It's 3:00 A.M. In fifty minutes my phone will blast out the chorus of the old Mexican music I use as my ringtone (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U9PUHCt444). I feel good though, and think to myself that I should just get up now and head to the studio. I remember thinking this when at 3:50 A.M. my phone does just that. My sleep schedule has been completely ravaged by the massive excursion I returned from four days ago. Any feeling I had that would have made me skip out of bed and head to work bright-eyed fifty minutes ago were left behind and replaced with the words "Fuck me". But wake up I did.

I go through the same routine I've gone through for the last five plus years. I swipe my keycard to get into the lot, swipe my card to get into the building, ride the elevator to our floor, and enter the code to get into the offices. The halls are the same ones that I have been down a billion times, but I am just not here.

The previous night was spent trying to catch up on news, email, and porno. Not enough to make me feel confident that I know what is going on in the real world, but enough to make me sick of news and my couch stainy (gross).

. . .

It's now 5:00 A.M. The show intro is playing. Our voice-over guy announces "It's The Free Beer and Hot Wings Show!" and Kenny Roger's "The Gambler" starts to play. I see Free Beer's hand push the microphone buttons on the board... we're live. "It's Wednesday. This is The Free Beer and Hot Wings Show," he says and immediately goes through roll call. This is followed by Zane's voice. I can tell he's about to go into a story in a way that only he can do, and often does during the first break of the show. It hasn't been that long since I've heard him talk about putting his fist through a family members face, but goddamn, did I miss starting my day off this way. That's all I needed to feel at home again.

It's not that we don't take time away from the show, because we do, but it was very different this time. Knowing that the show was still in full swing while I made my way across godforsaken states where cell phones are just timepieces and everyone is ugly/poor made it so.

Anyway, I guess this is just a drawn out way of saying that it feels great to be back around the people I get to work with everyday... the guys I would consider as much a part of my family as I would my own*... the guys I would consider to be among the funniest I've ever known. The world is a pretty serious place with lots of miserable Kum & Go employees. To be able to go though the first five hours of my day with a shit eating grin on my face makes me a very lucky person**.

I would go over details about the road trip, but could never do it the justice that the videos documenting the trip do. (You can check them out here: http://www.freebeerandhotwings.com/g/Producer-Joe%27s-Freedom-Trip/175.html.)

*The good side of the family...not the side that throws me out of the vegetable garden by my hair and belt loop (true story).

** Yes, even when I'm being called a donkey-toothed fag.