This week I’ve been preparing for my triumphant return to H-Town next weekend to see my one-act and collect my royalties, which have been upped from three pies to three pies and one trashy romance novel after I valiantly and selflessly agreed to add ten more lines of dialogue at two a.m. I’m not really sure if it’s humanly possible to eat three pies in two days, but I’m excited to find out. You know, FOR SCIENCE.
Anyway, I made a list of all the things I miss about H-Town that I want to be sure to do while I’m there. Then they were all restaurants and I realized I couldn’t eat lunch twelve times on Friday. So I’ve decided to dig deeper, and think about what non-food things I miss about H-Town.
1. On-Ramps
It's like I'm living in the futuristic dystopia... TODAY!
Steven has always said that, unlike him, I’m a “natural Houston driver”, which I assume means “not a total wuss”. I really miss the needless enormity of the Houston highway system. Sure, it ruins the landscape, but I always feel like I’m entering a giant game of pinball as I speed up the oddly inclined on ramps or am about to rocket into a hover car skyscape a la The Jettsons. Sure, North Carolina roads are less intrusive and more in tune with the natural environment, but they make me feel two-thirds less like a super spy.
2. Brian Reinhart
If I were still an English major, I'd make some kind of innuendo about cheese
Sure, I have the Internet, but it’s just not the same. For one thing, making Brian Reinhart the sole villain of all my conspiracy theories was a lot easier when we were at least in the same state. But now that I’m so far away, it’s way harder to pin things like the weather or Internet failure or the scary bugs that attack my porch nightly on him. Rest assured, Brian; everything that goes wrong during Amazing One Act Weekend will be all your fault.
3. The Shoe Hospital
The number of pictures of this on flickr makes me happy
I’ve never actually been inside the Shoe Hospital, but every time I pass by, I’m pleased that a business can not only survive with a giant shoe on their roof, but do well enough to have THREE locations in one city. The fact that one of them is near that giant, shiny armadillo on Kirby is even better. I imagine them having conversations on their off hours late in the night, commiserating about the trials of being giant advertising devices.