Divorce.

Move over, marriage, I guess. The new post-modern phenomenon of under-30-and-educated divorce is sweeping over the cliché phrase "everyone is getting married" like a 21st century cultural tidal wave. I'm 29; I know four people my age already divorced. Is this normal?

Examination and analysis. All four are Asian-American (though, of course, the people I know are predominantly Asian-American), all four divorces instigated by the woman, and all four under the age of 30.

The Census Bureau reported in 1997 that 84% of all Asian-American children were living with both parents, a number not only significantly above the national average, but significantly above other ethnic groups. In addition, according to the U.S Government Accountability Office, red states have a divorce rate 29% higher than blue states; a figure that might seem counter-assumptive considering the Christian contingent embedded within the philosophy of Republican states. Also, according to the Census Bureau in 2002, less than 10% of marriages end in divorce within the first five years.

This confuses me somewhat; though empirical data is questionable at best, if less than 10% of marriages end in the first 5 years in 2002, why is the number of weddings I have been to fewer than the amount of divorces I know of at age 29 or younger?

Something to think about, particularly if you're thinking of getting married. Don't become another statistic on my blog.

Tour - halftime in Minneapolis.

Kristina Reiko Cooper, who recently embarked on an identical mid-America tour to ours, was recently quoted in "All Things Strings" as saying: “Being on the road can be pretty lonely. You perform, you get all the adrenaline running, you get on a high, and then you have to go back to an empty hotel room, with nothing to do but watch Law and Order."

Perhaps. I spent today, however, eating blueberry pancakes at Perkins, swimming a mile at the YMCA, resting in a sauna, getting coffee at Caribou, and shopping at the largest indoor mall in the United States. And now I'm going to watch Law and Order, and it's going to be the shit.

Rock Springs, WY.

Concert tours magnify my human tendency to realize satisfaction in the small things; nothing cries awesome better than a hot tub and a solid wi-fi connection, though the ingrained bi-coastal snobbery rooted in my genetic makeup can't help but find an equal amount of enjoyment in tattoed middle-aged hillbillies with names like Starla or Ginger.

Tours are therapeutic in so much as they force an intense focus on only one thing; most of the time, I can't answer a cell phone call even if I wanted to.

A girl in Montana told me I was good looking. I barely had two seconds to revel in this compliment before I noticed that she had extreme Down Syndrome.

Thief River Falls, MN.

The simplicity of the rural midwest wreaks of small tales of urban escape; broken down signs next to rusty tractors, the excitement of deer season, christmas carols at expansively large high schools and the like. On the whole, the Norwegian contingent screams native with the majority, but I sense a general bliss in the ignorance of city affairs.

Leonard Bernstein wrote "On the Town" over half a century ago, the primary musical number "Lonely Town" detailing the below quote by Mark Twain - "whether you're on Main Street or Broadway / if you're alone / they're both the same."

In December of 2007, police discovered the skeletal remains of Christina Copeman, an East Flatbush resident who had been dead in her apartment for well over a year. Oddly enough, the story made her an immediate posthumous quasi-celebrity; a symbol of the dire theoretical (or inevitable?).

Examine the dichotomy: "Unless there's love, the world's an empty place; and every town is a lonely town." - Leonard Bernstein, 1944

"Urban Loneliness is a myth" - The New York Magazine, 2010

According to a new study conducted by the New York Magazine in an article entitled "Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?", 50.7% of the population of New York City are single-individual households. In Manhattan, 57% of those single-individuals are women as opposed to Brooklyn, where it is only 29.5%.

Mark Twain once said, "the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco." But the heat wave in SF these past few summers was stifling.

Mark Twain also once said that New York City is a "a splendid desert — a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race." But in the wake of quantifying human emotion (a study was recently done by the Citizens Committee of New York City on which borough of New York is "happiest"), loneliness is now so much the norm that it is no longer lonely. Lonely, it seems, is the new happy.

Mark Twain is so yesterday. And in case you were wondering, the happiest boroughs of New York City are (in order from happiest to least-happy): Queens, Staten Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and sadly (literally) the Bronx.

Day 1 of the 45-day long mid-west tour. Minneapolis, MN. Begin.