Road Trippin' (aka Where I Was Last Week)

[Guest TSMAdmin]

Hi everybody! If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s personal websites. Unless you know the person in question, these are the most BORING things in the world. Someone you don’t even know wasting web-space typing up each and every detail of some stupid thing they’ve done in the hope that everyone will read it in awe strikes me as egotistical and dumb. Luckily, you guys all know who I am, so you won’t have those feelings at all and you’ll love hearing about my road trip last week (August 12-16 2002)!

 

As a prelude to my road trip recap, I went with my long-time best friends Peter, Maxwell, and Joel. Since we all just graduated from high school and depart soon for college, this was very likely the last “big thing” we did together, for at least a little while. We made a video of our last road trip (during Spring Break, before I started using the board, to L.A.) and it was a lot of fun (albeit 8 hours long!), so we decided to try that again. Also, since I make a habit of complaining about being broke and begging for hand-outs, I decided to include a “running balance” and “where did all the money go?” each day, so that you can see how well I spend my money (which, depending on how you interpret it, may be an explanation for why I’m always broke!). Now that there’s a bit of background, let’s get started, shall we?

 

Day 1/5 (Balance: $160-170 [exact amount unknown])

Much to my chagrin, we agreed the day before that since San Diego was an 8-9 hour drive; we’d be on the road at 6AM. Even though I was in bed at 12:30AM the night (day?) before saying goodbye to everyone on the board, I somehow managed to awaken at 5:50AM and got ready. Joel came to my house at 6AM, and we waited for Peter (the driver) to pick us up. And waited. And waited some more… we watched Mr. Rogers, but Joel opted to watch CNN instead of Hamtaro. Finally, Maxwell calls me, and I call Peter at 7AM, only to wake him up. After making such a big deal about me, being the designated “flake” (which I’m not!) being ready to go by 6 (which I was!), our own driver forgot to set his alarm and was an hour late! Oy! We finally got going around 7:30AM.

 

The beginning of the road trip was pretty uneventful. We stopped for gas (AT THE SAME PLACE WE STOPPED FOR GAS LAST ROAD TRIP!!!!!!11) and ate McDonald’s, but Peter tried the only thing worse than drinking and driving, eating and driving; he spilled McNugget sauce all over his pants, and we had to pull over so he could get McNugget sauce off his pants and I could clean his fingers. Of course, I didn’t clean his fingers hard enough, so we had to stop for him to clean his fingers and eat the rest of his McNuggets. Besides this delay, there was another for over an hour at some isolated hot gas station when we thought the car overheated and popped the hood but we were all too chicken to take off the cap to check the anti-freeze level because of the fear of heat pressure or something. When we asked the guy at the gas station to take the cap off, he laughed at us, and asked us how we were going to live in the real world. It turned out we didn’t even have a problem, which sucked because we already bought the anti-freeze and everything. Boo!

 

Finally, at around 4:30PM, we made it to San Diego and checked into the hotel there. After spending some time in the pool (where, in a game of Marco Polo, I was “it” for 40 minutes because I can’t swim and thus couldn’t catch anyone; some other girls were laughing at me the whole time), we went around town a bit, but ran into the COOLEST MALL I’VE EVER SEEN! Seriously, this place was even better than the Mall of America. I forget what the place was called, but it was three floors, but unlike most big malls, it was open air, so you could look up and see the clear night sky. Not only that, but because it was open air and at night, there were these beautiful elaborate signs outside all the stores and restaurants, particularly those at the top level (including the shiniest McDonald’s Arches ever!). Most of the time I go to the mall with a specific purpose in mind, but this is one of the few malls I would go to just to hang out at and see all the stores. Plus they had these weird “futuristic” clothes-washer things that looked like cryogenics chambers from some ‘50s sci-fi movie. Too bad almost everything was closed by the time we got there.

 

We ended up eating at the Napa Valley Grille (which I thought was really funny since we live near the Napa Valley, and think nothing special of it, yet in San Diego it’s highly revered as a fancy shmancy place worth naming eloquent restaurants after), simply because the hostess there was HOT! Sadly, that really is why we made the decision to eat there. I ordered Goat Cheese Ravioli and Chicken, with pine nuts and a light wine sauce. Eating a dish like that made me feel important, and we made “conversation” about our “portfolios”, and when I got the joke about why I don’t have a job (which I’ve been hearing ever since I lost my seasonal job at Burlington Coat Factory last year), I pretended to be a laid-off dot-commer. Funny stuff.

 

Back at the hotel, it was PR0N ALL NIGHT! For no apparent reason, we bought a package of three movies back to back to back. One I remember was particularly funny, because it had a stock broker who, when his wife begins foreplay, not only decides to NOT have sex with her, but rather to go to another room and masturbate so he doesn’t miss the opening of the stock exchange (he’d “get off faster that way”). His wife gets mad, has lesbian sex with a random friend of hers, and sends him off to a “sexual reprogramming” school. Somewhere along the way there ends up being a dream sequence involving laser blasts with intercourse, and men pulling condoms out of women after climaxing. I don’t know… I wasn’t paying full attention, but what I saw was hilarious, although there were too many sex scenes for my taste. I wanted to know the title, so Maxwell went back to the main menu, but hit the wrong button and ordered another package of three movies. So, just when I thought it had ended, there was only more PR0N!

Where Did All The Money Go?

Well… I chipped in $20 for gas, $40 for hotel, $20 for dinner and $3 for McDonald’s. That’s a huge chunk of my limited finances right there. Damn McDonald’s taking all my money…

Amazing Experience of the Day

When we first stopped for gas, we all tried the new Pepsi Blue. I can’t even begin to say how terrible that was. It allegedly tasted like berries, but had an awful syrupy bubble-gummy aftertaste. Guess there really is no such thing as a good blue soda. Once again Pepsi proves they should stick to, ya know, Pepsi?!

 

Day 2/5 (Balance: $82)

After being forced to wake up early again (groan…), I noticed that I had spent an awful lot of money the previous day. However, I quickly rejoiced when I learned that after much debate, we were, in fact, going to the San Diego Zoo. Yay! The Zoo was the only thing I really knew about in San Diego, and thus was the only thing I really wanted to do.

 

We got to the Zoo around 11AM, and the first thing we noticed was the ticket prices… $18.50 for an adult? For once, I wished I wasn’t 18… but gladly paid and went in anyway. The second thing we noticed was “DAYAMN! This is a HELLA big zoo!” as flamingos stood in front of us and swarms of people and roads were the surroundings in all other directions. Starting in the rain-forest, we continued walking and saw tons of animals, including some we hadn’t even seen before (in particular the tapir and okapi, which looked very funny), and variations of ones we had. Most of the animals’ enclosures are set-up like their natural habitats but with pleasing aesthetics, although there are also some exhibits where you can’t see the animals because the animals are so rare that to arrange their habitat aesthetically would present a danger to their health. Ummm… I guess I can buy that, but why bother bringing them to the zoo in the first place then? We saw a lot of tree kangaroos, a typically boring koala, and some raptors (including a 60 pound vulture with a 20-foot wingspan that was so big Peter thought from a different angle that it was a guy and not a bird) before taking a sky-flight thing back to the entrance and eating lunch. After lunch, we went up this long escalator thing that went nowhere, TWICE, trying to find the world famous Giant Pandas and then the decidedly less famous lions. We found the Pandas, waited in line to see them, then pretty much left. I guess now I can say I saw Giant Pandas, because I believe those are the only Giant Pandas in a U.S. zoo, but there isn’t much you can get from seeing them live that you can’t get from a WWF (to think, three months ago I could’ve been flamed for typing that) website or video.

 

After that, since it was a nice day, we went to the beach, where, as is the case on Southern California beaches, there was an over-saturation of hot girls. They were everywhere, which further cemented my views that picking dates on looks alone is stupid, because there’s WAY too many hot girls for that to work. Not much else happened at the beach, but I was buried in the sand, and getting up after that and having layers of sand all over your body that won’t wash off sucks. Afterward, we went on a wooden rollercoaster, which was an average coaster, but like many wooden rollercoasters, the constant violent bumping and creaking is the most unnerving thing about it.

 

For dinner, we went to San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, which is a really beautiful place (all of the buildings we saw had great colonial exteriors), even if all the restaurants are way too expensive. We passed a homeless man in a wheelchair, and he played a great blues harmonica and had a bone-chilling vocal delivery. I felt really bad that I didn’t give him any money when we first passed him because I didn’t get the chance to see him and give it to him then after we left the restaurant. Regarding the restaurant we went to, I can’t remember what it was called, but it was funny because we passed all these restaurants on the street and told the hostess’ we’d be back, but since we could obviously only go to one restaurant, whenever we passed another hostess they would jeer us, because unlike their usual partisans we were middle-class teenage tourists so we wouldn’t complain about it. I wanted a prawn pasta dish, but couldn’t afford it so substituted it for the same kind of tube pasta but with shrimp and oyster. It was good, and since prawns are basically just big shrimp, I think I made the right choice…

Where Did All The Money Go?

Another $20 dinner plus a $20 zoo ticket = $40 down, which led to me looking in my wallet and saying for the first time, “Guys, I can NOT spend any money the rest of the trip…”

Amazing Experience of the Day

I guess you could say passing the homeless blues player. It’s not like I never saw any homeless people before (I lived in San Francisco… Market Street, anyone?), but this was the most talented homeless musician I’ve ever heard.

 

Day 3/5 (Balance: $31)

We left San Diego this morning. Bye bye, San Diego! After stopping at Carl’s Jr for breakfast (even though their breakfast sandwiches looked NASTY compared to the advertised sandwiches, all fast food advertisements have immaculate sandwiches so we ate ‘em anyway), we got on the road to Universal Studios Hollywood! I didn’t really want to go, plus I had to borrow money to get in, but it’s all good I guess. Here’s my mini-review of the stuff we went on:

 

The Mummy – this is one of those walk-through “haunted house” style exhibits. It’s got some decent stuff in it, like a weird little person in costume like the weird little spirit hunter things from The Mummy Returns, and has a nice atmosphere for an Egyptian tomb, I guess. It wasn’t really scary though, but that’s probably because Joel and I ruined the attraction by overselling everything with comical high-pitched “screams”. Supposedly you can also activate some things to mess with other people, but it never happened to us… or did it?

 

T-2: 3D – This was a pretty awesome little 3D movie. I’d venture it might even be better than Moonwalker! Before a short introduction by a hilarious live hostess, you put on your glasses and witness mismatched live actors (they tried hard, but they were darkened for a reason – they looked little like John and Sarah Connor and NOTHING like Arnold!) and on-screen extra footage shot with the real actors. With the exception of some effects with the T-1000, and T-1,000,000 near the end, there wasn’t much obvious 3-D; most of it was fairly subtle. However, even though at the beginning they say that every seat is the best seat, it’s not true. After talking with my friends, I discovered they had more 3-D images “aimed” at them (for me, I always saw them aiming directly at Joel who sat to my left).

 

Studio Tour – This is “the” thing to do at Universal Studios. It takes about 45 minutes, and involves a bus trip through some actual studio lots and sets, and an equal amount of staged occurrences based on some famous Universal films, such as King Kong, Jaws, and Earthquake (although there are many others as well). My favorite stop, of course, was by the Bates Motel and the “Psycho House”. However, the trip took on a kind of kitschy goofy feel because the announcer wouldn’t sell anything, which makes sense because they probably do hundreds of those tours a month for their job, but instead of “OH MY GOD, IT’S JAWS!!!!!!!!!” it was “Oh dear, it seems Jaws decided to interrupt our tour. The shark, nicknamed Bruce, caused as much trouble for Steven Spielberg during filming as well…” It was still a neat little trip though, and I marked out for an Allen Smithee reference along the way.

 

Jurassic Park: The Ride – Before “going down” (the section of the park with Jurassic Park, E.T., and some other attractions was separated from the rest of the park by a long series of escalators and stairways), Peter and I went to the Nickelodeon kids area, which has water-shooters, huge buckets that dump water, and a rocket that “blasts off” another flood of water. Because we were bigger than everyone else and wore actual clothes, we got soaked to the bone, so in line for Jurassic Park we wrung out our shoes of water and told the astonished people behind us in line that we had just got off the ride. This is the only true ride in the park, and even though the first part of the ride is slow, with just a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs spitting water on you (unfortunately, unlike the Nickelodeon water, this was ice-cold water, so it was uncomfortable), the drop at the end was much steeper than I expected and thus made the ride awesome (it was such a thrilling drop I couldn’t scream, and just had my mouth hanging open and my eyes closed looking like an idiot in the picture).

 

Here, I split from my friends, because they really wanted me to go on E.T. with them, and I said no. As a bit of a backstory, I was afraid of E.T. growing up, pretty much up until the recent re-release, where the situation was “downgraded” and he just makes me feel uncomfortable. Anyway, I guess my friends thought it would be funny to force me to go on it so I’d freak out. Oh, ho, Ed’s intensely frightened, how hilarious! So, we argued for about ten minutes, and all this time, because I was still really wet from Nickelodeon and Jurassic Park, I was freezing, so I told them they can go on E.T. and I’d go on Backdraft to warm up. So… just a little more trivial info for those of you keeping score at home.

 

Backdraft – There was literally no line for this. I guess this is what happens when you make an attraction about a movie that nobody saw. Since there weren’t as many people, the host got to be a little warmer (no pun intended) and funnier than the others. They showed some interview and introduction from Ron Howard (who is everywhere in the park… they have all sorts of promo’s for his movies and they also feature him in the Studio Tour and on other attractions), then demonstrated a small fire effect before moving into an area based on the chemical warehouse in the film’s conclusion. I’m no pyromaniac, but when they had a barrage of explosions and fires, especially being cold and all, I was so stoked! All of my friends said beforehand that Backdraft sucks, and given the short line, most people would tend to agree, but that was the most satisfying event at the park. If I may make the cheap wrestling reference, it’s BEING HELD DOWN~!

 

Special Effects Workshop – I checked my pocket-watch and found that my friends would still be in line for another 20 minutes, so I got in line for a new exhibit about three stages of special effects. They got into blue/green screens, movie monsters, and sound effects. It featured a lot of audience participation (alas, not from me), and was a lot of fun to watch, and must have been REALLY great to be a part of. Unfortunately, it was also really long, and because of the air conditioning, really cold (especially after Backdraft), so I came out shivering to find that I was 45 minutes late meeting my friends… eh heh. Oops.

 

After this, we stopped by Carl’s Jr (again?), and checked into our hotel for the night in L.A.

Where Did All the Money Go?

I had to borrow the $45 admission price for Universal Studios, so even though I “have money” I’m now officially “in debt”, and even though I didn’t buy any t-shirts/souvenirs, or even any food or drink at Universal Studios, once you’re in debt you can only go downhill from there.

Amazing Experience of the Day

Uhhh… I experienced rapid fires and explosions on Backdraft… FOR THE FIRST TIME!

 

Day 4/5 (Balance: $22 [with debt: -$23])

I ate the other half of the Carl’s Jr. sandwich I bought last night because I didn’t have enough money for a real breakfast. Heh. We were on the road all day. Nothing really happened, with the exception of one incident at a gas station where I got really pissed and blew up because I was asked to “repeat a spot” from the last road trip video that I thought was “fucking stupid” (forgive the uncharacteristic coarse language). I really have no idea why it bothered me so much, but I guess throwing a tantrum would’ve made for better footage anyway.

 

We drove up to Big Sur and went camping for the night. I’m not really a big fan of camping, but this was a lot better than I’d thought it would be. We set up a tent and campfire and made s’mores and everything! Like on the road though, nothing really happened. At least I didn’t have to spend a lot of money!

Where Did All the Money Go?

We stopped by a Safeway on the way there to pick up hot dogs to cook, and I was out of contact lens solution so I had to pick up another container of that. Man that stuff is expensive…

Amazing Experience of the Day

Putting hot dogs on sticks and cooking them over an open fire. I had never done it before and it worked much better than I’d thought it would.

 

Day 5/5 (Balance: $12 [with debt: -$33])

We woke up late, because for once we had no real plans. wh00! Once again, we were on the road all day, but this time, to my chagrin we stopped in Santa Cruz. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Santa Cruz (after all, I’m going to school there in three weeks), but I had thought since we went camping we weren’t going to go there. As such, I was a tired little bitch (I admit it, sorry guys!). Plus we played pool, which I don’t like because I’m not particularly good at it, but I think I got a little better in that hour we played. We played some DDR (Dance Dance Revolution; best game ever!), and since it was outside on a platform thing and we were good, there were other tourists gathering around to watch us and even tape us! I found that funny. Also, while we were eating we saw this guy who was such a dork that he played by himself on the hardest song on the hardest difficulty and hit EVERY note PERFECTLY! I’m a bit of a DDR dork myself, but it’s no fun to play by yourself, especially not if it costs money in a real arcade.

 

Once again, we didn’t stay out late (although it seemed like forever since I was tired, only half there, and had to go to the bathroom the whole time), but were on the road home the majority of the way. I got home around 6, and for the first time in two days, ate a real meal (pizza!), and proceeded to go to sleep. And the rest, my friends, is history! OK, not really, but nothing really important has happened since.

 

I hope you guys enjoyed my mini-review/rant/whatever you want to call it. If not, my Velocity recap comes out tomorrow, and next week I’m going to finally turn in some REAL articles (music and/or DVD review), since I should get as many of those in while I still have all the time in the world. As usual, I’ll beg for money (I’m in debt, so I can’t buy my wishlist items myself… hehe), requests for DVD reviews, and feedback. Actually, I don’t have to beg for the latter, I’ve actually been getting feedback lately (yay!), but the Smartmarks’ SMTP server has been acting funny so I won’t be able to respond to it until tomorrow in the “mail bag” section of my column.

 

Oh, and for everyone who thought this would be better, ummm… I’ll try to have a funnier life next time?

 

Edward Robins

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"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about... [just] remember there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste." – John Waters