It Came From The Cineplex: Vacation

Welcome once again to Flashback Summer '15! So far in this summer I've seen a Poltergeist, Mad Max, Jurassic Park, Terminator and now a Vacation film in the theater. What freakin' year is it? Enough's enough, Hollywood. Sure, recycling's good for the environment, but not so good for the cineplex.

Vacation was written and directed by Johathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

Goldstein and Daley previously co-wrote The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Horrible Bosses. This is their directorial debut.

John Francis Daley is also an actor, and among other things played Sam Weir in the beloved NBC series Freaks And Geeks.

I wasn't expecting much from this film, so it surprised me when it turned out better than I anticipated. Maybe going in with low expectations helped.

So what exactly is this film? Is a sequel, a remake or a reboot? To quote Bilbo Baggins, "All of them at once, I suppose." It definitely has all the elements of a sequel, since it features characters, actors and numerous references from the first film. 

But it's also a remake, as its episodic nature follows the structure of the first film very closely. What am I talking about, it follows it exactly. Family takes a cross country road trip in a bizarre, sub par vehicle to Wally World. They encounter a series of escalating disasters along the way, and the miserable experience brings them closer together as a family. It's the exact same plot.

We've had quite a few of these remakes masquerading as sequels (requels?) this summer. Terminator Genysis, Mad Max: Fury Road and Jurassic World all followed this dubious, back-to-basics formula. It's a trend I don't particularly care for.

Vacation appears to ignore all the previous sequels, which, given their ever diminishing quality, is probably for the best. With the exception of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, the sequels were all pretty terrible.

This is the sixth film in the Vacation franchise, and the first that doesn't feature "National Lampoon" in the title. The corporation stopped lending its name to films in 2007, feeling that the less than stellar nature of many of the movies it promoted was tarnishing its brand. Ironically the very next year the CEO was forced to resign after several stock market fraud and Ponzi scheme scandals.

SPOILERS, I GUESS!

The Plot:

Regional airline pilot Rusty Griswold (played by Ed Helms) lives in Chicago with his wife Debbie (played by Christina Applegate) and his two sons. Older son James is sensitive and awkward, and is constantly being bullied by his younger, psychotic brother Kevin.

After seeing how much fun his neighbors had on their trip to Paris, Rusty decides to shake things up a bit. Instead of the usual boring vacation in Sheboygan, he'll follow in his father's footsteps and take the family on a cross country drive to Wally World. Sound familiar?

Things go wrong from the start as the only car Rusty can rent is a Tartan Prancer (the Honda of Albania), a bizarre hybrid vehicle with two gas tanks, a number of charging cords and a key fob filled with nonsensical and illogical icons. Hmm... a strange looking, low quality vehicle? Something about that seems familiar as well.

As the family passes through Tennessee, they visit Debbie's old alma mater, and Rusty learns she has a dark, sordid and drunken secret, as she was the inventor of her sorority's "chug run." She's intimidated into taking the run again, downing a pitcher of beer and immediately projectile vomiting all over the course.

On the highway, James sees a cute girl his age in a passing car and flirts with her, until Kevin tries to kill him by wrapping a plastic bag over his head. Meanwhile the family is menaced by a trucker who's seemingly stalking them, and may be trying to kill them.

The family stops in Texas to visit Rusty's sister Audrey, who's married to successful TV weatherman Stone Crandall (played by Chris Hemsworth). The visit turns disastrous when Rusty drives an ATV into one of Stone's prize steers, killing it. Visiting relatives on vacation? Again, familiar.

They move on and stop at a motel in Arizona. James meets Adena, the girl he flirted with earlier. When Kevin ruins their interlude, Adena asks why James doesn't stand up to him. James tries to explain that he's taking the high road, and it wouldn't be right to hit a younger child. Adena says he deserves it, and James realizes she's right. He knocks Kevin on his ass a few times and finally shows him who's boss.

Rusty and family then stop at the Grand Canyon to go white water rafting. They're almost killed by a suicidal guide who just found out his fiancee broke up with him. They leap from their raft minutes before it goes over a waterfall with the guide.

Back on the road, the Prancer runs out of gas in the middle of the desert and explodes (familiar!). The family wants to pack it in, and Rusty reluctantly agrees. Just then the mysterious trucker shows up. Rusty fears he's there to run him down, but the trucker reveals he's been following them to return Debbie's wedding ring, which she lost back in Missouri. He then drives them to San Francisco, where Rusty's parents Clark and Ellen (played by original Vacation stars Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo) run a bed and breakfast.

Rusty finds a marriage help book in Debbie's things, and fears she's going to leave him. She tells him that their marriage isn't over, because he refuses to give up. He decides then and there they'll make it to Wally World in LA or die trying. Clark loans them his Wagon Queen Family Truckster that he inexplicably still owns, and the family drives to Wally World.

They finally make it to Wally World and stand in line for five hours to ride the Velicoraptor, the park's star attraction. Halfway through the ride, it breaks down and they're stranded upside down.

The next day, Rusty sends the boys back home and he takes Debbie to Paris.

Thoughts:

• I wonder why they didn't cast Anthony Michael Hall as the now adult Rusty? Hall's still working, so it seems like he'd be a natural to reprise the role he originated.

Did the studio cast Ed Helms because they think he's a bigger box office draw? That seems unlikely.

It's been a long standing tradition of the franchise to cast new actors in the roles of Rusty and Audrey in each film, so I'm betting that's why they didn't go with Hall.

• Ed Helms seems to be playing his Andy Bernard character from The Office here, which he's done in every film he's ever been in.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with that; after all, plenty of actors have made a good living playing the same character over and over. The problem here is that Helms' awkward, milquetoast manner is completely wrong for Rusty. The Rusty Griswold of the original film was smart, competent and best of all, cool. He always seemed to be several steps ahead of his father Clark. Helms' version of Rusty is a completely different character.

I guess it could have been worse— Adam Sandler was briefly considered for the role. Yikes. The world dodged a bullet there!

• Do you like meta humor in your movies? Yeah, neither do I. Unfortunately Vacation features several in-your-face meta moments. 

When Rusty announces they're going to recreate the "original" vacation, the family says this new vacation seems like the same old thing. Rusty replies, "We're not redoing anything. This will be completely different. Besides, the original vacation had a boy and a girl, this one has two boys." Kevin says he's never even heard of the original vacation, to which Rusty replies, "Doesn't matter. The new vacation will stand on its own."

Note that Ed Helms does everything but turn to the camera and wink in an exaggerated manner during this exchange.

The problem with this "hilarious" little exchange is that this vacation is the same old thing. It follows the original film's structure to the letter, making Rusty look like an even bigger idiot than he already is.

The second meta moment involves Rusty leafing through a photo album and seeing pictures from the various other Vacation films, featuring the many different actors to play both he and his sister Audrey. OK, so that was mildly humorous, but it also pulled me right out of the film.

Maybe in the world of the story, Rusty and his sister were seriously injured and had to undergo extensive facial reconstructive surgery every few years?

• Christina Applegate starred in the Fox sitcom Married... With Children. Oddly enough, Married's first season opening credits included a quick shot from National Lampoon's Vacation, featuring the Wagon Queen Family Truckster driving down a Chicago highway! That's it in the center above.

• Wondering why there's no appearance by Cousin Eddie in this film? That would be due to actor Randy Quaid's numerous legal woes (including a felony burglary charge). He's currently living in exile in Canada, and will be subject to arrest if he ever reenters the U.S. Oh, Cousin Eddie. Who's emptying the sh*tter now?

• Rusty has some odd gaps in his knowledge of sexual perversions. When older son James asks him what a "rim job" is, he genuinely doesn't know, and says it's probably a term for "kissing on the lips."

Later, younger son Kevin says he saw an opening in the wall of his bathroom stall, and Rusty blurts out, "Sounds like you found yourself a glory hole!" Seems like if you were familiar with one, you'd know what the other meant as well.

• Was there a point to the whole Audrey subplot? Rusty and his family visit his sister Audrey, who now lives in Texas and seemingly has a perfect life. There are cracks in the surface though, as her husband refuses to allow her to get a job. She then disappears completely from the movie, never to be seen again. Later on, Ellen says both Audrey and her Stone are cheating on one another, a detail which seemed completely unnecessary.

Screenwriting tip, guys— if you set up a subplot, you should probably find a way to resolve it and not leave it dangling. And if you're not going to resolve it, then maybe don't include it at all.

• Wow. There's no way to say this without sounding mean, so I'm just gonna come out and say it. What the hell has Beverly D'Angelo done to herself? Her face is virtually unrecognizable. None of us want to get old, Bev, but it's time to lay off the plastic surgery.

Vacation is a reasonably decent followup, or remake, or whatever it is to National Lampoon's Vacation. It doesn't outdo the original of course, but it was better than I expected. I give it a B-.

What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation Part 3

This past Thanksgiving I accompanied my parents and sister's family on vacation (for the first time since I was in college) to scenic Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where the seven of us spent five days together in a cabin/house. 

You can read all about Part 1 of the trip here and Part 2 here.

The day before Thanksgiving my sister and parents decided to go shopping at some kind of craft village. My brother-in-law Marcel, nephews Alphonse and François and I decided we'd had enough hiking and shopping for one day and stayed home at the cabin/house.

That's François and Marcel in the photo above.

It was very quiet in the cabin/house as we all relaxed and just hung out.

Right around 4 pm Marcel looked up from his book, glanced out the window and shouted, "There's a bear in the yard!"

Naturally the rest of us reacted with a hearty and skeptical, "Surrrrrrrre there is." But Marcel was insistent and when we all got up to look out the window, sure enough there really was a bear in our yard! 

I couldn't believe it! An honest-to-goodness bear sitting (I said sitting!) fifty feet from our house.

We opened the sliding glass doors and rushed out onto the elevated deck to get a better look. We made sure to keep the doors open, just in case we needed to get back inside quickly for some reason.

I will admit that I am no bear expert, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he (or perhaps she) was a black bear. It was probably between four and five feet long.

That's me doing my best to block out the bear with my giant head.

He was aware of our presence up on the deck and from time to time would turn his head to look at us. He didn't act the least bit concerned about us, and why should he? He's a damn bear!

It was about that time that I started hoping that the deck on which we were all standing was solidly built. It would have been bad if it had collapsed and dumped us below right into the bear's lap.

That's me trying to touch the bear.

I also realized that less than an hour before we spotted the bear, Marcel had been relaxing outside in the hot tub on the deck, and I had been around the corner sitting in the porch swing enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. We probably just missed the bear walk past us both by seconds.

Alphonse is not impressed with the bear.

A couple of days earlier Alphonse had somehow cajoled his parents into buying him a police riot stick, of all things. You know, the ones that look like a billy club but have a handle sticking out the side? At one point while we were all standing on the deck bear watching, I looked down at Alphonse and noticed he was clutching his riot stick in his hand... just in case there was any trouble.

Around that time the bear apparently got tired of sitting in the woods (I said sitting!) and moseyed over to the downhill neighbor's house (in Tennessee you don't have next-door neighbors-- they're either uphill or downhill). He actually climbed onto their porch and started nosing around. Yikes! We didn't think the downhill neighbors were home, but right then the lady who lives there came out onto her (thankfully) upper deck. 

She saw the bear and started clapping at him and yelling "Shoo! Git outta here!" the way you would at a dog.

Amazingly that did the trick and the bear left her porch and lumbered back toward our house.

What a place to live, where the bears wander through your yard like stray dogs!

By now people laboring up the mountain road spotted the bear and stopped their cars to take photos. My sister and parents also came home about this time and they also joined us on the deck for some bear watching.

All this activity and noise was apparently too much for him and he started acting a little more concerned about our presence.

 

He actually tried to hide behind a tree for a few minutes! That's my dad's shoulder in the bottom photo by the way, showing how close we all were to this freakin' giant wild animal.

By the way, I apologize for the quality of these later photos. Chalk it up to the Bigfoot Rule Of Photography: the more amazing the subject matter, the more likely your photos will come out a blurry mess.

By now our ursine pal had had enough of civilization and started heading back to the wilderness from whence he came (or perhaps the dumpster behind the I-Hop).

He started heading behind our cabin/house. The thing is, the mountain rose directly up behind our cabin/house, at a near 90 degree angle. So by walking behind our house he was now even with our heads.

Everyone else ran back inside the cabin/house. Amazingly my dad and I stood there like idiots taking photos of a bear that was now a scant six feet away from us. It's a horrible photo, but you can kind of see how close he was to my dad there.

These photos came out so badly because it was starting to get dark and for some reason I forgot to turn on the flash on my camera. Now that I think about it, that's a good thing. Sure it ruined my photos, but it probably would have been a bad idea to repeatedly flash a strobe light into a bear's face when he was within mauling distance of me.

He then scampered around the back of the cabin/house, fell down the side of the mountain, and ran behind the natural gas tank.

Then he scampered through the driveway, as I lost my mind and chased after him to get a better shot. I have no idea what I was thinking. I admit this is a really bad photo and it could just as easily be a big dog or a cat in this picture, but trust me, it was a bear.

He then ran across the road to the uphill neighbor's, where he proceeded to jump on top of their garbage can cage (all houses on the mountain keep their garbage cans inside steel cages, to prevent bears such as this one from getting into them). He jumped up and down on the cage in frustration and then ran off into the woods, never to be seen (by us, anyway) again.

That was definitely our excitement for the day, and possibly the trip.

Needless to say after that we no longer cavalierly flung the front door wide open when we went outside. From that point on we cautiously opened the door just a sliver and peeked out until we were certain we wouldn't walk right into a bear's open gullet.

The next day was Thanksgiving, and after stuffing our craws full of stuffing, my parents and I decided to go back to Clingman's Dome. Well, I went back, they'd not yet seen it.

Once again I was fascinated by all the boulders in the woods, something unheard of where I live.

My attempt at taking a panorama shot of the Smoky Mountains. I got lazy and didn't try to color correct the panels.

We didn't climb up to the top of the Dome this time, we just stood at the base of the trail and gawked at the scenery.

That's my dad taking a picture of me taking a picture of him. Just like Inception!

And with that we bade the Smoky Mountains goodbye and came back to plain old flat Indiana.

It wasn't a bad trip and I actually survived living in a cabin/house with six other people. Would I ever go on another vacation with my family? What? I can't hear you. You'll have to speak louder. I can't... no, I cant understand what you're saying. I have to go. Send me a text.

What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation Part 2

This past Thanksgiving I accompanied my parents and sister's family on vacation (for the first time since I was in college) to scenic Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where the seven of us spent five days together in a cabin/house. 

You can read all about Part 1 of this experience here.

Here's one of those rare "Tennessee Ruler Trees" you hear about so much about but rarely ever get to see. This particular straight-edge of a tree was located right in the driveway of our cabin/house. It was so perfectly straight in fact that the owners of the house decided to use it as a light pole.

Here's a couple more Ruler Trees on the opposite side of the driveway.

Here's a shot of the mountain road in front of our cabin/house. As you can see it rises at a pretty steep angle. Our cabin/house was about halfway up the mountain, and each time we drove up it we could smell burning rubber coming from our tires, caused (we theorized) from the wheels constantly turning back and forth on the road.

Trivia: There's no word for "flat" in Tennessee as everything there is at an extreme angle. Things are either above you or below you, as illustrated here by our neighbor's homes.

During our stay my sister and brother-in-law and I decided to explore the Tennessee landscape and visit a local waterfall, accessible only by scenic trail. We tried to get my nephews Alphonse and François to join us but they couldn't tear their gazes away from the siren's call of the internet and Fruit Ninja. Kids today!

The trail looks deserted here but there were actually quite a few people coming and going along it. We noticed many people were carrying fancy high tech "walking staffs" as they made their way up the trail. Of course we mercilessly mocked them for owning such a silly affectation. Then after about ten minutes of walking up the steep route we all kind of wished we had walking staffs too.

Hey, don't go anywhere! There's lots of scenery to see after the jump!

What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation Part 1

For the past few years my parents and sister's family have been engaging in a new Thanksgiving tradition: The Holiday Vacation.

They always invite me, but so far I've never been able to go with them for various reasons. I was either working, didn't have a job, had no money or my personal astrologist advised me against traveling.

This year though the stars lined up and I could actually go, so I accompanied my family to Gatlinburg, Tennessee for Thanksgiving.

It's been a long time since I've been on a real vacation, and a very, very long time since I've taken any kind of trip with my parents. Not since high school in fact. And I've never been on any extended trip with my sister's family. I was a little curious as to how many days it would take before I decided to fly home by myself.

It's not that I'm antisocial you understand, but I live alone. In a house by myself. Just me. I'm used to peace and quiet. To suddenly be thrust into a cabin with six other humans like I was on some half-baked reality show would be a big adjustment for me. 

We would be staying in what everyone kept referring to as a "cabin" for five days. A cabin. In the woods. Seven people. In a cabin. In a remote area. For five days. Seven. Did I mention there would be seven of us living in this cabin? For five days?

After driving for six or seven hours we arrived in the kudzu-choked environs of Gatlinburg. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the "cabin" was actually a house. A fairly large house to boot. 

I was assuming we'd be staying in a small wooden shack in the middle of the woods, far from civilized living. I brought a book and a sketchpad, thinking there'd be nothing to do in this remote location. Imagine my surprise when I found out the house had cable TV and WiFi! Although it did have an old school "picture tube" non-HD television set. Roughing it indeed!

There were even two bathrooms, which was a godsend. Seven bathrooms would have been nicer, but that's probably not realistic.

Here's the view from the second floor of the house, looking out over the living room and out the large bank of windows into the forest beyond.

And here's the reverse view, from the living room looking up at the second floor. I ended up sleeping on a bed in a small alcove visible in the upper right in this photo.

A shot of the house's vaulted wood-paneled ceiling. Hey, I'd hate to have to dust that thing, eh? Amirite ladies? Eh?

That's my nephew François in the green shirt, watching the primitive non-HD television machine. That's my brother-in-law at the right. François brought his laptop with him and rarely looked up from it the entire week.

We took two cars to the house, so when I first arrived I found my sister's family was already there. My nephew Alphonse was upstairs playing Playstation 2 games (again, how deliciously primitive!) and proudly wearing a cardboard Burger King crown. Alphonse is 14 years old, by the way. I vowed I would get a photo of him in his stylish crown before the week was over. Alas, this is as close as I got.

Here's a view from the deck, looking out at the neighbor's house. We could monitor their activities quite well from this vantage point. You can't see it but just to the left was a hot tub on our deck. Roughing it!

No, I did not get into the hot tub. I wasn't expecting such an amenity and didn't bring any swim trunks.

Here's a shot of some of the neighboring homes, hundreds of feet above us. Pretty much every home I could see was either hundreds of feet above or below. There's no such thing as level ground in this neighborhood!  

How many houses can you spot in this photo? Hint: There are at least five. You wont be able to spot them; I could only see them at nighttime when their lights were on.

Here's the road above our "yard." Our house was about halfway up a mountain, accessible only by an incredibly steep, curving and narrow road. Think of the steepest, curviest and narrowest road you can imagine, and then double or triple that.

At certain points on the road you could look down and see nothing but an abyss plunging downward for hundreds, possibly thousands of feet. It would not surprise me if there are 1950s model cars full of dessicated skeletons at the bottoms of some of those ravines.

There were very few guardrails along the road. My suspicion is that they install rails on an "as-needed" basis. Wherever some unfortunate soul flew off the road, that's where the Tennessee Department Of Transportation decided a guardrail was necessary.

I have to wonder why anyone ever looked at this mountain and thought, "Say, this would be a perfect place to construct luxury housing!" Sure it's a scenic location, but it ain't exactly easy to live there.

If you buy one of these homes, you get a house and a driveway. That's it. At the home in which we were staying the "yard" was actually a forest floor that sloped away at a 45º angle. The lot contained absolutely no usable land whatsoever.

And god forbid it should ever snow in the area. Even a light dusting would trap you at the top or bottom of the mountain. They're nice homes to visit, but I wouldn't wanna live there.

While I was out front taking these photos I heard a voice from above. It was one of the neighbors a hundred feet above me. He called down to warn me that earlier that morning he'd seen a bear nosing around on the front porch of our house. Gulp! As I looked around I noticed that everyone's trash barrels were kept inside large steel mesh cages.

The day after we arrived my sister, brother-in-law and I decided to visit Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Smoky Mountains. I tried to get my nephews Alphonse and François to go with us, but they couldn't pull their attention away from their electronic teats and stayed home. Kids today! Ah well, it's their loss.

We passed a multitude of spectacular scenery as we made our way up the winding mountain road.

I thought the road leading up to our vacation house was curvy, but the road leading to Clingmans Dome was even worse. Switchbacks, hairpin curves (quite literally), corkscrews... it was something to see. 

We were using a GPS device and at one point it just gave up, refusing to even try to display the road, leaving the onscreen car floating in a formless green void.

I'm from an extremely flat land where even a ten foot high mound is considered a hill, so vistas like these were completely foreign to me.

The temperature in Tennessee during Thanksgiving week was a balmy 60 - 70 degrees. Thanks, global warming! But as we continued climbing higher and higher up the mountain we started seeing snow at the side of the road.

After about an hour of driving we finally reached the Clingmans Dome trail. Here's a shot of the parking lot, complete with large snow bank. I took this photo mere seconds before a snowball fight broke out between the subjects in the background.

Boulders! Look at those boulders in the background! That's another thing we don't have where I'm from. I live in a 100% boulder free area.

The temperature was a bit cooler at this altitude, probably in the 50s.

Here are some shots from the Clingmans Dome parking lot. Note that we're actually higher than the large, flat  cloud bank at the left!

Here's a shot of the trail leading up to the Clingmans Dome Observation Post. That's the paved trail just above the ranger's hat. If you look closely at the left you may be able to glimpse some tiny people on the trail in the distance.

Eventually we began walking up the trail to the Observation Post. After about 5 minutes I started breathing much harder than normal. After 10 minutes I honestly felt like I was going to die. I had to sit down on a convenient boulder and rest for a minute.

I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Sure, the trail was steep, but it wasn't that steep. I walk all the time back home; every morning before work in fact. I walk a lot. I thought I was in decent shape, but the fact that I was gasping like a fish out of water seemed to indicate otherwise. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. My sister and brother in law were wheezing like bellows as well.

Then it finally hit me-- of course we were all gasping and wheezing! We were over a mile up the side of a mountain! Clingman's Dome is over 6,600 feet high. No wonder I was having trouble breathing-- there wasn't any air up there!

Another view of a cloud bank below us, which is definitely not something you see often outside of an airplane.

After much wheezing and struggling, we finally reached the Observation Post located at the top of Clingmans Dome, in all its Googie-design glory.

The Observation Post is accessible by a long curving ramp, seen here at the bottom of the frame. The ramp was an unexpectedly dangerous affair as it was covered in a smooth sheet of ice.

A view of the treacherous ramp and the clouds below.

Here's the spectacular view from the Observation Post at the top of Clingmans Dome. I guess all the gasping and crawling was worth it.

While catching my breath at the top of the mountain I had a morbid thought. The thin air at this altitude definitely makes climbing the trail a strenuous affair. So what would happen if anyone ever had a heart attack while climbing it? It took us at least an hour to drive up the mountain road. An ambulance might take a little less time, but not much. Then you'd have at least an hour drive back down to get to the hospital. It's unlikely you'd survive a two hour trip to the ER. 

Most likely they'd have to call in an emergency helicopter. Still, to anyone climbing the trail, my advice is to simply avoid having a heart attack in the first place.

Looking down from the Observation Post at the forest far below. Note the snow on the ground.

As the caption says, that's either Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge off in the misty (or would that be smoky?) distance. You know, this view reminds me of something, but I can't quite remember what...

Oh yeah, now I remember. "Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum, and villainy. We must be cautious."

More amazing views from the Observation Post.

Here's a shot of people gingerly tiptoeing up the icy ramp, trying not to fall and slide all the way back down the trail to the parking lot.

That's me proving I was there.

Here we are walking back down the trail. We thought the walk back down would be much easier, but oddly enough it wasn't. 

Oh sure, it wasn't as hard as walking up, but on the way down you had to constantly "put on the brakes" so to speak, lest you get going too fast and topple over the side of a cliff, so by the time we got back to the parking lot our calves were killing us.

Haw! Christmas came early for me as I just found my brand new cuss word for 2013! I think I'll try it out right now. "Get out of my way, you stupid hotards!"

Here I am doing a pretty darn good job of blocking out the Smoky Mountains with my giant head.

Coming up in What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation Part 2: Another trail, and a near disaster as I almost topple off a cliff!