What happened next...

Monday, my final day in Topeka, was spent packing and saying goodbye to my friends, and a tearful farewell to the 5 cable equipped televisions in their house. Before leaving town, we drove past the few places we had missed on our previous trips down Memory Lane and I was pleased to see quite a few Obama signs planted on front lawns and not that many McCain signs. I don't think it means anything; my guess is that the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign doesn't think it very necessary to spend the money on a lot of yard signs in a state that's as solidly red as Kansas. And, I have to mention, the majority of the Obama signs I saw were in a old, arty neighborhood near Washburn University, one of the few liberalish spots in town. I didn't see any Obama signs in the suburban neighborhood I was staying in, though I didn't see any McCain signs either.

I also had to get some pictures of the Fred Phelps Westboro Church anti-gay picketeers out on their daily picket line. If you aren't aware of these evil clowns, you should be; go look them up on Google. My friend even bravely drove me past their compound so I could get a couple shots; she was worried because she heard they had the place covered with hidden cameras and didn't want them harrassing her; they really are looney tunes and her kids have to go to school with some of the kids from that cult. (I've always thought it strange that they don't homeschool their kids, or set up their own church school like so many other culty churches, but they seem to prefer mixing in with the public as much as they can. They really do thrive on publicity.) And I was sadly disappointed to NOT see the grand poobah himself, Fred Phelps, but the man is incredibly old and it's been rumored that he's been slowly dying for years. Still, it had been a long time since I'd seen the old fraud and really wanted a final glimpse of his cadaverian body clad in it's usual armor of skin tight Spandex...

After that, we headed to the airport and my final indignity of my trip; the fuckers at security confiscated my packed bottle of BBQ sauce in my carry-on! I had the option to check my bag, but I'd packed everything in one small bag so I wouldn't have to mess with bag check so I said screw it. My guess is, hundreds of bottles of BBQ sauce end up in the hands of the FTA, and those fuckers probably have a monster bbq party every month or so, or sell it to be repackaged as KC Masterpiece and make a tidy profit...

After I boarded the plane, I noticed that the woman sitting next to me was eating this huge, takeout salad in a plastic container, which pissed me off...there's far more potential for explosive devices or weapons to be hidden in her monster salad than in my little bottle of tangy and delicious BBQ sauce.

This country is SO fucked up.

NOTE: the mediocre photos are by ME. The picket sign says "Thank God for IEDs" (meaning improvised explosive device; Westboro Baptist is also anti-soldier, anti-war, and anti-American as well as anti-gay. They also hate Canada for some reason.) and anti-Phelps protesters spray painted, "God hates the Phelps" on the marquee of the church sign.

More of the story...

Friday night, after I arrived at my hosts' home on the outskirts of Topeka, we chilled and had a delicious homemade spaghetti dinner in between bonding moments with the host's 11 and 7 year old sons, my so-called nephews. Jake, the 11 yr old, wanted me to spend hours watching him play various on-line computer games involving wizards, magic wands and endless quests to find magic amulets, while Josh, the 7 yr old, was under the impression I was some sort of new, stretchy, bouncy fun toy for him to pummel and bruise. Except for a traumatic vomiting incident by the overly excited and overly over-snacked 11 year old and the irritation of having to listen to a room full of overly excited and overly inebriated adult male heterosexuals while they watched a college football game, it was an enjoyable evening.

Saturday was spent driving around and going down various Memory Lanes, much to the chagrin of the 7 year old, ("Are we done going down Memory Lane? Memory Lane is BORING!") I also got to enjoy lunch at my favorite bbq restaurant and had to endure a tour of the busy commercial strip of Topeka and all it's newest chain restaurants; apparently, Topeka now has a branch of everything except The Cheesecake Factory...

Saturday nite, we went to Chili's for dinner, then dumped the kids off at grandma's while the grownups went to a cheap tavern for booze and pool. I had a good time slumming in a dive and vastly enjoyed my "Slippery Nipples" as well as my attempts to annoy the locals by playing Shirley Bassey and Scissor Sisters incessantly on the jukebox. (In my defense, it was a reaction to the non-stop barrage of Bon Jovi and Metallica). It was also enormously entertaining to watch a gaggle of local hootchies put the moves on one of my host's single male friends. He is recently separated from his wife and nervously on the market, but he was encouraged to refrain from sampling the wares of a cadre of barely legal porkettes whose slutty outfits and garishly applied make-up seemed to scream out, "Chlamydia: Come and Get It!"

It was a fun evening.

Sunday was spent lounging around the house and I was introduced to an entire world of Bravo produced entertainment...I'm not sure how I've gone this long in life without the joys of Project Runaway, Top Design, and Tabatha's Salon Takeover. I had at least heard of the first two shows, but the delightful Tabatha was an unknown quantity and let me tell you, it's fucking great! It's a simple premise; a virtual copy of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares...A bitchy, British hairdresser to the stars, (who I've never heard of, prior to this show), goes around to tacky beauty salons and gives them a makeover which basically consists of giving everyone involved a good, swift, well-deserved kick in the arse. The best episode I saw, was one where she went to this gawdawful, strip-mall salon on Long Island populated by a bunch of rejects from a Sopranoes extras casting call, or perhaps, a traveling carnival. There was a delicious amount of blue eyeshadow AND blue language, not to mention the fact that all the hairdressers themselves had horrible hairdos, which Tabatha also noticed and in order to teach them how to be classy, she took them all to a posh, high-end salon in Manhattan and gave them all make-overs. For the most part, they all still looked pretty trashy, but at least in was a fresh, up-to-date kind of trashy instead of the tired 80's looks they'd been sporting before. And, what I really appreciated about this show, was that it did NOT have a happy ending...when Tabatha came back for her 6 week check-up, the deadbeat owners were no where to be found and hadn't stuck to any of the improvements and the poor hairdressers were upset that things had gone back to the way they were before Tabatha showed up...but at least they had cute new hair-dos and personally, off camera, I bet Tabatha advised them to jump ship and find themselves a better salon to work in...

More to come.

Journey into Darkness

I'm back from my 4 day trip to Kansas and would like to say I survived with both my mental and physical health intact, but I do feel a little groggy and hungover. I didn't really drink very much so I'm blaming my frazzled state on an excess consumption of chain restaurant food, cigarettes, hours and hours of Bravo watching, the excessive humidity and the annoyances of airports and air travel in general...I didn't post anything while I was ON my trip, so here's a rough synopsis of how it went, in diary form:

Friday, the 12th: Got up at the ungodly hour of 3:15 in the morning in order to catch a bus to the airport...I missed my bus by about 30 seconds, so I had to call a cab to get downtown to catch the 194 to the airport. I made it, with about 1 minute to spare and thoroughly do not enjoy my journey which consists largely of drunk, smelly people on their way home after a night of binge drinking and drugs in the alleyways of downtown Seattle. There is a smattering of airport bound travellers and a couple airport workers, but for the most part, it's a bunch of drunks and the indigent. The bus smells like a cheap shoe that a chronic alcoholic has repeatedly vomited, shat and pissed upon. But, I have a bus pass and it's free, so who am I to complain?

I get to the airport, breeze through security and onto the plane...about a half hour in to the flight, I'm jonesing for a smoke, so I pop some nicotine gum into my mouth, kindly supplied by a friend of mine. Unfortunately, I've never tried nicotine gum before and I seem to have a reaction to it; my throat starts closing up and I feel like throwing up. I quickly spit it out and decide it was probably dumb to use nicotine gum only 45 minutes after chain smoking 4 cigarettes outside the terminal...

I have to change planes in Denver and fortunately, the kind souls in the Colorado state legislature put in a clause in their indoor smoking ban/law that provides for a smoking lounge in the airport...it's attached to a tacky airport bar/restaurant and you're required to buy something to sit in there, but I don't begrudge them $2.50
for a Pepsi and a chance to chain smoke in between flights. I grab an overpriced turkey/cranberry sandwich, buy a new book and catch my flight to KC.

I'm met at the gate by my gracious hosts, my longtime friend Kelly and her boyfriend Aaron and quickly readapt to the torpid humidity of the Midwest...it's about 70 degrees with 99% humidity and gray and rainy when I land. The irony of Seattle having nicer (meaning warmer, sunnier and drier) weather than the Midwest, is not lost on me...

Oh, and the Seattle airport gets an A for their food/retail, (Love the Border's Bookstore) and Denver gets a C for a rotten selection of food options but a decent bookstore, and Kansas City gets an F for very rotten selection of food and NO bookstores.

More to come.

Photo by ME, all rights reserved.