It is truly a City For All Seasons.

I am posting this from a Super 8 motel in Mattoon, Illinois. You know – Mattoon. The FutureGen Final Candidate Host Site. Mattoon. Home to over four types of food. Mattoon. Home of the first Burger King and The Mad Gasser and apparently some sort of “Soybean Museum” that only seems to exist in the town’s wikipedia entry (which is a bummer, because I would really like to visit a Soybean Museum tomorrow morning).

I’ll be here until tomorrow morning when we set off for Memphis. In the meantime, I’ll be on the lookout for a white female in a sun hat.

Mattoon: A City For All Seasons.

Pretty much everything.

It’s easy to get sick of your lunch options, particularly when you work in the suburbs and have to drive to get anywhere. I generally eat at the same handful of places week after week, none of which sell pizza. I haven’t managed to find a decent slice of cheap pizza near my work. They’re a breeze to find in the city, but apparently there’s something about suburban sprawl that is inconducive to selling pizza in any unit smaller than “by the pie.” “By the slice” is out there, sure, but they’re hard to find and mostly disappointing. This is my plight. Pity me.

So when I drove past some place called Goode & Fresh Pizza Bakery with a sign in the window that said “slices” or “by the slice” or “we have slices!” or something like that, I was pretty excited. “Goode” and fresh? That’s my kind of slice! I walked in and was happy to find an old lady in there, picking up an order. A good sign – she’s probably lived here a long time, I thought to myself. This woman has seen a lot of pizzas in her time. She knows a good pie when she sees one. This is good. No, wait – this is “Goode.” And fresh. Things were looking up.

The man behind the counter looked enthusiastic when he asked me “What’ll it be?” I asked him what kind of slices they had – he looked at me like I was an idiot. “We make it all fresh here,” he said. “Any kind of slice you want.” Okay, wait a minute. You’re telling me you guys cook individual pizza slices here? That rather than preparing a few pies with standard toppings (generally one plain cheese, one sausage, and one pepperoni) and keeping them under heat lamps, you guys will prepare individual pizza slices with any toppings I want? Why didn’t I know about this place before?! This is fantastic!

“Oh, wow!” I said. “Well… uhh… can I have a slice with… umm… pepperoni and mushrooms?”

“Pepperoni and mushrooms, comin’ right up!” he said. “That’ll be about five minutes.”

Wait a second.

Five minutes? Five minutes to make a slice of pizza? How “goode” or “fresh” can a slice of pizza that takes five minutes to prepare possibly be? And hey… now that I think about it… why is there an “e” on the end of the word “good” in their name?

Five minutes later, Mr. Goode comes out with a triangular pile of half-melted cheese on a Boboli and a huge smile on his face. I pay for it and eat it. Guess what? Goode & Fresh Pizza Bakery sucks.

Ever since one of the capsule toy vending machines in the currency exchange by my old apartment offered the possibility of winning a laser pointer, it’s been hard for me to walk past a cluster of them without dropping some cash. Over the course of a year, I probably dumped 10 bucks into that damn thing, coming away instead with a seemingly endless supply of rubber balls and weird keychains that smelled like gasoline for some reason. I would bounce the rubber balls onto the roof of the building immediately, then stare at the keychains with wonder and profound sadness, thinking about the children toiling away on the other side of the world to manufacture these hideous and smelly abominations, all the energy expended to transport them across the ocean and then carry them by truck to every nook and cranny throughout the country, eventually finding their way into a vending machine at a currency exchange by my apartment where I would waste my 50 cents (probably as much as the kid who made them earns in a day) on them, only to instantly chuck them into the trash because, you know – where the fuck is my laser pointer?

Which is all to say that it can be exceedingly difficult, frustrating, and expensive to get what you want out of a toy vending machine. You’re generally better off with the ones full of stickers that say things like “I (Heart) Chocolate!” or “I Go From Zero To Bitch In 2.8 Seconds!” When we walked past a cluster of them last night in the foyer of a taqueria, I guess I wasn’t paying attention – I noticed the Homies machine (not interested – it seems like I always get DevilDog), but I somehow missed the CSI one that Jo was freaking out about. It looked like mostly crime scene tape and fake moustaches, but Jo was intent. She pumped in 50 cents, turned the crank, and got exactly what she wanted.

Evidence.

Me? I got a fake moustache, but whatever – getting evidence from a vending machine rules.

Dudes have two options when Aunt Flow comes to visit their babes: put up or shut up. That’s been enough, those two choices, since the dawn of man. You either roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty or say “yucky” and wait a few days. That’s how it is. That’s how it’s always been. Or, if you ask some freak named Abdul A. Al-Saleh from Saudi Arabia, that’s how it’s been for FAR TOO LONG. Al-Saleh thinks two choices is bullshit. Al-Saleh wants to have his cake and eat it too. Al-Saleh is probably a very strange guy to those who know him personally.

I don’t think I have to tell you what U.S. Patent #5,620,429 is. I think the picture speaks for itself, at least conceptually, although the actual physicality of how such a contraption might work completely eludes me. The abstract explains a bit:

The round bag has an opening and rings, windings and protrusions, as well as a suitable cream…. The fixing extension is placed between the rumps and may be coated by an adhesive material.

Oh, I get it now. The fixing extension goes between the rumps. Where in this patent does it explain who in their right fucking mind would ever consider banging this thing? Did he think about that at all? Maybe that’s why the patent was filed ten years ago and, bafflingly enough, you still can’t find Al-Saleh’s magnificent contraption at Walgreens or CVS. Maybe two choices was enough all along! We’ll put up or shut up, but we won’t fuck bags. Sorry, Al-Saleh. U.S. Patent #5,620,429 sucks.

Minna no uta – koneko to keito (1992)
pretty much the cutest thing of all time. too bad that all of those kittens are probably dead by now.

Turbo Tax Rap – Give Me A Refund Please
cuz taxes.

Alanis Morissette “My Humps” video
watching this video in its entirety will shave 5 years off your life.

David Lynch on Product Placement
well said.

TV Funhouse – Pothead Theater
heh.

E-Pak-Sa – Korean YMCA
is their bus broken down? is this what they do in korea when the bus breaks down?

Thank God I…
these people are deranged.

Cat Bus #4
this is what happens when stoners get computers and watch too much paperrad.

Baphomet vs. William Shatner
this is the final scene from Incubus, a long-lost film from 1965 starring william shatner and shot entirely in esperanto.

“String bean.”

Anything in it is describe as “kooky.”

It is Leprechaun In The Hood.