Where is the hotel?

california vacation, sort of

obviously i am back in california. i mean, i can feel it. it's either california or the west coast in general. either way so far it's been great. while i am waiting to find out if this tv show is happening and adjusting my travel arrangements since my ohio trip has forcibly been nixed the last couple of days (minus work) have been fun.
larry and i went to two baseball games this week. sf and la. here are some photos. sf's park was by far the best i have been too.
breathtaking views

amazing food. garlic fries and a hot link with peppers and onions.

these fries were so great that i think i need to explain that they were french fries tossed with chopped fresh gilroy, ca garlic and parsley.

then today larry and i went to the dodger's game sort of spur of the moment. i gotta say that the sf park blows dodger's stadium away. i mean both are beautiful and different. but i wasn't too stoked on our seats at in la and the food was super overpriced. the worst thing though is that these people are fucking wave fanatics. i think there must be a small percentage of people that come to these games not to watch baseball but to participate in the wave. and then there are the god damn beach balls bouncing throughout the stands and ultimately onto the field where they interrupt the game. the wave is the gayest. maybe i need to start a blog just for my hatred of the wave.

a family that does the wave together stays together. i don't know why i hate it so much. now that it has taken me 20 minutes to post these photos here due to the lame internet connection i feel asinine.

here's some of the mariners and their coaching staff trying to decide what is more annoying:
the wave or jeff kent

nina cut my hair and trimmed my beard today. that felt pretty great. we have discussed giving me a slight permanent wave so i look a little more like dave mustaine. i must admit i am a little frightened by the notion of a perm but stoked at the thought of looking a little more mustaine-esque. she says i shouldn't be scared and i tend to trust her. i guess i have a couple of days to think about it.

i love la.

my apologies

finished. that's all. another one finished. another 5 week trek across the country finished and another one on another continent rolling out in front of me. and so on and so on. i, like someone else i know, worry (a little) that people think i am a snob. maybe because i don't really like drinking to get drunk or yelling in a loud bar over loud music and smelling people's bad breath i come off uppity when i don't go out. it's not to say that i don't like to be social. i would just rather have it be meaningful and a conversation. so that's why i didn't go to the shortstop tonight and it's why usually don't go wherever the party is.
on top of all that is that i don't understand what we are celebrating. i am just gonna say it and that will be that: My role in the entertainment industry is a job. what's the party for when we have to do this all over again in 12 days? and beyond that when maybe it's more like 5 years more i could be doing this. i realize that if you are what we call: "the talent", there may be something more to celebrate after a homecoming show. you're rejoining your friends, you are performing for them. i have no doubt that it's special and exciting. and i have no doubt that the notion of your next tour to foreign countries is exciting. and it should be. but, again, i hate to say it, but i will: i am not doing this because i love music. i am doing it because it's my job. most of the bands i really like are: dead or too broke to hire me. i can appreciate what i work for and i often enjoy the show and enjoy watching the audience enjoy themselves knowing that i had a small part in making the event happen.
my point is please don't think i have my nose in the air because i would rather just get some rest because i have to still work tomorrow even though we aren't playing for 2 weeks. and please don't be upset if i didn't say good bye to you even if i might never see you again and we just spent 5 weeks in the same room each day. it's easier for me to leave and not say good bye to anyone rather than spending 25 minutes saying good bye to everyone. and tomorrow i will meet 5 more people, spend a long time with them and then maybe not see them again. remember, it's just my job. and i want to go home and watch baseballl tonight as soon as possible. so in summation, i am actually not snobby at alll. in fact i am just a regular dude that likes too keep an eye on e.r.a's and batting averages.

cross country inspiration

hey.
this is what inspires me when i am in portland. actually, it is what inspires me wherever i am. i watch these amazing things come together and it makes me pretty happy.
and now, if you live in nyc you can see it all in person.
Niki is having a trunk show of her latest clothes tomorrow night in the west village. I wish i could be there but i have to run a show in LA.
if you are in nyc please consider stopping by. i can't say how proud of her and these clothes she has made by hand, by herself, i am.
please tell your friends.
buy your girlfriend a gift.
there are beautiful hand dyed, hand sewn jersey dresses. perfect for the summer silk dresses. chiffon wrap tops. super soft jersey t-shirts. and they are all lovely.

give her a hug for me.

Luxury Jones Trunk Show at
Albertine
13 Christopher Street
Btw 6th and 7th aves
June 21, 2006
6-8 pm

dance party hotel

hell ride today on the nastiest bus in the country. i don't think i have been on a more vile bus than this one. it smells like a giant cigarette butt laid a giant ash turd in the the middle of a dirty sweatsock. no one cleans it because everyone's stuff is everywhere. i think that larry and i are the only two people that have any clue as to how it could be... you see the thing is that although it might come as a big surprise on most tours the crew bus is probably cleaner than the artists' bus. this is because no one wants to or can tell the artist what to do or when to clean up their crap. but on a crew bus if people left all their shit laying around, dvd's, cd's half drunk cans of coke, food wrappers or anything for that matter it would be tossed. you put shit in your bunk or it get's tossed. my point is that i spent 18 hours on this stench on wheels. i slept most of it or at least after people got up i went back to bed. we left seattle at 3:30 AM and ended up in san francisco at 8:00 pm. close enough to 18 hours.
yesterday i walked around a grocery store in seattle. i could have bought a lot of stuff but seeing as: 1. fucks on the bus that have no respect for others would have eaten it and 2. we are losing the bus in two days. i didn't really buy anything. but i walked around aimlessly in it and i realized that if you don't live anywhere and you want a good deal at a supermarket these days you are out of luck.

what is this shit with having a card in order to get a good deal. not that i want a giant case of salinated weird coke water but why should i have to pay $4.00 more if i did and i am a guest in seattle. i actually did really want the skinny cows and thought about applying for their stupid card (but knew i didn't need another god damn card in my wallet) or paying full price for them but i wandered some more and forgot about them. instead i got tom's of maine woodspice deodorant, a book of blank receipts and a sunday new york times. i realized that since i don't use deodorant that much it can last me a year. cause jen stilwell bought it for me last july in nyc. it was my going away present when i moved out of nyc and we were eating our last lunch at westville.
speaking of jen...i got a great pep talk from her while i was sitting in a park in capitol hill in seattle. i was just feeling freaked and she really knew what to say and hit the nail on the head when she told me not to worry about it all at once.
after we got off the phone i started thinking about how great public places are and how fascinating it is that we all feel compelled to go and sit sometimes and not do anything. i looked around and saw at least 14 other people all doing the same thing as me. nothing. sitting there and staring off into space. i thought that we as a species can't be that bad if we realize that our quality of life is improved with these spaces where we can go and lay on the grass and listen to a fountain for 34 minutes. then i saw some couple get up and walk away and hold hands and thought fuck them, for a second but i know as as soon as i get my apartment or buy my house at the end of the year things will be fine. i know that in september i will be gloating to everyone that i have been to israel and that i saw negative approach and scratch acid in chicago. and if i wasn't miserable now i wouldn't be able to say those things. that's the price. here's some shots from the park.

i saw some old friends last night in seattle. i still didn't see the one that just disappeared. i don't even know if she still lives one block from the club but i walked by her building a couple of times but was too scared to ring the bell. too scared or too busy i guess. but i saw some other rad people. i guess the latest thing about my job i have been pondering is: why do people want to fight me every night?
last night there were 4 people hanging out in the dressing room area of the club. they didn't have the right passes. i knew they weren't friends of the band cause they weren't watching the show, they were gabbing the whole time. as a matter of fact i knew exactly what they were all about before i said anything to them. they were the cool people or the people that think they are cause they write for the stranger or they own the record store or they have some shitty lame band. and they think that that means that they can hang out backstage whereever they want. and that they can give me a bunch of shit when i tell them to leave. all i wanted to say to that girl was shut your fucking fat yap and just leave. she thought she deserved something cause she had written about the show for the local weekly. i told her "great! you actually went to work one day and wrote a few paragraphs. you have a job and you did it. you should feel really proud. but now i am working and i am doing mine and if you don't leave i will kill you." well i didn't say i would kill her but i said she should leave. she lingered and gave me a bunch of shit. fuck her. listen up people. i am a pacifist. i love peace. i love yoga. i love being mellow and not saying much. please don't try to pique my spite or hatred. it bums me out.

i like this silver jews song, punks in the beerlight. here are the lyrics:

where's the paper bag that holds the liquor
just in case i feel the need to puke
if we had known what it'd take to get here
would we have chosen too
would we have chosen too
so you want to build an altar on summer night?
so you want to smoke the gel off a fentanyl patch?
have you heard the news adam and eve were jews?

and i always loved you to the max
i love you to the max
i love you to the max
i love you to the max

if it gets really really bad
if it ever get's really really bad
let's not kid ourselves it's really really bad

punks in the beerlight
two burn out's in love
punks in the beerlight
Toulouse-Lautrec
punks in the beerlight
two burn outs in love
i always loved you to the max
i love you to the max
i love you to the max
i love you to the max
i love you to the max
i love you to the max
i love you to the max

max

when we finally arrived in sf larry and i went to the Edinburough Castle for fish and chips and beers. he got borracho for the second time in one day and me for the first.

borracho larry

borracho david

this world is not my home

this minute i can't wait to say good bye to portland. i try not to be so gloomy. i, also, try not to be so fatalistic and most of the time i am not. the constant good bye has me down and although my god damn bed (i talk about it all the time) is here i don't know when i will be again. for the last 5 months i have been driving and flying across the country spending the perfect amount of time with people here and there and staying at my safe places and every once in awhile on my bed. i slept on it the last two nights and it was glorious. it's a great bed.
but in a couple of weeks i'll be off to europe for a summer of beer soaked english clubs and sunny festivals in spain, italy, norway and other excellent countries. but my friends and the people i love won't be there. just the people i work with. and while that isn't always bad right now it's all i can do to keep from breaking down in tears in this dressing room full of strangers or people that wouldn't really care why it was happening. that's not to say they have no feelings but in this situation it wouldn't make me feel better just like more of a stranger. i called kime today and told her to get ready for my arrival on tuesday cause it might be a day of decompressing in los angeles.
the other day i called someone a sadist for sending me a text message about her porch and garden. but maybe i am a masochist for getting myself into this homeless situation. i thought i had the constitution for it but i just don't think i do. i am afraid of turning into the roadie i always hated but that is the course i put myself on. and although i know all it will take is sucking it up and seeing it through the summer and part of the fall it's hard to know when the end will come and i can get an apartment and a couch and my bed and a plasma tv and everything might feel okay.

the real le bon temps post

i have started and stopped and started this one so many times. i don't even know what to say anymore. i feel like all the wittiness i ever may have had has been sucked out of me. it's not that i am not having fun on this tour but between the current one and getting ready for the next two i just feel exhausted. and boring.
but i'll give it a go.
new orleans was great. the first two days were filled with work but the last day larry, manuel and i mozeyed around the city. we had oysters and bloody marys and beignets galore. then we watched the basketball game on the bus and i went and met up with susan for a drink on the street. i had big bourbon on the rocks sitting on a stone wall around a park. it's a nice thing about new orleans. actually i suppose that i hate the whole booze anywhere in new orleans. but since the hurricane and the city is a ghost town it wasn't so bad. there wasn't the crushing drunken humanity there and i finally enjoyed myself.
i didn't see too much destruction but it's still there. abandoned restaurants and housing developments outside of town. some shut businesses in the quarter and no one on the streets. and now, in nola, express dry cleaning means you get it back in 3 days.

but the beautiful quarter is still there. seemingly untouched. it's amazing to me that many of the porches and balconyies survive the winds of any storm that comes this way. you have to love the natural delapidation of these buildings. they reek of decadance and leisure. it makes me long to have been an old french settler.
this was our le bon temps day:

then we strolled around and checked out the architecture while we looked for a good food place.

the japanese scientist that discovered adrenalin lived here. he also gave washington, dc the cherry trees that are such a hit today.

i would own this building in a second.

finally we found some oysters. when i was on tour with the white stripes meg took a bunch of us out for oysters in portland. but i thought i hated them. i had had one when i moved to olympia years ago. so i didn't have any. but these were amazing. i also had a bloody mary. le bon temps.
oysters

post oysters

then we walked back towards the bus and passed the most amazing row of antique stores i had ever seen. too bad they were all closed for the night. all i kept thinking about the whole time i was there are the two people i know that have never been to nola but would love it the most, kime and niki.
here are some things i know they both would love.

kime, if she were a tree.

le bon temps.
this is larry. he is righteous cause he found my blog on the internet but hasn't told anyone else the address. he was also wasted on booze and vicadin for his back when a girl at the bar took this photo. it was during the marathon never ending sound check the day before the nola show. a 12 hour ordeal. i was only there cause i felt like i should share the pain. otherwise i had nothing to offer that day. the catholic guilt not letting me lounge around in my hotel room or see my friend. i am still glad it is over.

le bon temps, for a day at least. and now i feel like i can sleep and not feel like a douche cause i have neglected this thing. i could go on with my disgust for a couple of drunk fucks in dallas but the flashlight to the gut i gave one of them is probably all i have to say. dallas is the opposite of new orleans and i am gonna say that that would be le mal temps. but i am just guessing there, for some reason i think i might know that mal means bad in french. but maybe it doesn't.

camping out

tonight, even though we have an off day and hotel rooms, i am staying on the bus. it's like a campout. but the satellite is working, the internet is free and i am going to eat steaks with larry, greg and manuele. manuele is a count in italy. the tribe is winning. we are gonna watch the basketball game at dinner.
the bus driver didn't fall asleep and kill us during the 18 hour drive from dallas. so, except for the fucking drunk dicks at the show in dallas last night it's been a great 24 hours. soon i will be in the northwest and then the west coast and i will feel like i am home.

texas downer

sometimes too much air conditioning makes me feel down.
i can't wait to get outside to the suffocating blankets of heat.
i will go to stubb's.

hang on

i'll write more in the morning.
i am in new orleans.
this is happening to me.
it's a ghost town now.

you'd love it here.

can't you hear me knocking?

billy preston, RIP.