WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

It's been a few days now, so unfortunately i have to summarize. Here are 7 small paragraphs that all start with "We":

-We had an excellent CMJ. That's all.

-We played in the basement of a dorm complex in Troy, NY and it was one of the sweatiest shows we've ever played. We stayed on the couches in the venue area and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on a projector screen with the music playing over the PA.

-We, along with our friend Alan, visited the Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hampshire on our way to Boston. 30,000 Jack-O-Lanterns. We were talking on the way in about how we'd never played New Hampshire, and at the festival we were able to weasel our way onto the "Jesus Is Lord Tour" stage and played 5 songs. We have now played 43 states.

-We love Great Scott in Boston, MA and we love The Octopus Project and we love Ho-Ag. So, be default, our show with Octopus Project and Ho-Ag at Great Scott in Boston a few days ago was awesome.

-We (collectively) hate turnpikes. We spent 10 hours turnpike-ing from Boston to Meadville, PA to play a very fun show at the coffee shop at Allegheny College.

-We (collectively), in response to our hatred of turnpikes, took a back-road route to Bowling Green, OH instead of going on the Ohio Pike. This was a great idea, as we had never seen a "HORSE AND BUGGY CROSSING" sign before, nor had we ever seen the Horse and Buggy cross a road, as warned by the sign.

-We are playing in Bowling Green, fittingly, with a band called Wee.

Yessssssss

Yesterday was pretty awesome. Our showcase went really well, we saw some old friends (The Photo Atlas, Ian Anderson) and made some new ones (Alex Newport, Moros Eros). Life is good. I wish there was a way to exchange a high five through the monitor with anybody reading this, but technology has not quite met up with my demands.

Today is our "fun day". We don't really have any plans other than the French Kiss Records showcase and the Barsuk/Sub-pop/Suicide Squeeze/Touch and Go/every-other-indie-label party at midnight. Nothing to play, nowhere to be, nobody to try to impress. It shall be sweet.

We've never been to South by Southwest, and this is our first CMJ, and it's better than i thought it would be. It's like a weird indie rock utopia. Today is our last day, then we're off to continue our tour. We will be home in less than a week! Wow.

CMJ

Today:

2 PM - go to Soundfix records in Brooklyn to watch our pay Erik Bogle play in the Fatal Flying Guillotines/loan them equipment
5 PM - go to Cake Shop in Manhattan to load in for the Hello Sir showcase
7 PM - go back to Brooklyn, attend a party held by Alex Newport at his studio
11 PM - play at the Cake Shop

This is exciting.

We went to see a move (Frank and Cindy) last night at the Museum of Modern art. It was curated by This American Life and Ira Glass held a Q and A afterwards. Not much else to say, it was just pretty cool.

Foooood and Muuuuuusic

One of the best things a human can do for another human is to make them a meal. I'm sitting in a kitchen in New Jersey, watching the squirrels and the chipmunks scramble for fallen acorns while a family friend of Griffin's is cooking us eggs. Awesome.

We will spend today and the two following days in New York for the CMJ music conference. We don't have a whole lot of definite plans other than to actually play. I'd like to catch Lifetime and Modern Life is War tonight, but the Bouncing Souls are headlining and that just doesn't seem like something I want to be a part of.

Slaraffenland is the best difficult-to-pronounce band from another country that we have ever played with.

People will be people when they eat this sandwich.

Why is waking up at 9 AM so hard to do?

Pittsburgh and St. Louis seem like they could be friends. They're both fairly industrial and not very pretty on the surface. Both are places where if you didn't know anybody there, you would not have a good time; they're both places where you have to make your own fun. Also, St. Louis took all of the hypothetical metal that Pittsburgh used to make a shit-ton of bridges to make a big-ass silver arch*.

Today is Philadelphia and show/post-show dinner with Pattern is Movement, a band that we're friends with so we always forget that they're the WEIRDEST BAND IN THE UNIVERSE. And weird bands make space jesus cry.

We Versus the Shark stopped by the house we've been at and hung out/stayed. It feels like we're on tour with them, since we've seen them once already and are going to see them in New York. New York will be fun. New York will be good. New York is important. New York is the reason we're on this tour.

*There's that one Q and Not U song where they say "every town needs and Eiffel Tower tonight", and i know what they mean and agree.

It's hard to post when a guy is impersonating a bear in the next room over (and doing a great job at it)

Today we are going to embark on this mission:

step 1: go to Guitar Center
step 2: buy new "Little Big Muff" pedal
step 3: take out of box, put Griffin's broken "Little Big Muff" pedal in its place
step 4: return pedal to different Guitar Center
step 5: high fives

Wish us luck.

Last night was an 8 band house show in Pittsburgh. The cops came, not because of the show, but because of the meth head that was walking around grabbing ass and boobs.

Speaking of boobs, the best thing we've heard on this tour is something along the lines of "dude, I love boobs so much that you could put a nipple on some dude's belly and i'd probably get turned on" Is this a you-had-to-be-there?

Things that are making this tour great for me: the new Weakerthans record, "Blankets" by Craig Thomson, and finding recording nerds to geek out with.

Lazy blogging = catch up

Here is a quick summary of the last few days:

WEDNESDAY: very fun house show in Blacksburg, VA, barbecue restaurant in Greensboro with intense mural of space jesus*, bag of Laffy Taffy, most quiet dance party ever (sleeping roommate), first failed attempt to get guitar center to replace cracked-ass cymbal for free.

THURSDAY: new Radiohead record, un-fun bar show in Washington DC, realization that just because some of your favorite bands are from a place doesn't make that place cool, Motel 6.

FRIDAY: Chinese restaurant, mostly fun warehouse show in Leymoyne, PA, being chiller whales at a parent house, second failed attempt to get guitar center to replace cracked-ass cymbal for free.

Today we go to Pittsburgh to play a house show and visit some friends. It shall be a good time.

*space jesus is a mysteriously inappropriate mural of a view of earth and the moon from outer space, with a gigantic translucent face of jesus in between the two. There is one lone tear coming from space jesus's eye. This is, of course, how floods and hurricanes happen.