Your Misbegotten Adventures Quizo Update

Firstly, an important safety tip: if you burn the roof of your mouth - say, on a piece of pizza at dinner some August Tuesday - do not repeat not use mouthwash when you brush your teeth that night. I cannot stress this enough. If given a choice between using mouthwash after burning the roof of my mouth or having blind 8-year-olds whack me about the head and heck with baseball bats, I would have to seriously consider the question of just HOW blind the 8-year-olds are and whether the bats are wood or metal. It is the worst pain ever. Avoid it if you possibly can.

Secondly, an important travel tip: if you are traveling to or from Atlantic City and you need gas, do not get off the AC Expressway at the Hammonton exit. There isn't any gas there. There is not, in fact, gas anywhere NEAR there. Exit 28 is, as near as I can figure, the only exit on the entirety of the Atlantic City Expressway that does not have a gas station within, say, 40 miles of the exit ramp. Driving (my father's car, as mine is still busted and he is on vacation) down yesterday, the "Check Gauge" light came on at about exit 31and for some reason I determined that I would not make it all the way to Farley to fill up and - in what was surprisingly NOT my biggest mistake of the day - decided to get off the Expressway at the Hammonton exit.

Understand that my sphere of geographic knowledge - within which I am basically infallible when it comes to finding/knowing the location of/getting to places - does not extend south of the White Horse Pike until you get fairly fair east, basically until you get to the Parkway, though it does have a sort of peninsula connecting the Hamilton Mall to Somers Point (me and my crew down there like to go to the Borders in Mays Landing, so I need to know how to get to and from it and people's houses). So I was essentially flying blind once I hit the bottom of the exit ramp, and the only thing I had to guide me to a filling station was my keen intellect and an educated guess. Now, at the bottom of the ramp there was a sign saying that I should turn right to go to Vineland and left to go to Hammonton.

Here's my thinking at this point:

1) I remembered from my short time working at the Death Star that there was a Best Buy in Vineland.

2) I figured a Best Buy was a reasonable barometer of civilization so there would probably be a gas station near one.

3) I knew that Hammonton was about 2 miles north of my position (aka "left").

4) I knew that Hammonton did not, in fact, have a gas station once I got to it, and for some distance thereafter, at least not on the White Horse Pike.

From this knowledge I concluded:

5) If I turn right here, I will hit a gas station in Vineland after about 2 miles.

It turns out that from that spot it is, in fact, twenty-one miles to Vineland. Putting a sign at the bottom of that exit ramp saying "Vineland ----->>" is the equivalent - quite literally - of putting a sign out in front of the Dark Horse reading "King of Prussia Mall ----->> ."

That is one deceptive goddamn sign.

(That comparison, believe it or not, is actually accurate to about 900 feet.)

So I turned right at the bottom of the ramp. After five or six minutes of passing vast swaths of farmland, farmhouses, and other farm-related geography I realized that not only was I probably not getting gas any time soon I had no fucking clue where I was. I flipped a quick u-turn and started burning rubber northbound, remembering my old football coach's advice of "when you're lost, drive fast, because that way you aren't lost as long." (Note: actual advice. I am not making this up.) I passed back under the Expressway and started to see the rudiments of civilization - pizza places, a shopping center, and something called "El Rodeo Musical," but no gas station for several agonizing minutes.

Finally, as I start to feel the car shudder and buck at the pedal and realize that for the first time in my life I am going to run out of gas on the road and shit I don't know where I am there's nothing here but farms where the hell am I OH MY GOD I KNEW I WAS GOING TO DIE IN NEW JERSEY I see glowing red letters ahead on my right. A Citgo. Salvation!

All the dashboard lights flared on and the car finally sputtered it's last and shut itself off as I was pulling into the station. I literally coasted the last 30 feet up to the pump. Once I was there the attendant walked up to my window and actually smiled at me and laughed a little.

"Cut that one pretty close, didn't you?" he said.

I just said, "brother, you got no idea."

As I said, though, that was not even my biggest mistake of the day.

That would come later at the casino where the Little League World Series was showing on the TV over my table. At the moment in question I was fairly pissy - actually I was exceptionally pissy, as angry as I can remember being for quite some time - about something that had happened the hand before. One of the other players pointed at the screen and said "hey, at least we tied it up," to which I replied, fairly spitting venom, "yeah, you know, you'd think the Japanese would know not to fuck with us by now."

This is already the most offensive thing I have ever said. However, I continued, and at this point I turn around and start pointing at the screen. "Yeah, you oughta fucking know better! God dammit! You wanna mess with us? Fucking dumbasses! Remember what happened the last time? Huh? Huh?" I cap off this stream of invective with the unfortunate coup de grace of a muttered "BOOM!" while making a mushroom-cloud-motion with my hands.

This is when I turn back around to find that an elderly Japanese gentlemen is being seated at the table.

I have never wanted to crawl into a hole and die more than I did in that moment, and thus was my humiliation complete.

You have to admit, folks, I don't do anything small.

Thirdly, an important shopping tip: if you are of the comic book persuasion and you are in the Olde City/Penns Landing/Liberties/down that way area, the guys who run the store I shop at out in Willow Grove have opened up a new location on 2nd Street across from the Arden (45 N. 2nd Street, to be exact). It's quite nice. The folks who run it are good friends of mine and are outstanding people who run a hell of a store. If you go and tell Rob you heard about the place from me he'll probably laugh at you, but you never know. The importance of the comic store I shop at opening a location a scant five blocks from the pub cannot be overstated. The ability to make one trip on Saturday mornings to both watch Chelsea and get comics not only saves me the weekly jaunt out to Willow Grove but also gives me another conveniently-located place to waste time at and insures that I will basically never be productive on a Saturday again in any remote way.

Finally, on a personal, more positive note, today, August 27, marks eight years to the day since I stopped drinking, and I can't think of a better bunch of people to spend such a milestone with. The irony of spending such a milestone in a bar is of course not lost on me, but no one ever said my life didn't labor under an excess of irony.

JLK