richmond, mon

i lost my tour diary in asheville, so i’m going to have to piece things together with the help of several other people who most likely have a worse memory than i do. who would’ve thought it would be hard to hold on to a little tiny book while sleeping in your underwear on floors and getting drunk.

i woke up in the van, sweaty and dry mouthed. dan was in there too and being the early riser he is, we both decided to wander around this scenic area of richmond.

teur-ror
tore
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the hurricane actually kind of affected richmond. we had to switch back from sidewalk to street, back to the sidewalk again. we rounded a corner and realized we were in a pretty low-income part of the city and went to a mini-mart. i found a Barney the Dinosaur “i love my dad” book that had some vaguely creepy pictures that could be turned into show fliers. we bought water and came back to the house we were staying with these dudes, mark and brandon.

we’re in nashville right now and max from MW is sitting next to me on a drum throne in his underwear, taking a beer bong.

“hey max, should i put this picture of you up with a beer bong?”
“ehhh. ehhhhhh. yeah, fuck it. my probation officer doesn’t know how to google. fuck her!”

i should just write his full name over and over and over and over again now, hahahaha.

we bullshitted around and everyone was still asleep. rachael woke up. someone in the house mentioned that there was a place with $1 tacos. we obviously went there. joel ordered 8 tacos and a margarita. of course he didnt even eat half of them. fuck you, joel. we were split amongst two tables and max overheard one of two servers ask the other server, in spanish, “do you have the table full of pussies or do i?”

no idea how he could tell the difference.

we went to the liquor store to stock up and max bought some “japanese fuck pills”. some dude in front of the liquor store wearing one of those wal-mart skull t-shirts tried to sell ben some weed and talking about rap music. then criticizing the tire pressures on our trailer. he also told a story about how he tried to smoke weed with Project Pat but he refused, saying, “this shit is business.”

“you know what, i respect you, Project Pat!”

then some woman came out and asked us if we were in a band and gave us five pounds of fake beef. she gave the sketchy dude a bag and he asked me what to do with it. i told him you could make some decent stir fry out of it and he told me he was going to make kebabs out of it. yeah, fake meat kebabs. good one, dick.

we walked to Vinyl Conflict to meet up with Brandon, who is also an old friend joel’s. hopefully some day people get to hear the band that they had when they were like, 16, as it rips. abikiyokon, or whatever its called. i’d say joel would correct me but i don’t think he’ll ever read this. man, why am i so mad at joel when i’m writing all this?

anyhow, Vinyl Conflict was supposed to be closed on that day but Brandon said he’d open up just for us, but we had to wait. half of us walked to a graveyard and logan and i walked to some cheesesteak restaurant to use the bathroom. we came back and walked around with sticks, hitting things like a bunch of children. max mounted an apple he found on the ground on the top of one of his sticks and then stuck smaller sticks on it to create a fruit stick mace. then we had a rock fight, like a bunch of children.

we walked back to Vinyl Conflict and shuffled around the store looking at records and buying shirts. i finally got a Channel 3 and an Acid Reflux shirt and we played our 7″ for Brandon. joel sold a few of the super rare records he’s been carrying around on tour, selling at the table.

we went back to the house and threw around a football and drank on the porch. i guess we got a noise complaint but we had already left for the show.

we were gone for an unexplainable period of time doing unexplainable things, then we showed up to Strange Matter. i ate a fucking half-priced portabello cheesesteak that was served to me by an unforgettably attractive bartender. or maybe she wasn’t the one who gave me the food – fuck, whatever. someone there was unforgettably attractive. dan got the bloodiest burger of his life and i tried to talk to some dude with some cheese fries who i could tell immediately hated me. joel made a rookie mistake and got a bunch of thai food that i guess was so hot that it made logan cry.

siren played – lot of echo on the vocals, i think it might’ve been their third show. they were good and there was a pretty large crowd that had turned up by then. before our set, i made the decision that i no longer wanted to wear pants during our sets so it was me in my underwear and cowboy boots. punched pat and knocked him down and started kicking him. he still managed to clock me across the face with his headstock and i thought i split my eyebrow open. pat kept rolling around on the floor and our set turned into some sort of shitty Sonic Youth thing, but people seemed to like it for some stupid reason.

much worse did their thing and everyone flipped their shit for a few songs. pat screamed unintelligably into one of the other microphones and we got to do our favorite “YEAH, RIGHT” into the mic for “Forced Hand”.

we hung out in the parking lot for a bit and although we were right across the street from a bunch of cops, they didn’t give us any trouble. kinda nice for once.

Unholy Thoughts played and were all really tall.

no but seriously, fucking killer band and all super nice dudes. couldnt tell if we were more stoked on them or if they were on all of us. during their set, some dude jumped off a bar and donkey kicked some girl in the face. glad i didn’t see that. i did get thrown into a few overturned tables a few time and now i have some giant bruises.

i went outside and talked to a group of people and a coy asian girl who was wearing a shirt that i wanted to be wearing.

somehow we got back to the house and we stayed awake until 7 AM. drinking, drinking, drinking. we never found that co-axial cable we kept looking for all night. ryan from municipal waste came by to see joel but joel was dead. i fell asleep on the couch on the porch.

i woke up a few hours later with two dopey fuck-up cops giving me a hard time and accusing me of being a vagrant. i guess the landlord drove by early in the morning and took a picture of me asleep on the porch and reported it to the cops. i still don’t get how that works – did he text the fucking police or something?

“what are you doing here?”
“sleeping.”
“who are you here with?”
“dude, i’m here with a bunch of people inside. there’s no place to sleep so i’m here.”
“yeah well, we’re gonna see about that when we knock on the door and talk to them.”

they bang on the door and aaron comes out, shirtless.

“is this guy with you?”
“yeah. what?”
“uhhh”

then aaron slams the door on them. the cops apologize and give me this, “we’re just doing our jobs,” thing and leave. their presence was so out of place and unnecessary it had the same effect as waking up with a room full of ex-girlfriends, glaring at you.

“why the fuck are you even here? what the fuck are you doing?”

later after i woke up and gathered myself, i noticed that i didn’t have a busted open eyebrow from pat’s guitar, i had a full blown black eye. i dont remember how we left richmond or even why we left richmond.