I WALKED OUTSIDE WITH MY HANDS WET AND IMMEDIATELY BALLED THEM UP FREEZING.
IT WAS BITTER ICY DEATH WIND COME AGAIN.
----
I can't believe that I hadn't read Lord of the Flies until now. The writing blows me away. It seems like there is a life lesson in every sentence. And ok, I'll just be honest, I'm only halfway. But it's shaping out so well!
Lord of the Flies is one of several books that I have begun and never finished. But I've gathered them all up and am reading them all in a row. Some of them are: 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, Walden, and several Chuck Palahniuk books. But after I finish those I need to find some more to perk my interests to reach my goal. Any suggestions, you can leave them in the comment box.
I'm going to go try and finish it.
Feb 27, 2008
Feb 21, 2008
by the end of 2008
-Read at least 30 books
-Read the lyrics to every single Bob Dylan song.
-Listen to every single Bob Dylan song.
more goals to come?
-Read the lyrics to every single Bob Dylan song.
-Listen to every single Bob Dylan song.
more goals to come?
Feb 17, 2008
These five: this time
I did not create this for band purposes. But I these past couple weeks have been pretty pivotal for me so I wanted to start there. I will be writing about my experiences in this blog. Conversations I have, people I meet, and places I go. And for me, this is where it kind of starts:
---
I have just returned from being on the band's first "actual" tour. We were gone from February 1st through the 15th. The plan was to be gone 21 days, but this ended up being 14 days and playing about 9 or 10 shows. Even though it wasn't to our expectations, we had an extraordinary time. We traveled and played with Randy Chabot (Deastro www.myspace.com/deastrothetracker), and he became a very good friend of ours, and mine, through this trip. The fallowing is a brief recollection of the entire trip.
The places we went:
Detroit, MI - We went up to Randy's home town for a great show and some amazing home cooking by his mother. He has a very warm loving family, and staying with them was none less than enjoyable. The morning after the show however we were driving to Pittsburg without Randy. He had a show in Detroit that was important for him to play, and the show was paying for him to fly out to Philadelphia (our third show) to meet up with us again in a couple days.
Pittsburgh, PA - We drove into Pittsburgh not sure what to expect. The bar was called Gooski's, and it was on a very quiet, very slanted street. Pulling up we wondered if this was going to be a bust show. The place couldn't have been any wider than 20 feet from the front view. However when we got inside we only then saw how far back the bar ran. It turned out to be a great show. We sold a good amount of merch and made so good contacts in Pittsburgh. Now we had to drive the full length of Pennsylvania through the night to Philadelphia, where Dan's cousin lives. She said we could stay with her.
Philadelphia, PA - Our show in Philadelphia was canceled due to the Super bowl. (oh well we wanted to watch it any ways!) So we stayed in her apartment watching the game and eating pizza. We walked down the street in the fourth quarter to get some "wudder ice" (shaved ice). Luckily there was a TV in the shop and we saw the end of the game. Incredible ending btw. The owner of the shop gave us all free cheese filled pretzels with our purchases (score).
New York, NY - The morning of our New York show we had a couple things to do with the van: power steering fluid was low, and for some reason the gas was really jumpy and the van wouldn't keep going if we weren't pushing down the gas pedal. We deduced that it was a bad batch of gas we had put in. So we filled it up with Premium gas and it was smooth sailing to the big apple.
Our show was at The Knitting Factory. Coincidentally, the night we played, Death Vessel was playing in the upstairs of the venue. He was phenomenal. We felt pretty good about our set too. It was a fun place to play.
Nathan's friend Dan was in town on business and came to the show, and when he found out that we didn't' have a place to stay and might travel through the night again to Baltimore he put his foot down and made us stay in a hotel right next to Times Square. What a nice guy.
That night we walked around in the lights and soaked it all up. We ate some pizza, and then took upon the daunting task of sleeping in the smallest hotel room any of us had ever seen. Besides the bed there was only floor space for two, and the bed held two as well. So seven people were squeezing into two rooms. (did i not mention that PJ flew out for this show? well he did! and as soon as we pulled up to the venue he was directing traffic and protecting our gear. PJ's the man. (he was staying in the hotel with us as well)).
The next morning we all watched Friday the thirteenth on television and then slapped ourselves in the faces because we were in New York City and were watching and movie in a hotel. So we ran outside to find some place to eat. Found an amazing little pizza show just a couple blocks away. We all, from the bottom of our eating hearts, could say that it was "The Best Pizza We'd Ever Had".
Next on our minds was exploring this monstrosity. Randy decided that he wanted to go make fliers and promote some of our future shows. Dan, Nathan, Mark, and I wanted to see as much as possible. So we went our separate ways. The four of us walked down into Grand Central Station and got Metro passes for the day, looked at the map, and decided to first go see Ground Zero. A few of us had never been on a subway, (think just me and mark) so that was fun.
we got there and saw that the aftermath of the Giants Super bowl Championship Parade had just finished, and there were streamers and paper everywhere, covering buildings and the streets. We walked around and saw the statue of liberty, and ground zero. Then we got back on the metro with only a couple hours to spare before we had to leave and went to see Central Park.
In Central Park there was a giant rock structure that we all jumped, climbed, and horsed around on. Got some good pictures there i think. And in the distance we saw the Apple store. Had to take a look.
After we viewed the glass apple house we knew we had to get back to Randy and the van and head to Baltimore. There was still so much more we hadn't seen, so we need to go back.
Baltimore, MA - We arrived in Baltimore at Randy's father's home in Baltimore. He lives out there during the weeks for business. He treated us to McDonald's, and Randy rented The Zodiac. The movie was good, but it was extremely long, I think Randy was the only one who didn't fall asleep.
The next night we had a show in an art gallery. I forget the name of it. Not too many people showed up, but this was our fault. We all still had fun playing. And even brought people in off the streets with our tunes. Those people ended up being our only CD sales funny enough.
We all went out to each in downtown Baltimore, on the bay. It was beautiful. And then once again crashed at Mr. Chabot's abode.
Richmond, VA and Washington D.C.- The next morning we all decided we wanted to see Washington D.C. before heading to our show in Richmond. So we hurried off.
We first saw the Jefferson Memorial, then the Washington Monument, then the Lincoln Memorial and then we had to go. It was a lot of walking.
In Richmond we played the Canal Club. Amazing venue. Great staff. We will deffinately be back. Even if we only played to a couple people.
Jacksonville, FL - After the Richmond show we drove through the night yet again for a ways of 9 hours to Jacksonville, FL, Where it was sunny and warm and we were all too happy about that. The van had given us a little trouble starting to over heat on the way down, but it was fine by the time we parked. And we were fine being in the sun.
We walked down the street to a corner diner. Dave's Diner in fact. The food sucked. But it was good to have food. haha. We needed to find some wifi so we located a Panera via word of mouth and began driving. After only going a little ways however our van began overheating again. And it was fast this time. We pulled over in a parking lot and saw that there was a giant coolant leak on the side of our van. It was gushing out in fact. Desperate to get to the bottom of this we locate the closest mechanic/car shop, which was unfortunately a tire shop with low maintenance mechanics. After wasting our day there and them in the end doing nothing for us, we had to get to the show. So we loaded the engine with water and headed to Murray Hill Theater.
A ton of kids came out to the show. It was an Invisible Children benefit show. Successful for them and us. We made a bunch of money off of merch. And one of the bands scored us not only a place to stay, but a show for the next day in Orlando.
Orlando, FL - Dan and Randy volunteered to be the ones to wake up super early and take the van in to be fixed. we had to cut the leaky line at the radiator, simple, but it took all morning. As soon as they got back to the house we stayed at we had to book it to Orlando for Vision Fest. Put on by none other than Concert Man himself. It was a very successful show for both Randy and ourselves. After the show we drove over to Tampa to stay with Andrea's (mark's gal) family. They blessed us with a nice little pad of our own over their garage.
In Tampa we met up with our good friend Jack Sjogren. He was coincidentally in the same neighborhood, so we walked over and hung out in the hot tub, and watched some flight of the concords. It was great.
The next day, Sunday, we went to Steve Sjogren's new church's first service. Called Coastland. Afterward we went to a house luncheon with some people from the church. Free food is always good food. In the backyard we made ourselves sick on a tire swing and Dan went crazy on a trampoline.
Next that day we wanted to go to the beach. (did I mention that this entire tour was the most ideal vacation?) So we drove an hour East to the Gulf of Mexico. The water was clear, and sky was clear, and the sand was white. It was absolutely beautiful. We got there around 5:30 PM so we were able to watch the sun set on the water. One of the most beautiful sites I've ever witnessed.
Pensacola, FL - We drove to Pensacola for a show at Sluggo's with Early Day Miners. Great guys from Indiana actually. But there was a giant storm and no one came out, haha. Though once again, we made good contacts and made money enough to make it to the next show. After the show we got a hotel that we paid for for the first time on the tour. It felt good to do.
We woke up and watched Species on AMC for a couple hours, and then went out to eat before we drove to Dothan to stay with our now good friend Mike.
The place we chose to eat was Flounders. And i don't think any of us ever imagined that we would eat so much food. We ordered an appetizer of nachos that was litterally (you have to take my word on this) 10 in. tall, and a foot wide. We also all order the Seafood Burger. Incredible burger by the way.
Dothan, AL - We drove to Dothan and crashed at Mike's house. When we woke up we had about six hours to burn, so we played Call of Duty 4 until the last second we had to leave.
The show that night was with Look Mexico at a skatepark. About 40 people showed up, and it was a small room, so it was a fun show.
At this point in the tour we were all sick with colds and low on money. Our next two shows were six hours south back into Florida. And we would be losing that much more money because we had no shows afterward back home. So that night in Alabama we decided to drive home. We drove all night and got in roughly at 11 am. All of us exhausted. We've got some awesome pictures that I will post soon.
For now here are a couple videos. There are a couple more that we recorded that as soon as they surface I'll post. These couple are from a couple shows in Florida:
---
I have just returned from being on the band's first "actual" tour. We were gone from February 1st through the 15th. The plan was to be gone 21 days, but this ended up being 14 days and playing about 9 or 10 shows. Even though it wasn't to our expectations, we had an extraordinary time. We traveled and played with Randy Chabot (Deastro www.myspace.com/deastrothetracker), and he became a very good friend of ours, and mine, through this trip. The fallowing is a brief recollection of the entire trip.
The places we went:
Detroit, MI - We went up to Randy's home town for a great show and some amazing home cooking by his mother. He has a very warm loving family, and staying with them was none less than enjoyable. The morning after the show however we were driving to Pittsburg without Randy. He had a show in Detroit that was important for him to play, and the show was paying for him to fly out to Philadelphia (our third show) to meet up with us again in a couple days.
Pittsburgh, PA - We drove into Pittsburgh not sure what to expect. The bar was called Gooski's, and it was on a very quiet, very slanted street. Pulling up we wondered if this was going to be a bust show. The place couldn't have been any wider than 20 feet from the front view. However when we got inside we only then saw how far back the bar ran. It turned out to be a great show. We sold a good amount of merch and made so good contacts in Pittsburgh. Now we had to drive the full length of Pennsylvania through the night to Philadelphia, where Dan's cousin lives. She said we could stay with her.
Philadelphia, PA - Our show in Philadelphia was canceled due to the Super bowl. (oh well we wanted to watch it any ways!) So we stayed in her apartment watching the game and eating pizza. We walked down the street in the fourth quarter to get some "wudder ice" (shaved ice). Luckily there was a TV in the shop and we saw the end of the game. Incredible ending btw. The owner of the shop gave us all free cheese filled pretzels with our purchases (score).
New York, NY - The morning of our New York show we had a couple things to do with the van: power steering fluid was low, and for some reason the gas was really jumpy and the van wouldn't keep going if we weren't pushing down the gas pedal. We deduced that it was a bad batch of gas we had put in. So we filled it up with Premium gas and it was smooth sailing to the big apple.
Our show was at The Knitting Factory. Coincidentally, the night we played, Death Vessel was playing in the upstairs of the venue. He was phenomenal. We felt pretty good about our set too. It was a fun place to play.
Nathan's friend Dan was in town on business and came to the show, and when he found out that we didn't' have a place to stay and might travel through the night again to Baltimore he put his foot down and made us stay in a hotel right next to Times Square. What a nice guy.
That night we walked around in the lights and soaked it all up. We ate some pizza, and then took upon the daunting task of sleeping in the smallest hotel room any of us had ever seen. Besides the bed there was only floor space for two, and the bed held two as well. So seven people were squeezing into two rooms. (did i not mention that PJ flew out for this show? well he did! and as soon as we pulled up to the venue he was directing traffic and protecting our gear. PJ's the man. (he was staying in the hotel with us as well)).
The next morning we all watched Friday the thirteenth on television and then slapped ourselves in the faces because we were in New York City and were watching and movie in a hotel. So we ran outside to find some place to eat. Found an amazing little pizza show just a couple blocks away. We all, from the bottom of our eating hearts, could say that it was "The Best Pizza We'd Ever Had".
Next on our minds was exploring this monstrosity. Randy decided that he wanted to go make fliers and promote some of our future shows. Dan, Nathan, Mark, and I wanted to see as much as possible. So we went our separate ways. The four of us walked down into Grand Central Station and got Metro passes for the day, looked at the map, and decided to first go see Ground Zero. A few of us had never been on a subway, (think just me and mark) so that was fun.
we got there and saw that the aftermath of the Giants Super bowl Championship Parade had just finished, and there were streamers and paper everywhere, covering buildings and the streets. We walked around and saw the statue of liberty, and ground zero. Then we got back on the metro with only a couple hours to spare before we had to leave and went to see Central Park.
In Central Park there was a giant rock structure that we all jumped, climbed, and horsed around on. Got some good pictures there i think. And in the distance we saw the Apple store. Had to take a look.
After we viewed the glass apple house we knew we had to get back to Randy and the van and head to Baltimore. There was still so much more we hadn't seen, so we need to go back.
Baltimore, MA - We arrived in Baltimore at Randy's father's home in Baltimore. He lives out there during the weeks for business. He treated us to McDonald's, and Randy rented The Zodiac. The movie was good, but it was extremely long, I think Randy was the only one who didn't fall asleep.
The next night we had a show in an art gallery. I forget the name of it. Not too many people showed up, but this was our fault. We all still had fun playing. And even brought people in off the streets with our tunes. Those people ended up being our only CD sales funny enough.
We all went out to each in downtown Baltimore, on the bay. It was beautiful. And then once again crashed at Mr. Chabot's abode.
Richmond, VA and Washington D.C.- The next morning we all decided we wanted to see Washington D.C. before heading to our show in Richmond. So we hurried off.
We first saw the Jefferson Memorial, then the Washington Monument, then the Lincoln Memorial and then we had to go. It was a lot of walking.
In Richmond we played the Canal Club. Amazing venue. Great staff. We will deffinately be back. Even if we only played to a couple people.
Jacksonville, FL - After the Richmond show we drove through the night yet again for a ways of 9 hours to Jacksonville, FL, Where it was sunny and warm and we were all too happy about that. The van had given us a little trouble starting to over heat on the way down, but it was fine by the time we parked. And we were fine being in the sun.
We walked down the street to a corner diner. Dave's Diner in fact. The food sucked. But it was good to have food. haha. We needed to find some wifi so we located a Panera via word of mouth and began driving. After only going a little ways however our van began overheating again. And it was fast this time. We pulled over in a parking lot and saw that there was a giant coolant leak on the side of our van. It was gushing out in fact. Desperate to get to the bottom of this we locate the closest mechanic/car shop, which was unfortunately a tire shop with low maintenance mechanics. After wasting our day there and them in the end doing nothing for us, we had to get to the show. So we loaded the engine with water and headed to Murray Hill Theater.
A ton of kids came out to the show. It was an Invisible Children benefit show. Successful for them and us. We made a bunch of money off of merch. And one of the bands scored us not only a place to stay, but a show for the next day in Orlando.
Orlando, FL - Dan and Randy volunteered to be the ones to wake up super early and take the van in to be fixed. we had to cut the leaky line at the radiator, simple, but it took all morning. As soon as they got back to the house we stayed at we had to book it to Orlando for Vision Fest. Put on by none other than Concert Man himself. It was a very successful show for both Randy and ourselves. After the show we drove over to Tampa to stay with Andrea's (mark's gal) family. They blessed us with a nice little pad of our own over their garage.
In Tampa we met up with our good friend Jack Sjogren. He was coincidentally in the same neighborhood, so we walked over and hung out in the hot tub, and watched some flight of the concords. It was great.
The next day, Sunday, we went to Steve Sjogren's new church's first service. Called Coastland. Afterward we went to a house luncheon with some people from the church. Free food is always good food. In the backyard we made ourselves sick on a tire swing and Dan went crazy on a trampoline.
Next that day we wanted to go to the beach. (did I mention that this entire tour was the most ideal vacation?) So we drove an hour East to the Gulf of Mexico. The water was clear, and sky was clear, and the sand was white. It was absolutely beautiful. We got there around 5:30 PM so we were able to watch the sun set on the water. One of the most beautiful sites I've ever witnessed.
Pensacola, FL - We drove to Pensacola for a show at Sluggo's with Early Day Miners. Great guys from Indiana actually. But there was a giant storm and no one came out, haha. Though once again, we made good contacts and made money enough to make it to the next show. After the show we got a hotel that we paid for for the first time on the tour. It felt good to do.
We woke up and watched Species on AMC for a couple hours, and then went out to eat before we drove to Dothan to stay with our now good friend Mike.
The place we chose to eat was Flounders. And i don't think any of us ever imagined that we would eat so much food. We ordered an appetizer of nachos that was litterally (you have to take my word on this) 10 in. tall, and a foot wide. We also all order the Seafood Burger. Incredible burger by the way.
Dothan, AL - We drove to Dothan and crashed at Mike's house. When we woke up we had about six hours to burn, so we played Call of Duty 4 until the last second we had to leave.
The show that night was with Look Mexico at a skatepark. About 40 people showed up, and it was a small room, so it was a fun show.
At this point in the tour we were all sick with colds and low on money. Our next two shows were six hours south back into Florida. And we would be losing that much more money because we had no shows afterward back home. So that night in Alabama we decided to drive home. We drove all night and got in roughly at 11 am. All of us exhausted. We've got some awesome pictures that I will post soon.
For now here are a couple videos. There are a couple more that we recorded that as soon as they surface I'll post. These couple are from a couple shows in Florida:
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