Dateline: September 15, 1999 - Los Angeles,CA - Davenport, IA Joe spits out coffee all over my livingroom as I writhe on the floor convulsed in laughter and Alex pretends to be reading. We are listening to musical excerpts from SPACE GHOST, a cartoon I've never seen but whose soundtrack album shivers with spastic brilliance... but this jollity is cut short by a glance at the clock. We vroom to LAX on fumes - Joe left 1/64th of a tank in his car - and head for Chicago via Phoenix on America West. At the airports, Hurricane Floyd flexes its muscles yielding huge lines of disappointment snaking from Customer Service counters... We all meet in Phoenix and our O'Hare flight gets delayed... and after several awful airbus-Richard-are-those-your-knees-implanted-in-my-lumbar-region hours we are Westbound in Super Promoter Lance Sadlek's van, headed to Iowa. We bullet through the night, stopping only at the O'Hare Oasis for a much needed royalty fix at Burger King. Lance lends me the phrase "Ski Iowa!" for "Kill Your Television" as we pass skunks, cornfields and the DeKalb exit in the chilly night. A harvest moon skirts the horizon. At the hotel in Bettendorf, IA, there is no Weather Channel (a travesty), so I stay up watching "Change of Heart" (or, as Alex calls it, "Train Wreck"). I vaguely remember hearing one contestant tell his date her hair looks like taco meat as I drift into Nod. Quote of the Day: Richard, re: me - "Hey, you've been employee of the month for the past six months. But your parking space is in Berkeley."

Dateline: September 16, 1999 - Davenport and Deluxe Dining Up at ow o'clock for our tryst with Rob Digga-D at KALA, the college's radio station. It's an urban format - an odd match for us - but Rob eases the transition by giving Joe Bob lessons in "street." We do "Vapor", "Leisure Suit" and "Caravan" for a semi-confused but breathlessly phat Rob, who sums up our time there succintly: "It's all good." Rob has a killer promo demo of himself - he's cooler than we'll ever be - and should land himself a great big city gig someday. Goofy event: hearing Finetti attempt to lip about how "mack" he is and how much "cheese" he has, which only serves to Kraft our appetites... Cornfields and sheep-like clouds abound..... and we are off to a grand ole lunch at the Iowa Machine Shed, a paragon of eating off of I-80! This super cool place is a trough of wonders from which we readily slurp. I'm serious. Feed bags and farm signs surround us as we tread the carpet, designed to look like wood planks, and pig out mercilessly. The overall-clad waitress is completely unamused by us as we empty our plates, bowls and dishes of any Bob Chow she brings. Goofy event: Photo opps outside with various farm objects. There are wonderfully silly posters of us all over the campus promoting our Friday night show at the Galvin, part of the Fine Arts Series. Streetlamp flags announce our impending arrival...Limp Bizkit, eat yer heart out! Later that afternoon we workshop with STAMVOJA, St. Ambrose's resident vocal jazz group. We dissect their "A Cappella in Acapulco" and discuss Latin percussion... they are a great group with spot-on time and we're amazed they've only been a unit for a month's time. Goofy event: Matthew's brain malfunctions and he tells the bass to "Shake those marimbas!" Lance shepherds us to yet another wonderful meal at Le Mekong in Moline, IL, a French Vietnamese place where we sample several dishes while discussing old movies, bomb shelters, and Joe Bob's residence hunt. Joe's been thinking about leaving Los Angeles and brings up Canada this time - specifically Vancouver. His plan: "find a girl and...you know..." (I think he thinks that's all they require for Canadian citizenship.) Our fortune cookies: Matthew - good things are coming. Richard - success. Me- luck is on the way. Joe - "You are creative, capable and careful. Prove it!" (I'm serious here!) And for Lance - " You will pay the check." Quote of the Day: Joe, re: WWII Japanese bombs sent across the Pacific in balloons - "That's just irresponsible."

Dateline: September 17, 1999 - Davenport Cont'd. Although we didn't get around to photo opps at the John Deere Pavilion (sadly - we wanted shots of us being herded and the like), we did get a good sampling of the Davenport area. In particular, Richard Bob and I rented bikes on a gorgeous Friday morning and rode the Mississippi riverfront downtown for several miles. We passed huge freight trains, cool bridges, the President Casino (do they get a new one every 4 years?) and at one point, the bike path veered onto Credit Island, a pretty park. We passed egrets (I've seen a few, but then again, too few to mention), sunflowers, sky, and.... a fully realized life-size representation of Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte"!!!!! What the...?!?!?!?! Naturally, I whipped out my camera. It was a wonderful afternoon, and later on, legs beginning to ache, I realized why they call this area the "QUAD cities."

The show is lots of fun, and Joe Bob and I look like prom dates these days - he's in a light blue tux with a white ruffle shirt and I'm in a Donna Reed-esque light blue/gold stitching formal dress (with shoes I sprayed light blue to match - a $4.29 investment, but they hurt so much I may bag 'em). The audience joins us on a special birthday video greeting we're making for Jason Alexander - filmed by an actual birthday boy that day, Charles! After the show, we meet lots of fans who have come great distances to see us - from Omaha, from Minnesota, on a 6-hour bus from Mason City, etc. Incredible! And we repair to the way cool Front Street Brewery for microbrews and wrapup with Lance, Marti Dunn-Hall (STAMVOJA's director), her husband Joe (whose promise to find Joe Bob a nice old truck temporarily sidetracks Kanadian Kutie Kwest '99) and ex-student Louis (a super-bass who now teaches and told his whole class they'd flunk if they didn't come to our concert). On the way back to the hotel, laughter erupts yet again over Richard's increasingly huge countoffs for "Mr. Duality" - bordering on frightening! Quote of the Day: Me, re: the extremely overweight Human Beat Box guy who died of a heart attack while doing the beat box - "Don't blame the beat - blame the meat."

Dateline: September 18, 1999 - Davenport, IA - Los Angeles, CA Yet another unsatisfactory Bruegger's Bagels experience (I'm working too hard for that stupid bagel and tea... why can't they toast it themselves?)... and the 3-hour jaunt with Lance back to O'Hare. During this trip, we amuse ourselves with a trivia book Lance brought, revealing that we collectively know way more about Greek Mythology than proper food storage and refrigeration. And unfortunately there isn't enough videotape left to film Joe Bob doing "North By Northwest" in the cornfields next to the Rest Area. Ah well. Next time in Iowa!

CHONG: LANCE SADLEK - for absolutely everything!!!!! You rule!

©1999 Amy Engelhardt (text) , Richard Greene (page)