Hello people, After a 4 week hiatus from LA Snark I am back. First off thanks to Chad and Fat Elvis keeping this site up and running for the past month, we’re growing at an alarming rate!

What I’ve been up to, in outine form.

* Took a 9 day roadtrip even though the gas prices are insane
- Hit up Vegas. Learned that Circus Circus is hell on earth, like literally. I grew up being scared to death of clowns, and I should have stuck with that fear. This place is flat-out trashy. As if it wouldn’t prove to be trashy enough on it’s own, as soon as The Girl and I walked in to the lobby to check in, a guy took his (probably) girlfriend’s purse and threw it across the lobby to which she yelled “YOU ASSHOOOOLE!” Yeah, welcome to Vegas, Circus Circus, the best deal in town! Screw Circus Circus, this place is beyond a dump. Plus, when you book this place and see photos of it, you see a giant high rise hotel like the rest of the hotels on the Vegas strip, but noooooooo, most likely, you’ll be staying in the Howard Johnsonesque motor lodge in the back, and you will probably find, as we did, random M&M’s or other evidence of a family w/ sugared up children that had been there before. Add to all this they didn’t get my reservation that I booked online and I had to pay for the room twice until I paid Circus Circus for WiFi so I could log on and call the company I booked it through. All was resolved but this place was a NIGHTMARE. Never stay at Circus Circus, you hear me? Never stay at Circus Circus. Hell, the Subway there wasn’t even observing the $5 footlong campaign. That’s whack. I’ll say this about Vegas though. There are three Dunkin’ Donuts’ in Vegas, but for some reason they don’t advertise for them at all. One is in the mall just south of the strip. If you’re driving to Vegas from LA, and you’re a former New Englander, definitely hit it up before a night on the town.

- Drove up through Utah. If you say in your car, you are safe from the Mormons. We’ve all heard horror stories about Mormons and how they try to steal your blood or they multiply when you get them wet or whatever, but if you’re driving through with the windows up, you’re pretty safe. I’ll tell you this though: If you’re a realist like I am, and you look at a map of the United States and say “I want to go camping,” you’ll see that there’s this giant salt lake in the middle of Utah, yeah who knew? You might assume like I did, that there must be tons of great camping next to that salt lake. Well not at all. You can pull off to where the street signs say you should camp, but when you get there you’ll do a quick U-Turn. Shirtless dudes with mullets and mustaches drinking beer and burning questionable things in a campfire, no thanks. During the day though, Utah is beautiful, had I know that Arches National Park was in Utah, I would have found a way to make it there, but next time I guess.. (windows up).

- Idaho was pretty cool too. I remember driving through Idaho and seeing all these cool mountains with a house under them. These people had no neighbors for at least 5 miles. That sounds pretty good to me.

- Wyoming. Wyoming is awesome. This may have been the state where listening to country radio as a gag turned into listening to country songs for actual pleasure. That “stupid old pickup truck you never let me drive” song remains a favorite. And Yellowstone park, man that place is awesome. I saw Old Faithful (avoid the buffet next to Old Faithful) and stood in the wild next to a pair of Bison. Why do people in America call Bison Buffalo? I don’t know, but I was one of them. I spend my life wanting to hang out where the Buffalo roam and apparently they only roam in Asia. What a rip. Thank you cowboy country artists of the past for steering me wrong.

- South Dakota. Well God damn this state takes a while to get through, but it was the beginning of the zen ride. Long miles of nothingness.. lots of time to listen to country radio, talk radio, or nothing at all. We actually caught part of a Red Sox game on the radio when they were playing St. Louis. That was awesome. We hit of a lot of Flying J’s and Burger Kings for the BK Veggie Burger.

- North Dakota. The Girl’s homeland. We arrived around 1am in Wahpeton and were pulled over by a cop the second we got into a residential area for going 37 in a 25. He let us go with a warning but asked me if people in LA typically put their hands on their head when they’re pulled over. I said I didn’t know because I’d never been pulled over, and that seemed to suffice. Hanging out at The Girl’s mom’s basement was pretty zen, I miss having a basement to hang out in. She supplied us with enough treats to last the rest of the trip.

-Montana. Montana sucks. If you can drive straight through this state without stopping, do it.

- Idaho again, yeah man, Idaho is ok.

- Washington. If it weren’t for those clouds punching me and my seasonal affective disorder to death, I would move to Washington. Eastern Washington was awesome and what you’d pretty much expect: Lots of green, people camping, giant lakes. It was great. Seattle was cool, it was definitely one of those cities that I’ve seen on tv a lot and in movies (thank you Tom Hanks.) I did get to see where the guys throw the fish but did not see them actually throw a fish. That’s fine though, those guys seem to be pretty frustrated with the fact that everyone wants to take their picture but no one actually wants to buy anything. Southern Washington - rap video. Seriously.. don’t pull off the road south of Seattle if you are a scared white person.

- Oregon! - Man Portland was great. Well pretty much. We stayed in the Hotel Deluxe, which was not really our style, but we had to find somewhere to stay and they had the most reasonable price and was closest to downtown. I liked almost everything about Portland, the used record shops, the used clothing stores, the underground bars, the cool restaurants, the cool shops.. the only things I didn’t like were the overcast days (again seasonal affective disorder) and the fact that all of the youth there seemed to be dying. Like everyone. Everyone was really skinny, looked unshowered, really pale, and had really, really bad tattoos. I’m not sure why this is (heroin) but it was enough to make me not want to pack up everything I own and move back to Portland as soon as I got home.

- LA - Listen, NorCal seems great and all, but after Portland, we felt the need to get home and relax before getting back to work. Which we did. We drove straight from Portland to LA, stopping only at a couple Flying J’s and a Denny’s. It was a good ride. Glad to be back. Now to sort out this dayjob situation, more on that later.

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