PART 2: Living With Lyin’

We arrive at the internet café we’re supposed to be playing at and there’s a sign on the door that says Living With Lions didn’t get through the border, but the show is still a go. It’s ironic, Justin notes, that we had made it through the border illegally, using the lie that we were going down to Seattle to see Living With Lions play. And then they, who have legally prepared Visa applications don’t even make it through. This is not the first time I’ve heard of legal applications being the wrench in the gears of a tour at the border crossing. Those P2 applications require an unrealistic time-frame to be worked within and it seems like a lot of bands [read: venue buyers and concert promoters] have trouble preparing performance documentation within that window. Anyway. After we play the worst show of the tour opening for a dude in a Red Power Rangers shirt, a dude with a leg cast and a dude in a shirt that says My Indian Name Is Runs With Beer (which isn’t even a pun) whose grand finally is a Jimmy Eat World cover, we’re standing outside the club smoking cigarettes with 2012 MLB FanCave finalist, Benjamin Christensen, when a black Hu$tler approaches Matt Shatters with the proposal of a card game.

Matt, being the fun-loving guy he is, can’t resist the black Hu$tler’s rouse. First, Matt throws down a dollar, and wins. Then he does it again! Boy, am I ever impressed. Then, the black Hu$tler drops the three cards on the ground and again asks Matt to find the black card. There are two (2) reds, and one (1) black. Then the black Hu$tler tells Matt this is a $10 bet. We have both been watching closely and feel we have a strong idea where the black card is at. “Fuck it!” Matt says “I got ten bucks - middle card!”. WRONG. “FUCK!” Me and the black Hu$tler both erupt into hysterical laughter while Matt Shatters sheepishly retrieves a crumpled Treasurer Hamilton from his jeans and hands it over. The first of many moments to come that the Matt Shatters acquisition paid off in pure entertainment value.

Ben's American League (l.) and National League (r.) tattoos


The Worst Hair Cut

May 10, 2013 – 1:10PM. After killing an hour in the Target parking lot drinking beers and Vining impersonations of past drummers we’ve played with, we pick up Rookie Rochelle from PDX to complete our 5-piece tour roster, and hit the highway toward Boise, Idaho. The scenery along the highway reminds me of the Lake Tahoe level of the Cruisin’ USA arcade game, which incidentally, is where I learned to drive. At some point we spot a large lake and camp ground and Matt begs me to stop so he can take a dip. Normally I would never accommodate a request for recreational activity when we’re already hustling to make a show, but the lake does look pretty fucking majestic.

We make our way down to the rock beach and take turns trying to peg a submerged wooden pillar with stones as Shatters strips everything but a pair of stretched out light grey boxer-briefs and his permanently goofy grin and jumps in. He swims out toward the pillar while we continue to wing rocks out toward it. Nobody can hit it (not even me!), but we do almost nail Matt a few times before he clambers out of the water and up onto the pillar like an elderly gentleman pulling himself out of the bathtub, and somehow manages to poise himself straight up on one leg for a brief second before toppling over and creating the type of splash that takes about two-Mississippies to fully erupt from the depths below.

I happened to be Vining the moment, check it out.

https://vine.co/v/b0nAguF15TD

Until now, I’d been driving the whole time, so when we get back into the Volvo, I take the middle back seat known as bitch, between Matt and Tony, allowing Justin to clock some time behind the wheel of my nameless Swedish road queen. By now we’re all hungry and Tony has just about finished the bread and peanut butter I picked up in Seattle, so Justin suggests we stop at Subway. I tell him no stopping until Boise, but then Matt plants the idea in my head that we should get some beers for the drive.



By the time we hit Boise, everyone has eaten, and Matt and I have enjoyed eight Budweisers each, argued flaws and merits of the Canadian voting system in great detail, played a dozen rounds of Who Else Is Babes? – a male-bonding drinking game we made up organically – and fleshed out some material he’s been working on for his stand-up comedy act. Here’s a clip:

http://youtu.be/8jKLkBt6Xlk

At the show, we’re met by a deli tray, a generous bar tab, and a bunch of kids who, once we start playing them, know the words to all our songs. Also, it should be noted that the beers we get at this place are 32 ounce plastic Big Gulp cups of anything we want on tap. Safely orders Sierra Nevada – a great choice; Matt sticks to Budweiser, and I demonstrate zero ability to make good decisions when under the influence of alcohol by deciding it’s time to switch to cans of Guiness. Like, many cans of Guiness, to wash down the eight Buds I had already drank on the way. They have like, several imaginably delightful regional IPAs on tap and I’m going ice cold cans of Guiness. Rookie’s driving and Tony’s drumming so those two buddy up for soda waters with lime. Tony sips his through a straw while Rook slugs his back and chews the ice.

By the time it’s time, even Justin is drunk. The entire stage becomes an advanced-skill Japanese obstacle course from one of those strange television shows on the Spike Network. Justin Safely is scaling up a rope, Rookie and Tony are rolling tires over seasaws, the audience is laughing hysterically with their hands over their mouths, pointing; I’m dodging Nerf balls, and we all wait to see if Matt Shatters can ride a flying-fox over a pool of mud. He can’t. Instead, he dizzies and crashes toward the back wall of the stage, which is actually a glass and aluminum garage-style door that opens to the sidewalk outside and which thankfully, they have shut for the night. As a last resort to right himself, our new hired gun grabs for the Marshall stack he’s borrowing from the opening band, effortlessly bringing it down on top of him, burying him under a pile of amplified rubble – ass to the floor, head to the garage door – yet miraculously, his guitar continues to wail, and I start slapping high-fives with the dudes singing along in front of me. Then the Jagerbombs arrive.

8:30 AM, the next morning: we wake up bright and early to get a move on. We’ve got to get to Rock Spring, Wyoming and it’s going take us all day to do it. I’m in the kitchen corralling the guys when Matt – who’d slept in the car – stumbles inside with a Don Draper-preferred Coors yellow-can, open.

“Dude” he says to the guy who let us stay at his house – I only know him as Dr. Bug from my days on the Pop Punk Message Board – “that is the worst haircut I’ve ever seen.”

“Who, me?” Bug responds, putting his hand through his unmaintained, kind of squeegee-punk Mohawk with Rat-tail combo.

“Yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong: it was really fucking nice of you to let us sleep at your place and everything, but what is going on with that hair? Like, I’m going bald, and that is still by far the worst hair I have ever seen!”

I sell Bug some vinyl and we hit the fucking road. An hour and a half later, the Volvo explodes.

[TO BE CONTINUED]