VamoSmiles.

That is, sneers, smirks, snickers or keel-over laughers, as Vamigré’s mirthical travelers explore the world of ongoing grins and gaffes, of cackles or cringes, of grimaces or guffaws—and of miscues, mishaps or total merriment along the way. Humor us world, will ya? Be it by virtue of rank humiliation or hilarity run amok. How? Via jokes, anecdotes, tell-alls, comix/cartoons, soliloquies, broadsides and detoured asides.

Bombed and Dangerous. Count among current yukables the comedian and former ‘Silicon Valley’ HBO star boozily phoning in an Amtrak bomb threat from an entirely different train. Funny man, route disrupting shtick, stunting for his upcoming shows: His bogus alert has netted him a $100,000 bond release and potential hard time.

North Gone South? Then there are the Korean Air kewpie queens, who toss water and wage ‘nut rage’ at the ‘peons’ who serve them on their airline chairman’s family flights without all due fawning, genuflecting favor…now, it appears their mother is kicking in on the staff abusery…

Pass the Pepperoni. Banished for life, the Empress has finally given him a pass. His royal offense? Shlepping a suitcase loaded with pepperoni into the fabled Victoria, B.C. hotel back in 2001. What an odyssey: The Nova Scotia salesman had left cured meat on his fourth floor room’s windowside table to keep it cool and fresh in the chilly April air. He was to meet his new employer, after all, and the the Dartmouth N.S. delicacy was a gift from home to some local transplanted friends. So off he went to newbie conference, leaving his room window sufficiently ajar. But he returned hours later to a blizzard of over 40 seagulls flapping about the room, the birds devouring his pepperoni, otherwise laying waste to the regal quarters—food, feathers, gully drool and excrement everywhere. When he showed, they split, flying into lamps, curtains, and as he struggled to shoe them all back out the window, the damage only got worse, to where chewed over pepperoni and a towel-bagged bird plummeted on to the High Tea party directly below.

His clean up efforts proved to little/late for the Empress’s primly Victorian taste, so it decreed that he be forever barred from hotel extant. Until most recently, that is, when the petitioning guest in question was granted a royal goodwill pardon amid a flurry of online appeals—just so long as he keeps his room window shut and leaves the pepperoni at least a cross-continent away.

Weary On My Wayward Ones. What we budget-conscious travelers won’t put on and up with to lessen the feel-ty burden piled upon rock-bottom airfares. Wearing layers, stuffing pockets, donning packs and stowaway belts: We carry-on like Bedouin desert nomads to combat onerous add-on charges. Even as TSA further tightens security searches, and the air carriers shrink seat pitch and overhead storage bins. But for the moment, all we can do is grin and bear it, right? Just plod and plot ahead—at least until we Vamigrants coalesce to scheme out better ways…

Whoa, Hold It Up There a Sec… “You have to help me before the flight takes off,” exclaimed a woman in Polish on a recent London to Warsaw flight. The Wizz Air (really?) crew denied her access to the cabin’s lavatories, citing safety rules prohibiting usage during takeoffs and landings, or directly before and aft. But she desperately needed to go, and so she did, dropping her undies, squatting and letting loose on (of all places) the airliner’s galley floor.

The video went crazy viral, as it was perhaps the most dramatic onboard uninary scene since French actor, Gerard Depardieu was spotted leaking into an empty bottle and onto the cabin floor during a City Jet flight from Paris to Dublin. This woman wasn’t just messing around, however, as she figured the police would be coming for her, immediately owning up to her pissyfit—relieved and upfront to a fault. But she’s likely as not to get a Wizz pass on it anyway, given the compounding problem of incredibly shrinking airliner lavatories. So buckle back up, and snacks or beverages anyone?

Real Stand-Up Guys?  Step right up, gents, and lay it all out there. The latest answer to the ‘City of Light’ public pee-nuckle problem is to can it on the spot.

To the naked eye, les uritrottoirs are rectangular trash receptacles recently scattered strategically about Paris’s popular sites and thoroughfares. Closer scrutiny reveals a function of a different color, however, beginning with their blushing red tops. Then there are the queues of anxious guys holding tight until they can zip on over to address the cans, much to their great relief. For certain hommes and hombres have long felt the urge to water clearly public venues and vegetation alike.

Past pissoirs and vespasiennes, accommodating though they were, failed to set the golden flow. So these new bladder boxes take it directly to the streets, encouraging pissersby to tap bloated kidneys into straw-filled stands, right out there for all to see.

At the same time, they are essentially fertilizing plant growth out of the can tops. Not exactly a picture of Parisian style and elegance, but you can’t beat the ecobennies and urinary convenience. Even though it’s going to take some serious ‘fine tuning’ to fashion a uritrottoir pour les femmes, rest assured Vamigré will follow the flow (which is likely why the uritrottoirs are already being sabotage plugged up with bunwad, cement and worse).

Meantime, best to keep your pants on along the Île St.-Louis and Champs-Élysées. Just step up between the eco-toilets’ waist-high ‘privacy shields’, making sure your aim is true.

All told, hilarious, that: In other words, wherever Vamigrés and Vamigrants go, whatever we do, sometimes we’ve just gotta lighten up…