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“HUG’S” is loosely based on a chain of truck stops called “LOVE’S.” My partner Ami and I stop at the Love’s in Quartzsite, AZ, every time we head out to visit her folks in Tucson. It’s great! They’ve got ads posted over every urinal so you can peruse all their sales while you pee. “Oh wow, The Devils Advocate on Blu-ray for $4.99. Better toss one of those in with my Corn Nuts.”

Of course “Hug’s” here isn’t anywhere near that slick. It’s the low-rent, Blu-ray-less version of Love’s. Hug’s is the place you come across when you turn off the main highway in search of “The Spud Cathedral” and… oh boy… starting to see a loooot of Confederate flags all of a sudden…

I’ve been to dozens of places like this while criss-crossing the country on road trips, and they always bring out the same weird emotions. Sera says she feels an overwhelming need to “rescue” all the objects she finds in the store. That’s about right. It’s like I’ve fallen into some freaky liminal space between dimensions and need to gather as much stuff as possible before the Things Without Names tear it all apart.

I rescued one of those little real fur kitties from the Things once. He goes like this:

REF ROUNDUP: The footnote under panel six refers to the scene in The NeverEnding Story when Atreyu’s horse, Artax, becomes so overcome with despair he can’t pull himself from the Swamp of Sadness and dies. I swear to God that scene goes on for fifteen brutal hours and retains a vice-like grip on my brain to this day despite the fact that (SPOILER) Artax returns to life at the end.

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You are now bearing witness, of course, to one of the most important moments in Serenity Rose history. 

No, not those boring dirtbags at the bottom. The HAT. This is where Tess gets her hat! We rarely ever see her without her iconic signature hat from this point on. When they finally build a Macy’s Thanksgiving parade balloon of Tess, it will certainly have a hat.

Looking back at this page now, it feels slightly weird that Tess is calling herself “psychobilly.” I like a lot of psychobilly stuff (The Cramps, HorrorPops, The Creepshow, Tiger Army, look ‘em up!), and I can easily imagine Tess rockin’ out to some standup bass, but is it cowboy hat music? Psychobilly bands are all about big Elvis pompadours, flattops, elaborate 40’s pinup constructions… You don’t cover up all that difficult hair-work with cowboy nonsense! 

So why did cowboy hat = psychobilly to me? 

I blame Rob Zombie. (Always blame Rob Zombie.) He had a cool hat like Tess’, and his album Hellbilly Deluxe was in pretty regular rotation on my iPod at the time. Hellbilly, Psychobilly, same difference. HAT TIME.

Thank you for helping me sort this out!

Let’s see… Anything I want to say about these dirtbags at the bottom of the page? Nah. We’ve all known dirtbags like this. The 2000’s were an especially dirtbag age. It was all about coddling the edgelords back then. The Dark Bros strode the earth like titans in those days, demanding every Girl Go Wild, sperm flow through every comedy, and gay panic jokes be enjoyed by all. The dirtbags briefly lost favor in the early 2010’s, but came roaring back mid-decade with their signature crowning achievement: electing one of their own president of the United States of America. They have never been out of power since. (Fewer “69” jerseys and more business suits now, though.)

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

I dunno, man! I’m actually writing this post a week early. Theoretically as you’re reading this I’ve just spent several days visiting my family in Chicago and am currently on an airplane heading back to Pasadena. Or maybe I died? That would be spooky, huh? If that’s the case, please buy a copy of SHOCK CITY in my honor.

Thank you from beyond the grave (maybe)!

NEXT WEEK: PRETTY LITTLE PIGGY.