Coming to Miami

As I begin my fourth week in adjusting to Miami life, I wanted to share a few things that I have come to learn (and unlearn) about this city that everyone should know.

1.  Yo quero Taco Bell.   ¡usted debe saber hablar español!

Everyone speaks spanish here… your neighbors, the people at mcdonald’s on the french fries,  the grocery store clerks, the babies, hell even the dogs bark in espanol.  Thank God I managed to procure a version of Spanish Rosetta Stone before I left Charlotte.  I mean, if you didn’t see American flags flying here and there as you traveled about town, One could easily be mistaken for being in a Latin American country.  For those few people that you run into that don’t speak Spanish, they speak French!  I’m a little pissed that all of those years of French in high school and college didn’t properly prepare me for Haitian french accents nor speed of delivery.

2.  Don’t let the smoove taste fool you!

While it’s true that all of the glamour and glitz you see on tv and in movies about Miami is true with the beautiful cars, beautiful people, gorgeous water and city sky line, that’s really only about 5% of actual Miami.  I mean Lebron, J.Lo and Scarface stays there, but the other 95% of Miamians stay in places that look more like this ghetto below:

3.  WTFX is up with all of these mosquitoes??

Living in what I guess could be described as one giant, humid marshland, Miami has some of the most viscious mosquitoes I’ve ever encountered.  I mean they wait on your doorstep for you to come out.  They roll in swarms like gnats.  They’ll bite your eyelids.  They bite your earlobes.  If you wore a full kevlar suit from head to toe, with only the left pinkie toe slightly exposed from a sock hole, expect to find a red mosquito bite there in a matter of minutes of being outside.  What I’m saying in short is, if I can find away to mix the sweet smells of Cool Water cologne with the power of OFF! mosquito repellant, I can forgo all of this Law school BS and retire on my island in http://www.theworld.ae.  The only thing that trumps the mosquitoes here in numbers are the spiders!    Normally, I’d cut down all spider nets and squish each one within seconds of seeing them, however, they are the lesser of the evils in this battle of worthless insects.  Now if I could only get them to capture and eat all the mosquitoes around my pad, my time in Miami would be magnificent.

4.  Yes those jeans do make your butt look fat and not in the good way

If you are not already a native of this area, you are overweight when you finally visit.  Yes, your body is not in shape for that bikini.  Dude, put that keg belly away.  You may, in all reality, be an 8 to 10 on the flyness scale in the city that you come from, but rest assured when you make it down here, you will be the ugly new kid in class.  For heaven’s sake, one of my first order’s of business was to get my ass down to the neighborhood gym because I saw so many good looking people.  I’m usually the one that doesn’t care too much that I got some nice love handles, but seriously, people down here don’t play fair.  There are pencil-legged, early-Arnold Schwarzenegger’ed bodied, HOMELESS guys on South Beach that are winning Charlie Sheen style.  The writer’s of People Magazine were waaay off when they voted J.Lo the sexiest woman on the planet this year.  The editor’s only needed to take a walk down Collins Avenue to officially recind J.Lo’s title.  As far as I am concerned, King Kong ain’t got ish on the beautiful people of Miami!

Until I got here, I never understood why that, in Tony Toni Tone’s classic song,  it “Never Rained in Southern California.”  The answer is completely simple and clear to me now!  It never rains there because all of the allotted rain clouds of SoCal are hovering over Miami prepared to drop buckets of parade drenchers, everyday, at 10 minute intervals.  The crazy thing is, the grounds dry up immediately after the rains, and it’s sometimes hard to tell that it even rained a few minutes ago.  If you’re planning on hitting up the clubs in the city, make sure not to have the hairdos that cant get wet, or the blue suede shoes on that will get messed up.  Fellas, bring your rubbers (boots) and ladies prepared to get wet in this romantic city!