That Fuckin Guy

Can anybody recommend a good USB KVM? Just need a 2 port deal compatible with windows and os X. Nobody is looking a this blog anyway. Hi!

We went to see Journey last night. Say what you will about them; Neil Schon KICKS ASS

hardrock afro at 1:45

The downside: We missed Cheap Trick and most of Heart on accout of it being in fucking Irvine. How are we supposed to get to Irvine by 7pm? Leave at noon? Can you please play in Los Angeles instead of the OC next time? Oh yeah, they are playing in LA next time. Thanks

Every so often I have to leave my happy little apt-get land and dirty myself with yum. Could it be slower and less flexible? I don’t know the exact name of the package, do you think you could suggest some? I really wanted XML-Parser, but you wouldn’t give it to me. Oh, I have to append perl- to that string and then everything is happy. Gosh, why didn’t I think of that.

To boil it down: I am sick and tired of Redhat and its derivatives. Thanks for listening.

EDIT: also, the BSD Ports system is a horrible pile of crap that should be put to death.

Friday, June 13 - San Diego, CA

Heading out on the road! I scramble to load equipment, a bit of fear that it all would not fit. I put my Tetris skills to use and somehow it gets done. The truck is completely filled and ready to head to San Diego, which is our first stop on the tour. An uneventful 2.5 hour drive to SD ensues, and we land at the world-famous (not really) Tiki House. It’s a little place in the frat-y area near the ocean in SD. We play every song we know as it is a 90 minute set, during which I have to play on the floor as there isn’t enough room on the stage for the 5-piece (this will become a recurring theme). Hit in the head with the headstock of the bass player, I see stars at some point but manage to get through the set (injuries also become a recurring theme).

We end up having some drinks at some stupid meat-market club down the street and then head back to where we are staying. We have the weekend to make the journey from San Diego to Olympia, Washington. This will be the hardest drive.

Saturday, June 14 - Sacramento, CA

We decide to get as far north as we can today, and decide to stop in beautiful Sacramento, California. The Motel 6 is decidedly a shit hole, but we suffer through as we want to get as far as Portland on Sunday.

Sunday, June 15 - Portland, OR

We arrive after a gruesome 10+ hour drive in beautiful Portland, Oregon. Before I go on, the drive through northern California is dreadfully boring UNTIL you get to Shasta National Park. Unbelievable views of forest, mount Shasta, and a rock formation called Castle Crags. It really made the grind through norcal worth it.

We arrived in Portland and check into a much nicer Motel 6. By this time I need a drink, so Debbie and I go out to see what we can find. The stoned front desk guy mentioned some sports bar around the corner, so we go looking for it only to find a place called The MouseTrap Tavern. It’s a run down place with pool tables and Keno. Cheap drinks and older folk in the bar on a Sunday. Just what we needed. Relaxed and unwound, we headed back to the hotel for much needed sleep before the trek to Olympia.

Monday, June 16 - Olympia, WA

This last bit of driving is not so bad, maybe 3 hours. We have a gig this evening at a place called Charlie’s Sports Bar and Grill. It’s a bit of a sports bar dump as you can imagine, but they have good beer. By this time I am pretty sick of eating hash browns and mozzarella sticks and fried crap on the road, so I found a veggie/vegan place which was out of this world. It was also incidentally the place we are playing the following evening.

Charlie’s: Apparently we are the special guest in the weekly “battle of the bands” at this bar. What turned out is that we thought we were playing at 9pm, but it got pushed back to midnight. I started to think “I’m going to be completely loaded if I have to sit in this bar for 4 hours and then try to play” which is exactly what happened. But before that, the battle. Two bands is hardly a battle…The first band was not even worth mentioning. Awful. The second band can be likened to a band that has been in their parents basement since 1984 and learned every Judas Priest song ever written. Pretty good and funny if you’re me, which you aren’t so you’d probably think “this is awful” to yourself. Anyway, we suffer (and I giggle) through it and play our set in a decidedly drunken fashion.

We made friends with these two metal heads from Olympia, and I am not going to be able to do them justice here. They bought several CDs and followed us around the next night. They were completely awesome, and you’ll just have to wait for the video documentary to get a better picture. Just think of growling “NEPTUNES FAVOR” in your lowest metal growl and you’re on your way.

Tuesday, June 17 - Olympia, WA

We wandered around Olympia today and it is a really cute little freaky town full of fun stores and stinky hippies. I got a tattoo (for the tour cliche) and had a nice lunch. We play at a place called La Voyeur which has the veggie/vegan food and killer beer. I’ve decided that the pacific northwest is made of killer beer. The show was uneventful and the place was rather empty, so no great loss as we were on our way to Seattle the next day.

Wednesday, June 18 - Seattle, WA

We have today off, so we arrived at my pal Dennis’s place in Seattle. This night we were going to go see the Mariners play, but events occurred that left us at the Pyramid Ale house across the street from the stadium. We wandered downtown into Pioneer Square and the girls rode a mechanical bull. We then wandered into some other bar and a bad bad bad metal band played. Then we went wandering for food and got harassed by crackheads, then went home.

Thursday, June 19 - Seattle WA

Tonight we play at a bar in west Seattle called The Skylark Cafe. Again, the beer selection is unbelievable. I saw an old friend (HERF) as well as my uncle Pete. Wonderful too see them both and to be able to rock it out with them there. The show went well until the bass player broke a string (if you can believe that). We recovered from that and rocked it out. Good times in Seattle…On to Eugene.

Friday, June 20 - Eugene OR

We apparently hit the one week that school is out in Eugene, so the whole town is basically empty. Added to that, another one of the bands playing that night gave us stink eye all night. See, they were “on tour” from Portland with one stop in Eugene. My friends, this does not a tour make. Become ridiculed by me you will. OK enough with the yoda but these people were really full of themselves and warrant my distaste. We played some good pool and drank beer so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I think we’ll try to get to Eugene when there are actually people to play in front of.

Saturday, June 21 - Portland OR

This night, we play at a place called The Red Room on 82nd in NE Portland. Apparently this area is known as prostitute central. We saw one getting shaken down by the local police as we pulled in. The Travellodge actually had a sign that said “no prostitution” which was just charming. The venue itself was pretty cool, I think we played the best set on the tour here. Also good beer and drinks and pool and friendly locals, so altogether it was pretty fun.

Also, by now I am the master at filling my truck with gear. The first week was a pain in the ass but I’m over it.

We have four days and three nights off after this, we’ll meet in San Francisco on the 25th. Almost home…

Wednesday, June 25 - San Francisco, CA

The pizza at 2:30am from the night before is taking its toll on me in the bathroom. That said, we play at Grant and Green tonight. Earlier we ate lunch in the Mission district and took the bus up to Haight st. for some much needed shopping. Anyhoo we ended up loading around 9 and playing a nice drama-free 45 minute set. A rather poor showing from my SF friends, only Laurel and Lamont showed up. I understand how it is though, it being a Wednesday night and a school night and everyone hates me anyway. Everyone except Laurel and Lamont. Thanks guys! We will be back next year probably, maybe the rest of my SF pals can get off their dusty couches.

Thursday, June 26 - San Luis Obispo, CA

We hit SLO today, only to find that there is a street fair completely blocking off the roads around the venue (Frog and Peach). So we go to the club and ask the guy WTF there and he says “Who are you, you can’t load in here” and we’re like uh, see the 15 signs around your bar that say Neptune’s Favor? We decide the guy must have been on drugs. needless to say we were not enthusiastic about playing at this place. After a while the street fair closed and they packed up, we got our gear in and we rocked it. This turned out to be one of the better places we’ve played, they gave us a bunch of free drinks and even paid us. They want us to come back when school is in session. The funny thing about this tour, is that those places where we thought it was just going to be horrible turned out to be totally awesome.

We head back to LA the next morning to play in Santa Monica, which totally sucked. Welcome back to LA, your band doesn’t even get half a free drink and the club promoters can go fuck themselves. That said, I had such a great time I want to get right back out there.