Big news. Toby now sports a twirled moustache. Cameron has drawn a little cartoon of him for your amusement.
This tour we’re opening up for The Get Up Kids. Their guitar player Jim is wont to refer to himself, on and off stage, as “old” which is kind of annoying cause we estimate that he’s younger than us. But they’re not kids anymore and we sure ain’t youths. The two shows so far the audience have been great for us. Also, they sure do appreciate The Get Up Kids and have memorised a lot of their song-words.
The first show of the tour was Denver. It seems you can get dehydrated, sunburned and muscle-exhausted if you fly straight into the altitude of the Mile High City like me and Cameron did. And on East Colfax St, where our hotel was, you can be accosted by any number of meth-heads, crack-heads and general miscreants that line the pavement. Seriously, it’s a zombie movie.
Denver people tend to say “Oh, the Rock-mada” when you tell them you’re staying at this particular Ramada Hotel. It’s a universally acknowledged joke, like “Bris-vegas” for example, that’s still in circulation unlike, I don’t know, The Big Apple, which got too boring to bother with.
Also in Denver we met the first on band Pretty & Nice. They are nice as it happens. They’re from Boston, Massachusetts. The bass player Roger tries it on with any girl who crosses his path – nice work. And they can hold up their end of a conversation which is always…nice.
A sartorial observation/generalisation: boat shoes are rife in young America - I blame Vampire Weekend for steering that misguided pleasure craft back to civilisation.
I bought 6 Australian navel oranges at Walmart. I didn’t think it would be worth it to send fruit grown, picked and packed in Australia to sell at the supplier-crushing prices Walmart gouges. But there you go.
I love Salt Lake City for a visit. The difference is courtesy. When I got out of the car in Boise a pedestrian crossing the road yelled “motherfucker” at a passing car that didn’t slow down enough for his liking. A situation like that with those two protagonists doesn’t exist in Salt Lake.