Midwest Halloween Weekend

Paul and I had a couple shows in Saint Louis and Chicago this weekend. We flew into Chicago on Friday night and went to Dave Murray's Halloween party. I fell asleep somewhere around 1 or 2 at the party in a chair. I was kind of beat from getting up early to study for and take my probability exam and then all the planes, trains, and automobiles that got us to the big city. I told Paul on the flight over that if I could live for a million years I would never fly in an airplane, or ride in a car, or probably go much of anywhere, because the chance of being killed during such activities is large that if you rode an airplane say 5 times a year and each time a flight occurs there is about 1 in ten million chance that it results in a fatality (the actual chance is a lower depending on which airline you choose, unless it is a Chinese airline). Making a total of 5 million flights over a period of 1 million years - the probability that all 5 million of those flights are fatality-free is (9,999,999/10,000,000)^(5,000,000)= 0.604. That means if you take 5 million flights there is a 60% chance that your flight will not result in a fatality and a 40% chance that your at least one of your flights will crash and result in a fatality.

Although if you lived for a million years flying may become a lot safer. Because human beings have such short lifespans we can engage in all sorts of ridiculous behavior like flight and driving really fast down highways in small metal cages. Paul started talking about how the elves in the Lord of the Rings would got to war and die. I thought some of them probably get sick of living after a while, but that's just me talking from a cynical nonelven perspective.

So anyway I fell asleep at Dave's party and it continued on for three or four more hours. People kept sitting down next to me and trying to make small talk. I would open my eyes and say "yeah" and get up and move to a new chair to sleep on.

On Halloween we met up with Phil from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Grace and ate at Hot Doug's. I asked Doug what kind of hot dogs Steve Albini likes to eat. He said he usually goes for the bizzare sorts of meats that Doug usually has as "Game of the Week." Figures. The Game of the Week was Alligator sausage with goat cheese and it was amazing. Phil also got an awesome buffalo sausage that was out of this world. And the straightup chicago dog is real good there too. Doug rules.

We had a great show at the Beverly Art Center in Chicago that evening. At one point I went up to the balcony where it was mostly just small elementary-school-aged kids that were all high-fiving me and yelling "I LOVE YOU!" they were so cool! They were having so much fun!

I broke my keyboard too. Thought we could pick up a replacement power supply at radio shack, but Roland must not make their stuff with interchangeable parts because we couldn't get it to work right. I bust through those JUNO-D's maybe once every two hundred shows. Gotta get a new one. We borrowed a keyboard via twitter for St. Louis. Thanks to Joanna, Brett, and Zach for pulling through, if you guys ever read this.

We played on the roof of the City Museum in Saint Louis. This is the best museum in the world. Please go there. It is like a McDonalds playplace but without the McDonalds and 4,000 times bigger and more fun with caves and a ton of awesomely crafted rooms and tunnels for our exploration. You can ride a 13 story slide! I think it's 13 maybe its only 7 but it's still awesome. We played on the roof. We did a short part two in in a schoolbus on the roof.

Here is a picture of me at the city museum cafe that Grace took.