Self-Promotion

As you may have noticed from my updated sidebar, I am now a certified blogger at the newly launched blog of Emerson's Writing, Literature and Publishing graduate program. It's about writing, literature, and publishing (natch), with a particular focus (at times) on the Bostonian/Emersonian perspective.

Our fascist boss (hi, Kim!) has been hounding us to promote the site and build up a reader base — so I implore you, go read my latest post, On Dampness, and then the elegant and intellectual diatribes by my like-minded peers.

Conversations With Greatness CLXXXII

A Series of Eventful Misfortunes (Pt. 2)

The bizarre heatwave that had nixed my trip to Death Valley was still thoroughly settled on Monday; when I left my hotel around ten in the morning, it was already 98F outside. Nevertheless, after a quick stop at the (overpriced but impressive) Hoover Dam, I charged east into the Nevada desert. (Potential t-shirt slogan: “There’s nada in Nevada!”)

I-15 going east from Vegas is an interesting drive. It starts off scattered with mesas in a vivid Trivial Pursuit palette: History, Literature, and Sports all glow in rich strata across the landscape, one on top of the other. Then things pretty quickly flatten out, and all of a sudden you’re in Arizona, driving across this huge stretch of flatness on a suicidal collision course with a full-on mountain range. If I hadn’t already been sweating buckets from the 107F heat outside, I would have been sweating nervously — because the way the road is angled against the mountain, it literally looks like it just ends, and there you are, stuck in the middle of the freaking desert with nowhere to go.

As it happens, there’s a narrow pass through which the road winds, emerging on the other side in Utah. (Potential t-shirt slogans: “Utah man!”; “Whatch Utah-lking About, Foo?”) From there I-15 continues north, but I exited and got onto a smaller road towards Zion National Park. (Actual t-shirt slogan: “Our ‘rock’ stars never get old!”)

Zion is pretty heavenly, as you might imagine. Other than the fact that I got a giant nosebleed (yeah, I’m that kid), it has easily been the highlight of the trip so far, and even the nosebleed had its upside — the park ranger felt so sorry for me that he only charged me half admission. Zion Canyon (the main attraction) is pretty spectacular on its own, but the road, at one point, goes into a tiny tunnel blown into the mountain, so small that it can only accommodate one, single-file RV (of which I have seen many this week). It’s pitch black and you make your way through with only the glow of your headlights and the hum of your A/C for company, and it's marvellous.

Unfortunately I had completely misjudged how long the driving for the day would take, and wound up on the other side of Zion at five-thirty with two hundred miles between me and my planned stop for the evening. Except, actually, it was sort of only four-thirty, because my planned stop was in Arizona, which doesn’t observe Daylight Saving Time (thank you very much 1968 state legislature) — but I didn’t realise that until much later. Anyway, the upside was that I arrived at Glen Canyon exactly at sunset, then ditched the idea of going all the way to my planned stop, and took a room in a small town just over the border, in the Arizona desert. (Potential t-shirt slogan: “Ari-zone out!”)

And that’s where I’ll stop for now. Yet more photos added on Facebook.

Next: The Grand Canyon!

Alas! Vegas!

I pulled into Vegas around six o’clock in the evening. My hotel had been on the cheap side and was on the old strip (which Adrienne had described to me as “ghetto”), so I was pleasantly surprised by how nice my room was. Oh, sure, there were miserable alcoholics smoking and pissing away their money just a hundred feet or so below me — but I had a page right out of an Ikea catalogue.

After showering the desert off and having a quick dinner, I headed down to the new strip. My hotel had claimed to have a shuttle bus, but in fact this was a lie; the concierge looked positively terrified when I asked about it. And because Mallory (or “her mom”, to whom all of her fussing is ultimately attributed) had spent weeks telling me scare stories about the dangers of walking about Vegas on one’s own, I shelled out for a cab.

I will say this about Vegas cab drivers: they are a chatty bunch. At least my guy on the way to the strip talked to me; my guy on the way back to the hotel talked mainly to himself (I think one comment — “I’ll tell you, if there’s one goddamn thing these people can do, it’s fuck up a road” — was directed at me, but as a conversation starter I wasn’t quite sure where to go with it).

On the strip I strolled around a couple of the big casinos — the Bellagio, Caesar’s, Planet Hollywood, Paris — casually depositing my money in strategic slot machines, and eventually ending up at a blackjack table at the Flamingo, where I chatted with my Ethiopian dealer and walked away with $35. It didn’t quite cover the cab rides.

The strip is a pretty surreal place. I guess you don’t need me to tell you this. I think my favourite part was Frank Sinatra’s voice echoing down the street — it was coming from the fountain show at the Bellagio, though I prefer to imagine Ol’ Blue Eyes’s ghost hovering above the strip, getting tanked on martinis and trying to stare down women’s shirts. Though I guess if you want to see boobs in Vegas there are easier ways to go about it — I was offered escorts by approximately eighty-seven thousand people.

After a day of driving, I was tired and stiff, but I still capped off my night in the most Vegaseque way possible: I went back to my hotel room and fell asleep in front of the Weather Channel. Just like in that movie.

(A few more pictures added to the Facebook album.)

Next: Just Deserts!

A Series of Eventful Misfortunes (Pt. 1)

So, Sunday morning I dragged myself out of bed at eight, so that I could get a jump on my long, meandering drive from LA to Vegas. The plan was to head north to Death Valley, then cross over into Nevada and loop back towards the south and Sin City.

Then, about ten, Mallory (who will evidently make a good mother one day) called me in a bit of a panic — turns out a heat wave had rolled in over night, and there was a severe temperature warning for the entire Death Valley region. It was to reach a record high (for May) of 117F, or 47.2C. This, if you are unaware, is about the temperature at which titanium spontaneously bursts into flames, and meant that (assuming my car didn’t overheat in the middle of the desert), I wouldn’t actually be able to stand outside of it for longer than about five minutes without, um, dying.

So I pulled over and we worked out a plan B.

Instead I cut east along winding state roads, watching the desert flap into mountains around me. A little past Barstow, California, I stopped at a ghost town called Calico. Ghost towns had been on my to do list for Death Valley (it’s full of them, shockingly), so I was happy to find one along my new route. That said, Calico was definitely a consolation prize: it’s more of a tourist trap than anything else, with only five original buildings among the two dozen or so Disneyfied ones. It boasts such authentic attractions as a Popcorn Wagon and Icee Drink Stand, the Calico Photo Studio, the Sweet Shop (serving old Western espresso drinks), and the Maggie Mine Shack. The last one particularly intrigued me as it boasted an infamous “Glory Hole”, but I decided not to pay the admission — doubtless it wouldn’t have lived up to expectations, either.

From there I hooked into I-15 and drove northeast, between the northern edge of the Mojave and the southern edge of Death Valley. You can actually see Death Valley from the freeway, and it’s pretty striking; you’re just driving along, flat across the desert — and thinking things couldn’t get much flatter — and then suddenly, on your left, the desert drops away in the distance and a wavy fog hangs in the gap.

The Mojave, in the meantime, is beautiful. I ducked on to a county road for a while, a two lane strip of bumpy asphalt that changed colour as it flew by — brick red in front of the car, slate grey in the rearview — and scraggled, pistachio brush stretching away for silent miles on either side.

Then I crossed the state line into Nevada, and was immediately greeted by two casinos, an outlet mall, a rollercoaster, and billboards advertising for porn auditions.

Some preliminary photos on Facebook, if you're interested.

Next: Vegas, baby!

Who Says Stereotypes Are Inaccurate?

A list of predictable things about my experience in LA:

• Gay tattoo artists at Venice Beach
• Dinner at a sushi place proudly displaying pictures of celebrity clients (they were Justin Long, aka “Mac”, and Jean-Claude van Damme)
• Driving one block between destinations
• Drinking, going to bed, waking up hungover, drinking again
• Wedding dress shopping at a Beverly Hills boutique
• Seeing a movie on the FOX lot
• Radio ads for boob jobs (“Make your body happy!”)*

(*My other favourite radio quote from the trip: “There are a lot of technical differences between Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ and what our economy is doing right now: back then it was a full-fledged depression; now things are just pretty crappy.”)

Next: the drive to Vegas.

Conversations With Greatness CLXXXI

Sure, Baby, Whatever You Want

From BBC NEWS | Americas: Obama sorry for 'sweetie' comment

You really do have to visit the BBC page for this story and listen to the audio from Obama's voicemail apology. It honestly sounds like what I imagine an SNL (or maybe Family Guy) sketch about Obama leaving a voicemail apology would sound like; right down to the ponderous pauses, exaggerated verbal tics, and fuzzy logic. It's rather hilarious.

Also, not that I — ahem — like to blow relatively insignificant Obama gaffes out of proportion, but is anyone else just a little irritated by the content of his apology? "It's a bad habit"? That's the best you can do? It's tantamount to saying: "I'm sorry I did kind of a douchebaggy thing, Peggy, but the thing is, I'm kind of a douchebag."

And yet, because Soundbite McGraw says it in that booming voice of his, suddenly all is forgiven? Doesn't anyone else wonder about the underlying implications of a presidential candidate who habitually dismisses women with a blithe "sweetie", and then "fixes" things by a thirty second phone message? Do we really want Joey Tribbiani in the White House?

Oh, sure, at least he apologised, but only after the fact, and I think habits (even admittedly bad ones) say more about a person than what that person does when he realises that he just potentially alienated the one voting bloc that is still most loyal to his opponent.

So, in conclusion: I am still skeptical about Obama, no matter what John Edwards says.