Okay the tour story in one sitting, now or never, here goes.

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.

Hey-yay-yeah, the bedroom kid. I’ve been sitting in here for thirteen hours. I drew painstaking red and black Charlie Brown stripes on the These Hands dude on the desk drawing for what felt like four hours but was probably only forty-five minutes. I am trying to remain focused in humidity, in coffee-mind, in a quagmire of scrambled eggs and tuna sandwiches.

Every light in my apartment burned out during the four days it took me to get back from West Philly.

In an email to Tasneem I suggested that I might try asking the new residents of 4531 Locust whether they might allow me to have a key and crash on their couch and use their shower on an as-needed basis in exchange for some reasonable amount of money. The later it gets and the longer I hang out in my room the more viable this plan becomes. I am so delirious that I keep forgetting what the beginning of the sentences I’m typing are before I get to the ends of them. In a surprising but as yet not-necessarily turn of events, me and Tasneem are hanging out Wednesday night around midnight before I fly to Providence the next morning.
I wonder just how much I need to get done in a day to keep from feeling like I totally wasted my day. Eleven hectares? Twenty two pounds? Seriously, how can I possibly feel like I didn’t do anything today?

I’m working on an audio project that is based around location and time specific recording. It will be serious documentary recording to meta-listeners and it will be noise to regular ones. I am also going to start a band called Homer where the premise is that I blind myself and then tell a story for about eight hours. I mean a band called Socrates where I talk about why I have to drink poison and then I do it. I mean a band called September 11th where a plane crashes into me. I mean a band called blog where I write a blog.

For my birthday my dad emailed me this:

I don’t remember if I told you this one or not, but a few years back Joni Mitchell cut an album entitled “Mingus”. It was a tribute to the legendary jazz musician Charles Mingus. Some of the tracks were prefaced by some live discussion with Mingus himself. One of them was at a birthday celebration in his honor and at the critical ” Happy birthday Dear Charles” part he bellowed out “Happy Birthday MotherF***er”.

Susy brought cake to Mike’s house. Melissa brought five beers in a white plastic bag. All was well. Last night I drank framboise mixed with hoegaarden (a “dirty ho,” our server happily explained) and John told us about word oven and sustainable medicine in Africa. Meghan remembered the Waterworld story and I was baffled. Susy and I had an afterparty of raspberry pancakes and at the hostel this morning I listened to Dopesmoker on maximum volume while I rolled in other people’s mud, was landed on by other people’s flies, squeezed other people’s shit in my bare hands. I live out my bad karma five days each week. Nothing else can go wrong. Every year is better than the last.

Um so yeah.

Last night was the first concert ever to happen at the record store. The GDDWB played. On the back deck earlier tonight, Andrew claimed that the internet recording he heard of theirs was “the worst thing [I] have ever heard.” It wasn’t so bad. I was so tired that I fell asleep when I went home afterward to make a snack. The snack was a bagel with goat cheese on one half and marmalade on the other. In dreams two sisters stole the boombox from the back of my car while I drove east down Market Street. They laughed on their bikes and I drove after them. After driving into a chainlink fence they trashtalked me and I chased them further, crashing into both of their back wheels at once. I got out of the car and had forgotten about the boombox in the dream. We fought and I punched one of them in the mouth, but soon we were better and we went to their co-op. It was a converted horse stable with painstakingly crafted wooden fences and carefully raked rows where vegetables were planted. The younger sister told me I was standing in the tomato row and I apologized. We went into their house which was white concrete and undecorated and distorted. The walls didn’t meet up correctly with the floor or ceiling and gravity was not absolute throughout, in that there was no distinct “down.”

After work today I talked to folks from the DWB on Mike’s porch. I drank coffee and we went to Tommy Gun’s where I had suspect chicken instead of deep-fried mac and cheese. Out of the delicious frying pan and into the delicious fire. Stuck between a delicious rock and a delicious hard place. Deliciously damned if you do, deliciously damned etc. etc. We went swimming at devil’s and sat on the bridge for a long time afterward. At Jon’s I drank beer and talked to Susy about our supposedly forthcoming camping trip.

Susy’s wisdom teeth came out. I asked her if she could save them in a jar for me to keep as a totem but when she woke up and became coherent she said they cut the teeth into pieces before they took them out. I ate a plate of ribs while she was lying in bed with {Proof} on pause. Was it seven years ago that Jeremiah told me how brackets are extraneous and goofy in titles? Eight?

At the beach I peed in the dunes behind the forbidden zone, ate five kinds of fish, played cards, sat in the hot tub and wondered how my family can conceivably continue to do this year after year for nearly twenty years without getting bored and tired. Perhaps it won’t be until the fifty-fourth year that they finally decide to use that week to take a vacation from the vacation. It’s a separate life with it’s own problems and it’s own stupid hang-ups that sits and waits year after year for it’s week. Meanwhile, I guarantee that I will go back to Europe within the next twelve months. Man wow kids sure are different from their parents whoao generations sure don’t understand each other

I saw a plane fly by out of the corner of my eye just now and wondered how a lightning bug could fly so straight.

Umm what else. I saw VxBx in NxBx after playing a show in the backyard of an indian restaurant. Both parts of that day were amazing. Blaine bought us ice cream at the end of it and I got vertigo while we walked out onto a railroad bridge to eat it.

Okay I quit I am going to bed, fucking email me if you want an actual update, blogs are retarded, who is this even for anyway?

Ughhhhhh summer like lightning, like hail, like a hurricane and a tsunami and an insurgency all together. Last night Julian turned 24. Last week we went to parties at the warehouse, Mike’s, Adrian’s, Erin’s, Stuart’s, Lauren’s, Lorenzo’s friend’s, Adam’s, Sean’s and probably at least one other. I drank the dirty water from the mouth of a gargoyle and, so intoxicated, grew stone wings of my own.

I cut my toe on glass at devil’s pool. An hour later, Mirra and Mike and I were raving in the woods with our millipede friend, the witches who built that pentagram, the legions Mirra released when she broke it and that awesome wall with a hole in it. I had work two hours before and that was how my week started: thunderous band practice followed by sliced toes and ghosts from the future deep in the woods.

It was how my week started because that is how long I worked. I had a seven day week last week and now I am Off. I am savagely vooming between purity and accuracy of body and spirit and the dim jungles of warm weather mayhem. While I probably managed to bike to work four of those seven days, I spent at least as many nights in that blank catatonic perdition that follows this evil season’s frenzied evenings and afternoons. At work I took steel wool to toilet bowls and mildewed showers and they were my soul.

At Julian’s 24th I talked to Dave about recording our sludge and barf-rants and to my surprise and delight it looks like it will be happening next Thursday. What a busy week that will be.

I am working on The Summer That Had No Rules right now. It is a series of drawings/comics that I am stapling to telephone poles and taping to likely spots. Page one is available now on Bainbridge and South from 6th-3rd, Chestnut around 22nd, on coffee shop bulletin boards and along the river path between the art museum and the Chestnut St bridge. They might still be there three days and two rainfalls later. Supposedly Julia saw one of them, so that makes it a success.

Umm I don’t know, what else, what else. Bad vibes poured off of me while I vacuumed the third floor yesterday, and all was well last night as I wore sweatpants and the Russian Ballet did their thing.

Car crashes and guns blazin. We will get in six fights and come out unscathed. We will climb on your roof. We will tell you we live in your house, because we do! We will play the Fun Game and there is nothing you will be able to do about it! We will say Whatever. We will leave when the time is right!

Summer is rolling in and I’m listening to the electro to prove it.

I have been writing songs while riding my bike. Today I am going to go eat hot dogs with Susy and try to find a decent walkman with a Line-In in a thrift store or a pawn shop or something. I also need to get an adaptor for a new distortion guy I bought for $5 at the old guitar store. The guy who used to teach me in 9th grade still works there and he didn’t recognize me when I went in. I asked him what he was up to and it’s basically the same.

Yesterday I worked hard on the newest thing. It takes up more space than I realistically have available to work on it and it will probably take so long to finish that I lose interest and get into a bad mood about it but who knows. I drank a beer and made pasta and covered the bottom left corner of it with who knows what and I still had the energy to ride out this morning. I keep saying I’m going to go get a job in a restaurant but I keep putting it off in favor of other diversions. I brought books back from my parents’ house so maybe I’ll start reading again. Typically I find it hard to update a blog when I am busy with other things.

It’s as if my stuff is melting, the way it’s been slowly oozing off of every surface and out of every container. I am sitting waist deep in a pool of messiness the likes of which I’ve never been responsible for before. I will almost certainly be moving again in a matter of weeks.

The other day I wrote this and almost posted it, but I don’t like bathroom-wall style blogging so I didn’t. It remains relevant enough to warrant inclusion in this unrelated longer post:

At work today I cleaned the women’s showers in the carriage house and wiped the piss-soaked tile around the bottoms of the toilets. Tomorrow I will do it again.

My goth story lately is that I’ve been repeatedly dreaming about shooting heroine or dying. The heroine dream is boring – I find heroine in a drawer in a house in my old neighborhood and I shoot it. I usually wake up laughing in disgust. The death dreams are much more intense. I cried in my sleep in Minneapolis and again on my floor the other night. In the most vivid, I was taken into a restaurant kitchen by several plain young men who I didn’t recognize and tied to a cross. A crowd was watching from outside of the kitchen’s open doors. My last words to one of the men were “But can you say you’ve lived a good life?” and then I was raised up and I couldn’t breathe. I suffocated and woke up in a new dream thinking “It never gets any easier,” fully aware that I had just died. The sun was huge and there was endless grass.

Two nights ago I froze to death in a flood, watching the floating corpses of two drowned geese. Their necks were fat and rubbery and I couldn’t swim away from them. I was asleep on the floor in my room, which is somehow hard and unforgiving in a way that carpeted floors usually aren’t.

I slept on the floor in Mike’s room last night and it was marvelously restful.

We had a bonfire at the oilcans. We had a barbecue. I went to a show and saw some bands. It now costs about $1.83 to drive to and from work.

I have been in a middling bad mood for about two weeks. It is mostly due to frustration related to projects and “a lack of results.” At work I keep listening to drug music and having bleach fueled dreams. At home, I do my best work and get the most done out on the roof.

Me and Suz are maybe going on a tour of swimming holes and then camping in Nova Scotia. I am visiting my house this weekend. It has been over one year since I had the best steak of my life.

I love it here and will remain forever.
I hate it here and will never come back.

Yesterday afternoon I stepped over my piles of wires and books and scraps of paper and made my way to the little corner where I had put my paycheck. The money from Madison came in the mail so I thought it would be a fine time to head to the bank. It turns out that I slept too long on paying my Pittsburgh parking ticket, but I mailed them an explanatory letter that ends in “God Bless,” so we’ll see what happens.

At the Town Food Market there is a sign that says “No Loitering. No Begging.” I bought six tallboys and made my way to the store. There, Mike and I consumed them. Blaine is back from South America but she couldn’t have a drink with us for Health Reasons. She was (reportedly) wearing Arnau’s De La Soul shirt and time melted away. How long will it be until I’m hanging out on the roof of my house at 4AM, drinking and watching the bats and weird passersby? What ever changes? (As opposed to “Changes, whatever,” buhhhhh)

After many hours of loitering and begging on Jon’s stoop I made my way back to the house, got in the car and went for Indian Buffet. Afterwards, around 9PM, Susy and I fell asleep almost immediately. I slept fitfully all night and got up for work around ten. I had meandering dreams about Christmas Day for the second time in so few weeks.

Not long ago in Dan’s house on Christmas Day (in dreams), I went through his drawers and found his drugs. I tied up my arm and shot heroine and no sooner was I in my room, looking up at the spot on the wall where my boy scout medals used to hang, thinking: I can live through even this. Meanwhile, I could feel a woman staring at me through the wall, from a car outside, and I immediately knew who she was and where she was from and what she wanted. I went to her and she took me to the Empty Streets. It was frozen and dark and there was no one and then she was gone and I was still there.

Last night my father was in the driveway (in dreams), cursing me and my brother John. He seemed small and he wore a fancy overcoat with heavy gloves, like a private eye dressed for church. I laughed at him from in the house. It was Christmas Day.

I have many things to do today.

And a note. I’m listening to Underworld for the first time in two years. The first time I put it on for Susy she laughed and said “What is this, rave music?” Meanwhile across town, Joseph Zehner reports very positive spring vibes after listening to Dig Your Own Hole. Now that I have a dedicated backseat boombox with “we put it on our tour expense tab” cigarette lighter adapter, I may once again be able to roll out.

Things one and two are these.

The end of a maze I was invited into.

Mirra and Mike. Mirra speaks in tongues. Mike gets into fights.

And we’re back. I can’t remember the last time I was in South Philly. Seriously, I still haven’t gone back. I’m still in West Philly and we’ve been back for two days.

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