Weekend at E.J.'s II : Lil Burkey's Day out

we got the day started by snapping these glamour shots of ty for his lady. he's been missing her on the road since we left, and he wanted to do something nice. of course, by "his lady" i mean "hotornot.com".


here's me telling the other dudes about a sword fight i had gotten into earlier in the day. see, i got up early to go do some pilates and fencing at the gym on the roof of the hotel complex we were staying in, as is my usual routine. after the workout, when i came out of the shower, i got jumped by three dudes. they wanted my wallet, and i was like "are you CRAZY?!? i'm stark naked, and who would ever take their WALLET into the shower!?". luckily though, i never travel anywhere without my fencing sword, so i whipped that sucker out and showed those crooks who was boss.


we thought we had a leak in the tire, but we couldn't see any visible punctures or tears in the tread. nate had heard once that blind people's other senses become like super powers when they lose their sight. so, here he is closing his eyes and listening for the leak, thinking that his hearing would immediately improve. it didn't, but bryant did sneak up on him and fart right in his face and shout "did you hear THAT!". it was way immature.


not only was nate confused about the blind and their senses, but he also had a weird impression of what Canada was like. the first thing he wanted to do was infiltrate the parliament and plant an american flag in the middle of some official proceeding. here he is doing is best "impression of a Canadian" before he scaled the capital building wall. he did forget the flag though, so once he got into the building, he didn't know what to do, so he just ate some poutine at the parliament food court, came back outside, and we left.




Canada has the best malls. here we are killing time in an abandoned one, waiting for the zombies to come out and terrorize us. lucky for us, the same number of zombies came out at the mall as did people to the show that night, so we were totally safe.



also, before the show, time showed us this game he invented where you stand on one leg and slap at each other. very sissy.


the best shawarma we ever had?


casbah green room. casbah freaky scary terrifying weirdo green room.




after we played at the show, the crowd was really restless and screaming for more. so, when metavari came out for the encore we joined them on stage and ran through a set of improvisations and collaborations the likes of which have never been seen or heard. it was incredible. the place was electric and we sold out of all of our t shirts and cds and posters. then we all died and went to heaven.


here's nate's corpse right after he died.


detail of nate's rotten, bloated corpse.

you can't take that stuff to canada

so far this whole tour has consisted of almost exclusively driving, which doesn't make for much of a tour blog. it does, however, lend itself to a lot of inside-joking and delirious free association. And, a lot of funny made-up names like E.J. Turnbuckle, Chuck E. Jesus, and Dick Nail.

here is some stuff, though...mostly lies


Weird Owl Yankovic


what's there to say about this picture? brook has had this mustache in his bag since we left bloomington, and it was only when we were halfway across vermont in the rain that he decided to unveil it. at first, i did think he was nate, though.


nothing new here. moving right along...


here's tim sweet talking the border patrol. it was a VERY close call, but thanks to tim's unmatched charm and way with words we got trough the border with all of ty's k2 spice and bath salts in tact.


welcome to canada. have a seat.



after the show in montreal, a few of the guys in our crew kept insisting that you could get the best bagel in the world right around the corner from the venue. the next time someone says that to you, especially if you're very tired, just toss a baseball mitt in the microwave and chow down. it's virtually the same experience.


as is usual on any husband&wife tour, someone sat in gum...this time it was bryant.


world's biggest burger king playplace...

Getting our act together

Believe it or not, coming down off the high of an alternate, parallel dimension is not exactly a walk in the park. Not a single one of us has any recollection of what happened after the show in Boston, but when we woke up the next morning, this is what we found...

 
Ty and Burke woke up next to each other, neither knowing what unspeakable events had transpired in the night, but sharing an overwhelming sense of shame and crushing guilt.

 
Fortunately, Burke found a quiet place to reflect and try to make heads or tails of his foggy memories. He seemed better in the end, but for the duration of this quiet time I could hear him repeatedly muttering, "horror of horrors...".


When I came to, I found that my consciousness was being occupied by this cat. I don't know how he found his way into the annals of my mind, but for the truths he revealed to me, I will be forever grateful. Many of them were so vast and incomprehensable that I could never begin to explain them. However, one of the easy ones was that wet catfood looks just as gross to cats as it does to humans. Who knew!?


When we finally found Nate, he was in the sorriest state I've ever seen a man. He was stumbling around, wobbling back and forth almost growling, "horror of horrors...". We threw some water in his face, got out the smelling salts, and screamed at him, "WHAT IS THE HORROR OF HORRORS!". He began, hesitantly, to explain it to us. He was talking so fast that it was hard to catch it all, but there was something about a teenage barn party, skinny dipping, and an ocean full of dead, decaying bodies. Freaky stuff.


Thanks, in no small part, to our gracious host and friend Chris and his family we were all quickly snapped back into reality. We knew it was true because when we looked back on this photo, the food was real, and normal colors. No more of that psychedelic hook food crap. 


Metavari, The Oak and The Ax, Biddeford, ME. 
 

husband&wife in 4-D! tour blog now featuring aroma-scope. just sniff a fart while you're reading this and you'll know what it smells like where we are

we knew that getting to New York wasn't going to be easy. after all, bryant had no head. the first thing we tried was nate's idea of building a portal to an alternate dimension using only the stuff at the merch table. it didn't get us to new york any faster, but we did see some weird stuff...


...including this giant that dan asked for directions.


as it turns out, the quickest way back into our own physical reality was by taking the train. kinda boring after such a sweet entrance into another universe, but it was safe and it was practical.


while we were on the train we met the two most beautiful people in the world. here they are being nice to us in spite of our deficiencies.


they decided to take us under their wing on the remainder of our journey back to the one true reality. here we are eating food with them. you can't see it in the picture, but that's because the food in the alternate universe was exactly like the food the lost boys eat in "hook". for that reason, you can't tell right now, but tim's got a face full of blue mashed potatoes in his beard.


once our beautiful tour guides left us, we bumped into our animal spirit guide, Airbud. from here, he showed us the way. his first order of business was to concentrate on our auras and gather the proper psychic info he needed in order for us to find our way to the show. it was hard to gather what he was seeing, but he just kept muttering under his breath, "horror of horrors..." so i don't think it was good.


however, i think captain beefox was probably just thinking of some totally weird stuff on purpose in order to throw our spiritual guide of the trail and punk'd him. he's mischievous that way. oh, also, in the alternate universe, he had his head back.


eventually, we made it back to the show in our normal boring universe where we discovered that no fun was allowed, whatsoever.


metavari at don pedro in NYC


our dear old friends, ohnomoon. don pedro, NYC.
Sleeping Limbs by ohnomoon


metavari at the middle east, cambridge, MA.


night fruit. the middle east, cambridge, MA.


pretty and nice. the middle east, cambridge, MA.

by the way, Boston ruled last night. the middle east was super sweet to us, and all the other bands were out of sight. mondo thanks to ben hoffman, pretty and nice, and night fruit for hosting us!

Way Behind....

Let me start off by telling you just how sincerely sorry i am that this blog entry has been so long coming. The first few days of this tour have been full of action, and LOTS of driving. Driving, which not only impedes our ability to to update the blog, but also makes for some boring reporting from the road. we'll try to get into the swing and have the updates be as regular as possible, as soon as possible. we know how much you love them.

less go...


our newest besties State Park came down to bloomington for the tour kickoff show. they were real good, the real deal. you can probably already tell though, by the excitement on Tulo's face. If you don't know Tulo, he's the guy in the photo doing nothing.


packing th van on the first day of a tour is always a real challenge and always takes longer than you think its going to. so, this time we planned for it. it still took longer than we had planned, but not by much.


before we headed for cleveland to play at Happy Dog, a gourmet hot dog restaurant/bar, Ty convinced us all to walk across the street and grab some food at Naughty Dog, a bloomington based gourmet hotdog restaurant. So, we headed over there to meet up with our friends Fabio and Popeye the Sailor Man and grab a dog before we drove 7 hours and ate another dog.


bryant ate so many hotdogs at our first stop that this head fell off. here it is just lying in the back of the van on top of some gear. we figured we'd try to reattach it at the show. it was kind of rolling around a lot and making a bunch of racket, so eventually we just jammed it under the seat for the remainder of the van ride.


however, his headless body did keep walking around and bumping into (and breaking) stuff everytime we had to stop, so we bought this indian head to screw on in the meantime. it worked pretty well, but it definitely didn't speak the same language as us, which posed a problem.


the happy dog, while its perfectly delicious, does not make your life easy. here are tim and burke agonizing over the myriad choices they have for hotdog toppings. if you know these two guys at all, then it will not surprise you that this decision took them well over 4 1/2 hours.


...and THIS is what they ended up with. i promise you there is a hotdog under all of that mess.


Metavari at the Happy Dog, Cleveland, OH.


Soporus at Kung Fu Necktie, Philadelphia, PA. Soporus were great, and also very nice fellows. it was fun hanging in Philly, and meeting some friends and strangers we hadn't met before.


VANity.

on to NYC!

...and introducing Mick Shrimpton!!

It's happening AGAIN!!! We're hitting the road next week with our dear friends Metavari in celebration of their newly purchased van. We fully intended to soil that thing to our highest potential and leave no scent un-smelt.
here are the dates:
8/30 Bloomington, IN
8/31 Cleveland, OH
9/1 Philadelphia, PA
9/2 Brooklyn, NY
9/3 Cambridge, MA
9/4 Biddeford, ME
9/5 Montreal, CANADA
9/6 Ottawa, CANADA
9/7 Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
9/8 Grand Rapids, MI
9/9 Chicago, IL
9/10 Holland, MI
9/11 Fort Fun, IN
...just click 'em for all the important info.

we started rehearsing today, and it went really well. here's the proof:

tim and bryant discussing guitar amp sounds...bryant's all like "i need more BASS!", to which tim replies "there's already too much bass as it is, i'm not going to turn it up just for the HALIBUT!" to which bryant replied "oh, i can't hear it. my hearing used to be pretty good. i must've LOBSTER and never FLOUNDER" to which tim replied "huh?".


and here's burke. staring off into space without a thought in his pea brain.

we're really excited about these shows. so, if you know anyone in or near those towns we're approaching, tell them to come on out. we're intentionally planning to have fun at each and every show on this whole tour.