All I do all day is stick one piece of rubber onto another. Just stick part A to part B, then stick both parts to part C. Easy, eh? Hardly rocket science. At least the paychecks don’t bounce.

But the mind tends to drift after awhile. I see those gigantic, steaming slabs of part A rubber coming down the line and I’m thinking, like, Moby is in Sayreville on October 26th. Or maybe I’m slapping part B onto part A and I’m counting how many U.K. dates are on the schedule for Badly Drawn Boy. Slapping rubber on rubber is hardly anything to write home about, but thinking about Continental Drifters, Destiny’s Child and Diana Krall keeps the mental juices flowing, keeps your mind occupied while you’re slapping part A onto part B then onto part C.

There’s an old saying, something about “only your body’s in chains.” I can relate to that. Just because my body’s in rubberland, that doesn’t mean I have to eat, drink and breath this stuff. So I run the tour dates through my mind. While I’m grabbing part A, I’m thinking about my seats for Dogstar. While I’m sticking part B onto part A, I’m calculating the square root of the total of dates for Marvelous 3 divided by the number of tickets for The Smothers Brothers. You know, mind games. Just to keep the old intellect healthy.

Let you in on a little secret. Sometimes I get so caught up in schedules like Rare Earth and Moonshine Overamerica, that I kind of get confused. I’ll be thinking about Nada Surf and I’ll completely forget to slap part B onto part A before I stick part C on top. It’s happened a few times, but so far, I don’t think anyone has noticed. No matter, it’s not like that big mistake I made last year. The time I was so into Pearl Jam that I misspelled the company’s name on part A before I slapped it together with part B. Yeah, we still get a good laugh out of that one every once in a while.

The day we sent out a whole shipment of Fridgestone Birestone tires.