Bullitt

Rule Number 7: There is no longer such a thing as a real life Steve McQueen, but that won't stop him from making you look like an asshole

I've had a few heated debates recently with a friend of mine (who was just staring at me self-righteously while criticizing my blog's direction) who suggested (demanded) that I stray away from the rules based formula of my blog. And I will say that her argument has some merit (begrudgingly, of course). It's been a few months since my breakup and in many scenarios, these "rules to dealing with a breakup" will start to sound like melodramatic sob stories. So I give to you my new formula. Continue on with the rules format (suck it, Katie), yet remain vague and nebulous about what exactly I'm giving you rules for. In fact, in some cases like tonight, I'll just open my blog with a poorly-constructed witticism and hope that it tricks you into thinking I'm clever and that these rules actually matter. Don't look now, but you've just been played, oh reader.

And now onto the crux of the matter. What's the deal with Steve McQueen? Taking a quick glance at Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page, one can learn that he possesses not only the dashing good looks and rebellious persona that have made so many young women swoon throughout the years, but that he's also a certifiable badass. He served as a marine, did all his own stunts, was an avid motorcycle racer, had a black belt in some variety of martial arts that I've never heard of, and did all of this while snorting cocaine and having inconceivable amounts of movie star sex. He even died in Mexico for Christ's sake. The man was more legend than flesh and bone during the apex of his fame. And what was this man's key to success? Acting in roles where he pretended to be unassuming, careless, and generally aloof. And this is what gets men laid. Not being a marine or a black belt, but pretending like none of that matters and that really you'd rather just smoke a cigarette on the hood of a car in the desert. Do you still wonder why there were so many sexually frustrated authors and physicists?

McQueen is a perfect example of a trend in our culture that seems to have started with post-modernism and has now expanded to include Pavement, James Bond, and Burt Reynold's moustache. Disillusionment is chic. It's one thing to do a lot of cool things with your life, but it's an entirely different thing to have an air of superiority. Much like women are led to believe that they need to be either sun-stained skinny models or intriguing indie goddesses, men are pretty much led to believe that they should be unassuming action figures, alcoholics, and sex fiends. I understand that this is making a lot of assumptions about what females are actually looking for in men...but let's face it ladies, a lot of you would rather go for the guy staring down a bottle of whiskey in the corner of a club than the guy talking your ear off with genuine, caring questions about your day. The problem is that I've never actually met a man who fully embodies this disillusioned apathy that is so idealized in modern culture. At some point, we have to show some emotion. Steve McQueen's don't actually exist in real life; or rather, they don't exist beyond the Hollywood ideals that we cast upon them. Remember Tom Cruise? We all thought that he was one of the coolest guys in Hollywood. Then the homoerotic Top Gun scene started gaining some indie steam, he came out as a Scientologist, and jumped on Oprah's couch. As much as men can pretend to be disillusioned and to feign indifference, ultimately, we will all fall short of the ideal.

Now I've put myself in a vulnerable position, because as a single man I'm not supposed to reveal that I have emotion and am supposed to actively ignore any woman who I am remotely attracted to on the off chance that someday she'll see me stare longingly at a proverbial green light on the opposite dock (hopefully at the same time as she notices my grungy stubble and dirt-stained jeans) and realize that I'm her soul mate. I blame you F. Scott Fitzgerald, and you Charles Bukowski, and mostly, I blame you Steve McQueen. That said, I do believe that there is hope for the men in society who don't live up to this ideal (read: all men). The hope? We're all in the same boat together. Granted, there will always be the eternally douchey jock crowd that will never admit that they have emotions beyond "this Natty Ice tastes great." But for the rest of us, there is some solace in the fact that eventually, even if we don't play into the eternal aloofness hypothesis, we will all meet somewhere on our journey towards the middle. I do have faith in the crowd of women who don't idealize me or my kind as cooler than we should be. And occasionally, it is a little fun to play the game and come off as indifferent when in reality, most of my instincts are bouncing off the walls like children on Christmas. In the end, though, a man will not end up with a woman who thinks he is Steve McQueen. Men will end up with women who understand that they are exactly as they are, and that there's a reason for that.

Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page also lists three different wives. I have a feeling those romantic failings didn't occur because McQueen was too cool to handle. I have a feeling they occurred because after all, even the coolest actor that's ever hit the big screen is still human after all.

The Deodorant Theorem

Rule Number 6: Nostalgia is the best medicine, and the worst drug

This may not be much of a rule, but it's something that I came up with when I was in high school, and I've never gotten over it. And by that I mean that I thought I was so damn clever for coming up with this when I was sixteen years old that I'm going to ram it down everyone's throat until it finally gets published in a coffee table book with advice for high school graduates looking back upon their golden years. I'm serious. Add this to my list of ambitions.

Regardless, describing the effect that nostalgia has on people is enormously difficult. It can be simultaneously very heartening and very distasteful. Either way, our brains are hard-wired with so many implicit connections that reminiscing on the past is impossible to avoid. Take this example: have you ever bought a new style of deodorant? The first time you use deodorant, you can smell it on you for a few days and you think to yourself "hot damn this deodorant smells great, girls are going to love me for wearing this, I'm like Fonzi in this shit." OK, well maybe I just really like a new style of deodorant, but even if you aren't as enthusiastic about smell as I am, you notice that you smell different. But after a few days, your nose and brain get used to the smell. Your body accommodates, and the scent disappears. Now, try switching deodorants for a few months, and then switching back to the original scent. You'll smell it again, and not only that, you'll remember everything that happened during those few days when you first used the deodorant. Yes, this is an experimental process that takes a few months and a couple sticks of deodorant, but I promise I'm not full of shit. I also promise that this won't be worth your time to try if you haven't noticed it already, but whatever.

The point I'm trying to get at is that we unconsciously absorb so many things. There are times when I think I've totally forgotten some parts of my life, and then I'll walk into a room, look at a specific corner in a way that reminds me of another time, and drift into oddly specific memories of years past. For instance, every time I walk into the production studio after my DJ shift at KALX I'm reminded of a specific date that I took an ex-girlfriend on a few years ago. These two things are likely very thinly related, and I still haven't figured out the reasons why I make these connections, but I think that's the point. Nostalgia isn't supposed to make any fucking sense. Unless you think about the deodorant theorem. Much like how our noses accommodate a new smell, our brains accommodate moments that are repeated and ordinary. People generally look back on the past fondly because it is a new stimulus that their brains have forgotten for a while. It is the deodorant that you haven't used for a few months and are just trying on again. While that's a nice feeling, it's very frustrating that we can recognize in hindsight that maybe we should have taken things more seriously while we were involved. Everyone's had the experience at some point of looking back on time spent with a long-lost friend or ex-girlfriend and realizing, "man, I shouldn't have taken that for granted." Nostalgia is a great medicine, but it's an addicting depressant as well.

I've realized recently though that "not taking things for granted" isn't realistic. Our brains are hard-wired to deal with nostalgia in the way they do precisely because they aren't hard-wired to handle full ranges of emotion and comprehension at all hours of the day. We have to take some of this information, store it up, and bring it out in idle times where we have a few moments to become nostalgic and think back on how we felt in the past. If we were always so sentimental, nothing would ever get done. We'd all be likened to the elderly man telling his grandchildren about the "good old days." So how do we get around this and not take things for granted when we're in the moment?

I haven't totally figured out an answer to that question. I have too many regrets in the recent past to think that I'm even making progress in that field. If anything, I think the best we can do is enjoy the waves of positive nostalgia, and when the negative inevitably arrives, take a deep breath and move forward. Nostalgia can be a great medicine, but ultimately the goal in life is to live comfortably drug-free, whether medicinal or not. As far as dealing with the present, my goal is to live intentionally. I will still take things for granted, but I know that I am capable of opening up my brain to what's actually occurring around me. Instead of falling into deep moments of thought about the past and future, I can close off that part of my brain for a bit and just notice the present. It's difficult, but worth attempting.

I have to go to Walgreen's today to buy a new stick of deodorant. I think I'm going to buy something I've never bought before and make a statement about my future. These are the days that I'll remember if I ever try my experiment again, and I'm alright with that. And maybe someday I'll be ready to come back to what I've been wearing recently and will remember some of the things that have happened over the past year. If I'm lucky, I just might look back fondly.

You Are What You Love

So as to not waste any of your precious time, let's jump right into the rules, since this is something that needs to be discussed ad nauseam. I also need to have time to vigorously pat myself on the back for using the phrase "ad nauseam" in a sentence.

Rule Number 5: You are what you love, and not what loves you back

Alright, so I had to steal this rule from a Jenny Lewis lyric. Haha point and call me a hipster. Regardless, it's a very good representation of the topic of l-o-v-e in our society today. And the reason I know this is because I've been force fed a poor interpretation from traditional times. Yes, it's that Corinthians Bible verse that's read at every wedding. "Love is patient, love is kind, love is a handful of meaningless adjectives strewn together in a way that's designed to make children weep and women swoon." OK, I made that last part up, but there's no arguing that stylistically this verse is a bit bogus. That's not to say that I don't like the verse or its message, I really do believe that a loving relationship should be based on all the things listed in that verse. However, I don't think this actually encapsulates what love really is (despite it's many efforts to define it). Love is not based out of reciprocity and isn't always related to a relationship. In many instances, love is vicious, capricious, forgetful and disappointing. It leads to situations where you can go from talking to someone multiple times a day to never speaking again, usually out of some sense of pride, vengeance or pain. The Bible interpretation may sound pretty in the maid-of-honor's speech, but something so huge as love doesn't really boil down to two people, it actually only involves one.

The better interpretation actually comes in the forgotten verses before it, and the aforementioned Jenny Lewis song. I'll deal with the Bible first. Before the laundry list of adjectives that starts in verse 4, the Corinthians letter says this:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

Sounds a little different, right? In the later definition, love is something that is based around how you interact with other people. This time, love is just something that you can possess regardless of how the other people around you act. This is where Jenny Lewis comes in. The lyric that I posted for Rule #5 is especially important to me right now because I've seen the vicious, capricious, disappointing side of relational love recently - and really, for a long time now, as I've essentially bounced between relationships since high school. In other words, I'm very jaded. I don't know what this love thing is, but I want nothing to do with it because it's burned me one too many times. But Lewis reminds me that I am what I love, and not what loves me back, because often those are two different things. Now this is sort of like the "you are what you eat" saying in that if I eat a pear, I'm not actually a pear, but you get the drift. I can love things like writing, music, sports, whatever, and that's how I'm defined, not by my interactions with other people.

That's not to say that interactive love with other people is not important...in fact it's probably the most important thing in life. But in times where I find myself disappointed because I put so much into a relationship (this applies to friendships too) only to have it fall apart, it's nice to be reminded that the end result of my efforts doesn't reflect on who I am as a person. I am what I love, and while sometimes those things are torturous, malicious, and generally don't love me back, I can still take some comfort in knowing that I am the only person who defines myself and how I love things and people alike.

Back to the Future

As a kid, I was always infatuated with a particular scene in Back to the Future Part II. One of the characters (I'm pretty sure it was Biff) went into the future, got an encyclopedia full of sports results, and then when he went back in time started wagering huge amounts of money on surefire gambles. As a unashamed capitalist, I thought this was the coolest thing that could ever happen. If only I could know with 100% certainty that I would achieve a certain result, I would be a much happier (and much richer person). Or would I?

This brings me back to the breakup/loneliness/general despair rules

Rule Number 4: If you've done it before and it didn't work, it's not going to work this time around.

The thing about predicting the future is that, most of the time, we can already do it. Most of the situations that I face on a day to day basis are relatively simple. Most of the situations I've faced regarding relationships are even simpler. We have enormous levels of social context about what should and should not be acceptable in romantic relationships. Whether we learned it from One Tree Hill or Seinfeld or Boy Meets World doesn't matter, what matters is that essentially from the time we realize that we have pleasure organs...erm...reproduction organs...anyway, from the time we realized that, all we've really talked about is how we interact with the opposite sex. Between this and the abundance of television shows that literally are designed for the sole purpose of forcing viewers to sit down and harangue others for their poor relationship decisions (I'm looking at you MTV), the book is pretty much written on how to deal with relationships by now. So why, with this immense relational vocabulary, do so many people act as if they are illiterate?

I think my personal hindrance is that I'd rather take sure consequences that I know I can handle rather than uncertain consequences that may or may not be worse. And this is where the Todd comes in. As a huge Scrubs fan, I've wondered why the Todd continues with his sexual innuendo despite the fact that he knows it will always end with him getting slapped, threatened, etc. But here's the key - that's the worst that ever happens. I'd argue that the Todd continues in his devious ways because he knows that he can handle those consequences, but what he can't handle is forcing himself to change his personality, perhaps opening himself up to rejection. He'd rather be the hilarious, piggish Todd that everyone knows than try to be sensitive Todd, or angry Todd, or even sexually active Todd. At times, we are all Todds. At least in my experience, this very human issue rears its ugly head most often when you are alone with your own thoughts. At least in my experience with breakups (and I'm not even just referring to mine at this point), the person who has been broken up with always has an intense desire to pick up the phone and continue trying to contact the person who dumped him or her. It's pretty simple...nothing that he or she will say will make you happy. And you know this. Yet you still call. Because you are the Todd. You aren't even listening to what I'm saying right now are you? STOP DIALING DAMMIT.

Alright, so maybe that was an exaggeration, but I do believe that people continue to make the same mistakes because they can mitigate the consequences, rather than risking something better (or worse, but usually better). Most people are like mice running through mazes. They'd rather live in the half-misery of making the choice that feels right but doesn't lead to the cheese than actually ignore their instincts and go for something better. As I mentioned in my last post, this is essentially my journey towards edifying myself personally in the places where I would usually make the same mistakes. While I would love to be able to go into the future, find out when the A's win the World Series (please, let it be 2011) and come back and bet my life savings on it, I can't. Looking backwards, though, I think I know enough about where I've been to know what to avoid.

Wasted Hours

What would it look like if every time we felt lonely or self-destructive, we made an attempt to better ourselves? How would that work?

That was my Facebook status from this morning, and has been something that I've willingly chosen to wrestle with all day. I wanted to force my own hand. I wanted an answer to the question of why after twenty years of living I haven't found a way to successfully deal with loneliness. Why when all goes wrong, I still feel like a neurotic fifteen year old in the bedroom in the house I grew up in trying to play power chords on a guitar and illegally downloading Gin Blossoms ballads about how unfair life truly is (my fifteen year old safe would hate to know that I don't like the Gin Blossoms any more...but hey, Empire Records was a big stage of my life). And this morning was like any other. I woke up, reached for my phone to send a text message that I knew would bring no good to my life, and then I stopped and waited. What if every time I felt self-destructive, I did something constructive for my life? I ended up downloading a podcast from my church at home, an institution that I have not stepped foot in since summer (and even then, I rarely was able to attend), and I listened. Instead of talking myself into or out of what to feel, I let myself be influenced by something that I knew would be good for me. And so sprung this crazy idea.

Over the next few weeks as I deal with the post-breakup blues, I want to discover things about myself that I didn't previously know. And I want to encourage other people to do the same. Some days may be trivial and many may end in me performing the perfunctory duties of my everyday life without much thought for myself. But in between, within those wasted hours, I will continue with this journey. I will stop and take deep breaths whenever I feel myself slipping, and ask these questions over and over, a personal mantra repeating endlessly in my brain. The continuing story of Bungalow Bill will move onward. And maybe I'll learn something from the process. As for now, here are a few rules to follow if you find yourself similarly lonely, exhausted, and wearing articles of clothing that ex-girlfriends actually made for you years ago (true story...actually all of my sleeping garments have some relation to an ex-girlfriend).

Rule Number 1: The soundtrack to your life is very, very crucial. One thing that I've realized in the past few weeks is that soul music does exactly what it's intended to do. Despite the fact that seemingly every soul musician ends up a born again Christian due to an ill encounter with steaming grits, is murdered by his father, or suffers a tragic drug overdose, the music actually does make you feel better. Ya know, if you ignore the fact that most of the lyrics are about crippling depression and just enjoy the dance that you can do to it. Oh, Al Green, you are an ironic bastard. Whatever you do, though, don't listen to Joy Division. I see you looking at your record player and hoping I'll let you put on your copy of Closer. Just remember, what happened to Ian Curtis can happen to you too.

Rule Number 2: Find your own way to meditate. Let's all face it, meditation is weird. You just sit there, pretend like your back doesn't hurt like hell, and try to clear your mind of all feeling, which of course causes your brain to react negatively and flood you with feeling. The concept isn't all bad though. I'm definitely a fan of things that distract me in a positive way from whatever is actually going on in my life. For me (at least today) it was downloading that podcast. In the future, I'm not sure what it's going to be. But I'm 99% positive that it won't involve sitting uncomfortably upright while I wonder if my Mom's concerns about me one day becoming a hunchbacked curmudgeon weren't completely unfounded.

Rule Number 3: People don't like it when you bitch. And people also don't like it when you mope around and consciously enunciate every grunt and breath that you take as if you're trying so hard not to bitch. I am making this rule not because I suspect you, reader, of being guilty of said crime. I'm making this rule because I think my housemates will forcefully extract me from my room if I walk around narrating my own life and complaining about not having enough tortillas when everybody knows I'm actually just pissed because I don't have a girlfriend anymore. If anything, this blog is to stop me from doing that by actually dealing with my emotions, trivializing them, and putting them out on the internet where, if I'm lucky, somebody trying to find an in-depth Beatles analysis might stumble across them. This may seem worse, but if you ever see me in person you'll agree that it's totally better.

As time goes on, I'm sure I'll add rules to this list. I really expect to add a lot of things to this process. But one way or another, I'm ready to begin a process of bettering myself in simple and complex ways. I'll let you know how it goes. Keep an eye out though. If cases of whiskey start disappearing from Trader Joe's and I haven't posted an update in a while, you might need to send out a search team. If we're lucky, though, I'll make it through the days unscathed, using those wasted hours for something more.

Joseph Arthur @ The Rickshaw Stop (January 20)

There’s no better way to start the year than to start it alone, right? Or perhaps that’s not exactly how the saying goes? Regardless, Joseph Arthur decided to begin his year with a solo tour with a scope so expansive that it seemed as if he were trying to persuade fans into forgetting that he had ditched his band. Unfortunately for Arthur, a lackluster performance left these same listeners wishing for another performer on stage to pick him up.

Touring solo for the first time after 2009’s release of Joseph Arthur and the Lonely Astronauts’ Temporary People, Arthur’s first album with an acknowledged backing band, Arthur aimed to create a unique concert performance based around his abstract art, on-stage looping techniques, and ability to create interesting soundscapes despite being the only musician on stage. Moreover, each concert was being professionally recorded and offered to fans in DIY brown sleeves after the show’s culmination. While at various times during the show he seemed like Bob Dylan or Samuel Beam, the unpolished performance ultimately fell more into the company of Russell Brand.

Billed as an 8 PM show, the night began with most patrons filing in on time, only to realize that due to some disconnect between Arthur and the venue they would not be hearing the featured musician for some time. There were no opening acts, and Arthur meandered to the stage at 9:26, almost an hour and a half after the “Evening with Joseph Arthur” was scheduled to begin. Evidently, promptness was left off Arthur’s checklist for his two-night stand in San Francisco. That was about all that Arthur didn’t bring on tour, however, as the musician had lined up an armada of various guitars, harmonicas, microphones, and paintings on stage to hype his appearance as a jack of all trades artist. For the first few songs, it looked as if Arthur had accomplished his goals, and the combination of electronically created automatic harmonies and looped drum beats expanded the sound of the event from a single musician with an acoustic guitar to one that often accompanies a much larger group. Unfortunately, the consistency of the performance failed to live up to the standards which Arthur’s talent naturally would have commanded.

Arthur’s most persistent problem of the night was an inability to reign in his usually wistful falsetto. Instead, the song’s which were dominated by this type of singing often fell flat and out of tune, much to both fans’ and Arthur’s frustration. While he owned the problem and talked to both fans and sound technicians about ways to mask it with excessive microphone reverb, Arthur’s vocal efforts found strained until he finally hit his stride in the last song of the night, “She Paints Me Gold.” Despite his difficulties, though, there were enough highlights from the night to make the show enjoyable. A stunning version of his hit, “Honey and the Moon,” which contained drastic vocal melody changes, was one of best received songs of the night. Arthur also managed to touch on the moody brilliance of his recorded work with particularly passionate versions of “A Smile that Explodes” and “Black Lexus.”

The true disappointment regarding the show, though, was how contrived it all felt. An impressive artist, Arthur’s only painting on stage seemed to be more of a gimmick, as all he did was draw red crosses on a white canvas with an already painted woman’s silhouette on it. His set breaks were timed so that the concert could fit on two different burnt CDs, and at the end of the show Arthur grabbed his guitar and played a song at the merch booth to buy time for the CDs to finish finalizing. What could have been a beautiful acoustic experience instead seemed like a desperate reach for recognition and, most importantly, money. Joseph Arthur may be one of the more poetic acoustic artists of this generation, but his lack of business tact and a usable falsetto made his stop in San Francisco a letdown.

The Top 5 Worst Places in America

First, a note of business: I created this blog not to be a source of constant word vomit about my feelings - I want to actually have something to say when I post an entry.

That said, here's something I've always wanted to document: The Worst Places in America that I've encountered in my numerous family vacations. As a prefatory remark, my family has ties in very random places. My dad's from New Jersey (no, not the cool part of Jersey, I'm talking about South Jersey, in the middle, where nothing exists...), my brother moved to Colorado and compelled us to drive there (the road to Colorado is paved with red, rocky hills, picturesque overlooks, and rednecks), and somehow college hunting found us in the most random college towns that I can imagine.

So without further ado, the worst places in America that I've come across to this date. If anybody that reads this feels differently about those places, feel free to prove me wrong. But you're likely just biased or hold some deep seeded insecurities about your hometown, because this is the truth right here:

5. West Deptford, New Jersey
I hate to be too harsh on this place because my Aunt Linda does still live here, but West Deptford defines every single stereotype that exists about South Jersey. The white trash in mobile homes, the legally separated cousin and his "wife" living with other partners 6 months after the separation, the gaudy Soprano's accents, and the awful smelling dog with an ear infection that never seems to get cured, etc. My memories from Deptford have mostly been blocked from my consciousness, but sometimes I still get flashes of my cousin telling me that the Godfather video game is great because you can "throw women in the street and run them over with cars and shit" and then stopping for a moment, thinking, and saying "you wouldn't understand yet, you aren't married." Family is family though, so I end up in West Deptford every 3-6 years. I seriously hope this portion of my family moves...

4. Rancho Cucamonga, California
I hate desert towns with nothing to do in them. Rancho Cucamonga, quite simply, only exists because there is a shopping mall. Granted, this was a very large, relatively cool shopping mall, but I spent too much time choking on smog and eating in Outback Steakhouse to gain any enjoyment from this attraction. If I wanted to be surrounded by chain-smoking, LA wannabes, I would go to the Valley.

3. Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania
In order to avoid unnecessary prejudice against Bird-In-Hand, allow me to mention that I was only six when this incident occurred, and my memory is foggy. This could have happened in any number of the Amish towns that my mother took us to in search of the perfect quilting shop (could have been Paradise or Intercourse for all I remember). However, Bird-In-Hand not only has the most ridiculous name I've ever heard, it is the the setting of one of the most horrifying incidents of my childhood. After a flash snow storm, I ended up stranded outside of a quilt shop in this Amish town with a sneaking suspicion that I needed to use a restroom. Well, as we all know with Amish people, they don't much like technology, or flush toilets, and so I was screwed. And thus, I ended up on the side of a parking lot, with my six-year old johnson in hand attempting to pee before too much snow covered my package. This memory is emblazoned into my mind, and while I don't remember many details about Bird-In-Hand, its inability to provide proper restrooms makes this a shoe-in on my list.

2. Wendover, Nevada/Utah
In my family's adventurous road trip to Colorado to visit my brother, we stumbled across this lovely border town that divides Nevada and Utah. As with all border towns, all the cool stuff is on one side, and all the scary stuff is on the other. Can you take a guess on which side had which? Nevada had its casinos, its alcohol, its interesting people...and we stayed in the Motel 6 on the sketchy Utah side which had a Lucky's and what looked to be quite a few undercover coke dealers. Legally, it would make more sense for Nevada to be the sketchy side, but it seems as if degenerates instead wanted to sneak around the Utah side and entice proper citizens and tourists over to motels on the Nevada side. Apparently the ploy worked, because the only acceptable restaurant in the city for us to go to was the Rainbow Casino's buffet on, guess where, the Nevada side. This wasn't a good buffet either, but then again, are casino buffets ever good?

Regardless, I ended up in a very creepy motel room with a window facing what can only be described as a "mountain of graffiti." Literally, I fell asleep staring at a gigantic, red rock with what I would expect to see in a men's room written all over it. If there ever is a case against Prohibition in Utah, somebody should use Wendover as the example for why alcohol laws should be repealed. Seriously, they can't have helped that much if Wendover is still as awful as it is.

1. Williamsburg, Virginia
Some may think that, compared to some of the small, crap towns that I've dug up for the previous portion of this blog, Williamsburg is a surprising choice as the worst place in America. Let's stick to the facts here, though. Williamsburg is a perpetually hot and humid town located a short drive away from the Atlantic Ocean. Oh yeah, and it's a completely colonial town where half of the residents dress as if they just met Thomas Jefferson for tea to discuss amendments to the Declaration of Independence. I went to Williamsburg to visit William & Mary, and left wondering how a single college student could exist in a place where if they walk 2 blocks, they can see a grown man pretend to be a blacksmith. I want to be as far away from any location where grown men pretend to have professions that were long proved obsolete. This is not to mention the fact that while I was there, it was 110 degrees for the entire day, with 90% humidity. I tolerate heat pretty well, and this place gave me heat stroke. Or perhaps the fact that not a single building in the town was modern enough to have air conditioning or a refrigerator for cold beverages did this. In any case, congratulations Williamsburg, you are the worst place in America.


For those of you adventurers out there, don't let me discourage you from exploring the country. Just be careful, because if it sounds bad (Bird-In-Hand), looks bad (Wendover), then it probably is bad. Happy trails!