San ClementeDiego

San Diego/San Clemente

Quotes:

“Ropey Jism and Fonda Peter starring in Cocoon 3” – Mostly Chuck

“At least we care about the Pelicans.” – Chuck (see below)

“San Clemente is a pretty clean city. I haven’t seen any turds. I give it an A.” Lisa

5 minutes later…

“Oh… well… A minus.”

“Kitty, kitty, kitty.”  The lead singer of the band after us singing into the mic during soundcheck.

Fauna:

Lizard, Western Grebe, (sweet fucking bird) Surfers,

Brown Pelicans – The Pelicans were all over the place and continuously diving into the ocean. You could just sit and watch them for well, several minutes. Anyway, I was told a fact about Pelicans once, and it was that old Pelicans most
common cause of death is starvation. After a lifetime of hurling themselves into the ocean after fish their eyes eventually form cataracts. Can’t see the fish can’t catch the fish. I’ve never looked it up to confirm it because if it’s wrong I don’t want to be right. Everyone in the van expressed appropriate dismay at this harsh way to expire when Chuck said, “Well it’s better than the way we die. Pants full of shit in a strange bed, no one giving a damn about us. At least we care about the Pelicans.” Chipper fellow that Chuck.

A truly decent fellow and friend of Joe’s (we try not to hold it against him) helped us out with a hotel in San Clemente which is pretty much at the halfway point between L.A. and San Diego. Since we drove there after Ventura we actually had pretty much a whole day to our own devices in this cute little beach town. I found out there was a four mile beach trail, so as is my wont I got up, grabbed my binoculars and went walking. It ran right along a series of public beaches from south to north Clemente. Wasn’t a lot of non-human fauna but I had the chance to learn first hand that surfers are in actual fact sexy motherfuckers. The men walking out of the surf made Steve Austin look like Murderface, all glisteningly drippy in their tight wetsuits. The women, all badass in their bikinis made that surfer girl who got her arm bit off by a shark look like a regular two-armed girl.

After walking for hours I headed up into the town proper and it really is a nice little place. It’s not super touristy and it feels like people might actually live there. I stopped at a wine bar and paid way too much for a glass of wine and a cheese plate. I’ll admit it, I was happy. Shortly afterward I ran into Lisa and she was super excited because she had gone swimming in the Pacific and had her ass kicked by the waves. She was thrilled and it was a pleasure to see.

Lisa then told a story that became the theme for the day. When she got back to the hotel and was removing her suit a bunch of sand fell out, which of course is perfectly natural. However what is not typical is that one of the pieces of sand actually skittered away of its own volition upon hitting the ground. She screamed of course but made her mistake in telling Chuck about it, who suggested that maybe it hadn’t fallen out of her suit but perhaps her nethers. She didn’t find this to be a particularly appealing thought, which then led to much thoughtful discussion at dinner and forced her to make me swear that I would not print that

our best guess as to the identity of the life form was ginch maggot or cooch critter.

Hearing about the fun they had in the ocean I ran down and I jumped into the ocean before we had to leave. I squealed like a little girl. The water felt great, the waves would just tumble you end over end. There was a bald tattooed guy about 50 yards away who yelled over to me, “Having fun?” I yelled back, “Time of my life!” I was exhausted in 15 minutes. So fun.

We were playing a place called the Ruby Room and after our day we were tanned, rested and ready*. (actually we were sunburned, cheerfully exhausted and reticent) I don’t really feel I got a sense of San Diego. I didn’t see Balboa Park (although after listening to the Springsteen song it might be too sad) or the downtown. We were in a nice, fairly non-descript part of town. The club was all dark and metal vibe-y (the night before there had been a package tour featuring Swedish, Norwegian, and Canadian Black Metal bands – which means I licked a black metal mic) but the owners came from Dayton and Columbus respectively and seemed to enjoy getting to talk with fellow mid-westerners. I don’t know, we had our awesome group of hardcore fans, and a bunch of people who kind of wandered away as we played. I thought we played a good set so there’s only so much you can do I guess. No complaints. We’ve been really lucky with the bands we’ve opened up for. Tonight we had a band called Kinetic Circus. Here’s a link so you can enjoy them too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tTrNsgUnkw

Tomorrow is L.A.

*Because San Clemente is the birthplace of the original Tricky Dick Richard Nixon.