This weekend I roadied for my friends Flowers In The Attic (Kenny, Kevin, Rebecca, Ryan). I met up with them in Baltimore, and we drove to New Jersey, then Pittsburgh for the first two shows of their 3 week long tour.

The first stop we made, at Ryan's insistance was here:


It turns out that Nugget Magazine is Flowers' preferred tour reading and in fact led to the naming of the tour : SKULLS AND BONERS, since that was the name of a pictorial that showed a girl posing with, of all things, a baboon skull. I can't believe I didnt snap a picture of this for posterity.

Travelling in the van was fun, even though it was sort of spartan (the words "Tour, Not Vacation" scrawled on the roof of the van reminded me why we were there, though). We talked, listened to music, I played Zelda and got afew pieces of the TriForce.... It was a good time.

The first show, which we were 2 hours late for, was in a wealthy suburb in New Jersey. The kid who did the show had a band (who were pretty good) and the whole crowd was 14-17 year old suburban kids. It was weird, but fun. After, we hung out with the kids which was an odd experience. I pretty much hung out with Flowers, with occasional kid interaction.



Us hanging out in his yard:



The entryway to his show space:


A cool record he had:


A poster that I have in my room, on the wall of the show space. I have no clue where I got this poster so it was weird to see it up.


The next day we got up and went to breakfast. I amused everyone by charging my cell phone at Dunkin Donuts, then we hit the road.


The Subway we stopped at in the middle of nowhere included an interaction with a red-headed lad named Josh who asked if we were in a band, said "he'd heard of Flowers In The Attic before" and said he only liked independent music "and blues."

The next show was at a record store, Brave New World, in Pittsburgh. Pittburgh is in the middle of nowhere, but the drive to get there is really pretty. The town is really weird and there doesn't seem to be any reason for it to be there. There are punk kids EVERYWHERE, all the resteraunts are half price after 11, there are dumpsters full of furniture everywhere, and lots of one way streets.

Some of my records were on the shelf:


The show went okay, not a lot of money but Ryan broke a cymbal stand and we got a flat in the parking lot. Not so good. Next door to the place a guy was listening to the radio SO LOUD at his house it was like there was an arena concert in his house... Seriously, it was amazing.

Flowers hanging out after the show:


At one point, I went to the bathroom and, on the way, saw a book about doom metal. I thought, "I should look at there and see if my friend Wino is in there"... Assumming that he would be, after I was done I picked it up and realized... HE'S ON THE COVER.



The place we stayed at was called the Peach Pitt, and it was kind of amazing. Way more dirtfarm than the dirtfarm is... filthy, full of trashed furniture, including a dumpstered foosh ball table as a living room table. 9 people live there and the total rent is $825... Though they don't make the guy who lives in the basement pay because of all the mold:


This mural was painted by one of the roommates, Lucas, I think, who showed it to me moments after meeting me. The first thing he said to me was 'Want to shitgun a beer?' and I did!





We left to get half price Tex Mex and generally hang a bit in Pittsburgh. Zack, our intrepid guide and host was super friendly and awesome and showed us some cool stuff. He is in a band named Sequioa, who played the show. It was a good time.



Here is Kenny looking biblical outside the Tex Mex place:


We partied at the Peach Pitt after, and a lot of fun was had, I wrestled with almost everyone, we ran around in the streets, Ryan chased people with a Digeridoo (sp?), there was a naked roommate who wore tighty whities because we were there... Much fun was had. I have lots of bruises and puncture marks. I slept WELL yesterday.

If I remember more, I'll post it here... And I will follow up with my sunday events as well... Time to do some work!

I had a really fun weekend. Now I'm at work with lots of stuff to do and I really don't want to do any of it. None of it is particularly hard, granted it's not interesting, but not excruciatingly boring. I just really don't want to do any of it.

But I have to.

So I think I'm going to make a deal with myself that I have to fully complete at least one task before looking at Killoggs again or hiding the Ghatti book under the desk.

Riding Giants was perfect, a big step up from Dogtown&Z-Boyz. The narrative technique would have been exhausting if the material wasn't so pleasing (buildup, climax, buildup, bigger climax, buildup, bigger climax, ...., tragedy, buildup, bigger climax). It made me want to be able to spend 10 hours a day doing things I really like with friends (at this point I would probably become a bike bum).
After watching that, we went to Tropical Persuasion, on 1st and 1st, where Kiche had brought us for the aftermath of his birthday. This is an outrageous Hawaiian bar with too many scupltures, colors and live birds, which evokes the nausea that eating stolen pineapples all day long as a surf bum would bring.

I've had about three weeks of quality time with Washington, DC. After last weekend, I'm ready to resume my policy of avoiding that place when possible.
Last night at about 3am I walked from my car through Mt. Vernon park, to my apartment. All of the breathing and buzzing sounds are the same as last summer. Mt. Vernon, Baltimore. Its such an awesome place at night. Everything looks better at night.
I just now sat down and watched this GnR documentary that I bought online (instead of paying some bill.) It was amazingly bad, but not bad enough to make it un-boring. A mushroom cloud of pot smoke could not make it worth watching.
The documentary doesn't use any of their music, because its 'unauthorized.' They have a narrator with a serious-sounding British accent, and interview a bunch of third hand nobodies. Pretty much everyone was labeled as "promoter," and they talked about what great times it was 'back then,' and about the one time they saw Axl backstage, and that record cover that was really controversial... it had some girl on it or something like that.
Seriously though, these interviewees kept openly admitting the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about.
One guy is talking about how Izzy wasn't in it for the fame, thats what he moved on. "..Or at least thats what I gather from interviews," says the guy.
They go on for awhile about their WIIIILD lifestyle, quoting these two goth girls who start all their stories like, "I heard about this one time..." When one of the two goth girls was speaking, the other one was always sitting next to her nodding in agreement, so we know it must be the truth.
I think the point of the "documentary" is to give insight to the average seven year old what the life of a wild rock n roller is all about. This one guy seemed really excited to use the F word.
For some annoying reason, another guy kept comparing Axl Rose to Eminem.
Axl Rose and Eminem have a lot in common, if the only other male stars to ever exist are also Davy Jones, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Louis Armstrong and k.d. lang.
I kept flipping on the display button to count down the minutes left, but I forced myself to wait until the end.
It was almost worth it for the credits, during which they played music by some band I've never heard of, but it sounded kind of like Blue Oyster Cult.
I can't wait to get to the record store to buy some real DVDs.
I am so bored right now, but I can't go to bed this early. Once I lay down, I wake up and go to work. I still haven't figured out the point of that.

I've been bummed out ever since the Olympics have started. For those who do not know I am first generation Greek (meaning my parents came over on a boat to this country of ours) and even catching a glimpse of NBC's coverage of the games puts me in a bad mood. I haven't been back to the Motherland in about 10 years and all I've been thinking about lately is just fuckng dropping everything and getting on a plane and going back!

Am I entering the young adult mode of "Yes, I will move to Europe and drop out of society" part of my life? Who knows. What I do know is that I"m currently saving up some paper to finally go to Greece again early next year. You're more than welcome to come with me.

My itinerary so far is to:
Chill in Athens with relatives.
Chill on the island of Lesvos, where my dad is from, and read Sappho with lesbians
Go on those crazy island tours of Mykonos etc and maybe get spotted on E!'s "Wild On" series.
Drink lots of Ouzo! andyell Opa! at everything that moves.
Buy Iannis Xenakis records

Like I said, you people are more than welcome to hop along.

On Friday, Julie came to town. She came by my work at about 11am, my boss and I were watching the Olympics. We left shortly after and went to lunch.

There were these guys at the table next to us at Govnor's who had this huge beer thing. It was at least three and a half feet tall and had a spout at the end. We asked them how much it held and they didn't know but told us we could handle it. However, the waitress said that it held two pitchers of beer, so we passed. We were going to take a picture, but neither of us was buzzed enough to get up the guts to be like, "hey, can we stand next to your beer thingy and take a picture?"

Next we walked to these towers next to the HOB that I call the Scallop Towers. Julie actually knows their real name, but I do not.
We went to Michigan Avenue. Julie had a conversation with a nice man.

He was a good listener.

We decided that it was really an LC duty to head to Sephora. I had never been in one. We smelled many perfumes, until we actually started to go lightheaded. We made it a point to sniff some LC recommendations. I actually preferred Kara's favorite. Julie went with this one that was shaped like a lady. We tried on sparkly makeup

and petted all of the nice soft brushes. Eventually we had to tear ourselves away. We did pick some things out of the impulse-buy bins though. I agonized over some fake eyelashes for a few minutes until Julie just grabbed them from me and threw them in her pile. She is wise in the ways of shopping.
Then we decided to go to the top of the Hancock building.

Because really, it's much cooler than the Sears Tower. You can order drinks.

The best view, of course, is from the ladies restroom. But I think Julie took all the pictures of that.
After a brief detour into H&M to purchase some fabulous belts and earrings, I had to go to my show. Julie and her friend Cameron came to see the show and afterwards we met up with Craig.

We were on our way to the next bar when Julie suddenly saw someone she knew. There was a nice movie moment with Julie trotting down the street and speaking his name loudly lamenting that he was going to escape when Tia decided to just scream to him from across the street.

We went with him to the L & L dive on Belmont and Clark. Then we started hitting the hard stuff.

I neglected to mention earlier, that Julie and I are very into the new shade of green that is appearing in various fall collections. We both splurged on a shirt and a coat respectively.
All in all

we had a great time

and we'd like to hang out again

we laughed a lot

and shared

good times

a Killoggs story that ended in the most fabulous of hangovers!

THE END