June 22nd - St Louis to Chicago

@ The Moving Castle

Mountain Man

Beartrap

The New Yorker

Dastard

Xerxes

Proles

We pick up now where I am buying Horny Goat Weed at a Flying J somewhere in Illinois at about 2 AM. I had heard the myths and legends, but never seen the horniness for myself. Needless to say, I already knew the four quarters I had to drop to get it would be well worth it. So for the rest of the day I was getting stoked with Horny Goat Weed in my pocket.

After Will's turn driving was over, my turn at shotgun was over too, so I moved back to the nook between the backseat and door to sleep. When I woke up we were arriving in Chicago as the sun rose and the skyline was caught in that bluish red sunrise haze. Traffic is one thing I will never get used to, and I can tell already that when we are entering NYC I'll be shitting myself with pure terror. I've always been scared of crashing.

We got to the Moving Castle at about four or five and went straight to bed after Christine let us in. Me and Evan took this strange room in the back of the basement that was just big enough to fit a mattress in and the others slept on the ground on a rug. The room may have smelled slightly like cat urine.

I was obviously the first one up, and I want upstairs to hang out in my boxers for a bit. There was dumpstered ice cream around and so I broke my vegan edge for the first and last time of this tour. I've been thinking about keeping with it even after tour, just in the interest of staying healthy. Me and James are doing it for the entire three weeks though and he would probably be disappointed to find out I ate the ice cream since I have been keeping it a secret.

We had identified a problem within our ranks and it was that with a ll this summer heat, we had been getting too sweaty and wiping our foreheads with our shirts wasn't working. So, to fix this problem, we set out for a dollar store near the Castle. Our search led us to a CVS, Walgreens that both didn't deliver on the goods, and finally a Family Dollar with brightly colored hand towels for the entire family. This whole search on the streets of Chicago may have taken us about two hours just for the hand towels. That I'm not sure if anyone has used.

We returned to the Moving Castle to find our pal Olive had made some sweet limeade. We cooled off at the house for a while before returning to the task of exploring the city.

Since we were in Wicker Park, we took a little trip to Reckless Records and the surrounding area. At this point I still hadn't eaten anything and the Jimmy Johns across the street at one point was calling my name. Of course, I would rather go hungry than spend money, so we ended up wandering in the sun for a pretty long time without making any pit stop. Somehow, none of us got sunburned.

We got back to the house in time to get some delicious spaghetti and garlic bread. A meal fit for kings of the Castle. Soon, Beartrap and Mountain Man showed up and ate some sketti of their own. After about five bowls, I was finally satisfied.

It was an especially sweaty set and I completely sweat through Maddey's shirt that I stole. The New Yorker killed it and we hope to be hanging with them over a weekend or so in the future. Beartrap and Mountain Man both sounded better than St. Louis, I think the acoustics of the Fubar might have been a little weird the night before. Overall, it was a fun show and its been nice to be getting positive feedback lately.

During the show, I took the Horny Goat Weed in hopes that something cool would happen. I even leaned up against the wall during Beartrap's set in hopes that the vibration from Mickey's disgusting bass tone might have some effect, but honestly it was a total let down. I felt no more horny than usual.

After the music was over, we had a good time hanging with our pals on the road as well as some dudes from The New Yorker. Tomorrow is our last of three dates with Mountain Man and Beartrap and I can't wait to see those dudes when we roll into Boston.

Jesse and Mickey hung out especially after everyone had left and we had some fucking cool conversations in the kitchen. It was at this point that I was trying to convince everyone to wake up at 6:30 the next morning so we could get to Grand Rapids in time to watch the USA - Algeria game. Everyone (kind of) agreed and so this morning I tried to wake everyone up and was met with some really cool opposition. Eventually we were on the road out of Chicago at seven though. Luckily, with the time difference I didn't take into account, we'll be missing the entire first hour of the game.

Actually luckily though, is the fact that our pal Ciara in Grand Rapids has planned to make us a sweet vegan breakfast when we get there, so its not all bad.

Right now, we are driving through some pretty serious wind and storm clouds in northern Indiana and have a little ways to go to get to Grand Rapids. I am maybe the hungriest man alive and can't wait to get some breakfast.

Chicago, especially Christine, thanks for a sweet show and a good time.

Love,

Calvin/Zerk

June 21st - Louisville to St. Louis

@ Fubar

Bear Trap

Mountain Man

Xerxes

Widowmaker

At about noon, we all set off in Ol' Blue to get to St. Louis. Since Max had had such a catastrophe during Mountain Asleep tour (as well as probable other reasons), he ended up deciding to stay home in Louisville for the next three weeks instead of being number one road dog millionaire, so most of the first hours of conversation were spent contemplating kidnapping him to forcefully spend a couple weeks in a van with us.

The drive was mostly uneventful. James sat in his usual drivers seat position in only his boxers for the entire five hours, so his entire left thigh is now terribly sunburnt, and we made a sign to solicit young females to expose their breasts to us on the highway, but to no avail.

We got to St. Louis around four Central time, so we had a couple hours to kill before the show, which we understood would be starting at nine. Our first stop was to refill the gas tank, which we searched for the nearest station that wasn't a BP (in this case an Amoco), but the gas station we thought would be an Amoco turned out to be a property taken over by BP, which left us with no choice but to donate to the earth killing machine. Next, we spent a while eating and drinking at the local Taco Bell before we asked if we could leave the van in the parking lot in order to take a walk to see the arch.

Of course, the temperature in St. Louis in the mid-afternoon was pushing 90, and we were a bunch of sweaty boys wandering the dirty streets, so sunscreen was a must (especially for James after he had already roasted his entire left side of his body), but I found that the spray on sunscreen I had brought's applicator had somehow broken, so I spent the next couple minutes trying to figure out how to make it work. We also passed a gated swimming pool behind an apartment tower near the arch and ended up staring at the water for at least 30 seconds.

Once we had gotten to the arch, I was fed up with trying to get the sunscreen to work, so as any other person would do, I tried to throw it at the concrete so its contents under pressure would explode everywhere. They didn't, but the spray nozzle did break off which made it possible to hold the bottle near my crotch and shoot out a powerful stream at anyone I wanted to. Classic.

The arch was the arch, powerful and majestic. The real entertainment came from the yuppie dad and his two kids that got a ticket from a park ranger for carving their names in the metal near the base and the girl who walked out of the underground museum to a powerful, well-timed gust of wind that blew her skirt up and showed her multicolored underwear to the entire world. Luckily for her, the entire world didn't notice, just a couple dirty punk boys sitting on the bench straight ahead of her.

We walked through the underground museum for a while to escape the heat, and since it was a family friendly environment, Will had to tuck the part of his shirt that said "FUCK COPS" into his blue jeans American-style. James happened upon a family Otter stuffies that seemed to be miserable and wanted to come home with us, which was sad.

When we were fed up learning about history, we walked back to Taco Bell with the possible intention of driving to the zoo, but ended up just rehydrating and waiting for a good time to drive to the venue.

A good time came, and we loaded back in our steaming hot tin can van after Will's pals texted him to come on over. We were there early enough to eat some sunflower seeds and talk about assorted bands, both local to us and local to them.

Which brings us to the Fubar:

The Fubar is a quality venue. As far as bars that punk bands play in, it is a good combination of Old fashioned beer-sucking bartending, as well as DIY punk kind of atmosphere. Its about as close as you can get to being Skull Alley without actually being Skull Alley. There was weird movie playing on the TV screens above the bar(seriously like really fucking weird) There was pizza, for meat eaters, veggies, as well as vegans, for touring bands, which really was just what the doctor ordered.

Beartrap and Mountain Man are two really good bands, really good dudes, that I can't wait to hang with more in Chicago and Grand Rapids. The show went well, a good number of people came, and it was nice to see people wanting to buy our record after hearing our set. Hopefully that happens a lot in the next three weeks. Overall, it was a good day one of tour, and a good first show.

Now, we are driving to Chicago to meet our dear friend Christine at the Moving Castle. I am in the passenger's seat and Will is driving. I already pounded down one Berry flavored full throttle and have an Agave flavored one waiting for me. I have my shirt off and I intend on taking my pants off and perhaps, as Evan has dared me to, I might show the world a little of what I'm packing. The road ahead is all but empty, and I doubt I'll sleep tonight. We just stopped for gas, and now we are in it for the long haul for the rest of the night, so I have to keep Will awake before he starts getting weird like the last time we drove home from Cleveland. No Zippety Fucko tonight.

St. Louis, you rule, thanks for giving us a warm welcome to our summer tour of 2010. Now on to Chicago.

Love

Calvin/Zerk

Ps. A lightening bug just killed itself on our windshield and theres glow juice on it now. Fuck yeah.

CALVIN -

LISTENING TO:

YOUNG WIDOWS - OLD WOUNDS

LEMURIA - SELF TITLED EP

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY - ALL OF A SUDDEN I MISS EVERYONE

READING:

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST

DILLON -

LISTENING TO:

FUGAZI - 13 SONGS

NONE MORE BLACK - THIS IS SATIRE

GUNS UP! - ALL THIS IS & OUTLIVE

EVAN -

LISTENING TO:

HARMS WAY - REALITY APPROACHES

CRUEL HAND - PRYING EYES

THE RIVAL MOB - BITTER RIVALS DEMO

WILL -

LISTENING TO:

LA DISPUTE - SOMEWHERE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER BETWEEN VEGA AND ALTAIR

DAITRO - Y

COLISEUM - HOUSE WITH A CURSE

READING:

SUTTREE - CORMAC MCCARTHY

JAMES -

LISTENING TO:

VERSE - FROM ANGER AND RAGE

OWEN - DISCOGRAPHY

SLICK SHOES

READING:

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING