Well, here we are, in the lovely town of Indianapolis. Today, we're playing at the Egyptian Room, which looks exactly like you think. I think I've come up with a surefire gauge for how well a tour is going: when the stagehands you have today are dumber than the stagehands you had yesterday, your tour is not going well. At all. Period. I'm not looking forward to load out tonight.

I think it's kinda sad, actually, that Detroit, that city I loathe so much, has been the bright spot of the last week or so. The hands at the State theatre (sorry, Live Channel, but I will not call it the Fillmore. Ever.) were awesome. Everything went so smooth, I almost don't hate Detroit anymore.

So after Grand Rapids, with a truss that didn't fly and looked like it was about to fall any minute, I thought it couldn't get worse. Then we hit Milwaukee, where they had Studio Spots hanging from a truss by spansets. What's the big deal, you ask? Well, when you have a moving light fixture on the end of a string (basically), and it starts to swing around with the music, it tends to keep on swinging even when you don't want it to. When Lucas asked the house LD where the Studio Colors were, he told us those were Studio Colors. If you click the links to the photos, you'll see that those two lights are pretty hard to confuse. But that wasn't the best part. The best part was that the guy who supplied the lights, who looked like he got stuck somewhere in 1984, disappeared before everything was working. Suddenly, the house lighting console didn't work. Then the backup broke. Now it's 6 pm, the opener has sound checked, and we still don't have house lights. Awesome. Kip Winger (the lighting contractor) finally showed up at about 6:15 with some little desk that kinda worked, and the show went on.

Which brings us to Indianapolis. I knew we were in trouble when I couldn't even find the truck, because I was at the wrong stage (there's something like 3 stages in this venue.). So when I find the right stage, and see that none of the advance lighting has been hung, it portends a long day. And it has been. I think I can sum it up like this: Lucas' front light is made up of two washes, one blue, one amber. When the house LD walked up to him this morning, held up a piece of clear frost and said "Will this work for your amber wash?" I thought my head would explode.

Ok, so enough about work. Let's talk about the rest of the world:
Tammy Faye Baker Messner died last week. Boo hoo. Her face will still be around for the Rapture, I'm sure. After all, there's nothing natural about it.

Michael Vick's buddy turned around and pleaded guilty, and will probably testify against him. Who would've guessed that a guy who beats on helpless animals and forces them to fight for profit would be so disloyal?

Computerized voting machines have been hacked by a University of California team. Really? Those machines can be hacked? Gosh, and Diebold said they were so secure. Give me a hanging chad.

Apparently, some Japanese feel that history has unfairly made their actions in the Second World War seem brutal and inhuman. Guess what kids: they were. Anyone who tells you that it was a war for survival because the US and Britain were strangling them with economic sanctions is off their nut. Oh, and by the way, it was just that sort of blind, zealous nationalism that made us have to come over there and kick your butts 60 years ago. So cut it out.

So, last but not least, Ingmar Bergman died yesterday. I won't say it was a tragic thing; I mean, come on, the guy was 89; but he did have a great eye for cinema. And a really strange way of looking at the world. And so, I leave you with this:

"I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lyre. I shall try to remember our talk. I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency."

Antonius Block, Det Sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal)