Travels with Tina: Halloween Homecoming (Part 1)

The Convention & Visitors Bureau really goes all out to make a guy feel welcome.

It’s Halloween, and I’m spending the night in the most terrifying chamber of horrors in the entire state of Texas: the city of Waco.

What the hell am I doing here? Well, it's homecoming for Baylor, the alma mater of Ursa Domina. She's been tremendously indulgent about coming to North Texas sporting events both good (basketball) and bad (football) for more than a year, and she's called in the debt by making me suffer in this godforsaken wasteland for two days and one night.

Baylor is a very nice school with a beautiful campus and an excellent academic reputation (even when you consider their whole "gaming the SAT system" debacle). Put it anywhere else in the state, even Lubbock, and I wouldn't hesitate at all to visit with a smile on my face.

But Waco is the place where joy goes to die. Hope and dreams can't survive here. The smile on my face withers and dies the moment we cross the city line.

Among the fascinating facts I’ve learned about Waco from the lovely lady: Waco has the highest number of homeless people (per capita) in America. Also, Waco has enough churches that a spiritually confused student can go to a different one each Sunday of their college career. I suspect that only works for the typical Baylor college career, not the North Texas music student’s standard 8-10 year plan.

One new fact we both learned from an I-35 billboard is that the number of murders is up dramatically, and Waco is now the 7th most violent city in Texas. But according to Wikipedia, Waco is only the 21st largest city in the state (just smaller than Beaumont, just bigger than Carrollton). This means that the good people of Waco are getting murdered at a prodigious rate, even without the help of the federal government.

Lots of homeless, abundant churchgoing options, and an astronomical violent crime rate. What's not to love?

Behold the best restaurant in town. They're open whenever the hell they feel like it, unless they change their minds.

The restaurant above is Kitok's, the best meal in town. From the outside, it looks like the sort of abandoned building where a mafia informant would be tortured to death. And it's in a particularly unappealing part of town... Which is really saying something when you're talking about Waco.

When the lovely lady and I first started seeing each other, she was in her last semester at Baylor. Completely baffled as to what possible attractions and non-chain dining options Waco might hold, I called up a recent Baylor grad and asked him about any place he could think of that was suitable for courting a young lady. He took a day to think it over and reflect on his four years in town, and he gave me a written list of all the restaurants, sights, and destinations.

He wrote the entire list, including names, addresses/directions, and brief descriptions, on the front and part of the back of one standard sized Post-It note. I'm not kidding. And even that list was padded to include some very questionable suggestions, like visiting and photographing an unexceptional bridge.

At the top of the list was Kitok's, a Korean/Chinese/Hamburger restaurant. Unfortunately, Kitok's has the most bizarre hours of any eating establishment I've ever tried to visit. The proprietors may very well have designed their schedule to confuse and torture pathetic Waco residents desperate for quality food. Some nights, they close at 7 or 8. Some nights, they're not open at all. And one time, after we had called early in the week to make sure they'd be open when we got there, we arrived to find a locked door and a sign saying that they had spontaneously decided to close down for a two week vacation. It took two months of trying before we finally got in the place. It's worth the effort, though. If you're trapped in Waco and you're hungry, cross your fingers and try to get in to Kitok's. I recommend the bulgogi.

Homecoming means two things: Carnival Rides...

...and a Bonfire.

We're here for the weekend with one of Ursa Domina's sorority friends and her boyfriend Nick, who regular readers may remember as the guy who's first college game was the North Texas/FIU game... An experience that he enjoyed, despite the fact that the game itself was, in his words, as much fun as watching someone kick his dog to death. He's a med student and an emergency room technician, and the first words out of his mouth when we got near the carnival rides were ones of warning. Whenever the carnival is in town, hardly a day goes by in the emergency room that someone isn't brought in with some sort of severed or mangled limb.

I'm pretty fond of all my appendages, so we skipped the rides. Nick and I decided to go explore the event on our own and leave the girlfriends to hug their old sorority sisters and talk to everyone in unusually fast paced, high pitched voices. As long as we were around, they all had to pretend that they didn't haze the crap out of each other as part of their sorority initiations, and sustaining that sort of massive lie can be exhausting. You could ask anyone who was involved in faking the moon landings, if only the strain of perpetuating that myth hadn't killed them all.

Anyway... Back to the Homecoming attractions.

I am strictly forbidden from making any more jokes about people who play basketball at Baylor killing each other. But if I were allowed to, this is where the jokes would go.

Sadly, it is not socially acceptable for this man to wear his Muppet costume and garbage can on days other than Halloween Homecoming.

If TY had been here with us, he would have squealed like a little girl, because free face painting was available for all ages.

But inflatable sports attractions, snazzy costumes, face paint, and bottomless cups of free hot chocolate (thanks, Alpha Delta Pi tent!) are just appetizers. The Baylords and ladies come back on Homecoming weekend for some Art Briles pep rally excitement and a roaring bonfire.

The Baylor cheerleaders work the pep rally stage in a wholesome, 100% family friendly way.

If your eyes weren't magnetically drawn to the big snazzy stage or the scandalous exposed cheerleader calves, you may have noticed the crowd throwing up their University gang sign: The Sic 'em Bears Paw. In the first Baylor edition of Travels with Tina, I described it as a mix between the tomahawk chop and a bad mime pretending to play Hungry Hungry Hippos.

These people are crazy about their Sic' em Bears Paw. They're totally nuts about it. I mean, I love to throw up the Talon whenever I get the slightest excuse... But these Baylor Homecoming folks turn their hand signs into a mass orgasmic, religious experience.

It appears the Pizza Inn Nazi already brainwashed the Baylor faithful decades ago.

The "Sic 'em Bears" experience: Is it some sort of tent revivalist rapture?

Or a freakish, kinky, hypnotic spell?

Once Briles and the Baylor seniors were done instilling the crowd with an appropriate measure of pep and the Sic-ing 'em was (mostly) over with, it was time for the Baptists to embrace their inner Zoroastrian.

The most adorable little bonfire I've ever seen.

Keeping the bonfire in the center of campus is a priority, so Baylor is forced to keep things very, very small. So small that if their bonfire stack collapsed on me, I could probably just lift it all off and get back up without straining too hard. So small that emergency management brings tweezers instead of a fire truck because splinters are a greater threat than flames. So small that... Well, you get the idea. Baylor's bonfire is a good show and a fun time, but a week ago I watched the massive Mean Green stack almost (with apologies to Hank Williams) set the woods on fire.

So while Baylor may have a huge carnival atmosphere, double our bonfire attendance, a better conference affiliation, and a higher US News and World Report academic ranking... North Texas totally kicks Baylor's ass at unleashing the raw power of fire.

The big, big crowd enjoys a tiny, tiny bonfire.

After the bonfire was over (I believe a group of 6 or 7 volunteers urinated on the flames to put them out, campfire style), it was time for me to buy some new clothes. Other than my Texas Douche Halloween costume from last year, I can't remember the last time I got a piece of non-North Texas branded college apparel. But, since the lovely lady is almost always dressed in a North Texas shirt at Mean Green games, I am not allowed to be a Douche at Baylor games anymore. I now own one of the Baylor t-shirts shown below.

Even in Waco, Texas Douche needs wardrobe options.

And while we were out shopping for that shirt, we saw something truly amazing...

Gas cheaper than $2.00 a gallon? Could it possibly be true?

For the first time since Hurricane Katrina, we bought a gallon of gas for less than two bucks. I guess that if you believe in the Great Pumpkin long enough, eventually you get a Halloween miracle to reward your faith.

As bad as Waco may suck... At least it's cheap to get back out of here.

Tomorrow, more Baylor Homecoming adventures, and then I'm getting the hell out of here as fast as possible.

Hopefully, nobody murders me first.