stoner crashing (andrew)
curious crawford at the wheel
Traveling from venue to venue, you start to see the patterns of which bands are following in your tracks. There’s only so many logical touring routes. And maybe booking agents are the same. Last fall in England, we kept seeing Less Than Jake flyers. This year, I see a lot of Rooney Flyers. Saw a bunch of Das Racist flyers on the trip out to the West Coast. I even see some flyers of one of my old bands, my roomate’s band, Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers.
Why are the houses that bands crash at rarely clean? The answer, my friends, is because the sort of person most likely to let a band crash is a stoner. And we Deezes are not the sort to perpetuate stereotypes, but in our experience, these stoner houses are grimy. The last two nights for Darwin Deez have been stoner crashes. There were so many bongs lying around the house we stayed at in Denton, Texas, that we were getting high by accident. But in all seriousness, Darwin is drug free, and Greg is the only one in our group who partakes on a semi-regular basis. Despite my fragile temperament towards reefer, I took the green challenge both nights. I needed all of my willpower to not lose myself in the purple haze.
After a classic stoner group diatribe about the Star Wars cannon, our drummer Miles chimed in about how he’s friends with the actor who played Jar Jar Binks. It was fascinating. I’ve never given much thought to what the aftermath must be after playing one of the most despised characters in cinema. After hearing Miles’s story, I sympathize with the guy. Apparently, the actor was doing some sort of theater performance which incorporated the walking style that would eventually become Jar Jar’s. George Lucas asked him if he’d like to be in the new Star Wars. Who wouldn’t turn that down? Who wouldn’t be excited? George Lucas asked the actor to experiment with a few different funny voices. He liked one of them, and that ended up being the Jar Jar voice. And throughout the filming, the final result was a mystery, because of the fact that Jar Jar is so largely a product of CGI. It was a disaster that he couldn’t even see coming. And now an entire international community of geeks loathes his existence. And now the guy refuses to take any interview questions about Star Wars.
In the morning, our host asked us if we wanted pasta for breakfast. It was so stoner.