Potatoe Boys in Potato City

We have entered the Pacific Northwest. We have heeded warnings and face our own new hells, but also several heavens. Please pay attention to the following paragraphs.

Boise, Idaho: The first thing we understood when we arrived in Idaho was that this is not Iowa. I thought we were next to Wisconsin, but we were not even close. We were instead hellishly close to Oregon, Washington, and other associated states and states of mind. The outside was desert-like, and it was very chilly. I was scared and cold, but never alone. When I told Yes-Yes that I feared being alone, he told me, “You are never, never alone. They hate us because we’re boisterous. They hate us because we have our dignity. We’ll stand together so proud and strong; this is the place where we belong.” These oi-flavored axioms reshaped my view of Idaho very much. 

The drive was long and relatively lacking drama, and I mean “drama” in the traditional sense, not in the way it’s used today to describe discord between friends. When we arrived at our friend Joel’s house in Boise, we were greeted with a great deal of vegan-friendly food. I ate corn, beans, and a hotdog bun. My peers ate similarly. After dinner, we played at Bike 2 Boards, another bicycle joint. It was a store full of glass cases and so forth, so we all feared Yes-Yes would unintentionally destroy a thing or two. He did not. 

During our set, KGC unexpectedly tackled Yes-Yes, and I knew not what to do other than to unplug all of the microphones and let the battle take its course. There was no clear winner, but the audiences’ collective pair of eyes was red, bulging, and dry. We stayed for several minutes after the show, where we received offers, exchanged advice, and compared knowledge with the Boise locals. We drove to WinCo, bought cheap gummies, then went to sleep at Joel’s. KGC, Airick of Ages, and I slept in the van with some bugs from outdoors who decided to join us (they thought it would be a fun sleepover, but we all fell asleep pretty fast so they left after the disappointment killed their moods), only to wake in the morning to a mystery surrounding Symptom’s missing mega-stuff Oreos. There were more Oreos missing than he had dispensed, so there was legitimate concern that morning. The offender did not reveal himself. There is currently no suspect. The case has since been closed.

Spokane, Washington: I have a special connection with the word “Spokane” after reading “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, a novel for middle school-aged students that takes place largely within the Indian reservation of the Spokane Indian tribe. Ignorantly enough, I am not at all sure of a relationship between Spokane the tribe and Spokane the city, though I do know the accurate pronunciation of both. I could explain it here, but you could also google it. My peers were wrong about the pronunciation and I was correct. Why did I know the correct pronunciation? Check my transcripts, baby.

Furthermore, we were added to the show last minute, and in those types of situations I tend to keep my expectations low to prevent severe disappointment. Luckily, this tour has ceased to disappoint me and the rest of Cruelster. The show was incredible and we sounded perhaps the best we’ve sounded the whole tour. Every show beats the last in some way or another. It was in a small, interesting house, in a small, hot, barren living room that nurtured the sounds of our amps, vocals, and drums to a beneficial effect. We were able to confuse the audience at point-blank range, and I did not play a wrong note once, save the time Yes-Yes put me in a complicated choke-hold during the end of “One Big Breath,” one of my favorite songs to be featured on our upcoming LP “POTATOE BOYS.” In retrospect, Yes-Yes likely learned this chokehold in eighth grade, when he was a successful wrestler for Lewis F. Mayer Middle School. Speaking of middle school, Sherman Alexie did not make it to our show. Despite his writing skills, he is old and loud. After the show, we ate messy popcorn outside and weighed the pros and cons of staying in Spokane or Seattle, which is where we’re spending the next day despite not having a show booked. Symptom would like some eggs and Piss would like to sit atop the Space Needle. I hope you are enjoying yourself, but please, oh, god, oh god oh god, PLEASE never stop thinking about the different ways you can change the way your body looks, functions, and channels energy. 

(Today we made the fateful error of stopping at a roadside flea market in northern Idaho. Here, Yes-Yes found and purchased, or perhaps stole, another orb. His previous orbs have provided him with peculiar means to mildly control others, namely me, but this orb is different. It is dark and raw. There is power swirling within this large marble – and Science help me if Yes-Yes ever reads this – that I fear even Yes-Yes himself cannot understand, much less control. He has also been demonstrating his power to control wind; when we drive past windmills, he quite literally spins their propellers with a mere twisting motion of his firm hands. This could be mere posturing, but the blackness of his oft baby blue eyes sends a wave of ice down my spine too stinging to ignore.) 

“I was a surfer, I had a skateboard, I was so heavy.”