August 9th, 2002

      This was the first day of a two day trip down south. Today's show was the Semifinal round of the Battle On The Lake in Dracut MA. We had an unprecedented, rather "enjoyable" trip down. The only notable item is actually noted best in the form of a question: "Haven't you always wanted to see Sean Higgins running through a traffic jam on foot? Dressed as an ape?" I'll see about getting some video clips up or something. This needs to be seen.
      We arrived at the Lakeview Lounge around 8pm or so, to meet our buddy from MA(rs), Mr. James Martin, doing good on his promise to sell "many tickets" to the performance. By the end of the night, he'd managed to sell 26 or 27 tickets to random barflies who were on their way in to drink.
      This little recovery operation (we were supposed to sell tickets to enter / we live in maine) was cut short around 9:30 or so when we caught wind that the LL staff was after a guy selling tickets in the parking lot. We felt that this was a great opportunity to leave the scene, and go get food. Which ended up being quite an adventure in itself. Upon our arrival at the pizza parlor, they were just trying to close, so we were their last order. One of the guys working, Pizza Tim, struck up a conversation with us, resulting in the weirdest 15 minute conversation between 8 people or so that i've seen in quite some time. Apparently this Pizza Tim knows where we all live, and has been there before. And to make things even more bizarre, his full-time job is a cop in Boston Chinatown. He even took us out back to show us his cruiser. Did i mention that he whipped several thousand dollars out of his pocket at one point in the conversation, and at another, dived onto the floor to execute a moth with extreme prejudice? Well that happened too. And on our way out, Jim's buddy Justin was the victim of a perfectly executed Pizza-jacking, in which some local hoods sped towards us and into the parking lot, only to snatch the pizza right out of his hands and speed off. No individuals were hurt, and the pizza was safely returned several minutes later.
      As for the show, we were the last of the bands for the night, so we started our set fresh and early at 12:30 in the morning. We played our standard half-hour set, rocking out several in attendance.
      After packing up and taking back to the road, we sped back up to Auburn ME to unload Old Reliable at a family function, and arrived at our floor for the night in Biddeford at 5am.

click to read the tour diary for August 10st @ the Sad Cafe


SETLIST
Prelude
Action, Reaction
Jesus Sunrise
Waitforever
Boys Will Be Boys
Lie Down With Dogs