Hench!

When I was a kid, I had to learn about all 50 states. I had to learn where they were on the map, what their principle products (coffee and steel, for instance) were, and their state capitals. Today I find that I probably couldn’t place most states outside of the northeast on a map.

I chalk this remarkable deficiency up to the fact that, until I was about nineteen, I’d never left the northeast. Since then I’ve done a little travelling through this country, and have formed some minor opinions about some of the states. Some of my opinions are valid, some are complete bullshit. Regardless, I’d like to say a few words on each state.

ALABAMA: I’ve never been to this place, thank fucking god. Isn’t the state flag of Alabama the rebel flag? [does some Googling] Oh, it’s a big, scary red “X” on a white background. Looks like a white power symbol, to tell you the truth. Fuck Alabama. I’m sure there are some nice people there, but I am personally of the belief that the North should have never reconstructed the South. I hate euphemisms like “the War between the States.” It was the Civil War, and the confederates were guilty of treason! Treason, treason, treason! Now the south has all this fucking power in this country, passing laws that slowly further the confederate agenda. Those treasony assholes and their pecan trees.

ALASKA: Always wanted to go to Alaska. Not much of an outdoorsman, me, but I do like the cold and glaciers and all that. Seems like it’s probably much different from anywhere I’ve ever been. I hear that Anchorage is a beautiful city. On the other hand, the two people I’ve met from Alaska were complete fucking certifiable psychos.

ARIZONA: All the charm of a corpse in a frying pan, not that I’ve ever been there or anything. You know those establishing shots in movies that are just heat shimmering over the surface of the road? Arizona is like that all the time, but without the promise of a car cresting the horizon and kick-starting the plot. Cacti, vultures, and sadness.

If you went to live there, you would spend months trying to find someone cool to talk to. After half a year, you’d see this remotely interesting girl at the grocery store, but when you got closer you’d realize that she has a Kokopelli tattoo and she’s buying way too much Bisquick. How many pancakes can a person eat? There’s such a thing as too much goddamn Bisquick. That shit will make your complexion go bad from all the butter and flour.

ARKANSAS: I’ve been to Arkansas, and let me tell you—it’s the future. There are strip malls everywhere, and every town looks exactly the same. Me, Sarah, Sarah’s sister Bip, and Sarah’s cousin Jordan drove through the whole state, and it felt like we just kept driving through the same town over and over. I was expecting Rod Serling to step out from behind a mural of a razorback and tell me that I had to set things right before I’d be able to continue my trip to Memphis. This is the home of Wal Mart, and at the University of Arkansas there is a bronze bust of Sam Walton . . . wearing a bronze baseball cap that says Wal Mart. It’s the tackiest piece of shit I ever saw. A branded bronze bust. Beautiful, the future, right? I think it was J.G. Ballard who said that the future was going to be a vast suburb of the soul. The people were nice there, although they all really like the Eagles. “The Eagles said they’d get back together when hell freezes over, but then they got back together and—you know what? They called it ‘The Hell Freezes Over Tour.’”

CALIFORNIA: Oh, shit. This one is tricky. I’ve only been to Northern California, which is cool as shit. I love it there. Oakland, SF, San Jose, uh, Mendocino, Fort Bragg, Berkeley, all great. I mean, I can’t say enough good things about the place. If I ever get enough dough that I’m not dependent on the publishing industry for work, I’d seriously consider moving out there. Maybe. A lovely place. Pretty much everyone I’ve met from Northern California has been cool as hell.

That brings us to southern California, which looks completely unbearable to me. I don’t know. Many of the people I’ve met from there are really, really, really shallow. A few are really cool, though. K.J. Swanson is cool, but then there are these other . . . well, I don’t know how many of you have seen the Stepford wives, but . . . It’s weird. A lot of southern Californians seem like they stepped off of some shitty gameshow. But some are all right. So I guess I can’t make the same kind of sweeping generalization about this state that I’m making about all the others.

Some people from northern California who I think are really cool have moved to southern California. I plan on eventually making an expedition there and passing my worthless judgment on the region. I’ll bet it’s not as bad as I make it out to be. I’ll bet the food’s good.

COLORADO: Went through the rockies on an Amtrak with my friends Tom and Dave. At one stop outside Boulder, this rangy old cowboy got in and sat next to us. He was about seventy something years old. He coughed a couple of times and then pulled out a pack of Kents. The train was about to go into this tunnel, so he leans over and says “This here’s the train, and that’s the tunnel. The train goes in the tunnel. If you have any other questions, let me know,” and then he got up and left. I didn’t have any other questions. He was the Essence of Colorado.

CONNECTICUT: Way back when, this state was the birthplace of John Brown, the ass-kicking abolitionist and the subject of the song “John Brown’s Body.” Hartford, Connecticut is considered to be the “Insurance Capital of the World,” which sounds like a lot of fun. I don’t really know much about Connecticut.

DELAWARE: Connecticut’s vestigial conjoined twin that is also retarded. On edit: It turns out that they aren’t actually conjoined, physically. Only in spirit.

FLORIDA: The home of cockroaches, geriatrics, death metal bands, corrupt politicians, 2 Live Crew, and serial killers. Florida looks like a big barrel of fun on paper, but I’ll bet you it isn’t much fun at all, really. If I never find myself in Florida it will be too soon. It seems inevitable that I’ll have to pass through there at some point, unfortunately, a fact which makes my hatred of it more acute. I’ll be the Cuban section of Florida might be pretty cool, but, you know, I’d rather go to Cuba. But I can’t. I hate fat white people in pastels. They look like walking advertisements for dying of heart disease during the Easter holidays. Like they’d be jiggling along in their pastels and then suddenly cough up a flood of pastel M&Ms and then die. Florida is just asking to be written with an exclamation mark at the end, like “Florida!”.

GEORGIA: Georgia peaches, Georgia on my mind. Except I hate peaches, and I never thing about Georgia at alI think that this guy Garin I know is also from Georgia. He seems like a nice guy, but I don’t really know him that well.

HAWAII: Eh. I like to experience Hawaii via tiki bars and Les Baxer records. That way I can turn it off and void it from my bladder when I’m done with it.

IDAHO: Potatoes—I love potatoes! But seriously, Idaho gets my vote for “Stupidest State Shape.” I’ll bet it sucks to live in that weird, extruding pseudopod part of Iowa that reaches up towards Canada.

ILLINOIS: I was in Chicago once for three hours, and it seemed like a nice city. Afraid of getting lost and missing my train, I only went to the top of the Sears Tower and back down. A lot of good comedy, music, and literature has been produced in Chicago. Not sure what happens in the rest of the state. There’s this really good zine called Roctober that gets printed there. I know that’s a fucking stupid name, but it’s an absolutely terrific publication. Another place I keep meaning to visit but the timing is never auspicious. I think it’ll be pretty cool, and I look forward to it.

INDIANA: I’ll bet they eat their Wheaties in Indiana. I’ll just bet they do. With their bare hands.

IOWA: One of my favorite people that there ever was in the world, Annie Edelman, is from Iowa. Now, I don’t know about the state itself, but Annie was one of the coolest people I ever met in my entire life. She drank a lot for a while, which I suppose earned her a small measure of infamy, and then she stopped. Last I heard, she was still living in Vermont.

Anyway, Annie and I had a lot in common and had a great time hanging out. She was a really sweet kid, and was a fantastic photographer. She was an incredible driver, and drove everywhere at an average speed of 87 mph. She ate all this fast food and threw the wrappers in the back of the car, and then her car got infested with silverfish. So I’d drive around with Annie at 87 mph., in this car that smelled like rotting tacos and was writhing with bugs, listening to Prince full blast as Annie leaned out the window and took photographs. If everyone else in the state was that cool and fast and smart, I’d move there. But I’ll bet they’re not. I’ll bet Iowa sucks.

KANSAS: Kansas City is in Kansas, and I’ve heard that’s it’s a cool place but I’ve also heard that it isn’t. Makes me think of the Wizard of Oz, which I never liked. Dorothy dreamed the whole thing? What the fuck! Dorothy has stupid dreams. I had a dream that I was hanging out with Iggy Pop because we both got short stories published in the Alaska review. I was going to talk to him, but I admired him so much that I was afraid I’d find out that he’s an asshole and I wouldn’t like him, which would make me sad. Also, I was only familiar with his music and not his literary output. Then I woke up. See? That was a stupid fucking dream. Last night I had a dream that I was a champion cyclist, and every time I’d pass other cyclists in this race I’d yell stuff at them. Specifically, I’d yell this quote from the New York Daily News, which was “famously eccentric cyclist.” So when I passed Lance Armstrong, I yelled “The Famously Eccentric Cyclist takes the lead!” That’s another stupid dream. Not all dreams make good movies.

But actually, thinking about it, I really liked the flying monkeys in that movie, and hum their leitmotif whenever I’m trying to quickly make my way through a crowded area, like Penn Station.

Oh, I’ve just learned that most of Kansas City is actually in Missouri. Who knew?

KENTUCKY: “Kensucky.”

LOUISIANA: I don’t know if New Orleans will emerge from all this flood nonsense intact, but it was one of the coolest, funnest, most fucked-up cities that I have ever had the pleasure of visiting. The tourist parts sucked, full of white-hatted douchebags slurping strawberry daqueries, but some of the most brilliant music in the world has come out of New Orleans and, in fact, continues to come out of there. Being there made me feel like I was in another country. If I could take the heat I might have moved there. The food is fucking great, too. Sarah took me out for this one meal where I drank a bottle of wine, ate alligator sausage, rattlesnake, crawfish, and potatoes. Holy shit, you know? That’s the kind of meal that Screamin’ Jay Hawkins eats. Then we took a rickety streetcar for an hour to what seemed like a really dangerous bar where Sarah’s magician friend Ryan did tricks for the patrons. Or did it happen some other way? I don’t know, they sell alcohol in their laundry mats there. All I know is that New Orleans is like this amorphous cloud of priceless memories for me. Everyone I met there was so incredibly cool, except for this one hippie guy I didn’t like much. Why couldn’t Florida have flooded? Further proof that there is no god, really. I’m not sure about the rest of Louisiana.

MAINE: I’m not sure that I can fathom myself venturing that far in to New England. Aren’t there a bunch of islands in Maine? Fjords? Everything I know about Maine I read in Stephen King books when I was in junior high school. A lot of men I’ve met from Maine seem like they’re wicked fucking manly, but then it turns out that they’re really not. Remember the Maine! God, what does that even mean? Clearly, I don’t remember.

MARYLAND: If Maryland could be a person, it would be a wan, skinny young man with a wispy moustache and long, stringy hair who wears purple corduroys and listens Dream Theater while filling out their tax forms because Maryland is contrived like that. Maryland doesn’t like to get dirty but emanates this disgusting, sweaty funk all the time. Maryland has constipation and clips coupons to buy stool softener and doesn’t even blush when the cashier asks for a price check because Maryland is too busy flipping through the Enquirer to look at Demi Moore’s fake-tanned fake tits. Maryland could also be a forty year old man with a plastic khaki-colored backpack and cargo shorts who is buying a nonstick frying pan. Or, conversely, Maryland is a 500 pound woman who sells Hummel figurines for a living and is in debt for her dental work. Maryland sucks. I’ve never been there. Delaware and Maryland should team up to form the Mid-Atlantic State Shit Twin Alliance.

MASSACHUSETTS: I’ve actually been told “You can’t get there from here” in Massachusetts. First of all, that statement is fucking impossible, because you can get anywhere from anywhere else.

“How do I get to the highway?”
“You can’t get there from here.”
“Yes I can, because three days ago, I got here from there.”

Jesus! I can’t believe a New Englander really told me that. It would be as if I went to Ireland, asked an Irishman for some money, and he made me catch him before he put on a hat with a belt for a hatband and led me to a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow and then got drunk and had too many kids to support and then died in the potato famine and was buried in the Catholic churchyard, his final resting place marked by a tombstone reading “Here Lies Seamus Paddy McMick.” You know what I’m saying? I think you do.

Anyway, the thing is that, although my interactions with strangers have been shitty in MA, a lot of my closest friends come from there, and are the warmest, funniest, smartest people I know.

Maybe I’m the problem? I don’t know. Probably.

Like most of New England, Massachusetts is very pretty, and I’ve had a lot of fun going to various places there. I’ve been given several tours of Boston by my pal Matt Kelly, who knows a lot about the history of the area. Actually, everyone from that state knows the entire history of the state and are all really good with directions and navigating those fucking traffic rotary things that are all over the place.

“Dood, where you from? Bucklebuck?”
“Nah, dood! I’m from East Bucklebuck.”
“Yah dood?”
“DOOD!”

Also, some people in Massachusetts sometimes say “Yah” instead of “Yeah.” They also say “dood” rather than “dude.” You can just tell. A lovely state. New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts are the constituent states of my “East Coast Trifecta of Awesomeness.”

MICHIGAN: The Stooges were good. The MC5 kind of secretly sucked. George Clinton is good. All Motown is great. Destroy All Monsters more or less sucked, despite having a great name and an ex-Stooge on guitar. There’s this whole Detroit techno thing, but I never heard it before. I’d like to visit the city of Detroit, but I never seem to find a reason to. I wish someone I knew would move there.

MINNESOTA: What the fuck is a Raspberry Beret? I don’t know, but I love that song. This might be a controversial opinion, but I think that Around the World in a Day was Prince’s best album. I woke up to it every morning for three months straight.

MISSISSIPPI: Em eye ess ess eye ess ess eye pee pee I don’t give a fuck about Mississippi. It’s annoying to type, first of all. Second of all, can you say “big fucking racist shithole?” If you’re from Mississippi, you probably only speak in monosyllables.

All right, I know one woman from Mississippi and she’s cool. The state flag, however, is the rebel flag in one corner and three stripes (red, white, and blue, of course). In my brain, Mississppi encompasses everything that I hate and despise about the Old South, which—I admit—is a really easy enemy to hate and despise. Still, I can’t believe that people are allowed to fly the rebel flag. It’s a symbol of treason as far as I’m concerned. March to the sea, Sherman, and seed the ground with salt.

I’ll get off my fragile little soapbox now. All right, a lot of really good music came from there (Robert Johnson + all the other Delta blues to start) and some pretty remarkable writers (William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Tennessee Williams, etc.). I guess I would have had Sherman march selectively. Like most of the states I make fun of here, I’ve never been there.

MISSOURI: I don’t know a goddamn thing about this state except that I pronounce it different than people from that area of the country. I say “MIZ-oar-ee” and they say “Mizz-err-AH.” Ha! Stupid assholes. I’m right. “Mizz-err-AH, mah home. That thar dog has burrs.” Ha ha! That sounds so fucking stupid! Ha ha ha! Assholes!

MONTANA: You know how sometimes, when you’re driving somewhere, you pull off into a highway rest stop to take a piss and stretch your legs? Always makes you eager to get back on the road, doesn’t it? Everything is dirty and stupid, all the food is going to make you feel like a fat piece of shit because it’s in a vending machine, and there’s a picnic table with a sour woman smoking a long, bad-smelling cigarette. There is an impossibly boring sign somewhere that serves as a banal historical marker, and some kind of half-assed nature admonishment on a wooden sign, like “Don’t Disturb the Pine Cone,” or something. You hate the other people in the car. Your feet itch. There are bees near the trash can. Just when it seems like it can’t get any worse, you go into the rest stop bathroom and encounter a snowman with a top hat pissing in the urinal. That snowman is Montana, and it hates your guts.

NEBRASKA: The spelling of Nebraska is visually repellent to me. States with too many broad vowel sounds in their name suffer from an inherent lack of potential. Nebraska sounds like Saskatchawan, which means that I don’t like the sound of it. For some reason, it’s also a word that wants me to make a pun out of it, but I can’t because that would be impossible. “Nebraska? I ask ya! It’s a blast-ah” See what I mean?

NEVADA: What can I say about Nevada that hasn’t already been said about letting pets near your sandbox? Las Vegas is like a big, tawdry turd in the sandbox of Nevada. Lardy, lardy, lard! $5.99 T-bone steak with chicken-fried cheesesticks. If I lived in Nevada, I would have nightmares about being cornered by a guy who has a playing card face and one of those playing card swords and is wearing a track suit. I’d unzip the front of his tracksuit, and a bunch of used breast implants would fall out. Thusly disemboweled, I would take the man’s silicone remains, put them in a garbage bag, and use it to float back to the East coast via that secret waterway that explorers were so bent on finding back in olden times. The Nothwest Passage, I think? They never found it, but I know where it is.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: You know, I always liked Vermont better.

NEW JERSEY: Hey, what an awesome fucking state. First of all, New Jersey has my favorite ever radio station, WFMU, 91.1 FM. Second of all, it’s the home of awesome fucking bands like the Misfits and the Feelies. People often accuse Jersey of being “the armpit of New York,” but that’s not true at all. It’s an awesome state with its own thing going on. I like visiting Jersey. Many of my dead relatives are interred there. I’d like to live there one of these days, but I’m not sure I’ll get around to it. Maybe I’ll get buried there? I’ll have to see if there’s a family plot.

NEW MEXICO: Let’s eat flapjacks!

NEW YORK: The jewel of the empire. I love New York State. From the primitive, unpopulated microvillage that is my hometown to one of the coolest cities in the world, New York pretty much runs the gamut. The best part is that upstate New York has nothing at all to do with the city, and vice-versa. I’ve never been happier or more miserable than here. Upstate is very beautiful, although it is economically fucked, being part of the rust belt and all. I like to call upstate New York “Shitty Canada.” It’s just like Canada, except the schools are bad, medication is expensive, there’s no free health care, and everyone is fucking violent. Oh, and assholes from the city move up there and make these ridiculous little cottages and become all precious and drive up everyone’s taxes.

New York City is a wonderful place where cool shit happens all the time and there’s all kinds of people up to all sorts of stuff. I’m getting all misty-eyed just thinking about how wonderful this place is, so I’ll spare you. Really good bagels here. And music, and theatre, and all the rest of it. Hooray, hooray, hooray New York.

Interesting mind set of New Yorkers, much different than people from California and the mid west. The people who lived in those states often kept going west, you know? “This homestead act is sweet. Let’s throw down on some free land and build a farm, kids. We’ll be able to buy all the gingham that we’d ever want!”

Not my family. My family was like “Fuck Ireland, let’s go to New York. What, we have to live in some teeming ghetto and die of tuberculosis? Aye, Seamus, that sounds good. How soon can I put the kids to work 140 hours a week at the blacking factory? Tuesday? Not soon enough. Let’s see if I can’t get a job flensing pigs at a slaughterhouse for a haypenny a week. Hell, I’d be happy getting paid in cockroach legs.” Two months later: “What? Homestead act? Is there flensing involved? No? Well then I ain’t hearin’ of it. Horatio Alger says I’m on the right track. Pull myself up by my bootstraps. I don’t need no fancy land, just some dead rats to make shoes out of and a cockroach to milk for the baby. Someday I’ll flense an animal with a skin so big, it’ll wrap all the way from New York to Ireland, where your old granma is eating three centipedes and a potato rind for dinner.” Not that it was easier in the rest of the country, but you know what I’m saying.

New York is a big state and it takes a while to drive around in. There are parts of it that I’ve never been to. Western New York is like a foreign land to me. People often ask me if I’m from the area near the fingerlakes, and I say “Oh no. No, no, no, no no no. Not even near them. Never been there. They’re nice? Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that, now, would I?”

NORTH CAROLINA: Everyone in North Carolina smokes Newport cigarettes and drives around in white sedans all day and all night for all of eternity. Christ, what am I going to say about South Carolina. I actually don’t even like the word “Carolina.” You know what it must be like to live there? I’ll bet everyone is trying to live by the water, which is hiding this universe of blind, gilled monsters who look on the residents of North Carolina with nothing more than a hungry indifference. Go swimming off the shore of North Carolina and you’ll be smothered by the rubbery wings of the manta ray.

NORTH DAKOTA: The other “North” state. Is this where Mount Rushmore is? [googles] No! It’s in South Dakota! Why the fuck would you want to go to North Dakota, then? You probably wouldn’t. That’s why this is the least densely populated state in the nation. Or is that some other place? Wyoming? Oh, who cares. I do know one thing about Dakota: Dakota! There’s one guy in North Dakota, and he has his own area code and zipcode. If you call him up, he’ll say “Yeah I got my own fuckin’ area code, and you’d better not fucking forget it, shitstain.” This guy frequently eats alone. If you ever got invited over, you’d probably be eating Fritos. “ I love this shit,” he’d say, “this is the best shit in the world.” Dakota is also the only state in the union where people who get lost in the mountains are eaten by trees. Their bones are never found. His name is Dakota.

OHIO: I never been there, but I’ll bet you my bottom dollar that you’d have a whole lot more fun in Ohio than you’d think you would. First of all, Ohio has produced a lot of awesome fucking music. Second of all, everyone I ever met from Ohio was really fucked up and really fun. I worked in a bookstore with this kid from Cleveland with a pile of blond hair who was one of the fuckedest guys I ever saw. He would tell you these stories that wouldn’t go anywhere but usually ended in this noncommittally dirty manner. For instance, he’d go “I don’t know about that shit. I mean, I want to play my music, but I don’t want to like, you know, be like Bowie or something. I just want to play my shit. I fuckin’, I mean, I work at the museum selling audio guides and I work here, so I mean . . . fuckin’ I watch TV and shit later on . . . you know, like that show about that detective in the wheelchair. What’s that shit called? It’s a funny show, kid. I bet he can’t even get it up. You think he pisses himself? Fuck that. I, fuckin’, I wouldn’t want to be on the case with that dude, in a car with his stink pisspants. He’s fuckin’ smart though. I also watched that movie—what’s that shit called? You know, that fuckin’ movie about the kids who get high and listen to Zeppelin. They all go to this school. Then in the bathroom, right, there’s this mirror that says ‘big hairy pussy’ on it. What is that shit called, asshole? I don’t remember, but Ironsides is probably into that shit, big hairy pussy, ha ha ha. Right? Ionsides is the name of that wheelchair shit I was watching earlier, ha ha ha. Ironsides likes big hairy pussy. You know that. You KNOW that shit, man!”

OKLAHOMA: I can’t believe they used to make musicals about people who lived in flat farming states amidst corn and wheat and had all these stupid down home values. I hate “down home” anything. When people are into down home values, something is fucked in their head. It’s like they wish they were stupider than they were, and they’re forever striving for this state of perfect ignorance that somehow also involves cinnamon buns and horseback riding. You know what I mean? These phony salt of the earth values that don’t exist, and simple people with chapped hands that forever spout out homilies about life don’t exist. Wilford Brimley is nothing more than a deranged fiction for people who have purchased books on how to make their own soap.

You know what that down home okey-dokey romanticism reminds me of more than anything else? My mother used to work with mentally handicapped kids, and then later I got a job where I worked with mentally handicapped kids and adults. It was probably the best job I ever had. Anyway, some people know how to talk to a person with Down Syndrome, and some people talk to a person with Down Syndrome in this fucked up, condescending way. That’s what it reminds me of. These health workers who, for whatever reason, infantilize Down Syndrome people.

“Oh, Eric, what a good job you did stacking these chairs! Such a good job! You’re a good boy! Oh yes you are!” It’s just like they’re talking to a dog. Disgusting. Meanwhile, Eric isn’t a boy, he’s 36 years old and could give a fuck about those chairs. He wants to talk about Metallica. He likes cooking and has interests and hobbies. The least interesting thing about his life are those fucking chairs he just stacked.

I feel that I may be in danger of losing my original thread here, but bear with me. People who like Oklahoma (the musical, which I guess is actually Oklahoma!, with the exclamation mark) probably wish that Oklahoma (the state) was this big Eden for cowboy-booted simpletons who can’t wait to eat a big ‘ol plate o’ tater pie and see Hoss shuck some husks. I’m sure that Oklahoma is nothing like that. For instance, I know exactly two people from Oklahoma, and they’re very smart, funny, and stylish. I’ve never known them to churn butter.

But, it should be noted that, much like Idaho, Oklahoma is another state with one of those stupid extruding things sticking off the side. Locationally, it’s situated right above the Texas panhandle. That’s crazy. If you were walking around that part of the state with a compass, it probably wouldn’t give you a correct reading. At least the useless part of Idaho is partitioned off by a river. This part of Oklahoma is like a shitty land-locked peninsula, roped off from the rest of the country by a straight line. I wonder how that happened, you know? I’ll bet that, when they were dividing up the country, Oklahoma was all like “This is mine, fuckers!” and Texas was all like “Take it, you butter-churning fucks! We’re trying to fight off Santa Ana over here! Lend us some bacon, a corn cob pipe, and a little rusty can full of tacks!” But Oklahoma lent them none of that, and Davy Crockett died.

OREGON: I spent a miserable two months in Oregon and had a terrible time. Portland, to be specific. Had a bad time. Maybe, under different circumstances, I might have had a better time there. But I didn’t.

One thing I did do was get to see the band Poison Idea. I don’t know how many of you like actually like punk rock, but Poison Idea were great. First of all, they were all really fat. I mean, fucking really fucking fat. The guitarist, Pig Champion, weighed in at about 450 pounds at one point—and I’m not embellishing that. Pig Champion tipped the scales at 450, and he wasn’t a tall guy. His guitar, which he thrashed viciously, would just sit on top of his big fat belly, which shook as the lard inside approximated a choppy sea. It was a beautiful show. I was flattened up against the back wall of the place by their malice, and felt slightly relieved when the whole thing was over.

But then one night I was riding the bus and reading a book. There was no one else on the bus. Suddenly, I smelled this awful fucking wretched stink. I turned my head, and the singer from Poison Idea was looming over me. He sat down in an adjoining seat and stared at me psychotically for the duration of his ride. Fuck! It was terrifying. I was afraid I was going to be eaten. This isn’t what I wanted out of Portland, but it did teach me a valuable lesson: I had to learn how to believe in myself.

The weird thing about a lot of the shows I saw in Oregon is that they were at this place called the Robot Steakhouse. There were always vegan brownies for sale, you know, but they didn’t charge admission at the door. They’d pass a hat, and you were encouraged to put in $5 or something to help the band pay for gas to get them to their next gig. The thing is, though, is that I didn’t like most of the bands, and had a hard time putting that money in the hat. You know, I think it’s a better idea to make people pay up front. Because by the end of the night I have a couple of drinks under my belt and thought all the bands sucked and am less inclined to pay. It was weird, because there was this pressure to pay, like you were expected to drop a couple of bucks into the hat. That may sound like the same as just paying up front, but it’s not. It’s one thing to purchase admission, it’s another to support the band. I’d rather just purchase admission, but I’d RATHERER see shit for free. Surely there’s a game theory problem about this somewhere. I do applaud the owners of the Robot Steak House for putting on the shows that they did, and for their admirable and unshakable dedication to doing it their way.

PENNSYLVANIA: The name Pennsylvania sounds like Transylvania, but it’s different. That’s not all that’s different, though! (kaPOW!) Transylvania is the home of borscht and vampires, while Pennsylvania is the home of nothing interesting at all, except for maybe something in Philadelphia but I wouldn’t know because I never visited there. Pennsylvania is a square state, and the square is not a shape suited to withstanding pressure. The circle is best at withstanding pressure. Pennsylvania is weak and will cave in to pressure. It will rat you out.

RHODE ISLAND: They say Rhode Island isn’t really an island, but that’s not true. It is an island. It’s a secret island that floats a hundred miles above the earth. The state that we know as Rhode Island is an imposter. Don’t let it fool you. It’s a piss poor replica too. You know how you can tell them apart? The Rhode Island in the air has unicorns, and the Rhode Island on the ground has an excess of silverfish. A rainbow bridge connects to the two, and you can only ascend it if you die a proud warrior. Both Rhode Islands have a town called Woonsocket, however.

SOUTH CAROLINA: See North Carolina.

SOUTH DAKOTA: If you build a house in South Dakota, you have a 63.4% chance of building it on an old Indian burial ground. Those Indians would haunt your house and scalp your family with a Ouija board, or whatever they used to say happened when you built your house on an Indian burial ground. Rumor has it that Mount Rushmore is there as well. If you’re the kind of person who would drive through the wilderness to see a shitty rock sculpture, well then: Well! Mount Rushmore was also built on an Indian burial ground. At night, the stone heads open their mouth and bats fly out.

TENNESSEE: NN SS EE, you know? That’s a lot of doubling up on the letters. Anyway, when I was in Tennessee, I was sitting on a porch with Sarah’s cousin Jordan and we were in rocking chairs. He said “I could get used to this, you. Sitting in a rocking chair while a nice old lady brings you lemonade and shit.”

Memphis was a real cool town, I’ll tell you what. I had an excellent time there, although, frankly, I didn’t see all that much of it. Just the tourist stuff, and couple of out of the way places. I’d wanted to visit Jerry Lee Lewis house, where you could hang out and watch Jerry Lee Lewis drink Kool-Aid and yell at the TV, but there wasn’t time.

Do you have any idea how much good music has come out of that state? Any fucking idea at all? A lot. A whole lot. You could spend all year listening to cool music only from Tennessee. Do you know how long you could do that with South Dakota? One minute. Think about that. But even if you took that one minute to listen to it, it probably wouldn’t change your entire life and they way you listen to sound.

TEXAS: People seem to have a lot of opinions about Texas, but I’d be the first to admit that I’m not one of them. I do have night terrors about being forced to live in the panhandle, thought. Could you imagine that? It’s like some fucked up landing strip. It’s not even really part of the state. Most of the people you see in the panhandle are probably just “passing through,” you know? Lightnin Hopkins was from Texas, though, as were the 13th Floor Elevators. In fact, the two parties made an album together in 1968, and I want a fucking copy. If anyone out there can provide me with one, you get extra Henchpoints.

UTAH: When Tom and I took the train to San Francisco, this couple in Utah thought that we were a charming young gay couple. I also talked to this kid whose name was Elvis. Utah was mentioned in Angels in America by Tony Kushner and is often the butt of Mormon humor. I don’t really give a shit about Mormons. What I want to know is why they get to call their basketball team the Utah Jazz. Shit. That would be like having the Delaware Zydeco or the fucking Arizona Gamelans.

VERMONT: If I ever run into some kind of horrible trouble in my life, like I end up being a castrated burn victim with no friends or eyes, I’m going to move to Vermont. It’s pretty, people are mellow, and everyone seems to appreciate softball, beer, ice cream, and swimming. Everyone in the state owns a Frisbee as well. Even though Vermont borders upstate New York, it’s a thousand times nicer than upstate. Whenever I crossed the border into that state, I felt sort of like the Von Trapp family must have felt once setting foot in Switzerland, or wherever it was they fled to in that movie that I’ve only seen the ending to.

VIRGINIA: I get the feeling that this is the Connecticut of the south. The only time I ever went there, it was about 104 degrees and my parents had a car without air conditioning (as usual). Too fucking hot, too fucking boring! Fuck it.

WASHINGTON: Back in the early 1990s, I really wanted to go to Seattle because that’s where grunge music was. I didn’t know much about it, but I sent away for the Sub Pop record catalogue and checked out the photos of the bands, and I thought they looked cool. I mean, if you grow up in rural America, you already have the clothes. My f’ed up old denim work jacket that I’d worn for years to cut wood in was now like a fucking cool piece of rock’n’roll clothing, you know? Stick a Ramones pin on that I was in style. I grew my hair real long and tried to find grunge albums. I didn’t find any. I did get a CD with the first Mudhoney EPs and singles, which was actually pretty good. Grunge rules, I thought. But then I listened to other stuff that was passing as grunge, and it was really bad. I didn’t like Pearl Jam, or Soundgarden, or Our Lady Peace, or Seven Mary Three, or Candlebox, or any of that shit. I found out later, of course, that all that music was considered “fake grunge,” or something. Then I found out that grunge didn’t really exist, or was made up, or whatever. Who cares! Before I knew it, all of my f’ed up lumberjack clothes weren’t cool anymore. In fact, they hadn’t been cool in ages. I just looked like some redneck. So I cut my hair, dyed it black, and wore pressed shirts and polyester pants and sweaters in an attempt to look aggressively studious.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Interminable non-state with some interesting relics such as the Brooks Brothers coat Lincoln was shot in. Also home to a mysterious kind of music called Go-go, which is sort of like hip hoppy funk but more organic, with a lot of drums. Go-go never really took off, unfortunately, so it’s nearly impossible to find any CDs of the bands, like Trouble Funk. Last time I was there, I had to ask the record store clerk if he had any Go-go, and he brought up a CD wallet full of bootlegged shows. I bought one, and it was pretty cool, but I would have preferred something that was recorded with a little higher fidelity.

WEST VIRGINIA: If someone is a coal miner, they’re always from West Virginia. That’s where the coal is, apparently.

WISCONSIN: The most interesting thing anyone seems to be able to say about Wisconsin is that cheese is made there. Well, cheese is made in like ever other fucking state in the union. On television, I always see people with these cheese wedges on their heads yelling at some football game, but then the Wisconsinites that I know are incredibly smart, well-spoken people. One is a director getting her PhD, and the other is a political science guy who was going to school in Budapest. Their secret? They didn’t eat the fucking cheese, that’s their secret.

WYOMING: It’s fitting that the least interesting state in the entire country the last state I’m going to cover here. If any of you have actually read all of these in sequence, that means you get to end on the boringest fucking state in the whole country, Wyoming. Why? Why, “Oming?” Jesus. It evades my best efforts to make it interesting.

So to hell with Wyoming. Fuck you, Wyoming, with your 1890 admission to statehood, your 97,818 square miles, your 307 area code, your fucking “Western Meadowlark,” and your border states of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, and South Dakota!

I’m not being fair to Wyoming. No, instead I think that I should take a second to apologize to all of the states I’ve unfairly maligned. Most of them I’ve never visited. Generally, the longer that I stay in a place, the more that I Iike it. I tend to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person, but I gleefully get drawn into the most base regionalism, which I both spoofed and vented here. In many cases, I went back and toned down some of my more ridiculous tirades against certain states. I actually do hope to see some of these places, but I’ve only started traveling in the last few years. Before I met Sarah, I’d never really left the northeast. If I’d written this in, say, 1999, it would have been even more ignorant and ill-informed.

The epigrammatically-inclined Mark Twain once said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

I think that’s true, albeit in a very minor way for me. Which is a very roundabout way for me to say “I’m OK, you’re OK,” really.

But actually, we’re not.

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