I spent a rainy day-off in Seattle last month. On the way out of town I wound up at the Green Space Travel Supply Co. A description, from the store's website:

GOING UP? Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. is the finest purveyor of necessities for adventurers of all varieties, gifts both fine and amusing, objects of distraction, curios and miscellany. We carry a large selection of items from the brands you trust.

Space travel is all we do!

Greenwood is, of course, the Seattle chapter of 826 National, the nonprofit organization founded by authors Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. The after-school program/kooky gift shop chain now has seven locations around the country, each with its own unique theme. Given the Emerald City's most recognizable icon, it's only natural that its chapter has a shop devoted to outer space gear.

Greenwood isn't quite as large or as filled with irony-drenched brick-a-brack as the org's flagship pirate shop in San Francisco. There's no fish theater or booby traps involving mopheads but there is an "atomic teleporter" that whisks kids from the gift shop into the classroom. The gal working the cash register offered to let me try it out but I didn't want to explain myself to the dozen-or-so future NYT Best Seller List authors on the other side of the wall.

Among the items for sale in the gift shop: black holes, rocket fuel, dark matter, terraforming starter kits, thermographic dispenser nozzles and ocular vulnerability reduction systems (aka goggles). I bought a bumper sticker advising all would-be space travelers that "a lack of preparation is a recipe for mishaps."

I'll keep this in mind the next time I get the opportunity to spend an afternoon in zero gravity.

Labels: kitsch

I'm a big fan of drive-in movie theaters and there's a great one out in Newberg called the 99-West. While they've enjoyed a resurgence in popularity over the past decade they're still few and far between. Oregon has hundreds of movie theaters but only four or so drive-ins still operating. Besides the 99 West, there's supposedly one out in La Grande and another in Lebanon, all too far from Portland for a jaunt there and back on a boring Saturday night. There's also the Motor-Vu in Dallas, a small town located 20-minutes outside of Salem.

It's known for having the largest movie screen in Oregon. I've been meaning to go down there and check it out for a few years now but I've never been able to convince anyone to make the long drive with me. With nothing better to do last Saturday, I finally made the journey. Here's what finally convinced me: they were screening a Incredible Hulk/Baby Mama double-feature. That's inspired programming, right there.

The drive from Salem passes along a scenic stretch of the Willamette and the Motor-Vu sits in the middle of a large patch of farmland. Visitors pass under the screen and the parking area is almost double the size of the one in Newberg. The snack bar is filled with '50s decor and they've got White Castle burgers on the menu. Oddly, the bar sits in the middle of the property, which blocks the view of around a sixth of the drive-in's potential audience. I guess the owners assume that most of the audience up front wouldn't make the 100-yard trek if it were located all the way in the back.

Being a liberal Portland wuss with limited knowledge of what lies along the I-5 beyond Salem and Eugene, I expected to find a crowd of methheads and families along the lines of Cletus' brood on The Simpsons. While I was one of the few people there in a foreign-made automobile, the crowd was similar to the low-key, suburban one that turns out for movies at the 99 West. I was all geared up for a night of culture shock but left disappointed.

About half of the crowd stuck around for Baby Mama and I guess it's a testament to how strong my gag-reflex for half-assed Hollywood comedies is that I made it through the whole thing. As for The Incredible Hulk, I actually prefer Ang Lee's version. Edward Norton's Bruce Banner is an improvement over Eric Bana's but the action sequences were actually weaker than the over-the-top ones that Lee cranked out. At no point does the Hulk ride a jet into the stratosphere or fling a missile at a helicopter after catching it in mid-air. And if you're ever going to film an epic battle-royale between two comic book monsters in the middle of New York, it helps to stage it somewhere besides a vacant lot and the street outside the Apollo Theater.

Labels: kitsch, movies