The thing about The Thing?

If you've traveled Interstate 10 between Tucson and Las Cruces, you've seen the hundreds of billboards for The Thing? (always with a question mark). Yes, it's a tourist trap. But in the grand sense, it's so much more.

The Thing? isn't just a small, threadbare, not-all-that-interesting museum attached to a gas station, Dairy Queen and souvenir store. It's conceptual art. It's the totality of it. It's the name and the marketing and all those billboards. It's a chunk of American highway culture. It's knowing The Thing? is hokey and disappointing and you drive past because you're too smart. Or it's stopping anyway because you know it's hokey and disappointing but that things like The Thing? have a certain cheesy, kitchy, stupid entertainment value. And it's only a buck. And you needed to use a bathroom anyway.