Tour 9

We drove through the night out of Albuquerque and detoured on our way to Phoenix so we could go see the Grand Canyon. By all accounts it was really worth it. The weird thing is that because it's so high up, we were really cold on the way there (I was wearing a sweatshirt for the first time on this whole tour). Both the coldest and hottest temperatures we've hit were in Arizona. I have really enjoyed the diversity of the landscape down here, and the dry clean air.

The bizarre thing about the Grand Canyon is that it has been so extensively photographed and documented that it really cannot be experienced in a primal, non-simulated way. To compound the issue, when you actually get there and look at it, it literally looks fake. The distances are so huge that the eye loses all sense of depth, and the landscape seems like a Hollywood matte painting. It's iconic, and can't be experienced apart from its place in the popular consciousness. Any picture taken at that site has been taken before, and the continuous proliferation of these copies reinforces the simulation. We remember the look of the place and are familiar with it even before we ever go there, so our experience of it is always mediated by the model (photograph) preceding its instantiation (the experience of being there). So the two might be indistinguishable, if it weren't for the $25 entry fee.

I'm in California right now, for the first time ever. We're staying in Irvine, south of L.A., with one of Brett's friends. Our Tijuana show was cancelled because the venue was shut down, so we have today off and a show in South Gate tomorrow.

I was curious to see what L.A. was really like in person --- and to be honest, it is already stressing me out. It's a sprawling beast: a filthy, gridlocked, tangled web of strip malls and air-conditioned boxes for the middle class. A consuming amoeba which is engineered for excess --- impossible to walk anywhere, millions of people seeking shelter from the smog in sealed cars on clogged freeways. It's like New Jersey on speed, and with unlimited money and no clouds.