Metro Pulse/Gamut/Truck Stop Christmas

When you're on your way over the river and through the woods and you suddenly realize you forgot to get something for Aunt Suzy or Papaw Cole or little Liza Jane, where can you do your last-minute shopping? At the convenience store or truck stop, of course. We went lookin', and here's what we found.

Turning Japanese

It's hard to remember a Christmas when peace seemed as distant a dream as it does today. America continues its war in Afghanistan, and an attack against Saddam Hussein seems imminent. Who better, then, to lead youngsters in the way of nonviolence than a 16-inch tall ancient Babylonian ruler that's half elephant, half rock?

That's right, Meteoroid Ele Man. He once led, with understanding and justice, the very land that Hussein now terrorizes. Far be it from me to expound on his glory. I'll leave that to the fine Japanese writers who created the product box.

"The Story of the King of Ele:

"A legend goes that in 3000 B.C., Babylon, the oldest mysterious nation in the world, was originally ruled by the peace-loving ruler of earth—Kahama, the King of Ele, and ancestors of mankind and various kinds of spirit lived a happy and careless life.

"However, bewitched by Devil Gila, the mankind began to learn how to invade and launch a war. As a result, the mankind and spirits could not coexist peacefully and the world has become more and more chaotic.

"Now, mankind has gradually suffered the consequences for what they have done. In order to re-create a peaceful nation and to eliminate the influence of Devil Gila, King of Ele, who is living deep down in the earth will appear at any time....."

"Any time" appears to be Christmas, when the great Kahama speaks to the people from a Weigel's on Western Avenue out toward Oak Ridge. The people shall marvel that anyone thought to combine an elephant with a space rock, that such a creature should be entirely gray except for his eerie humanoid eyebrows. The people shall wonder what a "walking, talking meteoroid" has to do with Babylonian mythology, and why the Far East Brokers and Consultants, Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., possibly thought to import him.

When I found Meteoroid Ele Man, he was bellowing 20 seconds' worth of elephant roars, mechanical crunching sounds, and scratchy shouted words with all the subtlety of an alarm clock for the hearing impaired.

"(Elephant roar.) Khhh, chhh. I! Khhh, chhh. General of the armies of the Ele World! (Elephant roar.) YES! Khhh, chhh. General of the armies of the Ele World! (Elephant roar.) Khhh, chhh."

Hmmm. Didn't seem very peaceful, and neither did his tomahawk and flinty dagger. But the box promised such words of wisdom as "Remember peace" and "You! Human! No war!," and that was enough convincing for me. I plunked down $12.99 plus tax, took him home and installed four AA batteries, rubbing my hands in anticipation. Finally, a toy that would teach children a bit of loving kindness!

Meteoroid Ele Man shuffled his way across my kitchen floor, occasionally stopping to swivel his torso menacingly. He shifted his eyes from side to side, daring onlookers to defy his iron rule. As he spoke, his mouth glowed red as if spewing fire.

"(Elephant roar.) Khhh, chhh. I! Khhh, chhh. General of the armies of the Ele World!..."

Where was my promise of peace? Where was the ruler who would lead us in a happy and careless life? The duplicitous king had promised more than he could deliver, and bilked me of my money in the process.

Isn't that just like the government.

—Tamar Wilner

Wood and Metal

Let's start by acknowledging that I'm not just a defender of truck stops. I'm an evangelist for truck stops and have been, actively so, for decades.

When the denizens of Fox Den were foaming at the mouth over the prospect of truck stops at "their" I-40 interchange with Campbell Station Road, I remember calling that opposition flat un-American. Hell, "truck stops are America," I said in an editorial in a former Knoxville daily of some import and barely questionable repute.

It was true, and it still is. These are the havens along the highway that cater to the needs of the men and women who carry this whole country to and fro. As American as apple pie and hot dogs they are, at least, and they serve both, along with oceans of coffee and diesel fuel.

And however they might be perceived in a negative light by the uninitiated as Christmas shopping centers, those stores next to the restaurants within the truck stops sell lots of Christmas presents to gift-givers on the fly.

Picking out a suitable Christmas gift at the Pilot Travel Center on Lovell Road was as simple as paying holiday homage to the hallowed Haslam family behind the Pilot name. Genuflect, genuflect.

It could have been a difficult choice, nestled as it was amongst a baffling and dazzling array of flashlights, running lights, reflectors, tie-down straps, alarm clocks, flares and locks and boots and hats and ball caps, plus compasses, hand tools, 12-volt coffee makers, 110-12 volt converters (and vice versa), a veritable plethora of "God Bless America" items, pre-wrapped toys, costume jewelry, cheap but flashy watches and so forth, and so on. Tempting to some may have been the entire collection of 50 states as represented on refrigerator magnets, at $99.50, plus tax. But for me it was easy. I knew what I went for.

I bought the $4.99 tire billy. It's a jewel—16 inches of inch-thick oak dowel encased at one end in durable metal and drilled at the other for a rawhide thong long enough to loop around one's wrist. It's used by truck drivers to check the tires of their rigs with a quick thump.

But there are myriad other uses for the lay person. Never again would one have to kick the tires in a used car lot if one were possessed of a workable tire billy. Any pneumatic tires, for that matter, from bicycles to lawn mowers, can be promptly tested for air content once the proper thumping pitch is learned.

The billy is also handy as just that—a billy—in the event one might be confronted with (unarmed) elements of road rage. That would be for defensive purposes only, it should be understood. The Pilot sales clerk, a pleasant and obviously sensitive young woman, reflected as much when I put the blunt instrument down on the counter to pay for it. "Who pissed you off?" she asked. No lie.

I plan to have this one engraved, or wood-burnt actually, for a first cousin who has long been in the business of big truck sales. As far as I know he's never had his own personalized tire billy, and I expect him to be overcome with over-the-road Christmas spirit when he opens the package and sees his time-honored family nickname, "Acky," in dark letters on the pale oak barrel of that pretty billy.

It almost chokes me up just thinking about it. Have a Merry, Merry...

—Barry Henderson

Taste of the Weed

Scrooge was a pussy. An optimist. When it comes to holiday ill will, I make that old fartknocker look like Mary Hart.

I hate Christmas trees; I hate jingling bells; I think reindeer smell like shit. I hate mistletoe and stockings and fruitcakes and egg-nog and gift-giving and that fat f—- with the red suit, and all the other crap the season entails. But most of all, I hate the fact that during the holidays, I'm subjected more than usual to my miserable relatives and friends—most of whom I do a pretty good job of avoiding throughout the better part of the year.

And one of the more distasteful social obligations I'm always expected to fulfill is to pay a visit to grandma and grandpa, to that old pea-soup-smelling house where they live, where I have to listen to them yammer and bicker and bleat while I chew on one of grandma's naugahyde turkeys and stuffing I wouldn't feed my neighbor's asshole cat.

Now, every once in a while grandpa gets frisky, and he starts chasing grandma around the dining room table, and much wheezing and screaming and rattling of dishes ensues, until finally grandma lets him catch up with her, at which point the old coot is always too pooped to pop, if you know where I'm, uh, coming from. So he collapses on his walker, and she looks disgusted and starts throwing more stuffing on my plate. It's a wretched, dehumanizing spectacle.

So, I'm in the convenience mart the other day, and I'm sulking—I'm also buying beer and pork rinds, but I'm sulking while I do it—I'm dwelling on the season's various impending miseries. And then I see it. The answer to my prayers, a salve for my sufferings: a gift for grandpa.

There on a chintzy metal rack next to the nudie lighters and Britney Spears collector cards are an array of small packages, about the size of Kool Aid packets but covered with all kinds of lurid descriptors: Horny Goat Weed; When in Need, Try This Weed; Brings Out the Bushman in You; New Improved Formula; Hammerstrong.......There are photos of surgically-augmented supermodels in thong bikinis on the front of each package, girls with freeze-dried hair and bowling balls for tits, and lots of Outback-ish foliage (there's some kind of Australian connection involved, which I never quite figured out), and....a goat.

Perplexed, I tried for many long seconds to figure out what the hell all of these images and slogans had to do with one another. Then I gave up and read the description on the back of the package.

"Horny Goat Weed, nicknamed 'pleasure weed', combined with other sexually enhancing exotic herbs creates a formula that is one of the most powerful sexual stimulants on earth. Now good sex gets even better."

The list of ingredients consisted mostly of Latin words and protracted chemical names, furanosterols and Guarana seed extract and tribulus terrestris and catuaba bark. I have no idea what any of that shit is; I'm reasonably certain they made all of it up. The bottom line is that this crap is supposed to perk up the old noodle and enable the users to f—- like rabbits.

So I'm thinking: what if I slipped some of this stuff in grandpa's Metamucil, or better yet gift-wrapped it and gave it to him in lieu of an actual Christmas present (because at a buck-twenty-nine, the price is right). Then instead of suffering through the annual Christmas Theater of Pain at the grandparents' house, I can pack the two old buzzards off to the bedroom post haste, order pizza and watch pay-per-view porn without interruption.

Damn I'm good. Come to think of it, I'm gonna do all my holiday shopping at the convenience mart (I even broke down and bought one of the nudie lighters for myself). I wonder if they gift-wrap Slurpees?

—Fester Bangs

Reason to Believe

What always makes Christmas so magical is it's a time when we believe in things. When we're little, we believe in Santa Claus climbing down through every chimney in the world, delivering gifts to all the good children. When we get older, we believe in good will and love for all (never mind that we don't live our lives that way, or that hate is as much a part of humanity). Because believing in something makes it easier to get through the day, even if what we believe in is bad or not real. Believing is the American way.

I'm not being ironic here—we all need to believe in something. There's great value in myth, legends, ideals. I couldn't get out of bed without them. Sometimes, I can't get out of bed. As you get older, the American myths get harder to accept—they start to seem cheap, cynical, fabricated, manipulated. Luckily, new things to believe in are born every day. You can find them every where.

Of all the people and things Americans choose to put their faith in—Elvis, football, Ronald Reagan, rock 'n' roll, consumerism, Seinfeld, the American dream—professional wrestling is the most delusional, and conversely the most honest.

I find it comforting that out there in the endless reaches of the American heartland—wherever you might be traveling to or running from on some winding, everlasting slab of concrete and blacktop built by America's finest workforce (with the help of America's finest lobbyists)—you could stop at a nameless truck stop and find something to believe in. You could find something so utterly false and cheap that you invest your own cheap and empty feelings in the object. Suddenly, it's not cheap and empty, but a plastic representation of your emptiness. You fall in love.

Picture the lonely truck driver, weary from hauling a tank of fuel or load of clothes, stopping off here for a cup of coffee and a sub sandwich. He stumbles through the aisles, scanning the shelves for something to keep his mind off the long drive ahead. When he spots the Jeff Hardy wrestling figure, he thinks of his boy, at home staring at a television set. The truck driver's gut hangs down around his belt, but he likes to imagine himself with Hardy's physique. Maybe his son is a wrestling fan, maybe they've watched it together. More likely he has no idea what his son likes, but he buys it with the hope of connecting with him.

Better yet, picture me—agnostic, lapsed Catholic, angry bitter liberal, and lonely, to boot—strung out on coffee and staring at six more hours on the road, another 10,000 damn white lines to zip past before I reach a place I can call home. I scan the shelves filled with cheap glass figurines, coloring posters, and remote-control Pilot tanker trucks, searching for a last-minute Christmas gift. Something funny, something cute. Then I see Jeff Hardy staring at me. He wears black leather pants and a blue shirt that's easy to rip off to expose his bulging muscles. He comes with a chair to throw at opponents he meets in the ring. He looks really mean. And yet, you know his meanness is only an act. Who the real Jeff Hardy is, we'll not likely ever know. All we can be sure of is he wants us to believe he's real. For $9.99, I can pretend. Forget the relatives—I keep him for myself.

—Joe Tarr