LOLZapalloza

The band has two shows today. The first being about 30 miles away. On a farm. Some dudes get together every year and have a party called Leopalloza (I think it’s on Lee’s farm.) Once we snail our way through Cornwall traffic, it turns out to be quite the affair. Like a garden party on steroids and Carlsberg, there are two stages flanking each other, a suspended sound booth that looks a bit like the preliminary stages of the Flaming Lip’s spaceship, a couple rows of young Aspen, a rave tent made of primary colored triangle panes, and a cheetah painted car chassis filled with wood and other incendiaries for what I’m sure will turn out to be quite the blackout-wasted, paganesque happening later in the evening.

Unfortunately, we have to leave right after the band plays to make it up to West Brom for show number two.

For the majority of the 4 hour jaunt, there’s a strange sense of accomplishment hovering in the car. Usually I have a hard time getting James and Charlie out of bed by this hour, and now they’re musing about wanting to be this efficient every day. I smile, keep my mouth shut, and keep driving.

I'm disappointed we don't have time to stop and eat at this place. Do you think Smiley is still smiling?

We also have already missed this:

I’ll be honest, Birmingham, West Brom, and the surrounding areas aren’t really much to look at, and they’ve been nicknamed the Black Country. In perhaps some attempt to move past this appropriate epithet, the venue for tonight’s show is done up in every type of brightness possible. One entire floor moonlights as a giant green screen, as the other floors are exercises in space pods and garish squiggles.

Unfortunately, our hotel seems quite proud to embody its hometown moniker. Thanks to an ill-thought through combination of three adjacent buildings, getting to our room requires navigating a maze up and down and back up and back down from the ground floor to the first floor. When we arrive, there is bars on the windows and the hallway smells like hot, wet paper.Sadness crouches in every corner and creeps up on you when you turn your back to it. I can’t believe we have to stay here for two days.

Charlie and I escape for a while to the awesomeness of “Inception.” It is the third time we’ve attempted to see it, and we finally prevail. I’m going to refrain from being picky about it and just say it is way more fun than Birmingham (UK).

On the way home I start to get an undying craving for Indian food, and I wonder if Leo put the idea in my head.

I go out for some time to myself and end up with some bright orange Chicken Tikka Masala. I can’t stop thinking that it must be radioactive. I feel bad not eating it, but really, I’m not starving enough to chock down something that’s the color of an electric crayon. I don’t know what is up with this city and fluorescents, but they should keep ‘em out of their foodstuffs.