It's late Wednesday night, I'm in a hotel room in Austin, Texas. I just got over a mild cold/Vegas hangover combo so I'm feeling 20x better than yesterday. I thought I was gonna wait until I got home to start writing it all down but I just can't and will not settle down, I need to get this stuff out of my head before it evaporates. In no particular order of any sort, here are some highlights of my trip so far:
1. I met Johnny Depp in Vegas. Seriously. This is great for a number of reasons:
A. He's a great actor. I especially loved his work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because I am a huge Hunter fan (see pic 1 below). To meet him in Vegas seemed like a nice added coincidence. According to Jen (who has helped to keep me in good spirits on the road) he was also great in Sweeny Todd which I have yet to see but I'm sure it's great.

B. I got his autograph. He was in town and both he and his daughter got backstage passes to our show. It was the second-to-last song of our show when I saw him, and I didn't know the tour's policy about interacting with celebrities who attend the show. So far I've met some interesting people (Billy Ray Cyrus, Colin Powell, Alicia Keyes) but I've never felt the urge to say much more than 'hello.' In this case I grabbed the book I've been reading on the road (Charles Darwin's
The Voyage of the Beagle) and went for it. I convinced myself by telling me that I would regret not-doing it later, so just go for it. He was was so genuine and sincere, we got to talk a little bit, and then I had to go back to work. While we were talking one of my co-workers Otto came up and said 'whoa, hi!' Otto suggested that I should tell him about my SkullHammer movie and I replied 'but that would exceed my "no prop or actor shall cost more than $20 or a fifth of Jack" ' to which he just laughed. He said he'd like to see it when I'm done though...there's some motivation.
2. My friend Jeff lives here in Austin, and we were motorcycle buddies back in my Colorado days. After miraculously recovering from a major car accident (aka $27,000 of reconstructive surgery to his body and face) he formed a non-profit company called
The Bikers Foundation. It's an organization that's dedicated to such things as helping abused kids get re-acclimated to society...here's a quote from his site:
"The Biker's Special Children's Foundation is one of many 501 C3 tax deductible charities, but we are one of the best children’s charities to donate to because we are one of the few national charities that 100% of the money generated goes to our cause, helping children in need."
If you like what he's doing feel free to either donate or just drop him a line to say hello!
3. I'm coming home sometime this weekend...which is great cuz I can't wait to sleep in my own bed and be back in my own studio. I decided not to shave for this two-week trip and I'm itchin' to shave. Why, you ask? I guess it's interesting to see what I look like all burly...but as soon as I get home it's gone. I will not be leaving the house unless:
A. I run out of food
B. ok maybe an occasional pinball/coffee run
C.
the meadow is on fire4. I got up at 6 a.m. last friday to video-record the entire stage building process at our first Vegas show, which took almost 6 hours! I set my rig way up high in the bleachers, falling asleep and setting my alarm to change dv tape every 90 minutes. I ran out of tape and had to go direct to hard drive, good thing I brought some 500 gb hard drives out with me! When the stage was finished we got to play Guitar Hero on a 25-foot by 25 foot screen and five audio line arrays (our line arrays are speakers that are clusters of around 7 speakers grouped together, and the show used 10-15 of these but we only used 5 of these clusters, it was pretty friggin heavy ;). YouTube video will be following after I get back home and do some editing.
And with that I am off to bed in my final hotel room for this tour, I'm wiped out...did I mention I can't wait to get home?