THE TOM FOOLERY AND THE MISTAKES WINTER TOUR 2000 DIARY
12.15.00
three guys, an overstuffed 1996 mercury tracer (i still can’t believe we brought all this shit), shitty gas mileage, and the open road = the tom foolery and the mistakes winter tour 2000. Jake has some job or something, so he couldn’t go with us, so fiddles is playing the role of the bass player. This morning i was supposed to get up by 5 so i could pack my one and a half bags, shower and get to lubbock by ten for practice....that didn’t happen. I woke up at 6:30, packed and left by 8/...i went to sell books back at the school too, but they weren’t buying til 9, so we were just gonna stop on the way to albuquerque.....well, i went to lubbock, we practiced, loaded everything, changed the oil, and left. We made it to the bookstore by 3:00, but they closed the doors of the bookstore early, apparently...i let myself in, and said “look...i REALLy need to sell these books back.” They were real assholes about it, though. They said “we ran out of money, so we can’t do nuthin’ for ya, son”. They just wouldn’t cooperate. I really probably shouldn’t have strangled that guy, but...i was REALLY mad. Then we went to wendy’s. Mmm....nothing cheers me up like a bacon jr cheeseburger. We stopped at my house to call ryan in abq and tell him we’d be late. We get to ryan’s house and there wer meet him and brandon davis, aka “mr. Bad influence”. We go to insurgo, the place for shows, and there we meet up w/ the battles end, and our friend carlos, who puts on the shows. I think 2 or 3 other people were there too....we then proceeded to play the WORST show of our career. I broke my low e string, fiddles forgot to tune down.....my amp fed back the whole time, luis forgot to sing.....ugh. what a mess. But we had fun.....battles end was amazing as usual.....and it was good to see the abq kids again. We went to this huge all night diner called frontier. I got “nachos”. They sucked. I was later informed that “nachos” weren’t the best thing to get at fronteir, as if i hadn’t already figured that out for myself. Brandon and ryan talked to carlos and i about strip club adventures for about 45 minutes. Then they took us to castle....a walmart sized porn store....and i gotta say, it was incredible, the size of this place. They had an entire wall of dildos. Anything anyone could possibly want. They had it. Bondage, midget videos starring bridget the midget, postcards with celebrity heads superimposed on pornstar bodies...now, i don’t own any porn at all..seriously. but i almost bought my first issue of hustler. The cover said it all.....the holiday issued featured this chick pulling a strand of christmas lights out of her ass. Yowza....we got back to ryan’s, luis and fiddles crash out, and i check my email and read a magazine, while ryan juggled bowling pins.
12.16.00
woke up in abq to some stranger knock knock knockin on ryan’s door, waking me from a deep deep sleep. I didn’t know who he was, where i was, or anything., he wanted to use the phone, but i was kind of weary letting a stranger into someone else’s house.
Here’s how our conversation went:
him: “lemmee use the phone
me: “uh...uh....
him: “where’s scott and ryan?
me: uh...scott’s in.....albuquerque....uh, no...i’m in albuquerque....scott’s in....seattle
him: “let me in
so i let him in. I’m so wishywashy. I guess he does it often enough that rryan wasn’t mad. He turned out to be a drug dealer though. I woke up, showered, and started to play super mario bros. 2. There aren’t a whole lot of video games i’ve mastered, but...that’s one of them. I got up to Wart, (ya know, the big assed frog that spits bubbles...you have to catch vegetables, toss them in his mouth til he gets a lethal case of indigestion...), ....i had one more hit to go, and i died. I was mad. Real mad. We then left to go to taco cab’s, and.....a word of advice to novice touring bands, if they don’t already have enough sense not to eat taco cab’s while on tour....don’t eat at taco cab’s while on tour. Having said that, we drove to el paso, texas. Not a real eventful drive, other than the fact that i drank 2 bottles of water in the car, and well, there ain’t a whole lo of towns between abq and e p. It’s been awhile since i’ve had to pee that bad. But i made it. Other than that, it was the first time an of us had been through truth or consequences, nm (not just a shitty movie....it’s also a shitty town!) got to victor’s house, and watched a little wrestling, followed by a taped copy of the atdi performance on letterman from the night before. We went to wendy’s, and then to the show. This girl marina graduated from nmsu, and rented a hall for a big ol’ graduation party. She’s real nice. We played a lot better than the previous night, and did a moving version of feliz navidad. This band called universal recovered played as well, and they kicked some ass, let me tell you what! Everyone i’ve met in el paso has been real cool so far. Afterward, the dj played a bunch of merengue/salsa music and a lot of people danced. I wanted to dance, and i almost did, but then i remembered i’’m just a dorky white guy who can’t dance. I thought i’d better just sit tthat one out and not make an ass out of myself. Fiddles was drunk as hell. Apparently during universal recovered, he drank a whole pitcher by himself.
Sample drunken fiddles situation:
joanna: (girl who was nice enough to let us crash at her place): do you need a place to crash?
fiddles: I need a girlfriend
he threw up in the street of this after party we went to.
Then he broke up a fight. Lots of pretty girls.
Lots.
But....we’re dorks.
We went to bed by 2:30.
The party went on til 5.
And i was awake for the whole thing.
12.17.00
600 miles is a long drive inside a car, that’s for damn sure. We’re on our way to austin. We actually got out of el paso by ten (central time) AFTER stopping at dunkin donuts and getting gas ( i love me some dunkin donuts!) , meaning we should be there by 8-8:30. Luis stepped on one of my favorite mix tapes (fuckin luis!). anyways, yeah....long drive. We stop at a subway in some shitty little town where gas was $1.50. fiddles bought me lunch. The radio was set on some christian rock station, and they played this song whose chorus was “your momma needs jesus tonight”. We couldn’t stop laughing. I read a dave barry book which wasn’t as funny as luis hyped it up to be....about 45 minutes away from austin, we started to notice the faint smell of “hippie”, so we popped in our metallica “...and justice for all” tape. Rock and fucking roll. We arrived at the hole in the wall and were greeted by paul (very nice guy) the bartender/guitarist for superego. He gave us a free pitcher. I felt like a bar band cuz, wel, tonight we were a bar band. Man from nantucket played 1st. They were super nice guys in an alternative rock beer drinkin band. we played next. People clapped...so, that’s cool. I don’t think many punk bands play at this ‘hole in the wall’ place, but maybe we’ll be back someday....if they’ll have us. I think paul was sory of annoyed with us or something...i’m not sure what we did.. maybe it was luis going up on stage when paul’s band was playing and looking for his high hat clutch and getting on the mic and asking the bar if anyone had seen his highhat clutch.....maybe that was it. Our friend emily took us to kirbey lane, where she works, and where we DIDN”T get to use her 50% discount. But it was good food, and we had a good time. It felt cool to hang out w/ austin hipsters. Since we couldn’t stay w/ emily at her place because it was “messy” or something, we drove to san antonio cuz marco, m, and zanetta were nice enough to let us crash there. We watched transformers the movie. Twas the most comfortable floor i’ve ever slept on.
12.18.00
mmmm.........bagels. we woke up in san antonio, got dressed, contemplated going to the alamo, but remembered, it being Monday, we’d probably better not, cuz we’d have to take 3 cars, and pay a shitload for parking and whatnot, and plus, we had to get to corpus. We got there, and stopped at a music store to buy a new high hat clutch....fiddles and i picked up acoustic guitars and started playing songs on them. The storeclerk was from clovis and i talked to him for 5 minutes about how this lady that works at a soulfood place in clovis was a mean crotchety old woman. Small world. Got to luis’ house and met his parents (beforehand, i was advised to stand up straight and look him straight in the eye as i shook his hand) it wasn’t that bad. He wasn’t as intimidating as luis made him sound. He was actually rather mild-mannered and hospitable. Luis is columbian, for those of you who don’t know, and apparently, english is his 2nd language. Fiddles is mexican. All i gotta say is that the conversations were 99% spanish in that house. I didn’ seeem to know what they were talking about. We got to millenium skatepark, and loaded in and stuff...this band called winchester played first...pretty bythenumbers “emo>< it was okay. I’m not sure if they were nice guys or not, cuz they took off right after they played. Then watson played. They were really good. The ampants were next. They were good as well. We played okay, except for luis knocking the pa head over in the middle of the set (fuckin luis) the soundguy got it fixed, and all was good........people clapped, and marco and m came out and sang feliz navidad w/ us. jay came out to the show. He was in corpus visiting the folks, and he visited us....we watched the last band, whoa sam, rock the fuck out, loaded up, and we did our first interview ever. the guy just wrote down what we were saying.....If he had a tape recorder, it would have gone a lot smoother, but i didn’t want to be the one to tell him that....luis was tired, so we dropped him off at home and jay and his old roommate levert (who we’ve heard so much about), took us to a titty bar called fantasy. It only cost 2 bucks to get in, so what the hell...we traded stories and drank four dollar beers while naked women danced amongst us. then we went to jay’s.
12.19.00
day off. Today, we are going to flour bluff tx-hometown of jay. We’ve been hearing about “the bluff” for quite some time now. And today, we found it really does exist. We pick up luis and jay’s friend chris, ate on the beach at a fish place called snoopy’s, and tried not to let the seagulls poo on us. (we won). Jay took us to the infamous flour bluff HEB, in search of the “HEB hopeless drunk” (this guy who sits outside the heb with a sign that says “hopeless drunk...need beer”) and julio’s tortilla chips (these really addictive seasoned tortilla chips supposedly found exclusively at HEB’s in south texas) we didn’t find either.....instead we found soap opera digest (gotta keep up w/ passions) and TATO SKINS. I was so overjoyed to find tatoskins. They were my favorite potato chip for a long long time. We go back to luis’ house, and his columbian cousin was there. The english stopped being spoken, and i was in the dark until we left again. I got to look at the punk page and check my email and stuff. The punk page thoroughly entertained me for about 20 minutes; i think it was the best string of posts ever. we ate a delicious dinner, and jay and his friend jenny took us to vernon’s---jay’s favorite bar, where miller lite tastes REAL good, and where “peanuts are for eating....not throwing”. We had a real good time. I got drunk.
12.20.00
got up an hour late, showered, ate breakfast, checked the punkpage for more juicy gossip (hee hee) AND we found out that fiddles and i are going to see the jon spencer blues explosion LIVE in st louis the next week. YEAH! We loaded up and were on our way back to lubbock. Stopped in san antonio to say bye to marco, but luis a) can’t take directions properly b)can’t follow directions once he calls and gets accurate directions. Plus, it was lunch rush hour , traffic was shitty, so after about an hour of searching, we drove on. My film got stuck in my camera, and i had to get it out in the bathroom at a texaco. ...pretty uneventful trip. When luis got to drive, he put in his kid dynamite tape, and didn’t stop playing air guitar til we got to lubbock. We ate some mcdonald’s (Mickey d’s ....nuts) for 39 cents, and about 15 minutes later, we realized we all had to shit. We dropped luis off at his apt, and fiddles and i booked it back to his house, he took the upstairs, threw me down some asspaper, and i took the downstairs bathroom. Whoo! We drove to einstein’s and loaded in, which was not enjoyable due to the extremely cold weather. Egon shows up and we say hello, and whatnot. The jr’s take the stage. There are 9 people in the audience. Jake was sick so we played a pretty short set, and egon rocked the fuck out. I really didn’t have a whole lot of fun that night, honestly. I didn’t want to come back to lubbock. Even though i knew i only had to be here for a total of 14 hours, i couldn’t stop thinking the whole way home that lubbock is sort of a shitty “welcome back home” place for a variety of reasons...egon and i went back to fiddles’ house, drank ziegenbock, watched the virgin suicides, and i cheered up when i remembered that tomorrow, i get to eat at ranch house and go to ohio. Then i fell asleep. i think we all had a lot of fun, and i’m sure we’re gonna do it again someday! Keep on rockin in the free world.
kyle