Thursday, May 21, 2009

Wherein I Demonstrate How Badly I Suck At Photoshop

I think I was built for highway driving. But not by some shithouse loser-ass American company. By Honda. If Honda made a machine that drives machines that drive on highways, I like to think that it would be a lot like me, but with a less-chiseled jawline. My ability to stay within the lane? Legendary. Those "You're going to die if you don't adjust!" grooves would have nothing to do if the highway were full of Mes. My endurance? Iditarodian. My bladder? Well let's just say I was walking by an oil tanker that moonlights as a CT scanner the other day, and HE was like, "God-Damn!". I saw a lot of tough-looking sumbitches drivin' them big rigs on my cross-country trip - dudes with laughable mullets and hunting-catalog outfits. And as I - a northerner without any questionable facial hair and with a penchant for conjugating correctly - passed them, there is no way they could have known that they were being passed (courteously and always on the left) by their future champion. I will be the Jeff Gordon of big rig drivers. They will adorn their rides with cartoons in which my call number receives a golden shower, but they will soon find out that I am unflappable - I will drink their metaphorical golden shower like it is lemon-lime Gatorade, and drive past them as they metaphorically vomit in disgust.

What's so great about highway driving, though, is that it masks my weaknesses. For instance, many of you know that I have the poorest sense of direction this side of a game of pin the tail on the donkey. If you were to drive me and a dog around randomly for an hour and then kick us out of the car, I would blindly follow the dog with my arms outstretched like a two-year-old until one of us got run over, and if it were him I'd start looking for the nearest place to make a new life for myself. But the highway is pretty straightforward. Take I-70 East for a thousand miles. Got it.

As you might have surmised if you have been paying very close attention, I just got back from a roadtrip - a whirlwind east coast jaunt with my Dad to attend Nate's graduation from Penn, and to bring him back to Colorado, whereupon he may Derv mightily. (Speaking of the Dervishes, we are 3-0 now, and have summarily ass-whipped every team we've played thus far. Bandwagon-hoppers, your time is now.) It was a good trip. When I think about all the shit we got done in one week - visiting with all of my grandparents, attending an Orioles-Royals game in Kansas City (on Ladies Night, no less. My attendance was a surprise treat for them) and a Rangers-Tigers game in Detroit (and witnessing my first live one-hitter. Fuck you, Michael Young.), and attending Nate's various graduation clusterfucks in Philadelphia, all sandwiched between a shitload of the highway driving for which I was maybe built by Honda - it really makes me appreciate what a week can be. As a gentleman who has on multiple occasions failed to put on pants for three straight days because it looks a little bit cloudy outside, an eventful trip like this one is both an edifying and a shaming experience. At any rate, here are a few thoughts I've had in the past week:

- I found out on this trip that the tired waitress schtick of mock-seriously denying customers some basic perquisite is not endemic to Colorado. I hate this schtick very much. Only one of these lines did not happen:

My Dad: Could I get another napkin?
Waitress: Nope. We're not allowed to give out extra napkins.
(Very Short Pause)
(A unicorn trots in and orders a black coffee)
Waitress: Haha! Did you see his face?
Me: (murders her)


- A 17-hour car ride with one other person presents a lot of opportunities for conversation and for silence, and I appreciate both. I especially like when a period of silence is so long that your thoughts can swim off in some random direction for twenty minutes, which is always hilarious when you come up for air. For instance:

Dad: Who is this (playing on my iPod)?
Me: This is Flight of the Conchords.

(20 minutes of silence)

Dad: Is it possible to extract DNA from bone marrow?

Awesome.

- And in case you don't have anything to talk or think about, the highway is littered with thinkpieces. For instance (I didn't take this picture, but I'm pretty sure this is the exact billboard I saw):

















At first when I saw this I missed the point and was like, "Probably Cabo." Then I thought about it for a second, and I was like, "Well, wait. I'm dead. I don't think incorporeal souls can get tans. Or drunk. Can souls date? I mean, you always hear about 57-years-married Eunice and Herbert meeting up in heaven, but if you die single, can your soul mingle? Because Cabo would be no fun without the potential for intercourse. Souls don't seem to care. Souls are asexual creeps." Then I thought about it some more and I realized that this isn't one of those hypotheticals where you get to have fun choosing. This isn't graduating from Penn and having infinite possibilities. It's graduating from the Air Force Academy and wondering where your ass is being sent. So I thought a little bit about Thomas Aquinas and came to the following conclusion:

















This sign is more direct (I didn't take this picture, either, but this sign is probably everywhere):

















Actually, Christians pretty much dominated the pedantic billboard market across the Midwest. "Hell Is Real," "An Abortion Stops A Beating Heart," "Thank Your Mom For Not Aborting You" - the fuckers are everywhere. Rush Limbaugh loves to talk about the drive-by liberal media, but it only seems fair that the media lean left to balance the large and important drive-by billboard disparity. When I get rich by inventing a locker system for theme parks and zoos that is capable of transporting your items to any other same-numbered locker in the theme park/zoo (patent pending), I am going to combat this disparity. And yes, the billboards I put up will be hacky photoshop jobs, too. And they'll all have pictures strapped awkwardly on top.



















































- Do you know why Philadelphia is called the City of Brotherly Love? It's because that's what "Philadelphia" means in Greek. It certainly isn't because people in Philadelphia are nice to one another. Philadelphia is a miserable place, populated by miserable people who cannot get over their own misery long enough to treat each other with even a modicum of respect or common human decency. With the notable exception of the waitress I may or may not have murdered earlier in this trip/blog post (how do you know unicorns don't love coffee?), I am always effusively nice to strangers, and generally they are nice to me, so Philadelphia is a bit of a shock to the system. I'd imagine that spending a month or so there would be long enough to batter my spirit to the point that I would become one of them, and I suppose that's how the city stays so mean. Fuck that place...Maybe they've ruined me already.

- And you might assume that Ivy League parents would be relatively mature, thoughtful people, but Nate's graduation ceremony put the lie to that bullshit assumption you might have made. One guy in particular, every time someone with the last name "Hu" was announced, was cracking himself up by saying "Who?" and looking around expectantly, likely hoping that someone in the area was a talent scout or a voting member of the Comedy Hall of Fame. I was annoyed, but I'm probably a hypocrite to complain about him, since this billboard is the only one I could be bothered to take a picture of, and looking at it makes me laugh every time:

















The Right Parts.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I live in the outskirts of Philadelphia and you are correct it can get pretty crazy there. Though I wouldn't say that they are mean persay, just passionate.

I actually found your site because of the chinchilla picture and am now pretty attached to your stories, haha.

Btw..if your parents would have given in and gotten you a chinchilla it would still be alive. They have the ability to live up to 25 years. I have one and made sure to know that first. And they definitely escape, but they generally come back because who else would give them fattening treats.