Where is the hotel?

RIP Avery Bef Dusuede

Avery was 13 years old and the raddest, wisest dog i have known. she loved to swim and hike and could walk and walk. she lived in nyc and would vacation in ohio. until recently or before i moved to the west coast i would take avery on walks from her place on 22nd street and 1st avenue all the way down to soho. we would go into apc and look for jeans. she looked very chic in there what with their rough hewn timber floors and her rustic brown and cream colors. everyone loved though her she wouldn't allow most to touch her. she was pretty shy and protective. i would love to see her on my bed when she slept over and i came home from being out.
it's one of those things i am sure we are going to all start having to deal with more the older we get. the regret of not seeing someone when we had the chance. and i am wondering why i didn't go see her when i was in nyc last. she was one of my closest friends and i will miss her dearly.

it's too hot to type on this thing

it's too hot here. and do you know that an apple ibook reaches a temperature hotter than the core of the sun? they thought they were being really smart by not putting a fan in it so it was quiet. but the thing is that my computer used to be white but now it's gray from sweat and dirt and i am sure gross dead skin.

anyway...the other day nina and i woke up to the news that LA had broken record temps with highs between 110 and 119. sf had broken record temps with a high of 87 degrees. that was the new record beating the old one of 81.

so we decided to get in the car and drive to SF and see the baseball game and stay at the W hotel. the drive was blazing the windows of the car were hot to the touch. livermore right outside sf was like 115 degrees. but once we got near the bay bridge we had the windows down and it was like 84 or something. amazing. we were right on time for the game, which according to mlb.com was starting at 4:10 pm. so we checked in and took a town car down to the stadium. we got there at like 4:30 and everyone was leaving. turns out that mlb.com lists all the times on their website in east coast time. i thought that 4:10 pm seemed like an odd start time but i thought maybe its the game of the week and that would mean a 7:10 pm start time in ny. either way we lost out...no garlic fries for us. so we just went back to the hotel and enjoyed the ac and got a cobb salad from room service and then later that night we went to the edinburgh castle and had a beer and risked our lives walking through crack town on the way back.

now we are back in la and it's still blazing hot. meanwhile it's still 80 in sf.
wouldn't it be great to be really rich?

this was our view at dawn from the 29th floor of the W.

this is how cold it was in our room

i've never had more fun in my life. it's true.

oh yeah

larry is back for the next tour. hallelujah.

the good venice

yesterday i took the train by myself to venice. then onto bologna for the gig. this morning i drove from bologna to milan. then i took a plane from milan to london. i am in heathrow right now. i fly to los angeles in 3 hours. that's 5 cities, one day. a most uncivilized experience. it's like 100 degrees in the airport. get it together limeys. it's not like ac was invented last week. jesus.

venice is amazing. venice, italy. venice, california blows.

nina is picking me up from LAX. you really can't ask for more than that. you know someone likes you when the offer to come get you at 6:30 pm at LAX.

yes

sparks

daft punk (backstage)

my friend's aunt

i am 20,000 feet above spain or something. i don't know. it's one of those flights that's on a small plane and you almost feel like you think you might feel like in a fighter jet or something. it takes off fast and it feels like it's gliding. soon we will be in madrid.

and i was just sitting here rubbing my beard in that cliche way one might see some intellectual dude in a movie do it. you know what i am talking about and all of a sudden i realized that my life is sort of not so bad. and it's kind of magic.

here's some things i have been thinking about the last couple of days:

i saw buckingham palace and all the people dressed up to go in on the way to the airport the other day. i actually liked london for a second. and it made me realize that i probably can't ever go visit the queen or whatever these people were doing. cause i look to scruffy.

when greg and i flew into barcelona from london on thursday i was thinking about the last time i was at the barcelona airport. it was in 2002 when i was on tour with the moldy peaches (adam green was a member of that band. you need to know that in a minute.). i had flown into london by myself. it was only my third time to europe and second as a tour manager. but first solo overseas trip. i got myself to the place where i hired the van and the gear from and i left at rush hour and drove through london to dover where i got a hotel at 8 pm. i woke up at 5 am and got a ferry to france and then i drove through france. you had to stop like every 20 to 30 miles and pay a crazy toll and i had to climb over to the passenger window to pay cause the steering wheel was on the uk side. and i remember coming up on the mediterranean for the first time and driving along it through the dusty south west of france and into spain. and finally made it to barcelona. the next morning i picked the band up at the airport. anyway... i sorta forget that trip a lot and wish that i remembered it more often cause i remember thinking how crazy it was that i was driving through france by myself in a uk van going to spain and i didn't even get lost. oh! i just remember i also took a little detour and went and saw le tigre in lyons. i surprised them that night and just showed up and watched them play. and crashed on their hotel room floor.
when i told greg that he was impressed and said that it must give me some confidence knowing i can do that. and it does....when i remember that i did it. but sometimes i forget.

that's one thing. another thing that's pretty magic is that last week or something or the beginning of the month i was talking to sarah. she had flown into nyc from glasgow for their gig at battery park. i was in la getting ready to go to the uk. i told her how funny i thought it was that she would arrive in LA for the hollywood bowl gig the day after i left. I would be in glasgow while they were in LA. and then we would both meet a week later in barcelona and madrid. and later this summer we will be in reading and leeds and edinburgh on the same days.
and at the festival yesterday and today there were so many people that i know from other places and jobs. there were the irish people that were opening for the moldy peaches on one 6 week euro tour 4 years ago. they all came up and said hi even though i didn't know any of their names. adam green was at this festival and will be in madrid today. his tour manager now is the first tour manager i ever had when i came to europe for the first time with le tigre in 2000. that guy, paul hill, used to tour manage the twilight singers who i am with now. so yesterday i was in barcelona with adam and belle and sebastian and today we will all be in madrid together. in march of 2004 i was on tour with b & s and adam opened the spanish shows. so we have all been in these same places together before. then josh who i just met in la but has known niki forever is around yesterday and today playing with sparks.
and i just think it's great and bizarre and amazing (if i do say so myself) that a person from ohio who was never even on an airplane until he was 24 or west of the mississippi until he was 26 or in california until he was 28 has now been to over 33 countries, i have over 225,000 frequent flier miles and i need to get some extra pages added to my passport at the end of the summer.

that's alan drum tech (belle and sebastian) "working". looks like a rough job, dude.

(sarah, richard, stevie, bob, and stuart and i hung out after the show. of course we drank moet. but we had the worlds worst candy bar ever. it looks like it's gonna be gourmet and delicious but the only way it's ever gonna be good is if, as sarah said "you could make some wee brownies with it." and she is probably the only person in the world that i would trust to make that statement. she knows brownies.)

world's worst candy bar.

back to what i was originally talking about...

i have lived in some of the greatest cities in the world.

i am from ohio. i will be in ohio in september for my little brothers wedding. which sounds crazy to say that your little brother is getting married. it's the same as when all of a sudden the baseball players stop seeming so old and start seeming incredibly young. he is getting married and i will go home for a week or so. nina and i are going to fly there and drive back or drive there and fly back.

i am going to go to israel, finland and portugal next month.

and soon. so soon. i will be back in LA. but first i get to go to italy and eat.

that's what i was thinking on the plane. and you know...the airport is hectic. the departure from the hotel is hectic. but the plane is always calm. i don't care if it's the worst turbulence ever. as a matter of fact i sort of like turbulence. the plane is a place where i can totally feel good because i am out of reach. there are no decisions for me to make.

and now we have landed. and it's all different. we are in the weirdest hotel called the i-hotel which is only weird cause it is very modern and euro. and sort of in the middle of nowhere outside madrid. that's the thing with festivals.

you think you are going some place you have been before but sometimes you never quite make it and you are stuck in the sticks of madrid. in some sort of weird industrial park type place. and the van can't drive up the driveway to the hotel so you have to lug all 24 bags a couple hundred feet. and the schedule that you were hounded to approve 6 days ago via email is now just totally tossed out the window and you are presented with a whole new timetable of events. some events you've never even heard of before. and people want their pd's and it's just not the same as being on the fucking plane and knowing that i can't be hassled. sometimes i think that i don't even care if it goes down. at least i know no one will expect me to know the answer to their question anymore.

but actually, today i don't feel that way at all. today i am psyched. and all that stuff i just mentioned doesn't even matter. cause tomorrow i will be in florence and then i'll be in venice and then i'll be in bologna. and then i will be in la. and i am gonna call that home for the first time ever...right now. wednesday evening, i will be home in la.

that feels pretty good to say.

unbelievable

so you want my job? you think it's fucking great that i get to go all over the world? you think it must be fun?

just be glad that you are in an office or something and you do the same thing everyday and you don't have to deal with the fucking retard bus driver and bus company that i made the mistake of hiring for this trip. retards. and morons. imbeciles and idiots. there aren't enough words to describe people that can't get it together enough to know what time the ferry is supposed to leave, let alone which ferry company it is that we will be using.

just utter idiocy.

help me.

public urination

it's festival time. the time of year when european kids pay an arm and a leg to get drunk, sunburnt and broke. and pee in public. and today's venue was the t in the park festival in balado, scotland. that's north of edinburgh.

and it's been sprinling and like 55 degrees for the last 4 hours. the first part of the day were great, sunny and easy. i mean the whole day was pretty easy.

then i ran into pretty girls make graves. so awesome seeing them all the time. i think i have talked about derrick before. we run into each other in the most random places. once i ran into him in a car rental in LAX and we have been in england together a bunch. and of course derrick used to sleep on my floor and drink budweisers in the morning when the murder city devil's played in cincinnati. i rode with them over to their stage to watch them play. on the way we passed the public urination row where guys just have it whipped out and are pissing through the fence.
here's some idea of what it was like.

and it wasn't just dudes.

then we went to the maze of terror. i'll just tell you this and then show you some photos. it wasn't much of a maze. and i doubt if anyone ever asked for a refund.

learn to spell, england! i mean i know i always have typos in this thing but i didn't invent the language.

look! derrick has giant hands too. maybe it's just my camera. apparently the first 20 seconds of the maze were terrifying. i was taking too many photos to realize it.

you hear the word festival and it used to make me think of things like chorus' and fun. now it's about trash everywhere and a drunk euro that apparently had someone throw a beer at him.

that trash strewn field makes me long for LA.

don't say i didn't warn you

as of right now there are two people on line for a beat down. the problem is that i never expected it would be these two. and although the only photos i have of each of them make it appear that we are having a good time they disguise the fact that behind their swinging hair and lovely smiles they are hatching diabolical plans. they have no idea the might of my freckled hands.

first will be buzzelli. not only did i help her get the gig making those fine shirts but we have been close friends for almost 12 years. and she was the first...she couldn't even wait 3 hours from the end of the show before rubbing it in via a comment on this very blog.

then it will be nina's turn. sure, she went to the afterparty and hob knobbed with the stars at the hollywood bowl. and yes, i spent upwards of $10 in text messages hooking that up in my bunk on the bus with no tv or even keys at 3:30 am last night uk time. and i know, i know we look so happy together here in this photo. but some things can't go unpunished.
*

don't worry. it may not be physical. but my hands will take care of the retribution in some form or another.

*in nina's defense...it is entirely possible that i asked her in the middle of the night how the show was... i can't quite remember and will have to figure out a way to get this verified, maybe my cell phone bill will shed some light.

belle and sebastian beat down

this is a warning:
the first person that tells me how great or for that matter ANYTHING about the belle and sebastian show at the hollywood bowl tonight was gets a fucking beat down.
seriously.

buzzelli made awesome shirts. she handpainted each one. they are works of art. if you are going you should go early and buy one. they are limited and will be collector items. but if you get one and i see you wearing it i will probably have to beat you down because i will know that you were there. it'll be a preemptory beat down just in case you were gonna start talking about how great the show was.

here's kime's t-shirts:

these are the knuckles that will administer the punishment. i know. i know they look cute, sort of like a giraffe with the freckles, etc. but they hurt.