Day the Eighth, Friday April 30, Evanston

This was a great day, mainly because of two of the patron saints of mediocre indie rock - Cheryl and Mark van Ausdal. Holy good god damn do those people take good care of us, as well as members of the Promise Ring and Sloan.

Anyway, for those of you not in the know, these are the parents of Gordon's lovely better half Karen, and they graciously put us up whenever we're in the Chicago area. Dag.

We arrived in Evanston in the early afternoon and headed to the Loyola radio station to do an on air interview. As usual I hogged the mike and spewed inanities about English literature and Pete's sexual prowess. However the best moment of the interview came when Pete took the mike for himself and did a few minute riff about KISS. It was awesome. Afterwards we played some songs and headed out. All in all, a success.

We were pretty tired and by the time we hit C&M's place we were ready to do just one thing, C-R-A-S-H. And so we did. I hit Karen's bed, but graciously (IMHO) slept on top of the blankets and used my bag for a pillow. Trust me, she didn't want any of my three day without a shower stink any closer than that.

After my beautiful two hour nap, where I'm pretty sure I dreamed about happy kittens and weird monsters, we all devoured some Chinese food and hit the club.

The club was fantastic, especially for a suburban club. The stage was good, the sound was good and the people running the show were great. Everyone was great except....the one huge asshole every room needs. This dude was the singer of the band after us and was all bent out of shape because he thought we should have gone after his band. Bands will sometimes do this when they feel like they're king shit of fuck mountain. They feel slighted and will try to alter the schedule to their benefit. The usual tactic is to try to guilt you out of your slot. But we've been doing this a long time, and if you're not the reunited Beatles featuring Jimi Hendrix on guitar we're not switching.

Anywho, our refusal made said dude angry. So as we were setting up (quickly, like we always do) he started hounding the front of the stage, snapping his fingers and clapping his hands while shouting "let's go!" "Come on, let's move!" "What's taking so long?!?!?" etc.

At first we ignored it, but after a while the aforementioned temper of mine flared up. He finally got up in my grille and shouted "Guys, let's go here, you're already late!", at which point I whipped around and screamed "FUCK OFF ALREADY!!!" He backed away at this point, which was good. I am not very strong, but I had a week of tour annoyance built up and I'm pretty sure my blind rage would have carried my through a physical confrontation with Mike Tyson at that point.

Then we played and all was forgotten. Evanston really turned out for us and the show was great. It's so nice to play for appreciative people, especially ones who you care about and whose opinion matters. We all just had a fantastic time.

After the show, we all did our own things. Being pretty antisocial I decided to nurse some diet cokes and watch the show of Mr. Bitchy von Bitchenstein. He was OK, but laced the show liberally with FXA putdowns. Lame, dude, lame.

Finally, it was time for home, a little cold Chinese food and bed. Rock and Roll.