Tuesday, October 23, 2007

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!


3 comments:

historyjen said...

I LOVED, LOVED the show tonight (Sneaky Dee's), guys! Awesome stuff. Best set I've heard in several months. And I go out regularly...

Hope to see you back here soon!

Unknown said...

Ropes=lame. I love those paintings...Magritte is amazing. And YAY! for Canadian border crossing that does not involve getting searched. New Pushing Daisies tonight...hurray!

sean o'kane said...

having lived semi-near to the canadian border for a good chunk of my life, i can say that thats the way it goes. some days you'll try to cross, even with just a car of 2 people and no bags, and be stuck for 5 hours. other days you can breeze through with goods in your lap. it all depends on who you get inspecting, plus the times you go. weird stuff.

good luck on the rest of the tour!