also, i have a bunch of good pictures, but dont have them here at work to add to these posts ... i will as soon as i get them ...
where we last left our heroes ...
- 08.06 ... back on the road, today to provo, utah ... we got really spoiled havin a (nice) hotel to stay in our first two nites cause the rest of tour would not be so comfortable ... chuck wren gave us a box of jumpup cds and tshirts to sell on the road for gas money, which was ridiculously nice of him, he turned the trip into a family vacation of sorts, and was there with his wife and baby daughter (whos one of the cutest kids ive seen, and she likes to dance to reggae) ... nothin to memorable bout the trip to utah, except that im sure the mormon jokes were flyin ... oh, we warned ahead of time to buy beer before leavin colorado cause utah has this 3.2% law ... for the uninitiated, basically beer can only contain 3.2% alcohol (except for imports), so for example budweiser and coors makes special 3/2 beer that they sell in utah ... you also have to be a member or have a membership to a bar in order to drink there, which i didnt fully grasp ... its like a cover charge but you buy it for weeks at a time and it allows you to get friends in as well ... and no booze after 1am ! whattup wit that !?!?, also in utah if you order a shot, you get 1/2 a shot ... no joke ... weak ... anyway, so we got to provo early (we were actually pretty good time-wise all tour) and jus chilled for a while on what im guessin was the old-school main drag ... ok, seriously though, provo creeped my shit out, and im not even gettin to the LDS thing yet, cause on every block there was 1 if not 2 (and sometimes 3) DIFFERENT flyers for missing teenage girls put up ... what the fuck provo !? seriously, there was alot of missin girls in provo, and i dunno if the mormons or las vegas are gettin em, but regardless it made me feel a little off ... anyway, so we ended up eatin at some place called "sensual sandwiches" (which smelled pretty nasty) after none of us were brave enough to venture into "la taqueria tormenta" ... i was gung-ho bout "tormenta" till i actually looked in the place, and saw that it resembled a homeless shelter with a sink ... i was feelin pretty tired by this point (late evening) and decided that caffeine was what the system needed, so we talked to some locals and were directed to the only coffeeshop within walkin distance, a neat little garage of a place which actually cooked up some decent java ... i think jus me and bijan went, and while were sittin there hepcat came on the speakers, and so i decided to make sure the kids workin there knew about the show ... which. of course. they didnt ... fuckin promoters ... if the "ska kids" in town dont know bout the only fuckin "ska show" for the month, yer seriously not doin yer homework ... i will say however, provo was the only club (out of 6) to actually put up the promotional flyers we sent (i dont get it, do clubs enjoy not makin money, while seein bands suffer ?) ... regardless, now the kids knew, and they came to the show, but even witout them it was a pretty kick-ass show ... good crowd and everybody was dancin ... AND, the bartender workin there ... god ... damn ... murder me wit style ... seriously, hottest chick i saw all tour: in provo, utah ... go-fuckin-figure ... i tried chattin her up, but i dont think she was into me past the "ill be sweet so you tip me" style ... blah ... cant blame her though ... gotta make that money somehow ... tommy (our merch guy) had some good luck though, and actually had a girl come up to him and say "if i buy you a beer will you make out wit me" (or somethin very similar) ... she wasnt a fox, but goddamn, thats a pretty sweet deal ...
after the show we went back to some guys house for a pseudo-party kinda thing ... i wont lie, it was pretty boring ... the most excitin thing bout it was that when we first got there, there was about 3 cops wit drawn shotguns walkin around the block, addin that final touch of paranoia that makes utah such a magical place ... i think i slept on the kitchen floor ... - 08.07 ... wake up to the same routine ... first three questions ... where am i, and what day is it, where do i have to be tonite ... im on some guys kitchen floor, its sunday, we have tonite off ... word ... we have 2 days to get to phoenix, and theres a whole lot of indecisiveness about where we should go and what we should do ... we have a place to stay for the nite in salt lake, but its in the opposite direction, however las vegas is exactly on our route, and our merch guy has friends there he liked to meet up wit ... so off to vegas we go, although the nite is still not decided ... we rolled into vegas in the early evening, and sweet crackers ... whatta wicked place ... id been there once before, and though not old enough to gamble yet still thought it was pretty "blah", but this return trip definitely re-established that notion ... babylon live in las vegas ... fe true ... so we parked the van on the far end of the strip near the luxor and all went about doin our own thing ... django and tommy went to meet tommys peeps while the rest of us wandered around ... we hit up tropicana, luxor, mandalay bay, excalibur (and yes, thats merlin holdin it down in the middle) ... jus walked around and made fun of people kinda thing ... chris almost had me on the floor laughin doin his crack-head impression and scarin people around us ... we did however find a spot where we coulda gotta a 35 dollar shave ... or for 55 bux, the "royal shave" ... the lady workin there didnt find us amusing ...
now dont get me wrong on all this, im certainly not a moralistic law-abiding citizen, but las vegas jus embodies so much of the shit i hate about american culture in such a condensed area that it jus gives me the heebie-jeebies ... as bijan so eloquently put it, its a city which constantly consumes, yet produces nothing ... to which i remembered that las vegas was (im not sure if this deal still exists) so desperate for families that it was offering a full 4 year tuition to UNLV if you lived in the las vegas area for 6 months ! the catch ... the only degrees worth gettin from UNLV are in hotel management, casino management, etc ... kinda creepy ...
anyway, so we all collected again, and after a stupidly-long discussion on what to do now, we decided to jus hit the road and straight-ball it for phoenix, or to stop somewhere along the way ... (were so fuckin decisive) ... oh, also, we started drinkin sparks ... if yall aint got down on this shit yet, i highly recommend it, though make sure yer in the proper setting (read: anywhere but a van w/ 7 over-tired guys) ... cause this shit will fuck you up ... like a steel reserve and red bull with the taste of orange fanta ... i drank one and actually felt like i jus burned a j ... it was strange ... for others it jus makes you want to DESTROY EVERYTHING ... specially if you get more than one in ya ... tommy (merch) was in the lead as he had been drinkin heavily the past 2 hours w/ his boys and then was gettin sparked in the van ... so were goin along drivin and we come across that human marvel, the hoover dam ... but wit heightened security, were forced to stop since our vehicle is larger than a car ... fuck ... we got open booze in the car, and were a reggae band ... it was decided early in the trip though that if pulled over we either played rock n roll, country or christian rock ... so when the cop asked us "whats in the back", "uh, musical instruments", "oh yeah, what kinda music you boys play?", "rock and roll", "oh yeah, what kind, alternative, heavy metal, classic rock", "um, jus good ol rock and roll sir", "ok, well drive safe" ... word ... though theres somethin fucked up about havin to lie about music you play to avoid suspicion ...
and, i jus remembered, i forgot to mention in the previous post that i managed to get us pulled over in-between denver and grand junction for jerkin the wheel of the van as i went to answer my phone ... cop was cool though, first he said was "im not issuin a citation, jus wanna see yer licence, etc" ... weird ...
ANYWAY ... so, now were drivin over the hoover dam now and tommy (merch) aint doin too well ... bout 3/4 of the way over the dam all a sudden the side door flies open (while were goin 40mph) and tommys ralphin all over the hoover dam ... jive turkey ... it freaked us all the fuck out cause no one knew what the fuck he was doin at first, there was no warnin, jus open door and "blehchhhh" ... in a way its kinda cool, not that many people can say they puked on ol hoover ... so we pulled over in a parkin area, checked the dam (which is really impressive, specially at nite, it looks like a big ol 1940s futuristic art-deco monstrosity) then drove for another couple hours before findin a really cheap motel somewhere in arizona ... all in all a pretty interesting day ...
thats all you get for now ... ill try to add more later today ...
provo, a fun place to visit !
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