Enjoy Some D-Tea with Aj5

Could it be about los Paranoias?

2006-10-21T03:26:00.000-04:00

HERE IT IS!!!! OH BABY OH JEEZ!!!! WATCH THIS... WATCH IT STRONG!!!
this is thee one and only offical unoffical TRIPLE BLACK video edited by the one and only Loren Semmens.
you're going to crap thy pants and wonder "why in the hell wasn't THIS their official video?!?????"
your guess is as good as mine...
enJoy.

and now it's time for everyone's favorite... Lights!

2006-10-14T18:08:00.000-04:00

that's right kids... filmed at our very own genesee community college back in november of 2005.
this marks the first time collaboration of myself and brant penman. filmed on two canon gl-1's plus a third single chip canon mini dv (maned by the one and only eric adams) the sound was captured on dv tape and mixed by dan shepard combining all three camera audios plus the sound board audio.
it sure looks pretty, doesn't it? you should see it on DVD... oh wait... you never will!

HOLY 20/20 VISION BATMAN!

2006-09-30T02:05:00.000-04:00

this video jerks me. it jerks the weepy pussy tears from my stupid looking into the past eyes...
filmed and edited in 2004, this video is a documentation of the pinnacle of all that was "our" batavia... before the split... before life happened... before we got "older". before down to earth approach had even been on ONE tour... okay enough. just watch this video already.

This one's an old one... but a good one... and ones that are old and good are really good -and this one is really good.

2006-09-25T20:44:00.000-04:00

sorry about the video quality, it's kinda shitty. but there's nothing really to see anyway. this one's all about the audio.

Everyone knows is WINNDYYYY!!!

2006-09-10T14:52:00.000-04:00

i'm starting to think that these webisodes should be called Mac-TV
it's like scorsese and deniro (or dicaprio), paul thomas anderson and john c. reiley
now you have joy and mccampbell
alright, enough text. hit the play button already!

And then Fenster says, "He'll flip you-flipyouforeal!"

2006-09-06T20:08:00.000-04:00

sorry about the uuhhhh... the non-textual updates these days.
but here's another video, so quit'yer cryin'!

BAAWW! PUNCH YA IN THE STOMACH!!

2006-08-28T15:51:00.000-04:00

yo, kids! two spankin' new webisodes for you and yours!!!
big ups to williams st. ithaca! lemme holla at cha for a minute!

this one is good

but this one is amazing

Outside Main Street Coffee One Morning...

2006-08-19T15:01:00.000-04:00

a video gift from me to you, the Aj5 constants. this is footage of the very first day of tour back in 2004. we're about to meet up with as tall as lions to join them on their first tour.
you can only find this on the band's youtube site, and not on the main site. ooooo!

enJoy

What happened to Warped Tour? What happened to the music scene? (UNFINISHED)

2006-07-23T22:56:00.000-04:00

[author's note: i wrote this almost a month ago. some things are different. some things are the same. today in denver, we had a great show. a mosh pit broke out. denver loves us.]

Everything is different now. Warped Tour is no longer what it used to be. For every lead singer that screams fuck the system, we’re outside of the normal, we won’t follow like corporate lemmings, there are 20 thousand kids standing and chanting and following them right along.

The idea of not belonging to anything is to belong to something. It is inevitable. Everyone is part of something. This Warped music scene belongs to itself. Every kid looks the same. Every band sounds the same. But so does every other music scene. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a scene. The question is, is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Better yet, is it really a “thing” at all?

There is a place for everyone and everything. After 10 days of touring, it may be safe to say that this isn’t the place for a band like Down to Earth Approach –that being a small band from Western New York trying to make a name for itself with no gimmicks, no face paint or black lipstick, no double bass kicks or no screaming what so ever. On a daily basis I sit here under this tent watching literally thousands of kids walk by. Some will stop and ask if the stickers are free. I say yes “and so are the posters”. Some will take both while others with flip over the sticker, looking for something (what I’m not sure of) and upon not finding what ever they were looking for, set it back down and walk away. I watch hundreds of mohawks bounce past. By the end of the day most of them will be flopped over their face from sweat soaking through the hair gel that has so carefully kept the spikes in place. If they knew that in every town we’ve been in more and more people can be seen wearing the shirt that reads “Don’t Get Emo” complete with a frowning face under the international symbol for NO, I’m sure they’d have a heart attack. (Not to mention the Boondock Saint shirts everywhere, along with the black shirts with white text that read, “Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck.”). But that’s just it. Every group of people has their own images they stick to. They attach themselves to what is comfortable to their own eyes. They form themselves according to the view of themselves with in the mirrors they stare into every day. One can’t leave that mirror until the proper comfort level has been reached. Some need that mirror. Some don’t. My comfort-self-image is that of a shirt that is quite with what is written on it, a pair of shorts and some sort of footwear that doesn’t require socks. I belong in Vermont, listening to music with slide guitars and really long bridges. But that’s me and I digress.

What about DTEA? Where do they belong? This tour is helping me figure out an answer to that ultimate question. The dozen fans that show up daily for them are sometimes a part of this Warped scene. Most of the time they’re not. I’m seeing more and more frat-boy types coming up to our table and giving praise. In Milwaukee, some college dudes came up to the table and told of how Another Intervention is their wake up album. In an almost Dave Matthews Band like fashion I’m starting to realize that perhaps the college circuit is the place for this band, the one place in America where wordofmouth travels the fastest, the place where everyone is connected via college intranets where everyone’s iTunes are avalible to share streaming with one another.

What does this all mean? What about today? I’m writing this under the merch tent which is situated on the outfield of a ballpark in Orlando, FL. I’m surrounded by thousands of kids, hundreds of tents and six stages. Under perfect timing, Less Than Jake has begun their 30-minute set on one of the main stages directly in front of me. Just the sounds of their horns are enough to snap these kids out of their washout hardcore blank stares. They’re running across the field to get the best possible spot to watch this band –a band that has been on this tour for years. A band that grabbed a hold of me one morning as I was waking up one day for one of those lost years of high school that was too long ago. My alarm was set to WBER and “History of a Boring Town” came on. Years later you could find me and Pete driving north from Purchase College to Poughkeepsie NY for a Less Than Jake show that I was all but exploding with sense to me. I’ve stood in the catering line with these guys. Their bass player watches DTEA play excitement to get to. Now, here I am semi-lost in my mid20’s on a tour that makes no these days. His dreadlocks are a lot smaller these days. Under perfect timing, the mass hysteria that is going on in front of the Less Than Jake set (Fat Mike from NOFX just came up onstage and cut off all of the saxophone player’s shoulder length hair) the Down to Earth Approach are now quietly taking the stage at the other ended of the concert grounds.

This brings me to the problem of Warped Tour two thousand and six. It’s too big. Way too big. With almost 75 bands playing daily the idea of small bands joining the tour and getting big is a hard one to achieve. The small bands stay small, while the big bands stay big.

WEBISODE 4

2006-07-21T20:56:00.000-04:00

oh yeah!

Happy Trails (Warped Tour Beings)

2006-06-13T08:58:00.000-04:00

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.

"It is futile," I said,
"You can never-"

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.

-Stephen Crane

John's nose should be broken

2006-06-09T12:52:00.000-04:00

turn up your speakers and listen to sound that john's nose makes. it really should be broken, but it's not.

Over. Easy.

2006-05-11T14:05:00.000-04:00

at the moment, we're home. this allows me all the time in the world to edit videos together for you people.
oh look! here's one now!

Punch and Pie

2006-04-30T01:53:00.000-04:00

During one of the recent shows, I Wikipedia’d Batavia, NY –our home town. I recommend to anyone who’s from a home town to Wikipedia it. You’ll learn more about where you live then you’d expect.
For example, I learned that there was a huge Masonic controversy in Batavia in the 1820’s. The jist: Someone talked shit publicly about the Masons and they killed him. The story the Masons told was ‘We didn’t kill him, we took him to a cabin and convinced him to leave town forever.” They were convicted of abduction, but not murder.
It’s true.
The source has already been sited.
See for your self.

I also read this:

The area was purchased in 1792 by the Holland Land Company, a consortium of Dutch bankers. The 3.5 million acre (14,000 km²) territory, purchased from Robert Morris, a prominent Revolutionary banker, was known as "The Holland Purchase."

Batavia, the name the Dutch gave the city is a poetic name for the Netherlands.

[this is the good part. Actually, it’s the worst part….fuck. fuckin’ crazy white Europeans from the 1700’s and their manipulation of the natives Americans. Fuck’em!]

One of the provisions of the sale was that Morris had to settle the Indian title to the land, so he arranged for his son Thomas Morris to negotiate with the Iroquois at Geneseo, New York in 1797. About 3,000 Iroquois, mostly Senecas, arrived for the negotiation. Seneca chief and orator Red Jacket was adamantly against the sale, but his influence was thwarted by freely distributed liquor and trinkets given to the women. In the end-
[anotherwords, once they were all drunk]
-he acquiesced and signed the Treaty of Big Tree, in which the tribe sold their rights to the land except for a small portion for $100,000. Mary Jemison, known as The White Woman of the Genesee, who had been captured in a raid and married her Seneca captor, proved to be an able negotiator for the tribe, and helped win more favorable terms for them.
[if you ever see me, ask me about Mary Jemison’s greatgreatgreatgrandkid]

alright. Enough with the cut and paste.

Currently: 12:24am april 29.
Driving: to Witchita, KS
ETA: 6am
Destination: Comfort Inn (with wireless for cripsakes)

Saves the Day Head West, Back East Tour, Part 1
Over. Done. Ciao bella!

Hmmm… old news, again. The West Coast is like a giant slip and slide. All the water is dumped on Seattle and it just runs screaming headfirst down the coast until it comes to a skidding stop in the sand. You and everything else around you –including time, haul wet ass down hill.

To recap: Since leaving the Jedi Training that was touring with Takumi in Seattle, things are so far, so… bipolar.

-and there’s that. The Bipolar Tour with Lorene Drive has begun. Both in terms of the shows ups and downs and the fact that it’s a co-headlining tour split smack down the middle.

We had a relaxing good ta meet ya first night in Roseville California on the 24th.
Before anything could begin any other way… we got to Bakersfield.
All I will say is that apparently water is very expensive in Bakersfield, CA.

Oh, and I almost got maced by the crazy shut in that lived right across the street from the venue. (by street I really mean a small dead end street that wrapped around the back of The Dome [actually a dome] the venue we were at in Bakersfield)
My guard went up early on that night when we parked in front of his house. He had posted two NO PARKING signs on his property. One on his gate to his front door, another at the end of his yard, the latter one had a huge two way arrow implying that this guy’s spot will most likely be guarded at all costs.
Picture now the van and trailer, taking up three car lengths in front of his completely fenced in house. The house is in a location where no matter what you do, the muffled audio muck that is the sound of live music through walls from across the street is inescapable. Hearing that night after night after night… it’s enough to drive crazy people insane.
It was towards the end of the night when all of this happened. I was taking my camera bag back to the van. Ryan was sitting on the curb a few feet away talking on the phone. Pete was inside the van, also on the phone. As I walked to the van, the guy’s dog was barking –nothing out of the ordinary about it.
Just a dog.
Barking.
I open up the van, throw my camera bag on the seat and say something quick to Pete. The guy’s dog has stopped barking. There’s a pause as everything beings to slow down. Pete laughs in reaction to whatever is being said on the phone and agrees with whomever he’s talking to. I hear “hey” gruffly from the yard behind me… everything continues to slow down… something’s about to happen. I stay slow and attentive, waiting. Pete’s on the phone so he’s only half there. He hasn’t heard anything. “Hey, you…” I hear the sishsishsish of feet walking through the lawn. “Hey man. Hey, where’s my dog at?” I turn. What? “My dog, where’s my dog man?” I have no idea where he is. “This your van? What are you doing over here –where’s my dog?” Again, comely I speak… I have no idea where he is. “You wanna fuck with me?” His right hand is in his pocket. “Where’s my dog man?” I don’t know man –I have no idea where he is. His right hand comes out of the pocket holding something. “You fuckin’ with me man?” I see something shine between his fingers. He steps closer to the chain-link fence separating us. His eyes flicker up to me and back down to his hand. I can tell he’s thinking over whether or not to follow his anger forward. I have since planned out my possible path of dodge/escape/attack, but I wouldn’t know this until afterwards. It’s not a knife in his hand, I know that much. He wouldn’t bring a knife to a fence and stand that far away from me. I stare at his hand. What ever is in his hand is small, a cylinder, and silver. From the possible weapon, my eyes flick to the edge of the reach of the streetlamp. His dog comes trotting out of the darkness. He’s right behind you! “Don’t fuck with me.” He doesn’t believe me. Look. He’s right there. The dog walks across the tops of the guy’s feet. “You fuckin-“ He looks down. Immediately he snaps out of it and beings to talk rapidly. “Oh my, oh man I’m sorry. Oh man, ya know I had to lock’em up. Oh man, I’m sorry.” He put the can of mace –or gun, back into his pocket and placed his hand on top of the fence. “He’s my guy ya know –I gotta lock him up, he must have hid on me.” To the dog; “where’d you go buddy?” Naw man, it’s cool. (Is it?) I understand. (Do I?) Why am I saying these things to him? He extends his hand out. We shake. “I’m really really sorry man.” He picks up his dog and walks out of my life.
That dog will never understand what he stopped. He doesn’t have to either. He was a little wiener dog. One like I’d get.
I told this story later on that night to the rest of the guys. “Wait, what? What guy?” Ryan asks, “That guy with the dog?” Yeah. “He came up to me and started talking to me –I had no idea what he was talking about. He asked me if I was with the guys in the van. I said no just cos I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Well first he asked me for a cigarette but then he said ‘there was a guy over at that van –I thought he put my dog in there. Then I realized he was talking about our van and I said, ‘there’s no dog in that van that’s my van.’ ‘Oh,’ he says ‘well, that guy over there opened up the doors and then closed them slow like. I hope I didn’t freak him out’.”

Currently: 2:14am
Driving: Just over the Oklahoma border north of Texas.

I’m still working on getting Cellphone Chronicles Vol. 6 posted.

Plus there’s more video to be posted.

A lot more.

It is now the next night, Saturday the 29th. We’re at our hotel outside of Witchita, KS watching the South Park movie on the secret stash on Comedy Central. Cartman just finished “Kyle’s Mom’s a Big Fat Bitch”. I just finished a Guinness.

I plan on switching to Pete’s laptop soon so I can upload a few more videos tonight. Stay tuned, etc.

"This is old news," said the cat.

2006-04-28T21:23:00.000-04:00

[note: the first half of this was typed while in and out consciousness on an overnight drive... it doesn't make any sense]

Salt lake city.

When you drive there it’s amazing. after pushing through the plains of Kansas and co. seeing the rocky mountains literally march towards you down the I-80 is indescribable. On the usual route the first stop after Lawrence KS, is Denver. The altitude there is a real thing to behold. Before I left for night one of the Piebald 2004 tour, I was told via my mother’s sister Mimi that if you drink the night you get to Denver, expect craziness due to your bodies unfamiliarity with the altitude. It really is a thing to behold.

You spend a night in Denver. You then move on to the deep Rockies through the noman lands of Wyoming. The trains begin to follow the road. They weave with you thought the rocks and snow fences. The trains begin to grow, both in number and in length, from a few minutes long to a few miles long.

It was just 4:20 4/20 on the east coast. The first two paragraphs were written moments after this drive began. Before we came across the “Pocatello 119” mile sign.

The arms of sleep are pushing on us from all sides. You can feel them. I find it better for myself to force myself sleepless with the co-pilot position rather than driver. That way someone will stay up with me. Otherwise if I drive, the rest of the camp will sleep thus leaving me all the room in the world to go insane.

We JUST crossed the border of Idaho. So this guy walks into a bar and he says to the bartender, “Hey barkeep, would you daho?” the bartender laughs quietly to himself and responds, “I’d a ho in no time you silly fool, you know this.”

John has rolled down his window most of the way. “are you freakin’ out?” I asked.
“naw, just bad smell,” he said.
I turned towards the laptop and begain to write.

The slumps are coming. The tireds. The –oh man, the music just went from crazieness to full blown Russian square-dance. POCA’FREAKIN’TELLO onebillionmiles!

I would like to thank Tyler and his famila at this time for allowing us to invade your humble abode.
Well, I’m not sure if it’s humble yet… but I have a felling it will be quite nice.
i was wondering today when we put out a sign that basically says “all we need is a floor to sleep on” do the people also know that means “and a shower to wash in”? I’m assuming it dosen’t.

sleep is pushing. Sleeping is punishing right now. John is snorkeling. My beard is itching. I want to go to a super target and play xbox360. Nay, I want to xbox some motherfuckers.
Now go in there, get my wallet… it’s the one that says ‘bad mother fucker’ on it.

It’s 3am.
Insomniacs count the minutes like hand counting angry bears at a zoo. Ya huurrrrd?!
Exit 13, Malad. It’s crazy, you get up into these mountains. The real mountains. The ones abound with rock formation alignments and other crazy places of power.

****************************

Well, that was fun wasn’t it?

April 22nd, 2006.
Late for Seattle.

John drove from Salt Lake to Pocatello on the night of the 19th. What you just read was my attempt at keeping myself awake and alert in the passenger seat. The last half of what I wrote I didn’t even know existed until today when I opened up the laptop.

Our day off on 4/20 was a good one. Slept late. Ate some eats (bad Chinese food). Played with a super bouncy ball in the parking lot of a mall. Shit, I even got to play Halo for a while.

Pocatello Idaho, you may not have known is the home of Idaho State University.
Now you know.

The venue we’re currently headed to used to be called Graceland. Two years ago, when the D-Teas came through with Piebald it was still Graceland. It is now called El Corazon.
Now you know.

Something wacky has happened in Seattle for the humble band this story is about. They grew, like playing the Sims, a fan base in Seattle. It’s no wonder. The first show they played here was their best show of that tour.
“It’s crazy,” Jon said to me, “kid’s ‘ll be shouting out the lyrics and you’ll go ‘what the fuck, what is this right now in Seattle’ it’s like we were home at the coffee shop or something.”

Seattle knows their shit about music. It’s good to have them on our side.

Quick! Before the Set's Over

2006-04-27T23:14:00.000-04:00

sorry for the nonupdateness.
here's a video!

a tour of the basement dressing rooms durning the saves the day set in salt lake city.
people in video: pete... and then pete and eric from .moneen.
set's over. gotta go. (we're in new mexico)

Organic Just Came to Mind

2006-04-14T21:15:00.000-04:00

I thought it was Wednesday yesterday.
The rest of the band also thought it was Wednesday.
Last night on stage, Chris from Saves the Day said “Thanks for coming out on a Wednesday” to all 150 kids in the audience.
Everyone else selling merch spoke of the day as being a Wednesday.

Odd. The tour and all its inhabitants hit a wormhole.

We played in Cain’s Ballroom, Tulsa Oklahoma.

To picture the room we were in: A very large old high school gymnasium with a stage and a bar in the back. The roof peaked along the center like an awkward barn. Huge portraits of late country star’s hung angled on the corner of the ceiling up and down both sides of the ballroom. Hank Williams, Sr. kept watch over our merch table. At the center of the room on the ceiling there was a large red neon star with a disco ball hanging from the middle. Directly under the star, the floor was dented in. The pillars that held up the place stuck out slightly from the walls. Where each pillar met the ceiling there was what looked like the “mouth” of the furnace that scared the shit out of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. Right where the flames from the furnace should’ve been, there was one glorious red light bulb, perfecting the image.
During Circa’s set, John and I joked of the place being haunted.
“Hold on a sec” he said and ran off. I had no idea where he was going. I figured he was on his way to see the Frog Brigade play a live set of Animals. He came back a few moments later. “Look!” he yelled, “Look at my eyes!” He pointed to them. They were watering. This means only one thing; someone’s just told a ghost story and John was present. “The security guy said that this place is fucking crazy haunted. I guess you’ll just here voices from all over the place and you have no idea what the fuck is going on –and there’s a kid –and a woman in a red dress. The bartender said she’s fucking seen her.”

I quickly apologized to the room for mocking it.

Two and one half hours to Lawrence, KS.
The Ithaca of the Mid-west.

Typing While Moving (could induce vomiting)

2006-04-13T20:51:00.000-04:00

This will be the first journal entry typed while not on the Internet. I’m currently riding in the way back of the van. Ryan’s driving, Jon sitting shotgun and as usual we’re all plugged into iPods. We just stopped at a Waffle House on our way out of Nashville. Our waitress greeted us and we spoke back, “gooood, how are you?” Her response; I’d be a lot better if I wasn’t working at a Waffle House. She had an inch and a half hickey on the left side of her neck. We’re assuming the cook gave it too her. They interacted like they had just had a night of cheap vodka and beer with a nightcap of ruffsex.

Today’s entry will be thick and wordy for reasons I’m sure you can figure out.

This journal’s been going since November of 2004, telling the tales of a touring band touring as well as they know how. I haven’t gotten into the really good parts about our first shot out of the gate in May of 2004 with our original brothers of tour, As Tall As Lions (who were also out on their first tour). Nor have I touched upon the self-induced electrocutions in Denver during the Piebald tour or “that night” in Tallahassee with Spitalfield. Honestly, I don’t think I ever will. But no matter, ‘it’ll be on the DVD’… except for that shit in Tallahassee, I wasn’t there for that. Even if I had been there, I doubt any of it would be able to be put on to DVD. Except maybe the guy biting the frog in half right before things took a turn for the insane, and headed to D’ffuck? Town.
Another story for a day other than this.

Everything we’ve known for the past two years about touring is now out of date. I was going to say that everything we’ve known for the past two years has been thrown out the window, but it’s not true. You can never lose knowledge or remove it. Just like it’s mass counterpart, matter can not be created or destroyed. You simply update it.
Before last Thursday we knew the bare bones -the onezies of touring. We now know the tenzies of touring. We still have a long was to go. I read somewhere that Prince had discovered the hundredmillionzies of touring.
As I type something peculiar has unfolded itself in front of me. I’m reminiscing about touring “years” ago. It has *just* gone into the category of “years” so I’m not going to boast or talk of the good ol’ days when gas was a buck fifty (it was however a buck 90 when we started). I will say that this tour… is a Tour and it feels damn good to be on one. Not only for the obvious reasons, but also to learn.
To compare life and touring:
Think of Vagrant Records as a pizza place. We are the pizza delivery guys. We deliver one huge ass pizza a night in various large cities and towns across the country.
To compare life and this tour:
It is a traveling High School. I don’t mean this is a bad way at all. Down to Earth Approach are the freshmen, .moneen. are the sophomores, Circa Survive the juniors and the seniors are Saves the Day. Takumi, STD’s tour manager is our principal. I’m the equivalent to that teacher that all the kids liked and seemingly never did anything but still managed to get shit done and all his students passed in June.
I’m thankful for this tour. If we would have jumped from local opener’s and 300 to 500 kid shows riiiight on up to a full dance with the Warped Tour all summer… we might have exploded.

it’s ten after 11 in the morn. Ryan’s still driving. All else are sleeping sans me. I can’t type while sleeping. That would be creepy.
159 miles to St. Louis.

The Cellphone Chronicles Vol. 5

2006-04-03T03:49:00.000-04:00

i've been sitting at my computer for two hours now listening to wilco's live album. it's damn good... damn good.
felt like tellin' ya.

anyway, here we go again...

i took this photo because huge foreboding crosses in tennessee freak me out.

after the memphis show we drove for a bit and then nabbed a hotel room and bedded down for the evening.
the jo(h)n's always take the beds. ryan, pete and i have air mattresses. it works out nicely as long as there's floor space. i've seen ryan blow up his air mattress in two different kitchens (both of which were no bigger than the air mattress). even in hotels the floor space is sometimes limited. one of us has to rearrange the furniture and you end up sleeping where the table stood, uncovering the layered months of dust being kept hidden.

as if it weren't enough -that morning i saw this!

have you ever seen such a thing?! goodness, look at that!

that day we headed south south south south south... to the ATL. wacky place that atlanta georgia.

as i begin to get into this post i'm starting to feel more and more like michael scott talking about his regional manager.

this is going to be a good one.

Tuesday, March 14th, 2006

a view of the way back. the sleep machine. the zen den. the back of the van.

first, the crosses. then the truck full of weird glass. next up from the deep south, mini six packs of dr. pepper in glass bottles:

by this time it was getting dark again. it was almost 7 and we were still a few hours outside of atlanta.

we got to atlanta when we did.
when we did, we met up with ally and katie.

hey! there's bill cosby again.

okay.

by the end we were holding this up to our asses and farting into it like a deleted scene from ren & stimpy

it started with this and never stopped

(click on the "play" button in the center. it will load right here, not somewhere else)

we left.
we needed a liquor store.
we found one.
we never took off the dresses or the house coats or the army vests or whatever the fuck else we put on.

a view from the balcony

remind me next time we stop there to photograph the empty INSANE looking kodak building to the right of that picture. there's a huge red 10% broken K O D A K neon billboard on the roof of the building...

he slept like that all night.

that morning on the way out of town, all seemed normalish...

until we got to hooters.

The Cellphone Chronicles Vol. 4

2006-03-28T10:59:00.000-05:00

the say anything tour is over. we made it home, sound and safe.

let's go back, shall we?
when we last left our favorite gang of idiots, we were headed west from north carolina all the way to memphis.
aaaaalllllll the way to memphis....

jon began the drive. john took over at 4ish.

"I've got the will to drive myself sleepless"

on over night drives i have this nack of staying awake for all of it. i can't really sleep durning times like these. every time i nod off and there's even the slightest bump in the road, my halfsleeping brain freaks out and jolts my body awake in fear that the van has just gone over a cliff. so i just stay up.

ask john -i kept taking this picture over and over and over, deleting all of them except this one. i began photographing the clock at 4:10

i wanted to show you guys a waffle house. i don't know why.

stopping at the rest stops are not really for resting. they're for pulling yourself back together, getting a snacky and a sipper and takin' a piss. (the people in the red and blue cars to the left of pete kept staring at us. we get that a lot. scratch that -we get that EVERYWHERE that's not new york or califorina)

before i went back out on the road with the d-tea i worked my mind away at the iFul warehouse of the www.stereoadvantage.com in buffalo ny. 8 to 6ish 5 days a week. as you may or may not know or care, we live in batavia -30 minutes east of buffalo. leaving the house at 7:15 every morning doesn't become easier the more you do it, it becomes accepted. to aid in the sleepcoated travel, i would ignore it with a MONSTER energy drink because i don't drink coffee. like coffee it became an addiction, so when i saw this can of MONSTER at 4:30 in the morning snug inside the tennessee mountains nicely outside of my mind... well... i drank it... and loved it. to be fair, it was a 32oz. can. like howard hughes' first attempt at hell's angels, i photographed it with no frame of reference.

"i just took a shit this big," he yelled.

************************************

Monday March 13th, 2006: The Complex, Memphis, TN

(if you squint your eyes, you'll be able to see say anything sound checking. the dude in the white was high. he's one of the sound guys. the sound guys also got stoned right before the show started, and again before down to earth approach came out... super.)

pete's checking the integrity of the door frame. i (wasn't) checking the garlic juice myspace. i was adding a comment on the dtea page about updating this)

i hate myspace like i hate the movie titanic

continuing on...

buffalo
- the water front
+ elvis presley
_______________________

downtown memphis

getting there involves riding trolleys. old trolleys. creaky slow heavy wooden trolleys.

it should be noted that jon and ryan didn't come with us because they were on a mission to pick up the say anythings and their trailer and get them to the venue because their van took a shit 80 miles outside memphis. it should also be noted that at the exact moment jon and ryan pulled into the rest stop where the guys were waiting, the say anything van arrived back and working.
go figure.

meanwhile pete, john and i walked aimlessly for a good 30 minutes.

when you first get to beales street your mind doesn't know how to process the information it's being fed. tons of people. tourists. blues music blasting from speakers hung outside shops. familes. drunks. bums with magic tricks.

at the end of beales street you can find wet willies...

...an alcoholic slushy bar.
if there was an episode of south park that revolved around a wet willies with a short balding gaylisp'd southerner as a bar tender, then i was in it. after we got our 8dollar white russians, the three of us found a bar table by the window. drinking these slushies was a painfully slow process. about an hour into it (give or take an hour) the bar tender came over and chatted us up. he asked "where ya'll from?" buffalo. "ya'll ss'eeree's?" he responded. at this point he had propped his knee up on the foot rest of the open stool and placed his elbow on his knee to support his head like the thinking man.
take a moment to picture this.

did i forget to mention his short shorts? i did, didn't i...

after willies we could take no more. we walked back to one of the trolly stations and waited...

and waited...

and waited...

someone spent a lot of time on this and pete just stepped all over it. although, the floor of the trolly station is a weird spot to put a thing such as this! i am outraged! pete get off of that kids face!

nobody steps on the king, baby!

the trolly looked the same on the ride back.

on the wall of the club...
it's a real life rage against the machine album cover! yeah! fuck the system! coowiddit'now!

we made it back for wifi, beer, and burritos. saddly, i did not take a picture of my burrito. it was huge. now i'm starving thinking about it.

and finally...

jon on the outside.

jon on the inside.

oooookay, that's enough. next stop: Atlanta...

ha.

The Cellphone Chronicles Vol. 3

2006-03-16T23:17:00.000-05:00

the longer you stay out on the road, the less the days of the week exist. the passage of time turns into the passage of mile markers and exit signs. the next set of pictures are from last sunday, enroute and in charlotte n.c. (at least, i think it was last sunday)

[a funny thing has happened over the last year. since the iPod came and took over the world, none of us really talk anymore while in the van. 5 guys, 5 iPods and 5 pairs of noise cancleing headphones. when we started this road trip 2 years ago this may, there was two iPods and hundreds of CD's. we were forced to go one album at a time. the 7100 song shuffle didn't exist]

[ya see what i mean!? look at how sad i am that pete won't talk to me]

*****

[did you know that the south is chalkfull of the biggest damn wal-marts on the face of this great planet of ours? on this stop we were hunting for a frizbee (i wish i knew how to spell that). also, did you know that the south is chalkfull of wal-marts that don't carry frizbees?]

[once we got to the venue, john helped himself to the wifi while i played connect four with myself]

[our dressing room. there was no dressing going on, but there was a bottle opener screwed into the wall. i felt like marty mcfly when i attempted to open my red stripe]

[the glass tower. it crashed, believe me]

[a view from the merch]

[the pool table had two 14 balls and was short a ball. i still don't know what ball was missing]

[load out. it happens every night. it's not very exciting]

[from here we began the "lose your goddamn mind" overnight drive to memphis. i have to stop this post at pay attention to the merch table. it's funny... down to earth approach, driving all the way down to florida to play a sold out show for metal heads. tonights bands are "showdown" and "flyleaf". flyleaf has a bus and a female lead singer with a mohawk. showdown has a shirt that says "git snake bit" and the colors of the letters are those of the confederate flag. no... i'm not kidding. the reason why i say "it's funny" is because no matter who these guys play for, they STILL sell merch every night -more on this and photos of memphis later]

The Cellphone Chronicles Vol. 2

2006-03-13T19:25:00.000-05:00

MARCH 11th, 2006

[from virgina beach back up to baltimore]

[enroute we eneded up in washington d.c. traffic and somehow thanks to google maps ended up going through a portion of downtown washington]

[jon/spider monkey]

[aaron/weird]

[baltimore, known for their cranes and cats... and scary ass venues with terrifying bathrooms]

[after the show we were told to go to The Paper Moon Diner. i, aj5 am telling all of you NOT to go to the Paper Moon Diner. the servers were all bitter burnded out hippies left over from generation x. there were nine of us who went. our food came out very slowly, and one order at a time. i ofcourse was the last one to get fed. on the front page of the menu there was a list of rules and a f.y.i. about the diner. one portion read: "the person who takes your drink order may not be the person who takes your food order. the person who takes your food order may not be the person who brings you your food." maybe, if they had ONE person taking care of ONE table, the place might not suck. oh, and not to mention the inside looked like someones bad trip exploded all over the walls]

[if you only could've heard the sound john made seconds before the butter ended up on his chin. he was focused intently on the package, squeezing it slowly until it burst]

[this is outside of the fucking paper moon worst diner in america. the toliet infront of pete is filled with dirt. just like that stupid diner. also, i just realized that i've been uploading all the photos up until this one smaller than normal. if you want to see bigger versions just click on them]

[that night we ended up at pam and steph's house. they have two kids. we spent some time playing and watching cosby]

[planet earth, meet cameron, son of steph]

[now that's a hell of a sweater... my burrito has arrived. it's sitting on the other side of the laptop right this second. there's a guinness to my right. we are in memphis, and i must go]

The Cellphone Chronicles Vol. 1

2006-03-12T20:29:00.000-05:00

We left thursday morning. I still had my battery charger for my camera. Today is Sunday and i no longer have it. we're somewhere inside charolette north carolina. my charger is vacationing at virgina beach.

before the forgetting of my charger i began taking photos with my cellphone.

let's begin at the beginning:

March 9th, 2006
inside the northstar bar on the outskirts of philly.

(i just realized something. since i'm constantly on the move now surrounded by no stop activity -a woman JUST asked me if they "sold corn nuts here". -i'm going to have to skip the text and just add the -ryan JUST walked up to the merch table and said, "fiiive..." and gave me the devil horns. i responed with a pair of my own -i'm going to only upload the photos i've taken so far with a skinnybones who and what is going on caption.... here we go.....)

MARCH 10, 2006 VA BEACH
PEPPERMENT BEACH CLUB

[ryan and the front door of the club]

[pete eating something inside the "say anything/down to earth ONLY" dressing room. there is an outlet to the left of pete. it's the last known sighting of my battery charger]

[if Wilco would've said yes to this design, it might have been their #1 shirt on the road because as of now, we're selling more of this dude and his dotted red face than anthing else]

[after the show i went looking for the van... i got lost.]

[we ended up in a hotel room a block away from the beach. believe it or not, the evening was spent chatting with the dudes of say anything over the glowing flicker of conan o'brian. we were in room 319, they were in room 415. if you stood outside of 415 you could see the door of 319 open. it proved more hilarious when jon called my cellphone asking for the location of their room. i told him to open the door and look up. when he did i yelled and pointed at him.]

*********
the last band is currently playing their last song and believe it or not i actually have shit to do besides drink beer south of the masion dixion line, so i must end this until we reach the next wi-fi orb once we reach memphis tomorrow.

John Ford was ruthless on the set.

2006-01-22T13:55:00.000-05:00

photos by nicole brownell
gcc rockfest 2005
batavia, new york

Rapid Eye Moment/The Teal Awning?

2005-12-11T11:57:00.000-05:00

i'll just start writing then. spurs and all.
so here we go. live writing about a live band chilling in their littlecity home town of Batavia, NY.
it would be odd if i started this thing up again and never mentioned the 9 month gap in writing.
so what have i been doing? more importantly, what has the band been doing? have they been touring? have they been fishing? swimming? did they bopandweave all summer eatin' ice cream and chunks of bark down by the sea side? is aj5 still sane? why is he asking all these fake questions? why is he talking in third persons? how did the narrative of this entry find it's way into the quicksand lands of perpetual question?

i don't know.
but i'm glad i found my way out.

the band has been doing creatatious if you must know. they rolled through a 2 month summer tour like champions. then as a nice cranberry chaser to the shot of blavado that is the deep south in the dead of summer, they finished up the touring year with a 2 week hop back and forth across the land right before thanksgiving.
they ended the tour with the "if i saw it in a movie i wouldn't believe it" debacle of a spectacle that is the genesee community college's annual, ever wondrous Rockfest. (please note: DTEA has no hard feelings about GCC -but I do. i have plenty*)

the show was filmed by myself and two others: Brant and Eric (who you may here being called Jerkstore or Molson respectively.) we sent eric to run amuck through the crowd filming the showwithintheshow; The Misbegotten Children of Hot Topic circa 1995 that have all found their way onto the GCC "campus". for a guy that hadn't ever actually used a video camera to it's fullest, eric nabbed some richious downhome footage -great shots of people acting like people (which is always worth watching). meawhile brant played 8 camera men in one, running from stage right, up to the stairwell, then back by the soundboard, in the crowd, up on the roof, etc. i stayed anchored at home base, stage left. brant and i have been editing the show down to its juicy pink center. a release of the show in some form or another (online downloadable, buyable, fuckable -who knows) will be around planet earth once we're finished with it. (have you seen the iTunes music store lately? VIDEO has moved in awfully fast)

/

last night (december 10th) the d-tea played a quaint little show in our naughty big sister city of Buffalo, NY. i say quaint little show, not as a negative, but simply as a thing to say. it was a small show, yes. but it was a great show. it was pete's first night playing with a clicktrack. he bought this little shape of plastic that has all these circuits and gizmos running inside it that allows him to program many different tempos into it. (very futuristic stuff) he can even type in the names of the songs and program set lists. it also came with a spaceheater output for blasting rhythmic waves of heat onto pete's toes in case he can't hear the clicks.
the first song of the night: the clicks began sending out their A.I.perfect controlled tone via pete's drumsticks. everyone on stage hiccuped.
the A.I. was holding court. it caused them to step back and realize the tempo. they didn't speed up. they didn't rush things. they paused, and just played. the music came out calmer and closer to center than anything i've heard them play to date.

the new music is exactly what it should be. it is so much so, that your humble narrator is drawing blank after blank on words to describe to you, dear reader, exactly what it's like hearing the new songs

-first of all... one of them is called night moves. it should be noted that lullo didn't realize that bob seger song was called night moves. pete said: "how about knight moves?" and then proceeded to explain the spelling change because he didn't have the luxury of communicating with text at that moment standing in front of us. (knight moves, the wizard -it could work)
i bring this up because, even if it is called "night moves" it won't matter. people will here it and go, "welp that song is sick. night moves it is. it is a worthy successor to the name. i dub thee sir lullo" and then they'll knight jon and smash ice cream in his face like alyssa milano does to arnold schwarzenegger in the beginning of Commando... with father/daughter love.

the live weaving of old and new songs has given the band life again. their sound is finding itself out. i get giddy thinking about the new album. it's sounding quite nice as it unfolds.

coming this spring, 5 will be back on the road with the 4. (march 2006 say anything tour)
the journal will live again!

VIVA EL JOURNALE!!

*for further reading on Aj5's disdain for GCC please visit: http://lefthandedfisttotheface.blogspot.com
check the archive at the bottom of the page and read february 2, 2001

2005-07-23T03:48:00.000-04:00

EVERYONE
QUICKLY
EXPLODE

Quinn the Eskimo

2005-04-08T18:38:00.000-04:00

for all of you that have been coming to this site,
i thank you.

with the band being out on tour and i stuck at home bein' a working stiff, i ask you constant reader... for help.

by using this website's newly updated "comment leaving system" i suppose we can call it... or CLS for short... you the reader can suggest things you'd like to read about. Q & A if you will. or even... send in your own semi-related down to earth approach stories.

the CLS is pretty easy to use. i know that before hand, in order to leave a comment you had to be a damn member of blogger, but not any more! yes, that's right... you can be yourself.
click on COMMENT and this niffty popup window says hello to you and you can post whatever you want without having to leave the page. to sign it, simply choose "other" and you can type your name. ...or not. up to you.

so here we go kids... the wonders of 21st century world wide communal livin'!

and now...
another photo:

Many things are happening in this photograph.

The Dutch

2005-04-04T15:58:00.000-04:00

michael, pete, dan, me, john, justin's shoulder. from left to right.
picture taken august 3, 2004.
the song: living rooms.

2005-03-31T02:28:00.000-05:00

Oh Justin... It's Tea Time.

People Screaming Outside?

2005-03-29T11:47:00.000-05:00

the screaming kid in the middle is the one and only Adam Stoneburner of Lindblum. he looks mighty angry! he might be screaming in pain, ya never know. he did end up passing out soon after this picture was taken. i remember it being about 120 degrees in there. 300+ people inside a coffee shop in the dead of summer will do that. notice the glaze on everyone... notice the other Adam of Lindblum, Zinke.

Getting Lost Upon the Return

2005-03-29T11:00:00.000-05:00

i had already seen the west coast and the mid-lands with these guys.

i took off with them during the last few weeks of may. i had no idea what i was about to do.
none of us did.
i clutched to my instrument and held it low, keeping it on auto focus and i made sure always to use "quick shots." my filming style is all thanks to one man: Andy Rojas from Miami. friends of the one and only Rudy Mungray also of Miami. Andy and Rudy went to theatre arts high school together and both went to purchase back at the turn of the millennium. Rudy roomed with the ol' drummer man himself, Pete. Andy was a dramatic writer. one evening in october Andy, Pete & John, Derek Van Giesin, Aaron "The Rabbi" Rosenstrike and my self all sat, yapping and tipping the drinks down our necks. game 2 of the subway series was deep into the 10th inning. we had been helping ourselves to the tub of jungle juice created by one of the girls who lived there. "there" being somewhere on M street of the New apartments @ grand ol' Purchase College of the Performing Arts. The Rabbi had brought his camera over to record the moments the juice would erase. at one point in the night, Pete had the camera pointed on Andy. The shot goes on for maybe 45 seconds and Andy says into the camera, "quick shots pete, quick shots." He didn't realize it at the time, but Andy ended up saying that to me.

**********************

i must stop the narrative right there.
it's all a dream anyway.

on to the here and now and what's up with this journal and where it's headed and what time is it and what is going on?

sorry it's been so long since the last time we "spoke."
goodness me, it's almost April! Zing!

the past few entries were pulled from two letters i wrote to my girlfriend while zooming around the country during the end of august on the Natural Disaster Tour of '04 with Sunday Driver and The New Transit Direction. no, we are no longer dating. yes, that's her in those photographs. and yes, i had a damn good time with her. wouldn't trade it for a damn thing.
those photo's were taken by Lucas the night i got home from the tour i sent the letters on. (aawww... aaaaaaaa-shaat up.) the pictures amaze me because the images are exactly how i felt.

the band, as i'm sure you know is out on tour. they're somewhere on the west coast right now soaking the salt wind into their skulls.
bastards.

that's all for now.
i'm going to post some pictures now that you'll have already seen by this point.

Letters From the Road: Vol. 3

2005-03-11T02:37:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, September 1, 2004
4:43pm
The Fall

Last night at The Handel Bar was one of those nights that you'll never forget.
I sat and spoke to this 61-year-old man for almost an hour. He had a lazy eye and short white hair. His face sprinkled with beard. While we spoke of his years spent traveling the country, he rolled his own cigarette. He did it effortlessly and with out thinking. In fact, I didn't even realize he had finished rolling it.
"I used to play drums. Harmonica. Slide guitar," he said.
I couldn't believe this guy. He was so REAL, sitting in front of me. Speaking such pure truth I couldn't stop smiling and laughing. This moment, sitting with him is why I cry at movies. Life is beautiful. Each part. Every human, every cloud. Trains! Bugs! All of it.

There's a rainbow arching over the interstate. It stops half way in the air at the edge of its cloud.
As I finished that sentence Ryan said, "Hey Aaron it goes all the way down now."
Sure enough the cloud has moved and the rainbow is now full.

Friday, September 3, 2004
6:23pm
The Jams

We're now in our forth traffic jam of the day.
With out thinking about it, I grabbed Pete's headphones & my CD player and threw in a Phish show. Their music is some of the best shit to hear while staring at the earth moving by the windows of the van.
I think it has something to do with how they create their music live on stage. Losing all though and dropping your mind down (or up?) that one step that allows it to flow freely.
Much like writing you have to find the rhythm of life (7 beats per second) and allow it to pull you forward. From the center of your chest outward in between all physical parts of life. You pour out and fill in the spaces between all of it.
The infinite.
Attaching your existence to it. Like perfectly shuffling a deck of cards, laying each card on top of one another, one from the right hand, one from the left, one from the right, one from the left. Then something is created which belongs to more than "the author" or "the musician." It belongs to no thing. It is a part of every thing.

Back to surface level things. ...Sorta. I had a wonderful dream last night.
I dreamt that Sophia Coppola was filming a movie about fire............

[image: home from tour (clearly)]
[text: end]

Letters From the Road: Vol. 2

2005-03-03T02:11:00.000-05:00

Friday, August 27, 2004

I woke up this morning to the FedEx guy ringing the doorbell.
The video had arrived.
The band's full budget video was finished.
It looks amazing.

As we watched, everyone's eyes got big
and smiles, small evil smiles
crept across everyone's face.

It's hard for me to write this
because there's so much activity around me right now.

I have to go fold my laundry.

We're about to set sail to Nashville.
Holy shit! I'm gonna see Nashville?!!!
This tour
is some of the best shit I've ever done.

I'm in the back of the van.
Ryan is driving through construction
and it's so bumpy. Ha ha!

I can't write at all right now.

It's like trying to finish your homework
on the way to school
while sitting in the back of the bus.
The teacher always knew who was slacking
by their penmenship.

I just got off the phone with you. It's 2:33.

P.S. I lost my black pen since finishing this letter. I was about to seal it into an envelope, but I realized it was unsigned.

***************************************

Saturday, August 28, 2004
2:03am
The Dirt

I'm fighting the sleep gnomes. Battling with swords made out of clouds. If struck or pierced by these swords, one goes into a deep hyperactive sleep full of insane dreams.

None of which are about melons.

The U.S. is about to lose in Men's Volleyball. We're destroying everyone this Olympics. Yesterday we had somewhere around 83 medals. China has 54. China is second.

Sunday, August 29, 2004
11:54am
The Un

Ugh.

12:51pm
I haven't been able to write this letter. This morning I wrote the time down and John came in and sat next to me and started talking to me. Granted he's even closer to me now, but we're in the van.

We mis-calculated our drive today. It's going to be 9 hours, not 5. Anthony's place is 4 hours past the border of N.C. & Tennessee. Load in is at 8. It's 1:41. We've been driving for 10 minutes.
Our plan was to drive to Anthony's first, unload our bags, hit up the Matty's down there, head to the show. Now it's gonna be a pain in the ass all day.

I had a dream about you last night.

We were in a house that sat on this huge dirt road. I'm on the porch with you. I'm sure we were talking about wondrous things - of life and the infinite, but my attention was being pulled down the road into the darkness. Something was in there, in the emptiness, and whatever it was, I knew it was on it's way down the road. You and I stared and strained our eyes to get a better look, a sooner look of the now present shapes lurching down towards us. As they came into focus I shot you a look of terror, and you only smiled back. "Aaron," you said, "they're only fake. In fact, look at them," and you pointed. Standing in front of the porch were about 7 creatures from The Village. They just stood there, staring at us for quite some time. "You've got to stab them straight," you whispered, "in order to get rid of them." So I did.

Closer to waking up, I had a cellphone dream. I called Anthony and he was drunk and slurring his words. I hung up and tried to call you, but I began to wake up so the phone dissolved into my hand. I stood up and walked into the living room of Cameron's house. As I opened the door of the bedroom I was in, my phone began ringing. Unfortunately it wasn't you. It was Anthony. My dreaming mind picked up on the phone call before it happened and sent me a prevision and told me to wake the hell up.

It was already noon in North Carolina.

Cameron is a true human. One that loves life and loves living. He bought beer, breakfast, lunch and other goodies for all of us. On the way out of his driveway he handed me a nug and told me I'd better stop down soon. We gave 'em a copy of the album and he made everyone, including me, sign it.

As I wrote the last page, a moth flew into the van and landed at my feet. It didn't really fly in, it bounced off the frame of the window at 75 mph. John squealed when I showed him. John doesn't like moths.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004
3:50am
The Sound

The bugs are incredibly loud.

"Shit!" I just said.

Writing now seems like a bad idea. Sorry for the writeo's (the same as typos) I've been drinking. In the van, in a parking lot belonging to the Comfort Inn.
The VAN HAS NOT GONE ANYWHERE. (THIS IS STILL ME BY THE WAY, I HAVE TWO DIFFERENT "FONTS" ...NO NO- "HAND FONTS," YOU COULD SAY...THIS ONE TAKING LONGER...MUCH MUCH LONGER IN FACT, TO LITERALLY PUMP OUT. IN FACT MY HAND IS IN PAIN RIGHT NOW JUST ATTEMPTING TO FINISH THIS! By "pump out" I MEAN TO WRITE ON THE PAGE!

11:07am
The Explanation

Okay... that was fun wasn't it?
Last night, as I attempted to write, nothing was making sense.

John & I were sitting outside of our hotel room. We had just spent over an hour in the van drinking a 12 pack. Pete was spent from driving all day, so John, Jon, Ryan, and I sat drinking. After talking in circles for a while we all shuffled off to bed. John and I got high, and for about 10 minutes were completely gung-ho about reading and writing.

The overwhelming sound of the bugs quickly drove us mad.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * ** * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We are approaching Hot-lanta (Atlanta for you white people, which is funny because The Allman Brothers were the first ones to use that term.)

It's not really that hot.

Tomorrow is September.
Wow.
It blows my mind how non-existent time is.

My mind is very sporadic this morning.

I bought a pound of Cajun turkey at BJ's yesterday.
It's so damn good.
I need to get some cheese.

I opted, while at Bj's, for more turkey and no cheese.

I guess maybe just some mayo would do.

[text: to be concluded]

Letters From the Road: Vol. 1

2005-02-28T00:19:00.000-05:00

[photo: home from tour]
[text: letters from the road]

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

I woke up this morning to a text message from Sprint. "Your PCS Service has been turned off." Wonderful. After having a dream about you, all I wanted to do was call you as soon as I got up. Frustrated I went out to the van and got high. I ended up cleaning the whole thing out.

The guys are all inside C & C Custom Drums Warehouse, and I'm alone in the van I cleaned this morning. Pete's drums were peeling - the finish around them or something. So it's all drum talk in there. "Oh wow, it's the new 1 inch block all maple jazz standard Billy Preston model snare drum." I had no idea what anyone was talking about. I stood behind everyone, not saying a word. All the other people in the room that don't know me, continuously look me up and down (perhaps it's the video camera I always have with me). Since everything they're talking about (guitar amps, pedal boards, members of other bands) makes no sense to me, I just quietly cross my arms and stair into space. If everyone laughs, I'll crack a smile which always seems forced.

I paid my phone bill at the C & C Custom's office so in a few hours I should be calling you.

The couple that was with the band Mock Orange was making me crazy. I kept turning them into you and I in my head. The couple was the brother of the singer and his girlfriend. Almost like what you and I would be to DTEA.
I wish you could see all I'm seeing. I want you to be here, laughing with me, ignoring everyone around us, moving by our own gravity. My god the people! You would laugh so much at these places I've been to. The two guys who came into this music shop yesterday (and by music shop I mean a rack of used Pearl Jam CD's and some used Playstation games) and with the most ridiculous midwest accent asked, "Ya'll got en'y AC/DC cd's? De uder place get'em stoled on 'em."

Everyone is still inside C & C. The temperature in the van right now is about 427 degrees. We have bananas in here and lots of shoes. Needless to say, it smells great. The first time we stopped on Sunday, one of my Birkenstocks fell out of the van and rolled underneath it. I didn't notice, so now my right Birkenstock is somewhere in Ohio. 90 bucks and about four years worth of walking all lost at a roadside gas station in Ohio.

The Guys are back. I'll finish up this letter as soon as I can.

****************************

We're at the venue. It's called El Torren and it seems to be home to the hardcore death metal scene. Horrible music is dumping out of the speakers as I write this. The humidity is borderline unbearable and everything in this place is covered in a layer of filth and grunge. Even the videogames are too filthy to touch. I'm not too sure about this bench I'm sitting on right now either. To my right is a huge fan which is the only salvation from the heat. Behind me is "the lounge" which is nothing more than a group of steel tables and chairs, literally fenced off by chainlink. On the wall of The Lounge is a velvet portrait of a crying Elvis. Candles bookend the painting. There are stickers and flyers everywhere. Sharpie graffiti covers what the stickers and flyers cannot.

For the past two days now, Jon and I have been using the soaps of the people we stay with. This morning it was sandalwood rose bath & body works stress relieving body wash.

Last night/this morning we stayed with the owner of the bar we played at. His girlfriend (whom he lived with) was the bartender. Had I known this, I prolly would've tipped her.

I think I'm gonna walk to the 7-11 and buy some beer. I'll continue soon.

*****************************

Thursday, August 26, 2004

I'm in a living room in Indiana. Lullo is sitting on the couch with me, reading The Beach. Ryan is reading a motorcycle magazine and Pete is drinking a Sprite. John is boiling his bass strings in the kitchen. We're at his aunt's house. They have two dogs whos names I don't know. Their barks are louder than anything I want to hear at this point in time.

John's aunt is cutting cheese for all of us. I think.

Uncle Mike is home. I gotta go and meet him. We're eating BB-Q tonight. I'll continue after dinner.

***********************

It's way after dinner. In fact it's almost 4 in the morning. No one else is up. Tomorrow is Friday and we've got a show in Nashville. I really want to stop at Graceland. We saw Garden State tonight. It was so fuckin' good. The guy and the girl in the movie were actually you and I, but no one knew this.

I can't believe I'm still up. My brain is very sparatic right now. I hope that my penmenship and my spelling haven't been too much for you to deal with. It's best to not read my letters in a motor boat or perhaps while on a roller coaster. Finding a very stable location to read them is the way to go. Like on a large rock somewhere. The one by your pond would be ideal.

Tell Eyes I said hello and that I miss her a lot. I'm gonna go to sleep now. I should wrap up this letter tomorrow and send it out. Who knows...

Blinded By The Lights

2005-02-16T01:25:00.000-05:00

this is the cleanest you will ever seen these guys.

Silly Bill and His Little Sister

2005-02-14T15:11:00.000-05:00

with the guys out on tour, poor ol' aj5 has nothing to do with his time.
so he decided to start a band of his own.

i play the bass. the one and only Catastrophe (aka Justin Bachulack) is on the keys. Our favorite Snake (Brian Gardner) is on the geetar and as of now we don't have a drummer. We do have a lead singer, and her name is Brittany Kistner.
We even have a show coming up on the 19th. Main Street Coffee (again) and we'll be playing with Wren and Lindblum (who's headlining). as for a name, i wanted to be called Yeah Is Good. Justin thought we should be called This Old Man, and Brittany keeps coming up with names every few hours. her latest as of now is, Excursions In Mathematics. as for Snake, he keeps saying "yeah... is good." in other words... "whatever man."
we've only been playing together for 3 days now.
i used to play the bass back when i was in 8th grade, but i gave it up, sold my guitar and cut my hair. but now, many a-year later, with my hair long i decided to pick up that ol' guitar and start to play again. i decided this three days ago. the first day our band formed.
saturday is going to be interesting, if nothing else.

the dtea will be back in town soon but as far as i know, they'll be hitting the road again before the 19th so they're gonna miss the show.

i'm gonna post some more photos of the guys tomorrow if i have time (not like posting photos takes a lot of time away from my life). some of the pics are from their video shoot out in LA. others are from their show in chicago. and some have nothing to do with anything, they're just pictures.

In the Gardner Snake

2005-02-05T14:36:00.001-05:00

When you go to Snake's House, you do things like this:

we were at Snake's last night and I so desperately wanted to write a new post amidst the insanity, but it was just too much. So here now instead are photos, and everyone loves photos.
(that's not my hat by the way)

W.C. Fields Forever

2005-02-05T14:35:00.001-05:00

(there's whiskey in my glass and stupid in my head)

Grace, Too

2005-02-05T14:34:00.000-05:00

There was a big fuckin' bear outside his window.
Notice Jon's arm? That red dot means he plays a lot of guitar.

The Dangers of Jumping on Stage

2005-01-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

For the show on the 7th, the band closed with Triple Black. The energy in the room at that point was exploding through the roof. Everyone was screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs. I looked to my right. "I'm going up there!" I yelled to Snake. "Really?" "Yeah dude, let's do it." The timing of the whole unexpected person on stage has to be perfect. The band was swaying back and forth like a gauntlit. John had moved closer to Pete, so my destination was all the way across the stage. Ducking behind Ryan as he swung down feverishly on his guitar, jumping over cables, past Jon as his whole body lurched forward with every downstroke. As I got to John's microphone I looked back across the stage to where Snake and I had been standing... He was no where to be seen. I expected him to be right behind me. Fuck it, it was too late, so I belted into the microphone, "BRINGIN' YOU HOME!" I had no idea if I sounded like Brian Wilson or a dying cat. No one cared. Well I didn't, at least. With the end of the song came the end of the show. Jon said his thanks and we headed off stage.
(But Aaron, what happened to Snake???)
Much later into the night I found out. Before jumping on stage, I worked out my path across stage like Indiana Jones did as he tumbled through the spinning blades at the end of the Last Crusade. My timing was perfect, but I never factored in dragging another person behind me. As soon as Snake stepped on stage, Ryan rocked out right into the side of his face. Some (such as Snake himself, and I'd say he had the best viewpoint of the whole thing) believe that Ryan's skull collided with the side of his face. Others believe that it was the head of Ryan's guitar that cracked the buttons out of him.

Upon returning home, Snake took this photograph:

Either way, it probably hurt. A lot.
So remember kids, when attempting to jump across stage durning a live rock'n'roll show, always factor in the people who might be following along with you.

Mike Enjoys Stealing Our Beer. No One Likes Mike.

2005-01-25T19:42:00.000-05:00

(Dan and Pete)

being at purchase college makes you do things such as taking digital photos without a flash while using a super slow shutter speed.
this was the night before i left, which was the day of the last post, which was yesterday, which will be two days ago tomorrow...

Preservation Hall

2005-01-24T14:59:00.000-05:00

Purchase College of the Performing Arts has a library.
most colleges actually have one. i might go crazy here and say that all colleges have what the eld call, "a library."
so here i sit, within the walls of the one located at purchase college. i figured since i have no classes to attend, nor any real thing to do, i might as well take these pointless hours and put them to good use. it's been a long time since you bastards scanned my words with your eyes, but here i am. back and ready for love.
ready for your love.

i should take this moment in space-time to address a few things (large things) that have happened to me in the past week.

last friday i was accepted back to purchase college. i haven't been here since the fall semester of 2000. returning back for the spring semester of '05 (i thought) was a cute little titty of a trip. being able to say wacky things like, "oh i took a four year christmas break" was full of fun times for all!
well...
turns out that returning to this fucking college in the spring is about as pointless as getting a tattoo of your face in the shape of your face on your face.
"why yes aaron, you can come back to school. yes... we know that we're telling you this only a few days before classes start, but not to worry -you can still go." aw, gee thanks school! thanks for fullfilling all my dreams. "little do you know mr. joy, that mayhap no classes will be avalible for you to take. oh sure, there's shakespear on film, or perhaps southren african studies of the early 18th century, but for someone like you -a future student of the dramatic writing conservitory, these classes are nothing but a waste of mind and money."
huh.
they didn't tell me "this" until i got down here. until i bought a plane ticket, a bus ticket, a subway ticket... until i walked around campus looking for my apartment (P16 dosen't exist, it is actually P 1-6) and until i unpacked, settled down, calmed my mind, told myself that yes infact here is where i am. here is where i will stay...
it comes down to this... purchase college will forever be "land of the fucked up and odd." students, administration, the campus, the food, the air, the trees, my shoes... they allowed me to come back, but a semester too soon.
so either tonight or tomorrow morning Pete and i will be driving back home. Pete's sister going to (i think) manhattanville college and they're on their way down here as i type this. depending on how the ol' drummer is feeling (he's kinda sick and sniffy) will determine our departure time.

so here's to you purchase...
i'll be back next semester and then you and i will have a little chat. and by "chat" i mean boxing match. bare-knuckel UFC style.

(the rest of this post i began almost two weeks ago. it's about the show on the 7th of january. thank you for sticking with me. i'm going to finish up this story today and thus by the time you get to the end you'll be once again reading writing that was written today... what?)

To those of you who have no idea what it's like to be on drugs... I feel sorry for you.
To those of you who have and play Halo 2 online, I feel sorry for you.
To myself: Aaron, I feel sorry for you. You haven't been faithful to your dtea journal since you got yourself a copy of that damned game. You're trying real hard. Posting older saved posts, and funny ha-ha pictures... but it just hasn't been the same since you became...
addicted.
again.
to yet another drug.
give up one, find another.
way to go.

So here I go. I am going to do my best right now to not think about killing other people with the energy sword or the shotgun.
If only I had some Tully's Tenders, it might make this sit upon my desk chair a bit more... a bit more...

before the show began, life was running full speed. approching it's terminal velocity if you could imagine. this night, my parents were even involved with the whole spin.
snake and dan came down to my place an hour or so beforehand to enjoy some drinks and some good ol' fashion "meet the parents." but of course as some of you know, my parents are anything but ol' fashion. it might be safe to say that those that created me could be some of the best around.
my dad spoke with dan all about michael and his possible attendence to purchase college in the fall, while my mother talked to snake and i about... who knows... she kept looking down every few seconds to address what ever cat might have been waltzing by at that moment. "and now -presenting... jonny! in cirque de o'cat!" (i'm not kidding, she really says these things... and you people wonder where i get my brain from...)
after the 750 ml. bottle of captin' said goodnight, the three of us (along with my folks) all headed down the street to the coffee shop.
[please note: only dan, snake and i "said goodbye" to the bottle of rum. my folks don't drink rum.]
walking into the coffee shop before a show is like walking into a sparkler that's warming up by the lick of a flame out of a grill lighter.
maybe that's how i feel.
i feel like that sparkler.
maybe sparkler isn't the best image...
how about a set of M-80's tied to a long fuse spaced equally apart from one another...?

(here begins today's text assult from the purchase library)
either way upon walking in to the shop, the first person i saw was dan from astallas lions. it had been three tours and seven months since i last saw him. lullo was manning the merch station. in front of him were the new shirts. boy did they look like left over xmas presents straight from under santa's very own tree. all expect that green one with the lines on it. looked like santa was a bit drunk when he printed it.
the crowd was already at 70%. the energy was reaching that level as well. (ask josh about the levels -he'll tell you.) the boys in Lindblum were standing by the counter, eyes wide. i love seein those guys before shows. i usually punch one of them.
Snake and i mashed our way into the "backstage" area. John and his g.f. Jessa were sitting, staring at the walls, helping themselves to matty's pizza and soggy wings. i kicked open the door and yelled, "T'YO!" John lept up and gave me his thumb spraining hug attack. (while greeting David D'amico at tully's one night, John slung his arms so far and fast around David's neck that John was actually able to jam his thumb into the back of David's head, thus spraining it.)

Lindblum took the stage and main street was xstriked. after the first song the applause was wyld. the people had no idea what to expect. they had no idea what the inside of videogames sounded like. and they didn't even know how much ziggy zippy fun it was to be there dancing in between the pixels and coding. my parents were smiling -couldn't stop smiling. my mom followed me across the front of the stage and we stood infront of the speakers on the far wall by the fishtank. ...by the Justin(e).
justin, you fuck. i told you...
during their final song, Wyld Stalyons (the spelling?) the jam at the end... the wwwumm wwumm wwwummm... i saw people standing around the backstage slowly rocking the horns -those fucking devil horns- in tempo.
Lindblum has just recently recorded a 3 track demo called The Arc Impulse E.P. Dan "Jazz Hands" Shepard recorded it, mixed it and all that shit. Pete helped master it.

From them to As Tall As Lions. that band... that fucking band... their live music is huge. HUGE! if the size of their album was the actual size of their studio music and then the size of their live music was as tall as lions...
anyway.
if you're ever around, if you're near, far, close, in proximity of one of their shows...
go.
go and go crazy. hold on to your skull because it will be smashed. hold on to your neck because you will get whiplash.
Acrobat? holy heepin' shit. "this song," Dan said, "this song is going out to a bunch of people." just because i love the crap out of this song, i started jumping up and down going, "rreeah, whooo rreahh!" Dan looked and me and laughed. "this goes out to Aaron and the guys in down to earth approach." yesssssss. "and," he continued, "this also goes out to this girl right here." pointing to a girl who was front row, dead center. "because at our last show in rochester, she was singing so loud, she was actually singing louder than i was."
and so Acrobat began. and it built up. and up. and up. and up. and up. and up. i was told afterwards that The Joy Brothers were head banging in unison. their long black hair flopping and flying everywhere. i wish i could've seen it. all i could see while that was happening was the back of my eyelids.

after the Lions left the stage, Snake and I glanced up at the clock on the wall. we had been talking of and tickeling the idea of buying more alcohol. it was almost time for the liquor store to close. if we wanted more, we had to make a move now. and fast, for neither of us wanted to miss Gym Class Heros. we grabbed some 20.oz-ers from the cooler and took off running (carefully mind you. it was icey.) because Snake and I are idiots and enjoy drinking... we missed the first few songs that the Heros had to offer. we were drinking, high school style, in the back of Liz's car. (her parked car. we're not that stupid.) we managed to finish another bottle of captin' morgan before returning to the coffee shop.
we again mashed our way back to the side of the stage and there we were treated to the "damn i wish i was black" head nodding mind soothing sounds of Gym Class Heros. live hip-hop is amazing. (good) hip-hop in general is amazing, but LIVE... whoa. by the point in the night it was so damn hot in there and the lead singer had on a friggin' hoodie and a downed vest on. he was sweating, yes. as were we all.

Jon Lullo has real love in his heart. It is all for Dawson and his creek. only needing seasons 4 and 5 to round out his collection, Jon is very devoted to those kids.
taking advantage of this, (at the request of the band) i downloaded the "i don't wanna wait for our lives to be o'va!" theme song and made sure it was played nice and loud before and as they walked up on stage.
My Brother Michael stood ready over the keyboard, Pete settled in behind his kit. John slinked across stage and wrapped his bass over his head. Ryan picked up his R and turned towards his amp, making last second adjustments, and Jon stood front and slightly left of center, sipping snapple green tea, giggling to himself knowing what was about to come out of their amps at the speed of sound... they made sure that everything was up to 11. the keys, the guitars... everything... the sound slammed everyone in the face. the song so familiar. at first everyone just stood there in amazement at what was happening, at what they were hearing. i turned around to see what Snake was doing... but he wasn't doing anything just yet. he blinked a few times and cocked his head to one side, like a dog attempting to understand "sit boy, sit." he shook his head and snapped out of it. 10 seconds had passed and as Lullo sang the first line of the song, "Time... is never time at all..." Snake (along with the rest of the coffee shop) exploded. everyone jumping. everyone screaming, singing, smiling, laughing. you could almost hear everyone's collective thoughts floating above their heads: holy shit... look at these guys. these four (and five) guys from our own town... this middle of nowhere, this shit kickin' city... "believe in me... tonight..." and we do. we will. we will never not believe in you guys. in what you've done and what you will do. we're proud to have you from our town. such a sound! that wall of sound! so tight! so loud!

...and so it went.
right up until 11pm.
the masses shuffled out, exhausted, happy, glowing.
four bands, all beyond good.
not one complaint. not one fight.
no one hurt. no one miserable.

this moment...
this show...

this is what music is.

Hold Please

2005-01-13T13:16:00.000-05:00

i'm going out of my mind.
i'm about to go back to college (for the first time in 4 years) and things in my life right now are out of control.
i promise i will sit down soon and write write write all about the show w/ lindblum. i also have an entire summer of touring with the band that i'm going to get to.
my life just needs to slow back down a bit.

100% DTEA Free (Too Bad Sucka's!)

2005-01-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

this isn't what i did on new years... it's just the greatest photograph ever taken. that kid in the back next to me is... someone. i don't know who it is. (if you know who this kid is, post a comment for me would'ya?) as for that unbelievably attractive person in front... that's brian. some folks call him snake. some call him jimmy jumping pants. i just call him, "love."
and then of course there's brittany...
but aaron... who took the picture?!!?? who saw this moment and said, "we'll need to remember this for a long time and since we're all smashed right now, pressing this button atop this gray box like machine is a very good idea." who said all this? who pressed that button atop the gray box?
it was norah.
norah did it.
names people... just names... if you know them, then you do and if you don't... you still don't. but believe me, if you did know them and then somehow un-knew them but still knew that at one time in your life you knew them, your un-knowing self would be very jealous of that moment in time in which you had known.

All Senses Lost

2005-01-10T03:17:00.000-05:00

i remember sitting in pete's dorm room. i was 18 years old. surrounded by bricks. quietly, slowly losing my mind. we drank rolling rock and mgd. our minds twisted, full of the insanity that is Purchase College of the Performing Arts. outside people yelling from the windows, yelling into the windows: "fuck the yankees!" "yanks rule! mets fucking suck!!!" the 2000 subway series had just ended and the mets had fallen victem to the deus ex machina that is the yankees. john the mac walked into pete's room with a stack of cd's. he sat down at pete's computer and beckend us to come closer. like santa clause on acid he motioned us to come ever closer. back in 2000 visualizers for music programs on your computer were fresh and new and nipple erecting. the one that this story is about was called Giess. (could've been spelled geiss. or guiess. or kasjieaf23sd for all i know) i sat down on the floor indian style and held onto my mind with all my might. the music that john rolls naked in isn't your average. Critters Buggin' were the captians of this perticular schooling of hard knocks to the skull. for hours we sat there, john in pete's chair... pete standing, crouched over the desk, and i in between them cross-legged on the floor.

wonderful story, isn't it?

it's late again. about 3:20 in the morning... i sit around here in my room not thinking about much any more. i've been over run with iPods, new DVD collections and Halo 2 online. i apologize for the lack of updates. it was going good for a while...

Here, Take This...

2005-01-08T02:35:00.000-05:00

(to go into detail about the show would be to ruin the next post... so be pay-shent) tonight the guys played with The Lions. here we are in their van in the middle of ohio. this was way the hell back in May of '04. behind me was a waffle house. "behind me," i mean, behind me. behind my back. aka, behind me. the lights of the house of waffle were beyond amazing. those sweet little yellow blocks of light...

This Sounds So Good Dan

2005-01-06T02:07:00.000-05:00

this post is coming from pete's house. with in this here room i sit, my ears are filled with "the new song." demo-ed tonight by the one and only dan shepard.
expect more dtea goodness.
pete has just come back into the room with a huge bag of chips. john and dan lunged at the same time... john being the victor.
"hey, let's get so drunk we shoot john with a pellet gun that's not mine," said lullo.
so much is going on around me that i just kinda wanna stop writing and hit the post button.
snl is on tv. whoa... i just turned around and my eyes fell upon a bottle of vodka pete found in his basement.
now i see why there was just so much chitchat about vodka and puking.

Hi, this is Pete. I'm the drummer. Aaron is getting all Mortal Kombat on John right now... not too sure about that... We recorded some new songs tonite with our good friend Dan Shepard. He's a prodigy plain and simple. Fuck I just read the text above written by Aaron, he just said the same thing I did. That's enough for me. G'nite.

okay. ow. i just rammed my knee into the desk. they've gotta dump the demo into the computer so they can sound forge it and burn it.
expect some bodyflippin' gutchurnin' mind lovin' plaabaa givin' photos to be posted with in the next day or so.

well, some more time has passed. i posted this and now i'm reposting it because i'm bored.
pete and dan are mixing "the other new song." dan is jumping up and down. pete is sitting with his head down, listening very closely.
as for john, he's gone home.
but jon... jon's "sleeping." laying down on the floor with headphones on. they're hooked up to the 8-track. jon's mind is somewhere in between the notes right now. i can only imagine what it must be like to create such music and then hear it played, over and over.
again. and again.
and again.
"you see how much louder track 3 is," dan asked. "so track 4 should be louder. we want it to carry the high-hats."

the snow outside right now is full on. the kids might not have school tomorrow.

batavia is funny like that. funny like that. funny like that.
it will snow, a lot.
then it'll rain.
everything will turn to mud.
the weather will warm up.
it will snow again and everything will be covered.
then by the time you get out of work, the roads will be clear of it because the rain has moved back in.

i believe the mix is finished yet again.

I Had Your Car Towed All The Way To Your House and All You Have For Me is a Lite Beer?

2005-01-03T14:45:00.000-05:00

author's note:
after rereading this post, it doesn't make much sense to me.

i ate steak, rice and salad. i sipped on beer from canada (do you have any idea how hard that shit is to get here in the u.s.?) and made fun of my parents and my aunt and uncle. we toasted to the new year and of life to come. yippidy blah blah.
michael and i took off right after dinner. it was getting a bit much. the more champagne my mother had, the faster she fanned herself, repeating, "is it hot in here?" mean while my father started throwing shit at my uncle. it was a good ol' joy/piazza holiday dinner celebration.
my brother headed to the super 8 to have an underage drunk fest.
i met up with jon and zoomed on over to his candy mama's house. we were in a rush rush rush. our e.t.a. at dan's was 9-ish. we got to lisa's house (one stop away from dan's) at 10.
silly...
we sure are silly.
sitting in lisa's living room, i spoke with her mother (who used to work with my dad - i'm telling you people, the world is smaller than any of us realize) about all sorts of fun things. i didn't care that we were talking for almost 45 minutes... i had been drinking for three hours... and lisa's mom is kick ass regardless of the slight amount of alcohol that might be creepin' around your blood stream at the time of conversing.
jon was in the kitchen helping lisa finish up the 2005 cupcakes -for an hour! "i'll do what ever i what, gwad!" so some more time passed and another beer went into our minds. jon had chosen the ever popular (i suppose...) molson variety pack. export, golden, canadian, and... hmmmm... i have no idea.
zzzzooom! on over to dan's. dan shepard's casa de infuellorosa! (that's spanish for nothing, i created it.) dan, as you may or may not know, has been in a smattering of bands around these parts. the double hyphenated Curb-Side All-Stars, Dream Cars, and The Hudson. playing along side others including Snake Gardner (who's first name is Brian.) Snake, for the time being within this story, was having a not so superhero time down in Bonaventure. he will soon show up.
until then, we stood out on the porch, hugged, happy new yeared and drank our years away. there was a kid there that i had seen before... at the coffee shop and the what not... but i was never formally introduced. some time close to midnight (by this point we were all face down in the bag) lisa says, "oh aaron, this is timmy hodgens." my reaction to this, i do believe scared him into not wanting to talk to me. li'll biiit.
good ol' timmy hodgens...
i was 13 years old. for three summers in a row, i spent the month of august on lake ontario. the oak orchard yatch club. sailing school. and this little shit! timmy muthafuckin' hodgens was 10 years old and... and... i... what the fuck! "timmy!? what the fuck i can't believe it!" and then i burst into my wrraaaa ha ha ha ha head to the ceiling laugh. i definitely scared him. because he didn't say anything to me and just walked into the living room. i laughed and laughed at the absurdity of life. the "small world" syndrome and all that shit.
after midnight we all got on our phones. "we all" as in the eastern time zone. jon was in convo with pete and john who were merrily out of their minds in new york city. NOT in time square. no sir... time square is thee worst place to go for new years. you have to get there at 6pm if you want to see anything. but there's nothing to really see that you can't see better at home with dick clark. you can't drink. zero tolerance for that. and you're stuffed shoulder to shoulder with god awful picture snapping horn blowin' 2005 glasses wearing tourists.
the rhythm section of the earth approach was shacked up with the one and only jinda powmadavdajioa (sorry about that man... i really haven't a clue as to the spelling of that there last name of yours.) regardless... jinda was the man that took some amazing AMAZING photos of us while we were down in nyc playing with hot rod and say anything. i will look up the link and post it for ya'll because you've gotta see these photos. aaaaaaaaannyway... i got some of the pictures pete took on new years (actually, he sent me all of them) and i posted a few. if you have no idea what i'm talking about, keep reading and at the end of this post you'll see! -HEY! DON'T SCROLL DOWN NOW. you're the kind of person that reads the last word in a book first, aren't you? you fuck! stay here! no skipping ahead! (i've forgotten why and what i'm writing about. i need a second to collect myself...)

ah yes...

TCM was playing (in honor of mass consumption) concert films all night. first came elvis at 8pm, which i was watching with my family while eating steaks. then The Last Waltz (if you don't know... bah! i'm not typing it out) and then right after midnight was ABBA: The Movie. at 1:45 am, the house was invaded by aliens from another space and time... The Song Remains the Same... good job TCM. thank you for this. Jon had since left me for "aw's'm sex w'th's g'r'fr'nd." even though he was my ride home... i didn't mind much. i had spoken with Brian/Snake and since his evening wasn't going so fantabulous, he was headed back to Dan's (promising me rides a plenty "to where ever you need to go." easy for him to say, since his car is in the ol' shoppe.) regardless, i stayed. i waited. t'was 3am... and standing up was something i wanted nothing to do with. i had spent most of my time that evening on the kitchen floor, wrestling with the dog. in fact, i believe for about 20 minutes that night i turned into a dog. which is weird because i'm a cat. covered in mud i just sat there... drooling and oogeling at the flickering images of light coming out of the tv. somewhere during all this, snake showed up. (notice my story telling ability is lacking at the moment. the night, to say the least was... well... it was new years so i'm doing my best.) we all stood (i leaned) in the living room, faces frozen as john bonham decided that drum sticks were too much. badabdabdabdabdabdabdabdabbdabdabda taaa ttatattatatababdbabdadaa moby dick! the faster he played the more insane i felt. my mind was folding in on itself like origami and i wanted to run out of the house screaming mercy, but i couldn't move.
but soon, it was that time... and away i went. into the night with snake and liz. onward to his house where back to the future was the main event. i'll tell you what buddy... i knew that movie was good, but i didn't know it was that good. good enough for me to start weeping. i realized that i was too drunk to continue drunken drinking dranking and decided that water was the way to go.
on the couch. closing my eyes. sleep is a must. another new years eve, the most pointless holiday ever invented, had passed.

2005-01-03T03:31:00.000-05:00

(new years again) john asked me not to post this because he didn't want people to know that he normaly wears a helmet and sunglasses durning his down time in life... which is all the time... but anyway, don't tell him (or anyone) that you saw this photo.

2005-01-03T03:24:00.000-05:00

new years eve under the city in the tunnels of the subway. jinda (the funny lookin' one) ...uh... i have no idea what he was doing. jessa and john, i'm assuming have no memory of this event. pete took the picture. notice his rule of thirds. very nice pete. i talked to these guys via cellphone after the new year. do you think any of it made sense? oh, i'm sure when you called everyone that you called right after new years you were exchanging fully formed words and sentences.

(Shut Up Aaron) It's True

2005-01-01T04:17:00.000-05:00

Happy Newear.

Breakfast With a (Future) Blind Date

2004-12-28T21:19:00.000-05:00

nothing much to report. my iPod that i got from santa has been consuming my life since the 25th... i've been meaning to post some new pictures but every time i go to do it, something goes wrong. perhaps it's because every time i'm ripping cd's into the iPod and my computer (being four years old) can't even begin to think about doing both things at once.

pete and i went to best buy today. he picked up a copy of Garden State (if you haven't seen this yet, i feel bad for you.) i bought a condom for my iPod so it won't get any diseases this winter. i also helped myself to season one and two of ren & stimpy (uncut!!!).

see what i mean... nothing much to report. besides, it's the holidays damn you! i'm busy and i can't sit here and tippy type away on stories of freaks in kansas or mothers in hot tubs in denver (we'll be getting to that later.)

the guys have been writing at a snails pace, but they're churning out some amazing shit. pete told me today about the reworking of a wondrous pop goodness. thanks in part to a lovely mellow-ma-man drum beat he channeled yesterday at practice.

don't forget about the show on the 7th of january. if you're any where close to batavia, get in your rocketship and get over here. four sick bands for 7 bucks. make sure you get there early to see Lindblum. (i know a kid named michael who's in the band. he's supposed to be good on the keyboards - i believe he's going to be playing four of them.)

good bye.

So This Is the New Year

2004-12-27T02:40:00.000-05:00

[Jon wrote this and asked me to post it]

We all hope you guys had a wonderful holiday... we happened to have one ourselves! I just wanted to take a minute out and thank each and every one of you guys for supporting us in everything that we've done thus far. We really couldn't ever thank ALL of you enough for what you do for us! From letting us to stay at your place while we are on tour, buying our merch, coming to our shows, buying our cd, or even downloading it for free online, we love you guys for making us a part of your lives.

Just to single a few people out for thank yous, I (jonathan lullo) have created a small list. This is absolutely in no particular order.

We would EXPECIALLY LOVE to thank:

EVERYONE at VAGRANT. This is the greatest label in the world. They do EVERYTHING in the world to help us, and we are forever greatful towards them. RICH, i am in love with you, in a non-paternal sort of way. MATT AND MAUREEN for making an amazing video, endless rusty trombones, and all the love you guys could give! BRENDAN CIECKO- he created this lovely website, and has been a non stop help with all of my problems. EVANGE LIVANOS- We love you for being our friend, and helping us out with tours! BRIAN at PISTOL BOOKING- you are the man, and that was one crazy "Natural Disaster Tour of 2004" that you hooked up for us. EVA ALEXIOU- You have been so amazing to us, and I can't wait to hug you in 2005. SWISS for being our bearded father. BILLY for being our spiffy mother. JOSH NEWMAN for letting us play with the ever amazing MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK. CHRIS CARRABBA for teaching me the way of the ninja, and for cuddling under hotel sheets with me. MIKE POORMAN, for calling me and making sure that i'm not losing my mind. DAVE SHIFFMAN for keeping in touch, and helping us make the record we dreamed about making. DAVE STEIN for being our lawyer, even though I am taller then he is. MAX BEMIS for trading late night phone calls about wigs, tuna shanks, and the like. AARON JOY for doing everything in the world for us, and from going from the biggest pothead i know to the biggest non-pothead i know, and for creating www.downtoaj5.blogspot.com, and other endless love brimmith forwardeth. MICHAEL JOY for being a child prodigy, and being the closest thing in the world to a fifth member of the band. We fully expect you to play our our next record, if you will have us. ROB CREDI and all of MAIN STREET COFFEE for being the hustler that we only dream of being, ourselves. ADAM BURNETT for his brotherly love, and showing us how to live life like a player. KAMTIN and GREG at ABSOLUTEPUNK.NET. You guys have been preaching about us before anyone else in the world, and have been great friends at all times! SEAN and everyone at BLUE COLLAR PRESS- we know that we are huge pains in the asses, but you guys do an amazing job, and we wouldn't want to drive any other company crazy! MONEEN for playing the greatest record release show in the world with us. PIEBALD for taking us on our first tour with attendees. THE JEALOUS SOUND for all of the amazing adkins talk. NORTHSTAR for being great great people and for makikng one of the best records of 2004. AS TALL AS LIONS for being the closest thing to a brother of a band that there is. THE NEW TRANSIT DIRECTION and SUNDAY DRIVER for the wild activities in florida and beyond. EMERY for teaching us that all bush supporters aren't all horrible people (ha!). BRAZIL for the late night card games and beers with 20 people in a Super 8 motel. FROM FIRST TO LAST for unleashing our inner goth. MENDING POINT for finally playing a show with us. ADELAIDE for making us feel horrible about our live show by continuously blowing us out of the water. JIN and NITRO SNOWBOARDS for the free gear brah!

that's all i can think of. I'm sure i forgot many many people. I love all of you, and can't wait to get back out on the road in 2005, keep writing new songs, and keep meeting you amazing people that make up this "well we're in denver, we can just keep driving straight through- nah, i'm not really tired yet" country of ours! WE LOVE YOU ALL!!!!

I'M YOUR BOYFRIEND NOW NANCY!!!

2004-12-24T02:34:00.000-05:00

i love justin bash-u-lack. i'll never know how to spell his last name. never ever ever.
i don't care.
i really don't.
nor do i care about what i'm typing at this moment.
rihgt now you are in the midst of a fullon "I've been at the bars for waaay too long" attack of Aj5. i hate refering to myself at that. "AJ5" fuck that! someone kick my ass for that.

things i did tonight:
1.) went to the main street coffee shop xmas party as jon's date. his g.f. Lisa couldn't make it. she had to take eucher lessons. lessions. leasons. she was taught how to play that fucking card game...
so i sat in as jon's love.

tonight i got a christmas card from the band.
they all signed it.
it ment more to me than anything i've gotten for xmas since my nintendo when i was 5.
they also bought me a bottle of captin' morgan.

we drank and drank. we rank and skank!
we had fun.
i was the last to leave the bar.
everyone i showed up with, left me.
alas... i didn't care.
(i'm used to it)
i found people to talk to. i got free drinks because of it.
so i ended my night with a walk home by my lonesome.
it was VERY cold out.
i kept scrunched up the whole way home...
tomorrow is the 24th! SANTA will be here soon!

(much love to my past... i'll see you in the future...)

The Concrete Girls?

2004-12-22T04:00:00.000-05:00

i remember being somewhere in kansas.

kansas is one of those states that while driving through, allows you the opportunity to completely loose your mind.
living in new york you never realize what "the plains" truly look like. once you leave ohio and approach indiana the country goes impotent for a thousand miles or so. through illinois nothing changes. missouri and into kansas the only difference are the oil pumps. kansas, land of oil pumps and the straightest road in all of the u.s. at some point on the way back in early september i was able to let go of the steering wheel for an oddly long amount of time. it afforded me the opportunity to comb my locks.

back in june, we stopped at a truck-stop on the way out to denver to meet up with piebald. jon and pete high tailed it to the bathroom while john, ryan and i stayed back at the van and indulged upon the vast emptiness of all the land around us. the parking lot was even over barring. i remember the actual buildings of the truckstop seeming tiny and horribly alone.

playing frisbee while on the road becomes a way of life. allowing you to run around like 10-year-olds after being forced to sit inside for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours... ryan, john and pete are quite good at it. i have trouble from time to time throwing it because of my left-handedness. i do this insane bassakwards under hand flick that wobbles maniacally at first and then straightens out and soars like an eagle baby!
as for lullo... let's just say that he can sing and play the guitar a hell of a lot better. jon's throws either go straight into the ground bouncing on its side, or go straight up and back, hitting him in the chestel region.

after getting our ya-ya's out whipping the fisbee at each other, john, ryan, and i made out way inside the truckstop.
i make it a point while on tour to eat pizza everywhere i go. i come from a town with 10 (soon to be 11) pizza shops. you may not think that's a lot... but batavia is small. it's a city, yes. but only 16,000 of us wander around within it's boarders. that number has stayed the same since i was first taught the idea of "population" back in grade school. so because of our small size and abundance of pizza shops, the city has really managed to create a unique style of pizza. it has become an art form. with shops only blocks away from one another you really need to know how to make a pizza in order to stay up and running. (to give you an idea of how insane this town is, two guys were going to open one pizza shop together but they had a falling out with their partnership so they each decided to open up their own shops. this is a true story. pauly's just opened in the old pizza express building [which used to be the old ficarella's shop] and main street pizza co. will open very soon.) so if you're ever in batavia ask yourself first: how the fuck did i get here? then question why you're here... and if you can get all that sorted out, enjoy yourself a slice of batavia style pizza. it ain't new york style, and it's not chicago style... it's in between what the rest of the country calls "deep dish" and "thin crust." it's a hell of a lot better than any other pizza you'll come across. i have tested this theory many times while on the road.

so while at the truck-stop, i ordered a cheese and pepperoni 4 slice. next to the pizzas (pre-packaged, pre-made and awaiting their rebirth) were cinnamon rolls and other assorted pastries. this has nothing to do with the story -actually, it does. it is simply a part of it, for this story is about nothing. much like all stories. but soon, i suppose you could say that i will be getting to my "point."

while waiting for the pizza i wondered through the gift shop. i found lullo in the back looking at plastic snow globes. inside them were two fat american tourists on a beach. the phrase "jamaca me happy" was written across the base. lullo put it back on the glass shelf and looked up at me. he just kinda stared at me for a second. you could see the gears turning behind his eyes. he half blinked and twitched his head back and forth. what he wanted to say had come to mind...
"oh my god, aaron!" he said, "did you see her?"
"what? who?"
jon began laughing like a sub machine gun in slow motion. he grabbed my arm and pulled me into the food mart. "sshhhh," he said, "she's around here somewhere -oh my god, you've gotta see her."
we crept through the medicine isle, and hid behind the endcap of slim jims and doritos.
"oh shit! there she is!"
standing in front of the beer cooler was thee most out of place human being i had ever seen. everyone was staring at her, and i mean everyone. fathers were dragging their sons to see. mothers were dragging them back. this woman was causing a freakin' side show. girls were scoffing, some were uncontrollably laughing and walking away. guys were stunned, staring mouths agape, eyebrows scrunched together in disbelief. this woman didn't give a fuck. she made her selection, paid for it, pulled her sunglass down... and walked out.
i stood motionless and a bit confused for some time. "jon," i said, "what in the hell was that?"
laughing so hard, he couldn't respond with words, only random sounds, smacks, gestures and convulsions.
"what the fuck is she doing out here!? we're in the middle of nowhere!"
"i have no idea," jon said in between gulps of air and hawking laughter.

the spectacle took up most of my wait time, so i wandered back into the cinnamon roll(slash)pizza shop just in time for my 4 slices of garbage to come dinging out of the oven. pete came around the corner holding a gatorade and a side salad from the random truck-stop restaurant. jon, still recovering from the visual mind fuck was sporadically coughing up chunks of laugher.
"what'd i miss," pete asked.
i shook my head. "i don't know man... what ever that was... you sure missed it."

2004-12-21T16:15:00.000-05:00

the men with guitars are looking down. the man with out a shirt is looking up. the shirt is floating. there's some poor fool reaching up for that shirt that has been taken off due to the amount of sweat in it. and the whole damn photo is bookended by Garlic Juice filming one another. (this photo comes from the record release party on august 3rd. ...oh man... now that was a good moment in my life. talk about havin' some happy summer times! yippie!)

Old Man River, He Just Keeps Rollin' Along

2004-12-21T15:20:00.000-05:00

[note: started on december 9th finished today]

i need to ignore my life for awhile so i suppose i'll start the next chapter in this silly little story i have for all of you.

november 12th, 2004. The One and Only GCC Rockfest.

now i'm from batavia. home of GCC. and infact i've actually attened GCC for a few days.
before we go any further i can't help myself. i'm trying my damnedest to not say what i want to say right now, perhaps i should come back to this post when i'm a bit less upset.
naw, fuck it. GCHS is what they should call it. 13th and 14th grade, with all the kids from high school you never talked to. every time i walk into that place i can't help but think... who the fuck are these people, and why am i standing next to them. (please note, the band is not me and i know they love playing there, i've just grown up under a thundercloud of anger towards my home town)
now granted some nice people have come out of that school.
if GCC didn't have a volleyball program i would've never met liz crawford (my ever popular girlfriend of the 2002/2003 years of life).
actually, now that i think about it...

anyway...

the show:
luke and i were drinkin' 40'z at my house before hand. we were playing mortal kombat on xbox live and getting our asses handed to us. we played this kid 12 times and lost every time. the house was insane before the show. my brother and all his friends coming and going, in and out, up and down. cellphones ringing, people yelling. sometimes my house gets dizzy.
their set started at 8:30 but i figured that, much like every other show i've been to in the past, it wouldn't start until at least 8:45. i was wrong. we walked in to the forum at 8:43 (i checked my watch) and they had already started playing. the crowd was huge, much like they always are for the band in batavia. i shoved my way thought the crowd and began yelling at the top of my lungs "JAAAAAAAAANN!" (i was yelling jon, but joooooon doesn't look right) the people around me started giving me looks. those wonderful small town western new york looks. hey now, something weird is happening, some one is acting odd, better stare at him and quickly judge him and tag him as an idiot. people... get off my case. you have no idea. this was the first time i had seen the guys play since they had left on the emery tour (which i had to sit out due to lack of money and abundance of girlfriend). i was very excited to see them play. for the first time in a long time, i was on the other side of the stage. i was a FAN. no camera, no sellin merch. i was there to go nuts, mosh my feet off and sing as loud as i could. i found my brother and his friends right down front. i shoved michael (my brother) and he turned around. "WHAABLAAB YO BLHAHA WARRAABLBAHAA!" he said. i don't know, i don't remember, he just yelled and started jumping up and down. soon adam and zinni saw me and we all began a good ol' mosh pit.
the guys in the band still hadn't seen me. damn you people, look at me! i'm here. in the crowd! look! look! oh he looked! and all jon could do was smile and say into the mic, "aaron... aaron's here." "oh man, aaron's here," ryan said. john walked up to his mic and asked, "i thought you had to work?" no. no i didn't. "the rest of this goes out to aaron," jon said, "because we missed him on tour."

continued today:
at one point inbetween songs, john pulled me up on stage for god only knows why. i stood there like an ass, jumped up and down a few times and then turned around and kissed john on the neck. most of the time, this is a welcomed event in my almost gay kinda life, but tonight... not so much. remember folks, john was in the middle of playing a live set of music which allows for the body to mass produce and coat itself in sweat.
tasty upon ones lip? no. double no.

after the show we all stood around in the cafeteria and mingled and chatted away. buy this, sign that, come to my house, go to the bar. i was once again signing Aj5 autographs (in red sharpie. the same red sharpie that was later sold for a nice price in nyc)

nothing much happened after that.
actually, i don't remember what happened after that.
oh wait... yes i do. we went to o'lacey's. in the words of lullo, "the greatest bar in the world." there i stood and warbled and mumbled. john spilled a beer. pete danced on the bar. ryan smoked some cigs (outside) and lullo ignored everyone by keeping his face inches from lisa's. those two are just a pair of chatty kathy's, i'll tell ya.

2004-12-17T17:21:00.000-05:00

Look kids! It's my "beard growth possibilities" in action. This picture was taken after the last show of the Sunday Driver tour. It was about 3 in the morning and if my memory is working right now, none of the footage that I'm filming came out. My camera, for what it's worth -never works. I suppose that would make it worthless. I remember waking up the next morning and there was this pretty little butterfly fluttering upon the hood of the van. Then we began driving north and got stuck in hurricain evacuation traffic for six hours and I wanted to kill everyone.

08.24.04. Just One of Those Things (Again)

2004-12-16T18:32:00.000-05:00

[note: the following was written inside the van while on the sunday driver tour at the end of the summer. i just found today while going thought some notebooks. it is unfinished.]

Back inside Kansas. Currently on the K-10 East enroute to Missouri. I'm sitting shotgun, Pete to my left. The show last night was seemingly good. Granted I was a mess because of the free Miller HighLife Light that flowed endlessly from the tap. Not to mention the two Manhattans that started the night. After the guys set was done I needed to use the facilities but the bathroom downstairs for some reason sketched me out to the point of it sending me upstairs to the other one. There I was greeted by the annoyingly familiar waft of marijuana. "It smells great up here," I said. At this point I had no idea who I was talking to. Turned out the one guy was the lead singer of this band, The F-Ups. (what the fuck is that? who thinks of these names?) "Oh here man," he says as he packs a bowl. "I just finished, but if you want some - it's from New Mexico." I smoked the whole thing somehow. I found my way downstairs - the pot now taking hold. For me, pot taking hold is pretty uncontrollable. That shit ruins me. Somehow I manage to stay moving forward. I grabbed the camera and immediately began filming. I followed the gravity of the people. It pulled me outside, under the awning, where Ryan and John stood. There was an air-raid siren wailing louder than anything I had ever heard. If I wasn't so out of my mind on New Mexico crazy-man pot, I probably would have been scared of the torrential downpour, frequent lightening and the very real possibility of a tornado tearing apart the building. We New Yorkers thought we were in Twister and some of us went running through the streets laughing and hopping in the puddles. The locals soon scolded us and made it clear that it really wasn't a joke. We were all forced to go back inside and move away from the windows. The show was stopped. Everyone got on their cellphones. I'm still out of my mind and decide to call my home. Thank goodness my brother picked up. "DUDE, THE SHOW GOT CANCELED WE'RE INSIDE OF A TORNADO WE CAN'T GO BY THE WINDOWS I'M DRUNK AS HELL I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M SAYING TO YOU CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

2004-12-16T02:20:00.000-05:00

if we didn't have ohio, we wouldn't have corey. wait a sec... if we didn't have corey, we wouldn't have a place to stay in ohio. that's what i wanted to say. this is what the inside of an apartment in bowling green freakin' ohio looks like. and yes, i too would like to know where ryan is... perhaps in the back of smokey's lounge? or maybe just not in the photo...

Ready Made

2004-12-16T02:10:00.000-05:00

real quick you fucks...
i was at practice tonight and the band (of idiots!) played for me THE NEW SONG. oh sweet mama. a new song... so new infact it sucked!

aaaaahhhhhh hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

2004-12-15T13:56:00.000-05:00

Look at my front porch, it's full of idiots! From left to right we've got the one and only dustin bow, then there's the wop david d'amico, that's my arm sticking out from the back of his head, jon is looking at me while touching my chest. then there's mr. hell yeah himself, ryan and that baseball hat behind pete is john bocker. (the spelling of that last name is a mystery to me. perhaps there's two k's.) where we were all headed is long since removed from my memory, but i do remember my mother running out onto the porch going, "ooo ooo! lemme take a picture! you guys look so nice!"

Wooden Ships (Time Spent Under Smoke)

2004-12-15T03:58:00.000-05:00

strange things are afoot at the circle K.

as i pour myself another glass of whisky and ginger ale, i receive simultaneously three IM windows. this is a bit much if you ask me. one girl is talking about the boy she loves, the fact that he's an asshole, and how he won't make out with her. the other girl is talking about the past and drinking too much. and pete is talking about hanging out and gettin' spacey at Snake & Brittany's.
the first girl wants to make out with me, but i'm at a loss of how to do that while sitting behind a computer screen. the second girl began talking gibberish after i asked her why her font was so small (i thought perhaps she was whispering) and she wanted none of what i thought was advice and just signed off line. now pete's window is flashing and i must click upon it to see what he wants... more nothingness.

perhaps, i should take this time to go over the members in the band
(for those who don't know) we have:
Jon
John
Pete
Ryan
so when you see those names in here, you know that i am interacting with the band. i do this a lot. i live in the same town as them... i went to school with them... i take baths with them on sundays after the bills games. i have all their numbers in my phone book. i am their creator and programmer. jon makes my lunch for me every day.

you may be wondering, where is ryan?

ryan works...
a lot.
he's the only one that does that.
personally i think he's a bum!

last i saw of him, he was in the back of smokey's lounge in the basement of the center street smokehouse. he stood there with his posse of badass motherfuckers that if you were to get too close, would lay down some sort of jujitsu upon you and the next thing you'd know is what being upside down is like. i brave this would-be assault to talk to him now and again. when i do see him, he hands to me the warmest of hugs and smiles. oh ryan... i take back what i said about you... you're not a bum...
they claim that smokey's lounge has proper ventilation, but i'd say they're lying. when i, for whatever reason it may be, decide to go down into the lounge, i regret my choice very soon after.
for those of you who may not live in new york, the state has gone smoke free. they even made little bumper stickers and key chains that say "i heart smoke free new york."
i actually use one of those key chains, because i do heart it. not having to keep your jacket outside when you get home from the bars because it smells too much like the underside of a truck is wonderful. (there was a time when i dated a girl who lived inside of an ashtray and Anthony and i had to keep our jackets outside for weeks on end, but that's a story for a different day...)
you may or may not know this, but ryan is one hell of a dart player.
smokey's lounge has two dart boards, a jukebox and a widescreen tv hanging from the wall. the dart boards and the jukebox are on the floor. ryan knows how to use all of them. have you ever seen someone actually rick-o-shay a dart off of a stone pillar and make it count? because i still haven't. ryan's not that good. but i have seen him program the best damn sequence of songs into a jukebox this side of happy days.
the down side of picking songs with ryan is that we always manage to start picking them 20 minutes before they close and since we're music nutcases we end up pumping in about 10 dollars. becaues of it, we never get around to hearing all of them.
but that shit will never get to him...

ryan just smiles as says, "it's all good man..." and lights one final cigarette for the road.

Scarlett O'Hara Knows Nothing of Wind

2004-12-14T16:20:00.000-05:00

last week batavia was attacked by wind. i don't mean little bits of it here and there, sprinkled and spackled like miss o'hara's brain power. i'm talkin' shock & awe size wind attack. half the city was without power. the other half laughed at them.
i was sitting home waiting for the guys to call me after they were done practicing. we had talked about possibly going to the bars and perhaps to the all night zoo over on center street. i was sitting here wondering whether or not the wind was going to tear my windows out of the wall they so nicely sat in, when my room went black.
super.
i was in the middle of typing out an entry and i hadn't hit the save button yet. it was nice and fat and almost ready to be posted. alas... those words will never see their birthday inside the internet. frustrated and alone in the dark, i just began to applaud the situation. my brother came down the hall and knocked on my door. "you were writing weren't you?" oh yes... i was.
well, the hell with this, lemme call up jon see if they have power. sure enough, they didn't. no practice for those guys. the power had spent a few moments going off and on and they had finally said the hell with it and decided to leave. the practice space is deep within the 100 year old industrial center that used to run batavia's nervous system. it has long since gone the way of the dinosaurs and is now home to a t-shirt silk screening company and ghosts. and believe me, from personal experience, it's a hell of a place to be at 4 in the morning... any time after dark with no power would be at the bottom of my list written for things to do.
jon, john and ryan made it as far as the elevator when the building lost power again. after an hour or so, they were some how able to contact a maintenance guy to come and superhero them out of there. on their way out to their cars, a power line had gotten taken out and was writhing and spitting sparks at them.

i don't know if you guys do this when a storm rolls into town, but we enjoy drinking with it. it's best to leave a beer outside for the storm to enjoy with you.

jon came and picked me up at 11:30 and we headed to jubilee (our trusty south side supermarket). as we approached, the creepy balding manager poked his head out in between the sliding doors and yelled over the wind, "we're closed guys!" i scrunched my eyebrows and looked at jon through the corner of my eye. all the lights are on. what the hell is really going on here?
so off to the west end. good ol' tops friendly markets. open 29 hours a day 377 days a year. molson bottles were on sale. mmmmmmm, canada-land beer. on our way back to the car a shopping cart came flying all the way across the parking lot to say hello. actually, most of the shopping carts were out there talking and running around like little kids. they love it when the wind shows up to hang out.
i don't know what it is with severe wind, but it turns the town into bedlam. there were people screaming and laughing at the other end of the parking lot. firetrucks were all over the place. all the stop signs were face down. it's just an all out back to the primordial, human experience.

pete lives on the edge of town. actually, he lives way the hell out on the edge of "in the middle of no where." if you were to travel a few more minutes down his road you would see a sign that read, In the Middle of No Where. (wrr wrr wrrrrrr)
the four of us (pete, jon, john and i) sat in pete's room until all the beer was gone. jon wrote insane IM's to Max Bemis ("i don't like your wig." and other random madness). john and i played house with pete's tea set. pete got out the coloring books and crayons. i feel bad for pete some times... he still can't stay in the lines. he's one of the best damn drummers around, but the kid can't stay in the lines! because of it leonardo and donatello had blue and green spikes coming out of their head and back. it was silly.
out our way out of pete's house, i managed to fall down the stairs. the whole evening was being filmed with my broken-ass camera and for the most part, all the footage had come out, up until that part. you get the first milli-second of the fall and the rest of the tape goes blue.

back to the rehearsal space... apparently before the power started to finger fuck their practice, jon had had a break though and had written a rather good song. before they could get it down on tape, the power shit the bed. jon was stressed about it all night, pulling his hair out and punching himself in the balls, which apparently was his way of helping his mind not forget the goodness that was the new song.
so at about 3:30 in the morning, with pete long into sleep-lala-land, The Lullo came out in full force. The Lullo is jon's alter-ego when the music takes over. when it's time to get serious (as serious as we can get) and the fuckin' around must stop!
it was go time.
it was time for john and i to go somewhere else.
taking advantage of the emptiness of one of the biggest, most god-awful scary buildings in batavia, we went running amuck while The Lullo got down to it.
we soon had to head back to the space because our imaginations were getting the best of the situation and shit just started to get weird.
when we got back, The Lullo was long gone and jon was once again laughing like jimmy stateing and attempting to shoot hoops with the rim that hung on the wall. (i don't think he made one shot. infact, now that i think about it, i do remember him attempting to slam dunk at one point and he just ended up putting his foot through the wall.)

but the night, dear lord, did not end there.
4am, sport of kings restaurant. the mecca of all things western new york.
durning the summer, saturday nights, the place is stuffed and puking at the seams with the racers from the fair grounds, their super duty pickups with their broken ass, no where close stock cars in tow, over run the parking lot. so please note: don't go there when this is happening. you will either a) laugh uncontrolably at everyone around you and end up getting into a fight, or b) feel waaay to good about yourself... and end up getting into a fight.
but in the dead of winter, it's pretty okay. the cook always hates you when you walk in. the waitress always hates you when you walk in. most of the time, you interupt their cig-life, standing out there, huddled together, shivering wondering why they can't feel their hands (smoke cuts down your circulation lady, don't get pissed at me that you have to cut that thing short and come back inside and take my order. be thankful, i just gave you a few extra minutes of lifetime to bitch about)

this entry has been about nothing.

and i'm done.

to conclude our trip to sporto's: i bent a fork all to hell, didn't have enough money to cover the bill and then freaked out with john on the ride home to the new critters buggin' cd.

upon returning home, i was locked out until 5am.
standing on my deck for 30 minutes i realized that fresh snow is quite beautiful in the wee hours of the morn.

2004-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00

Jon and I on the day all of our dreams came true... 8th grade graduation.

Four Years Later...

2004-12-06T18:46:00.000-05:00

driving to new york city and back in 24 hours should teach you one

thing:  don't ever do it.  if you live perhaps in white plains or

maybe somewhere in jersey, then yes -go right ahead.  do it, see if

i care.  but when you live in batavia (which is by buffalo,

blahblahblah) it's not really as wonderful of an idea as you may

think.

the band learned of the show they were asked to play with hot rod

circut, straylight run and say anything only days before it

happened.  i was at center street (a bar) the night after

thanksgiving and i ran into ryan downstairs in the smokers lounge.

holy shit man, he said to me, we're playing with fucking say

anything!!!

what what what??? when the hell is this happening?

oh, ya know sunday night.

but ryan, that's in two days...

yeah i know, i just found out too.

well shit, i'm coming with you.

and with that ryan hugged me and bought me 2 drinks, 7 shots and a

pitcher of yuengling along with a pulled pork sandwich and some

baked mac 'n' cheese.  ryan enjoys tour when i'm around.  after

playing a round of darts, the smoke was so thick and clogged in my

throat i couldn't breathe.  and since i quit cigs almost a year ago,

there was no real point for me to be down in that room anymore.  as

much as i love ryan and he loves me, it was just time to leave.

upstairs i ran into pete.

aaron!  he says,  dude we're playing a fucking show with say

anything!!!

(we all really love this band here in batavia)

i acted all cool and collected like i didn't know.

oh yeah?  i said, and just walked away.  pete began to weep.

he fell to his knees and yelled at the celling, why doesn't he care?!?!!!



7am sunday.

pete and ryan and the van are at the end of my driveway.  i hadn't

taken a crap yet and since i didn't want to be that guy that held

everyone up, i just said the hell with it and left without.  like

most of the time when leaving on tour or for a show, it was raining.

infact, now that i think about it, anytime you leave batavia it

rains.  and anytime you drive back into batavia, it's raining.

since lullo lives right by the thruway exit he's always the last one

to be picked up.  because of it, he for some reason manages to be

the first one asleep.  i'm not really sure how those two things are

related.

it also seems that ever time we leave batavia pete is the man to

drive at first and we all end up asleep.  thus, by the time pete has

had enough driving we're all waking up and ready to talk like

idiots.  unfortunately, pete needs to sleep.  so here we all are,

inside the van talking about everything from what the farts that you

have when you first wake up are called (morning thunder) to whether

or not chris carraba is going to sing at tonight's show.  the only

salvation that pete has from this insanity is to lose himself inside

his iPod.  thank you steve jobs, you save pete's sanity day in and

day out.  (if only i had an iPod, oh the places i'd go...)

we stopped at burger king somewhere deep into pennsillvania.  in the

parking lot we had a quick lesson on how to moonwalk. (no,

seriously.  i can moonwalk.  if you see me at a show, ask me and i

may just do it for you.)

anyway... onward to the city.  i hadn't been back in four years.

the second we exited the lincoln tunnel i had my face smashed

against the window gawking at the city that surrounded me.  my god,

it was good to be back.

we got to the bowery ballroom around 3.  right on time if you ask

me, and the soundcheck guy.  but no matter, we still got yelled at

once up on stage.  gotta go go go!  no time to delay.  hurry up and

wait.

lemme tell you something about this here ballroom.  first of all,

only band memebers get a pass.  so even some one who is as close to

the band as i (since i'm writing the tour journal and have been

filming them for the past 6 months and went to elementary school,

high school, and college with them, not to mention some classic

prepubecent cover band attempts) will not get a pass.  believe me, i

asked.  and also, unless you have $250 to blow, you can't film

anything either at the ol' ballroom.  so there i am (and rob and

jessa) with out a pass and no where to go.  i have a drink ticket in

my hand, but in order to drink you have to go outside to get a

bracelet.  but someone, like me, who is passless, can not go outside

to get a bracelet.  to hell with that, i went outside anyway.

dumb idea.

i got stopped twice on my way back into the ballroom.  infact, i

almost didn't make it back in.  so here i am, sitting down at the

bar, with all my stuff upstairs in the dressing room.  i wasn't too

keen on leaving my camera and other assorted goods upstairs with out

me around, so john and i headed upstairs to hang out in our

"dressing room."  yeah well, with out a pass it's most difficult.  i

had to say about five times, "no no no, i'm with the band."  and

frankly, i hate saying that.  you people should know this!  i've

been standing around here since 3pm.  i walked in with them.  i'm

filming them.  i'm making out with them.  we're cooking pasta

together.  folks, i AM the band.  fuck you guys, i made them!

infact, they're actually just robots which i programed.  (WE CAN

LOOK AT THE ECLIPSE -AND YELL AT IT!)  but ya see aaron, those

things don't matter in new york city.  no sir.  not in this town.

john and i somehow made it back upstairs with out getting shot.  we

then proceeded to listen to frank sinatra and drink manhattans for

an hour or so before the show started.

but aaron! how was the show???  well, if you were there, then you'd

know wouldn't you?  so don't go asking me to help you where you

screwed up.  alright, fine.  dtea opened with their ever popular

phil spector wall of sound attack.  they sounded fantabulous.   i

stood next to Jinda (our fellow Jackson Elementary School alumni

-john, pete and i all went there) for all of the show.  we laughed

at john's "i'm starving and i need to eat the hell out of this

microphone" singing techneque.  (sound guys please note:  keep

john's mic turned down, no matter how quiet he soundchecks.)

it's fun to watch the kids not really know who this band is until

exhibit of the year beings.  the guys used to open the show with it,

but they soon realized that blowing ones figurtive load before

anyone gets a taste of the sweetness isn't a good idea.  since that

damn song is on the vans comp and the latest vagrant comp, not to

mention getting airplay on fuse, it's good to close with it.

picture yourself now in the crowd, unsure of this band, never

hearing of them, or about them.  but the longer into the set your

mind gets, the more it begins to take a liking.  and then BAM this

song comes on ("about having awesom'sex wth'ya'girlfr'nnnd.") and

you know it!  well holy shit, i do like these guys.  and then that's

it.  show's over.  your mouth is left dripping, watering for more.

inbetween bands, that song may replay itself a few times in your

head.  you might even catch yourself doing a mini-headbang.  and

then like a silly brainwashed monkey you come to our mech table and

buy every copy of the cd we have, handing over a few hundred

dollars.  a'than'goo. here's a free poster.

speaking of posters, we did give a lot away at the show.  we signed

most of them.  infact, there was this one kid who didn't want his

poster to get all wrinkled durning the blistering sets of say

anything, hot rod and straylight.  understandable.  i've been there

before.  it sucks, buying merch too soon and then you're forced to

hold on to the crap for the rest of the show.  so i set the kids

posters aside, no prob.  alas... they might have had a better chance

of surviving had they stayed with him.  at one point in the night,

casper (from say anything) came out of the bathroom and decided it

be a good idea to lay down across all of his and our merch.  he was

sleepy.  we tried to get him up by looking at my nipples (lullo drew

circles around them) but he only responded with, "those aren't girl

nipples, those are fag nipples!"  he then went to the bar which was

no longer serving him and threw a glass of water on the ground.  so

the kid who's posters i had came back at the end of the show looking

for them, much like he said he would.  sorry buddy, we had an

accident and they've been crushed.  would you like new ones?  for

some insane reason, he didn't.  infact he was actually able to get

casper to sign them.  so there are now two dtea posters with say

anything autographs on them.

i was also able to sell a sharpie for a dollar.  don't ask me why.

could've been because it was one of those badass chizel tip ones.

and not to mention it was red.

at one point durning the evening, we met up with our old tourmates,

as tall as lions.  it was freaky seein' those guys again.  i hadn't

seen them in so long.  oh the tales i will tell from the times spent

on the road with them... just you wait...



so after say anything and hot rod blew the fucking roof off,

straylight run took us all back down to earth and lulled us into a

tragically hip mellowed out trance that caused, for most of us in

the bar, to begin thinking heavly about the direction of our

seemingly directionless lives.  it was most welcomed though.

fantasic music all around.  there was a couple on the couch by the

men's room that had passed out on each others shoulders.  the girl

kept waking up and rubbing the guys hair.  you could feel the old

love they had for one another.  across the room, a kid had his eyes

closed, but his head kept moving back and forth to the music.  time

seemed to slow down and the room i believe actually got quieter for

awhile.  i think i even heard a bag-pipe being played somewhere in

the distance.



after the show, Jinda took us around to find a place where they sold

food (he called them a "resturant," what a weird guy.)  we ended up

at this tiny ass grocrey store that had a sub counter in back.  this

poor guy had to make 7 subs at one in the morning.  and you know 7

was more than what he had made all day.  and of course, the

wonderful gotta keep going gotta keep movin people of the city were

not having it.  a few folks came in and stood behind us for a little

while, but soon huffed, checked their watches, rolled their eyes,

and walked out.



the ride home was interesting to say the least.  pete drove for

awhile and around 3am ryan took over.  god bless ryan... he drove

the rest of the way.  i'm tellin you, he turns into a robot (one

which i of course programed) and is able to drive for days on end.

at one point over the summer he drove for 12 hours straight (5pm to

5am.)  but now i'm getting ahead of myself and this is only the

beginning of the tour journal.  this thing will infact, work its way

backwards to the tour we had with as tall as lions back in may of

this year.  it'll be fun.  kinda like a charlie kaufman movie.











AJ5