February 6th, 2005.

Friday night was our last night in Wilmington. We played the Rusty Nail, and the Nail dripped sex – and yet surprisingly… we did none of the dripping. I mean, yeah, Heather was hot and all… and as usual you couldn’t walk five slippery feet for females salivating over my luscious denim-clad posterior (yeah… you know it’s true)… the star of the night was a mysterious, dimly-lit woman in a short skirt who danced through our set and… well… I can legitimately blame ANY missed lyrics on her curving silhouette.

As the night progressed, she grew more and more inspired – treating her partner to a floorshow that I was helpless to tear my eyes away from. Despite the distraction, we played hard LONG into the night – the show started before 10 and we closed the place out, ending our set at 2 in the morning. I felt bad at the end of the set, because she was doing quite the rhythmic lap dance and we reached the end of the song before he was… done. At that point I had to get off the stage and at LEAST… well, apologize.

Mike and Missy Loved our set – Mike went so far as to say it was the best Live show he’d ever seen. She sparkles and he exudes “friendly” and as I’m talking to the fine, fine married couple, I notice their tattooed rings. Apparently, Mike is in the military and was deployed as an electrical engineer to Bosnia shortly after they were married. His job meant it would be hazardous to wear his marriage ring for about 11 hours out of every day, and they went in for these barbed-wire-esque twining leaf tattoo rings to replace their more traditional bands. I’d never seen anything like it, and in truth, though the symbolism of the untarnishing, eternal golden ring appeals to me – the idea of the commitment behind something that you’ve grafted eternally on to your skin appeals to me even more. If all marriages required laser surgery to get out of, perhaps people would take them a bit more seriously.

Missy then decided to show me more of her tattoos. I had noticed the edge of a serpent peeking between the intriguing shirt/skirt gap, but I wasn’t prepared to see it go…. err…. down. Anywho, I was glad Mike seemed fine with it all, and in any case I managed to get away before she gave me any lip.

It was a great night, and I only regret that it hadn’t been a full band show.

Anywho, I know that Annette Warner tunes into the Journal every once in a while, so I figure I’ll thank her here for her assistance with this run – both with booking the Folks Cafe and for helping us tweak the sound on Friday night… even though the latter mostly consisted of flailing… the point is is that it was DIRECTED flailing!

Last night we played the Open Eye Cafe (also known as the Cafe of Sauron) and had a very good last night in North Carolina. Good show, good response. Russ showed up from the Six String Cafe and his wife turns out to own a cosmetics salon of some sort… she has access to the Good Stuff. I’m saying that I’ve finally found a NAIL supplier!!!