| I just got an email saying that someone requested a password change for my Livejournal. In other words someone tried to log in and couldn't figure it out.
What's the deal with that?
Anyhow, in an event that is completely unrelated to the password thing, I have chosen to move to Tumblr.com.
http://jerik.tumblr.com
All one of you: Adjust your bookmark accordingly.
I'm still not sure of what I'll be doing the Livejournal. I might have Tumblr be me regular blog and LJ be my tour blog. I will most likely be reposting some favorite things from here onto Tumblr. I don't know!? What do YOU think I should do? | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| I’m of the mind that beyond the age of three or so you should be able to deal with the concept of seeing a movie having read or heard something about its storyline beforehand, but I realize that most people don’t feel this way. That being said I will make preface this whole thing with a simple, “SPOILER ALERT.” Also, if you’re a little behind, John Locke is in the casket, douchebag.
Up:
I’ve been a vocal hater of Pixar movies for along time. I remember Toy Story being chosen by class vote to be watched one day during the last week of 5th grade, and being furious about it. “What is this bullshit? Tim Allen?! COME ON!” I thought. Ok I don’t remember for sure, but I probably thought that. I’ve always hated Tim Allen. I watched the (toy) story unfold, and realized that I didn’t give a fuck about jealousy between two talking toys. In fact, I was more concerned with the fact that these toys were interacting in the first place. Were they Hindus resurrected as lesser beings? Were they possessed in some way? I may have been young but I’d already seen Puppet Master and I was very, very concerned. Eventually I saw Monsters, Inc. which was horrifying and Finding Nemo, which featured a main character that I would have flushed down the toilet without remorse. I was even vegetarian at the time! I wrote a haiku called “Pixar Movies” which I will now present here.
Pixar Movies
by Jon-Erik Hendrickson
Came home to find them
watching Monsters, Inc again.
Gonna take a dump.
I suppose this is all beside the point.
It was with slight reluctance that I agreed to accompany some friends to Up. I’d seen the trailer (strangely, I saw it before Terminator Salvation. It should be noted that a Pixar trailer will immediately put an end even the stiffest time-travel action boner) and it looked decent enough. Certainly the first Pixar movie that appeared even remotely interesting to me. I figured I’d put by hatred aside for once and check it out.
A digital short called Partly Cloudy played before the movie began. These people over at Pixar are clearly on drugs. Apparently storks and cloud-people are working together in creating and distributing all living creatures down to Earth. Sound like some weird sci-fi? Wait till I tell you that (and this is just my opinion) one stork named Peck is being sent by Gus, a cloud-person, on continual involuntary suicide missions but keeps surviving. Nice! So far, I wasn’t lamed out.
Without retelling the whole movie, Up is about an old man, Mr. Fredrickson who for various good reasons, decides to turn his entire house into an aircraft by attaching thousands of balloons to it. His destination is South America. After taking off he discovers that a boy scout by the name of Russell, hell bent on earning his “assisting the elderly” badge is aboard the makeshift aircraft. I’m not sure where Mr. F lives but it must have been Panama because they complete the trip in like a day. Suffice it to say a bunch of crazy shit happens. Giant birds, talking dogs, an evil dude, etc. In my opinion Mr. F becomes a murderer, and Russell an accessory to murder. They don’t focus on this in the movie, though. They don’t even mention it actually. Self-defense or not, they are a bunch of goddamn murderers! They also never deal with the whole “Oh hey, sorry I took your kid to South America for a few days and had him dangling out of my helium balloon house thing multiple times. Oh also, he watched me make a man fall to his death. Are you mad? Please don‘t be mad!” No big deal though.
Of course I’m just being a big jerk about a lot of this. I have to admit, I enjoyed Up. I even found myself smiling and laughing, which I haven’t done in years. Maybe I’ll rewatch those older Pixar movies and see if my cold, blackened heart has been compromised. But probably not. Maybe I’ve lightened up through the years. Camus taught me that life is meaningless. Sartre taught me that hell is other people. Mr. Fredrickson taught me that if life gets me down, I can take my balloon-house to South America and kill a guy, and we’ll all be better for it. Thank you, Mr. Fredrickson. Now if you’ll come this way the police would like to ask you a few questions. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Today as I was driving, I saw a newer blue car parked on the street with the license plate "2SMRT4U". I said aloud to myself, "At least I know how to spell 'you', asshole!" | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| 4-13-09 - Bismarck, ND
After being in Fargo for about 7 hours, we left for our show in Bismarck. We brought a dude named Nick with us. Nice guy. The drive was fairly uneventful. Got into a debate with Josh over whether or not Dave Grohl says “Sergeant Harry” in the song My Hero. He doesn’t. Never has. That’s ridiculous. However, upon researching the matter it is apparently a commonly misheard lyric. Weird.
When we got to Bismarck my mother had a giant feast awaiting us. It was awesome. We all gorged ourselves. Usually it’s just me but this time EVERYONE ate too much. We were devastated and it was awesome since we still had several hours until we played. We had time to recover.
I was surprised to see my parents purchased a brand new hookah. Dedicated readers (that’s a joke) might remember on the last tour I tried hookah for the first time in Goshen, IN. So, either my parents are incredibly hip (very probable) or former hippies tapping into the glory days (also probable). Ha. Either way my parents got a hookah and that’s pretty fuckin’ cool by my standards.
We hit up the Light Club to digest. I hadn’t played in Bismarck in several years and I hadn’t played at the Light Club in even longer. There was one point where I actually claimed I would never play the Light Club again. However, the Hands gig is technically a job, and the place appears to be under control of different, less money hungry people now so I’m not going to sweat it. The newly renovated place didn’t even resemble the old one. It was weird.
Upon using the bathroom there I realized it was the same bathroom from the old version of the building. When I played my first show there nearly ten years ago with Nova-86, we set up and had a few minutes before we had to play. I had to use the bathroom so I did. The toilet apparently couldn’t handle my hatred of trees and ended up clogging. As the water rose within the bowl I began to freak out -- NO PLUNGER. I did the only thing I possibly good. Yes. I unclogged it with my hand. Please bare in mind it was clogged due to paper, not due to some inhuman log. Still, it’s gross nonetheless. Super gross. Ashamed, I washed my hands and played the show with a little smile on my face. I should have said, “Hey we’re Nova-86 and I probably just touched my turds,” but once again, that’s gross.
The show was great. Plenty of people showed up, which is cool for a weeknight. Saw several Bismarck types that I never see. It’s weird to think that I’m now one of the old dudes at Bismarck shows. It was good to see the War of Ages guys again. I’m always laughing when they’re around. Also, Sean Murray came! Although he couldn’t make it until we had finished playing, it’s always awesome to see the dude, of course.
After the show we found out that the interstate was closed between Bismarck and Jamestown. Everyone else seemed convinced that if we spent the night in Bismarck we’d be stuck there for several days. So, we took a ridiculous alternate route. The trip took about 7 hours. Of course other bands, who stayed in hotel rooms that night, woke up the next day and came to Fargo with no real complication. Awesome.
Another one down. We don’t roll out again till June. I decided during this tour that from now on I’ll be keeping two journals. One like what I’ve been doing and one more personal one that won’t be public for a while. Stay tuned. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| 4-12-09 - Buffalo, MN
Not much to say on this one. I am cursed as far as driving the van. The GPS takes me into every construction zone or no-longer-existent street available when I’m behind the wheel. What? Turn right? But those are train tracks. I swear if that British bitch says “recalculating” one more time I’m going to flip the fuck out. Ugh.
We got to the Vault, not expecting much. The last time we played there was phenomenal, but this time it was Easter Sunday, AND there was a record breaking show there just days prior with 450 in attendance. With the odds against us, we came close to smashing that record to pieces. About 15 people paid to get in, and man did it get hard to move around in there without smashing into someone!
We got a buyout to go get food. I’m getting increasingly depressed when I encounter the “This is meal time and the only option is a gas station” situation. A lot of gas stations don’t even have items that you could consider a meal. I’m not going to be satisfied on a bag of Funyuns and an RC Cola. Not when I haven’t eaten all day. So frustrating. I walked to a grocery store across the venue and set up a mortgage for the sandwich I bought. Not sure why it was so costly but it was all there was. Fuck it, it’s the last real day of the tour.
I still don’t know why or how this show happened. Four bands, none of which were local, one of which ended up not being able to make it, on Easter Sunday, after the biggest show in the history of the venue. Yikes. We all played our little hearts out to those that were there. It was good to see the guys in No Wings to Speak Of, who are quite enjoyable people. I envy Sam and his wife because they’ve made their own way in life. They run a business that has gotten them a nice home. It’s their only source of income and they only answer to themselves. I like that. I want that.
During our set, Josh managed to spit on me twice. Awesome. It’s cool that he gets so into the music that he can disregard the fact that I’m a fucking human being who doesn’t deserve to be spit on, and just spit wherever he happens to be facing when he gets the urge. Someone explain to me the need to spit on stage. I’ve been playing in bands since I was 12 years old and I’ve never been on stage and felt the need to spit. In fact I’ve never been in any situation anywhere where I thought “Man, I’m really sweaty and out of breath from this strenuous activity, I need to spit.“ Seriously. Explain it to me. Enlighten me. Give me a reason other than “It’s an attempt at looking cool.” If I catch another gob, there will be repercussions.
During No Wings’ set, Waldy decided he was going to do a move where he jumped off the stage and sprung himself off the wall back onto the stage. As he was running towards the initial jump I remember thinking “No. Don’t jump. No. Don’t do it!” He did it, and a second later there was a brand new giant hole in the wall a few inches from my head. Great job, Waldy. Or shall I say, WALLdy. Heh.
We went to Fargo after the show. It’s always weird getting back home. For some reason, Zerr stole my pillow while I was away and was fast asleep. I left my other one in the van. Great to be back. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 4-11-09
Normally I wouldn’t write an entry on a day off, but today just takes the cake as far as interesting stories.
We left Warrensburg, MO to drive to Minneapolis, MN. Our next show is Sunday in Buffalo, MN and the band has a friend in Minneapolis we can stay with. Nothing to interesting about that. We stop at a gas station in a town called Raytown, MO. Some of us are sitting in the van, waiting for the others to come out when we feel the whole van lurch forward a little bit. Someone had backed into the trailer. Shane ran out and caught up with them since they looked like they were about to drive away. Four wannabe gangster types get out of the car and start talking to Shane, who is obviously upset that they just smashed a light off the trailer. The kid driving gives him some line about how he wants to just pay him out of his pocket, since he doesn’t have insurance and it’s “not even his car.” Shane tells them that’s not going to fly, and that they’re going to do the normal, reasonable thing and file a police report, etc, etc. They aren’t cool with that at all. One guy started getting aggressive, throwing out a barrage of racial epithets that would probably make your mother blush. JR, our merch dude, who also happens to be a photographer, immediately hopped out and covertly snapped pictures of their car, their license plate, their FACES, the damage on the trailer, everything. They had no idea. I’ve never seen a more Johnny On the Spot situation. So Shane tells them he’s going to go inside to get the number for the police and start getting everything taken care of and that they need to stay right where they are parked. Of course they don’t. They take off. A police officer comes and starts taking down all of our information since we’re all witnesses, etc. This guy was great. He overheard us talking about how stupid these guys must be to have thought we didn’t take down their license plate or anything, and he chimes in with, “Yall must not have dipshits up in North Dakota, huh?” We shared a hearty chuckle.
It turns out these dudes were rolling in a stolen car. While he’s taking down our information he gets a call on his radio and informs us that “They found the car and the dumbasses actually stopped!” After getting all the info down and the whole scenario figured out, we followed him a mile or two away where they had them standing in line along the curb, handcuffed. It was certainly them, although one of the dudes was gone and there was a girl in his place. Turns out the two not driving had warrants out for their arrest in Texas, so all three of these guys were going to jail. What an interesting series of events. Easily the most eventful day off I’ve ever experienced. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Paramore | | Security: | | | Subject: | Snake! | | Time: | 11:44 pm |
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| 4-10-09
After a seriously windy night in Tulsa, and perhaps more trips to Sonic than any group of people should make in a 24 hour period, we left Liz (still unconvinced of her southern-ness) and headed for Camdenton, MO. I haven’t heard of it either!
It was pretty difficult to find the place. There was a somewhat random gravel road with a radio station at the end and the venue, The Warehouse, was behind that at the bottom of a small hill. Weird. I guess after we got there Josh, being the hippie that he is, went over to see what he could see at the radio station. He’s always walking around and meeting people. Apparently the dude there was a big dick and basically said, “I don’t have any time for you. There’s the door.” Wow. The voice of Christian radio in Missouri is a total douchebag. “There’s the door,” is like the least nice thing you can say to a person.
The Warehouse is a warehouse. Imagine that. It seemed like it would be a pretty decent enough show. Now, these shows were put together by a booking agent, and have contracts, etc. Fifty dollars was the budget for food for both bands. It was interesting to see the promoter pull the “I’m going to give them like ten dollars worth of food and keep the rest for myself!” gag. We got some poppyseed chicken. It was good, but one of the guys didn’t even get any. Also, if we wanted anything to drink we had to pay for cans of soda. There was bottled water, but if we had that we “wouldn’t have anything to drink on stage.” I know if Phil the Tour Manager was still with us the whole situation would have been a problem. I’m no rockstar, but don’t sign a contract if you aren’t going to follow it.
Unfortunately it also ended up being the worst performance of the whole tour so far. During the first song one of the strap locks on my guitar disassembled itself and my strap went flying. I didn’t miss a note, but I may as well have stopped playing since everyone was staring at me trying to see what I’d do. Aaron from My Epic tried his best to help me out. Apparently when I got my guitar case open and pulled out an alternate strap, it was wiggling around and he thought I’d pulled a live snake out of my case. It creeped him out for a few seconds before he realized what was up. For some reason that whole thing is absolutely hilarious to me. Like, if you went over to help a guy whose strap broke and for no reason at all he pulls a live snake out of his case. Ha!
Anyhow, we just couldn’t get it together during the whole set. It was definitely the worst job I’ve ever done singing. Maybe in any band, ever. I cringed multiple times. Each song was pretty rough.
After the show we drove to Warrensburg, MO and stayed yet again with Shane’s in-laws. Not bad. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 4-08-09
So, I haven’t updated in a while. This is simply because we haven’t played a show since Facedown Fest. Day two was about the same as day one, except there was no responsibility. I just stood on the side of the stage for most of the show.
We then spent a few days hanging with Jason who runs Facedown Records. It was pretty cool. Ate some great and crazy food, saw southern California, hang out. Not bad. I learned that I don’t care about the beach that much. It’s cool to see, but spending time there isn’t really for me.
Unfortunately a bunch of stuff fell through on our tour back, and we didn’t find out about it in time to get anything together ourselves, so we have two shows and 5 days to get us from California to Minnesota. Kind of a bummer, but it’s the nature of the beast sometimes. Part of me thinks it might have been more economical to drive straight home, but I know that I’d just be bored out of mind and would rather be doing this than sitting in Fargo.
We left California on Tuesday morning and drove all day to Scottsdale, AZ. In Blythe, CA there was a gas station with a room randomly placed near the entrance with a sign above that said “MASSAGE” Apparently you could get a massage. The room was weird, with a lone, ominous table in it and wet floors. Odd. We got to Scottsdale and I had what will be my final In N Out experience for a long time. It was great. Fortunately, JR the merch dude has friends that live in Scottsdale with whom we spent the night. We were only half way to our show in Albuquerque. I got there and conked out early.
We got up at 7am and rolled to Albuquerque. Roughly a 7 hour drive, plus a time change. We got to the venue, The Telos, to discover it is a Christian frat house. Weird. For some reason, although there were two locals, Hands was playing first. I suppose it didn’t really matter when we played. The turnout was ultimately pretty poor. It was an interesting venue and I had fun, though.
After our set I disassembled my stuff and walked to a 711. I was talking on the phone, so I wandered into a little area between the 711 and the neighboring building, where I found a 5 dollar bill. It was the first time I’ve ever just found money. There was one time I put 50 cents into a machine and instead of getting my desired balloon I got 1.75 in quarters. However, I don’t count that as “finding” money. That was being given money. Five dollars! Just sitting on the ground. Awesome.
I walked back and was talking to Shane near the van when the dude who had been running sound for the show came over and started talking to us. He looked kind of like Screech from Saved by the Bell and interestingly enough introduced himself as “Screech”. Weird. Anyway, he was a very nice guy. I told him how I found money for the first time and he reached in his pocket and gave my a handful of money. One dollar and seventy five cents to be exact. I tried a few times to give it back to him and for some reason he wouldn’t. So that day I made $6.75.
We decided to drive through the night to Tulsa, where we could have potentially stayed with our friend Liz, the southern belle. We hadn’t gotten word from her whether or not it was ok, but figured we’d make the trip anyway and if not we’d at least be most of the way to Friday’s show in Camdenton, MO. JR drove, I stayed awake. It was interesting. By 9am I had completely lost my mind. I was having thoughts that didn’t even make sense. I almost said one out loud but realized it didn’t remotely resemble a coherent idea. I didn’t care about anything but staying awake. JR was hopped up on 6 energy drinks. I had a McGriddles that was amazing. I wrote “What?“ on my arm. We ran into the band Attack Attack! at a gas station. I hadn’t heard them before, but JR had them on his iPod, so in our sleep deprived insanity we decided to cruise by them blasting their music. They didn’t seem amused. Probably because we looked like complete assholes. Finally around 10:30am we switched it up and I slept a little. We got to Liz’s and I crashed for several more hours. It felt good. That was intense. It was weird to see the remaining mileage on the GPS say 500, and look back at it and see it say 14. What a trip.
We’re currently at Liz’s house. We stayed here last time we were in Tulsa. Tomorrow we’ll drive a few more hours to Camdenton, MO. Only three more shows on the tour. Weird. I feel like the shows on the beginning of the tour were months and months ago already.
I’m not exactly excited to get home and deal with moving out of my apartment. Ugh. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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