Shortly after that conversation I slipped into a bit of a depression (unrelated to beating Beefy at chess, or the tour). It got real hard for me to do much of anything for a while, especially making music or promoting the tour as well as I could. As a result most of our lofty goals of producing Mediocre Tour EPs, shirts, buttons, and “beefyness-dot-condoms” fell through. I did send out press kits and spam some internets though. Actually, we didn’t end up make any merch for the tour, but the night before I left I hovered over Shannon’s sewing machine and made 8 denim wallets to sell at shows along with my comics and yo-yos.
When I arrived at the airport on Thursday morning I realized I left my laptop’s power chord at home… Yeah I forgot my power chord for the computer that I would need for the tour, fuck you, what of it?
But then things got good. Being 3 hours early, and internetless, I pulled out my pencil and paper and went to work. I created 3 new pages for my next comic, they are about the infamous flatjack incident from the last time I was in Seattle. These 3 pages are fucking beautiful, they are funny and have some crazy perspective. For the first time in months I was really excited to work on something again.
So I arrive in Portland happy as hell, and meet up with Jones and Beefy and Router. Router had an ear infection… Fuck you what of it? So the first stop of The Mediocre West Coast Tour 2007? The Vancouver County Emergency Room. Turns out she had a real nasty ear infection and shit, they gave her vicodin and some other stuff. It all turned out okay, but delayed us 3 hours. For some reason, this whole part of the tour reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine. Beefy’s car doesn’t have to be push started or anything, however there is a button under the passenger side floorboard that kills the car. I’m not exaggerating, for some reason there is a button near the left foot that if accidentally bumped will turn off all the power and lock the steering wheel.
When we made it to Seattle things didn’t get much better. We apparently have trouble with directions. In particular, we couldn’t find one key street, and we nearly had several accidents trying to find it. Beefy ran a red light, and did some other really crazy shit, while we tried to find the street. It was like Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray keeps living the same day over and over until he gets it right. Every time we drove down those dark streets we managed to avoid fewer and fewer potholes and hazards. We made it to the show, but missed the first few acts. Yeah it was the first show of our tour and showed up late like rock stars, fuck you, what of it?
The space was beautiful, but not very full. 30 paid attendees I think. After our first song we had an iPod failure that took about 3 minutes to fix. Other than that, our first show went really well. I hadn’t ever seen MC Router perform before, so that was cool. She can work a crowd really well, moving around the stage and connecting with audience. Other than all of the problems we had getting there, the show itself was fucking sweet. So no worries.
The next morning we met up with a cameraman at Gasworks Park in Seattle and did a Mediocre Tour photo shot for the Nerdcore for Life documentary. I’m really excited to see these shots. Yeah, I wanna see pics of myself. Fuck you… What of it?
So you’d think that with all of our Seattle troubles, we would be extra cautious with our directions to the Portland show. Nope. Again we got to town later than expected, and got fucking lost trying to find Hawthorne Bridge. So again we arrived to the show late (like the rockstars that we totally are). This show was a house show, about 3 blocks from Hawthorne Fish House. The houses occupants do a podcast called The Mediocre Show (sound familiar?).
There were only two bands for the evening, us and Hott Pink. Our set went fucking sweet. In spite of some feedback issues on the first few songs, our set was fun. All of us feel it was the best hip hop show we’d ever done. In my opinion, it was one of my top 5 shows I’d ever done with any band. Someday I should tell you guys about the bands that I was in 10 years ago.
I can’t really hear everyone else’s songs, but all of Beefy and Router’s tracks sounded very hot. Of my songs, Happy Valium Meal really got the crowd jumping the most. That was surprising, given the songs preachy-straight-edge-bullshit-message. After our set, we each got crazy applause. We didn’t sell much merch at this show, but we got paid enough to feel Beefy’s tank twice.
So, it looks like we will make it to Seattle with time to spare, however it’s raining and I’m really edgy riding in these type of conditions. Fuck you, what of it? I don’t wanna be a prick, but Beefy doesn’t drive any different in the rain. Despite the fact that everybody else on the road seems to.
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