who does number two work for?

Life is shit. For me at least, this is terribly and sadly true. Every day, first thing in the morning, I wake up, go into my kid’s room, where I’m greeted with the scent of freshly crapped pants and a smiling little man standing in the corner of his crib. Then, I go clean up dogshit. By this time, I have to dump, so I do that, and then I make coffee and eat bran cereal. That’s the whole morning. It’s almost completely devoted to shit. I don’t even need to get into the metaphorical way that life is shit, I’ve got a lifetime of literally shitty mornings to look forward to.
On tour, life becomes extremely routine. I guess it’s pretty routine when I’m not on tour, but I guess the thing that’s different is that it’s a completely compromised routine. You, your bandmates and crew all eat at the same time, sleep at the same time, ride around in a little box all day, deal with all the same people, go drinking at the same bars, etc. There’s a lot of down time, and not really a lot to talk about because, well everyone is doing the exact same thing you’re doing. Not a lot of new material coming out. There’s no “I ate at a really good place last night” sort of small talk, because everyone already knows that place. They ate there too. With you. Had the same meal. They know it was good. The end result is that bands on tour end up talking a LOT about shitting. It’s the only thing that’s left that’s a unique experience that’s not beating off.
Shitting on tour is very difficult. It’s almost like getting Yhatzee to be lucky enough to have to take a dump at a place where you actually CAN take a dump. Your standards plummet pretty quick. There was a time when I’d only crap at home. Now, I draw the line at outside onto the ground, although I’m really not a fan of portapotties. Anyway, not the point. The point is you WILL be at that Love’s truckstop in Wyoming sitting there on a filthy toilet dumping between two gigantic grunting sweating truckers. And your mind will suddenly remove all the stall walls and you’ll kind of float out above your body and look down and see you, just mere inches from these hulking, laboring men and you will say “wow…this is living the dream, huh?” And there will be sounds. There will be horrendous sounds coming out of these giants. You will want to laugh and cry, but you will just sit there and stew in the whole thing. It’s a real scene.
Club toilets are almost always gross, but you’ll use em, and you’ll talk about them and you’ll maybe take up writing graffiti, because all you do is sit and read all this crap and at some point you think “hey, if I’d been writing my name in all these stalls, I’d be pretty famous, graffiti wise.” I don’t know, maybe you won’t.
The diet is pretty much just junk, beer and very little sleep. Touring often starts with about two or three days of no one dumping at all, (just kind of what happens for some reason) but then it starts getting interesting. Sometimes, everyone has to shit at once. Sometimes there’s just no stopping it. A buddy of mine pulled his van off to the side of the highway and dove into the woods to crap during an all night drive. We talked about that for weeks.
This is not just for small bands either. The universality the quest for and inevitable lack of shittable bathrooms reaches from Coldplay to the Menzingers. You can’t shit on a tourbus. The toilets are made for liquid only. Shitting on a bus is a great way to get the driver to hate you. Drivers also don’t just pull over willy-nilly. They’re like truckers. They go and go so they can get to where you’re all going so they can go to sleep, score some meth and get a hooker. They don’t have time to be pulling over everytime the drum tech has to crap. End result? There’s Chris Martin in the stall at the Truckstop, middle door, between the two greasy large mustached men. Dumping. It’s the great leveler, really.

Okay, look. I’m not trying to sit here and reminisce about poop. I don’t even really like the subject at all. It’s gross. Also, I know from experience that once someone starts talking about poo, everyone who thinks they’ve got a good tale pipes up and it gets gross so fast. I don’t want to hear about it. There’s etiquette to talking shit. You don’t talk about the actual shit itself. I don’t want to hear about size or corn or spray (well, actually spray is okay. For example, if you just shit a whole bowl of drool…that’s not something you should have to keep bottled up…but see, it’s really gross, so keep it to a minimum). I NEVER EVER EVER want to see pictures of shit. AND, and this is very important, I never want to hear women talk about shitting. I know! I know! It’s sexist or something, but look, man. They took santa claus from me, they took the tooth fairy and jesus from me. They took gay marriage. Don’t take away my idealized world in which women don’t shit. Please. PLEASE. I’m not alone on this either. There’s not a man out there that wants to hear about women shitting. Well, no man that shouldn’t be under some sort of surveillance, at least.
My friend Sean’s ex wife once pushed her plate of eggs away and said “Sean. Let’s go home! I’ve gotta crap!” and I didn’t eat eggs for a year as a result. They also ended up divorced. Coincidence? No, man. No way. She shattered the mirror. There’s no coming back from something like that. God. This is all so disturbing. I think I’m gonna go lay in the fetal position in the shower.
Enjoy your day!