Life is an adventure...

It's been an interesting couple of days...
Last night (an off night) I found myself staying at a Microtel in Augusta, GA. The propaganda booklet in the room mentioned "Helga's Lounge" - a bar with 100 different beers, 30 of them on tap. I needed to eat, anyway, so I went.
Walking into Helga's was interesting. It smelled like someone had deep fried a lit cigarette. The jukebox was switching songs from Toby Keith's 'Whiskey Girl' to something by Slipknot. Nascar paraphernalia, animal heads, and townies abounded. The wait staff were all hot young women in tight black shirts.
I asked for a beer list and a menu. She pointed at the wall over the bar and said, "There's the menu." There were many different colored pieces of copy paper taped to the wall along the top of the bar, each with a different menu item and price on it. Everything from grilled cheese sandwiches to King Crab to the "Alligator Basket." I pussed out and ordered the cheeseburger.
For the beer list, she pointed to the cooler. She said, "What beer do you want? We got it." Silly young person. Of course they had no Oskar Blues, New Belgium, 3 Floyds, or Bells. I quickly grew tired of playing 'stump the hottie' and settled on a Xingu. Not bad for a nascar bar.
The cheeseburger came, all 1/2 pound of it, served on Texas toast with nearly a pound of fries. It beat me. I couldn't eat the whole thing. But it was good.
I went back to the hotel and washed myself of the smell and the grease.
Today, I also find myself in a cool place to eat because of my hotel. This time, however, it is because my hotel (The Colony Inn in Columbus, GA) sucks.Stale cigarette smell. Cigarette burns on the lip of the tub. Spilled paint in the tub (not matching the color of paint on the walls or ceiling, nor the color of the tub. Shaky toilet that you have to hold the handle down to flush. A remote you have to pay a $10 deposit for at the desk, but that comes with no working batteries. And no wifi.
So I called my trusty wife and had her find me some wifi hotspots in the area. She came through like a pro.
I'm sitting in the Cannon Brewpub in Columbus, GA, across the street from the venue I'm playing at tonight, eating a calzone and drinking an Ironclad Stout (a very adequate beer.)
Life is an adventure, my friends. Life is an adventure.

Driven To Write

Like the title says, I'm driven to write--sort of. See, I'm always coming up with all sorts of great ideas when I'm driving. Story arcs, characters, comedy bits, songs, game concepts... When I'm driving, I usually find myself wanting to stop somewhere and write.
Which is hardly surprising, seeing as how driving consumes a considerable bit of my time these days. When I'm three hours in to a seven hour drive, I often feel desperate to stop, to write, to stretch, to do ANYTHING but drive.
And then I get to the hotel and I have oh, so many things to keep me busy... I have to check in, to unload my luggage, get settled into the room, use the bathroom, call my wife, set up my computer. And then I can write, right?
No. Usually I have to find the venue, check in early about the sound (I'm a guitar act. Sound is VERY important to me. Crappy sound can all but kill my show.) Then I'm hungry, and have been eating fast food all day. My wife insists (and rightfully so) that I should eat real food as much as possible. So I find a sit down restaraunt and order something other than a burger. And then I have to get back to the hotel and get ready for the show, then back to the venue and perform.
And then I can go back to my room and write, right?
Alas, no. Then it's merch sales and shmoozing, getting paid by the manager, and the load out, and calling my wife again to let her know how the show went. Then (if I've been drinking at all) I need to make sure I've waited a suitable amount of time before I drive back to the hotel, and by the time I do...

...I'm too tired to write. Often I'm too tired to sleep, too. So it's HBO or Showtime and movies I never wanted to see in the theatre until 3 or 4 am (I can't tell you how many times I've seen Madea's Family Reunion...) And then I sleep.
Whether I sleep late or not, I'm invariable not interested in writing when I wake up. I have to get around, sometimes in order to start the process all over again (including the driving.)
I'm driven to write, but when I have the drive, I never seem to have the time.

Splurging in Cleveland...

Today I splurged a little on myself. Usually that means eating at Waffle House or Arby's, but today I woke up 20 miles from Cleveland.

Though I considered it, I didn't go the the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. I refuse to do so until they induct KISS. It's a personal choice, really, but I figure that if they've stooped to inducting Madonna (which they did this year) then KISS should've been in a decade ago.

As a cast member of the Good Beer Show (http://www.goodbeershow.com/,) I was a little bummed that I didn't get to attend Dark Lord Day at Three Floyds Brewing Co. in Munster, IN today. So I treated myself in the nearest, most similar (albeit lacking) fashion. I went to the Great Lakes Brewing Company brewpub.

I paid too much for fish and chips (I had 'em hold the cole slaw...) The tartar sauce was tangy, but I'm not a fan of tartar sauce, so after trying it, I dismissed it. The beer-battered cod was excellent after a decent salting, but quite bland beforehand. The fries were over-seasoned. I know, I'm picky. I come from Indiana, land of the weekly fire-department all-you-can-eat fish fry*. For the $12 I paid, I should've been swimming in fish.

The beer was good (Blackout Stout - a Russian Imperial Stout) though not as sweet or engaging as I've come to expect a Russian Imperial Stout to be. Still, at 9% ABV, it helped take the chill from the overcast skies and breeze coming down Market St.

I also ordered the bread pudding. It's very good--and very, very sweet-- and I'd post a picture of it if I had one. Unfortunately, I was on it like a fat guy on good bread pudding. It didn't have the chance to be photographed. It now only exists in my memories...

It doesn't make up for missing Dark Lord Day, but it made me feel a little better about being a road comic doing a weekend of one-nighters while my wife and kids are away...

*To be honest, I never attended these. My wife did. I didn't really care for fish until after being converted by my wife. But right now, I'd bend her over the fish fry table at the firehouse and eat bread pudding and beer-battered cod off her back while dry-humping her and drinking beer, right there in front of everyone at the fire house. I need to be home more often. That little fantasy is a little more vivid than I expected...

The Wait

I wonder if it will always be like this...

I'm in the hotel room, a couple hours before the gig. Just ate Arby's. Fight Club's on the tube. My wife and kids are hours away by car. I just got a picture on my cell phone of my sons playing.

I visited the venue, and it turns out I'm playing at a small, L-shaped bar. The show is at 10, and I can't set up early. The corner in which I will perform tonight still has tables in it.

I know, in a very specific way, that future success will alter the trappings somewhat, but I wonder if things will be this way in the abstract. Will I always be in a hotel room, alone? Will there always be a movie on hotel-provided cable that I've seen too many times? Will I always find things about the venue to complain about?

I hope not. But in all likelihood...

Playing By Myself

I'm in Gainesville, GA. I just played a show to a room of about 10 people, who wre seated interspersed through a restaraunt and eating, unaware that comedy was to take place. There were about 15 more people in the next room over (the bar.)
The TV's were left on during the show (this was at a sports bar/restaraunt.) Nobody paid anything to get in, and there was no advertisement for comedy whatsoever. The staff even seemed mildly surprised that there was to be a show.
The worst part is, they've been doing comedy like this at this restaraunt for months. Months. Not a couple of weeks, not a month, but four months. They've been relying on people wandering unsuspectingly into a "comedy show" to tell their friends and bring a crowd the next time.
I'd spent the last 4 nights playing a small, newly opened club in a small town in North Carolina. Not all of the shows were well attended (they're working on building an audience, though.)
Sunday night, not counting wait staff and the people performing (it was an open mic) there were only three audience members.
And it was an infinitely better show than tonight's. This was because the people cared that they were there to see comedy. They came to see comedy. They were performed to.
I'm a strong performer, and confident in my abilities. But when I'm put in front of an audience that is completely unsuspecting and totally blindsided by a live comedy performance, I'm just playing by myself onstage.
Sure, I got paid. But I could have been sleeping in my own bed tonight. I could have kissed my son goodnight, snuggled with my wife.
Instead, I'm in a hotel room in Georgia, playing by myself again.

Living In History

You can tell the natives in Chicago while walking beside them on the street. They never look up. They should. They really should. I can't imagine not being impressed on a daily basis simply by the architecture, let alone the convergence of cultures and flavors.

I'm sitting an an old hotel in Chicago. One of the distinguished sort of old hotels, rather than the run-down sort. I'm on the 15th floor, and my view overlooks a Catholic Seminary, which is breathtaking. Buildings climb above and around my window, each one a castle in its own right, be it strikingly modern or antiquated and stately.

Yesterday, I woke up in a suburb of Birmingham (Alabama, not England,) surrounded by antebellum homes and green spaces. Today, I'm amidst true urbana. There is green here, but it has to be carefully cultivated and maintained, or it dies. And, right now, it's covered in snow.

I miss my family-- I've been gone for a week-- but these views, the parallel views from the street and the 15th floor, distract me from that somewhat, as does the wide-sweeping arc of my trip: Birmingham to Chicago; south to north, rurality and suburbia to sheer urbana. History steeps both places. I wonder if people notice this daily...

My next venture into history is home: we live in a small town, created for a train stop in Indiana. Our home was built while Lincoln was alive. It has history in it that I can't really see anymore, possibly because I'm too close to the history we're making simply by living there.

I never look up when I'm home. I should. I really should.

Down Time

So I'm sitting, alone and bored, in a Microtel Inn just outside of Charlotte. I'm not terribly impressed with the place, as I didn't have any towels in my bathroom and my toilet ran for half an hour after I flushed it. But at least it's clean and has internet access...

A friend made the trip with me this time. He wanted to visit some friends who live in Charlotte and agreed to split gas money. Two nights ago, we drove all night through snow and idiots, over and under mountains, to get here in time for me to drop him off and make the 4 hour drive to Greenville (where I performed last night.)

Tha car is so covered in salt and grime that it looks like a whale came on it. Ick.

The show in Greenville went well. I expect tonight's shows and tomorrow's shows will go better.

My friend asked me what it's like on the road. I told him that I read a lot. I listen to a lot of NPR podcasts on my iPod. Now I listen to a lot of XM radio, too. I get to see the modest hotel rooms of many cities that I can't really afford to act like a tourist in.

There's a lot of loneliness, or at least alone-ness, that goes into being the life of the party every show. No wonder so many comics self-destruct with drinking, drugs, alcohol, and cheap sex. They must not have my inpenetrable shield of NPR podcasts and fantasy paperbacks.

Or maybe they just ran out of authors...