lol "tour diary" joplin

july 26 2k8:

my alarm went off at 12:30 and i rolled out of bed pissed as fuck and ready to drink. shawn rolled up in VAN morrison, our van (hence the horrible pun, it's big, black and has a unicorn on the back, probably not the vehicle you want to be driving with expired tags when you're trying to avoid the police's attention.
) we headed out to CD Warehouse where Erock offered me a free Interpol 7-inch. i replied "fuck that band". everyone in the store stared at me. whatever.

fast forward about an hour: we picked up the rest of our crew (a list and fun facts to follow):
1) Erock: plays bass and currently works for the Obama campaign scaring old people into voting for a black man with his rugged good looks, shot gun tattoo and earrings.
2) Danny: plays drums and used to have problems keeping time because all he thinks is RAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWRRRRR while beating the hell out of his toms
3) Shawn: lead guitar and always shoots down my repeated requests to cover foreigner's "i wanna know what love is"
4) Logan: our dad.

we also took Brandon who's last name i forget. he slept on the floor and had things fall on him. he also gave me some whiskey.

joplin was an hour's drive away. our van lacks air conditioning, so it was unbearable until danny decided to regale us with note by note renditions of his favorite guitar solos while thrashing around the back of the van playing air drums. a lot of it was pantera shit. we listened to the Jaguar Love demo. I made fun of logan for not having the full album yet because i'm an asshole.

about 5:30 we rolled into joplin and to our first stop: Food 4 Less. I guess the place has good prices on alcohol. i'm broke phi broke so i wasn't buying any. i was confused and thought the place was a FOOD MAZE, because of the way the place was set up. basically, the shelves were set up with aisles in the middle and giant ring of shelves around the outside...you know, basically like every other supermarket. I drew lots of attention to our motley cru by exclaiming WHERE'S THE FOOD MINOTAUR???????

people stared at me. shawn thinks it's because i was yelling. i say it's because people in joplin know shit about basic greek mythology.

After we loaded up on drinks, we drove around blasting Q and Not U and getting more stares. danny did every drum fill and i wished he could have serenaded me forever. we finally made it to The Cesspool Castle, which was the most metal house i've ever seen. Danny said it was "gnar as fuck". I have no idea what that means, but everyone i've seen use that term has a big beard and wears mostly black so I assume it's a compliment of some sort that I'll never get (kind of depressing really).

we started loading in and this kid came by on his bike. someone made the mistake of making eye contact with him so he turned around. he was totally a river kid: long dirty blond hair slicked back into a mullet, no shirt, dirty cut offs for shorts, and carried a stick that he had painted STICK OF DEATH on one side and STICK OF DIE!!!! on the other. we later found out from his mom, pissed off that he was hanging out with some shady dudes near a shady van (can we get this lady a trophy for her mad ability to point out the obvious?), that his name was Chicothe. I don't know how to spell it correctly, but it rhymes with Chipotle, which we also ended up calling him behind his back because we're not above talking behind a 9 year old's back.

"hey, do you like my new bike? it's new!", he called out to me.
"yeah. it's really cool." i replied in a surprisingly enthusiastic way considering i hate everyone under the age of 20.
"oh yeah?"
"yeah, bikes are awesome. i've got one back home."
"oh yeah?"
"yeah."
"oh yeah?"
"i just said that"
"oh yeah? well guess what. I HAVE NINE BIKES. DO YOU HAVE NINE BIKES?"
"no. i sure don't." i was slightly confused. "i only have one"
"oh, well i have nine. that makes me better than you. i'm rich. you're poor."


i'm not going to lie, i was proud of this child's ability to pick arbitrary reasons to hate on people.

He basically hung around while we finished unloading. We tried to be nice, acknowledging him occasionally, but not letting him keep us from getting our shit set up in a reasonable amount of time. i barely had problems as he bugged logan since he was a guitar player and Chipotle claimed he was in a rock band with some of his friends, but they didn't play instruments. he asked logan if playing in a band got him chicks. Danny made a classy joke about wanting to bang Logan's sister. Chipotle didn't know what was going on, and started claiming he could do back flips off the stage.

I'm kind of a bad person and wanted him to try because I thought he'd break his neck.

"hey you want to see me do a back flip?"

"not really. you'll hurt yourself", i begrudgingly decided to play the role of responsible adult instead of bad ass awesome nihilist (note to those reading this trying to pick it apart: bad ass and awesome are not redundant. fuck you)

"i can"
"i'm sure you can dude, but if you didn't, i'd feel really bad and your dad would probably beat my ass"
"my dad could totally beat your dad"
"yeah most likely, the only thing my dad did was cheat on my mom and steal money from me" (what? i like being brutally honest with really young strangers)
"do you want my dad to come over and beat up your dad for you since you're like half girl?"

after about ten minutes of him talking about random shit involving back flips and bike tricks and me trying to get my laptop to work with the PA, he ended up giving me some sort of ultimatum of LET ME DO A BACKFLIP OR I WON'T WATCH YOUR BAND.

i was like whatever.

he jumped off the stage and totally didn't do anything resembling a backflip. he kind of just spun around in mid air. i wasn't impressed at all. i scored it a 3.

"HEY DUDE YOU TOTALLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DO A BACKFLIP. I TOTALLY FAKED YOU OUT."
"oh, you got me"
"I'm so much smarter than you"
"oh fuck you, i'm not drunk enough for this". i'm not above swearing at little kids.

people filled into the room. chipotle stayed. we played our set. i don't remember much of it. people seemed into it for once. no major mess ups. it got taped. maybe i'll post a link when it gets up on youtube. during our set, chipotle kept jumping up on stage and stage diving into a crowd that was terrified that they would drop him and get beaten by his probable key ice drinking, hgh infused, mullet wearing riverdad. seriously, this kid was gnar as fuck, whatever that means.

we loaded our stuff back into the van while it rained. chipotle threw his stick of death up against stuff. He saw that we were standing outside
and came up to talk again. fairly uneventful really, until he started spanking logan with his stick of death (SoD added to prevent the inevitable perverted joke)

"hey you should stop that, somebody might get mad"
"don't care"

he kept slapping logan's ass.

"listen kid, could you please not do that?" Logan was speaking in his hank hill voice, so imagine that he later went on to speak about how propane is clean burning.

"hey old dude. i got kicked out of elementary school. want to know why?"
"why?"
"i stabbed a kid in the neck."

yes. he nonchalantly spoke about stabbing a kid in the neck as if he was lying about having 9 bikes.

i'll miss you chicothe, i wish i could watch you grow up into the meth addicted gentleman who will probably spend most of his adult life in a cell for something hilarious that i know you're destined to be!


ps. i also hung out with some guys from iowa. and one of the touring bands sounded just like falcon punch.

on finding out my little brother is actually engaged

why did he have to pick the 4th of july? now i'm going to have to miss hanging out with sweet dudes, awesome barbecues and high fives.

dying alone> quitting my band to marry some girl who will end up divorcing me anyway. still, i should meet "some girl" to see if she'd be down for just hanging with me and my cat.

oh shit it's like i'm fifteen all over again

this band sounds a lot like christie front drive.

i wonder if they could find a band that sounds like boys life so they could put out a split that all the pretentious indie kids will drop a ton of money on.

it's cool, i already have my copy.

hey chris reminder that your new facebook password is your myspace's password now. don't fuck it up.

my life is complete

holy shit merzbow and sonic youth did a collaboration.

i won't pretend that i'm not going to end up jacking off to this shit.

also this picture!:

on finding out my little brother might be engaged

"whatever, steven seagal is in a band"

fox gets me through the tough times.

ATTN: Faux Hipsters/Indie Kids from Springfield

i heard MIA on a trailer for a hollywood movie. one of those action/comedy movies where people run around shooting at each other while quipping not-so-witty comments like boondock saints. you know, the kind of movie bros plaster posters all over their walls with.

since you are all failures for still playing her at parties a year too late. stop. go back to listening to shitty "alt. rock" bands so i don't have to watch you appropriate (read: water down) the subcultures i'm a part of while you pretend you're in the fucking sixties

fuck fake garage rock
fuck yr mopey twee bullshit you have the audacity to call folk music.

and for the love of god stop hating on skinny jeans since me and my friends actually pull it off well.

ps. except for paris, the sixties were a waste of time.

fuck the beatles

at the drive-in was the best band ever

a line in the sand

Fate has thrown down the gauntlet: successfully complete the process of making a grilled cheese sandwhich while drunk.

wish me luck!

here's a list of names i've used for our new song

1. i tried to rip off sigur ros and all i got was this shitty post rock song
2. GO magazine doesn't care about black people
3. i will never get drunk and make out with a girl at a boris yeltsin show again
4. how many scene points do i need to level up?"
5. god we're like a lame not-japanese version of Envy
6. short histories of powerful blow
7. i look pretty awesome in a brown shirt, does this make me a fascist?
8. here's a song about how i'm going to die alone because nobody likes boys who read Foucault.


one post and i'm already out of ideas. maybe i'll just make this blog about weird shit that happens to me at gas stations.