Where is the hotel?

the silver lining is alive and well

i am home. it's weird to be back. i got lost going to glendale today!
festivals aren't all bad. look who i ran into the other day in Norway....Pamela!

she is in Gogol Bordello. i first met her in the one and only fashion show i was in in nyc in 2001. she was helping get us dressed. and for the past few summers i have run into her all over the world. the last time i saw her just happened to be Norway too. it's weird how that works. last week in barcelona i was in the middle of a plaza in a part of town that isn't touristy at all. we were sitting there having a drink when someone came running up to me and said my name. it was this dude jp who tour managed a french band i drove around the states 2 years ago. random. in the middle of spain a dude i know that i don't talk to that lives in paris ran up to me.
normally when this sort of thing happens i can explain it like "oh i live in LA. you live in london. we're both in nyc and we ran into each other on the lower east side." and that's cool and random. but if i know you and we both happen to be in nyc then we are probably both gonna be in the same neighborhood. but spain! barcelona. awesome.
anyway... back to pamela. she plays the washboard and the giant bass drum and really, really makes the show.

pamela. i'll see you in portugal in a couple of weeks!

home is home. i am at mikes and it feels great here. it's like being in a tree house. in a week it's back to hotels. but japanese hotels! the ones with the automatic curtains and the mirrors that don't fog up and crazy bidets and where they smoke in the elevators and when you call the front desk and ask for directions they fax a map to your room. japan. i love you.

here are two of my favorite recent rooms.

emmaboda, sweden.

and copenhagen. this one is my favorite of the last year or so. maybe since 2005 when i stayed at the hotel on rivington in nyc on the white stripes tour. i spent about 6 hours in total in it. what a shame.

speaking of white stripes.... i got a new job for september today.

pull my lips back and watch me smile

i'm coming home. i'm coming to los angeles. the band is playing as i write. the show will be done in an hour. i'll walk to the hotel around the corner. i'll repack my bags. i'll take a bath. and i'll sleep for an hour or two.
then i'll wake up at 4:45 AM (8:45 PM west coast). i'll take a mini bus to Katstrup Lufthavn here in Copenhagen. I'll check in on British Airways flight #811. The plane will take off at 7:50 AM (10:50 PM west coast time). I'll sleep. The plane will land at 9:00 AM (1 AM west coast time). I'll disembark and begin the arduos process of transfering through Heathrow. Not to sound like a dick. but it's not hard. orit wouldn't be hard if people that rarely travel would just stop. Heathrow now has a high budget movie they show while you are in the security line. But no one watches and they still all take their shoes off even though they don't have to. If all goes well i will have finished my terminal transfer at Heathrow by 10 AM. I'll look for a book. I'll have a coffee. I'll wait for my gate to be announced at which point I will hang out a little bit longer. Then i'll head to the gate, probably a 15 minute walk. At the gate I will show my boarding pass, possibly be searched again, and board my flight. Normally I would wait til everyone was on before boarding. But when i have an exit row seat like tomorrow (and all remaining flights on this trip) I board early. American Airlines flight #137 will leave the gate at approximately 11:25 AM (3:25 AM west coast time) and i'll be in the air shortly after that. Then I'll sleep and I'll eat and I'll stretch and I'll watch a movie or two. Maybe I'll watch the last episode of weeds. and I'll stare at the map of the flight path for a few hours or more.
And finally at about 2:40 PM (2:40 PM west coast time) after 11 hours and 15 minutes I'll be home. I'll get off the plane, clear immigration, wait for my bags, clear customs and head for the curb. Hopefully by 3:40 PM i will be in Cali's car, in tears, firmly ensconced in LA traffic. tears of joy, exhaustion, sorrow who knows. they'll all blend together.
Seriously, there'll be no deviation from that plan. Why? Just because... how else could it possibly go down? every thing from the packing to the customs clearance is business as usual. the tears? who knows.
but i haven't been "home" since march 28. so i am counting on them. regardless, i am coming home and i couldnt be happier.

i fell asleep the other day on the flight from trondheim to copenhagen. my camera was on the empty seat next to me. i like to think the flight attendant took this photo.

my brothers! we're one and the same

dude.
check this out... did it today.

lose my heart on the burnin sand

this

became this

when iggy invited about 200 people on stage duing "no fun". i am sure hundreds of other people have written about this already. but this was my first shot seeing the re-formed stooges. it was hectic and rad. i realized though as they spent a good 7 minutes clearing the people off the stage that it was a way for the dudes to get a little rest in the middle of a long set. that's cool. iggy's 60.

give up for now, keep on this way

i spent the last few days in perth. we went to rottnest island. check it out, if you want to see where in the world rottnest island lies on the face of the planet. we rode bikes and checked out the quokkas.

helmets were mandatory, fyi.

we went into the indian ocean! now i only need to go in the arctic ocean and i have them all. this was the side of the island that had the shark fence.

its a great feeling being at the end of the world.

and finally.... the quokkas showed up! i had my back turned and i heard j say "ahhhh! it's eating my bike!" and there it was my first quokka.

little did we know but lars is bros with the quokkas.

but it's not hard to bro down with them. j was yelling "now you have lice!"

before we headed back to the mainland we went to a cafe on the island. after we ordered we were waiting for our food filling out postcards when the waitress approached. here we are on an island 10 miles off the coast of the most remote city in the most remote country in the world. and they had the new dinosaur jr cd! so incredible. i always think how great that must feel for the people i work with when someone in a weird, remote place admits to being a fan. or when you get an offer to play in singapore. surely even the most famous rocker can remember playing in their basement and now a girl 18,000 miles from where j grew up has his cd!

the ferry back was a nice ride that got pretty cold 15 minutes before we landed in perth. we passed some awesome ships delivering goods to the middle of nowhere.

this is perth. just in case you don't get to come here sometime.

tomorrow it's 27 more hours of this, back to singapore. then to london. then to barcelona.

death is forming, forming death

hey. the internet in australia sucks! get with it fucks. it's 2007 and i am paying $30 for an internet connection that is slower than dial up that i had when i was 12.
clubs don't have it. hotels don't have it. even cafe's don't have it.
so if you're wondering why i haven't posted that's why. well that and that when you have to fly to every city you don't have time or energy to deal with prehistoric internet.

just another reason that the USA rules supreme in all things that make living good.

excess baggage

auckland to sydney today. this is the third flight into sydney in a week. 9th flight of 36 total for the whole summer.

my war, you're one of them

i just got back from a walk with larry. we tried to walk from coogie bay to bondi beach but the weather was not happening. i didn't mind the rain though. i think it was just the combination of the rain and that bondi was just a little farther than we thought that cut the trip short. it was like being on the new england coast in the late spring or something. constant rain, but not too cold. the rain came a little out of nowhere. but kind of you knew it was coming but just the 5 minutes before it happened. the waves swelled and you could see it coming across the ocean.

but we pressed on and walked in it for a good hour. like i said, i rather liked it rainy instead of sunny. it made me feel like i was fighting against something. and since that is what i was doing in my head, trying to push certain bad thoughts to the back, trying not to beat myself up or make myself feel bad...it was nice to have a physical manifestation to fight against. to press on against.

guess what day it is? i know you think it's saturday. but it's really sunday. i know that the dateline above will say the 7th. but it's the 8th down here in the southern hemisphere, 17 hours ahead of los angeles. and i haven't written about sundays for awhile. i'll tell you that they make me feel the same no matter the hemisphere, apparently. homesick. heartsick. lost. lonely. and to top it off, while the temp does not reflect what those of us that grew up with real winters know as winter. the light does. and it's just the same. it's always more about the light than the temperature, i think. it's the long shadows before the day has started. they are in full effect down here.

i like this hotel room. its' view of the ocean. its' two beds with the yellow and white striped comforters and the heater cranked up to 25 degrees c. now i know why people want to live on the water. it's nice to sit and get up and stare out the window. nothingness. it can bring you back. now i have to go to work. on a sunday night no less. wish me luck.

i thought about you

jet lag is killing me! today i realized that there's pretty much not an end in sight to harsh jet lag. as soon as we get used to aussie time we're gonna head back to europe. then as soon as we get used to europe time again i'll head back to LA. i'll be in LA for a week just enough time to recover. then it's off to japan. harshest jet lag / culture shock combo in the world. japan for 5 days then european festivals in august. radical, nonetheless. but i'll pretty much be out of it for the next 6 weeks. it's a rollercoaster out here people. yesterday was a high. today, while not a low by any means, has me bumming.

i'm not counting the week i was in LA. first of all, a week doesn't really count as being at home. second of all, i only had one day off. so, i've been gone for 100 days today. if you want to be a prick and say that the week counts, fine. then i've been gone for 56 days. if i weren't working and i were in the states i would be going to the boredoms boadrum 77 event under the brooklyn bridge. for sure. certainly if i know you and you live in nyc you are going. certainly if i know you and you live within a 6 hour plane ride of nyc you're going. 77 drummers! on the east river! nyc summer? if i weren't in australia, if i were in spain, or italy i would quit and go. i would.

guess who's gonna be taking part in this! allison busch! my new favorite drummer from awesome color. i was thinking about her today. rather kind of 1/2 dreaming on the flight about the whole event and remembered i never posted this hot video from the last dino/awesome color show in montreal.

you get an idea of why she is the best.

keep your eyes peeled for her in the park today.

our hotel is on the beach. maybe while you are getting blown away by 77 drummers and yamatsuka eye
i'll be on a whale watching expedition.

it's alright if you love me, it's alright if you don't

last i knew i was in germany. now i'm in brisbane and have been in australia for like 3 days? maybe 4? i don't know. the inflight entertainment went out about 1/2 way through the 12 hour flight from london to singapore. they had a spinelli coffee stand in the singapore airport. i thought the only one was in san fran!
two hours after our flight departed terminal 4 at heathrow airport they shut the whole thing down. someone found a suspicious bag so they kicked everyone out and closed the terminal for like 6 hours. close call is what we call that. i got to sydney and immediately got food poisoning and was sick for the first 36 hours which included one of the only days off in australia and a flight to brisbane then a 3 hour car ride to byron bay. ill.

anyway, enough complaining. i am so lucky! i realized this the other night in germany. we had like 8 hours to kill after the gig with the chili peppers before the bus left for the airport. so we were literally the last to leave the stadium. we watched all the fans leave. we watched as it started to downpour the moment rhcp walked off stage. we watched them break the stage down, the lights, the pa and clean the stadum in like 4 hours. and at some point during this i was thankful that i wasn't soaking wet moving 100 sub woofer boxes in the rain. and i looked through my last few blog entries and was like "shit! i travel around the world. i met dave rat. i am backstage at a chili peppers gig. i saw my friends beautiful kid in london. i'm going to australia via singapore. i'm going to japan. nina's coming to spain for a week. i'll be an exectuive platinum member on american airlines soon. i see dinosaur jr shred every night. i only work with bands i like." things coud be so much worse.

so here's what happens after you leave the giant enormo dome show. think about how much worse things could be...but then think that these guys might think the same thing when they think about your job. weird!

before

during

after

(um, standing on top of scaffolding at 12:30 am in a down pour? yr stoked if this is not your job.)

another thought. after you live in california, australia doesn't feel that exotic, it feels like home. wicked.