Chicago fer a while then Milwaukee

We Stayed in Chicago and went shopping. Then we went to Milwaukee and hung out with Daniel, whom you all know from the Chinese Telephones, Daniel James Gang and a million other bands. We just chilled, and I blogged about whatever day it was when i was embarrassed about bloggin at the party. Anything interesting happen that day? We were unable to see a movie, and i guess Sean saw some guys messin with the cops out front like "arrest me!" or Hassle me" or something. It's not all fun and games out here, you know. So yeah, thats what we did that day. I wish i could sleep more. I used my backpack as a pillow (kyle left mine at the hotel) and slept on a hardwood floor with no blanket. Whomp whomp.

Chicago

We will not be making the obvious joke about the empty club being named the empty bottle. to be honest it wasn't all that empty, anyway i don't remember crap about this show and really couldn't care less right now. Then why write it you ask? because i've been in a car since 1:30 yesterday morning and we have finally arrived at our destination! yay! a record store! no, wait it gets better, 2 record stores! so while i sit in the hot car wishing i'd gone to college and made something of myself, i'm going to blog. that's what people do now, right? also, we have a cat now, and i think he's mine! i think his name is bowie cuz his eyes are jacked! but we'll see. Alright alright, so we drove to Chicago and waited around while people went shopping they got records and the like. then we got in the club and loaded in and goofed around onstage for no one until the soundgirl started to do her thing. We then went next door to a place called Bite, which despite it's wack ass name, is a fantastic little spot. Kinda like a hippie diner but not too much. The food was awesome, i got a huge dang-it-i-can't-remember- what-they're-called wrap. it's not greek i guess, cuz i just spent ten minutes trying to find out online. But it's like deep fried balls of garbanzo beans or somethin with spices. it had a cucumber dressing and lettuce and tomatoes. anybody know what i'm talkin about? it was delicious and giant and came with sweet potatoe fries, enough to feed me twice. Also they give the bands playin next door free coffee. So i played a couple games of Miss Pacman and waited some more til soundcheck. Homegirl doing the sound really did it. She was checkin and checkin and checkin and yer poor nervous friends in thee band said "hello?" "check" Check..check" etc. oh, it's just awful. but good for her she did a good job. i thought all the bands sounded great that night and you could tell she was working and fixing problems as they came. See soundguys? quit being stupid baby pants and trying to make every band sound like limp bizkit! Turn the bass drum down, fer Bob's sake. Listen. then respond. Stupid soundguys, i hate almost all of you. Wannabe musician-ass bitter babies who get their kicks power trippin on bands night after night. Actin like you've seen it all n what not, we don't believe you! anyway homegirl was fantastic. And then some people showed up! Homeboy from the lovely band The Yolks was there, Nobunny had sent him over to check out the force of nature that is Audacity. They delivered of course, halfway through their first song they had everyone off the bar and watching. We played a great show too, but Lee...I don't even know how to describe what Lee was doing. He made sure anyone enjoying themselves quickly stopped and felt uncomfortable. It was weird. Soundgirl was very concerned and recommended medication. I don't know, Lee, you be actin crazy! Afterwards we went to a lovely hotel that was provided gratis by Matt's parents. They got a timeshare or something and it worked out perfect for us. Thank you Matt's parents!! i'm still using the hair conditioner from that place, it had a whole spiel about shea butter and everything! So we slept like kings and showered like princesses. Very much needed and appreciated, thanks alot Mr and Mrs Schmalfeld!

Athens Ohio

As we were driving around for a laundromat, this girl bent over and you could see down her shirt real well. Lee was making this huge u-turn and she was kinda where we had to look anyway, but still. It felt like we were driving straight down that girls shirt fer a sec and i could think of nothing else i would've rather done. Sorry everybody. So we found The Goo(d was missing) laundromat and cleaned our clothes. The bathroom was so small there! I took an army bath in there and felt like a clumsy giant, which really isn't that different from how i usually feel. So we sat around, watching America's Got Talent (they are called Audacity) and reading US weekly etc. It was fun enough I guess. After brushing our teeth and puttin on our much needed clean clothes, we went over to the union, Scott from blackout booking's club. We said hi and shot the bull fer a minute and then audacity played. It was a very subdued audacity that night, prolly because columbus was so off the hook, but no one was complaining! they were the tightest i've ever seen! Everything was perfect and everyone in the room knew it. After songs people would tap their homie on the shoulder with this huge grin like "did you see that?!!" and their homie would be "I KNOW!" Oh me oh my, they were the future that night, and everyone inside got to go for a minute. Scott has a new favorite band. It used to be us. Oh well, career suicide never sounded so good! Audacity sold tons of merch and the door guy kicked down the money he was sposed to be paid, just cuz he liked them so much. This is the reaction they should get every night, but most people are stupid. Audacity will discover new forms of plants in the amazon, and cure cancer. So we played and it was whatever, but people thought we were OK. We went to Scott's house, shot the bull til way too late and admired some of his gal tracy's art. Good job Tracy!! Oh, how I miss my Tracy. It's like an infected wound. PS I'm almost caught up on this thing, so hopefully all the time travelling confusion will be gone soon. Lee just told me Big Fun Name dropped us in an interview! What a bunch of talented, pretty little sweetie pies they are! I like how they don't do the whole "look we're girls" thing and just play. I don't know what that means either. But they're good! And have great hair.

Athens.

whoops! Columbus!

So I'm caught. I just check the myspace and whatever it says the next show was, i blog it. Well we played a show in columbus that wasn't on the myspace so i didn't. but now i will! You can pretend this blog is like Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, my two favorite movies (JKROFLOL!), this is an unconventional manner of storytelling, dig? OK...Hey everybody, what did we do the day of the Nobunny show?...No one's got anything to say about it. We woke up in a motel and drove a long time. the end. When we got to the rock room they were super nice and gave us hot dogs. I was trippin balls, being absolutely sure that me and Al had been there before but that they served burritos, not hot dogs. Never fear ladies and gentlemen, yer boy Nika here's fit as a fiddle, they used to have burritos, thank Bob. So we were HYPHY!! We all ate delicious free and friendly hot dogs with whatever we wanted on them. mine was a veggie dog with tomatoes ketchup and mustard, fantastic!! Here's the best part, our favorite desert bunny in the whole world was gonna play!! Some party had been cancelled and he just so happened to hop on over. NOBUNNY!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!! NOBUNNY DOES IT LIKE YOU, NOBUNNY!! The great Nobunny is a jackalope descended, one-man revival of everything in life you hold dear. You fool, go to his myspace now and have some fun! Or youtube his chic a gogo performance and love life more! Arright I just did what i told you to do, only i had to wake thomas up and tell him to sit in the bad seat cuz the chord to plug this thing into the car radio is short, and you can't just listen to a little Nobunny, you gotta ROCK THAT SHIT (sorry Mr Crowe)!!!! Everyone in the car is having a great time now, no joke. He does that. He also does this thing where you can't not dance so much that your feet end up looking like the picture i will eventually have Alex post on here. I know i write confusingly, i'm sorry. Me and Matt wanna be Nobunny so bad! AAAHHHH HE'S SO GOOD!!! we are listening to live videos off of youtube now and it's makin me feel drunk. Wait til you see my foot. So anyway we were brazilian dance fighting and fake jumping eachother out front fer like an hour or so, in between mad bouts of extremely loud fruity loops improvs. Man, it was so great!! I's all like "Eh Yo, What up doggie?" an they's all like "yeeuh" and most importantly we all understood. It's very hard to listen to Nobunny and blog at the same time, did you know that? All you cute girls should go throw yourselves at his large lucky feet and do whatever he tells you. Also Lee is insane.
So Audacity played and everyone lost their minds!!! Be proud Mr Crowe, your child is Homo Superior. Whoah! Have you seen the okmoniks? they are jus lovely! fun bouncy bouncy 3 chord rock'n'roll with a farfisa lead and a cute bouncy girl who you probably should not kiss no matter what she says. Sorry sammy we love you. OK. there's been like an hour between sentences again and i really don't care about this anymore....it's now 1130 and that last sentence was from like 3 oclock, ferreal.
Me and Lee fought so much!! So The Okmoniks played and we all danced like fools but before them Nobunny did his thing and we had to be in tune with the natural vibrations of the earth, and that's tiring after he's done so you know. I'm in Milwaukee right now but I'm not smart enough to make the time lapse work in this so...

The Rock Room (or how we spent $300 on gas to go shopping)

After our delicious breakfast with our hilarious friends Dave "i wore a spiderman costume to KISS" Buick and Shelby, we were off on a shortish trip to Pittsburgh to play at the rock room, a bar that has special prices for the over 50 crowd. Well, that's not really true. We were really there so our vinyl-addicted members could get that sweet sweet stuff they only got at Jerry's, truly, a lovely store. Huge racks of every style and multiple copies of every record you're looking to come up on. They got a 7" room that's as big as the other one. This is where Sean broke poor little Richie Top Ten's heart by finding that rubette's record last year. I wonder if he's got that yet. But first, the show! As we drove circles around the town we got mad at eachother and fought. There were no street signs, places to turn around or people to ask so naturally we assumed it was everyone else's fault. Alex got all nihilist on Lee like he does, making Lee's car panic thing he does worse. It sucked. I woke up to them already goin at it and tried to be a sweetheart and make peace, but it ended with me yelling "LEE! SHUT THE FRAK UP! JUST SHUT THE FRAK UP RIGHT NOW! SHUT UP!! SHUT THE FRAK UP LEE!" until it happened. Then we ate food and felt better. Except Lee, who opted fer the bar's food instead of McDonald's. See how tour is sometimes? Wait it get's worse. The bar doesn't serve food anymore on tuesdays or whatever day it was, so lil Leelee had to make do with a bag of chips and a beer or two for dinner. Which he paid full price for. He was so miserable. So we're at the bar and it's empty except for the other band, a few locals and two thug lifers, who be chillin at da end wit dey money out n watches flashin an whatnot, you know jus doin it. They were phonies. Also this is the room next to the one we play in, so our music tonite is just a mild annoyance to people drinking. The guy from the first band the shutouts apologized to us sweetly and we told him we knew and didn't care. Swear to Bob, I Don't Care by The Ramones is on right now! The Shutouts played fast hard Pop Punk and did that place like there were more than nine people there (ten actually, Alex, Caleb, Cameron, Dan, Kyle, Lee, Matt, Sean, Thomas and shutout guy's gal). They went nuts and so did Audacity, who capitalized on the empty night by playing a bunch of songs they hadn't in a while and goofing off. It was adorable of course. And really alot of fun! I was half ass dancing and throwing darts casually. Things got goofier and then we went on. Goofiness continued. It was basically tour friend appreciation night. When i felt our self indulgent set length was too much i asked the shutouts if we should quit and they said yeah. Stupid me, they didn't even let us stay at their house, we had to get a hotel. We would've closed that place down! Our bands may have merged into one! Thomas played drums for us on Wreckless, and it was great!! And so fast! I'm old and tired!! Ha Ha! But really, as far as empty shows go this is the best one ever. Afterwards we went to a motel and watched infomercials for extenze. Fun. The next morning I woke up and called the front desk to ask when the continental breakfast ended. They did not have continental breakfasts, but if i would like to try the panera bread restaurant downstairs, she is sure they are still serving breakfast there. Yes, I write that way on purpose. We got cleaned up and went to Jerry's Records, which, although great for records, has no food. So Alex and I wandered the streets looking for food with Thomas, while everyone else shopped to their greedy black hearts content (i'm jealous. sorry guys). We first went to a nice lady's fruit store and got fed greenbeans while we looked around. We bought some peaches or nectarines or whatever, and asked her where we should go. She told us everything we wanted to hear! her favorite spot was just down the way, pretty cheap and not too greasy (but greasy fo show!) We thanked her and left as directed. Lo and behold the spot ruled! It's called Pamela's, it's got a rainbow disco ball, wall paintings of famous disco records, pancakes that were like thicker crunchier 49er flapjacks (but not even like that) and a dope waiter who i think may have been crushing on me. He was funny and also treated people as if he expected them to not be morons, weird right? Also his voice was kinda like Bobby from The Go's. I got an omelette with tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, brocolli and cheese. it was just what you think it was but bigger. When Cameron strolled in I was full and he still had a whole free breakfast waiting for him, sweet. Thomas got the pancakes which were really good, but you know, Anaheim, Pancake House...So we left and went to another record store but before that, i bit the bullet and bought a ton of pricey indian food with Lee and Alex. I love indian food so much! And we ate a ton and had a ton for later too! Then it was back to another record store. Boring!! After our recordheads got their vinyl fix we drove on to Athens, which brings me to whether or not us doing laundry in Athens should be the beginning of the next blog? Yeah, next one.

detroit

Man that last blog was terrible. When someone from the band actually reads that thing the are gonna laugh and say what a bitter man child i am. Did you know Matt is really into vans. It's hilarious and cute. He gives them a thumbs up when they drive by and will ask their owners "how did your van, um, get so cool?" like he was askin about the engine specs. Dear parents, there was not really LSD at Rob's, that was an inside joke. We really did do a lot of yardwork though. I liked it. Any convenient chance to exercise on tour should be taken. Back to the bloggle. We drove to Detroit and OH MY GOD!!! LEE JUST ALMOST MURDERED THOMAS!!! He started to drive off when the roof made a funny sound like someone was up there stumbling and saying "whoahh!" Sure enough, that's just what it was. I yelled at Lee like always and he blamed everyone else with typical Leegic. When Thomas jumped off the roof with a big smile we relaxed and started laughing. Thomas said it was very scary....
Detroit looks hideous! It's like what morons think America would look like if we didn't kill terrorists. Seriously, Fox News should just show pictures of Detroit and say there's been another attack. We drove around burnt out, run down versions of any building you can imagine. They got a football field that hasn't been used in forever and I always have to resist the urge to sneak in that thing. I imagine Desmond running a tour de'stat or whatever, and i gotta find That Island, yo. Alas, i fear homeless crackheads, and so I do not. To be honest I've only seen like 3 streets in Detroit. We went to the National Bohemian Home, where we were gonna play and checked it out. It was a burnt out, run down building! Just kidding, it was a cool burnt out somewhat rundown building from 1915. The sound man seemed very professional, and then I realized he was just a jerk. We all learned that he was NOT the soundguy, but a soundguy who was doin sound at this club. Then we all learned about his oh so interesting career troubles and preferences in sound equipment. When some girl brought him some equipment a sec later he's like "WRONG ONE. WRONG ONE! I told you it looked like THIS one. That one's WRONG. I can still use it give it to me..." sssheeeessh!! Round about then The Go showed up, and the camera guy who'd been there an hour started to film them. I got shanghaied!! They came around the corner and we start broin on down when i realize i'm in a movie version of it and want out. I'm weird? It was awkward, so we went for food. We were directed to a place by someone who thought "pretty cheap" to us meant $10 sandwiches (prolly my sweet suit). We started off seperately, but seeing Alex and Audacity, in their bright ass shirts, against the nasty, crack infested brown, grey, black, and more grey background was just too much and we had to pick'em up. We packed in the clowns, and drove to Loew's and it was expensive and bangin! We needed alot of food quickly. This was not our place. But we had crammed nine of us in the impala for fun so now we had to find food frakkin fast foo! Stupid idiots went to white castle, smarter ones went to subway and i opted for "the chinese wall" a little red shack that promises chinese food new york style. it looked pretty nasty and everything there had meat, the lady working wouldn't get off the phone. I'd say "does this have meat?" and she'd yell "pint o quart" and i'd say "nah, nah, is there meat in this?" and she'd point and yell "this pint! this quart!" I got some decent vegetable rice with all kindsa goodies in it, and a pork spring roll she'd assured me had no meat. I spat it out and cursed her when i ate it later on the street. She was MEAN! And on the phone the entire time! I respect her. She probably has guns in her face on the regular. They got bullet proof glass at SUBWAY there, fer Bob's sakes. They put your sandwich in a little revolving door, it's sad. So baby pie no funs decided to walk and we drove comfortably back to the club. We met Annette, who designed the super cool poster for the show. She likes John K's blog and knows what a multi plane camera is, coolbeans. She also did the super cool art for The Go's new BubbleGum record which was the reason we were there in the first place. It is called Knock Knock, Bananna and I haven't heard it!! It's driving me crazy, knowing that the better, wiser, Go got a record to school my ass an I can't even listen to it! Matt has just asked that I talk more about our meal. 2 2f 1t Ksus dbl. Matt had two hamburgers one of which i saw him eat. I felt proud to not eat meat then and left. From what i hear, Kyle also had two hamburgers, but decided to add some fries to his order. Next up was Lee, who did me proud by smartly avoiding the chicken rings (chicken rings), and requested for himself one hamburger, to be supplemented with an order of tater tots. He ate tater tots after spitting out his first bite of white castle's nasty excuse for a burger. All drank water and ketchup for sustenance. They had a double drive thru...The clear yellow record came out on Belly Ache Candy Shoppe and I can't for the life of me remember the kind gentleman's name who ran the damn thing! But he was the opposite of the chinese lady. A total gentleman. They released a frakkin candy bar! Its white chocolate (colored yellow) with bananna chips in it and ya buy it along with yer record! Genius. Naturally, we'll be releasing some record candy thing with them soon (if the secret works). oooh! what if it was like a hard candy record?! like the record was a flat, round jolly rancher??!! and you'd never ruin yer needle with that stupid idea, sorry. but it could be cool anyway. If the secret works. Then we waited while DeeJay Anytime played all the bestest bubble gum and i danced alone at the merch table. Then The Audacity played and poor Thomas was nervous as heck. I was not nervous but that's another story. The room was huge and the stage was huge and the sound guy was a jerk and had shitty sound. Both onstage and off. But of course they all played beautifully, it was just like what are you gonna do up there you know? Jerk (from alex). Anywho, we played and it was the same thing. People liked us both and bought stuff but we didn't get no party started. I guess it was fine but whatevs. The Go played and the sound STILL wasn't great! They were fantastic of course and I danced a fool. Then it was off to a lovely old home where we could stay, and the party across the street. It was fun! People would include you in the conversation and assume you had some intelligence and humor. I turned on the charm and ended up mayor of Detroit fer a minute. It was Dave Buick's house, Lee wants me to tell you. And I want to tell you that man loves me. Much more than Shelby, who thinks I'm OK, i think. We all had a lovely time, whether sleeping at the comfy home across the street or winnin over the locals at Dave's. The next moring we had honest john's, it was delish brah! Omelettes all around! Detroit Ruled Shit after all!! Thanks Detroit!