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Now where were we...let's see, ah yes, the walk home from the bar passing by the Embassy.

I could lie to you and tell you that I was man enough to go on the Sega Rocket the same night I got fucking hammered at Joey's. I could. But I love you guys and so I'm not going to lie to you. My happy ass went home and went to fucking bed, whereupon I slept until the early hours of the next afternoon. Christ it sucks to get old.

But alas, a new day in a foreign land was upon me and AJ and I set out to find adventure. And find it we did. In our last trip to Tel Aviv, we took a ride on the Sega Rocket. I don't think it has any relationship to the Sega that has those funny squirrel puking commercials, but I dunno. Anyways, this ride was called the Sega Rocket.

The Rocket is pretty much, well, a fucking human slingshot. Remember how much fun it was to put hamsters in your slingshot and fire them straight up into the air? Well, much like that dream where you're in your underwear dry humping a DeSoto (or is that only me?) the Israelis made it real only you're the high flying butt plug, not the hamster. It's located right on the waterfront so that you can catch a quick glimpse of the beauty of the sea, right before you fucking shit yourself. You know, that last gasp of human decency thing.

It's all run from this little fucking trailer that looks like the mob is doing construction there. You bang on the window and an Israeli dude comes out to ask you what the fuck you want. "Two rides," we reply. No sense in mixing words. We hand him 75 shekels apiece and he crushes out his cigatette and makes his way out of the trailer door, opens the padlock to the ride (don't forget it's the slow season...winter and all) and fires up the juice to the Rocket. It's at this point when maintenance record enter your mind, but fuck, too late for that. The heart of the Rocket is a steel cage ball, that looks kind of a NASCAR's roll cage (Sorry Dale...) rolled into a cylinder shape. I can only hope it's a little safer, eh? Inside this Sphere of PantsShitting are two seats complete with five-point harnesses and a video camera facing them. See, for an extra 25 sheckels you can film your Ride of Fear. Yeah I paid it. Video tape to follow soon, since I don't have a video capture card myself and have to have a friend take care of it.

We flop our fat asses in the seats and begin to buckle ourselves in. The Israeli Dude makes sure all the straps are tight, flicks on the propoganda lights on the Rocket and pops in the VCR tape so that we can later see ourselves acting like complete pussies. Then he retreats from our side to the control panel to prep our Journey Of HolyShit

Attached to each side of this sphere cage are two huge fucking cables which each run to the top of 150 foot towers. A pneumatic engine somewhere provides a serious amount of tension on the wires to launch your happy ass upwards at six fucking times normal gravity. That means I weight a measly 960 lbs for a short while, which you know, is about twice what AJ weighs normally. Just kidding, fathead. Seriously, this motherfucker launches your ass up at quite a clip... the fucking wind brushes your hair back.

Now, let's think about this. One Fat Kid at 160lbs, AJ at let's say 180lbs, and one ball cage at 300lbs, and two huge fucking cables at 200lbs each is 1,040 lbs. I say again we're launched upwards at six times our normal body weight so that's well over 3 tons applied to these cables. Which is exactly what happens whe the Israeli Dude hits the "prep" button on his contol panel. Notice I said "prep" and not "launch". When he does this we jump from a position of resting on the ground and are forced up about six inches (ten inches to you women) while the slack is taken out of th ecables and tension is brought on the lines. "So what's holding you down and keeping you from being launched into the great blackness of th Israeli night?" you might ask? I'm glad you did, because perhaps you'll be as fucking amazed as I am -- a fucking magnet. Yep, that's right, a magnet is holding down this metal ball from being luanched into the air by 6,000lbs of pneumatic force. That, ladies and gentlemen, is one strong fucking magnet.

So we teeter back and forth like a bead on a string when you pull it taught between your hands, gentle rocking back and forth all the while knowing you're seconds away from passing Eagle One on the ride up. We do what any other nervous American would do... we talk shit to each other. I call AJ fat, and AJ calls me a fat pussy. He calls be a bitch and I call him...

FWWWWOOOMMMM!!!! With the same suprise that overtook the Germans at Bastione, we're fucking lauched into the blackness of night with enough fucking force to push us into our seats and make my bones creak. Not that they don't anyways, but this was especially vocal. Within one second, one fucking second, we go from standing still to rocketing upwards at six times our body weight. Suprise. "Yeah can you feel that!" I belt out as we reach the zenith of our travels (no, they don't fucking let you go to land somewhere in Palestine territory, they keep you attached) and just as fast as we shot upwards, now we're racing -- upside down -- back towards the Earth. "Holy Shit..." AJ creaks out as we reach the bottom of our bounce and begin a violet spinning motion that throws us this time out of our seats.

City. Stars. City. Stars. City. Stars. Ths is the cycle that overcomes as as we sit at the end of two cables suspended two hundred feet in the fucking air. God Damn, it's good to be alive. We flop and tumble a few more times within the tention on the cables until the Israel Dude presses the release button on the control panel and we begin our gentle and (dammit) controlled journey back towards ground zero. What little hair I have left is tussled and AJ's pack of smokes (Marboro lights if you must know) got tossed out of his pants pocket and into fucking never never land, never to be seen again. We unstrap ourselves from our harnesses and even thought we're not drunk (yet) stumble towards the TV where we can view our tape of this whole event.

Now neither of us want to really walk around with a fucking VHS tape all night, and we're right near our hotel, so my proposition was to make the quick five minute walk back to the hotel to dump off the tape and then begin our night of the Boobie Hunt. Alas AJ, hot on the scent of boobies stashed the video in the bushes near the mob trailer. I advised against this considering that most things left around Tel Aviv are investigated by the fucking bomb squad and subsequently blown up. But alas, I relented -- I too seek boobies -- and we began the walk towards the Cococabana.

Yeah ladies and gentlemen, you may hear me say the word "Cococabana" but in reality what I'm saying is "Heavenly Paradise on Earth". THIS kids, rivals the for my choice in the Strip Club Hall of Fame.

Yes the Cococabana is a place on Allenby street with lots of obnoxious flashin glights and glitzy signs, luring in tourists like mosquitos to a flashlight. We are greeted by burly man of 6'4 and about 350lbs, "50 sheckels," he utters. Hmmm, a quick math calculation jumps at me. "For twelve bucks cover," I think, "this place better be good." We pay the man our sheckels and proceed down the three stairs into the hallway that runs to the main body of the club. I have been here before. Yes, yes I have. During our first trip to Tel Aviv, only I was too drunk to really remember any details. But I am pretty damned sober now and can take full advantage of my senses. Cheap photographs of Jenny McCarthy and Cindy Crawford adorn the pink walls, made to look crimson by the red lights. We reach the end of the hall to breash the threshold of the main dance room of the Cococabana night club.

A middle aged man with a big fucking head and Jimmy Johnson haircut greets us with a smile, "Welcome friends!" he grins, "you like our club, no?" His accent is different, not like those I've grown accustomed to over the past three days in Israel. "I'm Armani," the man states with a warm handshake to us each, "you need anything," and he motions to the girls dancing, "and you talk to me."

Ahhhh, now I get it. You see kids, the Cococabana is run by none other then, yeah baby, the Russian mob. Yep that's right, your very own little fat joke list guy had his first dealings with organized crime, and let me tell you -- crime fucking pays and pays well. Of course I'm basing that off the amount of money I spent in the Cococabana ($1,100) over the course of the next seven days, so all things are relative.

I shake Armini's hand and take a seat on one of the various couches adorning the place. A woman that looks to be in her mid twenties and very American looking brings us over two beers without our even asking for them. Christ, did I mention I love this place?

To be continued (still)! .. the 'RADIUS' dance...hubba fucking hubba...and the ATM's break.