Yikes.

Even Yikes-ier because T.O.C.E. actually knows some of these people. Are we really moving back to a place that harbors wackadoos like this??

Oh, I get it!

It's installation art! Call LACMA!

C.update

How's the unpacking going, C.apeshit?


Yeesh. Sorry I asked.

And They're all Full of Ticky Tacky.

And so, gentle (non-existent) readers, the humans' journey comes to a close. T.O.C.E. is back home, annoying me like she never left. C.apesh*it is all but settled in to her new home. See?

Huh. Well, give her a few days. Maybe she'll settle in. Nice cradle, though.

No Sleep Till Koreatown!

Steeled by the prospect of not having croaked in the wild and wooly (and by a few hours of air conditioning and hotel cable), the travel-whores decided to try their luck on the dangerous streets of Moab. Many watering holes could've met their needs, but a bar two doors down ultimately won out, thanks to their sign advertising THE COLDEST BEER IN TOWN. The Pacificos were, in fact, nice and cold. Not that our fearless humans have anything to compare them to. They didn't drink anywhere else and were in bed before midnight.



Interesting thing #1 about Utah laws and customs-- Utah bars are all registered as "Private Clubs," and one must be a member to drink there. Or so the Evan Dando-ish bartender (who also served their food AND COOKED IT!) told T.O.C.E. before charging her a $4 "membership fee." She now has her own card, with her name on it. Well, her initials at least-- after three tries at dictating the spelling of "Passarello," Evan-Dando-The WaitChefBartender just scrawled "ElenaP." on the card and threw it at her. Enough to make me wanna bust some grills, but T.O.C.E. just smiled and sat down. Sucka. Well, at least she's a member-- C.apesh*t had to stoop so low as to be her "guest." Fade to black.

* * *

Fade in as rosy-fingered dawn fondles the Virginian-- time to rise, shine, and bid farewell to this house of nil disputes. Well, maybe just one quibble--this sight seems to indicate that eight (count em EIGHT) feet, all of them large enough to fit these mighty, identical pairs of shoes, were staying in a hotel room the size of that in which the two ladies stayed. And that they had been out in the great outdoors, probably sweating. That's a lot of foot odor for such a modest hotel. Mental note-- never stay in the corner room of the Virginian...

The early morning light outside Moab was so lovely that, for nearly a full hour, the pair drove in silence. The fact that T.O.C.E. managed to keep her trap shut for an hour made a swarm of pigs fly around them, only increasing the incredible scenery.


Desperate for coffee, the two-some stop in the miniscule town of Green River, Utah (Ed Bentley, Mayor), which is one of those tracts of a few streets and gas stations right where the river allows plants to grow, while hundreds of miles of burnt-up desert sprawls around it. Seriously, the whole town is about the size of this bug that tried to jump on T.O.C.E.'s foot:

Lord have mercy, look at the size of that motha! C.apesh*t offers her foot as a scale reference. Also pitching in-- a ciggarette butt.

Crossfade to the middle of nowhere. The pair finishes the USA Today crossword in, like, half a minute. Half of the word clues weren't even words: AVS, Sarge, Ops, AandW, Nub, Fro, Fax.

That finished, C.apesh*t entreats T.O.C.E. to play the stupidest game in the whole world, where players simply list names of cars that are also nouns: mustang, golf, fury, etc. C.apesh*t tries to argue that there really is such a thing outside the car industry as an Aerostar. T.O.C.E. responds by listing that the Chevy Mormon was Motortrend's Car of the Year in 1976. Aren't you glad you didn't take a trip with these fools?

Seriously, you two. Maybe you should just stick to looking out the window.

This is about the time T.O.C.E. read aloud an interview with Kimora Lee Simmons, who, apparently, owns a gold-and-jade toilet. C.apesh*t is baffled by the desire to poop on precious metals.

And this is about the time the camera battery died out, or maybe just got so disgusted by its operators that it decided to play possum. Thus, alas, I can offer you no documentation of the girls' pit stop in Cedar City, Utah, home of a Shakespeare festival, an interesting fast food restaurant, many fat people, an even more interesting condiment, and, for T.O.C.E.'s money, the funniest C.apesh*t quote of the trip: "What the hell is everyone DOING here!?!?!? SERIOUSLY!!!! How the hell are those people PAYING for that ranch house???!?!?!"

And so they beat on, passing an antelope, Las Vegas, the World's largest thermometer, and arrived in LA alarmingly on schedule. C.apesh*t's new apartment is a vintagey, high-ceiling-y bungalow in the up-and-coming St. Andrew's Square. And her neighbors seem very interesting, if a little uninterested in putting all their clothes on before coming outside to mock C.apesh*t as she tries to pull in to her RIDICULOUSLY NARROW PARKING SPACE.

Never the party animals, the girls had to force themselves to stay up past 9pm with a rousing game of UNO. For once, T.O.C.E. won without cheating. Or maybe they just quit the game. Either way, who cares? I for one, am just shocked that they made it at all.

Dirt Instead of a Lizard.

Lights up on a small hotel outside Denver, where the girls headed west fairly early in the AM. More Colorado radio, which was weird--no sound effects or tags, and every announcer sounded like he was recording his show in a hallway or something. One DJ read a mailbag letter requesting that they never play Amy Winehouse's song, because its message (say "No, No, No" to rehab) was a misguided one.

C.apesh*t's Jeep groaned its way up through the Rockies like a boxy champ. About the time they crossed the Continental Divide, C.apesh*t began employing the adjective "gnarly." Her re-entry into the West Coast had begun...

Day Two of the C.apeshit/T.O.C.E. cross-country trek was just as successful as the first, perhaps even more so because these two human morons actually found something to take pictures of.




Apparently, humans put long planks of wood on their feet and, after snow falls, roll themselves down these large Colorado inclines. Both T.O.C.E. and I think this is an asinine passtime. Interesting side note: C.apesh*t lugged a pair of these items (called "skis") all the way across the country to Iowa from LA, and never used them for the three years she was there.

Lunchtime found the pair in Fruita, Colorado, where the first stegosarus bones in America were found. Big whoop.

For this reason, the whole town (a haven for mountain bikers) is done up in Dino themes. The girls stop off for a tasty burger in one of these dino-themed diners and T.O.C.E. promptly discovers that she can't find her wallet. Insert panic here.

Ever the life coach, C.apesh*t tries to calm T.O.C.E. down by teaching her to meditate in the booth fo a greasy spoon. I hope that sounds as weird to you humans as it does to me.

The real claim to fame in Fruita should be that Mike the Headless Chicken (whom I've blogged about before) was both born and beheaded here 60 years ago. T.O.C.E. was sure that she'd be able to score much Mike chotchke while in Fruita, but all they found was this statue in the center of town.

It's made of giant farm tools, natch. And speaking of giant tools....


Yeesh.

The girls spending an hour driving around Fruita (which is three blocks long) looking for headless chicken merch. They meet a spacey local girl in the coffee shop, who sends them to City Hall, where a very interestingly coiffed art teacher sends them to the Visitor's Center one town over, where a gerbil of a woman sends them back into Fruita to a sewing shop (note: based on the data they collected, all Fruitans must wear at least one piece of turquoise at all times), where the only Mike item they have to sell is a book. And we all know T.O.C.E. never learned to read.

So they leave Fruita, but not without stopping to buy peaches first.

This is about the time T.O.C.E. found her wallet. It was in C.apesh*t's purse.

The girls drive out of Colorado and into Utah, which, apparently, is a cause to take more blurry photos:

They check into a charming little hotel in the kickass town of Moab, Utah in the early afternoon. Moab is in the desert, very close to a place where The One Called God decided to use wind and sand and shit to make crazy sculptures out of ginormous rocks. Driving past them, T.O.C.E. starts to understand the reason for the glum tone of all those Western films.

This looks dirty, doesn't it?

Believe it or not, there is a lizard there. Good God, who gave T.O.C.E. the camera?

"Hey," says C.apesh*t. "Let's get out and walk to Delicate Arch!" "I don't hike and I hate nature," says T.O.C.E. "Oh no," reassures C.apesh*t. "It's easy. Babies do it." So they set off in the desert heat, sneakers pointing upward...

C.apesh*t takes off at what can only be described as a speed-walkers pace, straight up a mountain, with T.O.C.E. gasping behind. No shit-- people on crutches were passing them.

Here is C.apesh*t, threatening to make T.O.C.E. meditate again.

At one point, they drift about 50 feet off the trail and T.O.C.E. thinks she is about to die.

Thirty minutes later, they are approximately one BILLION feet up in the air, shimmying along the world's narrow-ist ledge, adn T.O.C.E. thinks that C.apesh*t has it out for her. She delivers her own last rites, rounds the corner and...

Oh. Oh, wow. Well, that's actually kind of nice. Huh. Almost worth having coronary thrombosis for. No wonder it's on all the Utah license plates.

And what a view! A lunar landscape. So this is why all those people reject The Hills Marathons in favor of, you know, outdoorsy shit.

Here, T.O.C.E. tries to take a picture of the two of them and the arch, and blocks the arch.

This happens like 18 times, until some nice Scandanavian woman agrees to take the picture for them.

Like Thelma and Louise, Only Without Accents or a Criminal Record.

Dear Humans--This catblog has been officially hijacked by a pair of humans, possibly the only pair of humans who read the blog in the first place (God help anyone else who finds this rot interesting...). Early this morning, while I was happily diving into a bowl of A.W.A.H.M., T.O.C.E. and C.apesh*t left my driveway (H.W.D.N.T.B.N. waving them off like a faithful farm marm) and headed to some far away land in C.apesh*t's car. Apparently, they've been taking photos the whole trip , which ended for the day in some place near Denver, like the human omelet. Here is a handful of photos from the first leg of their trip, which all prove, among other things, that T.O.C.E. takes horrible pictures.

For starters, here is Big C. herself, bidding farewell to her home of three years with a signature "Take a trip to John's Grocery" wave. Insert the sound of an entire town weeping.

The pair lands in the tiny town of Dexter, Iowa, which puts its town name on friggin everything.

First pit stop of the trip. Water for T.O.C.E., Gas-station-cold-coffee-beverage for C.apesh*t, gas for the Jeep.

The first scenic vista of the day is when this car of 15-year-olds holds up a cardboard sign with "SHOW US YOUR TITS" printed on it. When the ladies refused, they flipped the sign over, revealing a weeping frowny face.

T.O.C.E. responded by composing this sign but they sped away before she could display it.


The lads reminded T.O.C.E. of those lonely nights on Georgia Hwy78 that she wiled away by flashing truckers.

Lunch time found them in beautiful downtown Lincoln, Nebraska, home of this famous-among-like-maybe-four-people book-making industry.
The downtown area very much resembled the Strip District of Pittsburgh, which threw T.O.C.E. for a loop. She even thought she smelled water. Also loopy was the fact that, apparently, all Big Ten Towns are contractually required to have restaurants named "THE MILL," which must sport red awnings.

Attn: IC Mill-- your Nebraska counterpart has wireless access.

Also worth noting-- nearly every resident of Lincoln, NE, resembles T.O.C.E.'s less-than-amorous ex-amour, who purportedly lives in Lincoln. The duo instead opts to eat at a restaurant that serves salsa by the caraffe.

Insert Bruce Springsteen tune here:

"In the town of /Lincoln, Nebraska/two innocent people...had lunch."

News Flash-- the leg of I-80 between Iowa City and Denver doesn't really offer much in the way of scenic vistas. Here, T.O.C.E. passes the time by tallying all the state license plates they see. Still missing: AL, DE, GA, HI, KY, LA, MA, MS, NV, NH, NJ, NM, ND, RH, VT, WV, and the District of Columbia.

Behold the find of the day-- Alaska. Best vanity plate was a Virginia tag that said BLKLDY, and the frame around it said "BACK THAT THING UP."

This was about the part of the trip where T.O.C.E. started writing her postcards. Only she had very little to say so far, which explains why H.W.D.N.T.B.N. is getting a postcard detailing the overturned Tyson Chicken truck they saw outside of Omaha.

Also: horses.
Also also: air horses .

Once the pair crosses into Colorado, things get windy and stormy, and, for miles, no stations show up on the radio. The pair stop in a gas-station-slash-collectibles store-slash-beat-to-shite-trailer and T.O.C.E. buys a big pack of feminine hygeine products while three burly trucker types look on. The lady behind the counter doesn't even put them in a bag or nothin'.

Behold the approaching storm:


As the sun went down, the pair tuned into Delilah's inspirational radio program and got very inspired by all the crippled, sick single moms that were out on the North American continent, raising 140 foster kids on a budget and asking only for a dedication of "Wind Beneath My Wings" in return. Biggies C. and E. both found Delilah's choice of "What's Love Got to Do With It" for a 7-year old's shot out to her best buddy a little inappropo.

Here, C.apesh*t frowns outside Denver. Who knows whether its gas prices or 11-hours of T.O.C.E. monologuing that has her down.



Cheer up, big C. Only 72 hours to go!!!!