OKAY! we’re on the bus right now, just left Pittsburgh, PA, had a GREAT time there. The most energetic audience we’ve played for yet. Got a standing ovation after a song that was just a regular old tune in the middle of the set…WE’LL TAKE IT! Anyway, the show just got better and better as the set continued. Good times. After hangin with the fans we stumbled around Carson Street on the Southside if Pittsburgh, which is a really cool area, kinda like the too cool area of San Frandisco, Valencia street too hip to live and all that. Since our show ended early (9:30pm) we had plenty of time to make fools out of ourselves. We spent a lot of the time after the show at a place called the smiling monkey, where there were only a few dudes wearing the bridge and tunnel blue striped shirt uniform, so we knew it would be gritty and fun and it was. Saw some good punk rock there while hangin out with our new pal Mark from Pittsburgh. tanks, I mean thanks for the drinks Mark!

After the bar a few of the members of our posse displayed how intoxicated they were on Carson street by approaching the locals with awkward conversation; we’re lucky there were no fights to say the least. The scene on Carson street was similar to that of North Beach, SF on a weekend night - cops everywhere, drunk stumbling rowdy frat boys, hoochie mamas, the whole deal - glad we survived!

oh yeah, the place we played was called the Rex theater and the folks who worked there were super cool.

Now we’re driving to Hannover, MA - just a short 11 hour drive. Good thing we have Rick at the wheel.

things we learned in Pittsburg:

- don’t walk up to a drunk caucasian guy on the street and tell him he looks like anything other than that.

- don’t shout to strangers on the street that they should “read more books”

- don’t talk about the West Coast and stuff like that

After the street “party” some of us watched a futboll (Soccer) game on the tele with Thomas. It was a fun experience to watch England whoop Russia’s ass, cause Thomas was way into it. We all learned a few things about the game from him. After waiting an hour for Joe and our tour manager Jeff, who were stumbling around the streets, they arrived and they were on one! it was hilarious. Glad Jeff and me kept Joe from getting arrested!

These pics were taken by Doug Seymour at our World Cafe Live show in Philly.

After our show in Philly last night, we all slept while the bus drove for a long time to Akron Ohio. When I woke up we were at a strip mall. I went in a book store and found these really cool books I’ve seen before; it’s a series called 33 1/3 and it’s these short books that are all about classic albums, mostly from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I got books on The Smiths “Meat is Murder’, A tribe Called Quest “People’s instictive paths”, Stevie Wonder “Songs in the key of life” and Beastie Boys “Pauls Boutique”. I got lucky cause those are definitely 4 of my top 25 albums! Anyway, these books have lots of behind the scenes details about the making of the albums, basically nerdy musician stuff.

The venue we played was something else.It’s called Tangier and looks like a castle from Casablanca or something. I dunno what the deal with the place is but on the inside it has hundreds of autographed framed pics of a long list of major superstars who have performed there. The question is WHY would all these people come to Akron? I figured tangiers must have some mafia connection (not Jazz Mafia but like The MOB yo.) Later we found out some really dark stuff about the history of the place in a tragic tale of deception, love, lust and…MURDER!!!!!!!

So anyway, we went and played our show - it was definitely more of a midwest vibe than Philly, kinda felt like we were in a casino or something. There was a lounge bar next to the showroom we played in and everytime the doors would open you would hear this band that i renamed “The Wedding Singer Tribute Experience”. Exciting. Oh also an experimental electro/ambient/noise group opened which really got the 80s pop fans scratching their heads! Whoa! Joe and i like the electro band (Jeremy Bible) but it was way outta place. our set was fun and it was the most bangin sound we had yet.

After the show we tought some locals how to ride the Ripstik, drank whiskey, hung with the locals and then the usual after after on the bus…mainly watching TV and listening to music. We watched the last half of Hustle and Flow - it was so real it was scary.

Also today we got to hang more with our really cool bus driver Rick. He is way cooler than our driver from the last tour. He actually comes and hangs out but isn’t all up in your business, he just chills and does his thing. We’ve been asking him about all the crazy stories he has about driving everyone around the country from Motley Crue to Wu-Tang. Also rick was the driver for a few Girls Gone Wild tours and floored us with some knowledge bout that bizarre scene! The craziest story had to be when he was driving Wutang up from NYC to Canada. They got stopped at the border cause lots of the guys in the band didn’t get rid of their weed (DUH you are WU-TANG you can get weed anywhere!! They got stopped and busted and while they were all in detention the mounties discovered that Ghost face Killa and thir manager had a warrant out for their arrest for a MURDER in NYC! They all had do spend two days in jail since everyone on the bus had prior arrests for drugs and assault (except Rick of course). Long story short, he won’t be going back to Canada anytime soon and we have to get another driver for that leg of this tour. Bummer, cause Rick is a cool guy.