8/17/10 – Arlington, VA

We hightail it to Virginia, with Alice in tow, carving out some time to sightsee in our nation’s capitol. We stand before the White House lawn, walk past the Washington Monument, look in vain for the Lincoln Memorial, and stop by the World War II memorial instead. Then we hit Ben’s Chili Bowl, which is amazing, hung with approximately two hundred pictures of Bill Cosby. I try to buy a tshirt at the official Ben’s gift shop upstairs, but the guy inside won’t open the store, even though it’s seven minutes before closing. He just counts his money on the counter and pretends he is a deaf-mute. I wouldn’t open my store for us either.

We shuffle back to the car full of chili cheese fries and chili dogs. This does not bode well for our show–a couple of months ago, Yoshi ate poutine before a San Diego show and he was so sluggish he fell off his drum stool. (To be fair, this only caused the crowd to yell, “Yosh-i, Yosh-i, Yosh-i!”).

We reach the club, the Galaxy Hut, in Arlington. They’ve got a great back porch to hang out on. An inspiring band called Foul Swoops opens. We play a good set and have fun talking to the bar’s regulars afterwards. We struggle to find a hotel as I realize my glasses prescription is five years old, finally hitting our beds around 3:30. Nick’s pull-out couch slopes dramatically. He looks inverted like a bat as he drifts into sleep. I worry that he’ll wake up with brain damage. But I don’t lose a minute of sleep over it.