Where is the hotel?

anytime but now

i'm back in nyc. i was here last week for a couple days.  fuck it.  ami going to be such a wishy washy prick for the rest of my life.  i didn't care about being here. i just wanted the tour to start so i could get home to LA . which is probably the exact opposite of the way i felt 5 months ago. or 2 months ago.  i did have one night where i criss crossed the city seeing people when they were available. bottle of wine and dinner on the LES.

a sixer of bud light at 22 and 1st.

one beer at the tile bar.
then i pussied out and took a cab to brooklyn.  old me would have taken the train.
people drink a LOT in nyc.

touring with ted leo / pharmacists is rad and easy.  being on tour with a true, smart, punk songwrite is a nice change of pace.plus james canty is here!  and marty violence is here. and molly neuman is their manager.  this is like a total reunion from my days of promoting punk shows in ohio. james was in make up / nation of ulysses.  marty was in (young) pioneers. molly was in bratmobile. ted was in chisel (and citizens arrest!)  i've known all these people since i was 25.  they are part, a big part, of the reason i do what i do today.  they crashed at my house. they played in bands that drove all day to get to their show and help me move furniture in a coffeeshop so they could play to 200 kids.  and best of all we became friends and remained them. over the years through random run ins, often in totally incongruent places.  ladyfests in olympia, punk clubs in germany, muddy festivals in england and now in the backstage all day long snack shop known as a shed tour with pearl jam.  here we are again, grown up pro's.

it makes me pretty happy.  happy to be around these guys and happy to see someone like pearl jam so stoked to be around them as well. whatever, scoff all you want.  pj dudes are rad.  they stop by on a daily basis to say hello and compliment the band.  their guitar techs help with buzzing amps.  their personal chef makes us coffee.  there's no weird vibes backstage.  it makes me think that if i could just meet the next PJ i could actually stay on tour for 20 years.

but best of all... there's pretty much round the clock donuts and cake backstage.

technically disfigured

what's the most annoying thing about Pennsylvania?

the lame website on the license plate. i've been all over the world and this is by far the dumbest license plate i've seen. surely if you cared enough about PA to want to look it up on the internet you could just google "pennsylvania" and find the website.  or for that matter "PA" just in case you can't actually spell the word.  it works. i just did it.

plus, the bottom kind of looks like a urine stain.

also...annoying today, this add on my myspace page:

what's so "special" about this woman?  if a sneering 30 year old barista is your idea of a "special" gf there are quite a few coffee shops i can point you towards.  and you don't have to pay a fee to get them to treat you like shit

oh yeah!  and this fucking guy. 

i ain't got time to take a fast train

(brutal)

i woke up in brooklyn this morning and the mets had fired willie randolph. my gut instinct was (especially since they had just won 3 of 4) that there is some secret formula that determines how many black men are allowed to be at the top. and since obama won that meant someone had to go to keep the balance. but then sommerstein told me that they had hired jerry manuel (whom i thought was white, but i was thinking of charlie) and since jerry manuel is black, that theory was shot.

(brutal)

so i grabbed the papers and walked down the street to peter pan's donut shop, the one with the super hot polish waitresses and the rad donuts. the thing is, these girls are like the pale skinned version of the latina girls on the subway.  neither care about you if you aren't latino or polish. or at least they don't care about you if you have greasy hair and naps forming in the back of your head. bummer. so i am flipping through the ny post (which doesn't have anything about willie being shit-canned cause the mets did it at like 3:30 AM east coast time) and i come across this little tidbit of millionaire whining.

normally i don't care how much money pro athletes make.  yes, sometimes it's absurd, but the argument that if the owners are making it hand over fist then the players should get their fair share sounds about right.  but come the fuck on.  i fly way more than these fucks do and get probably a penny on the hundred for what they make.  AND i guarantee you they are not flying fucking coach. and even if they are, surely that plane is chartered and they have plenty of room to spread out.  listen.  i've seen the flight attendants on virgin airlines (the airline they supposedly use) they are hot. i can understand the complaint if it was american airlines where they all look like relics from dynasty circa 1982.

let's break this down:

"All told, Willie Randolph's team has traveled 21,611 miles in that span, including a 2,921-mile trek to San Francisco."

whoooop deeeee dooooo.  the span willie is talking about is 6 weeks, May 1 - June 17. May 6 - June 17 i have flown 23,520 miles. and those have not been on a chartered plane and stayed at a super deluxe hotel upon arrival, being paid like tens of thousands of dollars while i was at it.

"Randolph, who called his team's schedule "brutal" when asked about it last week, repeated those concerns before the Mets' charter left Sunday night on yet another six-hour, one way trip."

whatever dude.  randolph doesn't even know what "brutal" means. PIG DESTROYER is brutal. pussy pro athletes playing pranks on each other on a private 6 hour flight is not.

"I'm not looking forward to getting on the plane. It's a long ride."

omg. met's suck. i guess it's a long ride if you know you are flying 3,000 miles to get the ax.  still... where would you rather be fired?  LA, sunny and 76?  or nyc, shitty and hot and humid?

"We've been out to the West Coast four times in a [month] and a half," said Randolph, who was including a trip to Denver in that count."

dude... again.  boo fuckin hoo. ya know what you did in the last month and a half?  you went to the west coast on a chartered plane.  you stayed in rad hotels. and you got paid a shit ton to sit on your ass in a dugout and basically hang out.  i know. i know he is the manager, he has some responsibility.  but anyone that has been to a baseball game with me has heard me wax about how rad it would be to be a pro.  it's like you get paid to hang out with your bro's.  especially the pitchers that sit on their ass all summer long in the bullpen on patio chairs watching baseball games.  sorry but 3 time zones does not warrant the complaint.

all i am saying is... you guys already play a sport that many of my non - sporty friends do not consider to be that difficult or hard (i disagree). and i spend a considerable amount of time trying to convince people that you aren't in fact pussies.  and that you are legitimate athletes. so quit acting like little babies.

(not brutal)

now let me tell you about a real brutal flight!  i flew to nyc on sunday. left my house at 10:00 am.  boarded a flight at 12:25 pm and arrived at mary's house in brooklyn at 4:30 AM.  that is 15 hours and 30 minutes door to door.  my flight landed at jfk after circling nyc for an hour due to a storm. then diverted to boston to get more fuel. in boston we were trapped on the ground for almost 2 hours due to the storm still over jfk.  then we flew to nyc landed and got jammed up in gridlock on the tarmac for an hour and twenty minutes.

 

the best part?  neil patrick harris (doogie howser) and his boyfriend were in the same aisle as me on the opposite side of the plane. this is the business class section, the first row. there is a big screen
showing movies and tv shows right in front of this row.  and for the last 2 hours they showed episodes of neil's show "how i met your mother" over and over again.  he handled it well. but i must admit i was praying for a freak out. anything to alleviate the boredom and make the delay worthwhile.

after we got to the gate we waitied 97 minutes for our bags.  (the mom from friday night lights was there too!  total fox.) and then i waited about 55 minutes for a taxi crab.  the thing is... it wasn't that brutal. i was in business class.  see willie... that's how you complain.

actually, we all could have it worse.  we could be like this random semi full of chickens i found parked on the street in a desolate part of greenpoint last night.  just a truck of chickens clucking and shitting on each other in the middle of brooklyn.

ridin' around in the breeze

have you ever had someone tell you what they really thought about you?
have you ever had someone that you thought was your friend (and was at one time more) tell you that you are basically a piece of shit?

yesterday someone i thought i was friends with told me what she really thought about me.  described in detail, much to my surprise, how i had done her wrong.  laid it all out, out of the blue.  a real, straight up telling off.  the kind where you're on the phone pulled over on sunset, 76 degrees, sunny (of course), traffic whizzing by, screaming in my ear.  to explain why, the catalyst, isn't even important.  beyond that it is straight up dumb. i wish it could be something as exciting as another woman, a secret drug problem where i stole all her shit and pawned it around the corner from the house or an accidental fire in her house. that would be exciting.

instead it's something pretty banal, just a straight up miscommunication. i get it though. i understand where she's coming from... i just never knew she felt that way and it came as quite a shock on the side of the road down the street from the shitty restaurant we went to after or cross country road trip. the one that's called good, even though it isn't.  we were just too tired to fine somewhere else that was open at 9 pm (oh LA).  but that's what happens when you get older, maybe.  you get it. it's not nice to hear and you don't even have to agree with it (i don't) but you understand that there are other point of views. valid?  maybe not. but it's how someone feels.  so who's to say?

so there on sunset our friendship ended. 4 doors down from the fucking comfort inn that has had the sign saying they are under construction but still open.  even though it's been like that for close to 8 months and i have never seen any thing even resembling a pick up truck let alone a hammer anywhere near there.

today, i was on the same part of sunset, still a little shell shocked, coming back from coffee and crossword puzzle.  and there was rollins, on the radio during the day filling in for steve jones.  he's telling some insane fairy tale about brian jones, steve jones and himself on a beach in the south of france talking to a journalist in 1968.  that's his segue into a beach boys song.  and then he played a roy orbison song.  and it sounded amazing!  even though i only have one speaker and it sucks.  it was like i had never heard roy orbison before.  i can't remember the song, which is a shame. it was one, maybe it was in blue velvet, where he's singing about letting him die, he sounds happy (or content, at least) about it.  and it sounded perfect on another sunny day, 76˚.  and i felt better.  again, i wasn't feeling that badly in the first place.

so i went home, happy that rollins was alive and playing music on the radio in southern california.  and i looked for that song on the computer to buy. but i couldn't find it and i didn't feel like buying a roy best of and not having it be on there.  i don't think it was a huge hit, i might be wrong tho.  but then i saw the traveling wilburys, and i remembered that i had always meant to buy this recently reissued comp of all their songs.  dudes. it is amazing.  it made me even happier than rollins already had.  i mean, there is a sort of weird kraftwerky meets so cal rock from the 70's jam. and of course there are the hits.  and they are so good. it even included this video.

how rad do all those guys look? harrison is really intense and looks like he just flew his private plane to practice. petty is straight deadwood old west, and looks amazing.  what a smile.  lynne looks like a cross between will ferell and my dad circa '80.  roy orbison is a ghost and his voice sounds so sick.  and dylan, well, he just looks like a furry dylan.  watching this vid i thought, "man, to be in that train with those dudes.  how insane would that have been?" or to be in the studio when they wrote this record?  i mean, i was pretty stoked when once i was in the same car as j mascis, mike watt, ron asheton and kevin shields. (well, i just namedropped, which is one of my faults i was called out for yesterday).  but these dudes were beatles, ELO, dylans and petty and orbison.  i couldn't help but think how rad it would be for any of these dudes to be my dad. the funny thing being i know a daughter of one of them and it doesn't sound like it was always how i imagined... i don't even know what that is... i think it was more of those dudes in that train. that particular moment in that video, if that was your dad and you were just watching him and his friends jamming.  and they aren't even famous.  they are just some bros jamming on the train.  ha!  that was my day dream.

have you ever realized where you finally stood with someone? whoa!  it's liberating.  and it doesn't even matter. i would have felt just as fine about it with or without that TW song.  but i was walking in the park, thinking about what a relief it was to know what was up and not worrying about it.  and when i paid attention to the song it was the line "don't have to be ashamed of the car i drive. i'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive. it don't matter if you're by my side, i'm satisified" and i thought.. "petty!  you read my mind." it's corny or silly. but lynne and company totally summed up how i was feeling. and that rollins is responsible for being the catalyst for this realization....well, my week which started out on a shit note looked up by tuesday.

if it's what it takes...

i feel sorry for any of the three car loads of dudes (potential rapists?) that cat called me as i was walking home from the Dodgers game tonight. must be a real bummer to ask what you think is a woman if she wants a ride only to realize, as i am looking around "who me?" style, that you just asked a dude to get in your car (the polite one). or that you just asked a dude to "suck your dick" (the rudest, and ugliest of the three, naturally) and then because 38,000 other people were leaving as well these guys could only stew in their embarrassment as the cars in front of them inched along. i suppose i could have just been cruised by three separate car loads of gay dudes.  but this was elysian park, not griffith park where i hear the action usually is.

yeah.  my second game in a month, both against the rockies.  i fucked up by my lack of posts.  last time i went for free due to the benevolence of my old boss (and friend) greg dulli's season tickets.  such a kind, kind man to offer up his tickets on the first of TWO(!) joe torre bobblehead nights. and since part of our deal was a blog about the game that i never wrote, i couldn't bring myself to ask again.  (if you read this dude, i checked your seats tonight hoping to see you there, but i guess a Penny vs Francis game is not an intriguing enough match up to get you out to the game.  i don't blame you.)

which brings me to my lack of posting... not sure how it started. and it can't all be blamed on the last tour i just finished.  at least not the start of the dry spell.  i most definitely can blame the longevity of it on the tour.  oh, the tour.... for some reason one i thought would be (and was told would be) easier than the last (pretty easy) was grim.  and grim is just one word, others that might be used according to the thesaurus are:

forbidding

uninviting

formidable

dour

harsh

menacing

implacable

ruthless

and perhaps most apprropriate

m e r c i l e s s

two lost passports.  one stolen passport.  more drunk, more often band members since interpol 2003. more drunk crew members than i have ever been around.  there's nothing worse than forgetting the monitor guy at the moscow hotel at 7 AM, turning back from the airport to get him to find him passed out in his bed angry about being woken up.  all because he was drinking vodka until 6 AM.  fuck that shit. 

it's too early to go into details.  so MERCILESS it was that i am only just recovering thanks to the aforementioned baseball game and just general calmness of being home. i think you'll have to wait for the tv show or the book that is most def forthcoming as i can't see any other way out of this lifestyle than a tell all account in a few years.  i've even gotten a request for a feature film.  and that came from a record company employee i worked with a couple of years ago. i just found out i tortured her so that she fantasized about pulling my hair out and slapping me across the face.  too bad she didn't encounter me on my walk home tonight.  i am sure she isn't the only one, exes notwithstanding.

don't believe me?  randy randall got a nice shot of me in the midst of the misery and put it up on the no age blog, here. i am pretty close to forming some dreads in that photo.  i know, i know it's all about tie dye this summer. but when i get a beard that long and little naps forming in the back of my head... you know i've been spending too much time around canadians.

leg room

the other day i went to bed in luxembourg. i woke up in brussels,  as we are getting off the bus to check in for a flight i find out that someone realizes they left their passport in dusseldorf.  we were in d-dorf 4 days earlier. pretty pretty pretty shitty that the hotel didn't call me or email me (they had both) to tell me that one of my charges had left their passport.  so...

somehow i get the dude on his plane with his driver's license. which, to be quite honest, i was v surprised to find out that he even owned since none in the band own a car as they live in toronto, which apparently you do not need a car to live in.  i know i know that's a paradox because you need a car to get of toronto as you can't actually live there.  but he had one.  so i got him on the plane....made arrangements for the hotel to fed ex the passport to vilagarcia de arousa, espana, our destination. crisis averted.   90 minutes later, right before the flight takes off the crisis is back.  turns out that fed ex does not operate on saturday and sunday in spain or portugal... because some people hate convenience apparently.   

upon landing in portugal i made some calls to a travel agent.  she made some calls while we were driving north to this town in spain. whatever... this is bullshit.  long story short, this is how i spent my friday:

7:00 am wake up
10:00 am depart brussels
12:40 pm arrive porto
5:35 pm depart vigo, spain
6:40 pm arrive madrid, spain
7:35 pm depart madrid
10:05 pm arrive dusseldorf, germany
11:00 pm arrive NH hotel dusseldorf, pick up passport (give hotel the finger)
5:45 am wake up at NH hotel dusseldorf, saturday
7:50 am depart d-dorf
10:25 am arrive madrid
12:45 pm depart madrid
1:55 arrive porto
2:55 pm meet band, arriving by car from spain
4:20 pm depart porto
6:35 pm arrive london

6 cities, 6 flights in 36 hours.
 

feels like flying

i can't sleep. it's 8:14 am in istanbul and i am wide awake.  i was asleep a couple hours ago for probably 45 minutes. i'd fallen asleep to the sweet sounds of cliff lee and the cleveland indians beating the yankees.  and then what i am assuming was the muslim call to prayer went off at like 5 AM.  that woke me up.  this does not bode well for my day of sightseeing tomorrow.  i am quite sure that that will not happen now.  so much pressure to do so much in so little time on these tours to exotic places. 

hung out in the new terminal 5 at heathrow today for a good few hours.  i liked it.  it is the polar opposite of everything heathrow. no lines, lots of light. and the business class lounge is loaded with free food.

it might be getting time for a career change seeing that i really would just rather be in LA.

at least during baseball season.

i don't care if it rains or freezes

whoops.  it's may.  i am about to go to turkey.  my flight leaves in 30 mins.

there's nothing worse than a man with a 8 year old dell laptop yelling "the king is dead" as the cavs lose GAME ONE! of the series against the celtics.  i am not even worried.  but FUCK massholes.  they are everywhere and they are just as lame in the admiral's club LAX as they are on the street behind fenway.

see you in turkey.

this got made in the day

oh yeah.

i am in nyc.

be home tomorrow.

but i made it home alive

tonight i pulled a trick (sort of) that i haven't pulled since i lived in nyc.  first of alll as i was driving kime and i to the hollywood hills for a party i wasn't sure i was going to be that into anyways i thought, "hmmm....if i was in nyc i would just leave and get on the train when i was ready to go home".  there's no responsibility of other people.  but this was a whole different game.  driving someone, it's a lot of pressure to have a good time.  and sometimes you are in the mood for that and sometimes not. and i won't say i wasn't in that mood tonight. but this party, while fun for others no doubt, was no what i was really in the mood for.

so i pulled a classic ds circa the nyc days.  back then if there was something i was sort of obligated to go to but not really in the right state of mind, or maybe it was at a bar i hated...if there was something i was not stoked on for whatever reason i had a patented trick.  i would show up at the venue (unless it was more than a 10 minute train ride away or if it involved a river crossing, in which case i just wouldn't go) of the party.  i would talk to the first couple people i saw that i knew. and then after a few minutes of casual conversation i would say i was going to get a drink.  at that point i would just leave and go home. it was sketchy until you got to the corner. you didn't want to run into any other guests as you were bailing. but once you hit the corner you were in the clear and i would usually walk to st marks book shop and look at books for the next hour or so. 

that's what i miss living here in LA.  it's much harder to pull that move off.   but i kind of did it tonight. although i didm say i was leaving... but then i ended up sticking around for 10 more minutes and then i found myself outside checking out the amazing house and i just thought "well... there's my car" and i left. sorry.

sometimes i am not the best partier.

and when i got home i was looking at this photo and decided that i am going to buy a turntable tomorrow.  because if i could listen to SCRAWL "he's drunk" right now... i would feel great.