Don't Take John With You

The next time you need to travel and think it would be nice to have someone along to help with the driving, don't take my buddy (I'll call him John, since that's his name) John with you. Unless your idea of travel involves driving off a bridge at 90 mph,in which case please take John with you.
A few years back I was ready to make my annual pilgrimage to Chicago and really didn't want to make the seventeen hour drive alone. My pal John , an unemployed('natch) actor volunteered to go, which seemed to be a good idea at the time.Off we go!
I soon found out that John is the guy who spends thirty minutes describing a five-minute Saturday Night Live skit.His one-man re-enactment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail lasted for the entire trip across Ohio. I'm sure you've met John- everyone knows one John, I'd wager. Everything he says is a quote or quip from a movie or TV show. He's seen them all-and if you tell him you haven't seen something, he'll tell you all about it,including the really clever twist at the end,thus ruining any potential future viewing.
Driving through Indiana sucks enough without having a passenger who likes to do Jack Nicholson imitations. Really, really likes to.
Anyway we got to Chicago without violence, but just barely.
It was a working vacation for me (another comic show) and John went with me. We were on the 'EL' (elevated subway)to the convention centre when John suddenly became even more agitated and manic than usual.
"Hey man, that girl over there is checking me out", he said, indicating a cute young woman who, like everyone on every subway anywhere, was looking at nothing. It's an art really, being able to see nothing, yet maintain the awareness needed to know when your stop is reached. Never make eye contact with anyone-ever.
To paraphrase Robbins ,"the song Love is a Many Splendored Thing was not composed on a Chicago subway".
The object of his hopeless affection just happened to get off at the convention centre stop, so John spent the entire 3-day show wandering around a convention the size of small town looking for El Girl.I have no idea what he would have done if he'd found her, but at least it got him out of my hair for a while. (I have a friend here who is,shall we say, 'generous with her favors'-I believe she's slept with every boy and half the girls in town- and she told me that she turned John down.Twice.) He didn't stand a chance with El Girl.
While we were in Chicago he ate all my brother's food, drank all our beer and didn't do a goddamn dish or take out a single bag of trash. I actually encouraged him to start with the booze early, so he'd pass out early and we could go out without him, but this just made him more annoying.

We made it home without violence, but just barely. I haven't seen him since. He still owes me money, but it's not worth talking to him in order to get it. Don't take John with you.