Tenderhooks Tour Diary #1

HERE WE GO, INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN, A REBEL WITHOUT A CLUE, ETC.



Day 1
5/14/07
to Memphis, TN

We depart at 1:45 and Ben steers us westward. We pass a place with a giant, neon orange sign reading "RB" -- we always joke that this is where R.B. Morris lives. We find that Ben has left his phone charger in Knoxville -- faced. Discussing what songs we would have permanently erased from our brains if we could delete only one (Jake picks Sarah McLachlan's "Adia"), we stop in a town called Bucksnort to urinate. Matt confesses that Bucksnort is the town where he purchased his first porn mag ("You're writing that down?!"). Every sign we pass for a few miles has the words "Loretta Lynn" in whatever it's advertising. We pass a truck bearing the legend "Let's Roll From The Goodness Of Milk", which is to become a kind of motto over the coming weeks. In true Tender fashion, we indulge in some frank discussion about eggs: I confess to Jake that I prefer over-mediums to over-e's these days, Matt requests scrambling advice, etc.

It is 6:30. We snake our way through Memphis and find ourselves at Murphy's, a kind of Irishy-themed bar we've played before. Current staff: one confused man who does not seem to know what time we are playing, whether or not bands play at the venue, or if music exists in the world. He advises us to come back later. We go to a Greek deli and eat sandwiches and briami. As "Somewhere Out There" plays, Ben and Matt go public about the quality of their falafels: apparently very bad.

Back to Murphy's to find that our show has been mysteriously cancelled. FABULOUS NEWS. "Maybe you should try calling first next time," an asshole says to Ben on the way out. I suggest looking around for another venue and we head for the Hi Tone, where the Clientele bar us from entering (and, apparently, begin to follow us from town to town for the duration of the tour). "Memphis is bad," Matt intones from the backseat. "Let's go to a place that actually appreciates musicians." At the Poplar Lounge, which has the exact same sign as the Corner Lounge, we send Matt and Jake in to ask directions to the Buccaneer. They emerge with a napkin emblazoned with "The Blooby Foot of Zock" (which they insist is meant to read "The Bloody Foot of Rock", or the name of the bartender's stoner rock band) and the Buccaneer's address. We joke that we should go busk on Beale Street. Matt suggests we play the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Blues, and Ben states that we would be booed off the sidewalk, if that is even possible.

We fail to find the Buccaneer. Needless to say, this is a shit first day. Matt, as if to drive the point home, again points out the poor quality of the falafel he ate at lunch.

I call Howell Evans, who lives in Memphis, and is one of those guys who lives to help out touring bands. He meets us at Murphy's in what seems like thirty seconds and leads us to the Buccaneer, which was apparently a block away the whole time. They deny us a bit brusquely, and Howell suggests another place, so I hassle the bartender for the number and we call them: also no. I call Jeremy Bain, who seems to know something about everything, and he tells me he will make a few calls and calls and call me right back, and I immediately drop my phone and break the screen -- quel fuckup! We catch up with Howell for a few minutes and then dejectedly decide to go ahead and leave town. We drive, complainingly, and as soon as we pass a sign reading "Flicker Street" (!), my phone rings (I thank God that it still works): Bain to the rescue with a venue name (The P&H Cafe) and phone number. I call, and the show is on, albeit after a comedy show (Bain, you are an American hero.) We go to the P&H Cafe, which seems to be a bar rather than a cafe, and watch the open mic comedy night unfold. Not one of the people is at all humorous, and one guy's material is entirely comprised of unknowingly racist jokes about his students. We load onto the tiny stage and play weirdly. I recall a modicum of technical difficulty and general un-seemlessness. A girl in a Hellcat Records shirt buys two cds, and people put lots of tips in a jar that we didn't know existed. These acts elevate the P&H above our last Memphis show, at which we made zero dollars (again, Murphy's).

We pack up and drive to Summer's family's house. We all sleep on the way except for Ben, who enjoys two picks while we all slumber -- this will fuel minor controversy for the next couple of days. At the Sheltons', I sleep in Summer's dad's room devoted entirely to Apache paraphernalia (I will wake to a stuffed wildcat and stoic daguerrotype of a chief eyeballing me), and the boys sleep in the living room.

Day 2
5/15/07
to Birmingham, AL

"Aren't you guys glad we're doing this instead of working for the clampdown?" -Jake

We awake to Sheltons cooking a delicious breakfast (eggs, ham, biscuits, muscadine jelly), discover that Jerry Falwell is dead, and learn that today is No Gas Day. Will we make it? We tell Summer's dad, who is also a musician, of our travails. "I love being old," he says. "Youth is full of insecurities and you don't know where you're going to play next." I learn from Summer's mom that we are in the sweet potato capital of the world, and she regales me with an imitation of Summer as a child. After two delicious meals, we head to Birmingham, discussing the fact that I am heading for age 27, aka Rock & Roll Death Year. I pick London Calling ("A very idiosyncratic choice, Emily." -Ben) and we roll along through pleasant National Park-type surroundings. More egg talk: I have a maxiumum of two in the morning, while Jake apparently makes a minimum of three: "Feeling sassy, I go for four!" We pass a strip club that is actually called The Boobie Trap.

In Birmingham, which appears to be an actual city, we head to the Rocking Horse/High Note, where no one is, but where they have hung up our flyer, which is nice. "Hey, you guys playing tonight?" The voice comes from a minivan parked across the street, inside of which is a bald, rotund man with a cell phone attached to his ear. He turns out to be the "sound man" (more later) at the club, and he leads us to a Starbucks (for which we have $200 in gift cards, thanks to Eric), where we attempt to abandon him due to his being one of those extemely annoying types who comes off as very proud to be in the music biz ("booking agent") and constantly, truly constantly, answering his phone to chat loudly to one or other of his "clients", who all have names like The Killing Floor and 50 Watt Highball. We exit with coffees and realize he has been waiting outside (on his phone, natch). We go to Bailey Brothers' guitar shop so Matt can buy drum heads and they have a room with a massive tuner in the wall -- you can sing a note and it will tell you if said note is in tune. We mess with that for ages, try to sing a chord, confuse the tuner. We go to a record store where a woman knocks two dollars off a Soca record for me, then back to the venue, which is now open.

It is beautiful, but we don't understand where to play. When they lead us into the actual venue (past a Schindler's List poster [in a bar?!]), we ooh and aah, because it is huge. We discuss our band fund policy as relative to beer-drinking (Jake takes a surprisingly liberal viewpoint, even calling me a "square" at one point). Another band is finally there (East End Lights), and they in quick succession prove to be both racist and sexist, AND obsessed with jazz chops (they are cornily emo to boot, and clearly not into the idea of letting us crash at their house). Matt's patience is immediately thin with their drummer, who seems hellbent on jawing about drum rudiments until Matt's face is red and his knuckles whiten around the pint glass in his hand (it doesn't take long). The openers tonight are Evergreen Express, three out of four of whom are in vests. The flashing lights give me anxiety (epilepsy, see), my face goes numb, and I head out. Ben joins me, Jake comes out soon after, and then Matt. The annoying East End Lights drummer again approaches us, this time asking if we would mind if they play next, since they have to work at 3am or some equally ridiculous tall tale. "Yes, we would mind," we reply, "especially since you are basically admitting that even you would leave immediately after you play, leaving no one to watch us. Do grow up (paraphrase)." I ask the soundguy if we can have no flashing lights when we play and he is incredulous and hurt. "You don't like FLASHING LIGHTS?!" he screams, as if I have just declared my distaste for kittens, or Christmas, or anything besides flashing lights. "Uh...they make me have seizures." "Well, is this okay?" he asks, and showcases a more slow-moving light display. "I guess," I reply, defeated.

We set up, and suddenly Baldy is nowhere to be found. I can't figure out where to do a direct-in, no one can find a microphone, etc. A guy helps us and we eventually realize he is just a patron who happens to know something about doing sound -- soundguy still nowhere. We play (to East End Lights, two girlfriends and a mom) and after fifteen minutes the bald booking agent guy comes up to the front of the stage and tells Jake that we can only play two more. "Two more!?" Jake blurts. I, having had it, grumble "Let's just play Kidstuff and Vidalia and get the hell out of this town." Soundguy rambles off saying something about kids being assholes and we rock said songs (Matt later admits that Ben scared him during the rockout portion of Kidstuff). Jake introduces himself as Peyton Manning and leans down to turn off the monitors because they are screeching so loud. "We just have one more," he says, and someone in the audience insists that we do not. We say YUH-HUH WE DO and sing Unscared before unloading as quickly and painlessly as possible (not easy when what seems like 20 East End Lights and their 50 piece drum kits including gong and chimes are perched in every nook and cranny in and around the stage). They play and suck and we chat with Evergreen Express who suddenly seem like the nicest people on Earth, ever, and they tell us to try the Bottle Tree next time.

We head to Microtel and Matt realizes he has left his credit card at the venue. Jake and I check in and watch some bizarre Michael Caine movie that involves a mystery about a grandfather clock while Ben drives Matt back to the club. They return cardless and Matt declares himself sad. I take the floor on account of having the only bed last night, Ben essentially sleeps in the window, Jake takes the bed, and Matt takes an angry shower before joining him. We sleep, fitfully. (PS -- we totally made it through No Gas Day.)

Day 3
5/16/07
to Jackson, MS

Jake and I are the first to wake, and we head down to "continental breakfast", wondering aloud what continent considers dime-sized bagels and half-and-half the industry standard. Jake declares us in need of a morale boost. "Before it gets too late," I concur. We check out and attempt to swing by the High Note to retrieve Matt's card, and they are, of course, closed. We rally round coffees (more fake Starbucks cash) and discuss ways to get Matt's car back. Ben suggests that he call the bartender and ask if he can meet us at the High Note. Matt tries this, and the bartender says that he has no ride. "Tell him we'll pick him up!" Ben says. No dice. The bartender says he lives a million miles away and is really busy, or something. I suggest that he have the bartender express mail the card to Darby's house, where we will soon end up. Matt again calls the 'tender and tells him to mail the card to his parents house, which still renders Matt scrill-less for the next week, but at least the problem is basically sewn up. Back out on the Alabama Adventure Freeway, Matt selects Green Day's Dookie (I realize Matt is totally a child because he was 10 when it came out[!!] ) to two cheers and one silence (counts as a jeer). We drive through Chunky, Mississippi, a town that will become the butt of one of the most persistent jokes of the tour.

We land at W.C. Don's, another spot we've played before, and a guy immediately tries to sell us a chow puppy. Jake learns that his phone bill is mysteriously a million dollars higher than it should be and Matt simutaneously discovers that the drum heads he bought yesterday do not fit. "This is a day of turmoil," Jake deduces. A W.C. Don's staffer tells us to enjoy Jackson, and we laugh as his face immediately lets us know no joke has been made. We walk around town a bit, and then head to Hal and Mal's for the first po boys of the tour (aaaaand the worst po boys of the tour). After lunching we become afflicted with a severe case of the giggles, roundly chalked up to "losing it." Ben attempts to prove that a plastic bottle can not be broken by cement by banging it repeatedly on the sidewalk for ten minutes. A fellow band member approaches with caution during this display and introduces himself as Bernie of the Unlikely Heroes. I sit at the bar and read for a while, realize that my phone charger is broken, suddenly understand why people in bands on tour act so odd sometimes.

We play and rock decently, though we still seem to be getting our footing. The next band (Oriental Hitler) are some kind of extremely loud, shambley, wall-of-sound side project of another band, and they are friends of Tim and Susan Lee which makes us instant BFFs. They treat us to some peachy shots, and I head back to the stage where some kind of shred-off is taking place (a black metal-looking guy thoroughly trounces the gentleman who ends up being the guitarist of Unlikely Heroes, who are brutally, brutally terrible. They are far and away the worst band we have ever played with. I can only describe them as a kind of grade-Z Staind.) I can no longer justify watching awful bands to myself, so I head back to the bar where the bartender is playing Toots and the Maytals. He gives me a pack of cigarettes and writes down "toots, from the roots!" on a napkin. Outside, a girl tries on my glasses and has a picture taken, which is one idea, and the Oriental Hitlers are completely obliterated and talk to us for an eternity.

Darby tells us he has secured us a hotel room, and after a lot of heehawing and you-didn't-have-tos we check into the hotel, which is clearly the single best thing to happen to us since we left Knoxville. Ben and I take a giant mint puffball bed each, Jake sleeps on a couch, and Matt takes the floor. We fall asleep talking about the weird songs that occasionally get stuck in our heads -- Ben's is "Cheer Up, Charlie" from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and mine is a seemingly apocryphal Dr. Pepper jingle from 1990.

Day 4
5/17/07
to Baton Rouge, LA

"We responded to the crisis in the manner of middle-class adventurers the world over: We phoned home for more money." -Martin Amis, Experience

(PS, there are suddenly pictures, because there are suddenly batteries in my camera.) Jake and I again wake first and head to breakfast, which is over. We raid drawers and rifle through cabinets until we find coffee and bananas, which we happily consume in the empty lobby. Jake plays some Elsah songs (the band we are to play with tonight) on the net-equipped computer, and they sound like they will surely be the best band we have played with thus far. I accidentally throw away Jake's banana and he chides me for it. Despite this setback, we all agree that the hotel experience is a turning point and that we are in the beginning stages of a major upswing (and I see a newspaper headline reading "Odd Package in Hazlehurst Turns Out To Be Just Jelly", which is probably the best one I've ever seen.)

We drive, and Jake makes an excellent Louisiana-themed mix, which sets the mood for this, what is sure to be the most exciting leg of the trip.

Baton Rouge seems beautiful, sunny, musical, and peopled with indies on bicycles. There are flyers for shows everywhere, and we seem to be in a college area (it turns out to be the area right around LSU, which has a car-free campus).

We walk around and go to a place called Roul's for our second po boys of the tour (grilled shrimp). Roul serves up these delights under a marquee proclaming "ROUL LOVE U ALL JUICY JUICY". We have already laughed about this for a minute when Roul turns around to reveal the back of his shirt, which also reads "Juicy Juicy". We develop a system of 10 possible Juicies which becomes the standard by which all po boys are hereafter to be judged. We walk around LSU campus which is all uniformly beautiful and Spanish-looking architecturally,

and covered with massive palm trees (and another type of tree that grows like a giant overturned bowl over the ground -- anyone know what this is?).

We are assaulted by friendly ducks at a swampy pond, marvel that they sell liquor in gas stations in Louisiana, and agree that this is the first truly interesting city we have found ourselves in. ..(Lol, This is where you study Daft Punk at LSU, natch.)

We walk for ages, then circle back to the club and find a nice and well air-conditioned coffee shop. We slouch in massive, overstuffed chairs to read/do crossword puzzles/drink coffee and be quiet for a while before North Gate Tavern opens. We also hit a killer deli called Louie's (?) and Jake has some kind of delicious seafood omelette called a Fisherman's Friend or something, and Ben has some kind of sausage and egg/chocolate chip waffle combo, which is disgusting, and pictured below:

This gentleman created the food for us:






North Gate Tavern seems harmless, even nice. We hang on the porch until Neil of Elsah shows up and quickly proves himself to be full of taste and hilarious anecdotage (Ok: Neil is one of those people that is impossible to describe well. He is one in a million, not unlike a Sonny Simpson or a Jeremy Bain, scattering astonished lols and hysterical wtfs everywhere he goes and preaching Awesome to the youthful rockers of the world one whiskey shot at a time. We loved him almost immediately, and we love him still. Hooray, Neil!) He soundchecks our mics for us and is so good and hilarious at it that he should clearly host a weekend workshop on the topic. We play and rock very well. Elsah play and are the best band we've played with thus far.


Neil geniusly merges the lyrics of "Pinball Wizard" with the tune of "Folsom Prison Blues" and sounds like Mike Ness fronting the Old 97s. It becomes clear during their set (which also includes weirdly great covers of the Go-Gos, a song from Disney's Robin Hood, and a Public Enemy track that I can't remember the name of) that they intend to play until someone stops them doing so, and they do, until the bar closes at 2am (and even then they play two more, and one of those is a song they have already played). As Elsah reluctantly wrap up their set, I discover through discussion with a local that Louisianians do not consider Tennesseeans southerners ("Because we were Union?" "No, because you're in the North." Harsh!).

Outside, Neil declares that one Tender must ride with him as he leads the rest to his house, where we are to sleep tonight. I volunteer, and climb in. He clandestinely hands me a wad of cash, our first real cash of the tour, and we're off. "Why did someone have to ride with you?" I ask. "Oh, they don't realize this yet, but we're going to Mississippi!" I glance at Neil, who does not have the look of a person who has just made a joke, and go back to scrolling through the selections on his iPod. Lucinda Williams, Gram Parsons, no surprises here I guess, Gillian Welch, hmm, Carter Family, OH MY GOD, ARE WE DRIVING THROUGH A FIELD?! "What are you doing?!" I shakily ask, as Neil over-corrects across a median. "Sometimes you only get one chance to freak people out, and you just have to take it," he replies. I wonder what my fellow Tenders are thinking from the van as I cover my eyes, as Neil presumably continues piloting the vehicle through fences and up underpass ramps.

We arrive at his house, which is a beautiful little crib, and Jake immediately takes a shower. Neil, suddenly already in a helmet, asks who wants to ride his scooter. Matt volunteers with gusto, though (as you can see from the picture below) the scooter clearly has his best interests in mind when it decides not to start.


As Matt and I pass out on couches and Ben hits the floor, Neil passes us the sweet leaf and we all partake a bit, and Neil proves that he can go above and beyond the rest of us in smoking as well as drinking and long-distance rocking, which he proved earlier. He expounds some rock and roll wisdom to us, and Jake emerges from the shower to find us smoking reefer and listening to Lucinda Williams's Essence (I will learn later that Neil passed the dutchie to Jake while he was in the shower). Neil bids us all goodnight, and, after a few scattered, deafening attempts to start the scooter, heads off to his boudoir. The last words I hear before dozing off are Matt's: "I can't wait to talk about this in the morning."

Day 5
5/18/07
to Mobile, AL

We wake and enjoy eggs, ham, toast, and Neil's New Orleans advice on the porch. He leads us to the interstate, loping gingerly from side to side on his scooter, and bids us farewell.

We head for Mobile listening forebodingly to Highway to Hell. We arrive and walk around the city, which has a sprawling, squat, cute downtown area that surrounds its central sky-scrapery business-district area. We want coffee and a some kind women tell us where a Starbucks is, stating that it is definitely not walking distance. Ben tuts at this, and we end up walking ten miles to a Starbucks in the blazing heat. "Well, this was worth it," Ben sarcastically says, as we swing open the Wilco-propaganda-adorned door. I remind him that walking was his idea, he reminds me that I am not an automaton, and I remind him that I hate him. Back downtown, we eat at a place called Busaba's Thai: pretty good.

Later, we head into a place to pee and see a troupe of streetpunk kids with giant liberty spikes mohawks and joke that this is the crowd we will be playing to tonight.



When the Cell Block opens, we go in and discover that they are actually one of the bands we are playing with. Imagining how "Quarter of a Century" will play to a mosh pit full of Grimple fans, we hit the bar. This is the first day of our first weekend on tour, so we decide to really drink -- we deserve it. Ben imbibes his new favorite, Jagermeister, and I line up the whiskey and Cokes. There is a giant, beautiful poster of the Clash in their Bond Street-era gear opposite where we are sitting, and it is a picture I've never seen before. "I love that picture of the Clash. It's making me want to be better," Ben says. "It's making me want to look better, that's for sure," I reply. "You should look at them and know that you can become anything you want. Take them as a blueprint and then do it 'til you collapse," Ben says. The opener performs (sample lyric: "I came from Alabama with a banjo up my ass"), and then we play, and everyone comes up to front and seems to enjoy us.

After we play, I bond with the punk kids over some punk talk, and then American Suicide plays and I feel 15 again (except drunk instead of straightedge). They have one guy with long, long dreads, another guy who dresses up like Angus Young, and a "Safe European Home" cover that rocks. "That's my favorite Clash single!" I screamingly lie to the bassist, and he yells back, "Mine too!" A sorority-type girl accosts Ben and their dancing styles clash hilariously. The bartender declares our drinks free for the rest of the night on the strength of our set, and we do Jager shots in a huddle together, Jake making a toast about touring with three great peeps. It's sweet.

The dream is quickly over as the band of punkers plays and they reveal themselves as crudely sexist and not very good, more disgust occuring when I head to the bathroom and witness their friend attempting to force a girl to kiss her sister so that he can film it. I trade cds with the American Suicide dread, and we prepare to leave. In the van, we realize to our chagrin that 1. Ben is drunk, and must drive, and that 2. We have zero of the ten cds we took inside, and somehow only made three dollars and fifty eight cents. We decide to put the drink down in the future in the interest of making fewer friends. We white-knuckle it to a dormitory where a cuz of Jake's is putting us up for the night in an empty room. I will learn in the morning that at this point we ate two entire jumbo bags of beef jerky. We sleep badly, Ben and I on beds with no blankets, and Jake and Matt on the floor.

Day 6
5/19/07
to Hattiesburg, MS

I wake first, way first, and go walking around campus in search of coffee. I read a little in a coffee shop (recommended to me by some nice power-walking ladies) called Carpe Diem and rehydrate with some much-needed orange juice (and then immediately dehydrate with some much-needed caffeine). Back at the dorm, where the boys are in varying states of wakeitude, Jake confesses that he and Matt vomited side by side in the dormitory lavatories last night. We disrupt a boys' soccer camp on the way to the van and a man with a withered hand chastises us. At Starbucks, we discuss our misbehavior and collective need to reign it in a bit.

We buy the new Wilco album with our fake Starbucks money, and when the question of who gets to keep it is raised, we devise a rock battle, set to occur in Chicago. We drive to Hattiesburg, listening curiously to Sky Blue Sky (I won't go into any crit here; you've surely read by now that it's boring).

Once our flag is firmly planted in Hattiesburg, we immediately set about finding Peter's Po Boys, heralded in Jackson as both "the best po boy I've ever had -- bar none" and "what I would choose as my final meal were I slated to receive lethal injection." Ben calls Summer to ask her opinion on Peter's and I can hear her response from three feet away. In the parking lot Darby (Hattiesburg native, Summer's brother, and our precious friend) calls us and, catching wind that we are eating at Peter's, meets us in less than a minute on his motorcycle. Peter's Po Boys, it appears, loom large in Hattiesburg legend. We enter Peter's and are greeted by what is surely the tallest Chinese man in history (Peter). Po boy sizing is handily demonstrated by a wall-hanging of giant foam tubes labeled small (about 12"), medium, large, and x-large (about the length of one of those foam noodles people play with in pools -- in fact, that's exactly what it is). We order (po boys, of course), and I hear Peter yelling Cantonese numbers to the cook. Excitedly, and flusteredly, I attempt to tell him thank you in his native tongue, but end up saying (I think) "unable to sleep." "HAH?" he yells. "Nothing," I say, and bolt to my seat. The po boys are, of course, elaborately delicious and satisfying. We variously rank them between 8 and 9 Juicies on the Roul Scale, and go to Darby's house to digest. It is here that, one year ago, we first saw the Arctic Monkeys performing on MTV and said "now, who are these kids?" Darby's dog has recently mothered one million tiny puppies, and we all say "aw" while hugging them, then shower and get dressed.


(This is the only known picture of the Thirsty Hippo.)
We head to the Thirsty Hippo, our favorite venue from our previous tour, and load in. We drink free Abita, soundcheck, and talk to Brad (the Jason Boardman of the Hippo). Our rocking is primo, and then our pals the Squirms play and are primo, too. Ben and I stand outside talking to Brad and I spot an orange cat that I dub Pumpkin Time -- Brad does not love this, and his reaction to the name becomes Ben's favorite imitation of the tour. A guy on an enormous chopper pulls up beside us and asks Ben if we have already played. On hearing the answer he fires up the chopper and pulls away into the night, deafening us and blowing our hair and clothes behind us. A cutie asks me what I was reading earlier, and then barrages me with baiting questions about it. Brad pays us the only big money we've yet laid eyes on, and we head back to Darby's and crash (I have no memory of this save for a blurry image of a multicolored quilt).

Day 7
5/20/07
to New Orleans, LA

We wake up early, consume breakfast, and head for NOLA, bidding fond adieu to Darby and his wondrous menagerie of pups. Driving into New Orleans, we cross the longest bridge I have ever seen, and enter some hurricane-addled areas -- some just looking windswept or trash-strewn, and some with houses bearing black x's. It is unbearably hot. We meet a cuz of Jake's that he has not seen since childhood, and he takes us to some botanical gardens boasting alligators (we see none), massive red flora, and a family of turtles, which are beautiful.


He takes us to Acme for po boys, which garner a cumulative score of approximately 7 on the Roul Scale, We are in poor moods, for some reason, and I have written in my notes that Ben and I are annoyed with each other, but can't remember why or what happened. We are probably just hot, tired, full of po boy, and homesick, which explains the quotes I have written down: "I'm going to knife myself in the kidney," -Matt. "Stab me first, please," - Ben.




We finally get to the French Quarter, which is brightly lit, musical, and delightfully filthy, and we meet a band called 3-Legged Dog at Checkpoint Charlie's. They seem much older and cooler than us, and we tell them we will be back to see them later. We head to the famous Cafe Du Monde and eat (literally) platefuls of beignets.

We pass a park full of fat, stray cats, and I coo at them through the bars before bolting to a piano bar past a tarot reader and a guy playing "Stairway to Heaven" on a row of wine glasses.

(This is where the cat park was...I know, it kinda looks like the Magic Kingdom.)
The piano bar is called Patrick O'Brien's, and though I know nothing about this sort of thing, it seems terribly authentic and un-shitted-up. Matt and I obsess over writing our requests on napkins (he ends up selecting "Have You Met Miss Jones" and I go for "The Man That Got Away" by Harold Arlen -- the pianist says "Well, this is not the sort of thing we normally play, but we are happy you want to hear it." Do what? I figure out what she means when she plays "Walking in Memphis" and the crowd goes wild, spilling steinfuls of booze over the ashy floor.) We go into Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, which is apparently the single oldest building in use in America, or something -- it was recommended to us by Neil, who was correct in telling us that it is lit entirely by gaslight.

Bourbon Street is magically wanton. We pass a man wielding a sign (reading "cheap beer") the size of a car (no exaggeration), which he then uses to physically stop cars from progressing down the street by placing it in front of them. A sign advertising Live Sex Acts blinks at us, and Jake is soon whispering to me that he was unaware such behaviors were legal. He is clearly scandalized. People try to sell Matt and I beverages that come with "strongest cocktail on Earth" credentials that are called something like the Brain Grenade or the Nuclear Gutbomb or something, and we decline, because we are responsible adults. We watch the excellent TBC Brass Band play on the street, and then pass a couple of anarcho-punks sitting behind a table with a sign on it reading "ADVICE." "Hey, let us give you some advice!" one says. "Yeah, we even have a sign here that says 'advice!'" intones the other. "I get it, like the Calvin and Hobbes comic," says Eric, as we pass. "Dude, it's from Peanuts!" screams one after us. "Yeah, you should let us give you some advice on comics!" shouts the other. We go to Checkpoint Charlie's again and watch 3-Legged Dog, who are wicked badasses and sing hymns of blues and misogyny. Realizing we are physically unable to become drunker, we return to Eric's home, and I sleep upright in a chair.

STAY TUNED FOR UNIT TWO: Our four heroes become even more depraved, rocking, and oyster-grease-soaked as they continue to hassle Louisiana and the rest of the tres juicy Po-Boy Belt. Also: I turn twenty-seven Inna Fine Style, and one Tender bangs his head incessantly on the van in frustration. Why? TUNE IN TOMORROW NOONISH!!!