Sister Spit Hot Topics, plus Terror in the Skies!

Earthlings, I blog from the sky, aboard a Virgin America flight bound for JFK, surrounded by my Sister Spit comrades. This is sort of the first time Sister Spit has ever flown on a plane – I say sort of because the terrible yet exciting Sister Spit EuroTrash tour of 2009 did survive a flight aboard EasyJet, the Greyhound Bus of the European skies. There is a reason why the flights cost a dollar. I would rather stow away on a tugboat then fly that nightmare again. And speaking of nightmares – we just experienced the WORST TURBULANCE OF OUR LIVES aboard this craft! I am not being dramatic. Tour Manager Beth Pickens clutched my hand on one side and Ali Liebegott’s on the other and hyperventilated madly as the plane rumbled and dipped and rumble-dipped and shook and shook and dipped once more. With the hand that was not being crushed by Pickens’ powerful grip I typed out a farewell email because it suddenly seemed deeply possible and tragically perfect that we would all go down together like Pasty Cline and Buddy Holly, or the entire Polish government. Amos Mac gchatted me, ‘Turbulance, Mary!’ MariNaomi did breathing exercises and shuffled her iPod because she was afraid of dying to an Eric Clapton song. Myriam Gurba was chanting please god please god please please please please please in her head. Ali whimpered and Kirk Read cackled a rueful, perhaps ironic cackle. Blake Nelson looked around to see if, in their fright, anyone had abandoned a New Yorker he might read. Anyway, things have so calmed down that the black coffee I ordered an hour ago has arrived, delivered by a bubbly and apologetic stewardess who seemed totally unfazed by our near-death experience. So I will return to our regularly scheduled blog post – what we talk about when we talk about things in the van. As follows:

Fibromyalgia.

Adopting cats from shelters.

Drinking during 90s Sister Spit tours.

Kirk Read’s High School lunches. Why it’s not cool to work for free. A boy Myriam Gurba went to High School with who had such a deep dip in his sternum he would eat Captain Crunch from it. Vestigial tails. What you would do if you had one year left to live.

Euthanasia.

Stalkers. Outhouse urban legends. Noteworthy Sister Spit bar fights. What we will eat when we get to Whole Foods. Analyzing the rhetoric of the Bargain Food Mart signage in Watsonville, California.

Oh no guess what? Now I’m at our hotel and I have realized I left my notebook on the PLANE! I no longer have the complete record of what was discussed in the van! To make up for it I leave you with these exclusive, as yet unpublished photos from my digital camera: