anyway, here’s a picture of an adorable puppy, which more closely matches my mood, right now:

cute puppy

hedwig and the angry inch

primal fear

falling down

standard operating procedure

overnight

aside from “falling down” (which was cheesy) and “standard operating procedure” (which was, sadly, nothing new to me), i was pretty happy with my choices. i was especially stoked about hedwig. i thought the story was great, the music was rad (performed by eli and girls against boys), and the lead actor was amazing. i’m bummed that i missed the boat on that movie, cause apparently, it was released in 2001? heh.

anyway, tomorrow, we have a quick jimmy-less rehearsal, before we meet back up with him in los angeles on saturday. i’m pretty excited about this next leg of tour, as it will be in a 15 passenger van. it’s always nicer to have a place to call home, even if it’s a home on wheels. the flying and renting minivan deal was getting a little rough, and it never felt like we were a band on tour. so, it’ll be nice to be doing it legit. now, we just need our full backline and that will make for a very happy me. hehe.

what else is new? i rooted and installed cyanogenmod on my g1. very happy about it. i bought a class 6 microsd card and partitioned it with a fat32 media storage partition, an ext4 app storage partition, and a swap partition. the combination of the swap and the custom mod have definitely given me a performance boost. and i don’t have to worry about running out of space again! now, if only phone makers would stop seeing android as a low-cost alternative and actually start putting it on decent hardware, we wouldn’t need to do so much hacking! haha.

first of all, i have a full on sore throat and stuffy nose. like, some kind of cold. really, immune system? this is gonna happen in the middle of the summer? booo. i think it has to do with the fact that since getting home, i’ve been using my home toothbrush and not my tour one. and i think my home one might have had creepy crawlies left on it, from the last time i was sick. so, lesson of the day: ABBNT… always be buying new toothbrushes!

then, i get a phone call from alamo/national car rental. when we returned our mini-van at o’hare, last week, we left our tomtom gps guy in it. d’oh! anyway, this lady called the next day and asked if i left something in the car. we were thrilled! i told her that we left our tomtom in the glove box. she asked if she could mail it to me at my address on file, and i was thrilled, especially since she said she wouldn’t charge me.

well, fast forward to today, where i woke up to a missed call from a number i didn’t recognize. so, i called and it rang a bunch. i was almost gonna hang up. finally, a lady answers “thanks for calling alamo rent-a-car”. for some reason (probably cause i had just woken up), i said “oh, wrong number”. but, then she asks “did you leave something in your car?” hmm.

we then proceeded to have the exact same conversation that we had last week. wtf?

so confused right now. haha.

the thing about the creatures is that they were killing dogs. i’m not sure why. i think in the video game, they were the good guys and the dogs are like mutants. it was some kind of crazy role reversal intra-dimensional shit.

at any rate, it was scary and i hope some giant werewolf creature with guns doesn’t ever shoot my dog. (i don’t even have a dog).

i’m playing drums for jimmy robbins. check out his music! he’s a super nice and funny guy and we hit it off right away. jimmy has the potential to be huge, and i wish nothing more than that, because that would mean that i’m along for the ride. hehe. we have three fly dates, right now, but lots of stuff is in the works.

my week with motion city was amazing. mark hoppus is hilarious. chris holmes is the man. tony is an animal. eastwest studios are beautiful! easily, the most fun job i’ve ever taken. hehe.

speaking of motion city and hoppus, i’m also working for mcs for two shows in las vegas with blink 182. i’m flying out tomorrow morning to los angeles, picking up the van and trailer, and driving to vegas. couple days of rehearsal, couple shows, and i fly home. should be busy, but fun times.

i’ve been trying to eat healthy for about three weeks now, and it’s going alright. i’m of the opinion that even baby steps are a positive thing, and i’ve taken huge leaps in my diet, so i’m pretty stoked. i wish i could keep up with the excercise portion of it, but when i need to be in three places at once, it can be difficult to squeeze in a workout. at any rate, the scale says i’ve lost about five pounds, so something’s working! hehe.

jesse and jessica’s wedding is in august and i just booked my flight and rental car. this might be the first time i’ve ever done something so grown-up, all by myself. haha. probably because i’ve never had enough money to do so. oh wait, i don’t have money right now. what am i doing? ahhh!

lastly, i leave you with yet another submission to the blog of unecessary quotation marks that was either lost in the pile of submissions, or deemed not worthy enough. i happen to think it’s a “good” one.

it's a new law, alright... *wink wink nudge nudge*

normally, you have to have really good foresight, to be able to heard the finished songs in your head, when it’s just drum tracks. for this, though, everything’s done! the instant gratification is probably gonna make everyone poop their pants. in a good way (i hope). i’m stoked for it.

other than that, i may or may not be getting together with someone who may or may not be hiring me to maybe or maybe not be involved in something that may or may not be awesome. (i hope that was vague enough to not get me in trouble, but still be intriguing! haha). at any rate, keep your fingers crossed for me!

i’ve come a long way since this:

my first drum kit. also, my last polo shirt?

here's me as a youngster. cute fucker.

i just scanned a bunch of old pictures onto my facebook.

there’s a couple in there from high school and it’s crazy, cause i feel like that wasn’t that long ago. but, it was almost a decade ago! yikes! i guess i’ve been teching for mcs for 3 years. somerset was formed almost 7 years ago. and flipsyde’s first tour was like 10 years ago? crazy. hehe.

at any rate, i’m feeling much more positive now, than from my last post. i had a great conversation with jon, who plays in the matches. he is starting a new project and we’re talking about me possibly playing drums for it. i’m excited to hear what he’s got. i hate getting ahead of myself, but just thinking about playing in a band and touring in a van again gets me stoked.

like, when it comes to skill. it’s not that i’m thinking “i want to be as good as that drummer, because he makes a lot of money and there aren’t lots of skilled drummers out there.” it’s more like “i want to be as good as that drummer, because he’s a fucking badass.” so, i’ve been working hard to make myself a better drummer. and i feel like i’m doing alright, but that i can always be better.

different drummers have different skill sets. i know lots of drummers who are very skilled and technical, but they don’t seem to have passion in their playing. it’s like they’re more worried about impressing fellow musicians, than letting themselves be moved by the music.

at any rate, i guess i’m gonna keep doing what i do. i’m just worried that my window of opportunity has shut. i was just talking about this, yesterday. somerset was doing video updates before youtube. we had the nice photo shoot, before other local bands. in fact, we got criticized for it!

when we first came out, people thought we were trying too hard. but, now, every band has a myspace with a giant banner up top (with a professional photo), glossy sounding demos, and youtube webisodes. these days, if you don’t have those things, you’re not trying hard enough! heh.

anyway, i’ve gone off on a tangent. i don’t know that i had a specific point to make. i think i’m just down, at the moment. but, i can turn it around! i always dooooo! hehe.

please, keep your fingers crossed for me!

i would like to hold this pug soon!

so, i’ve been home for a few days now, and it’s been pretty fantastic. been seeing and hugging lots of friends and a surprising amount of tour buds. i’ve also been co-producing a band with jordan, which has been pretty fun. last week, i did an in-place upgrade to windows 7, but i felt like a huge sellout, so a couple nights ago, i went ahead and did a clean install of it. so far, it’s been pretty rad. honestly, i don’t know if it’s worth $100, but it’s definitely worth the $0 that the year-long evaluation copy costs. hehe.

what else? my credit cards are all paid off. i just have $3k of medical bills left, but i’m not even paying attention to it, cause it’s at a pretty low apr. i’ve also heard a rumor that you don’t technically have to pay your medical bills, if you can’t? hah. well, i hope it doesn’t come to that. it shouldn’t. i’m actually sitting pretty comfortable, right now, thanks to the mcs shows that i played, over the last couple of months.

speaking of those, they’re over! if you missed it… umm, you missed it! haha. definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event. if you still haven’t seen the videos i posted earlier, they’re still up on my demo reel page.

man, i’ve been waiting for a while to write a huge update, but i can’t think of anything else to say right now. haha. sorry! maybe next time!

trucker shower

in case you were wondering (and i know i always had), this is what the inside of a truck stop shower looks like. i used four of these bad boys. the first few were dandy, but the last one was questionable.

anyway, i thought i was gonna have a lot more to say, but i’m drawing a blank. i guess that’s what driving for 5 days straight does to you! haha.