The past week...

..was all about lifting wheights at the Y, riding bikes and midnight swims at the lake. The temperature must be around 30 C constantly. I have pictures which I will put up at a later time because I'm tired now.

Famous Marshallltown people:
-The guy who designed the swoosh and the now designs dunks
-One of the munchkins in the wizard of ozz
-The guy who created The Sims
-This one guy who took of to Colarado to smoke pot and play in a folk band. He got a write up in the local newspaper and is therefore more famous than other semi well known musical acts hailing from Marshalltown
-The lady who played Joan in the first Joan of Arc movie
-Frog, who jumped through the window of C.J's house and got mentioned on various blogs and messageboards
-The littlest girl on the brady bunch, she grew up across the street from Angie's dad
-All cast and crew of Marshalltown's furious karaoke battles

Reading and stuff

2 days ago I found the letters of abelard and heloise and was so excited I pretty much finished it in two days. Great story, perfectly written and the translation I got is awesome too. I also found the Cirano book which was a good find.

Right now I'm on the lookout for anything by Ovid but especially metamorphosis so if you have some books of his laying around and wanna get rid of it hit me up.

4 more weeks until Holland's first match.

A genius belly dancer

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Genius Belly Dancer. Where You Lived: Korea. How You Died: The Plague.

Who Were You In a Past Life?

Sorry mom....

Just had this one done. It will probably fade after a while since it's on the inside. This happened only a couple hours ago so it's still a bit dirty.

Hot tubbin'!

Hot tubs, Europe needs to get in on them.


You can sit in them without a shirt on and make funny faces.

Random pictures post

Last weekend we played 3 shows with Spanish Bombs, and they had these yellow sweatshirts. It has a wolf on it and says 'fuck responsibility'. I just had to get one. Spanish Bombs are an awesome band by the way, I suggest you check m out. They have ex-members of let it burn and the break. and Danny knows Aart, sike!


I always have the spot on the back bench, behind the black window. My cup holder fits a 44 oz cup and I always have the shades pulled down.


This is Chris asleep in the green limousine on the way to our show in Quad Cities yesterday. The show was a blast, the kids went nuts and I busted out my Keith Richards moves (well, I tried... once). While playing I decided my A Life Once Lost shirt is gonna lose it sleeves soon.


Angie is gonna be the next Janis Joplin. She's got a great singing voice so I suggest you all come to the Blue Cactus when she's there doing karaoke. Recently we decided we're gonna write songs for her to sing.


This is Big Joe, the biggest of the Joe's. He's the guy who runs Lifeline records who puts out MLIW vinyl. This one time he got me Stroopwafels which was amazing.

Marshalltown show and afterparty

Last Friday we played The Midnight Ballroom in Marshalltown and the show was a blast. Spanish Bombs (announced as spanish flies), Raining Bricks and Old Scratch Revival Singers were also on the bill.
After the show we went to this afterparty at this kid C.J.'s where things got pretty crazy. So crazy that at one point a Marshalltown local decided to jump through the living room window and so he did. He survived without a scratch, but the party ended rather abruptly because of that.

Yesterday we played St. Louis which was pretty crazy. We also got to see The Bronx for free which was not so crazy.

Chicago's famous stuffed pizza

It's only 10" wide, but still I couldn't eat more than half.

The Green Limousine

People back at home have been asking what our van looks like, so here's some pictures. I'm always on the backbench, which is also able to lay flat like a bed. Yesterday we had our first show in a while in Chicago, so me and Josh have been laying down almost the entire way.

me asleep (look at my belly, damn american food)


The view from the back bench:


Since we hadn't played a show in a while we were all kinda nervous yesterday, but the show turned out to be awesome! Someone came up to me asking about Zen Arcade which I thought was pretty awesome, it proves there's actually people reading this.
Chicago show:

Watch out....

or the Marshalltown Penguins of War will come and get you!


They hang out at Kum and Go. They go all out:

The land of endless opportunity

Just pour a couple jugs of water in a bucket....



...and out comes a black sleeveless jeanjacket!

Remember the Big Gulp?

So here's how I spend most of my days: Reading punk rock confidential, lifting weights and drinking big gulps. (Oh yeah, in between I play music)



Today however, after lifting weights longer than usual the 44 Ounce Big Gulp just wasn't gonna cut, I decided it was time to step it up and get the 65 Ounce:



This drink lasted me throughout the entire day, and all that for just over a dollar.
So yeah, my days are pretty busy and by the end I'm usually pretty worn out. I've been known to fall asleep in front of the TV. Tonight Tyler made me watch Stop Making Sense, that Talking Heads movie but after a while I started to doze off again. I wanted a cup a coffee but after having gotten used to Big Gulps, I was afraid just one cup would be, you know, not very much. Enter The Mega Mug, I will never sleep again:

The Sci-Fi Channel

Just the fact that there is one makes me wanna watch it all day. Right now I'm watching an episode of a series that I think is called "Mutated Spiders From Outer Space Eating Up People Who Crashed On An Island". It's pretty awesome.

The Big Gulp

It's pretty warm overhere, like I hear it is in Holland right now, and when it is warm I get thirsty. So yesterday again I got thirsty and just knew a regular can of mountain dew wouldn't cut it. Enter The Big Gulp.



Now this is a 44 Oz which even ain't the biggest. Biggest I found is the 64 Oz, but I've heard stories of a 100 Oz which instantly made it on my whishlist. A 44 Oz costs 69 cents and costs 99 cents to refill. Makes no sense huh?

Isn't it great to get excited about this?

Places I ate and what I had (don't worry Mom, I eat more than I can handle):
Taco John's - bean potatoe burrito and fries
Diamond Dave's - crab and shrimp burrito, rice, beans and salad
Subcity - cheese sub
13th Street - fish filet sandwhich, fries and cheeseballs
Kum 'n Go (yes that's the actual name)- cheese pepper jack
HyVee - cheese pizza

Marshalltown

Picture time

Some more up here:

Witness

This was on our way to Cedar Falls. It's about an hour from Marshalltown and all the way all you see is landscape like this.


Some more Iowa


And even some more Iowa, it's a big state


This is the set I play in our practice space


This is the practice space where I spend most of my days while I'm here.


The practice space


Me and mimi, John and Angie's dog

"I'm a mummie"

Yesterday was my first day back in Marshalltown and coincidentally also the first bandpractice with all five complete. Within a few hours we nailed a new song that in my humble opinion is one of the best MLIW has ever written. I will not try to describe what it sounds couse that always looks silly, but I can tell you there's some new and exciting ingredients added to the MLIW sound.

After practice me tyler and jeff went to Cedar Falls where I saw Cam again, and after that we went back to the practice space for music and beers. I would post pictures if my laptop hadn't crashed again. I need to get that fixed soon.

Not much else, we're basically gonna be at the practice space every day so if anyone wants to fly over to hang out don't hesitate. Oh yeah, we got asked to do a couple dates on the Gorilla Biscuits tour this summer, so hopefully I can make it with visa's and shit.

3 day going away party

Why I even go to hardcore shows in between touring is beyond me. It seems at least some of my friends have some kind of superpowers they use to convince me into tagging along to go see shitty band #285 since past October, and every time I fall for it I find myself hiding in a dark corner near the bar asking myself why I'm there and not somewhere else. So last Thursday DaxMila succeeded in dragging me down to the Joe Coffee show in Haarlem which I genuinely was excited for since I loved Sheer Terror but never got to see the Rev. Bearer in the flesh. And even though I loved Sheer Terror I went in completely blank and without expectations which is the way to live if you never ever want to be let down by anything, so I did not feel anything when it turned out I did not like Joe Coffee's music and headed to the bar and got mad drunk. I must admit there was a slight sense of disappointment that Uncle Pauly wasn't as talkative as he apparently had been other shows on this tour. But whatever, I hung out with some people I hadn't seen in ages which was very fun and interesting. A big plus too was being in an automobile with DaxMila for over an hour again, something which is always quite an adventure. He didn't let me down this time as we headed north to Haarlem by going an hour south first as DaxMila had no clue where he was or where he was going. It was great and we got to listen to a lot more good music this way.
Oh yeah, Bold played too.

Friday my buddies Ivo and Ingie took me out shopping and I spent money like water. A.o. I bought a digital camera and you'll all see the results of that on here pretty soon. I never guessed taking pictures was this much fun! Ivo made me buy white shoes since summer's coming up and white shoes are the big thing this summer (as every summer I guess). He did however give me 30% off discount coupon for which I was and still am very thankfull. Me and my white shoes will be on display on various stages throughout the US this summer, scroll down for dates.
Later that night some of our friends threw some kind of squat/ house party where beers and wines were 50 cents. It was awesome and since I now had a camera I took a million pictures of which I will most likely put some up on here. The party had good music, a good mix of people and good drunken antics. Ivo got rowdy and kept sneaking up behind the DJ booth to turn the beat up. I was loving it.

Yesterday was Queensday... I think all I remember right now of that day is that at one point I was convinced The White Suicide Rythm And Blues Collective are the best band to ever come out of The Netherlands and are the future of music in general.

Now please let me get on with packing because my brother is picking me up in a couple hours to drive me through the airport.

Playlist

All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin’ behind bottles in dark cafes

what else:
Pink Floyd
Daniel Lohues
Gnarles Barkley
The Streets
Twilight Singers
William Elliot Whitmore

Finished recording

Today we finished recording. In total it's three tracks and I'm very siked all turned out way better then I hoped it would. Wout the producer (his real name is Jesus and he's always right)really outdid himself. He will start mixing and as soon as I get a rough mix I will post an mp3 here. That might take a while though since I'm leaving a week from now and everybody's got a ton of stuff to do.