so i’m at a waffle house with robin williams, only it’s not robin williams, it’s robin williams as his character from “House of D,” which i haven’t even seen. but i know from the trailer that his character is retarded. so there i am with retarded robin williams in a waffle house and i realize that i left the lights on in my car. so i go outside. no sooner do i step outside than a gang of street thugs leaps out of the shadows and declares that they’re going to kill me. for what i’m not sure. i run back inside and try to ask robin williams for help, but he’s retarded so he can’t do much. so i turn around and yell for anyone to help. but everyone just goes back to eating their waffles. i start thinking how strange it is that no one is reacting to me or trying to help me. but then i realize that it’s even stranger to be in a waffle house with robin williams as his retarded character from House of D (which I haven’t even seen) in the middle of the night about to be attacked by a huge gang of street thugs for no reason. that’s when i realized it was all a dream. so i made all the thugs burst into flame and then i flew out the window.

i’m at a computer kiosk where i have to stand up, which is weird for me. i feel that doing computer work standing up should be reserved for space ships and the future, not a student union in madison, wisconsin. however, when you are as commited as were are here in speechwriters llc to daily blogging regardless of somewhat awkward locations and/or a lack of any real interesting things to say, you will not bend like the reed to such a wind.

i have been jumping rope in parking lots and rest stops across america, and i’m pleased to report that while still looking stupid, i look stupid for longer amounts of time as i am getting better at actually jumping the rope.

pizza at a place called ian’s in madison is something you should all experiance. they took one of my favorite salads (carmelized onion, blue cheese, walnut, arugula, and gala apple) and put it on a pizza. also they have hot sauce and honey to mix together and dip the crust into. it’s this sort of simple culinary innovation makes me feel like i’ve just put on a new pair of socks – salad pizza socks – and it feels marvelous. so does saying “toadstool strudel.” just marvelous, these little things.

it will be a good show tonight. we have jasper and he is a titan among men. we have an audience. we have good songs that we are excited to play live. we have (hopefully) a setlist by now. i don’t know how that’s going, exactly, because i am standing at a computer that is not from the future or on a spaceship. either way, i trust things will go just swimmingly.

last night i saw the alphabets live.

seattle has much to offer. there is good coffee everywhere, there are branches of the public library that have bathrooms from the future, there are quirky music stores that let medicore bass players noodle around with expensive pedals that make medicore bass players sound less mediocre and more like powerhouses of virility and funkiness. there are omelettes with goat cheese and carmelized onions. there is a needle from space that bill gates uses to knit cosmic hand towels for the bathrooms from the future. seattle, to me (being from portland), is like the cool cousin that hooked you up with warm beers from your uncle’s garage when you were 14. seattle, the adopted home of the alphabets, is a fine last stand. seattle is our own hadrian’s wall. now we plunge into the abyss, like ed harris before us. this is, in fact, possibly the last time on this tour that any one of us will draw analogies to both the roman empire and pre-titanic james cameron films in the same breath. tonight we must pack the van with style and discipline, and make the first of many marathon drives eastward. bets are being made on individual freak-outs. i am seriously wondering whether or not my grand plan of cooking on the road will not result in some sort of awkward and humiliating disaster.

say what you will about the four men that make up the llc, but we are nothing if not a united front against absurd and baseless apprehensions about my abilities as highway chef, our collective inexperiance with the camping we have planned, dave’s sporadic explosions about internal politics regarding the hoodie situation, misha’s deteriorating mental health, and nitzan’s cabin fever when it comes to long stretches of driving without music or any real conversation. in spite of all this, we will continue to post rambling blogs while watching football and we will continue putting on the most potent live show we can.

the alphabets have lit a fire under our asses, and we must answer not with the water of shoe-gazing but with the gasoline of flailing-limbed rock.

and love songs.