Tuesday, September 14, 2004
It's my brother's birthday. Happy stuff to joey!

I'm back in Ok. have been for a little while now, and man have i been filling it up with highly bloggable things. i feel like i get so far behind with this stuff that i just sorta gloss over everyhing. so, i'll gloss over the fact that we've put in a good amount of work on new songs, and i'm very pleased with how it's going; i've spent some time in norman with ol cheyenne jenkins even sitting in w/em for a few shows w/ sebadoh and others; had an uneventful birthday, which was fine by me; and went to stillwater and saw incubus and jim brewer....
alright, i can't gloss over the last one. if it werent known already - let it be known that i hate jim brewer, i have a hard time being in stillwater, and incubus has a dj. then why, pray tell did you go? shut up. i do what i pleases. actually, it was because the walkmen played the show for the sorest thumb of the year award. i ended up having a pretty good time - the walkmen/colbert hooked us up with more tickets than we needed so we came out with more money than we went in with. the walkmen set was fee-resh, and we did some late night food in an unfamiliar town with colbert which just seemed right.
i gotta go now - then i found $20. awesome.

posted by jeff shoop at 1:05 PM


Thursday, August 05, 2004
my friend travis and I were talking years ago about what would be the worst way to wake up in the morning. he suggested that the worst possible way would be to wake up really hot and sweaty, walk outside and fall into freshly cut grass. while that would no doubt suck - i felt like their had to be a worse way. at the time i felt like the absolute worst would be to be awoken by a new born baby crowning right over your head, falling on you in an afterbirthy slush - then have the baby turn its head around and, in the voice of james earl jones tell you that you caused the holocaust.
this morning i experienced a new one. ok, it wasnt quite as bad as the demon baby messenger one, but still.
i went from completely peacefull rem sleep to utter confusion quickly moving to terror back to confusion and finally to reluctant acceptance of our new fate. i cannot describe in words the sound, the volume, the trajectory, nor the length of what i heard. all i can say is that it was highly unnatural in everyway. as i woke up hearing this i thought it was worth being concerned about, and looking over at my friend erin - her face confirmed that this was in fact a troubling sound. it just kept getting louder and louder and longer. i was fully prepared for the sound of impact or anything - instead it only continued to climax. at this point nothing seemed out of the question - from some sort huge vehicle crashing trough the wall to an attack of some army to an alien invasion. honestly i was ready for anything. confusion - panic - acceptance.

as it turns out this was the annual day that the blue angeles practice over the city, and they started practice about 50ft above our house.
posted by jeff shoop at 2:43 PM


Tuesday, August 03, 2004
this past weekend brought a mo-ped rally, a damien jurado show, some parties, some poker, some cookin, and some chillin.

sorta funny...
there was a party the first night of the mo-ped rally. now, i'm going with some friends - i'm not part of the club, i didnt bring a mo-ped, and i dont even own a mo-ped. so, i'm just hanging out puting out the good will, tryin to lay low and not step on their rally too much being an outsider and all. i meet this broad and she said it was cool if i rode this mo-ped around, so i says cool. i rode around for about 7-10min - having fun, everything going fine. AS SOON as i get back in front of the entire party hanging out on the street lined with mo-peds i turn the thing way too sharp, and layed it on its side. awesome. i dinged up my leg some, but i wasnt concerned with that at first, i just hoped i didnt mess up the bike. whats even better, as all the mo-heads came over to inspect the damage (which was inconsequential) it turns out the girl niether owned the bike, nor had permission to let me ride it. awkward.
now anytime i see rosie, she calls me douche bag.
speaking of rosie, she (or shelia) is hosting karoke at the green room on sunday.

saw the village the other night - the new m. knight shamalamadingdong movie. i was expecting it to be terrible, so i was pleasantly surprised that it wasnt terrible. wasnt great, but it enjoyable enough. leave it at that.
posted by jeff shoop at 1:29 PM


Wednesday, July 28, 2004
I’m writing this from the Denver international airport – www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Denver_Airport.html I haven’t been able to find the mural, I think it’s in another concourse/terminal or something, and what with the events of 9/11 I am unable to leave my concourse. I am, however able to find plenty of creepy mythological and Masonic imagery decoratively inlaid in the floor. yikes.

I’m flying to Seattle on a ticket I got for getting bumped off another flight, and now I hanging around in Denver because I took another bump and got yet another free ticket. How do you say….ah jes….boo yah.

Ok, now I made it on a different flight to Seattle, and here I write to you thousands of feet above the Rocky Mountains. Dude I’m so high right now. So high.

Those slimy airlines will do anything to make sure you don’t get food on a plane anymore. They started removing meals from the majority of flights years ago by shifting schedules just off of universal meal times and routing shorter flights. That’s fine. So now you have to get a 2+hr flight right across a mealtime just to get an insulting snack. Well this is 3hr flight that took off at 11:20. Sounds like lunch would be pretty reasonable right? Furthermore, the ticket had a little fork and knife icon in a column of services provided that did not appear beside any other flight. Thus, I deduced after years of foodless domestic flights I would finally receive – a meal – a sandwich – a granola bar – anything. I was handed a menu and asked if I wanted to purchase $12 sandwich for lunch. Bloodsuckers.

Exploiting the needs of a captive audience is something the terrorist want to take from us. Dang, I just wrote terrorist on a plane.
Granted I swung some free flights – but that of course is their fault in the first place for selling more seats than are actually on the plane, and there is the whole inconvience thing. Whatever.

Now, I'm in Poulsbo with dave and anne. Fortunately as soon as I got here I got really sick and couldnt enjoy my time with them or a great meal anne made.

listening - kexp.org

posted by jeff shoop at 11:32 AM


Friday, July 23, 2004
ok so after months of trying in vain to get this blogger to work, i think i may have got it.
of course as i type this i'm not sure if it will actually post so you can read that i finaly got it working - or if it will disappear like the other things i have typed over the past few months.
if in fact you are reading this, meaning its not impossible for me to blog anymore, then on the contrary i mean to make not such a biannual experience.

so, yeah i'm in norman for the weekend where i've got some super random work in between working on the new record with bryce. i'll go back to seattle on tues, and it couldnt come soon enough.
alright let's see if this worked.

playing - crystal kulls - new songs
midlake - bamnan and silvercork
iron and wine - endless numbered days
posted by jeff shoop at 6:59 PM


Saturday, December 13, 2003
PostTourDiary Part3

Yes, we made it there fine. AAS wasnt as lucky and had a spinout on the ice, but regrouped and met us in seattle. we've got more friends than we know what to do with in seattle, so there was much to do and not enough time to do it. we happened to get to seattle exactly on anne krestene's birthday so that worked out nicely. shoutouts-a-plenty: dave, anne, travis, evan, chad, jahan, jill, dave, wes, cameron, trey, casey, christian, janie, eddie, jimmy, sir mix, etc... 1000 appologies if i missed you.
my good friend travis got to ride along with us to portland - i was happy for that. i like portland quite a bit and we had a nice little visit. first time to berbati's pan - nice place. hit up a whole foods, dropped off travis and had a really pretty drive through oregon.
wasnt terribly stoked about ashland. it wasnt with AAS and was definetly our worst show in a while, but the people were super nice, which always makes a big difference, and they put us up in a furnished house with arcade style video games that i never got to play because kyle played punchout all bleedin night! (the next day he had cheat codes written all over his hand in blue ink)
onto san francisco. bimbos is a super great venue. met back up with earlimart and chris so our sound was taken care of. caught up with the stratford 4 gang, met up with some other friends - sarah, kristi, maura and never hooked up with cody (cody if you see this buddy, im sorry we'll have to do it next time) after the show we resumed some food challenge bets. i bet james $10 he couldnt eat an individual size bag of pretzles in 4 min without taking a drink. i won. i will take this bet again if anyone out there thinks they can do it. see i know you think you can do it, but i also know that you can not do it. had a nice breakfast with sarah and kristi and went to LA.
the show was okay, but we played pretty early and left before the stills played so we could eat and play cards with some friends.
had the next day off in LA, which would normally be a bummer, but i had a really great day. went to some music stores in hollywood, went to pinks, and then went to long beach to meet up with AAS and chris at the all tommorow's parties festival. got to go on the queen mary, drink free dnl, see cat power, aas, elliot smith tribute, mars volta, and iggy pop and the stooges, ran into old friends: matt, dan, orlando and made some new friends: matt groening, thurston moore, and flea.
we stayed in huntington beach with frank and lori, had coffee walked on the beach sat around frank's then had gorgeous sunsetting drive down the coast to san diego.
okay show - hung out with jimmy and drew. went la posta after the show begining our 5 straight meals of mexican food. woke up to some incredible breakfast borrito's thanks to rachel.
well that makes two meals, what about the other 3?
you'll have to tune in again in a few days for part 4, which some are calling the final instalment!.....
posted by jeff shoop at 5:43 PM


Saturday, November 22, 2003
PostTourDiaryPart 2.
okay, from chicago onto madison. first time of a few attempts to make it to madison. neal rice town. jonny hooked us up with two great meals and a bat flew in during the show. bryce was going to eat the bat, we all grew tired of his constant requests to call him the prince of darkness. then to milwaukee on halloween. both the drang and amanset made it a point to be on time for load in and sound check, so we of course sat in the lounge for 3/4 hours before we needed to do anything, but we had a good time chewin the rag. we found out that earlimart (along with our sound guy) wouldnt make because they had been in an accident. we thought look this has to stop its getting out of hand. (later when we met up in san fran we learned the wreck was just someone hitting the trailor in new york and they were just waiting for it to be fixed - everyone was good as gold.)
minneapolis was a very nice club with very good food and marked the first of the ladybug transister shows.
the thought of heading straight to seattle from minneapolis (30~hrs) didnt sound like something we wanted to do, so we went with the analogers to the infamous mall of america. now the real reason we were all so excited about it was kenken's description of "cereal land." we arrived only to find a giant wall blocking entrance to cerealland, mind you the wall did not reach to the ceiling, it left just enough room for the unnecessary taunting of an oversized tony the tiger, the silly rabbit, snap, crackle, and pop! our dreams of creating our own cereal (lee's idea won - a cereal made up entirely of booberry marshmallows) were analogous to pouring a big bowl of cereal only to find you're out of milk.
with our spirits broken we started to cross the cold (-8) snowy mountainous wilderness of north dakota, montana, idaho, and finally washington. Taaarecherous!
...did we make it.....???? you'll have to come back and read Part 3 to find out!
posted by jeff shoop at 4:09 PM