THE BEST BEST THAT COLD HAPPEN.
THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN.
THE REAL THING.
Each segment recounting what its title suggests. The first chunk being a series of best possible scenarios which entail amazing coincidences and startling encounters with wonderful pay offs. Serendipity is the word of the day and the kick in the step of the happy traveler. You would hitch-hike everyday if they all turned out the way these do.
The second chunk is an unrelenting saga of degradation and humiliation. Murphy's law is but a harmless by-law compared to the horrors John Water's imagination lets loose upon himself. If anyone doubts the interior existence of the John Waters of old and his ability to make you gag on a monstrous notion ought to struggle along with him on the ghastly leg of his journey across America, A couple of bits made me groan and feel a little light headed with revulsion. Ah,just like the good old days.
The last third of the book is the actual real world journey Waters undertook. He is a man in his mid-sixties now, a place in space and time he talks about with disarming honesty. That is an old face staring back at him from motel and restroom mirrors. Yet he is still full of the bear and enjoying life. Mindful that some of his beloved chums and dear friends are no longer so. Indestructible youth is behind him but the indomitable spirit of the natural born weirdo still rages within him. I have often felt that the spirit of man is like a scowling pacing monkey locked in a cage he did not build that occasionally throws poo at you and you just have to learn to duck.
And to laugh.
And laugh you will at this great wee travel book. There are even those who might read the first segment and think surely that belongs in the second segment because that reaction in itself is quite funny and altogether human. Something I have always loved about the peculiar stable of actors and actresses, performers and personalities he surrounded himself with in his movies and probably in his life. Surely one of the most bizarre assemblages of talent in any medium. My own favorite of that talent pool being the extraordinary Edith Massey. That wonderful face and that wonderful voice, quite unlike anyone I had ever seen before in a movie.
BABS,WHERE DO EGGS COME FROM?
Tennesse Williams never wrote dialogue like that. The things John Waters had pop out of that woman's mouth. I have sometimes wondered how they met, John and Edith, what strange cosmic alchemy drew them together to produce something like The Egg Lady. There is a beautiful coda to their relationship in this book, one I will not spoil by saying too much.
Anyway, you ever feel like looking for car trouble that covers the waterfront check out Carsick.
Parking on a bookshelf near you. Sometime soon.
