7:45 p.m. - 2004-10-04
Bury Manilow
"I wanted a Hummer, but I settled for a Probe," says Clare, turning the ignition on the rented LeSabre. I hate the Lesabre because it's...What's the word I'm looking for?....BROWN. Brown exterior, brown upholstery, even a brown dashboard with a fake chunk of fake brown wood running through it. If you popped the hood it would probably have brown spark plugs.
Clare says the LeSabre has a bonus: somebody left a copy of "Ultimate Manilow" in the CD player. I want to know what she expects to do with that? After all, this is the guy who writes the songs that make the young girls cry. We could donate it to one of those assisted living homes, where people could listen to "Mandy" while ingesting their creamed spinach...Or use it as a coaster...Or sharpen the edges and make a pizza wheel.
Clare speeds along the expressway while I roll down m window and hold out the CD, prentendin it's a flying saucer. I make an important scientific discovery: If you turn it even a little bit off the horizontal, the wind catches it and it won't fly right. This pretty much disproves all those flying saucer stories once and for all. I'm about to explain this to Clare when the CD gets away from me and goes flying back along the expressway.
We have just passed a rest stop, and it seems obvious that "Ultimate Manilow" would probably have landed there, so Clare turns around at the next exit and heads back.
There are no other cars at the rest stop, which makes us worry a little about serial killers, but we look around for the CD and then Clare has to use the bathroom. We walk over there and I surprise her and give her a push so she goes into the men's room instead. I've always wanted to check one out. All the toilet seats are up, just as I expected. And the urinals are totally weird and full of cigarettes and chewing gum, kind of like soggy ashtrays. I turn on all the hot air dryers like a tribute to Barry M. Then I try soaking paper towels and throwing them at the ceiling to try and make them stick there.
A guy walks into the bathroom and looks surprised to see us. "This is the girls' room!" I yell at him, and he runs back out.
We're afraid he'll figure out our ruse, so I tell Clare to act really snotty, and we walk out of the mens' room with our noses in the air, but the guy isn't anywhere. He probably used the girls' room, the sick SOB!

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