I’m so tight with my crew that virtually nothing is off limits.  Since we’re trapped together for 12-14 hours a day, we’ll discuss anything.  There are no limits, no filters and, unfortunately, there’s virtually no censorship.

I have been putzing around lovely Central California this week with my team.  In the past few days, the conversations have gotten incrementally more absurd and bizarre.  More absurd and bizarre than usual … I mean.

One of my crewmembers is suffering from a series of spider bites on his genitalia.  (Don’t ask.)  And while it’s not affecting his performance, it is affecting his ability to talk about anything else.  “Do you know that I actually considered wearing socks on my hands last night because I was scratching my balls so much during my sleep?” he casually mentioned to us at Starbucks.

The rest of us nodded in agreement, as if spider bites on one’s balls have become par for the course.   The barista at Starbucks actually stopped making my Soy Chai Tea Latte’ to listen in on our convo.

The spider bites got worse before they got better, unfortunately.  Every morning the crew would circle around the minivan and have a “DBU”, otherwise known as a “Daily Ball Update”.  Did we need to get more salve?  Should we call a doctor, or, at a minimum, a nurse practitioner?  Should someone get online to deduce exactly what sort of spider bite it appeared to be?  What did WebMD say?

Eventually my crewmember’s testes were no longer a hot topic of conversation, so we quickly switched to talking about our respective families.  (It’s a seemingly natural progression, yes?)  And then the conversation degraded even further when we discussed the subtle nuances between El Niño and La Niña.

Tonight we enjoyed a very pleasant Italian dinner in the middle of Modesto, California.  I’m sure this city has some redeeming qualities, I’m just not quite sure what they are right now.  At one point I turned to my photographer and said, “You know, if you think about it, you could be with your crappy-ass family right now instead of enjoying a classy joint like this in Modesto.”

We immediately ordered another bottle of wine … and that’s when the conversation really lightened up.  God only knows what we’ll talk about tomorrow.  I just hope there’s another infestation of spiders in this hotel.