Eight Cities with the Ugliest Guys

The Official List

So, a Web site called Total Beauty, which seems to me to be one of the most legitimate sites possible (Who doesn't want to find a Web site that pinpoints what's wrong with your intellect, appearance and personality?), has published a list of the eight cities with the ugliest men in the country based on their teeth, hygiene, average level of obesity and education.  I have no idea how they figured out which cities had the men with the worst hygiene and teeth, but they somehow did.  Naturally, Katie and I felt we needed to check this list out to know what we should be avoiding on this trip. The results were...I'm not sure. A little disturbing may be the best way to phrase it.

Counting down...

8: Houston, Texas  Evidently the men here are smelly and obese.  Not to mention, according to the Web site, 15% of those 25 and older have less than a 9th grade education. That's not really too cool. Get an education... maybe you'll learn better hygiene habits in school.

7: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  Right on the other side of the state, these men evidently have bad teeth. I'm not really sure what that entails... crooked teeth? Bad breath? Generally dirty teeth? Cavities?  Like I said before, I'm not sure how they decided this about all men in Philadelphia, but bad teeth are a big turn off. Nobody really wants to lean in to kiss a guy with a mouth full of gross teeth. 

6: Detroit, Michigan  The men of Detroit evidently have a low amount of education and are part of the highest obesity rate in the country.  Education really is the key to places like this. Smart men are hott. That's right, double-T hott. Graduate from high school, at least. It's free.

5: Mobile, Alabama and Huntington, West Virginia, for a tie  And I quote, "terrible teeth," which as I said earlier could mean anything... missing teeth even... and "unhealthy, inactive and obese men."  Believe me, I'm not a fan of exercising. I get bored with it, but I walk about 3 miles a day to and from school... maybe some days just a mile and a half if my boyfriend, Frank, picks me up or drops me off.  I still get bored with that, but then I'm committed to finishing the workout, or I don't get to go home.  Maybe try that.  It will save you on parking and gas costs, too.

4: Greesboro, North Carolina  Thanks to totalbeauty.com I now know that this lovely town is not all that sexually active.  Once again, how do they know this?  Did representatives from the site knock on the doors of all these houses and ask about its inhabitants' sexual activity?  What is considered an average amount of sexual activity? Anyone know?  Anyhow, if this is true, it makes sense to assume there are some ugly men, and probably ugly women, in this city of no sex.

3: Miami, Florida  Complete shock.  When I think of Miami, I think of the South Beach diet, which I'm assuming originated in Miami, but I could be wrong, and people walking around in swim wear all day.  This is completely ignorant, but it's what I think.  Although, based on the site's finding it may be accurate.  Evidently 21% of men over 25 never made it beyond 9th grade and they're lazy.  It makes sense. They quit school to lay on a beach all day.  I don't know if you can fault them for that. (Really you can, but okay.)

2: Hagerstown, Maryland  Here's something we haven't touched based on: Evidently all of these guys smoke. GROSS.  Like I said before, nobody wants to kiss a guy with a gross mouth, and tasting like a cigarette is gross.  Beyond that, nobody wants to die from their boyfriend's second hand smoke.  Tonight one of my friends actually said that her boyfriend is giving her the best birthday present of all time because he was going to quit smoking.  I think that says it all.

1: El Paso, Texas  This Lone Star state city suffers the same vices as its neighbor, Houston.  I guess Katie and I made the right decision to spend 24 hours driving straight through Texas.

While I'm pretty sure these sweeping accusations are pretty bogus, they bring up some valid points with the smoking and education and unhealthiness.  I don't know what I can add about Pittsburgh.  I guess all I can do is be thankful that I have Frank, who pretty much scores 100 where all of those listed above lack... Although I'm not too sure I can say that about his general smelliness, which can be sketchy at times.

I would just like to mention that I don't believe these bad qualities define all men in these areas. I'm purely basing my comments on this Web site, which I mentioned earlier, is less than the height of sophistication. 

One hour in traffic is one hour too much.

Last night Katie and I went to Phantom Fright Nights at Kennywood, which is an amusement park in Pittsburgh for those of you who don't know.  Well, from my apartment it should take about 20 minutes, at most, to get there, but because of traffic and the stupid road construction in Pittsburgh, it took us over an hour to get to the park.  I thought I was being smart and going a back way to get there too.  

Well, as we were sitting in almost standstill traffic we were stuck behind this car of teenage boys who were obviously dancing around to music on the radio, so Katie and I started flipping through the radio to see if we could hear what they were so intently listening to, which we did. It was Paparazzi by Lady Gaga.  They were bouncing around in the car and bobbing their heads  and eventually swaying in sync with their arms around each other.  It was a great distraction for about 20 minutes.

So after we had decided we had been in the car for 2 hours we realized we had only been driving for about a half an hour.  We realized that our completely lack of time perception is going to be great from our nationwide road trip this summer.  Just imagine when we have to drive through Texas for 24 straight hours... we're going to make it an hour in and think we're to New Mexico.

At least we can buy Lady Gaga's CD. That seemed to make the teenage boys' journey to Kennywood more than tolerable. 

Giant Beings

So Katie and I have decided that we need to see all of the giant things this country has to offer.  There is an entire Web site dedicated to "Giant Beings" that can be found all over the place, and there are a surprising amount of them that can be found.  There are almost 100 through out the country, with most of them located in Minnesota and Illinois. 

How did the construction of huge... bizarre... sculptures of people ever actually begin?  Especially when you look at sculptures like the one shown on the left.  Who was sat there one day thinking that making a giant creepy-looking guy hold a giant hot dog like a baby would be a good idea? I can't get over the look he has on his face... he's sort of staring you down, challenging you to take that giant hot dog away from him. It's just weird.  I guess we'll let you know what it's like in person.

Overall, I think we should be able to hit up every single of these freakish statues, except for Santa Claus in Alaska. I don't know if we'll make it up there. We'll make a little road map with cut out of these big guys taped all over it to make sure we don't miss any of them, because that would be quite the travesty.

Because of midterms, this is pretty much all of the planning we've accomplished this week, but we're meeting up this weekend to brainstorm and discuss all of the ideas that everyone has thrown our way so far.  Keep them coming. They've been great.

Best Pizza...Pittsburgh?

I find it hard to believe that the best pizza in the country is located 10 minutes from my apartment, but okay. Katie and I will stop at Village Pizza in Shadyside, PA. Somebody has to think there is a better place for pizza...anyone want to make any suggestions? Anyone from Chicago or New York want to dispute this, or even Memphis?

I love eating. It is my favorite hobby, so believe me, there will be not shortages of stops for claims of the best food in the country. Keep the ideas coming: Ice cream, hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, sandwiches (although I'm not sure how many sandwiches could beat one from Primanti Bros. or Peppi's in Pittsburgh)

You get the idea. If I could eat my way across the country, I would, so I need your help to know where and what to eat.

Best Burrito in the Country, Here We Come

Thanks to Hannah Limbaugh, I think we know have a first officially listed destination for the trip: Flaming Amy's Burrito Barn in Wilmington, North Carolina. Who can pass up a place with allegedly the best burritos in the country and a slogan like "Hot, Fast, Cheap, and Easy"?

We'll let you know just how good the burritos are when we get there. Anyone want to combat the location for the best burrito or have any other best restaurants?

Tips for Active communication

Now although Emily and I have been friends for around 16 years or so, we still lack the sense to listen to each other, which results in many disasters. One of my personal favorite stories that exemplifies this point was on a trip to Washington D.C.

In order to fully understand the hilarity of this story, I must start from the beginning. Emily and I decided that we wanted to go to D.C. in the beginning of January before the spring semester started up. We both like historical things, and it had been a very long time since either of us had been there.

Our original plan was for us to wake up really early in morning to drive there, spend the whole day, leave late that night and drive back. This idea was quickly thrown out by my mother, who booked a motel room for us on a military base right outside of D.C. (My mother is retired from the Army).

So they day of the trip comes and there are winter storm warnings everywhere. From Pittsburgh to D.C. – it was going to be bad, but it wasn’t going to hit until a few hours into our trip, so being that Emily and I are stubborn, much to the dismay of my father and later we found out Frank, we decided to risk it.

While I was getting my last few things packed, I gave Emily the Tom-Tom and told her to program the address that the motel. She then told me that I had written the address down wrong because it was not showing up in the GPS system, but she had figured it out.

We got to D.C. safely, luckily we out ran the winter storm. Now here is a little fact about myself – I have a very small bladder, and on road trips I have to stop a lot. A little bit outside of the city I told Emily that I had to pee and that if we saw a place, stop. Well as we were passing a gas station I told her to pull over, she thought that I was saying this so we could ask for directions because of a road closure that Tom-Tom refused to detour us around, so she said “No, we are fine,” and passed the gas station. I then yelled at her that it was because I had to pee, she claimed that she forgot but would pull over at the next place we saw…little did she know that there wasn’t a place for over an hour.

When then drove around lost (because guess what, military bases do not show up on GPS’s, a fact that was unknown to us, but in reality makes a lot of sense) for what seemed like forever, looking for a place for me to pee. It came down to us sitting at a light in a traffic circle and me spotting at hotel. I turned to Emily and told her I was going to run to the hotel and for her to try and stay on the traffic circle and I would meet her at the next light.

Without a jacket on and shoes half off, I ran for the hotel. Finding the bathroom in the hotel was like a mouse finding a piece of cheese in a maze. Crazy. After I found the bathroom and came outside in the sleeting freezing weather, I call Emily on her phone asking her where she is. She is laughing so hard that I can not understand here. So I get frustrated because while she is sitting in heated car, I am freezing my ass off. So I yell at her where are you and she tells me to start walking south, so I do just that but instead of walking I start running because I’m cold.

One again She starts laughing to a point where I can’t understand her, while she is telling me to slow down I think she that she says speed up. So I keep running and she keeps laughing. I am about a block away before she finally stops and says turn around and come back. Frank meets me half way and takes me to where they are parked.

Moral of the Story: Emily needs to learn how to listen and remember little facts such as Katie needing to go the bathroom so we don’t have to drive in circles around DC for two hours looking for a place for Katie to pee.

Finding Ourselves in 'The Lost Generation'

A few days ago Business Weekly posted an article (The Lost Generation) on its Web site about the growing concern over 16-24 year-olds simply not being hired and not being given the chance to make a name for themselves.

This is why Katie and I are going to make our mark in our own way and not spend a summer hopelessly waiting for someone looking at stacks of resumes to decide our fates.

 

Getting Everything Started

Hi everyone, this is Emily typing.  Katie and I, who have spent the last few years planning every possible way to go on vacation, taking spontaneous, ill-conceived road trips and making an uncountable amount of visits to Disney World, have decided to broaden our horizons.  With college graduation insight and the prospect of being a "real adult" in mind, we have decided to take this summer to travel the country and explore the unknown, at least to us.

If any of you know us, our past traveling adventures have resulted in a stalled car, broken GPS, ice storms, etc. You name something that could go wrong, and it has gone wrong.  Not to mention, despite the fact that we have been friend for the better part of our lives, Katie and I tend to fight constantly out of severe stubbornness from both parties, mostly about ridiculous subjects like whether flies have feet. (A fight that I won, based on the findings on page 19 of the book "Flies" -- "Flies have sticky feet.")

Our intension is to document the entire trip with photographs, blogs, videos, etc.  We are currently in the process of creating accounts with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, in addition to our blog of course, so that we can post as much as we can.

Over the next few months we will be planning exactly where we will be going, what we will be doing and how we are getting there.  The one thing we do know for certain, though, is that we are doing this without a GPS, because we haven't had much luck with them in the past anyhow. We are completely open to suggestion and would, in fact, love to hear about must-see places wherever they may be.  Hopefully you enjoy and stay tuned for what lies ahead.