Unicorns vs. Douchebaggery: Unicorns Win!*

I'm freshly returned to the land of Kotter after spending two weeks riding to the Twin Cities and back in a veggie oil-powered school bus motor home as helper monkey to some 30-odd Rude folks. It's sort of hard to break the whole thing down into a two-dimensional form like this. But a boy can try, can't he?

Hand-crafted magnetic lettering by Turt on the ceiling of the bus.

It originally spelled out "NO MORE WAR," but the N got mangled. And RMO loves cats.

I met the band in Pittsburgh as they were wrapping up some repairs on the lounge area of the bus. The lounge is where the nightly dance parties happen and is lined with the pelts of dead plush toys. It is, of course, available for wedding receptions and bar/bat mitzvahs. The bus itself is capable of transporting up to 342 passengers, each with their own milk crate's-worth of stuff, so small wonder that a concentration of bodies would put an inordinate strain on a few sheets of plywood and some 2x4's. Anyways, they repaired the lounge with no problem and I pretty quickly tested its durability by sleeping on it.

Our bus driver was a really sweet man who, despite his best intentions, seems to be going by the name of Joey Bananafoot these days (yikes!). Though young, Joey has already embarked on his second career as a roller derby referee (his first was as a middle school bus driver, natch) and was graciously taking some time off to chauffeur us halfway across the continent.

From Pittsburgh we moved on to Cleveland where we were greeted by a unicorn and friends bearing food and moist damp, peppermint-scented towels (I kid you not). Unicorn food being the secret to eternal youth, the band was instantly rejuvenated and stomped off to play the local Food Not Bombs support march, followed by a kickball party and a set in the park.

Here I am bouncing on shit in a campground in Wisconsin.
Photo by Phil Not Bombs.

For the next several days it was much the same: hundreds of people on the bus stopping in various Midwestern cities, meeting mythological creatures, and eating very well. Dare I say it was idyllic? I dare. We escorted a class of doe-eyed children to their first day of school in Columbus, stared down a gang in Chicago, and learned that "in Milwaukee, we jump on shit!" Educational. Very educational.

The far end of our pendulum swing was in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where the malignant forces of douchebaggery incarnate were having their quadrennial freak-off. Let me not complete another sentence without first stating the goodwill I feel toward the Twin Cities. They are a source of culture, good ideas, tall bikes and punk rock in a country that is sadly short on all of these things. I would advise anyone reading this to go and spend some time there. That said, the policing in the area was what we common folk describe as batshit crazy. The preemptive searches and detentions, tear gassing of permitted rallies and marches, taser action, and overall climate of fear were not necessarily unexpected, but damn, do we really need that? (No. The answer is no. For the Wingnutteria.)

But at least we're not China.

Luckily, the RMO has secret weapons in the form of delicious snacks and a unicorn-run Llama Homo Spa!

[Make up your own caption. Words escape me.]

Which reminds me: There were llamas along the way too, but somehow I missed them.

We spent four days in Minneapolis with friends who were far more generous than we had a right to expect, after which we closed up shop and headed back east, stopping in Madison, Chicago, and Ann Arbor for food, lodging, hair cuts, and bouncing on shit (definitely not the same thing as jumping on shit, which only really happens in Milwaukee) before a final show in Detroit (which I like to pronounce in its proper Frahnch form so it sounds something like "deh-TWA").

On the last night of tour, we were sadly split in two, as there were parties with things to do the next day and, more importantly, Bananafoot was needed to keep the peace among the wheeled women of the West. So, down to only about 170 people, we made our way back home just in time to get soaked by the fringes of a rare and precious Northeastern tropical storm. In the midst of it, though, a handful of hardy souls were kind of enough to welcome us back with the dulcet (if soggy) tones of Down By the Riverside (adapted for the Gowanus Canal) and A Message To You, Rudy. Suh-weeeeet!

There's more to it, of course. I didn't even get into the bra that was shared by the entire entourage or the night I took a shower with an off-duty bartender and his girlfriend in Minneapolis. Another day, perhaps. Track me down, buy me a beer, and I'll lay one on you.


* Come now. Unicorns always win.