Days off are bad news. After doing laundry yesterday, Mike told us about the games of basement baseball he and his roommates play. The setup was fairly organized, but we settled for a scoreless homerun derby. After an unsuccessful at-bat, Charles came out of nowhere and tackled me. Don't think I broke a rib or anything, but it does hurt to laugh now.

In the evening, we ventured into town once again (fed this time). We walked down the Broadway strip. Boot and hat stores as far as the eye can see, and live music was coming out of every bar. There were a lot of homeless folks about as well—there were official-looking pamphlets and signs out asking people not to give money to panhandlers. There was one guy selling some newspapers for a buck, not dissimilar to the Spare Change papers they sell up in Boston. Some group of people behind us started making fun of him for doing so. Assholes have probably never gone hungry a day in their lives.

Anyway, we first settled on hitting up a place called Legends. There were record sleeves checkering the walls (not exclusively country, either; there were village people records and even a Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends record). Had a Dos Perros ale, which was very tasty. Had a round of whiskeys thereafter (good old Tennessee JD). Someone named Matt Mason was playing. Not particularly into country music, but he was really good. None of this pop pap in disguise.

Ventured to The Wheel next. Don't know who was playing and it's been tough to find this info online (if someone has it, please let me know), but after finding out we were from Boston the dude asked Jen to come up and play guitar on a song. Another highlight: in mid-song, they were soliciting requests for TV theme songs. Neither could the Simpsons nor Full House stump them. Also, I have to say this is the first time some promo people approached us with free chewing tobacco. Gross.

Tommy's been going on about Jack in the Box for some time on the tour, so we hit that up. It was just as tasty as he was saying, even if it caused some immediate self-loathing. Back at HQ, Jen and Charles engaged in a jalapeño eating contest. Not sure who won, if anyone wins in that situation. This may have been where it all went downhill.

For starters, Jen lost her contact lens somewhere in her eye and spent a good dramatic twenty minutes trying to fish it out. We're still not sure if it's still there or not (we're guessing not). Her eye was stinging pretty bad. As for the rest of us, we thought a round of midnight basement baseball was in order. Charles was at-bat first, and Tommy got a pitch in. That's when the magic question came out of Charles' mouth: "Am I really bleeding all over the carpet?" The tell-tale trail of red from the strike zone to his foot answered with a yes. He cut his foot pretty deep and nobody's really sure how. The rest of the evening was a mixture of hysterical laughter, cleaning up the stains on the carpet with some Shout, and trying to get the wound cleaned up. Most of this magic was actually caught on video.

Passing through Kentucky now, on the way to Columbus, OH. Everyone's a marvelous wreck at the moment. And it still hurts to laugh.

Henry

Labels: tourdiary