The Gods Of Now On Tour – Day 18

I open my eyes and look around. It’s 7:38 am. I didn’t fall asleep until 5 am I think. I need more sleep. I close my eyes.

It’s 9:46 am. Ahhh, that’s better. Energy. I think I’m back to normal. The world is once again in front me. Like it used to be. And you’re in there somewhere. All I have to do is find you.

Me, Alex and Zasta are up and ready for breakfast. Jon turns over and says he wants to sleep. I’m so energetic.

So we walk to the hotel resto for eggs. We sit down. I immediately take my little pad of peanut butter that I always eat at breakfast. The waitress with, as Zasta points out, invitingly milky bosoms comes up and flatly says “You’re disgusting!” Oh yeah! I’m ready for this. I put my arms out invitingly and say “And good morning to you too!” She’s cool. I have three eggs, toast and hash browns. Zasta the same (but he gets rye I get brown toast). Alex has oatmeal and yogurt. We eat and it was good.

The hotel gives us coupons for some money off (2 bucks off actually) which added up to almost a coffee each. Ah well, better than nothing.

We go back to the room. Zasta is going for a walk in the sunshine. It’s a beautiful day. Alex gets on the comp and starts to straighten out life. I wanna check out the waterpark so I put on my ATTACK suit and go.

I walk in and all is quiet. Their is no one there at all. I look at the massive waterslide and all the fountains that are quiet. I say a few words out loud to hear the echo. “Claim!” I say and “Fabric!” The reverb is astounding. But I want it all to be working – I want the water to flow. So I go to the front desk and ask. The woman comes with me and starts it up.

Holy Shit!!! This place is water world. (See pics/vid). I smash down the waterslide – serious! The river run makes me want to puke – YEAH! And the pool is perfect for a good cooling off.

I sit down in the spa-aaahhhhhh!

I have a breakthrough concerning the backstory on a character I’m writing for a TV show aimed at the same demo as Californication or Six Feet Under. I scribble it in my writing book. The producers of the show want the character to be more real and more flawed. I simply draw off my own background. Yeah, that’ll work just fine.

Forgiveness is strength. Not only for the one who is forgiven but also for the one who forgives. We all fuck up, don’t we? None of us are perfect. I’ve done…questionable things. Was a broken kid (you see right in to me), now I’m a scarred man from those old lonely wounds. But all along the way I’ve been strengthened by forgiveness. Now it’s Alex’s turn.

No one here is ordinary. We act as we do for reasons that are beyond our control. Driven. Always driven on by a mania or desire. We demand to know what is on the other side. We demand to know how far is too far. We need to know what happens when you fall off the edge because walking along it is far too predictable after a while. And then when it happens, self-destruction. Re-invention. Creation. We come back from the other side and we know something astounding.

It all sounds so fucking rock and roll, doesn’t it? It is for civilians looking in. But those close to us, those who care for us, they deserve a rest sometimes.

We’re demanding but all we demand is acceptance. We’re out of control but all we want to ruin is ourselves. We become lost and we need that anchor to bring us back.

Alex is here, like the rest of us, for his reasons. The road changes a man. Driven around the world by insatiable lust for life. No matter how much you look at this ball, this circle, this ring, it is never the same. No beginning and no end. No matter where you start out, or leave off, or pretend to finish. You go around and get back together where you were and it’s never the same. It’s never what it was. It cannot be. It’s better. It’s different as it is new. And new is right Now. And right Now is as it should be. And Alex has found something astounding. But you’ll have to ask him.

I get out of the spa and go back to the room. I change. Jon’s hungry so we go to the Hotel Lounge and he grabs a club sandwich. He needs to eat so it’s fine but it is not that great, he says. Then we notice that their’s musical instruments set up. I ask if we could play there tonight. The manager says “why not?”.

Cool, it’s great to play. But we almost immediately think about the logistics of it. We’re a fucking out of control live act – now playing the lounge at the Travel Lodge. I dunno if this is such a bright idea…

Speaking of stupid ideas – I have a FlipCam. These are excellent little iPod sized video cameras that have a USB port built into it. You just shoot your vids (with sound and amazing picture) and then dump it on to your comp. Our vids are done like this. – yes, yes, they’re coming!

Anyway – I have this bone-head idea to take the FlipCam down this crazy waterslide. You know, cuz it would be fun to slide down with you – this is sort of what it would be like. Jon would be at the bottom and I’d throw him the FlipCam just as I enter the pool.

I know – what a great idea right? And before you think we just impulsively do things without thinking them through (well, Alex does, but maybe not so much anymore) I grab this little plastic cup about the same size as the camera to use for a practice run (see vid). So Jon’s ready at the bottom and I slide down and chuck him the little cup. He just misses it. It hits his hand, but we figure because he was taping the practice run, he’d have caught it using both hands.

Let’s do this thing.

I take the FlipCam up the waterslide with me. I do it. No turning back now! Through the tunnel, shoot to the corner – down the spiral and there’s the end. Up I throw it. And it touches Jon’s hand in just the same way the plastic cup did. And SPLUNK! Right into the pool. Ahhhhh! I dive for it. We take it out. It’s soaking wet…and dead.

Who’s idea was this? Fuck, too much time on our hands. I’m an idiot. Well, I dry it under the hand dryer for a little while. Then I put it in the sun for about 15 min. The big moment of truth. I turn it on. Sigh.

We go back to the room and I take the little bugger apart and then leave it there. We’re hungry so we need to look for food. I’ll go ask the front desk.

I change into my clothes and walk to the front desk. I could not believe, looking at this girl, that I was in Medicine Hat, Alberta!

Amanda seems to be a popular name out in the west. That’s okay. It’s a very sexy name to begin with. She has long, strawberry-blond hair. And pale skin. Small features, and oh so very pretty. She reminds me of the kind of girl a vampire would go for immediately. But the most attractive thing is this sadness that surrounds her. Like a Calvino linen, it envelopes her, makes her ascend up to some heaven that I’ll never know.

She tells me that their’s a good resto down the street. I tell her we’re playing later and hope she can drop in. She has no context for any of this. But she smiles so I’m happy I got to see that.

We get ready and pile into the Banyion. We’re hungry and want to break out of our lack of energy. We’re hoping the food will do this for us.

We see a Seafood resto. We all have misgivings. We’re in the middle of Canada. Seafood? Not really. We go in anyway. Look at the menu. Everything is fried.

Psychotic Episode #5.

I glance over at the tables. They’re fried too. The cook in the back is currently frying his hand. He looks over and sort of chuckles and says “It’s like a hot glove, eh!”. Two hot waitresses wearing bikini’s are slashing boiling cooking oil on each other – just like in a beer commercial – they’re giggling! The patrons are sipping iced oils while eating fried vegetables – I over hear one of them say the veggies are because they had pie at lunch so they have to watch it. But it’s a good thing it’s all you can eat.

End Psychotic Episode #5

Zasta says, “this isn’t the kind of food I eat”. I nod. We leave.

In the parking lot walking to the Banyion. Two girls wearing black are smoking behind a Starbucks. I glance at them and get almost to the Banyion when we hear…

“Ahrga Biark! Ibglik! S’potep!”

Whaa?

We look over and they’re looking at us and smoking.

“Whaaa?” one of us says – or all of us. What the hell does “S’potep” mean? We walk a little closer.

“Are you guys in a band?” The girl with nicely done purple eyeshadow asks.

We all check our own zippers.

“Yeah. The Gods Of Now”.

They’re Eden and Raven. They both work at the Starbucks. They’re very friendly. We talk a bit. We have to have some kind of context here. Once that’s established we find out a good place to eat. They tell us that if we keep going on the road we’re on their’s a Moxie’s and a Montana’s. Cool. We go.

We actually see a Kelsey’s so we go there. Great choice! Valerie from Magog is our waitress! Ahhh, we all become homesick in two seconds. Elle est vraiment une belle fille! Just so nice to be around. So nice to look at. Girls from Quebec are a national treasure.

I have a salad that Valerie suggests. It was great. Instead of chicken she put salmon because I don’t eat meat (chicken, pork or beef). Jon had a Philly steak – he said it was the best he’s ever had! Zasta and Alex had hamburgers. Zasta loved his. Alex complained about something – I think it was something about the radius of the top bun not matching the bottom one.

We get the bill and it’s time to leave. Everyone watches as we each give two kisses to Valerie and say “a la prochaine”.

Now it’s back to Starbucks for attention and coffee. I walk in and I see Raven say to some hot little number “their’s the guys I was telling you about.” We say hello to her and Eden once again and are introduced to others. The hot little number is named Chelsie and they all say that she is a foam expert.

..?

Umm. I look blankly at Chelsie and say “You really shouldn’t say that to a rock band on the road.” She doesn’t hear me. But Raven does and laughs. Cool.

Eden hooks us up – she is the manager. So nice to have a friend with coffee as her power.

We say good-bye and go back to the Hotel. We talk about playing on the way there. We’re kind of pissed about the fact that some of these shows we’ve been playing are last minute shit gigs where no one knows we’re playing until the day before. Less time in some cases. In once case the bar DIDN’T know we were playing. We hate this.

Do we really need a rehearsal? No. We all agree that if their are people there we’ll play. It would be even better if we could use the drum kit that was there. Cheap ass kit but better then lugging the whole of Zasta’s in.

So we get back and go into the lounge. There are people there! We’ll, actually person. An old lady playing a poker machine. We all look at each other… Naaaa!

I go to see Amanda and tell her it’s too much effort. God, does Alberta even know she lives here? She’s the kind of girl you remember forever – She’d be great in a music vid.

So, now that we’re not playing I’ll see how much damage I did to my FlipCam. I go back to the room. It’s a skeleton of her former self, my FlipCam. All apart, no buttons and just her naked screen showing. I put the batteries back in and turn it on.

Nothing…wait! There are lines on the screen! Wait! Color! Oh my god! IT’S ALIVE!!! I immediately dump down the vids that are on there onto the comp. Wow! We all can’t believe this thing came back from the dead after been plunged into over chlorinated pool water! We’re going to write the company to tell them how amazing this little thing is.

I put it all lovingly back together. It’s as good as new.

So now we’re going to try it again! Well, come on. It’s only a bone-head idea if it DOESN’T work. If it does – it’s fucking awesome.

And it works! (See vid).

We tried it with a pen first. And Jon got it without a problem. So we did the real thing. And he caught it. Now their’s nothing better when a risk you take works out. Nothing better at all – except doing it AGAIN! Yeah! So we do it again. And it works! Again.

Now I’m bored with doing that. It was cool, but now – you know, whatever!

Jon and Zasta go back to the room. I swim around a bit and then also go back to the room.

Everyone has their instruments out and are playing acoustically. I grab mine, (they brought it in for me). We worked on things we needed to tighten up and came up with a very cool new intro to the show.

Now I’m laying here wishing this was my bed.

Good night.

Somewhat Related Entries

• The Gods Of Now On Tour – Day 25
• The Gods of Now On Tour – Day 5
• The Gods of Now On Tour – Day 8
• The Gods of Now On Tour – Day 4
• The Gods Of Now On Tour – Day 16