#fast food

11 Dec 2007
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Friday December 7, 2007–Seattle

I used to live in Seattle, so more than anywhere but Omaha, it evokes warm cuddly feeling. We will be playing at the Comet Tavern, a grunge era place that I was inappropriate at more than once.

I-5 opens at noon and we finally get out of town at two, because Nick and I are pokey motherfuckers and Nevada, forgets to bring his keyboard and has to go back to his apartment. We’ve built up the drive to be much scarier, traffic-wise than it is. Nevada is with us for the first time ever. He is our new keyboard player, recruited from Omaha connections. His mother is business partners with our mother. We grew up about ten blocks apart. I wonder if this will prepare him to tolerate our incessant bullshit.

Nick explains to Nevada that I will be blogging, and that everything’s fair game except for really bad stuff. Like if Nick shit his pants an hour south of Anacortes, I would never say that on the blog. But I would.

We stop at Burgerville. I require that we go to Burgerville anytime we drive to Seattle. If we don’t stop, I start moaning “Burgerville” until Nick pulls over. Centralia and Chehalis are coated in a film of mud from the floods, but everything’s open. Nick is going to draw everything he eats, so I take a photo of his black bean garden burger. I really want a mocha perk shake but am already worried about my voice. Alex Shee Bee Gee told me dairy produces too much mucus, therefore, one should not eat it before a performance. Normally, I don’t give a shit, but the last time we played in Seattle, I had no voice, so I’ve got something to prove.

We pull into Seattle early and go meet my friend Christopher and his fellow Stranger writers at a weird place called Havana. They are drunk and witty, and I am given a pair of wrist warmers—actually socks with the toes cut off and a thumb hole cut in them. They’re pretty Hot Topic, which makes me feel youthful.

We load in the Comet and I realize I’m supposed to change in a bathroom in which I trust no surface. I am the sort of person who will eat a peanut M&M off a toilet seat, so this is saying something. This place has no usable mirror, no place to set things—nothing. I guess this means I will wear no makeup. I also forgot nearly everything–socks, underwear, shirts– including the leggings that are my uniform. I have to wear my dress over jeans, which I hate.

The show is a great lineup—us, Fishboy, Awesome, and BOAT, one of our favorite bands.

We play well. Nevada pulls off his first show easily. I never quite settle in, for some reason, but it’s fine. Fishboy totally rip. The drummer is fucking insane. I am really stoked we’ll be playing with them for many shows. “Awesome” are hard to describe—there are a billion people singing and a billion instruments. They pull all of this off while wearing suits! I don’t know how they do it.

BOAT are fucking amazing, as usual. I hope we can tour with them sometime.

There is a hot dog stand, like there is outside of every rock club in Seattle. Last time I played here, I had a fit of joy over the hot dog stand all the way in Ballard—of course there’s one at the Comet/Neumo’s. Why doesn’t Portland have late night hot dog stands? I could eat a hot dog every day if it wouldn’t kill me.

06 Sep 2006
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Day of labor

SF to LA–Monday September 4

Due to labor day traffic, we spend the entire day in the car.

We pull off at Kettleman City, the halfway point between the two cities. We’ve been waiting for In N Out burger for hours. This place has become legendary in our band lore because last summer, on an identical stop at this very In N Out Burger, Nick was unwittingly teabagged by a clogged and overflowing toilet.

We roll into our friend Deb’s place later than I would like. She has snacks galore, and lots of water, which we are sorely in need of at this point. My urine has resembled Tang for days.

Spaceland is a very nice place. The crowd is unusually good-looking. I befriend another band; they are obsessed with 90210 (evidently the entire show is coming out soon on box set!) and tip me off about LA tourist activities and the local roller derby scene.

As we are loading out, a man is selling tamales from a cooler. Score. This will be the first time I haven’t gone to bed ravenous in at least a week. (I was burning the candle at both ends long before we left Portland).

We try to watch VH1 but our eyes won’t stay open.

06 Sep 2006
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California Love

Chico–Friday September 1

We try to leave Portland as early as possible, but as usual, we take much longer than expected. Even waking up at the ghastly hour of 6:00 AM (I played a show with Shee Bee Gees the night before) we don’t hit the road until after 10:30. There’s the dog to be dropped off, food to find, the triple checking of our packing list. Last tour, I held on to the idea of eating well, long after I had crossed over into survival mode, but this time we’re honest: it’s Burgerville for breakfast. I contemplate getting an espresso milkshake—asking if they make them this early–but Nick advises against it. All day I will mourn the ghost of this lost milkshake.

We pull into Chico a bit later than we like, but the headlining band is still 2 hours behind us. As long as there’s someone worse off than us. . . I called before we arrived to apologize for our tardiness and Connie, the wife of the show organizer Jason, offered us a place to stay and went so far as to ask what I like for breakfast.

After we play, someone tells us that he’s been listening to “Le Projet Citron” for the last year, never knowing who sang it. He had assumed that we were covering the song live. He says, “You mean YOU wrote that song? No Way!!”

The last band is the single weirdest band I’ve ever seen. In a good way. A woman who goes by Pixie sings and “plays” a lamp hung with windchimes. While accompanied by guitar, she holds her ears and writhes around. It’s spooky, made even spookier by her truly incredible voice.

Outside of the venue I notice they too are in a normal car—theirs an eighties-era Chevy Nova which is smashed in the back. Steve the guitarist says they got rear-ended on the highway. A car was barreling up behind them and Steve tried to pull aside but the car smashed him anyway. Now, two months into a four month tour, they have no way to open the hatchback. They load their heavy gear into the backseat over the folded-down front seat. “Were they drunk?” I ask. “More like on acid,” Steve says. “Or both—drunk and on acid.” Pixie says, “Yeah, that’s like the military.” She pauses. “Just like a lizard.”

We all end up staying at Jason and Connie’s even though Jason and Connie are trying to get to San Francisco early the next day. I am once again reminded of the unreasonableness of this lifestyle. These are hard-working people who just want to take a quick vacation, and yet they are kept up and crowded by four freaks sprawled on their living room floor, overrunning their bathroom, raiding their food. Back at the venue, I had spoken with a woman Renee who had hosted our last show in Chico, at her record store. Recently, she finally closed the store after years of crushing bills. She was spending a couple thousand a month to keep it open. She’d work a day job and then go to the store and host shows until three in the morning, then get up and do it all again. Her subsistence was bulk bags of beans and rice. And she wasn’t complaining—in fact, she’s just resting so she can dive back in. She loves music that much.

23 Jun 2006
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Just a band and its will to surviiiiiiiiiiiiiive

Wednesday, June 21–Philadelphia

My throat starts hurting first thing. It feels familiar, as if I’ve been waiting for this all along. Only two more shows to go; hopefully, I can limp it home like an ailing car, block by block.

I nap in the hotel while the boys go in pursuit of a famous cheese steak. They bring me back one, but tell me they have misgivings, that the cheese steak joint might be really racist, that it had plaques honoring the officer shot by Mumia, etc. We find out later that this is a well-known racist cheese steak joint.

A homeless man calls Mike “Rocky.” As in “Got any change, Rocky?” Mike is slight and a redhead. Perhaps that’s the default address here, like Hoss or Boss or Man.

The Standard Tap is a 200 year-old space, beautiful and glowing with warmth; you can feel that people have been having a good time here for centuries. The person we’re playing the show with tells us that this bar has only recently started hosting shows. Normally this would be terrifying, but in this case it’s intriguing.

The stage is very small, an arched alcove, and we have to rig up my kick drum so that it’s hanging off the front, in order to accommodate the whole set. I have fantasies about kicking it into the audience on the last song. A couple of songs get bailed on because of my throat, but it’s the most fun we’ve had on stage, with a head bobbing audience who knows the words. Every person seems 100% like they want to be here, like they’re in it for the night.

After the Midwest the Dandy mentions dwindled, but have now been replaced by Counting Crows references about Omaha. We get two of these tonight.

To me, the difference between a person who makes art and an Artist is not the quality or quantity of what they produce, but their orientation to the world. They are like aliens our planet gets to borrow. Kurt Vile, who headlines the show, is an Artist. He is a crazy cocktail of seemingly incompatible elements—looks like Robert Plant, sings like Dylan and Jagger, plays like Sebadoh Freed Weed era and early Liz Phair. When I compliment the show he says, cryptically, “It gets worse every time.” He gives me two CDs and, along with them, the sense he is insanely prolific.

I befriend a guy named Patrick and because I am a singing drummer, we discuss Don Henley and both admit how much we like him. Perhaps, Patrick offers, Henley has too many “yes men” around, and this results in too many un-questioned musical choices, subverting his shot at worldwide domination. We make a plan to start a club called Henley’s, where only Henley’s music can be played. Henley himself will give regular live shows. We decide a California beach is the best Henleyesque location, but that there are obvious franchise opportunities and soon we will evangelize the whole country. Henley himself, of course, will be deeply grateful.

Kurt Vile’s posse has brought its own turntables and records, and once he’s done, they hold court in the red, womblike room, full of the totally game, totally onboard, crowd. Springsteen comes on and we laugh about how perfect, cliché even, that is in Philly. Who would have thought that the indie kids actually do love the Boss? Soon, the DJ quits pretending anyone wants to hear anything but the Boss, and the night turns into a total Springsteen fest. Everyone is dancing, going crazy. Patrick is not only a Henley devotee but an unbelievable dancer, whose style is a hybrid of Springsteen himself and Westside Story. He incorporates chairs into his routine, kicking off them like a donkey and swooping his leg over the backs. As a matter of fact, a lot of people start incorporating chairs. Patrick gets a glass shard in his hand when I show him how to do a vaudevillian dance move called a “coffee grinder.” As people get drunker, chairs go flying, and the waitress keeps saying, “All right, I’m shutting this party down,” but then she stops to dance.

I leave with a renewed appreciation of the Boss and in awe of how cool the people in Philly are. This is the most fun we’ve had on the whole tour, hands down.

In bed, the fun dissipates and I am unable to sleep, swallowing compulsively to gauge how screwed my throat is. Now it’s not just my throat—I’m officially sick. I pray we don’t have to cancel tomorrow.

11 Jun 2006
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Wild Wild West

Friday, June 9 (part 2) – Nevada

A couple of hours outside of San Francisco, I make a bunch of phone calls and keep telling everyone, “Nevada, I’m in Nevada!!” in the same incredulous inflection people use when they utter the word “Nebraska,” my home state. Just another example of what pop psychologists call the cycle of abuse. Who do Nevadans deride?

Three hours later, we see a sign that says, “Welcome To Nevada,” marking (obviously) the actual beginning of the state. I’m disappointed and a little embarrassed, but I’m used to being wrong. I just make things up sometimes, convinced of their truth. At Yoshi’s house, I was recounting how Nick was at Candlestick Park during the World Series earthquake. Nick walks in to inform me I’m completely wrong. I had been so sure. . .

More bad food—this time we try Subway and regret it. I am a Subway virgin, and wonder aloud how “Jared” pulled off his diet. Nick tells me this particular Subway is sub-par, even for Subway.

Later, we pull off to get a beverage at a single building in the middle of nowhere, designated as “Gas Station/Mini Mart/Bar/US Post Office.” Suddenly, the driveway pavement gives way to a minefield of foot-deep potholes. But the only vehicles in the lot are mud-splattered monster trucks, so the holes must be an entry initiation. Above the entrance to the “bar” section of the building, a sign warns, “You must be 21 to enter. You must act 21 to stay.” The unmistakable riff of Fortunate Son ushers a stumbling man into the vague delineation between bar and mini mart. He holds a fist aloft and slurs, “I dedicate this fuckin song to every fuckin kid in Nevada!”

This snaps me out of my slow, baffled progression through the store. I scurry for the counter with a canned Starbucks “double shot,” and the clerk tells me how much she loves them. We bond over our shared taste in drinks. The moment is a comfort, as the vibe is pretty dicey in the bar, and the action keeps spilling over to where we are. Shit will definitely be started at some point this evening—maybe every evening–but we’ll be long gone by then.

In the car, Nick wonders aloud if Starbucks ever thought in their wildest dreams that a woman at a roadhouse in desolate Nevada would be endorsing their pre-packaged drinks.

A while down the road we get delirious with giggles, and Nick tells me in all sincerity that he now understands the term “natural high” because he feels really stoned, except that he has a secondary, more sober consciousness that is fully aware he’s laughing at stupid shit, but is nonetheless powerless to stop it. The Doves song “Black and White Town” comes on, and in that stoner way we just go nuts, philosophizing. Nick asserts that it is the sonic embodiment of an Industrial UK town (Nick lived in a “Ned” neighborhood in Glasgow for a while). The high hats are unrelenting for the whole song, like a locomotive crashing through the neighborhood. If you haven’t heard it, you should go listen.

We give up in Wells, NV because the bug guts are so thick that oncoming headlights are turned into pulsing slashes, something straight out of Star Trek. We find a hotel and head towards a café that the desk person recommends. By recommend, I mean she vouches that it would be open. I relay to Nick that it’s called, er, “The Three-Way.”

On the way there, we pass a place called Bella’s Espresso, whose entire building is outlined in pink neon and glowing hearts. That is a whorehouse, I say. But it says espresso, Nick says. Then he looks again and says, Wait, that does look like a whorehouse.

We find the café—which is actually called The Four-Way (dang!) and is not only a café, it’s a Casino/Truck Stop/Café. These Nevadans are such multi-taskers. Inside, the crowd is completely apeshit. Everyone is drunk and spilling out of their booths, calling to other patrons, staggering around the aisles. Yet incongruously, they’re eating eggs and hashbrowns in full fluorescent light. It’s totally bizarre. I had planned to order a beer, but change my mind; it seems best to keep my faculties fully intact.

After dinner, we use some merch money to play the slots. Total losses: $2.

Then we collapse.

Suggested Nevada State Mottos: 1) We’re rowdy! 2) We heart potholes.

Daily stats:
Times Nick caught Heather looking at her biceps: 16
[Ed. Note—gross exaggeration!]

10 Jun 2006
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Nick can’t drive 55

Thursday, June 8–Oregon

On the way out of town we see a giant Caveman statue and we exchange looks. Nick promptly heads right for it, intuitively, as if we’ve been on Caveman quest all along. At the base of the Caveman, a plaque explains that Grants Pass is famous for a “booster group” from the 1920s called—get this–the Cavemen. They gave themselves names like Big Bone and Fluffy Pelt, wore animal skins, and claimed to be direct descendants from Neanderthals. Supposedly, their activities included appearing at a Broadway show (wha?!?!?), which seems very 2006, Broadway-aesthetic wise. This season, they could open for Menopause: the Musical.

We stop to get an espresso in Yreka, California. It’s a a drive-thru, which sounds fast, but will actually the single slowest coffee experience I’ve ever had, partly because the woman working there is going crazy from being locked up in a box all day. Maybe it is our fault; we walked up to the window. While she’s making our coffee, a man drives up to the window and wants to know the maximum number of espresso shots that could be fit into a coffee drink. She guesses she could cram five into a 20 ounce cup. He then wants to know the most “exciting” drink she could make him with him with these five shots. She keeps describing different drinks and he says “nope, not exciting enough.” This is all while she’s supposed to be making my coffee. Right as she flips the blender on to make his “Crazy Caramel MindFreezer” she informs me, apropos of nothing, that she didn’t care that Kurt Cobain died. Then as if in consolation, she concedes that she really loves tiramisu.

For lunch we eat at Burger King. I can’t believe it, but I don’t want to waste time looking for something else. On the Today Show recently, Eric Schlosser said that McDonalds is one of the largest toy retailers in the country. I happen to find kid’s meals perfectly-sized (for me), so now, after two of them in two days, I own a disturbingly “hot” troll-teenager doll and this Bratz thing—a perfume bottle?–that looks like a buttplug.

So, here’s a debate for you. Are fast food places really grosser at gas stations? We keep snubbing the truck stop McDonald’s, as if they’re somehow inferior, like the fries will be cooked in diesel fuel. They’re probably the same, but we just can’t do it.

Nick is wearing an outfit that looks like Larry David. Sorry, that is not grammatically correct. The outfit looks like that of Larry David. Grey slacks and a polo shirt and white tennis shoes. I wish we were driving a Prius—then we could get into a “situation.”

Grand Funk Railroad keeps popping up in the ipod mix. Do you think they really got laid in Omaha? “four chiquitas in Omaha. . .we tore the hotel down.” I’d be pissed if I were those chiquitas and heard about it on the radio. Makes a bathroom wall look discreet, you know?

Fights:
One. Brief. I was working on an article and failed to acknowledge Nick’s celebratory honk as we entered the state of California.

Driving division of labor: Nick 10 hours Heather: 3

Place names that could be euphemisms for sex acts:
1) Balls Ferry
2) Junction City

10 Jun 2006
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And…liftoff

Wed. June 7th–Heading South

Early in the drive we pass the 45th parallel, the halfway point between the North Pole and the Equator. Perhaps that explains the Oregonian penchant for equanimity. A couple of hours later we pass a yellowed billboard that screams “Big Mac Attack!” and Nick points out that the slogan hasn’t been in use in twenty years. Perhaps someone left it there that long?

Anyhow, it is an omen, as our first meal is, a bit later, at McDonald’s. I have a feeling I’ll be eating a lot of McDonald’s. After a late night trip to Taco Bell last week, I have exceeded my yearly fast food quota already, with only two visits.

We decide to stop for the night in Grant’s Pass. The name is kind of romantic, as if we’re crossing over a momentous threshold. The first hotel we try, I am in a line behind an amorous teenage couple. They paw each other as they are making the transaction. At first I think they are just dying to have sex but then their friend, a bounding, punky girl, barges in and says, in a very loud kid-whisper, “Get Room 205; we’re all over there.” I immediately walk out and suggest another hotel. The Travelodge is more amenable but the woman who checks us in is clearly in training and the owner is growing frustrated with her. The trainee keeps complaining—as if to explain her difficulty with credit card machine, finding the keys, and the retractable pen– that her glasses are too smudged to see through. This seems strange, because in the time it takes to utter the complaint, it could be fixed. Sort of like saying, “My finger’s in a light socket and it really hurts.” Pull it out, you know? The room mildly smells of fish and urine and we watch a VH1 documentary on heavy metal which details Iron Maiden’s evolution. Bruce Dickinson, who seems oddly like a Christopher Guest character—in a good way—is explaining how he developed these enormous gestures to give the people in back of the arena a sense of proximity. So I’ll be working on that. I’ll let you know what I come up with, once I find a spare appendage. Perhaps my hair can do the talking. Also, Iron Maiden employed a fail safe trick: a mascot, this skull thing. It has a name. Like Curly or something.