After the previous night’s Bourbon drinkathon, grill-out and car wash adventure — not to mention the delicious fried chicken and BBQ ribs we inhaled earlier that day — trouble was a brewin’ in the bowels of the SlayRV. One by one we systematically decimated the bathrooms of the Walmart and nearby Burger King, and once business was taken care of we hit the road for the 5+ hour trek to Dallas.

Bowels freshly purged we swore off meat for the day; I had a healthy breakfast of carrots and hummus. Of course that oath went straight out the window when we saw the following sign across the road from a truck stop in Texarkana:

I mean how the fuck can you say no to THAT??

Poppa’s Smokehouse did not disappoint. A fine young lady (by Texarkana standards) served us up brisket sandwiches, and although the ribs weren’t quite ready for the day yet as it was still pretty early we left happy customers.

The clientele was, um, interesting, but the place was top-notch. Exactly the kind of roadside joint I’d hoped to visit many of on this road trip.

The truck stop itself was quite charming too:

The gas station store had quite the assortment of religious reading material (sadly, no Torah scripture) and cowboy hats:

Onwards. Upon arriving in Dallas we were really disappointed. We parked the bus and took a walk around Deep Ellum, Dallas’s “entertainment” district to find… absolutely fucking nothing. It was a ghost town. Nothing going on, at ALL. Total waste of time.

Bumming out pretty hard we headed back to the bus just in time to receive word from the lads in Dallas progressive metal band White Arms of Athena that they’d be able to stop by and bring us some herbals. SCORE! Whilst partaking in said herbals the dudes played us their new record which they’d literally just finished two days ago with producer Jamie King. I gotta say… wow… their new record sounds FANTASTIC and they have big things in store for them. Thanks again for the hookup, guys!

From here things started to get much better. Nick and Jono from The Destro rolled through, beers in tow, looking to rage. Before we knew it we had a bonafide party on our hands… all dudes, natch. After a choice burger at Angry Dog we were boozed up, full of meat and ready to fucking roll, so where better to take a bunch of drunk, horny dudes than Vinnie Paul’s Clubhouse strip club?

What followed was one of the most ridiculous moments of the entire trip. A bunch of drunk metal dudes roll up to this strip club with a bunch of beers and a half-finished bottled of bourbon in a plastic bag (BYOB strip club! brilliant). Anton OyVey was supposed to have the hookup to get us in without a cover charge, but the poor door girl just stared blankly when his Jewish ass was trying to work out a deal. He must’ve said the secret passcode or something because the club manager called up Vinnie Fucking Paul on his cellphone and put Anton OyVey on with him. A nervous OyVey was visibly shvitzing while stuttering through a conversation with Paul about how he presided over the Bar Mitzvah of Vinnie’s manager. While this was going down we realized that the cover was only $5 because it was a Tuesday night; we instantly all felt like scumbags for even asking for free admission. Nevertheless Anton somehow worked out a deal with Big Vin (we’re pretty sure he offered him some pickled tomatoes and tongue from the 2nd Avenue Deli) and we continued on in for free.

What happened in the Clubhouse stays in the Clubhouse. All you need to really know is that Anton OyVey and Rich Hallford fell in love with a stripper only to have their hearts broken when her boyfriend showed up. Seriously though, who dates a stripper?

At 2am the club closed down and we were booted out, but our desire for boobies had not yet been satiated. We all piled into the back of The Destro’s van and rollicked from strip club to strip club all over Dallas in search of one that was still open. Our search was in vain, but we did have an awesome moshpit/headbang party in the van to the sweet tunes of Napalm Death, Soundgarden, Goatwhore and, um, Pearl Jam. You know how when a bunch of drunk dudes are all riled up and the metal comes on instant mayhem ensues? Yeah, that. Good fucking times. Kip threw himself on a passed out Anton OyVey who was none too happy about being woken from his slumber.

-VN

Tomorrow: South by Southwest… finally!

The Story So Far:

Day 4: Memphis BBQ and The Walmart Parking Lot
Day 3: Louisville Sluggers and Nashville Honky-Tonk
Day 2: Scion Rock Fest
Day 1: The Calm Before the Storm