2:41 a.m. // 20 December 2003

Q: WHY am I wearing a finger condom on my thumb?
A: The skin on my thumb has become severely chapped and cracked in the last week and splits open in parts. It really hurts and in the absence of professional dermatological advice, this is my current attempt at fixing my damaged skin.

Q:
A: It happens every winter. It's genetic I guess; my grandma has this condition.

Q:
A: I got three finger condoms at a Le Tigre show in like 2000 or something. A clinic was handing them out because I guess they thought there would be a lot of lesbians there.

The show last night was awesome! Josh didn't get home from work until 7-something, then we had to load up in Chris Jones' truck, then we had to figure out how to put the tarp on the truck, THEN we had to stop once to buy more bungee cords and THEN we had to stop two more times to better secure them. And we lost some on the road anyway.

Something about the venue set me totally at ease and I played the best show I've played. (Out of like four shows total.) It's a low-ceilinged dark bar, kind of a dive and kind of nice. They played White Stripes while we were setting up so that made me feel relaxed too.

The set was short (ten songs, plus one bonus that I don't know how to play), and I think I have those songs down. I barely hit any wrong notes. I could hear myself and everything else pretty well and I kept in time. I was turned up as high as I could be. D. and J. said they could hear the keyboards well. Two guys in the crowd said they liked the music but couldn't hear the keyboards enough. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Forty Minutes of Hell are great. Their singer's more spastic than anyone you've seen before. He brought a Dollar General bag with musical toys and played them throughout the show -- kazoo, egg shaker, whirly whistle thing. He played tambourine in the first or second song and he smashed it while playing it with his hands -- wood shattering, steel discs exploding like confetti. He tried to break shot glasses and pint glasses two or three times (not successful). Writhing and screaming on the floor like a willful child. Weirder than Mike in the Gamblers, more destructive than the old singer from Tank Tank.

Dwayne says he gave them a bad show at Mable's (some four people watching, including the Israeli two-piece, and the local band didn't even show). And he was supposed to book a show for them but we went to Canada that weekend and it never materilized. Yet they gave us a great show. What good guys.

We got home at like 4:30 a.m. and then I stayed in bed until like 1:30 p.m., with a brief time of awakeness to make d. lunch/breakfast.

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