Surefire Cure For The Blues

Bumming. Monday morning with nowhere to be. Feeling pretty listless and a little bored, but mostly just plain depressed. It's hard to come from such flux on tour to return to my own bed. It makes the hardest crack up just a little. I have found a solution though. It is as follows.

-Wake up early
-Do laundry that has been piling up since London of the last tour. Put on last pair of clean socks and trudge to the laundromat. Stop along the way at the French pastry joint up the block. Wash clothes. Eat croissant.
-Give self a boredom-sparked home haircut
-Shower, fix bits and pieces of crooked hair. Remove hair from walls, ceiling.
-Make and consume 3 pints of carrot juice.
-Download Fela Kuti's 'Expensive Shit' record because it is amazing.
-Take a drive, preferably over the Golden Gate Bridge
















-Stop, ever so briefly at In and Out Burger just to make sure that the world is spinning in the right direction and burgers are still delicious.















-Find some direct sunlight



















-Find some flowers. If that's lame then find some flowers and back over them with your car. I kind of liked those little purple bastards though.
















-Go to the most amazing beach in the world.




















-Lie down in the sand on said beach.















-Walk to giant Eucalyptis tree.
















- Sit. Contemplate.

















-Find a spa. Sit in Sauna. Sit in hot tub. Get massage.
-Eat delicious, delicious Thai food. (This was a great idea other than the fact that I had previously sat in a sauna and hot tub and then got a rub down, and was now full of food and had to drive 30 miles home).
-Go see '300.' If a film with a bodycount in the thousands doesn't perk you up a little then you are a bad person. I think that there was a total in the tens of thousands...and four elephants.
-If the following doesn't really do it then.....go to the zoo.
-And laugh at the baboons.


















-And the Hippos.


















-Maybe bang on the tiger cage.














And tickle the crocodiles.





























-Talk shit about the polar bear. Poor little guy. It was 70 degrees.
















-Feed the penguins a churro.



























-And marvel at the howler monkeys. Holy shit.








Maybe the key to being happy is just living life as you would enjoy it. Seems simple enough, but I forget sometimes. Lesson learned.

If Carlos Santana Did Meth and Listened to Black Sabbath

My friend Jerry is out tuning basses and what looked like making tea for The Mars Volta. They played in Berkeley the other night. I had only seen them in festival settings where they don't really do so well. There was a notorious performance at KROCK's weenie roast where I think they played one song that lasted an hour. The kids roasting in the 110-degree heat were less than impressed. Such is the band's style. The show the other night was pretty damn good. 2 1/2 hours, no support band and the jammy, meandering songs sounded huge, and always collapsed into screaming metal at some point. I was pretty impressed. They really never let up the whole time. The two furry ones are some of the most entertaining performers this side of Dana Carvey.