YEEE-HAWW!

I made my first trip ever to the South this week. Ostensibly I was supposed to go to a wedding reception with my girlfriend and her sister, but really it was just an excuse to drive around for a couple of days and see the country. The best part about the trip was I got to ease into the region gradually, by driving with my girlfriend from Chicago to Alabama via Kentucky and Tennessee. The whole way we were making overalls-and-banjo jokes about what Guntersville, AL would be like. Of course, we expected to be pleasantly surprised by the level of sophistication and urban development that the thriving metropolis Guntersville had to offer.

AND THEN IT WAS JUST LIKE OUR JOKES. Here are some helpful traveling tips for northern Alabama in the summer:

-It is oppressively hot and humid. Being outside is like having a Great Dane breathing heavily in your face 24 hours a day.

-There are enough insects to make you believe Moses just radioed in a plague. They sell "Off!" in the supermarkets - sorry, the "Piggly Wigglies" (yes, that is the actual name of their major grocery chain) - in aisle-end racks, like Gatorade.

-Every building is made out of corrugated aluminum.

-Every other building is a fireworks store, and advertises itself with a giant plywood sign hand-painted with "FIREWORKS!" and some combination of the words "BANG!", "POW!" and "BOOM!"

-A Waffle House in the South may be the best choice ever for a prisoner's last meal. It tastes like heaven, but the residue from the accumulated gunk on the cooking surfaces will probably kill you before you get to the electric chair.

-There are no sidewalks, even in the large (like 20,000+ people) towns. There's just the highway and grass, and occasionally a thin berm of roadkill that hasn't been cleared away.

-If Tyson Chicken ever went out of business, the entire Bible Belt would become anarchy. It seems like every other town has a giant concrete warehouse, which I assume is full of rows and rows of chickens a la Napoleon Dynamite and smells like the inside of Chris Farley's stomach after a post-SNL party.

-There seems to be a remarkable divide between the wholesome God-(and dangerous-minority)-fearing South and the violent promiscuous South. If you were to take a random sampling of five billboards around Guntersville, it would look something like:
REPENT SINNERS
NAUGHTY & SPICE ESCORT SERVICES
WHICH DIRECTION ARE YOU GOING? JESUS CARES
PRIVATE PLEASURES GENTLEMEN'S CLUB
ATTEND FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH WITH PASTOR LEROY CLAY

I did, however, see the best billboard of all time in Albertville. Nothing can top this:


If you can't read the text, it says: "Are you RISEN IN CHRIST or DAMNED IN EVOLUTION?" Alabama, I have to hand it to you - you're fighting that evolutionary "theory" all the way to the grave.

Also, when we had an afternoon to kill, we went to see a famous cave about 5 miles from the Georgia border. Our guide told us that despite what we might have heard about the stalactites and stalagmites being millions of years old, "we know that they were created when the whole earth was underwater during the Great Flood, around six thousand years ago."

And on that note, I have nothing further to say.

Oh, one more thing: Why isn't Edward Norton more respected or well-known? Name five other actors in his age group who have put together as impressive a body of work in their first ten years. He made American History X, Fight Club, and Primal Fear - in which his transformation is one of the biggest "OH, SHIT, I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING" moments in cinema history - in his first three years of work. Granted, he's tapered off a little and he doesn't make that many movies, but 25th Hour was pretty impressive too.