Bonus Road Trip (7 of 10)- Columbia, Mo., to The Indepence Bowl

Since we originally started the Road Trip series back in the spring of this year, we set out to try and cover every state, including Alaska and Hawaii (for the Aloha State, we used a short drive on the island of Maui). And, we think got all the states except for possibly Missouri.

So, we are including the Show Me State here just to be 100-percent certain. Since we are sort of based in North Carolina, this may seem like high treason as the University of North Carolina Tarheels will face the Missouri Tigers for the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La.

This is actually an early bowl as it will be played on Monday, Dec. 26, at 5:00 p.m./Chapel Hill, NC, time.

For this entry, we chose two Mexican restaurants as our points of destination. La Siesta on North 9th Street in Columbia, Missori, the city where the Tigers are based, is the Mexican restaurant for Mizzou. And, for Shreveport, we have chosen Superior Grill, which also has three other restaurants in Louisiana and one in Alabama. In Sheveport, the restaurant can be found on Lime Avenue.

If you are in Chapel Hill, NC, we saw that our friends at the Turkish restaurant Tallula's on Franklin Street about 15 hours and 30 minutes from the Superior Grill in Shreveport, La.

But, we are looking for the distance between Columbia and Shreveport; and the answer is:

A) 9 hours, 45 minutes

B) 10 hours

C) 10 hours, 15 minutes

D) 10 hours, 30 minutes

E) 10 hours, 45 minutes

SIDEBAR ONE: Lots of books with very long titles are out these days, including this one we saw mentioned in "Rolling Stone" and later at a book retailer in Washington, DC: "Free Ride: How Digital Media Parasites Are Destroying the Cultural Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back" by Robert Levine, who is also a contributing editor to "Rolling Stone."

SIDEBAR TWO: We love headlines from the satirical news publication "The Onion," and this header from today's edition was as always quite funny and very dark: "(Detroit) Tigers Sign Jim Leyland Through His Death in 2012."

It should be pointed out that the legendary baseball manager Jim Leyland is alive and well; in fact, he turned 67 on Dec. 15th.

Silly Image to Fill Space- Jamie Lee Curtis

Since today should be either International Screaming Day or Edvard Munch Appreciation Day because of all the madness going on around us, we thought we'd do a quick entry with an image of the main scream queen of the late '70s/early '80s Jamie Lee Curtis as she appeared in the original John Carpenter version of "Halloween"
(1978).

Today, Curtis, 52, appears in commercials for Activia yogurt and writes for "The Huffington Post."

Fay Wray, who was the woman in the original version of "King Kong" (1933) is considered the original scream queen.

As far as Edvard Munch goes, one can see his most famous painting "The Scream" at the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo.

There is a "Stella/Stanley" screaming contest in honor of the play "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was penned by Tennesee Williams. The contest for this year will be held in late March at the Tennesee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival.

Each contestant must yell Stella or Stanley three times. Hmmmm.....yeah, it might be hard to top Marlan Brando.