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 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.

Viva El Rey!

L: One of our favorite haunts in Nashville is a little Mexican place by the name of El Rey. YUM!!! Elle insists on eating there at least once while we’re in town. We invited our friend Dutch to meet us there for lunch.

We drive downtown and walk around a bit, as we had some time to kill before meeting up with Dutch at Gruhn Guitars on Broadway. We kinda window shopped mostly before making our way down to Gruhn.

Inside Gruhn the members of Sister Kisser looked at/tried out various types of stringed instruments. Probably the most unusual? Marconi test drove a TWELVE string bass. TWELVE.

Our friend arrived shortly after and we headed over to El Rey for lunch, which was only a few blocks away. As we walked, Elle took the lead and couldn’t wait to get there, she’d been anticipating this lunch for weeks now. She really does Love, Love, Love this place.

We walk in the crowded Monday afternoon lunch hour and grab a table for five. A waiter comes to our table and brings us some chips and delicious spicy salsa and proceeds to take our drink order. We all studied our menus drooling over the possibilities of what to get.

As I said, the restaurant was EXTREMELY crowded and the wait staff was INCREDIBLY busy. So as we’re sitting and chatting about this and that, we’re making observations about the restaurant, making snarky comments and just joking around in general. At one point Marconi, with his back to the kitchen, didn’t see our busy waiter just about to pass our table and [jokingly, but quite audibly] exclaimed “Where the hell’s our goddamned waiter?” You couldn’t have asked for better comedic timing.

The waiter, who was carrying another customers food, totally heard the comment JUST as he passed our table and turned and just shot Marconi a WTF? glance. While we all thought this was pretty funny, and ONLY this could happen to him, we’re pretty sure our waiter made us wait a little longer before he came back to take our food order.

Oh.

And none of the rest of us ordered the same thing as Marconi.

Just to be safe.

A: I laughed a lot about this. And picturing the things that might end up in Marconi’s food.