earlgreytea68 | My Time in Shreveport (Reply)

This weekend I did a signing at the Barnes & Noble in Shreveport, Louisiana, and it was super-awesome and everyone was DELIGHTFUL. One thing that was noteworthy about the trip right away was that I didn't actually realize it was a six-hour drive each way until a couple of days ago. Oops! That's me planning ahead. But it ended up being a lot of fun and I'm so glad I went! Below are some highlights:

The trip began with me trying to get a hot tea at a fast-food-restaurant-that-shall-remain-nameless. They told me they didn't serve hot tea but they'd be happy to put iced tea in a cup with no ice for me. This is not the same thing, in case you were wondering.

One thing I really like about driving at this time of year around here is that the cotton is in bloom and I think it is beautiful, all these fields that look like they are covered in snow. (Ironically, I drove through the Cotton Capital of the World on my way to Shreveport and did not see any cotton at all there.)

There was an enormous yard sale going on somewhere in either Mississippi, Louisiana, or Arkansas (I have no idea where I was at the time) with a LOT of car parts for sale. So if you're looking for car parts, probably you should drive randomly through those three states. Seems like solid advice, no?

There is a coffee shop on an otherwise deserted country road in Louisiana/Arkansas/Mississippi called Jehovah Java, and if that is not a coffee shop AU begging to be written, I don't know what is.

I saw people stopped talking to each other all over the place duing my drive: in the left-hand turn lanes, on the on-ramps to the highways. Like, cars pulled next to each other, them out of it chatting, like it's not the middle of an actual road. I get these roads don't get a lot of traffic, but...is that actually safe? Are these actually drug deals?

PROTIP: If you are wishing to take a right onto a one-lane highway with a speed limit of 55, and you see my car coming, and you see no cars behind my car for miles and miles and miles--indeed, none are visible at all, and you can see a long way--PLEASE make sure that you turn in front of me to then go thirty miles an hour because I love nothing more than to be stuck behind the ONE OTHER CAR IN SIGHT ON THE ENTIRE ROAD WHO COULDN'T HAVE WAITED FOR ME TO PASS BEFORE TAKING THE TURN OH MY GOD SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE IT DO YOU SEE???

What exactly is a speed zone? Is it just where they change the speed limit to make sure you're paying attention and haven't fallen into a trance?

I did not stop at Uncle Keith's Discount Tobacco but I want you to know it exists.

I am consistently freaked out by low-flying planes. I passed this airfield that I can only assume had planes used for crop-dusting? Is that a thing? My lack of country knowledge is showing. But anyway, the planes were up in the sky doing all these maneuvers and I was all white-knuckled on the steering wheel thinking they were about to crash. And then this morning driving out of Shreveport I think an Air Force plane of some kind flew over my head making a funny sort of noise and scaring me to death. Or it was a UFO. Even odds, probably.

At one point I was on a Louisiana Scenic Byway and I was like, "Huh. I wonder what I'm supposed to be seeing," and then I rounded a corner and THERE WAS A SAFARI PARK. It's like, bam! You think you're just going along a regular country road? Nope! Giraffes! Right there! Crazy.

There was a sign for "Rubbish Landfill." I know this meant a landfill for rubbish, but I kept thinking of "rubbish" in the British adjective sense of "something that should be thrown away because it is terrible and useless" and I was like, "That sign sounds like that is a terrible, useless landfill, poor thing."

Trains are very long. I lost three minutes off of my GPS-estimated arrival time waiting for a VERY LONG train by the Dunkin' Donuts in Bossier City (I FIND DUNKIN' DONUTS WHEREVER I CAN).

I just watched Doctor Who when I got back this afternoon and haven't had time to re-watch so no write-up yet. I was actually pretty meh on it, for the first time this season. But maybe anything was going to be a let-down after the free-wheeling high of Time Heist for me.

I went to see The Drop this weekend. This is what I do when I get to spend some time in civilization: I locate Dunkin' Donuts and I go see a movie I can't see within 100 miles of where I live. So, anyway, it was very good and I liked it a lot and Tom Hardy is amaaaazing in it. STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS.

SPOILERS FOR THE DROP:

So I actually really loved the movie. I am not much of a movie person--television is my preferred medium--so I don't go see many of them, and I'm very careful before I go to research to make sure the movie isn't going to be too depressing, and I thought I was pushing it with this movie. I was honestly really worried I would find this movie upsetting and I was crazy to go see it. But it was Tom Hardy and a puppy and I looked it up to make sure the puppy wasn't going to die and also that it had a happy ending. And it does, actually. Some of the reviews I read didn't like the happy ending, but I actually adored it. Not just because I prefer them in general, but because I thought it actually made the movie a little more nuanced in its examination of morality and good-and-evil and human motivations. It's not a heavily Catholic movie but there's a definite Catholic thread running through the whole thing and I was glad that it didn't end with Bob's meditation that maybe what happens after you do something terrible is God tells you that you have to be alone forever, because, well, I like to think that what we're trying to teach in the Catholic Church is a God of forgiveness, who will acknowledge your repentance, who doesn't want you to be punished for the rest of your life. And, I don't know, I liked that the ending gave us that idea: that faith isn't necessarily supposed to end in Hell, that this life is frequently a messy struggle and maybe it's hard to judge and maybe all there is in the end is the hope that the rest of your life is supposed to start soon, and maybe that's what God stands for in the end anyway. I don't know, I feel like I'm making this movie sound like some huge theological thought-study, and I don't think it entirely was, but I also don't think it entirely wasn't, and Tom Hardy was seriously incredible in the role and the entire story was so well-constructed and so thought-provoking that I had that moment, when it was over, of wishing I could write something that was so essentially, touchingly, emotionally human on so many different levels at once. It's violent, yes, but not as violent as I thought it was going to be going into it, I have to confess. And there's a part of me that really wants to read the book, because I'd like to spend more time in Bob's head, but I'm also at the same time worried that it would interfere with my own head's thought right now (and also maybe that Bob's head would break my heart; and also maybe that it wouldn't; because my take is that Bob is just so unbearably *lonely* and I have this thing for lonely characters and making them un-lonely and actually this is something I just thought about for the first time in exactly those terms and now I have go ruminate upon it). So yeah, I don't know, it was a good movie. And the puppy's adorable. And so is Tom Hardy. I wasn't fully on the Tom Hardy train before this movie--I was busy running up and down the aisles of the JGL train--but now I would like to purchase a ticket, because he is somehow unbelievably, incredibly attractive in this movie. Tom Hardy is more attractive the scruffier he gets and that's actually not something I think all the time, I have to confess, I have never been that girl, I like scruff but I tend to prefer better a nice, clean, put-together look, but Tom Hardy is very, very hot when he's scruffy, and he keeps carrying this puppy around and being very sweet with it, and also he spends this whole movie bundled up in many layers and you know how I feel about men in lots of layers, they are totally my Kryptonite, I spent the whole movie being like, "Tom Hardy, how many sweaters and sweatshirts and coats are you wearing right now and can I take them off you?"