It’s way past midnight and you’re tooling down a desert highway. You’re in a hurry to reach your destination, so you take a short cut. Some turnoff marked as Promoter’s Gulch or Ticket Scalper’s Gully, something like that. Before long, you realize that you’re the only person on the road, and you start to wonder what you would do if the car broke down. That’s when it happens. That’s when you come around a bend and see…

You see something the size of a house descending from the night sky. Oval shaped with flashing lights, it reminds you of a Roger Waters concert. You step on the gas, but the car stalls instead. That’s when that little voice inside your head speaks up. That’s when you realize that this has happened before.

The ship alights on the road in front of you. Its hull is covered with bumper stickers for Social Distortion, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe and Kool Keith. You sit behind the wheel, paralyzed, when suddenly…

When suddenly an opening appears on the side of the ship and two beings step out onto the ground. One of them seems to be a short, dumpy looking man-like creature sporting a baldhead and an enormous belly. The other appears to be the female of the species. She looks taller than the male, but that’s because she has five feet of blue hair piled on top of her head. Neither one of them has a chin. They’re walking towards your car when the man trips over a rock and falls on his face.

“Doh!”

That’s when you know this has happened to you before. The man opens the car door and the woman takes your hand and leads you to the ship. Once inside, the two beings have you lie prone on an examining table. The woman presses her finger on your forehead. “Tell us,” she says. “Tell us about the tours.”

And you tell them.

You tell them about Eels in Paris on November 5. You tell them about the Britney Spears tour and how the opener was pushed back to October 31st. You tell them about The Big Wu and P.O.D., even Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine. You rattle off the dates for Zucchero, the venues for Lee “Scratch” Perry, and countries for Travis.

Finally it’s over. The woman leads you back to your car while the man gets out the jumper cables from the trunk of the spaceship. Once they have your car started, the woman leans through the window and reaches out to touch you. The woman places her hand on your forehead. “Forget” she says.

Walking away, she stops as if she has forgotten something. She turns, walks back to your car, and once again places her hand on your head. And while she doesn’t actually speak, the message comes through loud and clear.

“The tours are out there.”