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it's gonna be goodbye for the 4th time in one year.
that's pretty fuckin lame if you ask me.
oh well.
i have a bed in portland. all my stuff is in LA. i sort of miss nyc, but maybe that's just becuase i am not there anymore. my family is in ohio and it is the greatest state in the nation but i don't know if i can live there again. where should i live?
i got my judge "what it meant" cd today when i showed up at niki's. it's super confrontational, if you're my friend don't do drugs, or i will disown you and then give you the beat down stuff. in some ways it has to do with the last post about friends fading away. but, duh, in a much more aggro way.
then i saw this and instead of being sad about friends long gone i got stoked about the ones i have. stoked enough to steal this self portrait from mary's page.
Now the posse's gettin' hungry, and Mix-a-Lot's treatin'
we stopped at Taco Bell, for some Mexican eatin'
but Taco Bell was closed, and the girls was on my tip
they said, "Go back the other way, we'll stop and eat at Dick's"
Dick's is the place where the crew hang out
the SWASS like to play, and the rich flaunt clout
posse to the burger stand, so big we walk in two's
we're gettin' dirty looks, from those other sucka crews
my posse's on broadway
a sir mix - a - lot classic.
tonight i took the band to dick's. best burgers on the west coast. hand's down.
once we went to dick's after i was finished with work on some tour or another. maybe it was tortoise or something. then i stayed at your apartment. and we traded some letters and you sent me a package with an avacado and a tiny bottle of rum to the roosevelt hotel in los angeles. it had a great letter in it...you wanted me to finish the story. i never did it. and sometimes i wonder if that's why i never here from you anymore.
it's another hazard of the job. people don't know where you are ever and then you lose touch and all of a sudden some of your friends are gone. i know it sounds ridiculous but it's true. i always mean to call but there are always people around or there's someone asking questions. or there is an emergency somewhere in the venue. and sometimes by the time everything is mellow it's 3 am on the east coast. or it's 7 am and i am in japan and you are going to bed. and then when we are in the same place you can't make it out cause i called last minute and you are stuck at work or something. and no, i won't be here in the morning cause the bus leaves at 3 am. sorry, the train isn't running so i can't make it to brooklyn. and soon, it's been a few months since i have talked to you. no one emails anymore. at least not me. meaning, i don't email and no one emails me. and all of a sudden what's it been six months and i am home and you had a party last night but you didn't know i was back in town or i didn't think that you wanted to go see that band play with me. oh yeah, i leave again in two weeks. i'll be gone for a month or so. at least i get to go to dick's every couple of months. someday it'd be nice to go with a posse. just like sir mix - a - lot.
i still have that tiny bottle of captain morgan's. i carry it around in my bag with my tooth brush and all that other stuff.
today. what a waste in so many ways but so productive in others. i woke up in seattle and walked to the post office. in what kind of city is the closest post office 3/4 of a mile away? what the hell. i don't know why i am complaining. i enjoyed the walk. on the way back i walked through the seattle center and took some photos of the emp (experience music project). i love this building. many people i know hate it. fuck them. i don't know why i love it so much. it makes me smile. and makes me feel like human's can pretty much build anything.
and since then i have been working on the bed. this is how i always work. i am getting ready for the twilight singers tours in may, june, july and august. today i made a budget for the us tour in may/june. this is a bunch of bullshit. well, it's an integral part of my job but all it means is sitting on the bed with my laptop on my lap and the battery getting really hot. then i search and search through emails and find different numbers that people have sent me. then i put those figures in a spreadsheet and i find out how much money the tour is going to cost. and next thing you know it's 5 hours later and instead of sitting up on the bed i have slid down and the lap top is now on my chest and i haven't eaten and i have 10,000 windows open on my computer.
i get a lot of flack from some people about how many windows i always have open on my computer. i am pretty self concious of this because i don't really know how to operate without them all open. and i know i could probably figure out a more efficient way to use my computer. but i kind of don't want to because i sort of have a love hate relationship with it. i am not into sitting here in front of it all day. and i know learning more about it would make me spend less time sitting in front of it (maybe) but i just can't be bothered to care.
ok. i took a little break and went and got a cup of coffee and a little snack. i feel a little bit better. i can't wait to eat a hamburger at dick's tonight. that will make me feel great, for a second. but it's worth it.
i am psyched to see niki tomorrow and hit the road with her again. she is riding to la and then we will drive back to portland when this tour is finished in a week. i think we are gonna drive up the 101 the whole way.
today i also downloaded a ton of music that i lost when my harddrive died. and i started making a twilight singers itinerary.
i guess i meant it was a waste cause i sat in a hotel room all day. but the thing is that sometimes i forget that this is a job and i feel guilty if i am in a different city and i spend the whole day in front of the computer instead of doing something. but then i remember this is my job. plus i would rather get this shit done now and go to the tilamook cheese factory than be stuck doing it all when i have some real time off.
that's all. now we have to go to the show at neumo's.
oh yeah, one more thing. do they still do this crap? when i lived in cincinnati it was flying pigs, in nyc it was bulls and i was in orlando once and it was giant gekko's. they always look like the same crappy artist did them in every city. surely there are better ways to make money for charity than sullying up an already drab city like vancouver with crappy "art" bears.
isn't it weird that every major "city" on the interstates 94 and 90 from minnesota to idaho begins with the letter b? bismarck, nd. billings, mt. bozeman, mt. butte, mt. and then you have boise, id. but that's not on 90. what's with the b's pioneers?
yesterday was a typical spring in the mountains day. it started out in fergus falls, mn a balmy 70 degrees and almost ended on the side of the crazy mountains (that's what they are called) in some blowing snow. the temp? 26 degrees. alas, we didn't die and we made it to Bozeman, mt. the newly renovated holiday inn. they gave us the rollaway bed for free. and we saved $5.
the presets hadn't seen much snow before, being from australia. you can't really tell her but it's coming down a little bit. ya know how it looks when han solo goes into hyperspeed in star wars. that's how it looked.
for the second time in my life. i am in the exact same places for three days in a row in subsequent years, for example (from my old blog:
you know what is nuts?
last year :
3/27 Oslo
3/28 Stockholm
this year:
3/27 Oslo
3/28 Stockholm
that's what.
last year was 2003 with interpol. this year was 2004 with belle and sebastian.
last year with m83:
4/22 minneapolis
4/23 bozeman
this year it's the same. i realized this when we pulled into minneapolis. i saw the girl with tatoos all over her face. she used to live in cincinnati and she was standing in front of the club last year on a smoke break when i pulled up with m83. and this year as we drove by on our way to first ave there she was again. in the exact same place at the exact same time of day. figures. that's a comment on my life, not hers.
speaking of first ave. that's the club where purple rain was filmed. as a note to any bands that i may work with in the future i would like to say a couple things about this place. just to get them out of the way now and we don't have to go over them ad naseum:
1. no, prince will NOT be coming to your show.
2. no, we can not go to paisley park studios.
this is the band i am working for, the presets:
niki and i talked about having fun yesterday. that was a pretty good conversation. we are gonna go to the tillamook cheese factory for fun!
the wind is howling. it's blowing snow! we're in the mountains. sweet.
oh by the way... the germans need someone to drive them around. if anyone reading this thinks they want to drive a nice band on some dates opening for art brut it starts on may 8 in austin and ends on may 22 in nyc. they will pay you even! if you ever thought you wanted to do what i do this would be a good way to start. leave a comment if you are interested.
i am in the exact same place i was last year, bozeman, montana.
it snowed today. i am tired.
goodnight.
thanks to my lame job yesterday i missed out on an amazing plasmatics shirt on ebay that sold for a paltry $20 and a rapeman shirt today that went for fucking $6.00. fuck north dakota, fuck minnesota, fuck montana. fuck being away from home all the time.
fuck tulips.
chicago, illinois 4:30 pm
we rolled in today around 4:30 pm and got jammed up on the ryan expressway. the border crossing was painless, sort of, just not bad enough to mention.
i feel a little shakey or otherworldly from all the driving and traveling of late, i think. i may have said it before, at least privately to a few of you, but i am saying it again. i can't wait for my two week break. i need to have some fun. not that this isn't fun sometimes, but i need to have my own kind of fun with my own kind of people.
today we stopped at frosty boy in burien, indiana. i told the guys that this is similar to where i grew up. it's not so similar now as the area has grown but when i was a kid my neighborhood looked like the frosty boy one a little bit. we took a breather here.
i liked this awning. i tried to get a photo of my head in front of it. the only ones i could get show how large the gandolf nostrils are. this is the one where it looks the smallest, if you can believe that. speaking of believing, someone the other day questioned whether something on here (the story of kime's pony drawings) really happened. so if someone else that reads and knows the truth can you leave a comment and tell people that i am not a liar, nor has my life become so lame that i have to make up stories, yet.
and this is what i ate, but i only ate half of it.
while we were at frosty boy i lamented feeling restless and compared it to that song "range life" by pavement. ya know what's funny? they didn't know that song. i think these dudes really love dance music. which is cool, cause i don't know anything about it. i don't think i have ever worked with anyone that didn't know most pavement songs. i think about that song a lot. or more like the chorus "i want a range life / if i could settle down / then i would settle down" goes through my head a lot. i was talking about how i am sort of jealous of all the people i went to high school with and how they have been able to stay in the town we grew up. the problem is that i know i would freak out if i did that. but at the same time i wish that i would. it's like, i sort of HATE that i have been to 30 different countries and a million different cities because now i know what bosnia is like and i know what moscow is like and i know what stockholm is like. and that's amazing. when i was 26 i had never even been to california. but at the same time when i think about living places i have all these places i can choose from because i have been there. and i think "well if i lived in oslo it would be light for 24 hours for 3 months of the year" or "it would be great to live in rome and see the colisseum everyday". so it's hard for me to feel content anywhere. i know i am not the only person that does what i do that feels this way. it's a hazard of the occupation. and i know it sounds odd to people that don't do what i do. usually you don't hear people complain about traveling the world for free. i'll say this though: if you got pissed by that know that i fucking hate it when i hear people complain about being bored at home.
enought ranting. i am gonna eat a hot dog from hot doug's i think.
but first i have to say that today is the first official day of fun time, nice weather days. how do i know? cause i turned into a giraffe today and that's how i always know those days are upon us.
toronto, 6 am.
why is getting up at 6 am so much easier and more pleasant on the west coast?
border crossing today.
i had this throwing muses sticker in my 1981 toyota tercel in 1991. not a great record, but a great band.
562 miles to chicago.
