Gary Busey Summer Vacation (on the moon!)

Oh man! Is it good to be back! It seems like forever since I’ve had time to sit back and make silly posts. After a few weeks off to visit the family on Oric 9-Beta 12, I have returned with the obligatory summer vacation pics.

There are trips that change you—deep jungle dives into forgotten spice markets, empty dive bars off Bangkok alleys, sacred temples buried in volcanic ash. And then there are the truly strange pilgrimages. The kind that don’t just shake your compass, they hurl it into the void.

This summer, I visited Gary Busey. On the Moon.

We didn’t plan it, not really. A few cryptic messages scratched into cassette tapes, one voicemail that just said “Tranquility Base, bring Tabasco,” and I knew: Gary was calling me home.

He met me just outside the Sea of Tranquility, wearing what I can only describe as a fantastic Hawaiian shirt of great style. I point that out because I came dressed accordingly in a similar shirt. We both have style.

“Welcome to the bone-white heart of silence,” he said, offering me a moon rock wrapped in tinfoil. It was a baked potato. Gary Busey is a mystery wrapped in conspiracy wrapped in a poncho.

We hit the tourist spots, sure. The Apollo 11 landing site has been spruced up a bit with informational plaques, a guy in a foam helmet doing TikToks about “vintage gravity,” and of course Elmo. The flag still stands, faded and noble, like a drunk samurai at last call.

There’s a park now. Gary gave a eulogy to the moon rovers. Called them “metal sherpas with no gods.” No one argued.

We got hungry. You ever eat a Chalupa while staring at the Earth from 240,000 miles away? It’s a kind of religious experience. The Taco Bell up there has a drive-thru that only plays ‘90s ambient house and smells faintly of burned oregano and forgotten ambition.

We capped the night at a drive-in dug into a crater wall. It was showing Point Break on loop. Busey, ever the poet laureate of weird, stood on a mound of moondust and recited his own lines before they happened, like he was communing with a more confident version of himself from another timeline. When the final wave crashed, I swear I saw him cry. Or maybe it was just lunar condensation.

There’s something beautiful about the Moon. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t ask. It just is. And if you’re lucky, and you’ve got an old friend with a helmet full of riddles and a craving for beefy 5-layer burritos, it becomes more than a cold rock.

It becomes a story worth telling.

Until next orbit.