Yesterday saw the successfully completion of show number two. So what's new? Well, Marcel, the percussion player from Mars Volta is out with us and playing perc on 5 or six songs each night which adds a delightful variation to the live show and a cool person to have around. Add in John singing a Bee Gees cover of Shadow Dancing and the song "Hey" added to the set and the show was stood out as quite enjoyable and now that I have replaced my lost camera, I will snap some pics with Marcel up there. Speaking of camera. Scott and I grabbed a runner and headed out to Best Buy to replace my lost little friend. I opted for the same again but this time I got it in red rather than black. It is a Lumix DMC-FX07 for anyone curious and after owning 6 Canon digital Elphs, 4 Sony Cyber-Shot's, 1 Kodak, a Casio and a digital SLR Nikon D70, I can say that the little Lumix fighter is easily my favorite by far. I do still have and tour with the Nikon D70 and a giant lens and it would be my all around favorite if I had really huge pockets, the problem though is that 99% of the importance of of having a camera is found in actually carrying it with you. As far as the fate of all those other digi cameras, I am proud to say that I lost only about a third of them, a few were stolen, I sold one, gave a few away and the rest are in the electronics graveyard in my closet at home.

So once again, a bit late, I have implemented the Cam-Lam

method to increase the probability of retaining the the two items for an extended period of time in my possession. Speaking of retaining things, and since I have been on a bit of a blast from the past binge lately, here is another old Rat calendar that we mysteriously called the Amex Calendar

and since it is quite full of many pages, here is my January a 22 years back,

Minutemen and Meat Puppets at Fenders Ballroom and Oh Boy! we raked in the big cash at $350 but it appears we got shorted $50.

Who are these Violent Femms anyway, never heard of them, at least not back then and the show gets postponed.

St. Vidas $30 and owe $30. Hmmm looks like a sound engineer gig for me that I didn't get paid for. Oh and then on to do Black Flag, Flipper and Saccharin Trust, most likely at Fenders again as you can see we did not get paid again and added the $50 from the Meat Puppets show onto their "owed" account. If my memory serves me, I believe that we were quite skilled at not getting paid while living on little or no money. If we do the math, it looks like we earned a grand total of $730 for the month of January, receiving a whopping $350 to feed, fuel and pay rent for Brian Rat and I. But there just was not a lot of opportunities for a couple of punkers and their home made PA so we did what we could to stay alive. You know when people talk about the "good old days?" Well, Though those days are old and some of them were good, and I would not trade them out of my past, no way!, I will say that looking back upon them makes me truly appreciate my world now.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you left some truck drivers alone with a case full of Tiki items?

And since our Pirate days have passed, we make occasional donations to random and inspired fans

Take care till soon, the acclimating to tour,

Dave Rat