May 20th, 2000

Windsor, ON @ Gino A. Marcus Community Center
w/searchingforchin, Girl Named Conspiracy, +1 other.

The day began in the US where we stopped many times between Grand Rapids and Detroit to blow up the remaining firecrackers, bottle rockets and M-100s we bought in Indiana (steve note: our paranoia of any border crossing meant we had to use all these explosives that afternoon or the Canadian border guard might fuck with us). In great anticipation of pulling over and setting these bad boys off Mitch threw a spinning sparkler smoke bomb into a plastic bottle. It smoked up and started melting through the plastic so Nick tossed the smoking bottle out the window.

The last stop we pulled up to some school yard and we capped off the bombing with a huge row of crackers wrapping an old light bulb and blew it up. After that we put all the rest of the bottle rockets -like over 100- into a paper bag and set fire to the bag. It ruled (steve note: don't know if it's a guy thing, but blowing shit up still rules).

getting creative, bottlerocket off the shoe.

We made it to the border in good time for the show, but we were pulled over. No problem when they looked through the van, it's good we used all the fireworks. The Girl Named Conspiracy (GNC) dudes were at the show very early, earlier than us, so we chilled with them for a bit (steve note: we knew a few of those GTA dudes from their old band Noteriety, who were an awesome melodic hardcore band. We played with them back in 1999 in Brampton with amongst others Moneen).

The show ruled, best of tour by far, lots of kids, at least 50% girls, and as Mitch said "there were probably 15 girls I'd do and like 4 of then were super hot". I have like 4 bumps/scrapes on my face from the show. GNC and searchingforchin were amazing. Windsor definitely has an awesome scene.

After the show we were tired as shit and hauled ass home, stopping off and some Tim Hortons with GNC. Unloaded when we got home and got to bed at 10am.

not all that uncommon, Mike beatin' on Mitch.

May 18th, 2000

Columbus, Ohio @ Indiana House
w/Usurp Synapse, Jeromes Dream, and Race Bannon

So, yesterday we finally made it to Cinci after like 8 hrs of driving (from Rochester NY), and spending our own money on gas. We got to where the show was supposed to be, only to find 3 kids hanging in this record store telling us that the show was moved down the street. Oh, and they didn't think we were on the bill anymore. Fuck OFF!!! Tweedy may have ran into the street hoping a bus would end it.
The douche bag, Austin, who booked the show didn't bother getting in touch with us and just removed us from the bill. We drove to the new venue, some "hip" coffee shop, pissed as fuck. We find Austin who had his bullshit explanation, and we were like "hey, let us play for 10 minutes, in/out...for no money. We just want to play". The next 30-40 minutes Austin was "trying to figure it out" and we were just hanging out outside the venue hating every fuck we looked at. Austin kept saying "i don't know...not sure...hold on", but finally, with us pushing the issue, he said we could start to set up...quickly. We played 2 songs, fuckin' gave'r hard! Didn't get paid, but we sold some shit, and got a place to stay the night, so that was good (steve note: Austin fucking sucks).

Today was with the same three bands as last night (romulans). We got to Columbus at like 4pm and went to this dude Mike's house. He was cool and we hung out there for a while, and played vids (Mitch was killing it at Tony Hawk). We were fed spaghetti and then went to the show. We hung out with Mike's roommate Seth all night. Great fucking dude.

Not surprisingly this show was sketchy. Nobody in town seemed to know about it, and the first band (not listed above) was set up in the living room, waiting forever for a missing band member to show up. Finally at 9:30pm we set up because the dude never showed.
While we were setting up there was a HUGE crash from outside! I thought it was thunder since it had been raining, blowing and lightning off and on all day. There was all this commotion outside about a tree falling, so we ran out to see what the fuck happened. A massive fuckin' tree, like 2 ft. diameter at the base, just ripped and fell from the strong wind and landed on a jeep that was parked right in front of our van. Crushing it. The tree seriously missed our van by millimeters. The branches were touching the van. It was fucked!

if that landed on our van, we would have been fucked.

30 mins later we played, while firemen were looking around outside, checking the powerlines that the tree ripped down. We sold a CD and got paid $9, which was more than we expected. Usurp Synapse and Jeromes Dream dudes are fucking babies. They were all pissed off before they even played, all sad cause the show sucked. Usurp drummer said to me "it's weird you guys are playing the emo circuit." I said "whatever, we just want to play shows wherever we can". What a douche bag, 'oh, glad we're playing with you too, sorry we stole $3 from your pay'.

Some dude from Cleveland was at the show who looked like Meathead from All in the Family. After the show he told Usurp and Jeromes dudes "you guys are like my favourite bands...If you had played Cleveland it would've been awesome, everybody in Cleveland loves you, there would've been tons of kids, my mom would've made you cookies". Fucking weirdo.

I think my bass head is fucked, check it out in Grand Rapids tomorrow.

mitch and I looking through the brush that surrounded our van