In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas.
I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build.
I was not prepared for the gas station.
There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps.
I counted them because I did not believe them.
A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty.
He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things.
Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon.
A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced.
A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume.
And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot.
The beaver is a saint.
The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house.
And the bathrooms.
I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people.
I was wrong to dismiss it.
The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it.
I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering.
A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist.
I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes.
I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church.
I did not need any of it.
I needed all of it.
I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there.
I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either.
But I did fill the truck.
And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.
Sequels coming in 2026:
Fall 2
Scream 7
Jumanji 4
Minions 3
Toy Story 5
Greenland 2
Dune: Part 3
Angry Birds 3
Scary Movie 6
Focker-in-Law
Violent Night 2
Enola Holmes 3
Air Bud Returns
Mortal Kombat 2
Practical Magic 2
Super Troopers 3
Avengers Doomsday
The Social Reckoning
Heartstopper: Forever
The Devil Wears Prada 2
The Mandalorian & Grogu
The Strangers - Chapter 3
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Insidious: The Bleeding World
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
Scream and Five Nights at Freddy's star Matthew Lillard has admitted it "it f***ing sucks" to be on the receiving end of an insult from Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino. https://t.co/MrEYaA9pjz
Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, known for his roles as Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat (1995), Nobusuke Tagomi in The Man in the High Castle, and Chang in The Last Emperor (1987), has passed away at 75.