Tuesday, Nov. 16 - Trip to Hamburg (LEG THREE)

We all slept till 1 pm, then Wei and the two Popes and I got on a train from the VAST Hamburg station, full of colorful alien fast-food joints, to the small traditional town of Luneberg.

Colorful graffitti is EVERYWHERE, like in NYC. Yet it's very clean of trash -- save for HUMAN trash.

Sights in Luneberg:

Laundromat called "Wasch Fuxx"

Ancient cathedral from 1500s, featuring the most ornate cherubscapes EVER

A street called "Spielhalle Westbahahof"

A 400-year-old Radio Shack

Like a "Germany-Land" Theme Park, except for the Starbucks, McDonalds and Woolworths

Ate sweineschnitzel at one ancient pub, had 10,000 year old "feine biere"

Coolest pavement EVER

10-Billion-year-old Apotheke (drug dealership) with interplanetarily ornate doorway

Had Luneberger beer at other ancient pub, with awful German oom-pah polka-disco music, manned by long-mulletted German who jokingly told me to get a haircut

Noted "The U.S. Store," which sells American redneck clothes for German Pinks

Store called "Dr. Stange Int'l."

On the psychedelically-seated train back to Hamburg, Pope Black told us that, as a London chef, he has cooked for Parliament and the Queen, "by royal appointment." Sounds good, anyway.

Back in Hamburg, went to some bar... then Bob's, where we witnessed and photographed his Illuminati 911 evidence... then to the Fundbureau, where we heard a group of beatniks called The Avant Garde Band - crazee jazz, sounding like the soundtrack for a Yugoslavian animated short film... very Nino Rota-like.

Went to a couple MORE bars, and drank strong absinth in one; met a Mod Guy. An actual, real-life Mod. Roamed the streets; it was so cold that the hookers all had to dress like Kenny of Southpark.

This time, even We/I got pretty drunk. We have found photos of us posing in front of walls of graffiti, which none of us remember from real life. There is a videotape of the ground as we walk, and from the audio I was able to pare these two cosmic drunken realizations:

1.) Fundbureau means "Lost and Found," or "Found Bureau." Our London shows were at the Foundry. So this must be The SubGenius Lost and Found Tour. (Only in hindsight did the special irony of this name sink in.)

2.) Kay Wittke had been the voice of reason the whole time, protecting us, rationing the vodka, carefully apportioning the hookers. He was our silent protector the whole time.

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Thursday, Nov. 18 -- Hamburg Devival

Slept all day... got to venue at 7. Good thing the venue was only 3 blocks away.

Pope Black had awakened us, cooked a great sausage breakfast for everybody, and then he and Mickey Finn vanished, telling us to be at the venue at 5 "for sound check." They didn't actually get there until 9 - they had taken a sight-seeing boat, but in the wrong direction.

MY NEW VIDEOS!! Boy, they looked great on that big screen, with those excellent German projectors. Unfortunately, a train track runs right over the Fundbureau's roof, so every ten minutes or so, one's music or ranting is punctuated by the deep bass rumble of a passing train. Gives everything an atmospheric "bunker under bombardment" ambience.

There was a lot of beer and vodka backstage, and I swear my fellow performers would have stayed back there drinking it, and never gotten around to doing the show at all, if I hadn't force-kick-started it at about 10:30 pm. We had a pretty good crowd, but they were becoming hypnotized by the videos, and nobody was buying from our fine swag table (where Kay and German Bob acted as Swaggarts whenever Princess Wei had to run video).

I enjoyed delivering SubGenius 101 in careful English to an all-new set of audience souls.

Mickey Finn's classy rant was delivered PERFECTLY, and was WELL RECORDED - making perhaps the single most valuable chunk of audio from this trip. ""Bob" will wash your feet with somebody else's pubic hair."

Pope Black ranted/sang with a band called The Tomb Orchestra, performing his standard sermonlike activities such as handing out, and EATING, used condoms. By the end of the set - he tried to prevent it ending at all - he was screaming at the audience, "I HATE YOU! This is ALL BULLSHIT!" I have one memorable photo of him with a 7 Bladed Windbreaker in one hand, and a mic AND a bottle of beer BOTH in the other hand, at his mouth.

"The 7-Bladed Windbreaker - each propellor is a SWASTIKA! A PERFECT SWASTIKA OF "BOB"!"

DJ Protogoth & DJ Chronic, both from Holland, took turns playing tunes, while the entire party, audience included, moved to the backstage area. I pulled out the giant bloodshot Ping Pong Ball Eyes that Philo made and wore them, so I'd look like a wild party animal. Pope Black tried to shove an unidentified pill into my mouth - I told him to give me TWO. Then I pocketed them.

For POPE BLACK, of all people, to shove that Mystery Pill at my mouth, AND to think I was actually going to SWALLOW it... that took a lot of "sack," so to speak.

Pope Black himself actually fell sound asleep on the Fundbureau couch, but not for long; a pill kicked in, and suddenly he and Mickey Finn were gone again, bar-hopping.

Wei and I got a ride home from a crazy young Dutch Subguy who had been flirting with her all evening. At least, that's how it looked to me.

We were SUPPOSED to travel to Amsterdam for the opening of the SubGenius Sacred Art Show at Suzanne Biederberg Gallery... but Pope Black woke us at 8:30 am, having returned briefly from all-night drinking, looking for the pills he remembered giving me. He put the gobble on those two "Other Halves," as we preachers call EuroPils, and promised to return for the 10:30 am train in two hours. On his way out the door, unbeknownst to us or to himself, he had knocked the doorbell-phone off the hook, so that if anybody DID come for us, we'd never hear the bell. Kay in fact did come at 10:30, couldn't get an answer, and left, perturbed. We woke up about that time and realized that Pope Black might have fucked up. We waited and waited. Kay returned at 1 pm, with some food for us, and then Mickey Finn arrived, looking just a WEE BIT bedraggled. He had spent the last few hours vainly trying to get Pope Black to leave a particularly beloved bar, so that we could go to Amsterdam. But the Pope had been intractable, crazy. Finn had realized Amsterdam would not be happening this day.

The absent Pope Black was demoted to Altar Boy Black, and Kay's dog Perro was made the new Pope of Europe. We slept... read... went out at 8 pm, for a fine repast of Indian food at Bombay Restaurant, across the strasse.

9 pm - met St.Kay at Fundbureau; walked with him and new Pope Perro towards SKAM -- and, rather unexpectedly, found Pope Black in the GoleEner Handschuh biker bar, where Finn had left him almost TWELVE HOURS EARLIER. Kay had to extract him almost forcibly from the bar. His first words to us upon surfacing:

We literally led him by the arms to the SKAM building, where we were to see Bob's anti-Bush art show. He wanted to tell every passerby and shopkeeper that we were going to Amsterdam.

At Bob's gallery opening, Pope Black fell asleep in a big easy chair - UPSIDE DOWN, with his feet at the top of the chair's back and his head dangling off towards the floor - while we met lots of the nice young Germans who are very worried about fascism in America. I had gotten pretty tired of "explaining" the Bush thing by this time, but I kept doing it anyway. We watched a cool video collage that Bob had created, and drank some beers. I gathered numerous URLs which I have yet to examine: