Our tech people just finished massively reorganizing the website, so please let us know if anything we used to have that you liked isn’t here anymore and we’ll try to bring it back, unless we got rid of it on purpose.

Speechwriter’s Prayer

It’s a Monday in 1973

the year of our Lord Richard Nixon’s departure

and Mustang Sally, Ike’s honest old retriever

seems so damn far away.

This stomach has ulcers undiagnosed

the throat is swollen, the hands shake

and breathing is more difficult than it has been.

I’m queasy and my very structure

these bones and things

seem also to be more brittle

more stretched to breaking.

I’ve got a last speech to write for him

and many other details also

and all of this with a metabolism that feels recently returned

from malaria or some summer camp for dysentery.

So sick am I becoming that I fear

this Woodward and Bernstein disease

may just be the Epstein-Barr of every hack betrayed.

Please God, have him walk directly onto the helicopter

with no turning around to make that two-fisted victory sign.

Do this one thing for me, after all

I have given so much.

-attributed to Raymond K. Price

There’s so much pressure to write something epic here at the conclusion of our first nationwide tour, but I for one am way too lazy, so maybe Misha or Kolsky will rise to the occasion. We’re all still kind of meandering toward our separate hometowns, having divvied up the luggage and patted each other on the back and said “great tour, man” not two days ago.

And it really was a great tour. Not because we were good performers or even remotely worth watching, but because it actually wound up happening. I can’t believe we got to meet so many of you, the Crazed Internet Fans, in relatively non-threatening environments. I can’t believe so many people paid attention to what we were doing onstage and actually took the time to seek us out and say hi.

We’re taking a bit of a break over the next few weeks, having been all up in each other’s grills for the past three and a half months, but we’ll still be keeping up correspondence and leaking new MP3s like they were barrels of Exxon crude. We once again applaud your patience and promise that we really have written some new songs since January 2001, and anyone who wants to will be able to hear them soon.

So thanks again to every one of you for helping make the LLC possible and continuing to support us in even our most ill-advised endeavors. It’s been a great trip, and we’ll see you all again in the spring.

Cheers,

Dave