I couldn't get to the computer last night, so I "blogged" old-school in a notebook. Le voila:
I just finished watching "Elizabethtown," which was a really good movie. Not great because it dragged a bit, but really good. In watching it, three things occurred to me:
1.) In 2000, I had scheduled an interview with the paper in Elizabethtown, which I cancelled after I took the job here. Who on earth would I have become if I'd wound up in Kentucky?
2.) I have always wanted to be a marvellously quirky girl like the character Claire. I wanted to wear odd vintage clothing and hats, know all kinds of indie music, and say incredible things to men at the drop of a hat. Yet I'm me.
3.) I really, really have to take a cross-country road trip. Maybe it stems from growing up near Route 66, but I have always wanted to have that quintessentially American experience. I want to see the bizarre roadside attractions out west, get stuck at stoplights in small towns, eat at diners, and lose myself in the loneliness of the plains. I'm just not sure when I'll do it or with whom.
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Welcome to my odditorium, a collection of curiosities made up of snippets about my life and occasional machinations on deeper subjects.
5 comments:
I too have long wanted to take a cross-country toad trip, although I suppose in a pinch I'd settle for a road trip.
I suppose I might just do that after I get out of the service, assuming I ever actually do get out of the service. I had that great Nebraska Hedonism Tour all planned out before Djibouti happened... I can certainly come up with a cross-country hedonism tour. You know, the kind where you end every day with a winery tour and tasting? Not so hard to manage that any more. I had eight of ten nights in Nebraska at different wineries, so surely a cross-country road tour could be planned with wineries. It has to include giant balls of string and a stop at Smith Center, Kansas, which is the town nearest the geographic center of the country. Or the lower 48 or something.
Anyway, yes. A road trip. That sounds like a good idea.
I love Elizabethtown. I couldn't watch it for a long time, but i saw it three times in the theater, and bought it when it came out. And then didn't watch it for SEVERAL months. And when I do, it still makes me cry. A lot. And I have both the soundtracks and love them. (And now you'll understand some of my icons on my LJ.)
How interesting that you had an interview in Elizabethtown. I've heard it's a nice little place (friends drove through) and there's a great ice cream place near the highway to stop at. Driving through Kentucky is very beautiful. Stopped through there some while driving from N.C. to Michigan before. Always so green and pretty.
And yup, I totally wanted to do a road trip (well, sorta, i've done a lot of road time this past year) to see some cool things after watching this movie.
-Shana
To Smitty: Smart ass. I'm going to correct typos and make you look bizarre now :P
To Shana: Yeah, I had to call my mom after I finished the movie, just thinking about dad so much. And I'd been thinking about him earlier in the day, so the movie just made it that much more urgent to talk to someone who'd known him.
Didn't see Elizabethtown but I can completely and unreservedly recommend the road trip as a fantastic way to holiday. Ideally with a relatively pointless or obscure destination at the end of it, like a 1000 mile trip from Chicago, destination: Dr. Pepper Museum (Waco TX).
A road trip can be really bad if travelers are not sufficiently like-minded about desirable vs undesirable activities. Some disagreement is inevitable (e.g. whether "Amateur Night" at an, errr, adult entertainment venue somewhere in northern Kentucky should be considered "desirable" or "abomination") but too much can lead to sheer misery, especially in a very confined space.
A bit of planning is good but it's best to think of intermediate destinations as "ideas" rather than any kind of strict itinerary (i say this even as a compulsive planner). Otherwise you risk missing the odd little unexpected things that (to me) make the concept of "road trip" special.
Looking back, most of our family holidays were road trips of a sort: often with what seemed like no particular destination in mind, and stopping on a whim to see something interesting. Although decisions to stop and see something were not even slightly democratic.
I have to jump in on the Dunce-childhood-family road trips...
When you don't know where you're going to be when it's time to spend the night and aren't willing to pay more than $30 for a room, you run the risk of the Bluebird Motel (we kept driving around and all we'd see was the sign for this establishment, which was partially falling down as I recall...)
And I was stranded in Elizabethtown as a teenager when the church youth group's bus broke down. It was not nearly as charming as the movie version...
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