The End

And God said unto Adam, thou shalt live side-by-side with the tyrannosaurus…

The question of the day:

What happens when a Universal Studios theme park employee decides it is his God-given mission to prove that the earth is only 6,000 years old?

The answer:

The Creation Museum.

Now, Kate, Emily and I, were entirely prepared to believe. And by that, I essentially mean that we had gathered just about every photographic device we could muster and were prepared to ironically pose with as many animatronics as humanly possible. A few things, however, still made us slightly incredulous upon our labyrinthine visit.

the steamy side of Eden. It somewhat resembles a Sandals ad for the Book of Genesis...Welcome to Paradise

Spooky lighting seems to pop up whenever tangential culture things are mentioned

their arguments were particularly sketchy

And, more than any of these things, we were incredulous with their entirely comical insistence that dinosaurs co-existed with man. Now, Kate brought up the point that it would probably be better for them if they just denied the existence of dinosaurs. But how could they possibly ignore taunting such as this:

And so, to spite people such as the designers of the above novelty t-shirt graphic, the powers that be decided to base the majority of this 60,000 square foot museum around proving that humans and Viloceraptors were prehistoric playmates. This may raise questions in your mind such as this:

But the answer is simple: small dinosaurs, big cages.

So unless you want to load your family into the car (as many people in the PACKED museum did), follow the incredibly thorough signage through Kentucky to the Creation Museum’s front door, and fork over 20+ dollars, i’ll make the argument simple.

This:

A girl feeding a squirrel a carrot as a velicoraptor chills nearby

or this:

Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs...

So, whether you think Dr. Ian Malcolm is correct about the sequence of things (give or take a few ‘animatronics’), or simply want to scratch out a few details in his order of events, it all pretty much ends the same way: with us running our heretical asses out of there so we could get on with 2 hours of fruitless fishing (the only result being well-fed fish), Lifetime movies, and lazy rambling around lakehouses and basements.

Dr. Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth...

Tomorrow the long haul to Houston. And then it will be good-by to summer and good-by to silly blogs like this one.

The winner takes it all

(Emily Knittle)

The picture says it all. We’re here in Louisville about to embark on an adventure which will open our eyes, hearts, minds, and wallets to the truth about the origins of humanity and the planet. Yes, we are going to the Creation Museum. It is egregiously overpriced and we’re going to be ironic, so I suppose the joke is on us. Oh well…we’ll get lots of good pictures out of it.

The interview in Boston went really well, though I think I left a hefty portion of my sanity on the streets of Cambridge/Somerville just trying to get the fuck out of the city. What a terrible place to drive. Anyway, on Monday we go home. Yessss!

Oh yeah, also we saw Mamma Mia! again.

Theresa

Last summer while visiting our friend Emily in the city, we spent a little time out in Westchester county with our other friend Matt and his two dogs. He has a psychotic dachshund and a kind of poofy dog that is technically male, but clearly a girl–or at least a girly dog. “His” name is Woody, but last summer I decided that he needed a more gender-appropriate name, so I rechristened him Theresa. Now we’re back in Westchester on our way to Boston and again I’ve come face-to-face with Theresa, the gender-confused canine.

This picture actually demonstrates Theresa’s remarkable knack for contemplative stares, but I think you get the idea.

Aaaanyway, we spent a night in NYC with my friend Catalina in her luxurious summer housing room on the 10th floor of Palladium (an NYU dorm), which is, weirdly enough, where Adena lived last school year! Also where I spent many hours on a couch. It was freaky being back on the 10th floor, but not as freaky as our feet right now, which are currently ravaged by hours of walking around in cheap shoes from Target (in my case, at least).

And now after a night in Westchester we’re about to leave for our last filming location in Boston. It’s been a hugely successful, and–more importantly–fun trip so far, but I doubt I presume too much to speak for Adena as well as myself in saying that we’re both pretty eager to finish up and resume life as real people rather than mangy vagabonds with chronic foot pain.

Harassing cats in Maryland

Greetings from Maryland!

We finished our D.C.-area shoot–including a full interview, and a silly outing to the Washington monument–in just one day, and were hoping to see the band Leftöver Crack with my friend Andrew, who we’re staying with here in Maryland, but as cruel fate would have it there was a malfunction in the greater-D.C. metro, and after about 45 sweaty minutes in an inexplicably unmoving train at the Shady Grove station in Gaithersburg we got word that the show had sold out (“they ran out of crack”), so now we’re here in Andrew’s mom’s lavish guest room leeching the wireless and pondering his awesome cats:

This cat could advertise store brand Fancy Feast.

We’ve actually encountered a great deal of vivacious felines on this trip, plus a few pretty awesome dogs, and I have to admit it’s one of my favorite aspects of the whole project.

Tomorrow we’re off to NYC. The driving is getting a bit tedious, but luckily Adena has a few episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show on her iPod, so we’ve been passing the time with Karl Pilkington.

Here are two more pictures from Ohio:

Vetty nice.

Jack bought an electric organ for $75 from Goodwill while we were there. Here he is jamming with Adena on his back porch.

Ohio is almost a palindrome

But not quite!

Here are a few pictures to go along with Adena’s post from yesterday:

The hay adds so much to this activity.

Biiiig fuckin’ rabbit.

I liked the heart over the “i” in genetics.

THIS is what our country is all about. ‘Merican flag, cats, pandas. You don’t need to know anything else.

Yes, I did make him play Free Bird. But he asked! And we were his only spectators.

Ohio, so much to discover.

Four hundred miles and more than a few cornfields later, Kate and I have landed ourselves in our friend Jack’s basement in Ohio. There are plentiful hills, but whether they are alive with the sound of music is pending. You may punch me for that.

In any case, yesterday we went to the Medina County Fair. Corndogs were eaten, pigs were spooned by other pigs. Rabbits were the size of sheep, sheep were the size of horses, and horses were the size of bigger horses. 4H dramas were played out by the hour. A lone keyboardist struggled to play Freebird by Kate’s request. And apparently, somewhere in there, there was breastfeeding inside the dairy barn.

‘Tis a magical place where Purell is King.

What would you expect with a conscience so small?

Trashed my own house party ’cause nobody came

This is a cry for help. Somebody please, please save me from Adena’s atrocious mix CD. We’re coming up on day six in Arlington Heights, IL, and if I have to hear “I Try” by Macy Gray one more time, I will call this whole project off. Don’t test me.

Unfortunately the centerpiece of this mix is a song I could never deny, never truly tire of:

Curse you “Fat Lip”!!!!!!!!!

We just wrapped up our second day of shooting with our second interviewee and everything went almost frighteningly well. After shooting in Millennium park we went to a Jeff Koons exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. And then we hiked like psychos to catch the train back to the hinterlands. My feet hurt but we saw some real good art.

“This city’s got big buildings, I like food, bye.”

This picture was hanging in the booth at the Italian-ish fast food place we ate at last night in Arlington Heights. SKEEZER!

We saw Mamma Mia! with Adena’s mom on Wednesday.

Y’all. This movie was outrageous and terrible and I loved it. I think our friend Jess said it best when she said that it’s like a studio paid millions of dollars to produce someone’s inside joke. Honestly you ain’t seen nothin’ until you’ve seen Meryl Streep writhe uncomfortably on top of a goat house while singing ABBA.

And now we’re watching SHAAARK WEEEEEEK!

Oooooooklahoma!

We spent Monday night in my ancestral land with my mom’s cousin, Tony, and his family. I’d never been to Oklahoma City (my grandparents were partial to the greater Tulsa region), but I found it terribly pleasant and extraordinarily spacious. The highlight of the trip was probably our tour of downtown OK City when we sort of forced Tony to paparazzi drive for us around a residential area so that I could get a picture of a particularly goofy-looking man on a Segway. This is the best shot I managed to get:

…despite the fact that at one point we had totally cut him off in a parking lot and were stopped directly in front of him. I really let everyone down in that moment with my shoddy photography skills, but at least we had fun just chasing him.

And now, after a 12-hour drive through 2 magnificent heartland states and Missouri (snap! Missouri sucks!) we’re in Chicago with Adena’s family. Two things: 1) I’m currently in a basement, 2) like a strange land under some sort of terrible curse, Chicago gets COLD at night in JULY! But it’s also home to my friend Jess Combs, who I haven’t seen in months and won’t see again until January due to poor study abroad planning, so I’m thinking it’s not such a bad place after all. Also the suburbs here don’t look like a city had food poisoning and spewed out strip malls from both ends all over its outlying areas, so…that’s a bit of an advantage over where I come from.

Southern Illinois was kind of boring, but I liked these smoke stacks:

And here’s a group pic from the Jaws night: