April 18, 2004

I�m just waiting for M-D to finish getting ready to go and then we�ll finish packing everything up and start on our way home. Even though I�ve had a great time out here, I�m very happy to be heading back. Here�s the last few days, in brief:

- We spent Monday in Austin. It�s a nice city. There was a street which was something like Beale St. except that we were there on Monday, so there wasn�t much life. We had dinner at a good Mexican place called The Iron Cactus and then spent the rest of the night hanging out at a pool hall nearby. We had intended to go catch a band or something, but we were tired and ended up spending so much time at the pool hall that we just called it a night.

- We got to Dallas on Tuesday. We met with Bryan and Lyn for dinner and then with Becca to watch a movie. Not an overly exciting day, but it was our first contact with friends other than each other and that made it good.

- We reserved Wednesday for Becca. After doing laundry in the morning and then picking up my tuxedo, we met with her at the Dallas Museum of Art, where she works. She showed us around, actually managing to make me slightly interested in art. We asked her to show us around Dallas a bit, despite the fact that she said there was nothing there. It turns out that she�s right. There really isn�t anything there. Just a bunch of office buildings. We headed in the direction of a free concert that Becca had heard about, and when we finally found it, it turns out that there were a few little restaurants in that area, as well as the free outdoor concert. We hung out for a bit, but it wasn�t too exciting so we decided to move on. We went to a cool place called the Studio Movie Grill. They serve dinner while you watch movies, and it�s pretty cool because it�s not what I thought it would be. It�s not a restaurant with a screen. It�s a theater with rows of counters. It�s a good concept. We capped off the night in a Starbucks, looking at what Becca said were the �pretty people� of Dallas. I didn�t think they were so great�

- Thursday was put aside for Bryan. We were just there for him. Whatever he needed. He wanted to do some shopping, so we all went to the mall, after which we hung out at a place called Gameworks which is filled with video games and was thought up by some of the guys from Dreamworks, apparently. I could say more about that, but I�m sure it�s not as interesting to you as it was to me. After that, Bryan�s parents and sisters arrived in town, and we had the pleasure of having dinner with them. I love Bryan�s family.

- Friday. The big day. We met with Bryan in the morning and took him out for some more shopping. He wanted to buy a present for Lyn. After shopping, we hung out for a little while and waited until it was time to leave for the wedding. Then off we went. Despite the people at the hall being somewhat less than polite, the wedding itself was wonderful. Lyn was beautiful, the ceremony was beautiful, and I�m so happy for Bryan.

- We went to breakfast on Saturday morning with Bryan and his new wife, his parents, his sister Bridget, Harlan, Stacey, and Hoai. After that, we took Bryan to return the tuxedos and look for a keyboard stand for his big gig that night. We found one, and then we went to the bar to set up for the band. They rocked. It was a great time. I love doing sound for bands despite the fact that I don�t do it very often, but when it�s the band of someone I like, it�s even better. Working for Bryan�s band was a great time. They could only play until the sun went down because after that the hotel next door would apparently call the cops. So they finished up by 8 pm and then we were hanging out on the patio of the bar listening to music and getting to know the DFW people. Once the bar made us turn off our music and put on their own, we left to go to Erica�s house. It was very generous of her, and she has a gigantic, beautiful house that, in our area, probably would have cost a million dollars. Since it�s Texas, though, she told us that it didn�t cost nearly that much. Maybe I live in the wrong state. Anyway, it was nice to get to know the DFW people and to know more about the people who have kept Bryan going since he�s been here. More importantly, I got to spend a lot of time talking with Lyn and getting to know her, and the more I do, the more I like her.

- Which brings us to now. I�m just waiting to leave for our long drive home. We won�t get there until Monday night, but I�m really looking forward to it. I miss Ali and I miss Cindi and I�m looking forward to being with them again.

I’m gonna just post this here. It’s not even going into my “official” journal, because there’s very little to say. We were in Houston on Sunday, and given that it was Easter and that there’s not THAT much to do in Houston, we just went to a movie. Monday we woke up and drove to Austin. Once we finally found our hotel, we settled in, then went out for dinner. We ended up spending the rest of the night in a pool hall playing pool, arcade tennis, and drinking. A rather fun evening, actually.

I was going to put this down the other day, but I forgot. So it seems like we’re flying through these states rather quickly, and we are. I don’t know that we’re getting a full impression of any of these places, but that’s okay. What I’ve realized is that we’re basically getting the “American Sampler”. I’ll find out what’s out here and what things look like, and I’ll know if there’s any places I want to go back to.

A quick supplemental entry because I just remembered something from our Vampire Tour…

Did you know that, according to folklore, vampires are obsessive-compulsive? This is why rice (was) thrown at weddings. Vampires apparently have a taste for virgin blood, and so were quite fond of brides (who, of course, were supposed to be virgins). It was said that if you threw a handful of rice in front of a vampire, they would stop and count the grains of rice and ignore you until they were finished. This was apparently the inspiration for the Count on Sesame Street, as well, who, as you remember, was obsessive-compulsive about numbers.

April 10, 2004

We spent a good deal of time today walking around the historical sections of New Orleans. We decided to take two different walking tours, one of the Garden District during the afternoon, and one this evening called the Vampire Tour which went through the French Quarter tracing the history of what may have been real vampires or at least vampire-like activity, as well as pointing out the locations where Interview With the Vampire was filmed. I very much enjoyed these tours. I really like the historical sections of the city. The houses in the Garden District are beautiful, but it was the French Quarter that really struck me. Particularly at night, you can feel how old the city is. It has a sort of presence, and you simply know that there are hundreds upon hundreds of ghosts in the city. This was the city the way I had imagined it in my head. Once you get away from Bourbon Street, the French Quarter is fascinating. I guess I don�t have much else to say about it. It�s very internalized right now. We ended off the evening by walking down to the Mississippi and taking a quick stroll by it, and it really just got me somewhat introspective about the city itself. I think I would like to come back here some day.

April 9, 2004

We�ve arrived in New Orleans. More on that in a moment.

We went to Graceland this morning. Very cool place. The house itself is not nearly as big as I might have imagined. In fact, the house itself was really no bigger than many suburban homes of people I know or whose houses I�ve been to. What is big is the estate itself. It sprawls over the 14 acres that it occupies with several buildings, including a racquetball court whose walls are now filled (to capacity) with gold and platinum records. There are also stables, a surprisingly small pool, and a meditation garden which now serves as the final resting place of Elvis, his parents, and his grandmother. There was a portion of the tour which was devoted to Elvis� generosity and his donations to various charities. It was fascinating to see just how generous he was, and as M-D pointed out, it would be great if more artists today were like that. There was an entire museum dedicated to Elvis� various cars and motorcycles. They also had his two airplanes on the premises that you could walk through. Wow. Elvis� private plane (the Lisa Marie) was just really, really cool.

Leaving Graceland, I almost felt a sense of jealousy. It�s not that I want to be really famous, but I do, in fact, want to be wealthy. Who doesn�t, right? Well, it�s not that I want to be able to own lots of things or anything like that. I want to be able to have a nice house with some land, yes. I would like to fill my house with nice things, yes. But mostly I want to be able to spend money and not worry about it. If I want to do something or buy something, I want to be able to just do it without thinking how it will affect me financially. And, much like Elvis, I want to be able to be generous. I want to give money to people who deserve it and I want to be able to provide nice things for my family and my friends. What I got to thinking was, what is it that makes people who are successful and wealthy be able to become that way? In a lot of cases, I think it�s luck. In a lot of other cases, I think it�s drive and ambition. I think that largely it comes down to a combination of the two. Well, it seems to me, then, that there�s no reason that I couldn�t become wealthy. It seems like a really broad goal to have, but that�s my goal. I want to be wealthy. I mean that in the least shallow way possible, but that�s what I want.

Sorry for the little side trip there, but this is my journal of the trip, and part of that journal is recording my thoughts as the trip goes along.

So, we left Memphis after our trip through Graceland and made the long drive across the length of Mississippi to Louisiana, ending up in New Orleans. We got here around 7 pm or so. After settling in to our room, we decided to head down to the French Quarter to find a place to have dinner. I hadn�t really had a chance to go through our travel books as thoroughly as I might have liked, but it seemed like the French Quarter was a pretty busy place and a likely spot to be able to go and wander and find a place to stop.

I was mistaken. My impression of New Orleans, so far, is not a good one. It reminds me very much of New York City. It�s crowded. There are tall buildings and narrow streets making things feel closed in. It�s dirty and it smells bad. Parts of the French Quarter actually looked okay, or at least looked historical. Bourbon Street, however, was a mob of people flowing in and out of bars and strip clubs (not only was there the Hustler bar, there was also Hustler�s �Barely Legal� bar, and another club whose neon sign proudly proclaimed that they had �World Famous Love Acts). It felt like Spring Break. This was clearly not our scene.

We finally found a place called The Quarter Scene which turned out to be quite good. It was also a bit historic: Tennessee Williams was apparently a regular there, and our waiter pointed out to us the table where he used to sit. The food was also excellent.

Hopefully, New Orleans will look better to us by daylight. I�m going to go through the book that I brought more carefully tonight. I think a tour of the Garden District is in order, and perhaps a stroll through the French Quarter when it�s not time for the bars to be occupied. There are some walking tours that look interesting. We�re here through tomorrow night and I read a bit about some jazz clubs in the area that sound interesting, so I think I�ll try to find one for us to go to.

April 8, 2004

Oh shit. We�re in Memphis. I LOVE this city. It�s not as pretty to look at as Louisville was, but it has some life to it and it�s been really good to us today. We just got back from B.B. King�s Blues Bar where we caught a performance by �The Queen of Beale Street�, Ruby Wilson. She blew me away. Those of you who know me know that the following two statements are true: I don�t generally like going to bars and I don�t generally enjoy live music, anymore. Ruby was incredible. I haven�t left a performance feeling this energized in a very long time. I don�t really know how else to put it into words. But Beale Street itself is amazing. Everywhere you go, there�s music. It�s pouring out of every door and it�s on every street corner. It�s coming from the park. It all blends together in this wonderful cacophony of sound and it washes over you and it�s great. The streets are full of people, but not overfull like in New York. You can move and breathe but still feel the pulse of the people and the city around you. (Note to Bryan Douglas � we ARE coming back here, you and I.) I could easily go from bar to bar on Beale Street all night long, checking out the different bands and hearing them play. Truly amazing.

Backtracking a bit, before we went to Beale Street, we stopped by Sun Studios, the famous studio where Elvis got his start. We took the tour of the building, and that was also great. It�s this tiny, one room studio that�s actually still in use every night after 6 pm. Artists such as Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and even U2 have recorded there since it�s restoration in 1985. I even got to take a picture with the original microphone that Elvis (and probably Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and a host of others) sang into. As an added bonus, in the gift shop/soda shop area (which used to be the diner next door to the studio and was where Sam Phillips conducted a lot of his business) was hanging the Akai mixer/recorder on which U2 recorded Rattle and Hum. It even still had the label tape on it. *sigh*

Going backwards again, we left Louisville yesterday morning after a quick walk around the city (it really is pretty) and drove to Nashville. We walked around Nashville a bit, stopping for dinner in a genuine 1950�s soda shoppe (it was built in 1939 and is apparently the oldest restaurant still in operation in Nashville). We took some pictures of the Parthenon (you heard me) and then decided to call it an early night. We were kinda beat and Nashville doesn�t really hold a lot to do unless you�re a country music fan.

So that brings us back to today. We went to Waffle House in the morning and then drove on to Memphis. That�s where we are now. It doesn�t need to be said again, but I love this place. We�re going to New Orleans tomorrow after a trip to Graceland in the morning. Hopefully we�ll have time to make it back into Memphis to have lunch at Isaac Hayes restaurant. That�s right. Isaac �Chef� Hayes has a restaurant here in Memphis. They serve hot buttered soul.

I miss my little girl and my bigger girl. I�m having a great time out here and I�m also looking forward to seeing them again.

April 6, 2004

We�re in Louisville, KY right now. It�s really nice here. I�ll get to that in a minute.

The Rock n� Roll Hall of Fame was great. Sadly, as we pulled up, M-D noticed that they were pulling down a large banner from the front of the building that had the letter �U� and the number �2� on it. D�OH! It turns out, anyway, that the exhibit had been taken down at the end of February and not the day before we got there, so that�s a little better, but I think I would have rather not known it was there, at all. Anyway, the rest of the exhibits were great. I didn�t realize there would be quite so much to look at, and I think we ended up spending more time there than either of us had expected. I probably would have spent more time there, but I started to feel overwhelmed and we felt some pressure to keep moving in order to hit all the states we wanted to get to. Cleveland itself seemed okay from the little I saw. I was surprised to find the streets so empty. I mean, I know it�s not New York, but I thought there would be someone around. Sadly, we didn�t get to go to Alice Cooper�stown, a baseball/rock n� roll restaurant with, apparently, an Alice Cooper theme. That�s a shame. I really wanted to check that out.

We left Cleveland late in the afternoon and made our way to Charleston, West Virginia. Turns out that�s their capitol. There�s nothing there. We got there late, had some dinner, and went to sleep. We woke up this morning with the intention of taking the �scenic� route out of West Virginia and into Kentucky, with the destination of Lexington. Once we finally got into Kentucky along the scenic route, we realized there wasn�t really that much to see, so we got back onto the interstate. We tried, in vain, to find a �local� restaurant to eat at for lunch. This was when my disappointment started to set in. We ended up eating at a KFC (yes, in Kentucky). It was very hard to find any local flavor, and I began to feel that maybe this trip wasn�t going to work the way I wanted it to. Through lunch, as M-D and I talked, we began to realize that you can�t just set out on a road and hope to find�something. Not unless you have unlimited time. There are countless books written about taking road trips and the paths that you should take. There�s a reason for that. Also, we started to realize that the America that existed when our parents were taking the �Great American Road Trip� just doesn�t really exist anymore. America has become far more homogenized, and the differences between one state and the next are starting to be blurred. That struck me as sad, but I didn�t want to let it get me down. We made the decision that we needed to be more targeted in where we wanted to go, largely because of our deadline of needing to be in Texas by a certain date. With that in mind, we made the decision to skip Lexington since we didn�t know of anything in particular to stop at and just move on straight to Louisville.

Good decision, too. We stopped near Lexington for a bathroom break and picked up some brochures that showed us that there was not, in fact, anything in particular that we wanted to see in Lexington. We arrived in Louisville around 4:30, found a hotel, and began setting about deciding what we wanted to do for the night. M-D made the suggestion that we check out what was playing at the Actor�s Theatre of Louisville. Another good idea. The Humana Festival is going on right now, so we caught a performance of �The Ruby Sunrise�. I was impressed. The production value was quite high, the performances were quite good, and the script was pretty well written. And it wasn�t even expensive. After the show ended, it was still fairly early, so we walked around a bit, looking for a jazz club that I had found a brochure for earlier in the day. We found The Jazz Factory and went inside to have a drink and listen to some music. It was open mic night and there were guest musicians playing and singing with the house band. They weren�t the best in the world, but it was still a nice change of pace and a very cool club. If I was spending more time here in Louisville, I could definitely see myself going back there.

Which brings me to this town. It�s really clean. There are things to do here. I really like it. I think it�s probably the first big city that I can think of that I�ve really liked. I�m used to big cities being like New York or Philadelphia, and I hate them. They�re dirty. They�re way overcrowded. You have to constantly look over your shoulder for fear of being mugged and people tend to be rude to each other. Everyone we�ve had any dealing with here in Louisville has been incredibly polite. When we were walking to find the jazz club, we noticed that the streets were completely devoid of people. I mean COMPLETELY. It was odd. As we neared the Louisville Slugger factory, we saw two other men walking towards us. We made eye contact, and then they said, �Hey, how are you?� to which I of course responded, �Good. How�s it going?� A simple exchange, but polite. M-D commented that he thought that was odd and I remarked that when you�re the only four people on a street, it�s kind of rude to simply pretend you don�t see the other people. More importantly, though, if that same situation had played out in New York, I would have been frightened that those guys would turn around and rob us or something. Call me paranoid, but that�s the way I was raised, I guess. As it was, I did end up looking over my shoulder once, but I never, at any time, felt unsafe walking those streets.

When we got back to the hotel, I noticed that I had lost my cell phone. This, of course, made me unhappy. I called the club to see if they had found it, and they said that they had not, but they would look around and call me if they found anything. Meanwhile, M-D and I returned to the parking garage where we had been because we figured that the phone may have fallen when I got into the car. Sure enough it was there (thankfully). M-D suggested that I should call the club and let them know, but I figured it wouldn�t be necessary. After all, I figured that if they didn�t find it, they just wouldn�t call me. That�s what they�d do in New York (if they bothered to look at all). When we got back to the hotel (again), M-D�s phone rang. It was the club calling to say that they were sorry, but they hadn�t found my phone, at which point we thanked them and let them know that we had found it. I was somewhat surprised that they had called back, but, as M-D pointed out to me, we�re not in New Jersey, anymore.

I like that. This trip is starting to look up�

April 4, 2004

We left today for our 2 week road-trip to Texas (by way of many other states). Our trip got underway a little later than expected due to some technical difficulties, but once we were off, the drive to Cleveland went pretty much without a hitch. Well, until the snowstorm in Pennsylvania. But that wasn�t too bad. At least it made the scenery look nice. So, we arrived in Cleveland around 7 pm, had dinner at a place called Max & Erma�s (sort of a local answer to Friday�s, only the food is MUCH better), and went to see Hellboy (hey, it�s Sunday night in Ohio�what else were we going to do?). So far, I�m not impressed with Ohio, but then all I�ve seen is their turnpike and a small area around the hotel, so I really have nothing to go by. Tomorrow we�re off to the Rock n� Roll Hall of Fame, and then we continue on to West Virginia.

And now, �Conversations from The Road�

Me: Oh, see, that was Pride. That was a sin. You�re going to Hell.
M-D: I�m Jewish. We don�t have sins.
Me: Awesome! I�m gonna go do it with my neighbor�s wife!
M-D: Dude! We still have the Ten Commandments!

Well, maybe it was funnier if you were there�..

Alright, alright. So I haven’t posted anything in a while. And there was a bunch of stuff I wanted to write, but I never got around to it. And now I don’t have much to say, so I’ll give you this:

Also, M-D and I are leaving on Sunday for a 2 week road trip that will end in Texas with the wedding of Bryan and Lyn. We’ll probably have a good deal of Internet access along the way, so expect updates from the road.