I am writing you all from my hospital bed where I lie on the verge of death by the nasty strain of cholera I have come down with. OK, so maybe it isn't that serious, but I have been felled by the first strains of this year's flu. Nature, while beautiful can be a cruel bastard.
I just woke up from a three hour nap and upon waking had this converstaion with the flu:
Me: Yeah, flu, take that, be-atch!!! I just dropped a three hour nizzapp on yo' ass.
Flu: Yeah, I'm not impressed. And because of all your smarminess here's a fever and some nausea. Who's the be-atch now, be-atch!!!
Me: I am, Mr. Flu. I am.
Ouch. Well, that goes to show you, never argue with the flu. Also, probably don't write journal entries with lots of cold medicine swimming in your head. Ah well.
Big week in the Fooled By April camp. On Thursday we played at the Middle East Upstairs to a surprisingly large and supportive hometown crowd. Thank you to everyone who came out and paid the, IMHO, inordinately large admittance fee. When we make the millions, you guys will be the first to get free candy bars. I mean that.
Friday we went all out to support our pals in Scamper as they attempted to ascend to the glorious heights of rockdom that can only be achieved by winning the Beantown Meltdown battle of the bands. They were vey vey good and it wouldn't surprise me if soon they are sending me a free candy bar.
Anywho, Scamper's rock show was at the Good Times Emporium which is this enormous warehouse of video games and white trash located in Somerville. So, being the fun seekers that we are, after the show we sowed our wild oats on some seriously dorky video games. There was one game where you're a trucker and you race against an opponent who sits next to you. That would be good enough, but the kicker is that you get a cb radio that actually works. After a few drinks, this thing is the most fun in the world, unless you're Pete, who I was playing against. Pete is a saint.
The rock weekend wrapped up on Sunday, when we attended the WFNX Collegefest to support other friends in a band called OKGo. They were, as hip hop chefs might say "the bomb skillet." And after their impressive display of rock we got to walk around the fair and be looked at by 18 year olds as if we should be dead due to our old age. It was pretty fun. I also was given a bunch of condoms by a playboy playmate whose title was not indicative of how nice she was to me. I tried to give her a sticker and she told me she didn't want to wear it. I told her she didn't need to wear it, just take it, but she wasn't having it. Before the pepper spray started I got the hell out of there.
So I was very bored the other night and ended up watching the VMA's again. Now, I don't actually know what's dumber, MTV for re-running the same four shows seven hundred million times or me watching the same four shows 600 million times and then complaining about it, but I can tell you this - if I had a candy bar for every time I've seen this year's show I wouldn't be a hungry man until 2011.
Anyway, has there ever been anything more embarassing than that Guns and Roses performance? I mean, Guns was once one of my favortie bands, but now Axl looks like he's been on a steady diet of lard and bacon grease. And his voice! Jesus, he sounded like a baby seal being beaten by a vicious hunter who is himself being devoured by a polar bear, all in an underground sewer tunnel.
So that was very disappointing, and the pain was really only eased by my knowledge that Lance Bass would soon safely be ensconced in the International Space Station as an American ambassador of hope and peace. But goddammitt, they had to take that away from us too.
So... how can I, one man, sum up all the debauchery, lechery and archery that took place over the Fooled By April holiday weekend? Let it just be said that if anyone has ever played more Tony Hawk in a three day period then he is a stonger man than I.
Anywho, let me tell you all a little story. A true story, people. On Friday night at around 1:00 AM, after much Tony Hawk (see above), bass player extraordinaire Pete Galea and I headed out for a bike ride on the Minuteman trail. Most of the ride was uneventful, but then things got interesting, people, very interesting.
We were almost back when we came around a corner and saw this group of five or six high school kids walking down the path. No big deal. So we started to ride around them. Pete got around OK, but when I passed, one of the kids full on body checked me for no reason at all, stopping me and basically knocking me off my bike. Here's what ensued, with commentary:
Me: What is your f@#$ing problem, you f@#$ing a%#hole!!!
(This is called, in psychology circles, "calmly dealing with a situation")
Kid: F#@k You! You ran into me on your bike, bitch!
(There are a couple problems in this response. First of all it is patently untrue, unless the new definition of being run into involves deliberately stepping in front of someone and hitting them. Second, what kind of logic is this? If you're going to be a punk, at least own up to being a punk and threaten me like a man. I, personally, would have used something like "That's right Motherf?§ker, you want some of this beatdown?", or perhaps "My name is Jimmy the Killa and I own this trail, so why don't you $#%@ my mother%^%ing @£§?!" or even something as simple as spitting in my face. I mean, come on, "You ran into me"???? What's the point?)
Me: You're an a%$hole, F&*k off.
(Another example of my cool head. After this I began to ride off)
Kid: No, you f&*k off! (Very clever. He turned it around on me. This was followed by an unintelligible stream of expletives that I'm pretty sure involved a mention of my mother and definitely touched upon my apparent homosexual proclivities. At this point the other kids erupted in a chorus of expletives and began chasing us. Now this was just plain silly. It wasn't Carl Lewis and his friends chasing us, people, it was a bunch of jerkoff punk kids. Simple physics dictates that they will not be able to catch bicycles ridden by the like of Pete "Flash of Gyroscopic Speed" Galea and myself, Joe "Very Fast Bike Rider" Welsh.)
And that was that. We somehow safely eluded our pursuers and made it home. So, you ask, what's the point? There is no point, really. I just wanted to vent my pent-up anger over the whole thing and to ask that if you know who these kids are you take a minute, just one minute out of your busy day, and somehow poison their food so that they have non-life threatening, yet still very severe, diarrhea in their pants.
Until next time, when I might just talk about music...
