so i stopped taking notes and stuff. it's also about 3 or 4 days after we've returned home, so if this isn't as detailed as it should be, eat it.
Cleveland, OH
Sheldon and I had stayed over Dave's girlfriend's college dorm the night before and it was hellishly cold. There were news reports where people would throw water onto a windshield of a car to find that it only took a mere 20 seconds to freeze. They warned us not to stand outside for more than 10 minutes because it would result in frostbite. Imagine our (Sheldon and I) chagrin when we were leaving our friend Matt's dorm to meet back up with Dave and found ourselves passing through the wrong exit, stepping out into unchartered territory with a locked door behind us. We ran around with flashlights trying to get in touch with Dave to find where the fuck he was and at about 9 minutes, 49 seconds entered the correct warm dormitory with 11 seconds left to spare.
We woke up at 7:00 and drove back to Clarion, PA to pick up the rest of the guys and go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We had heard that if you go there with tour laminates you get in for free... we scrambled for our laminates from last tour, or maybe warped tour laminate but when we realized that we'd all have different laminates we decided against it. We almost walked in with all the posters we've picked up along tour with our name on it and our itinerary but in the end all they really needed was a CD. Free admission and it was fucking awesome.
- A birthday card Jimi Hendrix drew for his dad
- Handwritten lyrics to Beat on the Brat
- The plane Otis Redding died in
WOW. Too much rock and roll. We tried to cram as much in as possible and did formidably well, skipping the top two floors of the building which were entirely devoted to U2, we were given seven minutes to spare to look at the awesome CDs in the gift shop. I love music. I suggest everyone go to the rock and roll hall of fame, it's pretty incredible.
Our load-in time is always based on a bad guess. So when we showed up at the venue "early" for "7:00 doors" and "6:00 load-in" at 5:45, we were shocked to find that load-in was at 10:00. Or maybe 8:00? I dunno, 9:00? Not now. Leave. Or stay. Whatever. We wanna play darts. We want on a busy work mission to help Bove find strawberry soda and then waiting at a local Burger King to meet up with our friend Christine who lived kind of closeby and would be hanging out for the rest of tour. While I was in the supermarket picking up strawberry soda, I received a phone call from the girl who booked the show's friend.
"Um. Hi. We have a problem. They're going to start kicking people out at 10:00 if they're under 18, we're under 18 and we booked the show. Sorry you didn't know about this."
So our all ages show was fucked. People showed up sparsely hoping we'd go on before 10:00, and we ended up hitting at about 11:30 because The Minimum Requirements had a very long set. This band had also promised us their drumset for the night and lent us their bass cabinet and bounced back and forth between nice and frustrating. I tried to see if there was a way that I could sign as all the kids' legal guardian for the night and they didn't think that was possible. So I went outside in the subzero weather accompanied by just about everyone in the band at one point or another and played a bunch of songs for the kids who were thrown out in the middle of the streeet. Hopefully next time we come to Cleveland "ALL AGES" will mean "ALL AGES ALL THE TIME". JT followed this up with a set of stand-up comedy, and since I wasn't there I'm really not sure what that means but he swears he's the next Andrew Dice Clay.
When we were getting started we found out that apparently the equipment we were allowed to borrow, we weren't allowed to borrow. We couldn't continue using the PA speakers. We couldn't use the drum set. We ran the PA through a guitar cab and I started drinking profusely because I didn't know what to do without playing guitar. Mike Costa grabbed his drums out of the trailer. Unfortunately, the batter head that was on his snare drum was very sensitive to the temperature change... going from ice cold to sweaty bar hot is not a good transition, considering the stretch factor, shit gets fucked up. During the set, Mike put a stick right through his snare drum. The show went on regardless and Mike played like a trooper. Then the cops came. Someone stopped us mid-song and told us to turn it down. We picked it up right where we left off and tried desperately to continue this show well with the obvious constraints that were placed on us. After some guy sporting an early 80's mullet came up to us during a song AGAIN and said "turn it down" and i said "it can't go any lower" and he said "well, make it go lower" and then i said "this is me without a microphone" and i started screaming and he said "be quiet" and then i said "so i can't talk without a microphone" and then he said "no" and then i said "fuck it, we're not playing anymore. later."
We sold some merchandise, someone asked to take a picture of me and Christine making out (??) and we ended up making even more money by having people throw money in so that we would kick Mike Costa in the nuts. We raised a whole lot this way... you can really kick him in the nuts and he doesn't feel a thing. After the show, alcohol and medication combined in the worst way possible for Bove, causing him another panic attack which led to another panic attack later on that night which led to us cancelling the end of our tour.
A lot of other stuff happened which is quite personal and probably doesn't belong on the tour diary. The interstate was closed due to weather conditions and we were allowed to leave about 18 horus after our originally planned departure time. I almost died in a car accident but somehow I miraculously didn't fall into a ditch. I came home and it was heated. And I smiled a lot.
1.21.2004
1.16.2004
Cincinatti, OH. Right?
Pitchers of Old Style, cartons of cigarettes and the latest night ever does not mix well with a 10:00 wake-up call in St. Louis. I woke up and reached for a free box of sample Alka-Seltzer Morning Relief which was sticking out of my pocket. I walked downstairs got two cups and mixed up a batch for myself and Julie who had work at 8:00 AM and was still sleeping. It seems like a great idea, the combination of caffeine, headache relief and stomach cures all in a fast acting drink. It's too bad that drink tastes like piss. Nevertheless, we got over it and went downstairs for an awesome coffee and cheesecake breakfast that I attempted to finish, but you know.
We were pretty late because we were all kind of hungover, sluggish and tired. And then it happened. Dave lost his keys. He gave them to Bove, then Bove gave them back to him. Something like that. We looked all over the place and couldn't find them and said "Hey, let Julie send them to you. We have to go." No. That wouldn't be happening. We took LITERALLY (by literally I mean ACTUALLY. EXACTLY. PRESICELY. THIS AMOUNT ISN'T AN EXXAGERATION.) one and a half hours looking for these keys. We would end up being three hours late to the show because of this debacle thus missing load-in time, doors and most importantly, our set time. So I did what most strong animals in the wild do when presented with difficult situations, I went to sleep.
BUT FIRST, AN AMAZING CHAIN OF EVENTS HAPPENED. Because we were bored we started looking at other band's websites, mainly Streelight Manifesto's. Due to scene politicking, we lost a lot of dates that we planned in the winter and saw that Streelight Manifesto was playing with no openers at that time. On a whim, I called up and we they were kind enough to agree to play a bunch of shows with us opening up. HOLY SHIT. THAT'S AWESOME. Secondly! we were told by our friend that she had another friend with a recording studio and that we would in fact be able to record Plea For Peace, Sorry We (Thought We) Lost Your Dolly/Handtruck"! Yeah! What a day! All of sudden the terrible predicament of Dave losing his keys (which really was a bigger deal that can be translated in blogworld) wasn't that big a deal.
We showed up at the show at some point Eastern Standard Time which means I have NO idea how long it actually took us and there was a dead bird about three inches away from the door of the van. The promoter came up to us and told us that there was a problem concerning Wal-Mart, protests, the local news team and our show. There were protesters next door at some community fuckshitassholeidon'tcarewhatitwas because they didn't want a Wal-Mart to come into town. I thought, hey, that's pretty cool, fuck corporate america yadda yadda punk rock yadda ian mckaye et cetera. No. It was a bunch of old people who just didn't want traffic in their town because of a Wal-Mart. By the way, New Yorkers. Everywhere in America, there is a Wal-Mart. Everywhere else. It's scary. Scary. Anyway, these old people were complaining about the noise next door so it looked like our show wouldn't happen.
And the 8 people who came to see us in Cincinatti would not be able to enjoy our performance. Speaking of Cincinatti, why did everyone keep coming up to me and telling me "Cincinatti kids won't come here."
My response of "it's like ten minutes outside of the city" was constantly followed by
"nobody lives here."
"really?"
"yes. no one."
I decided that we probably shouldn't have done a HEADLINING TOUR when we really don't draw that much out of state, but then I took into account that the show was booked like 5 days before so there wasn't much promotion time. As usual, this smaller show was a lot better. The twenty people who watched us seemed to like it and we had a great time. The drum set was forced to be behind plexiglass which was really really weird. There were also two girls there in homemade ASOB tshirts which was awesome. One of their homemade designs is going to be stolen so that we have a good t-shirt design.
There was a long long long drive ahead of us that night. And this is when the fucking winter came in. We drove in awful snow on interstates that should have been paved because a three lane highway with one open lane covered in black ice is NOT FRIGGIN GOOD. The snow was an awful punch in the face from mother nature, reminding me that we were no longer escaping winter in the south. We were going to be home in a couple of days. For the first time in about a month I saw a sign that said "New York City. 408 miles." We could be back home in a matter of hours. Big bummer. When we finally pulled up at a house there were giant snowbanks on odd parts of our trailer that seemed to defy gravity. We went inside and watched the Toxic Making The Video and I went to sleep.
Pitchers of Old Style, cartons of cigarettes and the latest night ever does not mix well with a 10:00 wake-up call in St. Louis. I woke up and reached for a free box of sample Alka-Seltzer Morning Relief which was sticking out of my pocket. I walked downstairs got two cups and mixed up a batch for myself and Julie who had work at 8:00 AM and was still sleeping. It seems like a great idea, the combination of caffeine, headache relief and stomach cures all in a fast acting drink. It's too bad that drink tastes like piss. Nevertheless, we got over it and went downstairs for an awesome coffee and cheesecake breakfast that I attempted to finish, but you know.
We were pretty late because we were all kind of hungover, sluggish and tired. And then it happened. Dave lost his keys. He gave them to Bove, then Bove gave them back to him. Something like that. We looked all over the place and couldn't find them and said "Hey, let Julie send them to you. We have to go." No. That wouldn't be happening. We took LITERALLY (by literally I mean ACTUALLY. EXACTLY. PRESICELY. THIS AMOUNT ISN'T AN EXXAGERATION.) one and a half hours looking for these keys. We would end up being three hours late to the show because of this debacle thus missing load-in time, doors and most importantly, our set time. So I did what most strong animals in the wild do when presented with difficult situations, I went to sleep.
BUT FIRST, AN AMAZING CHAIN OF EVENTS HAPPENED. Because we were bored we started looking at other band's websites, mainly Streelight Manifesto's. Due to scene politicking, we lost a lot of dates that we planned in the winter and saw that Streelight Manifesto was playing with no openers at that time. On a whim, I called up and we they were kind enough to agree to play a bunch of shows with us opening up. HOLY SHIT. THAT'S AWESOME. Secondly! we were told by our friend that she had another friend with a recording studio and that we would in fact be able to record Plea For Peace, Sorry We (Thought We) Lost Your Dolly/Handtruck"! Yeah! What a day! All of sudden the terrible predicament of Dave losing his keys (which really was a bigger deal that can be translated in blogworld) wasn't that big a deal.
We showed up at the show at some point Eastern Standard Time which means I have NO idea how long it actually took us and there was a dead bird about three inches away from the door of the van. The promoter came up to us and told us that there was a problem concerning Wal-Mart, protests, the local news team and our show. There were protesters next door at some community fuckshitassholeidon'tcarewhatitwas because they didn't want a Wal-Mart to come into town. I thought, hey, that's pretty cool, fuck corporate america yadda yadda punk rock yadda ian mckaye et cetera. No. It was a bunch of old people who just didn't want traffic in their town because of a Wal-Mart. By the way, New Yorkers. Everywhere in America, there is a Wal-Mart. Everywhere else. It's scary. Scary. Anyway, these old people were complaining about the noise next door so it looked like our show wouldn't happen.
And the 8 people who came to see us in Cincinatti would not be able to enjoy our performance. Speaking of Cincinatti, why did everyone keep coming up to me and telling me "Cincinatti kids won't come here."
My response of "it's like ten minutes outside of the city" was constantly followed by
"nobody lives here."
"really?"
"yes. no one."
I decided that we probably shouldn't have done a HEADLINING TOUR when we really don't draw that much out of state, but then I took into account that the show was booked like 5 days before so there wasn't much promotion time. As usual, this smaller show was a lot better. The twenty people who watched us seemed to like it and we had a great time. The drum set was forced to be behind plexiglass which was really really weird. There were also two girls there in homemade ASOB tshirts which was awesome. One of their homemade designs is going to be stolen so that we have a good t-shirt design.
There was a long long long drive ahead of us that night. And this is when the fucking winter came in. We drove in awful snow on interstates that should have been paved because a three lane highway with one open lane covered in black ice is NOT FRIGGIN GOOD. The snow was an awful punch in the face from mother nature, reminding me that we were no longer escaping winter in the south. We were going to be home in a couple of days. For the first time in about a month I saw a sign that said "New York City. 408 miles." We could be back home in a matter of hours. Big bummer. When we finally pulled up at a house there were giant snowbanks on odd parts of our trailer that seemed to defy gravity. We went inside and watched the Toxic Making The Video and I went to sleep.
Clarion, PA
....went to get sushi.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
We went inside and ordered lots of food including sushi that Bove ordered. The sushi came about 45 minutes after the rest of the of the food and Bove's Tuna roll was a Tuna Fish roll aka straight from a can of Starkist. This was not sushi. It had eggs and canned tuna in it. This was no delicacy. OK, OK, OK, OK... sounds like I'm being stuck up here. With good reason. Immediately after our meal, Bove ran to the bathroom and started throwing up for about twenty minutes. Loud. He described the vomit, and now I will as well, so those of you with weak stomachs better go to another band's website or something. I suggest the Vandals, because even though they haven't done anything in a while they're probably still awesome. Or just skip this next part.
Bove said it was the most difficult vomit he had... He said that rice and seaweed was coming out of his nose and hanging all over the place and he couldn't get it out. He was SCREAMING while vomiting. The waitress came in and apologized and we said "no problem, but we don't want to pay for his sushi" and she said fine. Then the chef came in and said "I JUST ATE A CAN OF THAT TUNA FISH!" in broken English "AND I'M FINE!" We told him that was nice, we weren't mad but our friend was sick which was conveniently followed by extra loud wretches from Bove in the bathroom. They gave us a ton of napkins to clean him off with. In order to repair the emotional and physical trauma incurred on Bove's behalf they gave him a five dollar gift certificate to their restaurant in Clarion, PA, where we will never be again and where Bove should never eat again because vomiting is not fun.
Then we all split up. Some of us are visiting Dave's girlfriend who is an hour or two away at some fucking college that I don't know the name of, and good old Bove is watching Mars Attacks!
....went to get sushi.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
fuck you it's cold.
We went inside and ordered lots of food including sushi that Bove ordered. The sushi came about 45 minutes after the rest of the of the food and Bove's Tuna roll was a Tuna Fish roll aka straight from a can of Starkist. This was not sushi. It had eggs and canned tuna in it. This was no delicacy. OK, OK, OK, OK... sounds like I'm being stuck up here. With good reason. Immediately after our meal, Bove ran to the bathroom and started throwing up for about twenty minutes. Loud. He described the vomit, and now I will as well, so those of you with weak stomachs better go to another band's website or something. I suggest the Vandals, because even though they haven't done anything in a while they're probably still awesome. Or just skip this next part.
Bove said it was the most difficult vomit he had... He said that rice and seaweed was coming out of his nose and hanging all over the place and he couldn't get it out. He was SCREAMING while vomiting. The waitress came in and apologized and we said "no problem, but we don't want to pay for his sushi" and she said fine. Then the chef came in and said "I JUST ATE A CAN OF THAT TUNA FISH!" in broken English "AND I'M FINE!" We told him that was nice, we weren't mad but our friend was sick which was conveniently followed by extra loud wretches from Bove in the bathroom. They gave us a ton of napkins to clean him off with. In order to repair the emotional and physical trauma incurred on Bove's behalf they gave him a five dollar gift certificate to their restaurant in Clarion, PA, where we will never be again and where Bove should never eat again because vomiting is not fun.
Then we all split up. Some of us are visiting Dave's girlfriend who is an hour or two away at some fucking college that I don't know the name of, and good old Bove is watching Mars Attacks!
1.14.2004
St. Louis, MO
Our friend Julie is cool as shit and we are seriously considering moving to the midwest. I've counted three giant bedrooms, two bathrooms, two or three living rooms, a kitchen and a dining room and a storage room in a great area of STL for $700 A MONTH. In the midwest, kids live on their own after they're out of school because it's possible. They don't live with their parents like all of our lame asses. Let's ALL move out to the midwest at once. Starting now.
It's fucking cold here again. We've been taking drives where it feels like we're the only people on the road and it's great. We drove across all of St. Louis today and cracked 66666 on the odometer. When we showed up to Julie's we weren't expecting such a huge place and on top of that we were given a computer filled with awesome awesome music and a bunch of... well... lots of great cool shit.
Julie's roommate Daniel made us stuffed peppers for dinner as well as chicken and fake chicken for those vegetarians in the band. Incredible. One of the best meals I've ever had. Fucking delicious. I didn't want to leave, but I knew it was time to go so we went to the bar, got lost and went to the bar again. The stage was about the size of a small small stage that we couldn't fit on. We did our best, but it didn't work out all that well. The only other people in the room were our friends from St. Louis and Westbound Train. It was like a glorified practice session aside from the one kid dancing who was awesome. It was a lot of fun though. Free pitchers of Old Style for us. Free beer = wow. I got pretty trashed and this singer/songwriter/comedian from the band Registered Sex Offenders started playing hilarious songs. We all danced our last Westbound Train dances and were off to go to bed. When I say bed I mean back to the bar where we left jackets, cell phones and other assorted goods.
AWESOME THINGS TOBY (JULIE'S OTHER ROOMATE) SAID TO ME TONIGHT.
(2:30 AM in response to me saying "when did you guys eat breakfast")
- Breakfast was like HOURS ago.
(2:38 AM in response to Dave asking "you goin' to bed?" and after Toby had been offering me banana peppers for about five minutes straight)
- You know, I can sit around all night and wrestle over who is eating what peppers, but I got shit to do.
I concur.
Our friend Julie is cool as shit and we are seriously considering moving to the midwest. I've counted three giant bedrooms, two bathrooms, two or three living rooms, a kitchen and a dining room and a storage room in a great area of STL for $700 A MONTH. In the midwest, kids live on their own after they're out of school because it's possible. They don't live with their parents like all of our lame asses. Let's ALL move out to the midwest at once. Starting now.
It's fucking cold here again. We've been taking drives where it feels like we're the only people on the road and it's great. We drove across all of St. Louis today and cracked 66666 on the odometer. When we showed up to Julie's we weren't expecting such a huge place and on top of that we were given a computer filled with awesome awesome music and a bunch of... well... lots of great cool shit.
Julie's roommate Daniel made us stuffed peppers for dinner as well as chicken and fake chicken for those vegetarians in the band. Incredible. One of the best meals I've ever had. Fucking delicious. I didn't want to leave, but I knew it was time to go so we went to the bar, got lost and went to the bar again. The stage was about the size of a small small stage that we couldn't fit on. We did our best, but it didn't work out all that well. The only other people in the room were our friends from St. Louis and Westbound Train. It was like a glorified practice session aside from the one kid dancing who was awesome. It was a lot of fun though. Free pitchers of Old Style for us. Free beer = wow. I got pretty trashed and this singer/songwriter/comedian from the band Registered Sex Offenders started playing hilarious songs. We all danced our last Westbound Train dances and were off to go to bed. When I say bed I mean back to the bar where we left jackets, cell phones and other assorted goods.
AWESOME THINGS TOBY (JULIE'S OTHER ROOMATE) SAID TO ME TONIGHT.
(2:30 AM in response to me saying "when did you guys eat breakfast")
- Breakfast was like HOURS ago.
(2:38 AM in response to Dave asking "you goin' to bed?" and after Toby had been offering me banana peppers for about five minutes straight)
- You know, I can sit around all night and wrestle over who is eating what peppers, but I got shit to do.
I concur.
Kansas City, MO
Our new friend Ian let us stay at his place and it blew our minds. Jeez. Jeeeez. $780 a month for a million bedrooms, a working bathroom, a kitchen and so much more. It was huge. HUGE. They had a fucking living room. And a basement. And an upstairs. And a garage. Fuck the rent in new york. Fuck fuck fuck the rent in new york.
Ian of course had to earn money to pay his rent which led us to a laundromat at 8:00 in the morning. I've decided that laundromats are great places to hang out. You can't smoke in bars or diners anymore in New York. When you go to a laundromat you don't have to pay for anything, except maybe a dollar for an entire load of clothes. You have a place to sit and hang out for as long as you want. We hung out there for about 4 hours doing the whole inter-band bonding thing. When I get back home, maybe the laundromat would be the place to go.
Afterwards, we still had a whole lot of time to kill before the show in Kansas City so we went to Wal-Mart to look for strawberry soda. Sheldon, Mike and I got hearing tests and the receptionist denied the rest of the band. I talked to a doctor who laughed awkwardly at the name of our band and he stuck me in what I thought would be a 99% anechoic chamber... I could hear my stomach loud and clear but not the blood rushing through my veins. In my ears he precisely jabbed two pieces of foam which led to tubes which lead to other tubes which led to a big computer. He told me I would start hearing series of beeps soon and to hit the button on the controller that he placed in my hand. The beeps I started hearing were not from the computer nor were they the growls coming from my stomach. Turns out you can hear the fucking cash registers beeping from miles away at Wal-Mart... even in a soundproof room. Regardless, I did well, Sheldon did alright too and Mike apparently has a lot of high frequency hearing loss. Sorry, Mike.
We walked over to Chipotle to get our first band meal which was a burrito that would later give me some pretty bad shits because it was the first time I had eaten real food in a while. After eating, Sean tried skating and two guys came over, one in an Elvis Costello shirt. I asked them if they wanted to come to the show tonight. Ben's response was
- You slept at my house last night. We've already met. You're staying with us.
- Oh fuck, right. right. i'm an asshole. sorry. you're bud right?
- Ben.
- fuck. fuck. fuck.
They told us that they would be reconvening at the house in a little bit and we were free to come back and take a nap. When we came back, I started typing out our tour diary and the rest of the band inexplicably watched some MTV where we learned that TOXIC would be the new Britney Spears single. Tim Ruggeri (the kites) introduced me to this song during the school year and I found that it was actually INCREDIBLE and I showed the rest of the band and they agreed and it had become a tour anthem. It the minutes of waiting for Britney to annouce the name of her next single (we still didn't know! soon enough we would!) i would run down the stairs periodically whenever they would mention her name. When they announced that it would be TOXIC, we all cheered like little girls.
We eventually left for the venue and subsequently arrived at the venue. It was a cool space that may have sounded like a cave but had a bunch of great video games including a Guns N Roses pinball machine with some sort of weird conglomerate of Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke painted onto it. One of the special bonuses was "Matt Scoring" a clever take on GNR drummer Matt Sorum's name. JT was in heaven. Sheldon apparently knew about this pinball machine and had already known how to play it perfectly. We set up our stuff and there was a sound guy who was a real dick to us.
Let me explain some real simple live sound reinforcement to you. In order to get highs and mids out of a bass to give it more punch and attack you want to run a direct box as well as the cabinet. Bove's cab has a direct box built in. Simple. The sound guy said "I don't like plugging in anything I don't own direct." What? We let him know that we've been on tour and that we've done this in every venue. He still said no and later responded that he doesn't trust any amplifier made before 1974. WHAT? THIS IS LIKE ME TELLING YOU THAT 2 + 2 = 4. YOU KNOW THIS BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT AN IDIOT. A LIVE SOUND GUY KNOWS THAT DIRECT INPUTS WORK AND THAT MICROPHONES DON'T WORK AS WELL, NOT EVEN CLOSE, ESPECIALLY IN THAT ROOM. We let him know and he didn't care. When we asked what kind of microphone he was putting on it (i.e. a beta98a or maybe something else that would have good low-mid response) he said "why do you care what kind of microphone i use?" As we were setting up he told Dave to tell me to shut the fuck up. Immediately upon our check. We asked to sound check a song to make sure we sounded good. He said "no" and we said, "well, we're going to." We told him that mic'ing up the bass amp might be a problem on stage because we move around a lot and he said "yeah, well, then i might as well not mic anything so you don't break my shit." Good old Westbound Train gave him a talking to from the stage.
Westbound Train also showed up very late giving us the opportunity to play for an HOUR! AWESOME! It would be if the room wasn't filled with hipster ska kids. Yeah, you heard me right. HIPSTER SKA KIDS. These are kids who thought that SKA IS COOL. SO COOL THAT EVERYTHING ELSE SUCKED. We were heckled by members of other bands. Real cool, guys. Westbound Train eventually showed up, and we got off stage happily after playing one of our best sets all tour and having one of the oddest crowd responses. Damn midwest.
We reconvened at Ian's house where he fed us well again, we watched Encino Man and I found out that my ass was bleeding from burritos.
Our new friend Ian let us stay at his place and it blew our minds. Jeez. Jeeeez. $780 a month for a million bedrooms, a working bathroom, a kitchen and so much more. It was huge. HUGE. They had a fucking living room. And a basement. And an upstairs. And a garage. Fuck the rent in new york. Fuck fuck fuck the rent in new york.
Ian of course had to earn money to pay his rent which led us to a laundromat at 8:00 in the morning. I've decided that laundromats are great places to hang out. You can't smoke in bars or diners anymore in New York. When you go to a laundromat you don't have to pay for anything, except maybe a dollar for an entire load of clothes. You have a place to sit and hang out for as long as you want. We hung out there for about 4 hours doing the whole inter-band bonding thing. When I get back home, maybe the laundromat would be the place to go.
Afterwards, we still had a whole lot of time to kill before the show in Kansas City so we went to Wal-Mart to look for strawberry soda. Sheldon, Mike and I got hearing tests and the receptionist denied the rest of the band. I talked to a doctor who laughed awkwardly at the name of our band and he stuck me in what I thought would be a 99% anechoic chamber... I could hear my stomach loud and clear but not the blood rushing through my veins. In my ears he precisely jabbed two pieces of foam which led to tubes which lead to other tubes which led to a big computer. He told me I would start hearing series of beeps soon and to hit the button on the controller that he placed in my hand. The beeps I started hearing were not from the computer nor were they the growls coming from my stomach. Turns out you can hear the fucking cash registers beeping from miles away at Wal-Mart... even in a soundproof room. Regardless, I did well, Sheldon did alright too and Mike apparently has a lot of high frequency hearing loss. Sorry, Mike.
We walked over to Chipotle to get our first band meal which was a burrito that would later give me some pretty bad shits because it was the first time I had eaten real food in a while. After eating, Sean tried skating and two guys came over, one in an Elvis Costello shirt. I asked them if they wanted to come to the show tonight. Ben's response was
- You slept at my house last night. We've already met. You're staying with us.
- Oh fuck, right. right. i'm an asshole. sorry. you're bud right?
- Ben.
- fuck. fuck. fuck.
They told us that they would be reconvening at the house in a little bit and we were free to come back and take a nap. When we came back, I started typing out our tour diary and the rest of the band inexplicably watched some MTV where we learned that TOXIC would be the new Britney Spears single. Tim Ruggeri (the kites) introduced me to this song during the school year and I found that it was actually INCREDIBLE and I showed the rest of the band and they agreed and it had become a tour anthem. It the minutes of waiting for Britney to annouce the name of her next single (we still didn't know! soon enough we would!) i would run down the stairs periodically whenever they would mention her name. When they announced that it would be TOXIC, we all cheered like little girls.
We eventually left for the venue and subsequently arrived at the venue. It was a cool space that may have sounded like a cave but had a bunch of great video games including a Guns N Roses pinball machine with some sort of weird conglomerate of Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke painted onto it. One of the special bonuses was "Matt Scoring" a clever take on GNR drummer Matt Sorum's name. JT was in heaven. Sheldon apparently knew about this pinball machine and had already known how to play it perfectly. We set up our stuff and there was a sound guy who was a real dick to us.
Let me explain some real simple live sound reinforcement to you. In order to get highs and mids out of a bass to give it more punch and attack you want to run a direct box as well as the cabinet. Bove's cab has a direct box built in. Simple. The sound guy said "I don't like plugging in anything I don't own direct." What? We let him know that we've been on tour and that we've done this in every venue. He still said no and later responded that he doesn't trust any amplifier made before 1974. WHAT? THIS IS LIKE ME TELLING YOU THAT 2 + 2 = 4. YOU KNOW THIS BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT AN IDIOT. A LIVE SOUND GUY KNOWS THAT DIRECT INPUTS WORK AND THAT MICROPHONES DON'T WORK AS WELL, NOT EVEN CLOSE, ESPECIALLY IN THAT ROOM. We let him know and he didn't care. When we asked what kind of microphone he was putting on it (i.e. a beta98a or maybe something else that would have good low-mid response) he said "why do you care what kind of microphone i use?" As we were setting up he told Dave to tell me to shut the fuck up. Immediately upon our check. We asked to sound check a song to make sure we sounded good. He said "no" and we said, "well, we're going to." We told him that mic'ing up the bass amp might be a problem on stage because we move around a lot and he said "yeah, well, then i might as well not mic anything so you don't break my shit." Good old Westbound Train gave him a talking to from the stage.
Westbound Train also showed up very late giving us the opportunity to play for an HOUR! AWESOME! It would be if the room wasn't filled with hipster ska kids. Yeah, you heard me right. HIPSTER SKA KIDS. These are kids who thought that SKA IS COOL. SO COOL THAT EVERYTHING ELSE SUCKED. We were heckled by members of other bands. Real cool, guys. Westbound Train eventually showed up, and we got off stage happily after playing one of our best sets all tour and having one of the oddest crowd responses. Damn midwest.
We reconvened at Ian's house where he fed us well again, we watched Encino Man and I found out that my ass was bleeding from burritos.
St. Joseph, MO
Long drive. A lot longer than the three hours that were told it would take. Where the hell is this crappin' place. Far. Fucking f-a--aa-a-a-a-a----a-r. We showed up and it was a really awesome art space with a place to play downstairs. Let's do some quick recitation of shit that happened at this show:
- schizophrenic black-american woman calling us all slave traders
CRAZY: Where are all the bar (grabbing Mike's chin)
MIKE: I'm not from around here
CRAZY: Yes you are. You're a crip (aka gang member)
MIKE: No, I'm in a band playing here.
CRAZY: Stop fucking with me. Fuck you, n***er.
(follows Mike inside downstairs)
CRAZY: (at the top of her lung) You're all white devils! You're all a bunch of slave traders!
DOOR GIRL: It's three dollars to get in.
CRAZY: Fuck you, bitch.
- bove has his first on-the-road panic attack
I got a phone call from Bove that made me think he either saw something really funny on the street like a clown or something or he was having a panic attack.
"AAAAAH. [mumblemumble] QUICK. [mumble]COME OUTSIDE NOW."
We went out to the van and Bove was frothing at the mouth. It was very scary but we had dealt with this before. We heard the sound of him banging his head against the back of the bench seat from a block away and when Sean, Dave and I showed up I was happy that he was banging his head on a cushion and not the trailer. He was upset about something and he wasn't sure what. We did our best to calm him down, brought him outside and gave him some water. He quickly tried to start vomiting because he couldn't breathe and I sissily ran away for a moment that made my way back over. We talked him down from the panic attack. His response:
"You know, Jeff. When I called you on the phone before, I asked you to bring Mike outside and only Mike. You did the exact opposite."
He then held up a dismantled, torn to shit box of Trix cereal and then said:
"Um. JT's cereal didn't do so well."
Nothing much interesting happened in St. Joseph. It was scary. It was a city where there were plenty of stores and shops and streets and roads and parking spaces for cars and parks for people but there was not one person there at 8:00 PM. Not one. The streets were empty. With the thoughts of this scary ghost town, we stopped off at a gas station where Bove would stop panicking and go back to stealing Slim Fast like he's supposed to, Dave and I would find Tato Skins, the best potato chips ever and trucker hats were on sale for a buck a piece. Would have been a great merch idea. Too bad we're stupid.
Long drive. A lot longer than the three hours that were told it would take. Where the hell is this crappin' place. Far. Fucking f-a--aa-a-a-a-a----a-r. We showed up and it was a really awesome art space with a place to play downstairs. Let's do some quick recitation of shit that happened at this show:
- schizophrenic black-american woman calling us all slave traders
CRAZY: Where are all the bar (grabbing Mike's chin)
MIKE: I'm not from around here
CRAZY: Yes you are. You're a crip (aka gang member)
MIKE: No, I'm in a band playing here.
CRAZY: Stop fucking with me. Fuck you, n***er.
(follows Mike inside downstairs)
CRAZY: (at the top of her lung) You're all white devils! You're all a bunch of slave traders!
DOOR GIRL: It's three dollars to get in.
CRAZY: Fuck you, bitch.
- bove has his first on-the-road panic attack
I got a phone call from Bove that made me think he either saw something really funny on the street like a clown or something or he was having a panic attack.
"AAAAAH. [mumblemumble] QUICK. [mumble]COME OUTSIDE NOW."
We went out to the van and Bove was frothing at the mouth. It was very scary but we had dealt with this before. We heard the sound of him banging his head against the back of the bench seat from a block away and when Sean, Dave and I showed up I was happy that he was banging his head on a cushion and not the trailer. He was upset about something and he wasn't sure what. We did our best to calm him down, brought him outside and gave him some water. He quickly tried to start vomiting because he couldn't breathe and I sissily ran away for a moment that made my way back over. We talked him down from the panic attack. His response:
"You know, Jeff. When I called you on the phone before, I asked you to bring Mike outside and only Mike. You did the exact opposite."
He then held up a dismantled, torn to shit box of Trix cereal and then said:
"Um. JT's cereal didn't do so well."
Nothing much interesting happened in St. Joseph. It was scary. It was a city where there were plenty of stores and shops and streets and roads and parking spaces for cars and parks for people but there was not one person there at 8:00 PM. Not one. The streets were empty. With the thoughts of this scary ghost town, we stopped off at a gas station where Bove would stop panicking and go back to stealing Slim Fast like he's supposed to, Dave and I would find Tato Skins, the best potato chips ever and trucker hats were on sale for a buck a piece. Would have been a great merch idea. Too bad we're stupid.
Oklahoma City, OK
we listen to the dismemberment plan a lot these days. Bove is also crazy in a funny way. After falling asleep in shotgun I woke him up and convinced him to move into one of the back benches. Even so, the rest of the band was sleeping. Bove decided the best way to wake up these kind fellow band members and friends of his was to scream "FIRE FIRE FIRE! THE VAN IS ON FIRE! EVERYONE WAKE UP AND GET OUT! THE VAN IS ON FIRE! FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE! EVERYONE OUT! THERE'S A FIRE!" as he banged on the roof and doors. Everyone woke up but pretended they were still sleeping. If that were a real fire, Dave would be dead by now.
We didn't have much time. We printed out the mapquest directions at Stevie's and realized that if we showed up at 8:00 (because that has become the designated loading time for shows since we never really know what's going on) we would not have time to stop by Denton, TX to see our good friend James Lynch from Beret!. James unfortunately broke his leg or something and had been houseridden for a while and we were excited to see him. I drove as fast as I fucking could, but we just weren't going to make it in time. We called his house and we found out that he had left to go a Waffle House. The very same waffle house that we would be passing in about forty minutes. Let's make that twnety-five. We stopped by that Waffle House and stood outside and screamed for James to no avail. Imagine how awesome it would have been if we would have surprised this guy while he was eating with his friend and his gimp leg. We miss you James.
We made another stop at a gas station and once again, our sense of humor in the van (JT is a jew, Bove is crazy, Sheldon's a drug addict, Mike is dumb, I'm a pussy, Dave is fat, et cetera) was misunderstood by someone from Oklahoma who had yet to be educated about the separation of church and state.
DAVE: How long will it take to get to Oklahoma City if I drive as fast as possible?
GAS WOMAN: Hour and a half, why would you have to drive as fast as possible?
DAVE: We're in a band and we're in a rush. The jew is making us run late (makes a nod towards the bathroom that was unrecognized)
GAS WOMAN: Oh that figures.
(Bove enters)
GAS WOMAN: Are you the jew?
BOVE: No, the jew is still in the bathroom (JT was still sick)
(JT exits the bathroom)
GAS WOMAN: Are you the jew?
JT: Yes.
GAS WOMAN: YOU RUINED EVERYTHING.
There was a great record store that had 6 seven inches containing Faith No More's King For A Day. We saw our good friend Oklahoma Shannon and played an awesome show and later hung out at her friend's house. While we're at the gas station filling up, Shan told me that JK (the guy who we're staying with) was 40 but still cool. He also just got out of a coma and was sick so he couldn't speak very well. I fell asleep and failed to mention this to the rest of the band. When they came out to the van they said "um.......... this is weird."
It turned out that JK was an awesome cool guy who lived on the college campus kind of like in Old School, the hit movie starring Juliette Lewis. We crashed on his floor, cooked some stuff in his microwave and he was all smiles and totally awesome. We left OKC with two different sets of directions to St. Joseph, our next stop.
show.
we listen to the dismemberment plan a lot these days. Bove is also crazy in a funny way. After falling asleep in shotgun I woke him up and convinced him to move into one of the back benches. Even so, the rest of the band was sleeping. Bove decided the best way to wake up these kind fellow band members and friends of his was to scream "FIRE FIRE FIRE! THE VAN IS ON FIRE! EVERYONE WAKE UP AND GET OUT! THE VAN IS ON FIRE! FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE! EVERYONE OUT! THERE'S A FIRE!" as he banged on the roof and doors. Everyone woke up but pretended they were still sleeping. If that were a real fire, Dave would be dead by now.
We didn't have much time. We printed out the mapquest directions at Stevie's and realized that if we showed up at 8:00 (because that has become the designated loading time for shows since we never really know what's going on) we would not have time to stop by Denton, TX to see our good friend James Lynch from Beret!. James unfortunately broke his leg or something and had been houseridden for a while and we were excited to see him. I drove as fast as I fucking could, but we just weren't going to make it in time. We called his house and we found out that he had left to go a Waffle House. The very same waffle house that we would be passing in about forty minutes. Let's make that twnety-five. We stopped by that Waffle House and stood outside and screamed for James to no avail. Imagine how awesome it would have been if we would have surprised this guy while he was eating with his friend and his gimp leg. We miss you James.
We made another stop at a gas station and once again, our sense of humor in the van (JT is a jew, Bove is crazy, Sheldon's a drug addict, Mike is dumb, I'm a pussy, Dave is fat, et cetera) was misunderstood by someone from Oklahoma who had yet to be educated about the separation of church and state.
DAVE: How long will it take to get to Oklahoma City if I drive as fast as possible?
GAS WOMAN: Hour and a half, why would you have to drive as fast as possible?
DAVE: We're in a band and we're in a rush. The jew is making us run late (makes a nod towards the bathroom that was unrecognized)
GAS WOMAN: Oh that figures.
(Bove enters)
GAS WOMAN: Are you the jew?
BOVE: No, the jew is still in the bathroom (JT was still sick)
(JT exits the bathroom)
GAS WOMAN: Are you the jew?
JT: Yes.
GAS WOMAN: YOU RUINED EVERYTHING.
There was a great record store that had 6 seven inches containing Faith No More's King For A Day. We saw our good friend Oklahoma Shannon and played an awesome show and later hung out at her friend's house. While we're at the gas station filling up, Shan told me that JK (the guy who we're staying with) was 40 but still cool. He also just got out of a coma and was sick so he couldn't speak very well. I fell asleep and failed to mention this to the rest of the band. When they came out to the van they said "um.......... this is weird."
It turned out that JK was an awesome cool guy who lived on the college campus kind of like in Old School, the hit movie starring Juliette Lewis. We crashed on his floor, cooked some stuff in his microwave and he was all smiles and totally awesome. We left OKC with two different sets of directions to St. Joseph, our next stop.
show.
1.12.2004
Houston, TX
Let's make this one quick:
Went to guitar center to promote and get strings. I broke a 1700 dollar amp.
Went to the recording studio next door, it was closed. We couldn't record "Plea For Peace"
Went back to the skatepark to promote with a guitar. The mall security didn't like that one bit. They came up to us while we were playing.
RENT-A-COP: Are you aware that what you're doing is panhandling and is punishable by law?
SHELDON: I thought we were just promoting a show.
RENT-A-COP: You need to talk to management, get clearance, pay a fee and do a lot of stuff before you do that.
BOVE: We talked to them, they said it's cool.
RENT-A-COP: Who did you talk to?
BOVE: You see, we talked to this guy Jim. He said it was cool.
RENT-A-COP: Who?
BOVE: Jim.
RENT-A-COP: What department does he work in?
BOVE: Promotions.
RENT-A-COP: What? Where is he from?
BOVE: He's from here.
long pause, Rent-A-Cop shakes his head sadly
BOVE: There's no Jim, huh.
We showed up to Fitzgerald's early and hung out with this awesome band Anti-Anti for a while. They had guitar cabs with the Twisted Sister logo spraypainted on them and we discussed why music sucks, why the Darkness is good and a couple of other things. When I say we, I mean us minus JT. He was either doubled over in pain or running to the bathroom. We were excited to be in the upstairs of Fitzgerald's because that's where the REAL bands play. We were officially a REAL band playing a REAL show with REAL BANDS. Wow. People were kind of sparse during the beginning of our set, but after a while the crowd started filling up and it was AWESOME. What a fun show. Highlights? I fell off the stage in the lamest way possible. JT played while violently ill. We hung out with a girl who we met on the Warped Tour and some of her friends, one of them named Stevie. Stevie was an awesome chick who was named after Stevie Nicks. She was kind enough to offer us a place to stay, wait around for us, and then allow us to use her microwave. THANK YOU STEVIE!
P.S. Los Skarnales was awesome.
P.P.S. Stevie had a shirt she found at a thrift store that said "Dino Dig" on it. For those of you who don't know, "Dino Dig" is the name of a dinosaur-related dance song that Sheldon wrote for his old band 32 Degrees In Hell. We all signed the shirt, got a picture of the coincidence and were off. Bove sat shot with me on the long running-late ride to Oklahoma City, and handed me his pack of cigarettes and said "I'm done smoking. Have these." Since then he has not smoked a cigarette.
Let's make this one quick:
Went to guitar center to promote and get strings. I broke a 1700 dollar amp.
Went to the recording studio next door, it was closed. We couldn't record "Plea For Peace"
Went back to the skatepark to promote with a guitar. The mall security didn't like that one bit. They came up to us while we were playing.
RENT-A-COP: Are you aware that what you're doing is panhandling and is punishable by law?
SHELDON: I thought we were just promoting a show.
RENT-A-COP: You need to talk to management, get clearance, pay a fee and do a lot of stuff before you do that.
BOVE: We talked to them, they said it's cool.
RENT-A-COP: Who did you talk to?
BOVE: You see, we talked to this guy Jim. He said it was cool.
RENT-A-COP: Who?
BOVE: Jim.
RENT-A-COP: What department does he work in?
BOVE: Promotions.
RENT-A-COP: What? Where is he from?
BOVE: He's from here.
long pause, Rent-A-Cop shakes his head sadly
BOVE: There's no Jim, huh.
We showed up to Fitzgerald's early and hung out with this awesome band Anti-Anti for a while. They had guitar cabs with the Twisted Sister logo spraypainted on them and we discussed why music sucks, why the Darkness is good and a couple of other things. When I say we, I mean us minus JT. He was either doubled over in pain or running to the bathroom. We were excited to be in the upstairs of Fitzgerald's because that's where the REAL bands play. We were officially a REAL band playing a REAL show with REAL BANDS. Wow. People were kind of sparse during the beginning of our set, but after a while the crowd started filling up and it was AWESOME. What a fun show. Highlights? I fell off the stage in the lamest way possible. JT played while violently ill. We hung out with a girl who we met on the Warped Tour and some of her friends, one of them named Stevie. Stevie was an awesome chick who was named after Stevie Nicks. She was kind enough to offer us a place to stay, wait around for us, and then allow us to use her microwave. THANK YOU STEVIE!
P.S. Los Skarnales was awesome.
P.P.S. Stevie had a shirt she found at a thrift store that said "Dino Dig" on it. For those of you who don't know, "Dino Dig" is the name of a dinosaur-related dance song that Sheldon wrote for his old band 32 Degrees In Hell. We all signed the shirt, got a picture of the coincidence and were off. Bove sat shot with me on the long running-late ride to Oklahoma City, and handed me his pack of cigarettes and said "I'm done smoking. Have these." Since then he has not smoked a cigarette.
National Lampoon's Houston Vacation Day Two, The Revenge
We woke up in the morning and JT said "Fuck this." He took his pack of cigarettes and gave it away. He woke of coughing and choking as usual and said "fuck this. i quit smoking. forever." And that was that. To this day he hasn't smoked and he yells at anyone who is smoking around him. Eventually Bove and Mike followed suit and we soon passed a rule that there was to be NO SMOKING IN THE VAN. Wow. The cigarette smokingest band quickly turned into the healthiest. Bove and his slim-fast/grapefruit diet. The lack of smoke. Ok. Just two things. And mainly Bove.
We decided that today we must promote because we had nothing else to do. We went to Kinko's to chop stuff up and make flyers and that's where we met Andy. Andy was an incredibly nice worker at Kinko's who had the misfortune of being born 6 weeks premature but he was still extremely nice to us. He gave us flyer suggestions, helped us out with Sharpies and then the fun came in. After making a bunch of copies Andy decided that he had taken a shine to Dave. He went over to a huge printer-like machine and said to me, "hey! get your big friend over here! this is for him!" Within the next 15 - 20 minutes Andy was having a blast giving dave GIANT SIZED POSTER VERSIONS OF OUR FLYERS! We got a whole bunch of them, thanked Andy for being so kind, gave him a CD and went to the organic food supermarket across the parking lot.
The sign on the supermarket was attractive: FREE GOURMET COFFEE. Not that bullshit gas station cappucino we have been drinking. And it was DELICIOUS. To top it all off there were two chessboards there. We sat down, drank gourmet coffee and played chess for free for a couple of hours. Sheldon beat me. Dave beat Mike. We were also looking at the array of organic foods including a fruit called the pummelo. It was a giant green melony looking thing that as advertised had a "juicy red pulp". We bagged the pummelo and Sheldon asked "who didn't shower today?" We all smelled ourselves and realized we smelled fine. I suggested it was the fruit, and boy was I right. Never smell a pummelo, kids.
And that's when it happened. JT saw a display case of peanuts and since he was no longer part of the smoking community he needed to do something to kill time, so why not eat peanuts? They're healthy, right? We're at a fucking health food store. In the van, the first thing JT says is "man, this peanut doesn't taste right." Over the course of the day, he proceeds to eat an entire pound of these peanuts even though they tasted terribly.
We started driving to the Vans' Skatepark to promote and so Sheldon could skate. We saw a sign on the way that screamed at us:
RECORDING STUDIO AT THE GALLERIA
CALL THIS NUMBER
We decided immediately that we were going to go to some bum studio in the middle of Texas and record "Plea For Peace, Sorry We (Thought We) Lost Your Dolly/Handtruck." I started writing out the best horn part I could think of on the back of a flyer. We went to a Hot Topic and they were selling the Minor Threat CD and I wondered if Ian McKaye would approve. There were also no kids anywhere. We promoted to as many as we could find and then headed through a million shitty roads in the rain to the Galleria, made famous by Dane Cook and made illegal by ASOB.
We strolled in with one of ours posters and quickly threw it down immediately, because there was a store that was demo-ing SEGWAYS! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! IT RAN ON MY GRAVITATIONAL PULL! YES! SEGWAY! I JUST LEANED FORWARD AND IT WENT! YES! AWESOME! The only problem was that you could only Segway in a small squared off area with a non-velvet non-rope gating it off as well as the Segway employee. I tried desperately to Segway around him but to no avail, he was a lot quicker than my Segway. We walked around after this holding up the poster and were quickly informed by mall security that we had to get this permission from the management and blah balh balh balh alflkblkfhlkajbkljahfkjafljgsdlf;kj sdf fine, we won't hold the fucking poster at least take a fucking flyer oh you're not fucking even going to take a fucking flyer fuck you rent-a-cop. We did a lot more uninteresting thing. Bove ate another grapefruit. We lost JT. We all simulatenously hit on a girl working at Starbucks. We called Mike Springman who couldn't really hang out. We called James Lynch who lived too far away and couldn't come to the show tomorrow.
So we went back to the Motel 6. Sheldon and I wrote a song with the help of Bove which is currently titled "First Born Half Off" and may or may not ever be played but has funny time signatures in it. We were awakened by shouts from the van.
- COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK
We looked outside the window and there was a car accident. Not a car accident. Sorry. A HOUSE ACCIDENT. There was a house stuck in the middle of the road and some kind of truck came to get this FULL HOUSE out of the middle of the road. Get a piece of paper. Draw a road. Now draw a house in the middle of it. That's pretty fucking ridiculous, right? Bove, Mike and I went to the pornography store to go buy band porn. At some point I decided that if someone was in a bad mood they would be required to masturbate at the next Motel stop to get out of their funk. We bought the 25th anniversary issue of Hustler which has a girl with THREE BOOBS. We saw pictures of vaginas that looked like testicles sliced open. It was time to leave.
BACK TO THAT BAG OF PEANUTS THAT WOULD MAKE JT INDEFINITELY SICK... who eats a bad peanut, says "wow, this peanut tastes bad." and then proceeds to eat an entire POUND of said peanuts. JT got extremely sick and was vomiting for quite some time. He was unable to move for days. Days. I asked him later on what pillows he was using while he was sick. He said, "I don't think you can catch what I have... eating too many peanuts."
We woke up in the morning and JT said "Fuck this." He took his pack of cigarettes and gave it away. He woke of coughing and choking as usual and said "fuck this. i quit smoking. forever." And that was that. To this day he hasn't smoked and he yells at anyone who is smoking around him. Eventually Bove and Mike followed suit and we soon passed a rule that there was to be NO SMOKING IN THE VAN. Wow. The cigarette smokingest band quickly turned into the healthiest. Bove and his slim-fast/grapefruit diet. The lack of smoke. Ok. Just two things. And mainly Bove.
We decided that today we must promote because we had nothing else to do. We went to Kinko's to chop stuff up and make flyers and that's where we met Andy. Andy was an incredibly nice worker at Kinko's who had the misfortune of being born 6 weeks premature but he was still extremely nice to us. He gave us flyer suggestions, helped us out with Sharpies and then the fun came in. After making a bunch of copies Andy decided that he had taken a shine to Dave. He went over to a huge printer-like machine and said to me, "hey! get your big friend over here! this is for him!" Within the next 15 - 20 minutes Andy was having a blast giving dave GIANT SIZED POSTER VERSIONS OF OUR FLYERS! We got a whole bunch of them, thanked Andy for being so kind, gave him a CD and went to the organic food supermarket across the parking lot.
The sign on the supermarket was attractive: FREE GOURMET COFFEE. Not that bullshit gas station cappucino we have been drinking. And it was DELICIOUS. To top it all off there were two chessboards there. We sat down, drank gourmet coffee and played chess for free for a couple of hours. Sheldon beat me. Dave beat Mike. We were also looking at the array of organic foods including a fruit called the pummelo. It was a giant green melony looking thing that as advertised had a "juicy red pulp". We bagged the pummelo and Sheldon asked "who didn't shower today?" We all smelled ourselves and realized we smelled fine. I suggested it was the fruit, and boy was I right. Never smell a pummelo, kids.
And that's when it happened. JT saw a display case of peanuts and since he was no longer part of the smoking community he needed to do something to kill time, so why not eat peanuts? They're healthy, right? We're at a fucking health food store. In the van, the first thing JT says is "man, this peanut doesn't taste right." Over the course of the day, he proceeds to eat an entire pound of these peanuts even though they tasted terribly.
We started driving to the Vans' Skatepark to promote and so Sheldon could skate. We saw a sign on the way that screamed at us:
RECORDING STUDIO AT THE GALLERIA
CALL THIS NUMBER
We decided immediately that we were going to go to some bum studio in the middle of Texas and record "Plea For Peace, Sorry We (Thought We) Lost Your Dolly/Handtruck." I started writing out the best horn part I could think of on the back of a flyer. We went to a Hot Topic and they were selling the Minor Threat CD and I wondered if Ian McKaye would approve. There were also no kids anywhere. We promoted to as many as we could find and then headed through a million shitty roads in the rain to the Galleria, made famous by Dane Cook and made illegal by ASOB.
We strolled in with one of ours posters and quickly threw it down immediately, because there was a store that was demo-ing SEGWAYS! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! IT RAN ON MY GRAVITATIONAL PULL! YES! SEGWAY! I JUST LEANED FORWARD AND IT WENT! YES! AWESOME! The only problem was that you could only Segway in a small squared off area with a non-velvet non-rope gating it off as well as the Segway employee. I tried desperately to Segway around him but to no avail, he was a lot quicker than my Segway. We walked around after this holding up the poster and were quickly informed by mall security that we had to get this permission from the management and blah balh balh balh alflkblkfhlkajbkljahfkjafljgsdlf;kj sdf fine, we won't hold the fucking poster at least take a fucking flyer oh you're not fucking even going to take a fucking flyer fuck you rent-a-cop. We did a lot more uninteresting thing. Bove ate another grapefruit. We lost JT. We all simulatenously hit on a girl working at Starbucks. We called Mike Springman who couldn't really hang out. We called James Lynch who lived too far away and couldn't come to the show tomorrow.
So we went back to the Motel 6. Sheldon and I wrote a song with the help of Bove which is currently titled "First Born Half Off" and may or may not ever be played but has funny time signatures in it. We were awakened by shouts from the van.
- COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK COME QUICK
We looked outside the window and there was a car accident. Not a car accident. Sorry. A HOUSE ACCIDENT. There was a house stuck in the middle of the road and some kind of truck came to get this FULL HOUSE out of the middle of the road. Get a piece of paper. Draw a road. Now draw a house in the middle of it. That's pretty fucking ridiculous, right? Bove, Mike and I went to the pornography store to go buy band porn. At some point I decided that if someone was in a bad mood they would be required to masturbate at the next Motel stop to get out of their funk. We bought the 25th anniversary issue of Hustler which has a girl with THREE BOOBS. We saw pictures of vaginas that looked like testicles sliced open. It was time to leave.
BACK TO THAT BAG OF PEANUTS THAT WOULD MAKE JT INDEFINITELY SICK... who eats a bad peanut, says "wow, this peanut tastes bad." and then proceeds to eat an entire POUND of said peanuts. JT got extremely sick and was vomiting for quite some time. He was unable to move for days. Days. I asked him later on what pillows he was using while he was sick. He said, "I don't think you can catch what I have... eating too many peanuts."
National Lampoon's Houston Vacation Day One
If I told you what day it was I would be pulling it out of my ass.
I have no idea what day it was.
I have no idea what day it is now.
All I know is that we we had to drive 2 - 4 hours to Houston, and with leaving at 1:00 PM, we would be arriving in Houston roughly two days before show time. Wait... two days and two hours before show time. Fuck. There was an argument in the van over whether to stop at the Huddle House or the Waffle House, being that they are pretty much the same restaurant. None of us had ever eaten at a Huddle House except for Sheldon who was chanting "Huddle House! Huddle House!" like a five year old in the back seat. Apparently, like an asshole father I said "no. we're going to whatever's closer and that's final." When we pulled up to the Waffle House (which was closer) it was brought to my attention that I was being a fucking asshole. I felt bad and decided that since I was the dick, I would suck it up, go inside the Waffle House and ask where the nearest Huddle House is. I walked up to the door and turned around. The waitress was cute. Real cute. Immediately, Sheldon said "let's take her on the road with us. New merch girl! New merch girl!" The stripper merch girl had failed to take us up on our wonderful opportunity and well, a underpaid waitress seemed like a fair trade off. Bove brought in a grapefruit, the only other thing he's been eating on this tour besides slim fast and ate it nice and sloppy. We also offered the waitress an orange, y'know, to prove to her that we were nice people. Everyone around heard us devising our plan to take her on tour, and they weren't leaving the restaurant until we asked. After about two hours of delaying the check, Sheldon, in his creepy avaitors asked if she would like to go on tour.
No.
School.
Fuck off.
- um....
Fuck off.
We left another prospective merch girl sadly and drove a ways until we hit a Love's gas station where everyone had to pee and Bove had to steal because, well, that's what Bove does. I tried on a cowboy hat and some aviators and a voice from out of nowhere started yelling at me "take that shit off, you look stupid." I looked at the front register. It wasn't the woman with the microphone. There were no cameras. Paranoid, I wandered into the casino. Yes... this was a gas station/bar/casino. I bought a dollar beer because it was cheaper than soda and started playing video poker with the rest of the guys. I split up the two bucks I would spend on gambling between me and Bove and we walked out of there with THREE DOLLARS! Seeing that we were such big spenders, the man at the bar offered us teddy bears in exchange for our signing up on his membership list. The deal is that, as a member, if you go to that casino chain which is specifically Lousiana based about 1,000 times you can win a mag lite. Kind of like that shit you used to see on the back of Boys' Life magazine. We took our teddy bears firmly in hand and were off.
We checked in at a motel at some time and decided to go down to Fitzgerald's to see some live music. Our friend Catfish guest listed us (by the way, being in a small band and getting guest listed at a club because you're on tour is fucking so ridiculous and cool and confusing and awesome) and let us know that there was a fast aggresive skate punk band that night. When we showed up there was a rap-metal band. Not bad, but not our music. Bummer. We crapped around and decided to wait for the next band, and proceeded to be knocked on our asses by one of the best straight ahead fast punk bands I've heard in quite some time. Los De Verdad. Check these guys out. We got to see them for free and we were so fortunate. They sang songs about skating, smoking and fucking. Mainly skating. Here's some lyrics that i vaguely remember:
don't wanna go to work today/showing up late to work today/would you like to work my shift today/i just wanna skate
we skate/we skate/we skate/we skate
i just wanna fuck
Brilliant. Simply brilliant and great to see. We congratulated them on the great set and sang the last song "On My Way" all the way home to the van where we would go to sleep in the motel and completely forget the real melody of that song in the morning.
If I told you what day it was I would be pulling it out of my ass.
I have no idea what day it was.
I have no idea what day it is now.
All I know is that we we had to drive 2 - 4 hours to Houston, and with leaving at 1:00 PM, we would be arriving in Houston roughly two days before show time. Wait... two days and two hours before show time. Fuck. There was an argument in the van over whether to stop at the Huddle House or the Waffle House, being that they are pretty much the same restaurant. None of us had ever eaten at a Huddle House except for Sheldon who was chanting "Huddle House! Huddle House!" like a five year old in the back seat. Apparently, like an asshole father I said "no. we're going to whatever's closer and that's final." When we pulled up to the Waffle House (which was closer) it was brought to my attention that I was being a fucking asshole. I felt bad and decided that since I was the dick, I would suck it up, go inside the Waffle House and ask where the nearest Huddle House is. I walked up to the door and turned around. The waitress was cute. Real cute. Immediately, Sheldon said "let's take her on the road with us. New merch girl! New merch girl!" The stripper merch girl had failed to take us up on our wonderful opportunity and well, a underpaid waitress seemed like a fair trade off. Bove brought in a grapefruit, the only other thing he's been eating on this tour besides slim fast and ate it nice and sloppy. We also offered the waitress an orange, y'know, to prove to her that we were nice people. Everyone around heard us devising our plan to take her on tour, and they weren't leaving the restaurant until we asked. After about two hours of delaying the check, Sheldon, in his creepy avaitors asked if she would like to go on tour.
No.
School.
Fuck off.
- um....
Fuck off.
We left another prospective merch girl sadly and drove a ways until we hit a Love's gas station where everyone had to pee and Bove had to steal because, well, that's what Bove does. I tried on a cowboy hat and some aviators and a voice from out of nowhere started yelling at me "take that shit off, you look stupid." I looked at the front register. It wasn't the woman with the microphone. There were no cameras. Paranoid, I wandered into the casino. Yes... this was a gas station/bar/casino. I bought a dollar beer because it was cheaper than soda and started playing video poker with the rest of the guys. I split up the two bucks I would spend on gambling between me and Bove and we walked out of there with THREE DOLLARS! Seeing that we were such big spenders, the man at the bar offered us teddy bears in exchange for our signing up on his membership list. The deal is that, as a member, if you go to that casino chain which is specifically Lousiana based about 1,000 times you can win a mag lite. Kind of like that shit you used to see on the back of Boys' Life magazine. We took our teddy bears firmly in hand and were off.
We checked in at a motel at some time and decided to go down to Fitzgerald's to see some live music. Our friend Catfish guest listed us (by the way, being in a small band and getting guest listed at a club because you're on tour is fucking so ridiculous and cool and confusing and awesome) and let us know that there was a fast aggresive skate punk band that night. When we showed up there was a rap-metal band. Not bad, but not our music. Bummer. We crapped around and decided to wait for the next band, and proceeded to be knocked on our asses by one of the best straight ahead fast punk bands I've heard in quite some time. Los De Verdad. Check these guys out. We got to see them for free and we were so fortunate. They sang songs about skating, smoking and fucking. Mainly skating. Here's some lyrics that i vaguely remember:
don't wanna go to work today/showing up late to work today/would you like to work my shift today/i just wanna skate
we skate/we skate/we skate/we skate
i just wanna fuck
Brilliant. Simply brilliant and great to see. We congratulated them on the great set and sang the last song "On My Way" all the way home to the van where we would go to sleep in the motel and completely forget the real melody of that song in the morning.
Lafayette, LA
This was our first repeat on tour and it was very nerve-wracking. The question was arisen in my head "Would people rather see a band that they've never heard before or would they rather hear us?" More importantly, a trend was started by Bove. At first I thought it was a joke, but at every single gas station on this tour Bove has stolen a slim-fast for his meals. If they didn't have Slim Fast at the one gas station we stopped at, he'd go to the gas station across the street. And he never got caught. Today Bove tour a New Orleans Saints poster off of a mailbox and after saying "what the fuck am I going to do with this?" stole a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sign from Burger King, where we spent about an hour before the bar we were playing at opened up and debated the merits of my vegetarianism since I ate an alligator and also saw the tallest person I had ever seen in my life.
Back to Lafayette, the turnout wasn't that great. The show was supposed to go ASOB, Odd Arnie, ASOB Set 2. We split the two sets up logically, I panicked because my voice wasn't working too well, I tried to get drunk but failed. We went on stage and something shitty happened. The spirit of Lafayette that had broken my guitar into pieces the last time we were there broke the fuse on John's amp. We stood on stage and spoke for 10 minutes interspersed with Sublime covers until we found out that there were no extra fuses around. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. I just sang the first set and I realized that I am lucky I have a guitar to hide behind. After the set I drank more and more because I was getting depressed about not having an amp, and getting more depressed at the amount of alcohol I had embibed without even getting drunk yet. It used to be so much easier.
When the second set rolled around, I had already been screaming in the bar area of the show for about 10 minutes about how "love is bullshit" so apparently I had gotten drunk, which was good because the awesome Lafayette crowd who were used to our drunk performances was there. It was an electrifying feeling, and Odd Arnie even lent me their amplifier so I had something to play out of! This is the first night of tour that we got an ENCORE. Not one that we even planned on playing, not one that we instigated, a genuine fucking encore miles away from where we live. It felt great. Then we played the worst encore in the history of encores, sobered up and drove to a house party that someone was throwing because it was someone else's birthday.
We took a while to load out and when we stopped by, the party had already kind of stopped but I didn't care. We got to meet a whole bunch of really cool people who offered us all the beer we could drink and we all talked about music, touring, Black Flag, school and other bullshit all night. I always like parties as their winding down, no one feels the need to be stupid and everyone is just having a good time. And you also don't feel bad about leaving quickly. Chris from Odd Arnie was kind enough to offer up his floor space for us to sleep on. Tired and drunk I passed out almost immediately after I forced Sheldon out of the van. I woke up next to a washing machine and Arnold Schwarzennager said something about building a "hydrogen highway to the future" I almost pissed myself and went to the computer to update the tour diary. then it all got erased and I left with tears in my eyes and song in my balls.
This was our first repeat on tour and it was very nerve-wracking. The question was arisen in my head "Would people rather see a band that they've never heard before or would they rather hear us?" More importantly, a trend was started by Bove. At first I thought it was a joke, but at every single gas station on this tour Bove has stolen a slim-fast for his meals. If they didn't have Slim Fast at the one gas station we stopped at, he'd go to the gas station across the street. And he never got caught. Today Bove tour a New Orleans Saints poster off of a mailbox and after saying "what the fuck am I going to do with this?" stole a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sign from Burger King, where we spent about an hour before the bar we were playing at opened up and debated the merits of my vegetarianism since I ate an alligator and also saw the tallest person I had ever seen in my life.
Back to Lafayette, the turnout wasn't that great. The show was supposed to go ASOB, Odd Arnie, ASOB Set 2. We split the two sets up logically, I panicked because my voice wasn't working too well, I tried to get drunk but failed. We went on stage and something shitty happened. The spirit of Lafayette that had broken my guitar into pieces the last time we were there broke the fuse on John's amp. We stood on stage and spoke for 10 minutes interspersed with Sublime covers until we found out that there were no extra fuses around. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. I just sang the first set and I realized that I am lucky I have a guitar to hide behind. After the set I drank more and more because I was getting depressed about not having an amp, and getting more depressed at the amount of alcohol I had embibed without even getting drunk yet. It used to be so much easier.
When the second set rolled around, I had already been screaming in the bar area of the show for about 10 minutes about how "love is bullshit" so apparently I had gotten drunk, which was good because the awesome Lafayette crowd who were used to our drunk performances was there. It was an electrifying feeling, and Odd Arnie even lent me their amplifier so I had something to play out of! This is the first night of tour that we got an ENCORE. Not one that we even planned on playing, not one that we instigated, a genuine fucking encore miles away from where we live. It felt great. Then we played the worst encore in the history of encores, sobered up and drove to a house party that someone was throwing because it was someone else's birthday.
We took a while to load out and when we stopped by, the party had already kind of stopped but I didn't care. We got to meet a whole bunch of really cool people who offered us all the beer we could drink and we all talked about music, touring, Black Flag, school and other bullshit all night. I always like parties as their winding down, no one feels the need to be stupid and everyone is just having a good time. And you also don't feel bad about leaving quickly. Chris from Odd Arnie was kind enough to offer up his floor space for us to sleep on. Tired and drunk I passed out almost immediately after I forced Sheldon out of the van. I woke up next to a washing machine and Arnold Schwarzennager said something about building a "hydrogen highway to the future" I almost pissed myself and went to the computer to update the tour diary. then it all got erased and I left with tears in my eyes and song in my balls.
New Orleans
BOVE! BOVE BOVE BOVE BOVE BOVE! We got to the van and after tons of phone calls back and forth we saw Bove in our van cramming his luggage in. We were finally whole as a band again. Bove made lots of fun jokes and we were hella glad he was back. I was also hella tired. We found a Motel 6 in New Orleans and Bove, Sheldon and I crashed IMMEDIATELY on the wonderful beds.
..................................
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................
.............................................................
When I woke up, Dave let me know that he got the oil changed and we finally got a trailer. I walked outside to help make the transfer from the cargo space in the van to the trailer and it was FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE. Goddammit! We were trying to escape winter and from this day forward we were told by most people "yeah! there are only two weeks of winter in this town, and you're in them! It's never this cold here!" Thanks a lot, heliocentricity. I realized at some point that I had left my mouthpiece in Ft. Myers and we called up a bunch of music stores to try and find a replacement. I was thinking, FUCK THIS IS AWESOME I'M IN NEW ORLEANS JAZZ CAPITAL OF THE WORLD AND I'M GETTING A SAX MOUTHPIECE IT'S GOING TO BE SO MUCH GREATER THAN ANYTHING ANYWHERE ELSE FUCK NEW YORK THEY WILL HAVE SOME RARE VINTAGE CHARLIE PARKER AGED TO PERFECTION SHIT.
no.
student model.
student model.
student model.
student model.
p.s. for those of you who don't know... student model saxophone mouthpieces SUCK DICK.
We all showered and went to the show. It wasn't that big of a crowd, but it was the first night of school and we never played there before so why should there be a big crowd, right? We hung out with our boys in Odd Arnie from Lafayette, LA again and it was nice to see them. There was also something really creepy going on. I don't know if anyone reading this has even been to New Orleans but if you haven't, THE PARTY STOPS EVERYWHERE BUT BOURBON STREET. It looked like New York if all the streets were abandoned and five people felt like driving their cars around. There was a Walgreens somewhere. No pizzerias. Oddly enough, we played above the only pizzeria in a five block radius and they were f'ing closed.
We asked someone "where can we get food?" and they said "um..." and we said "is there anywhere on bourbon st." and they said "nah, dudes (condescendingly), we don't go around there." I muttered under my breath to Sheldon "yeah... we don't like to go where there are THINGS TO DO." And what incredible things. Bourbon Street is exactly like everyone says. It is the beginning of January, school isn't in, and the streets were FILLED with CONSTANT LOUD MUSIC AND TONS OF FUN PEOPLE. The bums were nice. The drinks were cheap. The pizza... well... that was 3 bucks per slice and a pie for 24 dollars. Fuck that shit. We decided on peanut butter, jelly and grapefruit in the van, left and tried to get in as much as possible. There was a drink called the hand grenade which is the strongest drink in the world apparently and in way BUILT INTO THE GUNS THEY HAD AT THE BAR. Some of us had this drink, Bove had one combined with his new medication which made an awesome awesome power... and then we got a phone call from Sheldon's mom.
THE WORST DAY OF MRS. QUALLS'S LIFE: Sheldon's mom was conveniently supposed to be in New Orleans the same night we were going to be there so she helped to arrange for Bove to come in on the same flight as her. Even though Bove said he was able to switch seats plenty of times during the flight, Mrs. Qualls was told that she was too late, that they sold her ticket to someone else. She was put on a transfer flight to Chicago and then to New Orleans. Then like a scene from Home Alone, the snow started to come down preventing her flight from leaving. All she wanted to do was buy us a nice cajun meal since it was our first time in that area, and SNOW prevented her from doing that. We called and texted her many times throughout the day and she just kept getting delayed and d e l a y e d a n d d e l a y e d. We finally met up with her at her hotel (which was two blocks away from our van) and combed the ghost town in search of some cajun food. Unfortunately, non-Bourbon St. New Orleans closes after midnight. We walked in a five block radius (the other direction this time) and managed to find a 24-hour diner... not the cajun feast Mrs. Qualls had intended. She kindly treated us to a wonderful meal at the diner which consisted of gumbo for some and breakfast for others. Among this crew was not JT... he had vanished at some point between when we went up to Mrs. Qualls's hotel room for our care packages from our friends at home and when we came down. Somewhere between Rampart and Bourbon... two streets that are NEXT TO EACH OTHER. When we finally met up with him later, he was shitfaced and claimed "Well... I did one of everything"
EVERYTHING =
drinking at karaoke bar
large hand grenade liquor bevarage
drinking at blues/zydeco bar
drinking at college night dance bar
drinking at topless/bottomless strip club
He had missed the cajun food, but that could wait until tomorrow. Mrs. Qualls offered to take us out for lunch the next day because we had a lot of free time and she felt bad that we didn't have cajun food at that diner (we were very happy to eat, and now we were eating twice. and we were in new orleans. wow. we are lucky.) We met up with her around 2:00 in the afternoon when an incredible plan got devised by Sheldon, in front of his mom who at one point the night before said "he knows his place in the band".
THE STRIPPER MERCH GIRL IDEA. There it is, right there. Not an idea so much as a movement. We go into a strip club, ask a stripper "Hey. How would you like to see the world. You wouldn't have to do much except wear very little clothing, maybe strip a little but mostly sell t-shirts. We would pay for your meals and drop you off in new york." Go ahead. Try and think of a problem there. Find one thing wrong with this plan. Would we sell more merch? Yes. Would we be able to bring this stripped to New York where she can get a better job? Yes. Would she get to see the country? Yes. Would she have harsh living conditions? Yes. Would it be better than the one she is in now? Possibly. Would it be worth it to get to New York and work at SCORES? Yes. We let this plan settle in as we went to a cajun restaurant.
And it was there that I broke my vegetarianism for a few quick seconds. There was alligator on the menu. I was first trying to find the loopholes. Is it a fish? Is an alligator okay to eat because it doesn't fit into the phylum of most other animals? Fuck it. I thought of two things:
1) JT mentioned that alligators eat people. He said it sarcastically and I took it seriously.
2) I can't imagine alligators dying in a way that isn't funny and enjoyable. They must be like clubbed or something, by a giant man in a funny hat. Question marks and amphersands would appear above their heads along with giant spirals. It's fun for the whole family.
So I ate a fucking piece of alligator. A tiny tiny piece, and I didn't really like it because I don't like meat but now I can't say that I've never eaten an alligator. Check it out. Here's me not saying it
THE STRIPPED MERCH GIRL IDEA PT. 2, THE REVENGE. Once we parted ways with Mrs. Qualls I would not let go of the stripped merch girl idea. Sheldon wouldn't be able to get into any of the clubs, but the rest of us were of age and besides, other than JT we didn't go into strip clubs the night before. It was settled. Dave would come in with me, i would do the talking and a stripper would come do merch with us. JT came into the Topless Bottomless because, well, it's a strip club. We sat there and stared. JT tried a trick tipping technique which is to bite the dollar in between your teeth after which the stripper will come up and grab the dollar with her breasts, thus, putting her breasts in your face. Unfortunately, stripper number one cheated this rule and grabbed the dollar with her mouth. We all nodded at each other and said "no. not the one." Then Paris came onto the stage. Paris, a sweet nice blonde stripper who seemed around our age and very kind. I gave her the test by biting the dollar between my teeth and when she grabbed it with her breasts I knew she was the one. But I had frozen. How the hell do you talk to a stripper without getting punched in the face? Where do you look when she's naked? How do you invite her to join your fucking travelling fucking cirucs? Wouldn't she think this was a proposition for a gang band? Who wouldn't think that? We're just nice guys trying to make everyone win. As I was going through all this stuff in my head, JT manned up and called "Paris!" as she walked off stage. She came up to us, naked. naked. naked. naked. naked. naked.nadkjed.nadnkednakednakendaked (weird odd awesome) and JT told her the deal, who we were, where she was going, what we wanted and what we had to offer. She couldn't reach for mace because she had no pockets. Instead she responded "My mother lives in New York." Thinking this was just something nice to stay so she could walk away, we said "thanks anyway", turned around and looked at the next stripper. She looked like one of our very good friend's girlfriend. VERY MUCH SO. We decided to leave because we all felt weird/bad for looking at the stripper. On our way out, Paris asked JT for his number so she could call us tomorrow if she wants to go.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
?????????????????????????????????????????????????
We bullshitted with Paris, Paris the stripper, Paris the incredibly sweet and very friendly stripper about the rest of the world. I told her about the Oregon vortex, she said "vortex?" We exchanged numbers and then we were off, with a stripper in New Orleans who either was or wasn't planning on coming with us for the rest of the tour. WOW. Thank you New Orleans.
BOVE! BOVE BOVE BOVE BOVE BOVE! We got to the van and after tons of phone calls back and forth we saw Bove in our van cramming his luggage in. We were finally whole as a band again. Bove made lots of fun jokes and we were hella glad he was back. I was also hella tired. We found a Motel 6 in New Orleans and Bove, Sheldon and I crashed IMMEDIATELY on the wonderful beds.
..................................
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................
.............................................................
When I woke up, Dave let me know that he got the oil changed and we finally got a trailer. I walked outside to help make the transfer from the cargo space in the van to the trailer and it was FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE. Goddammit! We were trying to escape winter and from this day forward we were told by most people "yeah! there are only two weeks of winter in this town, and you're in them! It's never this cold here!" Thanks a lot, heliocentricity. I realized at some point that I had left my mouthpiece in Ft. Myers and we called up a bunch of music stores to try and find a replacement. I was thinking, FUCK THIS IS AWESOME I'M IN NEW ORLEANS JAZZ CAPITAL OF THE WORLD AND I'M GETTING A SAX MOUTHPIECE IT'S GOING TO BE SO MUCH GREATER THAN ANYTHING ANYWHERE ELSE FUCK NEW YORK THEY WILL HAVE SOME RARE VINTAGE CHARLIE PARKER AGED TO PERFECTION SHIT.
no.
student model.
student model.
student model.
student model.
p.s. for those of you who don't know... student model saxophone mouthpieces SUCK DICK.
We all showered and went to the show. It wasn't that big of a crowd, but it was the first night of school and we never played there before so why should there be a big crowd, right? We hung out with our boys in Odd Arnie from Lafayette, LA again and it was nice to see them. There was also something really creepy going on. I don't know if anyone reading this has even been to New Orleans but if you haven't, THE PARTY STOPS EVERYWHERE BUT BOURBON STREET. It looked like New York if all the streets were abandoned and five people felt like driving their cars around. There was a Walgreens somewhere. No pizzerias. Oddly enough, we played above the only pizzeria in a five block radius and they were f'ing closed.
We asked someone "where can we get food?" and they said "um..." and we said "is there anywhere on bourbon st." and they said "nah, dudes (condescendingly), we don't go around there." I muttered under my breath to Sheldon "yeah... we don't like to go where there are THINGS TO DO." And what incredible things. Bourbon Street is exactly like everyone says. It is the beginning of January, school isn't in, and the streets were FILLED with CONSTANT LOUD MUSIC AND TONS OF FUN PEOPLE. The bums were nice. The drinks were cheap. The pizza... well... that was 3 bucks per slice and a pie for 24 dollars. Fuck that shit. We decided on peanut butter, jelly and grapefruit in the van, left and tried to get in as much as possible. There was a drink called the hand grenade which is the strongest drink in the world apparently and in way BUILT INTO THE GUNS THEY HAD AT THE BAR. Some of us had this drink, Bove had one combined with his new medication which made an awesome awesome power... and then we got a phone call from Sheldon's mom.
THE WORST DAY OF MRS. QUALLS'S LIFE: Sheldon's mom was conveniently supposed to be in New Orleans the same night we were going to be there so she helped to arrange for Bove to come in on the same flight as her. Even though Bove said he was able to switch seats plenty of times during the flight, Mrs. Qualls was told that she was too late, that they sold her ticket to someone else. She was put on a transfer flight to Chicago and then to New Orleans. Then like a scene from Home Alone, the snow started to come down preventing her flight from leaving. All she wanted to do was buy us a nice cajun meal since it was our first time in that area, and SNOW prevented her from doing that. We called and texted her many times throughout the day and she just kept getting delayed and d e l a y e d a n d d e l a y e d. We finally met up with her at her hotel (which was two blocks away from our van) and combed the ghost town in search of some cajun food. Unfortunately, non-Bourbon St. New Orleans closes after midnight. We walked in a five block radius (the other direction this time) and managed to find a 24-hour diner... not the cajun feast Mrs. Qualls had intended. She kindly treated us to a wonderful meal at the diner which consisted of gumbo for some and breakfast for others. Among this crew was not JT... he had vanished at some point between when we went up to Mrs. Qualls's hotel room for our care packages from our friends at home and when we came down. Somewhere between Rampart and Bourbon... two streets that are NEXT TO EACH OTHER. When we finally met up with him later, he was shitfaced and claimed "Well... I did one of everything"
EVERYTHING =
drinking at karaoke bar
large hand grenade liquor bevarage
drinking at blues/zydeco bar
drinking at college night dance bar
drinking at topless/bottomless strip club
He had missed the cajun food, but that could wait until tomorrow. Mrs. Qualls offered to take us out for lunch the next day because we had a lot of free time and she felt bad that we didn't have cajun food at that diner (we were very happy to eat, and now we were eating twice. and we were in new orleans. wow. we are lucky.) We met up with her around 2:00 in the afternoon when an incredible plan got devised by Sheldon, in front of his mom who at one point the night before said "he knows his place in the band".
THE STRIPPER MERCH GIRL IDEA. There it is, right there. Not an idea so much as a movement. We go into a strip club, ask a stripper "Hey. How would you like to see the world. You wouldn't have to do much except wear very little clothing, maybe strip a little but mostly sell t-shirts. We would pay for your meals and drop you off in new york." Go ahead. Try and think of a problem there. Find one thing wrong with this plan. Would we sell more merch? Yes. Would we be able to bring this stripped to New York where she can get a better job? Yes. Would she get to see the country? Yes. Would she have harsh living conditions? Yes. Would it be better than the one she is in now? Possibly. Would it be worth it to get to New York and work at SCORES? Yes. We let this plan settle in as we went to a cajun restaurant.
And it was there that I broke my vegetarianism for a few quick seconds. There was alligator on the menu. I was first trying to find the loopholes. Is it a fish? Is an alligator okay to eat because it doesn't fit into the phylum of most other animals? Fuck it. I thought of two things:
1) JT mentioned that alligators eat people. He said it sarcastically and I took it seriously.
2) I can't imagine alligators dying in a way that isn't funny and enjoyable. They must be like clubbed or something, by a giant man in a funny hat. Question marks and amphersands would appear above their heads along with giant spirals. It's fun for the whole family.
So I ate a fucking piece of alligator. A tiny tiny piece, and I didn't really like it because I don't like meat but now I can't say that I've never eaten an alligator. Check it out. Here's me not saying it
THE STRIPPED MERCH GIRL IDEA PT. 2, THE REVENGE. Once we parted ways with Mrs. Qualls I would not let go of the stripped merch girl idea. Sheldon wouldn't be able to get into any of the clubs, but the rest of us were of age and besides, other than JT we didn't go into strip clubs the night before. It was settled. Dave would come in with me, i would do the talking and a stripper would come do merch with us. JT came into the Topless Bottomless because, well, it's a strip club. We sat there and stared. JT tried a trick tipping technique which is to bite the dollar in between your teeth after which the stripper will come up and grab the dollar with her breasts, thus, putting her breasts in your face. Unfortunately, stripper number one cheated this rule and grabbed the dollar with her mouth. We all nodded at each other and said "no. not the one." Then Paris came onto the stage. Paris, a sweet nice blonde stripper who seemed around our age and very kind. I gave her the test by biting the dollar between my teeth and when she grabbed it with her breasts I knew she was the one. But I had frozen. How the hell do you talk to a stripper without getting punched in the face? Where do you look when she's naked? How do you invite her to join your fucking travelling fucking cirucs? Wouldn't she think this was a proposition for a gang band? Who wouldn't think that? We're just nice guys trying to make everyone win. As I was going through all this stuff in my head, JT manned up and called "Paris!" as she walked off stage. She came up to us, naked. naked. naked. naked. naked. naked.nadkjed.nadnkednakednakendaked (weird odd awesome) and JT told her the deal, who we were, where she was going, what we wanted and what we had to offer. She couldn't reach for mace because she had no pockets. Instead she responded "My mother lives in New York." Thinking this was just something nice to stay so she could walk away, we said "thanks anyway", turned around and looked at the next stripper. She looked like one of our very good friend's girlfriend. VERY MUCH SO. We decided to leave because we all felt weird/bad for looking at the stripper. On our way out, Paris asked JT for his number so she could call us tomorrow if she wants to go.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
?????????????????????????????????????????????????
We bullshitted with Paris, Paris the stripper, Paris the incredibly sweet and very friendly stripper about the rest of the world. I told her about the Oregon vortex, she said "vortex?" We exchanged numbers and then we were off, with a stripper in New Orleans who either was or wasn't planning on coming with us for the rest of the tour. WOW. Thank you New Orleans.
here comes the marathon session... we're staying at this kid ian's house and i am somewhere in friggin' missouri. let's say kansas city. anyway, here we go. in REVERSE CHRONOLOGY!!!
To Louis Armstrong Airport Pt. 2, The Revenge
We had a long drive ahead of us. Spanning four to five states. The mapquest directions said it would take 11 hours, that's without stopping to get gas, to get coffee, to take a shit. Without stopping to do anything. Sheldon manned up the shotgun position with me and we were off. Wait. Fuck. I left my sweatshirt at the house.
Ten minutes later, Sheldon manned up the shotgun position with me and we were off. Wait. Fuck. Traffic lights? It turns out we were going for about 150 miles on a road that had traffic lights everywhere. This was worse because I was not permitted to drive fast and make abrupt stops because JT was sleeping above all the tuggage in a little alcove he had made for himself. This alcove was not very sturdy and every traffic light was another opportunity for JT to tumble onto the Costa who was sleeping in the bench underneath him. We had left around 11 and pulled off for gas somewhere in Florida at around 5:00. We figured that we might make it to the airport on time to pick up Bove if we rushed... his plane was coming in at 9:30something AM and there was bound to be a time zone change somewhere.
The woman at the bargain basement only 24 hour gas station in the area was extremely kind when she informed me that the time zone shift had already occurred. She was also nice enough to tell me that we were TWO HOURS AWAY FROM NEW ORLEANS. The police officers told me that there was a bit of fog which would make the drive long. Fuck fog. We had been driving through it all night and we were about to finish a 11 hour drive in SEVEN hours. Knowing that I wouldn't have anything to do at the airport and that I wanted to be awake when Bove came in, I invited Sean to sit down at a booth with me and take in a cup of coffee. We stared at the confederate flags memorabilia and still thought it was pretty strange. We took a half an hour and then started driving again which is when my eyeball exploded. We pulled off again for another half an hour for shits, giggles and more shits. We were still SO FRIGGIN' EARLY.
When we finally pulled into the airport I was dizzy in a way I can't describe. Maybe it was the speed that I had been driving. Maybe it was the fact that I drank coffee for the first time in about a year. And maybe it was the fact that I tiredly put WAY too much half and half in that coffee. Or maybe it was the fact that I had been driving with one contact lens for hours and hours and hours at the speed of sound. One thing was for sure: I was fucked up. I tried shitting. Didn't work. I tried walking around. Didn't work. I tried to eat an egg and pepper sandwich.
Let me tell you guys something. NEVER assume that an egg and pepper sandwich is the cure to nausea. I woke up in the van at some point, which meant that I had somehow gotten there from innards of the airport and I almost shat myself. There was no way I could move. I couldn't find any water. After about 30 minutes of trying to get up, I finally got up and ran up the elevator, across the skybridge and down another set of stairs to a bathroom where I relieved myself. I then made my way back to the van and received a phone call that said BOVE'S PLANE CAME IN!
Sheldon and I went in and frantically searched for gate C8 so we could be there when he came in. With our hooded sweatshirts and aviator glasses we looked quite suspicious and a majority of the airport staff were happy to lead us in the right direction. As we gave up and decided to meet everyone at the van, one woman who was trying to help us find the gate and keep our bombs away from their planes tragically cried up the stairs "no guys! gate c8 is that way!!!!" She really wanted to help.
To Louis Armstrong Airport Pt. 2, The Revenge
We had a long drive ahead of us. Spanning four to five states. The mapquest directions said it would take 11 hours, that's without stopping to get gas, to get coffee, to take a shit. Without stopping to do anything. Sheldon manned up the shotgun position with me and we were off. Wait. Fuck. I left my sweatshirt at the house.
Ten minutes later, Sheldon manned up the shotgun position with me and we were off. Wait. Fuck. Traffic lights? It turns out we were going for about 150 miles on a road that had traffic lights everywhere. This was worse because I was not permitted to drive fast and make abrupt stops because JT was sleeping above all the tuggage in a little alcove he had made for himself. This alcove was not very sturdy and every traffic light was another opportunity for JT to tumble onto the Costa who was sleeping in the bench underneath him. We had left around 11 and pulled off for gas somewhere in Florida at around 5:00. We figured that we might make it to the airport on time to pick up Bove if we rushed... his plane was coming in at 9:30something AM and there was bound to be a time zone change somewhere.
The woman at the bargain basement only 24 hour gas station in the area was extremely kind when she informed me that the time zone shift had already occurred. She was also nice enough to tell me that we were TWO HOURS AWAY FROM NEW ORLEANS. The police officers told me that there was a bit of fog which would make the drive long. Fuck fog. We had been driving through it all night and we were about to finish a 11 hour drive in SEVEN hours. Knowing that I wouldn't have anything to do at the airport and that I wanted to be awake when Bove came in, I invited Sean to sit down at a booth with me and take in a cup of coffee. We stared at the confederate flags memorabilia and still thought it was pretty strange. We took a half an hour and then started driving again which is when my eyeball exploded. We pulled off again for another half an hour for shits, giggles and more shits. We were still SO FRIGGIN' EARLY.
When we finally pulled into the airport I was dizzy in a way I can't describe. Maybe it was the speed that I had been driving. Maybe it was the fact that I drank coffee for the first time in about a year. And maybe it was the fact that I tiredly put WAY too much half and half in that coffee. Or maybe it was the fact that I had been driving with one contact lens for hours and hours and hours at the speed of sound. One thing was for sure: I was fucked up. I tried shitting. Didn't work. I tried walking around. Didn't work. I tried to eat an egg and pepper sandwich.
Let me tell you guys something. NEVER assume that an egg and pepper sandwich is the cure to nausea. I woke up in the van at some point, which meant that I had somehow gotten there from innards of the airport and I almost shat myself. There was no way I could move. I couldn't find any water. After about 30 minutes of trying to get up, I finally got up and ran up the elevator, across the skybridge and down another set of stairs to a bathroom where I relieved myself. I then made my way back to the van and received a phone call that said BOVE'S PLANE CAME IN!
Sheldon and I went in and frantically searched for gate C8 so we could be there when he came in. With our hooded sweatshirts and aviator glasses we looked quite suspicious and a majority of the airport staff were happy to lead us in the right direction. As we gave up and decided to meet everyone at the van, one woman who was trying to help us find the gate and keep our bombs away from their planes tragically cried up the stairs "no guys! gate c8 is that way!!!!" She really wanted to help.
1.10.2004
Sorry, tour diary people. It has been a bitch to update this thing on the road since we have no internet. Right now I am at the house of a nice girl who is named after Stevie Nicks and I am in Houston, TX. I am going to continue trying to do this in reverse chronological order, but BEAR WITH ME IF IT TAKES A WHILE TO FINISH IT ALL! THERE'S SO MUCH TO LEARN!
To Louis Armstrong Airport
I woke up to wish Adam's parents goodbye. I knew that they were standing there saying goodbye to everyone else because I can sense those kinds of things in my sleep. I also knew that I would be saying goodbye to them later because there was no way that we were going to leave on time for this superdrive to pick up Bove. I was right. We had about seventeen hours to drive and we gave ourselves seventeen hours to do it. I left my home of four days to go out and be "homeless" again.
We went to a U-Haul rental space because we were picking up Bove in the morning. Adam called up my cell phone to let me know that I had left a razor (unintentional) and a sock (intentional) at his place. Since we were still in Coral Springs, Adam came by and we all hung out until I was summoned inside for my credit card (security deposit). And this is why I hate fucking idiots: YOU THINK YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO TELL ME THAT YOU START CHARGING AFTER 1,000 MILES. WE TOLD YOU OUR SITUATION, CUNT. BUT NO. YOU HAD TO HAVE US WAIT FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF WHEN WE'RE ALREADY LATE TO LET US KNOW THAT AFTER 1,000 MILES, MOST OF WHICH WE WOULD BE DRIVING TODAY, YOU START CHARGING 39 CENTS A MILE. We ended up not getting this trailer. And we also started out much much later.
We had made plans to stop off at the Qualls' home which was somewhere in Florida, possibly on the way. I watched the last beautiful Florida sunset that I would see for months or years and felt sorry for myself because I was feeling sorry for being so fortunate. Man, what an asshole. When we pulled up at the Qualls residence, we were greeted with a smile by a man named Bud, Sheldon's grandfather. We were quickly given a few big plastic bags and were asked "You guys like grapefruit?" after which we were lead into his personal grove where he grew his own grapefruits, pink grapefruits and oranges. After we were done picking fruit... now hold on a second, ladies and gentlemen, I just started a sentence with "after we were done picking fruit". punk rock saves lives... we were treated to a homemade Italian feast. Although Sheldon neglected to mention that JT and I were vegetarians, there was a FREAKING FEAST BEFORE US. SALAD. THREE KINDS OF PASTA. ANY MEAT YOU COULD IMAGINE. ALL FOR THE TAKING. We stuffed ourselves and soon enough, Sheldon's family members from the area started stopping by. One brought a pig which is the only pig I have ever seen that looks like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh. I went into the computer room and realized that if we left exactly then, we might be on time. We were sent off with a bag full of 30 pairs of black socks. I don't know why.
PART TWO OF TO THE AIRPORT... COMING SOON!
STAY TUNED FOR: NEW ORLEANS! LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA! HOUSTON!
To Louis Armstrong Airport
I woke up to wish Adam's parents goodbye. I knew that they were standing there saying goodbye to everyone else because I can sense those kinds of things in my sleep. I also knew that I would be saying goodbye to them later because there was no way that we were going to leave on time for this superdrive to pick up Bove. I was right. We had about seventeen hours to drive and we gave ourselves seventeen hours to do it. I left my home of four days to go out and be "homeless" again.
We went to a U-Haul rental space because we were picking up Bove in the morning. Adam called up my cell phone to let me know that I had left a razor (unintentional) and a sock (intentional) at his place. Since we were still in Coral Springs, Adam came by and we all hung out until I was summoned inside for my credit card (security deposit). And this is why I hate fucking idiots: YOU THINK YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO TELL ME THAT YOU START CHARGING AFTER 1,000 MILES. WE TOLD YOU OUR SITUATION, CUNT. BUT NO. YOU HAD TO HAVE US WAIT FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF WHEN WE'RE ALREADY LATE TO LET US KNOW THAT AFTER 1,000 MILES, MOST OF WHICH WE WOULD BE DRIVING TODAY, YOU START CHARGING 39 CENTS A MILE. We ended up not getting this trailer. And we also started out much much later.
We had made plans to stop off at the Qualls' home which was somewhere in Florida, possibly on the way. I watched the last beautiful Florida sunset that I would see for months or years and felt sorry for myself because I was feeling sorry for being so fortunate. Man, what an asshole. When we pulled up at the Qualls residence, we were greeted with a smile by a man named Bud, Sheldon's grandfather. We were quickly given a few big plastic bags and were asked "You guys like grapefruit?" after which we were lead into his personal grove where he grew his own grapefruits, pink grapefruits and oranges. After we were done picking fruit... now hold on a second, ladies and gentlemen, I just started a sentence with "after we were done picking fruit". punk rock saves lives... we were treated to a homemade Italian feast. Although Sheldon neglected to mention that JT and I were vegetarians, there was a FREAKING FEAST BEFORE US. SALAD. THREE KINDS OF PASTA. ANY MEAT YOU COULD IMAGINE. ALL FOR THE TAKING. We stuffed ourselves and soon enough, Sheldon's family members from the area started stopping by. One brought a pig which is the only pig I have ever seen that looks like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh. I went into the computer room and realized that if we left exactly then, we might be on time. We were sent off with a bag full of 30 pairs of black socks. I don't know why.
PART TWO OF TO THE AIRPORT... COMING SOON!
STAY TUNED FOR: NEW ORLEANS! LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA! HOUSTON!
1.07.2004
1.04.2004
Miami, FL
I don't quite remember waking up this morning. I think last night was the first time I went to bed without the aid of anti-anxiety medication in a while, so that's awesome for me. Anyway, don't remember when we woke up or what we did but soon enough we were out of Adam's house and on our way to Miami.
We showed up at the show and pulled around the back. When we walked in, imagine our surprise to notice that (gasp) we were playing a real club. A real stage. A real sound system. Decent capacity. We called up the promoter, who I will call Jessie (because I believe her name starts with a Y and when a name is so difficult to pronounce/spell that you can't even decide what the FIRST letter is, you call that person Jessie (especially when upon first meeting this promoter your first words are 'boy, that's hard to pronounce' and she mutters 'you can just call me jessie, asshole' [the asshole is implied and not said])), and asked if we could go on before the headliner. She said Yeah! Holy shit. Our first show of the year was going to be in an awesome place with an awesome time slot.
I think what's important about today is that Sheldon started freaking out because he realized that he likes "the lamest band in the world", Cursive. After skating outside of the venue for about 15 minutes complaining about the song "Art Is Hard" and that it is so good and he hates that it is so good, he knocked on the window of the van frowning and I put Cursive on for him. His reaction was an odd combination of satisfaction and complete hatred. We listened to the live set that was tacked onto the re-issue of Armed Forces by Elvis Costello and got inspired. I later received a phone call from my friend Tim Ruggeri (the Kites) and he told me that his drum tech on their new album that they were recording is Pete Thomas, Elvis Costello's drummer. Congrats, Tim.
We walked to the front of the club and, well, the promoter wasn't there yet and the coat check girl didn't speak much English and was kind of confused when we said "We're the Arrogant Sons of Bitches." She went "what? sons of bitches? go away." The show was awesome. The band before us, Empty Wallet were fast and awesome. Tough act to follow. The kids danced. The kids fucking danced and had fun. There were people coming up onto the stage and dancing and stuff and it shocked me because, fuck, we've never been here before. We got offstage and people bought CDs. People came up to us and spoke to us and were interested and goddamn it felt great to be in a band again. We were even given pasta and breadsticks! Loaded off the stage, loaded out and went to Wal-Mart.
We are certainly the kings of thrifty shopping these days. Sheldon made sick Ramen omlettes and dinner cost all of $1 for all of us as breakfast tomorrow will also cost $1. Dave got into a weird fight with me today about the validity of my vegetarianism because he's only allowed to eat at Taco Bell and Burger King because I don't want to have a potato for dinner. This was probably the longest argument I've ever had about nothing. Dave later played the Deer Hunting video game and I think it got out the aggression he has against animals. We came back, we ate. Tour is awesome. We leave Florida tomorrow I think for an overnight drive to Louisiana to play some more. Kids: join a band.
P.S. BECAUSE THIS TOUR DIARY HAS BEEN SLIGHTLY CORNY BECAUSE WE'VE BEEN ENJOYING OURSELVES, CHECK OUT THIS PHONE CALL WE GOT FROM SOMEONE FROM SWAYZE'S IN MARIETTA, GA.
Swayze's Guy: Yo, if your band ever comes around here again, I'm going to rip out your pubes and eat them in my cereal.
Sheldon: Wait, you're gonna eat my nuts?
Swayze's Guy: (disturbingly upset) No! Your pubes!
Sheldon: The thing about that is.....
P.P.S. thank you Bum Ruckus.
I don't quite remember waking up this morning. I think last night was the first time I went to bed without the aid of anti-anxiety medication in a while, so that's awesome for me. Anyway, don't remember when we woke up or what we did but soon enough we were out of Adam's house and on our way to Miami.
We showed up at the show and pulled around the back. When we walked in, imagine our surprise to notice that (gasp) we were playing a real club. A real stage. A real sound system. Decent capacity. We called up the promoter, who I will call Jessie (because I believe her name starts with a Y and when a name is so difficult to pronounce/spell that you can't even decide what the FIRST letter is, you call that person Jessie (especially when upon first meeting this promoter your first words are 'boy, that's hard to pronounce' and she mutters 'you can just call me jessie, asshole' [the asshole is implied and not said])), and asked if we could go on before the headliner. She said Yeah! Holy shit. Our first show of the year was going to be in an awesome place with an awesome time slot.
I think what's important about today is that Sheldon started freaking out because he realized that he likes "the lamest band in the world", Cursive. After skating outside of the venue for about 15 minutes complaining about the song "Art Is Hard" and that it is so good and he hates that it is so good, he knocked on the window of the van frowning and I put Cursive on for him. His reaction was an odd combination of satisfaction and complete hatred. We listened to the live set that was tacked onto the re-issue of Armed Forces by Elvis Costello and got inspired. I later received a phone call from my friend Tim Ruggeri (the Kites) and he told me that his drum tech on their new album that they were recording is Pete Thomas, Elvis Costello's drummer. Congrats, Tim.
We walked to the front of the club and, well, the promoter wasn't there yet and the coat check girl didn't speak much English and was kind of confused when we said "We're the Arrogant Sons of Bitches." She went "what? sons of bitches? go away." The show was awesome. The band before us, Empty Wallet were fast and awesome. Tough act to follow. The kids danced. The kids fucking danced and had fun. There were people coming up onto the stage and dancing and stuff and it shocked me because, fuck, we've never been here before. We got offstage and people bought CDs. People came up to us and spoke to us and were interested and goddamn it felt great to be in a band again. We were even given pasta and breadsticks! Loaded off the stage, loaded out and went to Wal-Mart.
We are certainly the kings of thrifty shopping these days. Sheldon made sick Ramen omlettes and dinner cost all of $1 for all of us as breakfast tomorrow will also cost $1. Dave got into a weird fight with me today about the validity of my vegetarianism because he's only allowed to eat at Taco Bell and Burger King because I don't want to have a potato for dinner. This was probably the longest argument I've ever had about nothing. Dave later played the Deer Hunting video game and I think it got out the aggression he has against animals. We came back, we ate. Tour is awesome. We leave Florida tomorrow I think for an overnight drive to Louisiana to play some more. Kids: join a band.
P.S. BECAUSE THIS TOUR DIARY HAS BEEN SLIGHTLY CORNY BECAUSE WE'VE BEEN ENJOYING OURSELVES, CHECK OUT THIS PHONE CALL WE GOT FROM SOMEONE FROM SWAYZE'S IN MARIETTA, GA.
Swayze's Guy: Yo, if your band ever comes around here again, I'm going to rip out your pubes and eat them in my cereal.
Sheldon: Wait, you're gonna eat my nuts?
Swayze's Guy: (disturbingly upset) No! Your pubes!
Sheldon: The thing about that is.....
P.P.S. thank you Bum Ruckus.
1.03.2004
Coral Springs/Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Ringing in the new year with two days off. The first day we woke up late and didn't do shit.
Today was awesome on the other hand. We woke up around noon and decided we were going to go to the beach because, fuck, we're in Florida. We have a place to stay, and it is January yet still friggin' warm warm warm. In the morning we e-mailed a bunch of venues trying to get a few shows to fill up our slightly spotty tour. Work was done. Let's go.
We are on our way down to the beach and we discover that Taco Bell has a 99 cent vegetarian burrito that weighs HALF A POUND. We stopped off and had a cheap cheap delicious lunch then headed over to A1A, the street that inspired Vanilla Ice to write Ice Ice Baby or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Rap, I can't remember which. We were walking down the strip of stores and Adam made a joke about us getting tattoos that lasted for 3 weeks. The second he said that I said "fuck that. i'm gonna get a tattoo." We let it slide for a little while, knowing that all the stores on the strip were way too fucking expensive for me. Sean got his skateboard and Dave, Adam and I walked onto the beach. The water was fucking warm. Had I not been wearing my only clean pair of pants I would have jumped in immediately. Instead I rolled them up to coolot length and walked in with my cell phone calling a bunch of suckers who I care about very much and are stuck in New York, letting them know that I was in the ocean in January and not a member of the polar bear club.
Sean decided we should panhandle a little bit so we went to the van and got the guitar, glockenspiel and set up right along the beach. It was fucking beautiful. We played a bunch of cover songs, the greatest of which was when a Rastafarian came up to us and asked us to play some Marley. I said I would only play "Redemption Song" if he sang the words. He said he was a musician and we rocked out together and I realized that I am probably the luckiest person in the world right now and I have to do my best not to take it for granted or ever forget this tour. It sounds lame and cheesy, but fucking Florida in January is incredible.
So I asked Adam where we should get these fucking tattoos. I just wanted to price it. See how bad it would be. I already knew what I wanted and I didn't even have my ID so most likely I would have to go back in the morning if I wanted to actually get a tattoo. When we went there, the door was locked and I was pretty bummed but they eventually heard us knocking and let us in. The tattoo I wanted wasn't too expensive. Dave and I both decided a while ago that we were gonna get some kind of tattoo to commemorate having an awesome tour. Since that last tour ranged from depression to elation, and I didn't know what to get, we never ended up actually doing it. But once I was game, Dave was down too. So we did it. We got fucking tattoos. It feels kind of like someone is burning you but in a very focused way. I gritted my teeth a bit from the pain, Dave turned his gritted teeth periodically to kissy faces. The artist was great and both of our tattoos are AWESOME.
We came back and made about two pounds of pasta and sauce for THREE BUCKS. We ate cheap and it was glorious. My new year's resolution is to realize that we're spoiled and very lucky right now, but to not feel bad about it. It's okay to be lucky sometimes. I love everyone and I miss everyone. Hope all is well and I hope you have awesome 2004s.
Ringing in the new year with two days off. The first day we woke up late and didn't do shit.
Today was awesome on the other hand. We woke up around noon and decided we were going to go to the beach because, fuck, we're in Florida. We have a place to stay, and it is January yet still friggin' warm warm warm. In the morning we e-mailed a bunch of venues trying to get a few shows to fill up our slightly spotty tour. Work was done. Let's go.
We are on our way down to the beach and we discover that Taco Bell has a 99 cent vegetarian burrito that weighs HALF A POUND. We stopped off and had a cheap cheap delicious lunch then headed over to A1A, the street that inspired Vanilla Ice to write Ice Ice Baby or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Rap, I can't remember which. We were walking down the strip of stores and Adam made a joke about us getting tattoos that lasted for 3 weeks. The second he said that I said "fuck that. i'm gonna get a tattoo." We let it slide for a little while, knowing that all the stores on the strip were way too fucking expensive for me. Sean got his skateboard and Dave, Adam and I walked onto the beach. The water was fucking warm. Had I not been wearing my only clean pair of pants I would have jumped in immediately. Instead I rolled them up to coolot length and walked in with my cell phone calling a bunch of suckers who I care about very much and are stuck in New York, letting them know that I was in the ocean in January and not a member of the polar bear club.
Sean decided we should panhandle a little bit so we went to the van and got the guitar, glockenspiel and set up right along the beach. It was fucking beautiful. We played a bunch of cover songs, the greatest of which was when a Rastafarian came up to us and asked us to play some Marley. I said I would only play "Redemption Song" if he sang the words. He said he was a musician and we rocked out together and I realized that I am probably the luckiest person in the world right now and I have to do my best not to take it for granted or ever forget this tour. It sounds lame and cheesy, but fucking Florida in January is incredible.
So I asked Adam where we should get these fucking tattoos. I just wanted to price it. See how bad it would be. I already knew what I wanted and I didn't even have my ID so most likely I would have to go back in the morning if I wanted to actually get a tattoo. When we went there, the door was locked and I was pretty bummed but they eventually heard us knocking and let us in. The tattoo I wanted wasn't too expensive. Dave and I both decided a while ago that we were gonna get some kind of tattoo to commemorate having an awesome tour. Since that last tour ranged from depression to elation, and I didn't know what to get, we never ended up actually doing it. But once I was game, Dave was down too. So we did it. We got fucking tattoos. It feels kind of like someone is burning you but in a very focused way. I gritted my teeth a bit from the pain, Dave turned his gritted teeth periodically to kissy faces. The artist was great and both of our tattoos are AWESOME.
We came back and made about two pounds of pasta and sauce for THREE BUCKS. We ate cheap and it was glorious. My new year's resolution is to realize that we're spoiled and very lucky right now, but to not feel bad about it. It's okay to be lucky sometimes. I love everyone and I miss everyone. Hope all is well and I hope you have awesome 2004s.
1.01.2004
Ft. Myers, FL
I woke up in the van and we were still moving. I looked at the temperature clock and it said 80 degrees. Holy shit. It was a gorgeous awesome day. We walked outside once we got to Adam's and Sheldon and I were jumping up and down because it was so nice outside. We hung out at Adam's for a little bit, caught up on old times, we ate some of the ramen and pastas that we got at the supermarket (the night before, Brian from the Know How was nice enough to give us a 17 dollar gift card to Winn-Dixie) and then went to the show. I was still so excited that I was dancing all around the gas station before we got on Alligator Alley.
Alligator Alley is a highway that is surrounded by swamp on both sides. You cannot enter, exit or do anything but drive on Alligator Alley for about 70 miles. It was a gorgeous gorgeous drive. Incredible. Mind-blowing. Breathtaking. All that stuff. It filled me with adrenaline it was so fucking beautiful. We saw the awesomest sunset EVER to take place in America. And then it hit me. We are so fucking lucky to be able to do what we are doing. We really are the luckiest people in the world: we get to travel around the country and wear t-shirts in December because we dance around like idiots and make rock and roll music. I had never felt so fortunate in my entire life.
We pulled up to the venue blastin' ODB with Adam's portable cooler/refrigerator complete with mine and Dave's bottles of champagne in tact. The venue was friggin' awesome. It was a huge gymnasium rigged up with a bunch of star-shaped Christmas lights that were sporadically flashing. It looked like the set of a rock and roll video. The people at the venue were really nice too. They fed us pizza and they gave us soda. We played our last show of the year and all the kids danced and had a great time. Or a majority of the kids. Whatever. We talked to a lot of interesting people and then put a sign up on our merch table that told kids to wait to buy merch, because we were going to the van to celebrate the new year.
Dave frantically searched for stations on the radio that we could listen to that would have the ball drop. He found a news one but that turned into music. He found a music one and that turned into news. They were talking about the Dow Jones or some shit and then a little noise went off signaling the turn of the hour. No countdown. No nothing. After the noise they brought the feed live to Times Square. Oddly enough, the second that the noise signaling the turn of the hour went off, Dave's cork flew off his champagne bottle without Dave laying a finger on it. I laughed for a split second until mine flew off without me laying a finger on it either and blasted me right in the face.
We started drinking our champagne and calling people and then I noticed that there were FIREWORKS going off. Not bullshit fireworks. Real, awesome fireworks. It was incredible and awesome. At this point I realized that I really am the luckiest person in the world and that this is the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. So HAPPY FUCKING NEW YEAR EVERYONE. If you didn't get a drunken phone call from me, feel privileged. Kris Roe of the Ataris did. But seriously. HAPPY. FUCKING. NEW. FUCKING. YEAR. Florida is gorgeous, my life can't and won't get any better than New Year's Eve 2003/2004.
I woke up in the van and we were still moving. I looked at the temperature clock and it said 80 degrees. Holy shit. It was a gorgeous awesome day. We walked outside once we got to Adam's and Sheldon and I were jumping up and down because it was so nice outside. We hung out at Adam's for a little bit, caught up on old times, we ate some of the ramen and pastas that we got at the supermarket (the night before, Brian from the Know How was nice enough to give us a 17 dollar gift card to Winn-Dixie) and then went to the show. I was still so excited that I was dancing all around the gas station before we got on Alligator Alley.
Alligator Alley is a highway that is surrounded by swamp on both sides. You cannot enter, exit or do anything but drive on Alligator Alley for about 70 miles. It was a gorgeous gorgeous drive. Incredible. Mind-blowing. Breathtaking. All that stuff. It filled me with adrenaline it was so fucking beautiful. We saw the awesomest sunset EVER to take place in America. And then it hit me. We are so fucking lucky to be able to do what we are doing. We really are the luckiest people in the world: we get to travel around the country and wear t-shirts in December because we dance around like idiots and make rock and roll music. I had never felt so fortunate in my entire life.
We pulled up to the venue blastin' ODB with Adam's portable cooler/refrigerator complete with mine and Dave's bottles of champagne in tact. The venue was friggin' awesome. It was a huge gymnasium rigged up with a bunch of star-shaped Christmas lights that were sporadically flashing. It looked like the set of a rock and roll video. The people at the venue were really nice too. They fed us pizza and they gave us soda. We played our last show of the year and all the kids danced and had a great time. Or a majority of the kids. Whatever. We talked to a lot of interesting people and then put a sign up on our merch table that told kids to wait to buy merch, because we were going to the van to celebrate the new year.
Dave frantically searched for stations on the radio that we could listen to that would have the ball drop. He found a news one but that turned into music. He found a music one and that turned into news. They were talking about the Dow Jones or some shit and then a little noise went off signaling the turn of the hour. No countdown. No nothing. After the noise they brought the feed live to Times Square. Oddly enough, the second that the noise signaling the turn of the hour went off, Dave's cork flew off his champagne bottle without Dave laying a finger on it. I laughed for a split second until mine flew off without me laying a finger on it either and blasted me right in the face.
We started drinking our champagne and calling people and then I noticed that there were FIREWORKS going off. Not bullshit fireworks. Real, awesome fireworks. It was incredible and awesome. At this point I realized that I really am the luckiest person in the world and that this is the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. So HAPPY FUCKING NEW YEAR EVERYONE. If you didn't get a drunken phone call from me, feel privileged. Kris Roe of the Ataris did. But seriously. HAPPY. FUCKING. NEW. FUCKING. YEAR. Florida is gorgeous, my life can't and won't get any better than New Year's Eve 2003/2004.
Gainesville, FL
I'm tired. It is the first day of the year and I'm already retroactively pining over last year already. AWESOME!
We woke up in the Motel 6 and left to pick up Mike at his aunt's house. We had told him that we were in South Atlanta. He heard that we were in ----- Atlanta aka plain old Atlanta which meant we needed to drive south on 75 towards Macon, Georgia to get to Fayateville or something.
- Do you have an exit number?
- no.
- Does anyone there know an exit number?
- no.
- How about rough milemarkers?
- no.
- How about mapquest?
- no. you'll see it.
So we drove south for about 80 or 90 miles and we knew something was up. We had done this drive before, and it wasn't so f'ing long. Frantically I started calling everyone I knew and asked if they had a computer and if so, what milemarker Fayateville would be around. When I finally got through to Christine Hooker, I had already known deep down inside that we must have made a giant mistake.
Jeff...
- fuck.
It's...
- fuck.
milemarker...
- fuck.
233.
- fuck.
What?
- what?
Milemarker 233.
- shit.
We had driven to somewhere in the 110s. South. That is over a hundred miles away from where we needed to be. As it turns out, Mike's relatives lived seven miles north of the motel we had stayed at. And we drove a hundred miles south. We pulled off at a gas station to put some more 87 in the motherfucker and the prices were high. Not on gas. On food items. And I say this because they were RIDICULOUSLY high. For no reason! There were exits a couple miles before, and a couple of miles after. These assholes were charging $1.59 for a bag of bargain basement store brand chips that would usually cost twenty-five cents at most. Two bucks for a cup of shitty instant coffee. Six bucks for a bag of nuts. The maps were shrink-wrapped and preceded by four signs mounted to each side of the rotating display rack:
DO NOT READ MAPS IN THE STORE. BUY THE MAP FIRST. THEN YOU CAN READ IT
No, shit. They're shrink-wrapped you money stealing sons of motherfuckers. The only un-shrink-wrapped map I found was a broad map of the Eastern United States that showed where Fayateville was. Christine was right. If anything, it was further north. I got to the right exit in about forty-five minutes. This was my unstoppable day of driving superpower. We stopped at a gas station and two sets of directions to Highway 85: one that made perfect sense and one that was completely unintelligible through the southern drawl. Dave and I decided to go for the directions that was claimed we could both understand. After a while, we decided to turn around and just take the correct directions.
When we had finally gotten to Mike's house, it was about 3:00. We were planning to leave at 11:00 so we could get to the show at a proper load-in time, 7:00 PM. The guy SPECIFICALLY set this show up for us, so we didn't want to be rude. We realized we could definitely play if we got there by 8:00, when the show started, but that still did not look likely when we were entering 75 around 3:30, ready to take a 6 hour drive. Well, quick driving got us to the show at 8:04.
AAAAAAND... no one was really at the show. The promoter explained to me that it was really short notice and it was 21+ so it'd be a bit odd, and it was. There were a few kids who were watching us which was nice. Some girl was on way too much LSD and drew a picture on our mailing list. It was a pretty fun show. We played a Taking Back Sunday song and two Radiohead songs. The microphones once again were not grounded and I put my teeth on the microphone while we were singing, which sent a shock through the nerve endings in my teeth through my entire skull. Ouch. Some 33-year-old glassblower said he really liked us. We met Brian from the Know-How and he was really nice. We decided to sleep in the van because we couldn't afford anything else. JT and Dave started to drive to our friend Adam's where we would be staying for a few days and I slept. Happily happily happily.
I'm tired. It is the first day of the year and I'm already retroactively pining over last year already. AWESOME!
We woke up in the Motel 6 and left to pick up Mike at his aunt's house. We had told him that we were in South Atlanta. He heard that we were in ----- Atlanta aka plain old Atlanta which meant we needed to drive south on 75 towards Macon, Georgia to get to Fayateville or something.
- Do you have an exit number?
- no.
- Does anyone there know an exit number?
- no.
- How about rough milemarkers?
- no.
- How about mapquest?
- no. you'll see it.
So we drove south for about 80 or 90 miles and we knew something was up. We had done this drive before, and it wasn't so f'ing long. Frantically I started calling everyone I knew and asked if they had a computer and if so, what milemarker Fayateville would be around. When I finally got through to Christine Hooker, I had already known deep down inside that we must have made a giant mistake.
Jeff...
- fuck.
It's...
- fuck.
milemarker...
- fuck.
233.
- fuck.
What?
- what?
Milemarker 233.
- shit.
We had driven to somewhere in the 110s. South. That is over a hundred miles away from where we needed to be. As it turns out, Mike's relatives lived seven miles north of the motel we had stayed at. And we drove a hundred miles south. We pulled off at a gas station to put some more 87 in the motherfucker and the prices were high. Not on gas. On food items. And I say this because they were RIDICULOUSLY high. For no reason! There were exits a couple miles before, and a couple of miles after. These assholes were charging $1.59 for a bag of bargain basement store brand chips that would usually cost twenty-five cents at most. Two bucks for a cup of shitty instant coffee. Six bucks for a bag of nuts. The maps were shrink-wrapped and preceded by four signs mounted to each side of the rotating display rack:
DO NOT READ MAPS IN THE STORE. BUY THE MAP FIRST. THEN YOU CAN READ IT
No, shit. They're shrink-wrapped you money stealing sons of motherfuckers. The only un-shrink-wrapped map I found was a broad map of the Eastern United States that showed where Fayateville was. Christine was right. If anything, it was further north. I got to the right exit in about forty-five minutes. This was my unstoppable day of driving superpower. We stopped at a gas station and two sets of directions to Highway 85: one that made perfect sense and one that was completely unintelligible through the southern drawl. Dave and I decided to go for the directions that was claimed we could both understand. After a while, we decided to turn around and just take the correct directions.
When we had finally gotten to Mike's house, it was about 3:00. We were planning to leave at 11:00 so we could get to the show at a proper load-in time, 7:00 PM. The guy SPECIFICALLY set this show up for us, so we didn't want to be rude. We realized we could definitely play if we got there by 8:00, when the show started, but that still did not look likely when we were entering 75 around 3:30, ready to take a 6 hour drive. Well, quick driving got us to the show at 8:04.
AAAAAAND... no one was really at the show. The promoter explained to me that it was really short notice and it was 21+ so it'd be a bit odd, and it was. There were a few kids who were watching us which was nice. Some girl was on way too much LSD and drew a picture on our mailing list. It was a pretty fun show. We played a Taking Back Sunday song and two Radiohead songs. The microphones once again were not grounded and I put my teeth on the microphone while we were singing, which sent a shock through the nerve endings in my teeth through my entire skull. Ouch. Some 33-year-old glassblower said he really liked us. We met Brian from the Know-How and he was really nice. We decided to sleep in the van because we couldn't afford anything else. JT and Dave started to drive to our friend Adam's where we would be staying for a few days and I slept. Happily happily happily.
Marietta, GA
It was a two hour drive from the Motel 6 in Augusta, GA to Marietta. I slept in between the two beds in my sleeping bag. There was a dresser in between the beds, but unlike most dressers these didn't connect to the ground... they were mica and kind of attached to the wall. During the night, my head somehow slipped under it while sleeping and Sheldon tells me I woke up banging my head into it about 5 times during the night and just started muttering "fuck! fuck! fuck!" When I finally woke up it was about 5 minutes to check out time. We checked out about an hour late and took Motel 6 pillows like we usually do. Unfortunately when I was doing the idiot check, the desk clerk at the Motel 6 came up and asked us to check out.
background on this desk clerk. he was without a doubt the smoothest guy ever. he was laid back and super SUPER smooooooth
He comes in and just says, "aw, man... you takin' my pillows?" So, yeah, we returned them and continued to use that Motel 6 computer for about an hour getting directions to our next 3 shows.
We showed up at our shows about 5 hours early and didn't have all that much to do. We walked into a pawn shop that had the highest ratio of confederate flag to wall space that I had ever seen. Sheldon decided he needed a haircut, so we went to the barber shop. There we were, two boys from New York in a barber shop full of over 50-years-old dudes from the south. On the television was Judge Judy, coincidentally showing an episode with two stereotypical southerners who have trailers and can't speak properly dealing with Judge Judy, a stereotypical New Yawker who always thinks she's right and tawks about her hardcore approach to justice. On the other hand, Sheldon and I were having a great time in the barber shop talking to the kind kind people who were there. Sheldon's head is now shaved, they offered me a cut but I declined. During this interim, JT and Dave went to Publix one of the finest damn pharmacies in America. They bought me some Christmas lights and I believe JT bought a box of wine. We still had so much time to kill. We tied up all our merch. We went to bookstores, Starbucks... there was not much there.
The guys from Nakatomi Plaza showed up, and it turns out that their guitar player is good friends with one of my good friends and that we had met before. He also used to be in a Long Island ska band called the Insurgent. To top off the Long Island chain, We Vs. The Shark showed up and Jeff Tobias (bass, keyboard) used to be in Long Island band We Are Groove Animals. AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF: Nakatomi Plaza was selling an old old crappy compilation with We Are Groove Animals on it. Jeff Tobias ended up playing bass guitar with us that day. We had never ever played with him before, not even practiced, but we tried and, well, we didn't do that well but it was a lot of fun. We had a decent time, and an even decenter time talking to everyone afterwards. All the Nakatomi Plaza guys were SWELL SWELL folks and they had a fine fine band that you should be hearing a lot about since they are from LI and on Immigrant Sun records. It was nice to be playing with such a great band.
We Vs. The Shark on the other hand TRANSCENDING greatness at this show. They blew everyone off the stage, and Nakatomi Plaza was really good so that's hard to do. We Vs. The Shark is my bet for band you will be seeing everywhere in about a year. They are from Georgia, I don't know their website off hand, but google search them. They will destroy you. They ARE that good. It was an honor stealing their bass player.
We said good bye to Jeff Tobias which was sad, but he lived an hour and half north and we had to drive 6 hours south to Gainesville. We then bid farewell to the Nakatomi Plaza guys who are making their way up the east coast now and deserve to be checked out. Someone offered us a place to stay, but we all had a hunch that it was going to be a huge party where we would be buying the beer and we all kind of wanted to sleep. Plus we heard a lot of John Mayer jokes, and I hate those. Anyway, thank you to Gus and the other two who refused to give me their names for offering a place to stay that night. I was also offered fondue, which I have never had in my entire life, but I turned it down because I am an idiot.
It was a two hour drive from the Motel 6 in Augusta, GA to Marietta. I slept in between the two beds in my sleeping bag. There was a dresser in between the beds, but unlike most dressers these didn't connect to the ground... they were mica and kind of attached to the wall. During the night, my head somehow slipped under it while sleeping and Sheldon tells me I woke up banging my head into it about 5 times during the night and just started muttering "fuck! fuck! fuck!" When I finally woke up it was about 5 minutes to check out time. We checked out about an hour late and took Motel 6 pillows like we usually do. Unfortunately when I was doing the idiot check, the desk clerk at the Motel 6 came up and asked us to check out.
background on this desk clerk. he was without a doubt the smoothest guy ever. he was laid back and super SUPER smooooooth
He comes in and just says, "aw, man... you takin' my pillows?" So, yeah, we returned them and continued to use that Motel 6 computer for about an hour getting directions to our next 3 shows.
We showed up at our shows about 5 hours early and didn't have all that much to do. We walked into a pawn shop that had the highest ratio of confederate flag to wall space that I had ever seen. Sheldon decided he needed a haircut, so we went to the barber shop. There we were, two boys from New York in a barber shop full of over 50-years-old dudes from the south. On the television was Judge Judy, coincidentally showing an episode with two stereotypical southerners who have trailers and can't speak properly dealing with Judge Judy, a stereotypical New Yawker who always thinks she's right and tawks about her hardcore approach to justice. On the other hand, Sheldon and I were having a great time in the barber shop talking to the kind kind people who were there. Sheldon's head is now shaved, they offered me a cut but I declined. During this interim, JT and Dave went to Publix one of the finest damn pharmacies in America. They bought me some Christmas lights and I believe JT bought a box of wine. We still had so much time to kill. We tied up all our merch. We went to bookstores, Starbucks... there was not much there.
The guys from Nakatomi Plaza showed up, and it turns out that their guitar player is good friends with one of my good friends and that we had met before. He also used to be in a Long Island ska band called the Insurgent. To top off the Long Island chain, We Vs. The Shark showed up and Jeff Tobias (bass, keyboard) used to be in Long Island band We Are Groove Animals. AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF: Nakatomi Plaza was selling an old old crappy compilation with We Are Groove Animals on it. Jeff Tobias ended up playing bass guitar with us that day. We had never ever played with him before, not even practiced, but we tried and, well, we didn't do that well but it was a lot of fun. We had a decent time, and an even decenter time talking to everyone afterwards. All the Nakatomi Plaza guys were SWELL SWELL folks and they had a fine fine band that you should be hearing a lot about since they are from LI and on Immigrant Sun records. It was nice to be playing with such a great band.
We Vs. The Shark on the other hand TRANSCENDING greatness at this show. They blew everyone off the stage, and Nakatomi Plaza was really good so that's hard to do. We Vs. The Shark is my bet for band you will be seeing everywhere in about a year. They are from Georgia, I don't know their website off hand, but google search them. They will destroy you. They ARE that good. It was an honor stealing their bass player.
We said good bye to Jeff Tobias which was sad, but he lived an hour and half north and we had to drive 6 hours south to Gainesville. We then bid farewell to the Nakatomi Plaza guys who are making their way up the east coast now and deserve to be checked out. Someone offered us a place to stay, but we all had a hunch that it was going to be a huge party where we would be buying the beer and we all kind of wanted to sleep. Plus we heard a lot of John Mayer jokes, and I hate those. Anyway, thank you to Gus and the other two who refused to give me their names for offering a place to stay that night. I was also offered fondue, which I have never had in my entire life, but I turned it down because I am an idiot.
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