Feed Us A Live Insect

Loomis--on our cousin's porch

I wasn't going to do an entry for Sacramento because we're not playing club shows on the 4th or 5th, but rather hanging out with Mary's cousin at her ranch in Loomis, a couple of miles outside of Sacramento. Her kids are engineers, like crazy mad scientist engineers, and they can build pretty much anything out of a couple of twigs and some ball bearings. For instance, there's a school bus there that they're converting to run on vegetable oil--they're building some kind of system that I don't really understand which will let you pour in used vegetable oil and it will filter out the water and impurities from the stuff while you're driving...amazing stuff. I was just talking to some other bands, asking how the hell we're going to keep touring if gas prices keep going up, and this is the answer, apparently. Of course the idea of driving a giant school bus over the mountains in Oregon gives me the shakes, but I should start looking for a short bus for us to drive around in. The other project they're working on is to convert a race car bed (by which I mean a plastic bed in the shape of a race car for little kids) into a drivable race car, with an engine and everything, except that it'll still be a bed that you can sleep in. Apparently they're going to have a race with their friends with vehicles made out of beds, reclining chairs, and L-shaped couches. Like I said, geniuses.

So anyway, we ended up playing a show (really a practice) on their porch. They had a mic and a PA (with built-in echo and phaser effects, which translates into endless hours of beatboxing fun), but no mic stand, so they stuck it between the handlebars of a motorcross-style dirt bike and I played while sitting on the bike, wearing a crash helmet for a little while. BEST SOUND OF THE TOUR. Obviously we should do all our shows by driving in on bikes with built-in amps and drum kits. I'm sure our genius cousins could built this for us. Get working, boys, we'll play you with t-shirts or something.

San Francisco is tomorree...can't wait. This was a nice break, though, thanks Sue!

posted by Eli Monolator @ 11:32 PM