Quartz City

The Big G. gets a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

For the hell of it I answered the Find Your Spot quiz with exactly the opposite answers than how I would normally answer. So according to them, my top list of places I shouldn’t move to are (keeping the website’s town description intact this time):

1. Round Top, Texas - Tiny Art Town In Texas’ Hill Country
2. Lake Havasu City, Arizonas - Arizona’s West Coast
3. Conroe, Texas - Big Lake Country
4. Clarksdale, Mississippi - We’ve Got the Blues
5. Crystal River, Florida - Manatee Haven
6. Hopkinsville, Kentucky - Friendliest Place in Kentucky
7. Fredericksburg, Texas - City of Steeples
8. Kerrville, Texas - Hill Country Shangri-la
9. St. Marys, Georgia - Georgia’s Oldest City
10. Eufaula, Alabama - The Bluff City
11. Green Valley, Arizona - Sunshine Paradise
12. Bisbee, Arizona - The Copper Queen
13. Marble Falls, Texas - Hub of the Highland Lakes
14. Port Aransas, Texas - Always in Season
15. New Smyrna Beach, Florida - Orlando’s Beach
16. St Augustine, Florida - America’s First City
17. Brunswick, Georgia - Georgia’s Art Capital
18. Alexander City, Alabama - The South’s Best-Kept Secret
19. Wimberley, Texas - A Taste of Texas Hill Country
20. San Marcos, Texas - Hill Country Jewel
21. Ormond Beach, Florida - The Secret Beach
22. Deland, Florida - The Athens of Florida
23. Guntersville, Alabama - A Lakeside Haven
24. Paris, Tennessee - A Hidden Lakeshore Treasure

This list reads like a season’s worth of City Confidential episodes. I have to go to Round Top, Texas now, if only to eat at Royers Round Top Cafe where they promise:

Very soon you will be able to sit on the Cafe’s front porch and connect for WI-FI is coming! Yes, we will be the only “wireless hot” spot in Round Top! We’re bringing Austin to Round Top!!!

Slice of pecan pie, top off the gas tank, and get away as fast as possible.

I’m convinced that all web quizzes are fundamentally broken after seeing my results from the Find Your Spot quiz. According to it, the best suited places for me are:

1. Cincinnati, Ohio
2. Seattle, Washington
3. Knoxville, Tennessee
4. Salt Lake City, Utah
5. Tacoma, Washington
6. Carlisle, Pennsylvania
7. Kent, Washington
8. Bellingham, Washington
9. Asheville, North Carolina
10. Provo-Orem, Utah
11. Denver, Colorado
12. Greenville, South Carolina
13. Olympia, Washington
14. Fort Collins, Colorado
15. Anchorage, Alaska
16. Ogden, Utah
17. Johnson City-Kingsport, Tennessee
18. Charlotte, North Carolina
19. Nashville, Tennessee
20. Richmond, Virginia
21. Bloomington, Indiana
22. Hickory, North Carolina
23. Chattanooga, Tennessee
24. Roanoke, Virginia

For several years running, I had Thanksgiving dinner at the Two Sisters restaurant in Inyokern and was thinking about it again this year but apparently it closed after several decades. It’s too bad because the interior and the menu at Two Sisters probably hadn’t changed at all since it opened. I can’t think of a finer example of “vintage eating” around especially with the Thanksgiving buffet which could have been identical to a typical meal from 1960. Information on the place is pretty sketchy, but apparently the last surviving sister sold the place a couple years ago.

Oddly enough, there is a picture of the men’s urinal on the net.

I’ve kinda been enjoying the time without satellite television and with the Trio network going off of DirecTV again, I see no real reason to go back to it.

The most screwed up thing about this isn’t that Terry Melcher is dead, but that the best headline the Washington Post could come up with is “‘Kokomo’ Co-Writer Terry Melcher Dies”. For crying out loud he played on Pet Sounds and produced The Byrds! The Independent has a vastly superior obituary.

The Apple Store: what was initially a questionable retail move is now totally hot. If “the Apple store staff all look like they just wandered in from practice with a local indie rock band” then that probably explains why people keep asking me if I work there.

Years ago it was the spot on US-66 where you could get free drinking water, but it now seems to peacefully enjoy it’s retirement as a meteorite target.

Not sighted on this trip was the “Thanks to Johnny Carson, Essex has TV!” sign - there’s a story there somewhere.

Satellite television viewers who have been bemoaning the lack of local public access channels rejoice, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network streams all four of its channels on the net.

Anyone want to fund a satellite television network that carries the “best” of public access channels from around the country? Heck, I’d watch it.

It’s not quite the same “Mystery Of The Desert!” it once was and the omnipresent billboards on I-10 aren’t quite as numerous as they once were, but The Thing endures (barely) as prime roadside balderdash. Now part of Bowlin Travel Centers, Inc. (whose website barely mentions “The Thing” attraction), The Thing is slowly being reclaimed by disuse, dust, and general entropy. The Thing’s font is to die for though.

Roadside America attempts to describe The Thing.