So, I’m at home in Chicago, I hop a plane to New York. I stay there for a few days with a friend. Sounds fairly normal, and not quite worthy of writing about. And yet the events that followed slowly folded into a complicated paper oragami with three heads staring in four different directions.
I went to New York to pick up Bice, our drummer, who happens to live in Boston, to start our tour in Cleveland. Pick him up in what? Why New York if he lives in Boston? And why does a Chicago based band start a tour in Cleveland? Where the hell is the rest of the band, Lizzie and the Brother’s Lipman? These are some rather intricate questions, that I am proposing that you may be asking. I really don’t feel like answering them. So let’s see what comes out:
Dan-e is back in school in Detroit, Tuesday thru Thursday. Lizzie lives on the south side of Chicago, another world for north siders like me and Brad (Brad now lives ten steps away from me, right below my living room. Yet, I still talk to him more by cell phone and e-mail than face to face conversation. That’s rather odd.) Bice is in Boston, but he has informed me that he is embarking on a pilgrimage to California, so I’m sure our situation will get even more perplexing. The tour was put together fairly last minute. We didn’t know Dan-e’s school schedule early enough to prepare. But Brad and I fumbled through a self booked tour that was being booked as we spoke on our cell phones feet from each other in the beginning and then one thousand miles apart a few days before the departure date.
I am helping to form a new Neo-Futurist theater company in Brooklyn, so I have been visiting this area periodically and am now planning on spending more time there in upcoming months, to finish my Weasel’s In A Box novel and to help promote the new Ensemble. So since I was looking for excuses to get out of Dodge (Chicago) and back to the OK Corral (NYC), I decided to find a way to pick up Bice for the upcoming tour wether in Boston or somwhere East. He could have flown out to Chicago, like he has done in the past, but we had a horrible episode last time wherein UPS lost his drums for a month and a half. Those drums went from Chicago, to Boston, down the street from his house before the tag fell off and the ups deliverer couldn’t figure out where the package was to go. I don’t know why they didn’t look on the floor of the truck for a lost tag, but they didn’t. So the drums went to a home office in St. Louis. Why St Louis? I have no fucking clue. Bice called a friend, who’s father is “high up” in the UPS corporation. They tracked down his drums after they had been shipped yet again to, get this, the manufacturer of the drum cases somewhere in Montana or Wyoming. They were tucked away on some high shelf just like the holy commandments in Raiders Of The Lost Arc. UPS picked them back up and finally shipped them to Boston. We decided to avoid another UPS fiasco.
Being the bright boy that I am, I told Bice to meet me in New York with his drums. I would drive out with the van, pick him up in NYC (He would get a ride there from his girlfriend Mauree, since they both enjoy visiting NYC anyway. They stay with a pair of friends in Brooklyn, let’s just call them DD and Abagail. there is no reason for secrecy I just can’t remember their names right now. They have an English Bulldog. Strange animal. Its astounding ugliness is sublimely cute.), and then we would drive back to Chicago just in time to load the equipment and the band mates and head out to Ohio. And of course I had my own sub reasons for wanting to go back to NYC, speaking of which I may be looking for a second home in Brooklyn or NYC, so if you know of any place to rent just let me know. My hope is to get a place that can match my already low rent of 500 in Chicago, so that I can manage a thousand a month. Wish me luck.
Bice thought this pick up plan was exciting in conception, yet somehow idiotic in its possible actualization. I agreed, and thought that that was enough justification to put the plan into action. Bice laughed at me, and then I laughed at him laughing at me. He then said, “why don’t we just leave on tour from New York instead of driving 12 hours back to Chicago?” It was a pretty good idea as long as we were both ok with the idea of Brad and Lizzie walking to Ohio from Chicago.
His hesitation was worthy of some more thought. It did seem somewhat stupid to tire ourselves out driving before the tour even started. So I elaborated and adjusted his idea to make it make sense in my head. I bought a one way plane ticket to NYC spent two days with my friend, met Bice and Mauree in a bar, stayed at the bulldog’s house for one night and then picked up a budget rent-a-car at Le Guardia Airport, loaded Bice’s drums from Maria’s car to the rental, and we took off for a 7 hour drive to Olmstead Ohio where we dropped off the car and met the rest of the band. Brad and Lizzie loaded the van and left Chicago at 10am and arrived in Olmstead Ohio 2 minutes before us. That was amazing timing, which we owe none of it to precise planning. Randomness was our saviour. Dan-e’s ride from Detroit to Olmstead Ohio fell through. So he called a taxi service. They quoted him at 300 bucks. Not a good idea. One of the band’s favorite friends, Shannon, received a phone call from the aforementioned Dan-e mere moments before he had to leave. Shannon was up for the adventure and agreed to drive him. We descended on Ohio and won a small battle.
And where was our next show, you ask? Why New York of course.

That’s if for now. Liz has just informed me that my food is getting cold. Which is actually kind of funny since I ordered a salad.

John Jughead
Even In Blackouts