mini mini review haiku: thanksgiving in four parts/project rungay

thanksgiving in hollywood I:
feasted at erin's
she knows many she-actors
no shit, they ate, too!

thanksgiving in hollywood II:
one of the roommates
won much cash on singing bee
thanks, joey fat one!

thanksgiving in hollywood III:
temptation island girl
gave teet a lapdance post-meal
teet texted for help!

thanksgiving in hollywood IV:
garlic mashed with cheese
i was beached, couldn't help teet
tofurkey and crotch!

[teeter worried that these haikus were mean, but really, just jokes, i had a lovely time-- erin and her roommates (who were so nice i didn't believe they were actors 'cept that they were unreal pretty) were gracious hosts who didn't make us lift a finger, and the food was delicious, and the bud light flowed free and easy, and as such, i'm sure the temptation island lady does not remember giving teet a lap massage, and if she does, i think she'd sooner laugh it off than die of shame-- she was on temptation island! twice!-- but whatever, just to be clear, i am grateful to erin n'roommates for their kindness, and it was funny to watch teet get danced on, and thanks to all, and to all a good night.]

whatever, teeter's here, which means we spend all day fucking around in search of food and then all night complaining about how much our stomachs hurt while watching project runway. can you believe that ricky is still on that fucking show? he should get the dq for his hats alone-- if he showed up next week wearing a pink plastic fireman's helmet, i wouldn't be surprised.

and is this not the gayest project runway of all time? jack has hiv? does that mean christian has a meth problem? or that chris is adopting a child with his partner? or maybe chris is just pregnant. dude doesn't make it work, he makes it supersized. he doesn't shop at mood, he shops at food. seriously, i could do this all day. except i can't, because ironically, i'll be busy eating. as always, carry on.

mini review: margot at the wedding

every review of this movie says essentially the same thing; the characters are pretty much unlikable, the cuts are stylized and abrupt, the director (noah baumbach) and the star (jennifer jason leigh) are married, etc, etc. unlike most other reviewers of this film, however, i'm a much bigger fan of baumbach's first two movies, "kicking and screaming" and "mr. jealousy" (yes, i like that movie, it's like a really great short story from the new yorker but you can watch it instead of reading it in installments while on the toilet and it's an excuse to watch chris eigeman exist).

most critics act like everything pre-squid and the whale is a youthful digression by the director, best ignored; i get the impression that baumbach feels that way, too. but i think the difference between the first two films (well, 2.5 with highball, but that was more of a home movie, even tho it's worth netflixing for the "everybody felix, it's felix's birthday" bit) (trust me, it's funny) (or don't) and the last two isn't just the first two are more comedic, and we all know that comedies don't "mean" as much as dramas, meow meow bullshit, whatever.

but that in those first two movies, the characters weren't necessarily more easily likable by the audience, but you get the feeling the director likes them more, too. that he's enjoying them instead of mocking them, or coldly displaying them for our scrutiny. "kicking" and "jealousy" were what they call "small" films (eg, nobody really saw them), and when you're the kind of guy who wears corduroy blazers around the house and writes shouts and murmurs essays, making films to little acclaim probably bruises the ego more than you'd care to admit. making films becomes more torturous than fun for said director, and, it seems, so do the films themselves.

moi, i miss the fun. i miss the rambling dialog and the familiar-yet-not-hateful characters and even the 90s haircuts. i don't get nearly as much enjoyment from watching a pompus-yet-talented guy become subconsciously disenfranchised with his trade, film by film. it's don't just enjoy it less, i respect it less. being arty and writing about crazy women is easy. comedy is hard. whereas margot at the wedding, while well made, is just hard to watch.

pt. 3: nh, nyc, ma, aka, manatee gets her gun

NH:
ok, this is really just about nh, because various random bullshit happened in boston and during my 10 blissful hours back in the city [and i'll explain usage of the word blissful later], but nh is where my life was changed. and when i think about it, nh is usually host to my major epiphanies. i mean, aside from epiphanies, thrifting, and crocheting while watching tv, what else is there to do once the weather gets cold?

actually, that's a lie, because i actually went kayaking while i was there. two years ago, when i lived in nh for six+ months, i decided i wanted to keep swimming through october and went to the local diving shoppee to get a wet suit. when most people think of diving shops (or at least people who've only experienced diving culture on shitty vacations to islands where you're either a guest at the giant resort or a local living in a concrete hut with 12 other family members who all rely on the patriarch who captains a glass bottom booze cruise), they think of stores filled with neon snorkels, rash guards, and various bits of island-abilia that look like stuff found at jimmy buffet's garage sale.

the lake, for obvious reasons, don't do diving that way. first of all, the only people that snorkel in the lake are looking for dangerous plants (millfoil alert!) or lost car keys. the lake bottom, where visable, is 90% boulders, 7% sand, and 3% deflated rafts that were once used to drag children behind boats, concrete n'keys. the lake is deep enough in most points that you can't see the bottom at all. and if you really scuba to see the bottom, then you're in for some really, really big boulders. and maybe a treacherous rock bass. and my dad's wallet that he had in his pocket while sailing a sunfish in 1984.

long story short, lake snorkeling, as is true for most activities in northern new england, is more practical than fun, the practical purpose being the anchoring or un-anchoring of long, floating boat docks when they're installed in the early spring or removed in the late fall . (because the lake freezes pretty solidly, and the thick ice shifts, wooden docks have to be removed lest they're shredded to toothpicks).

(this is also why wooden boat houses on the lake have winter bubblers that keep the water around the houses moving/unable to freeze, which is why i hate walking the dogs on the lake, but then again, like the old song goes, we can all feel like jesus and walk on water when it freezes.)

anyway, the store sells wetsuits for the dock installers/removers, ie, people who swim in the lake when it's either just thawed/about to freeze, so the wet suit i bought (and the only kind they sell) is so fucking thick that i can't only hardly swim in it, i can barely walk in it, and when i do, i could easily double for scuba steve (if you don't know your quality sandler, i can't help you). or i can swim in the pants (more like skin-tight inch-thick overalls), but if i wear the top (skin-tight inch-thick zip-up mock-turtleneck with attached bike shorts for xtry humiliation) i can't only thrash around like a gold retriever.

[image: me in my wetsuit being pawed by a giant child.]

so the suit's not so good for swimming, but if i wear the pants (among other layers of waterproof outdoorsy bullshit), they're perfect for kayaking. kayaking is already essentially jogging for paraplegics-- no legs required-- and if i do tip for some reason (even tho i can't imagine feeling tippy in a kayak-- they're like canoes if they were barcaloungers), i'm as buoyant as a an inflated raft used to drag children behind boats. so i went out in the kayak a few times, saw the last of the foliage, the empty houses, a handful of loons, and generally felt at one with nature. and like a sweaty ball of rubber.

i also played outdoor tennis with my father in 35 degree weather, but that's just because we're incredibly stupid. i've got no good excuse/nature trivia to back that up.

but, the main event came friday, when my friend rick told me that the local gun shoppe had my gun in stock. my gun being an auto-loading .22 ruger rifle with a black synthetic stock for easy care and maintenance. i could pick it up that night. and don't forget the ammo.

[image: the ammo.]

to back up: my house is under siege by red squirrels. red squirrels, like gray squirrels, bears, and many other woodland creatures, are not only territorial, but, for lack of a better word, consistent. if a red squirrel has found food somewhere, let alone lived there, they will return to that somewhere every time they're hungry until the end of time. (same with most types of bears-- once they develop a taste your garbage, they will keep coming back for more every spring whether the garbage is there or not [or until rick {bear hunting permit permitting, it's a lottery} shoots said bear with a bow and arrow]).

anyway, squirrels used to live in our basement, but we tore up the basement in the spring to turn it into my parents' retirement suite, as our basement is actually on ground level (the house is on a hill) and now my parents can grow old in a stair-free environment (at least when it's done, whenever that'll be, i'm afraid to ask rick, who's my parents' contractor, lest he shoot me with his bow and arrow). but now that we're essentially putting the basement back in, the squirrels have come home to roost, and in the process they're essentially eating the new construction.

[image: today, cardboard. tomorrow, the squirrels! but not the world. i'm not insane.]

nevermind that they get into the house through other nooks and crannies (the house is over a 100 years old, has no foundation, and is mainly populated by two older adults who don't understand why leaving an open bag of chips on the kitchen counter might be a bad idea). it's always fun to be sitting on the couch, reach in between the cushions to find the remote, and realize you've stuck your hand into a small stash of acorns, dog food, and the trader joe's version of pirate's booty.

(please note that not only do we have mice, and squirrels, but we also now have moles. you heard me. no concrete foundation plus slob inhabitants = mole problem. i saw one in a trap. it was like a mouse but with no ears, a really pointy face, and a broken neck.)

so rick has been telling me how much he'd like to come by on a sunday with one of his weapons and pick those fucking squirrels off, and i was like, why do you get to have all the fun? i'm a fucking nh resident, shouldn't i own a firearm by now, if not 8? cause i'm never gonna come through with the pick-up truck or the drinking problem. and rick told me that if i was serious, he'd bring a catalog and call his favorite gun shop, and tada.

[image: the branch was the bullseye. be afraid. be very afraid.]

now, i might be a pinko, but i do have a fondness for civil liberties than some could see as a libertarian slant (see: nh residency). while i think it should be harder to get a gun (buying a gun in nh is redunkulously easy-- the form literally has questions like, "are you a fugitive from the law?", questions the salesman pre-advised me to answer with NO), guns aren't going away. and besides, gun ownership, like, say, animal slaughter, is usually only seen in staunchly negative/in black and white terms by people who haven't spent much time around guns or animals. just die hard movies and cats (altho die hard movies are pretty cool) (fuck cats).

eg, a .22 is not a 30 ot 6 isn't an ak-47. owning a gun in new hampshire doesn't mean the same thing as owning a gun in new york or even new jersey (be it newark or south orange) (or the other nice parts but where tony soprano was supposed to live). and if you've fired a gun, you know it's a lot more than a murder machine. not that i think everyone should go out of their way to understand what firearms are really about, because it's just safer to assume they're murder machines and stay the fuck away since most people aren't responsible enough to own an iphone, let alone a gun, but still.

as for the animal side of things, i have many vegan friends, and i respect their efforts. but i don't buy that people are supposed to be intelligent enough to have the compassion that lesser predator animals do not. to me, that goes hand in hand with, say, wanting teenagers to be "smart enough" to abstain from sex. if the galapagos taught me anything, it's that even the gentlest creatures living in an earthbound eden are still vicious, territorial little fuckers who fight to the death for food, let their second born babies die of exposure for the sake of their own survival, and bust their asses to get laid.

your average human is slightly more sophisticated than your average marine iguana, but deep down, the wiring is the same. see: the hockey dad, the day after thanksgiving shoppers at walmart, the brazillian wax...it makes the violent shit animals do for their base needs look refined and quaint.

[image: this apple wanted a piece of me, so i shot out a piece of it (har har). or, since it was just rotting under our tree, you could say i put it out of its misery.]

long story short, i won't lose sleep over killing a squirrel, especially one that's trying to eat my house. i don't see the point in going out and killing a deer, because we've got no beef (or venison, i guess), but if necessity struck, i'd certainly kill a chicken, because if you're going to eat an animal you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking it became a mcnugget by dying of old age.

the most interesting thing i've noticed about pods of hardline activists of the vegan straightxedge ilk (it's always self-righteous in philadelphia!) is that they can be some of the most vicious, gossipy people you'll ever encounter, little dreadlocked heathers in terms of vindictive mindgamey bullshit. for all the rhetoric that goes with living in a vegan co-op in the ghetto (fort awesome/castle grayskull/chez asbestos) where everyone rides a track bike and helps with the house's unofficial pit bull rescue and wipes their ass with a reusable rag recycled from an old pair of dickies, the reality is often way less diy eutopia and more lord of the flies (which works well, since everyone is already dirty and wearing torn clothes). which is to say, animals are saved, but people are torn to shreds. this is not progress.

[please note: i also know at least one vegan activist type who also works with battered wives and teenaged girls and is rad overall, but for every one of her, there are 100 20 year olds who proudly don't vote and make mean girls look positively soft.]

naturally, i've lost my train of thought, but the point is, owning a gun isn't inherently wrong, hobbes was right, and i hate philadelphia.

[image: my idea of hell/my early 20s.]

MA/NY:
boston was sort of boring, as always, but in NY i saw friends, took the subway, tried on 13 items at h&m, all the bullshit i took for granted after 10 years in the city that now makes me feel like i'm on crack. oh, to have friends i can just lunch with and shoot the shit! to be surrounded by hundreds of people who are both alert and indifferent and good at hiding the fact they're judging you! tasti d-lite! the worst thing about the strike is that it makes me feel like moving back is that much more of an impossibility, but i'll take my hits of home when i can. more than anything, i miss my friends, all these funny, smart people who do such interesting stuff and make me laugh. and totally don't think less of me now that i own a gun.
ps: don't you hate it when tv shows make their characters unlikable or their plotlines annoying for the sake of "character development"? it's like the spinach of story arcs, like when rory and and lorelai stopped speaking to each other or when keith compromised his otherwise rock-solid morals to save veronica and in turn (most likely) ceeded the position of sheriff to vinnie van lowe. long story short, while i see what they're trying/have to do, fuck matt saracen 2.0 (lord knows the nurse will).

ihsp, r.i.p.

ok, so here's the deal-- for a year+, i did a blog with andrea called ihateselfpromotion.com, but as we aren't promoting anything current, and as hosting isn't free, ihsp is very likely going to go dark soon. it is where i first travelogued tho, so here, in it's entirety, is the reprinted story of my first drive from new york to california. see the first mention of pee wee roads! my hatred of elvis! my love of toilets! tada!

----

late october 2006

pt 1. - we love promoting dollywood
as was reported in the watchtower, andrea and i are currently driving across the country to begin our respective careers of asking questions on behalf of the shy and entering contests that involve eatings pies wherein i will eat more pies than anyone else. since we have no place to live, not across the country or on the east coast or really anywhere, we’re taking our sweet time on the road and wasting money we don’t have. as such, we went to dollywood.

dollywood is in the smoky mountains, so named because a, on the way there there was a stretch that smelled just like hickory smoke, which made me want turkey very badly, and b, the hills are on fire due to strip mining and environmental rape. getting to dollywood is kind of hellacious, because you have to drive on a 2 lane highway that’s so curvy i would guess it was used in the film “pee wee’s big adventure,” and if you don’t know the scene, just know it was curvy. but then you get to take this wee rode through the woods with vista parking lots all over, and then you can stop and takes pictures like this one.


and also this one.


but fuck that, look, it’s my dog!


anywho.

after you drive through what is essentially the branson of appalacia (which is the vegas of the midwest, so do the math), you get to dollywood (and dollywood splash down, fyi). here are the important things to know about dollywood.

1, it costs $47.50 to get into dollywood.
1a, that is per person.
1b, that does not include parking.
1c, that is not per pound, or most people at dollywood would have to pay thousands of dollars.

note the beauty of dollywood, the bounty of obesity, and the one black person. god bless her.

2, the handicapped parking lot at dollywood is larger than the general parking areas at most shed auditoriums, malls, and abandoned supermarkets.
2a, see 1c.

3, dollywood is not for the young. while there are rides and deep fried foods a plenty a poppin, there are also crafting exhibitions, blue grass performances, and a taffy assembly line manned by women dressed to look country/amish/colonial williamsburg/wildly uncomfortable. there are also pie slices the size of your head sliced from pies that weigh 20 lbs each.
3a, those slices cost $6
3b, see 2a/1c.


a dress so authentically southern, you can almost feel the agony of the slaves who made it!

4, dollywood is currently in the midst of its gospel and harvest festival, which pretty much translates to jesus and food, which is what dollywood seems to be celebrating every day of its existance.
4a, if you are, say, a jew, the southern states can get a little uncomfortable. if you are a really tan jew that could pass for a handful of brown minorities (instead of just a left-behind-mud-person), people get incredibly confused as to why they want to avoid you.
4b, also in pigeon forge (home of dollywood) (gateway to the branson of the vegas of the hillbillies [a term they embrace, fyi]) (there’s lazer tag also) is a theme park called christus gardens. we considered going, but we spent all our money at dollywood on admission, kettle corn, and in my case, a unicorn leather keychain tooled with the letters FTW. we were also afraid that upon entering christus gardens, we would burst into flame.

you have to hold it up to a mirror to read it, but this mug (filled with mr pib, mind you) costs $28 dollars, give or take $21 dollars. that’s still a lot for a beverage most people wouldn’t drink if you paid them $28, give or take no dollars.

this might seem a little early, but it’s xmas everyday at dollywood. also, note the love of fountains.


5, did we mention the eagles?
5a, dolly parton loves eagles.
5b, 9 to 5 is such a rad movie, and how the hell did they get away with all those weed jokes?
5c, her tits are huge. if you talk about dolly, you have to mention this. it’s a law.


if you don’t go to dollywood, the terrorists win.

in sum, we love dollywood, and not in that bullshitty ironic way because we are too old to attempt to be cool, which is why we ate at a chili’s outside of nashville for dinner so we could hustle to our hotel to watch project runway (which wasn’t on, anyway. fuck.). we also love dolly, because when she built dollywood, she raised her li’l corner of appalacia from nothing and made it into the thriving, tourist trap, pancake restaurant capital it is today. she’s also written some great songs and saved a bunch of eagles.

if you are driving along the bottom part of this country, don’t bother with graceland– elvis was a hero to some but he never meant a goddamn thing to me, etc– go to dollywood. expect to spend the equivalent of dolly’s family’s annual salary circa her coat of many colors childhood. and read this sign (from one of the parks 392839 places to eat/get fat) so fast that it seems dirty.

dollywood por vida.

pt. 2 - nashville is a mall that sells mugs, guns, and bullshit.

it really wasn’t fair to expect a lot from nashville because dollywood was pretty much the zenith (of our lives?), so it was all gonna be downhill from there. the decline started upon our arrival at our hotel, which smelled a lot like cigarettes, except said cigarettes consisted of a 50/50 blend of tobacco and feces. also, we did not get bravo, because southern cable carriers hate queers and neck tattoos, so we had to hear about jeffrey from the internet and the cover of usa today, which is just wrong. wrong being his victory, our failure to witness it, and the way in which we discovered this abortion of reality tv judgment. i’m surprised somebody from the pro-life thrift store i accidentally bought a shirt at today wasn’t standing somewhere with tape on his mouth in protest.

anyway we woke up early and spent the day driving around nashville. we ate pancakes, tried to thrift (and accidentally supported tape-mouthed zealots), but the most noteworthy thing is, we tried to go see the grand ol opry. while i am aware of the fact that the original grand ol opry is the ryman (sp?) auditorium, if only because i stayed awake through most of that recent neil young movie, we decided to see the new one, just cuz. the og ol’ opry is beautiful, has great acoustics, and from what i’ve seen on film with neil young, has a sweet projection system that can make a backdrop look like a rolling savannah. and while most of the country music i like is either ancient or really bourgeois, i was curious to see the place hank hath wrought. and this is not it. tada.


blurry? insignificant? afterthoughty? why yes. even if it weren’t raining and the temperature hadn’t dropped 20 degrees.

for this is the grand ol opry circa 2006:

it’s a mall. a mall, convention center, and home of the great southern tradition of commerce (and country music also).


and to bring it full circle, good to see malan is on his feet.

but see, this is the way the south works, at least to someone with the expertise of 2 days in a car driving through it; nothing in the south is small. the churches (which outnumber people) have mcdonaldses in them, the people (which outweight the churches) also have mcdonaldses in them, and the “historical” monuments have malls in them (that contain church going fat people) (and mcdonaldses).

it was lame and kind of depressing, but all hope was not lost! for just across the highway, there was willie, and it was good.


if you are like me, you are amused by the juxtaposion of willie nelson and anything smokable, but that aspect of the red headed stranger’s life is not one this museum/gift shop has chosen to celebrate. andrea and i did not venture further than the shop/the point when it stopped being free, but from what we saw, the most drug-related item in the willie museum and general store is as follows.


did i just blow yr mind?

so i guess the museum not only caters to willie’s fans who want to snuggle with him, but also his fans who hate black people.


which might be why you can find this establishment directly next door.


yes, it’s a little blurry, but if you look directly at this dukes of hazaard b-character’s shrine to himself, your eyeballs burn.

as for the rest of the day, it rained, we couldn’t find this bbq place that jenny recommended, we finally did and it was delicious (and located on bbq lane!) but entirely creepy, and then andrea had to eat at taco bell. not that this is punishment for her– bitch sprints to the border!– but as someone who grew up in new england and did not have taco bell for my formative years, i have to ask, what the fuck is up with taco bell? i seriously have never eaten there, mostly because, if you don’t know what’s in the food, you never will. the menu will say “grande taco fiesta-style chubby” or whatever, and that sounds fascinating, but can somebody tell me what that consists of? it could have chicken, beans, cheese, pico de gallo in it, but also semen, and i know it’s silly, but i would really like to know when i’m signing up to eat excreta of almost any kind.

taco bell is like the freemasons or something– either you’ve been tapped in and know to order the seven layer taco minus the extra cheese, but with quac, and nix the semen, or you just stare at the menu and try to figure out the difference between 4 burritos and what makes potatoes covered in cheese mexican. i’ve never had to do internet research to order at burger king or popeye’s. altho, to eat at the latter, i do usually have to order through bullet-proof glass.

tomorrow we drive to oklahoma. so there’s that.

pt. 3 - the real question is, why do you *like* elvis?

so i didn’t write anything yesterday because all we did was drive. woke up in memphis, got in a car, and drove to okla city. here’s what i know about okla city from my one night there:

-fuck taco bell, sonic is where it’s at. there was one in the mall/hotel/industrial waste complex where our hotel was and the diet dr pepper float blew my mind so hard i left brains on the orderbot 9000 that i spoke into to get the thing. see, sonic is sometimes drive-in only, so even tho we were on foot, we were not to enter the sonic hive where the magic was made. and on the door to said hive, it reminded you there was no entry, and also no pets (dog with line over it), and also no guns (handgun with line over it). so, rest assured, it was the creamy mixture of vanilla frozen something and soda that caused my brains to blow out, not a firearm.


please note: i had my inaugural meal at taco bell today– chicken was involved, cheese was not, and there was a ranch dressing that, and don’t act like you didn’t see this coming, slightly resembled semen. i didn’t love it, but i’m willing to try again on something ranchless. i just have to remember to do my research before going back, which, by the way, is still annoying.

please also note that said meal was had in amarillo, texas. why would anyone go to texas and eat taco bell? i don’t know, but don’t tell anyone we did, because we could be extridited back to texas and executed.

-toby keith has his own restaurant in okla city called toby keith’s i heart this bar and grill. as you may or may not know, toby keith is a country music sensation/shameless rightwing bigot– imagine a young pat buchanan in a cowboy hat and shirt purchased from casual male. so, while his signature eatery proclaims his love…for his signature eatery, a good subtitle would be what he doesn’t heart, ie, women, for’ners, brown people, etc. maybe his restaurant has special sections for each of them? we’ll never know.

-they call it okla city. moi, i’d go with OK city, but hey, they’re the ones with guns.

-oklahoma is flat and windy. so windy that your subcompact car will get shoved all over the highway like anyone who dared to mosh with me and my friend liz during dances our freshman year of high school. the speed limit is 70 but most of the time yr just hanging onto the wheel for dear life at 68 mph hoping you don’t swerve into a dodge ram (everyone drives a fucking dodge ram, it’s like dodge is OK’s official sponsor). (i mean okla! please don’t shoot!)


windmills by the highway. this proves that a, they know it’s windy as shit, b, they are trying to squeeze gold from a turd, and c, people here love jesus so much for a reason since they’ve felt his wrath as he’s constantly trying to flick them off of route 40 with his mighty, invisible index finger.

-people are still fat. we stopped somewhere for andrea to ‘rinate and a lovely obese couple in the car next to ours asked me what the millage on my car is. i couldn’t help but think that they were only interested in a car with good milliage because it would mean less trips to the pump/having to get off their kind-yet-obese asses. if only there was a dodge ram hybrid.

so that was oklahoma.

we rose early this morning and drove the rest of the way through ram country, right thru the top hat of texas (which is probably not what anyone there would call it, because it sounds kind of queer, and i’m glad i’m not in texas because a 2nd degree inference of queerery can get you executed) (twice if you’re retarded).

and again, i can understand why people here love jesus so much, because if you lived in a place like this…

…where all you have is high school football, the super walmart, and the ten guys in your high school class from whom you must pick your husband, wouldn’t you be praying for a better after life and the end of the world? i repeat:


and wouldn’t it be convenient if there was a tangible symbol of the love this part of the country has for mr the christ? ask and ye shall receive.


of course, behind every enormous fiberglass crucifix, there is a silver lining, and for us, that was to be found the moment we entered new mexico.


let’s just soak in it, shall we?


as we drove down the maindrag to check into our latest pricelined palace, it truly felt like the rapture had occured and (instead of burning eternally with the rest of the mud people in an earthbound inferno, as prophesized by kirk cameron) we had entered heaven. not just because we passed two sonics for me and two taco bells for andrea, but also because the people don’t look miserable, and the wind wasn’t punishing, and the fucking amazing place we ate at tonight (maria’s, get the blue corn soft tacos, 100% semen-free) didn’t have a no guns sign on the door. tomorrow we’ll do touristy stuff, probably involving georgia o’keefe, physical movement (as 2 solid days of driving have caused all of me but my right leg to atrophy), and a diet dr pepper float. yes, indeed: santa fe, living the fanta se.

-sb

ps: you might also have noticed that we spent the night in memphis, and yet there is no mention of graceland. i mentioned earlier that i had no interest in going there, and the way people have reacted, i finally understand the way vegans feel when people ask them why they don’t eat cheese (except fuck that, i love cheese). to make this quick, there are three good reasons for not visiting graceland.

1, elvis was to the contemporary black music of his day as paul simon was to south african music in the late 80’s except elvis didn’t give anyone any credit or play a huge concert in central park that was released on cd for me to enjoy very much when i was 13. also, elvis never wrote shit, let alone anything as good as “slip sliding away.”

2, graceland costs money, and that money, or a good chunk of it, goes to his daughter, lisa marie, which means a good chunk of that goes to the church of scientology. and if i have to explain to you why that’s creepy then i’d also like to politely decline your offer for a stress test.

3, i don’t give a shit about any of his music, probably wouldn’t particularly like him as a person, and find the whole elvis kitsch to be really forced and fake. good kitsch is kind of ugly and odd, which elvis kitsch is totally ugly and stupid. it’s a safe “weird” thing to like, like star wars or napoleon dynamite, two things which aren’t actually weird at all (and the later of which is total excrement).

so if i don’t genuinely like elvis, ironically like him (ew!), or musically like him, why would i pay money to look at his stupid house so that another member of the sea org can get their wings? why would anyone? i’d rather buy toby keith’s racist ribs (they’re on the menu under the black people are lazy blackened catfish, i’m sure of it).

pps: andrea wrote her own entry today! i haven’t read it yet but if she doesn’t mention it she’s totally drunk.

ppps: andrea was just flipping past snl and my chemical romance was on. it’s not worth describing their musical product (or listening to it, natch), but post-song, it was announced their song was sponsored by budweiser. evidentally, snl has being getting musical sponsorship for years from bud, but considering so many musicians are current/former drunks, this is an odd choice. one of said recovering drunks? gerard way, lead singer of my chemical romance. loving elvis is not ironic. the above tidbit is.

pppps: new caprica, rip. please remain dead (like elvis).

pt. 4 - in which i once again mention sonic. and santa fe, also.

today was spent fully soaking in santa fe, which is something we haven’t really done yet on this trip, ie, spend a full day in a city. we tried in nashville, but it was raining/a giant mall, so spending a whole day in a city in the car doesn’t really count.

most of the day was spent in the touristy ye olde historick zone, where andrea checked out this marketplace of turquoise jewelery and i strolled around. when i say checked out, i mean easily spent 2 hours carefully chosing which native american relics to call her own, and when i say strolled, i mean fully canvasing the 5 block radius around the town square with buzzo. this was great tho, because 2 days of car sitting had me yay close to needing physical therapy in order to walk again, and because buzzo is totally fat. let’s not sugarcoat it. plus there’s that thing where he cannot read my mean mean words.

long story short, i really like this place, as does andrea, and i’m not the one dripping with silver. i think we both like it cuz it’s purty:


the desert blooms! just like a certain middle eastern warzone i know, except totally different!

and cuz if something like this was in oklahoma, it would have a bus ad for big and rich’s big and fat steakhouse.


i like santa fe, not just because i can walk down the street without worrying about being lynched or because i saw a totally hot dude at breakfast this morning whose black wranglers, semi-tallness and greyish hair pretty much made him add up to “the dream,” but because i truly believe it is a secret portal to bizarro new england. i left new england long ago, but only because boston could not offer me all that i wanted, let alone trains that ran after midnight or people at rock shows i didn’t recognize. santa fe, however, is like a voltron of new england; all the best things from every state in one tidy package. altho by every state, i’m excluding connecticut (which would contribute what, an ikea?) and maine (inbreds, oxycontin, pepperidge farm accent, oh my!). anyway, observe.


are they building adobes on south willard street in burlington, you ask? i say, nay! that’s santa fe!


is that the main square in west lebanon, nh (or “west leb” to those of us proficient in ct valley lingo)? sorry friend, that would be santa fe.


gee, are those annoying begging teenagers (who still manage to afford hairdye, leather boots, and sweet camping gear) “chilling” in the pit in harvard square? or, since i forgot rhode island, are they a particularly lame crop of risd freshmen? fuckin a, it’s santa fe!

the biggest link in the chain, however, is the big catholic church downtown. it wasn’t until i left boston that i realized that cardinals weren’t on the local news every night anywhere else, that being irish and wearing a crucifix wasn’t your only alternative to being jewish, and of course, years later, that i was right to find priests creepy. in downtown santa fe/not-new england, there’s a sculpture of st francis of asisi, the animal saint, but the animal they’ve chosen for him to commune with is kind of an odd choice.


it’s a catholic saint (priest? i dunno this shit) talking to a beaver. one only wonders what that conversation is like. god loves you, and i love you, but not in that way? i fight god’s righteous battle, but i don’t play for the beaver team, if you catch my drift? hey, could you give me the number of your friend, the young he-goat? (that would be a male kid. animal humor). if you think i’m grasping at creepy straws, i also took one at this angle.


perhaps this would have been a more appropriate animal for him to be “communing” with?

corny? clever? i don’t even know anymore.

otherwise, just to get these out of the way, there’s 1, heaven’s menu, 2, clarice, and 3, the weird sculpture of a woman shitting on a guy’s shoulders or trying to sneak into the us that i couldn’t bother to pay and see in its entirety.



i also think andrea liked it tho because the whole town looks like a giant taco bell.

(count the pick-up trucks)

and buzzo loved it because it providing him with his favorite things in the world; beautiful objects to claim thru water rights, as i call them.

not to spoil the ending, but he peed on those.

tomorrow we wake up early, eat at some other delicious place, and then drive to phoenix, stopping at some national parks on the way so we can get there late enough to not see the megamalls and rich old people and just go to sleep. here’s the question tho– as much as i have enjoyed my time with sonic, drinking their delicious shakes and enjoying their no gun policy, should i consumate our relationship with an actual meal even tho i’m about to leave sonic country, not to be reunited for the forseeable future? the only sonic in CA is in anaheim, so unless i want to go to disneyland or drive by gwen stefani’s childhood home, sonic and are going to have to part once we get through arizona. should i make the most of our remaining moments together, or stop at point of no return before feelings get hurt? your input, please.

also, georgia o’keefe had no idea her flowers looked like vaginas. it’s true. i just saved you the $8 admission to her museum (unless you like her vaggy flowers, but i thought they were kinda eh).

pt. 5 - the circle is unbroken.

full disclosure– i am fucking exhausted. we woke up at 7 this morning so we could eat breakfast at a place called the chocolate maven (best thing about traveling with a vegan– free food research). i’ve been trying to convince my parents to visit santa fe, and at tha ‘maven, i thought, this place has chocolate, fancy coffee, a wide assortment of baked goods…how could this eatery be more perfect for my dear papa?


i expect he is on priceline now.

anyway, i drove the AM shift, then we went to the painted desert/petrified forest. i went on a trip out west with my family and our friends the stein family when i was 10, so i feel i’ve seen enough pueblo kivas and navajo pottery to last me a lifetime. but whatever.

obligatory pretty picture:

you get halfway through the park before you see any of the old wood, but we weren’t in the park for 10 seconds before making a record number of hard/old/stiff wood jokes. grown ups!

naturally, i thought the wood looked like turds.


also naturally, andrea needed to touch it.


i would post a bunch of pictures of how pretty the landscape was, but all i could think was how the brush looked like a black guy’s chest hair, which kind of killed the moment. ask your nearest black dude to take off his shirt, you’ll see i’m right.


and there were some pines. or something.

also, we thought this guy was a cop.

he was a village person with a cb radio. we’ve been tired for a long time.

the tired culminated with our arrival in phoenix, during which we blasted the michael jackson song “got to be starting something”, windows down, and pulled into the hotel/priceline palace parking lot just as the last mamasaymamasawmoomawkoosaw was fading into music history.

also, please know i just wrote “we blasted the michael jackson song “got to be starting something” by michael jackson” before erasing it. it is 9:30 pm.

let me tie up some loose ends tho. 1, i did the deed with sonic, but with a twist you probably did not see coming:

sonic drink of dreams and chickeny wrap, but with taco bell sauce. two worlds, together as one. it took 8 days, but i have reached the zenith. pretty desert can go fuck itself.

prepared to be taken higher? we were served by this person who andrea swears was a dragqueen…



…but might not have been, because we needed the gps to give us directions back to the hotel, which is 2 blocks away. please note that they are for the retarded.


i shouldn’t even be writing right now because i know this isn’t very funny, but i wanted to show the magic toilet, the black man chest hair, and to share a moment of revelation i had during my 4th hour of driving 87 mph: one song we’ve heard a lot on this trip is “won’t be home,” by the old 97s. (and don’t get on my dick for having shitty taste in music, i know i do, i’ve retired from giving a shit, and you try driving for hours across the desert listening to nurse with wound).

the chorus begins with the line, “i was born on the back seat of a mustang,” and while i have sung said line at full voice many times, we all know that there’s no way in hell someone who drives a prius should be able to make such a statement, even in jest. besides, if you want to get technical, if i really was delivered in my parents’ car, then i was born on the backseat of a pacer (mistakes were made). so what i figured out is, given how scatalogical my humor is (see: pictures of a shitter and wood turds in this entry alone), i’m pretty sure i was born on the seat of a toilet. judge me if you must.

ALso, call this a blog if you wanna, but the second this trip ends (which is tomorrow, fyi), there’s no way i’m going to do constant updates about how much i hate trying to find an apartment or why LA is hell on earth (eg, why do they call food courts farmers markets, why do they put “the” before their numbered highways when nobody says i drive on “the” maple street, why does it suck so much, etc). so fuck this blog bullshit. maybe tomorrow i’ll post pictures of joshua tree and fatburger, but tonight, i leave you with the knowledge that the planets have truly alligned; i found the perfect food, great thrift (did i mention the hotel’s near a savers that’s open til 11 for halloween? i mean, shit), and, last but not least, outside of a taco bell, i have actually found the semen (and i didn’t even need a blacklight).

thank you, thank you very much! good night!

ps: also, due to wearing dirty socks for 4 days and then no socks in sherpa-lined vans, my feet stank so bad today *in my shoes* that i think i killed the last trace of jerry’s new car smell (the car is jerry because it completes me, the gps is karen because we have tamed her like ricky bobby’s cougar, keep up).

my senior year of college i lived with this girl who got the nickname lesbian mcswampfoot (wasn’t a lesbian, did have the worst smelling feet of all time), and joining the ranks of l.m. brought me immeasurable shame. the only reason i’m admitting this is because i know andrea’s going to have a field day with it and i want the world to know that a, i am not proud of this foot incident, b, i washed my feet *the second* i got into our shitty (three stars WHAT?) hotel room, and c, the car still smells, so maybe it was andrea’s vegan face. just putting that out there.

pps: mamasaymamasawmoomawkoosaw

pt. 6 - a, this is long, b, it’s not very focused, c, nothing much happened yesterday.

we got in really late last night, but not really, but i got back to my luxury squat late after leaving andrea at her mom’s house because i could not leave before the gilmore girls/veronica mars prime time power hour(s). i’m currently staying in an empty on-the-market condo until i can find my own place, which means it’s just me, an air mattress, and a few very sad piles of all of my local earthly posessions. even my dog is kind of bummed because, while it’s better than the car, it’s lacking in things to pee on. he really doesn’t ask for much.

also, like i couldn’t comment on this, i really hate christopher. a lot. readers of the 05 gilmore girls eff toss know that christopher didn’t even make it past round 1, and it’s not just cuz he’s a loser, and don’t say he’s changed because we all know people don’t change. personal change is like dieting– at first, you see a difference and have people compliment yr undeniable transformation, but 2 years later you’ll be double fisting trader joe’s chocolate covered bananas in front of celebrity fit club and using yr thin pants as a bib. which is to say that christopher might have shit together for once but the countdown clock is ticking until he reverts to his old k-fed of ct status and leaves lorelai so he can slink off to take care of yet another one of his oopsy offspring.

but beyond being the unstable inseminator, he’s not luke. sure, luke hid his bastard daughter and took 7 years to move on from his generic brand blue cap ™ to the bold step of using his head to support a baseball team, but luke can build shit, and punch dudes, and i’m sure he’s killed something with a bow and arrow. christopher probably needs to hire someone to open a jar of pickles. he’s a country club, candy assed, well-educated-but-secretly-stupid fancy lad and if lorelai sells out and ends up with him i quit.

i was talking about gilmore girls, by the way.

but oh yeah! the last day of the trip. there’s not much to say except that we went to joshua tree, which really should be called cool cactus/insert real name of cactus here national park, because these fuckers were everywhere and they were super rad.


they look muppety (but probably didn’t feel that way) and totally made love to the camera.

these shots are going to be featured in the student art show, right next to some black and white shadowy shots of a naked she-stomach and a study of a homeless lady.


and then, tada, the joshua trees, who got their names from mormons somehow, and as far as i’m concerned, that was strike 3 against the park, strikes 1 and 2 being the complete lack of phones (the rangers use radios only, which wasn’t that important, but kind of freaked me out since there are bobcats in the park and a walkie talkie seems kind of bullshitty in that situation), and the association with U2, who are pretty much my least favorite band of all time. they’ve been around for so long that there are pretty much no new observations about U2, good or bad, but aside from the fact most of their songs are the exact same song, a, nobody should have their name be “the [noun]” unless they have a sense of humor (ie, do you smell what the edge is cooking), b, bono is balding, i am 99% sure of it, and c, people more knowledgable than i have told me about how a lot of his humanitarian work with 3rd world relief actually has strings attached that benefit corporations, and those people have footnotes and details and shit, so yeah, what they said.

ALso, since by law i must mention this once a day, i’m from boston, and i remember when U2 played the garden one year on st patrick’s day and it was like that whole corner of the city was baptized in green vomit. my whole impression of irish culture growing up was a, nuns and bad touch priests (see: santa fe), b, people who called my friend dave queeah cuz he had a pony tail, and c, with or without you. that should explain a lot.

so i had it in my mind that i was going to take a picture of buzzo peeing on a joshua tree because that would be the perfect image of my disdain for mormonism/bono/our national treasures, but we took a wrong turn in the park and the trees disappeared. and then we weren’t in the park, but in the town of joshua tree, desperately searching for a place to eat so that i would not crash and tantrum like my friend maysan’s two year old. except he looks a lot cuter doing it.

alas, we didn’t find a place to eat right away, and then andrea tried to give me driving tips, which, while well-intentioned, was ill-advised. i have many dude-like traits– love of movies where things get blowed up, ability to eat my own weight in [insert food/fat here], several pairs of pants– and driving touchiness is definitely one of them. raise your hand if you can remember being in the car with yr parents as a kid, hearing yr mom telling yr dad something about his driving, and then hearing yr dad offer yr mom the wheel before offering to just turn the car around and go home. brings it back, doesn’t it? anyway, thus begat the one spat of the trip that andrea alluded to, and really, i blame bono. not that i didn’t get a picture of a joshua tree.

turns out the town of joshua tree is full of them, and they don’t cost $15/car to see. and no, it’s not running away from my wrath– it was taken from a moving car (that andrea took over driving). at that point, we were ready to just get there already. which, with LA traffic, took 4 more hours. and then we spent all today in the car, so really, LA is a road trip every day in which you get nowhere and, if you’re lucky, get jamba juice.

that’s really the whole trip tho. if you have anything you want written about, do let us know, but the thought of writing daily updates about life seems incredibly depressing. those of you who know me (and that’s got to be all of you, because really, how else would you find this site? google searching green+vomit+vaggy?) know that my idea of a good time is shopping at trader joe’s and crocheting an inanimate object. that’s not a movie i’d go to see. or read. whatever. in the meantime, a, we made diet dr pepper floats tonight and it wasn’t the same, b, fuck bono, and c, give me a job.