Saturday, June 12, 2010

Indiana, You've Got A Problem

As I'm sure you all know because everybody who reads this knows me (Feel free to point this out in the comments, Isaac), I recently drove a U-Haul from Vermont to Minnesota, which is only marginally more fun than it sounds. Due to a tragic error on the part of the founding fathers, this meant that I had to drive through Indiana on my journey. Now, having grown up in Vermont, I never paid much attention to Indiana during my younger, more vulnerable years, knowing it only as the place where Hoosiers was filmed, I think, and where John Mellencamp probably came from, and hopefully can be sent back to. Having spent somewhere upwards of two hours in the state, I am now a fully qualified Indiana expert or something of the like, and would like to share my misery with you. So please, join me as you learn everything there is to know about the only state in the union to rival Delaware in terms of utter dullness! Hey, where did everybody go?

The first thing I noted upon driving through Indiana was that there was absolutely nothing there, an observation that the remainder of the trip would utterly fail to contradict. In fact, I believe that on I-90, Indiana actually had more rest areas than exits. Which is amazing. Fortunately, the horizon does not detract from the nothing throughout the state, as anytime I stood up I immediately became the tallest thing in sight. I thought I saw a hill once, but it turned out to be a dream I had. About Indiana. Worst. Dream. Ever. But despite all of this, there is something very distinct about Indiana beyond the remarkable number of Christian rock stations on the FM band (Many of which were absolutely hilarious. Picture a more bombastic version of Creed. Now don't picture it. Aren't you happier the second way?), and this is the number of public service/notice posters at each and every rest area, all of which were about meth. Specifically, the fact that you should not do or manufacture it. Now, I thought this was a fairly well-known sentiment due to meth's rather severe effects, but apparently after spending enough time in Indiana, these start to look rather appealing, which I can actually understand.

So that's Indiana in a nutshell. Jesus rock and meth. Thanks for joining me as I experience bad travel-related flashbacks. You are now a fully qualified Indianaologist or something. Someone should probably give me a government grant for all I'm doing to publicize the state here to only people who know me.

As a postscript, Indiana also did feature the city of Gary, but I'm going to file that under 'meth'.

9 comments:

kathy g said...

Once the Michael Jackson museum is completed, Gary - and subsequently all the rest of the state - will become a hotbed of tourist activity and hence a rocking good time. Then you'll be driving down to Indiana every weekend!

Lemming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lemming said...

You know Mike I've sure enjoyed Good Omens more than my Mom. While I finished it in three days, she's still around page sixty. Oh and good blog post.

UncleRick said...

Mike, David Letterman...so there! Oh, and David Letterman's mom.

Amy said...

all this because of Indiana? clearly you haven't driven through Iowa....

Ben Dandrea said...

From what I've heard Oklahoma tops the list when it comes to utterly dull states

HOLLA(R) said...

Ben, thanks for the heads-up. I am currently making plans to never go there.

And Amy, no I have not. And I hope to keep it that way.

HOLLA(R) said...

My Mom - Are they really making one of those? In Gary. You're making this up. But nice try.

Isaac - Glad you liked it. It's rather spectacular, and explains what happened to all those old cassette tapes I used to leave in the car.

Uncle Rick - Is he really from Indiana? Congrats to him for getting out.

Lemming said...

That was one of my favorite parts of the book Mike. The book was really funny, one of my favorite books.