Posts (page 2)

ok, now that I have largely recovered from the plague, I'm bored. scrabulous and 'lost' can really only take you so far. this whole 'not drinking' thing, while in and of itself pretty boring, is also keeping me from going out. I just really can't imagine going out to 'indieroke' tonight (indie karaoke) and drinking soda water and finding my friend's renditions 'neighborhood #3' or 'transatlanticism' all that amusing. also, I don't like most of my friends before I've had a couple.

***

warm spinach salad with yukon potatoes (no egg, no cheese, no bacon.. ugh)
apple with peanut butter
three cups decaf
brown rice with ponzu
kombucha
a few bites of gnarly noodleless pad thai
cup detox tea
cup cranberry tea

to my surprise, the food thing is turning out to be waaaay harder than the alcohol thing. this could be due to the fact that I am a pastry chef in a fine dining restaurant; everything there has red meat or a pound of butter in it, with the exception of the fish. and I don't like fish. there is basically no protein there I can eat. I'm gonna have start bringing my lunch or something, which is slightly ridiculous.

these are the things I have to munch on at work:
candied, deep-fried walnuts
garlic butter croutons
cookies
bacon
bagels
english muffins
risotto
dinner rolls (which I have to make, every day, and not eat)
pork tenderloin
gaufrettes (fancy potato chips)

see where I'm going with this? work is going to really, really suck.

**

apple with peanut butter
three cups decaf
cup miso soup
brown rice with veggies
bowl popcorn
mexican chicken soup
whole wheat pasta with turkey tomato sauce
two cups detox tea
cup cranberry tea

ground turkey is an acceptable substitute for ground beef
green tea is an acceptable substitute for coffee

**
also,
I'm gonna try to keep a food diary.

granny smith apple with peanut butter
cup detox tea
cup green tea
bowl mexican chicken soup, sans tortillas
gingerberry kombucha
big bowl popcorn*
cup detox tea
cup cranberry tea
cup miso soup

*ryan tried to tell me that it had to be air-popped, no salt, but upon reviewing the rules, I saw that small amounts of oil and salt are allowed in food preparation. I kept that in mind and used as little as possible when making it. I will probably eat popcorn every day, because it's a whole grain and I like it.

I got sick. what is health month, you might ask? let's recap the rules:

What was the one toy you wanted as a kid that your parents never bought you?
Submitted by Princess of Darkness.

there was a playground right across the street from my house when I was little, left over from when the administration building that's there now was a school. from a fairly young age I was allowed to go play over there by myself because my mother could see me from her kitchen window. it was pretty lame as far as playgrounds go, with just a swingset and a little monkey bar thing and a gross sandbox I would never touch, but it was better than nothing, and so after school I would go over there and play until she yelled out the back door that supper was ready.

on my way home one night, as I crossed the large field that seperated the playground from the street in front of my mother's house, I noticed that the first star of the evening had appeared, but no others. this was my chance. I closed my eyes in case other stars started to appear in my field of vision, because that would, of course, nullify the magic that was about to happen.

'star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight: I wish my mom would buy me a strawberry shortcake e-z bake oven'.

I continued on home, confident that I had followed the proper procedures for securing a bounty of easy-to-make, delicious cakes cooked by light bulbs. imagine my confusion, then, when it failed to arrive.

as an adult, I've often wondered if this great disappointment led me to become a pastry chef. it's more likely that I was always just predisposed to sugar and numbers and following directions, but wouldn't it be funny if that was true?

-don't I look so stoic in that banner picture? like I'm going off to die in war or something? I love the picture, but I'm not sure if I can keep it as a banner. it makes me self-conscious. perhaps you can recognize a thinly veiled glare from behind my sunglasses- it's a long story involving unexpected new year's eve closures, brunch (or rather, a lack thereof), and an unnecessary trip from brooklyn to manhattan and back again. that day was the closest that r and I have ever come to fighting, and over the stupidest shit, too. isn't that always how it goes?

-I've been in austin for a month, and have been without a car the whole time until this morning. a couple friends of mine have gone out of town for four days and I'm house-sitting for them and borrowing their car. having never been without a car since I was sixteen (that's fourteen years, friends), I have learned some things about myself:

1) I HATE relying on others for transportation. whether that's the bus (don't even get me started on the shitty-ass public transportation in austin), cabs, or bumming rides from friends, coworkers, etc., I absolutely loathe having to depend on other people for anything. this is a running theme throughout my life, but never have I felt it so acutely as when I cannot get from point A to point B without headaches, pleading, or lots of money. just ask r about my pathetic phone call when I was incapacitated by allergies and in desperate need of pho ga and stranded on the east side. I quite seriously almost took a forty dollar cab ride to get to hai ky on e. oltorf. I really don't know how people do this whole 'no car' thing.

2) it made me realize how much I took that freedom for granted, it's almost like when you have a really bad toothache, suddenly you remember how amazing it is NOT to have a really bad toothache. fortunately I go home a week from saturday, where I can drive wherever I want (even though there's not really anyway to go, but still. I have the option). I'll be sure to give my truck a little extra love. maybe some high octane gas or something, like a present.

I woke up about an hour after we got to dresden. everyone else was already up and going through the bus, making sure all of their belongings were accounted for. two gallants had been on the bus for two or three weeks before we met up with them, so they had shit everywhere. I tend to keep a tight rein on my stuff so I didn’t feel the need to do such a thorough search. surprisingly, my head didn’t really hurt- there wasn’t even an egg where I had smacked it. the sides of my neck and my shoulders were killing me, but I figured that was a lot better than a concussion and shook it off.

I went outside and morgan looked like he was having a tag sale- a low wall by the bus was now covered in his clothes, books, shoes, all kinds of random crap. he was repacking all of his stuff and singing made-up songs to himself. I brushed my teeth outisde, using an empty bottle of vodka that had been refilled water to rinse with, and had at least two older men just stop and stare at me in disbelief. sometimes it’s fun to fuck with people.

there was another artist’s apartment at the venue that we had access to, not as nice as the other one but fun because it seemed like more of an actual place to live. there was a room with three sets of bunk beds and another with two single beds, a living room with an open kitchen, and a bathroom. we ate yet more bread with cold cuts and cheese and fruit for breakfast (I don’t think I’ll be eating sandwiches for a while when I’m done with this tour) and started getting sad about it being our last day together. we spent the day mostly doing our own things. I walked around dresden a bit and wondered what it had looked like before the war. someone had likened it to me as the vienna of germany, just staggeringly beautiful. they also told me that the bombing of dresden had been without any real military goal, kind of more a punishment than anything else. I made a note to learn more about world war II when I got home.

we had all decided to buy something for jacob for being such a wonderful, patient tour manager and great friend. at first we were all going to chip in and get one big thing, but then everyone just started buying their own present for him so I went to a bunch of stores looking for something appropriate. a joke had been going around the bus about how hopeless we were without him, and how he constantly had seven people going ‘jacob, how far is it the next venue?’, ‘jacob, does the club have wifi?’, ‘hey jacob, will you ask them if they’ll give us more booze?’, ‘jacob, what time is soundcheck?’ ‘jacob, what’s my name?’ so I bought him a silver lighter at a headshop near the venue and wrote on the box in sharpie ‘hey jacob, do you have a lighter?’

the club was ok, not very good sounding but bigger than the last few we had played and fully equipped with five foosball tables, which was slowly becoming a priority. donny had decided he would do sound for us for the last show, which was such a treat. even though I'd been told that sound guys in europe better on average than american ones, we’d still run across a few stinkers and were delighted to have donny behind the board. we decided that we were going to perform, for the first time ever, my smash hit song ‘cock and balls and shit’, but it would be totally straight-faced. it was the only way. I was nervous, but up for the challenge, and after running through it a few times at soundcheck I felt ready for it.

dinner was to be at a restaurant around the corner, but they didn’t have our reservation so we just ordered take out from them and went back to the apartment. after we ate we presented jacob with his presents and he was really taken aback. we all got a little emotional (or rather, e-bro-tional) and once again reiterated to everyone that this had been a great tour, truly one of the best, and that we would all miss one another. it’s funny how quickly you can become close to people when you spend every moment with them, awake and alseep. three weeks ago I had never met these people, but suddenly I was waking up to them shuffling around the bus or talking with them until six in the morning about baseball or music or our families, or going out for dinner with them in countries where we had no idea what we were even ordering. it’s a situation that I imagine can go horribly wrong if you’re stuck with the wrong group of people, but as far I was concerned, we had hit the jackpot.

we took the stage around ten, and I spotted adam and tyson sitting on the side of the stage of near the ladder up to the dressing room because the floor of the venue was super packed. adam was in my line of sight, and when we started ‘cock and balls and shit’ I couldn’t make eye contact with him or think about any of those guys because I knew I would blow it, that there was no way I would make it through without laughing. yet somehow, I was able to block all of that from mind and pulled it off and the audience had no idea. they politely clapped, just like it was any other song. brilliant. I bit the inside of my cheek and moved onto the next song. the one other surprise of the night was a shock even to kate and me- eric’s nod to one of donny’s hilarious musings on having a fake metal band who’s album is called ‘in the night! tonight!’, giving the final t’s a kind of grunt at end, grossly overenunciating. eric did it the middle of ‘new drunk for the old drunk’, throwing himself off enough to miss a chord and sending kate and I into hysterics.

morgan, jacob, kate and I watched two gallants’ set from the same spot they had watched ours. we’ve been so spoiled to be able to see these guys perform every night, I made sure to soak in as much as I could; watching the spray of sweat from tyson’s hair every time he flips his head forward, the way adam glares forward and kind of shakes his head when he’s singing, the constant interplay of energy between the two. the crowd was crazed that night and started a mosh pit during ‘las cruces jail’ and there was even a crowd surfer. a crowd surfer! it was also during that song that there’s a quieter part where adam sings and it took me a second to realize through my earplugs that most of the crowd was singing along with him. I couldn’t help but smile and feel proud of them, and for them. adam caught my eye really quick and smiled back before jumping back into the loud part of the song. the two songs they played for an encore that night were unfamiliar to me, but apparently were jacob’s and morgan’s favorites.

we had to hang out at the club until the bus picked us up at two thirty, and we spent most of it upstairs in the dressing room because it was much cooler up there than in the club. at one point when there was maybe eight or ten people in the room when someone starting singing ‘cock and balls and shit’, and then suddenly everyone joined in and there were all these people, singing my tour song! I wish I had a tape of it. it was pretty impressive.

the ride to the airport in berlin took us about three hours, and while everyone else crashed to get a little sleep before a full day of travel, donny and adam and I took up residence in the lounge for one final bro-down. I was pretty exhausted at that point and probably a little drinky so I don’t remember much of what we talked about, but we exchanged numbers and email addresses and heartfelt promises to keep in touch with each other, and when donny’s favorite townes van zandt song came on the stereo we all put our arms around each other, adam to my left and donny to my right. I closed my eyes and sang along and felt a little teary, because I was pretty sure that with all the geographical space between us, we would never be that close again, but it was a lovely moment to cap an amazing experience, just the same.

andreas woke us up over the loudspeaker, announcing our arrival in stuttgart. we had to get there by noon for some undisclosed reason, and then he would be driving the bus about twenty minutes away to park it somewhere, so we had to load in and get all the stuff that we needed for the day immediately. when I was getting out of my bunk I saw adam and morgan doing yoga in front of the club (sun salutation, perhaps?) it was a smallish club that operated as a café during the day, so at least they had coffee. the dressing room was downstairs and ran as a bar on some nights, and as such was full of fruit flies.

the two gallants and eric had a radio thing to do, and I opted out of going since we couldn’t really bring the keyboard and I just didn’t feel like it. donny, jacob and I stayed behind, and richie the promoter showed us where the club apartment we had access to was located. it was super cool, well- decorated with three bedrooms that each had their own sink and stuff, and then a bathroom with a shower. no kitchen. they all showered, but I was still exhausted and crawled into one of the beds for a power nap. when I woke up we had a little bro-down/ tour recap and talked about how much we were going to miss everyone.

by the time we got back to the club, they had set up the green room for us, with the usual snacks and soda and beer and coffee and fruit and little sandwiches. donny and jacob tried to recall donny’s top five tour smackdowns (mostly soundguys, but there was a wayward dressing room hanger-on somewhere in france that he kicked out), and then donny and I decided to try to do some christmas shopping. we wandered through what was basically an open air mall, very boring and american-looking, and just when we were passing by an old clock that had been rebuilt after world war II, donny said ‘that’s where we want to be’ and points down an alley that, to me, looks like nothing. I shrugged and followed him, and suddenly we were at a big christmas market, rows of stalls with bratwursts and ornaments and nutcrackers and fish cooked on sticks. donny spotted a glühwein stand, which is a hot, mulled red wine germans make for the holidays and explained to me that when you bought it, it came with a commemorative mug you could keep. we sipped our drinks while we milled around and bought gifts. we found a skating rink and briefly discussed going skating, and it sounded really fun but then I got all worried about not having health insurance and breaking a limb or something and decided against it. as we were walking back towards the club, some church bells started ringing and we stood in the middle of the christmas fair, drinking the last of our wine, smelling the sausages and kebabs, soaking in the ridiculous perfection of the moment.

when we got back to the club for soundcheck at five, we found out we weren’t allowed to soundcheck until seven, which is when we were supposed to eat dinner, so adam and donny and I decided to go skating after all. we walked back to the skating rink, and on our way there, we spotted a guy that was selling prints of drawings he had done of famous rappers, dre and snoop and jay-z and tupac. adam bought one of the tupac ones for his brother for christmas.

they gave me hockey skates at the skating rink, and I didn’t realize how different they are from figure skating skates until I stepped on the ice and tried to push off with my toe and nearly fell on my face. adam had played hockey in middle school and took off fearlessly across the ice. donny had only skated three times in his life, so he was as wobbly as I was. we shuffled along, pinwheeling our arms once in a while to keep upright, while adam lapped us and skated backward. there were little kids skating that had these penguins or trolls about three feet high on runners with handles they could grab to steady themselves. I wished I had one my height.

after about thirty mintues I was feeling pretty steady, my fear of a shattered elbow fading. it was then that I heard adam’s voice behind me say, ‘miranda, spread your legs wide’. I knew what he was going to do, but for some reason I thought that if anyone could pull it off, it would be him. I pushed my feet out and saw his head poke through my ankles and then part of him hit the back of one of my skates and the next thing I knew the back of my head hit the ice with a hard thwack. we slid to a stop in the middle of a pool of freezing cold water, in front of a bunch of people who were gathered by the edge of the rink to watch the skaters.

‘oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.. are you alright?’ adam held my shoulders, looking me in the eye.

‘I think so’ I said, waiting for something to happen; searing pain, blood, blurred vision. but after a minute of sitting on the ice, our pants becoming soaked with ice water, I seemed to be ok. adam helped me up, and we took a few more laps before deciding to call it quits. we walked back through the christmas fair and stopped for more mulled wine before heading back to soundcheck. other than a dull ache and the feeling that it was going to hurt a lot more the next day, I seemed to have escaped major head trauma.

after a super quick soundcheck, the place filled beyond capacity within a half hour and we played to a polite but not terribly excited audience. there was a drunk, annoying woman who stood right in front of me during the show, talking loudly and asking us to play ‘happy songs’. she was, according to adam, just as annoying during two gallants’ set, too.

the show was over by midnight but andreas wasn’t picking us up until two thirty. the club was more than generous to us, giving us everything from bloody marys to cognac to tequila shots, which they serve not with a lime wedge but with a slice of orange with cinnamon on it. I tried one, and it was quite good.

once back on the bus, donny and I put on the beatles’ ‘revolver’ and had another epic bro-down in the lounge, this time arguing the age-old beatles versus rolling stones debate. I was stones, he was beatles. we came to a peace after we had listened to the entire album, with my ultimate argument being that while I respected the beatles songwriting and musicianship more, I responded more to the stones.

the place we played in münster was a smallish café place called gleis 22. I went to the day room to take a shower and then walked back past the venue and towards the train station. there was this weird little carnival-looking setup out front that consisted of just one ride called the ‘flying crazy train’ or something that didn’t appear to do anything, a hotdog stand and four little tents with shoes and belts for sale. I went in the train station and found a coffee stand and got a latte and walked back to the venue, where I traded my latte (too milky) for a proper cup of coffee and answered some emails and stuff. it was a boring afternoon. I spent about two hours trying to find an mp3 of townes van zandt’s ‘fare thee well miss carousel’ with no luck.

the venue cooked us dinner, possibly the best meal we’d been prepared so far this tour. a big pot of tomato basil soup, some kind of broccoli mushroom casserole, pasta with a cream sauce, a big salad of bean sprouts and peppers and cucumbers and greens, bread, chocolate pudding.. I needed it so badly. I had been feeling pretty toxic and that revived me almost instantly. jacob found out that the saddle creek guys that were supposed to be coming with the merch couldn’t make it, their flight having been delayed too long to bother. I felt bad for both eric and two gallants. they were losing a lot of money because of it.

the show was super packed, and after we played I could barely get through the audience to the back by the sound board, where there was some space blocked off behind donny. kate and I stood there to watch the show, but after about four sings I got tired of the smoke and heat and trying to watch over everyone’s heads and decided to go get some air and clean up the bus, as it was suffering from the effects of a few nights of serious throwing down.

after the show we hung around the venue, socializing and drinking until they kicked us out, and then we went back to the bus and did the same, with the addition of some poker (eric won again) thrown in for good measure. I have to get better at that game.

the dressing room in frankfurt was up three flights of spiral stairs, which I was kind of grateful for. I had been noticing the effects of not exercising and drinking lots of beer and felt like a few trips up and down those steps would do me some good. the stage on the ground floor was massive, facing a floor made out of huge metal steps and a balcony with rows of seats. the dressing room had about twelve individual little vanity stations along two walls, with their own broadway-style litup mirrors.

the constant overcast, rainy weather killed my desire to wander around, so instead I enjoyed a boring afternoon of lounging around the club, eating snacks and playing a new version of the bottle cap game which had been bred with the game ‘pig’ and involved jumping off the couch, spinning around and flicking the cap at the clock on the wall. after soundcheck the promoter, richie, took us out to dinner at a restaurant next to the club. I love our tradition of all eating together, especially when we go out to a proper restaurant. it’s something I’m really going to miss. there's something so comforting about sitting down and having a meal with a big group of friends. I got the schnitzel- I didn’t even know what is was, but richie’s vague explanation of it being some kind of fried pork cutlet sounded good enough for me. I mean, you have to eat stuff like schnitzel when you’re in germany, right? and while it could’ve used some kind of sauce, or onions or something, it was still pretty good.

during our set, when I was off to the side of the stage for a song I didn’t play on, flavie and adam came over and flavie said she was leaving. I gave her a hug and wished her well, and promised I would say goodbye to eric and kate for her. I couldn’t figure out how to get to the front of the club without going outside during two gallants set so I watched it from the side of the stage. I love watching tyson play drums; he’s so energetic and talented, a blur of arms and long hair.

we had the usual bro-down on the bus. there were a few stragglers I didn't know who were hanging out, plus another couple of adam's friends, daniel and his girlfriend who's name is either marie or anna. or anne. I'm not sure. they were going to be staying on the bus for a few days as well, but I didn't mind. they were very sweet.