I’ve had a radio-less stretch of a few months, ever since it got stolen from my car, so listening to FM on the way home from Vegas was refreshing. During the trip, the heavy metalish remake of “Land of Confusion” by the band Disturbed came on. I find it quite an improvement on the original – replacing a synth loop with nice crunchy guitars is always a good thing. Leon probably disagrees, but then he’s the only Genesis-Phil Collins fan I’ve ever met in my life, so we’ll let that slide.

As a child of the 80’s, with cable (MTV!) for one glorious year, I still remember the Spitting Image puppets in the original video by Genesis. Disturbed’s new video, done by Todd McFarlane (of Spawn infamy), is even better, or at least cheesier and more over the top.

Sensory nadir of the trip: somewhere about a 100 miles north of Bakersfield on I-5, a overwhelming stench reminiscent of rotting fish hit my nose a split second before Susan’s. Then it got eye-wateringly, gaggingly worse. As we looked out the right window, we saw the cause: cows. Not just a few cows. Thousands of cows. A vast sea of cows. Bovines every few feet as far as the eye could see. I wish I’d taken a picture, but I was more focused on speeding through the noxious vapor zone as quickly as possible. The first thing we had to do when we got home was figure out whose cows they were. Turns out that’s the feedlot of Harris Ranch. What’s frightening: there’s a restaurant right there. Now, I enjoy meat, and generally don’t worry about the fact that I’m eating something that was once a living, breathing animal – but I’d completely lose my appetite anywhere close to that putrid environment. This isn’t even taking into account being just down the road from where dinner got slaughtered (do diners get to pick out their cows ala Cantonese seafood dinner?).

To our horror, our roomate’s actually eaten there. He claims the restaurant is just fine. Me, well, I think I’ll drive Highway 101 to LA in the future.