This Fall Break I visited the land of Cleve, the Armpit of America, birthplace
of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Mistake by the Lake--Cleveland. Along with two of
my friends, whom I will refer to as J1 and J2 so as not to make public their names (which
are, by the way, Jud and Julian), I traversed our fair nation all the way up to a little black
dot on the map wherein was found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's a long story, so let
me begin, appropriately, at the beginning.
We awoke at the crack of dawn (and since my girlfriend's name is Dawn, this was
quite literally true for me) on the Saturday of Fall Break. We piled into J2's car and J1 took
the driver's seat (we scolded him and made him bring it back) as we headed north. We
soon traded the first automobile for J2's dad's larger Jeeplike vehicle. We bade farewell
to J2's parents (A1 and R2D2) and J1 and myself settled down for a long winter's nap as J2
took the wheel. (I feel like I'm playing Battleship here--this number stuff is getting
annoying. To keep Julian's and Jud's names secret, I will refer to them hereafter as Earl
and Buck, or whatever other names sound good at the time.) I awoke at the crack of Earl
as we were pulling into our beloved Motel 6 just outside of the armpit (rather close to the
nipple, in fact). In order to get a cheaper rate, we asked Hector to hide in the backseat as
Ned and myself paid for the room. We later discovered that this saved us only six dollars,
and Hector came to be known as a fugitive from the law--the Six Dollar Man.
Before I continue (or, I suppose, as I continue) a description of the hotel room is in
order. The beds were, how shall I put this...strong, dense, and very solid--we had to haul
some gravel in from outside for cushions. Skip tried to jump on one of the beds and
fractured three ribs. The towels were numerous, but severely lacking in the size
department--one towel would just about get my kneecap dry. Best of all, however, was
the foreign substance that Algernon discovered under the edge of the bed. We prodded it
with implements of destruction and attacked it with a tiny towel, but it stood its ground. It
was small, brown, and gooey in a hard sort of way--not unlike a Tootsie Roll gone bad. It
must have eaten the last guests, however, because it didn't give us any trouble.
Our first dinner in Cleveland was greatly improved by the fact that we sat across
from Facial-tic Guy. We created a system in which I held my camcorder aimed at Facial-tic
Guy's head, and every time Joe Bob took a sip of water Ernie would duck his head and I'd
zoom in on Facial-tic Guy. This guy was physiologically sound; he just had a strange habit
of squeaking and contorting his face into shapes previously unknown to humankind.
Imagine Mr. Potato Head meets Mr. Flamethrower and you'll be in the neighborhood.
Suffice it to say--that dude was wacky.
Okay, let me backtrack and tell you something about me, Wilbur, and Eduardo. Our
lives revolve around Spades, Volleyball, and Slurpees (I've recently added sex to the list
but that's a story for another article). Anyway, we had to try a Cleveland Slurpee, no
question about it. Like the rest of the armpit, our trip to 7-11 was less than up to par--
double bogey in fact. You know you're in Ohio when the 7-11's biggest selling point is its
mulch. Lucifer bought some Sugar Babies that turned out to be Sugar Senior Citizens. He
lost three teeth. We left the elderly sweets under the bed with the Tootsie Roll from hell--
they're expecting.
Oh yeah, we also went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Neil Young sang, "Rock and
Roll will never die"--not if Cleveland has anything to do with it. The Hall of Fame was
overpriced, undervalued, and smelled of rutabagas. Well, I'm exaggerating a little; it was
Fred, not the Hall of Fame, that smelled. The Hall of Fame was...in a big building,
with...good lighting, and...stuff. The John Denver wing was remarkably ...clean. They did
have some cool stuff: Ringo's drum sticks, Paul Simon's hand-written lyrics, Michael
Jackson's original nose. Overall, however, it was a bit of a disappointment.
But enough about the actual topic of this column, let's move on to the puke-fest. At a
restaurant called the Feve (a more appropriate name would have been "You Wanna Get
Violently Ill? Eat Here!"), Lyle and I were fortunate enough to eat the love children of
thecandy creatures from under the bed: tator tots with a side of grease and onion rings.
We all know that the postman rings twice, but little did I know that my onion rings would
also ring twice, quite unpleasantly the second time. We pulled into Benji's, he already
having shared with us his past few meals. By the end of the night we had all three floors
of the house covered--Gilligan in the basement, myself on the first floor, and Wally on the
second floor, each of us keeping watch over our own particular toilet. After a night that
saw more flushing than sleeping, we awoke to the sounds of Regis and Kathie Lee, which
just started the process all over again.
< P>We finally recovered enough to stop lying around in misery at A1's parent's house,
drive back, and lie around in misery at Dillard instead. Overall, the trip truly was a
triumph of the human spirit, and I learned some life lessons that will be with me always:
when on the road, stick to what you know--Dunkin' Donuts and Taco Bell (they, at least,
will only make you slightly ill), don't pay more than a few dollars to get into a building
full of mannequins dressed like ZZ Top, and waking up at the crack of Dawn is much
more pleasant than at the crack of Earl.