SIDEHIKE.NET ROAD TRIP 2008

So. Where were we?

Ah yes. Tombstone. Land of the Last-Resort Circle K.

Bo and I woke up Wednesday morning and decided to check out the OK Corral gunfight show, because damned if we were going to let our most lasting impression of the town be the teenage taquito-flinger from the night before. We packed up and headed out to our car, passing the huge maroon tour bus that had transported a contingent of the German Air Force to our hotel. Did we forget to mention the German Air Force? Apparently they were doing some sort of training exercise at the nearby air base, but their presence did cause me to note several things: 1) my high school and college German classes were woefully ineffective and 2) not a one of them were wearing those cool spiked metal helmets. Disappointing.

We showed up in downtown Tombstone, which is to say the part of Tombstone that isn’t a hotel, a little before noon, figuring the gunfight show would be at high noon, like any sensible gunfight show should be. Sadly, it wasn’t happening till two o’clock, and with all due respect to the good citizens of Tombstone, there’s no way we were hanging around that long.

Bo has some great shots from the town over on the flickr page, but they may not convey the full atmosphere of the place, which is this: imagine if the cheesy gunfight show at Six Flags were to grow like a cancer and envelop several blocks of real estate in the midst of otherwise unremarkable desert. The historic buildings are undercut by occasional bits of anachronism such as signs warning away any potential rollerbladers stupid enough to attempt rollerblading on gravel roads and wooden-plank walkways. Costumed re-enactors assail passersby every three feet, trying to talk you out of your money and into whichever wild west show they happen to be shilling for. After walking the length of main street, we’d had enough, and we headed out.

Most of Wednesday was spent in the car, traveling through Arizona and on into Cali along the border. The most notable moment aside from the many, many police officers was our late lunch at In-N-Out Burger, which was really only memorable because it was the closest we’d gotten to real food since the glorious Monday-night pizza. The highway blazed a path through rolling sand dunes around sundown, which made for some scenic farfegnugen, but as the sun began dropping closer to the horizon, Bo began to suspect that our goal of reaching the Salton Sea in time to photograph its alien landscape might not be realized. Sure enough, we didn’t reach the Sea until well after dark, so Bo’s valiant photographic efforts were hampered by the fact that the surroundings looked like a dark blur with a shiny blur in the middle. Nor was there any sign of Val Kilmer.

We finally arrived at our Burbank Holiday Inn around 10:30, and were pleasantly surprised when the staff upgraded us to a suite in the “executive tower.” The surprise was slightly less pleasant when we noticed that our spacious suite sported only one bed, but I didn’t mind taking the fold-out couch-bed, so we didn’t make an issue of it. My good friend Den came over bearing booze, allowing him and Bo to confirm each other’s long-disputed existences, and much fun was had.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday saw the arrival of my lovely wife Mere via plane, our nights occupied by Jason Davis’ rehearsal dinner and wedding, and general hanging about with LA friends. Some highlights:

- Jason’s mom almost murdered a hunchbacked piano player at the rehearsal dinner restaurant, right around the time his neverending set moved into a cover of the Peanuts theme song.

- Bo nearly lost his camera over the side of the Queen Mary when they sounded the foghorn unexpectedly as he leaned out over the railing to get a shot.

- Bo got a room located as far forward into the bow of the ship as you could get and not be on deck. The entire room was on a steep grade, and may in fact have been designed by the same people responsible for the defunct Six Flags exhibit “Casa Magnetica.”

- Jason saw a ghost in his honeymoon suite. Surprisingly, it wasn’t just his own pale reflection in the mirror.

- Jason staged a dramatic monologue recounting of The Ballad of The Kennedale White Trash Wedding on the deck of the Queen Mary. It’s a woeful tale of rednecks, genital warts, and women named Mike, but I could never do it justice. But if you ever meet Jason, be sure to ask him to tell the story.

- Den, Mere and I met this guy in a Studio City Starbucks. He was wearing a ball cap with a name tag attached, reading “A. Nobody C.I.A.” When first noticed, he was dictating loudly into a handheld recorder, delivering a monologue to whatever audience he imagines in his strange, fevered brain, and concluding with the line, “If anyone talks bad about my networks, I will sue them for one billion dollars!” A few minutes later when Den was trying to take a picture of Mere, Mr. Nobody interrupted and said, “Take a picture of this!” He then unfolded a five-foot-wide banner version of his business card. Clearly, his many, many networks spare no expense when it comes to promotion. He interacted with us several more times before we left, most notably when he offered to promote any of our future movie projects on his many, many networks. Did we mention he has many, many networks?

- We saw Beverly Hills 90210’s Ian Ziering in Mexicali on Ventura. He looks more or less exactly the same as he did in the mid-90s, except slightly less employed. Seriously, we couldn’t get Brian Austen Green? At least then we could have asked him what it’s like to sleep with Megan Fox…

That’s all for now. This afternoon Mere boards a plane for home and Bo and I hit the road bound for Vegas. Stay tuned…