The whole idea behind doing comedy in a foreign country and I’m talking a real foreign country here so this doesn’t apply to Canada, is to maybe experience at least little of what the place is about and then make fun of it. At least that’s the theory. In reality you find yourself in a place surrounded by mostly British ex-pats who rather than mix with the locals would rather run into their own kind day after day no matter how much they dislike them. They’ll even continue to fuck on a rotating basis of course, the same few women that are just as stuck in the community as they are. Consequently you don’t lose your girlfriend you just lose your turn. After moving amongst these people for a time you realize that should something disastrous occur they would surely turn on each other and feast on their flesh as opposed to break out of their well established comfort zone. Sure the Americans are not one to point fingers when it comes to being fit but there seems to be an accepted norm as to what most of the British males look like. A bad fashion choice in foot wear that leads into a pair of legs that if not actually occasionally moving might be mistook for a pair of legs one might find in a morgue. This all leads up to an ass that left them sometime between being ass-fucked in public school and them getting on the long haul flight that led them to where they are now. Above the belt line is a midi-sized belly that would make some of Buddha’s servants embarrassed were it not for the excuse for two arms sticking out of their counterfeit Ben Sherman short sleeve shirt they bargained for from some third world import market dweller trying to feed their extended family of twelve with the loose change profit they’ll gain from the westerner all the while claiming to be their friend.

And where are the American ex-pats through all this? Hiding in corporate fortified neighborhoods where they can surround themselves with the illusion that they too are working abroad and getting some culture when in reality an adventure is ordering a Big Mac from a Philipino girl whose parents are working sixteen hour days doing hotel laundry and trying to not think about their other daughter turning tricks in some Russian gangsters nightclub. American’s working overseas will never venture too far from their own kind thanks to years of misplaced intentions regarding US foreign policy. They’re learning that it’s always easier to advocate sanctions on other countries when you’re sitting comfortably in your Lazyboy channel surfing between laugh track heavy sitcoms and the shopping channel. What they don’t know and may never have the courage to discover is all those speaking languages they never bothered to learn because they may feel that democracy is best understood in American is most people on the ground working and living every day in these countries have a smile and will use it if you learn to give one first. Granted if for some reason you’re not paying attention while crossing a road because you can’t quite take your eyes off the young Chinese girl in cheap plastic high heels and a truck loaded with tossed out plastic bottles nails your ass they will drop the smile and clean out your pockets. And can you blame them? It’s always easier to take the high moral ground when your belly’s full but when you’re staring down the gun barrel of one more night in a shack with no air conditioning or a floor hell yes you’ll grab that mobile phone from the crushed hand of the western guy who couldn’t take his eyes off your little sister and as far as the guy in the street hoping someone will call an ambulance before he bleeds out internally the last thing he’ll be think to himself over the din of the call to prayer he’s been hearing five times a day is did I really need to come all this way to avoid paying a little tax?