It being generally known that I have recently been to the Outer Banks of North Carolina (or OBX, as the infidels would have it written), some of you might be wondering what manner of things there be to do down there.  And of course, if you still haven’t taken a vacation this summer, being that hurricane season is all up ons, this is probably one of the cheaper times to rent a cottage, lighthouse, or family-size porta-john.  However, since it would verily be the very acme of foolishness to just go venturing off to such an exotic and magical place as North Carolina without some inkling or another of what charming diversions one might expect there to encounter, I have taken the task upon myself to furnish y’all with a brief list of a few of the more wondrous fripperies which may be seen, purchased, and/or eaten in the Outer Banks, which, just to be ornery, I’m going to abbreviate and signify by a completely different and non-yuppified combination of letters, like BUH, POG, or maybe even the rarely attempted four letter island abbreviation, PHUT (not to be confused with the chosen acronym of the Pennsylvania Heritage of Underwear Trolls).  Anyway, let’s see what manner of wackiness may be discovered by the enterprising and beach-going soul.

            First, as you arrive on the island, you will no doubt be struck by the awesome presence of the World’s Most Fanciest Looking Home Depot.  Seriously, there’s some kind of an ordinance on the island, where any store over a certain size has to look like a lighthouse or something, so a couple of years back when the decided to build a Home Depot there, they were bound by the very law itself to make it look absolutely ridiculous.  Like, imagine that you were and old sea captain, and also a supervillian, and you wanted to build some kind of a nautical fortress of doom, while still remaining true to your ocean-going heritage, so you put a couple of lighthouse-looking dealies on it, while leaving most of it to look like the Brandermill version of the Supreme Courthouse.  That’s what this Home Depot looks like.  Every time I walk in, I expect some guy with a hook hand and a helper monkey to zoom up in a hoverchair and go, “Arrrr, welcome to me bonny fortress of doom, narrr!  Today we be having a whale of a sale on coping saws and pastel high gloss interiors!”  It’s never happened yet, but whenever I’m at the beach, I stop in every day anways, just in case.

            Next, make sure you stop by the Bootleg Wookie Golf Miniature Golf Course.  Sure, you could go to Count Baron Von Priceypant’s Golfstravaganza and pay 15$ to ride in a little cart, but for $1.50 a head, you can play all day at BWGMGC.  And trust me, even if it weren’t cheaper, you’d still want to go.  You see, whoever started it up, realized that in order to make it in the cutthroat world of mini beach golf, you need some sort of a gimmick.  He also realized, that if you plan on making your gimmick anything that people are going to recognize, you’ll be paying a heap of money to buy the rights to it.  The solution?  Weird-ass Bizarro Star Wars characters, crafted with loving care from fiberglass and the broken dreams of orphan children.  You can for instance, see Buzz Aldrin locked in mortal combat with a deformed Imperial Chicken Walker whilst one of his legs falls off.  Or you can see Chewbacca’s freaky elephant man brother, the giganimous Zoobacca, standing in a volcano beating a Martian as if it were some kind of intergalactic baby seal.  I think there’s also a dinosaur there, but since copyright on those ran out sometime during the Pleistocene Epoch, the golf course guy didn’t have to get all creative and give it like, three arms and a beef cannon for a tail.

            Should you happen to want to eat while you’re at the beach, make sure you stop by the famous and delectable Windmill Battleship Restaurant, where it’s not just a pretty name, it’s a restaurant made out of a battleship next to a windmill.  Now, when I was there, the restaurant didn’t look particularly seaworthy to me, but as a mere landlubber (and I do lubb me some land, let me tell you) it looked more like a generic waterfront restaurant building, at least from the outside.  Inside however, it clearly is made out of a battleship (the windmill is outside actually, and not available for eating in).  All their tables and chairs and other such sitting apparatuses (apparati?, that sounds more like a Harry Potter word) are all art-deco and cool-looking, and the walls are all covered with pictures of other restaurants/battleships that this one has sunk in glorious combat over the years.  Also, there’s a signed plaque from George Bush designating it as the most officially awesome restaurant to combine windmills battleships and fine cuisine that anyone was crazy enough to build.  Upstairs, there’s the historic Lima bean-shaped bar of doom, where Mr. T, Dwight Eisenhower, Marilyn Monroe and Winston Churchill all got drunk on the night before they flew off into outer space on their heroic mission to stop Hitler, while in the process being exposed to cosmic Space Rays^®, thereby becoming the Fantastic Four and saving the world yet again.  Finally, the Windmill Battleship Restaurant parking lot is right next door to the ocean, so whenever there’s a storm, the term overflow parking takes on a wacky and horrible double meaning.

            Well, there are of course a heap more awesome things to see down in PHUT, but since I’m already running a little long, you’ll just have to check back in tomorrow and see what else they are (don’t think I just used up all the sweet ones today though, and I’m just gonna write about sucky things to see, like the Nautical Lint Museum, and the Everything’s $1.73 Store.  Oh heavens no, there’s gonna be some industrial grade awesome coming up.

            It being generally known that I have recently been to the Outer Banks of North Carolina (or OBX, as the infidels would have it written), some of you might be wondering what manner of things there be to do down there.  And of course, if you still haven’t taken a vacation this summer, being that hurricane season is all up ons, this is probably one of the cheaper times to rent a cottage, lighthouse, or family-size porta-john.  However, since it would verily be the very acme of foolishness to just go venturing off to such an exotic and magical place as North Carolina without some inkling or another of what charming diversions one might expect there to encounter, I have taken the task upon myself to furnish y’all with a brief list of a few of the more wondrous fripperies which may be seen, purchased, and/or eaten in the Outer Banks, which, just to be ornery, I’m going to abbreviate and signify by a completely different and non-yuppified combination of letters, like BUH, POG, or maybe even the rarely attempted four letter island abbreviation, PHUT (not to be confused with the chosen acronym of the Pennsylvania Heritage of Underwear Trolls).  Anyway, let’s see what manner of wackiness may be discovered by the enterprising and beach-going soul.

            First, as you arrive on the island, you will no doubt be struck by the awesome presence of the World’s Most Fanciest Looking Home Depot.  Seriously, there’s some kind of an ordinance on the island, where any store over a certain size has to look like a lighthouse or something, so a couple of years back when the decided to build a Home Depot there, they were bound by the very law itself to make it look absolutely ridiculous.  Like, imagine that you were and old sea captain, and also a supervillian, and you wanted to build some kind of a nautical fortress of doom, while still remaining true to your ocean-going heritage, so you put a couple of lighthouse-looking dealies on it, while leaving most of it to look like the Brandermill version of the Supreme Courthouse.  That’s what this Home Depot looks like.  Every time I walk in, I expect some guy with a hook hand and a helper monkey to zoom up in a hoverchair and go, “Arrrr, welcome to me bonny fortress of doom, narrr!  Today we be having a whale of a sale on coping saws and pastel high gloss interiors!”  It’s never happened yet, but whenever I’m at the beach, I stop in every day anways, just in case.

            Next, make sure you stop by the Bootleg Wookie Golf Miniature Golf Course.  Sure, you could go to Count Baron Von Priceypant’s Golfstravaganza and pay 15$ to ride in a little cart, but for $1.50 a head, you can play all day at BWGMGC.  And trust me, even if it weren’t cheaper, you’d still want to go.  You see, whoever started it up, realized that in order to make it in the cutthroat world of mini beach golf, you need some sort of a gimmick.  He also realized, that if you plan on making your gimmick anything that people are going to recognize, you’ll be paying a heap of money to buy the rights to it.  The solution?  Weird-ass Bizarro Star Wars characters, crafted with loving care from fiberglass and the broken dreams of orphan children.  You can for instance, see Buzz Aldrin locked in mortal combat with a deformed Imperial Chicken Walker whilst one of his legs falls off.  Or you can see Chewbacca’s freaky elephant man brother, the giganimous Zoobacca, standing in a volcano beating a Martian as if it were some kind of intergalactic baby seal.  I think there’s also a dinosaur there, but since copyright on those ran out sometime during the Pleistocene Epoch, the golf course guy didn’t have to get all creative and give it like, three arms and a beef cannon for a tail.

            Should you happen to want to eat while you’re at the beach, make sure you stop by the famous and delectable Windmill Battleship Restaurant, where it’s not just a pretty name, it’s a restaurant made out of a battleship next to a windmill.  Now, when I was there, the restaurant didn’t look particularly seaworthy to me, but as a mere landlubber (and I do lubb me some land, let me tell you) it looked more like a generic waterfront restaurant building, at least from the outside.  Inside however, it clearly is made out of a battleship (the windmill is outside actually, and not available for eating in).  All their tables and chairs and other such sitting apparatuses (apparati?, that sounds more like a Harry Potter word) are all art-deco and cool-looking, and the walls are all covered with pictures of other restaurants/battleships that this one has sunk in glorious combat over the years.  Also, there’s a signed plaque from George Bush designating it as the most officially awesome restaurant to combine windmills battleships and fine cuisine that anyone was crazy enough to build.  Upstairs, there’s the historic Lima bean-shaped bar of doom, where Mr. T, Dwight Eisenhower, Marilyn Monroe and Winston Churchill all got drunk on the night before they flew off into outer space on their heroic mission to stop Hitler, while in the process being exposed to cosmic Space Rays^®, thereby becoming the Fantastic Four and saving the world yet again.  Finally, the Windmill Battleship Restaurant parking lot is right next door to the ocean, so whenever there’s a storm, the term overflow parking takes on a wacky and horrible double meaning.

            Well, there are of course a heap more awesome things to see down in PHUT, but since I’m already running a little long, you’ll just have to check back in tomorrow and see what else they are (don’t think I just used up all the sweet ones today though, and I’m just gonna write about sucky things to see, like the Nautical Lint Museum, and the Everything’s $1.73 Store.  Oh heavens no, there’s gonna be some industrial grade awesome coming up.