(If You Want To) (Around the World)

Beck Beck Beck and and and I I I had had had an an an excellent excellent excellent Sunday. (If you weren't there you should be dead! Or in jail! And if you're in jail,,, BREAK OUT!).

We roused ourselves around 9, ate some FLoops (we were both trying to get to the bottom of the box first - it was a Race for the Prize!), took care of the pups in the walk, defecate and eat departments, showered, dressed, grabbed an iPod full of Podcasts and headed toward Jerome, AZ, a small mining town up towards Sedona / Flagstaff. Ten minutes later we returned home.

After securing our backup camera and batteries for that backup camera, we again headed north on 101 toward Jerome. Beck has become a podcast addict in the past few weeks, so we listened to a couple of episodes of To the Best of Our Knowledge, particularly the episodes Cultural Touchstones and East Meets West (though it should definitely be noted that while I thoroughly enjoyed the Charles Schultz and Miles Davis segments, I could not listen to the Laika segment. Laika is my kryptonite - I cannot listen to a segment about a poor, confused dog in outer space slowly asphyxiating without getting overly upset. Further proof that I am human, or that the programmers did a good job on this here robot). It's a nice drive, up to and including the fully decorated Christmas tree in the middle of nowhere and the planned communities that dot the I-17 landscape like so many pre-cancerous skin tumors (Anthem? More like Anathema) (Actually, that is eerily accurate) (Though Beck points out that the entire town of Anthem has no bookstores, so being illiterate, they would probably not understand being referred to as Anathema. Perhaps they could co-op the term and use it positively, rendering language ultimately meaningless?).

We pulled into lovely (and chilly) 5000 foot high Jerome at about 12 and looked for a place to eat and/or fornicate with prostitutes. How fortuitous, then, that Belgian Jennie's Bordello Pizzeria was immediately across the street from our cliffside parking spot:

I had personally never eaten pizza off the abdomen of a stripper before, and wondered whether the pepperoni pasties were really tasteful, but hey, when in Jerome... I kid, I kid, it was just a mom & pop pizza place with excellent food and an extended Jerome history lesson taboot. Great decision to eat there, and we aim to return next time we return. On to the shopping, but I may as well insert the scenery here:



That last pic came out especially well for reasons outside of my camera-wielding skills. It's a mine that's actually down below the main town of Jerome. Anyhoo, our shopping exploits cannot be entirely revealed due to the gift-sensitive nature that the purchases involved, but we also did a fair amount of oggling at a handmade kaleidoscope store and a pottery shop. That's right, just when you thought you were getting intriguing text-based Nyetian content and analysis, you're just getting a bunch of trippy pictures! Huzzah! First, the pottery extravaganza:



Beck and I found it somewhat odd in that last shot that someone in Jerome would have dedicated an entire pottery piece to Wrigley howling at the moon, but hey, what do we know. And now, it's time to bust out those peace pipes, hippies, because we are taking a little trip down to the kaleidoscope store. (Now would be the time to press play on that little boom box ya got there with that sweet mix tape of Cream and Moby Grape):

You know what? X that. I will conclude the verbal tour of Jerome and share the kaleidorama in the next post. (Click pause again, sorry). So the Beck and I spent the bulk of the afternoon window- and actual shopping, and hoping to drive home through the mountains before dark (this time), grabbed a couple of lukewarm coffees in Jerome's bookstore / coffee shop (take note, Anathema) and took a beautiful drive up to 7000 feet and a bunch of snow and then back on down to Phoenix. We heard the Colts eek one out against the Raiders and then listened to a surprisingly funny Frank Caliendo (he of the kill-me-now TBS ads for Frank TV) on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. The more we age, the more we enslave ourselves to the soothing tones of NPR voice jockeys. (Now, where is Pete Schweddy when you need him? Answer: at the bottom of this page). Pulled in around 5, repeated the morning ritual of dog-care, and settled in for reading and an ugly, ugly Giants - Redskins game. Great day, great day - and I'll get you that psychedelia in a couple of minutes. In the meantime, here was a taste of our Saturday Night entertainment: