Ball gags are not my everyday apparel. But as I have mentioned before, I am shooting a pilot with my sketch comedy group Cup of Tea. In order to shoot a scene, I needed a ball gag.

I went to my local costume shop first, hoping to find something cheap and, more importantly, unhumiliating to shop for. No such luck - the guy at the costume store told me they didn’t stock any, but then took it upon himself to engage me in a five minute discussion about the best S&M shops in the city. Putting on a brave face, I visited the one nearest me, a store called Rough Trade which specialized in clothes and, uh, accessories for the discriminating gay man into the leather fetish community.

Walking in, I though, this isn’t so bad. They just seem to have a lot of clothes and things. Nothing I would personally wear, but nothing to make me feel ill at ease. Then, I rounded the corner and saw the toilet seat that you can sit on in order to poo on your partner and realized I was in way over my head. Thankfully, not literally.

Upstairs was every variety of thing to strap on, stick in, clamp, tickle, or violate a human being. I’m no prude, but as I raised my voice to inquire about ball gags over the strains of hard-core gay porn on the nearby television set, I did realized that there’s a reason I don’t care what people do behind closed doors. And it’s that closed door. God bless that wonderful, wonderful closed door.

There was a wide variety of ball-gags to choose from, I picked the second-to-cheapest, because some small part of me didn’t want to seem like a cheapskate to the man behind the counter. It is the first and last time I’ll ever go to a gay leather S&M shop. And if anybody’s interested in buying a once-only used ball gag, let me know.

Thanks to JennieCC for the photo!

I can’t believe these things were ever in fashion. Thank god it was only one day.

Wouldn’t I look good on a penny?

UPDATE: The incredible and impressive Ian thinks I would. Witness his submission:

Brilliant! Thanks, Ian!

It was my last night in Bulgaria, and so of course we had to go out. Which made it no different from any other night - heading out, drinking a lot of beer and eating a lot of food seemed par for the course. Midway through the celebration, I realized I hadn’t tried anything new that day. My days in Bulgaria had become so common that I hadn’t even done anything out-of-the-ordinary. So I did the only thing I could do in that situation - I proposed marriage to our waitress, Nika.

Even after I drunkenly and insistently pointed out that our both wearing pinstripes was a sign that we were destined to be together, she politely declined. Which is probably good - fabric pattern is not enough to base a healthy relationship on.

Today I visited the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, Bulgaria, one of the largest eastern orthodox cathedrals in the world. Yeah, I didn’t know that either, until I looked it up on wikipedia. But it sure was pretty.

Tuesday was wandered the streets of Bulgaria, searching for a good meal. My co-workers Donick and James had arrived that day and we wanted something that really had the Bulgaria experience. We ended up sitting in “Happy”, the Bulgarian equivalent of TGIFridays. Our booth had pictures of Marilyn Monroe on the wall and the TV was playing something akin to Bulgaria’s Funniest Home Videos.

Being that it was Taco Tuesday, I ordered the strangest thing I could find on the menu - an item called “Grandmother’s Savouries”. But then I spotted something even more unusual - pork Neck Skewers.

Fuck Grandmother and her savories, I thought. I’m getting this. So, thanks to the bravery that Bulgarian beer brings, I did.

It looked like a normal skewer of meat, sure. But this meat came from the neck of some poor pig somewhere. I know, we eat their legs and asses and haunches and everything else. But neck? That seemed some sort of violation. That’s a private area. That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Piggie give each other Piggie Hickies.

Oh, well. It’s my turn to suckle that flesh, I suppose.

Chewy. Very porky. Definately pig, but not really all that good. Like pork-flavored chewing gum, one piece will last you a while. Completely unable to blow bubbles using it, though.

One of my favorite things about Bulgaria quickly becomes the very-loose translations that happen. Because it is a Cyrillic alphabet, which most of the rest of Europe does not use, they often have menus in English to help out foreigners. Which is how I found myself ordering an Awesome Pizza.

As you can see I turned down the overstated “Magnificent” salad as well as the “Trusted” and “Strange” salads, which would seem to be in opposite corners. I also decided against the “Economically” pizza and the “Hulluva” pizza for what had to be the most Awesome pizza name ever: The Awesome Pizza.

How was it? Pretty good.

14 hours later (not counting the 6 in the airport) I stumbled into the strange Cyrillic world of Bulgaria, and almost directly to bed. That was too easy.

I went to the airport, confident that my new thing for the day would be simple: Fly to Bulgaria. Once there, however, I realized something - by the time I got to Bulgaria, it would be tomorrow night. I wouldn’t have done the new thing on Saturday, it would be Sunday. And I wasn’t exactly sure what i was going to do on an airplane that could count as new.

Luckily (and I use the term loosely) fate had a plan. Which involved a faulty serial card on a immigration computer, causing one of the biggest backups in LAX history. 20,000 people were stranded, myself included, as they shook the dust out of the machines and presumably blew on them like so many Super Mario 2 Nintendo Cartridges. So I had my new thing: Get stranded in an airport. I spent my time spending way too much money on wifi access and coronas at the airport bar, sweating through the lack of air conditioning and waiting 6 full hours before my flight finally left.

This being my first passport renewal of my adult life, i compared the new photo I took to my old photo. I don’t think I’ve aged well. But I’m off to Bulgaria!

Today I went to the store to buy the latest version of iLife. This has new iMovie and iPhoto which should illow me to better ipload and idit all sorts of ihit.