Back in the day, I used to spend a lot of time “commuting” the 20-hour back and forth haul from stinky ol’ Los Angeles to the Happiest Place On Earth, a.k.a. Austin, Texas, in an attempt to live somewhere I actually liked while attempting to maintain some semblance of a screenwriting career with all the necessary Hollywood schmoozing and whatnot.
Anyway, during one of those sleep-deprived, turkey-jerky-fueled jaunts along the good ol’ I-10 West, I happened to glance out the passenger window of my beloved hatchback Honda CRX and notice a very familiar pair of dinosaurs looming on the desert plains.
After slapping myself to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating from gas fumes and Diet Coke intoxication, I realized I was staring at the very spot where Pee-Wee Herman pitched woo to the Francophile truck stop waitress Simone (just before getting chased around the feet of a life-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex by Simone’s jealous, Bluto-esque boyfriend Andy in Tim Burton’s 1985 breakthrough classic, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.
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