i am at the merch tent for “medina lake” (is that a band? i’ve never heard that name before, but it sounds like a warped tour band), when a sudden gust of wind starts violently blowing it (but none of the other tents) away. i grab on to the poles and am lifted upwards towards the sky.

i suddenly begin steering the makeshift glider over the city, and expertly (as if i’d this sort of thing before), i land in front of the home of my friend, anthony ciatti (only, again, it’s not his home at all). there, i walk in the door and find another old friend, michael warren, returning my hi-hat stand that he borrowed (in dreamland, not in the real world), without either of us caring or saying a word about the fact that i just landed a medina lake merch tent glider in the street.

the end.

summer time

hey, blog. sorry i’ve been neglecting you! i promise to think about maybe, perhaps updating on occasion, for the most part. also, this election season, i promise to keep the rage to a minimum–although, i can already tell that it’s gonna be tough, with michelle bachmann in the running. i can’t believe that wack job is from my state! haha.

anyway, i just got back from a (too) short run of shows, co-headlining with the get up kids! those guys are definitely some of the funniest dudes out there that give none fucks. they do things that other bands joke about, like closing every night with black sabbath riffs.

today was a great father’s day. my whole family got together for brunch, and then headed down to boom island to board the mississippi queen paddle boat. what is it about boats that’s so much fun? i think it’s the same as airplanes. they allow us to be places that we wouldn’t normally be. they give us different perspectives, like the undersides of bridges and whatnot. i dunno. it was awesome, though!

so, what’s in store for me? not sure. sadly, our next big tour isn’t until the fall. i believe there are random things here and there, but for the most part, the summer is completely open. i haven’t decided if i should try and find a job, or if i should spend the summer learning, enriching, biking, etc. i mean, i would do those things normally, but i was entertaining the thought of coming up with a regiment to stay busy. i dunno. reeks of effort. haha.

what should i do with myself??

photo by Hart Van Denburg

i don’t own a car, but i have in the past. and, like most car owners in minnesota, i know what it’s like to get stuck in the snow. so, when i see people outside my apartment getting stuck, i can’t help but want to help.

and that’s what i did today. a lot.

so, it’s with wisdom that i bestow on you, my rules for driving in blizzards:

rule #1: don’t drive in this shit!

when buses cancel all service, when tow trucks are getting stuck, when hennepin county calls back its plows because they can’t keep up with the snow, and when mndot advises NO TRAVEL, guess what? you don’t drive in this shit!

i know you might think that your car is invincible, and that it’ll never happen to you, but i’m pretty sure a similar lesson was taught to all of us in high school health classes? you don’t have sex without protection. you don’t drive in this shit, cause you WILL get stuck.

rule #2: keep your wheels straight!

i know it seems counter-intuitive, especially when you’re trying to make a turn, but keep your wheels straight, when you’re being pushed! you will get way more traction that way. when you turn your tires, all you do is create a nice, slick little pad of ice and snow that you will never get traction from.

i think i told one particular individual approximately 15 times to keep his wheels straight, and for some reason, he wouldn’t listen. i almost gave up on him, until–fortunately–a couple more good samaritans showed up and–without my prompting–all started yelling at him, “keep your wheels straight!” he finally listened, and guess what? we got him out.

rule #3: go straight home!

unless you’re going to the hospital to watch your child being born or a parent pass away, whatever you’re driving to isn’t that important. go home!

one particular example that i witnessed twice tonight was people getting stuck, pulling into the gas station. you know what’s more important than gas that will allow you to keep driving? your sanity! so, instead of pulling into the same gas station that you just watched two other cars get stuck pulling into, run out of gas and call a tow truck to tow you home. it’ll be easier and cost you not much more than the $3/gallon gas that you were gonna buy.

rule #4: for fuck’s sake, don’t drive in this shit!

i guarantee you that you can walk to where ever you’re going in less time than it will take you to drive/get stuck/drive/get stuck/drive there.

bus service won’t resume until 10am tomorrow morning. and if a fleet of 12-ton buses have the foresight to wait until then, you should, also. trust me. i’ve racked up enough karma points and i’m not longer looking to get any more. haha.

this happened. deal with it.

last night, i had strange dreams. so strange were they, that when i woke up, i actually wrote down what i could remember into my phone. it might be the first time that i’ve ever recalled my dreams so vividly.

anyway, here is my dream, as best as i can remember:

we start at a small apartment, maybe a dorm. there are about 8 people crammed in. this is probably after a show or something. chris shotliff (who played guitar in a band i was briefly in) throws me some keys and asks if i can park the PLANE. apparently, there was no street parking available, but he told me that if i fly to summit avenue, by some church, there was parking there.

so, i walk to the plane and think about how i’ve NEVER FLOWN A PLANE BEFORE, and ponder the danger of it. i decide that it can’t be that hard to drive a single seat propeller plane, so i do it. i fly to summit avenue and had a hell of a time finding a spot for the plane, as small as it was.

not sure if the plane got parked, but i did enter the church, which was actually an OFFICE BUILDING where ONLY BLACK WOMEN worked. i think i went in to ask where i should park, but the next thing i knew, i was heading into an elevator.

when, i leave the elevator, i’m back at the DORM. down the hall, there is a group of HOT ASIAN GIRLS. i want to talk to them, but when i pass a mirror, i see that i’m dressed as CATWOMAN and about 200 pounds heavier than normal. my hair is in a hairband and i’m wearing aviator glasses. feeling self-conscious, i just walk back to my dorm, without saying anything to the girls.

CUT TO:

i’m now flying (WITHOUT A PLANE OR WINGS) over the los angeles area. when i look down, it looks like GOOGLE MAPS satellite view. i’m trying to find a place to land. a place that’s familiar to me. i think i see where my old band recorded a record once, so i swoop down to it. nope, not it. so, i fly back up.

apparently, i’m heading into the FORBIDDEN WOODED AREA of northern los angeles, because i see a picture of a CARTOON COP with his hand out (stop). as i see him, i start plunging to…

A RESERVOIR at the top of a water fall. there is a strong current, which is pulling me, but not affecting the TWO FLY-FISHERMEN who are also there with me. MY MOM is on the shore, telling me to be careful. the current gets stronger and my mom yells for the fishermen to help me.

one of them walks over and picks me up and puts me on a GIANT ROCK. the giant rock resembles the back of an IGUANA. the other fisherman, meanwhile, is asking me if i dropped my TOILETRIES. i assure him that i’m quite alright and that is not my deodorant floating downstream.

suddenly, the giant rock starts moving. it is so big that once it gets to the edge of the falls, it creates a DAM, but in reverse. in other words, the part where the water falls into gets filled up and makes another reservoir.

we look into this new reservoir and see that it resembles the SUNKEN CITY OF ATLANTIS, except instead of a city, it’s STONEHENGE.

the two fishermen dive down. i dive off of the rock and into the sunken city, and as soon as i do, it becomes AN UNDERWATER MAN CAVE, closely resembling the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE’S underground lair. the only difference is that there is an upstairs balcony (resembling the upstairs at THE QUEST club), where MOTION CITY’s full backline is set up.

i watch the two men play XBOX on a giant ENTERTAINMENT CENTER, and i wake up.

the end.

anyway, here’s a picture of an adorable puppy, which more closely matches my mood, right now:

cute puppy

hedwig and the angry inch

primal fear

falling down

standard operating procedure

overnight

aside from “falling down” (which was cheesy) and “standard operating procedure” (which was, sadly, nothing new to me), i was pretty happy with my choices. i was especially stoked about hedwig. i thought the story was great, the music was rad (performed by eli and girls against boys), and the lead actor was amazing. i’m bummed that i missed the boat on that movie, cause apparently, it was released in 2001? heh.

anyway, tomorrow, we have a quick jimmy-less rehearsal, before we meet back up with him in los angeles on saturday. i’m pretty excited about this next leg of tour, as it will be in a 15 passenger van. it’s always nicer to have a place to call home, even if it’s a home on wheels. the flying and renting minivan deal was getting a little rough, and it never felt like we were a band on tour. so, it’ll be nice to be doing it legit. now, we just need our full backline and that will make for a very happy me. hehe.

what else is new? i rooted and installed cyanogenmod on my g1. very happy about it. i bought a class 6 microsd card and partitioned it with a fat32 media storage partition, an ext4 app storage partition, and a swap partition. the combination of the swap and the custom mod have definitely given me a performance boost. and i don’t have to worry about running out of space again! now, if only phone makers would stop seeing android as a low-cost alternative and actually start putting it on decent hardware, we wouldn’t need to do so much hacking! haha.

first of all, i have a full on sore throat and stuffy nose. like, some kind of cold. really, immune system? this is gonna happen in the middle of the summer? booo. i think it has to do with the fact that since getting home, i’ve been using my home toothbrush and not my tour one. and i think my home one might have had creepy crawlies left on it, from the last time i was sick. so, lesson of the day: ABBNT… always be buying new toothbrushes!

then, i get a phone call from alamo/national car rental. when we returned our mini-van at o’hare, last week, we left our tomtom gps guy in it. d’oh! anyway, this lady called the next day and asked if i left something in the car. we were thrilled! i told her that we left our tomtom in the glove box. she asked if she could mail it to me at my address on file, and i was thrilled, especially since she said she wouldn’t charge me.

well, fast forward to today, where i woke up to a missed call from a number i didn’t recognize. so, i called and it rang a bunch. i was almost gonna hang up. finally, a lady answers “thanks for calling alamo rent-a-car”. for some reason (probably cause i had just woken up), i said “oh, wrong number”. but, then she asks “did you leave something in your car?” hmm.

we then proceeded to have the exact same conversation that we had last week. wtf?

so confused right now. haha.

the thing about the creatures is that they were killing dogs. i’m not sure why. i think in the video game, they were the good guys and the dogs are like mutants. it was some kind of crazy role reversal intra-dimensional shit.

at any rate, it was scary and i hope some giant werewolf creature with guns doesn’t ever shoot my dog. (i don’t even have a dog).

i’m playing drums for jimmy robbins. check out his music! he’s a super nice and funny guy and we hit it off right away. jimmy has the potential to be huge, and i wish nothing more than that, because that would mean that i’m along for the ride. hehe. we have three fly dates, right now, but lots of stuff is in the works.

my week with motion city was amazing. mark hoppus is hilarious. chris holmes is the man. tony is an animal. eastwest studios are beautiful! easily, the most fun job i’ve ever taken. hehe.

speaking of motion city and hoppus, i’m also working for mcs for two shows in las vegas with blink 182. i’m flying out tomorrow morning to los angeles, picking up the van and trailer, and driving to vegas. couple days of rehearsal, couple shows, and i fly home. should be busy, but fun times.

i’ve been trying to eat healthy for about three weeks now, and it’s going alright. i’m of the opinion that even baby steps are a positive thing, and i’ve taken huge leaps in my diet, so i’m pretty stoked. i wish i could keep up with the excercise portion of it, but when i need to be in three places at once, it can be difficult to squeeze in a workout. at any rate, the scale says i’ve lost about five pounds, so something’s working! hehe.

jesse and jessica’s wedding is in august and i just booked my flight and rental car. this might be the first time i’ve ever done something so grown-up, all by myself. haha. probably because i’ve never had enough money to do so. oh wait, i don’t have money right now. what am i doing? ahhh!

lastly, i leave you with yet another submission to the blog of unecessary quotation marks that was either lost in the pile of submissions, or deemed not worthy enough. i happen to think it’s a “good” one.

it's a new law, alright... *wink wink nudge nudge*