Monday, October 05, 2009

Dude Camp

 
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As expected, The Olympic Ass-Kickin’ Team had an awesome time at Dude Camp this weekend. We did many of the usual things, rode around from town to town rockin’ like ASS, stopping at Dairy Queen every day, bowling and eating way more than usual. We left Wednesday afternoon and headed for our jumping point, Charleston, WV. We arrived at a decent hour and enjoyed a few beverages before bed. The next morning we were awakened at 7:45am by the sounds of hot rods on the street below, bluuooooaam! bluuooooaam! bluuooooaam! Nice.
 
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The ride ahead to Columbus was of reasonably short distance so we spent time looking at cars and enjoying the crappy breakfast bar at Shoney’s before leaving town.
 
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Along the way we decided that everyone needed a “car name”. From then on we became Cobra (Jack), Falcon (Dave), Bronco II (Greg), Charger (merch dude, Paul) and Model T/SS (me). We made it to the club pretty much on time after a slight traffical turn around.
 
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Soundcheck was fine and we ran through a few tunes before I showed the guys a new song I was working on called “(While I was) Hittin’ it”. The question was, where would it fit in the set? It was later decided that we would OPEN with it, me standing at a front mike and singing. It worked beautifully and being in the key of C made it easy to go into other songs we usually open with, so we stuck with it for every show on the trip. The show at The Rumba Room was an early one and we had to be done by 9:45, so after the opener there wasn’t time for the extended version of our rock. But what time we had, we used wisely and impressed the hell outta everyone including ourselves at how tight and pro-style we were after not playing for so long. We had a few drinks and then headed for Cleveland, blasting “Rubber Soul” along the way. We listened to a lot of the new Beatles releases whenever we had a chance, “Help”, “The White Album”, “Revolver” included. This proved especially helpful keeping us awake on the late drives. We slept in pretty late on Friday morning in Cleveland. Thankfully, the sax guy on the street didn’t crank up with his “hit parade” until later.
 
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After an awesome lunch at Greek Express in The Arcade we walked across the street for some afternoon bowling and more eating. With the deal thingy we got “free” pizza and were able to get in FOUR games of bowling!

 
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The winner was of course Bronco II, cuz he brought his own shoes (that ought to tell you something!).
 
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I was in second place overall on my bad knee, which was miraculously temporarily healed for a day or two by the event. When we were done it was about time to leave for soundcheck at The Beachland Ballroom. They took good care of us with a downstairs meal of creamy pesto pasta, grilled chicken and mixed grilled veggies. And as if that wasn’t enough, Falcon realized that we hadn’t had our daily serving of Dairy Queen and googled to find the nearest one. Just a few blocks away, we all hopped in “eVANgeline” and ordered up.
 
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I swore I wasn’t getting anything and then Bronco II started talking about how it was the best chocolate cone he’d ever had. So I broke down and got a small one, which I’ll have to say was pretty damn good…and picked my spirits right up for some “good rockin’” (shout out to Spinal Tap!) when we got back to the club. Again, we tore the ass end out of it on stage, playing as well as we ever have and I was really surprised that none of us accidentally threw up while trying to sing. We gave the crowd, as we did the night before, a preview of the next record with my “Nervous Around Pretty Girls” and we also threw in our very rockin’ version of Mott The Hoople’s “Walking with a Mountain”, which we decided (upon Falcon’s wife’s suggestion) was about a fat girl...what else, right? We had a few adult beverages back at the room and watched a little “Cash Cab” before hittin’ the sack. The Greek place downstairs was so great that we had it for lunch again before leaving town.
 
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Along the way to Wapakoneta, I picked some little metal thingy and asked Falcon what it was. He grabbed it and began pushed it stupidly across the dashboard.
 
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“Thass some bullshit! Gimme that!” I said. Upon further inspection I realized it was part of an ink pen. A few minutes later, in my boredom, I asked Bronco II if he wanted to play with it. He leaned forward from the bench behind to say “What do you do?” “You just push it along…like this…”, and showed him. So he gave it a try, only he was PULLING it and not pushing it. “No, no! you gotta PUSH it!” so he turns it around and starts pushing the crappy little thing along the dash when Falcon chimed in…”Fun, ain’t it?” “What the fuck? Fuck y’all!” says Bronco II. I cried for the rest of the weekend about it.
 
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Big Ron was happy to see us pull in at Rt. 33 Rhythm and Brews and believe me we were just as happy to be there. It’s always an unbeLIEVEable time and this time was no different. Ron has the best pizza in Ohio and we always look forward to that but the real treat is crowd that comes in there.
 
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As the group of boys that came down from Michigan told me, “we get it!” That was obvious as they screamed for more whenever we gave them a break. We did two sets that totaled up to 2 hours and 45 minutes worth of pure ass-kickin’ rock, absolutely blowing the doors off the place…to the point that I only had one more song in me at the end of the first encore and it was all I could do to spit out the words to “All Dressed Up” for a second one. I was BEAT DOWN! And so were they. They bought lots of stuff, including our fancy new hoodies and made sure we wrote on’m. Ron gave all a round of drinks and hugs and offered up more pizza but we sadly had to turn him down and drive on back to Columbus. Bronco II had a 9am flight to catch from there and we’d have been hurting badly on our ride home had we stayed longer. That place is absolutely one of the greatest rock roadhouses in the country!
 
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Sunday morning came WAAAAY to early for me. I felt like pure T ass! It was after 4am when we checked in the LaQuinta and there was a small party in van so I could’a used a little later “van call” than 9am for the ride home. We all missed Bronco II and often sent him texts to let him know what we were up to. Like these: “Greg, who do you like better, me or Dave?”, as Falcon sent “Greg, who do you like better, me or Terry?” Damn, weez stupid! But like the writing scribbled on the bathroom wall at the Beachland said “Growing up is giving up!”
 
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No Pigtails????Damn, Model T/SS....hey, yall need to demo that 'Hittin It' song pretty soon...I need that 'un if you know what I mean...

JW

A Michigan Boy said...

hell yeah we get it. we don't get NASCAR but we like the OAK team almost as much as snow!! and once we figure out the best route to Bunn we're gonna come down there and yell at you every day.

Anonymous said...

HEY DUDE YOU NEED TO CUT YOUR HAIR, MUCH LONG AND YOUSE A HIPPY!