08/05/2005 - 8:38 p.m. | what other tricks do you hold, internet?

Well, this is certainly odd. I arrived in Kansas at about 8, but the house is entirely empty. Missy gave the passcode to get into their garage (and from there, the house), but it's sort of strange to be here alone, especially when, at the moment 18 - 20 Barmanns are staying here. I already took a shower and went through what caches of pills I could find (a few of them good, I suppose), but now I'm rather at a loss. So instead, I will write things down I thought of on the trip.

I decided I really, REALLY wanted to hear "You're My Best Friend" by Queen, one of the few oldies I actually prefer (most likely because I think it is very, very sarcastic... like "So Happy Together"), so every gas station I stopped at, I dug through their piles and piles of cheap audio cassettes in hope of striking some Queen gold. Surprisingly, they had slim to nil in that department. Greatest Hits of Foghat, for Christ's sake, but no Queen. Weather Girls, even! What the fuck? It did give me a little inspiration, though. If Kyle and I do take a road trip following graduation, it would make sense if every gas station we stopped at, we bought a shitty cassette and listened to it on a loop until we arrived at the next gas station. Sounds about masochistic enough for us, right?

Ooh - speaking of which, the radio was giving me all the hits today, but I heard the best commercial. It was for Dairy Queen (an oddity in itself), but it had this guy going through the drive-thru, and the guy working at the Dairy Queen was from an 80's butt rock band. He said fairly normal things about their chicken tenders basket, but he screamed them like Skid Row (I will demonstrate as you ask). I was LOLing so hard I nearly drove off a ravine.

The new Dane Cook CDs aren't as good as the old one. The man needs to get back on the coke is what I think.

There was this douchebag sitting at Schnucks - 40something, overtanned, with his hair bleached blonde (with highlights, of course) - and did I think, "Jesus, what a douche!" Well, yes, but more strikingly, I thought, "I should probably bleach my hair." What is going on up there, noggin? First Queen, then this shit?

I had only one delivery to do the previous night at the cookie place, leaving me trapped in that ultrawhite room for nearly four hours, watching every person tumble down the steps, no matter how many garrish signs we post telling them to watch them. I think this left me antsy when I got home, perhaps explaining why I would poison my body with a second Uncle Ben's Rice Bowl for the day ("Thai-Style" Chicken and "Spicy" Beef Broccoli - they made the crucial mistake of not using MSG, leaving me and Kyle with only our natural taste buds to enjoy these things. Of course it didn't work!!) and 1993's The Meteor Man to posion my mind. I hadn't thought about that fucking movie for over a decade, but it all came flooding back in an instant. Apparently it was a massive effort by the black acting community to create a positive hero because fucking everybody was in that shit. OK, mostly sitcom stars (Bill Cosby, Marla Gibbs from "227," Robert Townsend from "The Parent 'Hood," and Benson - NOTE: Three exclamation points should be after each of those) but fucking Don Cheadle (who everyone still thinks is Tim Meadows) and James Earl Jones (as a retarded man) and Biz Markie AND SINBAD! And possibly Matlock. With such an all-star cast, how could this movie fair? Very well, actually, due to an insane rambling script that didn't make any damn sense at all. Points for the psychotic youth army of midgets with golden flat-tops. That won't haunt my dreams for another decade.