The last few months of work-work have been extremely productive (re: especially a near-complete redo of the Mark Dion site, which I produced a ton of work for and did all of the building with Lord Whimsy art directing; a game I did some video work on for discoverychannel.com; a Flash project I produced with Hall Media crew), but as my two main, long term office projects both coincidentally end exactly as camp starts, and as our project management and workflow methods have evolved to the point that there isn’t even so much sidebar/cleanup work for me to do anymore anyway, the time to call it a wrap seemed perfect. I enjoy my final Beer Thursday at Lime Projects after the Dion install on the 20th, and what a mighty and beautiful two years it’s been. My infinite thanks and debt and permanent salutes to Laris and Kendra from every desk and city I work at from here out.

In conjunction with leaving my job, I decided it would be productive to move out of the random house and see what’s up in the world. I’ll be in Philadelphia until June 30th and then will be traveling and at camp until the end of August. After that is anyone’s guess. Feel free to contact me if you need work done; pretty much wherever you are I can come to you.

I haven’t worked on very much of public interest since band tour, other than a slow moving book/cd project that documents that move. If you want a copy of it, it’s still in development hell (which really just means done by mid-July), but you can have one for free if you get at me before I print them up. Otherwise, I’m in the middle of a fellowship application for a writing program in the fall (marking the first time I’ve drafted anything in probably four years), and am generally enjoying the early summer via bike/Men’s Group as much as possible before the hot street doldrums and mosquitos roll in and I head out.

In normal totally boring recounting of the week’s efforts news, I spent Wednesday with Lexie at the bar, Thursday in Newark airport with Susy, Friday at my old house on 43rd with Jon and the Team, Saturday with Ben and Mike at the Wiese / D. Charles Spear shows and eventually the train bridge (word to Chris Bee Mask who lives here now and gave me his new killah tape), today at the Magnet City thing downtown and then in my slippers and long weekend yawns. Tonight I’m going to see Matthew from Charlottesville’s band; I guess those kids all live up here or in Brooklyn now.

Horizon items =
- Ospreys / Robedoor / Pocahaunted / Natalie Wiseblood / Woods June 28th.
- Ospreys / Wilde Stallions C60 on wether’s new label
- New book in July before I go, as above
- I will be in New York June 11th-15th on camp/nonsense business
- One or two new website ideas, maybe for sooner, maybe for later

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So yeah. I’ve just been out cruising the old roads, rolling around in my 1995, cruising hard with my hair blowing in my 2003, overdriving a pitched up White Album through some kid’s Peavey in Savannah while my friends think it’s funny to pretend to open the jar they keep their pet Black Widow in. This is a long one with pictures.

Dali king, Tufts Library

Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Yesterday while I was driving to work, local public radio baroness Marty Maas had local public radio mutt Dan Gottlieb on her show and she kept asking him if he was ready to die.

There’ve been oceans of blank these past three or four weeks. I’ve been whiskey-washed and soaked in beer five times over, straight wilin’ my way through the March. I shot beams straight through daylight savings time, ruptured the Internet, rearranged entire houses full of furniture with my mind and pretty much didn’t document any of it. I’m doing a horrible job of keeping a blog, but that I do keep one at all speaks, I think, to a need for me to mark time in the gray waste when there’s nothing going on more than to an impulse to document, keep track of, or explain the actual retarded goings on of my mid-20s “wild years.” It’s not like I don’t remember everything that happens anyway. (And double-anyway, I don’t know, who is this for anyway? My kids when they finally get up the guts to look up their old man on the internet wayback machine in the year of our wishing we covered our tracks 2028?)

Mike and I went to the Wissahickon and we drove back listening to that George Thoroughgood song everyone knows. I tell everyone that when I heard it for the first time on public radio when I was in fourth grade that it made me want to immediately go out honkey tonkin. This remains the case even now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We drank a case of Mexican beer that Amber bought, two cases of yuengling and a case of delicious Magic Hat HI.P.A. before the wells ran dry. We’ve been godstorming in a more quality, less quantity way = Davey plays with us now, and Mark Price came and hung out the other night too. Susy calls this phenomenon Men’s Group. Meanwhile, dozens of 11×17 sheets get covered, I go into and out of the office, and life grinds on.

–+–

I had a long reverie the other day about an early argument I got into with my dad. I feel like I can figure out when it was to the year based on family vacation memories (maybe my mom will leave a comment and let me know) – it was the year of Altered Beast, when we went to the arcade every month, put a collective dollar fifty up in that machine, and rose from the grave to save Zeus’s daughter in two player mode. (Non-losers should maybe note that $1.50 is not a lot of money for two people to spend on a complete trip to an arcade, a fact I took weird pride in. We’d spend the rest of the $5 he changed to quarters on the skeeball, and I would buy plastic ninjas with the tickets. In the story that I told with them at home the black ninja with the two swords was the hero. He hid and watched the infighting between the reds and whites from on top of the ottoman and he swooped down on his grappling hook to finish them off when they’d worn each other down.) One Sunday that year, my cousins and I were playing Altered Beast in my gramma’s basement, and mimicking the wolf beast’s power, I did a lot of diving into the couches. When I got home, I said I could fly, and my dad told me it was impossible for a man to fly. I told him I had been doing it earlier in the afternoon. He got out an encyclopedia that showed a picture of a fish with wings (and I remember laughing and saying “Look at that fish with wings, that’s crazy” and immediately realizing that what I was claiming was, to him, exactly the same thing) and the text read “Man cannot fly.” We went back and forth and he eventually agreed to disagree. I asked him if he would read to me (we were reading this killer pink book of Norse mythology, with fucking Odin losing his eye to Mimir so he could know everything happening the previous week) and he said he wouldn’t because we’d wasted all of our time arguing.

Should I just scan my entire journal from 4th-8th grade, annotate it, and post it here? I feel like I should.

My brother emailed me earlier this month to let me know he was doing jumps from Australian cliffs. I miss him dearly and my wish is that he will run and take a leap and be surprised to find that he can carry himself up and disappear into the sun.

–+–

Kurt Vile

I went to see Kurt Vile + xNoBBQx a while ago. NoBBQ was horrible, Vile ruled. Going to see him with Sunburned and Davey tonight. Tomorrow I am working on my video all day. I think I am going to Assateague Island this Friday and then to my parents house for easter.

Mostly sure I mentioned already that Ospreys is touring with Davey or Tenspeed from the end of April through the beginning of May, our first tour in eleven(!) months, re: I went to camp, Mike bought a house and went on poster tour, etc. Massively stoked to lay down all manner of styles in all manner of territories. Definitely sure I mentioned that I’m working on a video. I was going to post a part of it here but seriously why would I do that when it isn’t done.

Dali spade, Tufts Library

Massachusetts

Me and Suzanne

Advice column

Wissahickon

Working on a video

Everything you can learn from yourself is already inside of you

I’m not doing a great job of posting these on Sundays.

Last night me and Mike were in the middle of the usual records/beer/board games Gray House flop-out that horrendously replaced the ultra-productive December/early January videos/whiskey/drawing mode (what can I say other than that we apparently enjoy having many, many titanic godswars more than we enjoy having anything to show for our stupid days) when it started snowing and Mike decided to take the dog to the park.

Despite predictions and the observed weather that prompted the move out, There were no clouds in the sky. We stayed in the park for a frigid hour and watched the first eclipse I’ve seen in probably ten years. I remember standing in the spring night in my boy scout uniform watching Hale-Bopp and thinking, shouldn’t there be some sound or something for this? Shouldn’t there be some great clap that shatters windshields and sets off car alarms in order to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that the universe is indeed fucking gigantic, and check it out the moon is disappearing and then turning a weird red? I drank my beer and paced to keep my feet warm. Mike tried to get his dog to climb up onto the playground’s fort. Cops idled and watched us from the edge of the park – their tire tracks in the frozen mud shone in the red moonlight. The dog chewed a plastic water bottle and its crunch echoed loudly. We had a hard time setting up the board for game three when we went back inside because our hands had frozen.

Earlier, Amber bought me beer because I drove her around. This somehow seems relevant to my being able to linger in the park for an hour, play three games of godstorm and have what may or may not have been a killer Bavarian Kings-style band practice (to be decided). Even earlier, and this is only tangentially related, Davey joined us to drink 40s and plan a band tour (and play two games of godstorm).

Even earlier, Sunday, I was at my parents’ house. I riled up my baby cousins at my gramma’s, scared my brother John and played video games without thinking too hard about the big issues of the day. I beat my dad in chess twice (which feels weird, re: he used to constantly destroy me when I was 10 when we last played, and the game itself always felt like such a raw ego vs. ego Chronus/Zeus thing especially now re: our general disagreement on almost every matter in the world, not being used to having my weird family position validated by winning, feeling weird about getting older/my dad getting way older (he was only eight years older than I am now when I remember him at his youngest), etc.). I missed my brother, who is in Australia, and who I can’t call on the telephone. I watched many Hollywood movies and walked on the banks. I finished watching the Mighty Boosh and have, as ever, been drawing.

This week is almost over and I have no plans for the immediate future. Tonight I’m going to drop in on my old roommates at their show. I’m going to have band practice a couple times and work on finishing drinking the beer. I’m going to try to go to the park. And on.

Especially boring version of the weekly lump for Sunday January 13th, year of our wonder and sorrow 2008.

In New York at the New Museum Friday saw Paper Rad “Problem Solvers,” ran into Ash and Etienne, had vegan chili fries with Susy, Crystal, AJW, Ted, Ben and Jess. At Judy’s we ate an entire piece of gouda on a baguette, drank tanguerray and found it unsatisfactory, watched dino squad and saturday night live. Met Kyle at the Lovid thing after internet talking to him last year.  Listened to the Mammal record on the train home.

The house is the house. I’m working and making packages. There isn’t much to report otherwise. I discovered “music blogs” this week and have listened to a ton of terrible synth music in pursuit of the follow-up to my love affair with that Vaggione record a few weeks back.  Good finds so far are Aktuala “Tappeto Volante,” Ed Yazijian “Six Ways To Avoid The Evil Eye,” and some Dream Syndicate jams, but otherwise nothing I flipped over and didn’t already know about.

I am working on compiling a disc of recent Ospreys fuzz from October through now, all from various Private Idiots basement styles.

I am going to buy a couch this week. What else? What else.

I have an art show in three days that I am getting moderately stressed out about because I haven’t worked on anything in days and have nothing done.

I drove home to Philadelphia after eating chicken cutlets and gnocchi at my gramma’s (as before). I drank black coffee and drove as quickly as I could. When I got in, I unloaded my things into my room, cleaned a little and went to Mike’s. We had band practice. Ellen lives there now. Then we went to the show.

The show was us, Davey or Tenspeed, Morsbergers like Machine Guns and three units from Birmingham AL – Dick Neff, Important Eagle, Mugu Guymen. IE played tapes and reeds, DN played drums, a custom synth and a Chippendale vocal mask,  and MG played drums and distorto guitar. DN played a song with Davey at the end and that slayed. All solid dudes who we will hopefully visit. Our set was a little rugged – first one played on our micro amps setup at middle volume. Feedback and sustain didn’t work as expected and there were some weird mid-set problems as a result.

The difficult influence of Providence RI’s Fort Thunder art collective was highly apparent in the musical and visual styles the AL crew brought with them, possibly championed furthest by DN, who screened the green yellow and red bleeding monster crazy lines weird letters show poster with clear flying hard line crystals, and yeah, played fast drums with a loop dealie and a mask on. I’m not going to write an essay about this influence and its obvious continuing role in defining a certain branch of fringe art and music just now, but let this be a placeholder for when I decide to.

Also, let me be clear in that I don’t mean to front on DN or any of these dudes by calling them out or whatever on invoking FT in their shit, consciously or not (I mean, the poster for this show was still totally tight). It’s totally okay. My interest and concern is for what comes next (in noise music and young art) in this so-called movement’s path, since we can only (presumably) print bleeding ghost monsters with weird letters on our show posters for so long.

I ate one and a half odwalla bars at the show. We ate delicious burritos beforehand. At the show, Rosa and Pumpkin ran back and forth, back and forth, kicking up a royal racket. I drank organic orange juice and some odwalla strawberry juice and had a sip of coca cola even though I can’t stand soda.

In the morning I woke up with a triple dream, 1/3 in the ancient city, 1/3 in the underground complex, 1/3 fresh weird allegory/film digestion in a tar pit. Two of my favorite three things, I volunteered to an old classmate of mine, are “fresh garlic” and “Enya.” Full disclosure in the zine I’m putting together for the two shows on the 5th, art/sabbath thing at dgl, and apparently an ospreys show in Lancaster – reunion jammer with our buddies Wether + P Des that I thought wasn’t happening until a wake later. Whoops.

I had breakfast at my gramma’s at 1pm after writing all of this down. I ate fried chicken, green beans, sweet potatoes and perfect gnocchi. I had no dessert but drank black coffee from my grampa’s new coffee machine (replacing his ancient Mr. C that took like 55 minutes to brew a pot and made the most terrible/perfect sunday buzz sludge ever – new Cuisinart pot or whatever brand makes the same brew [the flavor is based on his coffee making style of filling the filter to the absolute max with grind regardless of the amount of brew he plans to make] but in 10 minutes instead) while soundly defeating a challenge from my brother to beat original Contra without the ++– code. I died three times against the belly dancer (boss of energy zone = one general sloppy style, one because I forgot you jump over him, one because I forgot you can’t blow up the spikes he throws at you) and once at the end boss (just sloppy). All of my cousins watched me do this and laughed as I recalled to them the Contra styles our neighbors once espoused (machine gun against the waterfall boss, laser against the snowfield boss, etc.) while ruining all with what I believe to be the perfect unbeatable style for this game, S + R.

I am thankful every day that I do not play video games anymore.

At my grandmother’s house I had a glass of port and a bite of a ham sandwich. I have always had the feeling that she makes sandwiches only once per year, and that time being when we come over. (Or, perhaps I am being unfair because I eat most of my meals between two slices of bread, and I have become especially particular when served in this way.) When we left her house we moved logs up the river bank and my hair came out of its bun. The thinking was that if we didn’t move them up, the river might rise and take them. It was 60 degrees out and I didn’t wear a coat and my hair blew in my face. My sleeves were wet with the water from the muddy ground’s melted snow. I rubbed a piece of ice in my hands to clean them when I finished, and wiped them off on my pants when I sat in the car and closed the door.

At home my dad asked me if I knew any of the comics in the best comics 2007 collection re: his reading the times, and one of Ben’s was one of the images associated with the article.

I ate four chicken wings for dinner and drank a glass of wine from a homemade bottle. It was sweet and very mild. I moved onto the beaujolais nouveau and tried unsuccessfully for two hours to get work done. I organized drawings but didn’t produce. I ate three cookies and then two more later. I played chess against my dad with a chess clock and the game lasted for slightly less than the length of the Sun Balance side of VCO “Sun Balance / Open Knot.” I checkmated him as white in a wild rush after sacrificing a knight to gain space and one move’s time, but really it was a dumb luck gambit in a red wine crazy game. I finished the wine and drifted in and out of sleep listening to “Versatile Arab Chord Chart.”

I watched “The Limey.” Last night I watched “300.” Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

2008 = Whatever, Go Even Bigger

January = build tall couches, allen coming over on the 2nd, show on the fifth
March = band tour with stallions
June = MDBTR project is finished
July/August = camp
Late September/Early October = traveling with my mom

Outlife shits after the jump = 50 totally different inserts I drew/colored for the Ospreys tape on BTH. Godspeed these mugs to new bruns.

I finished CX Asylums aka How Can I Hand You a Diamond = if you have Phil Todd’s email address send it to me, scans coming later or whatever

I signed up for a Facebook account, my account is the one of me in the Ecuadorian mask L+K brought back for me from their recent trip down that way, not the big question mark, which is my dad.

Left late on Wednesday from Philadelphia. I didn’t complete any of my projects on time and brought them to Mike’s. Amber helped me fold and staple two zines while Mike burned CDs. We practiced in the basement for twenty minutes, power feedbacker in the good way and loaded into the car.

In Pittsburgh we found Carly and her boy John (who does exist). Drank beer and ate chili and brought our stuff up to their apartment. Out to the car and to karaoke, Stuey met us, sang war pigs. Left to go to a bowling alley, it was closed, we went to Ryan’s house instead and played Risk from 1am-5am listening to a five disc changer on random. Drank budweiser tallboys and mystified by clear smoke. Six person game, ended with defeat declared by Carly and I as Asia and Aus were well contained. Slept on the futon and woke up late and ate eggs and bullshitted and on out. If you are in Pittsburgh I recommend staying with Carly. Jeremy Hedges and co were unavailable, bummer. Next time dudes.

Afternoon drive to Columbus through light snow and rain. Went to Meg Buzzi’s house and rolled in with hangover faces and raw voices to a little dinner party. Meg gave us beer and delicious food and we sat and talked about Barone things and Susy things and music and we riffed for a while. Brian Harnetty was there, asked us where we were playing next, Kenyon, oh, I’m a music professor there. Awesome dude – listen to his music, drink beer and hang out with him at Meg’s house if you have the opportunity.

The Columbus show was a total disaster of a mess. Was a franz ferdinand bands show, some of the dudes were friendly, one was being a real dick about us playing. We drank a few beers and decided to peace out and spend the rest of the night working on CD packages. Giant bummer but whatever. In the morning I poured a bowl of grapenuts and went to put sugar from the sugar bowl on them, but the sugar turned out to be salt. My car had snow on it when we left.

Kenyon College is our favorite place in the continental US. Highest concentration of hilarious, motivated and fun young guns anywhere. When we left last time, it was after talking about drinking mimosas for hours and then not doing it. This time we went for it. I think we got there around 1PM. Sat in the coffee shop for a while, went to the liquor store around two, sat outside and drank two bottles of champagne watching the classes change. We opened them in the graveyard and didn’t recognize anyone until four, when all familiar faces appeared at once. Richard and Mirra and Mariana and Nora at the shop and we sat there for a while and went to buy more champagne. Went to Nora’s room where we drank white wine and then red, then to Richard’s house where we drank more champagne then Rogue stouts and eventually a “gin bucket” which is pretty much what you’d expect. Steffen and Tucker and PEEPS extended crew were all in attendance and we listened to pitched down Boards of Canada and I sprawled on the floor thinking about their labyrinth. We eventually went to a party and danced and danced drunk and loud, I met and talked to Andrew for a while, Mirra split her knee open and we worried that she would never dance again and Nora choked Mike.

Second day hungover piled out and had dust-stomach eggs for breakfast, same crew reunited and proceeded to get more champagne. Mike and I made our slow stagger to the Horn Gallery where we loaded in and played for maybe three hours. Cafeteria stomached only apples and oranges, still too exhausted and without appetite. Drew some t-shirts and worked on CDs for a while. Mimosas, mimosas and tallboys leftover from Pittsburgh. We played with Ed’s band Sushi Girl(?), Liesel danced perfectly, Mike and I watched it all from the shadows and I felt golden hexagonal energy spinning inside. We played three songs for maybe forty minutes, Mirra projected video and drummed super minimally. Incredible show, near perfect realization of the new material and so many good vibes. Afterward we went to a dorm party, drank a guy’s beer, I played Washing Machine and School of the Flower on his computer jukebox, got into an accidentally super heavy conversation with Ben (ps: if Ben or associates reads this, dude, email me – also Richard should email me too, tom at dog chirp), put on the Grey Album and moved drunk through many shoulders. Mike decided to party in the elevator and got everyone in trouble. We went back to the cottage and watched True Stories projected mute on the ceiling. In the morning snow covered everything.

Pulled out into Ohio clouds and got lost on the way out. Ice windshield and we listened to our set from the night before. Saw five cars completely flipped over on the way to Lexington. Perfect gray white day skies and seas one. In Lexington we loaded in and hung out. Ben and Daryl were good hosts and their cat Francis was huge. Listened to dub records and watched muted tv, ate pasta with srrachi, worked on merch for a while. Watched the Exorcist and time stretched and it was 10PM and we went, oh whoa, I guess we should play? Ben plays as CAVES – his shit was intense double bass manipulation, super low and brutal. We played a short chirp set, satisfying and sweet slow, only mics and cello – no bass or guitar. We went back upstairs, watched Adult Swim, drank whiskey and Tony came in and riffed for a while and we went to sleep. Ben took us to the Tally Ho in the morning for breakfast.

In Atlanta we stayed at Katie Bug’s. Drive was sinister – Tennessee cops everywhere, speed limit changed every five seconds. Her mom was hilarious and her dad (who has played 200 date years as Smoke Rise) told us we should cover the lick at the end of Dodge Ram commercials in our set. We watched those Different Drummer videos of Jesco White and Amazing Delores – highly recommended. On the way out we left a bag of muffins on the trunk and a guy beeped his horn at us a million times, rolled down his window, and yelled You gonna lose you muffins!

Was up all night working and being stressed and slept only four hours. Drive to Savannah was fast and easy. Savannah water still tastes like standing pond water. Met up with Amber and Michelle and bought champagne, ate a croissant and went straight to the space – burned out abandoned building without a front facing an art gallery. Celebs + Rowan and Hastings were in effect, super good vibes from the show, great to see Patrick Parker and John again. Played maybe twenty minutes, drank three Andre bottles and some beer, went to John and Patrick’s and listened to the Beatles until. Michelle’s dog Hobbes big and beautiful and well-behaved. Esteban gone and not forgotten. Mike and I went to Tybee in the morning and I walked fast and far and could hear the drums of death.

Columbia: Carlene’s dogs destroying everything, Dino still the best dude in America. Jeff’s house dark and strange – gave us presents, played us records, great dude alone in the wilderness. Played a smoked set for twenty minutes, bad feedbacker but heavy as hell ending, real slow burning meditator… no sweat and screaming, no chokes, but still up and out. Recorded this on video and haven’t played it back yet. Ate the best sandwich I’ve ever had for dinner, drank wheat beers, watched trailers for on demand movies until early morning. I’m fading out and am not doing a good job of telling this story anymore but I am going to finish it and supplement it later.

Durham yesterday fucking TEMPLE OF BON MATIN most killer set! Zach Kouns in his underwear absolutely annihilating to the audience of four – cafe owner’s mind blown – recorded it and will post it later, so, so, SO good. Our set was twenty minutes again, good stuff, Mike had problems with his vocal setup which was a bummer. Recorded it and will listen to it in the car today. Slept at Jonathan’s house and his kids in the morning staring at our wake-up. One asks, What are you doing in my house?

Charlottesville tonight and we’re done. So much left out. So much more to report that defies reporting.

Year started with tinnitus and waves of Jersey sweat from shoving crushing shoulders and backs. The saddest $30 lesson: not 20 anymore. Couldn’t get drinks, couldn’t dance, they didn’t play Helter Skelter. There was a Nazareth video playing, which may have been a good sign.

Everything Is Always Getting Better Always. Where my year of the pig bros at?

Woke up from a dream with saliva running from my 3AM mouth. Earliest I’ve been to sleep in weeks and up from dreams before I’m usually done to begin with. I was in a bathroom of a giant hotel that was hosting Jesus Lizard and Butthole Surfers in the back by the pool. I took a break to get outside and had to wear a white sticker on my hand; I had lost the pink bracelet and my shirt. Walking out down the tiled mosaic floor behind an older man, totally drunk and wearing a ragged suit, walking very slowly. I went upstairs instead of outside. I thought the line upstairs would be shorter and it was empty. The doors were made of polished wood and the floors were clean, the toilets ivory and gold. I had diarrhea and a man looked over the top and I dove out on him, he said what’s wrong with checking to see if you needed extra toilet paper? I told him I had caught him checking to see if I had extra toilet paper earlier in a different bathroom too, and that he was following me. He said well what if I shoot you.

Earlier I had tried to throw tennis balls to my brother and my uncle waist deep in the river. I could only throw them a few feet and the tide kept carrying them back. Earlier I asked my brother if my grampa was in the mob and he said he couldn’t say I and cried. Earlier I walked on a wall past oldest trees at the furthest reaches and up through a cone mouth of wooden stakes that only opened one way, pulled myself up and was on the top of the hotel, out in the city night above everything, and a woman below said “This is all you get.”

OSPREYS tomorrow in Wilmington delaware at that jawn MOJO13. Playing with bad-weed and harshed mellows noise bro Wether, Pink Deserts doing that ugly swirl and Northern Valentine playing the “rock?” sounds.

Wilmington is only 10 minutes from south philly. You can stop to check out Jesus With the Eyes and still make it in 20. Show is at 9:30.

We jammed for an hour today – Bonsky told us to turn it down. New shit with the cello and new tricks is way nice. Incredibly psyched for tour, tell your far flung bros to check it out.

january 18 columbus cafe bourbon st
january 19-20 gambier oh kenyon college
january 21 ??? lexington area ??? anywhere between columbus and nashville – get in touch if you can help this happen
january 22 nashville chris cherry blossoms’ joint
january 23 ??? atl / athens region ??? same thing holler
january 24 columbia sc the whig with KGB graffiti bros + stoked to see k sheild after not returning his email
january 25 durham nc broad st cafe with temple of bon matin
january 26 charlottesville the tea bizarre with matthew playing drums, going to project shogun assassin and play three notes for the whole thing then fall on a sword.

All weirdness and heavy-headed… serious deja-vu in the club last night. We played a tough set, ragged by technical problems throughout, continuing curse of the p.a. = can’t get the right levels, can’t hear anything, bad feedback, emboldened by borrowed amps = falling on my face. Played an old-style guitar thing that didn’t work too well, couldn’t hear mike at all; second one was mic tricks, not bad, would’ve benefitted from the jug’s presence. Third one was key, cello on his side and I played the new march with crushed bass… in all it was nice to play and good to get difficulties sorted before heading out. Naturally we knew the dudes – recognized Wether from somewhere, knew Pink Deserts bros from the church. Jason and the Argonauts was playing on loop at the bar, saw the skeleton warriors rising up three times.

Couldn’t get out of bed this morning, woke up completely terror-domed. No food in the house but not too hungry… genghis dudes practicing new riffs downstairs all morning, probably laid in bed and listened for an hour before I finally got it together to climb down to the dirty floor. Toenails and paper room grit stuck to the bottoms of sweaty feet, a room feeding back. Dreamed I could just sleep through it all and not ever have to get out of bed, perfect stasis up there in the loft, nobody would come to check or bother, I’d never get hungry, just keep slipping in and out of sleep while the genghis dudes riff and the light comes and goes, distant smell of Clay breakfasts and drug cavern classic rock sound, carpet growing longer and thicker, buckling under my loft like a crushed caterpillar, a leech on an arm under squeezing fingers. Found Nutty Steph’s christmas pres while I was cleaning, was my late breakfast from far hills, and I was in that tower and the sun was setting again and again:

Spent the afternoon re-sorting it all, clean paper here, half-dones here, dones here. 2007 marches on and I am packing that ship. Tonight going to trade noise musics with Pink Ds, hopefully check out Jared’s band after missing it too many times. Recorded an hour yesterday, sent four emails, played and still went to bed thinking, What do I have to show for my day? Unbelievable.

In DC I was five seconds away from standing in Mike’s friend Alan’s toilet when his roommate Jacob knocked on the door and stopped it. That was the beginning and end of the zine Toilets I Have Stood In though I have threatened to resurrect it many times since. It is useful, too, to stay at someone’s house and for them to think that this is a thing I will do while I am there. I haven’t tested this theory at all, but I vaguely suspect that those who have heard of Toilets I Have Stood In have made an effort to make their toilets as presentable to the camera (and ultimately to the pages of that publication) as possible.

We got back from band tour this morning at 6AM, after leaving Poughkeepsie around 2AM. What a lame drive. Some blown out weird pop was playing for the first while and then that faded and I dialed into some good afterhours rap show. Mike slept through Bahamadia and I almost made a hundred wrong turns.

There were fifty million amazing characters on this short trip. We listened to bootleg Brawlers + Bawlers + Bastards instead of the usual Jay-Z and usaisamonster. It was a more cerebral tour, instead of the previous bacchanals – there were no real hellion moments. On two possibly-related notes, our shit was way more together, and we actually broke even. Thanks for the donations dudes!

We fought traffic for seven hours in New York and ate taco bell only once the entire tour. When we got to Amherst, a couple of dudes came up to me while I was finishing loading my stuff into the Hampshire cafeteria.

“Hey man,” they said. They were big hoodie dudes.

“What’s up dudes?” I said. I was wearing a peace sign shirt and a stupid hat.

“Do you know where we can get mushrooms? We’re from U-Mass and we heard this is where we can do it.”

Awesome. In the cafeteria we made secret sandwiches and drank pabst blue ribbon beers from a 30-pack out of little coffee cups, incase security were to show up and yell. Cats from Providence played a five minute song and Etienne’s fuckin band Cave of Time ruled it. Total Mainliner destructo blasts and booming string whacked out psycho shit. After the show, Etienne said to John and Matt, “Dudes, what do I keep telling you, I need more solos, I only got one tonight, I need at least three.” The dude ran the show so hard John couldn’t switch to electric sax, and god knows what the shit that would’ve been like. I want to watch these dudes play twice weekly. When we went back to their house I asked if we had to bring in the amps and they said, “Nah man, you’re in Massachusetts, it’s cool.” I watched Flesh Eaters and fell asleep and in the morning me and Mike ate at a diner in a traincar in Northampton where the proprietor cooked the food on the greasiest ranges right in front of you and right under a huge, booming exhaust fan. You should eat there if you aren’t strictly vegetarian.

Then we drove to Burlington Vt. In Burlington our show was cancelled but the promoter Joseph said on the phone to Mike, “I try my best to make everything awesome even when the situation is the absolute worst.” He said this while I was outside taping a mirror that fell off of my car back on with painter’s tape and when I got in and Mike told me that he had had this conversation the mirror thing felt like a metaphor. Also I was hung over. Have you ever driven to Vermont? It is the most beautiful of the northeast states and it has wicked mountains.

Joseph met up with us after we walked around for a half hour in the cold trying to find him. He bought us sushi and gave us money and took us to a show where a woman sang a cover of You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’. I was super bummed all night and wanted to lay down serious jams but our show was cancelled. Back at Joe’s place we caught up with Susy’s old roommate Jake and eventually went back to his place, where we slept. In the morning we made zines and waited in line for an hour to get into the only diner in town. We listened to Bawlers and went to the Magic Hat brewery and got growlers and drank them.

We loaded into the death metal show we were “invited” to play on and the dudes said, yeah, you can play, but nobody will be here and you won’t get paid. We got paid and we played to maybe 25 people, so it worked out well. We drank whiskey from coffee cups, again in case security came to yell, and played pulsing fever music in front of an intense mason logo. Our drummer needed more direction than we were able to give. He asked me if I wanted fills, and I gave him the come on man, just do whatever answer because I didn’t know what he meant. Someone leave a comment with what fills are please. Other bands that night were of a more technical or seriously metal variety. The promoter Frankie’s band Portugal Towers was tight and somebody bought a pile of Domino’s and a slice of the sausage pie made me sick. We sold some CDs and one dude said “I was surprised by your band, it was interesting, but I’m not sure if I liked it.” Also, apparently nobody knows what metal riffing fingers are, up in the northeast? We went to a party after this show instead of going to Jake’s. There, a girl said to Mike in response to our band and general behavior, “I want to start a noise band where when I play people [do metal riffing fingers],” and that was the only good thing that happened. We had a convoluted, terrible time finding a place to sleep and ended up letting ourselves into Joe’s apartment at 5.30AM, after a guy woke me up and kicked me out of his house, the dirty floor of which I was sleeping on while Mike was drinking his way through about a liter of vodka. Also after trying to sleep in the car and after two people who offered us places to stay reneged. Shittiest night / funniest morning: special thanks to Joe’s roommate who didn’t want us there when he inexplicably found us in the morning, but didn’t feel strongly enough about it to kick us out. When we were rolling into Joe’s we got out of the car tired and smokey and ruined and across the street fifteen frat dudes were strolling down the street with cups in hand, still rolling hard.

Montpelier was amazing. Everything there was perfect. We ate more sushi at a by-the-piece joint and overheard a woman from the DNC talking to the proprietor about how Kerry was going to be running for president, but not anymore. Heavy election worries. We walked on train bridges and up a crazy hill through the woods (where a guy named I think Andrew had carved “I am the ruler of my domain!” on a lot of benches) and there was a castle at the top. Go to Montpelier, everything there is exactly like that, you go to do something fun and it turns out even better than you’d have thought. Mike scheduled us a show at an open mic night at Langdon St Cafe and I was more apprehensive about this show than any other. Nutty Steph rollerbladed right up to us when we were sitting down inside and said, “Oh hey, are you guys OSPREYS? You’re staying with me tonight” and that was that, we knew we’d be good. The Cardboard Tech Institute people were there too – Thor + Brian + Amy. Amy took pics. We had breakfast with them the next day and Nutty Steph gave them jobs. Bo screened Michael Franti’s movie, said a million hilarious things, and gave us presents just because we were touring and he thought we were good dudes. Montpelier! Our set was bad-feedback-laden at first and I had serious problems getting my mics to work the way I wanted and it took a while to clear the crowd of hecklers (first ever time we got seriously heckled, and by old dudes who played real guitar, so funny), but it was cool. First piece was a nine minute Glass Throats creep jam for staring into windows at 3AM. Second song (Mike introduced it saying “Okay we have one more short one”) was supreme two-note plodding doom sinister for perfect opium sickness. Slit throats bleed distorted bass, fucking shit, man! This was so inappropriately loud and barked into my little mic the recording is so shitty and I still way feel the level six hundred sixty six head nod vibes relistening to it. Afterward the Cardboard peeps cheered enthusiastically and everyone else was gone and I was liquified adrenaline lightning rod FUCK man! playing shows! …!! and we went back to Nutty Steph’s. She wasn’t home and when she got in at 12.30 she said “Oh man I don’t have much food, only cucumber and tomato and feta sandwiches!” MONTPELIER!

Mike claims I said “Play scrabble with me… PLEASE!” toward the end of our night in Worcester. We played with Jake‘s band Phonebook who were the best shit rock duo of them all. Mike has pictures of this show that he will undoubtedly never show me. A dude there was telling us about his band RIFFTIDE, the funniest all time band that will be remembered through the ages. The premise is “I will riff over your project.” Stay tuned. Forbes St trickiest hill most baroque system for regulating how co-op members are accountable for their dishes. Thanks Lilah for trading me a six pack of Wachusett Blueberry for zines! Thanks Kelley for cooking us delicious food for dinner! I accidentally got very beer drunk at this show and don’t super remember it. Our set was plagued by the same problems – contact mics breaking at a sad rate, little chirper barking too hard, shit just generally not working – but our second song was an ultra-heavy melter. Mike claims I played on for a good two minutes after he stopped, and then he decided to start back in again, and I stopped thirty seconds later. I told him I need more solos. Andrew made us waffles in the morning and we wandered Worcester for two hours looking for falafel in the afternoon, and the dude who provided it showed us his pictures of him with Gwen Steffani and Al Pacino and he told us a bizarre story about Limp Bizkit. Beware: in Worcester, the Mediterranean Foods Market only sells Italian, and the Italian place only sells falafel.

We stopped at Susy’s mom’s house but this is the tour blog so I’m not going to get so into that. She made us provisions and we watched Kung-fu Hustle and I was very glad we punctuated our tour with this stop.

Victory lap and happy returns in Poughkeepsie, last show. Spent most of the day on the couch zoned out wanting to play super bad. Interneting but my email wouldn’t send. Wandered campus, deja vu’d, got totally Box Eyes. Slept on the smallest couch and woke up to Brawlers. Mike went to look out a telescope at ships vanishing behind the sun, with Ellen who has access to these things, but I stared out the window for a full hour instead. Growler hangover + tour ending tear brushed away. We loaded in and played in Ellen’s living room for twenty or thirty people – totally awesome show, perfect tour conclusion. Little chirper gave me total hell by reacting on the super strange to my distortion and amp settings, and I was sure my amp was blowing at certain points. Once feedback was harnessed we stuck with the same set, but worked in a whole lot of triple space guitar bloom. Second song was a huge departure, big melancholy opener, slooooow beautiful birds singing hell-song. When we ended people clapped and asked us to play more for the second time ever. Ellen joined on electric violin with Zach who had played drums and Christina who took over the mic. We played one long, long jam, true sky-cracking and blood-pouring-in end to it. So good. Tour.

This afternoon I cleaned the shower doors in the women’s room and the insides of the showers in the men’s room. Over the course of the afternoon I listened to the same Angels of Light record four times. Halfway between Minneapolis and Madison, on the return trip, Mike said “Way to pick the worst possible record for how I’m feeling right now.” And how!

So the linear super boring non-story story of the tour, for my records and for yours, is as follows. I am straight up returning to secret code blogging as soon as this shit is posted once and for all for everyone who cares to google up.

We drove 2,650 miles, marked from a rest stop around Valley Forge back to Girard and Belmont. The only car accident we saw was a cop crashed into an SUV just as we crossed back into the ‘delph.

We played in Pittsburgh at Garfield Artworks with a guy (among some other stuff) who opened his set by covering that Semisonic song Closing Time, and everyone there cringed or threw up apart from his dad. It was the most poorly run show I’ve ever been to. We played last when we should have played first, whatever. We played for five minutes to two people and we played on a stage and through a PA. One of the people was in a band from earlier and the other was Jeremy, who put us up, bought us beer and was a completely amazing dude.

We played at Kenyon College in Gambier Ohio. A hiphop guy Leo who went to the college played before us. I drank maybe eight beers before and was pursuing Purity and Accuracy (“if you don’t know, now ya know”) so I was super into it. He had what might be called a tight flow and he rapped over the beat from Tried By Twelve at one point. We didn’t understand why we were at Kenyon until we found out that Chris is from Aryan/Asian, who played at the show in Philly where Mike met Mirra, who set up the show. (He gave me his CD-R “The Official Mississippi Gamelan Quartet,” or maybe Quintet, I don’t have it in front of me. Home recording lovers who have done mushrooms, watch for this shit! PS Mike if you’re reading this give me back my VCO jams right now.) As for ouuuurrr jams at Kenyon, we defined the “new” set that we’d play for the rest of the tour, featuring the reservoir dream, the not sorry song and the ugly fucked up mic feedback I seem to be playing more these days than I play bass. Also we went to the best bonfire I have ever been to and, as I mentioned(? I’m not reading back to see if I mentioned it or not), I capital-I Interrupted two people when I went on a dreamwalk through distant dark brush at 3AM.

In Chicago we played at a Version Festival event with twelve bands. We played an aggravating set to a fairly ambivalent crowd. Mike and I ate Subway in frustration just before and the chicken I ate made my stomach turn. We couldn’t get very good sound because Mike had blown his amp in Kenyon and he had to borrow a new one.

In Madison we didn’t play a show because Jamie “wasn’t ready for us.” He did buy us tacos, though, and I continue to miss his Philadelphia presence as much as I did when he left.

In Minneapolis we played alone at a birthday party for about twenty people on the second floor of a sprawling house. There were ghosts from my past and future everywhere and the night was generally upsetting though our set wasn’t too bad. Horrible uncontrollable “bad” feedback from the guitar but we just went with it. We gave buddy boy from Gold Kodiak (who I can’t stop calling Malcolm even though it’s not Malcolm) one of the prints of Nate. Afterward there was a tame bonfire in a backyard.

In Madison again we still didn’t play a show because Ted and Don waffled on us. Don had said three days earlier, and I quote, “I didn’t buy a PA last year for us to not do shows.” Fucking lame, dudes!

In Indiana somewhere Mike and I remembered to put in The Blueprint. It made our spirits rise and broke us out of a certain cloudiness that set in after we left Chicago. Mike saw a dozen orioles on the way to Columbus and said he thought it was a good sign, because he saw one on the way to Kenyon. It turned out to be the best show of the tour, and probably a tie for the best time. Aaron of Sword Heaven did us the favor of putting us on the bill. I ate so much delicious chicken and soup that I felt like I was at my mom’s house. Our set was as good as it gets. We drank whiskey and Mike slept on the roof. Everyone was super friendly, the show was extremely well organized and they even gave us some gas money.

And now you know 4% of what I’ve been doing for the last nine days.

Who?: Tasneem, Rafael Mudboy, This Is My Condition, Frankie Martin, free buffets that cost $5 (and/or “there is no such thing as a free lunch”), Max + Mica, Jamie, Ted + Don even though they fuckin’ straight up failed, Caroline for telling good lies and giving us presents, Carissa + Chris, The Feminist Stronghold, Lambsbread + Major Stars + Bonedust + Sword Heaven, Val + Doug

We’re at the apex of the tour arc. I think we drove 1400 miles. Tomorrow is the start of the return trip. When I get back, I will cook myself the most luxurious dinner, drink a gallon of water, take two back to back showers and sleep for thirty six hours with breaks in which I go to my job.

I am a housekeeper. On a normal day I clean four showers, eleven toilets and twelve sinks. I mop four different floors, take out around fifteen trashcans and wipe off four mirrors. Sometimes I vacuum. I usually make at least two beds but once it was something like thirty. I will do anything else anyone asks me to do. When I was in third grade I started doing all of these same things for my dad, for $2 an hour. I think I maxed out with him around $4.50 by the time I was in eighth.

At Version there was an art installation that you could go into, a back to the womb thing. It was a huge air-filled tyvec tent that you got into by crawling through fifteen feet of the most claustrophobic dirty plastic imaginable. Inside there were markers for writing on the walls and a couch. We spent all night in there.

I am mute and I can drink more whiskey and beer than anyone would ever believe. I can’t even begin talking about this shit until we get back.

I ate the brownies Suz packed me but almost none of the other food we brought. In Pittsburgh after an ugly show we drank Iron City beers and ate the best fake chicken I’ve ever had. At Kenyon, delicious salads grow on trees, so we alternated between gorging ourselves on those and rolling away the beautiful afternoon in the chunth.

This time around there haven’t been any dogs to pet. The only one we saw was a stray in the middle of Ohio. In Indiana there are signs that say “Animal Present when Flashing.” One was flashing but where were the presents? Ahhhhh get it?

Bonsky writes,

its time for secret hotties everyone!!???!!! look for them everywhere, raves, cupboards, bowling allies, the ballet, your grandmas house, in the microwave!!! they could be anywhere or anybody!! find a secret hottie now!!!!

We are going to get free thai food in a couple of hours. Also free drinks. Mike has been working on the remains of yesterday’s 30 pack since about noon. Some people don’t like being on tour and we can’t figure out why.

Hello so far: Jeremy of The Sea, Like Lead + Ed the English major, Chris of Aryan/Asian, Tigersaw gals, Semisonic cover band, Mirra and Nora, tollbooth hottie, Leo, Richard + Tucker + Steffen and all PEEPS, Marianna, Chester, whoever brought those marshmallows to the bonfire. Apologies to the couple I interrupted mid-coitus while I walked in the woods.

If I have time, I will post something a little less cryptic and a little more anecdotal when we get to Minneapolis.

At work the other day I thought about trying to write a scifi or a fantasy novel. Two summers ago when I was conceptualizing Working Title I wrote a short article about how genre fiction isn’t taken seriously by intellectuals or academics, and only ever invoked to illustrate some Freudian or Lacanian point in an “accessible” way. Anyway, the thing I was interested in was how genre stereotypes transcend their status as such and become traditions or unalterable lore, how they’re so omnipresent in genre stuff that even by consciously breaking them an author still invokes them in that negation. Working Title was going to be a scifi book but I ended up choking on my own vomit and writing what I wrote instead. For those that don’t know or might wonder, I’ve been drawing on the back of the printouts since.

This is all on my mind lately because Todd asked me at work two weeks ago whether or not I’ve been writing. This got under my skin in the worst possible way and plumes of smoke came from my head as I mopped. Of course I haven’t been writing, writing what? Working Title, Literature, was the most horrendously demoralizing thing I’ve ever convinced myself to get involved with. I haven’t done a damn thing since, and have been detoxing myself by pursuing art junk instead of writing. While the year has been somewhat productive on that front (off the top of my head I can count four large paintings, eight small ones, five small maga-zines, one medium one, the newspaper, the holiday prints, dozens of drawings and piles of junk, my band), even bigger successes (the newspaper) and developments (touring) have felt ephemeral, like small distractions, like colorful graffiti along the bottom edges of a windowless gray building that towers out of sight and off into the distance.

Todd suggested I write for Reader’s Digest. The jury is out on that suggestion. In the mean time, I’ve been working on something for the last few weeks and maybe I will finish it before abandoning it, like everything else I’ve worked on in the last year.

Oh but wait yeah a scifi book. I might do that. Also I have daydreamed repeatedly about epicca, which I parted ways with when I got to college and decided that everything I had ever written in the long years previous was terrible. While that opinion still holds largely true (and extends as writerly self-hatred does up and into the very sentences I am putting into this fucker right now), what seems important beyond completed articles on that old project are some of the better, complete ideas. I frantically email Jeremiah every six months or so (and always think of his birthday even though I never, ever remember to email him on it) saying I’m going to reinvent that thing or get regoing on it or whatever and then I never do. One of these days, though! Jer if you are reading this and I haven’t already sent you one, email me your update.

Also if you don’t know what any of this is about try googling my name and reading all of the stuff I’ve written for D&D websites or worse for my own. Or just wait until I collect my favorite ones later this summer and print them out.

Meanwhile, I’m designing the new letterhead for the Mansion, if I can get off my laziest ass and just go do it. All of my time is going into band junk – I spent about a day last week sending and replying to emails about tour. We’re playing at Kenyon College, Version Festival in Chicago, Jamie’s house in Madison, a friend of Mike’s in Minneapolis, an art gallery in Columbus and a house somewhere in central PA. (Maybe I will blog about tour while we are on the road, whoa!) We’re also playing near St. Joe’s on Saturday. I’ve been dreaming about it all week.

I printed shirts last night but they came out terrible. I am going to have to customize every single one of them in order for them to be decent, which is okay I guess, but I had only wanted to dedicate eight hours to that project, not 24. Mike’s advice was “Shirts!” and he shrugged and laughed. I was in a miserable mood until we watched The Cruise, and then when he showed me that guy Speed’s book, I wondered why I haven’t read anything in so long.

At Body Worlds, an enlarged man rode a humongous cartoon apparently functional bike. There were many visible plastinated penises but only one vagina, though the exhibit claimed indifference to all bodily taboos. A sign at the beginning of the exhibit said that no personal information about the lives or deaths of the corpses would be given, though an exception was made for the display of a sectioned obese man, where there was seemingly cause to mention that he died at age fifty of weight related heart problems. For some reason, the only plastinated animals were birds.

My roommate’s dog is asleep on the carpet outside of my room. Oh no wait he just left. He was waiting to be taken for a walk.

I drew six small pages for Ospreys #5 in the last couple of days. I want it to be double or triple size but I will see how far along I am by the time our show near St. Joe’s comes around. Similarly, I’m almost done making shirt stuff, but we’ll have to see what the printing situation is come Monday.

A booking agent sent me this email:

hey tom- before i can make any decision, i need to hear your music…do you have a myspace account? if not, take my advice and make one quick – it is THE way that venues do business with bands…let me know where i can hear you…

We leave for tour in less than three weeks.