Ranking Cheese Doodle: There were none.

So here’s a recipe for making your own! I expect pictures and reviews in the comments section.

http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/crunchy-cheese-puffs

Idiocy From the Van: Monocle Lewinsky

Our hotel in Tulsa was directly across the road from ORU. No, not The Winnie the Pooh Center for Zen Iconography but Oral Roberts University. For those lucky enough to be ignorant of the Oral’s legacy he was one of the original televangelist preachers, who came up with a version of Christianity whereupon gifts of money to God resulted in tangible blessing from heaven. He was a poor, itinerant Pentacostal preacher, charismatic enough to draw 10,000 people to his tent meetings for faith healings. Eventually, by hiring advertising companies and pioneering direct mail solicitations he became incredibly wealthy. In a bid for respect he founded the Orally Roberted University in the 1960’s. Oral’s son Robert, a twat, spent the University’s money and ran it into the ground by the 1990’s. Then that douche who owns Hobby Lobby gave the University over 50 million dollars and it was restored to its former glory. There’s nothing I can add to the topic of evangelists that a hundred earnest 1980’s songs hasn’t said better. Charlatans preying on the weak. Jesus.

So the reason for that backstory is the architecture of the Uni. It’s awesome. It was designed primarily by Frank Wallace and was in the Futurist style. Admittedly it all looks like the Disney/Epcot view of what the future would be like, but it’s a bright, shiny, golden, angular view nonetheless. The Prayer Tower, modeled off the Seattle Space Needle, is a flying space crown of thorns, with a heavenly tractor beam projecting down to earth in order to lift us up into heaven’s gently probing arms. At least that’s what it looks like to me. The main cathedral is at is heart just an auditorium, but the atrium was really cool with vaulting white triangles and sweeping staircases. Maybe because it’s summer and school is out, but I was virtually alone on campus. Just me and the gardeners piping the tears of fleeced senior citizens onto the Forget-Me-Nots and Jack-in-the Pulpits. I could’ve rolled around naked on the pulpit/stage and no one would’ve said boo.*

I don’t remember much from the drive to Dallas except maybe one of the biggest differences between England and here: the never-ending sprawl that surrounds our cities. Mile after indistinguishable mile of dollar stores in cracked cement strip malls. It’s depressing as hell and creates a longing in me for nature to reassert itself and place our vanities in their proper place. I was also ambivalent about returning to Dallas. Our last show there was one of our worst. The smell of sewage outside the club strong enough to make a Welshman blink, horrible sound, disinterested audience, and we got into a fight onstage. This time we were playing in the Deep Elum area. We were in contact with Olie, who had landed in Dallas earlier that morning and he was reporting that the area around the club was one of the coolest places he’d ever been. We were putting that down to the over-heated excitement at being in a new country because Dallas is, you know, fine. It’s Dallas. We found him at the club and had a huggy, happy reunion; his natural, diffident, British reserve temporarily broken down in a rush of unfamiliar moist emotions. Much like I assume how people reacted to Churchill’s victory speech. “In all our long history we have never seen a day as this!” Or so I assume.

Deep Elum was pretty cool with lots of really good restaurants and bars. It was obvious it would be a better night than our previous Dallas effort. I liked it better during the day before it became a bro-centric entertainment district. Everyone went to the Pecan Lodge for apparently amazing barbecue and I went to Il Cane Rosso and had one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had. Truly.

3 Links is a great rock club, the sound guy was top notch and I loved it there. We had around six hours between soundcheck and playing. Dinner killed some time but there really wasn’t much else to do.** It was hot as the back of Andre the Giant’s balls slung in a singlet on the sun. Fortunately the opener Joe Gorgeous was very good, and the American Werewolf Academy were inspiring. I contend they might be one of the best rock bands working these days. There’s a timeless quality to their songs and they don’t really require any hyphenated descriptors, although they do remind me a bit of an american You Am I.

We played to a good-sized crowd of people largely unfamiliar with our music. It’s a good thing I think. We’re trying to build a following and all. Did it work? I guess we’ll find out when we come back.

Tomorrow is Austin. 

*They’re not booing they’re saying put your damn clothes back on you pudgy bald freek.

** I did go into this vintage toy store and played a game I had never heard of: Baby Pac Man. It’s a combo pinball machine and video game and it was ridiculously difficult. When playing the video game there were no things to eat in order to turn the tables on the ghosts but you could escape down two pathways in the bottom whereupon you would disappear and a pinball would pop out. But there was nothing to bounce the ball off of and the paddle gap was wide.