I'm exhausted. We're home. Our last show is tonight. Come see us at the Purple House. The following notes will be brief. Perhaps too brief.
Recap:
Louisville: Awesome bands, nobody showed up, Dizzy Whiz is my new favorite restaurant. We heard that Allister Crowley is George Bush's grandfather and seduced his grandmother with sex magic and mind magnetism. Caboladies and Pete Fosco rule.
DC: Perry Palace were fantastic hosts. Tons of kids came out, they were awesome. Also some unexpected Hampshire friends made it an especially nice evening. We stayed with Peter's sister Lisa in her house. She has a beautiful apartment in a very happening part of town. To get to her home, we drove for about 11 hours through the middle of the night to cross all of Kentucky and West Virginia and part of Maryland. We saw the sunrise through the Appalachian Mountains. We ate at the Flying J at 2 in the morning. Peter almost bought socks.
Philadelphia: Cheesesteaks, Hoagies, skillshares @ the white lodge. We are fond of this city and its inhabitants. Peter was told that he looks like Jimmy Kimmel. I was not compared to anyone. Neither was Jim.
Now we are back in western mass. Hi everyone. Come hang out.
-Ben
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Boar Toggling
More from tour:
We're in DC. House show tonight. Be there.
We had a kind of weird show in Cleveland. The band Zs ended up playing with us. That was cool. We had to do the show at a bar, which was less cool. We aren't much of a bar band. I think this is because we aren't a band.
Then was Chicago. Chicago ruled and I am pretty sure continues to rule in our absence. Maybe it won't rule quite a hard, but still. Dallas and Liz hosted us. A ton of old and new friends came. WJ had a large contingent. Jim and I ended up doing encore sets for latecomers. Chicago is full of the three B's- Barbecues, bookstores, boyfriends. Seriously, everyone there is in a couple I think.
Anyways, writing happy things is not that interesting.
*
Urbana is more interesting. The headlining band was supposed to be Plan B from Chicago. They were going to suck, but then they didn't even come. In fact , no one came. I think that the booker may have intentionally sabotaged the show, because he kept us far from the venue entrance during the time when people might have come and he let other people know that the main act had cancelled. He didn't even stick around to let us show him my book or Jim's demo, even though we were going to. He just left while Jim and Peter were in another room.
This left us all alone in the Urbana Independent Media Center. This place should have been very cool. It is in a former post office building. It's about 100 years old and has several floors, a radio station, a bike-workshop, a free-internet computer room, and a capacity of almost 1000 people. It was super creepy. We stayed in this weird room in the basement on pathetically small couches. They left the air on-- cooling the whole place to 65 degrees all night long. This is supposed to be a liberal organization. Think about the energy use for that. Anyways.
Then the stupidest hypocrisy of all- they block google. They have free-wifi, but you can't use google or any other websites owned by google. This is, apparently, activism. Note to IMC- Censorship is not a good way to create change. there is a difference between censorship and voluntary boycott. Blocking blogspot and gmail is not going to do anything good for the world. It just inconveniences people. Plus, why block google but not myspace or facebook or even walmart.com? Apparently it's more important to lodge a totally useless protest against a company that has been accused of bending to foreign censorship (irony again finds its way in) than to block companies that cause real harm on US soil. This is largely the same kind of jingoist and self-deluded thinking that leads to people driving 400 miles to DC or New York for Free Tibet protests.
The absurdity of the night kept it from being a total loss.
*
Next came St. Louis. Awesome show at Open Lot. The people there were super-enthusiastic, welcoming and warm. We had a really amazing time.
I should rewind a bit though. Before STL we had a lot of time to check out southern Illinois. We visited the history museum of Vandalia, IL and were shown around by a very lovely elderly woman. The building was in a beautiful former church and our guide even showed us the upstairs even though it was supposed to be closed. She also showed us a tool that Abraham Lincoln once owned and had carved his initials in, logs from the national road, and all kinds of exhibits like photos of Vandalia's first basketball team and the town's first switchboard... lots of odds and ends. It was a very charming little stop.
We then went to the Cahokia Mounds. Look these up. They are incredible. They're a UN world heritage site, home of the largest earthen structures in the Americas and the former home of the largest pre-colonial city in North America (10-20,000 people). The mounds were something like North American pyramids, serving largely as burial grounds for high-ranking members of the community. It's a pretty amazing place.
*
After the history museum, mounds, and St. Louis show, we continued on to Louisville, KY.
I am tiring of blogging. Louisville is a very big and weird city. We went to Dizzy Whiz. Soon I will add details. There will be a post to discuss the last leg of tour. Maybe two.
-Ben
We're in DC. House show tonight. Be there.
We had a kind of weird show in Cleveland. The band Zs ended up playing with us. That was cool. We had to do the show at a bar, which was less cool. We aren't much of a bar band. I think this is because we aren't a band.
Then was Chicago. Chicago ruled and I am pretty sure continues to rule in our absence. Maybe it won't rule quite a hard, but still. Dallas and Liz hosted us. A ton of old and new friends came. WJ had a large contingent. Jim and I ended up doing encore sets for latecomers. Chicago is full of the three B's- Barbecues, bookstores, boyfriends. Seriously, everyone there is in a couple I think.
Anyways, writing happy things is not that interesting.
*
Urbana is more interesting. The headlining band was supposed to be Plan B from Chicago. They were going to suck, but then they didn't even come. In fact , no one came. I think that the booker may have intentionally sabotaged the show, because he kept us far from the venue entrance during the time when people might have come and he let other people know that the main act had cancelled. He didn't even stick around to let us show him my book or Jim's demo, even though we were going to. He just left while Jim and Peter were in another room.
This left us all alone in the Urbana Independent Media Center. This place should have been very cool. It is in a former post office building. It's about 100 years old and has several floors, a radio station, a bike-workshop, a free-internet computer room, and a capacity of almost 1000 people. It was super creepy. We stayed in this weird room in the basement on pathetically small couches. They left the air on-- cooling the whole place to 65 degrees all night long. This is supposed to be a liberal organization. Think about the energy use for that. Anyways.
Then the stupidest hypocrisy of all- they block google. They have free-wifi, but you can't use google or any other websites owned by google. This is, apparently, activism. Note to IMC- Censorship is not a good way to create change. there is a difference between censorship and voluntary boycott. Blocking blogspot and gmail is not going to do anything good for the world. It just inconveniences people. Plus, why block google but not myspace or facebook or even walmart.com? Apparently it's more important to lodge a totally useless protest against a company that has been accused of bending to foreign censorship (irony again finds its way in) than to block companies that cause real harm on US soil. This is largely the same kind of jingoist and self-deluded thinking that leads to people driving 400 miles to DC or New York for Free Tibet protests.
The absurdity of the night kept it from being a total loss.
*
Next came St. Louis. Awesome show at Open Lot. The people there were super-enthusiastic, welcoming and warm. We had a really amazing time.
I should rewind a bit though. Before STL we had a lot of time to check out southern Illinois. We visited the history museum of Vandalia, IL and were shown around by a very lovely elderly woman. The building was in a beautiful former church and our guide even showed us the upstairs even though it was supposed to be closed. She also showed us a tool that Abraham Lincoln once owned and had carved his initials in, logs from the national road, and all kinds of exhibits like photos of Vandalia's first basketball team and the town's first switchboard... lots of odds and ends. It was a very charming little stop.
We then went to the Cahokia Mounds. Look these up. They are incredible. They're a UN world heritage site, home of the largest earthen structures in the Americas and the former home of the largest pre-colonial city in North America (10-20,000 people). The mounds were something like North American pyramids, serving largely as burial grounds for high-ranking members of the community. It's a pretty amazing place.
*
After the history museum, mounds, and St. Louis show, we continued on to Louisville, KY.
I am tiring of blogging. Louisville is a very big and weird city. We went to Dizzy Whiz. Soon I will add details. There will be a post to discuss the last leg of tour. Maybe two.
-Ben
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tour Pt. 2
A brief summary of our stay in Pittsburgh will follow shortly, but first a bit of news.
My book, 78 Stories, is officially up for sale on the No Record Press website. It's at www.no-record.com. Buy it (please). Buy it right here http://store.no-record.com/78stories.html (please).
Shameless self-promotion temporarily aside, I will now recount our last few days. We've been staying with my relatives in Pittsburgh. They live in a great house right on the edge of Frick Park. We've basically spent the last several days being wined and dined and dined again by all of my various relatives. They've been really really generous and we've just been totally relaxing and being taken care of. So the short version is that Pittsburgh has been very awesome. Our show was quite small, but warmly received.
Pittsburgh, contrary to popular lore, is a quite beautiful city.
Tomorrow- Cleveland.
-Ben
PS: We are wondering what is happening on the homefront. Please report news of events in the the purple house. We also miss you.
My book, 78 Stories, is officially up for sale on the No Record Press website. It's at www.no-record.com. Buy it (please). Buy it right here http://store.no-record.com/78stories.html (please).
Shameless self-promotion temporarily aside, I will now recount our last few days. We've been staying with my relatives in Pittsburgh. They live in a great house right on the edge of Frick Park. We've basically spent the last several days being wined and dined and dined again by all of my various relatives. They've been really really generous and we've just been totally relaxing and being taken care of. So the short version is that Pittsburgh has been very awesome. Our show was quite small, but warmly received.
Pittsburgh, contrary to popular lore, is a quite beautiful city.
Tomorrow- Cleveland.
-Ben
PS: We are wondering what is happening on the homefront. Please report news of events in the the purple house. We also miss you.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
we're so on tour right now (pt1)
We have a lot to write about, so I'm going to try to stick to the highlights.
Jim, Peter, and I are officially on tour. We started off in New York. Jashin and Egan set up a show for us at Yoyo's amazing loft in Soho. It was also Jess's birthday party.
First: Egan and Yoyp set up a fantastic space and hung several of their photographs and paintings. It was a really beautiful setting. We performed. I think we all performed well. I forget details. There was a lot of wine etc.
Everyone we met was very supportive, even the people we didn't previously know. It is not rare to get to do shows for your college friends, but the mix was much more eclectic than I expected. Besides the usual suspects we had several Germans, a Marine, a professor, a renowned documentarian, and several others and everyone seemed to get along and be into our presentations. As sappy as it may seem, it's actually very touching and inspiring to share work with a large group of people and find that it's genuinely appreciated by such diverse crowd. And then there was the wine etc., which lasted practically until dawn.
The next morning, we cleaned the apartment. Mostly I cleaned the apartment because I woke up early and couldn't fall back to sleep. This led to an unfortunate sequence of events in which a fairly large rag was accidentally flushed down a toilet and amateur plumbing (with all of it's attendant anxiety and hilarity) was forced to ensue. The clog was fixed. The rag was not salvaged. We owe Yoyo a rag.
Our second minor hitch of tour: Getting out of the city. Day 2 was relaxed, but we were also pretty worn out. Peter was still working at the Vision Jazz festival, so Jim and I hung around the city and caught up more with friends.
I am trying to avoid listing names of friends because there are a lot of them and I've chosen to omit all rather than forgot any. Except for the people that actually helped organize the evening. And us. Our names stay in. Anyways...
We'd stashed the car at Russ's house on Long Island (I used another name, but that's really more of a location). Jim and I returned there in the evening and waited for Peter to finish. We made mistakes in planning. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Russ's, but we stayed too long and got started too late on our drive.
Also, we had to return Matt's guitar. This sucked. We got lost. We went out of our way. We did not find his house. The guitar is still with us. By the point of the failed guitar return, it was 2 am and we were in suburban New Jersey. We pressed on to Ocean City, where we had lodging at Jim's shore house. I took over driving and made good time for the first hour or so, and by 4, we seemed about to finally reach our destination. The fog materialized. Visibility rapidly approached zero, as did our speed. We crossed the bay in such a haze that we were unable to tell that we were even above water. We finally crawled into Jim's shore house around 430 and promptly passed out.
We woke up too soon the next morning because we needed to make Pittsburgh by 7. Jim's dad was at the house and we met him and spent a too-brief morning visiting, and then drove for 6 or 7 hours.
We are currently in Pittsburgh. This entry is getting too long. Pittsburgh will be described in the next few days, but for now I am going to sign off.
-Ben
PS: This tour is rad.
Jim, Peter, and I are officially on tour. We started off in New York. Jashin and Egan set up a show for us at Yoyo's amazing loft in Soho. It was also Jess's birthday party.
First: Egan and Yoyp set up a fantastic space and hung several of their photographs and paintings. It was a really beautiful setting. We performed. I think we all performed well. I forget details. There was a lot of wine etc.
Everyone we met was very supportive, even the people we didn't previously know. It is not rare to get to do shows for your college friends, but the mix was much more eclectic than I expected. Besides the usual suspects we had several Germans, a Marine, a professor, a renowned documentarian, and several others and everyone seemed to get along and be into our presentations. As sappy as it may seem, it's actually very touching and inspiring to share work with a large group of people and find that it's genuinely appreciated by such diverse crowd. And then there was the wine etc., which lasted practically until dawn.
The next morning, we cleaned the apartment. Mostly I cleaned the apartment because I woke up early and couldn't fall back to sleep. This led to an unfortunate sequence of events in which a fairly large rag was accidentally flushed down a toilet and amateur plumbing (with all of it's attendant anxiety and hilarity) was forced to ensue. The clog was fixed. The rag was not salvaged. We owe Yoyo a rag.
Our second minor hitch of tour: Getting out of the city. Day 2 was relaxed, but we were also pretty worn out. Peter was still working at the Vision Jazz festival, so Jim and I hung around the city and caught up more with friends.
I am trying to avoid listing names of friends because there are a lot of them and I've chosen to omit all rather than forgot any. Except for the people that actually helped organize the evening. And us. Our names stay in. Anyways...
We'd stashed the car at Russ's house on Long Island (I used another name, but that's really more of a location). Jim and I returned there in the evening and waited for Peter to finish. We made mistakes in planning. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Russ's, but we stayed too long and got started too late on our drive.
Also, we had to return Matt's guitar. This sucked. We got lost. We went out of our way. We did not find his house. The guitar is still with us. By the point of the failed guitar return, it was 2 am and we were in suburban New Jersey. We pressed on to Ocean City, where we had lodging at Jim's shore house. I took over driving and made good time for the first hour or so, and by 4, we seemed about to finally reach our destination. The fog materialized. Visibility rapidly approached zero, as did our speed. We crossed the bay in such a haze that we were unable to tell that we were even above water. We finally crawled into Jim's shore house around 430 and promptly passed out.
We woke up too soon the next morning because we needed to make Pittsburgh by 7. Jim's dad was at the house and we met him and spent a too-brief morning visiting, and then drove for 6 or 7 hours.
We are currently in Pittsburgh. This entry is getting too long. Pittsburgh will be described in the next few days, but for now I am going to sign off.
-Ben
PS: This tour is rad.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
It's really hot
Did you know that Hawaii has both the lowest all-time high temperature and the highest all-time low temperature of any US state?
Look it up. Hawaii's all-time high is 100 degrees and all-time low is 12.
To be fair, Alaska's all-time high is actually also only 100, so they are tied for lowest-high, but Hawaii's low is a full 14 degrees higher than second place Florida's -2, which makes Hawaii also the only state to have never been in negative degrees.
Let us contrast this with Northampton, MA which has a low of -30 and high of 100. Our swing is almost 50 degrees greater than the entire state of Hawaii. Honolulu only has a swing of about 40 degrees all-time (95-52)
On the other extreme, the state of Alaska has a 180 degree variation from -80 to 100. The city of Fairbanks alone has seen every temperature from -66 to 99.
World-wide, I cannot give a certain answer for the most impressive variance, but Yakutsk (Russia) might be a good guess. It's been as low as -85 and as high as 103.
-ben
Look it up. Hawaii's all-time high is 100 degrees and all-time low is 12.
To be fair, Alaska's all-time high is actually also only 100, so they are tied for lowest-high, but Hawaii's low is a full 14 degrees higher than second place Florida's -2, which makes Hawaii also the only state to have never been in negative degrees.
Let us contrast this with Northampton, MA which has a low of -30 and high of 100. Our swing is almost 50 degrees greater than the entire state of Hawaii. Honolulu only has a swing of about 40 degrees all-time (95-52)
On the other extreme, the state of Alaska has a 180 degree variation from -80 to 100. The city of Fairbanks alone has seen every temperature from -66 to 99.
World-wide, I cannot give a certain answer for the most impressive variance, but Yakutsk (Russia) might be a good guess. It's been as low as -85 and as high as 103.
-ben
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Come to this
This is going to rule. Go to http://stout.hampshire.edu/~pdb04/phtour/houseshows.html for more info
we're back..
It's been too long since this blog was posted in. Far too long.
- Ben
We have way too many things to talk about that should have gotten blog coverage and now must not. Apologies slighted blog topics.
First and most importantly to the house, we got new people in the double and Kristin moved out. This is the kind of bittersweet news we often have here. Maggie and Lydia are very excellent newcomers however, so overall I'm excited about summer here.
Secondly, Jim and Peter and I are going on tour in a week. Peter made a website:
Go get details there then come see us.
Ok so those are the major house news items. We can begin once again blogging about trivial topics at frequent intervals.
For example, Obama Nation sounds like Abomination, Friendly's was giving away free cones today, and it is 90 something degrees out right now.
The heat has destroyed my will to carry on writing and my ability to craft a decent sentence.
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