Coming February 2008...

Now that Tour is over for the year???

So we are finally back in austin doing a whole lot of nothing. Just kindof hanging out. I think we will start practicing and recording again this upcoming monday, but the week of nothing was very well needed. We are recording and writing a bunch of new songs at the house and getting ready to get a new set together for next year.
so here is a prose poem from Charles Baudelaire for his book "Paris Spleen".

"BEAT UP THE POOR"

For fifteen days I had shut myself up in my room and had surrounded myself with the most popular books of the day (that was sixteen or seventeen years ago); I am speaking of the books that treat of the art of making people happy, wise, and rich in twenty-four hours. I had digested-- or rather swallowed-- all the lucubrations of all the purveyors of public happiness-- of those who advise the poor to become slaves, and of those who encourage them to believe that they are all dethroned kings. It will be readily understood that I was in a dazed state of mind bordering on idiocy.

Nevertheless I seemed to be conscious of an obscure germ of an idea buried deep in my mind, far superior to the catalog of old wives' remedies I had so recently scanned. But it was still only the idea of an idea, something infinitely vague.

And I left my room with a terrible thirst. The passion for bad literature engenders a proportionate need for fresh air and cooling drinks.

As I was about to enter a bar, a beggar held out his hat to me and looked at me with one of those unforgettable expressions which, if spirit moved matter or if a magnetizer's eye ripened grapes, would overturn thrones.

At the same time I heard a voice whispering in my ear, a voice I recognized perfectly; it was the voice of my good Angel, or good Demon, who accompanies me everywhere. Since Socrates had his good Demon, why should not I have my good Angel, why should not I, like Socrates, have the honor of receiving a certificate of madness signed by the subtle Lelut and the knowing Baillarger?

There is, however, this difference between Socrates' Demon and mine, that his Demon appeared to him only to forbid, to warn or to prevent, whereas mine deigns to advise, suggest, persuade. Poor Socrates had only a censor; mine is a great affirmer, mine is a Demon of action, a Demon of combat.

Well, this is what the voice whispered to me: "A man is the equal of another only if he can prove it, and to be worthy of liberty a man must fight for it."

Immediately I leaped upon the beggar. With a blow of my fist I closed one of his eyes which in an instant grew as big as a ball. I broke one of my finger nails breaking two of his teeth and since, having been born delicate and never having learned to box, I knew I could not knock out the old man quickly, I seized him by the collar with one hand and with the other took him by the throat and began pounding his head against the wall. I must admit that I had first taken the precaution of looking around me and I felt sure that in this deserted suburb no policeman would disturb me for some time.

Then, having by a vigorous kick in the back, strong enough to break his shoulder blades, felled the sexegenarian, I picked up a large branch that happened to be lying on the ground, and beat him with the obstinate energy of a cook tenderizing a beefsteak.

Suddenly-- O miracle! O bliss of the philosopher when he sees the truth of his theory verified!-- I saw that antique carcass turn over, jump up with a force I should never have expected in a machine so singularly out of order; and with a look of hate that seemed to me a very good omen the decrepit vagabond hurled himself at me and proceeded to give me two black eyes, to knock out four of my teeth and, with the same branch I had used, to beat me to a pulp. Thus it was that my energetic treatment had restored his pride and given him new life.

I then, by many signs, finally made him understand that I considered the argumant settled, and getting up I said to him with all the satisfaction of one of the Porch sophists: "Sir, you are my equal! I beg you to do me the honor of sharing my purse. And remember, if you are really philanthropic, when any of your colleagues asks you for alms you must apply the same theory which I just had the painful experience of trying out on you."

He swore that he had understood my theory, and that he would follow my advice

End of Tour!

Well the Tour is now officially over. We played our last show in Chicago last night at The Empty Bottle with The Deadly Syndrome. Last night's show is actually our last out of town show we will play for the rest of the year. So if you live in Austin or around Austin you can see us play at Trophy's on November 8th with Abby Birds and a solo set by Tim Regan.

We had a lot of fun this tour with The Deadly Syndrome and if you didn't get a chance to see them then you should definitly check them out. Daniel and I agree that they put on one of the best live shows we have seen this year. Incredible group of guy's playing some incredible music. If you have never heard of them go listen to their music at myspace.com/thedeadlysyndrome.

Just because the tour is over does not mean that this blog is over. We will still be posting some random, funny, serious and thoughtful posts until the next tour. So keep checking in and have a wonderful Halloween!!

uhh...Brooklyn, NY to Toronto, ON...a bunch of days

There would be more pictures in my posts if my camera actually co-operated with my computer. So until I get a new computer, prepare for globs of text.

Friday:
In reference to things we might do on one of our days off in New York, we only did one...and only two of us did it. Tim and I made it out to the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) on Friday, which was in particular a good day to go (as we had planned), because Target sponsers FREE TICKETS for the museum for 4 hours on Friday night, which usually cost $30. So we went in and saw Art, and some of it was way lame...(ropes hanging from ceilings in my humble opinion....is not art) but some was really cool. For instance, I saw a bunch of really cool Picasso sketches of Minotaurs in various scenes, which was very creepy/cool.

My favorite thing I saw was a series of 3 paintings by René Magritte.
I have pictures of them...but...my camera doesn't work, remember? Here's what they looked like though:

Anyway, I really liked those.

Before that, Tim and I hit up the infamous Carnegie Deli, which we eventually found after walking the wrong way for a lonnng time. The sandwiches were HUUGE (I'll post pictures later), and filling. We also incidentally passed by "The Friars Club", which was super awesome to me, as it was one of the main focuses of an entire episode of Seinfeld.

Saturday:
We got up really early and headed over to the Music Hall of Williamsburg for our final show of CMJ. Incidentally, it was the same venue we had played our last CMJ show LAST year (Northsix)...but revamped and renamed. We pretty much got screwed on our set time because Trail of the Dead took way tooooo long and didn't really help us out. But whatever. It was fine. We spent most of the day watching bands play, which was fun and cool. We saw Mika Miko, Anna Ternheim (really really cool Swedish singer/songwriter), Islands, Will Sheff (from Okkervil River, whom Tim is friends with), and finally And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead.

Sunday:
We made our way to Boston, first stopping at what Tom, (our manager, aka "Major Tom") deems as the best pizza place in the world, to pick up a slice or 2 to compare Chicago to New York pizza and so on. I liked it very much, and was above par as far as most pizza is concerned, but Tom insisted I didn't get the "true" version of it, because I ordered the pre-cooked slices and not a whole pie. But whatever, we didn't have time for a whole pizza, and we'll be back in New York soon enough.

We stopped by Matthew's office (our awesome Lawyer) to pick up a keyboard we had dropped off there from a previous tour, and headed to Boston.

We had already figured out that that night was going to be the worst possible night of the year for us to be playing in Boston......it was game 7 of the ALCS, and the game was in Boston. So not a lot of people at the show, but it was understandable.

Monday:
Got a late start, dropped off and said goodbye to Tom, and started driving towards Toronto. We made it to Henreitta, NY, just outside of Rochester.

Tuesday:
Which brings us to today! Previously, we have had really really really bad experiences of traveling into Canada. Our average Customs/Immigration stop has been about 4 hours, and has included interrogation, intimidation, and confiscation of our entire van, and taking everything out and searching through every last bag.

So, today we were prepared for our usual crappy migration, and found that 2 members of the Deadly Syndrome hadn't even brought passports or birth certificates, which is required to get into Canada. So imagine our surprise when they (traveling an hour or so ahead of us) made it through in roughly a half an hour, and didn't have to even pay taxes on their merch. Uhhhhh.....what??? I figured fate still hated us, and we would personally be there at the border trying to talk our way into Canada for a couple hours.

We pulled up to the booth, handed them all our paperwork and passports...and they sent us right on through. HOLY CRAP! This hasn't happened in well over a year! Joel was so in shock he was still convinced that "that couldn't be all there was", and thought we had to pull over. But no! Free and clear, the Customs agent barely looked at our paperwork. Could today possibly be the best day of our lives??

We recently updated our GPS, and doing so, it somehow erased all the map information for Canada. So we're flying (driving) blind in Canada, which is not something we're accustomed to doing. Luckily, we pulled alongside the likes of the Deadly Syndrome driving in their van, who has a working GPS, and followed them to the Venue.

Upon arriving to "Sneaky Dee's", a Canadian Tex-Mex (*snicker*) Restaurant/Venue where we're playing tonight, we found that we couldn't load in or do anything until 7pm...which gave us 3 hours to kill. We all (TDS included) walked down the block and got some food stuff for our bellies from a Greek Restaurant (and I found out you pronounce the word Gyro like "euro"...not "Jie Row", like a Gyroscope). And now i'm sitting inside of our van parked on the street, and happened to find free wireless internet, so I thought I would take the time do overload you with my verbose entry.

The show...COMES TONIGHT!

Buttface Carl!

Hello everybody. Guess what? BUTTFACE CARL IS BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER!!!

Boston goes to the world seriers

This is what we saw downtown after the game.
this is my first blog post, and i hope you like whats coming.
Shows have been going great. NYC was off the chain.
And we got sponsered by GOldie and we all wear really nice bling.
Come say hello in toronto.
Tripple Lindy!!!!!
Hamburg!!!!

Brooklyn, NY - 10.19.2007

As I lay here waiting for Tim, Tom, and Joel each to awaken from their respective slumber, my mind wanders over changes in the last year. The first and foremost...how now I find it much easier to fall asleep on a blow up mattress (though it is a rather nice mattress), rather than my own normal bed at home. I've probably spent more time this year upon this piece of portable furniture, from which I now type, than anywhere else.

It's a somewhat sad thought. Aimlessly (not really) wandering the country, plopping down rubber and filling it with air wherever we might find ourselves for a night. Plopping a sleeping bag on type, dropping a pillow, and resting my head here every night. I've reversed my own normalcy to that of being uncomfortable on my own bed in Austin, to falling asleep much easier on this Aerobed from Bed, Bath, And Beyond. It's fine, I guess. It just seemed to me as a weird juxtaposition between "normal" life, and "on the road" life.


Sorry I don't have any pictures from what we did the past couple days. But I thought I would fill anybody in nonetheless.

Wednesday:
Joel, Tom, and myself got up rather early (9am) to go have a little meet and greet with Justin from AAM (Advanced Alternative Media) who does our radio promotions. So it was a long walk from Mark's house (the friend with whom some of us are home invading) to the subway stop, and then a ride on the subway to Manhattan, and then 8 blocks to their offices. We met, gossiped for awhile, and then made our leave. Tim was supposed to have met us there, as he was only staying 1 freaking block away from the AAM offices...but I got a text message from him at 11 (when he was supposed to be there) with only the word "Nope".

We had made plans to go to some sort of TV show taping, whether it be Conan, Letterman, The Daily Show, or The Colbert Report, and I had even gone as far as to actually acquire online reservations for the Daily Show, but then Tom found out that we were going to do this photoshoot thing in Brooklyn, and then had to be at Galapagos at 5 to do a soundcheck for our show there later that night at 12:30. So we canceled the Daily Show tickets (for fear of being forever blacklisted from future taping opportunities), and made our way back to Brooklyn. The timing for the photoshoot didn't work out, so we made plans to do it the following day. So we laid low, and then made our way in our Van over to the Galapagos for soundcheck.

So we get there at 5pm, load our stuffs into one room, then told we don't need drums, among other things, and load the drums back into the van. We then find out that we're playing in a different room on the side, called the "Side Stage", and start moving our stuff into that room. There's no drums set up on this new stage, so, we load the drums back inside. And again after we finish doing all this, we're told we don't need drums yet again. So back they go! Hoorah! So we're hanging out for awhile letting the super nice sound dude Tim get a handle on his situation and set his own equipment up. We leave and go get some coffee, and by this time it's 6:30 or so. We get back from coffee, and it's decided that (as I and everyone had already felt) there was no need for a soundcheck, and we should just pack up our stuff back into the van and head to the next venue where we were playing a show in Manhattan at 11pm.

So off we go....over the bridge and to the Delancey, our next venue. We found a really really awesome parking spot, unloaded our stuff down some stairs, and filled time for the next 4 hours. We played right after a band called Foreign Born, which I only saw one song of, but I liked what I heard. It was a small stage and small room, but energetic and lively....a pretty awesome show. We kept it a short set, as we had about 30 minutes to load back into the van, drive over the bridge back to Brooklyn, unload at Galapagos, setup, and play. Somehow we made it in time, got our stuff ready and played. It was a somewhat crappy show for me personally, because I had already been super tired the whole evening, and was kindof "played out", and then I broke a string, which kindof threw me off my game even more. There weren't a whole lot of people there to watch at all, but I guess it was fine.

Then for me and Joel and Mark's roommate Mike, it was off for bed.

Thursday:
Annie from Au Revoir Simone had been at our show at the Galapagos the night before, and invited us all to her house for Brunch with her and her awesome husband Doug (he plays drums for Dirty on Purpose). Me and Joel made our way over there around noon, followed by Greg and his girlfriend. We had a pleasant brunch, filled with enthralling conversation, and then said our goodbyes.







Back to Mark's, we chilled for awhile, and then made our way over to where we were having our Photoshoot at 5pm, with a quick stop at my most favoritist music store in the country, Main Drag Music. Joel and I perused the shop for little bit, not lingering for too long as to not become forlorn for the things we could not buy, and left empty handed. I did see one of the dudes from TV on the Radio there, though.

We went over to our publicists office, where we were supposed to rendezvous for the photoshoot, waited for Tim and Greg to show up, and went and took pictures. yay. It was quick and painless for the most part, but always awkward as I'm beginning to find out they always are. We finished, and then Tim, Joel, and I went to a rare full sized supermarket and bought grocieries to make Spaghetti, and went home. We made dinner, watched the Office, Boston/Indians game, and then Conan. And then I went to bed.


Which brings us to the present. Today the plans include riding the Staten Island ferry, going to a taping of the Colbert Report, and if not that, go to the MOMA for free, and eating at some sort of notable New York establishment. But as it is right now, it's 12:30 and half of us are still in bed asleep (Joel has since risen from slumber in the time it has taken me to write this post). So we'll see what we actually get to do.

Tomorrow we have one last show in Brooklyn, a showcase/party for AAM, and then we're off again with The Deadly Syndrome for our last 4 shows of the year.

Over and out

Newport, KY / New York City, NY 10.16.2007

Southgate House was fun. Not that many people. I think I could count them all on my hands but it was a fun show. Last time we were there we ate at a really good restaurant called Bar Louie which is located right across the street inside this mall. Well turns out this time we decided to go back there and eat again. I had this wonderful mac and cheese with shrimp. YUMMMY.

Today we drove around New Jersey for a while. We were at a Dunkin Donuts getting a delicious breakfast and met this nice gentlemen who was trying to get a taxi to the airport. Since we had nothing better to do we gave him a ride and he turned out to be really cool. Then we hung out with our AWESOME lawyer Matthew Kaplan for a while and had lunch. Then we drove 4 miles to Brooklyn but it took us about 3 hours. That SUCKED. Chillin in Brooklyn tonight. Everybody come out to the shows this week!



Southgate House Window







New York Tunnel



Traffic. I HATE TRAFFIC.

NYC/ Hackensack, NJ/ NYC......what?

Made it to New york city last night. Dropped off Greg at his girlfriend's house. Sorry ladies Greg is not single. Had a delicious dinner with our good friend Jeff then drove out of the city to a hotel in hackensack, NJ.

I hate it when you go to a hotel that advertises "FREE HIGH SPEED INTERNET" then when you get there no internet at ALL. Then they call you at 11 am and yell at you "CHECK OUT TIME CHECK OUT TIME." Screw all that. Oh well. Heading back to New York and will be there for a week. So if you live in the City then come check some shows out throughout the week. First one is on Wednesday at Galapagos in Brooklyn.

Anderson, Indiana 10.13.2007

ONOM and TDS are now in Anderson, Indiana. This "tour" really hasn't felt like a tour mainly because we havn't played any shows yet. It seems we are just traveling around the country to the most boring small towns trying to have fun. So far we have been successful at that.

Tonight our Hotel in Anderson, Indiana had a putt putt golf and games / batting cages right next door so we thought it would be a great idea to play some golf and hit some balls. yippee!

Davenport, Iowa 10.12.2007

Once Again Oh No Oh My are back on tour. This time with our friends The Deadly Syndrome.
Right now we are in Davenport, Iowa. Today we played on Daytrotter.com. Really really really cool website.
Now we are all in Davenport trying to make the best of our lives.