Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Day 2-- Birthdays and Whorehouses

Today is the second day of tour, and more importantly—you know what? It’s my Golden Birthday. The big 2-5. I was initially skeptical about spending it on the road, but it has turned out to be pretty amazing. Everyone has made it that way by giving me champagne and whiskey and a tiny crown and-- best of all-- A GOLD SPARKLETOWN TAMBOURINE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. Jared Mees and the Grown Children even sang me a birthday song. It went like this: “Biiiirthdays, birthdays! Everybody’s got a birthday. Birthdays, birthdays… TALIA CAME OUT OF A VAGINA!” Needless to say, I have a pretty big crush on all of them.

So. Last night. We slept 6 people in a room about the size of a bathroom. We’re getting pretty good at these situations. We have to, with 8 people traveling around in a 6 passenger Dodge Ram and all. Everyone woke up in a great mood today. We can probably attribute it to James (Luce), our roadie/photog/bestie/sanity coming trotting up from the van in a Monarques shirt and the tiniest shorts imaginable to wake us up. The good mood lasted all the way up until we hit HW 1 and had to navigate a 40 mile downhill, hairpin-turn-filled nightmare. Our van is old. Our brakes are questionable. Our trailer, “The Last Resort,” tends to act a little sketchy. Chrissy and Rich did a gret job driving, but we basically collectively held our breaths for about 2 hours.

Our destination was the Caspar Inn, a former whorehouse-turned-bar-and-hotel outfit that was straight out of a David Lynch movie. It could be decribed as “eclectic” or “charmingly kitschy” on a charitable day and “nightmarishly tacky” on any other day. That’s where I’m writing from currently, nestled in leopard print sheets. To give you an idea of how schizophrenic this place is, I should note that the two other beds in the room have Spongebob Squarepants and sheep-printed sheets, respectively, and that the vintage Art Deco print above my bed faces a framed Superbowl ‘87/Amstell Lite ad on the opposite wall.

There’s this thing about people in small towns. It’s as if the people who live in them make up for the low population by having the biggest and most bizarre personalities possible. Or maybe characters just blend in better in the city. In any case, they came out strong for our show. I could describe them, but you might not believe me. Truth is stranger than fiction. We managed to play and get upstairs into our beds without incident, and we’re now on our way to SAN FRANCISCO!!!! Stay tuned.

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