-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Burke
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 8:30 PM
To: Dan Burke
Subject: Just try and get me you bastards!


I've just finished my first night in Cuba after
beating myself into oblivion in Toronto with the
legendary Johnny Wad. With no sleep for 36 hours and a
mean hangover, I did what I do best when I get to a
new city -- I hit the streets.

I walked down from Vedado to Havana Vieja, a 4 or 5
mile walk along the famous boardwalk. When I pulled
into the real gritty urban area, I stopped, smoked
another cigarette, and headed straight in.

Within minutes I was in the bar where Buena Vista
Social Club was shot drinking Mojitos with a real dark
kid and a girl with a prosthetic leg. After a short
and uncomfortable conversation in broken English and
broken Spanish, they convinced me to buy them drinks,
then dinner, then they spun me around a serious
tourist-trap scam that involved my camera and about
100 Cuban Pesos.

When the cripple told me to stay while she 'pissed' in
the street, and while the dark kid was off finding me
cigars, Mote Cristo #4s in the dark back allies of
Havana with my camera wrapped around my wrist, I knew
something was up.

As the guy on a motor cycle waved to the cripple
across the street, and as she gimped away from me to
her escape vehicle, I ran directly up to the guy on
the bike, past the girl, and started babling spanglish
at him. He got really mad. I kept babbling. He drove
off.

After he split, and the cripple started to cry as
a last effort to make me wait in some distant shadow
for her to 'piss,' I bent her arm back and forced her
to find her friend with my cash and my brand new
camera. Her legs twisted awkwardly under her cruches
as I pushed my manness onto her (this part didn't
really happen, if you couldn't tell).

When we found Roberto, it was obvios that the gig was
up. The man handed me 3 packs of cheap cigarettes
instead of 5 Monte Cristos, and I took off mad in the
opposite direction.

It took me a few hours to make it back here, to Hotel
Presedente, where I sit now making this report, still
huffing from the long, long walk from to deepest,
darkest side of town.

I suppose I could look at it this way. That spare tire
that I've been incubating around my waist over the
past few months has been given fair warning at this
point. And god damn it if I'll let those back-street
hacks take my camera!

HA! HA! HA!

Todos bien en Cuba. Muchas mas dias... verdad.

Don't worry. I have back ups arriving in a few hours.

Peace and knucle fights from Havana,

DB