This is Not My Beautiful House! This is Not My Beautiful Wife!

Perhaps my favorite part of touring with the Blood Arm—forget the fact that we are not really touring per se, as we’ve been rocking London for the duration of the week—are the what the fuck?! moments. These are the moments that make one say, “what the fuck?!” (When I type “one,” I’m typing about myself, okay? I’ve been told it’s more proper than typing “me,” or “you,” even. And regardless, I’m the boss of this page, so one will do whatever the hell one wants here.) There have been a lot of these wtf?! moments this trip.

Cases in point: Tuesday we found ourselves playing penis and eating day-old salmon souffle in Maximo Park’s studio with four Swedes and one French girl, and Paul from Maximo was wearing an XXXXXL Cannibal Corpse t-shirt… What the fuck?! Wednesday we used an arm-wrestling victory over Nick from Intoxica Records as a decisive means of crowning Bruce Springsteen the Best Musician in the World… What the fuck?!

Last night, however, makes all other nights look like little bitches in terms of its what the fuck-upedness. Let’s recount it all down—what one can remember, at least—and lay it to rest, shall we?

-We began the evening at a party at a photo gallery called Proud (which is not a gay bar, by the way… what the fuck?!) to see the dude from the Test Icicles’ new band. Proud has lawn chairs with photos of Carl Barat—who does not look anything like Eric Idle from Monty Python, according to Grandmaster B (who happened to provide the cure to my most recent case of writer’s-block)—emblazoned on them, so one could literally sit on his face... What the fuck?!

-After briefly losing contact with Zebastian and Zachary on Primrose Hill in the rain, I found myself being whisked away to a posh apartment somewhere in Londontown in a Sony BMG company car, which as far as I can tell, the Blood Arm have little to no affiliation with… What the fuck?!

-I awoke topless with a pink polka-dotted scarf draped around my neck. A framed, autographed portrait of Ricky Martin was staring at me. "Bailamos, Ben Lee," it whispered.

Bailamos…

(let’s wait for this one, okay?)


Okay.
What the fuck?!
Ahhhhhhhhhh.

-Upon returning to the Travelodge (our lodging of choice), Dyan and all of our belongings were missing from the hotel room, and the walls, beds, and ceilings were stained with red wine… What the fuck?!

(And this one truly knocked my knees out from under me, stopped my heart, and repeatedly kicked me in the stomach, albeit for only one comical photographical interlude.)


(okay, maybe two photographical interludes.)


I called Chalkie, tour manager of champions (us). Chalkie says, “we’ve moved to the Jury’s Inn up the road, come back and I’ll tell you all about it, everything’s okay.” But there was a tinge of worry in his voice, and I was scared. I walked up the road to the new hotel. Chalkie answers the door to his room, clad in boxer-briefs and a hand-rolled cigarrette, nothing else.

“Have a seat, Ben Lee,” he says, looking grim. I fear the worst. “Apparently the kind folks at Travelodge did not approve of my playing bartender in the bar last night, and they threw us out.”

But the empty room… the wine on the walls… what the fuck?

It seems Dyan, Chalkie and Nathaniel returned to the hotel with with four bottles of wine no means of opening them. The hotel bar was closed, so Chalkie hopped over the counter to nic an opener. While he was behind the bar, he thought he’d help himself to a pint. Then another. And another.

The Travelodge staff did not take too kindly to this. They threatened to throw the threesome out. But our cheery threesome believed their infractions to be smooth-overable. Nathaniel tried to get the staff back on the winning team by belting out the lyrics to the new single ‘Suspicious Character’ (which will be out September 18). Chalkie offered them wine and tea. The staff was unimpressed. They called the cops.

So, under the watchful eye of Britain’s finest, a beyond-intoxicated Dyan, Nathaniel and Chalkie packed up all of our stuff, managed to spill wine all of the entirety of their empty hotel rooms, and relocated to the Jury’s Inn........................
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That’s a pretty-big what the fuck?! right?

The MacBeth is tonight. Let’s do it!

xxxooo,

Ben Lee

P.S. Pictures from the entire trip will be posted as soon as we return to Los Angeles tomorrow!