Home stretch & ode to MJ

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No, not that MJ. The other one. The one who lives at my house. The one who lives.

Lincoln, Omaha, Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Iowa City, Davenport…then the long, long trek of nothin before getting to Joliet and putting my feet up.

Or maybe not “nothin” after all…

So I stopped at two cool places on this trip. First, Iowa 80: the Largest Truck Stop in the World — and they ain’t kidding. This place is a truck driver’s (and tourist’s) dream. I hope #1 Son can get out there on one of his runs to see it up close.

Not ostentatious er nothin.

~

The automotive section (one of them).

~

Yes darlings, that is a truck inside the store.

~

The mother of all trinket shops.

~

They also have a full-service laundry, a movie theater, a barber shop, and a dentist’s office. No really, a dentist’s office.

OK, the second cool place.

The Thriller was raised in the microscopic Illinois town of Buda (pronounced “byoo-duh,” as opposed to, you know, this). Yesterday, while I drove and talked on the phone with him, he made the comment that he probably wouldn’t even recognize the place anymore, having not been there in decades. He’s always talked about taking me there to see his boyhood home and school, assuring me that the entire tour would take roughly five minutes.

(I underlined Kewanee…he was hatched there. Another Illini, ‘sides me, Mavis & PK.)

Anyway, I decided to take a small detour off I-80 and surprise him with a few photos. My favorite was this one, of the high school from which he graduated in 1969:

Nice. When he received the pictures in his email, he was speechless! (And lemmetellya, that don’t happen often…he’ll agree with me there, too.)

All right, enough fun for one morning. I think I’ve timed it so I can hit the shower, get some coffee, and get on the road in time to miss the worst of the Chicago rush hour traffic. What am I saying…it’s always rush hour in Chicago traffic. Oh well. As the Thriller is wont to say: Buckle yer chin straps; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Fink over and out (of Joliet).

Vamos

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And away I go, leaving the prairie. Much of what I drive this morning will look like this (taken on the way to Lincoln on Monday):

And that was just minutes outside of Crete, where Doane College is located. Beautiful country out here for sure.

I’m bugged because I only got about 4 hours of sleep, though. Not good when you have an 8-hour drive ahead of you. My brain gets going and I can’t shut it off, and the more I try to go back to sleep, the more sleep evades me. You know the drill, I’m sure. I just have to stop thinking thoughts that bug me. And a lot of stuff bugs me.

Still, I had a great time the last five days. I told the Thriller on the phone last night that this was a fantastic experience all the way around for me. Lots of good things happened.

All right then, fiends. To infinity and beyond. Or at least to what has become my daily haunt: the Káva House Café drive-through for a sugar-free skinny vanilla latte.

Yummy.

FO

Awesome theater, OK movie

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Yesterday I had some free time, so I drove 25 minutes into Lincoln to the Grand Theater, where I saw Public Enemies. Grand indeed.

Upon walking in the rather basic looking entrance, you’re greeted by a cavernous Art Deco lobby, beautifully appointed and very clean. The white wall on the right of the photo features dozens of classic movie quotes. Great idea.

From Wikipedia:

The Grand opened on 19 November 2004. It took the place of four smaller theaters: the Lincoln, which was destroyed to partially make way for the Grand, as well as the Cinema Twin, Douglas 3 and Plaza 4, which closed the night before the opening of the Grand.

The Grand includes over 3,000 stadium seats, and an arcade [called] “The Vault,” which features a 60,000-pound vault door purchased from Wells-Fargo.

The building is located right in the middle of the downtown business district; I had to park in a public garage. The auditorium where I saw the movie had the high-back recliner-type seats. And out of a city of 225,000 people, only eight chose to attend the 4:00 matinee. That was cool as well. Lots of room to stretch out. So I bought my small popcorn and Diet Pepsi and parked my bad self in the back section, front row. I was queen of the cinemarr.

Now, the movie…

I thought I would want to see it again and again, because, well, you know…it’s JD. But here’s the thing:

  1. He was decidedly unpretty in this film. Too many close-ups that show every pore and wrinkle and slimy slime of sweat. *shudder* Ew. And I hated the shaved-butt haircut. I know it was the style back then, but still. All greezy ‘n stuff. Icky.
  2. Marion Cotillard. She really, really struggled with the American accent, and I’m sorry, I just couldn’t get past it. I found myself listening for words she mispronounced. Unfair, I know.
  3. Dumb lines! Even for 1933.
  4. Too much Chicago typewriter fire and not enough story.
  5. The characters (Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson, for instance) were hard for me to identify and follow. Half the time, I didn’t know the good guys from the bad. They all looked alike, and most were nondescript.
  6. Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis. His accent bugged me, too. Way more old New Orleans than South Carolina. It just didn’t ring true, like with Cotillard.
  7. Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover was kind of creepy. I guess that worked.

That said, the movie didn’t offend me completely. There was just not enough of a tale for my taste, and I found myself wandering now and again, looking at my phone, squirming in my chair, and thinking about how much I’d have to pay to escape the parking garage. But the experience of walking in that theater was worth it! Wow, what a place. It was fun.

OK, off to Day Two, with two presentations this afternoon. Concert tonight, then back on the road in the morning, heading for Ohio via a stopover in Quincy, I mean Joliet, Ill-i-noy.

:P

Roughing it

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So this is the view from my dorm room window:

Tough, eh? Staying on campus at a small college in the middle of miles and miles of corn and bean fields is way more pleasant than I originally expected. Admittedly, it’s been awhile since I’ve been in a dorm. But these are really nice by any standards — air conditioned, even! Good thing too, since it was 91 degrees here yesterday afternoon.

Only bad thing: as is customary when students walk on carpet in bare feet for months at a time, the place smells a little like, well…like people walked on the carpet in bare, stinky feet. Not pleasant. So I made a quick trip to Wally and bought some Febreze. Covers it up just fine. My guess is the carpet shampooing hasn’t happened yet.

So here’s the layout, especially for the benefit of those of us for whom “suites” were not an option in college, heh:

View of my bedroom from the entry of the suite

My space. Other half of the room is a mirror image.

View from my room door

A gift arrived, full of treats from Nebraska. I have NO idea how half the chocolate bar disappeared.

So far, I’m by myself in this little paradise. Another clinician arrives today to occupy one of the other bedrooms. I guess that’s one of the perks: suite mates, but no roommates. That’s a good thing all around.

All right. Enough slide show fun. Time for showers, coffee, and final prep for today’s session (12:30 Eastern, in case you wanted to know).

The Thriller calls this trip my “adventure.” So far, it’s been a great one! I needed this. More photos & stuff tomorrow. Have a great Monday.

Fink out (on the lone prairie).

I owe Ioway…

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…more than I can ever pay. (Special prize from the Secret Vault goes to the first person who can tell me what show that ridiculous song is from.)

Actually, the picture below is of Illinois, just shy of the Iowa border. But I don’t know any cool rhymey songs about Illinois. And by the by, that’s Ill-i-noy. Not Ella Noise. I get a little snarky about that particular Schmenglish mishap, seeing as how that is the state in which I was hatched all those many moons ago. I mean, what if I said, “Oh-hee-oh,” or “Grennitch” instead of “Green-witch.”  I could snark. I could. But I won’t. (But I could.)

Anyway. No coffee yet, feel me?

I took this while zipping across I-80 west, singing along with the Jackson 5, near Davenport. Dassum flat land, fiends.

I worked on some session prep and channel-flipped for awhile last night. It was actually fun, and tres therapeutic.

Since I get up at the butt crack of dawn anyway, it won’t surprise you to read that I am wakey-wakey at 4 a.m. local time. So I inspected the disinfecting pod in my room…

Neet.

Whatever happens, it ain't our fault.…and perused my responsibilities as a hotel, inn, eating house and/or steamboat inmate in the state of Iowa.

And Starbucks isn’t open yet, either. It’s going to be a long wait.

So this morning, it’s off to Lincoln. Should be an easy drive. Looking forward to hanging with the fellow choir geeks tonight.

Are you behaving this weekend? Show the Fink some love. I can’t believe it’s only been eight days since the 4th of July. It seems like months. Has this week gone slowly for you too?

FO