Pour yourself a Hot Wahini Served Cold, and check out the Ghosts of TW Past:
TW11
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. No, wait, it was really the best of times and we had no sense of time. With 24-hours of your life passing before your eyes like the earth plummeting toward a skydiver with no parachute, it's best to forget about time anyway, and consider velocity.
I don't know about you, but I think time has been accelerating. Something must be done. God knows the government isn't doing anything about the headlong rush toward the future.
Wasn't it just yesterday that Ted and Sean were joking about how great it would be to have a 24-hour party - one that lasted so long all the participants had to get past the small talk and get down to the dialectical mambo? Well, no. It was really 13 years ago. And what started as a dare became a tradition.
But, just like International Bivalve Appreciation Day, traditions come and go. Sadly, so too has Waitstock come to its appropriately odd ending. After 11 of the 13 last Waitstocks, Uncle Bob's Dead Battery Farm has passed on to less reckless hands. And TW has no home. For now.
See, the thing is, your hosts are governed by a rather uncondiitional spirit. In the past, it's been the unconditional spirit of Tom Waits. But as Buddha says, "Waitstock is about Tom Waits as much as bourbon is about oak casks." So, we feel as much constrained by place as we do by theme, or time itself.
So check in from time to time. Who knows? This time next year we could very well have TW14 in Vancouver or Johnny Cashstock in Las Vegas. At the very least, count on a Pigstock barbecue in HoHoKus. And we can only hope that bands like The Moonlighters, Mealy Mouth, Torch Job and, of corset, Heavy Floe will disrupt our peace again.
Thanks again for making life zestier, stroftier and tumblier. We loved having you, and can't wait to see you again. Until then. check out the action-packed-action from this year, TW13.