KILL EVERYONE NOW!

so here i am, chilling in oklahoma city with my man brad wittle, watching a townes van zandt dvd...
i tried to do a post in the middle of last week, but i deleted it. nobody wants to read the rantings of a man deep in the darkest fathoms of depression (i mean, nobody WOULD read it, but...), talking about how the world is ending and how nobody cares about anything and how everything is utterly meaningless and pointless. sounds great, dude. i then went into a detailed recounting of my life-long struggle with depression and how i used to take pills and how now i just medicate myself with drugs and alcohol.
i don't know, i just got bummed out. i think it's taken me this long to realize exactly who i am, where i am and where i'm going. i got some perspective on my life. the writhing adolescent punk in me looked up for a minute and saw the horizon, saw that the end of the road is closer than when he last looked. is it a bad thing in life to hold onto your fantasies when reality is so fucked up? i guess not. it's really hard for me not to view everything in the context of what i feel to be the "big picture", which is that everything is ultimately, utterly pointless and meaningless while at the same time being full of secret meaning and significance.
this is the essential conflict. i generally view things from the dark side.
i've realized that very few people will care about the music i make, but some people will care a lot. what's better?: a lot of people kind of caring about your songs (and probably just one song they heard online) for a minute or a couple people feeling deeply affected by something you've done.
at pretty much every show on this tour there's been one or two people who REALLY love our band.
thank you.
you rule and you make me want to keep going.
unfortunately, it's hard not to feel like you're drowning in a sea of indifference and snide hostility. people don't know who we are and if they do, they ain't feeling it. that's cool, i get it. everyone's a critic. a lot of people think our record is shit, and maybe it is, but it's my shit and it's the best shit that i can shit, you know?
i'm just trying to make something good and maybe i'll never get close, but at least i'm trying and at least i'm putting it out there...
right?

"...you tell me that i make no difference, but at least i'm fucking trying! what the fuck have you done?"

i love rock and roll and i know that it will never die.

BEST BAND EVER? (part 14)

DESTROYED

a few weeks ago, i was driving the delivery van for my work along east cordova street in vancouver when i see this guy with crazy hair walking on the sidewalk carrying an electric guitar by the neck. i think to myself, "hey, that bum has a pretty sweet guitar."... it was dan bejar.
i actually get a bit starstruck when i see dan, i feel like a blushing teenage girl. not only is he pretty much the best guy at writing songs around, he's also devastatingly handsome. i've been known to rant about how amazing destroyer is, i mean, RUBIES...pffft! forget about it. i feel like i'm just now starting to really understand what some of the songs are about on albums like thief and streethawk: a seduction and i've listened to them for years! his lyrics are so fast and dense and full of sly inferences and dry humour, there's layers to that shit...like a god damn onion!
okay... i'm getting excited.
we played in st. louis the other night and destroyer was playing across town, so we booked it out of our show and over there in time to catch a couple songs. great stuff. i managed to play it cool and keep it together when we were all hanging out after. thank god.
the other great thing was that our friend scott august was touring with them selling their merch. scott is responsible for the monkey faces in the insert of our new album, which were these scary animatronic characters that would groan to life and "perform" songs like "ramblin' man" at monkey time pizza in the local mini-golf course/arcade when we were teenagers. they were getting pretty ragged and jolty by the time they were finally retired a few years ago. i'm not sure what took their place.

anyway, scott is an amazing artist. you should google him and read about his art and look at some examples of the shit he's up to these days. be sure you put in "scott august kelowna" or you'll get a lot of stuff about a guy who does native american inspired new age music, which could also be cool or at least relaxing.


also,

POUTINE

dear united states of america,
why is this weird to you? what is gross about a pile of fries topped with cheese curds and smothered in gravy? you guys like to eat shit that's really bad for you, so this should be right up your alley, right? seriously, it's delicious. AND it's great when you're hungover.
although this is a french thing, it's available all across canada. you can get poutine in your combo at most fast food chains across the country. poutine is single-handedly responsible for bringing about peace between anglos and francophones here, everyone can agree on poutine... god's perfect food. maybe by embracing poutine, america could abandon it's primitive war-mongering ways and move towards a state of true peaceful enlightenment. maybe not.
for a while, sean was obsessed with poutine. i mean, who hasn't been, but this was weird... he was eating it upwards of four times a week. it was getting excessive and we were all becoming concerned for his physical and mental health. it started to take over his personality. his girlfriend was complaining that he was starting to smell weird. the last straw came when he tried to climb in the bathtub with her while eating a large tray of dairy queen poutine. i shit you not. she laid down the law and the spell was broken, but for how long...
to this day he gets a strange far away look in his eyes at the mention of it, like he's come in from a long day at battle to a banquet table piled high with crisp, golden french fries with cascading piles of the choicest cheese curds and lusty wenches ladeling thick brown gravy over it all from a great steaming cauldren.
anyway, we're in montreal (the cradle of poutine) chilling out for a couple days in the midst of our massive (and massively unsuccessful) american tour. the "bury the hate in 2008" tour. i'm just pushin' it down, storing it up...
nice.
also,

RUTLAND

ryan comes from rutland, which is an area in kelowna, b.c. that has been a skid stronghold since the 80's. in the 90's those skids' younger brothers kinda took over the scene, bringing on the era of the skomies (skid-homies).
we found this shit last night and it kind of made us nostalgic for the old home turf.

first off: though these guys are not skids per se, laying patches has long been a popular skid past-time. the camaros of yesteryear have been replaced by the low-rider pick up trucks of today. these guys have nothing to do but get drunk and do this, as evidenced by the length of this "greatest patches" clip. enjoy!


then, after a long day of drinking and laying patches, these guys like to get together and spit mad street truth. this one is looooong, but...rewarding?

you tell 'em, guy!