asheville, nc

on the way to asheville, we stopped and some kid talked to us. he was wearing one of those flat brimmed hats with the shiny stickers on them, but he had bent the hat. funny because Pat had bought this flat-brimmed retard hat with a dollar sign on it back in Ohio and i kept telling him he needed to bend the bill to be rebellious/incredibly dumb. guess this kid already beat him to it. at one point pat had that hat and a livestrong bracelet i pulled out of my friend’s old room, just to make sure our troupe was a tumbling embarrassment.

so this kid started talking to us (i think also wearing one of those target/wal-mart skull shirts, like the guy in richmond) and the conversation went like this:

“so yall in a band?”
“yeah.”
“man i just got out of jail. 18 months.”
“what for?”
“not paying child support”
“uhhh”
“i’m in a band, we play prince covers and shit. might sound kinda gay but we’re the biggest band in morganton.”

his band’s name is throwdown jones. here is a picture of them:

if you were on this tour and reading this, you will notice how none of these dudes are the kid we met at the gas station. you will also notice there is a whole fucking lot of KISS memorabilia around them. jesus. the kid also said there is a picture on the facebook of Bill Clinton staring at his sister’s tits, but i couldn’t find that either.

i drank some cheerwine on the way and at the gas station, we talked to this pudgy attendant about the dick pills at the counter and about how many people buy them.

so we drove and drove, and got to this dive in the town of Asheville, nestled in mountains of north carolina. the bar was called The Get Down. one of Joel’s old friends, Dennis, was there. nice dude.

me and pat went up to this venezuelan hot dog truck and tried to order the burger. the attendant, an older venezeulan man, denied our order and insisted we get a hot dog.

“stand here when you take your first bite. i want to see the look on your face as it changes your life.”

it did not change my life, but it was pretty good. some girl standing nearby us also offered us a place to sleep, which was a good start to the evening.

dan wandered off somewhere and had some hicks in a truck yell threats at him while i went into a nearby mexican restaurant with aaron and ben where they got some of the best tacos of the tour.

when people ask me about tour, i say it goes like this:

“hey whats up, i’m drunk, where are we, where are the tacos, when are we getting pizza, oh cool, there is a dog here”

the mexican restaurant owner started asking us how to connect with bands as he was interested in having bands at his restaurant, and we kinda dodged the question for his own sake. dude doesn’t want brain tumors and much worse stinking up his fucking restaurant, trying to steal strings of chili-pepper style christmas lights. get a clue, buddy

there was also some little lonely girl wearing all black, wandering around the bar staring at the walls very intently. i thought about talking to her and i guess joel ended up chatting with her and finding out she used to live in japan and wanted to learn what japanese hardcore was. i guess what she knew as japanese hardcore is probably like, this one fucked up band i heard that had Jamey Jasta doing guest vocals. like later Aggressive Dogs. bands that have hockey jerseys with their logos on them or fucking whatever.

some old friends of mine/joel’s, sean and erin showed up. we didn’t have a whole lot of people watch our set and that was fine as i think we were all reeling from being in raleigh. i think people mostly stood there and the few people i talked to outside who i figured might enjoy us seemed to stay outside. who fucking cares. i dont even remember much worse playing and i didnt check out the last band, pox americana. but the bar gave us a bunch of free drinks and we got paid.

i talked to some girl with wild hair for a minute who had a weird vibe, and then we all went back to cram into sean’s new apartment.

little bit of backstory: sean and erin recently broke up after many years together. from what i can tell, there is no difference in their relationship – erin still acts like a bitch to sean and sean shrugs, smiles, and goes to get her a beer. basically like every other couple in america.

so we got to sean’s place and got to listen to erin compliment him on what a big boy he was for getting his own apartment or something. we listened to herbie hancock and sean’s old band, Ahleuchatistas, while everyone sat around marveling at what a fucking killer drummer sean is. i think sean told me he used to drum for this band that i only know because joel has a sticker on his bass case – REGURGISTATE.

sean and dan deciding whose drummer feet are more mutated, logan in the back asleep

me and ben and dan branched off and went with erin back to her house and left everyone there to sleep. sean said erin’s place had fleas but i dont think it did. what it did have was this giant fucking black dog named Ivan that ran around the apartment terrorizing all of us while erin shreiked at it. i woke up in the middle of the night all crazy, hearing pounding noises and dan fighting with it.

“c’mon dude, gimme back my fuckin pillow! c’mon!”

erin let me sleep in her bed. i think her words were, “c’mon dude, its fine, i wont try to fuck you.”

we woke up and erin made us piles of food. piles of it. it was great. but the dog had to be locked in the bathroom – ben went in there and took a shower with the dog pacing back and forth. i guess when logan and the other dudes came over, logan sat down to take a shit and the dog kept trying to hop up on his lap and lick his face. i also realized i lost my tour diary because i am a fucking idiot.

somehow it came out that erin’s neighbor is Harry T. Anderson from Night Court and somehow this excited pat. i’m gonna ask him:

“why were you so excited about Harry T. Anderson?”

he shrugged.

“you know, when you first found out you kept pacing around going, “oh man, harry t anderson!”

he shrugged again and threw his arms up, “WHY? WHY? Because it’s fuckin harry t. anderson!”

i just started laughing and he sighed and goes, “i dunno, i dont meet a lot of people,” and went back to doing his crossword puzzle.

anyway, i went back to the van to get something and when i come back, fucking pat is talking to some dude with some hedgeclippers. now pat is a really charming and charismatic dude 95% of the time, but then there’s the 5% where i’m certain whoever he’s talking to is worried about getting stabbed and dragged away into the woods. so i walk up and of course, pat is talking to Harry T. Anderson. and he’s taking a picture on one of those disposable cameras that no one has seen since 2004.

i walk up and Harry starts aimlessly talking about a bunch of shit – i’m not going to recount it all but here’s a short list of topics: how you can’t use the term “pal” anymore, how saying “no problem” is stupid, how he used to hustle using magic tricks in new orleans, how he moved to asheville, how night court was like a vacation from real work, his old ass blind pug dog that the police bring back to him, how he makes magic props, how i look strong and should be cutting his hedges for him.

dude talked a lot. dude also wears hawaiian looking shirts that have skulls on them and he has a tattoo on his forearm of a rose or some prison looking shit. the most memorable things he said were

“so what the fuck happened to you? did you get beaten up by some bull dykes downtown?” when looking at my black eye and bandage, and

“yeah, nashville is okay as long as you can get past the white-haired nigger-haters.”

yep, white-haired nigger-haters. confusing way to put it. but he was cool and very down to earth. he also had a suit of armor and a giant polar bear statue on his porch. just sayin.

we walked to grab coffee and ran into some kid who was at the show last night who sold us a bunch of amazing prints of his artwork. i guess max had met him the night before.

then we left asheville. i laid in the back on the way to nashville. thirsty, i dug around for a bottle of water and excitedly found one buried under some pillows. i pulled it out and it was filled with fucking cigarette butts. tour is gross.