Unicycle Loves You • Eastbound Clowns

Let’s face it.
Continental breakfast sucks.
Today I bit into a powdered donut and it made a sound.
“Crack!” said the donut, blinding me with stale sugardust.

The band fund is lean again, thanks to the 1,500 mile friendless gap between Missoula and Columbia, Missouri.  I thought Facebook had solved these kind of problems.

Wyoming likes its trucks.  Big trucks with meaty tires, driven with dogs lazily wondering in the bed.  When a truck dies it is left out to pasture, where it will rust and root itself into the landscape, alongside fallen ranches reduced to Bunyan-sized toothpicks.  research if that’s an appetizerIn the town of Upton (“The Best Town On Earth” according to its water tower) a black man near the Skull Creek Mall stood very still, almost like a statue.  I couldn’t tell but I thought I saw a placard titled A BLACK MAN AND WHAT TO DO SHOULD YOU ENCOUNTER ONE.

While Jim navigated The Cowboy State’s desolate byways, Nicole gave herself a pedicure, and we were all treated to the perfumey fumes of nail polish.

It was April Fool’s Day.  As an elaborate prank, The Black Hills National Forest had replaced its Ponderosa Pines and spruces with trees that had fallen victim to forest fires.  Hilarious, but I wish we would have come here on a regular day.  I bet it’s real pretty.The Bumpin’ Buffalo in Hill City housed our lunch.  I ordered something called Chislic.  The waitress was pleased with my choice.
“That’s what the mayor gets when he eats here.”
Nicole was not pleased with her choice.  She got a salad, but what she really wanted were Rocky Mountain Oysters.
“When am I going to get a chance to eat testicles again?”
Jim pointed out that she could have them every night.  Nicole said she would like to try human meat sometime.  Those nail polish fumes in the van were pretty concentrated.

“Chislic”

We ate on the rooftop overlooking the Black Hills.  The chislic- marinated sirloin tips lightly pan fried and served with homemade potato salad- was mayoraly delicious.  It was a peaceful lunch until a spider crawled on Jim, resulting in a foul-mouthed Little Miss Muffet freakout.  The family next to us laughed it off.
“Take off your shirt!”

We went to Mt. Rushmore to see The Beatles.  Nicole, who was clearly having a goofy day, pointed out how handsome Abraham Lincoln was.  “…his eyes…”
“So out of those four guys, you would do Abe Lincoln?”
Without hesitation she answered affirmatively.
We riffed on the possibilities of that situation for a while, and wondered how our 16th president might have tasted.

“Whatta sausage fest” – Nikki V
Photo by Jim

Mount Rushmore was pretty cool, even in the eyes of some huffing sickos like us.  My only complaint is that they left off Lincoln’s stovepipe hat.  That and they didn’t play anything off the White Album.

Photo by Jim

The signs for Wall Drug remain the kind of kitschy Americana that still warms this cynical heart.  5¢ COFFEE!  FREE ICE WATER!  HOMEMADE PIE!  FUDGE!  BE YOURSELF!  We had to go.

It was a ghost town.  Most of Wall Drug’s advertised features, like 5¢ coffee and taking a picture of a buffalo were closed for the day.  But we went there, just like every other American, because the signs told us to.  It was after all SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT.With no time to see The Badlands we made a straight shot east into South Dakota’s manure-laiden plains.  A particularly thick shit cloud hit us while I was chewing on a cud of Trader Joe’s pretzels.  I had to use 80% of brain to convince myself that I wasn’t actually eating feces.

David Bowie’s spooky Low provided the soundtrack to our arrival in Sioux Falls.  With limited midnight options, we ordered a Domino’s Pizza and watched cable TV.  For a part of the country that prides itself as the land of opportunity, there sure wasn’t much to opportune.

Motel Bathroom Mood Lighting
Photo by Jim

Unicycle Loves You • Meth to Mint

While J.T. took Jim out for Donna the Van’s oil change, Karma prepared some delectable homemade breakfast sandwiches.  A very strange World War II episode of Boy Meets World scored an otherwise peaceful brunch.  Keep Boy Meets Weird.

I borrowed Donna to go to the thrift store.  After last night’s failed merkin experiment (my drumsticks kept getting snared on its filthy locks) it was imperative that I get some new show shorts, though nothing could replace my tiny shinies.  I also needed a bass drum head, but that shit could always wait another day.  Pro gear, pro attitude!

There are more breweries than gas stations in Missoula, so that’s where we fueled up for our aimless travel day.  J.T. donned his new sea blue surfer sneakers and Karma looked quite fetching in her new hot pink Failure T.  We bid them adieu on our first sunny day in years on this tour.

Photo by Jim

At a pit stop in Drummond, we poked around a strange house dedicated to exposing the horrors of crystal meth abuse.  Cartoon humans clung to windowsills expressing their meth regrets.  A giant grim reaper, anti-meth poetry, and a family graveyard also decorated the building.  Several cars littered its unkempt front lawn.  Maybe it was an opium den run by drug snobs.

Photo by Nikki V

The drive through Montana is as beautiful as everyone says.  It was almost annoying.  Alright, we get it, Montana you’re amazing with the big, salty chocolate mountains, the marshmallowiest clouds, and the babiest blue sky cooing serenely.  Enough already.

Photo by Nikki V

To offset the beauty we ate peculiarly in Big Timber.  Next to Elvis and Marilyn mannequins, we endured a $13 elk burger, a bacon-wrapped hot dog slathered with Swiss cheese and mushrooms, and store-bought potato chips dusted with Parmesan and baked to a tasteless crisp.

Night fell down on Crow Country, where Donna bounced happily along the fluffy roads of the Crazy Mountains near Little Big Horn.  At a pee break in Crow Agency, Montana, I was taken aback by the beauty of the Native American women.  The cashier was striking.  I almost bought a VHS Tape Rewinder just to make conversation, but didn’t.  Later at the motel I would jack off playing a bootleg cartridge of Custer’s Revenge.

Photo by Nikki V

The red asphalt of Wyoming greeted with silent stoicism.  We stayed in the town of Sheridan for the sole purpose of patronizing The Mint Bar.  A narrow taxidermist’s Hall of Fame, Beer & Whisky, the Mint was surprisingly dead on a Saturday night.  We sat in a rustic booth made out of trees and were immediately ambushed by an elderly man with an extended hand.
“I could tell you’re not from Wyoming!”
His name was O’Connell.  Jim O’Connell and he was from Joliet, Illinois.  Spry and lucid for an 80 year old with a few drinks in him, O’Connell led us on an adventurous, mostly one-sided autobiographical conversation.

He was a pilot, a real estate tycoon, a grandfather, and the head of many boards and coalitions and things.
“You’re sitting with a very important man.”
When eventually asked, we revealed that we were a band.
He told us about an internet radio station his colleague had started.
“Do you have a card?” he asked.
Jim handed him a download card for Failure.
“No, no!  Something with an address!”
Nicole wrote their address on the back of the card, and O’Connell said to look for a piece of paper with a violin on it that would contain the internet radio web address.
“I tweeter,” he admitted, but clearly preferred snail mail.
We covered a lot of other topics.  The death of his son-in-law, The Korean War, gas prices, Manhattan (“No, not New York!  Manhattan, Illinois!”), the pilot in recent news who was locked out of the cockpit and wrestled to the ground by passengers (“He just went goofy”), The Vietnam War, our current war, Boston, Green Bay, Mykonos, Ireland (“Don’t go to Dublin!”), Italians, higher education, his daughters, his granddaughters, sororities, fraternities, the NFL.
Heybro hayseeds and heehaw cuties were giving our odd little booth the most quizzical looks.
Jim started rolling a cigarette.
“Is that hot?” O’Connell asked.  He bought the next round.
“We” talked more and more about many other things like real estate, the year 1972, and how the world is going to shit, all the way to last call.
On our way out O’Connell bought me a Mint Bar baseball cap and I saddled up to the bar for one more.
He complained that he spent all his money on his daughters.
“And you know what they get me every year for Father’s Day?  A silk tie.”
“At least it’s silk,” I countered.
I felt a tap on my shoulder.  It was Jim.  Time to go.
O’Connell said he was 80 and didn’t know how much longer he had.  He felt the wisdom he had imparted had fallen on his daughters’ deaf ears.
“You’re a great man.  Keep it up!”The bartender had given me a bumper sticker.
“DON’T MESS WITH THE US! – THE MINT BAR”

Back at the motel, comically amazing infomercials and Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka gave us the sweetest little nightmares.

Unicycle Loves You • Pacified

Ugh.  Putting on tour weight.  I’m eating fish and tofu, avoiding snacks, drinking wine instead of beer, but the fact remains we spend the majority of the day sitting in a van.  I wish my blossoming boobs could satiate my sex-starved groin grumblings, but it doesn’t work that way.  I hope Seattle likes fat horny drummers.

Photo by Nikki V

Grants Pass, Oregon likes fat horny cavemen.  They put a mighty one atop their visitors center that, according to its placard, likes to prank around with pretty women.  This is what I will look like by the time we hit Missouri.

Oregon’s drive was quite breathtaking, thanks to Jim’s competitive racing style of mountain driving.  We admired the cedars, redwoods, and conifers in record time.  In Salem we grabbed a Mexican lunch because why not?  Jim & I crashed hard while Nicole handled the serene trek into the Evergreen State.

Photo by Nikki V

I suggested a stop in Olympia for coffee, as I’ve always wanted to see the home of K Records, Sleater-Kinney, and legendary US soccer goalkeeper Kasey Keller.  I had heard about the city’s twee culture of cardigans, malt shops, and platonic handjobs.  To my disappointment, the coffee shop I yelped was atop a strip mall.  Nobody wore a sweater and no one played any instruments amateurishly.  But the barista guy did wear eyeliner.  So it wasn’t a total loss.

Photo by Jim

Seattle’s space age skyline greeted us like the Jetson’s maid Rosey.  If we have time we’re going to visit the 1966 World’s Fair.  In the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood our gracious host Jimbo greeted us, opening up his Murphy Bedded pad to our tired/mud-buzzed heads.  Out of nowhere, he treated us to fabulous suds and pub grub at McMenamins, then picked up an assortment of red wine from the corner store.  The evening ended as it had begun, with spirited conversation and hearty laughter with our consummate host Jimbo.  Seattle was like a Jesus to us.

Unicycle Loves You • Figuring It Out

It took a while to get our shit together this morning.  Our grimy beach motel didn’t do coffee.  We schlepped around Surf City in search of some type of breakfast, forgetting it was Sunday.  Eschewing the 40 minute wait at a locally yelped restaurant, we opted to just hit a coffee shop instead.  Lost on Santa Cruz’s dizzy version of urban planning, we got heckled by a carful of surf rats.  “Figyer it ay-ooooouuuuuuut!” they taunted in a strange nasal sneer.  Nicole returned their NorCal jab with a big Jersey fuck you finger.

In retaliation we ate at a New York bagel place.  It was a pleasant Sunday morning downtown.  Couples smiled, children ran free, flowers bloomed.  An unassuming middle-aged man took a casual stroll.  The next thing I knew he was sprawled out on the sidewalk, pushed from behind by a frothing beach thug whose mind had turned to psychotic dust.  With his face a raging red and his blue eyes ticking viciously, he was a truly frightening sight.  The assaulted man got up and tried to walk away but the beach thug advanced on him like a pit bull.  He had to jog to get away from his attacker.  Not a moment later, two small children met up and hugged at the scene of the crime.  Nobody paid it any mind.  Cowabunga, dude.

At Trader Joe’s we stocked up on pretzels and got a case of Charles Shaw.  The cashier joked.  “Looks like you’re going to have a good day.”  I almost bought a boogie board at CVS, but opted instead for Q-Tips.  A ravaged Lebowski in a stinky trenchcoat waited in line with the betties and their milfy moms, face-studded punks, surfers on a break, and impatient squares.  He made a wisecrack that broke up the CVS in universal laughter, and his wino eyes proudly grinned.

Santa Cruz, yer a weird chick with yer kooky problems and yer bitchin’ but we promised Seattle we’d buy her a beer so we’ll be back okay catch ya on the flip flop Facebook us.

We stopped in Redding for some surprisingly adventurous and delicious Thai food.  I ordered the pumpkin curry with tofu.  Jim put pineapples in his fried rice, and Nicole’s beef salad was sinus-clearing fresh.  You might say that we discovered MANGO PARADISE.

Coolio should sue

Northern California got distractingly ravishing again as we ascended her alluring curves toward Mount Shasta.  The clouds looked like Gawd’s beard trimmings, highlighted with fat rainbow streaks.  A snowy, meringue mountain jutted as high as the sky could go, resembling the world’s largest Tom Carvel ice cream cake.

Photo by Nikki V

In the town of Weed, California we stopped for gas and checked out a souvenir shop called The Weed Shack.  We picked up some pot trinkets for our pot pals.  It was cute and all but I prefer the PCP Hut in PCP, Hawaii.

Rock ‘n Roll Reality Check:  The band fund was at zero.  It seems that driving thousands of miles and staying in motels without getting paid for shows is how you go broke.  Huh.  Now we know.  Bruised but not broken, we admired California’s last hurrah of bizarre weather and breathtaking scenery before nightfall descended upon the Oregon border.

Burger King of the Mountain

In Grants Pass we holed up in our last motel for a while, cracking open the Charles Shaw for an improvised dinner.  We spread canned Aldi brand chicken on Sam’s leftover LA bagels, which still had some squeeze left in them.  After emptying the entire contents of the salt and pepper packets from the plastic silverware baggies, it still needed something.  Nicole added a handful of roasted peanuts to her combo.  Jim dipped his in applesauce.  I washed mine down with wine.  It’s hard to say what was the star of the plate.  Probably the end of it.

While Jim & Nicole restrung their guitars, I tried to read Big Hair and Plastic Grass, a chronicle of baseball’s funky side in the 70′s.  The same paragraph about ashtray stadiums and astroturf blurred over and over, until I finally succumbed to the broke, canned chicken & cheap wine coma.

Unicycle Loves You • Saguaro Salvation

Saguaros, man.  We had to see them.  Talkin’ about cactuses, pal.  Yeah, yeah cacti for all you poindexters out there.  Wait a minute, let’s go!

Photo by Nikki V

Saguaro National Park is a prickly paradise.  Jim favored barrel and hedgehog cacti, or as they’re known in cactus circles, Ron Jeremy cacti.  Nicole preferred creosote bushes and patches of paddly prickly pears.  I still swear by the classic saguaro, those green goofs.  We wandered all over the park, enamored with all the dancing cactus parties among the fishhooks, chollas, and ocotillos.  We even saw a cactus mouse!  Or was that a kangaroo rat?

Photo by Nikki V

The Highway 8 stretched along the desolation of America’s lower rung, dotted with long forgotten gas stations, and RV parks with utopian names.  We stopped in Yuma for In ‘n Out burgers.  Just couldn’t wait for California.  I swear I saw a sign that said YUMA: THE GARY INDIANA OF THE DESERT.

Today’s Modern Joad

We crossed into California in immediate search of the American Dream, but California seemed to want to search us instead.  First, with a fruit check, and then with an immigration check.  We passed both with flying colors.  Thank God we dusted those severed heads with baking soda.  California’s landscape got goony and duney, then brushed up right against the Mexican border.  Jim reckoned that illegals could sneak across the border in the big bushy tumbleweeds freckling the shoulder.

Photo by Nikki V

The sun was setting patiently against the Salton Sea when we pulled up to Salvation Mountain.  Buried deep in the Imperial Valley away from society and all its stupid horrors lies a garish, painted man made lump of love.  Leonard Knight began piling adobe and decorating it with philosophy for decades.  His message is straightforward:  keep love simple.  Yes, he also uses the word Jesus, but somehow his message is not preachy.  I’ve always liked Leonard.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see him.  In December he was placed in a long-term care facility for dementia.  In his absence, some kids maintained the mountain on their own, reinforcing the high traffic areas with a flashy palette of paint buckets.

Further down was Slab City, a haven for peaceful RV dropouts.  The Range, a car seat theater in the corner of the Slabs, was dark on a Tuesday night.  Bummer.  We should have booked a show here.  I think the squatter snowbirds would have liked the Beefheart cover.

Fresh from our spiritual cleansing, we breezed awkwardly past one more immigration checkpoint.
“Does this window roll down?  Are you a band?”
Meanwhile, some normal teens sat gloomily while their mini SUV got the dog sniffing treatment.

Conversation turned dark and spooky as we rode the rim of the Salton Sea.  We entered the town of Coachella, where I worked as a disc jockey for 93.7 KCLB from 1994-97.  I wearily pointed out old haunts and told half-remembered tales of my extended adolescence in the desert.

At a Walgreens in Palm Springs, Jim & I thought Nicole would like a stretchy top made from piñata material.  $5.  Great deal.  She didn’t.  We drank some cheap California wine and fell into our own individual California dreams.

Unicycle Loves You • Hail Snow & The Thing? with Sixto

The Texas-sized sky looked foreboding.  Thick fleecy grey blankets hovered threateningly above the dramatic terrain, as if Gawd hadn’t made His bed today.  You wouldn’t want to mess with it.After traditional slo-mo breakfasts in a gas station/roadhouse/liquor store/grocery store/restaurant, we continued west in search of the American dream.  In Kent, Texas a dead Chevron’s open door offered the worst restroom options.  The dark room was littered with broken glass, filth encrusted clothes, and the overwhelming stench of a punished toilet, whose plumbing privileges had long been revoked.  
Maybe if I was scouting another Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel.  Further on, a functioning restroom’s sign advised NON-PORTABLE WATER NOT FOR DRINKING.  Did they mean potable?  Maybe they meant nuculer.

Photo by Jim

This was Nicole’s first time west, and it was fun to discover it through her Instagramatic eye.  The view out the window was today’s entertainment, trumping laptops, cellphones, even books.

Choo Choo photo enhanced by Nikki V

A freak hail storm hit El Paso, right in the border.  Ouchies!  It spooked a loose poodle at the bank, making it a genuine dog’s day for a flustered security guard.

Photo by Nikki V

We tried to eat at the H & H Car Wash Cafe but it was taking a siesta, so we made a dusty trail to Little Diner in Canutillo.We all got gorditas- round fried tortilla pockets packed with lean cuts of carne asada, potatoes, and red & green salsas.  Delicious, even though they didn’t taste anything like authentic Taco Bell Gorditas®.  An autographed portrait of Geronimo hung next to our booth.
“Great food.  Geronimo”We crossed into New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, and the Land of Dust Storms May Exist Use Extreme Caution Zero Visibility Possible.  Donna the van made her off-roading debut on a brushy path to Fraggle Rock.

Photo by Nikki V

In Arizona, Death By Chocolate fueled us all the way to The Thing?  What is The Thing?  It’s a wonder!  A true mystery in the desert!  Watch out for The Thing!  It will cast a spell over you and boogie boogie ’til you’re blue!But really, what is The Thing?  You’ll have to see for yourself.  Interstate 10, exit 322, Dragoon, Arizona.My mom likes to tell me about the weather in Chicago.  She said it has been in the 80′s there, and that the world must be coming to an end.  She has a point.  We ran into a snowstorm in Southern Arizona.  Not cool, John McCain.

We sailed into Tucson and grabbed dinner at BK Carne Asada & Sonoran Hot Dogs on South 12th Avenue.  I still hate eating!  Then we hit Tucson’s oldest tavern, The Buffet Bar, a horseshoe shaped, graffiti slathered dive where Coors is the lone beer on tap.Over a pitcher of the stuff, I told Jim & Nicole about the time I went to Tijuana when I was 20.  It’s a decent tale involving drunken errors and terrors, shifty cabbies, vandalized rear view mirror crosses, puking, venomous jarheads, and Van Halen.  In the middle of the story, a dude with a big grin and eating a hot dog interrupted.  He resembled Sixto from our comic book Unicycle Loves You & The Magic Hitchhiker.“Hey, tell your friend that his stories are long and boring!”  Sixto was referring to mine.  I laughed and told him that he needs to work on not interrupting other people’s stories.  Awkwardly, I finished the hiccuped tale, knowing that it was being judged by an eavesdropping stranger with a hot dog.

“No really, it was a great story,” Sixto said during the inevitable lull in conversation.  I asked why he was listening to our conversation instead of just eating his fucking hot dog.  He told me to take it easy.Two classic rock jukebox songs later, Sixto apologized and bought us drinks.  He had just quit his band.  The tattoo of the band name on his forearm was kind of faded and in a difficult font, but I think they were called Bummer.

Sixto, along with his sister, made it their business to join us for the rest of our night at the Buffet Bar.  They were imposing, nosy, contrary, and fun with an asterisk.  Always on the verge of a fight, they insulted Nicole’s bass, corrected us incorrectly about basic Spanish words, asked us our ages, found out where we were staying, demanded we trade band buttons, bought us fruity shots, raved about Tool and the Alkaline Trio, approved of our choice of dinner, asked us inane questions about touring, and made me feel generally on edge.

Of course Jim somehow got along with Sixto, who scored a vinyl copy of Failure and invited himself over to our motel room to party with us.  His request was met with an emphatic no by Nicole and myself.  Jim hugged Sixto goodnight, and when a pack of too-drunk-to-stand party people staggered up to the Buffet Bar, Sixto introduced me to them as Ben Gibbard.
“Do you guys know who Ben Gibbard is?”
A guy who had just wiped a string of saliva from his face slurred no.  He had his arm around an anonymous blond haircut.  “Shit, what fuckin’ shit is?  This shit is fuckin’ shit!”  I may be paraphrasing.  Forgive me.Thanks for the drinks, Sixto.  I hope you enjoy the album or hate it in a way that makes it funny for you, and that Bummer reunites and is just as good as the Alkaline Trio.

Unicycle Loves You • Unofficial SXSW Showcase @ Lomography, Austin TX

Around 8 or 9am Lightfoils came by to deliver my drums before they set off for the long road ahead.  They showed us camera phone footage of a fight between a shoegaze band and a hippie band at yesterday’s Mexican restaurant music tent.  I guess one of the bands wanted to play and unplugged the other band’s gear mid-song.  Is that freedom rock?  Well turn it off, man!

We had an early show at a camera shop devoted to lomography.  “What The Hell Is Lomography?” read the headline on a big informative newspaper.

It all began with a group of students.

In the early 1990s some students in Vienna, Austria discovered a small, enigmatic, Russian camera, the Lomo Kompakt Automatic, and started a new style of artistic experimental photography of unorthodox snapshots.

The lomography shop displayed a rainbow array of nifty film cameras, tricked out and blinged up with dazzles and things.  They looked cute enough to eat.  The same could be said of the fetching staff.  Go Lomo in ’012!

SXSW’s voluminous shadow lingered, making it an eight band bill.  We were fifth, and lent our gear to a couple of the bands.

Mecca Lecca labelmate Christopher Paul Stelling opened the drizzly day with fiery folk, fingerpicking and stomping through selections from Songs Of Praise & Scorn.

Photo by Nikki V

Our set had its moments.  We were forbidden from playing covers at our official showcase, so it was refreshing to throw the Beefheart number back into the jumble.  Three songs in, during “Magic Marker Blackout” Jim’s guitar magically blacked out.  As in no sound at all.

“That’s what happens when you let other bands use your gear!” he lashed out.  While Nicole and the sound guy helped Jim locate the problem, I walked up to the mic in my Lacoste trunks & cowboy boot socks and made pinhole camera wisecracks.  A few people found it funny, or maybe just funny looking.

Jim found the source of his guitarbage.  The battery in his Big Muff pedal had died.  Whoops.  That’s what happens when you use your Big Muff pedal I guess.  Classic comedy!

We recovered the set with a particularly animated “Wow Wave”, featuring Jim’s new chimpanzee-in-heat dance, and had the fortune of closing with “Sun Comes Out”.  The Lomo folks took our picture for posterity and treated us to a fab tote bag filled with kooky iPhone covers, boxed water, and lomography literature.  Whatta swell group of Texans!

Dimitri took us out for dinner at Shady Grove, a happening eatery on the south side of town.  The chicken fried steak came marbled in cheese ‘n gravy, and the potato resembled Dad’s delicious loafers.  The star of my plate was the side of black eyed peas, goosed up with spicy cubes of ham and sauteed veggies.  I hate eating!It was time to say farewell to Dimitri & Cassandra (and Simon the cat), who not only put us up, but put up with us.  It should be noted that we stayed with them the day after they had moved into a new apartment.  So not only were their lives still in boxes, but a trio of gnarly musicians were living on top of them.  A big thank you to them both.

Photo & Bruises by Nikki V

As for SXSW, I dunno.  If I have to come back it again, I think I’m going to open a rollercoaster for hipsters- a spiraling loop-de-loop track to fasten fixed gear bikes while Sleigh Bells blares.  Or run a sea punk cupcake stand and put the word CO-OP behind it.  Maybe I’ll book a band to play under a tunnel and play to a glob of shit.  No cover songs though!

Photo by Dimitri

And so our Great Western Romance began into the unknown darkness of West Texas, where distance and time slow to a crawling melt, making for beleaguered rest stop options.  At a picnic area straight out of a Sam Peckinpaw film I whizzed under the howling stars and the reverse skyline of the jagged surrounding hills.  It was great to be out west again.

Photo by Nikki V

In the tiny town of Balmorhea we pulled into the Eleven Inn.  The long-horned skull adorning our room greeted us to a cowboy’s vacation.  We drank three-buck-chuck and watched Skinemax, Jim & Nicole on a rustic gaucho bed and me in the comfort of an uncomfortable rocking chair.  I soon switched to my own gaucho bed.Man, we got made in the shade.

Photo by Jim

Unicycle Loves You • Hamwow!

Memphis offers impressive breakfasts every day.  Today we selected the Barksdale Restaurant, an unassuming brick box of Southern comforts.  To our surprise, retired sergeant Bunny Colvin sat alone at a four-top, while in a booth detective Auggie Polk slurped down coffee before working “wet”.

Auggie Polk & Bunny Colvin endorse the Barksdale Restaurant

“Sit anywhere you like,” said Ziggy, who we were glad to see is out of prison and making an honest living at the Barksdale.

Wire bits aside, the Barksdale proved most excellent.  We all ordered some form of eggs, ham, and grits.  The ham was the star, clinging to a big fat bone, and cooked to a crispness one step before it could be considered bacon.

Ham! Wow!

“Wow!” exclaimed Nicole, as heard on the single “Wow Wave Cinema”.  From here on out, she would channel ham when we performing that song.

Austin is a long way from Memphis.  Too long really.  Obama should do something about that.  Arkansas happened for several hours, and we finally saw another band on the road to SXSW.  We gave each other the bike messenger nod, and continued on the road to fame, fortune, and bubble baths.

Champanties!

At a Texas truck stop, Nicole spotted a plastic bottle filled with lacey underwear.  Champanties.  It was covered in dust and showing signs of jaundice.  Along the highway, we passed Gun Zone, which is like a Lazer Tag but with real bullets.  And at a rural gas station, Jim and I were ceremoniously announced as faggots by a couple of mouth breathers sitting in the bed of a pick up truck.  Nicole didn’t fare much better, getting immediately whistled at from an unknown source.  The name of the town was Cumby, which is Texan for “cum-stained Gumby”.

Cumby blockheads vanish into a giant Guns ‘n’ Ammo Magazine

We stopped in Dallas to find the grassy knoll.  It’s still there, along with the book depository building.  The knoll was a bit spooky, and a little rapey after dark.  I thought we would see lots of people posing with umbrellas, like walking across Abbey Road.  But no, just joggers, strollers, and the morbidly curious.  Jim documented it with his 90’s Super8 camcorder, which has been catching random video snippets of the tour.

Photo by Nikki V

Sonny Bryan’s was on the list for dinner, but when we arrived the sign said CLOSED OUT OF FOOD.  Bummer.  That shack smelled like BBQ crack.  We opted for a Cracker Barrel between Dallas and Waco.  When in Rome.

For the final leg of the twelve-hour drive, Jim played a virtual reality video game called Anxiety Driving Battle 2012.  The goal is to get to Austin as fast as possible.  All other motorists and mosquitoes are your enemies, and Mr. Bungle provides the soundtrack.  But we made it to Austin in one piece, and our gracious hosts Dimitri and Cassandra welcomed us into their peaceful abode, where cold Lone Stars and warm 312’s were inhaled with relief.

Unicycle Loves You Are Gonna Be (500 Miles)

Wife goodbyes aren’t fun.  In recent years we’ve learned not to bum out about them until the very last minute.  For this tour I coped by immersing myself in a book about 70′s baseball and wearing 4D glasses.  It enhanced the chapter about Dock Ellis’s (“Ellis, D” in the box score) acid-assisted no-hitter.

I’m always up for an excuse to visit Cairo, Illinois.  I first discovered Cairo (pronounced Kay-ro or Care-o, but not Ky-ro) in 1993 while looking for a place to light off firecrackers.  Like a lot of middle class white kids, I was hypnotized by its apocalyptic serenity, a snapshot of calm after an unknown violence.  Cairo was the inspiration for an unfinished story I started a few years back.  And when I first heard The Bitter Tears perform the song “Cairo”, it confirmed their status as my favorite band.

At Shemwell’s Barbecue, we noshed on beef, pork, catfish, corn nuggets, and Texas toothpicks, which are fried strips of green peppers and onions.  Unfortunately the Ace of Cups, a cafe/book & record store/community center/punk venue is gone.  Bummer.  Cairo continues being Cairo.  I’m still rooting for the Cairo Egyptians in the 1903 in the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee minor league baseball playoffs.

We arrived in Memphis and all its mosquitos around 9.  The motel was a five-story fleabag reminiscent of the famous five-story tower in New Rochelle, New York.  The low hums and high squeals of the nearby freight trains would serve as a white noise maker, bullying us to sleep.  But sleep was not a priority.

It was Jim and Nicole’s first time in Memphis, so naturally we had to do Beale Street.  I got us there by memory, and we stepped into its mandatory madness, albeit on a Monday night.  As we all know, the blues has long since vacated Beale Street, replaced by gift shops, daiquiri bars, and endless terrible music.  I like to frequent the place that calls itself a “juke joint”, but is closer to a Bennigan’s.  Here’s what I wrote about this place when I visited it on a solo road trip in the fall of 2004:

Drank a beer on Beale Street.  I hadn’t been there in over a decade.  The band seemed authentic.  The bass player looked like a cross between my grandfather and Run DMC.  The drummer sported a gerry curl mullet.  They covered “The Sky is Crying” and bowed their heads in memory of Stevie Ray Vaughn.  The all-white crowd approved.  Bleagh.  I wonder what that band really thinks of the Beale Street thing.  I wonder what they really want to play.

We ordered three Beale Big Ass Beers, and caught the band just in time for their hit song “Tip The Band”.  I recognized the bass player from the last time I was here in 2007.  A tiny woman in a large hat, staring blankly while joylessly executing perfect scales.  Maybe the blues is alive after all.

It was time to go to Coyote Ugly.  It’s a bar invented by nonsense where ordinary girls stand on top of the bar and move strangely.  The bartenders have microphones and talk along to new country and 90′s alterna-rock.  The doorman made his carnival pitch.

“326 Beale Street.  Coyote Ugly.  It’s a Monday night.  Get drunk with us.  What else are you going to do?”

We admired his honesty and decided he was right.  The bar consisted of a sloppy stumbler with a big purse, a 40-year-old with an emo Elvis haircut, and various generic men.  Jim asked the bartender to make change for the pool tables.  She answered using the microphone.
“THE CHANGE MACHINE IS OVER THERE!”

Jim defeated me in pool, while generic dudes goaded Nicole to join the women on the bar moving awkwardly to Bon Jon Bovi.  She declined.  One woman thought we were The Proclaimers.  So we performed “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” with pool cue guitars and the place exploded.  No it didn’t.

But Nicole did get a pair of “Money Maker” hot shorts, and modeled them for us back at the motel, to the delight of grown men all over the world.