rubes

Damnit, Jim! I'm a guitar player, not a doctor.

Highway Robbers hit LA this weekend for the first time. Show #1 was at The Derby. Fun, but heroically out of tune for pretty much everybody. Happily the laws of sonic physics jumped in to the rescue and cancelled out the worst of the malfeasance, at least from my perch stage left. Lost my camera.

Show #2 at the LA Equestrian Center was...well, let's put it this way. It's not every day that William Shatner joins you on stage and tells you that he thinks you're great. Fun shaking his hand. Gary Busey, Jimmy Kimmel, Scott Hamilton, Rick Dees in the audience for Shatner's annual fundraiser auction thing. To add one more on the pile of Highway Robbers roadtrip-inspired inside jokes, "busey" is now an adjective. Don't ask me why.

At The Derby

Print out the flyer and get $5 off the cover. Joining us on keyboards will be the fabulous Tim Drury, who has toured with The Eagles, Don Henley, Bryan Adams, Melissa Etheridge, Stevie Nicks, and currently with Whitesnake. Do join us.

Good boy!

Chachi,

my relatively new canine roommate and latest addition to the Palais d'Avocado menagerie, is a fine fellow. He doesn't say much, and though I don't belong to him I like taking him for walks when I'm able.

Last night, late, I was out and about with The Leashed One. We came upon a discarded order of McDonalds fries, entirely intact in the fry box thing, lying on the sidewalk. I fully expected Chachi to gobble them right up, as a thousand other dogs would, as he did with a similarly abandoned hash brown down the block mere minutes before. Potato, potahtoe.

After giving them a good sniff and a funny uniquely canine I-shalll-not-eat-your-discarded-corporate-potatoes kind of look, he pissed all over them instead. Made my day. Take that, Krock.

Pain In The Eye

Remember way back in January we dubbed our SoCal mini-tour the Crotchety Old Man Tour?

Well, I officially dub our latest LA outing, an even mini-er tour, the Big Fat Pain In The Eye Tour. Not really a 'tour' of course. More of an excuse to get the SF rhythm section on a plane for one fun Monday night gig in Los Feliz on lots of borrowed gear. Nice place, Tangier. And all in all a very fun evening. I hope they see fit to have us back, especially since it's 2 blocks from my new digs.

But poor Russel, man among men, suffering almost immediately off the plane from ongoing Lasik surgery malfeasance (malpractice perhaps? One can never really tell, but something about it surely stinks out loud). Stitches on his eyeball shredding the inside of his eyelid all day Sunday after his tempo contact protecto-lens thing imploded with nary a word of warning. The only thing worse than an unhappy suddenly-blind bass player is, well, having stitches on one's friggin' eyeball in the first place. I'd sooner be shaved bald with a cheese grater.

Kimee, to the rescue, has an opthomologist friend who fixed him up right quick. But only after he charged his way through one of the best rehearsals we've ever had, all the while being the lovely funny Okie that he is. Were it me, I'd be going crazier than a cat in a dryer full of rocks. Stitches on eyeballs, I ask you. Wronger than the wrongest wrong thing.

But then a huge special thanks to Pauly for flying down from SF just to see us this evening. You always put a smile on everyone's face. Just what Russ needed I reckon. Thanks; I covet your car...

Rockin' Los F'Liz