We’ve been hard at work in the lab. We’ve been filming every weekend for the last few weeks, and we only have one more filming session left for the magical, infamous, legendary, buttery, captivating, episode 8.1. It’s such a makeover you won’t even recognize the show. New lights, mics…. and you gotta watch to see the rest.

4 shots is all we have left before the next episode. About 35% of the show left. And the other 65% (adds 35 and 65 in my head…) yea, 65% is already shot, edited and ready for your faces. Early next week its coming. Get ready.

Don’t believe me? Just look at these screen shots…

If you dont have quicktime watch the youtube version

I took this picture and said “record me taking a picture of you, and it’ll be cool to show the video and picture together!” Boy was I drunk.

My first memory of this road trip came somewhere in Vermont. I was asleep in the back seat, and woke up because we had just stopped at a gas station. Juan said to me, “we’re in Canada.” A little disoriented from my nap, I replied, “what the hell are you talking about?”
Juan: We’re in Canada. We crossed the border when you were asleep.
Me: No way man.
Juan: Yup. There’s a French chick right there (pointed at the fat greasy gas attendant working the register)
Me: Take me home.

Sure we weren’t really in Canada, but I wish he would have listened to me and turned around. Here’s a great idea for a New Years Eve vacation: drive 9 hours in the middle of winter to a foreign country that’s 30 degrees colder than your hometown. If anybody requested this idea to you, you’d probably punch them in their head. That’s pretty much what we did for the road trip of 2006, or as I like to call it, “Canada, I hate you, and I’m never returning again.”

It’s pretty cool that my car can switch from mph to km/h in the push of a button…

Yay for navigation and push button start. Keys are for chumps.

Juan (ramon paaaablo but you knew that), Jerone (the guy from the weedsmoke commercial that wasn’t me), and I (me) decided to drive to Montreal for a much needed change of scenery. It was more of unfinished business then anything, because last time we tried to enter the land of canucks, we were not privileged enough to enter. I say it was because I’m black. They said it was because of the drugs they found and the outstanding warrants certain passengers in the car had. Agree to disagree.

On the way, we stayed in Vermont for a night at a friends house. That was pretty uneventful, besides the fact that a little kitty pooped in the room that I was staying in and stunk up the whole place worse than the time all my fish died in my aquarium and I left them in there for a week before I tried to remove them. I had to stuff the blankets into my nostrils to escape the smell, because covering my nose up did not help. The same cat humped Juan’s jacket in the middle of the night and I felt that that is worth mentioning

If they didn’t let us into their country, I had a plan this time. I was gonna wait a few hours, shave all of my hair off, and get a fake mustache and a cowboy hat. They’d never know the difference. And we almost had to follow through with our plan, because they didn’t want to let us in again. To get in, you pull your car up to something that looks like a toll booth, and they grill you with dozens of questions to try to see if you break. It’s like a job interview. This chick asked a whole bunch of questions, and kept typing things into her computer. Everything was going smoothly, until she asked about our reservations. We told her we had none. As soon as we said that she stopped typing, looked at us, and started handwriting something. I knew we were going down. Apparently you cannot let people into Canada if they do not have hotel reservations, because there are no vacancies anywhere in their land, and we must be dealing drugs. But after about 45 minutes of us sitting in customs, answering more questions, and me playing Madden on my PSP, they decided we were worthy of entering.

This was just the tip of the problem iceberg, and I do mean iceberg. We got there and it was -3 degrees Celsius, and if my math is correct, that’s about -130 degrees Fahrenheit. You can check my math if you want, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Getting to Montreal was no problem, because my Prius is blessed with navigation. The first problem we encountered was trying to find a hotel. I can find the nearest hotels through the navigation system, but we couldn’t call them because half of us didn’t have reception and the other half didn’t know how to call a foreign country. So we had to get out of the car at every hotel we drove to just to see if they had vacancies. By now it was -160 degrees Fahrenheit and dropping by the minute. Finally a Days Inn solved our problems, but their ATM machine wouldn’t “recognize my institution.”

The money conversion was a factor the entire time. We could not figure out how much my beautiful American money would get in Canuckian dollars. My rule of thumb for the entire trip was about a 3/4ths conversion. “100 dollars, that’s like 75 American bucks.” “100 km/h? That’s like 70 mph in America.” “This elevator can hold 16 personnes? That’s like 12 American people.” But the main problem to me was the fact that Canada does not have the luxury of a nice wholesome paperfied dollar bill. Instead, they have a dollar coin. You might not think that’s too bad, but wait until this next bombshell: they have a freaking 2 dollar coin too. So it’s possible to get 9 dollars in change, with only a 5 dollar bill and the rest some nut ass coins. I would get out of my car and see the change that fell out of my pocket, and it could be anywhere from a couple of cents to about 12 dollars.

With our money exchanged, all we needed now was liquor, weed and food. Apparently Canada is famous for Poutines, which are French fries in gravy with cheese. Believe me, it’s just about as nasty as it sounds. Actually Juan liked them, Jerone wanted to punch the girl that recommended them, and I was fairly indifferent. There was one liquor store open on New Years Eve, and the line stretched outside of the store and around the corner. I thought they were selling Backstreet Boys tickets in there. Remember its as cold as the dark side of the moon there. Stomachs full and liquor secured, we roamed the streets for weed. You’d think it’d be easy to find it in Canada, especially after seeing that special on MTV. It took about one hour (which is like an hour and a half in cold Canadian time) to find some green that we could have easily purchased in America. No red hairs, no fancy names, nothing.

By now all I needed was some good ol’ Parliament Lights, and I was ready to start partying. I went into a store and asked for them, and they looked at me like a goddamned fool. “What is that, some kind of American cigarettes?” The only cigarettes they had that weren’t frenchafied were Camels, and I refuse to smoke them under any circumstances because they taste like they have bits of real camel in them. I was reduced to purchasing a pack of “Players” which must have had bits of real players in them because they were just as gross. I handed the guy a 10 and got a handful of change back, about 6 dollars.

“Caution: If you smoke, your baby will die”

All of their cigarette packs are extra wide and look like this. I thought it was a buy 1 get 1 free bonanza there.

Hotel. Showers. Liquor, weed, and a video recorded freestyle session later, and we’re ready to hit the streets. Oh yea, Jerone asked me to spray him down with some Axe body spray after I sprayed myself, because we have a theory when we go out: we all must smell alike, in case some girl likes one of us, they’re subconsciously be attracted to us all. I sprayed him while doing the robot (the dance), and somehow some ended up in his left eye. He was blind for a good hour.

Jerone’s blind eye.

Freestyle session. Where was I? Standing on the bed taking pictures of course!

I bundled up like I was about to stand at the bus stop for hours. By now it is nightfall, it is about -273 degrees Kelvin, and my face immediately froze and bled upon entering the night air. Juan’s face actually fell off. I was like “son you can’t go anywhere without a face, and yours is gone.” Many myspacers told me that Crescent street is the spot, so that’s where we went. Little did we know that you needed tickets for every fun spot, and we were so cold we went into the first bar that we didn’t need tickets to enter and didn’t have a line outside. That should have been our first warning.

15 bucks to get in. I paid in coins. It turned out to be some kind of punk rock/spikey hair convention in there. The only saving grace was that they had a buffet that specialized in butter sandwiches, which were pretty good until you found out they were butter sandwiches. Juan was tearing up the buffet like we were at Ponderosa. I couldn’t wait to finish our pitcher of beer and get the hell out of there.

Why would I leave the great country of America for a hockey loving land that has no NFL team, and their only NBA team sucks horribly? That should have been a clue but I was ignoring the signs. The closest thing they have to a football team is the Montreal Alouttes. How gay is that? You know how I know you’re gay? Cause your football team is called the Alouttes.

The night wasn’t a total waste though. After hitting the ATM again (which dispenses Canadian money much to my disappointment) directly at the 12 oclock hour ( no countdown for me… the closest thing I had was me punching in my pin code), we decided to check out the other street myspacers told us about, St. Catherine street. This street is home to the strip clubs and prostitutions, and it is where we should have been the entire time. Going to the strip club was a great come from behind victory because I thought the trip was a total waste. It’s the like Rose Bowl, when the Texas were down by 5 points on 4th and 5, and Vince Young ran the ball into the endzone for the winning touchdown. The strip clubs were 5 dollars to get in, lapdances were 10 dollars, and shots were 2 for 7 bucks or 3 for 7 bucks. The only drawback was that, like I mentioned before, there are no dollar bills. So to tip the bitches, you had to put change in their pants. They were all walking around with chunky panties like they were wearing diapers. OK I’m kidding, but the problem that the lack of dollar bills posed is worse than lumpy underwear: you had to tip the bitches with 5’s. To make matters worse, we could not find any prostitutions, and we were looking to expand into Grownmantv’s adult section of the site. Unless the prostitutions were the strippers, in which case we are fools. We left after the waitress kept forcing us to buy drinks, and saying that it was mandatory that we tip them, at least 2 dollars a person.

I thought that price was for gallons. Stupid litres.

The next morning I woke up 2 hours before checkout time because I couldn’t wait to get out of this country. We took all of our Canadian money and purchased 18 liters of gas and we were out. We had to wait in line for about an hour to re-enter the country. Why don’t they have a ez pass type lane for people like us? The dialogue that took place between the US border control pretty much summed up the difference between America and Canada.

Long ass customs line

Old border guy: “What’s your name?”
Me: “Ryan.”
Guy: “What was your purpose in Canada?”
Me: “Just to party.”
Guy: “You went to St. Catherine’s street didn’t you?”
Me: “Hell yes.”
Guy: “You went to a strip club didn’t you?”
Me: “YES!”
Guy: “You got a lap dance didn’t you?”
Me: “He did” (points to member of the group in the car)
Guy: “But you didn’t get laid.”
Me: “You must be a sorcerer.”
Guy: “Alright, get out of here”

Compare that to the interrogation we had entering the country, and you’ll understand why I am never, ever returning to Canada again. At least not Montreal. But I did hear it is slightly warmer in Niagra….

Anyway we’re back in the land of French fries with ketchup, dollar bills and, oh my god, good sporting teams. Thanks to everyone from Canada who helped us plan this trip. And I think we used to film a news show or something, and we’re gonna try to do it again this year. Juan please change the site name to grownmanamericannews.com.

I was driving when I took these pictures and damn near killed us. So I gotta put these up.

Secondly, Episode 6 finished filming last night. We’re returning to our roots, where we actually tell some news stories (*gasp*)! Don’t worry, we still have our commercials and other nonsense. We’re still trying to settle into a groove, so we’re trying out different things. We think you’ll be happy with the outcome. Wait for it!!!

Lastly, we are very aware of all the viewing problems that 90% of our audience is having with viewing the show. We at grownmantv live and die by Quicktime, just like Andy Reid and his beloved passing offense. We are currently working on a new flash-based format so EVERYONE can view the show without problems. We already have Episode 5 part II encoded in flash,!!!

Double-lastly, we have a new call-in voicemail line! Dial (215) 253-3776 and you will be able to leave a message! Ask a question, proclaim your love, do whatever you want. If its good we’ll play it on the air. If not, we’ll still probably play it. I don’t think we have an outgoing message recorded but thats coming soon. Call it!!!!

on with the show!!! Here is episode 5

Right click and Save as

Part One [Quicktime high quality][Quicktime Low Quality]
Part Two [Quicktime high quality][Quicktime Low Quality][h.264 comming soon][WMV comming soon]

First off is the podcast/ DVD commentary of Episode 5! I had many things to say about the episode, many things that no one knows except for me and sometimes the other jerks that film this show. So I said many things, many drunken things. Juan and I started with episode 5 and a bottle of Seagrams, and worked our way backwards recording commentaries for each show. As you can probably figure out, we got progressively drunker by each episode. You’ll wanna see this, because we’re saying things that you never noticed before, and many truthful things that I shouldn’t be saying about said other jerks. We realized one thing during this process: we love making commentaries. Our main inspiration for making new episodes of the show is so that we can make more commentaries. We have it available in two flavors: an audio-only version, and the over-dubbed dvd commentary style (which we recommend). Download it here.

Audio-Only Version
Video Version (right-click on this link, and select “save target as” in the menu)

And, AND, a special exclusive for everyone! You already know that we dance for every intro. What we usually do is 1) take many shots, 2) film each person dancing to the entire song, 3)Juan does his editing sorcery and chops up the best clips. While watching the playback of the Ma$e “Welcome Back” intro, we realized something equal parts startling and amazing - my Ma$e-like dancing is eerily similar to the man M-A-dollar sign-E himself. We were laughing so hard at this that we had to put it up in its entirety. My favorite part is how I keep a straight face through the entire dance scene until I nail the textbook Ma$e move at the end and I can’t help but laughing. And the part where i’m leaning on the wall and pull myself forward by my collar isn’t bad either. Check it out!

Download it here (right click and ’save as’ like above)

And magical special friday isn’t over. We will be releasing the other podcasts of the episodes throughout the day, and quite possibly Part 2 (Juan says its coming, I say nobody touch me). We will notify you when they’re available.

Quasi Platron out.