Florida

You know the day isn't going to be the best day of your life when you wake up around 7:30 in the morning in a full body sweat to the first song on that Midtown album. Yknow? God I wish I could hate you for the rest of my et cetera. I opened my eyes, we were at Denny's and Dave was running around screaming and eventually vomiting. Thanks, No Doz.

I took over the driving and landed us in Coral Springs, Florida, the home of Adam Geller, a friend of ours who moved to Coral Springs a few years ago. He said that he did not expect us to show up just like the last tour when we said "can i stay at your place in florida?" and he worked his whole week around it, tried to find us a show and we just didn't show up.

We all decided to go swimming because Adam has a pool. In fact, we really didn't do shit today except for swimming. We arrived in Florida too late to try and hop on the show that we wanted to get on, we were too tired to go walk around... funny fact is that we drove 40 minutes to go to a place that was the equivalent of White Castle in Florida. Nice to know that even out of state we are still scumbags.

JT got some cords for his 4-track and we decided that we would finally accomplish our dream concept album: based on the plot of the movie Speed. The demos from these sessions will be recorded during tour and a live show with the Wildcat Players should ensue shortly after. We swam, played video games, took a nice day off after a looooong drrrrrive. Yeah, we're pretty useless but tomorrow we play with the Unsung Zeroes. All I can say is that its beautiful out here and if Ethan and Dan read this tour journal, please give me a fucking call on my cell phone you stupid record label.

More Georgia

Why more Georgia? Why not Gainseville Florida where we should have been.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we procrastinated for an UNPRECEDENTED 12 HOURS TODAY. 12 FUCKING HOURS. We sat around my aunt's house and were like "lets grab a quick shower and eat cereal then get going.... ok, let's look at some toys.... ok lets play some basketball.... wanna smoke a cigarette?.... ok lets play with the kids some more.... ok im kind of hungry, i guess i'll have a pop tart... there's bread? i guess i'll make a sandwich.... ok we should watch the scene in the sopranos where puss gets whacked on the big screen again.... ok, lets leave jt alone so he can book more tour dates.... ok.... lets do all those things all over again.... twice.... lets go pick up mike.... lets wait for his aunt to get back from dropping her kid off at baseball.... its raining.... lets go to walmart.... lets go to taco bell.... lets go to kfc.... it stopped raining, we can drive.... lets install the playstation and television... math has a headache lets get some children's tylenol.... oh he doesn't have a headache anymore?.... we're already at walmart, lets go back in..... lets watch the speed DVD with the commentary.... lets go to a gas station and fill up.... lets go 40 minutes in the wrong direction because my 14.4 modem isn't fast enough to get good directions from mapquest... ok.... its about 12:00 AM, we were supposed to leave at 12:30 PM... bummer."

Let's have a tally of what we've done so far on this tour.
1 time Jeff lost his keys
3 overnight drives
1 terrible show
2 swimming days
ok... this tally is a bad idea. there was a payoff to this tally which i forget what it was once i started putting all the filler in the tally. that was pretty much a joke gone wrong. notice how i'm talking a lot? that's cause i'm in the back of the van wide awake and everyone else is playing playstation or listening to dr. dre. once we stop touring i'll tell you some of the scams that we have been pulling so we have a better time, but as for now, any venue that looks at this, we're stand up people who will not fuck your daughter.

South Carolina/Georgia

So I’ve been awake from a really really long time. This is going to be a haphazard attempt to recall the events of the past 48 hours. This is my life as an adult. This is my life as an adult.

So we’re super late to the fucking show because we can never get up get up come on come on let’s go soon enough. We’re driving and we’re driving and we’re hours late then all of a sudden we cross over into South Carolina. First exit? South of the Border.

For those of you whole don’t know, South of the Border is like Mexico for tourists who are too afraid to go to Mexico. They had fireworks, a roller coaster, hats around the world, American flags, lots of t-shirt stores, mexi-fries, chili cheese dogs.

We were planning on spending 30 minutes there and ended up spending over an hour. Come on, they had bathrooms too. We bought lots of fireworks that would later be used to blow things up and smoked indoors because it is still really cool to us that there is no problem doing that.

I drive the rest of the way to the show. We pull up at the same exact time as Bum Ruckus, and that’s how we met. We’re now pals, apparently one of them masturbates constantly, they’re the only band that can possibly outsmoke us cigarette wise and I believe their road manager used to manage New Found Glory. Damn.

South Carolina, man. Wow. When we got there we met the Curbside Vendors who were also pretty nice. However, about 8 people were there. We went and got food, and our promotion for this show was telling the waitress (Cory) and her friend (Chris(tina)) that we were playing a show two doors over and she should stop by. They did stop by and bought a CD as did one or two other people as we take the south by storm.

Instead of taking the drive to Marietta the next day, we decided that we can’t afford a motel so we might as well try and find something to do. We hung out Puff from Curbside Vendors’s house for a little bit taking care of some stickers and booking stuff and then went over to Chris(tina)’s house to hang out until it was late enough that we would arrive in Georgia after the sun came up. THIS NIGHT WAS DEFINITELY NOT CRAZY.

We left at about 6:00 and I drove down to Georgia with Bove sitting shot. Since everyone else is asleep we get to put on music that WE like in the van, so after Neutral Milk Hotel and the second Harvey Danger record, what could we listen to other than The Streets? After not getting any sleep, The Streets’ album is all the more crazy. I feel it had to do with The Streets being played on the radio, but shortly after we broke 30,000 on the new van a billboard popped up that said “Adult Diner”.

What is an adult diner you ask? Well let me tell ya… it is a diner where your waitress is not wearing a top, is wearing a thong, there are strippers past 11:00 AM (we went a little to early), there is a porno shop on the side, and, well… the waitresses are pretty much naked. Me Bove and JT were amongst the ones who were not sleeping and spent about an hour and a half marveling at the fact that we were being served breakfast by a practically naked woman. We later had a nice conversation with her and I wondered this last time we were in a strip club, but are you allowed to stare at the breasts of someone while you’re having a conversation with them if they’re right out there? That’s her job, right?

Anyway, Dave sat on Math in the van once we got out. We drove into Marietta as I was falling asleep pretty much and got into my Aunt Caroline’s house. It is probably the biggest house I’ve ever been in… it seven beds for all of us to sleep in. SEVEN FREAKING BEDS.

So I slept. This is after I bled from my anus for some reason. We woke up, ate some pizza and went to the Georgia show which reminded me a lot of one of our Long Island shows… not too many people there, couldn’t hear anything on stage, but a lot of people hanging out outside. We made quick friends with the Bum Ruckus guys and we got to see our friends Treephort… this is the first time since we’ve been out that we’ve seen people that we know so it was nice even though the turnout wasn’t that great. At the end of the set I got tackled by Bove the wrong way and I fucked up my leg again in the same place as the Easton Teen Center show. Bum Ruckus’s road manager helped us out by giving us a book full of contacts and that was real nice of him.

Too much stuff has been happening to put here… I am fucking tired as all shit, I’ve been up for two days pretty much and I’m most likely not going to end up posting this crap until tomorrow. One thing that sucks about the tour diary is that my wireless modem is only free from 9:00 PM until 6:00 AM and that is usually the time that we are busy or sleeping, so it kind of takes a while for all this shit to hit ya. Whatever. Fuck it. I never said it was in real time.

I read some things on our message board that says people are nervous after reading our tour diary. I just want to say, there is no bullshit in this thing… its basically what happened to me and my band for the next bunch of weeks. I’m sorry if anyone on LI misses us right now, but this is both the greatest and scariest thing we’ve ever really done, so thanks for giving us the opportunity to accomplish this dream, even if I am a cynical typical twenty-something fuck about it.

I should be around tomorrow to post a little more about Georgia. I will not post this tonight because it’s too late. Disregard the date and time. Its like 4:00 AM… and I am hella tired. If anyone who is reading this has been to the shows on this tour, thanks for the interest, but I need to sleep right now so we’ll have to pick this up some other time.

North Carolina
We slept a lot since we last spoke. A whole lot. Some of us snored really loudly. Some of us tried to watch the Clash documentary but were upset when it was 7:00 and time to go to the show which was, hey, five minutes away from the hotel. Sweet.

By the way, JT’s sunburn is ridiculously horrible. On the JT tip still, I honestly promise that he was playing catch in the Motel 6 parking lot with Math for about 4 hours while the rest of us were sleeping. He also didn’t like that MY tour diary is mainly focused on MY point of view, and it doesn’t talk about me enough. He scaled a wall in Jersey. Ya happy, JT?

So we get to the show and it’s at a pretty cool bar that reminded Dave of Coney Island High, the old venue in New York that was totally awesome. My keys have been missing for a while. That’s not important. What we found out as we got to the show was that the owners of Bessie’s found out that they were being shut down that day, and it was their last night. Every bottle of liquor must go. Therefore all drinks were a dollars. All shots, beers, every brand (I still drank Pabst and then OBX, the worst beer ever)... yeah. I recorded some prepared piano parts on a haunted piano with a cellular telephone that should be used on the new album.

There was some point when I was trying to argue about $100 not being enough to get paid because the other band wanted more money. Dumb.

So everyone’s trashed, I have no idea what time it is, but we are soon told that we will be playing for an hour and a half. That is 90 MINUTES. I have no idea what to do as my only pick, my shirt, my tie and my keys to the van and cash box are missing so we start thinking of ideas. Off the cuff we covered
- Blitzkrieg Bop
- Barroom Heroes
- El Scorcho
- A couple more that I don’t remember.
Some drunk guy kept giving bass fingers to Bove while he was playing. Dave was so drunk it was ridiculous. We’re all soaked in sweat and one of the guys in the other band of the day came to the side of the stage. I screamed with glee “is it 2:00?!?!?”. No. It was only 1:32. We still had a half hour left and we were out of ideas to entertain this drunken crowd.

I’d say the highlight of the night was when we wrote a reggae song ON THE SPOT while we were on stage and the entire crowd was singing along. It made me feel very wanted. I felt very wanted until someone came up during our cover of Creep and started pulling the wires out of the microphones. We were thrown off stage. The last song ever played at this bar was our cover of Creep after ten fucking years. Lame. Anyway, being pissed I started yelling “fuck you” or “fuck your mom” or some shit into the crowd, turned my amp up to 10 and faced my guitar up to it.

Later on we stole some cool stuff from the walls including a sick Marlboro clock that doesn’t work but we will fix. Right now everyone is in the motel room and I just keep hearing “we’re all naked.” You can’t imagine how much I do not want to go in.

Virginia sort of

Right now its about 4:30 and I’m in a Motel 6 in North Carolina. It’s a lot harder to remember to update this shit when you’re fast asleep in a crowded van driving across state lines because the motels that claim they have vacancy are entirely full of shit and those people who offered you a place to stay… well… you’re just stupid and you didn’t feel like having a place to stay for free. You took your chance with the motel and you got fucked.

I got a call at 10:00 AM yesterday morning stating “hey, Jeff, I’m still packing. Its all good.” Sincerely, Dave Dickerman (who is now snoring largely in a bed adjacent to me). I get a call at 10:08 with Dave yelling “I can’t do everything by myself.”

“Well, what can’t you do, maybe I can help.”

“I need you to get the insurance paid.

“I need you to get the oil changed on the van

“I need you to pick up everyone in the van

“I need you to do everything I was supposed to do.”

Bummer. Needless to say we got on the road very late, for the biggest part of our international tour… the part where you don’t come home for a month… the part where you cram your twin sized mattress in between two seats of your van in an effort to fashion some sort of a bed.

We knew we were very late after rush hour traffic had hit because we were still in Jersey just crossing over into Delaware. We needed to be the show in about two hours. We were all pretty hungry because we woke up early to sit around and do nothing all morning except for wait for shit to get done, but most importantly at 5:30 in the afternoon Bove has to urinate. So he wakes up to urinate and Dave refuses to stop. JT and I have to go really bad so eventually, Dave pulls over at the Delaware Tobacco Outlet or something. Those of us who chose eating over buying cigarettes lost out. Those of us who chose buying cigarettes over getting a bladder infection or basking in malnutrition for seconds longer were treating to a nice surprise. Marlboro Blend No. 27 cartons for $12. I kid you not. Twelve to the motherfucking to the dollars.

We got back in the van, Dave drove some more, for some reason JT put Aerosmith’s Get A Grip on the stereo and I know when we were kids we all thought that album was the shit, but it is totally fucking lame when you hear it now. Bove and I set up the laptop so we can have high speed internet access (14.4 kbps, yeah, that’s right) and video games (Nintendo, super Nintendo, genesis, arcade, Atari, yeah, that’s right). Played some video games, slept a little, played some more video games.

We crossed the longest bridge in America. 18 miles. Think about how big that fucking bridge is. Yeah.

Get out the strawberry condoms, because it’s a 21 and up show and everyone’s gonna try to get laid! We get to the show and its at this fucking pizza place/bar and its awesome. Everyone’s having a good time, the guys in Jackmove are extremely nice (less on that later, I’ll just cover it now, Jackmove are fucking great, one of the better ska bands I’ve heard in a while, check them out when you get a chance), and we get inside to set up our equipment in an area that is about 3 Dave Dickermans wide and 2 Dave Dickermans long. Bummer.

During the first two minutes of our set JT lost his AC adapter and my guitar strap broke. Another bummer. Jackmove gave me a telecaster to go on with and we had a pretty fucking good time. Some girl hit me in the head with a glass of beer and I didn’t really feel it then, but the day after it looked kind of bad. During “Piss Off” my rant involved me walking into the audience and drinking other people’s drinks. Everyone fell in love with Dave.

We sold some CDs. Ate some pizza. Watched an excellent Jackmove set. Drank some more. Hung out with some cool girls. Eventually it was time to go which brings us up to the now. For some reason, popular opinion was that it isn’t better to stay somewhere for free, its better to stay at a Motel that’s an hour awake but is kind of on the way (which it wasn’t either of those). We get there and try to park Big D’s trailer for a half an hour. NOTHING. I slightly miss the drunk guy outside of Chichos in Virginia Beach screaming at the top of his lungs and breaking bottles over his face. Joe offers to just drive to North Carolina for the show today where we can get a motel and relax all day. I say okay, do a little panic attack, take some few pills and fall asleep next to JT on the aforementioned shitbed.

I wake up to “I can’t believe the size of the shit I just took on the side of the road.”

I later wake up to “blah blah blah…. Waffle house…. Blah blah”

Waffle HOUSE? We get out and eat some good ass breakfast for pretty cheap and then make way to the Motel 6 we’re at right now who will soon lack pillows. SWIMMING POOL. Hell yeah. We jumped in even though it was freezing. JT laid out in the sun for about 4 hours and got burnt. Me, Joe and Dave went into town, got some Taco Bell and I finally found a store that sold Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. I could have bought some food with that money, but fuck it.

DAY OFF

I bought the new Tomahawk CD and a few books. The new Tomahawk CD is pretty fucking good.

Jersey

OK, its kind of hard to realize if anything funny is going on when you're buried in the back of the van under a blanket, two pillows, a sweatshirt, a jacket and 300 shrink wrapped CDs trying to ignore the emo and read Reefer Madness. So this update is going to suck.

Show was great. Stumpy and Tri-State Punk were great. The kids were great. The Superspecs were great. Everyone else was great. It was a great fucking show. We showed up on time. We got fed. We played songs. I gave the greatest Piss Off speech of my life.

Oh yeah, the door guy there was probably the most sour person I've met in my entire life. He was yelling at me and Math for leaving through the back door. We said 'we're sorry" and he said "NO! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT'S OK? HUH? WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?" I think he wanted to fight me. Earlier in the day I apologized for possibly being asshole and he just kept saying "relax, ok? just relax." Jesus, man. Lighten up! The sound guy lightened up towards the end of the day, but I thought he was gonna punch me in the face after our set.

We did another interview where I sounded like an asshole.

I learned that Bove urinates only once a day. Dave also tried to inhale a cigarette without putting his lips on it and he looked like Kirby. YEAH, isn't it fun to recap a day where you slept, drove, did an interview, played a show, ate, tried to sleep, drove home? Just think how many more of these we have coming up. I assure you these will be better very soon.

MONSON, MASSACHUSETTES

If this was a book I feel like this would be Chapter 2 in the book, so I guess it is considered the second day of tour. Of course, there's a lot to be said about prologues to books and stuff. So this might be Chapter 1 and the Long Island post would be the Prologue, or the Introduction. Anyway, this was our first out of state show on this string of shows that will lead us all the way to back here where we started. Well, back there were we started. Not Monson... Long Island.

I woke up a little early considering what time I went to sleep last night. I had to take care of some stuff, our record label dropped off some more pins for us and I did an interview with Jersey Beat magazine in New Jersey where I sounded like a pretentious asshole and ending with a very paranoid quote that I will hope some day is used as a yearbook quote by some fucking idiot who thinks me saying "don't trust the american media" is more important that 1,000 media theorists and modern philosophers stating the same thing.

We arrived at the rendezvous point extremely late... Math and Mike were still asleep at Math's house I guess from a busy night of making out with each other or something. I was at Sean McCabe's house convincing his mom to let him fly out to Florida so he can tour with us by flaunting my nice GPA for the semester and acting responsible. And saying he can only drink two beers a day. Load in time was at about 5:00... maybe 5:30 if I'm giving us any credit whatsoever. But since we're assholes, probably not. By the way, any future promoters reading this, we usually show up on time, especially for tour shows because we're not coming from Long Island.

At about 5:30 PM we are roughly 6 exits into Connecticut. Fuck.

We get out at a rest stop because its rush hour and it really makes no difference if we're on the road or not so we can switch drivers. Nothing very interesting happened there. I guess that the most interesting thing was that one of those fucking little bags of chex mix (not the littlest one, but the size about that) was $2.29. I gave the cashier such a "no thank you sir!"

I got out of the empty back space with the CD boxes to hop up front and drive a bunch. We get to one exit and I think we're there, but we have to drive another 60 more exits to another exit when I once again think we're there but then we have to drive another 60 more exits. Then the numbers went up and down by large increments simultaneously. Confused? ConFUZEd.

yesterday i said that this tour was this first day of my adult life, y'know, trying to do this as a career.

POINT OF ORDER NO. 1: Math bought a clicker because Kevin Gunther had one to count how many people were at a given show. JT took this counter to find out how many SARS jokes were told on the van ride up. The SARS count was an unprecendented 1120 jokes in about three or four or five hours. I believe SARS has officially replaced "the" and "that" in the dictionary of ASOB.

POINT OF ORDER NO. 2: Reggie And The Full Effect's "Apocalypse Wow!" came on while I was driving and everyone in the van started moshing. Everyone, including Joe who was sitting shotgun. We repeated the song for about a half an hour, ten minutes of just "lets get it on!!!" and everyone crammed onto a bench seat to beat the shit out of each other.

We finally got to the show which was in the middle of nowhere and in a log cabin. It was awesome lookin'. I told the band earlier to ask for food at every show because there is no way we can afford $8 a day to feed all of us. They said no one would give us food. Well today, thanks to Laura, the kind woman doing something at the American Legion for the show other than selling snacks I'm sure, gave us FREE CANDY! We ate candy all day and all night. It was breakfast lunch and dinner. Before Bove at his last Twix, he said "Goodbye, candy."

What a fun fucking show, a great way to get out of state. Tomorrow's New Jersey, maybe I'll stop doing this thing at 4:30 so I can write more stories.

Take care.

LONG ISLAND

first day of tour. first day of me being an adult. anyway... here's the quick recap because I have to wake up early tomorrow.

- Around 400 people were at this show I believe and we were the headliners. And it was a school night. Wow.

- We plan on playing and recording "People Pops and Fudgesicles for the Hit Factory" to put it on the website before we leave for tour, but certain people refuse to play it unless it is picked out of the hat. We yell back and forth for a half an hour, come to no conclusion, play it at sound check and realize that we can't really play it well when Joe won't play the guitar. Thanks Joe.

- VIDEO PREMIERE PARTY. The video gets eaten. Yep. That's right. The video gets eaten as we're testing the tv.
conversation. JT: I didn't know that was the vcr that eats tapes.
someone else: You just called it the vcr that eats tapes.
We're frantically looking for another copy, eventually we get one with lesser sound quality but just as much love.

That's all that happened that was crazy. There were just so many people there, and it was a great way to leave home feeling like some people might even want you back when you're done with tour. I'm really tired right now but I just wanted to get this up here to keep the documenting well. Lets see how long I can keep this up when we're actually on the road.

Oh yeah, we went to Bennigan's afterwards and ordered their cheapest bottle of champagne to celebrate such an insane night. So many people. Wow.

Queens

Not out of state, but still noteworthy for two reasons.

part one: why i wish i was in premarital sax
Our friend Neil from PMS came with us today... I think it was to watch merch, or at least that's just what we disguised it as, but we knew that he has a beard and is funny. After raiding the Go-Kart coporate headquarters for the Terror Firmer soundtrack and Cinema Beer Nuts DVD, we played some songs. Afterwards I know that Joe and Neil both had markers and everyone was outside beating each other up, trying to hold each other down while writing certain things in Sharpies on certain people's hands. "I have AIDS." "AIDS". "SARS". et cetera, follwed up by many "dude that's not cool"s. Neil was not writing on once because he is very wiry and can slip through your hands when you try to hold him down. Eventually everybody got on top of him and held him down on the side of Metropolitan Ave. while he is screaming "help me! help me!" and while everyone else is screaming "fuck you! fuck you!". Then the "fuck you"s stop. Why? Because police officers showed up at the scene. Of course, with five people on top of him, Neil can't hear these officers, so as we all quiet down all we can hear are the shouts of Neil screaming "SICKLE CELL! SICKLE CELL! SICKLE CELL! SICKLE CELL!" damn.

part two: why i'm glad i'm not in sprout
JT had a bit too much to drink. Coronas. Liquor. Jack. Coke. Whiskey? Southern Comfort? I don't know but right now he is passed out on my bathroom floor with toast on the sink, a half empty bottle of water next to him, a motel 6 pillow and a blanket. JT ran around the inside of our van a lot after the show, screaming, shouting. Being an obnoxious drunk in a confined area. Damn. As we are pulling out of the venue he shouts "I hate you Queens. You're all poor! You're all poor! Get jobs! You're all poor!" out the window. 15 minutes later he shouts "um... i left my jacket at the venue." Math did his usual "no, i checked for your jacket and its not there" but JT wasn't havin' it. We went back and JT found his jacket but couldn't find his cell phone. He left himself two voicemails screaming "what the fuck is wrong with you, JT? You got drunk at a Queens show and you're so stupid that you lost your cell phone. Its you. Call me back." and so on. Eventually when someone drinks too much they pop. JT popped his body out the passenger side window and started dry heaving and eventually vomiting. I pleaded with him to please exit the new van before vomiting but he wasn't hearing any of that. At one point, we were in the middle lane of traffic with JT hanging out the window, vomiting on other cars as well as our van. Chunks on our windows were clearly visible. Streaks. So much. We pull up to my house, Dave suggests leaving JT in his car without his keys as we go out. I tell JT if he wants he can throw up in my bathroom. Eventually he is on my front lawn screaming as my neighbors are taking out the trash, while dry heaving. After coming downstairs I hear JT screaming "HA HA YOU'RE DEAD HA HA YOU'RE DEAD" at himself in the mirror and often screaming into the sink. He was so drunk that he was crying. It was pretty funny. Then he threw up and got sober. The rest of us were already sober, but I guess we were kind of tired of hearing him scream ASOB song lyrics in order to stay awake. Now he's asleep in my bathroom, and who knows what the morning holds for him.

That's all I've got. See ya here in a week or two.

Connecticut

Fun out of state show today. Super super super fun. Sean McCabe fun. What I did today with extra super blatant hypenation action:

- Chugged beer outside our van at a Mobil because we are not allowed to drink in the new van due to the law (although i'm sure the law says that you can't drink outside, especially if its not brown paper bagged and you're littering).

- Showed up at the venue only to find that:
-- It was at the Hellen Keller Middle School basically
-- Kids who were not in grades 9 - 12 were not allowed to go.
-- There was a:
--- ping pong table in which math and joe played dave and sean (i believe those were the teams) in doubles ping pong. talking to dave outside he was drenched in sweat and said "dude, i just played 7 intense games of ping pong... that's why i'm sweating.
--- pool table
--- video game console center containing tony hawk 4, which i beat bove's ass at
--- air hockey table
--- foosball table

- I saw some cool people including the Blind Luck people, Ethan from our label and we met the Folly guys who were really really nice even though I thought that they'd be really really scary because their band is really really good.

- Sold our 200th copy of the new reissue of the CD

- Performed songs. Right. Here's where it gets a little wacky. We've stopped doing that whole lame "wait until the show starts to play" bullshit that we did for a little while to feign some sort of professionalism. Today we opened up with "Raining Blood" by Slayer (from the album reign in blood) then we did an instrumental version of "People Pops And Fudgesicles for the Hit Factory". It was definitely a fun show... we decided to cover "Walkin' on Sunshine" off the tops of our heads today and it wasn't a very good idea. I don't think it would have been had we learned it before hand anyway. So we go through our routine, yadda yadda, NOBODY IS DANCING AT ALL, fuckin' connecticut kids, man, SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE. I shook a little too much today. During "Piss Off" I took the most hilarious fall possible. I'm running around doing whatever, and I fell on my ass, like better than a banana peel slip. I was really scared that I seriously injured myself because I couldn't stand for the next few minutes... played the sax part on the ground, sang the rest on Dave's back. The set ended in a sea of cacophony which we've started doing moreso recently like we used to. That makes me cool.

- Got a first class massage and a good dose of SARS jokes. other jokes too... we won't talk about those.

Nothing too interesting happened today for you guys, but I had a fucking blast just haaaaaaaangin'.

5.11.03: Massachusettes

I'm trying really hard to not get backlogged here. This update will not be funny although this is possibly the funniest thing we've ever done as a band. However, I want to just get the story over with so it is going to be told like a guy who is trying to get through telling a girl a story so he can get laid. So let's get laid.

We show up to this show, pile out of the van, and our record label is there. We start arguing with each other about my sickness (by this day of tour i was wicked wicked sick), everyone's smoking habits, everyone's sleeping habits, my inability to sing. Bove said something to me and I just lunged at him and punched him in the face. Bove tackled me to the ground with all his pearlikeness and started choking me.

the night prior we decide that we should "punk" our record label, because, yknow that ashton kutcher mtv commodity... and how he always shouts "you got PUNK'd". so we said, kill normals been good to us recently... lets make them think that all the hard work they've put in is nothing because we're breaking up.

Everyone steps back for a second from the fight, I start screaming at everyone and saying that they're all a bunch of dicks. Bove spit on the van. I sit down alone on the ramp outside the Flywheel as label people both come up to me and I start talking to them and saying "no, this isn't a bullshit fight... i can't deal with these fucking assholes, there is just no way i can do it. They smoke all the time, I lose my voice because of it... how are we supposed to do this for 30 days if we can't do it for 3.... we can't stand each other." Stuff to that extent. For a while. When certain band members pass me by, I give them evil stares. When my "allies" pass me by, we talk about my problems. Eventually we are all outside and I made the announcement.

"Guys. I can't deal with Bove's bullshit anymore, and its not just that. I can't stand all the smoking all the time. I can't stand the way we all fight with each other. I can't sing for more than 3 days. You guys can keep doing this if you want, but for me, after May 29th, the video release, it is over. And its not cool if you play all the songs that I wrote. We can't do this anymore."

I swear the label guys (Ethan and Dan) looked like they just shat themselves. Finally I shouted "Kill Normal Records... YOU JUST GOT PUNK'D" Saliva. Screaming. Shouting. Totally. Ashton. Kutcher.

The rest of the show went pretty well, i can't remember it too well... i had to try and write a final paper on the way home and no one including Sam the Blind Luck merch girl who apparently reads books and our record label guys who we hope would be geniuses in financing and other areas as well had any fucking clue what the paper was supposed to be about. I was fucked. That's the story.

oh yeah. at one point dan kill normal said "make a set of rules, make 100 xeroxes and put them all over the van so they don't fuck with you." ha. ha. haha.

The saga continues...

5.10.2003: Maine

We wake up to get in the van to drive to Maine. MAINE. Maine is far as hell away, dudes. Stopped off at a Denny's too. Clever as everybody is, they told the waitress that it was my birthday, and they gave me this really awesome brownie thing that I was too full to eat. Sons of bitches. Oh yeah, when the waitress brought Mike a courtesy glass of water he said "Where's my Sprite?" in the rudest voice I've heard in a while. Grand Slam breakfast $2.99, when you can't go Waffle House, Denny's is a good enough alternative.

Five state drive pretty much. You know you're fucking far as hell away when the road signs start reading kilometers as well as miles because you're so close to Canada. That was pretty cool. By this point I was pretty sick, and that was not cool at all. I learned how to drive the new van with my thumbs so I could put my feet out the window if need be. We pull up to the club and its on the water... the scenery is too nice for punk rock. I spent a while sitting on the rocks writing songs in my head. Some of the other guys went to a video game store in town. The door stop to said video game store was a Mario Bros./Duck Hunt game that had a post-it on it that said "nobody loves me." That's pretty cool.

We played the show and a lot of people gave us a problem about picking up the CD, not because we were bad, but because it is too capitalist to have CDs and sell them. This was the first show full of young serious punk rockers that we've played in a few years, so it was nice to be able to argue with kids about something other than "you don't know who fugazi is?" Someone didn't buy a CD but wanted an autograph. I didn't get it so I wrote "Please excuse my daughter from gym class. She has SARS. - Mr. Jeff" There was also one or two old people at this show that bought our CD... like older than middle aged old. That's pretty damn old.

Dave was outside spinning bottle caps off of water bottles and we were all hanging out with the Skeptics until eventually it was time to leave. Where did we go? Another Denny's. No free dessert this time, just Math complaining about us not eating at the KFC which was closed. Two Denny's in a day... WOW. A bunch of kids from the show were at the Denny's including Nick, the promoter and some others... it was fun sitting somewhat near these people. It was just bizarre being all the way up in Maine. At some point we realized that we needed to get close to Masachusettes 'cause the call time was early for our Mother's Day show.

We drove for hours and hours and hours, switched seats a bunch of times, got into a bunch of fights, lit a lot of socks on fire, heard a lot of crappy Thrice songs, froze our asses off from the temperature change and lo and behold we were at a Motel Six in Springfield, MA. All I wanted to do was sleep because I was sick. Me and Dave went to get the room and the guy behind the front desk thought that we were gay, and going to the motel to fuck. I gave him the dirty kissy face (think Heather Graham in the limo scene in Boogie Nights before she beats the shit out of the frat guy) nonchelantly [sp?]. Anyway, we got the key, I jumped in the shower, jumped into my floor sleeping zone and pleaded with the rest of the band to be quiet so I could sleep a little bit before the show tomorrow. They were not talking. They were LISTING every wrestler they could think of. Eventually we made an agreement: They would be quiet if I played a trick on the record label tomorrow...

We just got back... is this kind of lame that i post these when i get back and not while we're on the road? I'll try and capture the moments... on our big tour we'll have computers and chicken wire.

5.09.2003: New Jersey
[phone rings]
RECORD LABEL: Hello.
MATH: Hey, what's the number of Tri-State Stage [sic]
RECORD LABEL: Don't tell me you're gonna be late.
MATH: That is the case.
RECORD LABEL: You guys are such dicks...

So we got a new van recently that runs. We drove like 950 miles this weekend and it didn't die once. We feel like we're living in the lap of luxury: econolines and motel sixes. We get to the show and to our happiness there are lots and lots of kids there. And as we're loading out someone says: "um... can you guys go on now?" he doesn't say "instead of later on, after the band that everyone is here to see, which isn't you guys, later on when no one will be here except for blind luck music, andy from your label and that homeless guy." So we're playing New Jersey for like hundreds of people, completely unexpected. And what breaks? My guitar. Over. And Over. And over. AND OVER AGAIN. We did our best to cover it up and I think we did alright.

I sat merch from when we got off stage until pretty much the end of the show... met some really cool people including Blind Luck Music who are on our label and we've never met before, and double including BLM's merch girl Sam, who decided it was an ass/legs day and wore a skirt with fishnets and a garter. The awesome things these people do to sell rock and roll. I wish I had cleavage and an ass people wanted to look at. Then I could owe my record label less money.

We decide to drive to Massachusettes and stay with our record label. Our record label disagrees, so we drive to a Motel 6 stopping off at a rest stop where there is nothing vegetarian to eat so I am stuck with a stale bagel and apple pie. Outside, Math and I engaged in the first eevr apple pie fight. At 3:00, 3:30 we get a Motel 6. We call beds, call showers, call shits et cetera. We tried rolling a blunt with a page from the bible but we forgot which page you're supposed to do it with so we decided if we're gonna be sacreligious we should wait until we know how to do it properly. We ended up smoking a pretty good blunt in the bathroom while Math was outside (he don't like that stuff). Then we pissed and farted around and talked and told jokes until it all became Dave reciting entire Homestar Runner skits and me shouting for him to shut the FUCK UP BECAUSE I WANT TO SLEEEEEP. Math was apparently outside masturbating in the van. Everyone sleeps, wakes up, eventually I wake up because there is a free spot on the bed. I get back into the bed and sleep some more until at some point we steal a bunch of pillows and get out of there.

...the rest of the weekend coming soon!

Finally, a few hours to do this nonsense...

Pittsburghish
Our van has been broken about every other week, so of course it had to fall on a day that we needed to make a 500 mile journey. In the morning Dave and I went to Vantastic to rent a van and realized that although Joe had said he'd reserved a van, he hadn't done anything of the sort. Boner. Luckily they had a van. They had a 2004 Dodge Ram. They had a 2004 Dodge Ram with about 200 miles on it. We were the first or second drivers. SWEET.

At some point in the long trip we started making sampler CDs for the show (oh yeah, the show was with Mustard Plug and Big D). The night before, Dave and I had made about 40 or so CD-Rs, I wrote some information on them, Bove and Joe folded up pieces of looseleaf from Mike's notebook, we all drew some cover art and Voila! the "econo-sampler" was born. By the time we were done, we were already at the show.

Here's some info: The owner of the venue's wife is in the band Rusted Root. Wacky, huh? The venue was also on the steepest hill I had ever seen, it was literally 45 degrees. We were highly considering losing our $100 insurance deductable and pushing the van over, watching it topple into 15 fancy BMWs and SUVs, and finding some other way home. Instead we took Bove's bass case and rode it down the hill. Fair enough.

Me and Math were walking to get cigarettes and some girl shouted to us, "Do you like dick?" Math said, "No." took a basketball from kids who were playing, backed up as far as he could and threw the ball right into the hoop. Swish. It was the most impressive 15 seconds I've seen in my entire life.

In Like Flint were probably the nicest guys we've ever played with... They set us up with this awesome show at this awesome venue. The backstage area was STUPID. You walk up a bunch of stairs make a left turn at the KITCHEN (for your personal use) go into the room with the PIANO and FOOD if you're hungry and go sit down on the AWESOME COMFORTABLE COUCHES and watch TV after going into the PRIVATE BACKYARD and getting a drink from your FREE KEG OF BEER. WOW. Wow. Wow.

I think the show went reasonably well for the amount of kids who never heard us before. I thought it was gonna be like 500 people for the Plug and the Table but it wasn't, which was cool because we got to have more fun. After the show I went to sleep in one of Mustard Plug's beds, Joe went to sleep in the van, Dave fell asleep watching TV and Math played cards with Mike. Our lives really don't change much when we're on the road.

The drive back was really rainy, but the van was SO FAST. It was awesome. I went about 95 MPH easily for much of the trip.
Math: OK, you be Adam, I'll be John.
Me: OK, so I'm Adam?
Math: Yes, I'm John.
-------
Math: OK, you do a better John than me. And a better Adam then me.
Me: Keep singing, motherfucker.
Math: Ok, you be Chris and Rog, I'll be no one.

Massachusettes
You can imagine my surprise when a van pulled up at my house to take us to Massachusettes. Our van is broken. But it pulled up nonetheless, and our van is a conversion van. That means we can drink in it. Alright. It was before dark too, so I was allowed to drink. Somewhere along the lines, Math decides he wants to give Dave a full body manjob (for those unfamiliar with the term, go fuck yourself). Math took off all his clothes but his underwear and Dave even took off his shirt. Math then took of his underwear, put a tube sock on his penis and started rubbing against Bove. I thought it would be funny to rip the sock off. It wasn't. Math sat in the van (danced in the van) for about an hour completely naked. It was something no one wants to see.

We get to the show... we have to go on first and run because we have a show later that night which was kind of upsetting because I was having a really good time. The kids were enjoying themselves, there were a bunch of kids there and we finally got to see our record label people again. But alas... we had to get off the stage and leave immediately. Boner.

We get to the Badfish show later that night at Tammany Hall and no one is there but a few drinkers, Badfish and the sound guy. None of them seemed too interested in rocking either. Here are some things that were said/done to make these people love us even more.
- "Get your fucking faces out your fucking beers and fucking dance you motherfuckers"
- Using a minute between songs to drink beer and swallow very loudly on the microphone.
- Explaining a cover song a song that you wrote while you were in the hospital afraid of dying for 4 weeks.
- Asking "what would you like to hear"? Hearing "Grateful Dead". Responding "OK, this is a Grateful Dead song called 'rocketrocketrocketship'". Its not a Grateful Dead song.
- "Thank you for sitting there and watching the TV during our performance, we really appreciate it."
- Pretending to learn an Offspring song for about one minute on stage and then playing an original instead.
- Insisting your set originally contained more Sublime songs but you can do it with Badfish standing right there.
- [conversation follows]
Dave: We're from New York, but I hate the Yankees.
Jeff: Shut up you fucking liar. You have a poster of Derek Jeter on your wall. You love the Yankees. You look at that poster and you touch yourself.
- Pronouncing the town name: "War-ses-ter" (worcester, pronounced wooster)
So as you can see, everyone LOVED us. We actually sold a lot of CDs for the small amount of people there, and we made friends with a cool girl named Jen from New Orleans who kept buying us drinks (it was past nighttime, so I was disallowed). Even though we poked fun at everyone, BADFISH were really really accomodating, extremely helpful and just all around nice guys, way nicer than us. The Nine were also really really cool. Its interesting playing so far out of your environment and realizing that if you're all in bands, its really all the same.

Everyone was drunk on the ride home except me and Math. Maybe Bove. When we stopped off at a rest stop it literally seemed as if Dave was rolling around trying to knock things over. All I know is that I was pissing, Joe got behind me and I said "get the fuck away from me or I will fucking end you," and Dave somehow got a broom to throw at me. When Bove came up to me after I was done I started hitting him with a broom until he held up a picture of Jesus that he found somewhere. WHAT?!

We got out of Massachusettes and got home. The end.
Hope that wasn't too boring.

thanks to everyone who came out to our shows! hope to see you real soon!

I am writing you from much colder Oneonta than earlier today. The show today was really cool, sorry we couldn't be there too.

Stumbling out of our van (stumbling is an underestimation) I was pumped for the show, because if there's anything to get pumped for, its the show. Right, motherfucker? Right.

So we get outside and the van won't start. Turn the key. Chug chug click. Turn the key. Click.
METHODS OF FIXING:
1) Asking a few kind people for a jump. nope.
2) Opening the hood. that solved nothing.
3) Calling Baltrus. Joe's dad. VALENTINO. Triple A. They said they would be there in an hour. Thanks.
4) Trying to find the problem.
a) Sliding under the van and hitting the starter with the hammer. At some point we decided it was the starter that was wrong.
b) Sliding under the van and hitting the starter with the hammer even harder.
c) Joey sliding under the van and hitting the starter because Mike is a pussy.
d) Hitting everything with a hammer.
5) Bypassing the starter by trying to hotwire the car.
6) Running into the back of the van as fast as possible hoping that the van will start moving.
7) Turning the key.
8) Hitting the roof like the Fonz.

None of that worked. We called AAA back after all of our failed attempts. It turns out they weren't sending a tow truck. They just figured we would fix it. Why would call and ask for a tow truck if we didn't want a tow truck? Apparently they have a new reverse logic at AAA where yes means no and straight means John DeDomenici. So we finally got in touch with them and they said it'd be a little bit before we would get a tow truck down there.

"GOOD" WAYS TO PASS THE TIME WHEN AT A HESS STATION FOR 2 AND A HALF HOURS.
- Eat every hot dog in the gas station. Then buy a 10 pack of hot dogs and put them on the grill.
- Suggest we all buy 40 ozs of Milwaukee's Best, drink them quickly, and beat the shit out of each other.
- Suggest we go shot for shot in the teeth with a hammer.
- Hitting everything with your only tool, a hammer.
- Trying all kinds of beef jerky.
- Finding how much money you can earn by masturbating into a cup in the public bathroom.

After all these ideas, we were bored. AAA called us up and said "we can only take two of you out of here". We said "that's great, we're two people."
(hidden secret: we had six people)
SOLUTION! Joey suggested that he, John, Joe and Mike hide in the back of the van under the blankets and equipment as it is risen onto the flatbed and driven roughly 50 miles to Oneonta on the back of a tow truck. Mike gets the winner award for sitting in the very back, in a small ball in between all the equipment. They were not allowed to move. Tada! We're two people. Me and Dave.
BUMMER! I shut the windows for some reason and everyone claims they almost got carbon monoxide poisoning. I claim I almost got creepy poisoning from sitting next to a salivated sleeping Dave and a 50 year old father of three telling me how cool the Rolling Stones are these days.

We left our van somewhere with a note on it asking them to please not tow us. What a tour. What a show. Too bad we didn't make it. Till next time!
piss off.

Hey, fellas. We have arrived in SUNNY Oneonta to pick up our bass player, John, for the evening. One night stand. And I said SUNNY, not SUNY. That's right. Its fuckin' WARM. ITS NOT FREEEEEEEZING.

So last night was mad cool. It is a lot of fun when you meet strangers one night and the next morning their mom is making you pancakes while you're staggering around trying not to vomit and you become best friends with people you never met before. Pretty cool.

Joey said he'd pay Dave $700 if he hit a deer. Dave didn't hit a deer.

Unspeakable things happened last night. I woke up and I had no hair. Party on, time to go to Syracuse.
piss off.

Whats up friends? We're not friends? Fine. Fuck you.

So we just got done with our CONNECTICUT show. Chris Baltrus once told me how to spell CONNECTICUT correctly. You write "Connect" then you write "I" then you write "Cut". It is quite simple. I'm not really quite sure where I am, but I know its in a house, there is a dog barking and Jessica, Lindsay and Liza are making pasta for Joe. Joe Werfelman. These kind people were kind enough to let us stay at their kind house and they said I could even grab a shower. How kind.

Today started off in typical ASOB fashion, two hours late. Up until a couple of minutes before the show I thought I would be playing the bass guitar. Then out of the blue, Bove (y'know, the bass player, who should be PLAYING BASS) said that he could come. So we took a car and a van up to the Empress Ballroom in Danbury? I think its Danbury. I have no idea where I am.

Instead of saying everything sucked, which it did (everything sucked) I will reflect on the positive moments of the day. We show up at the venue and there are like around 100 kids there. We're thinking, hey this is gonna be a kick ass show. Then everyone left after the local bands (the two opening acts) played. The snare drum in the venue could probably be heard over two children getting murdered by their parents very loudly (but not loudlier than the snare drum). It was good to see our friends in Treephort again, and they actually listened to us when we said "PLEASE DO NOT PUKE ON THE STAGE." They puked in a bucket. In front of the stage. There was a good number of cool people there with punk rock pins and fun hair while we played (well, it wasn't a good number. it was definitely an okay number. so-so) and after a couple of songs it seemed to work. It was the most confusing show ever. Picture these three items:
1) A stage that is literally ten feet off the ground so you cannot quite see the audience.
2) A ceiling that is higher than JT.
3) No ability to hear ourselves on stage.
Besides these three things, I guess the show went kind of well. We made some fans, made some friends and now we're crashing at a house. Maybe this tour journal wasn't a good idea. I read something about Black Flag in the van. Henry Rollins used to sit in the trailer as they were driving to their tour stops because he didn't get along with the van. Isn't that crazy. We all sit in the van. We listened to the new Juliana Theory and it is TERRIBLE GOD AWFUL. It sounds like nu-metal K-Rock crap. And that's about it. Oh yeah, we had people dancing on the stage with us. Now we're at their house. Maybe they'll dance a little later. They can dance while we're sleeping or they can not dance while we're sleeping and lie about it later. I wouldn't know the difference.

Off to the 'Cuse tomorrow. That's right, the 'Cuse motherfuckers.

Hey everyone. Here's the deal. We're going to be touring a lot more in the future, and I figure instead of putting my little bullshit updates on our main page, I'll keep this page for out of state shows so we can be more in depth in our coverage. I know you don't care at all, but I swear, one night you will be totally fucking bored and the next day you will IM me and say "Wow, Jeff, the ASOB site is REALLY COMPREHENSIVE." This has happened with over 30 people who I know personally and I don't know browse my site. So, look forward to posts after shows!