i hate packing. i spend more time packing books, cds and other distractions than i spend on clothes. Which if you know me makes perfect sense. I leave thursday night but this tour actually starts wednesday morning. At 9am i have to be at the Ed Sullivan theater to load in. From there i will bounce back and froth between maxwells in NJ and the David Letterman set. The band i am working for is going to appear on Letterman on wednesday. After the late afternoon taping they are playing a show at Maxwells. Then the following afternoon they are doing an NPR radio show. And finally late that night or early the next day we will get on the bus and head out for 12 days or so in the US. Sounds like fun doesnt it. Oh it is.

And the saga continues in the city of brotherly love.
A short saga this one will be. 6 shows with 1 already down. And that leaves only 5 to go.
Washington DC is our next target. I am looking forward to it. 9:30 club. One of my favorite clubs anywhere. Ok then. I am going to go and get a cheese steak.

Winona Ryder has been found guilty of shoplifting.

Paris hotel. Not that paris hotel. But another one. I was kind of hoping to spend my last night on tour at the bastille hotel in paris, but that isn’t going to happen. The promoter booked the hotel as part of the show. The bastille hotel is booked by l..... The record lable that the band is on in continental Europe. So here I am in a so-so hotel with not much to do till I leave at around 6 am. At the moment it is about 3:10am. So that leaves me with a few hours of nothing to do. I am mostly packed. Because I hardly ever unpack. Finally a benefit from living out of a suitcase for weeks and months on end. I will take a shower and maybe close my eyes for a bit. Then off I go.

Tonight is my last full night out. Tomorrow is my last show of the tour. I am leaving a few days early to attend my brothers wedding. I am kind of looking forward to the wedding. But on the other hand I have been so consumed with work and being away for so long that I don’t really know what to think or expect. When you are home after being out fort so long everything works and moves in slow motion it seems. When the day is free to do with as you want it can sometimes lead to trouble. Bordem. Which can lead to trouble. So here I sit I strassburg, france in a comfort in of all places. Little is of comfort here, but it is still not the worst place I have stayed at the past few months. I cant put my finger on where the worst place was. But I am thinking it was some small mom and pop bates motel type place in the USA. Tonight the thought occurred to me that maybe I don’t want to do this anymore. But I know that when I get home and have more than 3 days to myself I will miss this more than anything. As I already do. My brothers wedding is probably the only thing that could talek me away from this. This. This thing which has become my life and which I so thoroughly enjoy. This thing that I both love and hate but have never felt more at ease doing. Whatever. I am just rambling here with nothing real to say for a change. That rock star touring kid who writes the article for rolling stone movie was just on, in French. Kind of ironic there. Personally at least. And that what everything is, personal.

Yeah well since then I have used the pcm 70, 80 and 91. And tonight I used a TC M5000. In addition to a TC D2 and a couple of spx 990s. But that like everything else is another story to be told at a later date.

Yeah yeah yeah,. Not to be confused with the group. The band. The whatever. At the moment we are I hamburg, germany. I like it here. The club was awesome. Kind of like a bigger version of the mercury lounge in nyc. A good crest desk, JBL boxes and crest power. And best of all, a monitor desk with a really great house engineer running things. Ray seemed to really know his stuff and we talked afterwards for a while about gear and this and that. This and that being add n to x who opened the show. And the fact that there engineer hit the system so hard that it went to half power for a while. And the fact that he was a ...... Note the difference there. There are all of 3 people that know the difference but that doesn’t stop me from trying here now does it. No, it doesn’t. Hot dogs, porn and knives. Those are my other memories of hamburg, germany. Not bad memories I say. The show was really good. I had a great time tonight. I didn’t even have to use any of my outboard gear cause this place was pretty well equipped. A bunch of 160a’s, some drawmer 201’s. An spx990 a d two and an lxp15. To this day I still think that most of lexicons stuff is to complicated and so user unfriendly that I would rather use lesser sounding gear that I can easily negotiate my way around. As opposed to better sounding reverbs that are just imposible to configure as I want. I would up using the spx990 and d two on vocals and the lxp 15 on snare. The snare plate sounded good but I couldn’t figure out how to change the settings on it, so I used it as is. The spx990 and d two on the other hand are easy as cake to find my way around on. There was a pcm 70 at the spot in Belgium last week that sounded great but I had the same problem. To fucking difficult to tweak it so I wound using the stock programs. Not so bad, but far from ideal. Next place I am in that has a pcm 70 I will try and spend some time and lean how to tweak settings on it. Next time. In the mean time.

Germany is like every other place. It has its good its bad and its boring. Things however are ok at the moment. The party has left my room and I am sitting here alone after smoking, drinking and eating some of Germanys local delicacies. Maybe some of them arent quite delicacies but all good none the less. A good show at a proper venue with a good sounding sound system. The first I have come across on germany. And I thought Dresden would be a really lame place to play. Turns out that it is just the opposite. A good size venue that was quite crowded. Next time it will be packed.

The last US tour we stayed in one really nice hotel. That was a Hilton in Chicago. Totally nice, huge, modern, new hotel. Like a little self contained city. We stayed there for 2 nights and then it was a bunch of places whose names I cant remember. Except for Holiday Inn. And I only remember the Holiday Inns because they had pay per view and I knew they would always have a vending machine. And then the European tour before this one there was this totally new stylin awesome Holiday Inn in Belgium. Not far from the puglepop festival. But I am trying to remember if that hotel was really that nice, or was it that I was really that fucking tired that day. I remember driving with stevie through the night in the pouring rain and finally getting there at 5am. And then having to be awake and ready to go early the next morning. But I think that hotel was nice. Though not as nice as this one. So anyway.

The day starts with a a great hotel. Then off to the venue which is immediately awesome. A proper loading bay with ramps and a few extra sets of hands to help with the load in. Then into the smaller of 2 rooms in this amazing venue. The small room is about 300 people. The larger room holds around 2 thousand. Immediately I start to smile as I see 4 KF 850s hanging and 4 matching EAW subs. Finally a room with respectable sound system. FOH console was a PM 3500 and the monitor desk was a crest. The band loved the monitors and I loved the FOH. Plenty of outboard. Good mics and stands. And a really good house crew. The monitor guy in particular was tops. The band had good things to say about him. And the food at this place was incredible as well. Because of course they had full on great restaurant in the venue as well. A delicious piece if salmon and some tasty mashed potatoes. Just good all around.

Stooooooooooooooooooned. That about sums things up at the moment. And I am not complaining here. Not in the least. Today was total bizaro world day. Especially after what we went through the day before. The day before today was a venue that had never had a rock show. And they didn’t have a sound system either. So after some heated words and a bit of arguing and finger pointing a system was agreed upon and quickly delivered and set up. It certainly was not what I would have specd if I was I knew ahead of time that production had to be brought in. but it worked out none the less. A hodge podge of EV and JBL stuff powered by qsc with an omni drive. Whatever. It all worked. Today on the other hand started in England and after a quick chunnel ride we wound up in france and then a few hours later we found ourselves in Brussels, Belgium. At least that’s what place sam told me we are at now. I have no clue. It doesn’t make a differnce anyway. We drive up to the hotel that the promoter booked us in and discover it to be a 5 star Sheraton. Totally bizarre there, here, after being in budget oriented places for the past 2 weeks. And the past month before.

Something at the moment is a ferry on its way from Scotland to Ireland. Oh what a joy. And did I mention that this ferry will not arrive at its destination until 8am. Then we have a few hours drive to wherever it is we are going if I am not mistaken. Which I very well might be. But I doubt it. So yeah here I am. Not terribly happy or well rested or in good spirits for a change. Add comfortable to the list of things I am not at the moment. Well at least the sun is starting to rise. For whatever that is worth. Which these days really isn’t shit to me. Especially with how I have been feeling these days.

Stupid enough to think that his cool could always be maintained.
Nothing can be maintained 100 percent.
There is always going to be something

It kind of makes sense. I was just thinking about how I have actually progressed my sound career. To the point that I do actually have a career here. And this was what I wanted to do. What I was and continue to do. But all of a sudden there I got something back. But I got something back to something I was putting something into. And maybe that’s the trick somehow. To put into things that you wish to gain from. Things in your life. I never ever thought of it for some stupid reason. I never thought about it in terms of getting a return on something I do with my life. Whatever that might be. Maybe it is all bullshit and its simply a coincidence like so many other things are on the level we deal with them. Break it down far enough and you will see that there are no coincidences. But we don’t look at things on thqt level so there appear to be coincidences. And accidents. And mistakes. And all that other stuff that we read into and create and dwell upon. The bullshit of sorts. Or the blood. Glasgow, Scotland looks like any other place outside a rainy hotel window. They are all blurred together. Or some crap like that. Stoned in a hotel is an ok way to be sometimes. Sometimes it isn’t. I have found some things that make me feel better. Like just sitting at the computer in bed listening to music and staring at the screen. The closest thing to being home. Without a steady net connection. Or a nice comfortable couch. Apparently he was my very best friend we spent warm summer days wishing they would never end. To quote Ted Leo. And the pharmacists. Who I also miss. But I brought along a bunch of songs for me to hear from Ted. So that is a good thing.

Run till you fall down. To quote The Brought Low. Whom I miss. But I found an mp3 on a cd of kings and queens, so I listen to it over and over again. Because its that good. And because it makes me forget about where I am for a few minutes. At the moment I am trying to forget that I am in hotel room in Glasgow, Scotland for the second time in less than 6 months. Its all stuff and nonsense anyway. To quote the Supersuckers. This is weird. Its ok, but sometimes it is just weird. What has gone on the past 3 months. These guys put their money where their mouth is and stepped up tot eh plate and here I am. And I so psyched to be here. Careful what you wish for cause you just might get it.

But it gets back to still being tired. And not getting enough rest on my 5 days off at home. And this that and the other thing. Mostly the other thing. But I will write more about that later. Now I just want to get off this dam plane and into a hotel room with a bed. I slept a bit on the plane here. More than I than I have slpt on a flight in a long time. I actually opened up the computer not because I had anything to say or do, but because I was simply bored. And now I am uncomfortable and bored. Typing here with this thing sitting on a bag and my arm wedged up against a seat is not relly comfortable and certainly is not condusive to writing much of anything but the crap and dribble that flows from my hands at the moment. So I will stop for now.

And here we go again. 4th time going out and the third trip to Europe this year. I am on the plane heading towards England and I am already pissed off. Not a good way to start a month long tour of 7 countries. I am sorry but I am just tired and not well rested and know that there is a lot of work to be done in the next month before I get to go home. And then when I get home I have josh and gaelle’s wedding. Which at this point is looking like a piece of cake coming on the heels of another tour. I am not complaining here. I don’t know what I am doing. I am just really tired. But I think I said that before. I am going to really try and make the effort to have a good positive attitude on the outing. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but ic an still manage to have a good time with it all. After all this is what I chose to do. This is what I have wanted to do and now I have been given the opportunity to do it. How many people are really in my position? Not many I would think.

So it all boils down to mixing this band and how do I feel at the end of the night. Factor in all the crap, the sound system, the personalaities and the bullshit, the van and the travel, not to mention the being away from home for extended periods of time. But it all boils down to how do I feel after I have ginished mixing their performance. And most of the time I feel really good.

Except now that is. I am sitting in the dressing room in a club in Detroit. The band went someplace. Maybe back to the hotel. I don’t know and I really don’t care. I don’t care for the bullshit and the attitude that some of them walk around with. Granted for the most part it is not directed at me, but on occasion it does boil over and I catch some of it and I am none too happy when that happens. I am here to do a job and when they start doing stuff that interferes with my job then I tend to get pissed off. Most of the time I simply deal with it and go on with whatever it is I am doing. But on occasion because of there bullshit I am not allowed to do my job to the best of my abilities. That’s when I get pissed off. Like now. sound check sometimes is a fucking wank fest filled with everything but what I want. Whatever. I am fucking tired and hungry and have to go the bathroom and I am pissed off among 50 other things I am feeling at the moment.

Yeah whatever. The crew guys are always the coolest ones in the house. They are working, like me. Yes we would rather be sitting around drinking beer an smoking but we are at work. So right there we have something in common. Lately there has been good crew to hang out with and crap. The Troubador in particular was fun. At least for me. The house guy did monitors and I mixed FOH. But both desks are located at the FOH position up in the balcony. So you get to mix and have your monitor guy standing next to you. Interesting. Better than having your mix position behind the mains. That will never happen again. Jeez just thinking about it is crazy. So many different desks and speakers and crap. Its insane that I consistently get the most out of this each and every night. No matter how much or how little you have to work with.

This is the only the second time that I have sat down to write anything. I have written a few e mails and crap but I still havent responded to quite a few. I just usually don’t have the time or energy to do it. Sleep has been lowered a few notches to just above trying to not eat fast food. I get a few hours here and a few there, but I hardly ever sleep in the van. And that’s when everyone else is always sleeping. So I sit there ands try to get comfortable to no end and enjoy the silence. Sometimes I will listen to whatever cd is playing in the stereo or if I am lucky we David will have NPR on. We try to get a little NPR time most every day. Sometimes we skip a day, but we have been pretty good with it. We are most always in the van between 12 and 4. Usually we are in the van a few hours earlier. And sometimes we simply roll up to the club un load and sound check. After check we usually go back to the hotel to do whatever. On a good day we have a few hours to kill at the hotel before having to return to the venue. Sometimes we have 35 minutes. Whatever .It’s a change of scenery and gives me something to do instead of sitting around waiting. Hurry up and wait.

So the date time thing says that the last time I worte here in this place was on 8/13/02 on the plane home from france. I find it hard to believe that it was just over a month ago. Granted we did have 5 glorious days off back home but we then soon hit the road in a van across the USA. Tonight we fond ourselves in the CANADA. Van Couver or somre shit like it. The heroin captial of the north east is what people call tbis I call it a fuckint war zone.

I fucking hate Microsoft and all their crap. I just sat here and typed away for 10 minutes straight until an error message appeared informing me of a malfunction of sorts in Microsoft works word processor. Then it said that my current wok would probably be lost and prompted me to send and error report in via an on line transmission. Which at the moment isn’t possible as I am now 38000 feet above the atlantic ocean cruising along at over 550 miles per hour. In a few hours I will be in Newark, new jersey. Oh boy. The sheer thrill of it is beyond words. Actually I am really quite pissed at having lost my words there and no longer have the desire to keep writing.

I love my computer.

I just sneezed about 4 or 5 times in the past minute for no apparent reason. Make that 7. Getting sick now would not be a good thing. Getting sick anytime in the next few months would not be a good thing at all. Between a fairly full touring schedule and my brothers wedding I am busy and need to stay healthy.

The beginning of the last full day in paris. Tomorrow we head home. This afternoon we head for a radio recording session. I just came from the complimentary breakfast where I happened to meet Eric the touring keyboard player. We sat had some coffee a few croissants and some good strawberry jam. Normally I tend to stay in my room for as long as possible until it is time to go to wherever it is we are going, but when breakfast is included or paid for by someone other than myself I try and eat it. Every bit of money I save is a bit of money I earn. Its all about trying to make your per diem go as far as possible. I am doing pretty well. I went to the bank machine once in the 3 weeks we have been out and I took out 50 pounds which translates to about 80 dollars I believe. I probably could have lived without it but whats done is done.

Getting pissed with 2 mates at a bar in the eifel tower was quite fun this afternoon. A bunch of beers later and I had all but forgotten were we were and why it was that we were there. Though wlaking down the stret this morning it was brought up that “hey….you are in france.” they made us go to france dammit. No choice in the matter. You ARE going. And you will be paid to do so. Things could definitely be worse I say. I tend to say a lot of things. That particular thing is the pinnacle of all things to be said. All comments lead to that. Things could definitely be worse.

Being bored out of my mind in a very nice hotel room in paris really isn’t as bad as it sounds. Its not really bad at all. Its not terribly great, but as I said earlier, things could definitely be worse. This hotel could be worse which would be a shame because I really do like this place. The fact that we go home the day after tomorrow is the crowning achievement this day. All that is left is the radio session tomorrow then we leave the morning after. The session will take up the better part of the day so we will be busy and occupied. I will not be mixing but instead with the engineer in the control room assisting in some way shape or form. Or some such crap like that. I will be there. Leave it at that.

I am in my paris, fance hotel room now. I got the single room this evening. I have been rotating room mates the whole trip. As most of us have. I don’t mind sharing a room. Most of us know when to talk and when to keep to ourselves when we are in a hotel. But it is still nice to be in a room by myself for the first time in almost 3 weeks. Granted there have been moments to myself but I always knew that someone was going to be back in my room eventually. Not tonight. This marvelous paris, france hotel room has cable teevee and 3 English speaking news stations. CNN is on now. A special program recapping the events of 9/11. I don’t want to watch it but I cant get myself to turn it off. So I have it on next to me here on the desk. Like I have said before, every time I think I have forgotten about what happened that day there is something there to remind me. I realize that I will never forget that day. But maybe it will come to reside in a different part of my mind. I don’t think that will happen either. But I hope ins some way. I think the only thing that will allow that to come to be is time. So maybe what I am wishing for is time. Time between me and what happened. Time for it to be put in its place as something terrible that occurred. Something that I will never forget. Something that should not and will not be forgotten.

And Belgium aint no France. Which is where is was and were I am respectively. 5 hours later and we are now in Paris. The shows are all over and we are at the same hotel we stayed in a week or so ago. What is probably only a week or 10 days ago at the most seems a lifetime away at the moment. Of course we have been through 3 countries and back since then. Leaving France we wound up in England and then on to Scotland then back to England then over to Belgium and now we are back in France. I have been on trains, planes, boats and vans in the past week. And the only conclusion I have come to is that charles de gaul airport is a mess.

Don’t judge a sound system by the looks of it. I should remember this coming from where I come from. But sometimes you look at the parts and assume that it is going to fit together nicely. It doesn’t always work out that way. But like I said before, you stick it out and do what you have to do to get through it and hope that tomorrow brings something better. That’s all.

Tomorrow in his case is more than a few days later. And a few shows and clubs later as well. I can remember a few of the cities and a few of the clubs. And of course I can remember all of the sound systems. The following is a list of desks and speakers that I can remember:

-Amek Recall Nexo Alpha
-A&H GL 3300 ?
-Soundcraft Series 4 Martin Sound
-A&H GL2200 ?
-Soundcraft Series 2 ? The guy who designed Turbosounds boxes did these
-Midas Heritage 1000 EAW KF850/SB1000
-Yamaha PM4000 JBL ML4???

The festivals all had good sounding rigs and plenty of outboard gear. I would say my favorite was Reading which had a Midas desk and an EAW rig. Outboard at Reading consisted of a PCM70, 2xSPX990 and a Roland SD330 for effects. Drawmer gates and Behringer compressors. It all worked and sounded awesome. For Reading we were in one of the smaller tents called the Carling Stage. It held about 1200 or so and it was packed all the way to the back and flowed out some more. A nice turnout and a very receptive audience. All we got was a line check and then they hit stage. Everything was good except for Carlos not being plugged into the DI for the first 20 seconds of the first song. That and Eric only being plugged into the Left DI for his keys output. Nothing major and nothing that didn’t get rectified within the first 20 seconds of the show. I had a lot of fun mixing there and the desk in particular was awesome. A great eq. Amazingly functional. I was really hearing even relatively minute adjustments. The system itself was well thought out. Plenty of boxes and lots of sub. I was hitting it fairly hard but there was still fair amount of headroom. I wish all the systems were as sweet as that one was. The pukkelpop system was top notch as well. It was a bigger tent than Reading. And it was square as opposed to Readings round traditional tent shape. A big JBL ML series rig with plenty of bottom and a surpisingly mild top end. The desk was a Yamaha PM4000 which is a great desk. Easy to use, functional and well laid out. But it aint no Midas.

The good the bad and the totally indifferent. Or some such crap like that. Its all the same at some point. Doing something. Something you like. Something you don’t like. Something you thing you want to be doing. Something you think you should be doing. All the same. Its all what you make of it. Some days you think you know what you are doing and some days you are merely along for the ride and you have no idea who is doing the driving. But you stick it out and do what you can to get through it in hopes of tomorrow being a better day. Not to sound so optimistic there, cause I am not. I am simply being realistic.

At the moment my head is fucking throbbing as a result of trying to get on line from England. Manchester, England to more precise. AOL is eating my fucking arse. That’s what I get for trying to use AOL to get on line overseas. Of course the search back home for an international ISP lead me absolutely fucking no where at all so I was forced in a sense to use them. I figured that being as big as they were it would be a relatively simple affair to get on line. But no. nothing is ever as apparently simple as it seems. I should totally and thoroughly know this by now. But I forget sometimes. Sometimes I forget how utterly fucked the world is. And that I am trying to do things that make sense to me but make little or no sense to anyone else. I should simply learn by now. But I have not and fear that at this stage of my game I will not learn. Now I am tired and just feel like shit and am in a stupid hotel room in a foreign country and don’t really want to be here at the moment but what can I do. All that and we finally played a show tonight. And I finally got to do what I was brought here and am paid to do which is mix the band. That part was fun. Not particularly great sounding venue but really nice house guy as well as the rest of the staff there. That made things a lot easier. This was kind of the Brownies of Manchester. Ok then. I am going to bed now.

Now I am laying in a bed in paris, france and have a headache that has been with me on and off for the past 3 days. Maybe a good nights sleep will make it good away. Maybe I will actually get a good nights sleep somewhere along the road here. That would be nice indeed. Ok captain video, this is commander H signing off for the evening. Broadcasts will commence at an unspecified hour on an unspecified date.

Don’t whistle while you take the train. Actually it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Today we took the train from the small town in the non English language speaking country to a large city in the non English language speaking country. It was as easy as it could be what with six of us and a bunch of guitars and our luggage. So to make no story short we are now in paris. We were previously in dinan. The people of dinan were really quite fun and hospitable. One night while sam and I were out and about looking for something to smoke we wound up befriending the local d.d. of dinan. He and the rest of the crew that worked at this café we had eaten at took a liking to us. Not so much for the fact that they are in a band but more so because we are from NYC. Apparently we stuck out like soar thumbs. But in a good way of sorts. Meeting them made the rest of my days in dinan much more enjoyable. They took us around and showed us some sights and got us baked on more than one occasion. A good time was had by all. I was really thrilled with their hospitality. The last night in town one of the girls at the café took sam, myself and 10 others out for champagne at 1am at a café across the street from out hotel. It was so much fun. I sound like such a dork writing about it like this but thats what it was. A really nice time shared amongst new friends. And then we got on the train and left town this morning. And tomorrow we will get on a plane in the morning to fly to play a show in the evening.

A few hours later and our hero still lies awake in a crumby hotel room in a non English language speaking country. Some things never change. Some things simply take time. Time.

A few more hours later and I am still sitting ion the very same hotel room in the same non English language speaking country. Though at the moment I am feeling a bit better about things in general and about myself. For what reason I really couldn’t tell you. But better is better and I wont argue with that. This room has taken on a certain aroma of sorts. I am not sure if it as a result of it being lived in and not cleaned for however long or if it simply smells. Yesterday I was convinced I was stinking to high hell. So I took a shower and scrubbed myself clean and put on all clean clothes and walked out of the bathroom and was hit with the same smell I had tried to scrub myself free of minutes ago. So it wasn’t me after all. It was and is this stink bag hotel. I tried to use stink bag as a compound word there, stinkbag. But Microsoft’s dictionary thing is telling me otherwise. I turned off the grammar checker thing casue it underlined every sentence I wrote. For years and then some I was under the impression that sentence had an a in it. In fact I just tried spelling it with an a and couldn’t get to the end of the word before I was corrected. Not merely made aware of the fact that I had misspelled the word, but automatically. This auto correct thing is now beginning to piss me off a bit here. Auto correcting what doesn’t really need correcting.

Laptop on my lap. Actually J&R calls them notebook computers. I call them laptops. And that is exactly where this one is residing at the moment. On my lap as I lay in bed my back against the wall in this kind of smelly hotel room. Yeah.

A bunch more hours later than the last time I wrote a bunch more hours later. Every now and then I forget why the hell I am really here and it drives me insane. Then I remember and realize that I am still days away from accomplishing my mission. My goal. The job I was hired to do. My mission. Did I mention that I played miniature golf a few days ago? Perhaps in all the excitement it slipped my mind. Or my mind slipped. Or something like that. But I did indeed play 18 holes of a somewhat rudimentary miniature golf course located next to a small zoo. The zoo had reindeer and roosters in one section, and in an other it had some ducks and a few rather obese pigeons. That was all. Kind of strange but fun. For about 30 seconds. It certainly wasn’t the Bronx zoo. Or even the Bronx for that matter. Ok then. Sam and I are off to go get some dinner and stuff. The stuff being of greater importance than the dinner. Later we will maybe perhaps meet up with eric and rebeca and play some pool or foosball or video games. All of which we have been doing on a regualr basis since we arrived here. Its like summer camp in a weird distorted way.

Never judge a book by the cover so they say. Who is they and why do people seem to put so much importance on what they have to say. Yet another unawered question. That and is there an end to the universe. Though they are not quite in the same league with one another.

I sat and fired off about a dozen e-mails to various family and friends this afternoon. Net access was via a cyber café bar thing type place in the none English language speaking country that I am still in. the keyboards in this non English language speaking country are laid out a bit differently then what this English language speaking individual (myself) is accustomed to. Little things like having to hit shift to get to the period can really making typing a trying experience. Not to mention that altered placement of the letter keys and the double shift mechanism employed above the number keys. What should have taken a half hour wound up taking an hour and a half. I didn’t look at any web sites while I was on line. All I tended too was e-mail. I had wanted to at least take a peak at the NY Times web site and maybe Slashdot just to see what was going on in the ret of the world. Because where I am now there is nothing going on.

Whistle while you work.
Another thing that they say.

A while back i was in france for a few weeks. Not by choice. It was simply cheaper to keep me in france in between shows than to fly me home and back again. I said sure. I figured a paid vacation of sorts. Not exactly but it was something. This bunch of crap is the non english speaking country hotel ramblings.

A dirty room that was cleaned daily. Dust hung in the corners and dirt lived in the cracks and crevices. The beds were both made but with little care or regard. You get what you pay for I suppose. And at the moment I am not paying a thing. Or rather I am not paying with money at the moment. What I am paying for this with is my time and sanity. I presently have more of one than the other, you figure it out if you like. Or simply don’t bother and continue on as you were. As hi-tech as it gets it still boils down to current flowing over wires at some point. Sure there are fiber optics and radio spectrum receiver/transceivers but the bulk of the world still travels down a copper cable someplace, somehow. And those cables are everywhere you look. And everyplace you haven’t looked.

The reality of the situation being that I am in a hotel room in a foreign non English speaking country with a less than modern phone system. Getting on line is proving to be more of a chore than it really should be. And asking for help seems to simply set me back further from my elusive goal. The chances of 802.11 access being available are slim to none so I haven’t even bothered trying.
What else is new.

Sitting here for another 5 days is going to fucking kill me.

This is a holiday-tourist town with nothing for me to do. All the stores cater to tourists and the restaurants are all of the type that under normal circumstances I would never find myself in. today I was so tired of the of it all that I went to the super market conveniently located across the street from my hotel room and bought some bread, meat, soda and mustard and made a sandwich in my room. While I was eating I was wishing for a newspaper, magazine or and English language television program to accompany me. But I was shit out of luck. All I have with me are 3 books, 1 and half of which I have finished, and this computer. This computer with no net access at the moment. Which does nothing for me with regard to keeping me entertained while I eat my meat sandwich in my hotel room in this non English language speaking country. Like I said earlier, shit out of luck.

I woke up today showered put some clean clothes on and ventured outside to the center of this lovely little town. There I sat for 2 hours. I read and watched the tourists stroll on by. You can always spot the tourists. That look of bewilderment on their faces as they wander around aimlessly looking for who knows what. Looking for whatever it is that they don’t have back home. Wherever home is for them. But what do you do in my case where home has everything. Everything and then some. Everything that I need at least. I walk around with a different look on my face. And I sit here in this hotel room in this non English language speaking country with that very same look on my face.

The dirt is here, but it isn’t my dirt. So it may as well not be here then. What good is it if it isn’t mine. No one wants to play with or be surrounded by anyone else’s dirt. At least in this situation. As usual I can and only speak for myself here. You may enjoy the company of another’s dirt, but at this time and place in this non English language speaking country I simply do not care for it. A fucking newspaper would be a blessing at this point. Even the NY Post. That’s how bad things are getting around here.

Its all a struggle it seems at this point. Even these words are the result of such a forced effort that I think I may have to lay down and take a nap soon. Either that or I may venture out to the super market to purchase more bread and meat for some more sandwiches. I don’t even want to knock myself out so as to make the passing of time oblivious. I want to be conscious of it passing but be occupied or engulfed ion something as it does.

I have put off watching any of the movies I brought with me and have only barley played any of the games I have loaded the computer with. Delayed gratification maybe. But not really because there isn’t much in the way of gratification to be gained from any of that. The only thing to be gained is my time being occupied. That’s all I really want at the moment. Something to occupy my time.

Fresh towels were the days only concession. The only concession to cleanliness that is. Better than nothing I suppose, though just barley. Whatever. I will stop complaining. Though it just seems to come so naturally and without effort in the way I do it. At least to me. I suppose others will perceive it differently than I. But that’s there problem. There problem with how they perceive the way in which I do things. Or the way in which I don’t do them.

So I made it through another night. Which means it is now that much closer to actually doing what I came here to do. Which is mix. I am so getting fidgety now about wanting to mix this band. I truly enjoy working with them on a musical level. Things sounds quite good off the stage and that allows me to really fine tune things on my end. And to be a bit adventurous and experimental with certain elements. And they are totally cool with me doing this. There is definetly some mutual trust going on here and I am really glad that we are both felling the same thing. We both have a common goal. A well peformed, entertaining show. that’s usually what we end up with at the end of the night.

But that doenst change the fact that I am still here in a somewhat crappy hotel room in a non English language speaking country. Sitting around waiting. Waiting for the day to come that will signal our departure from this place. Then the fun starts. 6 shows In 6 days. I cant wait to be busy again. I feel better being busy and I sleep better as well. Till then though I will simply stick to the game plan and deal with this one day at a time. It is working so far.