We drove all day in 30+ heat from Sacramento to LA. Mountains everywhere, I swear California is one big mountain range. Our poor little van struggling to make it to the top then speeding back down out of control. She’s leaking oil already, the air conditioning doesn’t work, the steering is amazingly loose, we broke the indicator; basically it’s a speeding death trap… but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ve been in this country long enough to appreciate the following things:

1. ROOT BEER – I think I have about 2-3 liters a day, I’m hooked. Tastes like coke with caramel in it, Jamie says it tastes like dental fluid, Richo gave it a couple of days but has just told me that he hates it too. So I’m on my own with this one.
2. Junior Mints – just like Kramer says "…they’re very refreshing…"mmmmm mm mmmmm
3. Big Red chewing gum – Cinnamon tasting gum, all the red neck truckers chew it. I saw a huge trucker buy some last night, and I thought I gotta taste this stuff.
4. over 99 channels – and still nothing on, I love starting at channel 1 and 45 minutes later I’m at 99 and haven’t stopped to watch anything.. then you go back to 1 and start again. the only thing to watch here is The Tom Green show on MTV…

this list is nowhere near finished…

LA is like one big polluted melting pot, the sky is NEVER, EVER blue during the day. It’s like an off white with big patches of brown. The traffic here is constant, and never light. Even at 3 in the morning the highways are full. Oh and the people that serve you at the 7-11’s here are all bastards…

We got into LA and went straight to pick up our long lost gear from customs. It was good to have it all with us at last, now with our own gear tonight was going to rock like an early… White Snake concert… or so we thought… We drove around LA for about an hour looking for Al’s bar. The address we had took us to the slums of the city, driving around we saw a whole community of tents and cardboard houses on the side of the road full of homeless people. The club was near this part of town. The outside of Al’s looked like a rundown, decrepit, old hostel for the homeless which it probably used to be, but inside was cool. We got lots of photo’s, I’ll put all the photo’s up when I get back. So we set up and did a small sound check, everything seemed fine… Al’s had a 750ml beer cup so I got a Budweiser in the big cup and we started the set…

It all started fine, but as usual something dodgy happened. The stage power completely cut out during the 4^th song. Just like that.. in the middle of Boredom, suddenly, Jamie and I are strumming away and all we can hear is Richo’s drums bashing away… I couldn’t believe it, after playing the worst show ever last night we all vowed to make this one a good one, but it wasn’t meant to be. We cut Boredom short then it cut out in the middle of Girl Genius, then it cut out in the end of Homeless Blueless… and so on… the sound girl ended up having to sit on stage and hold a plug in the wall so we could finish the set with White Picket Fence. Dodgy.

Everyone seemed to like the bits of the songs they heard… It was like hearing a bluebottle c.d. on random then skipping to the next track after 2 minutes. I had another one of those BIG cups of beer after the show and pretty soon I was running around the club making a fool of my self… We finally played with a good band tonight, it was good to see someone had actually put some thought into booking us. I can’t remember what they were called but they sounded a bit like Jon Spencer.

So we loaded out and drove to the place we’re staying at in Riverside. It’s about an hour east from LA… Some how I managed to navigate our way back home. I woke the next day with a sore back and a headache. The back problem was due to an over zealous move the night before. Basically I tried to jump over the van, but didn’t quite make it. Nothing more will be said about it… you already know too much…

t care…