The Kollector

The industry friend we stayed with in Greenbelt is fan huge fan of the 70's megasensation rock band that is known as KISS®™©™. I've known about this for years, but never broached the subject with him until this past time around while staying with him and his family.

You see, when I was really young, I too was a major KISS®™©™ fan and was completely obsessed fascinated by them. [And this is not something I am very proud of today]. I listened to their music, read a lot about them and even to this day have a small Klassic KISS®™©™ Kollection. Turns out our friend is a Kollector too.

He seemed surprised and excited once he found out I used to be such a fan and The Kollector immediately began showing off his collection. In fact, the next FOUR days all The Kollector wanted to do was eat, breathe and sleep KISS®™©™.

[Okay. This is why I never mentioned the subject to him in previous years].

The Kollector ended up giving me this:



A display for photographer Barry Levine®™©™'s book on KISS®™©™.

TK: "Dya'ever see the KISS®™©™ pencils they came out with in the 70's, Lioux?"

L: "No."

TK: "Well now you OWN one."



[?]

Next he showed me his complete set of Mego®™©™ KISS®™©™ dolls. Which didn't impress me all that much, seeing as I already have a set myself. I even have two more that are still in their original packaging.



During our stay, SK®™©™ wanted to take The Kollector's family out to dinner on our free night to thank them for their hospitality. TK has two daughters, one who is Nine [And chose the restaurant we should go to] and the other Thirteen.

The restaurant Nine chose was a theme restaurant back in VA. About 40 minutes away.

*sigh*

It's her favorite.

Anyway we all got ready to go out to dinner and began converging in the living room when The Kollector came out of his bedroom wearing this:



[The pattern is repeated on the front].

Thirteen: [obviously embarrassed] "You are NOT wearing that are you, dad?"

TK: "Sure am."

And did.

Being there was eight of us all together, we divided up into two vehicles. TK's wife Mimi took the girls, Marconi and Alienwhere in her car while Elle and I rode with TK in his Mini Cooper®™©™.

Elle climbed in back and I sat shotgun. Since it was going to be a a bit of a ride to the restaurant, TK thought it would be fun to see if I could stump him with KISS®™©™ trivia and vice versa.

L: "Ummm. I can't think of anything off the top of my head."

TK : "Okay. I'll start..."

He then proceeded to ask a bunch of questions only a true KISS®™©™ fan would know. Poor Elle. Occasionally she'd chime in with a fun fact, like how one of her BFF's once dated drummer Eric Carr®™©™'s cousin for a year in hopes of changing the subject.

Nope, didn't happen.

TK kept bringing the conversation back to KISS®™©™ trivia.

*sigh*

We FINALLY arrive at the mall the restaurant is located in and regroup with the others. We work our way through the mall and to the food court. TK and the family stop in their tracks, look around and at each other in confusion. And that's when Alienwhere and I look at each other with the realization we just drove over 40 minutes [I didn't even mention the traffic we got caught up in] to eat at a restaurant THAT. WAS. NO. LONGER. THERE.

[I Know].

So Mimi throws out another suggestion, to which we go and check the mall map to see where THIS restaurant is located. And Guess what? Yep. That one's gone too. At this point I'm getting really hungry, and when I get hungry, I get cranky, and when I get cranky...I need a drink. We finally decided on TGIF®™©™'S as there was a tangible location standing right before us. Not really a place I like to eat, but they do serve booze and I think Alienwhere was getting to the point he needed a drink too.

Dinner was relatively KISS®™©™ Konversation free which was nice seeing as the night before Elle, Marconi, The Kollector and I had gone to a diner after the SK®™©™ show and that's ALL we talked about. TK owns a copy of KISS®™©™ Meets The Phantom Of The Park®™©™ and I was joking around with him about how bad the acting was and throwing out some of the more ridiculous quotes here and there. When we had gotten back from the diner TK even wanted me to stay up and watch KMTPOTP®™©™ with him.

As annoying as all the recurring KISS®™©™ themes kept going, I must admit The Kollector actually has something in his Kollection I was entertaining myself with throughout our stay. TK's pièce de résistance:



YES!!! An original KISS®™©™ pinball machine from the late 70's in perfect working order! TK brought it out of storage when he finished off the basement. Most of my downtime spent at the house was playing this machine, whether I was playing against multiple SK®™©™ band mates, The Kollector or just alone. [TOTALLY mopped the floor with Marconi's face]. I was annoying everyone by playing it so much. You could hear all the machine's bells and whistles throughout the house. I couldn't stop. I was obsessed with pinball.

"Lioux's at it again..."



Alienwhere even started calling me "Tommy" <--[You know. The Pinball Wizard].



[I had have a problem].

There was one final surprise The Kollector had for me. The last morning Sister Kisser®™©™ was staying with them, TK's wife Mimi made breakfast burritos for the band.

TK: "Hey Lioux, would you like some hot sauce for that?"



L: [?]

TK: "It's Gene's®™©™ Hotter Than Hell®™©™ sauce."

L: "Ummm. No, Thanks. I'm good."

[Wait. I certainly hope THAT'S not from the seventies. Ewww].

The Pilgrimage

Located in Richmond, Virginia is one of the most amazing spectacles ever beheld my human eyes. It has nothing to do with the founding of our country, nor does it in any way shape the state of the world, although, to be quite honest, it would be a better world if that were true. No, this pinnacle of human achievement is the best best BEST Arby's EVAR, and I will tell you why. If by the end of this post you don't believe me, you should just kill yourself, because nothing will ever make sense again, and we already have too many delusional retards running around doing things in our country.

Ok. Let me see... where to start. First off, it doesn't look anything like an Arby's from the outside. It looks like a really nice house. In the middle of a shopping plaza. When you walk in, the ordering area has all this stuff in it. Like a open brick grill/stove thingy. And fresh produce and meats that are being sliced up for your food. And a barbecue pit. And an ice cream bar. And like about a million other things, but you get the idea. Nothing like a fast food place.

You walk up and order, and the board that the food's on looks like it was photographed by Annie Leibovitz. It is THAT appealing. Everything looks ridiculously good, and you can't believe your eyes. So you order, and you are handed a little buzzy thing for when it's ready. So you go fill up your drink cup at the most breathtaking soda machine you've ever seen, all the while taking in the decorations - canoes, geese, and other lake-y things suspended from the ceiling, and an enormous stone fireplace right in the center of the building. Then the moment of truth. The thingy in your hand tells you you're about to have a life-altering experience. You get your food, and realize that it's not just Arby's food all dolled up. The turkey on that sandwich? Actual turkey, carved from a bird. Lettuce, tomato - freshly sliced. Bread? Forget about it. Delicious whole grain and soft. Oh, and that shake you ordered? Made with real ice cream, just blended a second ago.

As this sinks in, you make your way to the table, which is hewn from logs, as are the chairs. Sitting down, it starts to dawn on you that this may indeed be the best meal you've ever eaten. Then you remember that you brought your laptop. Oh, if only there was free Wi-fi... oh wait. THERE IS, and it's fast, because no one's even using it.

Basically, throw some whiskey and cute girls in this mix, and I'm blowing my head off, because life can only go downhill from there. This place is so freaking ridiculous, I often think about driving the 6 hours down JUST to have a meal or two there.

I'm not kidding.

Lioux, tell the nice people I'm not lying about the majesty of this restaurant.

The Return

Well, Sister Kisser®™©™ has returned from our road trip safe and sound. There are plenty more stories Alienwhere and I have discussed and fully intend on posting, but the last few days of the trip were just too fun-filled and action packed!

Some of the posts that are coming:

• The Kollector

• The Pilgrimage

• NASA. [Yes, we played NASA]!

And much, much more.

We were orignally going to leave for home after our last gig in the D.C. area late Sunday night/Early Monday morning so I could be back to work at Company, Inc. on Monday, but the more we thought about it [and drank] decided to stay the night with our friends back in Greenbelt, MD just to get a few hours sleep and leave first thing in the morning.

Elle went back with our publicist right after the show and Marconi, Alienwhere and myself went back to our friends place and left about 6:30AMish in the morning.

*yawn*

I got home yesterday at about 2:00PMish and decided to blow off Company, Inc. for the rest of the day. Now I'm just playing a lot of catch up here at work and home and can't wait to get back to my normal routine.

It's always really tough coming back from these trips. They're intense, crazy and fun. They're also a lot of work and we all come home exhausted. On top of that, I always go through a really bad depression our first few days back.

At least we have an AWESOME show coming up on Saturday night at one of our favourite venues!

A Trip To The Tattoo Parlor

A: Lioux, Elle, and I all decided to commemorate our excursion this time around with some fresh ink. Marconi decided to be a douche nozzle and not participate in this oh-so-fun activity. We went to a reputable place right near where we were staying, Painful Pete’s.

Painful Pete, as we found out, had a long and storied career. His apprenticeship began at an early age, when at 14 he started studying the art of body adornment under the tutelage of Angry Artie in Des Moines. Artie’s shop was one of the best known in that part of the country, and Pete saw quite a bit of action in those days. He stayed on for 8 full days, experiencing a lifetime of knowledge in that time.

From there he traveled to Hong Kong, to study Asian-inspired design and get a feel for the art on that side of the world. He returned with a series of new pieces that he would soon introduce to the western world, including the dragon, and the unicorn. The weekend spent in the Orient would serve him well throughout his life.

He returned, slightly older, somewhat wiser, but with no roots. He got a chair in a shop in Bayonne, and over the course of 11 hours he inked a jaw-dropping 327 people on a very special and busy Memorial Day. He even gave himself a tattoo to remember the special achievement, a flag with an eagle next to it.

He finally opened his own shop, at the age of 15, just after his birthday on June 1, in a small suburb of Richmond known as Glen Allen. To this day he operates one of the most well-regarded and widely respected temporary tattoo parlors on the entire east coast of the US.

Thanks, Pete.

The Breakfast Club

L: After our brief visit to the Parthenon, we had an early business breakfast with our entertainment lawyer [link] from the night before. We decided to meet at a little arsty, quirky coffee place called Bongo Java Café.

We had originally planned on meeting at 11:00 AMish, but ever the professionals, we got there a little early. It was one of those over the counter kinda ordering places. You walk up to the counter, place your order and they give you a little stand to put on your table, so they can find you when your food is ready. We all studied the menu on the huge colorful blackboard behind the counter and placed our orders individually.

Instead of using numbers for the order stands, Bongo Java Café uses mythological creatures and artwork. Marconi wasn’t hungry and just got bottled water, so he didn’t get a stand. Alienwhere, ordering just before me, was handed “Dragon”. Getting back to the table I noticed Elle had gotten “Phoenix”.





Alienwhere: “What’d you get Lioux?”



[embarrassed silence]

Lioux: “Hey, Gnomes are pretty bad ass too!”

Alienwhere: “You really are a Lioux Zhurr.”

Anyhow shortly after sitting down our lawyer arrived for the breakfast meeting. It had been two years since we were last in Nashville and had a sit down meeting with him. He was really impressed with our show from the night before and the crowd we drew. He wanted to know more about other shows we’ve done, how things were going with our German label, what our immediate and future plans are for Sister Kisser.

He also wanted to know more about our online presence and what we were doing to promote ourselves on the interwebs. He nearly fell out of his chair when we told him our band’s MySpace has nearly 45,000 “friends”, more and more of which have been coming to the shows because of having heard of us on the MS.

Our lawyer went on to say that he’s been pitching some of our music to a few music supervisors out in L.A. and was telling us about this film that he submitted some material for called “Trailer Park Terror” or something like that. [Sounds like a pretty horrible B movie to me, but it’s supposed to have some pretty big Hollywood names attached to the project].

The meeting went very well and was very productive. We talked about a lot of plans we have for the future, near and far. Alas, we ended up having to cut it a bit short as Sister Kisser needed to be on the road by 12:00 PMish heading to Asheville in order to get there on time, relax a little and head to club.