We're a Bus
Hello, friends! Rob here.
Fell asleep in Lafayette, woke up in Tulsa. Just like that, we're on tour. Real, honest tour. Terrestrial, highway-and-bus tour. Compared to the last several months, which have been all about airplanes and airports and quick weekend hops, this is going to feel like old-world craftsmanship. Handmade. Workshops smelling of oil and leather and wood. Thick, dry fingers caked in dust. Today is a beautiful day.
Monday we were able to set up in the Orpheum Theater (HINT HINT) for a rehearsal and tech day. "Tech day” is industry jargon for "identify a bunch of stuff that doesn't work and make it work.” As those present at our four-day pre-Thanksgiving run can attest, our touring outfit has ballooned over the last few weeks with a few back-end additions like monitor stuff and a few more noticeable changes like lights and oh yeah there's another person onstage now.
I'm pleased as punch that we have our dear friend PJ Howard (whom some of you may recognize from JamCruise, when he was filling in for Andrew) with us on this tour, playing percussion, singing, and generally being a fun, positive individual. The pocket's getting thick, like a sticky brick.
Anyway, it wouldn't be blog without some disorganized thought-barf, so here's a list of what's hot and what's not:
HOT- YouTube videos where they "remix” movies or other video-based media. The 2007 animated film Bee Movie seems to be a popular target, but I'm partial to this criminally underappreciated masterpiece in which someone took my all-time favorite video game and replaced every sound in it with Tim Allen's famous grunt from Home Improvement. Every. Single. Sound.
NOT- Is it just me, or has there been an uptick in altercations and ejections over the last few weeks of the NFL? I've even seen a few wide receivers throwing punches at helmets. When you're a person whose job is kind of reliant on your ability to perform delicate work with your hands, it doesn't seem like a good strategy to punch a guy- using your hand, which is made up of tiny, fragile bones- in his helmet, which is made out of, um, helmet.
HOT- Skinny pants, bulky sneakers.
NOT- The "Dilly-Dilly” Kingdom from those Bud Light commercials. First of all, stop trying to make "dilly-dilly” a thing. It's never going to be a thing. STOP TRYING TO MAKE FETCH HAPPEN. Second, and much more importantly, that place is TERRIFYING. On the surface, it may seem like a whimsical land of banquets and unpretentious libations, but in truth, the poor smallfolk of DillyDillyLand are living in an Orwellian nightmare where any dissent or nonconformity is punishable by torture. The "honey mead wine” guy? He's excited about a beverage, and he wants to share it with his friends. Do they humor him and try it? Do they rib him for being pretentious? Do they politely decline his generous offer? No. They gleefully condemn him into something called the "pit of misery.” I recently revisited the ground-breaking surrealist spy drama series The Prisoner, so I'm pretty amped up about the great struggle between the collective and the individual. Wouldn't mind seeing Patrick McGoohan set King Dilly straight with a few wry one-liners and a right cross square to the jaw.
HOT- Yellow. Yellow is the color of radness, and coolguys ("coolguys,” when used as one word, is a gender-inclusive term and you can't tell me it's not), and also did you know that there are people who call the yellow light on a traffic light "orange?” Or, if you call it orange, did you know that there are people out there who think it's yellow? Please flip out about this in the comments section instead of flame-warring over the NFL. I KNOW YOU WERE THINKING IT. Thanks in advance.
NOT- Red. So last spring.
And finally, I think I'm going to introduce a new feature to these blogs. The inaugural Friends Whose Album I'm Plugging are some familiar faces: Naughty Professor, with their June release, Identity. Naughty's own brand of hard-hitting funk music comes alive in this series of collaborations with a number of special guests (including a few you might recognize!). Tell me this doesn't look like fun:
The end. See you in America, America.
