[USA] The Mall

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My grandpa was still sick in bed when I started packing for the flight to the USA. He was still alive so I wasn't sure if I should pack a black suit, shirt, tie and shoes for a funeral if I wasn't 100%!s(MISSING)ure there would be one (whoever created the world "funeral" used a bad combination for the first three letters). Since I was half unsure there was going to be a funeral I only packed half an outfit required for the funeral - a black shirt and black tie. Unfortunately these were the cheapest elements of the funeral outfit and when I found myself already in the USA about to attend a funeral, I realised I was a suit and shoes away from looking the part. You see, I could have worn other clothes which were dark and could've passed for the funeral, but all my aunties decided all us guys should wear a black suit. Time to shop..

Cue the song, "Let's go to the mall.... today!" [by Robin Sparkles. Please play this in the background while you read this blog. Cheers.

].

The day after Thanksgiving is what the American call "Black Friday". It's pretty much the same as our Boxing Day where huge sales happen. The shops open ridiculously early and the masses flock like a flock to the massive sales of Calista Flockhart DVDs as if they were flocking Catholics heading to mass like a flock of sheep. The reason why it's called Black Friday I still couldn't figure out, but as you will read later on in this blog I have my own reason for it.... *cheeky grin*

The plan was to leave the house at 7am to beat the traffic, and we anticipated a one hour search for a parking spot. I set my alarm to 6am which, as I predicted, snoozed once and then turned off the second time as it got annoying. My mum woke me up at 7am to tell me we were late and my cousin was already waiting to drive us. Awkward. No time to shower the turkey grease and cranberry sauce from my armpits from the Thanksgiving dinner the night before, I used a bandaid solution of a quick face wash, brushed my teeth, changed my clothes and we were on our way. Somehow these details weren't relevant but I decided to include them for illustrative purposes.

As we exited the warm fortress of the centrally-heated weatherboard house, our faces were met with a blistering northerly wind that threatened to rip our noses off due to frostbite. Like well trained marines we made a bee line to the car before much damage could be caused to our freshly adjusted hair. My cousin turned the ignition, and without warning a trigger was sent to the C4 planted under the car. Following the chilling sound of a digital bleep everything happened in slow motion as the C4 was ignited. We felt the blast come from beneath as it began its harmful purpose of ripping apart our torsos. Body parts began to splatter all over the windows as flesh was violently separated from bone and the blood that once resided in between the two was abruptly spread over seat covers and dash board. We blew up into parts... pieces... My head went that way.. and my legs went that way...

Only two stops were made on the way to the mall- one for gas (they have people here that fill up your gas for you) and a stop at "Wawa" (like a 7/11 where we got some sweet hot chocolate in a HUGE cup). After a 20 minute drive we arrived at a mall in the town of "Tom's River". It was a standard American mall, supposedly one of the smaller ones, that had Macy's, JC Penney, Sears, blah blah blah.

I'm gonna sleep now so I'll continue this next time. I'm going to New York tomorrow to watch an NBA game and stay a couple of nights. Not sure if I'll have internet access. Until next time.. God bless!

---A few days later---

Ok I'm back from NYC now so I'll finish this blog. Wow I have so much to write about the Big apple. Stay tuned!

So we arrived at Tom's River mall and found parking straight away! Thank God! That saved us about an hour of planned time. Exiting the car was like stepping out of a car and into the cold autumn air... Worst simile ever. The cold air was too much to handle so we shuffled along straight into the JC Penney Entrance. Upon entering this mysterious shop I deduced that it was similar to Australia's Harris Scarfe (I think). Maybe a bit more Myer than Harris Scarfe, but it had that overpriced crappy brand feel to it (although they did stock Nike and Vans, etc).

My instinct lead me directly to the men's section where I was left on my own to fend for myself. Good news greeted me in the form of signs saying "Suits 50%!o(MISSING)ff" and so forth. I almost did an "Oh What a Feeling, Toyota" leap. I was confused with all the sizing as I'm not much of a suit connoiseur, but after a bit of searching and help from a salesperson I found the cheapest suit and in my size. Although it was the cheapest suit I thought it looked great. I probably only thought it looked great as previously stated- I'm not a suit connoisseur. After getting a suit that was fit me snugly, very snugly around the shoulders, but baggyish pants which I'm so not used to, I searched around the rest of the store for shoes. Not being able to find any shoes I ventured out into the rest of the mall.

My search for shoes had a few options- either find shoes that were really cheap that I could wear once and dispose of, find shoes that were a decent price that I could give to my dad, or really expensive shoes that I would definitely wear the crap out of. I ended up with the second option, finding a nice pair of Italian styled shoes (i.e. not made in Italy lol) for a really cheap price that I reckon would suit my dad. The search for shoes led me to a few shops- Macy's which is similar to Myer, Sears which is like K-Mart and Aldo which is similar to Aldo. I ended up buying the shoes from some obscure men's suit shop with ridiculously cheap prices. Shoes down from over $100 to $40. Pretty good value in my opinion.

It was in Macy's where I had my close encounter of the third kind. While browsing through men's checkered Polo shirts (I have way too many checkered shirts but they're my secret obssession) I heard a loud voice from behind the clothes rack. It was spoken in "ebonics", using many double negatives and calling people by descriptive words such as "rich" and overuse of the word "yo". The first sentence was something like this... "Yo rich, I ain't no n*gger and y'all think you can get rid of me but you's wrong, kid." Notice the double negative "I ain't no nigger" in which the "ain't" cancels out the "no" meaning he IS a n*gger. (LOL it reminds me of the South Park episode where Stan's dad plays Wheel of Fortune and the puzzle is missing just one letter in the catergory "People That Annoy You". The revealed letters were N*GGERS. He enthusiastically yells out NIGGERS but is dismayed to find out it's actually NAGGERS.)

Anyhows I'm blabbing on too much. So back to this guy yelling in the middle of Macy's in African-American-speak... As I look at him to see who he's yelling at he catches me and I immediately look away as to not cause any trouble. I see that he's sorta crazy and just yelling at no one. Great. The first black guy I see and he's yelling crazy talk in my vicinity. Scared as a little nephew cowering in the corner of a room with his pedophilic uncle hovering over him, I decide to leave the Polo seciton and just get my butt outta there.

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