If you've driven from San Diego to Phoenix, you know there's not much to look at. On a recent summer vacay, we were almost at the end of the road -- Maricopa Road, that is, en route to I-10 -- when we noticed a sign out the window. It was one of those Adopt-A-Highway signs, you know, the kind usually sponsored by the Sierra Club or the Audubon Society. Up 'til that point, Hooters was the oddest Adopt-A-Highway sponsorship we'd ever seen. But this one really made us wonder if we were hallucinating after too many hours on the road. The Church of Body Modification, chipping in for roadside cleanup? Aren't those folks too busy suspending themselves by their nipples and ramming hooks through their back flesh? Turns out they are too busy, according to Doug Nintzel, from the Arizona Department of Transportation. He confirms the Bod Modders sponsored a mile on Maricopa Road, just south of I-10, but says that our call prompted some checking, and that after more than a year, no one had heard from the Church. So ADOT "did a modification of our own," as the witty Nintzel puts it, and stripped the Church of Body Modification of its Adopt-A-Highway status.

Ouch, that smarts.