Other bands: Lola Ray
Me, at Meridien. Wait, no. That's Edgar Winter, a different albino.
It was four or five hours to Houston. We normally didn't have to be at clubs until 5 or 6, which meant we could sleep long in San Antonio. Then we had two blank days to get ourselves from eastern Texas to Orange County, California.
Meridien was a big multi-tiered complex with a small room for small shows like ours and a big room for big shows with bands like AFI or My Morning Jacket. It was well-kept and seemed fairly new, and seemed to be put together by someone who had been in the concert promotion game for quite some time.
I spent all my time in the dressing room watching Nic fashion a helmet and gloves out of aluminum foil. I tried to stay out of the main rooms in all the clubs we visited as much as possible because it still affected my nerves too much. I could toggle the alter-ego switch better if I stayed in the green rooms.
The show went well but without much audience participation (primarily because there wasn't much of an audience to participate). But there were four girls who came to see Lola Ray and became Brazil fans by the end of the concert. They were young college-types, eager to let us sleep on their floor and we obliged.
We left late the next morning, heading west on I-10 after a fast food breakfast and piss break. If we were smart we would have all been obsessive coupon clippers and Subway Sub Club card carriers. If we were even smarter, we would have signed up for a frequent-lodger program with a hotel chain. But we didn't because fame was always right around the corner and it seemed like a lot of work for something that we'd expense a major label for anyway at some point.
We saw Texas scrub once again turn to New Mexico and Arizona desert. Arizona desert turn into California desert, and then into California's version of paradise. Two and a half days seems like time enough to get from the middle of the US to the left coast. But unless you are driving in round the clock shifts, it is not.
Cash was again a scarce commodity, especially since we weren't making any money for two straight days, so we slept in the van at a rest stop on a deserted desert highway. It was high adventure camping - some of the guys opened up the trailer and used it as a shelter - but I worried about scorpions and coyotes and the fact that desert highways seemed like places where a senseless massacre by a rogue trucker would most likely take place.
That "movie" feeling of automotive desert crossing had lost some of its potency over the years but it was still there. I could still feel a tangible change the closer we came to Southern California, as if the smell of money wafted through the air the minute we passed Indio.
We arrived at Johnny's parents' house in Mission Viejo in the middle of the night. It was an upscale place in a cul-de-sac in the hilly outskirts of Los Angeles County, and a home that might fetch $400,000 in Indiana, but in California would probably sell for upwards of three quarters of a mil.
In the tradition of true Filipino hospitality, an enormous spread of food was left out on the table for us to devour at 4am.
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