TEXAS #3

So we saw a dead possum today. But that's for after.

The day began late as usual but an hour earlier than planned (Mike hasn't updated his phone to central time yet). After indulging in Cap'n Crunch With Crunchberries (a delicacy foreign to Canada) we retired to our little bedroom studio. It rained today for the first time since we arrived, but it was a drizzly, half-hearted kind of rain.

Let me take a moment to describe some of the lovely people we're staying with in this lovely old-fashioned home north of Houston. The mistress of the house is Nana, a kindly genteel Southern woman who is Tara's grandmother (Tara being James's wife). She has cancer and spends most of the day in her room watching crime shows. Oh, she also owns a large pump-action shotgun which she keeps bedside in case 'anybody tries to break in and rape and kill her.' James warned us that she's hyper-conservative but honestly, she's been nothing but kind to me. Though we're all kind of constantly aware that our brand of noize-rock and liberal Canadian values could easily result in our sudden and bloody deaths at any moment. As I type this, this woman sleeps a few feet down the hallway. Or maybe she's awake, waiting to spring her deadly trap.

The other two guests staying at the house are Morton and Tomas. They are from Copenhagen, Denmark and they are two of the coolest Danes you will ever meet, believe you me. They don't drink or smoke or take drugs because as Tomas says 'I spend all my money on music.' They arrived here a couple days before us and they spend a lot of time on their laptops designing flyers for our upcoming shows in Austin and doing record label business. After all, from what I understand, they are some of the main players in Skrot Up (http://www.myspace.com/skrotup).

Then there's James, who's as close to my mind's idea of what Kevin Shields (of My Bloody Valentine you philistine) as anybody I've ever met. Quiet, soft-spoken but wise and generous. His wife Tara plays in Lashes (http://www.myspace.com/lashesnoise) and together they form Pink Playground (http://www.myspace.com/pinkplayground3). Tara is similar to James in personality and they are both super-awesome cool people who are kinda stuck in middle America. But they've accepted that fact and are almost proud to be labeled 'freaks' by the Republic-Biblethumping-rednecks they are forced to share a state with. They also make pretty fantastic music. They met in middle school around the time Tara was 14 and now they have a sweet daughter who's 7 and likes playing videogames with fairies.

So that's our cast of characters. After dickin' around for a lil' bit, we finally decided to actually practise for the first time since arriving on Sunday. To jam, we're using our own pedals and James and Tara's two Marshall MG100DFX amps for the guitars and a decent sized Samick bass amp. We managed to get through two sets of music before hunger struck. Since we had tried out Tex-Mex the day before, we decided to go for the 'authentic American breakfast' experience, which could only mean one thing : Denny's (www.dennys.com).

The Denny's that Tara took us to provided a fantastic breakfast. I got the "choose your own Grand Slam" for $5.99 (taxes in Texas are about 8%). We also got to sit in the smoking section, a novelty for Quebecers used to being scorned and demonized for smokin' a fag now and then. The patrons were as authentically Texas as could be (think Billy Bob Thornton from Sling Blade) but the waiter was a dear who admitted he thought we were 'great.'

After that, we got to explore the consumerist side of average American life by visiting a Target department store. Just to give you an idea of how fucking massive this store was, there were 24 checkout aisles, an entire Wal-Mart sized department store, a whole supermarket, and a bevy of little side boutiques like the Photo Studio and the pharmacy and such. It was a little overwhelming and that old Clash tune about the supermarket began ringing in my ears.

Then we went to a native smoke shop where taxes don't exist to pick up a carton of Marlboro mediums. I wanted the Reds but the others didn't think they could handle such extreme American tobacco flavour. We also went to a cool record store where I found a copy of Section 25's Looking From a Hilltop single but it was $30 and out of my budget. Big ups to Tara for taking us to these cool places and tolerating all our obnoxious pointing at things and commenting.

When we got back, we recorded a new-ish song called "Super Free," which is still in rough form but may go up on the MySpace in the next couple of days if we finish mixing it.

To cap off the evening, myself Michaela and Mike decided to make an ill-advised attempt to purchase alcohol, which involved walking like 20 minutes down the side of the road (the same one we went along yesterday). Instead of getting honked at, we saw a dead possum , which was interesting I suppose because I had never seen one before. In the end though, I forgot my I.D. and all the alcohol-selling establishments closed up shop by midnight.

That's day three. I promise the next few days will be more exciting because we're going to Austin and tomorrow's when SxSW starts for real.

Ta MTLers.

=//Turnquest