But it's time to go for a bit.

I've had way more emails about this that I can answer, so I'll tell you now what's going on. In the past few weeks, I've kind of let my feet get out from under me. In the past several months, I've lost track of my priorities. And after an irritating invasion of privacy by one of those classic web-bound nutjobs, I pulled this here blog down for a bit, until I could decide what to do with it.

I've finally made that decision.

Blogging (and I still hate that word) is like having an open pipeline directly to the human id, with no filters. For a while this was great, but it became a place to talk about what I did over the weekend instead of legitimate social commentary. I've gotten lazy. I don't write like I used to, and I'm ready to redirect the bloggy energy into something more worthwhile.

I'm starting a new book. Four years ago I finished a novel that remains shelved because it is inherently, unfixably flawed. What's wrong with it is that it is not nearly as honest and forthright as it should be. I'm taking the next three weeks to really seek out some literary catharsis and begin a book that may never make it off my hard drive, but I don't care. I need to write it. More importantly, I need to get back to being a writer, the thing I was born to do. I've heard people maintain that nobody under 30 has any right to write a memoir, and that might be true. But if you'd just lived through the last 10 years that I've been through, you'd disagree.

I've left up an abbreviated archive of sorts, and so you may still read and comment on my favorite posts from this blog. You're welcome to email me, too. I'd love to hear from you. I hate to do this right at a time when the traffic on this blog is through the fucking roof, but a girl's gotta do. I'm not saying The Ashtray is dead for good, but let's let her rest a while, eh?

Love you guys. Really.

-Angela

I'm going to tell this story one time. Just this once.

So, sometime around 10:30 on Friday night, it occurred to me-- too late, it would seem-- that I needed racquetballs. It could have been the beer talking; it could also have been that my date had a hellish week and in a moment of compassion and solidarity, I let him off the hook for the evening, and so went drinking alone. Hence the beer talking. (Note now that if I'd held him to his obligation, I would have had my fingers around a bottle of Pilsner Urquell at The Earl, nodding to a shoegazing local band instead of banging around the suburbs with a lonesome buzz, so we can almost maybe blame TJ a little bit for the hell that was to come. We could, but we won't.)

"You need racquetballs," the beer says, and I realize that indeed I do need racquetballs, because I have an early date in the morning with CW, who will call me when she's almost to the gym, and I like her entirely too much to disappoint her. And so that moment seemed as good a time as any to go get some fucking racquetballs, because CW and I need to smack some balls around in the morning.

Fact: There is no place to get a new can of racquetballs at 10:30 on a Friday night except Wal-Mart.

I don't go to Wal-Mart. Maybe once a year, if I have to, if I'm stuck for a weekend in Mobile and I'm struck with a sudden and urgent need for a 64-pack of paper towels, and there is no Target, Walgreens or Piggly Wiggly to be found. Maybe then I'll find myself in Wal-Mart. Maybe. But it's not a regular occurrence, and I always kind of have to psych myself up for it. A little pep talk. I'm just gonna go in, buy the Christmas light clips that I can't get anywhere else, and then I'm out. I'm done. It's never so simple, but I like to think. This time, however, I had no pep talk. I had a whim and a couple of beers, which weren't laying right at all with my chicken-free chicken salad from Whole Foods (and really, it does taste just exactly like chickens). So at some point, Wal-Mart sounds like a good idea, until, on my way in, I hear one of those thunderclaps that startles your pets and makes children whimper a bit. I march in anyway. This is not my first (or last) mistake of the evening.

I should stop here and note that I've been fired exactly twice. Once for being the poster child for nepotism (or completely and openly insulting an elected official of the city where I worked, either way you look at it), and once from Wal-Mart, where I worked for five weeks when I was 17. I got shitcanned for saying over the storewide intercom (in my gorgeous, sultry, 1-900 voice) "I have a customer by the balls in toys who needs assistance," and then repeating for clarity, "I have a customer by the balls in toys who needs assistance. Thank you." Before I'd hung up the little intercom phone, the manager had already turned out my register light. Wal-Mart and I have some long-standing bad blood from waaaay back yonder, and I've never forgiven them, and frankly, they haven't deserved it. So I walked into the store Friday night with a mild buzz and a bad fucking attitude to start with.


Thunder claps. The wind picks up so fast that a few uncorraled, renegade carts start rolling maverick across the parking lot, through puddles and toward cars. I park between two other cars and the wind very nearly blows my phone out of my hand on the way in. Not a good sign.

I get a cart to push because there are no Abrams tanks to drive through the store but it still feels like I should be armed, and immediately after entry, I'm confronted with the consequence of what happens when amorous, fertile people have no money for entertainment beyond cable television: they fuck. And they make more little people when they do, all of whom-- parents and offspring alike-- are furiously consuming goods at the Wal-Mart at almost 11:00 on a Friday night. They are everywhere, stair-stepping behind their weary mothers, squalling in carts, touching merchandise, digging in their little porcine noses, standing in the way and generally menacing the decent people in the store, which, by my quick mathematical calculations, is pretty much just me. I head towards where I assume "sporting goods" would be; most likely the furthest, darkest corner of the place, and I book it in a hurry for that direction. On the way, I get distracted (this is not uncommon), and have a second there where I consider buying the trashiest romance novel I can, based entirely on the cover art, which should involve exposed breast flesh and blowing hair, and a name like Conquered Savage or A Reason to Sin. Nothing looks sufficiently... trashy. I make the determination that historical romances have fallen out of vogue among the romance crowd, and has now been replaced with a larger, less awesome genre that includes sex in space, sex with dragontamers, sex with vampires, sex in the future, sex on other planets with a race of superhuman androids, and sex in flying cars. I read the back of most of the trashier titles, and find no discussion at all of solar energy in the near or distant future. Furthermore, evidently timid virgins in the future and on other planets will still refer to hard cocks and sweaty balls as "throbbing manhood." Disgusting.

I'm cruising with my cart back to sporting goods when the snap of thunder shakes the steel trusses and corrugated roof, and an announcement comes over the intercom (sadly not involving customers, balls and toys). The manager is just this side of a sheer freaking panic attack, you can tell by his voice, when he calls the employees-- all of them-- to the front. NOW. He's about to completely un-ass the manager's booth and calls an immediate emergency meeting. I don't know what's said in this meeting, but I know that about five minutes later, a pack of surly employees round up everyone and tell us to get to the center of the store. The roof is shuddering like a drum head and a legion of miserable shoppers edge toward the interior. Remember that part in Michael Jackson's Thriller, where the zombies do that slide-shuffle-slide with the stiff arms? Yeah. That's us. Except we're pushing carts and most of the throng is shuffling their little zombie kids along, too. And they're whining. They wanna know what's going on. Suburban Atlanta's elite are now calling everyone they know to shout into their cell phones that they're stuck in the Wal-Marts (ed note: is that plural or possessive? Wal-Marts? Or Wal-Mart's?) and things are just terrible here. The irony, of course, is that things aren't so terribly bad after all, because I'm a little bit buzzed and this is funny, but the scenario is made terrible by the volume of people claiming it to be. All these people wanted to do was come blow their paychecks, and now they're stuck. Oh. It's just so fucking terrible. Really. I park my empty cart for a second and text everyone who will care to know that I am a) in a Wal-Mart, b) might die here, and c) only came in for racquetballs. My mom texts back, "Don't die. Imagine the headline."

About two minutes into this exercise in zen futility, I cut myself from the herd. I biefly consider hanging out in the towels and blankets part of housewares, in case the roof comes down I could maybe find some protection. Instead, I head--for the third time-- toward sporting goods because I still don't have any racquetballs (or soldering flux, which I also needed but forgot to pick up). This seems like a wise decision, because nobody is back here with me and I'm the closest one to the rifles and ammunition, which means that if a spontaneous case of post-storm looting breaks out-- or if I personally get a hankering to loot some shit-- I'm already in a good place. (I do briefly consider finding a digital camera and a pack of batteries somewhere in the store and taking pictures, but I decide to stay close to the firearms instead.)

I feel like I'm in jury duty but the criminals haven't been arrested yet. The walk among us.

The wind is still banging the roof around but so far everything appears to be intact. I get bored by the guns, so I go find my racquetballs (purple, not blue, which is fine but my racquet's pink and brown and I like things that are aesthetically pleasing and matchy-matchy) and then I slip over to the baseball stuff. There are pink girls' batting helmets (too small for my head). There are pink baseball gloves (only for right-handers, woefully, and I'm completely left-handed). There are little pink T-ball aluminum bats hanging in tidy little rows, and I smack them together to make the clin-clang sound that I love so much, the same noise you hear after the batter connects with the pitch (and the ball comes off an aluminum bat so fast) and the bat clatters to the packed clay, and little league parents cheer and whoop. I make noise with the T-ball bats for a while, and then unreel several yards of fishing line from the rods and reels (again, not left-handed), poke my finger in a tub of nightcrawlers (there's a cooler for them!) and then consider swapping the rubber fishing lures with gummy worms from the candy aisle.

This last thought makes me laugh out loud. Hah! Gummy worms in the fishing tackle! Tackle with the candy! Right about then I stumble across this book, which totally takes all the mirth and joy out of my locked-in-Wal-Mart-in-a-tornado experience. Finding Kill It & Grill It distresses me and makes me sad, and I immediately feel the way I do when I've been in Manhattan just three seconds too long, like I have to get out right that very moment. It's not fun anymore.

A full 40 minutes later, I'm out. And I'm alive. And I've got racquetballs, as well as a copy of Kill It & Grill It.

Ironic twist: I spent the rest of the night in the basement of my house listening to the eerie wail of the tornado sirens. When I finally got to bed, I shoved my phone under my pillow and therefore didn't hear the alarm when it went off. I woke up around 10:00, having completely missed my racquetball date with CW. I hate Wal-Mart more than ever, and even though I can't readily identify where this is Wal-Mart's fault, I'm certain that it is.

My friend Sean recently found himself smack in the middle of a big anti-gay throwdown, San Fran style (West Coast represent!). Sean took the position of a neutral observer, benevolently ambivalent, just sort of watching, and that's fine. Like any good liberal hetero, I've kind of enjoyed that same perspective. More and more, though, I find the issue has actually become the One Big Issue determining the way I'll vote in November, and I'm increasingly pissed off and hostile about the way things are progressing.

It's not really a big mystery where I come down on the argument of gay marriage. I likes the queers and I likes people who likes queers. Of course I want to see gay unions recognized (not legalized, because I don't feel they're illegal now); a disproportionate number of my friends are gay, and I want my friends to be happy. (Additionally, I am the best wedding guest ever.) Still, though, the issue has gained a bit of gravity for me lately. Before I was hetero-hitched, I swore on a baby's grave that I never, ever wanted to get married. But now that the terminally flawed experiment of my marriage has finally, mercifully been dissolved (as of Leap Day), I find that I've got a low-grade but consistent desire to be married again. Getting it wrong-- monumentally, spectacularly wrong-- the first time has compelled me to get it right the next time, and furthermore, I want everyone to enjoy this right.

Counterintuitively, I think the best way to do this is to abolish marriage entirely, which means civil unions all around. And really, does the state have any business making contracts before God anyway? Shouldn't all marriages be civil unions unless celebrated before such ministerial personnel as the happy couple sees fit?

Listen, redefining marriage will never hold. You can't make the word red also mean certain shades of brown and purple. Red is red. Marriage, for as long as there has been such a thing, really has applied only to men and women. The contract of marriage, however, is entirely out of date. We don't transfer women and their dowries from their fathers to their husbands anymore. It's not required to have children and raise a family, because clearly, this is done outside of marriage every day. Aside from the tax breaks, there's no real benefit to being married, or at least nothing that a joint checking account and a durable power of attorney can't get you. "But-- but-- we have to be married before GOD!" cry the troglodytes. Fine. Go get married before God. But the state has absolutely no business getting involved in any matter of faith.

"I'm all for civil rights - pretty much across the board and I would never entertain the notion that gays deserve fewer rights than those enjoyed by us breeders," Sean told me in an email. "I'm just saying that if they can get all the same rights and benefits that go with marriage, but have to call it 'Egairram' as a concession to the conservatives, it might be a worthwhile bit of semantic judo."

So what about civil unions? What about this clever shuck-and-jive maneuver to give the same rights but call it something different? No dice. Separate but equal is typically neither. Unless you scrap the idea of "marriage" entirely and give everyone a civil union, which feels (and feelings matter, since this is so completely emotional) like the fairest and most egalitarian of all possible options.

"Put it to a vote," my bullheaded minister father says. "We live in a democracy, and everyone gets a vote, right?" Mais non, Preacher. You're mistaken. We have a republic, not a democracy, meaning that everyone gets a vote, but that vote is to elect the people who will represent us, and that us includes the one in ten of us who generally identify on some level with homosexuality. A deeper threat looms, though. The right to marry whom you please is not a priviledge and it's not really open for discussion. It's a civil right. Like sitting wherever you like on the bus. And if we invite the general populace to vote in referenda defining the civil rights of people, then we're fucked. Mississippi didn't ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984, guys. Tennessee didn't ratify the Fifteenth until 1997.

None of this makes much sense, and I can't be arsed at the moment to actually look up relevant case law and put forth a coherent argument. I know that I am getting older, and predictably, I am less tolerant that I used to be, except the shit I refuse to tolerate include things like organized discrimination on the federal level used as a smoke-and-mirror trick to cover the fact that China is buying our debt like it's cotton candy at the county fair. Daily I find myself more infuriated that now-- now, this late in the development of civilization-- we're introducing freakout legislation on the very nature of love while Mrs. Lovejoy asks someone to please, please, think of the children. I'm pissed that so many straights feel so threatened at the very core of their mortal souls that two dudes getting hitched will somehow erode the veracity of their own marriage. And I'm completely inflamed that the best answer we can come up with is either to give it the same-but-different semantic shuffle or put it to a vote and let a bunch of people decide what constitutes a right for a minority. How fucked up is that?

...Has plainly gone completely fucking batshit crazy.

Evidently, the least awesome governor from Arkansas (and really, Arkansans, how do you go from this to a Baptist minister? What the Huck?) has decided that, even though he cannot possibly win the Republican nomination, he's gonna stick it out anyway. If you follow his logic here, because God made the earth in six days, he's also capable of altering the way basic addition and subtraction work, and so Huckabee's pretty sure that it's all gonna shake out okay in the bottom of the ninth. In his typical aww-shucks, optimistic delivery, Huckabee said at his press conference: "I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them." Psssst. Mike. Guess what. There's this whole big part of the Bible called Numbers, dude.

I've had this really weird fascination with Mike Huckabee. On one side, he stimulates the deepest mean streak in me. He's not stupid (I'm smarter, but that's typical), and yet he continues to hang on to this superstition about creation and evolution and says such deeply disturbing things about the sanctity of life (dude, check Arkansas' meth abuse statistics and tell me you really wanna outlaw abortion) that I seriously want to see him destroyed in the most historically significant way, like the classic Republican Death by Irony or something. Because he stands in direct opposition to most everything that's dear and holy to me, I want him to do more than lose, I want him to fail majestically, and bear shame and humiliation in front of his children. And yet, the parts that I hate are also so oddly attractive to me. He's hokey, and I hate hokey, but it almost kind of works for him. He's a cretin, but when he says stuff like, "I'm pretty sure there's gonna be duck hunting in heaven-- and I can't wait!", he's not pandering to the NRA. He's seriously planning on shooting ducks after he's dead. As much as he makes my skin crawl, I kind of don't want to see him go away, sort of like how I couldn't stop staring at Bob Dole's dead, pen-clutching limp right arm, and was so excited when Bob Dole started talking about Bob Dole's erectile dysfunction. (Can we please talk about Huckabee's junk now, too?)

So what do you do with a guy like Huckabee, who says such fucking stupid shit but actually means it, and so you can't really hate him for it? You dig a little deeper, and you'll eventually find a piece of evidence to swing your opinion in either direction. In response to an Associated Press question regarding his position on abortion, Mike said, "...But I'm pro-life because I believe life begins at conception, and I believe that we should do everything possible to protect that life because it is the centerpiece of what makes us unique as an American people. We value the life of one as if it's the life of all, and that's why we go out for the 12-year-old Boy Scout in North Carolina when he's lost... because we value life, and it's what separates us from the Islamic jihadists who are out to kill us. They celebrate death. They have a culture of death. Ours is a culture of life." Which is completely not true for lots of reasons, including the death penalty, et cetera, but let's go back and investigate the part about the boy scout.

As it happens, when David Huckabee, one of the two monstrous linebackers the Hucks whelped, was 17 years old, he was a camp counselor for the Boy Scouts. During that time, he took "some part" in the hanging of a stray dog. Nobody can really say what part he took in the incident, but I would assume, considering what I know about redneck shitheels and what I know about teenage boys en masse, that he either allowed younger boys to do the act or led it himself. And maybe he was just a kid and didn't know any better, but at 17 years old, I knew better than to kill things. And since I am not a supreme court justice, I can make a judgment, however far-fetched, based on the look in David Huckabee's eyes. And I'll tell you right now, I don't like what I see there. Not even a little bit. I'm also not a big fan of the fact that the Rev. Huckabee made an effort to make the hanging dog go away, in an effort to be shed of all that unpleasantness and preserve the illusion of his family's perfect high-and-whitey whiteness.

I might already be too liberal (even though I've got a healthy dose of self-loathing), but now's as good a time as any to point out something very basic with regard to the sanctity of life: if you're going to apply it, you've got to smear it on thick, with a heavy hand and an even coat. And it's possible that what I'm saying is influenced by the fact that, as I write this, the 132nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is being broadcast live, and a dog I know and have thrown toys with is there, showing and looking great, and I am missing my own Lola, and I'm missing every dog I've ever loved before Lola, and the Pedigree commercials with the homeless dogs are starting to get to me, but right now, I have very little tolerance for cruelty upon weakness.

I don't know how the Huckabee family handled David's misjudgment, and it's not really any of my business. I do know, however, that wrapped up in the hanging of one stray dog by one privileged white governor's son is a parable that speaks to the cruelty we consistently wage on things that are weaker than us. I'm not just talking about dogs. I'm talking about how thousands of black people who waded through the panic of the brown water in New Orleans and got no help because they were too poor to vote republican. I'm thinking about the kids on the free lunch program who eat food promoted by the USDA, at the special request of the manufacturers who make it. I'm thinking about the people without health care, me included. And I'm thinking about Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, who said the truest thing I've ever heard: "Deliberate cruelty is the one unforgivable sin," and I'm thinking about how I see it literally everywhere. And if I was having milk and cookies with Mike Huckabee tonight and his kitchen table, I'd tell him that I think it's a sin to use the compassion we were given selectively, applying it to unborn children but not grown men, to boys but not dogs. I think it's a sin to shoot ducks because it's fun. And I think it's a sin to cover the sins of your son because they're politically inconvenient.

I've been wrestling with God lately; or maybe it's more appropriate to note that I've always wrestled with God, but sometimes it descends into biting and kicking and becomes less like wrestling and more like wrassling.

I am a preacher's daughter. I am the director of a charitable Christian mission proving aid to African orphans. I descend from a family of lay ministers, deacons, elders and church organists, as well as faith healers, root doctors and kitchen witches. I went to a Christian elementary school where the rod was not spared and the child was not spoiled (I got my ass whipped in Jesus' name more than once). I have been to church services with Jimmy Carter. My business cards have a piece of New Testament scripture on them. Today, this very day, I spent an hour debating the finer points of the book of Micah. And I have defined myself as the least Christian, most secular of the Secular Humanists. I curl my nose up at the mention of Jesus, and prefer to call him Jeebus because I don't like the word in my mouth. I have a hard time eating food that's been blessed (because it makes it taste like Jeebus). At sixteen, I rallied my doubting soul and made one more push toward "the foot of the cross," asking to be immersion baptized. Less than two years later, I'd walked away from the church and Jeebus in disgust, content with my choice for burning in hell, if there was a hell, and then (as now) I didn't believe in such superstitious nonsense. I quit wrestling and marched my fat ass out the door, and took up being a Jew, and a latent, shitty, nonobservant one at that. And seriously, who the fuck would want to be a Christian? The religion that inspired the Crusades and launched witch trials? The faith that gives us dubious, irritating religious broadcasting with preachers with poofy, Mitt Romney hair, the one that relishes gay-bashing, the dogma behind which a pack of bloodthirsty chickenhawks are hiding while they send American men and women to kill and be killed? Yeah, so where do I sign the fuck up for that, huh? Whatever Christianity may be today, it's not the faith of my great-grandparents.

But over Christmas, I realized-- possibly for the first time-- that my issues with Christianity have way more to do with Christians than anything else. It all came to a head when I drove past the church where I grew up-- a freakish, 1960's monolith filled with abstract stained glass and low, itchy green polyester pew covers. When I say that I grew up there, I'm not kidding. My parents were married there. My grandmother played the organ and taught Sunday school for a zillion years. I was there for preschool, kindergarten, Saturday night teen lockups, Sunday morning services, Sunday evening potluck dinners, Wednesday nights for choir practice and Thursdays for youth group. The church was as much a part of my identity as my last name, and when I'm home in Florida, I usually drive through the parking lot to see how ratty and disheveled it's become. As I drove by this time, I took notice of the sign out front, which said two things that felt kind of like being kicked in the spine, twice. The first: "God Bless America." The second: "Welcome Charter Members."

I think we should put a moratorium on asking God to bless America, especially when it's a euphemism for asking to have our most aggressive and violent and un-Christlike actions blessed. Maybe we should start asking God to bless this whole world he made, and not just our little slice of it, hmm? Better yet, how about we shift the tone of our prayers from gimmegimmegimme to thankyouthankyouthankyou. I could live the rest of my life without hearing a Lee Greenwood song or seeing a "God Bless America" bumper sticker and never miss it. Change it to "Thank You, God, For the Blessings You've Heaped on America," and then maybe we'll talk.

The second part of the sign didn't piss me off as much as it broke my heart. My grandmother moved to Florida a month after this church was founded, and just barely missed charter membership, something she occasionally lamented. Now that the church has grown stagnant and is near death, they threw an old home week for the almost-dead oldtimers still singing from the 50-year-old hymnals. My grandmother didn't get an invitation to the festivities, even though she's been a member for 50 years. I came home after I saw the sign and fired off a nastygram to the current minister, and here's an excerpt:

Dear Dr. _____,

...My grandmother Helen has forgotten her former life and church community, but I never expected that her church would abandon her. Though I would have hoped that before the form letters to inactive members were sent, someone in the church office would have caught my grandmother’s name, I can see now that it wasn’t an oversight. For all of Helen’s commitment to _____ Presbyterian, the church never returned the favor. I’m heartbroken that the church showed no concern for her wellbeing, but I’m not surprised by it. (Even as I write this, my grandmother has been in a long-term care facility for three years and not a single member or lay minister has called to find out how she's doing.) After I left the church, I discovered that not every congregation is as miserably bitter and unwelcoming as this one. Not every church gossips wildly about who’s on the prayer list and why, or tolerates the hissing criticisms and sneering gossip about the clothes, cars and families of the members. Other church families make an effort to behave as real families, supporting the congregants through crises of faith and life. Other churches believe that everyone has a part in the ministry and encourage the faithful to have a relationship with God that goes beyond Sunday morning. I left _____ Presbyterian because I’ve never felt further from God and as spiritually hollow and bankrupt as I have sitting in that sanctuary on _____ Boulevard, and from the look of the parking lot on Sunday mornings, it would appear that I’m not the only one who has found the Lord elsewhere.

I live in Atlanta now, where I work for a ministry that provides aid to orphaned and vulnerable children in Africa. Home in _____ for the holidays, I drove past the church and noticed the sign out front: “Welcome Charter Members.” My grandmother’s greatest regret is that she missed true charter membership at _____ Presbyterian by a matter of months; she told me stories of Sunday school classes meeting in station wagons before the first stone had been laid for a building, and she was proud of her participation in the construction of the permanent sanctuary. My only solace now is that Helen is lost in the fog of her disease and cannot see what her church has become.

I've seen the worst of human behavior within this church, and I've seen it tolerated and condoned by those who would pretend to live in the manner of Christ. I've seen families driven out by the elitist favoritism toward those families who hold the power. I've seen those with needs-- mental or physical disability, struggles with addiction, acute and crippling poverty-- frozen out of the church because their spiritual hunger made the other members uncomfortable. I’m reminded of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where he laments “For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be… I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.” (2Cr 12:20) What has happened to this church my grandmother loved despite its human flaws and weaknesses? When did it become acceptable to forget and disrespect the elderly (Lev 19:32)? What happened to defending those without families and protecting widows (Deut 24:17)? And when the time comes, how will your church justify this as Christian behavior?

With a heavy heart,


Angela ______
Former Member

So yeah. I wrestle. I wrestle, and I stay pissed off all the fucking time, and I try to use that anger like rocket fuel, a volatile solid propellant but an excellent motivator, and I try to control this bitterness, even though it's clear to me that I haven't, especially when my best and closest friends feel like they have to ask me, "would it be okay with you if I got you a Christmas present? I mean, you won't be mad or upset?" Of course I'll be mad and upset, but not at prezzies. I'm pissed because good people use a good idea to justify a whole pantload of really bad shit. (A neighbor of mine said this the other day: "It's a shame we're gonna hafta kill all them Muslims, 'cause they all going straight to Hell." No. Fucking. Kidding.) I'm pissed because I find myself quoting scripture to a minister in my most sanctimonious voice because I have no idea how else to communicate how hurt I feel. I'm pissed that I stay mad and upset, but more than anything, I stay disappointed.

So two nights ago, I had drinks (and smokes!) with a new friend, a preacher's son who would seem to bear much of the same theological worldview that I do, with all the inclusivity and self-reflection and meditation and a lot less of my rancorous spleen and vitriol. He has no less cause to be bitter than I do, and possibly more, but he wears it well and keeps his scathing criticisms to a minimum. While we talked, I focused a little more on what it is that I hated about Christianity. The lame, saccharine music. The lucite acrylic podiums. The suits and the raised hands and the opposition to civil rights for homosexuals and that insipid, ridiculous method of saying "Praise the Lord!" all the time. The wrathful preachers who call fire down on the heads of their congregants before they pass a collection plate and go trade a blowjob for crystal meth. Most especially, though (and this thought only occurred to me after a half a pack of cigarettes and my second beer), I hate that Christianity-- a faith about love and sacrifice-- has become an excuse to be a worse person than you were before. Think about it. How many Christians do you know who use their church membership as an excuse for judgmental, arrogant behavior, a sort of carte blanche permission to shove arrogant, wrong-minded bigotry on others and call it the "good news" of Jesus (again, guys, dude's been dead for 2,000 years. There's no flash news to report)? How many people do you know who got the hell out of the church (whatever church they were raised in) the minute they went to college and generally seem like happier, more self-accepting people now than they ever were before (me included)?

I don't believe in angels. I don't believe in the age of miracles or original sin or celebrity sightings of the Virgin Mary on the sides of buildings or sides of toast. I don't believe in a six-day creation myth, the second covenant, the blood of the lamb or "on the third day He rose again, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead." I don't buy any of it, and I think it's all one big adventure in missing the fucking point. But I do believe in compassion, human decency and dying for who and what you love. Those feel like noble virtues, and the kind of thing I'd really like to find in a church, and not buried beneath a dubious political agenda and a pile of Falwellian hatespeak. So I'm going to church this Sunday. Not the enthusiastic marathon four-hour services of my preacher dad, where there are tambourines and anointing oil and people get the spirit and fall out and hit the floor. I can't handle that now and never could. But I found a wee small mellow Unitariam Universalist congregation, the kind of place that holds equinox and solstice services and blesses dogs and cats, that calls their Sunday morning worship a "celebration of life," the sort of church that marries gay people with delightful frequency (void where prohibited by law). I'm looking for the sort of place where God might be.

I'm not the first one to wrestle with God, and I'm certainly not the best at it, either. Jacob wrestled all night with a mysterious stranger, just outside of Canaan. He was about to get his ass beat by his hapless, fuckup twin brother Esau, and he was kind of ready to throw himself on his brother's mercy when this mysterious dude shows up. Sometimes he's a man (Gen 32:24). Sometimes he's an angel (Hosea 12:4). Nobody knows for sure, but he wrestles with Jacob all night until daybreak, and when he can't beat Jacob (because, even though he might die the next day, Jacob's not ready to go tits-up and forfeit), he blesses him instead, and calls him Israel, meaning "one who wrestled with God."

Jacob turns around and names this place Penuel, meaning "face of God." He said later, "God is in this place, and I wasn't aware of it."

Over the Christmas holiday, I was rooting around in some of my grandma's old things, including her high school year book from 1937 ("Helen-n-Dorothy BFF4LIFE!! Glee Club Roxx!!"), some crap my grandfather stole off a dead Nazi in Germany, and-- miracles!-- a stash of cookbooks. What's so astonishing about this is that my grandmother-- and don't doubt for a second that I love her more than just about everything else-- is (was) a shitty cook. Seriously. Long-standing family joke was that she used the smoke detector as a timer, and kept a pointy stick in the kitchen just for poking the reset button when the alarm went off. Not long ago, my dad (who somehow was nourished through adolescence on her inedible creations) and I were talking about the way my grandma fried an egg. She didn't, you know, just fry it. She cranked the burner up until the coil pulsed and glowed like the core of the sun, then she tempered the pan on it for a while until the nonstick coating scorched and curled, and then she dropped a half pound of pork lard right in the middle of it, and then cracked an egg over it, and while the poor egg spit grease, she paddled hot lard over the surface with a spatula. She said this made the edges of the whites "lacey." The melted bits of Teflon also made the eggs carcinogenic, but that's just an added bonus.

So I wasn't surprised when I found this, the Joys of Jell-O. Because you bet your ass there's joy in Jell-O. Joy, and mirth, and winsome merrimaking and gaiety and jubilant revelry and rejoicing. There is serious joy to be had in Jell-O, and because I love you and also my grandma, I'm going to share some of this wiggly exultation with you.



First, the sweets.



Party people in the house, meet Birthday Surprise. As in "Surprise! You're not getting a fucking cake this year, kid! And by the way, you're adopted!" The recipe-- which, by the way, isn't rocket science, it's just a plain ring mold with some ice cream plopped in the middle (which means it kind of doubles as a soothing hemorrhoidal sitz bath, if needed). This should not have required the brilliant minds of a scientific test kitchen to dream up, but maybe, because we're just a few pages into the book, they're starting us out easy. The recipe indicates that this "shimmering, colorful ring of gelatin filled with ice cream can replace the traditional cake." Why, of course it can. Because your kid would much rather look at loop of hydrolyzed collagen extracted from the connective tissues of pigs, colored red and simonized to a high-gloss showroom shine, than stick his finger in some buttercream frosting. And since little Andy's birthday is in July, you get the added benefit of watching your kid cry while this bad idea melts all over the picnic table and makes a mess of your tablecloth and parenting. Way to go, Ma. Better start saving for therapy now.




This is Crown Jewel Dessert, AKA Broken Window Glass Cake. Basically, this is little squares of Jell-O, suspended in Cool-Whip. So immediately, we see the creative license here. They're calling it "cake," which, if you ask me, is a pretty liberal reassignment of the word. Kind of like beefcake, or enriched yellowcake uranium. So, ever wonder what it would be like to eat terrazzo flooring? Ever fall asleep at night wonder what your peas would look like whooshed up in mashed potatoes, except the peas were square and the potatoes took the shape of a Soviet-era civic monument? Ever consider eating a cool, refreshing dessert inspired by Krystallnacht? Here's your chance.

I'd like to add at this point, while we're still discussing desserts, that there is a recipe in this book for Key Lime Pie (a proper noun, according to the Kraft Foods copywriters). Those of you who have lived with me, dated me, been married to me or are related to me by blood or marriage know that I can sho nuff cook, and even better, I can bake, and the one thing I make that's better than anything else in the world is key lime pie. There's not a picture here of what the Jell-O folks consider to be key lime pie, and that's probably a good thing, since just reading the recipe is kind of sending me into a panic attack. The subtext here says that this pie is "a delightful, luscious pie that was created in the Florida Keys, where limes grow big and juicy." I don't want to get too deep into it, but key limes are a special lime, like Persian limes or Meyer lemons. And they don't grow big and juicy, not ever. They're the size of ping pong balls, and they're yellow, and they're as bitter as I am. Evidently, when writing a Jell-O cookbook, there's no editorial assistant around to do some quick fact-checking. Additionally, I cannot imagine making a pie that calls for sour cream, bitters and food coloring and calling it key lime anything. I'm just saying.



Okay, on to the savories.



Evidently, once upon a time when our country was high on post-war enthusiasm and brimming with culinary innovation, Jell-O made salad gelatin. Okay, so what that means is that, umm, where normal Jell-O-- the kind we use today to suspend shots of vodka-- is flavored with artificial fruity flavors, there was once a now-extinct race of Jell-O favors that were instead vegetable flavored. In fact, the lineup included celery, mixed vegetable, tomato and Italian salad flavors, and the general idea here is that you use these cold, salty, wiggly matrices to suspend your most favorite meats and veggies. It's an innovative, creative way to take a perfectly good meal and gross your family the fuck out.

Pictured here (click 'em, they get bigger) is the Sea Dream salad, as in, you took pills, passed out and dreamed you made Jell-O with onion, cucumber and cayenne pepper, and then, insult to injury, dropped a bunch of frozen shrimp in the middle of it. Sally Hostess wonders why none of her bridge friends ever want to play at her house.

Beneath that is the Vegetable Trio. What the picture doesn't tell you is that the trio consists of carrots, cabbage and spinach, sealed up in a force field of mixed vegetable flavor gelatin. Imagine that you were recovering from taking the aforementioned pills. You're on your sofa with the curtains pulled, watching Ricki Lake reruns with a whiskey sour in your hand to calm your delicate stomach. One of your bridge friends knocks on the door and presents you with this. She shows it to you, and then she shakes the plate a little to make it wiggle. Now I ask you, can you make it to the bathroom before you vomit, or do you just double over right there and hose it off your porch later?




Ring-Around-The-Tuna, known in some parts as The Rimjob. This is where you take a can of tuna, some celery, cucumber, vinegar, onion and olives and mix that up with lime Jell-O. I'm not kidding about the lime part. Even with mixed vegetable flavor available to them, the test kitchen chefs decided that the flavor combination to really set off the tuna and olives and onion would be lime. I don't know which is more insulted here, the dead fish inside the mold, or the boiled-down pig bones that actually make up the mold.

Or, Why I Just Filed For A Concealed Weapons Permit.

Last night my lover and I talked about Meredith Emerson, the pretty, likable, charming girl who just moved here from Colorado and almost immediately went missing while hiking with her dog Ella. The timeline and some details of Meredith's disappearance can be found here. Be forewarned, if you haven't followed this case closely, it's fucking heartbreaking. As far as the authorities are telling us, here's the rundown: Meredith goes hiking. A creepy dude named Gary Hilton, known for being, well, a creepy dude, was seen walking behind her with a collapsible steel police asp. Meredith vanished. Ella's leash is found. Later, Meredith's wallet and some of her bloody clothes are found in a dumpster. Hilton is arrested while trying to clean blood from the back of his minivan. In exchange for the prosecutor agreeing to forgo the death penalty, the creepy dude leads authorities to Meredith's body. According to the coroner, she was kept alive for maybe three days and then decapitated after death. Remember what Sophia said in The Color Purple? "A girl ain't safe in a world full of mens."

All of this causes me to think about a few things. When I first moved up here, I went camping one bitterly cold night up on Red Top Mountain, near an Army Ranger Training Station. (As it happens, my lover was a Ranger.) Sometime after midnight, I was overwhelmed by the sense that something just wasn't right, and I left the tent to sleep in The Dreadnought with the doors locked and a machete in my hand. The next day, recounting the story of the supershitty camping excursion, a friend mentioned that those mountains, all part of the Appalachian trail, are way haunted. Like, notoriously so.

Listen, I've been up there. I'm promising you that those woods almost certainly harbor skunk apes. Places like this generally enjoy a local cryptid, a thing that someone swears that someone they know has seen by the edge of the brush at twilight. (Two nights ago, I was outside smoking a cigarette at 2:00am when I heard breathing and footsteps coming toward me through the leaves at the edge of my back yard. I nearly shit myself.) The Pine Barrens have the Jersey Devil. Massachusetts has the extremely creepy Dover Demon. Georgia boasts the aquatic Altamaha-Ha. There's the Bray Road Beast, the baykok, and La Llorona. And Jesus, don't forget the Mothman. All of the woodland creepies aside (thanks, lover, for freaking me out with the Proctor Valley Monster), the worst part about the North Georgia mountains isn't what's a mystery. It's the confirmed facts. There is a place not far from where Meredith was killed called Slaughter Gap, near Revenge Creek on Blood Mountain. With a name like that, nobody needs a reason not to go there, especially single women with sweet-natured dogs. I'm sorry for Meredith's murder, and I'm sorry that we live in a world where there is danger in just being a woman. But there are bad dudes in the woods. There are bad dudes in the swamps and there are bad dudes in the desert. As much as I may (or may not) enjoy a refreshing hike, I can guaran-goddamned-tee you that I'd enjoy being raped by a 61-year-old man and then decapitated a lot less. And so, because I am less and less tolerant of crime against women (why is this not considered a hate crime? Kill a black guy because he's black, or kill a woman because she's a woman?), I'll be carrying a gun.

I'm not looking to shoot anyone. And truthfully, I'm not exactly what crims and baddies look for when they're scoping for vulnerable women. I'm big, I'm a little intimidating and I walk with a loose fist and a confident stride. Still, I'm not at all willing to become a girl on the news. Tomorrow, me and Uncle Rupert's .45 are heading to the gun range to get to know each other. When we're good friends, he'll stay with me at all times. When that happens, my mom can feel a little safer knowing I'm on my guard, the way I feel better knowing she's packing heat in her purse.

Ladies-- mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, friends-- please protect yourselves. Skunk apes are one thing. Predatory men in a society that mourns women without protecting them is entirely different.

It's an accidental Old Home Week, and all the old heads from high school are in town, visiting their parents for Christmas. Most of us were part of a gifted and talented program that kept us segregated from the rest of the general (read: average) population, and most of us have gone on to do wildly incredible things, like live in Africa, become famous fashion photographers, sell luxury doorknobs and deliver pizzas. A disproportionate number of us have created careers for ourselves in the non-profit world, and we stood around like drinking like weary, reluctant altruists. It's been at least ten years since I've seen most of them, and even longer for some; last night we converged like a rare swarm of cicadas on a shitty local dive bar, a sort of serendipitous class reunion for those of us who flatly eschew class reunions on principle.

Much of the evening was spent talking about how we hadn't seen each other in sooooo long, it's been like forever ohmygawd! Austin and I spent a little while discussing the very real and serious possibility of hooking his dad up with my mom, which allowed me to fantasize about having the two awesomest stepbrothers ever, before I recognized the unlikelihood of such a fortuitous match. Mostly, it was catching up and getting a good buzz on, and we stood around and talked about college and shit and drank Guinness like they're gonna stop making it or something. Totally not bloggable. (Fuck, I hate that blog is a verb.)

One thing happened, though. Just one thing. Standing at the bar between my old friend Austin and my new (but should have known him before) friend Sean, I was waiting to get served by the overwhelmed bartender when a guy leaned over, tugged lightly on my favorite pink scarf (so pink it's beyond pink and well into pank) and said, "Is it really that cold in here?"

Perfectly logical question, considering it was 75 degrees last night. Except this guy was in a mock turtleneck. Not even a real turtleneck, but a turtleneck that pretends. Look, you see me at the bar, I'm talking to two men (one of which is gay and the other has a boyfriend, but you don't know that yet), and you think, hey, I'm gonna talk to that girl, and you've got all the time in the world to practice your line in your head, and what should fall out of your stupig gaping snackhole but some jackass comment about my softest, fair-trade, bamboo fiber scarf?

Austin and Sean stopped talking and looked at him. Just looked. "My scarf?" I said. "Dude. You're wearing a mock turtleneck. I think you don't got shit to say."

The fellow sort of tripped all over himself to apologize and assure me that he liked my look. (Just a note: I don't have a look. If it's black, red or white, I might wear it. I pair clothes based on what has legs and what has sleeves. It's not really a look. It's a method of covering my body because human beings have endoskeletal systems that leave us vulnerable, plus, it is a social construct in modern society to cover one's cash and prizes. It's not a look by any standard.) I finally sneer and freeze him out to make him go away, and he shows up again three minutes later asking to bum two cigarettes, one for him and one for his friend, who should have dressed as Christopher Walken for Halloween.

"Wait, you clowned my scarf and now you want smokes? Are you out of your mind? Who are you? Who raised you with manners like that?"

"I know, I'm sorry, but I just need two. Let me buy you a drink. Get whatever you want and put it on my tab. Just tell that bartender it goes on Charles's tab." He actually said Charles's. Not Charles'. Like Charles plural. Charleseseseses. "Come over by the pool table, come hang out with me and my friend instead of these losers here." He motioned to Sean and Austin, who were possibly the least loserish men there. Sean especially, who has more degrees than I've had hair colors, and later launched into a diatribe regarding greco-roman wresting and the homoeroticism of the full mounts and full nakeds therein.

"They're not losers. They're my friends. And neither one of them dressed themselves in a mock turtleneck this morning, which I think gives them a jump on you, hoss."

Charleses slurked off to drop quarters in the pool table and I ordered a double shot of Johnny Walker Blue, with two dashes of bitters. $18.50 a shot. And I told the bartender to put it on Charleses tab.

It's sweater weather, folks. And not just because it's 55 degrees outside in Central Florida and all the Detroit snowbirds are flipping their shit about the pipes freezing in their trailer in the retirement community for active seniors. No, it's the other kind of sweater weather, the one that is entirely seasonal and not a bit environmental. It's Christmas sweater weather.

Hey, know what I hate worse than Xmas? Xmas clothes! In all the variations-- sweater with snowmen/poinsettia/xmas tree/reindeer, sweater in random red/green Cosby pattern, sweater with eye-catching sequins, battery-operated lights, digital countdown to Xmas, sweatshirt with screenprint, applique or Donna Dewberry-style painted holly, and even the mock turtleneck with tiny candy canes. Fucking hate them all, and I'll extend that blanket dismissal to all clothing that could be called festive, cheerful, snazzy or fun. And even though I love an ironic joke as much as the next satirist, I dislike the seasonal wear so much that the "sweater parties," thrown with tongue planted firmly in cheek, are still not funny to me. (That said, I once saw a picture of my lover in a Cosby, circa 1991, and that was so funny I nearly pissed myself laughing, but it's completely case-specific.)

But hey, it's Christmas sweater season, and it's also presidential primary season, and while Barak Obama outright insists he goes to church, let's think about the sort of Christmas sweaters our hopefuls might wear. Assuming that Ron Paul wouldn't be caught dead (literally) in one, and Fred Thompson wouldn't abide such nonsense, that leaves a healthy pack of candidates that could use a little festive holiday conversation piece on their chests as they make the flesh-pressing rounds. What kind of sweaters would they wear? And will we get lucky and spot one?

Let's start with the easy target: Mike Huckabee. Dude is straight-up made for the sweater, as is his entire Wonderbread, AIDS-free Arkansan family, who sent out this gem of a card back when Mike was fat (a trait that might make me like him better, and so it's a pity he went and slimmed down). Though there is not a sweater present, you can see that these people own them, and possibly more than one each, even though one sweater is most certainly plenty. (By the way, notice how slimming those stripes are. My grandma was totally right!) As for sweater factor, I give the Family Huckabee two peace doves, a "merry kissmas!," one fuzzy Santa applique and possibly a "shop 'til you drop" for the Missus. Yeah, I know there's a lot going on with him, and I know he's a stand-up guy, if you can stomach Baptist creationists, and I know everyone really digs his candor, but he's way out in left field here, as in, public nativity territory, and even that kind of bores me. He's one giant yawn-fest. Even his festive holiday sweatshirts are probably pretty dull. And by the way, nobody tell my mom he's got a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, or she might up and vote for him.

(Additionally, Mitt Romney's family has enormous Christmas sweater potential, but considering the size of that brood, that's a lot of yarn to knit into sweaters. Are all those kids hers? Does Mrs. Romney need to have her cooch resleeved?)

Tom Tancredo. Aw, hell, how do you even kid about this guy? He's like Santa himself, if Santa gave tasers to good little white Protestant patriots and threw bricks through the windows of non-English speakers. Here's a dude who refused to vote yea or nay on a House bill recognizing Ramadan (he stated "present" instead). When confronted, he bitterly countered that no bill supporting Christmas would ever make it off the floor, and so, in the Christmas spirit, he thinks the Muslims can all go fuck themselves. (For the record, a resolution recognizing Christmas did make it to the floor, and Tancredo voted "yea.") If you think the War on Christmas was bad now, wait until Tancredo gets elected President and starts burning the dens of liberal iniquity. Christmas sweaters, sweatshirts and mock turtlenecks will be absolutely fucking manditory, and they better goddamned well be in English. No Joyeux Noel or Feliz Navidad. President Tancredo thinks that the "cult of multiculturalism is destroying Western civilization." Under President Tancredo (who maintains the Lord told him to run for a fourth term, even though he'd promised the Colorado voters only three) , if you don't wear a Christmas sweater, that's treason. And Tom Tancredo thinks treason should be punishable by death. Do not be caught without jinglebell earrings, ladies. They might save your life.

John Edwards. Okay, look. I dislike this guy. Even though I'm a democrat and even though I once voted for him by default, me no likey. Not that there's anything especially distasteful about him; just the opposite. There's no warm fuzzies. And pity the fool who gets linked to the unsavory memory of John "Hey, why not the long face?" Kerry. Edwards is about as interesting as a graphing calculator.

So, since The Guy With The Hair isn't giving me much to work with, let's investigate la familia. The middle daughter isn't a creepy as Rick Santorum's girl, certainly, so no criticism there. I can't figure out if Elizabeth's eyes are shut (who was this photographer?) or if she's gazing adoringly at the children she shot from her vadge like Pez candies, but either way, I'm spooked. The little guy seems to be grabbing his crotch, and I see a plaintive, "Daddy, I gotta go potty!" coming any minute as the young mister gets bored with saying cheese over and over. And then there's Cate. She's the anti-Jenna. Supple crossed legs end at demure flats. Tidy but definitely, umm, natural eyebrows indicate she takes care of herself but she's not especially vain. And by the way, smartypants boys, she's at Harvard Law. (This might impress you but doesn't impress me. I am, however, made to feel old when I realize there is nobody at Havard Law that I might have slept with anymore. All my old lovers have graduated or, more likely, dropped out.) Personally, I think Miss Cate is delightful. I also think her dad is not above exploiting her, Hurricane Katrina victims or his own wife's Laura Ashley sofa to earn my vote. (Hint: it's not working.) As for the sweater factor: I don't think Edwards is sweater material. I give him one Christmas tie with presents and trees on it, and a pair of supersexy Christmas boxers for when he and the Missus are alone. "Guess what I got you for Christmas this year, honey! It's my dick in a box!" He's thoroughly unelectable.

There are others, of course. Bill Richardson gets a snarky sweatshirt with lambs that says "Fleece Navidad." Hillary gets the NPR favorite with the cartoon nativity and cartoon bubble that says "It's a girl!" Barack Obama has no sweater factor whatsoever, but I'm willing to break out mistletoe in great handfuls for that man. Dennis Kucinich would wear... um, I have no idea. Does it matter? Christmas sweaters are tacky and embarrassing, and guess what-- so far, the presidential primaries have been equally tacky and embarrassing. It's been a funny couple of months, and not funny like ha ha, funny like socially uncomfortable. The debates have been irreverent and not in the good way, and the candidates have made pie-in-the-face asses of themselves as they behave like playground bullies. Nice Christmas spirit, fuckers. Go put on a sweater.

Bithlo is a place, immediately east of Fort Christmas, Florida (which is why we call it The Nightmare Before Christmas). But the word "Bithlo" is commonly applied to an annual event, the Orlando Speedworld Crash-A-Rama Night of Destruction and Figure Eight Schoolbus Races. Obviously, since this is the only thing of interest that ever happens in Bithlo, the name of the town has become synonymous with the thing for which it is notorious. When someone asks, "You goin' to Bifflo this year?" You know what they mean.

It's an experience. The smell of the St. Johns River, rotting and tannic, the smell of the mosquito repellant, scorched asphalt, the scalpy smell of the crowd, the rendered fat of the funnel cake fryers. I came home to Florida just for this.

I come from a long line of racecar drivers. My grandfather raced. My dad raced. My mom's dad drove a coal truck with dodgy brakes down a steep and wet mountainside in Tennessee. We are long-haul truck drivers and pit crew and mechanics, though this is something I keep to myself most times. Though I regularly needle Preacher about the lowbrow entertainment value of GoFastTurnLeft (i.e., stock car racing), I have a deep and perverse love of demolition. It's part of my barcoding, and though I am a season ticket holder at symphonies and philharmonics, and though I have removed myself from my country roots as far as possible, now and again I'll eat a raw oyster and feel compelled to smash some shit up. I live for this, for the bone-crunching, for the engine fires, for the snapped axles and blown tires and the sparks that fly as raw metal gauges a crooked line in the track on the second turn.

There was demolition, redneck skiing (where the back tires on a front-wheel drive car have been removed and replaced with metal sleds, causing the car to fishtail wildly, to the delight of the sellout crowd), there was roller derby (which involves a "puck car," meaning it doesn't run and gets pushed around the track by other cars). There was a ladies-only minivan demolition derby, which, sadly, was about the lamest, slowest catfight I've ever seen. And then there were schoolbuses knocking one another over. Big old cheesewagons, some with their safety lights flashing and stop signs flared, bouncing through the gap on a figure-8 track like an ornery pack of wild dogs. And at the end of the night, they brought out a jet car and burned down a stack of compact cars. Astonishing.

Viva Bithlo.