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Entry Three: a summary of events from July 12 through July 15, 2004

Dearest Tour Diary:

We arrived late at night in the City of Angels. Our first stop in the metroploic metropolis was at Interscope Records in Santa Monica. Our friend, Neal Ferrazani was finishing up remixing down the Downward Spiral in surround sound. Neal played us a a mix of "Closer" in the magic that is surround sound. It was pretty amazing.

After we tasted the Los Angeles major record label production, we decided to give our palletes something different. We started towards Baja Fresh. Upon our arrival, and to our dismay, the Mexican restaurant was closed. Our friend, Young Yoon was with us and turned our attention towards the International House of Pancakes. At first we were hesitant. The music they play in IHOP is totally cheesy. No one wants to listen to that crap. It's like the stuff they play in the dentist's office before you get your teeth pulled.

Reluctantly we sat immersed in the sounds so reminiscent of cavity filling and fluoride treatments, and we indulged ourselves in stacks of pancakes. The pancakes were not really that bad, but there was a lonely old man in a three piece suit who was complaining about low carbohydrate diets and Michael Moore and a bunch of other stuff that didn't make logical connections to IHOP.

The next morning we awoke and made our way back to Baja Fresh to see what we missed. We got the Burrito Dos Manos (Feeds Two!) and we ate like two ravenous Tyranosaurus Rex's feeding on a freshly slain Stegosauraus. YES!

Next, we played a show in the San Pedro Library. Somewhere between Colorado and San Pedro we must have lost Paul's mic stand pole. Paul made a dash to the music store down the street after we arrived at the library. It was a dash that the Grecian creators of the decatholon would have envied. At the end of the race against time, Paul discovered that time had played a nasty trick on him. A nasty little trick indeed, for the sign on the door of the store read "We will return at 3:00."

Paul looked at his watch. He looked with the intensity of a scurvy stricken pirate who longs for a glass of orange juice. His watch read "3:10." This was too much for him! One might suspect that he would just sit down right there and weep the weeps of a thousand widows, but no. Our Paul is a brave soul. He knew his life had a purpose, and that he was on a mission. This mission was not over until Paul said it was over. He called upon the gods to send the storekeeper back to his commercial enterprise to sell Paul a microphone stand. The gods, being the nice guys that they are, allowed Paul's wishes to come true, but only after what seemed to be an eternity of waiting. An eternity of limbo, not knowing whether or not the rock show would be able to commence without the simple trinket that is a mic stand.

One would assume that the mission would be over by now but that was not the case, for there is a greater mission inside all of us. It is the mission to rock. And now having completed his first task, Paul raced back to the library to put on a killer show. Paul joined up with me and we rocked the library down.

After the show, while the library was being rebuilt, we traveled to party with the Rita Skeeters down in Huntington Beach. We rocked their party, and then we rocked their bathroom. That bathroom show was the sweatiest concert I've ever been to, second only to the Andrew WK show. After that show I was covered in the sweat of one hundred party animals. After the show in the bathroom, it was only my sweat. Probably because I was wearing a sweater. That show was awesome! Paul and I got some bubble blower things from the kids. People even showed up with doughnuts! That put a stop to our doughnut deficiency. That was a fun party! It is important to party!

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Partying with the Rita Skeeters in Chris' bathroom

The next day we rocked the Sylmar Library. One of the librarians told us to turn down. She wanted to stop the rock! It's people like that who are trying to stop the rock. We can't let the rock be stopped. The rock is bringing people together to fight the man. We need to stick together. If our cry of unity is lowered in volume, what will happen to the fight against evil? I don't dare speculate.

Then Neal, Paul and I went to Mailbu to beach it up. While we were body surfing we got some most excellent sand burns. Also while we were body surfing, this totally gross sea creature came up from beneath the waves and started fighting Paul and me.

The creature wasn't really good at fighting though. It seemed to look like this moving mass of walking sea vegetation and it just kind of spun around and occasionally slapped you. It was a pretty lame fighter. Maybe if there were like 100 of these things coming at you it might be threatening, but this gross little sea monster was definitely weak. We took it on with no problems.

It was pretty good for lunch too. We hadn't eaten many vegetables on this tour and this monster was a refreshing healthy treat.

The day before, someone had bought a CD with a bunch of quarters, so we decided to make the most of this and go to the arcade. We did some intense pinballing. We also ate a churro.

Next, we hit up Pink's, LA's most famous hot dog joint. I heard that Orson Welles once ate 18 hot dogs in one sitting at Pink's. We waited in line for at least a half and hour and were eventually rewarded with the best hot dogs of the trip. We got six hotdogs.

It was both messy and triumphant. Paul's Dog Blog will have a more detailed account in a few days (or weeks).

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In the end we wondered who got the best of who

That night I fell asleep watching Spongebob.

The day of July 15th we awoke with the purpose of rocking once again; a purpose that seems so familiar to us but never gets old. The Potter Mobile found its way to the Library in LA's Chinatown. That library is crazy. There was a bunch of kids there, but no parents at all. It was totally punk rock. The kids are the bosses at that library. WOW!

We played a killer set at that library. For the second time in history we did an encore. HARDCORE! The place was packed! After the show we got a care package for long boring car rides from the amazing girls that showed up to three out of our four LA shows! We even got a unique golden snitch for our rearview mirror. RIGHTEOUS!

After the library show, we drove to Isla Vista to play another party! I love to party! This party was awesome. It was the third show this tour where people showed up because they were either at the Vassar show or had heard about the Vassar show. That show was legendary!

But anyway, this party was fun. We played in the living room and it was very conducive to wizard rock. We finally got to meet Kelsey, who runs Save Ginny, and that was cool. After our set, we ended up out-partying pretty much everyone and kept them up as late as they could be kept up. Jennifer was nice to let us crash on her couch. Awesome!

So now we're rolling into San Francisco and preparing to rock once again. Twice again, actually. When we are through, we will own this town.

Number of Shows: 13
Number of Burritos: 3

- Joe 07.16.04