rollin'

we're playing again, tomorrow night, at El Mocambo. 11:30.
since the venue is across the street from our rehearsal space, nobody's driving.
therefore we're all partying for the first time.
having a license can be a burden.

the winds of shit

It's Danny's birthday today. My main man is 24.

Tonight there will be a party of some proportion. I'm kind of scared.
It reminds me of the morning of St. Paddy's Day, where you know some shit is going to go down.

I can feel the shit pressure rising, and the shit barometer dropping.

hitchhiker's guide

After so many major consequtive purchases, I literally have a few dollars to my name at the moment. When asked if I wanted to go out tonight by my dear friend Kudzai, one story came to mind immediately.

The story of a penniless, stranded Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy goes as follows:

"Adams claimed that the title came from a 1971 incident while he was hitchhiking around Europe as a young man with a copy of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Europe book, and while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck with a copy of the book and looking up at the stars, thought it would be a good idea for someone to write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as well."

The book went on to sell more than 14 million copies.

I plan to do something similar tonight.

I'm literally going to take the twenty dollar bill in my pocket and blow it on beer with one of my best friends in effort to drink and dance my way into some flash-of-genius-stupor that will send my artistic career into another (if any) stratosphere.

I really enjoy putting myself in holes like this. At times I consider money to be simply a privilege; something to be enjoyed and dealt with at a later date. It's one of the great freedoms we allow ourselves to relish in: the ability to do whatever we want with our earnings. The simple fact about money that doesn't scare me one bit goes like this:

I know I'm not going to die.

I have food in my house and money coming my way in various directions. I know I'm not going to go hungry or homeless tonight, so it's time to put my inspiration on the stove and let it cook for a while.

startin fires tour

Show tonight in Kingston.
Yeah.

i can see claritin now my rash is gone

After four days of incredible partying, dancing (my legs are whooped) and Valentineage, the dust has settled, slightly. I'll be heading back home for a few days later this afternoon, mostly with intention to visit family, friends, and shoot my term project.

This will most likely entail the drainage of my savings, seeing as I'm purchasing a brand new Sigma wide-angle lens for my digital body. But hey, that shit lasts forever, and who doesn't want a wide-angle lens anyway? Hopefully when I'm home I'll shake this cold, which has been perpetual for over a month now. On top of that, last night I experienced my all-time worst allergic reaction. A dark red rash spread over the upper half of my body covering my face, chest, neck, and arms. Seeing as I was scared shitless, I called my dad at 6 a.m. (karaoke, you understand), to which he granted me some sound advice and went to sleep.


The funny thing about this all is that I photographed the whole process, because I thought I was about to die. I showed my dad these photos and he wants to use them as allergic reaction examples when he teaches. Always glad to be of service.


The shitty thing about this is that I have no idea what I was allergic to. I came home after the bar and made my usual feast: oven-toasted pita with pepper, pan fried portobello mushrooms, arugula, hummus, and a big glass of pink lemonade. What the hell was I allergic to? I threw everything out this morning, including the giant pitcher of pink lemonade, which may have been the culprit of it all. Bummer, 'cause I love the pink.

But alas, after taking some Claritin, my face is back to normal. I also now have an epi pen.

everything is broken

Well friends, here we are again.

I trust you've all been soaking up your summer to it's full extent.

I've personally been squeezing the living shit out of my summer. I swam in a Great Lake yesterday and slept in a tent. We can complain about the heat and sweat all day, but when it comes down to it, we all know we'll be complaining about the cold in six months.

I usually like to keep this blog away from my personal life, but for now I'm going to dictate the next week of my life for historical purposes. So that one day, when I have a cushy life, I'll look back on the good ol' days and smile for a minute. I truly believe that no matter how feverish my life currently is, I'll reminisce about how much fun it really was.

In the next week I have to:

Find a Place To Live For September
Course Selection
Rehearsals
Convince Rogers To Sell Me a New Phone
Work Four Days In a Row
Install a New Painting Exhibition, & Remove An Old One
Figure Out How I'm Going To Do All Of The Above

Piece of cake? Easy as pie? Sure, why not.

In related phone problems, the final sentence was delivered the other night.

The screen on my phone is completely ruined. I'm sure the damage somehow correlated nicely with the cut on my arm pictured below. The funny thing is, I can hear when someone texts me, but can't read who it came from. So I've just been calling everyone, which has been kind of nice.

On top of that, I stepped on my ipod headphones. I'm not upset about this, because those buds are so terrible in terms of sound quality.

please! no more meat! (in every sense of the word)

Ahhh, the ever-glorious May 2-4 weekend. This year we had the privileged of staying, cost-free, at a beautiful lakefront summer home in New Baltimore, Michigan (about 20 minutes outside of Detroit).
BK, Mills, and Billy are staying there for the summer, so we thought we'd pay them a visit.

The view from the back porch wasn't that bad either.

The next photo I won't go into too much detail about. For those of you who know this means, let's all share a laugh together.

The best (and worst) thing about America is how they've seemed to bridge the gap between food and convenience. Here, I can be seen drinking a pre-bottled A&W Rootbeer Float. Now, the most unusual thing about it wasn't the taste or the texture, but the ingredients. I wasn't shocked when I noticed that last diddy. Laughing gas anyone?

Tickle a ginger!!
What May 2-4 would be complete without tickling Jordan to the ground (which takes anywhere between 1 and 6 seconds, depending on how much he resists). Jordan, I wish I had your giggle as my ringtone, because it warms my heart.

We watched Family Matters (which is surprisingly still a good show), and it turned out that it was Steve's birthday as well. I cradled his head and wished I was there with him and Carl.

Funny face time. Aparently Josh's monkey face had never been captured on film until now. I consider that a damn shame, because it's fucking hilarious.

One of my personal favorites: The Rubber Mask. It scares pretty girls.

David, I don't know what to call this, but that doesn't mean it's not funny. It reminds me of somebody, mostly Egon from Ghostbusters.

"Oh man, BK is totally drinking from my dick. That's hilarious!"

I'm sure that's what I was thinking at the time of this birthday countdown photo.

Detroit, what.

We met blair right about here, because he's a Backstreet Boy.

I remember agreeing to see a Detroit Tigers game the night before, but I don't know how they managed to pull me out of bed the next morning. I was in hangover central. Although, the best cure for one of this is movement, Tylenol, sunlight, and more booze.
The daquiri stand looked damn tempting when sitting in 26 degree sun in the outfield.

Josh, enjoying that shit, even without the huge collectable fist drink holder.

The employees at the daquiri stand honestly loved their jobs. They made us honkies feel right at home.

Time for another.

Well played, honkies.

That motherfucker (and I can say that because he was hitting on Cougars the whole game) was one part hilarious drunk hick, one part annoying Yank. He didn't say much more than reciting rap lyrics and screaming "I'm on a boat!" during lulls in between plays. At least he gave us some good daquiri insight.

The new Tigers Stadium is beautiful. Everything I think a baseball stadium should be.

8 Mile!

Yeah, we got ourselves some White Castle. It had been about a decade since I'd last eaten here, and thank God for that. I forgot how absolutely horrible this food is. We ended up calling it Grey Castle because of the grey-matter-meat. Fucking terrible excuses for burgers. Under no circumstance should a food joint have a 40-burger combo on its menu. We all had to shit immediately afterwards. I think this venture capped off the meat consumption limit for the trip.

Mills and BK. More like East and DP.

Jordan loving the Five O'Clock Rum. That shit was so damn gross. But hey, it was only $16 for that entire bottle. Where do you draw the line between value and quality? Actually, how about value and dignity.

We opened our own bar after visiting Wal-Mart.

The spinning-head Exorcist owl.

BK and I held dinner down the second night. I made a red wine and worcestershire sauce marinade for the steaks and stuffed the potatoes with garlic, onion, and fresh rosemary. PS - damn you guys for having such beautiful rosemary and basil plants.

Of course, I was getting my feet dirty running through farmers fields to capture some sweet cloudage. Billy warned me that people here have guns and are not afraid to use them. Let's just say I made it quick.

Life's tough.

What the hell was with this thing in Billy's room. The creepiest thing isn't the imitation chest hair, but that fact that it came with the house when they moved in.

I should have known that these two would be gambling the entire trip. I'm sure only twenty minutes after knowing eachother bets were made.

And what May 2-4 weekend would be complete without a passed-out-early-Blair!?

I really don't know what to say about this photo below. Words that come to mind include: confusion, liquor, party, gay, sexy, drunk dad, wow, sweet, what?, nice!, and general laughter. I honestly can't even glance at this photo without busting a gut laughing. I think it's his stance and the fact that nobody else can be seen in the photo, which means it got late and Mrs. Clause decided to put on her sexy low-cut V neck that Santa loves so much. Except Mrs. Clause is played by a drunk Josh sporting three days of beard growth.

Meme, you're wonderful. Thanks for coming and leveling the sausage ratio a bit.

Middle of the night long-exposures during a lightning storm.

Crew.

All in all, this was another weekend for the books. Although it was filled with too much meat (foodly speaking), everyone had an amazing time, and I even got to play Hide and Seek. I speak on the behalf of every guest when I say it was great seeing you guys and thanks for showing us just how fucking crazy America is. Because, three words:

Smokes N' Stuff