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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Last week

It's Sunday afternoon and we're back in Long Beach. We drove here after our Fresno gig, and we technically have our last show here tonight, although it's a house show and it sounds like a request by residents of the house not to spread the word too widely has led to such little promotion that someone who lives there recently asked Alan where the show is. So, we're not expecting much tonight. But I'm happy to report that the second half of the tour was superior to the first half, and we don't feel the need to accomplish anything more than hanging out at Alan's friends' pad with a computer, ceiling fans, comfortable bedding, and a wonderfully chill boxer mix named Pyrate. We'll be here till tomorrow and then it's back to DC for me and back to PDX for a few days for Shravan and Forrest. Alan is technically homeless for a month, and then he's headed to Europe for three months to tour with Born/Dead, Doomsday Hour, and Witch Hunt. To recap since my last entry:

Eugene sucked, and we drove to Portland immediately after we played. I spent Saturday afternoon hitting record stores downtown and ran into my college friend Steve. He lives in Portland, but I ran into him last summer in Seattle as well. I had given him my email address but he lost it, so it was great to cross paths again. We caught up over breakfast a few days later when I was back in PDX for our second show. Take that, Facebook. Our house show that night was the most remunerative of the tour; Portland always comes through. Sunday was Seattle at Squid and Ink, a small vegan restaurant in Georgetown. Uninspired turnout, but we got decent money anyway. The Squid is closed on Mondays, but the owner, a friend of Alan's (and of the folks we were staying with right down the street), insisted on opening up to feed us brunch and then tried not to accept any money. A true gentleman. We got a slow start that day, ate brunch late and ended up with not enough time to do anything around town before we had to be in Tacoma for that night's show. It felt a little like a wasted day, but sometimes those are unavoidable. Tacoma was a house show with surprisingly good turnout. We spent the night in Seattle again and I made the most out of our day off on Tuesday by taking a bus to downtown, walking to Capitol Hill, and taking another bus to the U District and back. Hit four record stores (one was closed) and rounded things out with gelato and a newspaper by the water with a relatively uncloudy view of the sun going down behind whatever mountains it goes down behind west of Seattle.

Wednesday I brunched alone at the Squid (the owner only charged me $5 for a meal that was probably worth more than twice that) before we headed back down to Portland. Good show at The Know with some partying afterward. I went to sleep around 2:30 in a windowless practice room in the basement and got up at 9 in complete darkness to meet Steve for breakfast. I found out from Julie that our beloved feline bookend/paperweight Miss Kitty had taken a turn for the worse and the vet gently insisted she be euthanized the next day. 21 years is a hell of a run for a cat, but it's sad all the same. It's been a bad couple weeks for pets in the District. Beaujolais, one of Brighter Days' favorite charges (despite his proclivity for bisexual rapings), died shortly after I left town; and then another dog that didn't have anything wrong with him that I knew of was put down a couple days ago.

Thursday was a day off, and I did the whole drive to Oakland. It took us only 10 hours with stops from Portland, much less than I expected. Driving was a great relief from the boredom of passengerhood. Friday we hit Telegraph in Berkeley for food and records and then more food on the Oakland end of the street. Warehouse show at the Hazmat in Oakland went fine. Saturday we brunched at Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, a restaurant apparently owned by the Green Day dudes. Overpriced bland bullshit. At least they forgot to include my OJ in the bill.

As soon as we drove out of Oakland we hit hot weather. It was incredibly abrupt. We relented and relied on AC the whole way to Fresno. I thought it felt bad just because we'd been so spoiled with great weather the whole tour, but then we got to Fresno and were told that it had hit 106. Let me set the scene here. It's a birthday party/house show. We walk into a backyard featuring multiple shopping carts and almost immediately see a kid in a full clown suit being barked at by a small dog named Butters. Now you know everything you need to know about Fresno. Actually, for as much as I felt like I was in a west coast version of Gummo, people were friendly and we had a good time. We were only there for about 3 hours total and then we set sail for Long Beach. I'll probably post one last update when I'm home, but till then...

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