Quotes From The Road

I've been on the road these last few days, touring the Midwest with Christa Hillhouse, Jonny Blu, and Adam Gust. As the days go by, and the claustrophobia of the truck, the stage, and the hotel makes everyone increasingly punchy, funny things get said. Here are some highlights, along with a couple of clips of us live from the tour...it's not all just comedy, you know - we're actually playing some music out here, too!

BOB: "Tobacco itself is not addictive, cigarettes are addictive because..."

CHRISTA: "Cigarettes are addictive because I need something to smoke instead of crack!"

BOB: "Adam, all you gotta worry about is making sure your groove is making me comfortable. If I look like my ass is so clenched up that I won't be able to shit for a week, then you're probably not grooving."
CHRISTA: "Yeah, you're either a saddle or a buttplug!"

ADAM: That drumhead looks like my face in high school!"

ME: "I appreciate that he thinks I'm great and all, but the guy was so drunk I was kinda wishing he'd hated my act so he would be gone by now."

CHRISTA: "You hoochie mammas leave my boys alone! My boys are good boys! My boys are clean boys!"

ME: "If there is a God, I don't think it's anything like the God any organized religion has come up with."
JONNY BLU: "Yeah, theirs is more like Santa Claus, only really fucking ripped."

ME: Look, a Hooters! They actually have really good wings."
CHRISTA: "Yeah, but I find the premise disturbing."
ME: "Intellectually, I agree with you..."
CHRISTA: "...but your dick thinks they have really good wings."

CHRISTA: "I found a good parking spot, up against a bush, so our shit won't get stolen."
ME: "I think it's a good policy to be up against a bush whenever possible."

ME: I've decided I'm going to start drinking again when I turn seventy."
CHRISTA: "That's the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard!"

CHRISTA: "The best thing about drugs is they make you not care...the worst thing about drugs is they make you not care."

ME: "This traffic sucks ass."
CHRISTA: "And not in a good way."

Live at Zoo Bar, Lincoln, NE - 6/25/10

Anarchy in the Backyard

I sit on a large American deck, in a large American chair. Eating a muffin that could easily feed three large Americans, if they were paying attention. I am surrounded by large American houses, too large by half for the families within. But what the hell, I'd buy one myself, if I had the means. The houses are nestled around a large man-made lake, also American. The air is filled with a symphony of lawnmowers, keeping the grass civilized. The next house over, a group of middle-aged women laugh too loudly over bridge and cocktails. Suburbia, baby. The American Dream. Cheever people in the flesh. My roots.

Artificial, you say? Unnatural, you say? Hopelessly bourgeois, you say? I would have agreed once, but marking the difference between city, suburb and country is now pointless. There is now only the difference between the real world and the virtual world. Because we have all lost touch with the real world, haven't we?

I am writing longhand in the sun, entranced by the drone of the lawnmowers, untethered by the electronic chains that bind me. Free, if for just a moment, from my self-imposed prison of connectivity. Anarchy in the backyard.

I will not be answering your texts. Your IM messages. Your facebook messages. Your emails marked URGENT!! Your grammatically unsound tweets. Your phone calls, shouted unintelligibly into a bluetooth. You look like a crazy person, talking to yourself. Stop it!

You are just going to have to wait. Because I do not like who I have become. This once focused person who is now just another ADHD butterfly. This once voracious reader who now cannot conquer more than three pages at a time as he skims the text with one eye on the page and one eye on the iPhone. This once prolific writer of songs and prose who now spends most of his time harried and distracted by a barrage of mostly useless information. This man who is so busy all the time, but getting hardly anything done. No, I do not like who I have become at all. 

So I am going to continue to sit on this deck in the sun. And in regard to your email, your text, your tweet, your IM, your MySpace comment, your Plaxo post, and/or your call of twenty-four June, I will not be responding. Bartleby said it best: I would prefer not to.