ThouShaltNot Spring 2000 Tour Journal

3/9, 5:45PM

After a slightly late start, we embarked with tales of hardcore badger porn. The van is sluggish under the weight and we can't see out the rear window at all. Sarah is our first driver. Carbomb the stuffed cat rests peacefully on the dashboard. The straps holding the carrier on top of the car flap, annoying us. All is well.

3/9, 9:45PM
Stopped at Sarah's house in Columbus, where we gathered many pastries and taped down those irritating carrier straps. We left from there heading toward Cincinnati, to a taped reading of "The Raft", by Stephen King. Wow, was that ever a morale booster! Megan took over for Sarah behind the wheel, and Carbomb fell under the seat somewhere, unfortunately. Now, as we cruise down interstate 71 to the sounds of cellos covering the Beatles, we eagerly await the food and sleep to be found in Louisville, Kentucky.

3/10, 1:45AM
Finally, LOUISVILLE!!! After a slight detour to Lexington, we arrived at Megan's at 1:00AM, where we feasted upon the various delicacies her family so wonderfully prepared for us. The "Check Engine" light came on for no apparent reason, which soon was joined by a chorus of beeps emanating from the nether regions of the dashboard. The missing evolutionary link between kangaroos and turkeys was found to be the west coast, surprisingly enough. Go figure. The plans are laid for the journey of the morrow, and soon we shall retire for a precious few hours of slumber.

3/10, 9:30AM
After showers and breakfast, we pack up the van and prepare to move out for day two on the road. The goal for today is to find a hostel at a decent halfway point between Louisville and El Paso. More likely now is the possibility of crashing somewhere ultra cheap in Texarkana. Mmm... luscious Texarkana.

3/10, 11:00AM
TENNESSEE! It is now 11, as we gain an hour across the time zone border. The speed limit is up to 70MPH now, so we might actually get to Texarkana before midnight. We are all growing a bit restless, and Carbomb is horny as hell. Now the word "Carbomb" is a listed as a proper noun in our online dictionary... Carbomb is pleased that he no longer comes up with the spell check. Looks like rain up ahead, and Aaron really has to pee. Coincidence? Not likely. Aaron is most likely a psychic weather gauge. More on that later... You can trust the American people.

3/10, 12:30PM
We just had our first lunch on the road, in the parking lot of a shopping mall of all places. Mall security drove past about ten times... they were coveting our tofu sandwiches. Now we're about 10 miles past Nashville, three hours until Memphis. The pickles have been opened! The word of the day is: proegophagia. Stomachs full and badgers angry, we press on toward Memphis.

3/10, 7:53PM
We have abandoned the guys at the last gas station and have now "officially" taken over. We, the liberated women of this group, have had it with all this testosterone in the car. Not only does it smell bad, but Alex keeps letting his male pheromones get into the animal crackers. Carbomb has calmed down without the guys and has stopped attempting to HUMP peoples arms. Anyway, we are about 30 miles from Texarkana and are currently listening to classical music at this point. It is now storming outside, but back here in the "womb"* (notice all the quotes, Alex hates them, we found them on odd signs throughout the day) it is warm, cozy, and full of delicious CARPET animal crackers. * Note: the backseat will henceforth be called the "womb" and must be exited head first.*

3/11, 12:45AM
Ate, watched movie, went over details for the upcoming El Paso gig. Now we sleep for one thousand years... In a VERY nasty dirty Knights Inn (Night Sin?), but as they think we're only one person, the price cannot be complained about. We made Kool-Aid. Yum.

3/11, 10:00AM
After a good night's sleep, we ate breakfast and loaded the van. Toastee O's never tasted so good. Now we prepare for the eight-hour journey to Odessa, Texas. One more night and we're in El Paso!

3/11, 3:20PM
It's been a good day on the road so far. We just stopped at a pretty little rest stop for lunch, which was a nice break. It's a bit cooler than we'd expected for Texas, and quite a bit windier, but it's all blue skies and beautiful country. A fellow traveler had some gorgeous horses that he'd stopped to exercise, which really added to the Texan atmosphere of our windy little sup. We should get to Odessa in about four hours, where we'll get a hotel room, some hookers, and maybe a few carnies for fun. Maybe they'll have a hot tub...

3/11, 9:00PM
We're in Odessa, Texas tonight. The Motel Six here is WAY cleaner than Knight's Inn was. We had a delicious dinner of our usual sandwiches, pickles, and wayward prostitutes. The movie last night was "Analyze This", a cute little gangster-comedy with Robert Deniro and Billy Crystal. Four thumbs up from ThouShaltNot. Tonight the movie is "Coneheads". The drive down was quite nice, and Carbomb danced for us with a stunning grace. The itinerary has been changed a bit, as we are now making a more straight line from Missoula to Chicago. Hopefully the weather will favor our trip tomorrow... it's a short hop from here to El Paso, only about four hours. There we will play the first show of the tour... woohoo! Tonight we'll go over a few things for tomorrow and chill out.

3/12, 10:34AM
Ahhh, the joys of sleeping in. We're waking up and are going to grab some lunch and head out around noon en route to El Paso, home of the lowest metropolitan depression rate of any city in America. Yay for lithium in the tap water. Our first gig should go well. If it doesn't, we shall obliterate Texas in its entirety, so that word of our letting them down is never communicated, leaving our reputation intact. Megan has really got to control her addiction to paying male prostitutes money for menial tasks, such as bringing her a newspaper, or rotating the tires on a stranger's car. We're all hoping for a cure soon.

3/12, 3:30PM
We're back on the go after a quick lunch by the roadside. The country out here is very arid and mountainous, and our lunch stop was beautiful, although we were attacked by man-eating yucca. We're coming into some real mountains now... very pretty indeed. We've decided to take a detour after Phoenix and stop by the Grand Canyon, since we will pass by quite closely. Gas stations around here are few and far between, and rather sketchy when you happen across them. For every inhabited building we see, there are a score of dilapidated, deserted shells. We just crossed into the Mountain time zone, gaining yet another hour. We can't wait until El Paso, where we can make some "El Paso Kool-Aid"... happy Kool-Aid.

3/12, 11:10PM
Damn we're cool. We just finished our show in El Paso at the scene's sole goth club, Club Dedo, owned by very nice men who gave us all free pineapple pizza and breadsticks. Mike (one of the owners) told us that this used to be a gay club and we were shocked because it is about as goth as it can be; stone walls, candlesticks, morbid paintings, black walls and little purple Christmas lights in the wee alcove back here where we are selling the CDs. We've already sold a few cds and there were actually people dancing during the set. Despite the wobbly stage, nothing fell over and none of us fell through the thin boards. Everybody looked good, and a very nice lady whose name will be given at a later time when I figure out what it is has volunteered her place down the street for the night if we'll give her a ride home, which is great because the DJ who was supposed to put us up for the night pulled a no-show (We are learning recently that DJs and booking agents we do not know personally are not as reliable as you would think). Foo likes girls. Pray that we make at least some money off this gig....

3/13, 10:30AM
Barbara is the bomb! We stayed here at her Dad's house last night in El Paso. Last night was awesome. Although there was a very small turnout (the door didn't break even), the few people there really dug our set, and we played very well. Afterwards we came back here, and Barbara and here sister fixed a wonderful meal of fettuccini alfredo and salad, and the club owner and a few of the die-hard scene members came over for food and fun. It was nice to chat with everyone and get a feel for the scene here... everyone seems very cool. The scene here seems to be ruled by similar politics to most goth scenes, and that is unfortunate, but as usual everyone was extremely friendly and we stayed up chatting with them until 4 in the morning. The club owner, Mike, was really cool, and apparently he works for a sound company so he actually knew what he was doing, making the show a hundred times easier for us. It's too bad that the turnout was so small and that his policy didn't allow us to make any cash. Oh, well. We had a great time, played a strong set and made some really cool new friends. Word of the day: Stylokleptomania.

3/13, 8:45PM
Albuquerque SUCKS!!! We got here and our contact hadn't even set up a show. That was nice... so we fumbled around for a couple of hours, went to Wendy's, and now we're on the road to Phoenix. Actually, we're trying to get out of this God-forsaken city and get onto I-40 west. And now we're lost. Megan hates this town. Actually, that seems to be the consensus; we'll be sending a ticked-off (but not nasty, because we're nice people) e-mail to the contact who screwed us over. Alex's voice is almost gone and we keep trying to shut him up but he keeps spouting silliness in his new, husky, Barry White-esque voice. We'll be in a motel in God-knows-where soon enough. We're looking forward to our lesbian in Phoenix tomorrow. We sadly couldn't get a hold of Tommy T, so we now leave this forsaken pit of depravity. Bluagh.

3/14, 12:00AM
Well, we're at a Day's Inn in Gallup, New Mexico tonight. We made a little more progress toward Phoenix, so tomorrow we should only have about four and a half hours to drive tomorrow. Everybody is looking forward to the Phoenix gig, we just hope that there will be a good turnout. For now, we watch Three Amigos and relax though. Glorf.

3/14, 10:00AM
Yay for free juice and donuts! We raided the continental breakfast, and now we shower and pack up for our 11AM checkout. It's just a short hop to Phoenix. Alex's voice is still not much better. We're considering voodoo to return it to its full splendor. Now if we could only find some roosters and a scythe....

3/14, 3:55PM
So we're cruising down highway 17, south to Phoenix. We just got back on the road because we had to pull over; the car decided to overheat. Thank goodness Megan and Foo noticed or we would have been in trouble. We're pretty sure the problem is the transmission, because it's been kicking and neglecting to shift properly for a couple days now. We're going to try to make it the 70 miles or so to Phoenix, but we may end up stopping at an earlier exit if things get bad. Right now we're driving with the heater on and the windows down, but we're maintaining a speed of about 75, which is the speed limit, and that's pretty darn promising. In other news, lunch at a little picnic area was fun, and we've decided that we like Arizona because the climate is nice but there are still big trees and snow (Sarah's theory is that Arizona has "special" snow that has a freezing point above 30 degrees). There are more bushes, trees and mountains here, as well as depressing Indian reservations whose brightly-colored signs line the highway from exit to exit. Megan was impressed by the cement dinosaurs ranging in color from hot pink to baby blue. Alex's throat is still in pretty bad shape but he's been sucking down lozenges like there's no tomorrow, and Sarah pinched a nerve while loading the car and is barely able to stand up straight, but despite these shitty events morale is still fairly good. We're all looking forward to tonight's show, because the money should make up for our losses recently in expensive gas. The club we're playing normally has its goth night on Tuesdays, so we'll be set if we can just get to Phoenix. Plus, they promised us food, lodging, and a lesbian. Does it get better than that?

3/15, 12:17AM
Just finished our show here in Phoenix... not bad. We played very well, but the crowd didn't seem to be into dancing all that much. They all applauded quite a bit between songs, and they're buying CDs... hmm. For now we chill out at our merch table and dance a bit. Tomorrow we have to get the van into the shop ASAP, because it's gotten so bad that it overheats constantly, and we no longer have reverse. You never realize how useful reverse is until you no longer have it. We had to get out and push the van at one point... eck. Where the hell's our lesbian, anyway?

3/16, 3:35AM
After about an hour of packing and repacking we finally managed to squeeze everything back into the van. Five minutes later, while commenting on how the van was running decently, it died in the middle of the road. Ironically, it stopped only one and a half miles away from the apartment complex at which we were crashing for the night. So, after coasting to the side of the road, our host, Jeff, took Alex to the gas station where he called a tow truck. Fifteen minutes later, still in reasonable spirits, we were in the apartment complex pushing the van into a parking place. Now exhausted and discussing the "Plan" for tomorrow we are heading to bed. The "Plan" so to speak is to call the Dodge dealership around 6AM, a few hours from now, and tow the van to the dealership. There, hopefully, it can be fixed ASAP, which is necessary due to the fact that we have a 27 hour drive to Portland where we MUST be by Friday. So, our idea about stopping at the Grand Canyon and taking a slow, scenic drive has been cut. Although things look a bit down and we are exhausted from the driving, concert, and detours, the people and overall journey of today has been well worth the efforts. For now, we can sleep for a few hours before the early rise and maybe later while the van is being fixed. So goodnight all, sleep well. We need it.

3/15, 11PM
This morning Alex called the towing people and had the van taken in to the Dodge dealership, where it was given a new transmission altogether. It cost more than I would care to say, but with a working transmission, we were ready to go. It was after driving back from the dealership that we discovered that despite having allegedly been fixed, the transmission would still not maneuver into reverse. We'll get that fixed in Seattle. Blah. Sarah drove the glorious highway into the Heart of Darkness, or at least Death Valley, whose darkness penetrated even the gasoline prices - $2.15 per gallon. After paying the incredibly skeevy attendants, we gang banged them with lead pipes. There was super cute kitty at the gas station, showing that California is not completely worthless. Having driven now away from the cat, we expect not to see anything more of worth whatsoever until we breach the threshold into Oregon.

3/16, 1AM
OK, so thanks to Megan's incredible driving skills we are nearing LA. Yes, the city that you can get raped and robbed in all at the same time. The exits here suck hard core, they mysteriously end or merge without warning. The outlines of the mountains appear beautiful in the misty darkness, however, with the unplanned detours and terrifying curvy back roads, we feel that the view would be best seen during the day, when the blinding lights of cars in the oncoming lanes would not interfere. After only three detours and with the aid of the quick navigational skills of Alex and Sarah we have managed through the crazy drivers and exits of the pre-LA suburbs. We have found our way back onto the freeway after being sidetracked into the city - a more difficult task than one might assume (why are there three Mountain Avenues?). Alex has hit his sixth wind and has now taken over, intending to drive for most of the six hours to Palo Alto. The band has collectively decided to drive all night, even though it is already 3 AM eastern time, in attempts to make it to J's house near San Francisco. Unless Alex runs out of adrenaline soon, I think it is a safe bet that we will make it. So, with KMFDM blasting to keep the energy level high we are on the road again. Interesting to note that at the Shell gas station , where the gas prices are lower than they were in Death Valley, thankfully, apparently several teenagers (understandably peeved at the astronomical gas prices) stole the keys to the station, so the poor foreign clerk was a bit jittery. With a quick pit stop and a pick up of some more "jew-wick-ey" not to mention some munchies or, for Sarah, the ever-tasty orange Flintstone push-up pop, we were outta there. Aaron is resting in an attempt to avoid sleep deprivation and the sickness that will follow while the rest of us take turns at the wheel. Forward, Ho!

3/16, 7:15AM (Pacific Time)
Wow, California. It's gorgeous here. Lots of rolling, green hills, a brilliantly colored sunrise, and free-range pandas. After Alex drove through the smog-enshrouded freeway extending north of Los Angeles, Sarah braved the massive hills near Salinas and now Megan is courageously attempting the streets of Palo Alto. We need to call J soon, unless we want to show up at his door completely unexpected, but we fear that he is going to work this morning and we need to contact him before then! Foo sleeps like a wee muskrat, while the rest of us find stupid things to be incredibly funny. Ahh, sleep dep. It is our friend. Weeeeeee!!!!! There are not enough goats in California, but there is a lady who says "Pay, pump, and go." Hm. Go figure.

3/16, 9:30PM
We've been chillin' at J's house all day, sleeping off last night's escapade. Last night was crazy, and tonight will probably be just as crazy. Foo will be taking the first shift of driving when we finally get out of here, followed probably by Megan. Anyway, we're having a hard time leaving J's place because it is so relaxing here. We have been watching TV and playing pool, wrestling with J and filming each other acting goofy with his camcorder. We were fortunate because J's brother had his swim team over for a pre-meet dinner and we were able to mooch the leftover pasta, bread, salad and fruit. It was a good dinner, especially since it had been more than 12 hours since some of us had eaten anything except pastry swirls. Hmmm, pastry swirls. His parents are very welcoming and we are soooooooo reluctant to leave. *sigh* But Portland beckons...

3/17, 9:25AM
Well, we all feel like shit, but we're managing. A few hours ago Interstate 5 was transformed from a straight, easy and pleasant route to a scary, winding, mountainous road, which has given half our group tummy aches (along with lack of sleep, which is also hard to get on such a road). Foo courageously battles the need to hurl. We were all so beaten down and unable to find a band member willing to drive after Alex and Foo had both driven their shifts, we stopped in a parking lot at 5:00 am and took a nap. After about two hours of sleep, we all felt much better and Megan took over. Sarah will drive next, as her inability to hold her eyes open has now passed. We're listening to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit on tape, read by some pompous-sounding British guy. Good stuff. Oh, and the smell of antifreeze is starting to sneak into the van, promising that something is wrong with the engine. Foo thinks it is one of the hoses that is causing the problem. We'll see. Other than that, the van is running fine.

3/18, 3:19AM
After not being able to reach our contact in Portland initially, we went downtown to park, only to realize that placing the van within a mile of the club would be near impossible, as Portland has the largest St. Patrick's Day festival on the west coast. Miraculously, we nabbed a spot and wandered the city streets. Everything seemed fine as we moved the car nearer to the club to unload, but finding the proper loading door led us on a goose chase around seemingly the entire state of Oregon, where left turns are evidently banned. As we finished loading our gear into the club, Trace, the hideously dressed promoter, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Garth from Wayne's World, appeared and informed us that A.) we would be playing earlier that planned and B.) we would not be allowed in the audience for the rest of the show because we are under 21. As a matter of fact, we couldn't even hear the other bands from the section of the restaurant in which we were isolated. In order to find out what was going on or get our stuff from the main room we had to ask permission first, and toward the end of the show we were ready to take an ice pick to somebody's throat because we were trying to figure out whether the show had ended and were told to return to our little area. Boy, did the words "fuck you!" ever hover on our lips. As for the first matter, Trace insisted that the local band, Written in Ashes, would draw the local crowd, and therefore should go on after us, even though everybody knows that the local bands ALWAYS go first, followed by the bands that are from out of town or which are signed to record labels, both of which were the case for us, and NOT for the other band. So, we were doubly shafted: only once, however, was it Trace's fault, as the other was due to Oregon state law. In his attempts to make up for these inconveniences, however, Trace merely dug himself into an even deeper hole, offering us half-price food and free drinks, when any other club would have bought us dinner. But the stage was large and the soundman proved more knowledgeable than most, and we made friends with the other performers. Mike from our label, ADSR Musicwerks, was present, along with his band, Noxious Emotion. Because it was St. Patrick's Day (the theme of the show was "The St. Patty's Day Massacre") and the band was without any green clothing whatsoever, Sarah spray painted her hair green. It did not turn out as well as hoped, but still looked cool under the black lights at the punk store next door. Megan changed outfits this time, from her long black dress to her vinyl bondage pants and a cute shirt with a wicked-looking fae. She did her eye makeup like black butterfly wings. During the show Megan was assailed with shouts from a group of clearly ignorant drunkards who, fortunately, left halfway through the third song. Meanwhile a group of people gathered at the side of the stage and stared intently at Sarah, unnerving her because she thought they were pointing out her clearly flawed playing of the keyboard parts. She later learned that rather than scrutinizing her musicality, they were enthralled by her radiant beauty. Upon leaving the stage at the end of the show, which went very well all in all, she was randomly French kissed by one of her ogglers. When she made known her displeasure, her assailant's girlfriend revealed that she had told him to kiss her as a litmus test to see whether she would go home with both of them and perform unspeakable acts. When Sarah revealed that she and Alex were dating, rather than backing off, the horny couple then invited him to join Sarah in the debauchery back at home. They kindly declined the offer, flattered and a bit intrigued.

3/18, 4:03PM
After the show, instead of staying in Portland, we drove straight up to Seattle, with Sarah and Alex alternating driving, both struggling to stay awake on the way to Mike's house while Aaron and Megan slept in the back seat. Through some miracle, there was no sleeping at the wheel and we gratefully collapsed onto Mike's spare beds at six in the morning. Today we've been relaxing in Seattle and watching the news while hanging out at Mike's house, the home base of ADSR Musicwerks. SMP unfortunately had to bail on the show tonight, but we're still psyched to play with Noxious again (and actually SEE them this time) as well as Fockewolf, featuring the lovely Severina, over whom Alex and Aaron have been obsessing since August.

3/20, 10:37AM
To catch up from where we left off, we all drove the Auburn Annex in tandem and set up. We were unimpressed with the soundman, who couldn't have been more than 17 or 18 years old. We went onstage first, which was initially bothersome as we were the only of the three bands playing who was not local and who was on tour, but as Fockewolf and Noxious Emotion shared essentially the same stage setup, the only other choice was to go on third out of three bands, and we recognized that by that point, the all-ages crowd would have thinned out a bit. Another bonus of our having gone first is that our huge banner with ThouShaltNot's logo on it hung above all three of the bands as they played, just possibly deceiving any would-be Fockewolf or Noxious Emotion customers into thinking it was we who so impressed them, leading them to purchase our CD. Heh heh heh. Our friends Shoshana and Aaron (Alex's former roommate) from back in Wooster showed up as they were in town. We ended up sleeping at the house of Shoshana's sister and brother in-law, both of whom were not only fabulously hospitable, but also very cool. We took a day of rest in Seattle and went out shopping, then came home to watch the X-Files at the house for a second night. After waking up sufficiently early this morning, we now find ourselves en route to Missoula, Montana, goth capital of the WORLD!! Er... No. In fact, it is so devoid of anything even vaguely gothic that our show there will be an unplugged folk show at a coffeehouse called the Raven Café. Thankfully they have a piano, which Alex will play diabolically whilst Aaron drums on something and Megan plays cello, with Sarah adding some harmonies. This ought to be a fun show, and as we are not under obligation to be overly dark and gloomy, we'll be getting a little crazy, especially in the second set, which will feature medleys from hell and maybe some more surprises. We'll be staying with Megan's uncle tonight and then tomorrow, it's off to South Dakota. Woo friggin hoo.

3/20, 11:56PM
We just got back to Megan's uncle's house from our acoustic show. The performance was well-received by the small and very laid-back crowd attending, and we spoke with one or two locals from the café, though it was no surprise that the performance was not flawless, nor even especially gothic. Our offerings included a plethora of covers, such as a swing version of "Enter Sandman" as well as a truly bizarre medley of disjointed pop tunes. The owners were nice and we had overall a good enough time, despite not being paid (though that was understood at the outset). We sold two CDs, which was dandy. Back at Bill and Hope's (Megan's relatives), we were fed delicious food in mass quantity, including pie-wedge sized fudge brownies. *insert drooling noise* Tomorrow we drive to South Dakota, probably Rapid City, with the perhaps silly aspiration of catching a view of Mount Rushmore somewhere in the mix. We figured that because we missed out on the Grand Canyon, we could at least see man's destruction of nature in glorification of himself instead.

3/21, 1:04PM
Oh, the glory of Bozeman, Montana. Hoorah to Megan for driving for three hours to get us through the winding mountain passages. We meant to leave Bill and Hope's place by 9am, but we didn't leave until 10, in part because we were so unable to stop chatting with such delightful people. Sam, their first-grader son, stayed out on the porch in bare feet in the cold to wave goodbye as we drove away. What a cutie. We think we made an impression on the kid, who is aspiring to play either the drums or the keyboards. He had us sign the copy of the CD that we sold to his parents.

3/22, 8:36AM
It's morning here in Rapid City, South Dakota. We stayed in our last motel of the trip, staying up entirely too late watching talk shows whose topic - no joke - was "My uncle is the father of my child". Mmmmm.... Luscious sweet incest. As soon as the rest of us finish showering, we're taking on our last big day of driving, approximately twelve hours to Iowa City to stay with Karen, Alex's sister. We'll hang out there for a day with her and relax a bit before our last gig in Chicago, but as the tour winds down, I think all of us are definitely at the point at which we've had enough driving for the next year or three. It is with some enthusiasm that we witness the gas prices dropping as we travel east through the Midwest. Today we paid $1.37 per gallon and danced merrily. It seems we're finally embarking on the last leg.

3/22, 5:14PM
Though there's still a ways to go today, we're more than halfway to Karen's in Iowa City. We just stopped for food and purged the van of narsty remnants uneaten and spoiled. We're almost done with the book on tape of The Hobbit. Sadly, we've not listened as much to our high brow library as we ought to have, but as all of us have strongly individual musical tastes, after listening to three driving shifts of each other's music, we are more than ready to hear our own personal Metallica, Alphaville, Vivaldi, or Frente!. Today has been the single most boring drive in our entire trip. The Great Plains are hardly great in any way. The ennui inspired by them is soporific on us as we drive and we'll be thankful when our Iowa journey is over. Word of the day: Pivving Out

3/22, 11:37PM
We're here! After a bit of wandering, we managed to find Karen's apartment building and now we chill. Karen's cool, and her cats are gargantuan. Alex is filling Karen in on our journey thus far, and everyone else is adding in our two cents here and there, and just enjoying a chance to sit down in a seat that doesn't move. The conversation is quite animated now... we could take this show on the road. Oh, wait...

3/24, 9:55AM
We spent yesterday wandering in Iowa City and shopping, acquiring clothes and music. The town is charming and full of stuff to do. Karen was hit by a car while on her bicycle, but is fine. Her bike needs a bit of attention though. We made pasta last night with lots of mushrooms and there was much rejoicing. After that, we went out and saw American Beauty, which is still in theatres here. Wow... what a fabulously made movie, if a bit of a downer. Nothing wrong with downers, though (so writes the goth singer...) We're heading out in an hour for Chicago (with much eagerness on Sarah's part, as her cat allergies have been exploding in Karen's apartment), where we'll meet up with Alex's parents and do what is sure to be the best show of the tour. There are tons of people whom we know who are planning to show up, and we look forward to blowing them away with the performance. Or just blowing them.

3/25, 2:11AM
Just finished a fabulous set at Chicago's Club Mutiny, where one of ThouShaltNot's biggest fans, Batty, is a dj. The crowd grew steadily as we played, and by the time the owner made us leave (again, because we are under 21, but we are not complaining because we were lucky to have been allowed to play at all!) we had sold 9 cds. Right now we are at Batty's place trying to find something to watch on television: Megan doesn't feel well, Foo is worried about where we parked our car in such a skeevy nieghborhood with so much equipment still in it, and Sarah is thrilled that Batty has not one, not two, but THREE irresistable kitties. But Alex is happy because he was just handed $120 for the gig. The day was spent navigating the hellish streets of Chicago, where Alex's driving skills were put to the test after a wonderful early dinner at Uno's Pizzeria with Alex's Mom, who was delightful. Alex's parents later took us to a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken before the show (after we had soundchecked and needed someplace to go) and bought all Sprites, further proving their generosity. Alex's sister Karen and a friend of hers also attended the show. We're a little disappointed because we invited a number of people, but it was nice to have more fans than usual to support us. And we made a ton of money. Tomorrow, we head for home with great enthusiasm, hopefully stopping on the way at a music store.

3/25, 12:47PM
After a hearty breakfast of Life cereal and some mushy goodbyes to an unconcious Batty and her super-cuddly trio of friendly cats, we are homeward bound on 90 East, a toll road. We have just entered Indiana, the last state we will pass through before we return to Ohio, making our trip encompass 17 states in 17 days. Wooo. We are excited to be going home but are also somewhat bummed because a ton of schoolwork lies ahead of us. We will be stopping on the way, however, to fulfill Foo's boyhood dream of visiting what is perhaps the world's largest music store in South Bend, Indiana. Oh, and the van was left untouched last night even though, after all our efforts to secure it against theives, a certain-someone-who-shall-remain-nameless left the driver's side window down. Funny how that works.


That was the last entry made in the ThouShaltNot Spring 2000 Tour Journal. Apparently they never made it home...