My turn to tell the tale. About how this band finally gets to Go On Tour. We'll be driving from Monroe to Los Angeles, which would be about 30 hours non-stop, but we've got 4 days to get there, so it should work out okay. Only thing, getting started early in the morning directly from an all-night Kha-rat orgy is kinda hard. For one thing, we were all majorly destroyed--tired ain't the word. And the other thing, everybody's still horny as hell, so it's hard to stop screwing long enough to drive anywhere. Last night had been so damn cold, raining so fucking hard we never even saw the full moon. The storm was blowing the smell of shyøma away so fast we almost couldn't get horny enough to have an orgy. It was our 2nd Kha-rat with the Nokhons and we'd all been looking forward to it because the 1st had been so fantastic, nice dry warm evening and all. But this time it was way too cold and wet for rolling around naked in the wet grass, even with furry female squatches. So at 3:00 in the morning we gave up trying to commune with nature and climbed into the bus, testing out the humpworthy potentials of the bunk beds and sofa, the Big Bed in back, and soon it even got warm. And yay, once inside the bus Magga and Masnia filled the air with what was left of their wonderful shyøma and we all had to fuck like bunnies for another hour. Or two. I had foolishly volunteered to drive the first shift, but just couldn't get enough of those horny girls, squatch or normies, knowing that for me to be capable of driving at all I'd have to eat a fistful of those little blue flowers to make myself semi-immune to the smell, and that would be the end of the extremist fun for me. Until next month anyway. Liss and Mel both promised to give me some extra sextra later on, but you can't trust anything anyone says under the effect of shyøma. So we didn't take off until 7:00 am. Even that was delayed because Art and Elaine had to say goodbye to us and they couldn't help being mega affectionate... Elaine keeps trying to be a dignified mother-figure, so she always starts with an affectionate little peck on the cheek; then the other cheek, and then the other cheeks... And then Masnia's parents had to have us all one more time again, seeing their little girl off on her first Road Trip with a totally irresponsible band of rock & roll maniacs. They were concerned, but then they fell together with Adam's parents and we made our getaway from Hacienda Forest. Then we were driving through the fucking rain. More rain again. It had been a wet week. I was heroically driving solo while everyone else was still having sex in that Big Bed in the back of the bus. It sounded like soft & sweet low-key humping, soft moans, everybody slowly wearing down. But that can also be the nicest, so I was feeling quite self-sacrificing and Noble Indian Brave-ish. I opened some windows to dilute the smell, which helped a lot. Maki finally came up to sit beside me, offering to give me a hand and/or blow job while I drove if I needed it, but I figured that was a great way to get us all killed. I'm always so proud when I can win over my addictive nature.
The Squatch & Friends Magical Mystery Tour is traveling in our very own recently obtained specially modified rock & roll band tour bus, heading south to warm sunshine and cool happenings. We'd been talking about buying such a bus so that S&F could go on concert tours, one we could modify so that Adam and a couple more squatches could fit inside. Then we figured that we'd also been needing to be able to transport small groups of squatches around the state in connection with the NNP, so we needed a bus that could handle both functions. Problem being that no such bus existed anywhere-- seats too small, ceiling too low, toilets too flimsy, etc--so we decided to buy an older bus and modify it. Looking into it we discovered that if you convert a Prevost bus into a "motor home" you don't even need a Commercial Driver's License, as long as you don't have commercial markings and carry no more than 15 passengers. Shit, there's no way we were going to be able to pack 15 squatches into ANY bus anyway, so it would be a vehicle we all could drive. We found a 1994 Eagle Model 15 Entertainer Coach, a 16-passenger, 12 bunk-bed, raised roof, newly rebuilt 8V92 Detroit Diesel, for $75,000. We had the money and we needed a bus. I seemed to be the one most interested in the technicalities of a bus (ever since I'd realized a sports car would only get me killed), so I was put in charge of looking into it. Maki and I drove out to the used bus lot in Chehalis. We saw this one, swooned and called the others, then bought it. It had to be modified, but we had the local bus-conversion experts do it: told them we needed a Bigfoot Bus. Those guys thought we were kidding until one of them recognized me (since I'm such a big star) and went slightly ape-shit that this would be the S&F rock & roll tour bus, even gave us a discount because they wanted us to have this bus. The original layout was 12 bunk beds and a little "lounge" in the back. We had the last two rows of 6 bunks stripped out and the lounge expanded into one big bed, a wall-to-wall mattress on the floor. Four squatches could sleep there, eight if they were on shyøma. We got some kidding from the bus guys about how it would be perfect for some good old-fashioned rock & roll orgies, but we didn't comment on that. The driver's seat was reinforced and tracks installed that would allow it to slide far enough back for Adam to be able to drive the bus, just like in his Squatchmobile. We also had all the lounge sofa-seats reinforced to bear 1000 pounds, so that 2 squatches could sit on one while we were driving. A modern kitchen, a multimedia wall with digital studio capabilities so that we could rehearse/record inside the bus. A new toilet, but which squatches might just have to be careful with. Just enough baggage and instrument space under the floor. We could even pack in a teepee, just in case, so Maki and I can have a little privacy once in a while. Home sweet rolling home.
Oh man, we are all just so ex-statico about being on the road at last. It hasn't been easy for any of us to take time off from our duties with the Nokhon Nation Project, ever since we started it about two months ago. And our band manager, Si Bintzen, has been totally frustrated about how many incredibly lucrative concert offers he's had to turn down because we've been unable to honor them due to all the logistical and legal distractions concerning the NNP. And before that, Adam going "missing" for a month just after our big concert hadn't humored him much. We had this record-breaking music sales success worldwide, but Si felt we were missing out the prime time to be doing actual concerts, money-raking-in wise. Although, really, all of that delay only seems to have stirred the frenzied mystery surrounding Adam and his cool fellow musicians, so that our fans are even more ready for us. The plan is to do a concert at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles on Sunday the 12th. We are leaving with lotsa time to spare because this is also the vacation of a lifetime for us all, we really don't want to rush directly to LA. For our two squatch chicks this will be their first exploration of the fabulously exotic USA. Oregon and California are just as alien to them as Outer Mongolia. For us normies, just getting away from the recently constant Great Pacific Northwest rain for some California sunshine is exotic enough. We've also got meetings and arrangements with some music studios and video producers in the LA area, so we'll be gone for a few weeks, how long is still open. There may be concerts for us to do in San Francisco and Portland on the return trip. S&F has also been invited to do a concert in Mexico, but we're thinking it's too dangerous to travel by land at this time because of the drug wars near the border. Normally a band could just fly to Guadalajara, but passenger airlines have a hard time accommodating Sasquatches who are just too big and too heavy to fit in any seats. Masnia is not a problem, she's not much bigger than a large man, but Magga is over 7' tall and Adam more than 8' and between them they outweigh half a ton. So we are stuck with bussing it. Hey, not that I mind.
We've got 6 drivers among us--me, Maki, Mel, Liss, Adam and Masnia. Magga was the only passenger who couldn't drive, being still kind of nervous about touching skesk. While Masnia just loves all the skesk she can get her hands on, learned how to drive and got her license just for the trip. But then she's no normal squatch chick. Damn clever girl. We made a stop in Olympia, the capital of Washington State, because Masnia and Magga wanted to see it. They still find cities interesting. Maybe because the only ones they've ever been in are Monroe and Seattle, and they almost couldn't walk around on their own in Seattle because people got so excited about seeing them in person. But it was raining so hard in Olympia that the streets were more or less deserted, and those Bigfoot ladies just don't care about rain, having been wild & wooly Sasquatches in the Pacific Northwest all their lives. Adam went with them, the rest of us non-squatches waited in a donut shop drinking coffee, mumbling "Yuk, rain" for the hour or so until they came back. The chicks had really liked walking around the streets of a ghost town, stopping to look into shop windows, seeing the Capitol Building, since nobody noticed them at all. Maybe they used that "hey, I'm unseeable" squatch trick. We pushed on to Oregon, not bothering to slow down for Portland. Liss took a turn driving. Both she and Mel were a little nervous about driving something as big as this bus, but they both got used to it pretty quick, freeway driving anyway. It was raining too hard to see much of the scenic wonders we were passing, so we pushed towards better weather before slowing down. It finally quit raining that evening so we stopped in Ashland, Oregon. Mel wanted to show us the replica of the Globe Theater used for the annual Shakespeare Festivals. Our group did draw some attention, but nothing we couldn't handle, people were interested but polite, sorta like in Monroe. We ate dinner in the Ashland Denny's Restaurant, where the staff and customers recognized us and asked if we'd play a little acoustic concert for them, so we did, about four songs. Afterwards, we pushed on all night, even tho it started raining again and visibility was crap. I took an extra turn driving Maki's shift because she was kinda nervous about streaking down the soggy-sloshing freeway into blinding rain in total darkness. Actually, I learned to be nervous too. We finally had to stop beside the road for a few hours. Our plan had never been to sleep in hotels, where the beds would always be too small for the squatches, the whole concept of the trip had been to live in the bus. That's what rock & roll bands DO. Sometimes the squatches might prefer to sleep outdoors or in some woods, since they were usually not too keen on sleeping indoors anyway, but not even they wanted to sleep out in that rainstorm. So on our first night together on the road we all ended up in our one Big Bed, cuddling and cozy. We'd all just been to a Kha-rat fuck-fest together the night before, so nobody was shy. But not very horny either, all worn out. Or? Well, maybe a little horny, I guess-- everybody got a little something.
Next morning the rain had turned to a drizzle. Lis took the first shift driving, so I got to hang out in a bunk bed with Maki for a while. Still a little horny, it seems. Great way to travel. The weather was definitely getting better the farther south we went. On I-5 until just north of Yreka, Route 96 took us west into Six Rivers National Forest, which was an area now protected under our latest NNP charter. In other words: we were in official Bigfoot country! Masnia took over the wheel. It didn't bother her that the bus was too big or that we'd left the straight-ahead freeway and come onto a wiggly & twisty-turny road, she just gave it the gas and drifted through the turns like a born racer. She was an amazingly skilled driver, considering that she'd never even seen a car before two months ago, and she'd just gotten her license a week ago. Like Masnia always does, she decided to learn how to drive and just did it, while other squatches were still being squeamish about barely touching that nasty old skesk, yuk, poo! She learns everything so freaking fast it's scary-- I mean, she already speaks better English than I do! (There are those among us who might deign to make an impolite comment here, but this is my turn to be the fucking story-teller) We stopped at a parking lot just north of Somes Bar, where all the Bigfoot hunters start out trekking to Bluff Creek. That's where Roger Patterson made his famous (but fake) Bigfoot film in 1967. Man, shoulda seen the commotion Adam and the squatch chicks caused, all the Bigfoot tourists wanting us to take their pictures with them. Adam had considered trekking into Bluff Creek because his mother Mayala was supposed to have come from that area, but there were way too many tourists doing the same thing. We all agreed that any Nokhontli living around there would have split long ago! We stopped again at Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation because I'd been in e-mail contact with some guys on the tribal board there, setting up an NNP office for any Nokhons who wanted to come out, so it was kinda fun to actually meet Don and Spence. They were blown away to meet S&F, their new favorite band. But not so shocked to meet three Sasquatches, since there had already been four or five showing up at their office. I had mailed them some .mp3 recordings of Nokhontli phrases and translations they could play to communicate with any Nokhons trying to immigrate. But they were doubly blown away by Mel and Liss and Maki. Those guys were a couple of horny young nerds and I think they got the impression that Adam was doing the two squatch chicks and I was doing the three human babes, because they were giving me some pretty envious looks. I didn't dare tell them the truth-- that I WAS --so I just said we were fellow musicians. They rolled their eyes anyway, "Yeah, sure, man!" After that we stopped in Willow Creek, the "Bigfoot Capital of the World" according to their chamber of commerce. We had to go visit the Bigfoot Museum, natch, but we avoided the Bigfoot Burgers. (Adam had to go and ask, "Hey, what kind of meat is in that?") Like all the other tourists we had to stand beside that big shaggy wooden statue of a Bigfoot and have our pictures taken. We wanted to be in the pictures all together, so we asked people to take them for us, getting all sorts of reactions. We ended up laughing so hard we couldn't stand up, all seven of us. We couldn't help noticing how people in Willow Creek were also not so blown away to be seeing Sasquatches walking around town, and found out that several Nokhons had been showing up lately. The locals here were in touch with squatch news events, so everybody already knew about Adam's life story and his new Nokhon Nation Project, nothing new there. It seems several people in town had even been in contact with individual squatches for years. And then we met one. A squatch came down the street towards us, dressed in white campesino shirt & pants, pretty much a copy of those Elaine makes for squatches in Monroe. He greeted us, kha-ra, etc. He didn't recognize Adam at first but once we started talking he figured out that, "hey, you're the Negotiator! Wow, good to meet you!" In Nokhontli, of course, since he didn't speak hardly any English yet. His name was Daplangat. He was living on a local farm along with two other squatches working for an American farmer. We walked with Daplangat to the farm at the edge of town to check it out, it wasn't very far. Met the farmer, a grizzled old white guy named Chaz Jones, kinda old-fashioned but he knew about squatches coming out in Monroe and figured they'd be all over sooner or later. Seemed like an OK guy, he was willing to give the squatch newcomers a chance. "Besides, they're great workers, strong, easy-going. I try to pay them something, but they don't really get what cash is all about yet. Would be nice if I could talk with them, though." We gave him copies of our language lesson videos on DVD and audio CDs, told him about the NNP office just over in the Hoopa Valley Reservation. One thing we've been paying attention to at the NNP is that newly arrived squatches don't end up being exploited and cheated. They usually enjoy working, it's all so new to them and they like feeling needed, so it would be easy to trick them into being labor-slaves without pay. Or maybe a lot worse in the case of the women, who smell of Shyøma every full moon. Okay, there I go, on about my job again. We met the two other squatches, both guys. We all got into an excited discussion about the nearest Nokhon mlønoli politics, now leaning towards the Da-starda-hata faction at Shamballah and pissing off most of the younger studs, which was why they were coming out of the woods. Magga asked them for details so she and Adam could find that mlønoli later, maybe on our way back home, since we didn't have time right now. Those guys also got to trade some important information with me translating for them to farmer Jones, like: what are your names? do you like it here? what are your future plans? hey, what is that money-stuff for anyway? And all the while, people, neighbors, strangers, tourists, kept on showing up at the farm, wanting to meet more squatches, or having heard that the famous Adam Leroy Forest was here in town. Some of the younger townsfolk were even fans of our band. So once again, we ended up doing a free concert in the parking lot of the Willow Creek Museum, right in front of that big wooden Bigfoot. Fine with us, we needed to rehearse anyway before arriving at the Rose Bowl, only 2 nights away.
We hurried out of Willow Creek about 2:00 pm, Mel driving, out to Arcata on the Pacific Coast, south through Eureka and down towards Garberville, which was on my own personal list of places to visit: we were in Humbolt County and that whole city's economy had been based on producing the best marijuana in the world. Not that I smoke grass any more, I'm striving not to be an addictive loser ever again, so I've dropped that along with alcohol and whatever else that used to get me blotto. But I was pretty fond of it at one time, and I loved the idea of an entire city being in on the deal: the sheriff, the schoolteachers, the judges, it was a boom town. So I just wanted to see it passing through. Well, It looked like any other California small town. Flat, spread out, gas stations, shopping centers, lots of pickup trucks. Not the hippie hang-out I'd been expecting, a buncha long-haired dudes, psychedelic vans, cop cars with "Have A Nice Day" and "Peace" signs on the doors. We didn't even stop, kept heading south. Through Napa Valley, but none of us wanted to do any wine-tasting, so we kept going We had to stop every 2-3 hours, just to break up the monotony of being cooped up in a bus for two days now. And not just the squatches, all of us. But really, the bus was comfortable, we listened to music, we practiced our own music, we half-tried to have sex but were all worn-out, so we read books instead and the miles slid by. But it was still a long way and it was taking a long time. Until suddenly we were driving over the Golden Gate Bridge: San Francisco shining all golden in the setting sun. Our squatchettes were all eyes, going oooo and aaahh. So was I-- I'd never been out of Washington State either. We didn't know where to start, San Francisco is a place you already know from movies and TV, so we just drove around at first. I had to take the wheel because nobody else was really comfortable about driving a big fat bus in downtown city traffic-- as if I was, shit! And the hills, really steep fuckers, cable-cars clanging and banging for us to get out of their way. Lombard Street-- OMG. I was driving with my eyes closed and my tongue sticking out. It was all too much, so when I finally found a place under the freeway to the Oakland Bay Bridge where I could park the bus, I grabbed it. A bunch of semi-trucks and other busses were parked for the night, so it was even free. We decided to just walk around-- we figured, hey, there are lots of other tourists, who's going to notice us? First of all: this was NOT Willow Creek or Monroe; they were NOT used to squatches walking around in San Francisco at night. First people panicked, then they recognized us-- "hey, that's not a wild Bigfoot, it's that Singing Sasquatch!" Then it was our turn to panic. It was like being The Beatles. On Market Street, we were surrounded. At Union Square the TV cameras arrived--and the police, who wanted to see our permit for staging a demonstration. Grant Street, uphill to Chinatown, our parade filled the street side to side. By then it was about 8:30 pm. And then people started shouting the same thing to us, "Hey--Fisherman's Warf! Go to Fisherman's Warf!" They all seemed friendly and happy, so we played along, having decided we couldn't fight them. We finally made it to Fisherman's Warf, by heading for the bright city lights and being steered by the crowd. And suddenly everything was way cool: a reception had been set up for us on the Warf, a welcoming party! People even backed off a little as we were offered places at a big outdoor table right beside the Bay, a fantastic feast was waiting for us: salmon, clams, fish, salads, bread, cheese, fruit, deserts. Cinder-blocks had been stacked up for Adam, Magga and Masnia, chairs to take their squatch weight; normal chairs for the rest of us punk normies. And best of all: no wine, they had done their research and understood that none of us drank alcohol--Maki and I didn't dare, squatches just get sleepy, and Mel and Liss (who both might sneak an occasional drink if nobody's looking) always did without alcohol when with us. Then the Mayor welcomed us to San Francisco. Later we found out that they had heard we would be coming; even tho ours was not an official visit of any kind. Willow Springs had called the city council, who had called Art & Elaine in Monroe, and so on. TV crews had been following us through town, totally everyone knew that S&F was in town. We were the only ones out of the loop. So we ate the feast, and everyone was invited. Mayor Winslow sat at our table, an okay guy, and after some chit-chat he asked us if we would play some of our songs here. We said our instruments were in our bus all the way on the other side of town. Ring ring, the Mayor made some arrangements, and a helicopter landed on the warf! Next thing I know, I'm waaayyy the fuck up over San Francisco thwip thwip thwip, off to fetch our gear. Me, because the squatches were too heavy. Four young firemen were along for the ride and they helped me get the instruments out of the bus and into the chopper-- (oh them? yeah, those are just my roadies, man!) and we were back on the warf within half an hour. It was great how we were getting in our band practice every night, but this had to be a little more special than the off-the-cuff performances we'd been doing. We readied our instruments --a professional sound PA was already set up for us-- and were ready to play a spontaneous easy-going concert. But we took it a step further this time. We were most famous for making magic music, which is not always possible. Unless you have some Sha-haka-li (shamans and witches) at your disposal, which we fucking did. We took about 5 minutes to sit in a circle and go into our little trance. Magga chanted in Nokhontli, we responded, said our mantras, words of power, etc, then were ready. And then we took up our instruments and performed the magic we had just programmed-- our standard set and a few rock & roll classics. It went pretty well. Two hours later we were used up and our audience was knocked out, and everybody was happy. We couldn't match that 1st Seattle concert that had made us so suddenly famous, but that had been a very large mega-dose of magic. Still, this concert felt pretty good. Not quite what we would have to pull out of our hats for the Rose Bowl, but kinda okay for a spontaneous free concert. We also knew we had to ration out the kind of magic we'd be using, not burn out in all these rehearsals. LA had to be big. Like Adam tells us, "Magic seems to be something from nothing, but it's not, it is only something from something else. In other words, it's finite, there's only so much of it to be had at a time." It was late in the evening before we could get away from the reception, TV journalists and the happy crowd. The Mayor arranged transportation back to our bus for us and our instruments. It was nice evening (no rain!) so we drove out to Golden Gate Park and parked there. Adam and Magga and Masnia decided to sleep on the grass, leaving me with three beautiful girls all to myself and the big bed. But Mel and Liss were tired and wanted to sleep in their own bunk beds, so I ended up alone with Maki. Oh well, I made the best of it-- ow, she's been reading as I write and now she's hitting me!
Next morning we wandered around the Park for a while, saw the herd of buffalo, did rush tours of the Conservatory of Flowers & Japanese Tea Gardens, etc. We found a great taco place in the Castro District. I wanted to see Alcatraz, but that didn't appeal to anyone else and we didn't have that much time to waste. By noon we were ready to hit the road, since we wanted to be in LA at latest early Sunday and we had an 8-hour drive (minimum) ahead of us. We could catch San Francisco again on the way back north, if we wanted to. Adam drove to Monterey. We decided to take Highway 1, the coast road through Big Sur, where Masnia took over to play with all the swings in the road. We stopped a few times, considered visiting the Hurst Mansion, then decided it would take too long. By late afternoon we ate at the Andersen's Split Pea Restaurant just off Highway 101 at Buellton. It was a place Mel remembered from her childhood, back when her mom was a budding starlet in Hollywood, so we had to stop there. Then we drove the 10 miles into Solvang, which was supposed to be a Danish tourist town, but except for the funny-looking church and a Danish Bakery it seemed pretty American to me. We drove the rest of the way to LA, arrived at Venice Beach about midnight, parked in front of the Wasabi studio to spend the night in the bus. Mel and Liss already knew Bo Wasabi from their last visit in August, so they had called ahead and asked if we could park our bus in their parking lot. We were going to be making some videos with him after the weekend, so we were interested in checking out the studio. He was going to meet us there at 10:00 next morning. Sunday, October 12 -- In the morning I recognized the strip along the beach from the "Californication" TV series, it was a pretty nifty area. Even early in the day there were skate boarders, weight lifters, surfers, cafes were open. And oh yeah, lots of girls in bikinis. Although I didn't understand why I automatically react to them, considering the beauties I'm traveling with, and I see them without even bikinis all the time. Oh well, it's just my addictive personality, I guess.
Anyway, this is the day we play at the Rose Bowl, 7:00 tonight. I'm writing this on my laptop sitting at a beachfront sidewalk café... okay, that's enough for now. Somebody else take over.
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