i've realized that daytime soap operas (and daytime tv, in general) rate incredibly high on the "unintentional comedy scale." as i was putting on my shoes and getting ready to leave the house for a spot of lunch, i flipped on the tv to see what the gods of television programming decided to grace my life with. what i found was a particular carwreck called "days of our lives." to be honest, i'm mildly familiar with this particular waste of an hour because i dated a girl for two years that watched it religiously. she even made her mom tape it for her if she had to work. it was kinda scary.

to get the most for your "unintentional comedy" buck, you really need to catch the first five minutes of any soap before they even roll credits. the proof may be in the pudding, but the laughs are in the setup, i'd say. that first five minutes is packed with moony eyes, shady dealings, and everything else that you can only find in the dreams of an unhappy housewife. to be honest, the other 55 minutes are just a big tease to make you watch the next episode.

anyhowways…saturday was pretty low key. i spent most of the time recovering from friday night's festivities. we ended up going over to a cookout for our friend jess (my ex-girlfriend and ex-roommate, in that order). she's getting married to some tool and moving to dallas, texas. as long as she's happy, i guess. so most of the early afternoon was spent standing in the hot sun, drinking pepsi (i didn't feel like dancing with beer again, quite yet) and hanging with a bunch of people i don't know.

scott and i ended up splitting to head over to see irina and black widows play at the indoor skatepark. what i thought was going to be a huge show ended up being sparsly attended, but it was all good. irina rocked hard, but they sounded kinda muddy and steve's guitar wouldn't stay in tune. black widows kicked as much ass as always. after that we popped in and out of the various bars and i ended up back at the warehouse until 5:30 in the morning.

but i'm sure you could have figured that one out on your own…

yesterday was the weekly cookout and kickball in the park. we got rained out, last week, so we returned with a vengeance. once again, the team i was on kicked ass and ended up winning 16-13. another glorious victory. another week where we retain bragging rights. ahhhh…kickball. a few of us have joked about starting a weekly dodgeball game. now that would be brutal…

brian gets drunk and makes a giant ass of himself (vol. 3, chapter 472):

scott and i set out to have a fun evening of drinking and socializing, last night. we dropped off some stuff with johnny that he had left over here, then we jetted over to the rud to catch a friend's band (party girls). we hung out there for a while, then we decided it was time to hit the bar. we got to the well at around 12:30 and there really weren't that many people there. scott and i then decided to go grab some booze and drink at home at a discounted price…free (aside from the original price of the alcohol).

on the way back to the car we ran into our awesome friend kelly, who invited us to a midnight pool party. scott and i were pretty determined to get our drink on, so we told kelly we'd give her a call. that was the first mistake of the evening: never tell someone you'll call them if you plan on doing a lot of drinking first. chances are…you're gonna forget to call. either that or you're drunk dialing, and that's bad news, as well.

so…we got home and sat out on the back porch, drinking and shooting the shit, and enjoying the onset of summer. scott and i have decided to stop feeling so old and have a fun summer, this year. cookouts, back porch drinking marathons…we're gonna have to get matt and paul over here more often. good times, for sure.

scott and i decided to amble back down to the well to see if anyone was there. it was a bit more crowded when we walked in at around 2am, this time. elizabeth was still there, so we sat around and talked about whatever. second mistake: get really drunk and talk to pretty girls. chances are you're only making an ass of yourself. that's never a good thing.

scott ditched out and went for a walk to cahoots, then he dropped back in, hung out for a bit, and headed home. i stayed parked at the bar, hanging out to see if john would show up. right around the time i had given up on that and was getting out of my stool to make my way home, paul cruised in. i was literally off my stool and getting ready to head to the door. there's a cardinal rule in life: the party's not over if paul is still there. so i sat my ass back down and hung out with the illustrious puffin. a couple of beers and shots of beam later (the puffin is nothing, if not a tank), they were kicking us all out. i said my goodbyes and headed home.

you'd think being at home alone (except for the cat and a sleeping scott), it'd be hard to make much of an ass of myself. you'd think i'd be home, done, and ready for bed. well…you'd be thinking wrong. i called one friend and left a really drunk message on her voice mail. i ended up talking to another friend and lost all ability to make sense. fifteenth mistake: alcohol and phones just don't mix. if you're gonna drink, don't dial. if you're gonna dial…don't drink.

so…to cap this off, i'm issuing a blanket apology to everyone involved. i'm sincerely sorry, and i promise not to do it again…until later tonight.

i tried to keep last night low-key, but ended up failing miserably. i left the house at around 2am under the pretense of grabbing something to drink so i could take some medicine to knock out this summer cold ("the death," as scott calls it) that's been plaguing our apartment for most of the week. while i was out i decided to see if anyone was down at the well of spirits, our new neighborhood bar.

well…as soon as i walked into the place, i knew i wasn't going to make it home anytime soon. i ran into the usual gang of…usuals. i hung out with john and elizabeth for a little bit, and then steve and billy showed up. at this point, john decides everyone should go back to the warehouse to make some party. i stopped off and grabbed some beer and ended up back at the warehouse until 5:30 in the morning. steve and i sat around and plotted out a new band for when irina is on hiatus while phil is in russia for the fall. other than that…a lot of beer drinking and socializing.

and now i'm sitting around with a stuffed head, listening to mission of burma, contemplating some medicine (for real, this time) and a late afternoon nap. you have to love fridays…

i've come to the conclusion that i'm not posting to this site because i feel like my life is overwhelmingly uninteresting. i get these imaginary posts in my head that read something like this:

thursday…i went to the bar and got drunk. i sat around and made an ass of myself. then i went home and went to bed.

let me tell you…the excitement never stops around here. i could amend that by mentioning that scott ritcher was in town and we hung out for a while before he disappeared into the bathroom forever. when it came time for me to need to hit the facilities, i had to knock on the door several times. it went a lot like this…

me (knocking on the door): scott? you about done in there?
scott: wooo!
me: you okay in there, man?
scott: wooo!

ten or fifteen minutes later, he ended up coming out of the bathroom and said "i think it's time for me to go home." that stands as the understatement of the weekend.

anyhowways…friday i ended up at the bar again. i ran into a lot of people i haven't seen in a while (as well as people i see a million times in the course of the week). it was a nice evening out, but there were no crazy high points. i was a little drunk, so i felt like i was blowing a bunch of people off, inadvertantly. oh well.

saturday was more of the same. parlour played again, this time at the lava house. i enjoyed their set thoroughly, despite the fact that i was completely sauced. i ended up going back to the warehouse with john and a gazillion other people for a little impromptu party action. we all ended up on the roof, blasting some old time blues channel, drinking more beer. i ended up having some bizarre conversation with some girl that i don't remember at all (the conversation, not the girl). i do remember her not making a lick of sense, though. so i guess it's fine that i can't recall exactly what the fuck was said.

yesterday was supposed to be kickball, but we got rained out. we ended up just having the usual pre-game cookout in the little shelter thing in the park. after that, we headed back to rob's house to watch the lakers game. i guess everyone got all fired up, because we ended up at a park, playing 3-on-3 for the rest of the night. i am now convinced that i am horribly out of shape and have absolutely no jump shot to speak of. end of uninteresting story.

i keep puting off posting to bipolar, acting like i have nothing to post about, which is actually fairly untrue. i think i'm just turning into a matt. scary, huh?

i spent the long holiday weekend doing a variety of different things. friday night i went out and caught mogwai with parlour over at headliners. it was a pretty good show (thanks for the beer, connor), but i swear mogwai must be scottish for "slint." the highlight of their set was at the end (pre-encore) when tony from parlour (and a million different other bands, over the years) got up and played drums. then they came back out and just made a bunch of noise. very clever.

note: when playing in louisville, remember that we have seen all of your noise and we generally thumb our nose at it.

anyway…i didn't stick around to ask anyone from mogwai what ever happened to that track that they recorded with chino from deftones. oh well.

saturday afternoon was spent hanging with matt and paul. we went out to catch insomnia. once again, the summer movie season fails to disappoint. it's going to be a good year for film. after the movie we went back to their place and ordered pizza and watched iron chef. much speculation was made about when the secret ingredient was going to end up being kittens or small children. it's only a matter of time…

sunday was kickball in the park. this is really just an excuse to have a cookout and get drunk in the middle of a field. oh yeah…and to annihilate the other team in the opening innings. we were up 17-4, at one point. it was pretty pathetic. our run production slowed down pretty dramatically as we got more drunk and started to argue with the other team more. regardless, we won. stick that in your pipe and smoke it. bragging rights for a whole week, suckas.

other random details are pretty much a blur. scott and i sat around being bored for most of monday night, realizing that we were all but partied out. oh well…there's always next weekend…

song you should be listening to, right now:
metroschifter – whatever's wrong with me is here to stay
from the "for the love of basic cable" 7", 1995

back to the road (and complete non-relevance, at this point)…

5/3 akron, oh @ lime spider
after our relaxing day off in new york, we hit the road bright and early the next morning, headed for the rubber capital of the world (har), akron, oh. apparently this is the home of goodyear, the blimp, and all that other scary business. we were informed that they used to have a condom factory in town, as well, but it went out of business.

anyhowways…we got to the club and pretty much loaded straight in. we were supposedly opening for two glam bands (who booked this tour? a retarded 10 year-old?), which was nice because they proved to be the butt of our jokes for the rest of our time spent in ohio. we set up on the stage and set levels with each other (in lieu of an actual "sound check"), and then bellied up to the bar to get some drink on. we ended up trying to watch a ramones documentary on one of the overhead tvs, but we couldn't hear any sound. that left us cracking really bad jokes with the bartender girl and eating some skunky pizza made for us by the owner of the place. it was pretty funny because he came up and asked how everything was…

owner: how is everything?
chris: mmmf….good…who made it?
owner: i did!
chris: oh? man…this shit is fucking great!
owner: thanks! glad you like it.
[owner walks off]
chris (to me): this is some seriously nasty shit…
me: yep. totally.

the show went really well with little to no technical snafus, and we stuck around to catch the glam bands, which were both pretty fucking horrible. there were apparently some end of semester "riots" going on down the street, so i went out to check that scene with a friend from the area. the "riots" ended up being a bunch of drunk frat guys hitting on nasty, drunk sorority chicks in the streets while the cops stood there and yawned. i decided to ask the cops what, exactly, was supposed to be going on…

me: so what's happenin' in akron, ohio tonight?
cop: akron? shit…i thought this was cleveland. hey, guys…we need to get out of here!
me: shoot for detroit next time, smart guy…

then we went back to the frend's house in kent to crash. the most disconcerting part of the whole akron trip was waking up in kent on may 4th. we ate at some breakfast place with a giant, shitty looking x-wing fighter out front, and then got the fuck out of ohio. yeah. that sums it up pretty well.

[setlist*]
*note on setlist: the little stars are actually dan's depictions of assholes, making the overall presentation…disturbing.

the wilco site has posted a streaming recording of wilco's performance at all tomorrow's parties. it sounds great and is definitely worth checking out.

i wrote this earlier, in response to an article over at pitchfork (who i refuse to link) reviewing the new spider-man movie:

william,

-brian.

i can never say it enough…i sincerely hope those retards die in some suitably "indie" catastrophe.

i seem to be having a hard time forcing myself to update bipolar. but since i saw star wars: episode 2 last night, i can pretend i have something to write about.

in a nutshell: it was good. it blows episode 1 away. 100 times better. seriously. tons of action for dat ass.

i flipped out and quit my job the other day. it's not the brightest thing i've done in a while, but i just kinda snapped. i wasn't cut for working there again, anyway. i was depressed to walk in there on the first day and see a bunch of people i worked with the first time. it was ridiculous. so i got back from tour, had been back at work for 2 days and snapped. it's all good, though. i went to the store, grabbed a six pack, and came home and watched the usual suspects on dvd. splendid. that movie is still awesome, even when you know "the secret." the special edition dvd is definitely worth it.

and for the record, my former boss is the dumbest piece of shit i've ever had the displeasure to work under.

my get up kids and dj shadow reviews have been posted over at 75 or less. i liked one and hated the other. see if you can figure out which is which.

i will be getting back to that tour recap. promise…

before i cut to the continuation of thee tour diaries, i'd like to take a few moments to express how incredibly bad the new get up kids record is. it's bad. seriously bad. like "one of the worst albums i've ever heard" bad. avoid it at all costs. expect my review to go up on 75 or less before the end of the day.

oh yeah…my birthday was seriously fucked up. i started drinking at lunch and didn't stop until about 7am on the following morning. festivities included making out with hot girls and getting attacked by rufus wainwright as he tried to ram his tongue down my throat. i did score his cell number for katie, though. bitchin'.

i'll get back to the road stories later tonight…