The Day of Portland Part One

I finished the last blog in a place called “Stumptown Coffee.” I had asked my own twin Piss to use my own credit card to buy a mocha for me as to save time, since they wanted to leave and they were waiting for me to finish typing. The idea that they do not care about this blog leaves me with a deep, scientific sadness. Yes-Yes told me late one night that documentation is important in all instances, so I merely thought that this would be considered to be one of those very instances. 

We spent several minutes in the van doing absolutely nothing, for the city had offered very little. We eventually decided to go to a record store (I think it was 2^nd Avenure) where we bought Crass – “CHRIST,” The Pogues – “RUM, SODOMY, AND THE LASH,” a bootleg live Pogues LP, Devo – “DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE,” something by Tom Waits – “BAD AS ME,” some appealing tea shirts, Crass – “PENIS ENVY,” The Cramps – “SONGS THE LORD TAUGHT US,” and an unashamed purchase of The Transplants – “IN A WARZONE.” Timebomb pulled me aside during my browsing to direct my attention to the defecation of a crust punk in front of one of the governor’s offices. It was of an enormous quantity. I have been doing mild research on crust punks lately, and I have discovered few things about them, though I hope I am permitted to learn more.

We went to a Target outside the city limits because we were all feeling overwhelmed by the population of Portland. I thought a suburban Target would be an excellent place to spend time on a toilet, but it ended up being one of the worst moments I’ve had this tour so far. While I was toileting, a loud man barged into the restroom, screaming into his cellular. Never had I heard such raw anger – it made me fear for my physical safety, as if he would yank me from my seat and beat me into wet crumbs. I decided to take a break, so I exited and waited outside, notifying several Target authorities of the situation. A muscular Target employee with super-strength emerged from a nearby isle and confronted the man, who aggressively raised his voice at the powerful employee. The Target employees then instructed me to continue using the bathroom while they stood guard. When I was finished, there was no one outside except Airick, wearing his new Husker Du shirt. 

We ate foul forms of nutritional sustenance with the remainder of the day, such as macaroni-and-cheese burritos and spicy tofu mush. We parked, slept, spoke, and Yes-Yes successfully completed a load of laundry at a nearby Laundromat. We presently relocated to Blackwater Records, a small record store with a powerful edge. On that gripping cliff-hanger, I will have to wait until later today when I have more time to detail the epic events of our show at the Laughing Horse in Portland, Oregon.

“You can keep your shoegaze, but I’m going to keep listening to my fucking oi!”

Eggs and Dianetics

We had a day off in Seattle today, which meant we had the option to do whatever we wanted to do. This is dangerous because we are so used to playing shows each night like mindless gray-eyed sheep that when we have freedom, we are as clueless as comatose babies. Yes-Yes, a master of control, is accustomed to his own freedom, but not to others’ freedom. He was ticky and tocky all day long, which increased the overall tension of the group, almost nullifying our rare sense of freedom. We chose to go to the park, where he would occasionally grip the back of my neck just to remind me how his firm palms feel. Enough about Yes-Yes – my hair is beginning to tremble! 

We visited Sub-Pop Records and Fantagraphics Books, both of which increased our hunger, ironically enough, for not musical or literary but nutritional sustenance. We entered two bars, both of which chastised us for being under 21, although it was day time and we had no intention of buying alcoholism. We managed to seek refuge in an expensive egg institution, which duly provided us with scramble, hash, and breading. Timebomb, our merch junkie fanboy, grumbled a bit, for he did not believe an egg could be worth so many dimes, but two helpings of fine hash eased his fury. He introduced us to his old friend Ausden, who was tall and spoke with a clear voice full of youthful vigor. Ausden took us to meet a stone troll, but, due to my fatigue and general lack of interest in the children climbing all over the trollic statue, I chose to enter slumber within the confines of our van, leaving the troll dealings to Piss, Yes-Yes, KGC, Airick, Maple, Timebomb, and Symptom. They did not provide me any further information  regarding the troll encounter.

My peers and I agreed that Seattle was underwhelming in every way imaginable aside from our positive consumption of egg and hash. The Space Needle turned out to be a mere forty feet in height. I climbed it twice – with ease. Before my hemp sneakers could touch the concrete ground, the group had collectively decided to go to Portland. It was only 5 p.m., and our contact wasn’t expecting us until late that night, but Seattle was a thing of the past, a bland, egg-laden thing of the past. 

Our first stop in Portland was Voodoo Donuts, mostly because it served well-made vegan donuts to satiate KGC, Airick, and Maple’s unique desires. A long line stretched two buildings from Voodoo’s entrance, and, due to my line-induced anxiety, I instantly lost my appetite for donuts and increased my need to urinate. I searched vigorously for a public restroom, but, due to an apparently high rate of dangerous Portlanders, I was consistently denied. I continued my travels until I reached the Portland Church of Scientology. It looked modern and attractive, yet cold like a museum from the future. I walked in, asked the man at the counter if he had a bathroom I could use, and I was again, but kindly, denied. I ended up relieving myself at KILLER BURGERS, all the while regretting having not explored the Church of Scientology further. I reentered the church, and the mustached man of yore was on the phone. I waited patiently and uncomfortably for his conversation to end before he asked me, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, sir, I would like some preliminary information about the religion,” I said, injecting my voice with blind devotion, innocence, and sincerity.

“Absolutely,” he said, pleased but skeptical, and led me to a series of large-screen TVs that played incessant introductory videos about thetans and dianetics. I found it terrifyingly interesting and interestingly terrifying. I did not believe what the blank faces in the videos said. At one point, the television gave me the option to listen to the perspectives of Scientologists in different career fields. A natural intellect, I elected to view the “Teacher” video clip. It was less than three seconds long, and consisted of a man, presumably a teacher, telling the camera, “I use the practices of Scientology in my classroom everyday.” 

After I consumed enough pure terror, I asked the man at the desk, Jeff, for additional materials, and he obliged. Before I knew it, I was signing papers, filling out forms, and shaking hands. I looked up to six or seven middle-aged Scientologists garbed in black turtlenecks, each equally as ecstatic at the other to have recruited such a fine young man to their ranks. Knowing how dangerous a Scientologist scorned can be, I regret to say that I gave them information concerning my band and my life. Perhaps it was their yellowing eyes that drew the truth from my soul.

My peers may believe I actually am a believing member of the Church. However, I am instead a nonbelieving member of the Church. I also fear Yes-Yes suspects my irrational, solitary escapades to be have resulted in my worship of a new leader. The counter to this argument can be summarized into one word: never. 

Portland is a bad city, home of the extrovert homeless and the angry Arts. My time here has been marked by strangeness, fear, and intrusion of privacy.  My peers either love it – the food – or hate it – the heckling. I admit much of our time here was spent late at night, exploring donut joints and hentai theaters. 

Our tour contact hosted another band at her apartment; however, due to my general distate for cramped quarters, I opted to sleep in the van, wherein Airick and I discussed nudity, religion, sex, and VALIS. An active man in a robe flailed his arms across the street, a sight that isolated my nerves and spanked them until I slept. I woke to the loud rambling of Kid Gone Crazy, who was eager for a vegan breakfast sandwich. Tonight we play in the Laughing Horse also in Portland. The café we are in is blasting the Specials! Lo, the sidewalk calls, “Walk me, Whiz.” After the show we drive to San Francisco, City of Angels.

"You're full of eggs in my head, you're full of eggs in my bed."

You can more directly follow our tour on Twitter by following @tiboonda, or by searching the hashtag "LIMMIASOM."

Potatoe Boys in Potato City

We have entered the Pacific Northwest. We have heeded warnings and face our own new hells, but also several heavens. Please pay attention to the following paragraphs.

Boise, Idaho: The first thing we understood when we arrived in Idaho was that this is not Iowa. I thought we were next to Wisconsin, but we were not even close. We were instead hellishly close to Oregon, Washington, and other associated states and states of mind. The outside was desert-like, and it was very chilly. I was scared and cold, but never alone. When I told Yes-Yes that I feared being alone, he told me, “You are never, never alone. They hate us because we’re boisterous. They hate us because we have our dignity. We’ll stand together so proud and strong; this is the place where we belong.” These oi-flavored axioms reshaped my view of Idaho very much. 

The drive was long and relatively lacking drama, and I mean “drama” in the traditional sense, not in the way it’s used today to describe discord between friends. When we arrived at our friend Joel’s house in Boise, we were greeted with a great deal of vegan-friendly food. I ate corn, beans, and a hotdog bun. My peers ate similarly. After dinner, we played at Bike 2 Boards, another bicycle joint. It was a store full of glass cases and so forth, so we all feared Yes-Yes would unintentionally destroy a thing or two. He did not. 

During our set, KGC unexpectedly tackled Yes-Yes, and I knew not what to do other than to unplug all of the microphones and let the battle take its course. There was no clear winner, but the audiences’ collective pair of eyes was red, bulging, and dry. We stayed for several minutes after the show, where we received offers, exchanged advice, and compared knowledge with the Boise locals. We drove to WinCo, bought cheap gummies, then went to sleep at Joel’s. KGC, Airick of Ages, and I slept in the van with some bugs from outdoors who decided to join us (they thought it would be a fun sleepover, but we all fell asleep pretty fast so they left after the disappointment killed their moods), only to wake in the morning to a mystery surrounding Symptom’s missing mega-stuff Oreos. There were more Oreos missing than he had dispensed, so there was legitimate concern that morning. The offender did not reveal himself. There is currently no suspect. The case has since been closed.

Spokane, Washington: I have a special connection with the word “Spokane” after reading “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, a novel for middle school-aged students that takes place largely within the Indian reservation of the Spokane Indian tribe. Ignorantly enough, I am not at all sure of a relationship between Spokane the tribe and Spokane the city, though I do know the accurate pronunciation of both. I could explain it here, but you could also google it. My peers were wrong about the pronunciation and I was correct. Why did I know the correct pronunciation? Check my transcripts, baby.

Furthermore, we were added to the show last minute, and in those types of situations I tend to keep my expectations low to prevent severe disappointment. Luckily, this tour has ceased to disappoint me and the rest of Cruelster. The show was incredible and we sounded perhaps the best we’ve sounded the whole tour. Every show beats the last in some way or another. It was in a small, interesting house, in a small, hot, barren living room that nurtured the sounds of our amps, vocals, and drums to a beneficial effect. We were able to confuse the audience at point-blank range, and I did not play a wrong note once, save the time Yes-Yes put me in a complicated choke-hold during the end of “One Big Breath,” one of my favorite songs to be featured on our upcoming LP “POTATOE BOYS.” In retrospect, Yes-Yes likely learned this chokehold in eighth grade, when he was a successful wrestler for Lewis F. Mayer Middle School. Speaking of middle school, Sherman Alexie did not make it to our show. Despite his writing skills, he is old and loud. After the show, we ate messy popcorn outside and weighed the pros and cons of staying in Spokane or Seattle, which is where we’re spending the next day despite not having a show booked. Symptom would like some eggs and Piss would like to sit atop the Space Needle. I hope you are enjoying yourself, but please, oh, god, oh god oh god, PLEASE never stop thinking about the different ways you can change the way your body looks, functions, and channels energy. 

(Today we made the fateful error of stopping at a roadside flea market in northern Idaho. Here, Yes-Yes found and purchased, or perhaps stole, another orb. His previous orbs have provided him with peculiar means to mildly control others, namely me, but this orb is different. It is dark and raw. There is power swirling within this large marble – and Science help me if Yes-Yes ever reads this – that I fear even Yes-Yes himself cannot understand, much less control. He has also been demonstrating his power to control wind; when we drive past windmills, he quite literally spins their propellers with a mere twisting motion of his firm hands. This could be mere posturing, but the blackness of his oft baby blue eyes sends a wave of ice down my spine too stinging to ignore.) 

“I was a surfer, I had a skateboard, I was so heavy.”

Potatoe Boys in 3 New Cities

Wow, what a heartfelt couple of days. Since our last entry, we’ve played Kearney, Denver, and Provo. Please allow me to explain all of this.

Kearney, Nebraska: Our MO for this show was Fright. The audience sneered as we peeled on our suits, but they left the building gagging. Several young women in the crowd could not catch their breaths – “Their songs are two fast!” I saw one mouth to another. Another man was panting on the side of the stage, unsure of why his mouth was dry, or possibly wondering why Yes-Yes was so terroriffic. There was a golden retriever in the audience, bobbing his head slowly, slowly, slowly, happy as hell. After we played, I decided to hide in the desolate townscape of Kearney. I found a mini-park with four benches and a plant; it was hidden in shadows near an active train track. I waited for the others to find me, after which I would run away to a new location. Lost inside my mind, I thought this would instigate a thrilling game of hide-and-go-seek. Instead, my disappearance induced a widespread panic amongst my peers. Whilst they searched for my body, I waited to hear them approaching so I could duly hide elsewhere. I stared at the moon and stars, and 45 minutes passed. Eventually, I was found by Yes-Yes (who was flustered but relieved) and Piss, who instructed me to climb on top of a building and convince everyone I was there all along. The plan confused the intelligence out of me, but I obliged. Tim, our merch junkie fanboy, was to teach me how to climb. He showed me two spots, but both were difficult. One even scraped his poor wrist. I almost fainted at the sight of his mildly split flesh. The climb could not and would not work due to my innate fear of risk, so I instead instructed Tim to grip my neck like a prisoner and drag me back to the van, where my peers awaited my return. To my surprise, they were not amused. Apparently, the last thing I’d said before I hid was, “I’m going to kill myself.” I didn’t mean it, but I learned my lesson not to play games with that issue and not to play games without first telling those with whom I’d like to play games that I’d like to play a game. We had day-old loaves of bread from Jimmy John’s and water for dinner before blasting to Denver.

Denver, Colorado: There is little to say about Denver aside from it being our most psychotic show to date. We realized that our shows have and will continue to increase in psychosis exponentially as our tour proceeds. Yes-Yes was dive-tackled by Piss, I threw up water, and Ages dog-piled Yes-Yes during “Inchworm.” There were three people in the audience outside of Ages, and they were freaked. One of them drooled and fell asleep halfway through our set. The local band, a popcore get-up called The Coast is Ours, left while we played after being disappointed that the audience wasn’t moshing during their set. The singer even hoe-downed in front of Kid Gone Crazy during their set to excite him; KGC was almost furious, but a deep breath kept his anger at bay. The singer also said, “Really?” after a song because no one had moved. That night I zoomed through the Rockies at 85 mph, taking my friends and I to the Mormon mecca of Provo, Utah.

Provo, Utah: This was such a spiritual and refreshing experience that describing it on the internet would be heresy. Lots of mysticism, mountains, and spirit. We hiked to a secret place in the mountains where there was a natural water slide made out of rocks. Known as more of an intellectual, professorial type, I was too afraid to touch the water and instead enjoyed watching my friends take chances with their lives in the name of fun. We hiked back and I felt the courage to take off my shirt and expose my body to the sun. I am now happily ruby red all over. Furthermore, we played at a bike collective full of old and new bikes in various stages of dismemberment. Yes-Yes bled his knees and our suits were smeared in oil. That night, we treated ourselves to a soak in a hot spring. It was spooky. Symptom, the guitarist of Ages, smeared himself with the clay-like sand at the bottom of the spring. He claimed sulphur was good for one’s skin. We were encouraged by fellow spring bathers to remove our clothing, but only our dear friend Adam, who played in Timber!, the Mighty Sequoyah, and currently Bat Manors, had the courage to unveil his genitalia to the public. The next morning, we briefly visited Adam’s yard sale and bought two sweatshirts and three DVD’s: The Taqwacores, The Natural, and another classic baseball movie. Adam also gifted Piss and I a painting of a Gran female giving birth to an infant Gran (Grans are the Star Wars aliens with three eyes). Adam recently had an art gallery consisting of paintings that featured Star Wars aliens participating in human activities, all of which were purchased except the Gran, clearly too gory for the average Provite. Saying goodbye to Adam and his friends was hard and sad, but he will be in Cleveland in July so we are not sad.

 
Any questions? Ask us on Facebook or tweet me, Whiz, at @tiboonda. Boise, Idaho is next, and I have recently discovered after extensive research that Idaho is not Iowa.

A Slightly Tres Dopey Days

Whoa, holy wow, I can’t believe we’ve been on tour for two more days since the last blog. Our skins have calloused and browned with the passage of road time, which moves half as slowly as normal time. Last night, Kid Gone Crazy (on drums) promised us that we could go to a motel if our show made over $200. He then lowered it to $150. He is not our leader – Yes-Yes is – but he is very stubborn, and thus powerful. Fortunately, we made an even $200, and we had a comfortable sleep in a motel room an hour outside of Minneapolis. They caught us with 8 people in the morning and we were required to pay a fine. During my pre-shower organization, I noted a squirming tick on my shin.

Our show in Milwaukee disallowed Ages’ performance due to stylistic differences, but strenuously accepted Cruelster’s performance under the fair conditions that we played last and we played shortly. Our friend and confidant Zach gave us $40 for our performance, and we very much appreciate every single thing he’d done for us. We had fun in his city and on his porch. We went to a pizza restaurant under Zach’s porch, wherein our merch fanboy junkie Tim practiced light sexism toward the waiter, to the dismay of the rest of the group.

On our way to Milwaukee, we talked straight-up dreams. Connor Symptom of Ages knows a lot about this. He is like Sigmund Freud in high school. He told us about the Old Hag – who sits on your chest when you “wake up” (you are still actually sleeping), the green lumberjack who grins and prompts you to charge him, and, most notoriously, the Shadow People. “I’ve never had a Shadow People dream,” Symptom proclaimed. To his credit, Symptom is a master of lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. (We all expected and almost hoped for one of these aforementioned dreams that night, but we each had an ironically dreamless sleep.)

Cruelster shared a packet of beers with the singer of Ages, only enough to get slightly drunk for a very short amount of time. It was slightly wrong, but we were slightly unwelcome. Tim and Symptom went on a Long Walk to find Marquette University – they are both seniors in high school and they are looking to go to college anywhere. They didn’t find it. There were tall weeds in the house’s backyard, and various grindcore fans would periodically venture toward the tallest of these weeds in order to whiz and piss. Meanwhile, Whiz and Piss conquered Yes-Yes onstage in Minneapolis. The next paragraph will detail this occurrence.

The show was a Title Fight-themed dark pop-punk postcore straight edge doomcore show, so Cruelster inchly fit. Knowing this, we proceeded to scare and taunt the audience. However, I don’t think it was until we played our last song, “Inchworm,” that the audience understood what we were. Minneapolis is honestly a cool city to which we have never been, but, well. If you ever meet me in person or in another biological or technological format, I will give you the details.

We are on our way to Kearney, Nebraska, home of Jesse Pierson. We must take the back roads because the main highway is closed.

“I almost want to say they sound like No Doubt with Title Fight parts.”