Neon Vomit

nb. Neon Vomit is the name of a hipstery quasi-rap group in Providence. I'm not much of a fan, but I'll still crib the name because it fits oh so well.

In the novel Neuromancer, the rather oracular William Gibson writes of future cities which, having expanded out of their geographically determinate centers, assume the form of 'sprawls.' He imagines, for example, a consistently urban expanse which extends from Atlanta to Boston. Dallas isn't exactly like this yet, but the facts of it's geographical particularity as a major city on the Great Plains whose potential for expansion is encumbered neither by sea nor mountain, harbor a viral quality. When one drives into Dallas from the North--which is to say, when one crosses the Texas/Oklahoma border on either I-35 or 75--one immediately encounters a succession of exurbs followed by a further ring of suburbs. One does not encounter Dallas proper for nearly 70 miles, but the interstitial area, between the borders and the proper city limits is nearly entirely incorporated. A great deal of these outlying areas, say 99%, have to quality of being discreet architectonic iterations of a platonic Suburbia : a redundant cycle of housing developments punctuated by chain restaurants punctuated by housing developments ad nauseum. Dallas proper has largely the same feel.

This time on the drive in, I was struck by a singularly desperate image: a Macaroni Grill sitting directly opposite an Olive Garden on either side of I-35 about 30 miles North of Dallas. These two low-slung buildings, each with their own set of ancillaries (TGI Fridays, Bennigans, Chipotle, etc.), seemed to me to be squaring off, locked in an immortal struggle for simulacral dominance ("There can be only one!"). Some playwright or epic poet, more competent than myself, could no doubt write an achingly beautiful work turning on the false conflict at play here. Lear always choosing the wrong daughter not out of folly, but because there can be no right choice among equal distortions. A scene might go like this:

Susan: "Where shall we go to dinner tonight?"

Brad: "Tough question, maybe Italian?"

Susan: "Okay, should we go to Macaroni Grill or the Olive Garden."

Brad: "How can we ever know which is best, or which are the right criteria for choosing best?"

Here, I'd imagine, is where both Brad and Susan's heads explode and blood spews out from their necks quite liberally (a la the play scene in the Addams Family movie).