Do you know what I expect when I see a sign that reads “Automated Dinosaurs Ahead?” Dinosaurs. That are automated. Shame on you, Stewarts Petrified Wood, for letting us down with your lies. They did have petrified wood, though, along with an ostrich farm and a whole host of dinosaur statues featuring unlucky female mannequins. So maybe they were only half-lying. Such are the potential pitfalls of traveling along Route 66. Things that are not a bait-and-switch include Crater National Park, which is breath-taking and features an exhibit featuring the sweet MIDI tunes of Nashville composer Frank Cicalese, and our current residence, the Motel Safari, which beats the hell out of the Circus Circus Manor in Las Vegas. Note to potential customers: do not bring up how much the town of Tucumcari reminds you of Radiator Springs from Cars. Apparently they find the comparison unfavorable.
Category Archives: On Tour
Across The Great Western Plains
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Lo! We are moving to New York. By “we” I mean I and my girlfriend, Penelope. How are we doing it? By that most prototypically American of methods: the cross-country road trip. Sadly my faithful vehicle of the last 10 years, a 1993 Audi A6 Quattro Wagon known locally as the Golden Chariot, was deemed to be of inadequate constitution for the journey. Luckily she found a new home with fellow road-warrior and friend Jen Blakeslee who will, no doubt, give it the love I could never provide.
Frontalot Fall 2010 Tour Diary Days 17-19: Cleveland & Ann Arbor BLOW OUR MINDS
“OH MY GOD THAT’S PAUL RUDD!” exclaimed the drunken man in the backwards-facing baseball cap as his SUV barreled by the stage door of the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. He was yelling at me. “I LOVE YOU MAN!” This would have startled and puzzled me had the exact same thing not happened to me only a month prior at a party. Apparently a certain demographic (25-34, male, inebriated) is convinced that I bear a striking resemblance to the 40-Year-Old Virgin actor. No amount of photographic evidence to the contrary seems to sway these boozed-up young adults from their convictions, however clear it becomes that he and I share nothing in common but being white men with brown hair.
Frontalot Fall 2010 Tour Diary: Day 16, Pittsburgh
I would like to begin today’s entry with the sad story of Tycho Brahe: astronomer, Danish nobleman, and victim of the rare but fatal bladderus overfillus syndrome. Both a heavy drinker and a man of impeccable etiquette, Tycho found himself in a deadlock of ethics and urges while at a banquet in Prague. The attendees were of such high social status that Tycho deemed it declasse to leave the table prior to the end of the engagement. There was also an effectively endless supply of wine and spirits, which he could not help but consume at a rapid pace. Unwilling to relieve himself yet unable to stop drinking, the poor man swelled up until he burst like a water balloon after the Earl of Sandwich prodded him with a fork. The moral of the story? Carpe mentula. When absolutely necessary.
Frontalot 2010 Fall Tour Diary: Days 6-15 – Providence & Boston
Bleary-eyed and bluster-tongued, we hurtle along the deep suburban veins of inland New Jersey, our minds consumed with one word: Shartlesville. Home of the giant farmers, the tiny trains and the larger-than-life ambitions of Laurence Gieringer, the now-deceased proprietor of Roadside America. On our last tour, you may remember, we showed up just a little too late to experience the magic. Not-a-today, sir! We are determined to rectify that error, and won’t let trendy diversions such as “getting a good night’s sleep” or “being aware enough to safely operate a motor vehicle” get in our red-blooded American way.
Frontalot Fall Tour Diary Days 2-5: Northampton & Hamden
WARNING: This post contains moody, spooky and downright weird photos. I’ve been on something of an artsy photo kick lately, due largely to the awesome capabilities of my new-ish EVO 4G paired with the vintage effects of Camera360. I post about it, you get to see it. The upshot is that the contents of the photographs may not coordinate with my prose. Unrelated: I went to I Write Like and was informed that my word choice and cadence are similar to techno-blogger Cory Doctorow. Perhaps it is the frequency of commas and exclamatory asides? The jury is out on whether or not this is a good thing.
Frontalot Tour Diary: Pax Prime 2010, pt. 2
I admit it: I failed to live up to my promise. There was no tour diary entry yesterday. That said, there is a good reason: I’ve been having a @#&% blast! I decided to have my cake and jump out of it too on Friday night by watching the Protomen tear down the hall with their theatrics and then taking a cab to see my pals On The Tundra play the Mars Bar. Did you know that OTT has a new album coming out? It is called Echolalia and it will be available soon. I have a copy, and I can verify that it slays demons with its awesomeness. I can also verify that what they call “mac & cheese” at the Mars Bar is actually an amazing penne with mozzarella, some other fantastic cheeses and cayenne pepper. Holy smoking Jeebus it was good. I needed it, too, as the turkey rolls had run out many hours prior.
Frontalot Tour Diary: PAX 2010 pt. 1
Greeting and salutati
ons! Vic-20 is back in the game and coming at you live from the Fairmont Olympic here in lovely Seattle, where I sit and rest my weary feet which have covered an ungodly amount of convention-hall ground during this first official day of the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo, better known as PAX Prime. Devoted readers and foodies will be delighted to know that the Costco turkey rolls are once again piled high in the green room. They are so very hard to count when one is consuming them, I have found. I just never know how many I’ve eaten. This is just one of the many factors which prevent flyouts in general and PAX in particular from helping me maintain my girlish figure.
Frontalot Tour Diary Day 51: All roads lead to Philadelphia. And end there.
It is true. This is the last entry for the Frontalot 2010 “Zero Day” spring tour. Since I won’t have another chance to beguile you with the ins and outs of road life until we go on tour again, I’ve decided to go the extra mile and make this entry particularly insightful. Case in point: for those of you following my facebook page, you already know that we were tailed for an uncomfortably long period of time on the Pennsylvania Turnpike by a creepy Saab. I even took a photograph, though the face of the driver was indistinguishable. UNTIL NOW. Thanks to my friends over at the CSI NY labs, I was able to get the photo enhanced and was shocked to discover that the driver of the Saab was none other than Bat Boy, the Weekly World News favorite who seems, oddly, to never age. Perhaps his severe case of lockjaw keeps him from ingesting too many free radicals.
Frontalot Tour Diary Day 49: Hello, Cleveland! And Pittsburgh.
It is with a heavy heart that I write this, for tragedy has struck the Frontalot tour: our beloved Sturgenius has lost his cellphone. Despite repeated calls to the missing device and the laser focus of our hyper-sensitive musician ears, we have been unable to locate it and fear for the worst. He is currently in the backseat of the van, stewing over the fact that the last bastion of his old-school cred has been swallowed by the aether. He is also hoping against hope that those pictures he took of himself eating cereal out of his concave chest don’t end up on Perez Hilton.
