Boar Toggling

More from tour:

We're in DC. House show tonight. Be there.

We had a kind of weird show in Cleveland. The band Zs ended up playing with us. That was cool. We had to do the show at a bar, which was less cool. We aren't much of a bar band. I think this is because we aren't a band.

Then was Chicago. Chicago ruled and I am pretty sure continues to rule in our absence. Maybe it won't rule quite a hard, but still. Dallas and Liz hosted us. A ton of old and new friends came. WJ had a large contingent. Jim and I ended up doing encore sets for latecomers. Chicago is full of the three B's- Barbecues, bookstores, boyfriends. Seriously, everyone there is in a couple I think.

Anyways, writing happy things is not that interesting.

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Urbana is more interesting. The headlining band was supposed to be Plan B from Chicago. They were going to suck, but then they didn't even come. In fact , no one came. I think that the booker may have intentionally sabotaged the show, because he kept us far from the venue entrance during the time when people might have come and he let other people know that the main act had cancelled. He didn't even stick around to let us show him my book or Jim's demo, even though we were going to. He just left while Jim and Peter were in another room.

This left us all alone in the Urbana Independent Media Center. This place should have been very cool. It is in a former post office building. It's about 100 years old and has several floors, a radio station, a bike-workshop, a free-internet computer room, and a capacity of almost 1000 people. It was super creepy. We stayed in this weird room in the basement on pathetically small couches. They left the air on-- cooling the whole place to 65 degrees all night long. This is supposed to be a liberal organization. Think about the energy use for that. Anyways.

Then the stupidest hypocrisy of all- they block google. They have free-wifi, but you can't use google or any other websites owned by google. This is, apparently, activism. Note to IMC- Censorship is not a good way to create change. there is a difference between censorship and voluntary boycott. Blocking blogspot and gmail is not going to do anything good for the world. It just inconveniences people. Plus, why block google but not myspace or facebook or even walmart.com? Apparently it's more important to lodge a totally useless protest against a company that has been accused of bending to foreign censorship (irony again finds its way in) than to block companies that cause real harm on US soil. This is largely the same kind of jingoist and self-deluded thinking that leads to people driving 400 miles to DC or New York for Free Tibet protests.

The absurdity of the night kept it from being a total loss.

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Next came St. Louis. Awesome show at Open Lot. The people there were super-enthusiastic, welcoming and warm. We had a really amazing time.

I should rewind a bit though. Before STL we had a lot of time to check out southern Illinois. We visited the history museum of Vandalia, IL and were shown around by a very lovely elderly woman. The building was in a beautiful former church and our guide even showed us the upstairs even though it was supposed to be closed. She also showed us a tool that Abraham Lincoln once owned and had carved his initials in, logs from the national road, and all kinds of exhibits like photos of Vandalia's first basketball team and the town's first switchboard... lots of odds and ends. It was a very charming little stop.

We then went to the Cahokia Mounds. Look these up. They are incredible. They're a UN world heritage site, home of the largest earthen structures in the Americas and the former home of the largest pre-colonial city in North America (10-20,000 people). The mounds were something like North American pyramids, serving largely as burial grounds for high-ranking members of the community. It's a pretty amazing place.

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After the history museum, mounds, and St. Louis show, we continued on to Louisville, KY.

I am tiring of blogging. Louisville is a very big and weird city. We went to Dizzy Whiz. Soon I will add details. There will be a post to discuss the last leg of tour. Maybe two.

-Ben