Category: Uncategorized

Somehow, by accident, we ended up in the centre of the universe. Where everything is happening, at all times. Where you can do anything you ever wanted, all within an hour subway ride. Somehow we ended up in NYC. Cancelled show, three hour drive. Business, culture, politics, anything and everything of power, photosynthesize in the artificial lights of the city. Sitting in Time Square I realized that this is the root of all evil, but it sure is nice. Sitting in Brooklyn drinking a Brooklyn Brewery Pennant Ale I realized that this is the birthplace of all things nice, but it sure is evil. Altogether the biggest feeling place I’ve ever been, to be sure, and the most on edge I’ve felt in some time. Like a giant amusement park for the spenders of money, the watchers of people and the thinkers of men.

And in a few short hours, back to reality, if that is what you consider reality: driving, loading, selling, in places that are far from the centre of the universe, but matter no less.

A single day in this city has imploded my mind, a week might send me to hell.

I’ve lived a year past my own personal life expectancy. April 17, 2009.
I should have died. A cliff. In India. No shoes. Jiten.
A time of my life when I expected to die and I’m here a year later. I’m not expecting death anytime soon anymore, but the first year of my real life was the most significant and eventful than any previous. Six jobs in a year, if you count being a merch girl and pro-bono lawyer as jobs. Life philosphy more fully understood through the understanding of thought unhindered by conditioning or past thoughts. Facial hair more fully developed.

I’ve learned to ‘live at home’, and what the phrase ‘live at home’ means. I’ve found home on floors of different houses, on beds of different friend’s, on trains of different countries. Last night home was the field of some redneck man in Kentucky that he called the ‘bottom’. Tonight in a basement in Delaware, the hardcore hotel, with six bunkbeds for ten traveling souls. Next month I will find a home in a new apartment and with new roommates in a new part of a new-ish city. I will always live at home, because home is where I am living. Living at home until I die.

Earlier in the day, Tom the GPS took us to Easy Street, a long, narrow, winding, gravel road up a mountain to try and get to a phantom venue. Flashes of India blasted into the foreground of my mind, cliff hanging and dodging buses of oncoming commuters. Cliff hanging, a year ago, Jiten, ripped toes, sharp rocks. He said it was easy. Easy Street is a real bitch and will always be that way.

I planned to celebrate this day as my new birthday. Six months and seven days after my original birth I have a new day of birth that signifies something better, something newer, something less covered in uterus goo and cheek pinching. And to celebrate the hope is to start off my second year of real life by going to Game Two in Washington. Because Year Two of Life Two means Game Two. Because Life Two is based on the faith that there is No Problem.  That is what Life Two is rooted in.

Here is to the beginning of Year Two of my life that might actually matter. My life of actual discovery and examination. My new real life.

It can be hard to update on tour. Anecdotes are plenty, but rarely interesting enough to share often. Except the family of wild boars that were captured and caged in the backyard of our home in Florida. Days pass quickly. States become new states in a matter of hours. Each day I have to take a second or two to try and remember what state we are currently resting in, and the only way I remember is to think back at the last license plate I knelt next to. It all happens with haste. Between driving to gas stations and venues, sitting at shows, sleeping under coffee tables, listening to dudes yell across tables about WoW, staring at my twin (photo soon); time barely exists.

It is hard to tell sometimes if it is my excessive negativity, or the actual truth that there are indeed an overflow of morons that make me mourn the state of the only music culture that was created for redesigning thought, and displaying new ideas of unity. Tour is perfect, but it allows for a tired mind, which allows for serious disenchantment.

But what invigorates enchantment is the one and the only NHL playoffs. And although I abandoned my team in their most difficult task yet, I know they can hold it out until I return for a glorious twenty fifth season. The prospect of tour can make me do some pretty outlandish things. Everyone’s hands cause natural disasters. Let us hope that mine can heal them.

I woke up from dreams of being hunted down by Vince Vaughn, by a small bunny doing calisthenics in its cage next to my floor space. Too many hallucinogens, I guess.

A lot can happen in three days. Florida without internet, when things actually happen I can’t talk about them. But really, nothing happened. We got pulled over in a Floridan car, questioned, patted down (groped in the crotch) by a lady police officer, and questioned about my hot chilis and Canadian drivers license. Played a show in Memphis at the same venue that Johnny Cash allegedly played his first. I’ve watched a fight almost every night at each show. I’ve got what has been referred to as the ‘Tour Blues’, when a lack of sleep, vitamins, positivity, internet connection, and too much watching others play World of Warcraft, combine to create scurvy-like symptoms where the body begins to eat itself alive. So I drank vegetable juice, slept a lot, cried softly, consumed gallons of the Universal Solvent (water), and skipped two Taco Bell trips. The tour blues have almost subsided.

The gentlemen in A Textbook Tragedy hit the beach with beers for upwards of nine hours yesterday, resulting in gleaming red burns on backs, foreheads, noses. A local southerner recommended to bathe lightly in vinegar and wash it off with the Universal Solvent. Other uses of vinegar: elementary school cleaning agent (diluted with the Universal Solvent), cooking, dousing fried goods in, gardening, washing clothes, curing the tour blues, making cool explosions with baking soda, salt and vinegar chips. Maybe vinegar is the new Universal Solvent. It must be nice to have multiple uses, like vinegar, or water. I can’t even sell shirts, write blogs, stay healthy or make tips.

Alabama accents are harder to understand than the French language. Maybe if they gargled vinegar it would clear their throats…

Pictures are much easier than words. Photographers are lazy writers.
This is the life.

I’ve never been to Arkansas. Never knew anything about it. Still don’t. The first memorable thing I did in the state was forget my laptop in the apartment I slept at last night. And I didn’t realize it until 15 miles down the road. Worst merch dude ever. But if the Customs guard from Montreal is reading this, what I meant to say was, ‘Worst friend-on-tour-doing-nothing-and-gaining-no-benefits dude ever.’ That is me.

I am traveling with four to ten people I have never traveled with before. Only one I’ve had the honour of spending hours with, swapping odours and cynicisms with. A group of ten men, two vans, many meticulously coloured arms, legs and necks. Spending their youth. With care and thought. Eyes and minds in love with music. Eyes and minds hypnotized by the soft luminescence of computerized devices to stay connected, to stay entertained, to stay sane.  The chance to stay connected with home can disconnect a traveler from where they are. But sometimes it is best to forget where you are. Like in Arkansas for example.

Spending youth like a precious mineral. It is one wealth that when stored, might cause bankruptcy.

Soda-Pop Bottle Opener.

In my brief travels since quitting life I have had the chance to rate many cities based on the foolproof and completely shallow system that allows any onlooker to understand the basics of a new city, with the same amount of knowledge and research as a Lonely Planet or Fodor’s Travel Guide. It has never failed me.

Food- The first meal, Guatemalan breakfast. The second meal, Big Truck burritos. The first grocer, a massive Indian market. 7-11, terrible Slurpees called icy drinks. Easter Potluck at Tyler’s, my Indian food, veg chili, carrot puff, sweet potato casserole. Nic’s (spelt the same way!) Grill, top five best burgers of my life. Chick-fil-A, the most amazing fast food experience of my life, and the food was alright too. 4.5/5

Girls- It seems like in my new found position I should void this category, but in the spirit of a well-rounded system, and for a fair representation of this new city, I think I’ll stick with it. Easter Sunday mega-church, at least mega to me and church to some, all the college girls, save a few, were robed in lustfully inspired spring dresses and resurrection inspired curls in their hair. Southern Belles are not for me. XXX/Easter Bunny

Intangibles- Horse in the backyard. Smoking pipes. Talks about Health Care, economics, politics. Slip ‘n’ Slide. Hindi movie where Karina Kapoor actually kisses Amir Khan. Lack of public transportation. Easter Eggs hidden with peanut butter, Doritos, Vitamin C, dryer sheets and sticky men inside. People. 4/5

Overall- Passable. Liveable. As I’ve said before, a city is only as great as it’s sleaziest man, and the people here seem to be alright. People are the grout of a city built with red bricks on top of a bed of red soil.

Day One. Successful.