You Are Here. (Sort Of).

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. CNN posted a story today about the abundance of “film tours” sweeping the world. Evidently, tourism is booming in those areas where famous films and television shows were shot. Tours are being conducted in locations where things such as The Sound of Music, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Seinfeld, and Lord of the Rings were framed. Lord of the Rings?!? That movie didn’t even take place in reality! Jeez, at least the rest of them were based in actual spots like New York City, Jersey and Naziland.

And what’s up with the lack of love for House Party 2?

One particular woman, who took the New Zealand-based LOTR tour, had an interesting reaction after stopping in the sheep meadow that served as the FAKE backdrop for the FAKE town of FAKE little creatures caught up in a FAKE war to save a FAKE world. In her own words:

“I just stood there and cried. It was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m actually here,’ ” Maro said. “I loved the movie so much, and to actually be there where they filmed that, it overwhelmed me.”

You know the worst part about that statement? SHE KNEW IT WASN’T REAL! She wasn’t some delusional stalker-like fan who fancied herself a denizen of Middle Earth. She wasn’t a tripping-balls Tom Hanks roaming the drainage tunnels under the city in a desperate attempt to survive a live-action role-playing quest. She knew it was a FAKE movie…and she still cried about it! WTF?

No one wants to deal with reality anymore. They’d rather go stand out on the same French hillside that Matt Damon stood on as he pretended to kill Clive Owen while filming The Bourne Identity. Yes, imagining yourself as a world-class assassin is much more therapeutic than dealing with the loss of your job, your failed marriage and the fact that both your house and your retirement fund lost 40% of their value in the past couple months. Go get ’em, James Bond!

Sadly (and somewhat expectedly), this glimmer of a get-rich-quick scheme quickly rooted itself in my head and I started plotting out a famous tour of my own. That’s right, everyone is invited to join me on the deadbeatJONES tour! Line forms to the left. For the low, low price of just $39.95, you’ll embark on a 3-hour personal tour with ME! Your tour includes a brown bag lunch (a $4 value!), a limited edition souvenir (whatever I happen to have in my pocket at the time!) and stops at such illustrious locations as:

1. The railroad tracks that run behind my parents’ house where I spent many days plotting how to make the train wreck by placing pennies, dead rabbits, large tree branches and pretty much anything else I could carry onto the tracks. These same infamous railroad tracks were the very ones I traveled down to reach the bar I served at after losing my license in an ill-advised DUI arrest. BONUS: We may even drive past the underground government parking garage I was arrested emerging from after snapping out of my blackout and confusedly wondering where I was and how that cassette got in my car’s tape deck.
2. The different girls’ houses I used to ride past on my bike when I was a kid, because I was too much of a pussy to actually try talking to the girls I had crushes on. Some things never change…they just get creepier.
3. The yard I passed out in after I threw up all over myself at my friends’ pool party. We mixed grain alcohol with Kool-Aid in a five gallon drum and drank it all in Big Gulp cups. I remember my friend Jeff coming out to check on me as I laid in the wet grass. He asked me if I was okay and, once I assured him I was, he pointed, laughed and ran away. Good times, what I can remember of them. Pretty sure I woke up wearing my friend’s Metallica shirt too. Rock on!
4. That one place I worked at that used to be an Educational Toy store (I was a cashier) and then became an Italian restaurant (I was a bartender). It’s an adult video store now, which means it holds no memories for me really. I just want to stop in and see what’s on sale.
5. The high school I attended where I got punched in the face at least once a year.
6. The community baseball field where I lost my virginity in the front seat of a Toyota Corolla. She was a Catholic school girl and a year older than me. She gave me a condom she had picked up during Spring Break down in Ocean City, Maryland. Supposedly, it had little duck footprints on it, but I couldn’t see them through the tears of pure terror and embarrassment that were streaming down my face. Those were the longest 87 seconds of my life. When we were done, I tossed the used condom out the window as we drove away. A year later, I drove past that same field and saw they had built a chain link fence around the whole complex, complete with locked gates. Sinners.
7. If it’s still light out, we’ll drive across the bridge into the city and simulate that one time I had to go pick up my dad from work in his own minivan while I was completely stoned. Paranoia will destroy you.
8. And we’ll wrap the tour with a visit to my wife’s old apartment. This is the place I hid from my parents for a year, playing Resident Evil on the PlayStation and watching WCW Monday Nitro, before packing everything up (including the wife and her giant dog) and heading to Vegas to begin what has now become my failing career in advertising. You can blame her for domesticating me, for bearing my children, for putting up with me stumbling home at 6am covered in beer and $400 in the hole after falling asleep at a strip club, and for keeping our heads above water financially. Kudos, Little Miss Perfect!

Until someone can create a tour that simulates real American honesty like that, real hardscrabble life experience with all its faults and foibles, I’ll hold on to my money (what little of it I have left). Of course, I’ll be first in line for The Matrix tour. How much ass would that kick?