.

You know, sometimes touring is kinda shitty, you miss things, for example, my younger brother's college graduation, or father's day. I can get over missing those, but then when you get sick as shit and can't talk to people, that's when I wish I was home in my own bed not dealing with long fucking drives and the wonderful Arizona heat. I'll probably be better in the next few days and wonder why I was in a bad mood in the first place. I've actually been having a great time. More on the great times later.

Sharks Love Donkey Meat

So much has been happening this past week, not real things, just little happenings. I'll try to start at the beginning.
I moved out of my house, then took a nice eighteen hour train ride to L.A., slept for four hours and went on an eighteen hour van ride to Denver, CO. The next few days went by in a strange kind of blur, and before I knew it we were in Reno, NV, the home of Vegas style living done in a very half- assed way. I'm not much of a gambler so I just watched (almost) everyone else lose their money. Our tour manager made some money, but he's the only one. My time in Reno was spent walking around casinos and eating, they have some great steak dinner deals at many places, and I took full advantage of the deals. Then it was on to S.F. I stayed at my lovely friend's house after the show and went exploring in the city by myself the next day. I took some buses around and got to experience the thrill of being yelled at by a foreign old lady for sitting in a vacant seat, I'm still not sure why she was so pissed at me. Some of the guys came up to get me and we ended up at a nice little jazz club and then got lost trying to find a good spot to look at the ocean, but ended up in an even better spot, it was the best end to a night in San Francisco ever. The there was L.A., nothing too interesting there. Phoenix was sort of exciting. We went to an ASU party, those kids are all pretty much idiots, and they like to prove it. Example. I get yelled at not to fuck up this dude's bathroom, while I was waiting in line, I yell back that I'm not some jackass friend of his that goes around breaking shit in bathrooms for the hell of it. He was a dick, I can't fully explain the situation, I'll just say he was out of line yelling at me, so proceeded to throw cigarette butts in his pool for the rest of the night. Saturday night was spent in San Diego, the show was great, over 2,000 people attended, lots of fun. They had a lot of security there patrolling the area for thugs, but they seemed to spend most of their time harassing the bands. This was the highlight of my entire week; We're sitting on a stairwell talking, two security guys come up and immediately ask for our id's, no hi, how you doing, nothing, just straight to the id's. We get them out, he looks at mine, starts bending and twisting it, then turns to me and says "This is an identification card". I say "yeah, that what you asked for". He then looks at the card again and says "You were born in 1981 and don't have a driver's license?" At this point I should have told the guy to go fuck himself, but I just said yes and told us not to hang out around where we were at, which was actually right outside our dressing room. I was little steamed after this, but what really pissed me off was the fact that there were random kids casually coming into the dressing rooms after bands were done and no security was to be found during any of this. A little frustrating. I also had a craving to watch Escape From Alcatraz after my San Francisco visit, which was filled late Sunday night, that is a fantastic movie, go rent it.

b&BJ's

For the past two years I've been doing a study of things written on the walls in bathroom stalls, and I've come to the conclusion that 97% of people that shit in dirty ass truck stop bathrooms hate George Bush. I'm not going to get into politics because I don't really care all that much, I was just pointing out an observation I made. Also, apparently there is an abundance of men that really need to give blow jobs*, hate Bush, love bj's, interesting.



* I learned this one by reading the walls too.

Back In The Saddle Again

So I'm at home and being the jacjass I am I didn't post a damn thing while I was gone. My goal for the next two weeks before I flake out on writing again is to post my stories from the previous tour. I have a small excuse, my power supply pretty much completely stopped working and if you could see how I have it rigged up right now you would want to send me the $90 for a new one so my house doesn't burn down when I'm not looking. Seriously though, I owe the ones of people that read this an exciting update, and I promise it will be on yor computer screen very soon. As for now, go here and see what I did for six weeks.

Picture Update

A few pictures to entertain, stories to come soon.


Gum wall in San Luis.

My Texas cheese, chili, jalapeno, bacon omlette at 2am, it was great.



How to poop in a dirty bathroom.

Sad.

what?

Orange suckin'.


Myspace deletion.

Help with one of the most complicated things ever, deleting your myspace account.

Smart satanists.

Dance party Orlando.

Week One

After a week of almost all sold out shows I'd say my first week on tour has been a success. I wish some more exciting things would happen because I don't have any stories to share. We're in Texas now, so we'll try to make something happen tonight. That's it, seriously, I've been out of the game for a few months now so I forgot how to find excitement. I'll reharness my powers and get into some mischief.

Putting The Gay Back In Reggae

The summer of 2002 was a great one. I was in no hurry to get back into school, I had a great job, I had not a care in the world. So myself and a friend decided to start a band. It started off as a two piece, myself on drums and the other half of the band played guitar and sang. I can say I was anything but stoked on the project, but then one day it clicked and I had a new love for the band. We decided to name it Rip- Off Halo, maybe because it kind of sounded like Rip- Off Refused, which in hindsight is what we did, but that's besides the point. So we wrote some songs and found another guitarist, things were sounding great, I was having a good time, enough said. We recorded a demo we could sell on our upcoming tour. Now this tour was not just any tour, it was all of our first tour, and to top it off it was with the Americas. So the tour was booked, the merch was made, we did a nice split EP with both bands. A few disagreements were had about the artwork, no big deal we thought at the time. Rip- Off Halo found a bass player days before the tour, we practiced and then we were off. Six guys in a twelve passenger van, all the equipment included; two drum sets, two half stacks, four guitars, a bass amp, two boxes of merch and a pain in the ass pedal board. We were ready to take over the world, we didn't give a shit about anything, lock up your women and children. The tour started in Chico, a good warm up show for a local, supportive crowd. The onto Redding, great response from the crowd, everything was moving along smoothly. The next day was in Eureka, the show was great, Casey played accordion in the street, the cops pulled us over, we slept on a hardwood floor. Day four we headed to Eugene, Oregon. Said Rip- Off Halo singer drove this day (I did all the previous and future driving) he scared the shit out of everyone. The Eugene show looked a little sketchy, it's in a basement, it's raining, it smelled like lentils and burlap. Everyone but the lead singer/ tour booker are reluctant to play at first, but after the show we were all satisfied and had a great time, we drive overnight to Seattle, sleep in a parking lot of a park. I was driving so I had nowhere to lie down, I try the roof of the van, someone else slept in the park, then it started to rain, so we drive to the person's house that is putting on that night's show. He gives us free deep fried seafood, lets us shower and then we head to the venue. This show was supposed to be the climax of the tour, some great bands were on the bill, but we were so into not caring that we just didn't care. We were stoked on the inside, but we were also on our way to takeover the world, so we had to keep cool heads. The show was played, we all had a great time, but ROH singer was getting to be a little distant with all of us. The next show was supposed to be in Portland, but it fell through. We drove to Portland anyway to hang out with some friends and to pick up some other friends at the train station. While I was in the bathroom ROH singer snaps and yells to everyone how he hates this tour and we all treat him like shit, apparently because he had doubts about some upcoming shows not coming through and because we didn't offer enough praise for how awesome the tour was. He asks to dropped off at a friend's house, we gladly do so. The tour is over, he had quit the band, told everyone he couldn't be in a van with us, so we decided that night he would not be continuing our journey home with us. The next morning I call him, no answer, I tell him we are leaving soon. As I'm loading up the luggage he gets dropped off. Then the task of telling him he is not leaving Portland with us is at hand. The tension is thick in the air. I finally break the silence and tell him, " We decided it would be best if you didn't ride back with us." He doesn't argue, just asks for a ride back to his friend's house. The whole ride he's trying to get us to reconsider our decision, we decline many times, drop him off and head home. He eventually found his way back to town after a few weeks and communication between us (the remaining five) and him has pretty much ceased to exist. And that is my story about leaving a lead singer in Portland. As an afterthought, that was still one of my favorite tours I have ever done, maybe someday we'll all get together and finish our world domination, but probably not. Also, don't be a bitch, people will like you better.

On the road again.

In a matter of weeks I will have some new things to write about besides my currently boring working class life as I will be hitting the road with Waking Ashland for the next month and a half. I am pretty excited to be getting out of town and doing what I love best, traveling. I get to sit in a van and play bass for 35minutes a night, I'll be writing about my new adventures as they happen. And to make it exciting I will try and exaggerate every little thing that is even remotely noteworthy. To prepare myself for this tour I have locked myself in my room and been practicing their songs non stop (not really). In actuality I set aside forty minutes a day to play along to the CD, I feel pretty good about it all. Also, if you are up for this challenge, February 9th I will be playing two shows in Sacramento, one with Waking Ashland and one with Number One Gun, so make the trek to Sactown and watch both of them. Here is where I will be after that, come say hi if you want.

Feb 8 San Luis Obispo, CA
Feb 9 Roseville/ Orangevale, CA
Feb 10 Campbell, CA
Feb 11 Anaheim, CA
Feb 12 San Diego, CA
Feb 13 Hollywood, CA
Feb 14 Tempe, AZ
Feb 16 Amarillo, TX
Feb 17 Dallas, TX
Feb 18 San Antonio, TX
Feb 19 Spring, TX (Houston)
Feb 21 Tallahassee, FL
Feb 22 Orlando, FL
Feb 23 Atlanta, GA
Feb 24 Nashville, TN
Feb 25 Charlotte, NC
Feb 26 Baltimore, MD
Feb 28 University Park, PA
Mar 1 Philadelphia, PA
Mar 2 Montclair, NJ
Mar 3 Bellmore, NY
Mar 4 Wilton, CT
Mar 5 Providence, RI
Mar 7 Buffalo, NY
Mar 9 Covington, KY (Cincinnati, OH)
Mar 10 Lansing, MI
Mar 11 Grand Rapids, MI
Mar 12 Downers Grove, IL
Mar 14 Minneapolis, MN
Mar 15 Madison, WI
Mar 16 Milwaukee, WI
Mar 17 Des Moines, IA

In other news, Number One Gun has a song in an upcoming movie, it might come out in America, but I'm not sure, check it out here.

That's all for now.

Wednesday is right now.

I don't know if I'm an idiot, but I don't care, I think my brother is damn funny. I mean, look at the drawing above, genius.

Happy New Year

After a grueling sixteen hours and dealing with this and this we finally made it to the Seattle area to celebrate the new year. The worst part about the second story was we were literally fifty feet from our exit, and this was after having to drive three hours out of the way on snow covered back roads, awesome.