This is a recap of our latest Iowa tour, in reverse chronology.

Early Sunday morning

Play ‘Circle of Death’ as Justin fights off sleep. Not only do we punish our brains by drinking, but we punish our sleep-deprived bodies in the process. Not a healthy start to Sunday.

Midnight

We are in the midst of our second set at Headliners. Ames never fails to disappoint. The show was great. The crowd was wonderful. The staff rocks, as do Michael Jackson tribute songs. We love Headliners. The only thing missing was crowd-surfing. We’ll try harder next show, as should you.

Saturday afternoon

Hit the road to Ames. Pretty uneventful. We’ve been unhappy with our restaurant choices thus far. Lavish eateries, extravagant spending to include ‘making it rain’ all over our waiters/waitresses, and only decent to good food to boot. So we decide to make the frugal choice and head to the local ‘Subway’. Yes, the one Jared eats at. We anticipate hot sandwiches and friendly atmosphere with great fervor. Our excitement is doubled knowing that Justin possesses coupons that boast fabulous savings. We order all that we can handle, secure in the knowledge that we will greeted by low, low prices at the end of the line. What we did not foresee was a villianous cashier awaiting us there. She would not, she insisted, honor our coupons, for she had never seen them before. After a period of light excoriating, she made it quite clear her stance on the issue would remain unchanged. We left the deli with light pockets and heavy hearts.

Friday night

This is our second night at the Voodoo Lounge. It’s striking similar to our first night there. Except some guy kept requesting Skee Lo…

Friday morning

Seville and I partake in a moderate jog around the sidewalk-less streets of Waterloo. After a bit of wandering, we come upon the happy recesses of the Sunnyside Countried Club, where well-to-do folks engage in activites of the golfing variety. Feeling a bit out of place in our tattered clothes, we quickly scurry away and head back to friendlier territories.

We really had nothing to do all day. In fact, we spent the majority of the day just talking about what we should do. We eventually settled on renting “Burn After Reading”, to which I neglected to pay attention. If you have in fact seen this film, and would like to enhance this blog with colorful commentary on it, please do so in the “Comments” section below. We later went to Pizza Hut, another disastrous decision, culinarily speaking. My stomach is still a little off from that.

Thursday night

We arrive in Cedar Falls in the late afternoon and go directly to the Voodoo Lounge, without passing go and certainly without collecting $200. This place is very nice. Huge room, classy couches and billiards, great sound. The only problem is that, well, it’s a huge room. You could put 100 people in there and it wouldn’t seem busy. Still, we had a fantastic time playing there, the people were very good to us, and it sounded great. We really hope we’re gonna come back to play it again once school starts up again.

Thursday afternoon

There’s a great little place in Iowa City called Quinton’s. It’s a sandwich shop downtown. This was by far the best food decision we made all week. If you ever go to Iowa City, stop in. Get the 1/2 sandwich and bread bowl. Might I suggest the “Smoke Stack”. You shant be disappointed.

Wednesday night

This is our second time playing the Piano Lounge in Iowa City, and it was awesome. Who knew that IC could rock so hard on a Wednesday in the middle of the summer? Really good times. We had very low expectations, and you guys smashed all of them. Just like Justin smashed his head against the wall when we were playing there. He claims he hasn’t drummed the same since…

Wednesday day

Pack the van up and hit the road with little time to spare. Still, we’re on schedule, Seville’s got his bag of pretzels and it’s going to be a great tour. We love Iowa.