Zzyzx Road

Zzyzx Road is an interestingly named road in southern California, in between LA and Las Vegas.  I probably wouldn’t have ever gone down this road if it also hadn’t been the title of a great Stone Sour song.  I also probably wouldn’t have ever watched the low budget horror movie just called Zzyzx if I hadn’t gone down Zzyzx Road.

Apparently the word Zzyzx was coined by some guy who owned a “mineral springs and health spa” at the end of Zzyzx Road.  He claimed it was the last word in the English language.  No word whether he thought it was physically the last word possible if it were listed in a dictionary or the last word possible to coin as he believed all other combinations of letters had been used.  He was later arrested by Federal Marshals (probably Waco style) for misusing the land (which was federal land) and for violating food and drug laws.  The buildings he built are still there, but now the land is used as a Desert Studies Center.

Let me take a minute to tell you about the movie Zzyzx.  I want to make it perfectly clear that I am a fan of bad horror movies.  Unfortunately Zzyzx Road was worse than bad; it was terribly awful.  If I may quote Futurama, this movie was “a crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors.”  Now I can’t be sure about the spelling errors, but I can only assume based on the quality of the movie that there were a good few.  I won’t give away much about the real plot of the movie by asking, but what in the hell is this Mexican family doing digging up human bones in the desert?  Not even deep in the desert, but off the side of Zzyzx Road after they stopped for some reason.  They find human bones and their instinct is not to call the police like a normal person, but to dig them up with the care of Alan Grant digging up a Velociraptor?  What?  Why?  This is just one of many confusing and nonsensical aspects of this movie.  Don’t watch it; unless you are in the mood for a truly awful movie with negligible amounts of entertainment.

Oh, maybe I should talk a little about photos?  Just a little though.  This will be part one of Zzyzx Road.  These are all film shots taken with my Holga on AGFACHROME RSXII 200 slide film and cross processed for some sweet looking and appropriately weridening effects.  Part two will be digital pictures.  I stopped off at this road twice; once on the way to the Mojave with a friend, and once on the way to the Hoover Dam.  These are all from the Hoover Dam trip.  Henjoy.