Ahh, Barnstormer. Best Pizza Anywhere. The owner Adam, is one hell of a guy. I wonder if he'll ever see this page. I was there with GritKisser, and he took us all out in the middle of the night to this river. It was pitch back and foggy out. On the way, visibility was about 10 feet, and were going it felt like 60 on this little dirt road. Adam giving directions like "OK, the road is straight here, so just keep the van pointed straight, and you won't go off the road." Did I mention that Montevallo is famous for its mushroom tea? So we get to where the river supposedly is, but it's so dark out, you can't see it. Adam leads me down the bank, and points me in the right direction. "Ok, the river is in front of you. Dive straight ahead, but dive shallow; there's a log under the water in front of you, and you have to clear it." Shit. It all seemed too perfect to kill me, right? Standing chest deep in a pebble-bottomed alabama creek, staring at the sky in silence with bandmates and new friends, watching the stars melt out of the sky. damn.

One of my favorite places to play ever. When PopCanon played there, the place would usually be packed to the gills, and it was always a crazy naked frenzy rockfest that would go on for hours. Once the University of Montevallo philosophy department threw a party there after their annual debate and hired us to play. We wrote a song for the occasion called 'Ballyhoo.' We did a set entirely of songs about philosophers and philosophy. I played there a couple of times post-PC, once solo and once with Eurotoaster. It was not the same.

There was this one time that Christina Bello almost got beat up by some drunk guy there. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, though. She was videotaping the show, and someone there didn't want to be videotaped, I think.

I just remembered some other things. Montevallo is about 30 miles outside of Birmingham, and we would usually stay at my parents' house in Birmingham when we played there. The road in between was always thick with blinding fog. We set up a show there with Bing Futch from Orlando who was on his annual "coast-to-coast roller coaster tour." In these tours, Bing would somehow convince a local theme park to let him in free if he promoted the park during his show, and so he got us all into this park in nearby Bessemer. I believe the park closed down recently. Bing was frightened to death driving into Montevallo. The night really did have a horror movie feel to it, with the fog and the tiny roads, driving into this tiny rural town in which you'd never expect to find this quirky university and its quirky inhabitants. But Bing's set went over brilliantly, and we were brilliant as well. The next day, we all went to the crazy park - I don't remember what it was called, but we were somewhat horrified to find that it seemed to have something of a religious theme. Once when I was in high school, I went to Montevallo to visit a friend who was going to school there, and I slept in a haunted house.

Barnstormers is/was a double wide trailer that was renovated and turned into a pizza place/venue. The whole town is billed as haunted, which you could take for truth half- truth, or just the fantasy of those "quirky" residents, who just happen to be the kind of people that would want to believe. The town is also somewhat (waaaay) out there, away from everything, and if a person wasn't accoustomed to that sort of thing they might start to belive anything(plus some of that mushroom tea,and who knows!!!) People are cool for the most part, though.

The chairs played Barnstormer Pizza- It was one of the coolest times ever. Adam took us out to the 'crick' where all 5 of us waded on our bellies to a little waterfall. There was a full moon out and we all just sat there, stoned as ever, in a blissful trance of togetherness and silence. Then we went back to the club and threw down. Later the whole town threw a party in our honor complete with Ella Fitzgerald and "Deepthroat" (simultaneously, of course). And Donnie bit my ass really hard and left a big bruise.

maybe if you hadn't made your ass look so TASTY... I had forgotten all about that party, and those crazy alabamians. I wonder where they are now? Balzac (the guy that set his crotch on fire, repeatedly)? The guy that claimed to be irish, but wasn't? The girl with the hairlip and black vinyl minidress that I hit on shamelessly? All the many drunken philosophers? I heard that Barnstormer isn't there anymore; that's so sad, if true. Montevallo was so good to us. It's also is the location of the worlds shortest bridge that spans 3 forms of transportation (a river, a road, and a train track), called, I believe, the "Don Lovelady" bridge. Why yes, I do! Thank you, monty!