He Only Eats Guitars

I may have a new favorite song.

Rapture - Blondie

I thought about putting Tom Cochrane's "Life Is A Highway", which I totally heard (what road trip isn't complete without it?), but I heard this song too, which I had, for some inconceivable reason, forgotten. I mean, listen to this song. "And out comes a man from Mars, and you try to run but he's got a gun, he shoots you dead and eats your head, and then you in the man from Mars". Thank you Blondie. Thank you so much. The only unfortunate thing was that I couldn't sing along. The list of people whose presence I will sing in, Kellie, Mike, H, Jo, Gizmo, and Rusty, does not include my mothers van, which I was, most regrettably, driving.

In order for my trip to Pittsburgh to happen, unfortunately, I had to leave Gizmo behind for the second time in a week and borrow my mother's van. This injustice was not even remotely offset by the fact that I also had my mother's credit card to pay for gas.

A few things about my mother's van. I had to drive it last week to pick Kellie and the wee ones up in Breezewood. And, for those of you don't know, I personify my car to the fullest extent of the word. Naming is only the beginning. And really, for as much driving as I do, and when I can't take Jo, it really makes the trip more enjoyable if I have someone to talk to. And Gizmo is perfect for this. And when I got behind the wheel of my mother's Toyota Sienna, I got absolutely nothing. I don't know if her car is shy, rude, or just mute, but seriously, considering I only made it half way to Pittsburgh and then had to turn around and come back to MD, it was easily the worst solo road trip of my life.

And then, on Thursday, I had to once again leave Giz behind and hit the road in the Sienna (It doesn't even have a name! It doesn't even have a gender!!!) Going to Pittsburgh wasn't too bad, because Kell and Jabigail were in the car, and I passed out for the second half anyways. But then, it was all me and the van driving around Pittsburgh.

For starters, I really miss driving in Pittsburgh. For no explicable reason, I yearn for the god awful roads, the six + way intersections, the over-enthusiastic crossing guard on Versailles (the L's are silent, it's French!) where I used to live, and most of all, I miss the the billboards. Frederick is not a billboard city.

This one (not the same exact billboard, but the same ad) is my personal favorite. It brightened my day on the way home from work every day.

And I also witnessed something that made me regret even more not having Giz with me. Something we've always wanted to see, but for some reason have never witnessed. it was getting to the point where I believed there might be some magic to it, when, in the middle of the day, I witnessed the spectacle that is the changing of the gas prices.

Never, in all my time driving, and at all hours of the day, have I seen this happen. But two days ago I saw it with my own eyes, a man in a cherry picker truck changing the prices at the Sunoco. Don't ask me why he was changing them at four in the afternoon; that seems like an awful business practice, but I saw it, and I had to share that moment with not my faithful car Gizmo, but a minivan with zero personality. It was wasted on that vehicle.

So that brings me to the return trip. For starters, I was getting sick, and driving while sick is never fun. As I stated earlier, I wasn't paying for gas, so there was little temptation to drive 55 mph to get the best possible fuel economy. I was in a hurry, so I set the cruise control to 72 and sat back and took advantage of my two other techniques for fuel efficient driving.

I would have driven Ben nuts. While I don't condone my father's driving in the middle of the road, I am a fan of cutting corners, if and only if it doesn't involve in driving in opposing traffics' lanes, regardless of if there are oncoming vehicles or not. My father has no qualms with this and it bugs the bejeebus out of me. But most of my trip is through whindy mountain roads, where I shaved .8 miles off of my 113 mile trip on the Penna Turn Pike alone simply by cutting corners. And for those of you who think .8 miles is no big deal, that's about $.07 worth of gas(be impressed with me, I did the math). And of course, when your constantly switching lanes, signaling becomes a chore which I have long since given up on. Now, If I was passing or pulling in front of someone, I would signal, but most of the time I could see not a soul in front of me nor in the rear views.

And then there's drafting, an even more efficent way to drive, albeit more dangerous. I think that rather than "If you can't see my mirrors, I can't see you" as the trucker motto for driving too close to them, it should be "If you can't see my mirrors, your risking life and limb to save the earth and money. You are my hero". These "No Zones" as we were taught in Driver's Ed, are "No Worry Zones", because all your worries melt away when you're being that fuel efficient. Mythbusters did a special on this, and while I can't remeber the numbers, you can get quite a bit more fuel economy by drafting, even at a relatively safe distance. The only way you could be getting better gas mileage is if you and your passenger were gutsy enough to climb out onto the hood of your car while driving a few feet behind a truck and attach yourself to that sucker. You could just pop the car in neutral and turn the car off, getting yourself an average of an infinite number of miles to the gallon. Be sure to make sure that you're on a long enough to trip to offset the heavy fines that come from this behavior.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Why Is That Horse Truncated?

Let me explain.

So, while in Pittsburgh, among other things, I caught up with my Friend Matt. I met Matt when I first moved to Pittsburgh and started working at Target. And besides starting a tradition of rocking matinees for five dollars and in general making working at Target a more enjoyable experience, he co-created easily the best idea for a sitcom.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity (or the apt acronym, STD)

I'm not totally sure where the names came from, but the rest of it was pretty close to what we were doing there, apart from work. The general plot is as follows. Two guys, working at Target (We'd have to change the name more than likely, but I think we can get away with Targit), solving the many mysteries that crop up when working in retail. To give you an idea, some favorite episodes of ours our:

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: What's for lunch?
In which we try and figure out what to eat for lunch.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Who's working tonight?
In which we wonder who's working with us that shift.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Where's Team Lead Todd?
In which we ponder how it could be that Todd shows up at two thirty, but doesn't make it to the sales floor for two hours, minimum.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Why are we working here?
In which take a look at our lives and how we ended up here, and not some place considerably better.

And they're not all questions. For instance:

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Remembering the Good Times.
In which we have flashbacks.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Backroom Buffoonery.
In which we waste an entire evening fooling around on ladders because neither of us are certified to use the real equipment.

And one of the best, multiple episode story arcs:

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: What's the name of the guy who does the Subway commercials?
In which we try and figure, and bet money, on the name of the guy who did the Subway commercials.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Where's my money?
In which Skeetch tries to get the money Tay Diggity owes to him from the bet in the previous episode.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: At the movies.
In which our heroes first discover cheap Matinees as Tay Diggity tries to pay his debts.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Opportunistic Driving.
In which Tay Diggity gives Skeetch a ride home to continue paying off his debt, and makes some very opporunistic (and illegal) choices while driving.

Skeetch and Tay Diggity in: Paid in full.
In which Skeetch finally calls off Tay Diggity's debts despite not having paid up the full ten dollars.

So anyways, while I was hanging out with Matt, first off we saw a Matinee of the new Tim Burton flick, Coraline, which was a pretty wonderful movie, and definitely up there with The Nightmare Before Christmas. Then, we went to Panera, or what Matt called "The Bread", something that I'm pretty sure I could get behind, where we discussed Skeetch and Tay Diggity and got caught up. And outside of The Bread is a restaurant called P F Changs, with two huge horse statues. Only, they're not horses, at least not any horses I have ever seen. I tried to call them short, but that wasn't true; they were in fact really tall. Then I thought about thin, but that also didn't work, because while not fat, they definitely weren't thin. Matt finally gave me the word truncated, which was perfect. Of course, that still left the question of why.

The Champion

I will never eat my fruit again.

Well, that's just not true, but after having enjoyed the luxury of drinking it, it will be most difficult to go back to the old, primitive way of consuming the recommended three to five servings of fruit.

This is The Champion. Humble looking, but powerful enough to turn fruits, vegetables, fregetables, and just about anything you can fit down its tube into liquid.

Anyways, my one sister Heather gave my other sister Kellie a juicer, and last night, Kellie, Mike and I were playing with it. And may I say, well, anyone who knows me knows I really don't enjoy food all that much, I mostly eat it because I have to. But this, this was fun.

Look how excited we are. I don't think I got this excited for Christmas.

So, first of all, you know this thing is heavy duty before you even set it up, just from picking it up. It weighs, easily, twenty pounds; thing is a monster. And once you set it up, the real fun begins. you just take anything, and I'm pretty sure I'm being quite literal when I say anything, and ram it down the pipe, and BAM! You got juice.

Little known fact. Up there with shooting small animals and doing jump kicks, juicing things is one of the most masculine things you can do.

We started simple, chucking a couple of apples in, and when we were thoroughly satisfied with the outcome, we stepped it up to blackberries. these were less enjoyable on all accounts, as the "juice" was more of a sludge, and it was just kind of a mess. Still, after the blackberries, we found some tangerines. Now Mike, being the voice of reason, suggested we clean out the blackberries before throwing citrus in there. Of course, Kellie and I ignored him and just started feeding in the tangerines. And of course, before any tangerines juice fell out into the juice receptical, quite a bit more blackberry sludge come tumbling out. Not perturbed by this in the least, we proceeded to add a couple more apples, and then, also against Mike's advice, some carrots. And then, a banana. See, the banana is just not a juicy fruit, and about, yeah pretty much all of it came out the other end where the waste comes out. Not wanting to waste the banana, Kellie quickly caught it and put it in the bowl. Then, while Mike was in the other room, we tossed in a few more carrots, because we could, and we were finally ready to try our juice.

Here's me trying to mash up the banana bits into the juice.

I really wish we had gotten pictures of our reaction to this juice because it was, well, I don't have words for it. I mean, awful doesn't really some it up as well as I'd like, and to say that it tasted like a mountain lion had vomited rotten oranges into my mouth is both too verbose and still does not accurately sum it up. You get the idea though.

My nephew Jack, drawn close by its hypnotic power. Had we not intervened, it probably would have juiced him whole.

Fortunately, Mike and I have a secret cure all, that tastes good in about everything (though not coffee, and most definitely not as a substitute for the cheese powder in mac and cheese, even though the powders look the same). Yeah, we fixed it with tang. There was still a mildly unpleasant aftertaste, but as I've said, tang fixes just about everything. (There was even a "Tang Saves Santa" Christmas Special)

All in all, the most fun I've had in awhile, and easily the most fun I've ever had with food. I may just have to invest in a juicer myself.