What Happens in Wisconsin...

Chicago was lovely. We had an energetic crowd, partially influenced by an injection of high-school-drama enthusiasm, which I remember from my days of old. The night ended with a lovely hummus plate I shared with a music journalist whose real name is Amber Valentine, who like myself, is in the music industry as a quick-path to fiction fame. I'd like to think we had good conversations with the few words we were able to get out intermittently under the loud jazz-funk band playing twenty feet away. Amber was allergic to wheat so I got to eat all the pita.

We received a text a day or two before Chicago asking us to play an outdoors park show in Madison Wisconsin. When you think of outdoors park shows, you generally tend to think about a large outdoors stage, a festive summer atmosphere, maybe even a couple of pretzel stands on the side. Or slush. This is what a summer, outdoors music concert tends to be.

When we arrived, we saw a small sports shack on a tiny strip of grass barely passable to be labeled a park. The audience members, barring the 3 people suntanning and a few children on the playground, were the infrequent kayak renters.

Being the professional musicians that we are, we say hey, we may as well play. Which would have been a possibility had the 20-year-old sound system not shat the bed one song into our set. As luck would have it, a few nightmare of you fans showed up expecting an actual show. With no sound system you have no vocals. No vocals mean no songs. What do you do with 8 musicians, no sound system, and no songs? a 40 minute, alcohol-laced spacejam.

What occurred was something I like to refer to, in memory, as Plushmare of Goo. A completely improvised atonal series of melodies being sprayed around rather haphazardly. Apparently, two people asked for CDs and the name of our band. Absurdity works over time.

The next stop on our trip was Omaha Nebraska. We came and went and everything fell where it was, as far as Omaha is concerned. We did meet a very nice young vegan lady who gave our tour manager, Skippy, a vegan cookie in Lawrence Kansas. Skippy is also a vegan, and on a trans-continental trip through the united states, a task of being such becomes quite complicated, making this small genuine gesture of cookie-giving a beautiful notion of human kindness.

Speaking of Lawrence Kansas, we have come to the conclusion that we really do like Kansas. But something horrible happened. We needed to pull an all nighter from Lawrence to get to Denver at 8:30 am the next day for a radio promo spot. That was hellish enough, as a concept, without the need to add an extra serendipitous fuck hole in our left tire. Thanks to an awesome dude, we were on the road sooner than AAA got there, and made it to Denver with one minute to spare.

while that was happening, we found out we co-won the Deli Magazine's artist of the month with the band, the Narrative. Congrats to us.

Sign the frog.

Chapter 3: Landlocked Insomnia

The past couple of days have been blending together. Such is the unfortunate cycle of anxiety-driven insomnia. It all started in Lester Pennsylvania. We had a nice day off between Washington DC and Philly where we took time to work out some major kinks in our marketing. Namely a merchandise display. So we took a few hours, at a random Target in Maryland, and now we have a beautifully colored picnic basket filled with goodies. The best part is the frog-shaped stationary we are now using for our mailing list, leading to the new and effective mantra: Sign the frog. (see diagram 1)




So we were feeling good in Lester Pennsylvania, a brand new merchandise display, a frog to sign, and parking-lot wiffleball. Yet for some reason that night, I was completely unable to turn my exhaustion into sleep. The running narrative in my brain just would not stop. I had "Don't You Want Me" on repeat somewhere in the iPod of my frontal lobe, splicing with a sci-fi story I plan on never writing. Perhaps it was the anxiety of a 6 month tour ahead of me, or the excitement of having signed my first boob. (see Diagram 2)





So many things go wrong when you get no sleep. Feeling hungry and cold then nauseous and warm within a matter of seconds. Moments of drunken ecstasy followed by an envious hatred of those who were able to shut off the night before. Our second night on the tour was at The Northstar Bar in Philadelphia , and despite being absolutely loopy, I decided that it was a good idea to engage in conversation with other life-forms; this dialogued appeared to be more akin to a spoken-word mad-libs than any normative sequence of syntax.

I was lucky enough to get sleep that following night. We are now driving en route to Lancaster PA from Columbus OH. Matt is exchanging sweet nothings with Nuvi, our Garmin Navigational personality. Their relationship started rocky at first, sometimes we take familiar routes for granted, but once Nuvi proved herself right (after we tried to check into the wrong hotel despite her constant "U-Turn Here. U-Turn Here. U-Turn Here. ..... Recalculating.") Now Nuvi and Matt have developed a creepy symbiosis. She knows exactly how fast he is driving, and when we will exactly show up to our destination.

The show tonight rocked. I loved that our audience members danced with us and had a good time. And an awesome amount of people signed the frog. Adding to the list of first-time autographs, tonight I signed a pack of birth control and a beer. Two of the world's best inventions. Hopefully the hotel we get to has internet, so I can finally post this, and get much needed rest. Lansing is next.


Sign the Frog.

Chapter 2: In Cold Water

The van we rentedwas supposed to arrive at 10 am today. But, this is the music industry so we should have assumed that it would arrive at 11:46, which it did. Our goal was to drive to DC, despite traffic, within 5 hours (insert 24 style clock ticking now)

1:15: We have picked up all of our merch from various, GTA-mission-style locations, and are stuck in Jersey City. How do we get back to the highway? Don't worry, I have invested in a Garmin to help us out. Problem is, apparently garmin's personality is that of a passive aggressive 2nd-phase-feminism-gone-housewife dominatrix.

"Turn right twenty six seconds ago."
"Thanks"
"I told you to keep right"
"There were five possible rights"
"Sure there were, just like there were five possible nights of the week we could have gone to see Star Trek. I still have a life you know." (paraphrased)

2:25. Dialogue, as remembered by me:

Taylor: "there was a clear presence of toilet paper between my ass and my hands."

Matt: "But you still have to wash your hands."

Me: "Toilet paper is slightly between jello and solid substances. It flushes."


4:43:

me: "Ni Hao?

everyone: "what?"

me: "oh, I thought you were speaking mandarin"

6:10:

we arrive to our location, set up, play an awesome show with Brian Bonz and Nightmare of You while I continue to drink. As we are loading, Taylor takes a moment to jam, dissonant jazz style with a street performer, catching the attention of natives waiting for a cab.

1:45 am we leave for our out-of-the-way hotel that charges lower fares for smoking rooms. Immediately upon entering this smelly locale, we regret saving the extra 12 dollars.

3:36 am

I am sure there is more to report but right now I am more psyched to sleep than report. So have a good night. Tomorrow, we will be rocking out in Delaware. Or at least catching our barrings.

Rocking in Delaware. A dream come true.

In and out. See you in Philly

Chapter 1: Packing.

It has become apparent to me that preparing for a long tour is a bit like packing before summer camp.

I hated summer camp.

But at least this time around, the big scary kids are bouncers, who need legal recourse before torturing their victims with worms, projectile fruit boxes, and toppled over porta-potties. Except maybe in Dallas.

So I find myself here, in front of a smorgasbord of relatively useful crap that I may or may not use. So what does Dan from Plushgun pack? In no significant order:

7 pairs of socks.
10 pairs of underwear (re-using socks; not nearly as big of a sanitation folly)
2 black shirts. Because they are slimming
2 button-ups, for shows
3 skinny ties.
2 pairs of sneakers
1 pair of running shorts
1 pair of swim trunks.
200 condoms (for the great condom-water-balloon battle of Lawrence)
1 female condom, passed over from Freezepop, to be handed over to Nightmare of You.
Xanax
Excedrin
Imodium
14th century Spanish Short Sword
FIFA '05 for PS2
Portable fan
Tennis Racket
Wiffleball set
3 pairs of jeans
Chair
Treasure Map
Floss, which has yet to be opened, despite being purchased 3 tours ago.
2 Nerf dart guns
Macbook
Season 3 of Six Feet Under
1 copy of the US Constitution
Flask
toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant.
3 ounces of dignity
and one pint of shame.

I suppose I need more than the average person for a cross-country quest, though it is not because I am high maintenance, but just in general, a quirky man-child.

Lets see who's laughing when I find that treasure...

Prologue: The calm, unrequited.

Very shortly, we will be shipping off to tour the country for about six weeks. This will, by this point, be considered the longest "on the road" experience we will have had. As much as I am slightly nervous about the expectations, and unable to navigate the uncertainty of the events that lay ahead, I am also keenly aware of the literary opportunity that is presented in front of me. Or at least a voyeuristic insight that is rarely if ever truly seen: the touring life of a baby buzz band in the national sphere.

This is not a tour with buses and laminated passes. We are stuffing 4 guys and gear in a van, to drive state to state, stopping at standardized highway rest-stops to pile on top of the already-liver burning fast food. The glory of a touring band is highly assumed and misrepresented. Glory days are over for the music industry, and we are working with what we have to get by and spread our sound.

I am going to be using this blog to give you a candid glimpse in our lives in the next month.5. Names will be changed to protect the innocent, but let me be blunt: this is no typical tour diary, where bands present how fun their lives are and what sights they see: if I inexplicably wake up in Vegas wearing a cheerleader outfit, you will know. Perhaps not why as I may not know either...

As we embark, the Plushgun pirates on a concrete ocean, I invite you to join our adventures.

Ahoy!

Worst Summer Job

Dear readers,

the time has come again, to head back from campus, hang up that backpack, and work your degrading summer jobs. To make you feel better though, I will tell you my worst summer job story, and then open the floor to you. Comment with your stories and we will celebrate together!


My Worst Summer Job

The year was 2002. I was back with my parents between my freshman and sophomore year at NYU. Granted, the transition for me, from living in Greenwich Village to suburban Pleasantville caused a wave of self-entitled whiplash alone -- and to an ego so barely reconstructed -- little did I know what kind of hell I would step into when I agreed to go to an interview with my friend, an interview at a factory.

A Box factory.

"It get's hot, there is no AC, runs about, 115 degrees in the summer," our trainer casually dictated, showing us around the plant. "We get here at 5:30 am, no earlier, work until the bell, no later." My friend and I did not fit in, to say the least. We were the college kids these workers would later laugh at, prissy boys, spoiled suburban kids looking for money to pay for our illegal, collegial activities.

Our trainer showed us the process, a giant motherfucker called the corrugation machine was the heart of the box making process. This beast, which claimed the entire back of the plant as its domain, made most 90% of the noise and heat, roaring as it turned paper to cardboard. This would be my enemy, and I hardly knew it.

I was placed at a post where my responsibility was to watch stacks of boxes, and estimate if they were in numbers of 50. So I stood at a conveyor belt watching box after box turn into stack after stack. What made this worse, however, was that this was no simple box factory. No. They had to make Pizza boxes. I have since not recovered from the feeling, so empty of pizza, soulless and wanton. I ate pizza for a year straight after that, in memorial to all of the empty shells I had to witness.

My days degraded into ritual, repetitiveness was no longer mundane, it was life. Daydreaming was not recommended, I could lose a hand. All I had was the foresight of pizza. Pizza. Pizza. Pizza...

And on the hottest day of the year, 96 degrees outside, 119 indoors, the union leader (who looked exactly as a union due collector would look, if this were a cartoon: like a brick wall) plops two knee-high rubber boots by my feet. "You're goin' in."

He leads me on a path towards the Corrugation monster, "She started coughing up a bit" he said laughing "you gotta clean up the sludge, college boy"

Armed with a shovel and a garbage can, I stared at my nemesis. She was at least 50 yards long, a gross example of industrial inefficiency. The heat was tremendous, the noise intolerable, and the smell....the smell of her sludge-like waste was worse than anything I had smelled before. I was no longer the college boy, I was Beowulf.

I had to work my way into the gross underbelly of the machine, into a river of what used to be chemicals. With my shovel, I stacked pound after pound of sludge into the garbage can, taking a break to breath every 5 minutes or so in attempt to fight the vomit inching up my throat.

After an hour or so, Mr. Brick Wall Union Leader relieved me of my activity. I had won against the machine, and emerged victorious to my colleagues. I had survived the worst job, within the worst summer job, on the worst day of the summer. After that, I was no longer "college boy," I was "city kid," a respected upgrade in the hierarchy of nicknames.

And from that day on, with my new found blue-collar-cred, I no longer feared the people around me. Instead, I was welcomed into their inner-circle, I would hear stories about their near death experiences on the job, losing skin, burns. I would tell them about the Guggenheim, the New York Philharmonic, and drinking coffee in the west village.

They still thought I was gay, of course.





So what was your worst summer job?

Proposition 8 destroys the lives of children (and puppies)

**UPDATE - California Supreme Court Upheld Prop 8 **

The california supreme court is currently undergoing the scholastic review of Proposition 8; and is trying to figure out if it is, in fact, constitutional. I know that we have tossed these terms, legally, academically, and so it goes...I am going to give you a one-sentence explanation if you haven't been keeping up.

The California supreme court decided that, based on the California state constitution (which has to follow with the umbrella rules of the Constitution of the United States of America) same-sex marriage had to be legalized, turning "traditional marriage" proponents to a referendum process--California has one of the more powerful referendum systems--that, based on a very slim majority passed, taking away rights from those the supreme court held otherwise intact.

Now the California supreme court is at the dawn of of a new decision. Is this proposition an amendment to the Constitution, or a revision? Is this a fight for equality under the law, or an equal playing field?

This may be where I take a more radical approach. What rational Americans are fighting for here is not really equal protection under the law, but the right to be normal. Marriage is just a small legal concept. Marriage is a tax break. Marriage, outside of religion, family, and tradition, is a bureaucratic measure. It comes down to normality and civility. Until homosexuals are recognized as a normal part of our normal society with absolutely no exceptions to that societal rule, they will forever be judged, banished from what we deem civil.

Until this happens, prejudice will occur. "Fags" will be thrown intermittently. And bullying will continue for children who don't fit the standard "mold" of our societal expectations. I hate using examples to make a point, and using names to promote an agenda. I know nothing about this person's true identity or their sexual orientation, outside of what the media promotes. But this is too important for now to let go. A month ago Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, a boyscout, football player, and normal human being, hung himself in a town relatively close from where I grew up. He did so because of the taunts from peers. He may or may not have been gay. That doesn't matter. What matters is we lost amazing potential from someone who was loved by many, because we allow this hate to continue in a public forum.

I am sorry for becoming irate, but this is not forgivable anymore. As much as many of us try to be abnormal, it is because we have the luxury of being normal in the first place. We are destroying the lives of those who want to live like everyone else. This really pisses me off.

I generally like to end with a somewhat lighthearted note. But I can't really. I love puppies, who doesn't? And to those who love puppies but think homosexualily is unnatural, I would say then, that puppies--being the product of human domestication--are not natural. Therefor puppies are not normal...and dying from prop 8 as well.


Say you're sorry to mr. pug