The tour began last night with a free parking lot show to celebrate the opening of Pasty’s new management office in Nashville. I raised such a stink about the weather that Pasty went and rented us a pair of heat lamps, and by showtime it was nice and toasty on stage despite the 41 degree temperature outside. I can be such a puss sometimes. Speaking of which, within an hour of meeting our new bus yesterday I took a leak on it and became concerned that the urine smell was incredibly strong. Narrow vertical closets, tour bus bathrooms are poorly ventilated to begin with, but I was convinced that there was some plumbing issue with the toilet compounding the issue. The smell was super potent and seeping out the bottom of the door.
So I found Seth Loeser, the man that’s filled Pasty’s shoes as tour manager, and wafted a little urine-cloud at him in the front lounge. I think I gave him a primadonna-toned “does this toilet even flush!?” or maybe a whiny “what the hell is wrong with the bathroom on this bus!?” or perhaps a pompous, disinterested “oh hey, the toilet’s kind of fucked, you might want to fix it…”
One of those.
So Seth, who is vegan, gets in there and starts flushing the thing over and over and then calls out to the nose-in-shirt-occupants of the front lounge “hey did any of you guys eat asparagus today!?”
Sherlock Loeser
I scratched my chin and visualized my lunch at “Bread & Co.” on West End Avenue in Nashville that day. I’d ordered a smoked salmon salad sandwich, said yes to the bag of chips, and then asked for a “side of asparagus” — because they were skinny and grilled and glistening with olive oil and because it’s good to eat healthy on the road. The guy behind the counter then focused his gaze intently, let out a determined grunt, grabbed his powerful tongs, plunged them deep into the plate of asparagus, and filled a plastic container so high with green stalks that it barely snapped shut. There must have been 100 to 150 of them in there.
I sat at a table with my lunch and a USA Today. I became immersed in the Soduku puzzle. I was eating with my fingers. An hour went by and the Soduku puzzle was finished and so was my lunch. I can’t believe I ate all those asparagus, I thought to myself. I didn’t feel very good.
So my apologies to Seth for bitching about the stink I created, and my apologies to the 12 other people on the bus who made me use the port-o-john the rest of the day until I flushed ten dollars worth of asparagus out of my system. Funnily enough, there was a big display of asparagus backstage at the catering and Joe helped himself generously, oblivious to the events of the day, and helping to cement the new No Pooping No Asparagus Peeing rule on the bus.
Back in 1993, before the -TER, we thought it’d be funny to put two bunches of asparagus next to a doll on the cover of our demo tape.
Guster Road Journal 