Road Trip

Before I forget it, I wanted to offer up one scene from the drive so far.

My aunt and me driving through St. Louis.

Her: Wow, the Arch is beautiful.
Me: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Her: But it's silver. Why do they call it the Golden Arch?
Me: Uhhh....they don't. You're thinking of McDonald's.
Her: Oh.

And also, to keep the musical pelota rolling, one more great guest appearance.

It's another one starring Eddie Vedder.

Reasons it rules:
- no ridiculousness, he just comes out (at the beginning of the song) and sings the hell out of it
- no asinine new lyrics
- Tom Petty looks like Penny Marshall

Pics From Perhew

I am in Sheridan, WY. Tomorrow we go to Cody, WY. My aunt and I are driving from NC to CA.

These are pictures from Peru that Wynn took. I took some, and I'll put them up when I haven't been driving for 29 hours in the last 2.5 days. Or something like that.

Hector and me gettin' loco.

The Field General, surveying his troops.


Another sign that the U.S. is improving in soccer. I AM THE WALL. (Even though he's far away in the background, my soccer strength is so mighty that Daniel still feels the need to grab onto his pelotas.)

Stories And Performances

The other night, I think I found too many musical pairings that I love. I don't know if I'll ever have time to post them all.

And YES, in hindsight, clearly Axl's jacket should've received mention in the last post. I think four people emailed me to tell me about my mistake. I was shocked that four people had actually read it.

Let's keep the good times rolling........

Bono again. This time, with The Edge. And with Pearl Jam.

Why this is awesome:
- they named their collaboration "UJam"

- Bono strictly follows one of the Rules Of Duet Greatness. At least one performer must enter stage mid-song, regardless of how long the song has been going on (not very long), or how impactful it is (not very). I wish this wasn't a rule. You're not going to top "Ladies and gentlemen -- MR. ELTON JOHN!" And you're certainly not going to top Axl Rose's entrance at Wembley, so you may as well get to the stage when the song starts.

- the two ingenius prophets love reading-from-my-notebook style poetry so much during their OWN concerts, that when they play together, it's one big poetical douche-off. Did the song really need new words? Were Bono and Eddie Vedder sitting in adjacent stalls before the show thinking them up? Isn't the song about poverty already?? They should've called the pairing "UDouche." Or "DoucheJam."

And on top of all that......it still totally kicks ass.

This post was originally going to be more stories from South America. Including an anecdote about an Argentinian woman at a club telling me she didn't like American men because "most of them are like him" and then pointing to an intoxicated gringo at the other end of the balcony. Who was my travel companion. Wynn. Who will now be upset that I wrote this. But he knows I love him. The next story will hopefully involve something equally embarrassing occurring to me.

Hilarious Musical Collaborations

I like them. I like finding them, and I like discussing them. Usually I can't tell if my love is ironic or not.

You could probably have a whole mega-section solely devoted to Axl Rose, but this is my favorite so far -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzZXXCDakjY

Reasons why this performance rules:
- when this originally aired (in the early 90s??) I was watching this with my father, who is an enormous Rolling Stones fan. I was captivated. His only response was, "Why did they bring out this jackass?"
- it's an awesome Rolling Stones song that gets very little attention;
- Axl and Mick engage in a tense battle of who can do their worst go-to stage moves (Mick's spirit fingers on steroids and Axl's ridiculous sway);
- the ABSURDLY unnecessary inclusion of Izzy onstage instead of Slash;
- Keith Richards singing the first stanza as if he's never heard the song before;
- and finally, the two performers are billionaires singing a song that's meant to be a reversely-ironic discussion of the common man.

And no, despite it's awesomeness, it's still not as good as this.

The only person who may rival Axl in the ridiculous collaborations department is Bono. But what would happen if somehow, the cosmos aligned and they joined forces? What if the two Kings of Silly Collab collided? Would the world explode?? What? One exists? Seriously?

Wait A Darn Second

Soon, I will post more pics/brilliant analysis from my past two weeks in South America, but I wanted to step aside for some much brighter brilliance.

Has anyone else seen this? Why is this not the most popular sight on the internet?

Buenos Aires

I should´ve bought a watch in Buenos Aires. I was probably aware of what time it was around 10% of the time. I think BA is very similar to New York City. Wynn has lived in NYC for years, and is naturally contrarian, so he disagrees somewhat. I don´t think my body was ready for five straight days of arriving home after the sun rose.

Wynn and I were both given counterfeit money at different times. I was informed that mine was "muy muy falso" and part of the ink had even appeared to bleed all over the rest of the bill. And the watermark that is supposed to be a drawing of a politican looked like a drawing from an uncoordinated 4th grader.

We ate a steak restaurant and I ordered "steak wrapped in bacon." The steak was one of the biggest pieces of meat I´ve ever seen, and the bacon was a veritable sheet, wrapped around the giant piece of steak. Wynn got a giant piece of steak wrapped around a large piece of ham, with cheese and peppers in the middle. We were unaware that the side dishes were plentiful. We took part in a two-for-one special on bottles of wine, but you had to take one of them to go. The rest of the night and morning was spent handing the bottle to employees at clubs and seeing how funny it was that two shabbily dressed gringos were toting around wine. We left it at a club and forgot about it. I think that was the club where a group of girls wanted to practice their English, which mainly consisted of the phrase "I love you." As I type this, I realize that it was not anywhere near as cool as it sounds.

With our gracious hosts in Buenos Aires, we ended up watching Free Willy one night with their son. We debated about whether or not "Will You Be There" was at the end of this movie, or the sequel. Thank goodness it was this one. That song has definitely become the most beloved song of this trip, if not my life.

Last night back in Lima, looking for a place to hang out late after dinner, we were directed to a club near our hostel. We were told it was one of the only places in Lima that was open at this hour. We were not told, however, that the place was mostly populated by Peruvian prostitutes. We sat at the bar with some of Wynn´s friends who happened to be in town from a trek to Macchu Picchu. The whole thing was pretty weird, until Wynn talked the DJ into playing...... "Will You Be There." The prostitutes cleared the floor and Wynn and our friends showed them all that South Americans aren´t the only people obsessed with 80s/90s power ballads.

P.S.

When he turned off Big Stan, he put on Happy Feet.

Good Movies In Peru

While I was strolling the streets of Lima this afternoon, I came upon a nice-looking electronics store. I went inside to see how much an HD television costs in Peru.

I found a gigantic HD screen in a full home theater setup in the middle of the store. I thought I recognized the crowd on the screen as a concert film I had recently seen, but couldn´t place. Then, as dozens of children came walking on stage wearing Indian/Middle Eastern-ish garb, I knew what it was. Sitting there watching Will You Be There live from Bucharest was amazing not only because it´s amazing, but because over the past couple weeks, it had been viewed in my apartment probably nine times. By many different groups of people, from my skeptical roommate, to me by myself, to a group of about 12 people who crammed into my apartment after the party on the eve of Sam and Sahar´s wedding. And before that, Sam and I had discussed all its merits at his bachelor party. Which are many.

Needless to say, I pumped up the volume as much as was reasonable, and nodded my head alongside the middle-aged Peruvian woman and her daughter. That song kills every time. Although it killed me much more than it killed them.

My traveling buddy over the last few days, Eric, departed today. It got me thinking about how if I was in a random city in the US, even by myself, I would´ve talked to Eric upon meeting him and probably had a decent five minute chat with him. Yet meeting him in Huacachina, Peru, makes it completely reasonable for us to say, ¨"Hey let´s spend the next week traveling around South America together, sleeping in hotels, sharing taxis, eating meals together, and taking walks on the beach." In the US, we probably would´ve felt weird sharing a cab.

During the bus ride to Lima yesterday, the excitable bus attendant had the unenviable (or maybe enviable) job of picking which DVDs to show. He picked Transporter 3 which was less than awesome. Although it was fun to exclaim things in Spanish like ¨"No es posible!!" when Jason Statham drives his car off a bridge into a moving train, then gets out and starts shooting bad guys.

But I was beginning to think the attendant had made a misstep when he started to show Big Stan, one of the latest Rob Schneider comedic vehicles. That I had never heard of. "I wonder how the parents on this bus feel" was the only thing I could think of when the first scene involved Rob Schneider trying to sell a condo to an elderly woman by convincing her that "The area is bad, but that means that there are many black men there, who will all want to give you their big black ---" The Peruvian parents made it past that, and all the way to the 15-minute mark when Rob Schneider convinced his wife to use a dildo on him to prepare him for life in prison. That got an immediate trip to the back from a nice Peruvian man who was not pleased with the attendant´s taste in cinema.

Viva Peru

I am in Lake Huacachina, Peru. I wish I had time on the computer to upload pictures, because it´s a tiny little village that surrounds a lagoon, with giant sand dunes all around. The main activity in Huacachina is to take a snowboard and ¨sandboard¨ down the dunes. I am still cleaning sand out of my ears, nose, and other places less mentionable.

I ran into a guy at the hostel here who graduated from UVA a couple years after I did. He is in the internet cafe with me right now and just got upset because the stock that he owns in his former employer has gone down. That seems to be a theme here, as almost all of the Americans I´ve met in Peru have been recently laid off from their jobs. Or have quit.

I spent four days in Lunahuana at the orphanage where Wynn works. The kids were awesome. Much of the time spent with them consisted of me trying to figure out how exactly they were making fun of me. One of the best experiences was washing my clothes by hand. I thought I was performing admirably, until three of the girls volunteered to help me as they laughed. Wynn translated for me: "Poor Ricardo, he doesn´t even know how to wash his clothes." When they asked me how I washed my clothes at home, I sputtered out some combination of "Not like this" and "I don´t." That was probably one of the least embarrassing statements I made in Spanish while visiting there.

We played an expectedly fun and rousing game of soccer one afternoon. I was lucky enough to be the goalie for most of it, and tried to get the kids to teach me fun things to yell at the opponents. The kids respected the dorky, pale, mosquito-bitten gringo shouting "I AM THE WALL!!!" as the ball zip passed me into the goal. Those guys were not messing around, but I managed to make a couple saves.

And now I think I must go. I don´t think I have any Peruvian coins left, and the signs here (and the grumpy Peruvian man) have repeatedly mentioned that payment must be in coins. Which makes sense, except for the fact that there is only one ATM in the town and it spits out bills in denominations of 20, 50, and 100. And people always ask for small bills. And the ATM is not working currently. If no one ever hears from me again, I am in Lake Huacachina, Peru, and I am trying to work off a debt of 16 American cents.

More Quality Encounters

As I was in the Wal-Mart of Sanford, NC, this evening, an elderly woman saw me looking in the candy aisle.

"Honey, all that candy will make you sweet." HUH?? I blurted. "Honey, all that candy will make you sweet." Wow, I had heard her correctly. A conservative estimate of her age was 75.

"Uh, it's actually not for me....but I'm sweet enough anyway." Holy crap, I just kind of flirted with a woman who probably lives in a retirement home.

However, she was only about 25 years older than my last lovely encounter with a woman, which was the day before while driving from Charlottesville to Sanford. I was pumping gas when one of the station employees saw my California license plate.

"Hey baby! You must be lost! You've had a long drive."
"Yeah, it was pretty far," I said, not wanting to explain the logistics of my living situation.
"Baby, do you even know where you are?"
"YOU'RE IN THE JUNGLE, BABY" would've been infinitely cooler than my response, which was "Uhhhhh....near Danville?"
"Baby, you're in Tight Squeeze."

I think the only scenario where "Baby, you're in Tight Squeeze" would be less sexy is in the candy aisle at Wal-Mart (with a septuagenarian).

I was buying the candy for the kids in the orphanage in Peru where Wynn works. I'll be flying there Tuesday, and I needed to make sure this gringo was packed with sweets.

FYI, if you're flying to Peru and your mother is terrified, don't tell her about the picture in the guidebook that shows a man on the street selling fake "TAXI" signs and insurance certificates to people who want to swindle tourists.

Joe C

At karaoke a few weeks ago, someone asked me who Joe Cocker was, and why he was cool. I tried to show him a Joe Cocker impersonation.

All I should have said was, "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RnjWLVyMps"

Just Gentlemen Down By The River

Last weekend was our friend Sam's bachelor party weekend. It involved eating and drinking in nice establishments all around the District of Columbia. It also involved driving out to a high-tech driving range in northern VA where we had purchased an all-you-can-eat and all-balls-you-can-hit package. It was exciting for the first 7 minutes until one member of our group suffered a severe knee injury. Then it was really exciting.

It's a sad moment in life when you realize that you're of the age where you will go to the driving range with friends, and one of them could potentially sustain a very bad knee injury and have to go to the hospital.

It's also somewhat sad when you realize that a group of 10 hungover guys at a driving range is THE WORST group to be amongst when you suffer a bad-to-severe lower body injury. I think Mark would've received more sympathy from Federal prisoners.

"Mark, how's your leg?"
"Well, as you can see, the swelling is --"
"Oh my shot? Cool!"

Mark was a trooper. But the injury caused him to miss out on karaoke that night. The highlights of that outing included everything the Bachelor sang (he can sing) and our friend Danny Lee performing "Purple Rain" by Prince. I don't think anyone has "done" karaoke until they've seen an overweight Asian man sing the hell out of an '80s Prince super-ballad. Without even looking at the words.

During the weekend we also discussed various muggings and crimes in DC that have been experienced by our friends living there. They keep trying to convince me that DC is unsafe. I believe it, but I guess it's hard for that to sink in based on my most recent encounter with the homeless people of Charlottesville. Last week, I was jogging along the river when two guys stopped smoking what they were smoking to ask me which one of them had a better body. "Excuse me?" I yelped while removing my headphones and continuing to jog in place. Ready to make a hasty exit.

"I'm sayin' man, which one of us ya know, has a better body? Looks better? Who you think works out more??"

Both men were shirtless, overweight, and smoking what appeared to be crack. Not the kind of body contest I usually want to judge.

"Uhh.....he's got some bigger --" Do I say "guns" ? Do I actually deem one the winner??? "Uhh....he looks like he maybe works out a bit more." I pointed to the one on the left, the one who had been quiet until this time, when he pumped his fist in celebration. As I turned around and tried to make a quick getaway, the other guy wasn't done. "But wait....I mean, I work out too."

"Yeah," I said. "It's close."

The winner wasn't done either. "You have a blessed day, man!!!"

I ran the rest of my loop and thought for a while about whether or not to take a different route home. I wasn't necessarily afraid of anything except the awkwardness of having to talk to homeless men about their muscle tone. Screw it, I thought. I have nothing to fear.

When I came back to the spot, the loser of the Mr. Strongman contest was there by himself. "Yo!!!" he said. "Hey man," I replied. Then, possibly feeling my oats a bit too strongly, I added, "Where'd your friend go? Is he out pumping iron? You need to catch up." The guy just kind of grunted. And then said something indiscernible. Since my joke was so timely and funny and couldn't have been thought of as anything besides hilarious, I'll take his indifference as a sign of his inability to hear me, or that he was too high to comprehend the comedic gold I had laid at his feet. But I scampered off quickly.

The next day, jogging on the same trail, I ended up passing the same spot around the same time of day. This time, I found myself trying to navigate through a pack of about five 25-35 year old women who were all out on a run together. I looked over, and saw the (now fully clothed) body contest champion with two other friends whom I didn't recognize. I waved. He waved back and yelled, "Hey man!!!" The entire group of ladies wheeled around, shocked that I apparently was close friends with this fellow. I almost said, "He totally has a great body too," but decided to keep jogging silently.

Awakening A Slumbering Giant

Well, I figured it was about time to post something new. You can't keep the fans waiting (too long). Eventually they get furious.

This also coincides with the first significant amount of shows I've played in a couple months. I played four shows with a super cool singer-songwriter named Krista Detor. I met her and her husband/guitarist/producer/homey Dave Weber at the beginning of this year in Chicago when we were on the road with Brian Vander Ark.

She's from Indiana, she's great, she's very nice, and she asked me to play drums with her.

This little run was in West Virginia, Maryland, and Alabama. Fun times all over the east/southeast. Of course we met some splendid people along the way. Including one half of the 1995 Freestyle Frisbee World Championship team. When Gary told me this prime tidbit, of course I had to ask him approximately 5 million questions. Obviously number one was, "What are the chicks like at frisbee competitions?" Not really.

Speaking of Gary and chicks, all of Gary's friends were shocked to hear that I lived in Charlottesville and had never been contra dancing. (There was almost a riot when I told them that I had never even heard of it.) So for an extended period of time after our show, they showed me the moves. It's like square dancing on crack. NUMEROUS people at the show travel around the country, taking part in enormous contra dancers. With hundreds of other contra dancers.

In addition to world champion frisbee'ers and nationally-traveling contra dancers, I learned that Krista and Dave had some quality stories to tell as well. Krista's dad spent years in a federal prison for counterfeiting $72 million. "We were rich for about five minutes, then he was gone," she joked. Dave, for his part, was a traveling "catcher on the flying trapese." He is one of the guys that hangs by the back of his knees from the swinging trapese and catches the people jumping. Holy crap. To keep playing in this band, I'm going to have to pick up some impressive hobbies.

Another Bed

After playing in Chicago on Monday, Dylan and I woke up at 6 am on Tuesday to make the drive to Charlottesville, VA. I think it took us about 15 hours, including a long stretch of driving 40 miles per hour on the highway through terrible sleet and snow. Dylan made us stop in Louisville, KY, at a place called "Why Louisville" which is self-described as a "fan club for Louisville." Or something like that. Basically, they had a lot of Louisville inside jokes and hipster shirts. And basically, the two girls who worked there were lame hipsters who didn't respond to our witty driving-delirium-induced string of jokes.

Throughout the entire month, I was once again sleeping on floors/futons, sometimes at the homes of people I had never met. So I couldn't wait to return to my huge comfy bed in my parents' house in Sanford for a decent night's sleep. It was surprising when I woke up at 4am shivering because the heating didn't work. I tried to find blankets, but for some reason my blanket had disappeared. So much for the comforts of home. I had spent a better night on a futon in Chicago where it was 0 degrees outside, and where inside, Dylan was waking me up every 20 minutes to stop my snoring.

I got to see Bloomington, Indiana for the first time in my life. As well as Toledo, Ohio. Both seemed like more fun than I would've guessed. Toledo was snowy, cold, and windy, but still seemed surprisingly cool. Same with Louisville. Despite hipster nerds. The men at Jimmy John's were agreeable. Which also reminds me -- why would they open a Jimmy John's in Charlottesville, ONE BLOCK from Little John's? Little John's is the best sandwich establishment in the United States. So they open a chain sub shop with the same last name right down the street. That doesn't make sense to me.

A few things learned this month
- Part of the problem with writing a wildly popular internet blog (cough cough) is that you are worried to write about people who may end up reading the blog.

- I don't really know who Kathleen Madigan is, but the XM comedy stations played her so much that I don't even want to Google her to find out. She is either sleeping with someone at XM programming or has a great publicist.

- When sitting next to a close male friend in a theater, it is always funny to nudge him when there is onscreen nudity. It gets funnier throughout the movie.

- "Role Models" received a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which has got to be the highest rating for a movie that has been described as "a mound of dog turd flavoured with honey...just like dog turd with honey on it, the mess is unappetising."

- If you don't know a guy's name, but you later refer to him as "Garth" and your friend immediately knows to whom you're referring because that guy looks exactly like Garth from "Wayne's World," then "Garth" is probably awesome.

More!

The sound man where we play in Atlanta is a very very sweet guy. It's been fun to chat with him when we've been in town, especially because for years he ran sound for a band called Jellyfish, who spent a lot of time on tour with the Black Crowes.

But this time we talked about more serious things, because our friend has had a very tough year. He started by telling me of his recent heart attack. Then came the enormous medical bills. Then it was a messy divorce.

Then his daughter called him one day and told him that his ex-wife was currently dating one of his close friends, who lives in another part of the country. "Can you believe that?" he asked me. "You know what the worst part is? They met on eHarmony. They just filled out profiles and got matched up." We couldn't help but laugh about that. "Actually," he continued, "he's also the drummer for the Temptations." We couldn't help but laugh about that too. Attempting to use my ninja-like conversational skills to lighten the mood, I asked him which part was worse -- that it was his friend, or that it was the drummer for the Temptations. Thank God he laughed about that too.

Finally, I asked him to tell me something good that had happened lately. He spoke of his beautiful grandson Sammy. And showed me pictures of Sammy with Cookie Monster. Then he told me about terrible back problems he had suffered through until a few months ago. The pain had been so bad that he could hardly walk. He visited numerous doctors, acupuncturists, and anyone else who he could afford and who would listen. Finally he was about to have an extremely expensive surgery. Until he was hobbling out of the club one night and someone yelled at him from the balcony to come back inside. He said the pain was so bad, he almost didn't do it. But he said what the hell, and went back up the steps.

Someone inside introduced him to a drunken yoga therapist. The woman told him that she could probably help him, and she showed him a few intense stretches he could do. He said thanks, and hobbled back out of the club.

He said that after one and a half weeks, his pain was completely gone. After a long bout with terrible back pain, he was about to undergo an expensive surgery, and this inebriated yoga teacher had cured him in one week.

I asked him what he did to thank her. He said that he never saw her again. He didn't get her name or number or anything.

"Well, time to find her on eHarmony."

Only The Finest

Last night was the second show of our new tour. In Hartsville, SC. The previous night we played once again in our living room in Sanford, NC. Once again, it was fantastically fun. We played "You Shook Me All Night Long" during "soundcheck" in Sanford, so I was requesting it for my own band by the time we started the second set, when everyone had had enough to drink. I thought it went over well, and wanted Dylan to play his mandolin solo while walking up the stairs onto our loft/balcony that overlooks the living room. No dice.

Someone made a joke about us playing a bigger venue, like the Magic Dome in Orlando. I don't know if that's a real place, but I doubt the person realized we'd be traveling to South Carolina the next day to play at a bar called The Midnight Rooster.

Kristy ended up vomiting all day yesterday, so Dylan and I played the show in Hartsville by ourselves. We played for almost two hours, but since I know about six of Dylan's songs, the evening included a bunch of covers, and Dylan telling me what his songs sound like, right before starting them.

Dylan's roommate is a guy named Rocky (who I can't stop calling Bucky), who collects comics, laughs a lot, has painted his drum set four times since he bought it, refuses to obtain music or movies in any type of illegal fashion, and has a book in his bathroom called "What Your Poo Says About You."