In what is certainly the most yee-haw interview to grace us so far this Pride month, country royalty Dolly Parton met with The New York Times during the recent opening Wildwood Grove -- a six-acre, $137 million addition to Dollywood, her theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
If you, much like me, need the world to stop screaming for a moment, I'd highly recommend reading it. If not, here are three key takeaways:
Dolly Parton sleeps in full Dolly Parton Face(tm)
"You never know if you're going to wreck the bus," Parton tells travel reporter Tariro Mzezewa, "you never know if you're going to be somewhere in a hotel and there's going to be a fire. So I leave my makeup on at night and clean my face in the morning."
I am RIDDLED with questions. Does she always sleep on her back, so as not to get makeup on pillows or sheets? Or is there another secret to keeping the mug pristinely preserved during the late-night hours? I'm picturing a Dracula-esque arrangement complete with a cherry wood glam-coffin. (Too much? Too much.)
The namesake of Dollywood has never been on any of its rides
Dolly apparently gets motion sickness pretty easily. What's more, she says she's actually afraid of the rides. "With all my hair I got so much to lose," she said. Put that on my tombstone. No, put that on my hairline's tombstone.
Air travel who?
In the event you thought Dolly was simply a musical icon who sings the classics but lives in 2019, put those worries to rest. "We traveled by bus," she tells Mzezewa of the olden days, "and I remember loving, in the early days, stopping at all the truck stops along the way because of all the great restaurants, all the great food, all the little out-of-the-way places."
Apparently old habits die hard, because Dolly still prefers this over flying. Want the Queen of Country in attendance? Make sure to book far in advance, because Dolly's Rocking Tour Bus hums along at high speeds for no one. "Old Town Road" has nothing. Planes are canceled. No @s.
