8/13/12 – Fargo, ND – Cruddy, Brother Nature, Fuck Detector

Danny Shithead was born,
watched a little TV, ate some food,
then died.

– future gravestone of our drummer, dan

we started our journey late and in a rare move, overprepared. i went out and spent $200 or so on cheese, veal hot dogs, spaghetti, sunscreen, gummy fiber tabs, gummy bacterial cultures for your stomach, multivitamins, olive oil, and all sorts of other things that were lost or that are now sitting in my cupboard. we didn’t stop at any garage sales to buy stupid hats and we didn’t do anything dumb along the way other than worry about the 30 year old van we were taking out. i dont remember the order of who we picked up first, who pissed me off first, who wasted time getting ready (wait, it was me), or any other details other than i was sick the morning we left.

i also want to note that im typing this during the last X number of minutes at my current job as a CAREER SERVICES COORDINATOR at a college that teaches audio engineering, video game making, and now some other stuff. so yes, the moron writing all this stuff spent time as a career counselor for artists. in short, i walk away from this experience with the same general message i had after working with veterans.

don’t join the military
don’t be an artist

maybe it works if you do both.

we arrived in Fargo, ND at the SLABAFUCA house. on the way we stopped at gas stations and listened to Max (singer of Much Worse and Chief Tour Driving Officer) expel gas out of his human body. we got out of the van and i looked across the street, in the alleyway. there was a man in a purple shirt laying in the alleyway, next to a wheelchair, rolling around in the street. being as how this is a “fucked up” situation, this signified that tour had officially started.

i walked over to the guy with joel and noticed about six other people sitting around in the bushes next to someone’s garage. a family of native americans.

“hey can you help him up uhhh he’s really heavy and yeah we just cant get him up uhhh,” they said.

so with my shitty back, joel’s shitty body, and the largest of the women (who was likely transgendered), the three of us picked the man up and put him back into his wheelchair. the amputee was very thankful.

we walked back across the street where i found the card for NICOLAS THORNTON, PUBLIC DEFENDER laying on the ground. the card on the ground likely as useless as most public defenders. sorry about the wisecrack, Nicolas. hope you enjoy this blog after you google your name.

then we moved on to the best decision that five guys with very limited income could come to. we went to an old townie bar in the middle of North Dakota called The Bismarck. Max flirted with the molecular biologist waitress who refused to give us glasses of water on the grounds that it would make us sick. she looked like Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years and gave us extra raffle tickets that enabled us to drink in a cheaper way. i glared at a dude wearing a bowler hat with plugs and an Acacia Strain windbreaker. eventually i started yelling at him because i have the singer of that band’s phone number and i thought it might be funny. but he refused to acknowledge me. i put on Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” on the Jukebox. the song (in addition to being fantastic) is over 20 minutes long and for usually two american dollars, you can bump it up in queue and destroy some piece of shit’s 10-song run of Kid Rock or Sean Paul or whatever bullshit real people play when they’re out drinking.

we went back to the house and made grilled cheese sandwiches for Cruddy on the George Foreman Grill that we brought from home. we also made “toasty dogs” for ourselves using some veal hot dogs purchased from C*stco – they were the only hot dogs that made some sort of claim as to the quality of the conditions the animals were raised in. joel shaved his head to resemble Klaus Nomi, which got real fucking aggravating after looking at him for a few days.

we also met up with our pals in Brother Nature and the almighty Fuck Detector. Forred, a minneapolis fellow, told us a story about Minot, ND and how a knife store flooded and everyone stole knives and Joel told us how he dated the guitarist from this wanky dipshit NC metalcore band called Between the Buried and Me’s ex-girlfriend or wife or something and how she was a crackhead. i dont know where that came from. Matt from Serenghetto also informed us that coming from Minot, they told everyone that we were going to beat up their children. which is probably where the rumor comes from that one time i kicked a 7 year old kid off a table at a show we played. so thanks for that, Matt. and thanks for that, me, for spreading the rumor further.

Cruddy played. they were good but i didn’t like it much because it reminded me of too many things i’ve already seen (that i didnt like as much). Brother Nature played and are always good. then i think we played and it doesn’t matter how we did because we were drunk. i smashed my head on an old Hammond organ over and over again and it hurt really bad. it was a new sensation in pain because of the black keys. i also knocked over some beer bottles and broke them.

Fuck Detector were outstanding.

i woke up the next day and took a piss on a box of Cheezits and probably improved their flavor. i also noticed that Dan was sleeping on the roof of the van and that the house was swarming with bees. i spit out yellow slime to remind myself that i was still sick while listening to someone talk about how they had a dream about lactating.

we went to the only place that anyone could to to in Fargo for breakfast, presumably. McDonald’s. Max saw a shoeless man in the bathroom, pacing behind a stall, flushing the toilet over and over again. he also observed a urinal malfunction and splash all over another guy.

we also noticed our brake light was out – a recurring problem with our van. after receiving some directions to an auto store from a police officer at the McDonalds, we drove into West Fargo, a place that resembled the hellish wasteland of automobile horror known as Columbus, OH.

we spent a long time yelling “GET A JOB” at all the construction workers along the way, then went to a decent pawn shop next door to the auto supply store. everyone looked at weapons. there was also a detective or FBI agent in there when we got in who was checking inventory for stolen goods. i did not talk to him or make eye contact.

we decided we had had enough of Fargo and drove to Minot, ND. On the way, I saw a bottle of Robitussin for $11, which is the only thing worth mentioning between the two destinations. we also listened to a lot of Nausea and Aus Rotten