October 19th, 2002 - Lakeview Hotel, Williams Lake, BC:

The last installment of this short tour... and a virgin club for us... I walk in and the first thing that comes to my attention is the two gleaming gold poles onstage...

the second thing is a vision of Doug using those poles in our show - I quickly chase that one from my mind... the stage is black and white tiles with mirror behind us which is scary as far as sound is concerned... and again, I'm thankful we have Kenny with us this time - I'm thinking we're going to need him... it's a very small sound system; the speakers are up on tripods on either side of the stage and I have visions of them falling over during the show... also there is no 'snake'... for those of you not knowing what a 'snake' is, this is a long, thick cable running from the stage to the soundboard... without one, you need to run all the individual microphone lines from stage to the board; this is quite messy and potentially dangerous, as people can trip over the cables etc., but you do what you have to do... we realize quickly in soundcheck that any movement onstage is picked up by the microphones because of the tiling and there is a fairly annoying hum from the monitors that seems impossible to get rid of... at least it's only audible to us onstage...

The show must go on: it's a good crowd in here... in the middle of 'Day By Day', Doug picks out a fairly large, bald man from the crowd and informs him that, should Doug's own health ever fail him, he will have to take over as the new Doug... he bestows him with the title, 'The Dhali Doug' and brings him up onstage to sing the rest of the tune... a couple of tunes later and the Dhali Doug is back on the dance floor with his pants down around his ankles... it's hard to tell from the stage whether the look on the face of his partner is amusement, shock, horror, interest, whatever... but the Dhali Doug has no problem dancing that way for quite some time... to get the complete picture, you have to realize that this is during the Twist contest and he is twisting back and forth, completely exposed... shakin' his groove thang... literally... a couple of songs later and my vision almost comes true; a couple knocks into one of the tripods and it's rocking back and forth... but luckily for those nearby, it rights itself and there's no problem... oh yeah, and Doug does use the poles of course, but thankfully, it's different from the picture I chased out of my mind earlier... I'm sure those poles are cleaned regularly - (please tell me they are), but I'm also sure I wouldn't be the one licking them... I mean, you never know where those poles have been... well, okay, you do...

We repeat 'Day By Day' at the end of the show for the encore, which is very enthusiastic, and Doug brings the singer from the backup band up onstage to sing it with him... so the show is a success... and the band celebrates afterwards... Kenny ends up with a pocket full of shaving cream and beer... the face makes a very brief appearance... and who cares, when you're still drinking at 6am, that you have to be up at 10am to leave?

Ouch... Cya later! Marc.