Tour Diary: Day 1: LA to Escondido
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I guess I should say that day one for me is really day six for The Jonbenet, the band I’m on tour with, but we’re just gonna go ahead and call it day one. I left my apartment this morning at 5, got into LAX 12 hours later, met up with a guy from Houston named Jason who drove me out to Escondido to meet up with the band. My flight was freezing cold and I was locked into the window seat and couldn’t get out to hunt down a blanket. It was like being a prisoner on some kind of flying ice chamber of death. It was horrible.
Also, another note: Los Angeles is huge. There was nothing but mountains and desert and tiny little towns for hours and then all of a sudden, there was was LA. grids of houses and buildings extending to the horizon in every direction. No other city on earth can match this one in terms of sprawl. It’s amazing.
Escondido is either a southern suburb of LA or a northern suburb of San Diego and it took us about two hours to get there from the airport. Get this though: Jason had french friend from Del Taco waiting for me in the car. Can you believe that? The guy’s a real class act. He proved it again later when we stopped in San Clamente for soft serve from stand by the highway called Burger Stop. (Note to Californians: if you’re ever in San Clamente, it’s worth checking out. 24 flavors of soft serve, and also the home of the “Chile-Dog”.) The first lick of my ice cream sent it plummeting earthward, my camera breaking it’s fall. So bullshit. The nice lady behind the counter was nice enough to give me a new cone.
The gig was at a space and sci-fi themed pizza joint called Killer Pizza from Mars and the place looked like it hadn’t changed since it first opened in, if i had to guess, 1993. The dudes there were crazy hospital though. They feed and watered us, and let us hang around long after closing shooting hoops on their old school arcade thing. Three local bands played, and I took pictures of some of the funniest looking people. It was good. The kids at the show were all in high school and they seemed to dig the Jonbenet guys the best, and they unloaded a bunch of merch.
We’re in the van now, driving along the Pacific Ocean. Can’t see it because it’s totally black, but I know that it’s there. Kind of awesome. We’re heading 9 hours up north, straight thru the night, to Chico, which, we were told buy the guys at Killer Pizza, is the point of origin for much of California’s medicinal marijuana crop. It’s by a massive state park called Bidwell, so I’m hoping we get to hang out there for at least a little while to capture the scenery.
So that’s the deal so far. Sorry this is a rushed post, I’m dying to get some sleep, so future ones will hopefully be a little more thoughtfully crafted. And there’s so much hilarious shit that’s happened that I’m leaving out, so I’ll try to be more on top of it for the sake of posterity starting tomorrow. And, obviously, there will be pictures and things and I’ll introduce you to the dudes as time goes on. K? Later.
May 21st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
..if you make it back to LA and have a minute drop me a line and we’ll grab a drink…