491 - The Number of the Beast

US Route 666 -- nicknamed "The Devil's Highway" -- running north-south through the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, has been renamed to the far less diabolical-sounding US Route 491. We passed this sign denoting the change in Monticello, Utah, near Moab:

While this is excellent news for hexakosioihexekontahexaphobes, it saddens me. You see, while this spur of Route 66 (the sixth spur, of course) was named one of the "20 Most Dangerous Highways in the US" and believed by many to be cursed, what prompted the government to change the name was less supernatural than financial. People kept stealing the signs.

So my concern is, what will all those highway marker thieves do for entertainment now? If they want to rename Interstate-40 the "Old Scratch Turnpike," they better get a petition going, pronto. The change from 666 to 491 took about 77 years.

Better Left Unseen Dept.

I have never seen the movie, "MOTEL HELL," and I know you do not believe this, but it's true. It came out when I was 11, and the trailer ran before something innocuous I was seeing, probably "AIRPLANE!" The poster was in the lobby of the theater:

The trailer and the poster combined in my mind to form a storyline so horrifying I literally lost sleep over it. Now it is many years later, and I have picked up bits and pieces of what it is about over the course of my travels, but I've never actually seen it. Because when something succeeds so perfectly at what it is trying to do, don't you hate to spoil its fun?

Poster copyright MGM/UA.

Family Resemblance

People have said to me, "You grew up living with your mother at a roadside motel in the desert? Isn't that like...?" And I smile and shake my head and say, "It wasn't the same at all. I was never into taxidermy."