SUBVERT THE BLAH BLAH BLAH
(93nov23tue5:58pm)
The car rental agency in Plymouth, MI was just about to close; Pat and I run in and grab
our GMC Safari minivan.
The agent asks Pat a few questions, and then gets to the box marked "destination":
AGENT: "Okay, where are you guys
headed?"
ME: "We're going to CUBA!"
AGENT: "Hahahah! (typing a bit) ahh, we got one right here! Okay, where are you
going?"
PAT: "Texas."
AGENT: "Hahahah! Okay, seriously."
PAT/ME: "Texas."
After we convinced the agent, we set up the minivan for maximum nap/sleep/crash potential (removing the back seat, tossing a futon in the back, lining the sides of the futon with pillows, etc.). After relating a rather long (get used to it) Florida road trip story to Pat and Cynthia, both the act of sleeping in the back and the person sleeping are now officially referred to as the "sack". As we leave, we notice an Earth First! bumper sticker that reads "SUBVERT THE DOMINANT PARADIGM". This we take to our hearts as the official slogan of our road trip. It confuses me, and is immediately forgotten.
VAN-A-GO-GO
(93nov23tue7:54pm)
One of the first songs we hear on the radio taking I-96 West to cut down Indiana ("The State
That Looks Like A
Boot But Less Than Italy Does") has a chorus that goes something like "Eat dat chicken, eat dat
chicken" . . . time to
eat! Pat pulls into a Bob Evans (this could be a bad sign of things to come, methinks) in Jackson,
MI. For some reason,
he's giddy throughout the entire meal. I don't mean normal giddy; I mean PAT giddy. Extremely
close to the point where
you have to physically restrain him. I ask Cynthia what's going on. "He had three hours of sleep."
Uh-oh. I take over
the driving duties. This consists of eating a large amount of Tasty Snax and staying between
those little white lines
someone keeps painting on the roads. The GMC Safari minivan has its own level of ergonomic
excitement: the turn
signal is just hard enough to move that you think it's going to break off in your hands (I think this
is endemic to anything
GMee), the rear view mirror view is blocked by a large vertical stripe (the back has two doors),
you're constantly
surprised by an annoying light that appears every time you turn the steering wheel slightly one
way (it's actually the
temperature control, hidden behind the wheel), and the headlight switch is confusingly
chunky/angled so you can't tell
if it's on or off. However (foreshadowing/sarcasm-in-future- tense alert), I do like the little swivel
navigator lights for
map reading and whatnot that are on either side of the main interior dome light. As with almost
all rental cars, this one
has an automatic transmission and power steering. I can cope with an automatic; power steering,
however, is the most
WARPED driving comfort idea I've ever experienced. I don't think power steering could be any
more inconvenient for
anyone who has to deal with snowy/icy road conditions. If I move the steering wheel, I want my
wheels to move,
dammit. None of this pretend "virtual driving" stuff. After I stopped mentally bitching about the
van and drove three
or four hours, we stopped at the Days Inn, but I don't remember any of it. I didn't write anything
down, except for little
notes about stuff on the radio, like "Cpt Kangaroo: child molest chrg?" and "Voltage! 4 tsand
yards of extruded alumm!
(bzrr Pepsi cmml about mortgage)". I'm making a mental note to myself right now: buy a
mini-tape recorder. Of course,
if I did that, I'd probably record the radio. But I digress.
WAGNER'S ST. LOUIS
(93nov24wed11:07am)
We arrive in St. Louis and proceed directly to the Arch. Please note: the Arch does not, I
repeat, not cross the
Mississippi river. The St. Louis Arch: Gateway to Stupidity. The van is parked next to a
MacDonald's riverboat with
a huge inflated Ronald MacDonald guy sitting in the lotus position on the second floor. I get
some shots off with
Wagner, the inflato-clown, and the contrasting corporate/city arches. You can see where the
flood leveled off; they
(meaning "them") did a wonderful job cleaning up the mess. We wander down into the
museum/gift shop/loading
platform for the arch, and watch a video loop: "No one had ever built a 60 story arch before, and
no one is likely to
again." Hallelujah. Looking at the arch from the outside, it doesn't really seem feasible to escape
if your "capsule" gets
stuck at the top. Maybe you just slide down and land on top of a bunch of firemen or something.
There's an hour+ wait
to experience the joy of St. Louis capsule-style, so we pass (once again, those of you "with the
program" know that I'd
rather fly in an airplane than be sitting at the top of a sixty-story arch ["Archophobia"]). Outside
we take more pictures
of Wagner and Lucky. As soon as we pull out Lucky, some random passerby practically shrieks:
"Hey, that's the
FISHER-PRICE DOG! Is this like those people that kidnap lawn ornaments?" This guy's
good.
We move on to the National Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum, which I'm practically PAT-giddy about; I wanted to visit this place when I was creating X Magazine #6 [Ed. note: which has now become Dryer ], but never got the chance. Pat and Cynthia pass on the opportunity to experience bowling in all of its sneaky grandeur, so I venture forth with only Wagner to accompany me. There was NO one in this place; it might have something to do with being the day before Thanksgiving, it might not. However, the exhibits themselves seemed a bit . . . sedate. I don't know what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. The hall of fame was kind of scary, in a weird way the first hall was that of the men, in a black room, wood plaques, understated lighting, black marble floor; you could feel the entire room sucking the light from adjoining corridors. As if bowling was this SERIOUS and HIGHLY-RESPECTED event. Then, you entered the woman's section: suddenly, WHITE! CARPETS! Five million oil paintings of top women bowlers! I ran screaming from the room, but not before snapping a few pics of Richard wandering around. Downstairs, they have a few modern lanes, and a few "old-style" lanes you can bowl a few frames, which was appealing . . . but it was an additional two clams for four frames. Pass. We finally went to eat at an excellent little diner called "Victoria's" with the best damn cooked carrots I've ever had (and those of you "on the scene" of course need no introduction to my "Vegetablophobia"). We hit the road, and once again, about the only notes I have are of strange things we heard on the radio (again), like an ad for "Pure Passion Night Club" in Memphis: "with Honey, Candy, Hot Chocolate, and Vanilla" . . . and "Cranberry" on Thanksgiving?? We get gas at Rolla, Missouri, outside of St. Louis on I-44 (right, like I remember, I just picked that out of the Atlas), and Cynthia and I come out of our respective restrooms laughing. "What?" "Did you see..." "Hahaha! Yeah, 'grow and grow and glow'!!!!!" Strange ad copy on the dispenser for a glow-in-the-dark condom. "Grow and grow and glow" would probably serve as a good metaphor for the road trip thus far in some way; I'll work it out tomorrow. I go sack for quite some time, wake up briefly to hear Pat saying "I wouldn't whine if you would just rub me" and go back to sleep. Okay, okay, I'll explain: his back was killing him, and Cynthia had just bought some Eucylip-to-mint goo that smelled up the cabin pretty mentholly good. Later, I drive, and both Pat and Cynthia sack. Collectively, we commit our only navigational error of the trip, and miss I-30, and continue on I-40, putting us squarely North of the Ozarks. Time to crash: our sleeping quarters for the night, the four-star Motel Six in Conway, Arkansas. The mattress on my bed reads "keep this side up april may june" and on the other side "jan feb mar". I was confused, so I slept on the floor.
HOT SPRINGS! HOT! HOT HOT!
(93nov25thu10:23am)
We cut down through the Ozarks via I-7, which is a nice turny twisty road that they would
film car commercials
on if only the road was jet black. Halfway through, we encounter "Nimrod". I get many pictures
of Wagner and myself
and by the large "Nimrod Recreational Area" sign; As I'm standing off to the side of it, a passing
car honks in earnest.
They know. Looking for potential Wagner background, we start driving down a long dirt road
that has no turnarounds.
Ten minutes later, after Cynthia and I whine enough, Pat somehow turns the van around. After
getting back on I-7, we
see some hunters getting their guns ready, and gabbing to each other ("Okay, I'm the magic
bullet, and that can of
creamed corn is Governor John Connally"). Well, it was funny at the time, and I didn't even
mention that one of them
was taking a whiz. Hot Springs is a magical little town snuggled on the South side of the Ozarks,
and has all these
wonderful hot spring bath houses that we didn't stop at. A lot of buildings were nestled into the
sides of mountains, old
buildings, old town; it's like driving through the fifties. And that's always nice, as anyone who
has done that can testify.
Later on in the day, Pat puts a cassette tape into the stereo, and the familiar strains of Anne
Pigalle's "Looking for Love"
issues forth. "Hey! That's MY TAPE!" Confused as whether to hug or pummel Pat, I remain
passive.
APPROACHING DOOM
(93nov25thu1:23pm)
My notes for the rest of the day consist of mostly morbid/dumb ideas we came up with
while on the road: bullets
that play piezo electronics on contact ("Happy Birthday"); a "not" restaurant in which you would
order stuff you didn't
want: "I don't want any fatty foods, or sodas with carbonation in it, or cherry pie, and I'm allergic
to MSG." "Right away,
sir." Of course, you wouldn't know what you were going to eat, but I think that would be the fun
part. It would fail
almost instantly. After this amazing think-tank conference, we stop at a Texarkana Wal-Mart for
an hour, buying various
sundry items. I find a full-length cowboy-type overcoat thing and a BIG TEXAN HAT: "Look at
me, I'm a cowboy,
howdy, howdy!" After removing the outfit, someone turns the corner wearing the exact same
outfit. This is very
confusing.
MAD MAX WINTER CARNIVAL
THANKSGIVING (93nov25thu4:32pm)
Texas is a big state, with an INTENSE highway system. Check it:
TEXAS OFF-RAMP: Your basic Texas off-ramp is about 100 feet in length and throws you immediately into a two- way highway; you're just going to have to pray that everyone is obeying their "yield" signs, because you're barreling through there before you know it.
TEXAS ON-RAMP: Same thing; you cut across a lane of on-coming traffic to get on the entrance ramp, and faster than you can spit (and you can spit pretty quick), you're on the freeway. When they do have those gently sloped on-ramp curves, they're not even remotely circular. You're gliding along, getting ready to merge, and the curve gets tighter, and tighter, and TIGHTER ALREADY! So you're doing 15mph by the time you get on the freeway. The whole thing is like Hot Wheels gone bad.
TEXAS REST AREA: The rest areas are open, breezy buildings. The roof is raised about a foot off the walls. These are rather exciting places to do your duty when the outside temperature is the freezing point of water.
Then the snow came in. Snow, as an element, is something you get used to in a Midwest area. In Texas, however, it's treated as a alien invader, puzzling and frightening the natives. With Pat at the helm, we kept passing more and more cars, as everyone uniformly dropped their speeds, eventually down to about 20mph. We were averaging about 40mph from Texarkana to Waco; any faster and you'd start to spin out. We passed roughly 150 cars that had spun out and were in ditches (including two police cars), or hit the exit too fast. We tried to avoid the exits as much as possible, because that's where everyone was losing it. The temperature was right around 32 degrees, which wasn't making it any easier. The exit roads were turning into sheets of ice, but the bridges still hadn't frozen over. Until we hit Waco. The snowing had pretty much stopped; there were practically NO cars on the road (they had either wiped out or pulled over), transformers were blowing as we reached each exit, knocking out all the lights in a two square mile area. A Honda Civic is the first vehicle to pass us since Texarkana. It immediately wipes out and rolls gently into a ditch. Pat spies an RV with several bicycles on the roof, coated thick with ice. "Look, bicicles!" When you're the driver and you've passed 150 cars in a ditch, you're allowed to make really bad puns; you're allowed to say ANYTHING YOU WANT. An eighteen- wheeler finally passes us. Michigan plates. Now the bridges are frozen over; they use sand in Texas, and enough cars have passed over the sand to "clear" two tire track paths of solid ice. Pat has to maneuver a half-lane over for every bridge; Cynthia and I take over the duty of informing him when one is coming up. "BRIDGE!" Cynthia notices that a lot of bridges are over street exits, so we start taking the exits/entrances to avoid the bridges. Wow, was that dramatic or what? We finally arrive at the Four Seasons hotel in lovely ice-covered Austin. We're shown to our room. "Will you be requiring ice today?" (beeg laffs) "No thanks, we've had enough of that today." The bellhop proceeds to show us exactly how everything works in the room, and if Pat hadn't cut him off with a tip, we might have gotten even more basic instructions: "You see, the sink (turns handle) operates thusly, the water exits the large steel tube, and then gravity carries the water to the bottom here, drains down here, and goes into the wall..." Exhausted and confused, we sleep.
DO YOU TAKE THIS MELON...
(93nov26fri3:09am)
Since this is actually supposed to be an account of the road trip, I will leave out most of
the details of the wonderful
marriage and Wagner sitting next to the cake and the five melon ballers and the melons in the
bed and the expensive
mini-bar food and the hottub and the Austin walk of stars (Larry Hagman!) and the waitress who
stole my ketchup and
my heart at Hickory Street and Wagner's head falling off and the moonlight towers (165 feet
high!) and the techno and
the bats that weren't there and Kathy and Scott's styling hats and Laura breaking her glasses and
the wonderful
concierges and Delaware Subs and the pi¤atas at Fiesta Market (FIESTA!) and S'Fuzi! and more
techno and the weird
elevator layout at the Four Seasons. But I will tell you about the Franklin plaza waterfall. You
can drag your hand along
this long stretch of wall that water is flowing over. If you go too slow, it's a boring little dribble;
go too fast, it backs
up on itself and soaks you. But, if you go at just the right speed, you can produce this wonderful
arc of water sweeping
majestically behind. This, I think, would be a good metaphor for marriage; I'll work on it
tomorrow.
DON'T TOUCH IT! IT'S EVIL!
(93nov28sun4:19pm)
We pack up and get ready to leave our hotel room. For the life of me, I don't understand
how anyone can leave a
hotel room without checking everything 10,000 times; if I ever have to travel alone, I'll probably
never come back. The
trip back is mostly uneventful, until I grab one of the globe-shaped halogen navigator lights to
play the light more evenly
on my copy of 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?, which I picked up on a whim. I screamed
for about ten seconds,
and small areas on three of my fingers turned white. Them bulbs is HOT. Why exactly are the
bulbs wrapped up in that
ergonomically-inviting spherical swivel mount if they're going to turn hotter than hell in five
minutes time? As my
fingers scream, I mentally compose a letter:
General Motors
Minivan Division
ATTN: Mr. fksdjadfs
Dear Mr. fksdjfasf
Blah blah blah used the swiveling dome light for reading. Blah blah halogen blah. Blah blah
morons blah blah
blah, a new level of incompetency blah blah. For the pain and suffering that I have endured, blah
blah blah, I would
like a check for fifteen dollars.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jeff Hansen
I consider sending just such a letter to General Motors. Verbatim. Maybe the rental agency just forgot to give us our "Halogen Bulb Manual Adjuster Stick". Cynthia gave me an ice pack and wrapped my little piggies in gauze. She's always prepared; in my confusion, I would have just poured Coke on them or something.
ELVIS ON THE RADIO, STEEL GUITAR IN MY SOUL
(93nov29mon1:49pm)
We arrive in Memphis bedraggled and hungry. We went to some rotty fast food fish joint
("Captain ARRRRrrrrs"),
which was okay, but not before passing a hamburger stand that measured 10 feet by 10 feet.
Think about it for awhile.
Then we went to Graceland. We didn't have time to take the tour bus (okay, okay,
"Elvisophobia"), so I just scampered
around the area, dragging Wagner along with me. While I was holding this statue in front of one
of the "Lisa Marie"
planes and various Graceland signage, Cynthia and Pat went to "King's" convenience store and
bought me two
wonderful bags of potato chips: "Chumpies", and "Homegirls". If the king were alive today, he
would have been able
to trundle/roll down Graceland hill to pick up and read some exciting product literature at his
favorite corner store:
Chumpies ("Flavor") Potato Chips Manifesto: "This product is an acknowledgment of our American urban experience, and culture. This experience can be found in the term 'Home Boys'. Many youth today are unaware that this term has been used in our community for over 25 years. And many of our 'Home Boys' have gone on to become the pride of their neighborhood. A lot of the time we weren't the best kids on the block, but many of us went on to become Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Ministers, and even Police. We salute the 'Home Boys' of the past and dedicate ourselves to taking back the corner of today, from the dealers of drugs. We have to make the corners drug free again."
Homegirls ("Bumpin Barbecue") Potato Chips Manifesto: "Word Up! MOTHERHOOD: As we look to becoming mothers one day, we will produce children with good manners and good minds. We are the first teachers. WE'RE GOING TO CHANGE THIS THING AROUND. MARRIAGE: We should save ourselves for marriage. Why should a man respect us if he can have us before marriage? Respect yourself and everyone will respect you. NO RING . . . NO THING! WE'RE GOING TO CHANGE THIS THING AROUND. THE POWER WITHIN US: The force within us is stronger than the negative forces outside of us. So our message to bad influences is ... STEP OFF! WE'RE GOING TO CHANGE THIS THING AROUND. THERE IS A NEW BAG ON THE BLOCK . . . IT'S ALL THAT! . . . AND A BAG OF CHIPS"
Great morals, terrible chips! I got a nice shot of Dick by the "Wait for the ELVIS signal to cross the street" sign graffito, and by the blue Cadillac displayed outside the "Elvis Presley Automobile Museum" which has this ridiculously long piece of text (much like THIS one!) explaining how the car was originally was pink, but "too many people were confusing it for Elvis' pink Cadillac" (i.e., "we were sued").
DARN, THAT'S THE END
(93nov29mon11:37pm)
I'm going to cut this short (get it?) before I drown everyone out with this hazy text journey. The
rest of the way
back, we mostly discussed/argued various points from 13th Gen. Let me just end by saying that
Waffle House is the
keystone that keeps America together, and I wish I had stolen a menu, because the layout is just
INCREDIBLE. We
kept track of them on the way back; there's one only 45 minutes outside of Michigan. Anyone up
for a road trip?
Excerpted from Ladies' Fetish & Taboo Society Compendium of Urban Anthropology
Springing into '94, Vol. VII, No. 1
Want more info? Write fortuna@pipeline.com.
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