So, I (and a friend) go a little crazy with our event rider…

The Traveler: 

Hell week.

Every day it’s up at 4am, fly out at 6 to another city, press conferences all morning, switch hotels in the afternoon for client dinners. Present, smooze, and chit-chat till 11.. back at hotel by midnight, 2 drinks and a benzo, out for four hours… wash-rinse-repeat.

It was the kind of trip that made logistical sense only in the mind of MC Escher. And yet there it was, and by the time we hit Munich, co-presenter & traveling partner: CXO-Something for a software company you’d recognize (hereafter “bob” – only because I’m in a Jay and Silent Bob kind of mood) – we decided that it was time to turn the tables and start torturing the wedding planner-like host in whose mind all this perversity was exacerbated.

-MUNICH- START OF NIGHT’S EVENT

Me (to WeddingPlanner): “Hey you… we have some requests…”

WeddingPlanner: “What can I do for you guys?”

Me: “Well for our next event I want white rose pedals trimmed in red laid out on the tables with a single blue skittle laying in them.”

Bob: “No wait dude.. they got those!”

I looked sure as shit, there were white rose pedals trimmed just slightly in red. Bob tore one off, and arranged it on the table.

Me: “That's a wasabi covered peanut, not a skittle.”

Bob: “It’s still pretty fucking close.”

Me: “Goddamnit.”

Wedding planner looks satisfied, that he’d anticipated this. Bob wasn’t giving up.

Bob: “I want a pony. I want to ride a pony on stage”.

Wedding planner cocked an eye, time to double down.

Me: “Stuffed with a donkey--.”

Bob: “--A miniature donkey.”

Me: “That’s stuffed with a rabbit.”

WeddingPlanner: “What?”

Bob: “A Podonkit, it’s like a Turducken”

WeddingPlanner: “A what!!?”

Me: “A Turducken, is a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. They’re very popular in redneck land.” I whip out my phone to prove to him we weren’t making it up.

The notion of a turducken blew WeddingPlanner’s inflexible Swedish mind.

Me: “We want a Podonkit, a pony stuffed with a donkey –

Bob: “-Miniature donkey-“

Me: “-Right -miniature donkey, stuffed with a rabbit.”

Wedding Planner: “A PodonkEN?”

Bob goes mental: “I do not – DO.NOT. – want a fucking PodonKEN you fucking asshole.”

Me: “If there are feathers sticking out the ass of our Po-donk we will fucking end you.”

Bob: “What are you some kind of fucking pervert? A god damned PodonKEN – It’s a PO-DONK-IT – Fuzzy cotton tail”, bob shook his head, “jackass.”

Wedding plannr: “Why?”

Bob: “We’re going to ride it on stage and then cook and eat it”

Me: “it’s a team building exercise.”

MUCH – MUCH – MUCH – LATER – IN PARIS

Narco sleeping pills and 16 hours sleep in 5 days. I am seeing Podonkits everywhere. It’s like an acid trip. It’s all Bob and I can talk about. We have since decided that they’re quasi-stuffed, quasi grafted. Like a medieval culinary creation, the front half is a pony with the back and 2 additional legs of a donkey (to make it more of an all terrain vehicle – 6 foot drive!) with a fluffy white rabbits tail.

I look over at bob, my head swiveling with the world trailing slowly behind it like from a scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “you know what I want Bob?”

Bob: “What”

Me: “A podonkit with orangutan arms – you know a orangpodonkit – porangudonkit – podon-u-kit?”

Bob: “I think its just ‘Podonkit with Orangutan arms’”

Me: “okay.”

Bob: “*Why* do you want a podonkit with orangutan arms?”

Me: “For hugs.”

This is the first time I’ve seen Bob even slightly shocked. Have I managed to go to far?  I clarify quickly: “Not for like sex, dude, don’t be – just don’t. You know it’s just for --you know intimacy. It gets lonely on the road.”

Bob: “you wouldn't still eat it would you.”

Me: “You’d have to be a right cold bastard to eat a creature that just wants to give you a hug”

Bob: “Dude. Can you imagine the action you could get with the ladies if you have a pony that could hug them back”

Me: “Exactly.”

Bob: “You should be a cartoon super villain.”