September 2003

Greetings from lovely Bellefont, KS. My little vacation from the dull drudgery of workaday tidal waves should include some songwriting, soul-searching, and plotting, not to mention some good old fashioned farmer-engineering.

Had an interesting show Saturday night. While I think it went well, there were few people there. This was due to, I believe, advertising and competition from one of the Octoberfests and a show by Blaine Younger in Lincoln. No matter…we booked another in November.

I went to Dodge City last night for some food. I don’t remember being so scared for my life. Everyone was driving around with modified cars and writing on the windows that I didn’t understand, blasting hate and base and sending dirty thoughts my way. I went to Burger King and the only person I could understand was the guy that took my order. I saw someone ask for napkins and the person working there gave her a blank stare until she re-asked the question in Spanish. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs when the employees of an establishment don’t understand simple English. I’d heard of it happening, but I guess I didn’t expect it in Kansas.

Should it really take an educated man 7 minutes to figure out how to get sound to come from a TV? We have such an advanced entertainment system at my house that it took me that long to ascertain which remote control to use, learn that the volume on the TV was “fixed”, find a different remote, cycle through the input selection four times, hit some other buttons…finally, I selected “analog” and lost my hearing.

Had a rather wild night last night…attended two birthday parties and two bars…paying now as I pack to get ready for Victoria tonight. I wish I were more excited about playing tonight. We’ll see how well this has been advertised and then I might be more excited. I don’t expect to be.

I feel like my old self. I spent the night after the auction drinking alone and watching the new Star Trek: Enterprise episodes. T’Pol’s new hair cut and uniforms kick ass…the new security crew also is quite impressive.

I talked to Julie for quite some time tonight…just like old times sitting on the porch and drinking beer…except she wasn’t drinking. It was refreshing none the less.

I got home expecting to go to bed at a decent hour…I walked into a party at my house…I had to play guitar and sing for another hour and a half…not the best thing for my voice, to be sure.

God bless Star Trek and beer.

“Goddamn that guy!” –Air Boss, Top Gun

Burgess somehow swindled me into going to Fat’s tonight, bless his heart. Just what a person who can’t breath or stop sneezing needs…$1 draws.

I’m off to find Barry and take him to Fats. May my search not lead to the RCPD.

Looks like the Frankfort show has been cancelled. Look for one there sometime in October. Burgess will be playing in Frankfort this Saturday while Jimmy and I play in Victoria.

I got out of the New Mexico trip. Not really got out of it so much as the option was removed. That’s fine. I wish I could get out of this damn cold.

I think I’m autistic. No, really. There was this quiz in Newsweek that was supposed to demonstrate how autistic people think…you know the kind of quiz…choose if you agree strongly, slightly, disagree slightly, strongly…there were questions like “I frequently find that I don’t know how to keep a conversation going” and “when I read something I always notice if it’s grammatically correct” and “I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation”…I looked at the key and my answers of strongly agree, strongly agree, strongly disagree, along with my answers to the rest of the questions are those kinds of answers that someone with autism would answer. I think I’ll self-diagnose myself and prescribe caffeine and alcohol in large quantities.

I got up this morning and find out that I may have to go to New Mexico tomorrow. Just like that. We need you to go to Farmington, Aaron. Ok. Turns out we had a wheel fall off of a W900 and it needs a new axle. They want too much money to haul it down there so I have to take it. Damn. I just looked at the map. It’s about 60 miles this side of Arizona and over half way from Sharon to California. Here’s to the Trucker’s Dream.

It’s 9:24 (as if you couldn’t tell by the timestamp affixed to this and every post) and I’m sitting here at my house waiting…I’ve got my rig set up at Fat’s and am pacing…this is going to be a wild ride…the bar’s already have full when I left to come back here…I hope Burgess is doing well in Topeka…good times, good times.

I set my alarm this morning to turn on B104.7 at 8:00. It was the first time I’ve used the radio alarm in about 6 years. Anyway, it woke me and I just about beat the bejesus out of my air hockey table. I have it propped up vertically at the foot of my bed because my roommates are poseurs and we’re cramped for room. I’ve had it there for a few months, but this is the first time I thought when I woke up that it was someone standing there with a malicious intent.

I’m sitting here waiting for Pete’s interview on the radio and they’re playing some bastardized version of Angels Among Us. As if that song wasn’t bad enough to begin with they had to throw news coverage excerpts in it and play it TWO YEARS after the fact.

Poor Pete. Man, this girl interviewing him is nutty. Trevor just called. “How did she get into radio with that voice?” It’s pretty bad. Pete is handling himself damn well, considering he’s got a fruitcake interviewing him. She asked him, “what is your primary instrument, would you say?” I know the point of an interview is to get the interviewee to explain the obvious, but that is a little too horrible for even morning radio. She keeps talking about how cute Pete is…in her kindergarten teacher voice…Pete just played Running Low on Angels…smoked it…and
them. Oh my…she just said the music in Texas is “spicy, just like the food.” Jesus. Thank goodness Pete’s kicking ass…

I give McClure a lot of shit about him being rather harsh in his rambles. I logged on to his site again today, for the 9th time, and he’s posted something other than random derogatory comments…this one is worth reading…and makes me believe that there’s good in McClure yet.

I saw an old friend tonight at Fat’s…Darcy…

…and so did his concert at Abe and Jake’s in Lawrence. Burgess and I decided we didn’t want to go…then Barry and I decided that we did. Then Burgess said he’d go along. Then Barry found out that we needed a credit card to reserve tickets. He called and they had 50 left. He then left to get his mom’s credit card in Beatte. By the time he got there and called them, they were out of tickets. We decided we’re going to Fat’s and playing Pat Green on the jukebox all night. It’s actually probably going to be more fun than the concert.

Check out RockKansas.com.

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink…when they wake up in the morning, that’s the best they’re going to feel all day.” — Bing Crosby