March 25
These days, it seems everyone knows a Lindsay Lohan

The Europea-ganza kicked off with a BAM! BOOM! BONKERS! SHOOT THAT ALIEN! I’m talking about Area 51, people. The ferry from Denmark to Germany featured a crappy cafeteria, a second-rate duty-free, and some downright shady passengers, but its saving grace was a small bank of arcade games in the lobby of the Lido Deck (Lido must be Pirate for “Sit Around and Look Miserable”). Nelson and I each threw in a ten piece and began the slaughter of alien zombies and their ilk. They shot at us; we shot back. They threw barrels; we fuckin’ shot the barrels. I’ve always loved this game, especially the level where you’re in the office building, because it allows me the pleasure of indiscriminate destruction by shooting up inanimate objects like glass doors, windows, computers, exit signs, fire extinguishers, and picture frames, along with the filthy alien spawn that have so ruthlessly and unnecessarily taken over the office. I really focus when I play this game, always determined to snag every power up and ammo cache yet always careful of my stray bullet count so that I may secure a high accuracy rating. Nelson and I battled valiantly but went down together in the third stage. I pressed on alone as a crowd (Jeff) started to form, but without the support of my partner I could not cover the mounting fire. My efforts were rewarded, however, with the 6th spot on the all-time high scorer list. Entering your initials in an arcade shooter is a game all its own. You have thirty seconds to first think of a funny three-letter word (ASS, SAC, CUM) or acronym (FBI, CIA, IOC) and then shoot it onto the screen with a marksman’s degree of precision. I can’t tell you how many times my homage to a favorite part of the female body has been horribly misconstrued with nothing to show for my high score but TIS or RHT. So on this particular day aboard the SS Non-Aggression Pact, I went with an old standby, the simple yet sincere, GUY.

I hosted a send-off celebration in my bathroom this morning after getting out of the shower. As a ceremonial gesture of bon voyage (use the french pronunciation), I shaved off most of my beard. Right now I’m rocking a goatee, sans moustache, and ear-length sideburns. My reasons for the trim have little to do with personal considerations for my appearance and everything to do with a certain hobby of mine that I have cherished since puberty. I’m talking about facial hair clippings. Bags of facial hair; I collect ‘em. Only mine, of course. See, every momentous occasion in my life (from after I started growing hair on my face) has been documented with a plastic baggie full of the hair that was on my face at that time. I started cataloguing my life’s milestones with whiskers when I got Bar Mitzvahed and became a man in the eyes of the lord. At age 13, nothing seemed like a better affirmation of my acceptance into adulthood than shaving. At around that same time, I was becoming disillusioned with my scrapbooking hobby and was desperately searching for an alternative method of chronicling my life accomplishments. That’s when it hit me – hair clippings. And not just any old hair clippings from the top of my head, no, that’s nothing special. Facial hair! Hair that I grew on my face. I took my first bag sample the day after my Bar Mitzvah. It wasn’t much then - just some peach fuzz from my upper lip - but it was a start, a start of something magical. Since that first shave I have archived over 140 bags of facial hair that I keep in a shoebox under my bed. Some baggies contain the prickly hairs that commemorate my defining moments, like when I passed my road test or lost my virginity; others contain hair that I wore on my face during more difficult times, like when I suffered through mononucleosis or when I attended my grandmother’s funeral. Most of them capture the more understated events of my life that I can still appreciate as nostalgia, like a family vacation to the Bahamas or the time in high school when I struck out 10 hitters in a JV baseball game. Each bag tells a story, and each hair in the bag bears direct witness to that special moment from my past.

So now do you understand the reason for this morning’s shave? When I get back to Denmark, I’m going to need some unadulterated hairs for my collection, hairs that will have been with me every step of the way on this Eurotrip of a lifetime. Come hair harvest, I will have another bag to add to the box and another field of memories to watch grow.