town work. Luckily MasterCard and I had a back up plan. So I started swiping the plastic to help get my new place set up and German Will and I moved in.
Life was good. Green goodness shakes aplenty.
And then it wasn't.

You mean there won't be an "Are we there yet 3?"

In the span of one day Will got his wallet pic-pocketed and my master card got scammed (from a transaction made in Toronto of all places) and just like that I found myself apologizing to a pay phone for years of ridiculing it's cell phone challenged patrons.
I was by myself in the middle of one of the craziest streets in Mexico City, surrounded by the Hungover Mexican Avengers, with absolutely no cash and no way to get more.
And then an earthquake hit.

Now I realize starting this post with a "holy crap an earthquake!" plot twist and then not coming back to it until now was kinda douchey of me. Especially when said earthquake was only enough to shake the buildings and to finally stop the music box from hell....but it wasn't without it's reverberations.

Standing there, about to loose my shit like Axel, in one of the biggest cities in the world with everything going wrong around me. In the middle of a perfectly timed plot device of an earthquake, I was struck with two things:
One being that I'm pretty sure someone had used this phone booth as an emergency baño at some recent point.
And two being that things have a tendency to fall apart.
Sometimes life is a crazy disaster and it just does whatever it wants, regardless of your well laid plans.
Staring at the painted look on hungover Mexican Hulk's styrofoam face as he watched the buildings over top of us sway to and fro, MasterCard lady still squeaking polite annoyance in my ear.........all I could do was laugh.
Much to the dismay of the voice on the other end.
Some things, you just can't control. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things will still go to shit. You can plan for the worst and hope for the best but it doesn't change what's going to happen....and that's ok. Because it's got to be that way so best accept it and get on with finding happiness in the little things:

You can have your issues in a tissue and you can cry in your pie but all it will leave you with is a mess to clean up afterwards.

Why couldn't you just eat your emotions like everyone else?

These last couple years of travelling have taught me more than I ever would've thought about not only letting go but in trusting myself to be ok when I do. A lesson just as valuable as all the interesting jobs, adventure-filled memories and smiling friends. This life, for all of its troubles, is so very much worth it. The only thing more astounding than being alive is the realization that one day you won't be so why spend our little flash in the pan of life angry?
But try telling that to the Mexican Hulk.



So with that I will leave you with a choose your own adventure of extremely inappropriate similes to end this post.
I don't know what tomorrow brings but I know that......

Like a midget at a urinal: I'll have to stay on my toes.
Or
Like a blind man at an orgy: I'll have to feel this one out.
Or
Like a Japanese bukakke: I'll take it as it comes

As always, the choice is yours.

;)



Hasta luego amigos.