West Lafayette, IN

West Lafayette Indiana – terrifying.

So yesterday I’m sitting in the Sunshine Diner – open, strangely, from 2am to 2pm – and I slowly startle myself – living here, my theoretical likelihood of heroin addiction increases ninefold. There are seven obese waitresses, all anxiously shuffling around the six or so customers in tight greasy ponytails. American cheese, and every condiment comes in single serving tubs. I wanted to take the young waitress and shake her: “RUN!”

On the way from Minneapolis to West Lafayette, there was a fair amount of drinking on the bus. Somewhere in Illinois between naps, I groggily hear our company manager listening to a history of Alcoholics Anonymous, looking rather pale. Too soporific to process this information, I crawl back into my little bedbox. She made the right choice, praise allah, and unceremoniously bailed on us.

List of missing and dead on the world premier of The Spy:

1. Sound Designer.
2. A third of the Set (didn’t fit on the truck)
3. Lead actor
4. Director (yes, the director)
5. The second third of the Set (couldn’t be erected by out crew in time)
6. Company manager

The show was a hit, of course. Nine hundred hoosiers came out to see us, and they laughed at every plot point in Act 2, which is encouraging. Sorority girls (Obama organizers, along with your garden variety blondes) came out with us to the hotel bar after. Girls from towns of five thousand people and one library… didn’t exactly hit on us. Just, sort of… put themselves within arm’s reach of our libidos.

We played an 1100 seat house, bigger by far than anything I ever played.

Trivia: our driver (and bus) were recently decommissioned from the service of Lil Wayne. Our publicist works for David Hasslehoff. My parents are in their mid-fifties, in India with backpacks.

Next stop Poplar Bluff, MO. Til then, it’s Tom Waits, The Boss, and This American Life in the hopper.