Crazy Weekend

This weekend was pretty wacky. As a self-acknowledged loner/loser, it was way busier than I’m used to. It was in no small part to and with no shortage of company by Jester. I had only really planned on a having an early evening gig on Saturday with Retro Rocket in Lodi (yay!) and other than that I thought it would be a relatively uneventful weekend. It was decidedly not uneventful.

Friday at work was pretty slow and I was hoping to leave early, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do. I had baseball tickets for the SF Giants game, but I really wanted to sell them. I posted them on Craigslist, but by 3pm they still hadn’t sold. Something in my mind put Chinese food in my head and I had recently watched a local SF PBS TV show called Check Please, Bay Area which reviews local restaurants which featured a Northern Chinese restaurant in Berkeley called Da Lian. It was given great reviews and was a place I wanted to try. Jester had band practice with another band in Berkeley that night and when I finally sold my baseball tickets at about 3:30pm, I asked him if he had time for dinner at Da Lian before his rehearsal. He agreed but said he would need to eat by 5pm, giving me only about an hour and a half to get to Berkeley. I had to take the dogs home after work, drive through the city, and cross the bay bridge which would no doubt be silly with traffic on Friday afternoon. An hour an a half was really cutting it close. Jester suggested I take BART (SF Bay Area’s version of a subway) which actually made good sense. I hustled the mutts home and hopped on BART, but I missed the train that would get me there by 5:12pm and I wouldn’t get there until 5:24pm. Jester wasn’t really phased by the set back in time so I wasn’t too worried.

I had dinner with Jester and another mutual friend. We had Tea Smoked Duck, House Special Spicy Fried Calamari, and Mongolian Beef. I wasn’t really wowed by any of it. I was let down by the great reviews. I have had better Chinese food and was surprised by the praises sung on the TV show. (WARNING: JOKE STEREOTYPE AHEAD) The truth is in San Francisco you are run off the road by an Asian driver at least once a week and when that happens your car has a 75% chance of crashing into a good Chinese restaurant. That’s how plentiful good Chinese restaurants are here. After dinner I went to watch Jester’s band rehearse and then took the train home.

Saturday’s plans changed drastically at the very end of the week. At the last minute Jester booked our other band, Total Eclipse, another gig on Saturday in SF after our gig in Lodi (1:30 min drive). Saturday was a whirlwind of driving and playing music. For those of you unfamiliar with Lodi, CA…well…let’s just say…you probably want it to stay that way. It’s a one of the larger shithole towns in California’s Central Valley between Sacramento and LA. To sum up the Central Valley….The Napa Valley is to grapes and wine what the Central Valley is to cows and meth. Lodi is only famous for being the subject of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song…..Stuck In Lodi Again…aptly named.

I left the house about 11:30am to drop the dogs off at Jester’s so they could have the company of his dogs while we were gigging and to convoy with Jester to the Lodi gig. By the time we go there I was obviously unhappy to be in Lodi, because…well, its Lodi, but I was also stressed about the day’s schedule. This gig in Lodi was to end at 8pm and we had to start playing in SF at 10pm at the Grant & Green Bar in North Beach. With break down time in Lodi, the hell that is parking in North Beach, and set up time at the bar, we were in severe danger of not pulling this nightmare schedule off cleanly. To top it off, the wedding in Lodi was a freebee for a friend of the band and not getting paid is an amazing way to make you unmotivated to play gigs. The start of this day was not fun.

At the wedding there were tons of people missing teeth, lots of guys who would rather do anything but dance, and lots of women that looked like they could and would kick our asses at any moment. We only played a few songs and felt mostly unneeded for the event. They probably would have had more fun if they got a DJ rather than have our band play songs they didn’t really care to dance too… because A) We don’t play rap, B) we don’t play disco, and C) we don’t play the Chicken Dance. The first good thing of the day happened when we were able to get out of there by the time we were hoping, though we were still unsure what we were going to have to face in the way of traffic and city parking.

When we got to the city, everything fell together surprisingly well. We both had good parking karma and were able to get set up with no problems to start playing the bar gig right on time. The day finally got good. The crowd at the bar was fantastic. They danced and cheered for every song. It’s really fun for us when everyone is enjoying it. We sounded great and had no major flubs. During Don’t Stop Believing, Jester was able to coax the entire crowd into lighting up all their cell phones and waving them at us. It was awesome. It felt like we were playing to a huge stadium. I think I actually channeled Jonathan Cain (even though he’s not dead) through my keyboard during that song. People came up and told us how great we were and we did pretty well in tips. It was a great way to end up what started out as a very Lodi day.

Sunday I woke up and had to clean for my open house, then I headed back up to Jester’s (three days in a row, oof) to get my dogs which spent the night at his place. When I got there, it was almost time for Jester’s appearance on Hilly’s Blog Talk Radio show. Now for those of you who are reading blogs and haven’t yet discovered Blog Talk Radio….dude…catch up with the rest of us. It’s a blast. Bloggers host their own talk shows on BTR and during the on air chat there is usually a lively online chat room running at the same time. Jester hosts his own show on Wednesday nights, but Sunday is a big day for BTR. Among some of the bloggers I know (some well, some not as well) there is a string of shows that happens on Sunday afternoon/evenings. Karl, Hilly, Mr. Fab, Turnbaby have consecutive shows on Sunday and all of them are great hosts and have really fun shows.

I listened on UMB’s computer in one room of Jester’s house while he was on another computer in different room calling into Hilly’s show as a special guest. Unfortunately we missed Karl’s show, but I hope to catch it in the future. Hilly’s was a great show…. after that many of Hilly’s listeners including Jester and I moved on to Mr. Fab’s show. Jester took it upon himself to appear on air for as many BTR shows as possible that day. During his appearance on Mr. Fab’s show, Jester pranked Irrelephant’s show live while still on air with Fab. From Fab’s show we all moved onto Turnbaby’s show. At the end of her show, Jester decided we were all having so much fun that we should pick a random BTR show where the host would have no idea who we were and perform what I coined as and what will be forever known as the “Jester Roll”. He gave us all a link to the Supersize show and we followed him. He called in and worked the host while the rest of us bombarded his chat room with discussions of boobs and bacon. The host took it very well and had fun with the Jester Roll as it was happening to him, despite some unfriendly listeners in the chat room. After that it was dinner at Applebee’s and home to end the weekend.

I don’t know if if officially makes me a blogging geek that I had a blast spending a whole day listening to BTR, but whatever. I guess now I’m a self-acknowledged loser/loner/geek.