I am home in Chicago where it is cold and rainy. Back in Arizona it was warm and sunny and, specifically in Sedona, beautifully red and mountainous. But despite the natural splendor of the location, I deem Sedona one of the top ten worst places I've ever been in the world. Why?

For whatever reason, Sedona is the home to various vortexes--I'm not sure exactly what a vortex means, but based on my estimation, it's a gathering place for dozens of shitty souvenir shops that sell exactly the same things: crystals, ugly art, horrible clothing and various other accoutrement that rape Native American--and pretty much every other--culture out there. You know that Indian who cried at the end of that old commercial that told people not to pollute? Well, if he saw the shops in Sedona, he would simultaneously vomit and defecate.

Even if you believe in crystals, dreamcatchers, faeries and the like, you have to be a real idiot to think there's something genuinely spiritual in the mountains and mountains of crap being sold to yokel tourists in the middle of all this natural beauty. There is a vortex in Sedona: a vortex of suck.