colds going around

Somehow I've managed to catch a cold, probably from one of those evil car salesmen I've been talking to over the course of the past week. I started feeling poor monday, so hopefully this will run its course and be gone pretty soon. This has been a lousy week though, let me tell you. I've been trying to find a good deal on a car and also get good value on my trade over this past week and it's just not going good. I found one car and we'd worked a deal that was almost done, except we were within $500 of my asking price and they wouldn't budge. Frustrating, thats all it is.

Apparently drinking hot Theraflu and smoking is nothing like drinking hot coffee and smoking because it tastes awful. Or maybe its just when your sick. It's like the first time you smoke a cigarette and it makes you make that face like you just put something bitter and poingant in your mouth, the yuck face. Well whatever it is, it's pretty nasty.

I'll probably be picking up the tickets for the Twilight Hayride tommorow night, so we should know what venue we'll be at tommorow.

the VIP in full effect

Yesterday I saw this preview for the upcoming episode of Attack of the Show where they said the new host was going to be announced. Low and behold the guy who comes out on stage... is Vanilla Ice! I'm totally serious, but it was just a joke. He was there promoting his new cd and when he left another of the many many temporary hosts helped with the segements. Last night was Will from Cnet and Chris Gore. Its been ages since Kevin Rose left and they sure are taking their sweet ass time finding a new co-host. There was also a pretty bad ass segement where Fear Factory drummer Raymond Herrera came on the show and they had a "drum off" with Kevin Pereira who as it turns out is a bad ass drummer!

Let's see what else is going on. Band practice was good monday night, we're trying to get the kinks ironed out in the new song and pretty soon we'll start deciding on a set list for the Ocotber 27th show. Tim lent me a book he said I should read, I'm sure most people have read it but I have never read The Catcher in the Rye. Tim said he thought the relationship Houlden Caulfield has with his sister reminds him of me and my sister. He didn't explain that very well, but I started reading it monday night and I'm halway done with it already. It's quite good, very cynical and introspective. I can't believe I'd never read this before! So once I finish that I can go back to Haunted.

And yay for storms because that beast of a storm that came through monday night knocked out power and utilities to a large chunk of north county and UMSL was closed all day Tuesday! No classes, yes!

Good News

Well good news is Matthew and I didn't die last night or get arrested. More good news is our booking agent got back to me and said he loved our new music and is putting us in the Twilight Hayride this year. Once he gets his computer moved into his new place he's going to figure out which bar we should play at. So I'll be going to pick the tickets up at the end of the week. October 27th is the date I believe, so mark your calenders and check out www.twilighthayride.com for more info.

Oh and I thought of my friend John this morning when I woke up at 9, reeling from a hangover and running to the bathroom. When I looked at the time my first thought was, "John, if your up right now you need to get your ass back to bed, because thats where I'm going."

I can drive

I'm reminded so much of a party many many years ago when I was drunk and yelling out "I can drive" to my friends as I was leaving a party I was hosting in order to go get some taco bell. Right now it's about 2 in the am and Im at Gary's house as Matthew's designated driver and I've actually drank more than he has. Gary is on the crapper and we're having philosophical conversations about life and relationships through the bathroom door because Gary has the shits.

It should be noted that I nearly killed Sanning because Gary came out with his dad's .357 Magnum to show us and I started pulling the trigger and Matthew nearly dove for the floor when the hammer was triggered. But either way, I've drank too muchg to be anyone's driver. There has been way too much drama for anyone at the party tonight at Gump's house to be bearable by anyone. We've got Beth and Rick arguing, and Gary and Julie arguing...and Matthew, poor poor Matthew who broke up with his girlfriend today. This is too much, really it is.

For serious, Matthew and I spent 30 minutes sitting in my car, drinking out of his bottle of vodka (in my car), while waiting for Gary to show up, in front of Gary's house. And Matthew nearly became a statistic on the 5 o'clock news. And here I would be in an interview, "Yea, Gary told me it wasn't loaded..." while Matthew bleeds out on Gary's self installed family room carpeting.

All of my friends, they seem to be going through a quarter life crisis. I've got Mike Jobst, longtime friend who's going through a divorce to another longtime friend, Stacey. I've got Beth and Rick, both who are obscure friends who come and go from time to time who I just don't understand when it comes to their problems. And I've got Gary and Julie who seem like a good match, but yet their is something immature about their development that doesn't rub me quite right...but I know they seem happier than I've seen either of them in quite a long time.

So now it's 2:21 am and I'm still alright to drive, even though I've been doing hits off the bottle of Three Olives Cherry Vodka in my car less than 40 minutes ago, and mixing drinks for myself in Gary's house less than ten minutes ago. All this conversation about relationships and responsibility are too much. I can still drive, but we'll see if I. haven't been arrested when we leave here tommorow morning. We'll see if I make it home. I'm Matthew's designated driver tonight, but I think i've drank more than he has. We'll see tommorow, when tommorow comes.

The Parking Lot

Practice was excellent today, despite my hearing loss. Oh you haven't heard? Last night I lost hearing in my right ear. I was freaking out like mad. So this morning I went to see the doctor and she told me there was all this fluid built up behind my right eardrum that wasn't draining because this little tub that drains the fluid was all constricted. The cause? Of late my allergies have been off the scale, some days I can't even function they are so bad. I just have to stay in. Well that was the cause, but now I got me some pills and I'm starting to get my hearing back already.

Back to practice. After running through the set we started working on a new song. Tim flipped through his book and found a riff we all liked and 30 minutes later we had our newest song, The Parking Lot. I kid you not, even Tim said that was the fastest we'd ever banged out a song or at least a solid beginning to a song. It is bad ass and there is a high probability it will be one of the next 3 we record. It rocks that much.

I need to go study for a test tommorow, but for anyone out there who likes the anime I highly highly recomend Escaflowne. I just saw it for the first time over the weekend and it is easily one of the best animes I have ever seen. The question now is do I shell out the $80 some odd bucks for the series box set... It was damn good.

Dragging ass around the studio

Well that was one hell of a late night in the studio. Last night we started our studio session at 5pm and left at 1 am. I got home and in bed by around 2:30. I am so tired now and am thinking Ill hick the sack early tonight, although last night the only sack I was wanting to hit was Gary's for keeping me at the studio so late.

The good news is we finished mixing our 3 demo songs. Gary will probably have them up on Dmusic by the end of the week. All we have to do is give it one good listen through and decide if we want anymore changes, and then we can master it and get our demos pressed and distributed. The bad news is we're only practicing once a week now until I get out of school, which blows because with 2 days we were able to spend plenty of time working on new music. In my opinion this was a stupid move going to 1 day a week, although Gary says we should be happy we get at least one day a week together because its something tht used to be sparse with us before.

In terms of home news, saturday morning I'm lounging around the house like a bum at like 12:30 and someone rings the doorbell. I'm flipping channels and reading a magazine, still in my boxers and I go answer the door. A couple God Nazis are standing there and this guy dressing in the all white, over cornstarched, short sleeved shirt says:
"We're just out trying to spread the word of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In this time of fighting, what with the war going on and the riot in New Orleans we think it's important to spread the word of God that we need to work together. Even animals work together sometimes and if I could read a section of scripture I have here..."
At this point I stop him and say:
"Ehhhh, listen please don't take offense to this but I don't care."

Dejected, he said he appreciated my honesty and said have a good day. Afterwards I felt really bad but Gary tried to tell me I didn't do anything really wrong, it's not like I told him to shove his travel sized bible up his ass or anything. Seriously, God needs to stay in the churches and off my street.

Just disappear

Well I've finally got myself something good to read in the form of Chuck Palanuick's newest book, Haunted. My parents gave it to me for my birthday. I'd been wanting to read it since it came out but you know, monetary issues needed to be placed elsewhere. Needless to say I'm expecting great things, but then the past few have been slight let downs. Although the last Chuck book I read was Stranger Than Fiction, a collection of his articles published in magazines and some college essays. So far this book started out good, in Palanuick-esque style with themes of questioning one's self actualization. "What stops you here is what stops your entire life."

I've had a severe lack of good reading material for some time now. I really need to go buy that new Harry Potter book. I just get turned off to reading them when it goes so long in between books. I like it to be fresh. And any departure from the shit I have to read for school is good. I have to read books on police brutality and human trafficking that just aren't as...gripping as the works I'd usually prefer. I actually just completed reading Crash by J.G. Ballard. I started reading it over 2 years ago, but it would pick up and then drop off the face of the earth in terms of my interest for it. A story of car crashes meets sex addicts, or autoeroticide... But now I can finally take it out of my bookbag.

In terms of band news, we're going to the studio to mix our cd this saturday the 10th. Our engineer said he liked the new music so much he started pre mixing the songs to get us some ideas of what to do. Overall there shouldn't be too much needed to be done because the qaulity of the songs is so much better musically that we don't need to cover anything up. This time its more along the lines of exposing everything on the track because its all so damn good.

Permanent days unmoving

Well theres another birthday in the record books, but it didnt feel much like a birthday. It felt like the same old weds that come to pass every week. Nothing out of the ordinary, just work, school, home. The urge to skipp school tonight was overwhelming, but it wasn't like I had anywhere to go. I watched the Cardinals lose, ordered a pizza and flipped channels. Things are so quiet around here with my sister gone, everything feels off.

So tonight Im just falling asleep here in front of my computer. Every year my birthday comes around it's like, time for self analysis. Where am I currently in the five year plan? Currently I think Im two years overdue for anything I was supposed to be doing with my life. Am I any closer to happiness or independence than I was a year ago. It doesn't feel like it. Maybe only in the grand scheme of things I gained some more college credit and are closer to graduating. But in terms of fullfillment and fruition, I can't see any improvement. Not much to show for the past year of my life.

I'm listening to sad mushy music and looking through my folders at pictures. Pictures of people and places and important faces. People I loved and friends that changed me forever. Faces that Ill never forget and some that I wish I could forget alltogether. Things that were important to me at one time, but looking back I can't see how. Newer pictures that stir memories I don' t want. Sentimental snapshots taken without notice that capture some sort of unspoken understanding.

It's late, and I need to go to bed.

technical stuff

Just updating quickly, Gary has got the .mp3s working on Dmusic now and you can listen to Light of Day and Jesus X goes to the filling station, both unmixed and unmastered but still pretty decent sound. http://njn.dmusic.com/ is the place to go. The future of the website front page has yet to be determined. Gary loves the new one, and I hate it. I love the old one, and Gary hates it. So right now the old front page is up, but for how long no one knows...

We're going back to mix the 3 songs next weekend. At least that seems to be the plan at hand. Also trying to decide which 3 songs to record next. All signs point to I Hate You So Much, No Name and Never Again. What was once going to be a 3 song demo has become a full blown cd because of the success we are having with the new music. Its just one good thing after another right now. As if we can only move foreward, and we're making leaps and bounds in terms of progress.

Shows soon to be annouced. Expect The Way Out Club, and Twilight Hayride to be official very soon.

What I meant by expect

When I said to expect some updates to the website, I didn't mean look for it to climb the crap-tastic scale of unholy suckness. One day I'm busy with school related stuff and looking foreward to the new progess of the band and then the next day its like Gary got trashed and destroyed the webpage. And by destroy I mean climb the craptastic scale of unholy suckness. I'm pleading with the master, restore the precious to its former glory!

Seriously, I have my fingers crossed hoping that the next time I go to the website it looks normal again. If you want to check out the ''new" site, chocked full of suck that it is, then have a blast. The only plus is you can listen to "The Light of Day" in .mp3 format now. So go, but dont let it suck you in because it's evil and disturbing and it hurts my eyes!