Strange Day
You know your day is going to be a little weird when you step outside and find a giant mass of Cthulhu Ice Crystals on the side of the house. This is what happened last Friday morning. We were having a bizarre freeze here in Tucson, so we left the leaky spigot on the side of the house running to prevent the pipes from freezing. The pipes didn’t freeze. The leaky spigot, however, performed an amazing overnight act of metaphysical monstrosity when it sprouted a beautiful mass of Cthulhu Ice Crystals.
This meant that me and Bean were a little sidetracked on our rush out the door in the morning. Because how can you rush past a giant mass of Cthulhu Ice Crystals? First we had to stop and stare in wonder at such amazing configuration as these:
Then I had to push the envelope of getting the kidlet to school on time so that I could run into the house and grab my camera. I mean, how could I not take photos of this phenomoen to show the world? How often do you wake up and find Cthulhu Ice Crystals sprouting in your yard when you live in the desert? I snapped the photos, and we hopped in the car, making it to Bean’s school by the squeak of the bell.
There was only one problem. Bean opened the back door to get her stuff out and asked, “Where’s my flute?” It was band day, but in all the Cthulhu Excitement we totally forgot the flute. Uh oh. This was particularly a problem because I had made plans to drive up to Scottsdale to visit Stephane on Friday, and last time I went to visit Stephane Bean’s missing sweater caused me a delay. I didn’t want another delay, yet here my trip to Stephane’s was already delayed by the Cthulhu Flute Crisis. I had no choice. I drove back home to get the flute. When I got back to Bean’s school, I was surprised to find the parking lot full of parents carrying a variety of instruments into the school. There were trumpets and trombones and even a freaking tuba. Apparently, our house was not the only house affected by the Mysterious Cthulhu Ice Phenomenon which not only is the cause of amazingly monstrous ice formations but also inspired a plague of Instrument Forgetfulness. Ah well.
My friend Mark was going with me because I really wanted him to meet Stephane and wanted Stephane to meet him. Two special guys I care a lot about. Smile. We left in what I thought was plenty of time, allowing us nearly two hours to make it to Phoenix (which is a 90 minute drive from my house). There’s only one problem. Stephane doesn’t live in Phoenix. He lives in North Scottsdale which is an additional hour from Phoenix, and I’m kind of a Phoenix/Scottsdale Ignoramous, so therefore I totally underestimated how long it would take me to get there.
Ignorant of my gross miscalculation, I didn’t hesitate to stop when we were driving down Highway 79 and spotted this abandoned structure that was screaming our names:
“Do you think we have time to stop for a few minutes?” Mark asked.
“Of course,” I said. “We’re almost at Phoenix.”
So we stopped to take some photos because we couldn’t resist a gutted building in the desert. I quickly snapped a Cell Phone Photo (love those!) and sent it to Stephane to let him know we were briefly stopping to photograph wreckage (mine and Mark’s favorite pastime):
KDD Cellphone Photo of Wreckage in the Desert
Stephane replied that it was about time for me to be on my way. In other words . . . MOVE MY ARSE. Uh oh. That’s when I realized that I may have perhaps underestimated how long it would actually take me to get to North Scottsdale. I quickly snapped another couple of shots, but my heart wasn’t in it because I was preoccupied with not wanting to disappoint Stephane or keep him waiting or have him think I’m a flake because I am seriously not a flake! I swear! Anyway, here are the “not very good” photos I took of the building:
KDD Not Very Good Photos Of Desert Wreckage:
In the meanwhile as I was blundering around with my camera, Mark was exploring the building. As usual, his amazingly fresh way of seeing things enabled him to find beauty in the most unlikely of places. Places I never would have thought of looking! Or seeing the way he sees them! I wrote about Mark’s photography here in this review on Miami Art Exchange. When we were done shooting, we took a few minutes to compare photos. Once again, I was stunned by the beauty of Mark’s work. Utterly amazing. It’s such a privilege to be out shooting with him. I love when we compare photos. These two photos he took were my favorites, so I asked him to send them to me so I could share them with you:
Two Photos Of Desert Wreckage By Mark Hahn:
One of the reasons I wanted Mark to meet Stephane, besides the fact that the two of them mean so much to me, is because Stephane has such an amazing photography collection, and Mark is one of my favorite photographers of all time! So I thought Mark would really like to see some of Stephane’s collection, and I really wanted Stephane to meet Mark because Mark makes me happy. I wrote about an exhibit of some of the photography in Stephane’s collection at the Center for Creative Photography which is how Stephane and I met and became friends. Anyway, I just thought it would be great if the two of them could meet. So me and Mark packed up our cameras and got back on the road. I sent Stephane a message telling him we were about 15 minutes from Phoenix.
Both Mark and I were really hungry because instead of stopping for lunch, we stopped to photograph wreckage. Luckily I brought snacks - blueberries, clementines, apples, and pecans. We were devouring those as we approached Phoenix thinking we were right around the corner from Stephane’s house. Oh no. Not even. We got to Phoenix when I realized how grossly I miscalculated the time it would take to get to North Scottsdale. I sent Stephane a message, but by that time my Catholic Guilt and I-Am-A-Complete-Fuck-Up complex set in. To make matters worse, my brain and stomach were completely bloated and overdosed on pecans and blueberries (which I washed down with a Low-Carb Monster Drink which wasn’t helping matters on the anxiety front)! For the record, there are only so many pecans and blueberries and apples and clementines you can eat before you just want to DIG YOUR FUCKING TEETH INTO A HUNK OF MEAT or chew a hole in your own brain. But I didn’t bring any meat, and I needed what was left of my brain. So I ate a few more fruits and nuts and got even more bloated.
I looked at the map to Stephane’s house which said that I should take the Pima Road exit. I looked up at the sign on the freeway that said the Pima Road exit was 1 mile ahead. Woo hoo! Almost there (albeit an hour late)! I forced myself to ignore the fact that the exit number on the freeway didn’t match the one on the map and told Mark to take the exit. Uh oh. Not surprisingly, we got off on the wrong Pima Road and had to drive down a Phoenix Existential Road From Hell, find a place to turn around, and get back on the freeway. How the hell can Scottsdale have TWO Pima Road exits? And how many times can I fuck up in one day? Many! Wait until you hear about it!
A few more miles down the freeway, we finally got off on the right Pima Road exit. Phucking phew. I breathed a sigh of relief that we were finally almost there and that maybe Stephane wouldn’t hate me forever for being a late flake who forgets her daughter’s flute because she’s so inspired by the Cthulhu Ice Crystals and then underestimates her drive and stops to photograph beautiful wreckage instead of busting my ass to get to Scottsdale. A THOUSAND LASHES AND THEN A THOUSAND MORE, DAMMIT!
But we were almost there, right? WRONG! I watched the clock tick by as North Scottsdale went on and on and on past my window. Miles and miles of North Scottsdale. I imagined Stephane never wanting to talk to me again ever. When we finally arrived at the gate to the place where Stephane lives, I fully expected him to refuse me entrance and tell me to get lost. But he let us in the gate and we wound our way up to the house following Alquin's 23 ft tall ‘Goliath’ which stands outside of Stephane’s house. Now, if I got lost and couldn’t find his house with that sculpture leading the way, then I truly am a loser!
When we arrived at Stephane’s house we were first greeted by his giant owl “Lilith” by Ilan Averbuch. When I first saw Lilith on my first visit to Stephane’s house, I didn’t realize the importance of owls in Stephane’s life. But now that he has given his childhood owl collection to Bean and the owls reside at our house, seeing Lilith again gave me a big old huge smile. In fact, it’s giving me another huge smile right now. Yay!
Stephane came out to greet us. Being the blustering bumble impulsive girl that I am, I ran up to him, wrapped my arms around him for a giant hug and apologized a hundred million times for being so late . . . . and almost broke the man’s back because I squeezed him so hard! Jeesh. I’m such a passionate klutz! After a few more million apologies and pleading for forgiveness, I left my Catholic Guilt in the trunk of my car. I also brought Stephane one of my collages as a token of my love and friendship. I picked out this one for him:
We went into Stephane’s house where Mark got to see Stephane’s amazing art collection which I wrote about extensively in this article. We looked at art, looked through books, talked about photography and artists, and mostly did a lot of laughing. Stephane is a great story teller, and he had so many funny stories to tell. We also laughed about love and enjoying life for what it is. Even for ridiculous days like the one I was having. Stephane and I shared superstitions and belief in psychic abilities. We talked about love, life and death. Shared humor, laughter, and art. Stephane also shared his own Cthulhu Ice Crystal experience when we all looked in wonder at his frozen fountain on the patio which was periodically dropping giant icicles like bombs crashing on the flagstones. Awesome!
I decided I needed to take one of my Self-Timer Portraits of the three of us because they are so much fun and one of my MANY art genres (The KDD Self-Timer Art Shot). I propped my camera on a piece of furniture, posed the boys (orchestrating where Stephane should sit and where Mark should sit and telling them to allow just so many inches for me). Then I went through all my various dramatic and flamboyant maneuvers of setting the self-timer and running over to the sofa for the shot. I plopped down in between these two men I adore and CLICK. The camera snapped a shot and here we are looking too cute and happy:
Despite my gregarious appearance in this photo, I have to tell you that shooting the photo pretty much shot my load of any lingering nutritional value I had maintained from my pecan and fruit binge. In other words, I needed food! Stephane is so cute. He’s on a special diet, so he doesn’t have much food in the house. He opened his refrigerator and there was a giant jar of pickles in the middle of an empty shelf. It was like an art installation. I asked for a pickle. Not only did Stephane give me a pickle, but he offered the entire jar to me and Mark. Me and Mark looked at each other and laughed. We were planning on heading out into the Copper Belt wreckage, and the thought of a giant glass jar of dill pickles breaking in the car and us overdosing on the smell of pickle juice while out in the wasteland was pretty funny. Still, we declined the pickles. While in theory the idea of smelling pickle juice amongst the wreckage was amusing, the reality of Excessive Pickle Stink would probably be hard to stomach. One of the many chuckles we had during our visit.
Knowing that we were in dire need of food, Stephane directed us to an AJs market down the road. With our blood sugar leaking out of our shoes, Mark and I braved the North Scottsdale AJs during the commute hour. For the record, North Scottsdale during the commute hour is FUCKING SCARY. Everything you imagine when you imagine hideous white rich Arizona Republicans you will find in that parking lot. I mean, seriously they are so extreme they don’t even look real. Where do those women get that HAIR and those SUNTANS? We decided we would do the practical thing and eat an entire rotisserie chicken, so I politely waited my turn at the counter while Republicans in cashmere sweaters were served before me even though I was first in line. “I guess I need one of those sweaters!” I said. So yeah, finally I got my chicken. A white haired man (in one of those sweaters) came up to me and said, “Age before beauty” or some corny wisecrack like that. He was sweet. I decided he was a closeted queer and he’d be better served to dump the Republican thing and come out of the closet. Just saying.
Mark and I sat at the sushi bar and ate the chicken like savages, ripping hunks of meat off the bone and shoving it in our mouths. My hands and face were covered with chicken. I didn’t care. In fact, I took perverse pleasure in getting all full of meat juice amongst the perfectly groomed, manicured and scrubbed Republicans of AJs. Dammit.
By the time we swallowed our last bite of dead bird, we could not hit the road fast enough to get out into the wreckage. 30 minutes amongst the Right Wing Cashmere Crowd will do that to you. Make you want to flee and embrace the wreckage.
So we got back on the freeway to head out to the great wasteland that we love. Except that when we got on the freeway it was a fucking parking lot. It was like LA traffic but with none of the attractions of LA (e.g. ocean). We inched our way along and amused ourselves by talking about Stephane’s amazing art collection. I already wrote about my favorite pieces and showed them to Mark, so I wanted to know what his favorites were. I was surprised that his favorites were a couple of small black and white Larry Clark photos and the Spencer Tunick naked people in a parking garage photograph. We talked about how Spencer Tunick uses naked bodies like an art medium to create a singular monumental image out of the multiplicity of bodies. Then we listened to music, and I did funky car dances and made bad jokes. We finally made it to the interchange that said “Globe” and headed east. I had to pee so bad, but could not stand the idea of stopping until we got back out into the desert. The only problem is the desert never came.
Spencer Tunick’s naked bodies in a parking garage
It was nighttime by now, and the freeway stretched on forever. Endless rows of malls that looked like the malls we just passed that looked like the malls we just passed. We kept thinking that soon Mall Hell would end and the desert would begin, but it didn’t. It just kept going and going and going. My bladder was exploding, but I refused to stop until we were out into the abyss amongst the cactus and stars. I said, “Speaking of LA, I feel like I’m driving through San Bernardino. This is taking forever.” Then I’d ask, “Didn’t we already pass that mall?” and “How many Home Depots can we pass?” and “Didn’t we just see that Harkins Theater ten miles ago?” and “Does it ever end?”
Then something terrible happened. It was a nightmare. We looked up at the freeway sign, and it said “Scottsdale/Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.” NOOOOOO!!!!! Somehow, we ended up on the 202 and managed to spend an hour and a half driving in a loop around Phoenix and ending up back on Scottsdale Road! NIGHTMARE! Unfuckingbelievable. How could that even happen? It was like we were stuck in a Kafka novel set in Phoenix. And like spilled pickle juice, Kafka novels are much more entertaining in theory than in practice. FUCK!
We tried to hold it together. We tried to be happy. We tried to laugh. But THIS WASN’T FUNNY. This was ANTI-FUNNY. We somehow ended up in the hood of Tempe. We had to stop somewhere and look at the map and get directions. We had two choices - a strip club or a Jack-In-The-Box. We opted for the hood Jack-In-The-Box. We walked in, and there were a couple of people nodding off at tables, a couple of gangstas in one corner, and two guys joking behind the counter. I headed straight to the bathroom surprised that it was actually unlocked and available for the public.
In case you don’t know what an Austin Powers Pee is, let me tell you because that’s what I took. It’s when you pee and pee and pee and pee, and then when you think you’re done, you pee some more, and then when you think you’re done, you pee some more. You can watch the original Austin Powers Pee here. I seriously took a major Austin Powers Pee at the hood Jack-In-The-Box (I know, TMI) and oh my god it felt so good. I don’t think I ever had to pee so bad in my sober life. When I was done, I asked the nice guy behind the counter, “Where the fuck am I, and how the fuck do I get out of here and headed toward Globe?” The Jack-In-The-Box Guy was incredibly helpful at reading maps, and damn if he didn’t get us on the road and heading to Globe. Thank you nice guy at the hood Jack-In-The-Box!
I didn't take any photos of the hood Jack-In-The-Box, but I did snag this image from google maps, you know, just for visual texture:
At this point, things were pretty existentially dire. I’d go so far as to say that they were verging on a Very Bad Trip, literally and figuratively. To top it off, it turns out that Mark has “Bad History” at the very intersection at which we landed back in Phoenix (a.k.a. Tempe), so besides the fact that we just spent an hour and half driving in a circle, Mark had all kinds of Baggage that was spilled all over the streets near the hood Jack-In-The-Box. It was everywhere. Mark’s horrible baggage! Oh no!
That’s okay! I’m good with baggage. In fact, you could call me Queen Baggage. At this point, I pulled out my KDD Superstitious Mumbo Jumbo and used it to maximum effect. I told Mark, “Everything happens for a reason. We were meant to spend an hour and a half driving on the 202 in a circle around Phoenix because you needed to confront your baggage. Now let’s talk about it!” So that’s what we did. As Ugly Ass Never-Ending Phoenix rolled past the window, we talked out Mark’s baggage, and when we finally realized we were on the right road and hit the desert, the baggage was lying in a pile somewhere back in Phoenix, and in our heads we lit a match a blew it up. Bye bye baggage!
Our plan was to revisit the town of Superior and stay in the little motor inn we saw when we drove through the town a few weeks back. But to add to our further Existential Angst and obviously still operating under The Curse of the Cthulhu, when we got to Superior we couldn’t find the motel. It’s like it totally vanished. We drove up and down the dark streets, but there WAS NO MOTEL. (Insert Twilight Zone music.) There was, however, a restaurant and lounge, so at that point we decided to go in there, get directions, and shove some more food in our faces.
We sat in there with the miners, and we ate giant plates full of hamburger steaks (two per plate), green beans (from a can), french fries, and salad (chunks of iceberg). Our waitress Flo (yes her name was really Flo) was a riot. She said she was giving us the check early in case she forgets. The she said, “I suffer from a terrible disease. It’s called CRS. Have you heard of it?” I cracked a smile because I knew a joke was coming. She said, “Can’t Remember Shit!” Pah! Fucking love Flo. I’m going back there to take her photo next time I drive through Superior. In fact, my biggest regret of the trip was not taking Flo's photo! Speaking of photos, I already showed you my photo of the bar in Superior, but I neglected to show you my photo of the claw:
We left the restaurant with very full bellies and directions to the motel. The only problem was that all the lights at the motel were out, and there was no one to give us a room. Dammit.
HELLO GLOBE!
Yep, we drove to Globe and decided it was time for a return visit to the El Rey. The El Rey, for the record, is the diviest of all the old motor inns we’ve stayed in, but it’s also one of the friendliest. Seriously, this place is HARDCORE. Tweakers, drunks, bikers, and who-knows-what-else, but it has a certain charm to its unabashed trashiness. Last time we stayed there, we left a shirt in the room, so I called the owner, and he MAILED IT TO ME. How about that?
I can’t tell you how happy we were to see the sign on the highway, all lit up with the vacancy sign blinking. It was like an oasis of flickering neon. As soon as we pulled up and got out of the car, the owner came out with a smile and recognized us. “Come in, come in,” he gestured to the office. “I’ll be right with you.” Then he finished haggling with an extremely drunk, and I do mean wasted, woman who was paying ten dollars extra for afterhours visitors. You get the picture. He sent her on her way, though her breath stuck around to keep us company. Then he said, “I don’t have the same room as last time, but I have another one. Do you want me to show it to you?” We looked at him and smiled. “Sure.”
The man grabbed a key from under the counter, and we all walked across the parking lot together. The man walked up to this door:
Elvis? We walked inside, and our eyes popped out and mouths dropped open. It was the ELVIS ROOM with Elvis posters on the walls and Elvis stencils in the bathroom! “Is it okay?” the man asked. Okay? It was PERFECT. Why is there an Elvis Room at the El Rey? I have no fucking idea, but I LOVE it! We took the room, closed the door, locked it, and spent the night in Globe with Elvis.
Seriously, starting the day with Cthulhu Ice Crystals and ending it with Elvis? It doesn’t get more supernatural than that. Talk about a strange day. Yowza.
Photos I took of the Elvis Room:
End Note: When I told Stephane about our crazy 202 loop drive, he said that a very similar thing happened to him on the 101. Apparently these things happen all the time in Phoenix. It’s like a Twilight Zone Freeway Suckhole! Watch out!