On A Preponderance Of Beautiful Scenery, Lost Highway And Not Dying.

I’ve never finished watching David Lynch’s Lost Highway, but one image of the movie has always stayed with me: Bill Pullman is driving along, well, a highway, and the only source of illumination is his headlights pointed ten degrees down from the horizontal, hitting nothing but the road 40 feet ahead.

Suddenly I’m Bill Pullman. The only thing I can see coming at us at 60 miles per hour are lines painted on the road and the reflector poles – which pass the side windows every 30 or so yards, two reflectors each. The bottom reflector, maybe three feet off the ground, is nothing out of the ordinary. But the extra three-foot extension above that, the guides for snowplows that keep those trucks on the road when snowdrifts reach heights over my head, is what makes it feel like we’re on a desolate highway to nowhere, a sort of roadside stretch of Purgatory. We’re driving to a destination we’ll never reach.

And Purgatory may be the right descriptor for this, because the lines and the diamond reflectors aren’t the only things our lights illuminate. We see the occasional road sign – Trailheads: Cinnamon Creek 1/4 Buffalo Horn 1’ and ‘Gallatin River’ – but the things that get me are the crosses. There are just so many crosses along this road, each marking the spot where someone lost control and plunged off the path of illuminated reflectors and into … god knows what. A ravine? A river? Just a simple thicket of trees that stubbornly refused to yield to a crashing vehicle? The spectres of the dead could be staring at us from just beyond the reach of the headlights, for all I know, imploring us to slow the fuck down.

On Being Downcast, Or, Why Compass Points Suck.

The sun is starting to rise. Suddenly I feel like the anti-Dracula, racing to make it to a grand vista point before the sun has a chance to peek over the mountains to our east.

And in some strange twist, the compass in our car refuses to function, instead displaying ‘CA’ as a big calibrating middle finger to the two of us who are heading vaguely north and who just crossed in to Yellowstone National Park. The gods are against us, and my mood still reflects the bleakness outside.

On The Sexual Innuendoes Of The Grand Tetons And My Photographic-Manhood Insecurity.

We just left the Grand Tetons – which supposedly comes from the French slang ‘tetons,’ or, in layman’s terms, ‘tits’ – and I found out that I don’t have a chance with those boobies.

The pull-off points on the road, up until 8:30 or so in the morning, were completely empty. But once the sun came out in full force, it was a free-for-all photographic orgy. We reached the penultimate stop in the Tetons – where a mirror-smooth lake forms a great foreground for the backdrop of snow-covered peaks – and I pulled out the camera and tripod for some picturesque, well, pictures. Then some Jack Lemmon-looking guy pulls up next to us and unloads his Canon D20 with a 1000 mm telephoto zoom that looked like a damn cannon. As Freud might say, I was hit hard with camera envy.

Suddenly, I was the guy with the littlest gear, all embarrassed by my Rebel XT and its stock 18-55 mm lens. I was being shown up by 70-year-olds.

Like I said, ain’t no way I have a chance with these Tetons. Not when some ten-inch barrel lens is around.

On The Implications Of ‘Laramie,’ Both The Word And The Locale.

Prior to today, my experiences with Wyoming were limited to a vague image of rodeos and an even more vague pop-culture attuning to the word ‘Laramie.’ Now that today has arrived, however, I find myself in Laramie, and I recall why I know this town. It was that hate crime against a gay man that was subsequently made into a play and a movie and a musical and spawned hate-crime legislation … and that’s about all I know.

I do know, however, that my younger brother – who’s all about the musical theater – portrayed Russell Henderson, one of the two killers of Matthew Shepard. So I called him to tell him I was here.

I’m not getting into this topic any further; there’s nothing further to say.

On Poor Planning, Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love A Gun-Filled Photo Shoot.

Many of the photo shoots I’ve run thus far on my trip have been along the lines of what I would call ‘creative editorializing,’ wherein we come up with a narrative presentation based on our interviews of groups or individuals, or on research about a given historical happening or marker. Some of these shoots have entailed

• consumption of Scotch in a alcohol-free area in order to create a ‘Masterpiece Theater’-type setting full of 19th century English-manor-isms;
• the climbing on and hanging from a goalpost in a major college football stadium (the subjects, not me);
• and rock jumping for the sake of posing like Lewis and Clark (again, the subjects, not me).

Today’s ‘creativity’ involved a goddamn arsenal. Shotguns, rifles with laser sights, large-bore deer rounds, a .44 pistol, a compound bow, even a K-Bar Army-issue knife used as a bayonet. For some reason, we thought it would be a good idea to show the men at the University of Montana as outdoorsy, as hunters – as many of them claimed to be big-time shooters.

This rapidly spun out of control, however, as I found myself directing a photo shoot in the middle of a desolate field with more than 20 men, each of whom was holding some sort of deadly weapon. Why I thought this was a good idea, I’ll never know. All I do know is that the picture says it all. I’m not a gun person, per se – I like shooting from time to time, but nothing serious – but the sort of firepower literally staring down the barrel at me was a bit disconcerting.

Tomorrow, I head to Denver, a normal-sized city with a normal-sized idea of a good time, one that doesn’t involve more weapons that Iran-Contra. I can’t wait.

For the first time in more than a week, I slept for nearly eight hours. It was beautiful. After yesterday’s grueling schedule, I’m glad we had some respite from the interview/photo shoot grind.

We spent the early afternoon looking for laser-cut-metal artwork – not exactly my idea of a decorating scheme, but hey – and ended up passing a strip club where the sign read ‘Support Bush. Full Nude Full Bar,’ before arriving at this metalworking shop. We enter, and a wave of asinine chatter hits me like a wave. Chatty Kathy behind the counter was regaling customers with her previous night’s tales:

‘And I went to the gas station, and I was thinking that John likes his beer, so I got him a six-pack, and that was only $4.99, but I had to pay for the gas, too, but when I got home I noticed they didn’t charge me for the gas, only the $4.99 for the beer so I had to call them back the next morning because my daughter works for Thriftway, you know, and the manager thought I was a drive-off and should have been charged $32.87 and I said ‘excuse me, honey, but I drive a Kia, thank you, so there’s no way I could use that much gas,’ and they couldn’t find my receipt so they had to call the central office and …’

This is when the couple in front of me nodded politely and left the store.

While Brandon was investigating some gifts for his friends, I was idly spinning the weathervanes – which incidentally cost something stupid like $239, but were actually pretty hip, laser-cut-metal roosters and such, modern updates of the classic farm ideal, or at least as I understand what a farm should be like from TV – and Chatty Kathy looks up from Brandon, mid-conversation, with the bloodlust scent of a possible conversation and a possible sale in her nostrils, before saying, ‘If you like those, I have one I can sell you for $35.’

Before I can respond with ‘No, really, that’s okay,’ she brings out some godawfully ugly weathervane-type thing, which looked like an anorexic Labrador atop an Olympic balance beam. She continues:

‘This guy, who doesn’t live here, he’s from out of town, you know, but anyway he stops in and falls in love with this …’

I start to open my mouth, ready to say either ‘He fell in love with this? He wants an ugly dog on top of his house?’ or ‘umm, no thanks.’ But I can’t get a word in edgewise.

She continues on a rant until I stop her cold in her tracks with a simple declarative statement: ‘I live in Chicago,’ I say. ‘I don’t own a home and I don’t know how much my landlord will appreciate a weathervane.’ She didn’t like me too much after that.

We leave said establishment – Brandon was on a quest to find a winter coat which he was sure would be available in either Wyoming or Montana, something Western – and stop at a store for woolen goods. Next to said store, however, there’s a used-car lot that just begged to be photographed. We’re not talking 1992 Cavaliers; we’re talking 1921 Lincoln Zephyrs. See picture above. I don’t think I’ve ever been that excited about an impromptu photo shoot before. One of the most challenging things I had to do – in the name of the sanctity of art, of course – was to somehow find the right picture that would frame the rusted-out shells of cars built before World War II against the mountains … without showing the strip mall next door in the background. Ah, capitalism. You’re screwing up my photo shoots.

In any case, the men at the university we were interviewing for the next item on our agenda were more than receptive to a photo shoot up by a reservoir in the Gallatin National Forest – so a’national forestin’ we went. The rest of the restful day was spent in pleasant relaxation, from dinner at a local brewpub to driving down dirt roads where I could hear elks’ mating calls … from ten feet away. Try that from Wrigley Field.

Postscript the first. I’m forced to conclude that these Western towns are the Land that Time Forgot, due to the preponderance of antique stores and the existence of the aforementioned car junkyards. But a benefit of such throwback ideals is that you can find all sorts of cool shit. Take this excerpt from a cookbook, which I found while eating at the Cat’s Eye Café for lunch:

‘The proper diet depends largely on the occupation. People of sedentary habits and brain workers need more digestible food than the day laborer – therefore, the necessity of mixed diets; but diets should be varied as well as mixed, and the housekeeper in planning meals thinks of what was served at the preceding meal.’

Lowney’s Cook Book, Illustrated, copyright 1912.

So take a page (literally) from the playbook of yesteryear: If you got drunk last night and had a burrito at 1:45 a.m., make sure your next meal is suitable for your occupation. Day laborers should get, I don’t know, digestible food. Whatever that means.

Postscript the second. On the main drag of Laramie, which used to be a real-life frontier town with horse ties and all that crap, there are a bunch of yuppie coffee shops and Patagonia stores. That’s to be expected.

There’s also an Army-Navy surplus store. Nothing funny there.

Above the store is a statue of a horse, rearing up on its hind legs and rotating on a motor. Fine, I suppose.

Branded on the left hindquarters of the horse is the Masonic insignia. Okay, we’re getting a little weird now.

Between the hind legs of the horse, you see … copious endowment. What sort of a town is this?

Unfortunately for me, I’m in the middle of the granola, hippie-shite, out-of-civilization part of my trip. The western border of Idaho is full of sleepy towns like Cottonwood (population: 944) and rocky crags and evergreen forests … before giving way to boring-ass potato fields. And my Treo doesn’t work in the middle of nowhere, so I can’t even check my e-mail. And I haven’t read a newspaper or done a crossword in four days.

Let’s just say that rather than falling asleep to the beautiful sounds of an el train and a wailing siren and a drunken passerby, I closed out my day by listening to the mating call of elks – which sounds like William Wallace’s battle cry from Braveheart, only played backwards and underwater and performed by a 12-year-old girl – and the sounds of … absolutely nothing. It’s just plain freaky to listen and hear absolutely nothing, but that’s what you get in Bozeman, Montana.

But we’ve been busy as hell, covering more than 500 miles today on a route that took us from Boise, Idaho, to Moscow, Idaho, to Missoula, Montana and finally ending up in Bozeman. So, in chronological order, I present to you the events of 26 September 2006:

• leave hotel at 6:10 a.m. after three hours of sleep;
• drive through gorgeous small-town Idaho, try to take pictures of small towns in low-light settings, fail miserably, take periodic naps in the car;
• realize we are an hour ahead of schedule because projected destination is in Pacific, not Mountain, time zone;
• stop at Jacque Spur Café, a mom-and-pop diner, for some biscuits and gravy where the cook is wearing an honest-to-god hair net;
• nearly run out of gas, find out next station is nine miles ahead;
• reach plateau of Idaho, discover beautiful terrain has become boring potato fields;
• stop at University of Idaho, pose undergraduates in Masterpiece Theater-type setting complete with glasses of Scotch, prepare to incur future wrath of in-house legal counsel;
• watch boss get pulled over for speeding and get out of ticket;
• get to drive through Montana as a direct result of this;
• arrive at University of Montana, pose undergraduates on a bulldozer in shot reminiscent of a WWF poster;
• look for boss’ wallet all over university campus because he ‘lost’ it, find said wallet in back seat of car;
• drive to Bozeman, Montana, where I can finally sleep.

There are a few items worth expounding upon, however.

Pet peeve the first. Asshats that can’t drive a normal speed when there’s no passing for miles on end. I never knew there was such an industry transporting firewood and mattresses on the back of vans, but apparently it’s booming and full of asshats that can’t drive half the speed limit. Washington license plate 246-PDL, I don’t care how ghetto your ride be, just move, bitch, get outs the way.

Pet peeve the second. Potato fields. I’m originally from Ohio, which is the Buckeye State. Guess what? It’s not covered in buckeye trees; it’s a freaking nickname. Today I drove though Idaho, which took its nickname ‘The Potato State’ a little too seriously. You have beautiful gorges and mountains and meadows and streams, Idaho. Endless fields of below-ground crops equals boring.

Poignant story the first. My boss has been dispensing some good advice, from ‘make sure you know what you want and don’t listen to anyone else,’ to ‘sometimes, a little revenge is more than worth it.’

But they say actions are louder than words, and if that’s the case, the most poignant lesson I’m going to take away from this mentor figure is that when pulled over by a cop for going 78 in a 60 zone – and the cop calls you out on having a shitty radar detector that apparently doesn’t do any good – the best course of action is to say, ‘no, officer, i don’t have this radar detector so I can speed with abandon. Okay, nevermind, that is why I have it.’

Ahh, the voice of experience. Apparently it does get you somewhere – because he got off with a warning and I got to drive.

Rumination on nighttime Montana driving the first. Driving through the pitch-black mountains of Montana where anything – literally anything, from a deep ravine to a forested gully to an army of Zombie Tupacs (bust a rhyme for me, Zombie Tupac! Raaawrpah!) – could be lurking on the other side, it’s hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks I’ll be driving through the streets of New York where anything – literally anything, from a used condom to a half-empty 40 bottle to an army of Zombie Tupacs – could be lurking just around the next corner.

I learned – for the fifth or so time – why I don’t need to go to casinos.

There’s a line in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when Raoul Duke hits the gambling floor somewhere in the 2-5 a.m. range and describes the men sitting at the blackjack tables as ‘caricatures of used-car salesmen from Dallas.’

Last night, I was a caricature of a used-car salesman from Dallas.

At 2 a.m., after my boss goes to sleep, I went down to the lobby of my hotel with $17 in my pocket. I quickly lose $7 by playing stupid video poker – come on, jacks or better to get your money back? – but then I sit down in front of what I thought as My Slot Machine. My initial $10 investment, 40 credits at a quarter each, stayed relatively constant at 50-ish for a while. After hitting one big win, though, my credits were up to 129. That’s $32.25 in real money, more than 300 percent of my initial investment. I looked at the display, subconsciously noting the following three facts:

1. If I got below 100 credits, I would stop.
2. If I won a 40-credit or more spin, I would stop.
3. If I lost all of my money, I would stop.

Those of you with a formal training in logic will note that points the first and second, taken as a unit, are inconsistent with point the third.

Guess which of the three I followed. Hint: I lost all my money.

The morning dawned more quickly than I would have liked, and we started our journey. Before getting on the road, however, we stopped for a quick coffee at the truck stop across the street. It was there that I saw the day’s moment of zen, for above the door was a sign that read ‘Homeland Security Threat Level: Orange. Please See Cashier For Details.’

Apparently while I was gone, the key to unlock the War on Terror has been found: the National Security Administration’s daily briefings of truck-stop cashiers.

But the last time I drove through the Intermountain West, I was in sixth grade and was primarily concerned with playing my Game Boy and reading Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park than I was with the scenery. That was a mistake: It’s gorgeous out here.

Let me revise that last statement: It’s gorgeous out here as long as you’re a) in a car, b) not driving for hours on end and c) listening to Nelly.

The car was no problem, but we *were* driving for hours on end, so it’s a good thing we found some Nelly. Yes, ‘Country Grammar’ Nelly. For up to a half hour at a time, we got no radio stations. Since we were lacking the necessary iPod connections for the car stereo, were at the mercy of the radio gods. That’s when Fate smiled, and we found one single, lonely station in the middle of the desert. I expected country. I got hip-hop club bangers. What can I say? I worked. It kept me going.

The rest of the day passed much less eventfully, since we found ourselves back in the iron grip of civilization (read: suburban strip malls) as we neared Boise. The men we met for the interview were gracious and, apart from posing for a picture hanging from a football goalpost, nothing of note was accomplished.

Tomorrow is going to be interesting, as we’re getting up at 6 a.m. to drive to the upper reaches of Idaho. That’s something I never thought I would say … ‘drive to the upper reaches of Idaho.’ What’s this trip doing to me?

I went to bed last night feeling like an outsider: I had just closed the curtains on a gay-bondage photo shoot taking place in the apartment building across the alley, and I was treated to an endless parade of sirens and cries and yells and a cacophony of other drag-queen noises from street level.

I woke up for a run today and, 30 minutes later, I felt connected to San Francisco in a way I had never been before. For those of you who know the city, I ran from 8th and Market to the Embarcadero, then up to Pier 39 and back. The best way to describe it is to have you listen to ‘6B Panorama’ by Aesop Rock from the record Float, wherein he uses descriptions like ‘a junkie tourniquet surgeon urging the needle in / a batty senior citizen flashing that awful teethless grin’ and ‘a Nazi with tattoos on his neck / a Vietnam war vet / a Caucasian man with a limp and a cane.’ That’s San Francisco around Market Street.

In short, I discovered a farmer’s market, a breast-cancer benefit walk and a homeless shanty town outside the United Nations building – as well as countless other idiosyncrasies – in just a few short miles.

The rest of the day, in fast forward:

• Photographing angelically cute children climbing on the statue of Joseph Strauss by the Golden Gate;
• Getting a group of 14 undergraduates – none of whom is white – to freely admit that being diverse is a selling point;
• Eating an In-N-Out burger;
• Driving through Lake Tahoe and making giddy references to ‘that fiery orb in the distance’ to which my boss tells me to ‘stop being stupid’;
  
• Looking for a gas-station bathroom, but discovering I have to walk through a small casino to get there, thereby redefining awesome for the rest of my life;
• Holding a photo shoot at night, marking my first successful solo excursion with a full light kit and altered f-stops when an interview in Reno falls through;
• Stopping in a city called ‘Winnemucca’ for the night, where it’s something stupid like 42 degrees outside. And I’m still in my flip-flops.

So rather than head to bed when it’s 1:39 a.m. (real time in Chicago: 3:39), I’m headed down to the lobby of my hotel here in Winnemucca. I’m going to play the slot machines.

One more time, for effect: I’m going down to my hotel lobby to play slots. Yes, I’m going to be that guy. It’s better than being that batty senior citizen with a teethless grin … but just barely.

The cabbie that picked me up at 5:05 a.m. next to Wrigley Field provided the best (accidental) summary of my cross-country trip thus far:

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Moving out?”

I could see why he would ask me that – here I was, bleary-eyed and struggling down the middle of the street under the weight of one (very large) suitcase, another (moderately large) suitcase, a carry-on shoulder bag and a camera case, trying desperately to hail a cab that would take me the first 15 or so of the 5,800 miles my boss and I would be covering in the next 25 days. I must have been a welcome diversion from drunks spilling out from the very, very late-night bars.

Some months ago, my boss came up with the idea to drive from California to Boston, telling the true stories from the perspective of the members in our organization. Great, right? The problem is that the months, weeks and days leading up to this trip consisted of the same thought, over and over: This was going to completely kick ass. Here we were, about to drive across the country, covering what really goes on across the United States with all our members, and, well, we were going to have a blast along the way, road-trip style.

Actually, make that Road-Trip style. With capital letters.

But, like all things that seem superlatively awesomely great in theory, the reality was a bit different. I slept for just two short hours before jumping in that cab. The plane ride to Phoenix was complete with a barking dog on board. The Golden Gate Bridge, the first major stop on our trip, was shrouded in fog – that means no photos. Of course.

Then we went out for the night.

For whatever karmic reason, San Francisco this weekend was overrun by the parade I’ll call the Freak Show. Let’s just say that when driving back to the hotel, we had our lane blocked by a shirtless man holding a plastic cup – a cup which I’m assuming was full of intoxicating liquor – who was beating passing cars with a leather riding crop. We’re talking off the hook, even by California standards.

Ever seen the first Batman movie? Or any dark, Gothic depiction of a city, late at night, that was supposed to be teeming with seediness? That was San Francisco tonight. Drunken drag queens. Steam spilling out of sewer grates. Cabs that won’t stop to pick us up. Shirtless men with leather riding crops. You know, standard procedure.

I can’t wait to get to the next phase of this trip – as I write this, I’m watching two men in leather across the alley pose for a photo shoot. While I don’t think they’ve seen me yet, I can at least go to sleep knowing that I’m the outsider here, I’m the one who apparently hasn’t yet been fitted for his black-leather muscle shirt. I should either ante up or get out of town.

I’m heading to San Jose in the morning.