Alex stops by Songs & Cigarettes with a road trip video and writes about road movies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Road movies are sometimes awkward to classify. Everybody seems to recognize that The Grapes of Wrath is a road movie, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s contentious to say the same about Little Miss Sunshine, given that most of the film takes place in a yellow van. But you also don\u2019t have to look very hard to find somebody calling Star Wars: A New Hope a road movie either, despite the fact that literally every person you ask would classify it as a science fiction movie first. So I guess the question becomes: what makes something a road movie? And is the road itself actually necessary, or does the unpaved path from Tatooine to Yavin work well enough?<\/p>\n

I recently went on a road trip of sorts, a whirlwind three-day not-quite-adventure from Toronto to Montreal and Ottawa with a guy named Dawson, one of my oldest friends. (And while I hate to romanticize a weekend and tell a series of \u2018You had to be there!\u2019 stories, I\u2019m going to do it anyway.) We played Frisbee, helped an absurd friend move seemingly countless boxes of obsolete technology \u2013 including at least 3 old video game consoles, multiple boxes of VHS tapes, and a non-functioning teal iMac from around 1999 \u2013 to his new apartment, played some dice, destroyed an old bike with an axe, visited a bar called MacLaren\u2019s (Scherbatsky was sadly absent), met The Girl with the Chili Peppers Tattoo, ate at a rib joint with a signed and framed poster of Serial Joe on the wall, met a hitchhiker who was a big Lady Gaga fan, and ate about 14 McDonald\u2019s hashbrowns. Well, at least that\u2019s what the people I was with did. Since I had a camera with me, I figured I might as well film everything instead of actually partaking. (And while I hate to romanticize a weekend and say, \u2018Hey, watch this video I made! I promise it\u2019s not totally worthless!\u2019 I\u2019m doing it anyway.)<\/p>\n