June 2009 – Scarlett, stop dancing around naked, you’re not a party girl. You’re not Paris Hilton or your father

So I’m neither late, nor naked… No wait; there we go. I AM naked, but I’m not late. It is 1:25 in the morning on the 25th of June. My journal isn’t due until midnight. Normally I would rejoice; but Riki and Jef both already have their journals in.

We’re parked in the loading dock behind Grey Fox Pottery, possibly my favorite place we stay all year. Don’t get me wrong: We’re in an industrial park near St Paul Minnesota, not an RV park, but we have good electricity, water, arrangements for sewer… Heather’s boss owns the pottery factory – So when she works during the week it’s right outside our door. We’re walking distance to a gym, a Target, and a grocery store… and the neighborhood is nice enough that we feel safe.

Best of all: It’s free.

For this journal, my photos are collected, last month’s journal is read over, and the month’s events are outlined. Which means; first –and-foremost I need to cover a topic I meant to write about in May… but ran out of time.

The MTV Movie Awards are making me feel old.

I had a month to think over this whole topic; it’s been nostalgic, and bittersweet. I have always been a fan of the irreverence, the brashness; even the shameless plugs that help set apart the movie awards from its more staid predecessors. I’ve cheered along with “Best Kiss”, “Best Fight Scene”, and “Best Villain”. I fondly remember Will Ferrell wetting his pants for Tom Cruise, and even Adam West and Frank Gorshin doing a Lestat/Batman parody. Good times.

This year was different.

I find that it is part of my job to stay very involved with current events, especially cultural ones… I can tell you a bit more about that Jonas brothers, or Miley Cyrus, or the cast of High School Musical than is completely seemly for a 44 year old man… But apparently, along with “Twitter” I have also missed an entire segment of pop culture. Who the fuck is Spencer and Heidi? Why should I give a crap about Chace Crawford? The Hills, Gossip Girl, Leighton Meester? (Though to be fair, since she was featured so prominently on the show, a “sex-tape” has emerged… so there’s that). I saw, and even somewhat enjoyed, the movie Twilight… though it was obviously written for teenage girls terrified of sex, and with a lot of issues, though again should it really have dominated the year’s awards?

Twenty years ago when I first went on the road, I was the young, wild Bohemian who had the world by the balls. MTV still played music, there wasn’t really an internet, the only person I knew who had a cell phone had a bag-phone in his car… the most popular movies were the Burton Batman, the third Indiana Jones film, and the second Back to the Future. Paris was a city, Hilton was a hotel chain, nobody was adopting babies from Africa, and in fact Madonna was still hot… not leathery. There was no-such-thing as “reality TV”. And the idea of gaining “fame” from a Sex tape was ludicrous.

Now look at us.

Of course some of our fans (more specifically, PT’s fans!) take all of this in stride. This is how the world must be because it always has been… to them.

I just worry, sometimes, now that I have to acknowledge that I have become “middle-aged” can I be far from sitting on a rocker on my porch yelling at the “whippersnappers” to get off my grass?

So that’s off my chest.

To pick up this journal where I left off; we finished the final week of Georgia drier than the previous six or so… I did some repairs to our drum booth (fixing the shutters I’d constructed last year so that they closed properly), followed by our celebratory Drum Dinner. We went to one of our favorite sushi places in Atlanta, Ru-San’s. I’ve got a great crew, anymore all I do is sign checks, and occasionally make a few minor decisions. The joke has become that rather than me being the boss, I actually work for Justin and Meghan. They make more money from the biz than I do. We also brought our up-and-coming young drummer Jamie (along with his Mom).

I also reported last journal that the poop, or “black water” tank had (once again) started leaking? There wasn’t time for the very competent Protek RV repair shop to come fix it… so I had to finish Georgia, trek cross-country, Visit KC, trek even more cross-country, and finally set up here in Minnesota all while smelling our own poop… Yay! We have a guy here in the Twin Cities that is on-the-job… but we are totally looking for another trailer.

But, Back to Georgia

Our newest and oddest news tidbit: We’ve signed the first contract for our second team! That’s right folks, The Tortuga Twins “Blue Team” have signed an eight weekend deal at King Richard’s Faire outside of Boston! This whole thing is both exhilarating, and scary… a big experiment. We’ve chosen the right guys, we’ve trained them well, and the material is tried and tested… now let’s see our little monster live!

The boys also managed to prove themselves quite-well at the final R-rated show of the Georgia Renaissance Festival. I’m sure one of the Blue-team boys have photos, but suffice to say they did a little surprise bit that made us so proud! In fact, the new stage, Breaking-Point, and Barely Balanced, and our wild fans all conspired to make our final show in Georgia (this year) to beamazing!

We celebrated that night, with the first-ever all-six-Tortuga-dinner by looking at this photo you can see two things quite clearly; One, we got all dolled-up for the event. And Two, we got the right guys to carry-on our name to new audiences.

Good times.

My post Georgia experience was a lot more relaxed than last year. For many reasons, predominantly logistical and financial, I chose to not participate in the Bonnaroo Music festival again this year. Making the decision to not go may have cost me a tiny bit of profit… but it saved me Soooo much stress, worry, and immediate cash outlay. Making that decision felt like a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders.

Heather got her shop(s) packed-up quickly, the drum kids speedily and efficiently packed-up and scooted-off to Colorado, in fact the only thing that was really trying was the oppressive Georgia heat.

It was also Inari’s first extended car trip. Envision this: a sixteen pound cat, a nine pound cat, a cat box, a sixteen-month old (very active ) daughter, a car seat, Heather, Ronn, and now a puppy… all piled into my extended cab Pick-up.

Oooh Boy!

The puppy did fine, and she’s a lot less ‘sissy’ looking than our last dog. The trip was (mostly) pretty smooth, the only real set-back being the difficulty in finding a campground to stay in overnight. We avoided the creepy one abutting the graveyard, and there was no room at the slightly nicer one – we eventually took advantage of the surprisingly cooler weather and just stayed in a Wal-Mart parking lot again.

Oh, annoyingly enough we drove right past the farmlands where Bonnaroo was held, and were astounded by the traffic and its impact from miles and miles away.

And then KC!

Our Kansas City/Independence trip went pretty-much like it always does: Heather got photographed a lot, as did Scarlett, Bob Brown and I killed over seven thousand Zombies, (and with all the shots we were all doing; equally as many brain cells.), while playing Left 4 Dead on his Xbox 360. We dined at a few of our favorite restaurants with a few of our favorite people: Sushi train With Tanya, Kyle, and the Daltons, and of course Dim Sum! We even got the Browns to come out this time. We stayed where we always stay, in a lovely campground run by the Mormons right next to their very impressive church. Our favorite manager is no longer there. (we miss you Cindy!) Every morning I dutifully went out to hose down the puddle of ‘nasty’ leaking from beneath our trailer (eeeewwww!). Heather and I stayed in and did (blissfully) nothing but watch DVDs a few days (more on that later). There were some photos of me, taken, and I’m sure you’ll see them eventually… I’ve shown you guys the Zombie photo Ann did of me right? I guess the only other noteworthy event was hitting my daughter in the head with a Kayak as we loaded it out of the trailer in KC. (She wasn’t hurt, but her comical pained expression and Heather’s and my laughter sure won’t win us “Parents of the Year”)

I think we’ve come to the baby section of this month’s journal.

Scarlett has discovered bubble baths… and loves them! I thought (due to my extensive research: i.e. Calvin and Hobbes comics) that children hated baths. Not my kiddo. Sometimes even Daddy joins in! Scarlett has become quite the budding young artist as well. She loves mommy’s make-up, lipstick, and balms… and will swipe, and use them unless carefully watched, sometimes to bizarre, joker-like effects. She loves to draw, and color… though mostly on herself. I could fill an entire album with photos of my multi-colored daughter… thankfully; we’ve discovered washable markers. We’ve even gotten Scarlett washable bath crayons… which have led to some bizarre graffiti… (I think she had help on this one).

Our little Monkey has learned so much and is so interesting. As I am typing this she has just stripped out of her bottoms and diaper. I mentioned last month’s flossing… which I thought was adorable… Less adorable is this month, I caught Scarlett trying on Mommy’s naughty, naughty stripper shoes. I’m not ready for that.

Sadly it was time to eventually depart KC. Braving soaring temps, (still more pleasant than Atlanta!) we packed-up, and departed for our six hour trip.

It took 12 hours

You travel slower in a RV with kid, and dogs, and cats and stopping for dinner… It didn’t help that while everyone else was dozing off, Daddy missed his turn and took us fifty miles (each way) off our route.

Happy Father’s day!

The day started off pleasantly enough. Mommy, Puppy and Scarlett all bought me cards… Inari, the Japanese dog had one that said “rots of rove”. Mommy gave Scarlett the cards to give to me, but our little angel decided to do one better and help me by opening them too!

As I sit here on a Thursday, 1:20 in the afternoon, almost ready to submit this journal, we’re leveled, the Satellite dish is aimed, hoses are run (repairmen have assessed the repairs), and we’ve spent some relaxing hours just watching movies on the big screen. I like to think anymore we are largely lame, tame and happy! We’ve walked to the grocery store a few times, and also several times just for the exercise… as soon as this journal is done, I’m signing the family up to the gym across the street. Heather has plans with Kay Kinsey tonight, and yesterday we made a family pilgrimage to that Mecca of capitalism “Mall Of America” which involved (amongst other things) Scarlett’s first outing on her tethered monkey backpack-harness. It is funny; I swore we’d never use one of these on the kid before we had a kid. Only now that I do… I get it. (And Scarlett is so happy to be walking instead of in the carriage).

So I’m done, I’ll finish this journal off with something Heather yelled at our daughter after she (once again) stripped-down and out of her diaper and was dancing naked on the couch… something so funny, I wrote it down and will use it for this month’s journal title:

“Scarlett, stop dancing around naked, you’re not a party girl. You’re not Paris Hilton, or your father”.