Tacoma

Animals: Nope

Quotes:

“Rumpleseatskin.”

“That shit stain’s the size of a Kennedy half.”

SIARPC: Frosty Books

We were in no hurry to leave the comforts of our host’s bosom. We and the opening band were made hash browns, omelets, and pancakes that were freaking great. Home cooked is the shit. Now the first time we came to Wenatchee we played the Café Mela and there was an antique mall right next door that looked amazing, but was closed. Chuck, who never wants to do anything or go anywhere really wanted to check it out. For once he was right. This place had so much cool stuff it was like a museum. I got a 1938 book called, "Thalassa - A Theory of Genitality” by Sandor Ferenczi, MD for only 5 bucks. Here’s a small sample of the brilliance within.

"These observations have led me to suspect that in normal ejaculation a synergetic harmony of anal and urethral innervations is essential, their presence going unrecognized owing perhaps only to the fact that each innervation normally covers up or masks the other: whereas in ejaculatio praecox the urethral component, in ejaculatio retardata, the anal, is alone in evidence."

Ah, Fruedians are a fussy bunch.

Boom, then we were off. We stopped at a tiny, somewhat down in the mouth looking town called Cle Elum, where apparently some of Northern Exposure was filmed, (the vast majority being filmed one town north) to get gas and lunch, and where I got to pay $14 for a steak salad without the steak that was primarily iceberg lettuce. Sample conversation: ”Superchunk? I Hate Music? What’s that all about?” “Superchunk is the name of the band and I Hate Music is the name of the album.” “Huh. Weird way to sell it.”

The only bit of tourism we indulged in was a quick stop at Snoqualmie Falls. It’s 285 feet tall and it flows into a stunning gorge with high walls and lots of obnoxiously lush northwestern forest. I was told these were the falls used in the opening sequence of Twin Peaks and since it seems like a silly thing to lie about will assume that they were. 

Before we drove to Tacoma we stopped by the house where we were going to stay for two nights. A wonderful friend of the band vacated his house so we could have a nice, free home away from home for our Greater Seattle shows. He had snacks and beer waiting for us. We all had our own space to crash. There was a beautiful back deck where we were surrounded by flowers and a cherry tree with ripe cherries on it. I cannot express just how important the simple act of closing a door onto my own world where none of those fuckers had any need to go.

With bittersweet sorrow we hopped right back into the van to head to Tacoma. Tacoma seems like a working town, with I’m guessing a more industrial past. There was construction everywhere and the art museum (sadly closed) was in the midst of a $15.5 million addition, so it seems some of the Seattle largess might be filtering south. Still, it was a fairly empty downtown we pulled up into. The Swiss, the club we were playing, was a big, kinda sporty place with a super high ceiling and wacky things like enormous metal anthropomorphic grasshoppers hanging from it. I immediately felt anxiety settle into my stomach.

The stage was big, the sound system excellent, the sound guy benign. Two things made it a difficult environment for me. One - there were a lot of backwards baseball hat wearing dudes, as evidenced by the Drakkar Noir - now with Rohypnol! mister in the bathroom, and two -  the bar music was ear-splittingly loud and exclusively of the genre Chuck termed “butt rock.” Now keep in mind we’re all as deaf as organ grinder monkeys and have what I would consider fairly wide-ranging tastes in music, but this was horrible and unrelenting. As always the thing that saved the night was the wonderful people who came to see us. There was one guy who had been trying to see Chuck play since the Ass Pony’s days and was over the moon to be there. It was our smallest crowd of the tour but one of the things that pleases me about the band nowadays is that in the past a small crowd in an ill-fitting venue sometimes defeated us, but we had fun playing and it felt good to make these people so happy.

We got the hell out of Dodge and went back to our lovely borrowed home.

Tomorrow is Seattle.