WEEKEND RECAP

Great to be back on the road. Not much changed, the same guys who have gas still have gas. The same ones who sleep till 2 pm still do that. I think every band on the road has those people in their group. We played a show with Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin brothers in Oklahoma last summer. I walked into the trailer behind the stage to find them after the show and invite them up on the bus to meet ML and have a drink. I found them as they were changing and as I walked in I heard one of them yell "Goddamn man. That's awful!" Then it hit me...the gassy fumes that plague every band on the road because of the one member who can't control his bodily functions indoors. I realized that, while they may be 60 years old and have been all over the world and sold millions of records, they still that token band member that always lets 'em rip without warning. One way or another, whether it's from laughter or stench, it's gonna make your eyes water.

So I have this relative that got me $352.51 in Sharper Image goods for Christmas. I took it all back and turned it into a gift card, but there's nothing in the store I want so I'm trying to sell it on eBay. No luck thus far, but I had someone email in and offer me $280. It's so worth it to me to not have that much Sharper Image shit in my house I might be willing to pay someone $70 to take it off my hands.

I made a red curry pork tenderloin for dinner tonight. I think I was Thai in another lifetime. I made Tom Kha soup to go with it. Both were surprisingly easy. I think my favorite part a about being home for more than two days at a time is getting to shop for groceries and actually use my kitchen. I need to go buy a cannister of propane and get my grill up and running. It's been bone dry for about 2 months.

I bought David Gray's Greatest Hits today. He's the little british guy everyone got to know when they heard "Babylon" a few years ago. A great mellow record. Speaking of mellow, I also got Chet Baker's "Best Of." Chet was a damn good trumpet player who dies at 59 after a long battle with bad drugs. I listen to that record on planes all the time, listen to his version of "My Funny Valentine."

Bush gave his state of the union tonight. I didn't listen, but I'm sure he told me that our soldiers were keeping everyone in the middle east safe, that mortgage lenders were in the wrong for what they did to borrowers and that his last year will be prosperous. Translation: Your stocks are in the shitter, we're stuck in a country we can't get out of without having egg on our face and I have absolutely no hope of things turning around for the next year. That about sum it up? Anyone?

If you ever get a chance to go to the Imperial Palace Casino in Biloxi they have a good buffet. They gave ML the penthouse, it was very modern with dark wood furniture and a bar. I used the crapper in it. It was like any other crapper in any other hotel. Nothing special there. Saturday we played Cypress Gardens. Avoid playing a theme park if you can help it. There's really no good that can come of it.

As my dear friend Christian Seger once said, "I belong in an arena."