Five Song Friday: The Road to Anywhere
This Week: Seuss Love, Science Facts and Sample Superlatives
America is a ridiculously beautiful country, but you can drive for days and never see anything but stupid.
I’m sorry to say that if you’re jazzed to get your motor running this summer… if you’re excited to head out on the highway… if you’re pumped to go looking for adventure and whatever comes your way?
You’re going to be disappointed.
Yes, there are hundreds of miles of wild, open roads out west. There are places where the views around every bend will leave you gasping. You can still find vast stretches of blacktop on which to go full Easy Rider or Thelma and Louise.
But these days, most everywhere feels like anywhere.
The highways, byways and backroads are mostly a Möbius strip of meh.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Great American Summer Road Trip is on the endangered list. Wanderlust is a lot less lusty.
After logging almost a thousand miles in the Northeast corridor last week, I can confirm that watching the world go by at 70 miles per hour is mostly just a blur of orange highway cones and dumb trees.
Of course, that’s provided you’re fortunate enough to move forward. It’s more likely your travel days will be a stop-start sea of red taillights and people who want to merge but not look you in the eye while they do it.
Want to get out of the fast lane and go explore? Good luck.
Highway exits are wormholes of mediocrity.
Taking the scenic route puts you on a non-stop carousel of commercial chains. Fake villages of big box stores, chicken restaurants and cloying, technicolor logos as far as you can see.
If you get the sense that you’ve seen it all before, it’s because you have.
There are over 13,000 McDonalds locations in America.
Nearly 16,000 Starbucks and more than 20,000 Subways.
We are a nation of medium towns that feel like a skipping record of vape shops, shitbox fast-food franchises and Pentagon-sized Amazon warehouses.
The scenery is an endless parade of garbage and weeds and abandoned buildings.
You can pass a half dozen zombie stores, all barren and hollowed out like the bloated corpse of a roadside deer. The sprawling parking lot turned into a crabgrass farm. A massive “For Lease” sign posted like a grave marker.
YET, only one mile later, you can see the hulking metal skeleton of a gasoline and snack oasis on a freshly clear-cut five-acre square of mud with a sign that shouts COMING SOON.
I’m sure it makes some kind of business sense to build fresh instead of recycling old property. But that doesn’t make it okay to kill trees and disappear green space in the name of diesel and fried chicken.
This bothers me. And years ago, I thought I was crazy until I discovered the writing of James Howard Kunstler.
In “The Geography of Nowhere,” Kunstler makes a compelling argument that the landscape of the United States is “unrewarding” and “tragic.” He believes strip malls and suburbs are stealing our soul and making us cynical.
He writes that “Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last 50 years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading.”
I’m sure I shouted AMEN more than once.
Here’s another good one:
“The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.”
Since I’m mostly fake smart, I had to look up entropy.
Entropy is “a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty.”
After logging a thousand miles through the Northeast corridor last week, I can confirm.
Disorder and randomness are alive and well from Virginia to Maine.
Take comfort in the fact that if you go nowhere this summer, you aren’t missing much.
But if you crave an epic summer road trip, you can save yourself time and gas money by taking a few short laps around your local Wal-Mart and Target parking lots. Hit your neighborhood strip malls and maybe find a congested construction zone where you can idle and get angry at nothing.
For an even more authentic experience, do your business in a repulsive gas station restroom and make at least one regrettable choice from the collection of foil-wrapped mystery foods under the warmer next to the cash register.
If you pass a cell phone store, a mattress outlet, a Dollar General and something dead on the side of the road, congratulations… you’ve seen it all.
Buckle up and be safe out there!
Sincerely,
DJ CrankyPete
Five Song Friday 070
“I Hate… People” - Anti-Nowhere League
These pioneering British punks have no love for their fellow men and make it clear. They hate the human race, of which they are clearly a part. I wish I could hug them and tell them that self-loathing is a waste of time. I would rock them in my arms and share these words from Dr. Seuss, “Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you! Shout loud, I am lucky to be what I am!”
“Black and White” - The dB’s
Fun Science Fact: Back in olden times, before color was invented, the world was in black and white. This is why everyone always looks depressed.
“Mentira (Chega De Mentira)” - Marcos Valle
Do you remember where you were in 1973 when this Brazilian banger first came out? Some of you were not even born. But at least one of you was in a crowded dance club in the East Village watching a young man in cut-off jeans shorts, the one with the handlebar mustache and the maracas. Hel-lo handsome!
“Jump the Turnstile” - Jordana, TV Girl
Fun Music Fact: samples are great. Samples of the Beastie Boys are even greater. Samples of the Beastie Boys from Paul’s Boutique? The BEST.
“Rebel Rebel” - Rickie Lee Jones
This is a nice David Bowie cover that you should listen to.
“The piano ain't got no wrong notes.” ― Thelonious Monk