The Wannamaker Building, downtown Philadelphia

Philly sucks. :(

Green Room, Spokane Opera House

Me, Ann, Howard

Redmund, OR

Clearly, the Alaskan Air guy and the Hawaiian Air girl are not on speaking terms.

Downtown Pprtland, OR

Portland is groovy, albeit overrun with bums, hobos, and beggars, like every other 'hip' place in the northwest.

Things I saw in California

Highways, big skies, clouds and mountains, of course...but also....

An IHOP with free valet parking....

The LaBrea Tar Pits, complete with faux mammals struggling in the tar....awesome!

Compton, which Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre and all the bad west coast rappers be singing about....

The famous Watts Towers, which are WAY smaller than I'd been led to believe. There's even some movie where the villain clambered to the top of them and fought with the hero until he fell to his death hundreds and hundreds of....er....inches below.

The First American Bank at the corner of Laurel Canyon Blvd. and Archwood St.  This was the scene of the infamous 1997 North Hollywood Shootout. The reddish pic is a simulation showing the gunmen emerging from these very doors.

When you have no hotel and hours to kill, you can see a lot of cool stuff.

Rest in Peace, Great

Four Points Sheraton, Rancho Cucamonga: if you can't decide...

...whether you'd like to perish from carbon monoxide poisoning or electromagnetic-radiation-induced unchecked tumor growth, then this is hotel for you!

Forgot to mention, leaving South Carolina...

...followed Dan Rather onto the plane at GSP. This would be his ass end. Inspiring, eh?

Rancho Cucamonga, CA

We land at LAX, drive to the Inland Empire and exact revenge for our travel woes by hitting the local Wabi-Sabi, which is like Benihana, only called Wabi-Sabi. Duh.

Sunrise over Dulles en route to LA

There's nothing that makes Dulles seem nicer than an almost total lack of consciousness.

Follicle control initiated

Time to go to SupahBahbah!



My surly, gay, bald, Asian superbarber. This is the only time I've ever seen him smile. Otherwise he looks like a moving mug shot. He grudgingly relinquished the information that his name is Dee.



Smooth operator!

With hours to kill and Laurel to drive through...

Thought I'd catch up on some old sites:


The lovely Laurel Square apartment at the top of Claxton drive on Contee Rd. Where we kicked out Mom's old roommate Gina and squirted out Kat. Well, one of us did, anyway.


The townhouse. I think Jame still wishes he lived there...


Good ol' Harrison, where fun times, Halloween parades, and childhood trauma occurred.


Eisenhower: it scared me when I went as a kid and I don't think Kate liked it any better.


What was "Delaney's Irish Pizza Pub", and then became just "The Irish Pizza Pub" after Old Man Delaney got caught nailing his daughter's underage teen friends, has now become the Surf-n-Suds laundrymat. Jo's first live stage show, albeit shared with a passle of drunken dwarves.


The Old Homestead. Still looking good, and not that different. The picture I tried to take of the back blurred, but your deck is still standing in its original form, Pops. You definitely build to last. I miss the tree in the front yard, though. :(

Thus ends the tour, love you guys!

Baltimore's Inner Harbor makes ya go, 'Huh?'

The boats, the grand hotels, Camden Yards, the raised walkways, the....Weird Wood Guy Carrying a Leaf...? What the--? Is that a tobacco leaf? Is that man made of cancer? Well, now I don't feel Inner Harbor-y at all!

OK, clearly that last post was a mistake...

...and was an email I mistakenly cc'd to the blog. He is an interesting character, though. I only thank God that I wasn't linking to some video of lesbian clowns artificially inseminating schnauzers or something. Which --even though I have never thought of that concept before this second-- I am sure I could locate a video of within a few short googly minutes. Ah, the internet.

As repayment, allow me to put up pictures of us next to Laura Bush signing things at this big right-wing business thing the other day in Bakersfield.  There's Laura next to us and there are the three lines for people to get signatures: the one on the left was for Ronnie Milsap, the blind country music star, the one in the middle was for us, and the one on the right was for Laura Bush. Apparently marrying a dipshit horse's ass carries real weight with this community. I did not get a picture of Ronnie Milsap. He's blind and I felt funny sneaking up to him and snapping a pic: what if he had heard me with his super-blind-guy hearing and turned on me at the last second and demanded to know what I'm doing? And what if I told him and he got angry and said, "What's a picture?!" How would I explain that to him? There's no way in the world I could explain that to him. So, screw it. 

Interestingly, although Ronnie had no one in his line, one of his handlers just kept handing him cds to sign so I'm not sure he felt the humiliation as keenly as we did.  I think he may have thought there WAS a big line for him. Hmm.

I think I was telling you guys

about this weird 'musician' with all the strange bands from philly. Seriously worth watching the three parts of it. I can't tell if he's in on his own joke.

If it wasn't you guys I was telling...er....oops.

-T-

Why I couldn't answer the phone

Kat's car is dying. Today has been car shopping day. When you called she was just aggreeing to buy a new 2010 Nissan Versa with power nothing, no radio, just a/c and all new. This is an identical one. Hers will come tomorrow: she wanted a manual trans, which is a great buyers point, by the way. Love ya!

Just hanging out in Bakersfield

...with Goldie Hawn, seen here very sweetly and politely chastising a photographer for taking pictures of her while she's eating - she was not down with that at all, I guess the tabloids make you wary of awkward pictures. Also talking to Goldie, Jane Seymour, of Bond Girl and Dr. Quinn and cheap heart-shaped jewelry fame.  Also, there's Laura Bush joining us in signing things afterward.  The picture is blurry, yes, but oddly enough, Laura herself is somewhat blurry.

Onstage, Bakersfield, CA

...
A video showing us doing a quick sound check in front of 9000 people. Big name event, more to come.

The Hotel Rosedale, Bakersfield, CA

...
I won the room lottery this time, as this video tour shows.

4 hours down I-5

...
A boring video. Orchards to the left, grassy tectonic moguls to the right: the endless fruited plain of central California. Busy day tomorrow.

In the parking lot next door...

...to the lovely Renaissance Sport Club, is this wild Art Car. Just somebody's car that they drive to work. Excellent.

Drivin' across the Bay Bridge to Oakland

...
On our way to Walnut Creek. It's a movie, Mom!

All seats full to San Francisco

As usual. Ugh. 5.5 hours of bllllaaaaahhhhh......

Ghosts of New York

New York is inhabited by ghosts; even the Empire State Building looks like an ephemeral spirit in the fog and the light. All over the city, people have chained bicycles painted completely white...tires, spokes, handlebars, everything... Ghost Bikes, they call them. Each is inscribed with the name and story of the biker who was killed on his bike at that location. There's a lot of them, which is somewhat sobering. None of my pictures of them came out.

The back of Times Square

Room 2029, the Marriott Marquis. You guys stayed in the front when you came with the kids years ago. Love ya!

Only the Finer Hotels...

...come with a tastefully and appropriately decorated 'Raping Lounge'. Clearly, this is one fine hotel.

Room 917 of the Newport News Omni...

...with its spectacular wooded view of I-64 east. Dreamy...just dreamy...

Outside the Andrew Mellon Auditorium on Constitution Ave.

Two show night. The busy season (such as it is) is beginning....