The Great Dillo Day Odyssey (Part 1)

In the same way that a trip with Peter anywhere wouldn’t be complete without getting frighteningly lost when his Garmin maps argue forcefully that you are no longer driving on the highway and are in fact floating through time-space (we were), it would be equally incomplete without a blog post from me.

As my faithful squire and I departed from the sandy shores of Missouri, with its incredibly rainy weather and few other residential benefits, we were struck by the awesomeness of our journey. A drive of infinite length to visit our great friend who was still chained to Northwestern scholasticism and intellectual acrobatics. There was a great deal of emotion: it was like Oprah’s last show. And, tangentially, I think we’ve all been feeling Oprah’s absence a little bit. I was hit particularly hard because I had been under the impression that it was only a six hour drive to see Broken Social Scene and it turned out to be an eight and a half odyssey across the vast nothingness of Northern Missouri to see New Pornographers and B.O.B. Nobody is excited about seeing B.O.B. Even B.O.B. doesn’t get excited about his own concerts.

Driving ahead of us for quite a distance was a red Volkswagen Beetle with a license plate that read “2NATO.” Trololol, indeed. Talk about telegraphing your defense institutional allegiances… After Peter and I laughed about this clever semantic bit of humor for over four hours (I jest, I jest), I realized that it, in fact, read “2MATO.” Get it, like, Tomato? And this whole time I had been laughing because I thought it was a clever North Atlantic Treaty Association joke. VW Beetles are pleasant to drive near, however, because they don’t take up very much room and can’t go particularly quickly, so maneuvering around them is simple. Maneuvering around Ford pickups is an entirely different matter. If sports cars are man’s way of saying that he has a small penis, large ford trucks are his way of shouting he has a chode-y one.

After a while, I became content to stare off and make note of the various billboards and signs along the way while my Sancho Panza slaved away at the wheel. I also listened to Third Eye Blind a lot. “I REMEMBER YOU AND ME USED TO SPEND, THE WHOLE GODDAMN DAY, IN BED.” Speaking of which, of note in terms of billboards were the following:

JESUS
Before it’s too late.

I wasn’t at all sure what to make of it. Is the idea that we need to find Jesus before it’s too late? Too late for what? And where on earth is Jesus hiding this time? (Hint: Not the closet). Is that why the Rapture flopped? Pre-rapture wet feet? It happens, Jesus. Or, are we to take it more like the Cheez-Its commercials: “You just… Jesus!” Bewildered, questioning Jesus like never before, I continued on spectating:

Want your troubles to go away?

Give ‘em to Jesus

I admit, at the front, that I am not particularly religious and was not raised that way, but even I’m pretty sure that the message of Christianity isn’t that any time you have a problem you should give them to Jesus. He did die for our sins already… are we going for the repeat? (Passion of the Christ sequel opportunity!) There was an abortion advertisement too, of which I could really not make any particularly strong jokes, but then, as if a sign from above, another billboard appeared. This one depicted a cartoon female egg with a high school graduate’s hat on separated from a group of oncoming sperms. It read:

Stay back, I’m going to school.

Truly charming and inspirational. Peter and I stopped to stand in front of this bit of wonder.

It appears that the Christian entrepreneurs were relegated to a particular stretch of Missouri highway, so for a while we were unperturbed by religious moralism in capitalist advertising. Out of boredom, then, and a slight interest in the genealogy of creek names, I began to chronicle the name of each and every creek we drove past. It went thusly:

Soon we were upon what would quickly become my favorite business in Missouri: Iseman Homes. Just break it apart, pronounce it to yourself, and laugh. (HE SEMANS HOMES!) I began to make more lists, but given how little of interest there really is to be found around Hannibal, Mo (except the emo guy walking up Main street, I saw you), my efforts were unsuccessful, and culminated in this, fortunately short, list of Slightly Racist Campground Names:

Injun Joe’s was particularly strange for two reasons: first, that “Joe” is not a particularly Native American (or “Injun”) name at all. If you’re going to stereotype as your business name, it seems like you ought to go all out. Second, that to call the campground “Injun Joe’s” implies a sad forgotten native land ownership. Injun Joe’s was quite close to the border, so after all the joy of driving, we finally reached Illinois.

At this point, I, as self- and peer-appointed car DJ, decided we would do our best to listen to Sufjan Steven’s Illinois accordingly to which geographical area we got to. It worked impressively well up until the Decatur song because it skips to Chicago rather quickly and we weren’t there yet. And everyone knows that after you listen to “Chicago” you can stop listening to the CD because the quality really doesn’t get much better and starts to get a little repetitive in the “how much fucking banjo do you need to sing about Illinois?” kind of way. We transferred quickly to other forms of auditory enjoyment.

However, upon arriving inside the state borders of Illinois, we noticed an interesting new string of billboards. These billboards, with questionable grammaticality, all, except one that seemed to be in support of GMO-free corn, argued that guns save lives. Yet it was a particular set of these pro-gun billboards that had us thinking. It read:

Chicago is #1 in controlling guns. It’s #1. Gunssavelives.com

This was awfully confusing, because it certainly seems to my somewhat-elightened mind that gun control would be something that “Gunssavelives.com” would be against. Apparently not. Or else apparently the advertising branch of the Gunssavelives.com hierarchy was falling a little behind in its work and had to outsource a piece of the catchphrase work. But I could only spend so much time on an issue of such trivial importance. Gunssavelives.com’s best advertisement had to be its highlighting that only with guns can you save your pets (touching, sentimental, violent: all at once). Or, at least, that was all that Peter and I could piece together from the strange series of words that kept popping up on white and black billboards across the state.

My noble comrade, insistent upon not forcing me to do any of the hard work of driving, kept plowing forward through the lush greenery of Illinois while I played songs which I could sing all of the words to. That’s a roundabout way of saying that we listened to “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift two times on the trip and sang all of the words both times. A fellow in a Ford Taurus made strange eye contact with me while I was shouting about his worn out jeans and how he belonged to me. But it wasn’t the kind of eye contact that asked “What on earth have you been smoking?” No, it was the kind of strange eye contact that said, subtly, “I could use a little Taylor in my life too.” I can only hope he found the time.

My chauffeur wasn’t much for talking, and so here is included one exemplary piece of conversation between the two of us:

“Me: Hey, Bluffs city. Do you think it exists?”

P: [laugh]

(15 minutes later)

“Me: Hey, Bluffs road. Do you think it exists?”

“P: OH MY GOD.”

And so began and middled the trip. I’m still Brad, I made it through, and I’m retroactively reliving all the details. More tomorrow.