Levi’s, I challenge you to prove Pet Psychics are on par with Cancer Research specialists. Or while we’re at it, show me any pet pamperer who doesn’t deserve to get shipped off on B-Ark.
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Driving south on I-95, it is nigh impossible to ignore the looming tourist trap known as South of the Border. About 2 hours away, you encounter billboards with puns so bad they burn into your brain. You think about nothing else since there is nothing else distract on this stretch of 95, save swerving tractor-trailers trying to reach Florida on time. Getting closer, the billboards increase and grow stranger, some implying crashing your car is preferable to missing this totally amazing place. Yet closer, a sign every 100 ft. announces the imminent arrival of South of the Border. By the time you actually drive up near the gaudy neon mass of buildings, the sheer loathing of this place foisted on you over the last 3 hours is so strong you almost stop in just to throw a rock at it.
On the way down we skipped it and stopped at ordinary convenience stores. Fun Fact: most southern stores carry a local paper featuring everyone who got arrested that week, complete with mug shots, for only $2!
Unfortunately on the return trip the billboards wore us down and we had to slake curiosity. I give you: South of the Border.
Situated just south of the North Carolina border (haw), South of the Border is a sprawling, motley collection of buildings and neon with a Mexican/Vegas theme in South Carolina.
Located near a sizable Army base, the park’s seediness sits cheek-and-jowl with family fare. There’s a Dirty Old Man shop (actual name) in the back of a t-shirt store offering hardcore porn amongst other items, and a Pleasure Dome with cheap hotel rooms and a large jacuzzi area.
In case you were wondering what it looked like, in South of the Border did Paco a stately pleasure dome decree.
Paco isn’t just South of the Border’s vague ‘mascot’, it’s also the name of all employees regardless of gender, race, or actual nationality.
When we went the place was nearly deserted. No other families, no one in any of the enormous parking lots, and many of the restaurants were closed.
Turns out this Coffee Shop was mostly souvenir shop anyway, staffed by two surly women manning turnstiles in. Our minds boggled at the sheer amount of ridiculous cheap crap surrounding us.
Get it? South of the Border? SOB? Eh? Eeeehhhhh?
I can’t identify any of the animals here.
These towels were a bizarre combination of dirty grandpa humor and random nonsense.
What?
On the flipside were these posi-core laminated placemat/posters, though outside of Williamsburg types going through their early-90s revival phase I’m not sure who’d buy them.
The Sombrero Tower had a weak arcade at the bottom featuring half the machines off and a pool table around which some people were playing and smoking.
Is Fort Pedro really licensed to sell mortars?
Tags: campiness, creepy, tourist trap
Maybe you think you’re a patriotic citizen of the greatest country in the world. Perhaps this weekend you’re planning a barbecue, possibly with some fireworks after, in honor of the birth of the land of the free and home of the brave. Maybe you even went that extra mile and made a Jell-o cake in the shape of the Stars and Stripes. YOU MIGHT AS WELL PAINT YOURSELF PINK, COMMIE, because NONE OF THAT comes ANYWHERE CLOSE to the greatest tribute to the American spirit ever seen.
That’s right. Today, Wednesday, June 30th (AHEAD OF SCHEDULE in showing love for the country, by the way) is Mile Long Hoagie Day. “Hoagies aren’t patriotic!” you feebly cry. SHAME ON YOU! Let’s count the ways in which Mile Long Hoagie Day reeks of sweet Americana:
1) The actual hoagie will be a mile and a quarter long (ostentatious foodstuffs!)
2) It begins at the Rocky Statue… (America loves an underdog!)
3) In front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (disdain for foofery and book learnin’!)
4) Firefighters and police are involved somehow!
5) It’s in Philly, home of the Liberty Bell and other historical stuff! This also means there’s a likely chance of drunken rioting and car-flipping, and what’s more American than that?
USA! USA! USA!
Tags: america, giant hoagie, patriotism
If you find the heat and noise of New York City particularly taxing during the summer, why not take a note from history and head upstate? Many (generally well-to-do) families shipped out of the cesspool that is New York during the months of glare and heat, with breadwinners commuting in or staying alone in their apartments. It’s even the plot of ‘The 7-Year Itch’!
Even by highway traveling up the Hudson River Valley is gorgeous. The lush greenery and rolling valleys spread out before you as you climb into the mountains, with roadside oddities increasing in strangeness the moment you leave NYC. For example, this rest stop. At first it appeared like any other stop with a variety of chain restaurants and coffee shops for your snacking pleasure. However, a woman standing in the parking lot in front of a chained-off section under a sign reading ‘DO NOT PARK’ directing us where not to park with neon batons was the first bit of strangeness. Second was noticing the road to Woodstock is paved with hippies. Silly, silly hippies:
The inside dashboard was also peppered in Moe, Phish, and Bonnaroo stickers, along with a bobble head Grateful Dead bear.
Oddly the dichotomy betwixt hippie and redneck is found often further north:
Standing on line for caffeine, I turned around and found this…useful tidbit staring at me:
Milk! Wow! Actually New York isn’t so special; of the states that DO have a state beverage, most of them are milk, with the following awesome exceptions:
Alabama: Conecuh Ridge Alabama Fine Whiskey
Maine: Moxie ®
Nebraska: Kool-aid
Rhode Island offers a variant called Coffee Milk, made with Autocrat syrup, rarely available outside of Rhode Island with the exception of the bodega around the corner from me. Go figure.
Now, pretty as the scenery of upstate New York is, my principal reason for driving up is that my love of shiny objects knows no bounds. Worse than the magpie, sparkly stuff calls to me with a sweet siren song, one that obliterates the ridiculousness of me paying someone for the privilege of breaking rocks in the hot sun all day. That’s right, I went to the Herkimer Diamond Mines!
Firstly, Herkimer diamonds are not real diamonds. They’re a rare geological phenomenon where quartz formed into perfectly faceted shapes within dolomite, far more exciting than real, boring diamonds. Dolomite, as I found out the hard way, is one of the toughest rocks there is. Good job, Dolemite, it’s not just a clever name.
Only a few places in the world have pockets of faceted quartz like this, and the largest and most famous vein is in Herkimer, NY. The ‘mines’ are actually several outdoor fields filled with dolomite rocks. For a small fee, you get access to the fields, free hammer rental, and get to keep whatever you find! Visions of sparkling gemstones flashed before my eyes; I would smash open every rock in the place and return home victorious with overflowing bucketfuls of diamonds!
Above are the mines on a Saturday, with 2 Girl Scout Jamborees descending on the place (apparently it’s the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts or something this year). The day I went was a weekday, not crowded at all. Just me and a handful of professional diggers and retired couples. If you’re planning on going, here’s what you’ll stare at most of the day:
After a solid hour of smashing rocks to bits, I whacked open a wee, tiny pocket:
Sweet victory! That is, until some fat kid and his family, TOTALLY NOT OBEYING THE WARNING SIGNS, just walked right in, climbed up the side walls, and the fat kid found a Herkimer diamond 2 inches across ‘just sitting there!’, he yelled. Not a good time to have a hammer in hand.
IT SAYS STAY OFF THE LEDGES! Demoralized and weary, I took a break in the mine’s store/museum. I asked the ladies working if they had any advice, and they said breaking rocks was hard work; try just sifting the ground. Victory! Indeed, sifting the pre-smashed dirt for gems proved quite successful. In the remaining hour I had I picked up over 20 wee diamonds! Hooray!
Here they are looking rather unglamorous in a plastic bag:
A few of the choice fellows:
As I spent all my money on books comic and art at MoCCA, I’ve been without food the last few days. I only regained strength to type when this morning, as I attempted to scare pigeons away from precious crumb-piles, a kindly plutocrat tossed a half-finished kruller at me. ‘God bless ye, good sir!’ I feebly murmured, and also blessed Ronald Regan’s trickle-down economics as I swatted more pigeons away from my bountiful repast.
While the sugar rush remains I figured I’d share my paper-goods. I purchased entertaining volumes from ‘Hark: A Vagrant!’ and ‘Cat and Girl’, both also available online for your viewing pleasure. While my retinas burn after staring at a bright screen too long, I almost prefer the online format, if only because it prevents me from rushing through the entire printed volume, experiencing the book-variant of too much birthday. ‘Cat and Girl’ particularly should be enjoyed at a more leisurely pace to better enjoy the humor; beyond the initial wordplay and jokes there’s often a pointed observation that…I was going to say ‘deserves time to breathe’ but when I start writing about comics like other guys write about wines perhaps I should step back and start editing.
As with previous years I purchased everything from the Icecreamlandia table, including their latest, ‘Trash Magic’:
Lovingly screen-printed, it delivers exactly what it promises- trashy people doing all sorts of magic.
The two artists behind Icecreamlandia collaborated on three minibooks featuring both their styles. Flip the book and you’d get the other artist’s work:
I veered back and forth as to whose half I liked better, but ultimately ‘Hunt’ won me over from ‘Hunt and Peck’, featuring pages of goofily unaware animals:
You know how some people talk about how a piece of art ‘moved’ them? I always thought that was bullspit until I picked up a small booklet and came across this image:
It’s better to let the mystery of ‘why’ remain, but at the risk of overanalyzing seeing the embodiment of everything hated about how women are perceived attacked by comfortably chunky puns made real (catty ladies) ‘spoke’ to me. Specifically it said ‘Take that, Cathy, you whiny bitch’. AACK! indeed. It came from this volume, which though more grotesque than I usually enjoy was quite entertaining:
Tags: $$$, arty arts, comic books, comics, mocca, Spendy McSpendsalot
