T A B L E_T A L K New Year's Eve 1999: Do you have plans yet? Discuss where you'll be for the changing of the millennium in Table Talk's Wanderlust area R E C E N T L Y Tokyo sex wars: part 2 By Karl Taro Greenfeld The arrival of 24 "classy ladies" to work in a fledgling nightspot convulses Japan's new demimonde (11/10/98) Tokyo sex wars By Karl Taro Greenfeld Drug demons and sex junkies in Japan's new demimonde (11/09/98) On the road with the Smokejumpers By The King Teen What happens when a punk-rockabilly band from San Francisco tours the country in a broken-down Big Orange Van? (11/06/98) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news (11/06/98) Savvy tips for holiday travelers By Dawn MacKeen When can you actually demand money from an airline? Where can you find low-cost holiday fares? Christopher McGinnis knows (11/05/98) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		-------------------[GET PARTS ONE AND THREE] -----------Dead bunnies, canceled gigs, pizza and beer -- -----------a San Francisco band explores America. BY THE KING TEEN | In the darkest of the dark hours Sunday night, as we struggled unsuccessfully in a Brighton, Colo., truck stop parking lot to fix the Big Orange Van in time not to have to miss a second consecutive show, I thought it would be a prudent move to play the lottery, on the off chance that our luck was overdue to change. And maybe it was: I won $5 on a scratcher, bringing my lifetime lottery winnings to $5, which is to say $4 because I paid a buck for the ticket. I took it as a sign that things were going to start happening in our favor after two days of minor mechanical problems cost us as much as $600 in lost earnings, repair bills, parts and unanticipated hotel stops, not to mention the attendant frustration, anger and tension. You take your signs where you can get them. Now we're on a 24-hour, 1,220-mile drive through five states to get from the Denver outskirts to Muncie, Ind., for a Tuesday night all-ages show at a record store called Stevie Ray's House of Wax. We plow through eastern Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa on Interstate 80, then head southeast on I-74 through Illinois and on into Indianapolis. From there it's less than an hour up the road to Muncie. I play one scratcher ticket each in Nebraska and Iowa, losing both times. At Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the river from Omaha, we buy gas for 92 cents a gallon -- the first two-digit price we've seen on the trip, or in years. Gas is $1.20 or more back home. We take pictures of the sign. Starting in Iowa and for the rest of the time we're in the Midwest and South, store clerks bid us adieu by saying, "Come back." I begin to measure the quality of truck stops by their willingness to give me a cup of hot water for free. (Flying J keeps wanting to charge me 16 cents for the cup, but I always manage to talk them out of it. On the plus side for Flying J: great bathrooms.) I'm guzzling lemon tea to soothe a sore throat that hit me the day before we left and hasn't been helped by my singing every night. (Come to think of it, nothing is ever helped by my singing.) By the end of Saturday night's show in Denver, I was in pretty serious pain and worrying about my future as a singer. A former musical partner injured his vocal chords six years ago and is still struggling with the effects. Now, thanks to the tea and not having to sing for two nights, my throat is feeling better. Perhaps the problems with the Big Orange Van have been a blessing in disguise, though I have to say it's a hell of a disguise. One thing brightening my spirits as we head to Muncie is that my wife will be there. A Hoosier gal, the Queen Teen is taking a trip to her home state to visit friends and catch our show. When we'd been sitting in 40-degree Denver weather waiting for a tow, or when I'd been up to my elbows in grease, helping Double D, guitar player and resident mechanic, try to force some unwilling engine part into place, I'd spent a lot of time thinking about how nice it would be to be at home, curled up on the couch or clean and warm in bed. She has a way of reassuring me in bad times without being a Pollyanna, and after less than a week on the road, I can already use a dose of that. What kind of town is Muncie? The Indiana Visitors Bureau booth on the highway has no information on it. Not even a map. Stevie Ray's is in "The Village," a downtown section of restaurants and shops near Ball State University. We get to town in the early afternoon and check into a Valu-Lodge motel. "It's going to be expensive because of that word 'lodge,'" says Big Stick Mick. "No," I say, "Valu with no 'e' cancels it out." The rooms smell like chemicals, the shower is broken and there are shady characters hanging around, but we have all afternoon to eat pizza, do laundry and, in my case, luxuriate in the presence of my favorite person. We're playing with the Parasites, friends of ours from Berkeley who are racing east to hook up with the Queers and the Mr. T Experience for a tour. A local band of teenagers called the H-Men opens the show, then us, then the Parasites. We form a mutual admiration society with the Parasites. They tell us they jumped at the chance to play this show with us and we thoroughly enjoy their melodic punk show, with the Queen Teen dancing all night front and center. The Parasites want to adopt her. The kids buy up some CDs. Who ever said anything bad about Muncie? N E X T+P A G E | No wet T-shirts