25-Feb-2006

Bucketworks, Milwaukee, WI

Shameless Place gave us the invite to come and blast the ears off all the artisans in Milwaukee. We came to paint paint-by-numbers paintings and kick ass, and we were fresh out of velvety unicorn canvases. Needless to say, Bucketworks, the artistic commune, momentarily became BludgeonWorks on this otherwise innocuous Saturday night.

Our thanks to Shameless Place for having us and for, like usual, playing their asses off. Good work. The other bands--the Pulltops, Out of it, and Noah Lekas also came and conquered, kudos to them. And thanks to the venue, especially for having beer on hand to feed the Tate, and get him riled up enough to show the world his famous wrestling moves. It's too bad about those 14 afghan tables, and 24 leather chairs he had to boosh, but hey, that's the price you pay to see a wrestling star in action.

We found hell too, and surprisingly it's in Wisconsin at the McDonald's in Waukesha. First of all, we didn't even want to go to McDonald's. We're all Taco Bell fanatics and when we saw one of those blue highway signs for Taco Bell, we thought it was go time. So we exited into Waukesha and drove all the way up and down both sides of the road. There was no Taco Bell. It was a cruel, heartless lie, probably perpetuated by the geniuses working in the city's commerce department to get husky musicians like ourselves to stop in their town. Instead, we stopped at the McDonald's because it was the only place open.

That was a mistake.

McDonald's, as we all know and accept, is commonly labeled under the food genre of "fast." Well, while waiting in the drivethrough for twenty minutes when this particular McDonald's only served one other vehicle (who, I overheard, order an "ice water, but hold the ice."), I think any assumptions I had about their speed and alacrity where shattered into a million, quivering little pieces. Then, while waiting, it became abundantly clear that one member of the band had his heart set on ice cream, whether it be in McFlurry or Shake form was up for discussion--well, the sledgehammer of Mayor McCheese came down upon that idea when the only worker working there told us the ice cream machine wasn't working, but that there would be ice cream tomorrow. That McDonald's will be lucky if there aren't napalm bombs tomorrow.

Hell hath no fury like a Clovis Mann scorned.