Josef Koudelka

This is really great.

Dogs Don't Wipe Their Butts With Newspaper

That was my friend Tim's response to the question 'how do you know that you just stepped in human shit?' Gross.

Bummer. I am back from five days off of the tour for the Thanksgiving holiday. I flew from San Francisco yesterday to Milwaukee of all places.

I left here:



















To go here:


















Yep. I was here:


















And I went here, by choice.



















I am a total dick.

This was the scene the last day before my break. Bryan our merch guy sitting shirtless in the front lounge of our bus watching the military channel for six straight hours.



















Thanksgiving was unreal, check the turkey and the pies. I don't think that I ever really had that sort of thing. It was amazing.





























We went to Carmel beach and then down to Big Sur to The Henry Miller Library for the day.



























I'd just like to say that I'm not a bad person. However, when I saw this monstrosity of a vehicle parked in Big Sur I instinctively reached for a key to run along its pristine, black paint job. Turns out someone already beat me to it. It's a thing of beauty really.

















I started my day with not one but four people engaging me (or attempting to, anyway) in tech talk. Anyone who does anything surrounding or involved with something that runs on gas or electricity or anything that has any ergonomic purpose at all knows what I mean. Anyone who does anything but buy or sell paperweights knows that at some point someone who really really likes their job will ask you how you feel about the new XR-12, or how the B-14 improves the rear differential or why the DK9 totally alleviates paper jams. Who cares? Some people, but not me. I enjoy moments of my job, generally the creative ones, but when people talk shop around or to me it makes me question everything. That and drugs. When people talk to me about how much cocaine they can tolerate it makes me think that everyone involved in this line of work is a big tech nerd or a raging speed freak (or a little from column A, a little from column B).

So I ended up in Milwaukee today. My hotel is 18 floors that all look exactly alike. This is where stories involving drunken nights stumbling into the wrong hotel rooms are born.














We are at the Eagles Ballroom which is an old, creepy building with 5 levels and at least 3 separate venues in it. I have been here before. It is always cold here. Today was no exception. There is always a problem with power and the lights go out and/or burst into flames. Again, today was no exception. It's a weird old room that looks and sounds like you are inside a toilet.



















Creepy weird stuff abound.



























It used to be a bowling alley, swimming pool and they held the occasional boxing match there in the 20's. Oh, and Buddy Holly played his last show here, and died the following day on Jan 24, 1959.















There is a great deal of lore surrounding Jeffrey Dahmer around these parts. He picked up several male victims in The Rave, a club just downstairs, and took them to The Ambassador hotel. It was mostly a 'two men enter, one man leaves' type scenario. A few of us wandered up to the roof of the place, six stories up. It was mildly terrifying. Here's Tim being the ghost of serial killers past.


















We parted ways with Ted Leo and The Pharmacists in Miami last week.


















It was good fun. They got tanked and jumped on our vans when we were leaving.





















I love those guys.


Just as an aside, may I introduce $200 worth of veggie bacon?


















And here is Nick's plan to feed himself during the remainder of football season:



















Still looking for a place in SF. Lexi and I reckon that we have seen somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 places and applied to maybe half. Only 2 people have called us back, and only one has accepted our application. Unreal. The market seems to be so much in favor of realtors and owners that the moment an ad is placed at least 50 people are lined up waiting to rent it. People are so rude and cut throat that I fight back the urge to throw punches every time I go to an open house. The last apartment that we rented in NY was no easy deal either. We looked for a month or so, mostly at shitty places, but then went to a realtor, saw the apartment and signed the lease on New Year's Eve. I just keep thinking that we'll catch a break.