brooklyn blizzard of twenty-aught-ten

these are a coupla shots from this week's epic blizzard in brooklyn, new york.  about two feet of snow fell in a span of a few hours, with high winds and brutal white out conditions.  streets were unplowed for days and buses, plows, taxi cabs, police cars and civilian cars were all stuck in the snow, blocking streets, intersections and traffic.  jenny lost her phone in the snow, and it took me personally two extra days to get home to boston as buses were not running during and after the storm, and even when i did get to the bus station on tuesday i had to wait for 4 hours outside in the cold with wet feet to get a ticket and get on a bus.  go unlucky star and no-fun-wah!  anyway, bars remained opened for the most part during the storm, and if you get the chance, i highly recommend a hot buttered rum from quarter bar in gowanus...

get sharp

in this weeks edition of "black metal kitchen" we listened to the new darkthrone record called circle the wagons, and made spaghetti, sauce, and cheesy garlic and onion bread while drinking delicious american beer.  thanks to all the wonderful women in my life for contributing these dangerous and beautiful finely edged instruments to my collection.  the real mean looking knife to the left of this picture is so fucking sharp its terrifyingly awesome.  i minced some garlic like a vampire's life depended on it.  hopefully i wont tommy iommi my fingers off...
listen to black metal, and play with knives!

coffee paradise

The nederlands sure are something boy, let me tell ya what. Walkin around in the snow, eatin doner kebaps, dodgin cruiser bikes, strollin into a coffee shop pool hall and countin change out of my not warm enough canvas jacket's pockets to legally purchase a couple of hog legs for some post show weirdness and a good nights sleep after not sleeping the night before partying in London at some terrible bar called big red that I strongly recommend avoiding at all costs.
Two more shows, two more drives, two more flights and this crazy trip will be nothin but a hazy memory, more pages in more books ...
See ya in the good ol' usa!!!

brighton, england

go figure, last saturday night we had a night off.  we were supposed to play an after party to a fest in the netherlands with this amazing dutch band, The Devils Blood, but it got canceled.  so we took a ferry over to england and drove to brighton by the sea one night early.  having nowhere to stay, we got directions from our promoter to this pub hectors house that was holding a rock n roll horror punk dj night.  i made friends with the dj, this amazing dude neil who spun rad tunes, and took us back to his house at 3am for "some smoke and some drink".  it got wild quickly with more fake jager, conversations with proper british pie chefs, this is boston not la ripping on the stereo, random people popping in from the street, good times with great new friends.  if you are ever stranded in brighton on a saturday night, head to hectors house and after buying a few rounds, ask around for the after party.  you will not be disappointed!
the next day we had all day to walk around brighton, in the north lane shopping district.  peter and i got a pint at the heart and hand, one of my best mate's former local when he lived in brighton.  a nice proper english pub.  i also picked up two motorhead, two megadeth, and one deep purple record(s).
score !!!

road beers

not a whole lot has been happening out of the ordinary madness that is life on the road lately, so there is no apology from this guy for lack of updates.  

in germany, it is legal to walk around in the streets with an open container, so after the show is over we usually gang up and rove around town looking for an open kabap or chip shop and any interesting bars.  as in the top picture, we found nothing expect this silly sign is essen, and in the bottom picture, in koln,  jonah and i found a netto supermarket that sold off brand jager for 5 euros a bottle.  meisterschutz!!  

most bars wont let us in, being the sketchy foreign long haired rockers that we are, so then we will jam on back to the venue and get wild, racing cardboard boxes and trash barrel rides down staircases and breaking cots that were nicely set up for us to sleep on imitating pro wrestling "top of the ropes" type moves.

the b-team

phil lynott statue, harry street. dublin, ireland.
we played in dublin last night and trekked through the icy streets after our soundcheck to go see phil with a group of about 15 people.  this is me and carson from saviours, repping the b-team super hard.  seeing the cavern club in liverpool (or whats left of it) and the phil statue in dublin are the only two things i really wanted to do on this trip.  two for two!!

merry christmas from belfast

merry christmas from bellfast, sitting at the spring and airbrake with our friends in saviours and municipal waste.  we got to town early, driving late last night from an after party in leeds england, to the ferry in holyhead to make our 830 am ferry.  we arrived in dublin about noon and drove up to belfast, noting how the so called emerald isle is very white right now.  tired and dazed from yet another all nighter traveling, we wandered around downtown belfast in the grey cold and went to a really festive outdoor marketplace with all kinds of crazy foods and drinks like mulled wine, hot whiskey, hog roasts, and a kangaroo burger that i could not say no to trying.  ive never eaten kangaroo before, and it tasted like nothing else ive ever eaten, so i guess kangaroo tastes like kangaroo.  go figure.

elevated living

saviours, from oakland california.  were doing the whole tour with these maniacs and it's already ridiculous heavy partying.  this picture is from the first night in Berlin, at Kopi.  It was thanksgiving, we ate spaghetti at our chummy goran's house and then tried really hard to stay up past midnight to beat jetlag, resulting in some of us being up until 9am, myself included.

our new goal is to go to sleep before it gets light out, and weve almost accomplished that one.  last night in Hannover we got to sleep at 5am, after drinking all these silly shots at some bar hours after the show finished.  german kids dancing at shows is always a cause for celebration!

our chariot awaits

this is our van for the second tour this year.  its really big and really fast, the heat works and its got 9 seats in it, which are usually full of random swedish punk rockers that make fun of us and buy us beer at gas stations.

i cant complain, im on a plane

happy birthday to me, and happy thanksgivin' to yall!!  crossin' the pond tonight and celebrating thanksgiving with our oakland brothers, Saviours, tommorow in berlin...the fabled deutschland awaits!!!

it's a long way to the top

  this is a sketch i had made on june 12, 2006, in the netherlands, at a tattoo shop in the beautiful city of den haag called on edge.  it soon after became my first tattoo, during my first real bands last tour, a seven-week monster all in europe, starting in iceland and finishing in holland, taking in a lot of countries,  bands, highways, tweakers, and hangovers in the process.  4 years and two bands later, nothing has changed.  im still broke, i still love it, and i still want it more than anything.  

cheers to all the idiots still chasing down the impossible!