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At one point last night John Roderick asked me and Dino and John Svec what day of the week it was. John replied, �That�s yet to be determined.� I thought for a minute and said, �Wednesday.�
But I had to think for a minute because I had forgotten. I sometimes forget what day of the week it is just in the normal course of a regular week. But this has been anything but a regular week, and I�ve been driving all over the goddamn Midwest these last few nights, getting to bed at five and waking up at noon, so of course it�s only made me more disoriented. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I arrived back in the city from Champaign, driving up 57 and listening to Zooropa and maybe drifting off, my eyes swimming as they went in and out of focus. Not pleasant.
The drive to Champaign had been a tough one from the start, when I came home from work to discover my car had a flat tire. At first I thought all hope was lost, I�d never make it to the gig on time, etc. But I called the closest tire place I could find in the Yellow Pages, took it over there, and got a new tire in about fifteen minutes for thirty dollars. Cash only. No receipt. I�m sure all the people working there were legal residents of the United States.
Then on the way down 57, a sudden rainstorm swept across the road from right to left. This quickly escalated into hail, big dangerous-sounding hail, with just about zero visibility. Convinced I was going to get swept off the road or read-ended by a semi, I paused the Al Franken audiobook on my iPod and braced myself for a sudden, inglorious death. But I managed to exit from the highway and take shelter below an underpass till the storm blew over. When I got back on the highway the storm was a giant black inverted trapezoid in the southwest corner of the sky. I later learned there had been a tornado watch. Good times.
The show itself was fine. In so many journal entries, that�s the most mention a gig ever gets. �The show itself was fine.� Thing is, it�s usually the attendant circumstances of a gig that are the most interesting, so that the set and the music itself barely warrants a mention. Maybe a cursory �we played fine� or �the mix was good� or �we were heckled by sorority girls.� So the show itself was fine. And then I headed back up to the city at two a.m., with the aforementioned swimming eyeballs and the U2. And some Red Bull. Singing along, loudly, with everything in order to stay awake.
(This would be as good a place as any to mention that, while one of my supervisors may have reprimanded me because "gigs" is not a legitimate reason to take time off, my other direct supervisor stopped by my desk on Tuesday to wish me luck at my shows. She then asked me about my band, said she'd buy our CD on Amazon, and told me about her husband's band. Then she put on a big hat that said "Good Cop" across the front and continued on her way. I felt vindicated.)
Yesterday�s visit to Iowa City was a satisfying one. Margaret and I patronized several downtown institutions, including India Cafe, the Deadwood, the Java House, and then of course Gabe�s, for the ambience. �The show itself was fine.� The lineup was well-chosen: three pop-rock bands, all trios, and the Long Winters closing out the evening with a long, hilarious set. John Roderick is a master of humorous between-song banter. Towards the end they did a lot of silly covers, like Madonna�s �Don�t Tell Me� and �Running With The Devil� by Van Halen.
This time I had a longer drive back, and I didn�t get on the road till about two-thirty. I knew what I had to do: sing along with the entirety of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, doing my best Peter Gabriel impression, which is not that good at all. I also knew that I absolutely had to consume two Red Bulls, one Starbucks bottled Frappucino beverage, and three Ephedra. And lots of water. I kept taking my own pulse to make sure my heart wasn�t accelerating to a dangerous speed. By the time I got into the city, the sun was coming up, painting the eastern skyline a deep pink that I wish I could have photographed. Instead, I came home and collapsed into my bed with my cat.
Fun with oxymorons:
compassionate conservative
Now I�m here at my half-day of work, disorientated [sic] and slightly nauseous, about to get on the web and research teaching jobs in Germany. But that�s another story.
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