april 22 – over the river and through the woods to manchester

allen claims carson threw his leg over him sometime last night, or at least tried to several times in his sleep. thankfully he never felt skin/thigh/leg, but just sheets, and as quickly as it started it was over again. i may be getting a bill (legitimate business expense, i think) for some kind of post-coital trauma therapy from al when we return.

training through the english countryside now, rolling hills, patches of trees and old country houses, sheep, little bridges, little winding rivers, bright yellow flowering fields, to our hotel in manchester where we’ll be luxuriating with two (2!) rooms.
allen’s been filming from the train, somehow turned into an interview about the old-school nature of my music. i started talking about the artists i like and somehow wound up on “lady,” a kenny rogers song written by lionel richie with one of the best bridges ever written. “lady/your love’s the only love i need/and beside me is where/i want you to be/you’re the love of my life/you’re my lady.” sounds cheesy, i know, but you gotta hear kenny sing it. only lionel knew how to write words so cheesy and make ‘em sound like you never heard ‘em before. i gotta find that somewhere (record surplus on pico in l.a. usually has that kind of stuff, though it can be tough to find through the stacks).

checked into our hotel (somehow it’s french in spite of its location in the middle of manchester, england), dropped off our stuff, headed over to the manchester apollo, sent allen off in search of charge for our digital camera (he wound up, as he always does, finding people who’d been looking forward to going to the alanis show but couldn’t get tix, and comped ‘em). the apollo’s remarkably similar to brixton academy in london in layout, but its a bit smaller and the audience seemed more intense somehow.
dinner with some of alanis’ band (cedric/bs, blair/drums, jason/gt, much talk about hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy – cedric had just seen the premiere somewhere or the other, said it was ok, not great, but it inspired him to read the book. my brothers were big fans of the series growing up, i didn’t read it ‘til last year, but devoured the 5 books in the series in short order. hysterical, laugh out loud stuff from the twisted mind of douglas adams. if you haven’t read it you should probably look into it...
manchester fans were crazed, which was a pleasure, always fun to be signing everybody’s cds and taking pics with them, makes us really feel like we’re getting somewhere. went out to a pub with couchsurfer simon, whose brother wouldn’t allow us into their place for fear we’d steal stuff or something. he felt bad, so hosted us for the evening and discussed american politics ‘til we returned to our french hotel.