Deucecities - Believe It!

Oh YES, IOWA

2009-04-13T10:41:00.011-05:00

Roadtripz. 50's, Isaac, Waff and I pile into a car and take on the 5 hour journey to Iowa Fuckin' City (IFC) with vigor. We're headed down to catch The Hold Steady at the Picador, see some old friends and allow the swelling spring fever we're all catching to explode. This trip marks only the second time that Jeff and I have been out of the Twin Cities together since Finn was born.

Charley Biggs is "Kickin' it Up." He looks really cool.

Springtime self-portrait.

Before the show we kick it at the Deadwood, another top notch IFC institution. We drink increasingly less expensive beer specials under the watchful eye of a golden dolphin.

Isaac's hair has gotten to new levels of awesome. He's kind of like Jesus.

At the show we meet up with Bill Adams (aka Dolla Dolla Billz), bearded, right. He is snappin' some picz too.

Crowd shots. PBR cans for $1.

photo Bill Adams

It is truly great to see The Hold Steady in a small venue packed with drunk and passionate Midwesterners. This is the setting they were always meant to be experienced in.

This guys decides that we're cool cause we know the lyrics to the songs just like he does. He starts buying us beers and forcing us to mouths the words to the songs a little too frequently. He gets style points for his passion.

Post show after-blows. We hook up with Zach (aka Fresh) for more hangings.

Bearded Ken Doll and Skeletor Face.

Nothing says Iowa style like a lime green sports car. The only natural way to contort your body when around a car like this is to do what Fresh and Waff are here -- sassy and with an urban attitude.

photo Bill Adams

Street urchins.

photo Bill Adams

Isaac, in a ray of golden-red light.

photo Bill Adams

After a long night, we wake up the next morning at Fresh's to walk to the Hamburg Inn #2, the greatest IFC food experience imaginable.

The krew, minus me. I'm taking the picture, dummy.

Biscs and graves.

Getting serious.

Pie or cake shakes. A whole piece of pie or cake is thrown into a blender with ice cream and turned into these delcious treatz. This specific shake is a red velvet pie shake.

For a split second I fell asleep during breakfast.

Midwesterns should not eat food on camera.

The trip is capped off perfectly by a ride around town in the back of Liz's (aka Lando) pickup truck. This is legal in Iowa, and awesome.

OMG, Isaac looks crazy. I think he has a secret star trek life that we don't know about.

Giving the thumbs up.

Fast forward a few days to LJ's birthday. Here is JC, wearing a pubic hair moustache of sorts.

Dance parties and drunken sing-alongs. Looking to the heavens for inspiration.

Camerons don't fuck around. For serious partiers only.

Gonna finish it off with your Finn Fix. He's 9 months now, has two teeth, crawls and kind of talks a little bit but only knows two indiscriminate words "mamamamama" and "dadadadadada." He is also a fantastic genius.

He won't let Jeff play the guitar anymore cause he wants to play it himself.

50's is our Thursdays babysitter. Here is a picture he took of Finn and him strapping on the Baby Bjorn to take a walk around the neighborhood. Yes, this actually happened. Jeff and I don't even use that thing cause its so weird, but Matt attacked it with aplomb. For more on their Thursday adventures check out Fives blog: younghunger.com

Total dude party chapped cheaks and all.

Springtime Agendas

2009-03-22T10:08:00.008-05:00

Okay this is what I have to tell you about. FYI I have been doing lots of hanging out lately. Mom's don't have to be lame you know, sometimes they don't have enough time to take photos of what they are doing and post it on a blog, that's all. Last night for example I hung out till 4am with 50's, Jordan and the Roonz and then got up at 7 to take care of my babe and then go to a full 8 hours of work on a Sunday, and you know what... It was worth it. What would piss me off more? Hanging out with my good friends, OR going to bed early and getting a good nights sleep. Answer: going to bed early. Life has actually been awesome since Finn started hanging out, things are crazy, Jeff and I work opposite schedules, but we get by and we still make time for beers on the porch, friends and record listening. The most awesome Finn effect is that our friends have become Aunts and Uncles and in turn we all depend on each other in an awesome sort of family style way.

Anyways... I Just thought I should let you know.

This coming spring into summer we will be participating in at least one awesome adventure per month and I thought that this might be a good opportunity to get back up on the blogging wagon. So here goes the itinerary:

April: Spring Road Trip! The Hold Steady (THS) in Iowa Fucking City (IFC) followed by a delicious breakfast at The Hamburg Inn, those attending include me, Waff, 50's, and Isaac (Cassi/Iceberg)

May: The Boss aka Bruce Springsteen. We will be in the pit for sure. "Rosalita, come out tonight!"

June: Weekend road trips to hang out with Chicago peeps and go see an afternoon Twins game at Wrigley Field.

July: Finn's first birthday, combined with 50's and Beak's birthdays equals awesome river tubing adventures.

August: Weekend cabin getaways with Denny Hecker @ Cross Lake.

Happy Staycation to Me.

2009-03-06T15:26:00.001-06:00

It was over 50º yesterday and we decide to take Finn on his first trip to the Como zoo. Jeff and I are home all week for our first ever "staycation".

It's all my two dads up in this zoo. On the left we've got Paul Reiser and on the right it's everyone's favorite art dad.

The Giraffe's and Zebra's have to stay inside because they hate the winter.

Finn thinks tigers are "super kew".

Then we head over to the conservatory to check out some indoor plant action.

Fern's are cool!

Cluck Cluck

2009-02-16T10:05:00.005-06:00

Hey Dudes, I just wanted to let everyone know that there is a new awesome blog in town called deucecitieshenhouse.blogspot.com. Nicole and I decided to start and arts and crafts/mom blog. I still am going to keep deucecities for the party blog, but since life is not all parties anymore, I decided to start a new blog. So if you're interested in domesticity and babies stop on by.

Wordisms,
-Scoops

A Blast from the Past

2009-01-26T09:25:00.006-06:00

let's war. from joel angerson on Vimeo.

Courtesy of Joelgurt Anderson III
June 24, 2000

Featuring:
TPC
The Vida Blue
Isaac "Cassi" Gale
Mark Shaw III
Seth
Some stoner Kid
Steph
Andy K.
Ian Casey
And yours truly

courtesy of Mateo Johnson
April 19, 2008

Whatever happened to the Party Prime?

2009-01-07T10:07:00.002-06:00

Jeff has been stock piling up on Sparks since Miller has decided to stop creating them because they do too good of a job of getting people drunk and awesome at the same time.

Allen Family Christmas at the Deuhs household. Finn is too tired and can't stay up for Santa times.

Finn get's a red hunting cap from his grandma and grandpa and an awesome snow globe, someday he will be our own little Holden Caulfield. Santa trades in his sleigh for a more modern red car.

Jeff falls asleep under the tree waiting for Santa, or something like that.

Finn get's an awesome new sweatshirt from his Mam.

We make christmas cookies.

Fast forward to New Year's Day, where a now-3-year-old tradition of Polar Bear jumping into Lake Minnetonka continues. This year the crew has grown to include Blestos and Doogie and 50's Dad and The Attack and a bunch of Mike Deuhs' crazy friends. Here the crew waitsin line and pretends not to be scared to death of jumping into near-freezing lake water.

**Also it should be noted that on New Year's Eve we had a party, when the clock hit midnight we tried dancing to Jay-Z and we didn't know what to do. Is it over?

Jeff and my Uncle John (the Godfather of this whole crazy tradition) end up being joined at this last minute by some weird lady who doesn't have a jumping partner. How awkward.

Don't worry, those aren't electric cattle prods those guys are holding. Just poles to help you if you need them.

Mike Deuhs tries to showboat on his way up to the starting line and ends up slipping and falling in as hundreds of onlookers groan. Rippy, his jumping life partner, looks on in shame, while Blestos screams scornful hatred.

Victory party!

Blestos and Doogie get all Michael Phelps up in here.

Post jump endorphins.

The Attack and 50's: now partners for life.

Mike Deuhs' crazy friends.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T08:47:00.002-06:00

Mike Deuhs celebrates the new year by falling into Lake Minnetonka in front of hundreds of onlookers, as Ripplechip and Blestos look on in amazement and shame. More news at 11.

Friend Feast 08'

2008-12-17T15:37:00.001-06:00

Friend Feast 2008 Commences on an unusually warm December evening. This year the party has moved from Shots Paul to our new house in South Minneapolis, seen here. The glowing red paper bags were not included in the lease.

Finn's first Christmas calls for a horrendously embarrasing outfit that he will hate seeing pictures of later in life.

Jeff's sweet outfit this year has a picture of two kids looking out a window at a star and says "Just Believe." We're uncertain if this means believing in Santa or Jesus. Either way, drinking Sparks during the holiday season is a wise decision.

I am rocking a handknit sweater vest with red turtleneck, green earrings and green shoes.

Chicks love babies.

Uncle Beak teaches Finn some crazy things.

We have a chalkboard in our new kitchen. Did you know this? You should. Jeff uses it to make a Thingz 2 B Thankful 4 List.

Doogs rocks the hand-painted 2nd Grade sweatshirt steez while Rippy sports the 1950s abusive father angle.

Finn and his Auntie Cam bust dance moves prior to dinner.

Beak wins the Spirit Award, as well as Best Costume on a Rap Producer Award second year running!

Friend Feast commences. 50's Dad has created an insane smorgasboard of delicious treats and sumptious meats all cooked on hot hot heats (the temperatute, not the Canadian dance-pop band).

Meat and cheese plate formed like a Christmas tree from Beak and Cam. Other sundry awesomeness from various sources.

Before (note the Yule Log channel on TV). Comcast On Demand, yeah yah!

After. 22 people in our living room!

Jeff must crawl like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption to get seconds.

Backyard (aka The North Pole) Fires make the Johnsons jovial.

Mike Deuhs becomes Firemaster, and holds down the flame game.

For some reason, Mike Deuhs and JC decide that they should talk a lot about a fake radio station that they host the morning show for. Apparently their hosting duties involve a lot of knife comparisons.

Fire ash from MeBVamp.

3AM dirty snowmen, created by rolling up gradually larger snowballs using excess snow from the next-door vacant foreclosure property. Now THATs a Christmas tradition!

Yep.

The crew that ended the night. Beak proves that its difficult to look hard and hood while wearing a holiday-themed see-through holiday flag, but it can be done. You just have to want it.

Friend Feast 2008. Seacrest Out.

It is my BIRTHDAY!

2008-12-04T10:45:00.002-06:00

Matt made this for me. Thanks Matt. You should probably check out his blog

Hoppy Breathday! from Matt Scharenbroich on Vimeo.

Happy Hallo-springsteen-ween!

2008-10-31T20:05:00.001-05:00

Finn's First Halloween! He decides to go as "Born in the U.S.A."-era Bruce Springsteen, replete with pre-scuffed jeans, t-shirt with no sleeves, red baseball cap in the back pocket, and a Fender Telecaster made of felt and twine. This whole amazing outfit was put together by his Uncle 50's and Auntie D-Tans before he was born as part of a "Baby Boss Kit."

This is already in the running to be our most proudest moment as parents ever. His graduation from high school or his wedding will be cool and all, but this is something special.

Shredding licks and breaking hearts.

The real Bruce doesn't typically look this perplexed.

The Boss Kit in its full unabashed glory, including message to Finn about how to become The Baby Boss.

I made this pumpkin. It is Bernie Mac. RIP. Happy Ghost Day, dawgz.

You should probably know about this...

2008-10-31T15:04:00.005-05:00

My friendly friend 50's has a blog and you should probably check it out. It is super kew. www.younghunger.blogspot.com Here is a sampling of the awesomeness:

Hah!Pee!Barf!Dye! from Matt Scharenbroich on Vimeo.

Jeff's 27th Birthday recap coming soon.

Wam Bam Thank You Cam!

2008-10-08T20:53:00.006-05:00

Imagine that it's the end of August.

We take a Saturday night and go out to celebrate Cam's upcoming nuptialz to Lazerbeak. We try to steer away from the cliche gag gifts but a few can't be resisted, as seen in the above photo. Cam has to wear a donger shot cup around her neck and a "Bite-For-A-Buck" t-shirt that has Lifesavers sewn all over it. If you haven't seen this gag before I'm sure you can imagine what happens. Also, did I mention, we were escorted around all night in a limo, I've never been in one before... it was pretty amazing. If by amazing you mean expensive and drunken.

We go to the Vegas Lounge in Northeast. This asshole's name is Tim, whom we just meant. He pays for and eats all of the Lifesavers off Cam's shirt, asks Coles on on a date (seen here) and sticks his tongue in my ear. Gross.

Later in the night the limo takes us over to 50's house where we meet up with the boys who have been out a bachelor party with Beak. During Beak's night he was given a list of things he had to do in order to receive his epic "Lazerbeak" robe. The list included: Asking a girl for her phone number and then upon receivng the number tearing it up in front of her face, high fiving everyone in the bar, drinking alone in the corner of a bathroom while strangers came in and out, while peeing in a bathroom he had to yell "I piss blood" in the style of DMX, etc. He also had to endure a session of PowerShots which involved taking a shot of beer every 10 seconds for a full minute, which resulted in him puking outside of the Yacht Club and then coming back for more.

He also impregnated 12 women.

In anticipation of our friends' upcoming wedding, Matt, Jeff and I decided to make the next Aaron Mader Tribute Band EP as a gift in honor of them. I have embedded the single "Sexual Accounting" below.

Little known fact: Beak and Cam have an intense and irregular love of hot tubs, which iswhy it didn't seem like a dumb idea at all when JC proposed that everyone pitch in and buy Beak and Cam a hot tub for their wedding present. 50's made this awesome drawing to give to them along with the hot tub. Yes, that is Hall and Oates.

Fast forward, wedding day! No, not Liz's wedding day, Cam's. Here Liz shows us the proper way to wear a veil.

Here is the shot of everyone making funny weird faces on the camera guy's request. As if this ever wouldn't look forced.

The ceremony ruled and featured an ELO song. Here I am doing some post-wedding baby showing off. Beak and Cam have invited a lot of our friends from out of town to this wedding and we get to show Finn off to everyone. He's wearing a dope-ass tuxedo onesie and making weird faces.

Bob, Urs and Katrina check out the goods (i.e. Finn, our baby).

Throughout the night I tell McTubbins that he looks very dapper, and he does, agreed?

Bob wants to know what it's like to be me and Zach wants to know what it's like to be Jeff.

12 of us take a limo built for 6 on a very scenic route to the reception in Saint Paul. Leg cramps were involved.

Matt, Jeff and Beak cram in.

Liz sits on my lap.

My new photo pose, me always with my mouth wide open. Not sure why I keep thinking this is a good idea.

Jeff Allen's Best Man Speech from Alison Allen on Vimeo.

Left: Finn wears his first tuxedo and sleeps while the party rages around him.

Right: Grandma Julie changes Finn into his reception gear, a custom-made Lazerbeak onesie. Both Grandmas are invited to the wedding, which causes some baby turf war riots.

These guyses.

The Chicago/Iowa delegation.

The Detroit delegation.

Left: Maybe the craziest photo ever taken. It reminds of a senior photo that Beak once had where his lids are heavy and his eyes roll back into his head, it was pretty unbelievable and incredible.

Right: It's true, brides have to pee too.

Tres Generationos.

Young Lovers.

Old Lovers. Ripplechip makes his best dancing face, though Coles appears unimpressed.

Gay Lovers. Allen Brothers from different mothers.

When the tie becomes headwear you know you've had a good wedding. But we've already talked about this before.

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Wedding Dance Dance Revolution from Alison Allen on Vimeo

We supply the afterparty, and might I mention that it will be the last party ever to be had at our loft -- we move out into a house in Minneapolis 2 weeks after the wedding.

My dad is a hero and goes to buy us 3 more cases of beer, making the grand total 7 cases plus a cooler full of budweiser's that Greg hauls over later in the evening.

Mike Deuhs, Jeremy, Katie, JC and Rippy. How many people can you fit on your couch?

Cecil Ocho and Rhinosnacks prove the chair can hold at least 2.

Rory, MJ and LJ.

I know that I've been a parties in the past where all the beer has been drank and a few brave souls have gone through the wreckage to find sacred "half beers," but I've never been to a party where all the "half beers" are empty beers. I check every can and bottle in the pile and all 7 cases are completely empty.

Except for these 4 which I keep cold in the fridge. Secret. Shhh.

Jeff, same photo different year. A retired soldier. Honorably discharged from the party militia.

Kate, Mike, 50's (not pictured, and Greg end the party with me. All beers are empty, so we revert to Gin and Tequilla shots. Never a good idea.

Post-Script: Jeff and Aaron circa 1994.

More Things to Come

2008-09-26T09:31:00.002-05:00

Check this out, Ha.
We are horrible parents.

The Greatest Days of My Life

2008-09-18T09:42:00.005-05:00

So, I have a ton of photos, but limited time to blog now with this baby. This is what is currently happening in my life, not sleeping, learning how to operate a baby, attending the greatest wedding ever! (as seen below), and tomorrow we close on our condo and move back to MPLS! Greatest Day Ever for sure. Next blog I will be offering up some amazing photos, until then here are a few tidbits from the Beakandcam Nuptialz!

Finn totally is the only baby in the world with a Lazerbeak shirt.

Will Whitmore fuels the party vibez.

We called ourselves "The Badass Bridesmaids."

Babies, Dogs, Cabins, Tubes

2008-08-26T22:06:00.001-05:00

Finn is a bad ass. Did you know this? If not, please direct your attention to this skull and cross bones on his butt. Even when he's getting held by his Grandpa Tom, he maintains his street credibility.

He's also famous, check out this blurb that was written about him in the Strib.

Jeff and I drive down to Decorah, IA for a day trip to visit his grandparents and show them our awesome baby. On the way down, we discover rows upon rows of empty chairs in Chatfield, MN, set up in anticipation for a parade that had yet to occur. The streets were totally empty of people, but somehow the local Chair Cooperative had kicked things into high gear to put together this stunning display of empty lawn furniture.

Southern Minnesota landscapisms.

Great-Grandma Freda and Great-Grandpa Ted. As usual, our awesome baby totally charms them.

Finn's guitar shoes.

Fast forward a few days. This is the night that Jeff celebrate getting an offer on our condo! It hasn't sold yet, but that doesn't stop us from drinking some beers at our place late into the night while the babe crashes out. Here, Jeff shows us how to juggle two of the world's most precious resources.

*It should be noted that we had almost sold our condo weeks before Finn was born, we had even found an awesome house to move into in MPLS but the sale on our apartment fell through and our hearts were shattered for a little while. We're crossing our fingers this time.

Here's Finn meeting my Mom's dogs. They forge an uneasy but earnest friendship.

This is Finn's reaction to the dog, his first smile caught on camera.

Speaking of Finn and dogs, here is our awesome baby that same night hanging out with Nicole's dogs. Royal is ridiculously sweet to Finn, nuzzling him all night and never leaving his side. Hilarious and heartwarming.

Up next, Radio Dog the crazy chihuahua shows Finn some love. This officially concludes the Baby With Dogs section of the blog.

Fast forward, now we're up at 50's parents cabin! You may remember this magical place from such blogs as this one.

Jeff prepares with the SPF 50 -- no burns will be allowed here. This is also one of the last recorded images of this shirt, as it later met it's maker in the depths of Cross Lake in a freak shirt-flying-off-boat accident.

Yes.

Me and Danny Tanner, looking good. Did I mention that Finn was staying at Jeff's parents this night?

Daytime lake crews, totally basking in our tacky Midwestern recreationalism. Noodles and coozies.

Getting awesome.

More and more peeps arrive throughout the day, including MJ and Mindy seen here. Sunset pontoon rides.

Still can't believe I went 9 months without drinking a beer.

Jeff sparks it up.

LJ aka Liz Johnson poses with pontoon.

Across the lake from 50's parent's place this is gigantic house on the lake owned by none other than Twin Cities auto baron Denny Hecker, aka D-Hecks. This place seriously has like 100 boats on its docks.

Captain 50's mans the vessel. J-Rus, MJ and Marteen listen to Hall and Oates on the ship's bumpin' system.

Beak (did you notice he has a beard now?!?) opens up a bottle of bubbly while frightening onlookers cower in fear.

Much, much later.

The next morning. Coming off an evening of skinny dipping, hot tubbing, beer drinking, campfire having, friend communion, Beak awakes to find that someone has left him a fresh white robe in his room at the cabin. He takes advantage.

50's bakes us a ridiculous breakfast spread.

Jordan shows off his most recent inkage. Very nice, mang.

The crew heads out for some afternoon tubing. Nothing cures a hangover better than being thrown violently through the air and landing painfully in gasonline-saturated lake water.

Beak and Jeff have done a lot of things together, but this was the first time they've ever tubed the wild waters of Cross Lake.

It's Like Riding a Bike

2008-08-07T20:53:00.002-05:00

Alright, so I'm afraid I might be a little rusty at this blogging thing now. When I was preggs I never blogged; there was really nothing great to tell you. I was always sleeping, or I was awake and wishing I wasn't pregnant -- none of this makes good blogging material. I always knew that once I got my baby out that I would be back to my blog. So here goes nothing...

Finn was born on July 16th. He's proven to be a fairly amazing specimen. Totally chill, totally adorable, rarely cries, always funny. Here he is after a delicious meal of Enfamil formula.

I adventured out for the first time this last weekend when Finn was 2.5 weeks old. Saturday night Jeff and I drop the babe off at my folks house for his first over night. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as we drove out of the cul-de-sac, we were going out tonight! I was back. We head over to Colez house, and it's on.

I am in good company, Jeff is there and ready. He missed his drinking buddy.

Nicole also can't wait to have her friend back for a drink. I may be speaking for her, but I feel confident that this is a truism.

And I can't wait to have my friends back, Bud and Sparky.

50's and Danny Tanner show up to share in the success.

BTF is also there. Throughout my pregnancy BTF would tell me over and over again that when I was giving birth to the baby I would totally poop all over the hospital bed. She said it happened to everyone. And guess what: I totally did not poop. Looks like she lost the bet.

An honorary shot gun in honor of shotguns of the past.

This is too hot for Blestos to handle.

Look at all those beers. It is cool to be hanging out again.

We top the night off with a 1990's-era dance party. It's the only way we can start again. 50's plays his air drums along to some "Seether" by Veruca Salt.

Jeff rages along to some "Don't Speak" by No Doubt.

Next up, RATM: "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me"

What is Ice Spiders? Apparently Nicole has it on DVerD.

Old friends reunited.

I'm so happy, I've got my baby and I've got myself back. Yes.

Now for the good stuff, Finn photos.

This is when he was really young. Like two days old young.

He was yellow for awhile, on account of the jaundiceseseseseses. But he's tougher than a Boston street youth, and rallied to beat it.

He sleeps with his arms up like this. You can tell when he's really asleep by this gesture.

Baby hands

Finn Viral Video (FVV) numero uno - Beatboxin' Baby

Success!

2008-07-24T13:48:00.001-05:00

Born to Run

2008-07-21T14:51:00.001-05:00

He's here! Finally.

Finn Davis Allen was born July 16th at 6:23pm. He was 20.5 inches long (potential NBA star) and weighed in at 7lbs 14oz. In this photo he is a) sleeping and b) being totally awesome -- two things he is prone to.

Chubby cheeks and a hip-hop hat. We're told that he was born on Cecil Otter from Doomfield's birthday, which means that his hip-hop creditentials were already well established before he began sporting this urban look. Now it's for real.

We got to take the little guy home for a few days, but then he had to go back to the hospital to get treatment for jaundice, which included major sun-tanning while wearing wrap-around shades and having a neon blue light sit on his back. He's taking well to the treatment and should be back home soon.

P.S. I've had a few beers and it is AWESOME! You can't truly appreciate a beer until you've been through 9 months of pregnancy and 18 hours of labor. The rest of you think you know about how good beer is, but you really don't.

You know it's hard out here for a Preggs!

2008-06-21T11:33:00.002-05:00

This is what 8/9ths of a baby looks like.

Count down to beers: 32 days!

I'm not Dead

2008-04-02T10:24:00.000-05:00

Just so you know I'm not dead. I have been a bad blogger though.

I have things to tell you about, I just haven't had time to share them. I still have not updated photos from our Friend Feast in December, or when Waff, Rippy and Mike Deuhs all jumped into Lake Minnetonka on January 1st, or when we did a few things,or when Jeff and I went on a FREE trip to Cancun (details coming later) or when we found out we are going to have a boy baby, or when we packed up our house and put it on the market, or how life is being knocked up. And soon I will have to tell you about the last for a long time, TPC throwdown at First Ave coming up on April 19th which will include some sort of amazing friend soaked after-party. So I have lots to say I just haven't had time to do it. Except a huge update sometime in the near future.

This is all.

BABIES = NO BEERS

2008-01-02T18:30:00.000-06:00

So...yep. It's true.

Jeff and I found out about two months ago that we're having a little kid in July.

Totes mindblowing, dudes! That's the little guy or gal up there, the little grey blob bean pea pod thing that the ultrasound technician was kind enough to label "baby" for us. Although unexpected, we've gotten used to the idea and are pretty amped to welcome the crazy thing into the world.

So, obviously a lot has changed in the last two months (i.e. no beers), but I've still been trying to hang out at all the parties. And I've got some sweet photos from all the crazy happenings, I just haven't had the energy to put 'em on the internets yet. My life currently consists of lots and lots of sleeping.

According to the books I should be having some more energy in the next few weeks and I'll put up all the photos of the sweet shit that's been going down. In the meantime, send me some baby name suggestions. We're toying with the idea of Jesus Allah God Buddah Allen.

Long Live Happiness!

2007-11-07T20:41:00.001-06:00

Let's start regal. It's a Thursday night and Jeff and I go to see The Hold Steady (aka "The Steady") at the State Theatre. Normally, The Steady brings the pain at First Ave. when they roll through the Deuce Cities, but this time they go the traditionalist route. Think 2,000 seats (yes, seats), crazy architectural flourishes, the whole nine.

Despite the admittedly weird club environment (no booze service after the second band?!?!), The Steady hold things relatively steady. That's code for "sweet show."

Okay. Holy shit. The next night, through a divine act of God or some other spiritual intervention, Jeff and I manage to score front row tickets to Bruce Springsteen. @#!#!@!#!@!#. The real story of how we ended up in this lucky position at the last minute is too complicated and amazing to describe in full detail on the internets.

Bruce is Jeff's favorite recording artist of all time and a close second for me (Bob Dylan always wins that race), so we are beyond excited. Although, after this night it may be Bruce for me too.

The show was absolutely top notch awesome rad sweet. Even at 58, Bruce and the E-Streeters put most bands on the planet to shame. These concert photos are courtesy of the Pioneer Press, cause the Xcel Center doesn't allow photography -- gay but true.

When he's not being executed for crimes against his former people, Saddam Hussein is the lead guitarist in the E-Street Band. True story: 50's and Danielle were part of the backstage catering crew for this show and totally stood, like, 10 feet from Lil' Steve.

Also learned: Max Weinberg looks "totally fit and healthy" in real life, Clarence Clemmons' dressing room is called "The Temple of Soul" and must be addressed as such, Nils Lofgren is "very nice" and rides an exercise bike before shows, oh and Clarence also eats three lobster tails and $175 of caviar after every show. Thanks for the inside scoop, 50's Dad.

Bruce and that one super short dude who plays slide guitar sometimes. Bruce blazes for 2.5 hours straight, sets the place on fire and places Thunder Road during the encore. Celebrities seen: Ron Coomer, Paul Molitor, Dan Wilson. Oh, and that one drummer guy from Conan. Max Weinbaum.

Holy shit! The intensity continues. 50's manages to snag Bruce's setlist from the garbage can while cleaning up at the end of the night! We scan it so that the internet can see it for all eternity. Big ups to 50's!

After the show, Craig and Angie (in town for the night from worlds far away) come by for some post-show record listening, brews, smokes and Bruce appreciation.

Jeff makes some important points about our new theory for modern music: the best music is from a new separate genre called "Inclusion Rock." Bruce is at the forefront of this movement, we decide.

I second this notion.

Inclusion rock is an emotional roller coaster. Craig has actually gotten the chance to meet and talk with Bruce earlier in the night, face to face. Needless to say, this is a huge moment and we're all on a life high just thinking about it.

Brucisms are Truisms.

After those dudes leave, the Vaders stop by at like, 2AM. We stay till 5 with them, listening to Bruce and filling them in on the particulars of "Inclusion Rock" while Heidi Vader fills us in on how she was at the video shoot for Dancing in the Dark back in the 80s. At 5AM, we walk down the street to Mickey's for breakfast and good conversation with our speed-addled waitress.

Bruce fans unite.

Fast forward to the next night. Not much can top the life-affirming joys of the previous night, but we're gonna try. We head over to So. Mpls for a night with Beak, Cam, 50's and the whole crew. Dinner at Buster's, with much serious talk about taking a friend trip to Spain and/or Portugal.

After dinner is when the drunken firepit crazyness begins. Booze, brews, cigs, friends, and three carloads of recently-ripped down cedar planks from LJ and MJ's new house make for more life-affirming moments of communion.

Not a lot of proper fire safety is being practiced on this night. Unflattened boxes are being thrown on at will, and we're all inhaling huge amounts of glue fumes as the adhesive on the back of these cedar planks burn into the black night sky. We invision our lifeless bodies being found in the morning by JC, slumped in our chairs with warm beers in hand.

Case in point. Shit is getting out of hand and Beak is not prepared.

50's attempts to keep things in control.

Raising our drinks and our hopes.

It's at this point (say about, 1AM) that 50's and I realize that a slow exposure makes fires look totes crazed. We start to experiment. We see a blazing dragon.

Jeff is thwarted by an ancient fire beast. Just another night in southside.

Beak fights back with some dragonbeast flame throwing of his own. Getting totally midevil in this piece.

I have harnessed the power of the fire, and now control it with the wisdom of a wizard and the precision of a really precise thing.

Cam is helpless to defend herself.

50's is relatively bored with the dragonfire process and yawns out his own fireball.

You get the idea.

Really, this was hilarious at the time. I swear.

J.C. adds a Chicago flair to the proceedings.

Our fire safety gets progressively worse, wtih dried leaves from the yard and recently-cashed Corona cases entering the fray. Also, we are very very drunk. The night ends predictably, with Jeff and I passing out in Beak and Cam's spare room around 6AM. Not much sleep this weekend.

Home improvements! More to come soon. Just know that this is not a prison cell. That would be really easy to break out of, cause it's wood, dudes.

Belated Birthday Blog

2007-10-22T16:36:00.001-05:00

So Jeff is turning 26, which is like crazy old, so we throw him a rager at our house to celebrate. I make this sweet cake that lets him know that his best days are obviously behind him.

Pre-party, getting amped with Nami.

Mike Deuhs, my brother and (according to all women) the hottest dude ever, shows up early to get things started.

Beak has brought Jeff some Walgreen's cigars which are accompanied by some 12 year old Glenlivet scotch. When midnight strikes they begin celebrating the occasion. Waff smokes himself a nice bushy grey mustache.

Danny Tanner and Jaws Dawg are in the house.

Gay.

Ninja cakes.

Jeff's mom made a huge spread of crazy snacks for people.

The two best cards. The cat on the right is doing milk shots.

So, this is hard to explain but I'll try. Cam is wasted, this should be obvious. At some point, people started taking photos of her which greatly angered her for some reason. In a flash of drunken brilliance, she stormed into the bathroom and decided to write "fuck off" on her face, believing that this would force people to stop taking photos of her. That's weird enough on its own, but she managed to write it backwards because she was applying the sharpie ink in a mirror. Those of us in attendance could truly not believe what we were experiencing. This really happened. Greatest Cam moment in the history of all time, officially.

Here she is, pissed that people are laughing at her. Phenomenal!

Cakes and cigs and pipe accidents.

In case you were wondering it is possible to shot-gun keg beer. Our version is to just drink it really fast from a straw.

McTubbins shows up! Better late than never, buddy. Your face is crazed, though.

Mike Deuhs and Cam are too far ahead of everyone else in partying, if you know what I mean.

50's and Ripplechip discuss world politics.

Caylie made this really crazy cake that's sposed to look like Jeff, but it doesn't really. That's okay though. What it lacks in perfection it makes up for in heart.

It is at this point in the night that everyone decides that doing shots of 12-year old scotch is a really good idea. What a colossal waste of money, but it was awesome.

J-Russius is getting real.

A second round? Even smarter than the first time you thought of it.

Salutations.

Crystal (aka CQ aka QC aka Quality Control aka North Metro) washes down the scotch.

MJ (aka Matt Johnson) is in the house.

My brother is out. He gets sunglassed.

Yep, absolutely.

Sure, man.

Party coordination is hard. Should I smoke or drink? How about both at the same time.

Iceberg, no doubt.

MegDog samples the fine tastings of a flask. These guys will be spending their anniversary with Jeff on his birthday year after year.

Caylie and J.C. try to comprehend what is happening around them.

Beak and Adam have already given up on ever understanding anything.

So Gay So many ways.

Colezones is a member of the Fantastic Four tonight.

Fast forward to the next morning, about 7 or 10 people sleepover on our floor. We try to give them air mattresses to combat the hardness of our concrete floors but they lose air throughout the night. Adam compares his sleeping experience to being gassed in a concentration camp during WWII Germany.

Just for the record there was some things that happened during Nicole's super-hero picture and this picture of our lair.Here is a list of things that may or may not have happened.
Gin Shots
Secret puking sessions
Crazed running around in the rain
Pizza parties
50's new nickname "pizza leg"
Group sleepover which included watching "the office" while fading out.

50's is not ready yet.

Neither am I.

But hey, look at this asshole. Rise and shine, ready to face the day!

Weddings Galore! Shit Yeah.

2007-09-21T10:19:00.000-05:00

Before we dive in to the present, let's head back to the past. These are some photos that I got sent from the Chicago wedding two weeks ago. Totes awes.

The Dream Team.

HSCO in the house!

Another weekend, another wedding. 50's, Danny Tanner, Beak, Cam, Jeff and myself all pile into 50's Parents' Chevy Suburban and head off to Detroit for our friends Ryan and Angela's wedding.

This Suburban comes fully equipped with DVD player and wireless headphones. Jeff and I dive straight into some Sopranos and the time flies by.

We are accompanied by some beautiful midwestern fall landscapes. Totes awes.

Wisconsin sunsets. 12 hours after our adventure begins, at apprx 4AM EST we arrive in Detroit and are taken aback instantly by the hollowed-out bomb sheltered corpse grime steeze of D-Town. We shell out $40 bucks to park for 30 hours and head straight to our hotel room, where we heroically take down a case of beer in an hour and a half. Needless to say we sleep soundly.

Fast forward to the next afternoon, where we meet up with the wedding party around 2:00pm and head over to the reception site on a tiny bus. The bus may be tiny, but it is fully equipped with champange, party lazers (as if there is any other kind of lazers), and a driver named Gary who is unfortunately missing his sense of direction.

The wedding is totally outside in front of a sweet fountain featuring lions, weird babies, fish and turtles, all of whom are shooting water out of their mouths like they're continuously projectile-vomiting. Totes weird but awesome at the same time.

This is the fastest wedding I've ever been too. Short and sweet, 10 minutes would be a generous estimate.

The road weary family.

Cam suggests we get into some Glenlivet, I'm down by default, I have a cold. Two fingers please. Thank you good sirs, or madam.

50's checks out some boobs, Danielle is insulted. Watch out dude, she might law suit you.

Beak tries to tell Cam some things in the background.

Beers and Cocktails a plenty. Open bar again! Thank you, I just might have another.

One of the strangest photos, compositionally, this blog has ever seen. I'm sorry Ryan or Angela if this may or may not be your grandpa way in the background, but this guy loves getting wasted and harassing the bartender. I saw him go behind the bar and get his own drink about a million times. He wins for being the most wasted at your wedding.

FYI, Party Phil mugs in the foreground.

Sun smiles.

Everything is free!

Even the food.

The "new" Allens have a analog blog and they want us to leave them a note, for their rememberances. We oblige.

The Groom is also a DJ and that wall is also a sonogram. Do you see the baby in there?

Detroit never looked so beautiful. Seriously. It normally looks like a hobo shantywon.

All jokes aside, this building which used to be a casino is where the reception was held, totally beautiful and full of granite and marble.

First dances and last chances.

It's still early yet, so no one's quite at the break-through point for drunkenness. So we try to pretend what it will be like when we finally have pushed through to the promised land.

Now it's time for the dance party and we're all feeling ready. 50's and Cam are feeling it.

Let me introduce you to my new friend the The Durgler. Beware, you might get Durglarized™, Believe that!

Glasses rule this party.

Dancing also rules.

Mike from New York and his lady friend. In about 2 hours these guys will end up making out in the party bus while grossing out everyone around them. There should be a warning for dirty dancing.

No tie, tie. Very essential for dance floor getting downs.

Meg Durglar. Oh no, un uh.

If she said we partied, them I'm pretty sure we partied...

This girl has huge boobers.

This girl has lost her folks.

These folks have lost their minds.

So my friend The Durgler™ decides I need a new nickname that sticks. For the first time ever may I introduce myself as Flasky, later known as Flatchy for obvious reasons.

Getting Durglarized usually means hearing some sweet freestylez. "Yo, wake up and check my inbox at gmail.com/got a note from my dead mom"

Our bartender, a gracious host, and Waff Allen's new best friend.

FFlash forward about 1.75 hours. We go back to the hotel bar and have a hotel party!! Just like R Kelly once said. There are some weird characters in here, but that's okay because the wedding party pretty much takes up the whole room.

The Durgan's show up ready and ragin'.

The Beautiful Bride

And... The Hansome Groom.

The Greatest man ever, Brad Allen, the grooms father is totally down. He's only had 4 Vicodin's and about 7 Rum Drinks. Who's Ready? We're Ready!

So Sultry.

In Chicago they have Old Style "Cubby cans." In Detroit they have Budweiser aluminum "Tiger bottles."

Beak takes everyone in the bar on for some good old fashioned arm wrestling.

Beak is a killer.

Success!

An Engagement, A Wedding & A Birthday

2007-09-10T16:58:00.000-05:00

Where do I begin? So much to talk about, so little time.

We'll start with Caylie getting an awesome new kitten! Totally cute cats rule. She brings it over to Beak and Cam's backyard rager the same night she gets it. Beak and Cam are having a fire in their new plastic/bronze (the material is debatable according to some) fire pit and the cat is down. She parties all night.

The new kitten fits perfectly in Jeff's hole and melts right into his heart. We try and think of names. We come up with some sweet ones, but Caylie decides on Cous Cous. I suggest Minute Rice, Jeff suggests Uncle Ben's. She's not having any of it.

The party crew is ready. There's no shortage of wood around these parts. That's what she said.

JC looks completely crazed here.

50's shows off his newly sliced finger. He accidentally cut it to the bone with a chop saw, requiring 6 stiches at a St. Cloud Hospital - they charge him $25 for a bandage. Totes not cool.

Fast Forward to the next day -- check out the rock! Beak and Cam get engaged! He pops the question to Cam Sunday afternoon after having Bloody Marys down at Gabby's on the River. She of couse says yes and the couple invites us all over for Goldschlager shots and Champagne to celebrate. I am stoked to say the least.

Beak will be asking Tony Dungy to be the best man. Because of his Quiet Strength, of course.

Ring Shots.

Yes!

Champagne drinks. Yes. Yes!

Fastforward again. Friday night - Jeff, Aaron, Matt, Cam and myself head to Chicago to celebrate the wedding of our good friends Bob and Urs! We get into town a night before the wedding but barely make it in time for bar close. We belly up and have whiskey shots and pbr's. So far so good.

We head over to Joel's house. I guess he has a moustache this night but I don't remember it. These guys love playing dice games and betting dollar bills.

We find a little bit of tape and make a weak attempt at beer sabers.

Jeff breaks a chair and we think it's really funny. He insists that he didn't break the chair and that it was broken when he got there.

Me and Cam saber away in the corner.

Next Morning, Wedding Day. We head over to the wedding site, Logan Square Auditorium, which is an old concert venue in Chicago. It's the perfect place to have a wedding. The decorations are just like the set of a Wes Anderson movie.

Kisses and Confetti, the Beach Boys "Wouldn't it Be Nice" blares to the cheering masses. Full disclousure: this photo was taken by a quasi-asshole from New York named Ian.

So this is us dressed up, minus me. We are looking sharp. Oh, did I mention this party comes with a unlimted supply of beers, booze, champagne, shots, and it's all free. Photo shots begin to get blurry starting now.

Choclate wedding cakes with chocolate brides and grooms.

Ian is serious, serious about getting wasted.

Bride champagne slammer-bammers.

There are a few things that can measure the success of a wedding. At the top of this list is when dudes start putting ties around their heads and dancing the can-can. When this happens you know that the night is a success without a doubt.

Beak's utterly confused by the dance.

We look awesome. Champagne stained dresses and shirts.

Wedding cake with pink flowers.

These guys just got married in a gay way.

What is going on with Beaks face? Unreal.

50's applies pink flowers to my eyeball.

Post-wedding train rides back to Joel's.

Cam gets her hand caught in a bear trap that was hiding in her purse. Joel laughs because he was the one who set the trap.

Sure, sure, absolutely.

Beak whispers sweet nothings. It is safe to say that everyone is feeling a little fuzzy. The rest of that night is a blur. We head home the next day, having fallen further in love with Chicago.

Now things are getting current. This was Saturday, as in just a few days ago. Jeff's real brother Erik is in town with his girlfriend Jen and they're hanging out with their friends at a bar, we join them. BTW we're drinking beer out of malt glasses, not really my style. It freaks me out.

We hang out at that other bar for awhile and then head over to the Yacht Club for Ripplechip's birthday. He just spent the past few days in Las Vegas with Colez celebrating. Now he's at the YC celebrating with us, and let me tell you he is seriously soaked.

BTF and Jaws are there hanging out too!

Blestos joins the party with his new motorcycle jacket. It goes perfectly with his new motorcycle. He's a tough guy now so watch out.

This is the look of a wasted man.

Choke holds.

Erik is cold so Jeff gives him his sweatshirt. Brotherly love.

Erik wants to wear the sunglasses.

Jen does too, you guys are looking good. So that's all for now. Stay tuned as the following things lay ahead: a wedding in Detroit, a possible cabin weekend in Northern Minnesota and Jeff's birthday rager.

Iowa City Rage-a-thon and other assorted things.

2007-08-23T10:17:00.000-05:00

I have a sleepover at Coles and she introduces me to Tube Shots. Basically, it's like a small plastic science beaker tube filled with crazy mulit-colored booze shots. They taste horrible, but their novelty carries them to success.

Royal is in the house.

TPC has been in the studio making a new record the past few weeks. Here, 50's illustrates his percussion genius.

It takes real soul to feel these rhythms.

Jeff takes all of this really seriously

Roxy is Joe Mabbott's new studio dog. Likes: cardboard and playing games. Dislikes: not playing games.

This past weekend, TPC and some of the crew head down to Iowa City for the one-year anniversary of The Picador. You may remember that TPC also played its grand opening a year ago. Here, we kick it in the beer garden behind the club.

In this beer garden: nice new wooden benches, Christmas lights in the tree canopy, painted stencil murals on walls and lots of good old friends. Jacki Becker, you did it right.

TPC takes the stage

The show is so incredibly loud. Maybe the loudest ever. Not just at the Picador either, seriously the loudest on earth.

Bill Adams IS an amazing photographer. This is an inside joke that only we understand.

Tornavalanche is Tornavaleawesome!

Will Whitmore headlines - the place is packed sweaty and smokey. The crowd loves their hometown hero.

Everyone's favorite rice farmer, Pete Biasi (aka Bias-Dawg) is on the bass for this "sesh."

Iowa Incredible

During Will's set I get grinded-up-on to some banjo tunes. Totally not my thing. I find solice from the sweaty crowds with my #1 duns.

Right now there is so much love in this room.

Holy shit! Crowd surfing? To a guy playing a banjo? Pete takes it there. This shit turned into a Pearl Jam show circa '91 for a minute.

The Picador now has a new photobooth, I break it in.

Aaron and I take a trip to the Kum & Go to supply the party crew with 60 Old Style's and 5 Sparks.

Elevated picture taking. It was the only way it could happen.

50's helps me off the van.

Fast forward, post-party rage-a-thon continues. We are in a backyard somewhere in Iowa City. Joel and Bob hang out.

Joel and Fresh hang out.

The party glasses become key to the blog once again. Ian takes the reins this time.

It becomes really real to me that Ian looks like Jeff's brother and together they look like real brothers. Family photos ensue.

Pete and I trade accessories.

Molly looks good in her sunglasses too.

Molly falls and skins her knee. Total Party foul.

Hey everyone the life of the party is here, and he needs you attention stat.

Group photos. Jeff, Jackie, ?, Molly, 50's, Bias-Dawg, and Beak.

We forget to leave the rage-a-thon with the people we should be staying with so we have to find a hotel. As luck has it we stay at the Heartland Inn. Only in Iowa City.

It doesn't take long for the group blow jobs to begin.

Early morning prayer sessions.

We take a pit stop for breakfast at the Hamburg Inn, my favorite spot south of the border, the Minnesota border that is. I do the egg's benedict.

Jeff has a veggie burger with salsa, beak has some sort of fried porkchop sandwich thing, and 50's tops his first hotel breakfast off by having a second breakfast sandwich. We also shared pie shakes, pecan and apple pie styles.

Universal shoe on the wire languages.

Jeff celebrates his breakfast by getting a shirt in Hawkeye colors.

Never seen anything like this before.

Monday night our friend Doug takes us to see the twins play - the twins get destroyed and the game is not so fun.

I Got Blogged

2007-08-03T14:56:00.001-05:00

Alright so since Jeff and I got back from our Europe adventure a month ago, I really haven't been taking many pictures. Just been enjoying our summer and letting the high-stress demands of blogging fall by the wayside. As such, I don't have any pictures from a lot of awesome shit that happened in the last few weeks.

Luckily for me, Craig Finn came through town last week and demanded that WE use his camera to blog up a backyard party that we were hanging out at. What follows is the photographic proof.

Summer champagne rage.

Craig and his girl Angie. Angie has hands-down one of the best laughs in the history of laughs. It sounds like a machine gun, totally impressive, wish I had one etc. etc.

Beak and Jeff continue to "rep" whatever it is they are always "repping."

Angie knows a secret and she's not telling. Jeff wants to know what it's about and is gonna cry until she tells him.

If Craig ran his own blog he'd totally only shoot in black and white. You know, cause like, that's more pensive and emotional or some shit. Here Steve Dude talks about potato wrestling.

This dude is so into Polo that it's not just a shirt, it's a lifestyle.

Party Host, Andrea and...

Nick. They blessed the party with tropical summer watermelon martinis.

Now it's time for the usual "put your sunglasses on everyone at the party" portion of the evening. (Craig's idea not mine, he is afterall the guest blogger of honor.)

Steve wins, you're looking good dude.

Also, check out these sweet songs that 50's, Jeff and I made for Lazerbeak on his 25th birthday (July 21)! We are calling ourselves the Aaron Mader Tribute band.

Here are the Jams.

Birthday Song

Beak and Cam

Funeral Durge

Things Beak Like

I'm back on the blogging wagon, expect more to come soon. Thanks again to CF for the encouragment.
Also, for those who are interested, I posted the last three days of our European adventure you can check it out here 06.25.07

UK, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Home

2007-06-25T14:44:00.000-05:00

Alright, this blog will be a short and sweet recap of our last two days in the UK/Ireland. Sick and tired of London we take a train from the city to the western coast of Britan.

I can't get enough of those sheep!

The train has electrical outlets, perfect for charging the computer.

We get off the train and hop a ferry back to dublin. Irish ferries are super posh circa 1970's styles.

We float and drink brews.

We get back to Ireland and promptly belly up to the mexican margarita bar.

Our last day. We take a trip up to Belfast and the northern coast of Ireland to see the sites.

More sheep.

The Antrim Coast

Puffins!

Giants Causeway, complete with crazy hexagon rocks. This is the only reason I came all this way.

So awesome, so many ways.

Jeff works up a sweat from running around rocks.

Drinking competitions.

Irish castles.

Trainrides home.

Leaving on a jet plane. Jeff sleeps.

Home sweet home, MPLS!

London

2007-06-23T02:41:00.001-05:00

Jet, that one band. We leave Edinburgh for London on a rainy cloudy morning.

Bloggin' away between destinations.

No grids here. England is totally free-form.

We get off the plane and take the train into the city. To our surprise, and in a foreshadowing touch of just how ridiculously expensive London is going to be, it costs us 4 pounds a piece to ride "the tube" one way, akin to roughly $9 U.S. Dollars. Holy shit.

I think this might be one of the worst photos ever taken of me... Like a deer in the headlights, right?

London's full of weird fucking statues like this one that appears to be masturbating with a sword.

Buckingham Palace. I think the rule is that when the Union Jack is at full mast the queen is in residence. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet her or anything.

More weird statues.

The royal crest.

Our hostel is in Kensington, a fairly "chi-chi" (aka "toney" aka "wealthy") part of town -- not what two budget travelers are looking for. We decide to walk into the center of the city to see what we can find, anticipating that we'll run into some cool pubs or some cool people, but we're sadly disappointed.

Instead, we run into plenty of department stores, expensive "modern" bars (all lightly-stained wood and glass), and well-dressed people. We walk for a few hours, snap a few photos, get stuck in the rain. Fed up, we head back to the hostel and enjoy some bottled Budweisers in our room while watching old episodes of The Office on our computer. Total America therapy.

London Day 2: Discouraged by all the not-cool things we find in London the day before, we decide to take one of those famous bus tours to try and get a feel for the city. It costs us apprx. 38 pounds for the two of us, roughly $80 U.S. Dollars. Gay.

London has some weird 70's architecture in their business district.

They have a musical called "We Will Rock You" based on Freddie Mercury's life. Here is a 20 foot tall golden statue above the theater, totally mind blowing.

They've got dragons all over this city. Another goth haven. Beak would be into it.

Pot-bellied buildings.

Our tour guide is 100 percent hilarious, continually cracking jokes about his ex-wife and his mother in-law.

2nd worst photo ever.

Check out this dude's hair. Apparently it's intentional. It's our opinion that hipster dudes in London have the worst haircuts in the world, possibly (probably) related to the fact that they like to go to dance clubs for fun and listen to dubtrancehouseelectrowhatever.

Westminster Abbey.

The River Thames and the London Eye.

Big Ben.

I guess when the guy on the top of this statue died he asked to have his body preserved in Brandy so that they could get him across the sea and home to London without the body decomposing. After they got him home all his buddies did a cheers and drank the body brandy.

This is when Jeff and I start finally winning the London game. We do a little research on the interenets on where we can find record stores, deducing that the area of the city with the highest proportion of of them will be where we have the most fun. Our research takes us out of the city to Camden. We head north on the tube, hoping to find some solace from the obscene wealth of the city. We win!

We eat some Italian dinner at a cafe. Jeff drinks his first Italian beer and calls it "pretty good."

Our luck gets even better. After dinner we walk down the street and find a little pub that serves the original Budweiser from the Czech Republic.

We stop and have a few. Within minutes we make friends with our barman. He's real nice guy who tells all about his town as well as some other bars we should stop by, including a "Grunge" bar down the road that he thinks we'd enjoy. Jeff jokingly asks if Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder are going to be there but I don't think he got it.

Pub religion.

WTF? There was a dude in here dressed like a pirate, non-ironically.

A photo from the grunge bar - they've got some NIN on the stereo.

Late night tube rides home.

Young British love.

Our London trip in a nutshell: we accidentally spent time in a manner inversely proportionate to our interests. Trapped in the wealthy fashion and business districts most of the time, briefly discovering the cool affordable areas before leaving. Oh well. Sod off London (or some other such Britishism)!

Now we're back off to Dublin for a few days before coming home to the States. Dublin has been our favorite spot so far, so it should prove to be a happy ending.

Edinburgh

2007-06-19T12:14:00.000-05:00

Bennie and the Jets. Next installment: Edinburgh, Scotland.

Edinburgh is every goth's wet dream. Medieval architecture, rainy skies, narrow dark alleyways, an ancient and violent history. If you're not a goth, then it's still a pretty fucking sweet place.

Tired of fish and chips, we find our first mexican restaurant of the trip and take advantage. While waiting for our food we see that they have brass parrots just like the awesome one we have hanging over our door at home, given to us by J-Chizzle aka J-Chase aka Jawsdog.

Scottish versions of Mexican food are actually pretty great.

MmmmmMargeritas.

Really? A chill out room? That's fantastic cause we love to chill.

Mcewans, the only real Scottish beer we actually found on this leg of the journey.

Our hostel is right on a busy strip of town called The Royal Mile, so named because it's a mile long and has royal castle and parliament buildings on both ends. There are crap tons of tourists here, like this bloke with the video camera. In this part of town it becomes exceedingly difficult to actually find a real Scottish person.

"A culture of drinking" -- as our Polish barman from the night before called it -- enables public beer consumption. Totes awes.

It may be hard to tell from this photo, but these whiskey bottles are super tiny, like a few centimeters long. They're sitting in a plastic bag in the window of a whisky shop.

In all the old buildings there are dozens of chimney stacks on top. In the olden days every flat in every building got heat from internal fireplaces. Everyone used them constantly, sending unhealthy amounts of black smoke into the air every night. Eventually the city stepped in and limited their use.

We stop in at a sweet Camera Obscura building. You can go to the top floor and into a dark and windowless room. There's a small hole in the ceiling that's amplified through a few lenses and projects a live image of what's happening outside onto a big bowl in the floor. Pretty sweet!

This section is for McTubbins, who we think would've enjoyed this crazy shite. On one level of this camera obscura building was a whole crazy cadre of hologram images of weird shit. Here is a falcon on its falconer's hand.

This piece was entitled "Scream." Totally intense right? Right. Kinda.

Werewolves dude!

Edinburgh Castle. Right smack dab in the middle of the city center is a massive castle on a hill. Totally looks like that old video game Castlevania. In the olden days it was a working military base that was involved in like 30,000 battles and wars and sieges. Now its designed for people like us to just walk around and check it out.

Don't mess with the Scottish.

View from the castle.

Diorama of Scottish wars dude.

Real names on gravestones: Tinker and Scamp.

There is a fine line between serious photo-blogging and dumb tourist photo-taking. We are proudly skirting this line.

Shamrock shakes on top of our Guinness.

We're on a nacho streak. These were from a place that turned out to be like AMERICA BAR or some shit. They had all sorts of crazy crap on the walls just like TGI Fridays.

Near the end of our second night in Edinburgh we are exhausted due to jet lag, time changes, and miles and miles of uninterrupted walking. It takes its toll so we head up to the aforementioned Upstairs Chill Out Bar to be tired. It turns out to be a Polish bar staffed and frequented only by Polish people who like calm dance music and faux cow skinned furniture.

Scotland is way north, did you know this? As a result, the sun doesn't fully go down until like 11PM and it comes back up at like 3:30 AM. This is right after it gets dark.

Friendly Scottish kids.

Beach trip, Euro styles. Tall boys of Stella Artois, crackers and cheese.

Yes, we are American tourists.

Back in town at the self-proclaimed "Oldest Pub in Scotland." It's basically one small room tucked into a dark alleyway off the main strip. Pretty sweet.

When in Scotland, one must drink Scotch.

Tastes scotchy.

Two fingers of scotch. Get it? HA!

Real Scottish people look awesome.

We find a little bar tucked onto a side street that has a piano and a guitar. Jeff annoys the locals with drunken improvisation in E Major.

Then, out of nowhere, these loud and crazy Scottish kids show up -- all between 17 and 18 years old. Jeff and the main kid, Cain, have a jam session on some Oasis and Coldplay tunes.

They take a shining to us yanks for some reason. They insist that we are going to hang out with them, all night. This sounds like a good idea at first.

This girl claims that she and Cain, her boyfriend, are "just like Kate Moss and Pete Doherty!" We can't argue.

They buy us tequila shots and try to tell us how to properly take one down. We're all like "dudes, we know alright? Mexico is way closer to us than you."

Then things start to get odd. They take us down the street to some crazy pub called The Chunky Monkey or something where everyone in the place is laying together on a big bed. Cain is saying that we should come stay at his place with him, 30 minutes out of town, even though we have to be up at 8AM to catch a flight to London.

They tell us that emphatically we really should come with them and that they won't take no for an answer and that they will be getting us ecstasy, speed and Cocaine and it will be great and we should really just come with them. We thank them kindly, pretend to go to the bathroom together and then leave. Lame, we know, but they were really starting to get strange. After all, they were like 17 years old.

Dublin

2007-06-16T15:23:00.001-05:00

Leaving on a jet plane. Okay, the next few blog posts are international-styles dudes. Jeff and I are headed across the pond for ten days for fun in the (not ) sun in Ireland, Scotland and England! We're gonna try to update this every few days cause otherwise we'll have way too many pictures to fit in one blog at the end. Our goals over the next ten days are to: walk around and look at shit, talk to crazy old Irish people about stuff, visit distilleries and breweries, get "soused," get "pissed," and avoid eating any form of haggis. So here we go.

We start the first two days of our adventure in Dublin. The pint of Guiness and the shot of Jameson are a national institution, a daily ritual, a chance to share stories and crazy Irish nuggets of wisdom. People are very friendly, the skies are very grey, and the buildings are very old.

Guiness brewery tour.

Water (aka Lifejuice) is one of the four essential elements in beer production.

Notes to the brewmaster. The irony of this angry demand is that I think Irish kids are totally given whiskey in their bottles as infants. There probably is no "real" drinking age, no matter what the laws might say.

We spread our seeds.

Gravity Bar.

The Brazen Head, claims to be the oldest pub in Ireland. Incorporated in 1198, or so the t-shirts of the servers say. BTW, you don't have a "bartender" in Ireland. You have a "barman."

Jeff can't resist ordering his American favorite to see how it compares to the domestic original. Most beers in Dublin are served in tap form and are served in specific pint glasses that match the brand of beer you're drinking. America could learn some lessons from this.

Drizzle on the outside patio.

Norwegian camouflage mechanisms - their only defense.

At a pub down the street called Mercant O'Shays, they have black lights in the bathrooms. This is totally my toilet paper, lit up like its ready to hit the dance floor.

Old person bar called The Millenium.

There is a traditional Irish band busting out the jams here. They find out that Jeff and I are Americans and on our anniversary trip so they dedicate a song to us. Then they make the mistake of telling us to come up and sing a song with them. We stumble awkwardly and drunkenly through "Jackson" by Johnny Cash until they mercifully cut it short after two verses. Thanks dudes. We appreciate you humoring us yanks.

Old ladies, on the other hand, are quite talented at busting out the hot tracks.

Breakfast the next morning in the hotel room. Irish people fucking love Pringles. Seriously, its like the only chip they sell and they're available at every bar.

Crazy-named Doritos.

St. Stephens Green.

I loved Die Hard 3.6 but I hear they worked out a lot of the virus-coding bugs in this new version. And its fully compatible with Windows XP.

Jeff is eating meat on this trip.

Mushy peas. That's actually what they're called on the menu, as if I would be appetized by that phrase. They're not bad though.

Darkness. Imprisioning me. All that I see. Absolute horror.

We're gonna have to go back for this one.

YES!

The Liffey.

Jeff asks the barman what this jar is. We're thinking its a tip jar. Turns out they don't really do tips in Ireland. That's more of an American cultural custom. Instead, they get paid a living wage to serve you beers. Jeff thinks this serves as a disincentive for them to care about you, but it works out allright usually.

In reality, its some sort of vague and non-specific "charity" jar. The barman says in a thick Irish accent: "You know some is for cancer, some is for black babies, that sort of thing." We nod, confused. Also worth noting: dude was listening to Wu-Tang's "Enter the 36 Chambers" album in its entirety but was easily 50 years old.

YES! Bar close can't keep us down.

A map that our barman at the Millenium drew for us, explaining the basic geographical concepts of western europe.

A solid find. Edinburgh is next!

Aqua, Seafoam, Shame - Yeah, I did just say that.

2007-06-11T18:27:00.000-05:00

Alright, okay. Prepare yourself. Above is a video that Isaac (aka Iceberg) and Jeff (aka Waff) made for a high school video project. It's a half-hour movie filled with 6 music videos set to the Lifter Puller's "Entertainment and Arts" EP. Due to the size of the movie I had to section it into 4 parts. The video features much of the old crew back in the high school days (circa 1999) when were all gorgeous, muscular, tanned, spriteful and ready to take on the world in our own awkward and ill-informed ways. My apologies in advance if this blows your mind.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Memorial Day, 2007. We memorialize those who have fallen by watching the shit out of a Twins game at the metrodome. Jeff, Caylie, Coles and I head down to check out the action in full Twins gear styles.

Jeff "sneaks" in some new multi-colored twizzlers. It becomes obvious that these flavorful straws would make great beer accompaniments.

These two old guys are such wanna-be umpires. It's not even funny.

If you haven't already noticed Caylie is into to demonstrating some awesome new weird facial morphisms.

For realz, her face looks crazy.

After the game, we retardledly decide to walk a few blocks down to Sgt. Prestons, a lame frat-boy sports bar. This proves to be a near-fatal error as we proceed to enter the unforeseen realms of the Fishbowl Graveyard. Let me explain.

Do you know how when you start getting drunk and you can easily convince yourself that something is a good idea even when it's really not... well that's why it's called the fishbowl graveyard. I almost died. Definitely not a good idea.

After we make it halfway through the first fish bowl the waitress stops by with a "mess up" fishbowl. My preference is the pink fishbowl, Nicole works on the purple bowl.

Things are starting to get too real.

Fast forward a few days. Beak, Caylie and I are going bowling with our friend Leonard. He's 80 plus years old, recently-widowed, and absolutely LOVES coming into the Green Mill while we're all working to chat. We've been promising to go bowling with him for months and today is finally the day. Beak prepares to dominate the competition by placing a magical kiss on his balls. Oh snap!

Turns out Leonard is an amazing bowler, he scores a 183. Nice work.

Leonard has been saving up his Stove Top Stuffing "free bowling" coupons for a few months and is able to treat us to a game. We of course have to rent our own shoes.

Fast forward to Friday. 50's comes over for some piano loop recording mischievity. TPC has decided that pianos are cool and that chopped up loops of pianos are even cooler. I am drinking beers and watching from the window sill.

If you open up the top of a piano you get a better sound, or so they say...

When you're recording a song that's meant for screwing and chopping you use pots and pans instead of real drums. It sounds much cooler.

After laying down some initial hot tracks, we bike up some massive hills to the Saint Paul Cathedral. On this night, they're totes celebrating the shit out of being 100 years old by having fireworks, ice cream and magicians or some shit. We take advantage.

There's an ice cream social and Kemp's is sponsoring it with their "Twin Cities Fudge" ice cream. Guess what???? The chocolates are little Minnesota shapes with T.C.'s in the middle. Heartwarming.

It's just about to start raining and the clouds are crazy looking. We sit close to the church and manage to stay out of the rain.

Alright it's dark and time for fireworks. I have to say these are the coolest and longest fireworks I have ever seen! Not only that, they are being shot off from across the street so they're really huge and close to us. Super awesome.

These fireworks are some end of the world type shit. Check it out, the trees are exploding colors. That bus is about to die. The Saint Paul Basin rumbles and echo's like we're at war.

The next night, its another Beak and Cam porch drinkin' party. It's summertime so you know what that means: JayToTheEff pretending he has huge muscles by rolling up his t-shirt sleeves.

Jordan stops over to show us his 24oz Budweiser Twins can. Sweetness.

Tubbz becomez a string puppet.

Beak plays with dolls.

A few nights later, it's my mom's birthday! We're at a sweet Greek restaurant, definitely not Christos but that other one, you know, the good one. The gal on the left is totally BTF's little sister and she is dating my brother. This makes Jeff and I excited cause it means that maybe someday we could be related to BTF and Blestots. Who knows?

I make a layered chocolate birthday cake. My dad says it's the best he's ever had.

Jeff is in charge of the Birthday card.

Fast forward to Saturday night. We are partaking in the first ever Southside Bike Gang Bar Crawl. This involves a crew of dawgs riding bike all around south minneapolis and drinking at as many new and previously-unexplored bars as possible. We start at the Bulldog. An old favorite but a good place to get things percolating.

50's shows up and is dedicated to the cause, even though he has to be up at 5am for work.

Next stop Casey's on 34th and Nicollet. We've always wondered what this place is all about and decide to give it a try. We walk in and a regular shakes his head in disgust. I guess this bars for regulars only. I understand though. We order a $5 pitcher of P.B.R. and head out side.

Tubbs is sporting new wayfarer sunglasses. Jeff starts calling him "risky business". Just like Tom Cruise in that one movie. Oh yeah.

Funny jokes are being told.

Next stop on the bike tour. North-metro's (aka Crystal's) back yard for some brews and tetherball action. Waff and Tubbs flail their arms like little girls.

I'm sporting my hyperlush bike gang bandanna.

Thumbs up, these are some fun times.

50's approves as well.

No we're getting into the southeast side of the city. We head 30 blocks over to Beaks neck of the woods to hang out at the Cedar Inn. This is a weird Nascar/Motorcycle fanatatic pizza/beer joint. We steer clear of what's happening on the inside and set up shop on the patio.

We meet up with Beak and Cam. Cam lets us know about her afternoon... Her and Beak tried going on a canoe trip at Lake Calhoun and tipped the boat within five minutes. Funny shit. Apparently Beak loses his mind when he hits the water .

We head North towards Lake Street and stop in at a bar called Schooners. Free popcorn and $10 pitchers of PBR. Not the best deal in town, but we don't mind. We hang out inside for a little while and listen to the bar band. Singing drummers are always cool.

McTubbins poses.

I pose.

McTubbins flips.

We head back over to Crystals for some post bar crawl backyard fires and late night tetherball. On the way we find a snow pile outside a local ice factory. We can't resist snowballs.

Girls vs. Boys.

The bike gang family photo, sans yours truly.

\
Backyard parties with fires.

Blestos and Julie join the party. Blestos plays tetherball and hits the ball so hard that he breaks the rope and the ball goes flying. So funny, so many ways.

There's a CD player that only plays tapes, weird right? Or maybe it plays CD's but McTubbins only has one tape and no CD's. Jeff and Tubbs get into some air-guitar-style Nirvana Unplugged tracks. Jeff prompts "Can you say anything else" McTubbins replies "What else can I say" Jeff asks "Who do you think is gay?" Tubbs replies "Everyone is Gay."

The next day is the annual Green Mill softball tournament! A bunch of unathletic and hung-over service industry workers get together to broil and flail awkwardly in the punishing afternoon sun. Here, Caylie prepares for battle.

Todd, the Green Mill delivery driver shown here, is one of the key organizers for the event. He proudly struts around the field in a "no-shirt-brother" kind of a style with his trumpet. Totes weird, I know.

Some of Todd's musician friends are participating in the game. They start things off with Mexico's National Anthem.

Ladies and Gentleman please rise for the National Anthem.

Bottom of the first and my guy Morgan takes a ball to the chin. I'm not a key member of the team so I volunteer to take him to a hospital to get stitches and that's where I spend my afternoon.

FYI, Jeff and I are leaving for Dublin, Edinburgh, and London on Wednesday. Make sure to stop back as I will try and update the blog every couple of days.

Peacisms.

Lost & Found

2007-05-17T11:32:00.001-05:00

It's a Wednesday night, and practically everyone from our whole crew is inexplicably involved in this crazy music-fashion-art show that goes on in the Deuce Cities every year called Voltage. Isaac (aka Iceberg) is making the audio-visuals work right, so he gets a "Committee" badge. TPC is headlining the bill so Jeff gets a "Band" badge.

50's, too, is V.I.P. on this night. He looks frightened.

And yes, believe it or not, McTubbins is a fashion designer on this night. He, ETC and Crystal (aka North Metro) are dressing hot models up in crazy post-apocalyptic garb.

The show is at the 1st Avenue Mainroom and is crazy sold-out and crazy packed. This is a shot I snuck of Jeff getting his guitar ready for fashion rocking from behind the stage screen. Jeff wishes the volume knob on his amp would go to 11.

Iceberg's handiwork before the band goes on.

Informational videos about TPC and their designer.

The curtain drops and TPC begins rocking the assembled fashionites. Jordan is proudly (perhaps misguidededly?) sporting a kick-ass 1970's Chicago Cop 'stache and wearing a t-shirt that says "I Heart the Goods."

Me, sporting a McTubbins original neck scarf. One of the Hyperlush models gets totes apocalyptic.

Continued craziness.

This chick on the left totally has a huge condom on her back.

Fucking triumph.

Sweaty and in love with dragons, spreadsheets, the goods and danger.

Brews and crews. The night ends late with everyone feeling equal parts a) sweet and b) weird.

Thank god it's Twins time. Somehow I've managed to fall madly in love with the Minnesota Twins. Something happened between the end of last season and the beginning of this season. I mean, I started reading the sports section.

Funny thing happens during the game, we run into Jordan who is towering directly above us.

After the game we meet up with Tubbs at Big V's to see a tornavalance show. Big Money.

At the show we run into Pete Biasi, a reunion you might say. It was just a few weeks ago that we went on a weekend vision quest where we were introduced to beer sabers and the awesomeness that is "Bias-dog."

Tornavalanche kills.

Joelgurt.

Time to enjoy the spring, the first nice nice hot hot day of the year. The crew heads over to gabby's to throw back a few strawberry daiquiris and ring in the season.

50's points at Caylie, he is questionably in awe of her abilities to drink two beers at once. Way to go Caylie, you're officially now a member of the club.

Dickery daiquiri do.

Endearing assholes, endearing smiles.

In remembrance of last years march blog we climb Nicole's neighbors tree... again.

Fast forward to the next night. TPC is getting back to its roots in the western suburbs and agreed to be the bar band for the night at Decoy's in Hopkins. This means playing two sets, busting out the cover jams, invoking crowd participation, etc. Here, they jam out with some sweet neon Budweiser and Miller lights on behind them.

My parents make the trip to Decoy's to see the show cause going to see shows in the city is like, super scary and stuff. The suburbs are safe. My mom fits in because she has a hyperlush scarf on. She repeatedly says "I'm wearing a McTubbins, who are you wearing?" FYI photocredzos to Money Diamonds.

On the roof after the show, we sneak a peek at old Hopkins 6 movie theatre. Jeff, Iceberg, 50's and Beak all worked here as squeaky-voiced 15 year olds.

It's Friday night, I haven't been feeling so great. Back problems and what not. I'm convinced I will be in bed by 6:30pm. Lesson learned, things change. A greenmill party turns into and after party and the after party turns into a stoop party and the stoop party turns into a game of croquet, but of course.

Matt charts the course. Level of difficulty: low to medium. Just hard enough for us drunk souls.

This quickly turns into a bad idea. Jeff realizing that his legs are really long and that he has the wingspan of a bald eagle starts thrashing around breaking croquet mallets etc. etc.

50's has a sweet sweatshirt. On the back are these pissed off wolves and on the front it says: B.W.S. we can't figure out what it stands for. Maybe "Bad Wolf School, or Bitchin' Wolves Suck. Suggestions are always welcome.

There's one thing that happens when Beak and Waff have beers together. They can't help but touch and nuzzle on each other. Any opportunity to feel each other is always welcome so Jeff invites Beak to a wrestling match.

Notice wear Jeff's hand is.

Caylie declares Jeff the loser.

Cam declares Beak the winner.

Since I've done the last blog there has been a rash of thievery that has come our way. A few weeks ago Caylie had her bike stolen from outside her house. Totes not cool. Somehow last friday on her way to work she sees it locked to this stop sign. The cops can't help her so she takes matters into her own hands. First a hand written note...

Next she buys a lock and locks her lock (I just used the word lock 3 times in one breath) to the pole therefore preventing the thief from being able to retake the bike. A few days later she comes back with some super power towel, breaks the thieves lock and gets her bike back. There's only room for Victory and Triumph here!

Fast forward to Friday night, and when I say friday night I mean friday as in last weekend. We're finally catching up. TPC is playing a show along with Will Whitmore, the Stnnng, and some other sweet bands at the Turf club in Saint Paul in honor of Pete Biasi graduating from college.

Will's stamina for downing shot after shot of whiskey is mucho impressivo.

The good thing about having shows in Saint Paul is that we can convince people really easily to come over to our house for the afterbar. Tonight the Allen fam is introducing MPLS and SP to chi-town style beer sabers. Yes.

Here, 50's and Joel are lacking tape. 50's gets and extra point for shotgunning that middle brew.

Will wants to know if we have any hip hop jamz. We supply the goodz.

This is where the second case of thievery comes into play. Somehow this girl, who I will only refer to as "yellow dress" comes to my party, uninvited, and steals my red raybans. Totes not cool. These glasses are like my favorite thing ever and I am really sad about this. And don't think I'm just pointing my finger at yellow dress because I didn't know her and she was drunk, I actually have multiple levels of proof that she was the one that nabbed my shades.

Photo from blog archives demonstrating how cool my glasses are. Yellow Dress is a total bitch for taking them.

Much window sitting happens. People are into the beer sabers!

Tubbs and I do our best effort at a beer saber/air guitar version of Metalica's "One." John Tapp would be proud.

Party Goers.

Yes!

Oh and to finish up the story about the sunglasses. My hero, Jeff uses the power of the internet to send out an A.P.B. on the missing glasses. Turns out the girl ended up going to the Biasi household where she leaves the glasses and I am able to pick them up in the morning.

Not only that, I was totally avenged by Caylie. Turns out yellow dress is her highschool nemesis. She has no qualms writing her a sweet myspace message as transcribed below.

Caylie:
Hello olivia this is caylie. You stole my good friend Alison's sunglasses from her house in st. paul. This is not cool at all and you are a huge douchebag cunt bitch. You should be ashamed of yourself on multiple levels.
sincerely, caylie

Yellow Dress:
i do not have said sunglasses. maybe you missed it? but my friends found them at their house the morning after. awesome message caylie, i will be sure to return your kindness on the matter futurewise.

Caylie:
You stole them from her house and brought them to dudes house. They said that you took them. They cost $150 and they are extremely important to my friend. I know I was being childish about it but stealing things from people is unnexceptable. If it's not yours don't take it. I will not fear you in the future. If anything you will go down again.
sincerely, caylie

This is so awesome and endearing on so many levels.

Snoop Bloggy Blog

2007-04-03T16:12:00.000-05:00

It begins here, at this table in the beer garden behind The Picador in Iowa City, IA. Vision Qwest 2007.

Jeff, me, McTubbins and ETC have decided that being stuck in the Deuce Cities all the time is gay. So we fight the gayness by taking a road trip down to Iowa City to see our bros The Shadow Government, everyone's favorite vaguely-political-noise-doom combo. Our brilliant plan is to drink a ton of beers, watch the show and see what sorts of things materialize.

Floor level before the show, hanging with Tall Bikes and catching up with old-school Midwestern friends. This is also serving as a final goodbye to Tall Bikes before he heads up to his farming internship (yes, believe that) in western Minnesota. He is down here in the IC visiting his folks before he leaves. Brews are crushed.

ShadGov, kicking out the double-drummer-noise-machine jams.

McTubbins, stoned, drunk, like SEEING the music, man, for real.

Smoke machinage.

Is there a band even playing behind all this?

After the show, 20 people pile a few blocks over to an afterparty at a girl's house who is carrying an air-rifle all night. She has this crazy-ass robot dog. Look at that dog, just chillin'.

Outdoor backyard stoop smokes. Cans of Budweiser. Post-show delicate rain mists. It is at this point that we decide, in a moment of drunken epiphany, that "dude let's go to Chicago tomorrow!" We put our hands all in and everyone agrees. Vision Qwest 2007 will begin NOW.

Every single one of the people in this picture, independently, without collusion, has chosen to point to something or emphasize the existence of something with hand signals. It's hard to tell what I should focus on -- Tall Bikes shoe? Molly's head? Clarity is needed, brosephs.

Tall Bikes shows off his new tat, freshly inked, with some crazy dudes playing piano and dancing on his shoulder blades.

Everyone is kicked out of the air-rifle party on a suspect claim that "the cops are coming dude" or some shit. So we pile over to Tall Bikes' childhood home a few blocks away. His parents are sleeping soundly upstairs, so we quietly rage through whispers and quieted proclamations in the kitchen. 5:30 AM bedtime roll call. Beds made of hardwood and carpet, or if you're lucky, Tall Bikes brosephs bed.

The next morning, the weary and hungover crew enjoy coffee, cigarettes and sliced fruit on the front porch. Thanks to Tall Bikes dad for the amazing homemade rolls, they were delicious.

In the dining room a shrine made to Tall Bikes. This is his senior picture. His eyes are peering into your soul.

After a farewell to Tall Bikes' parents, we head back over to the Picador to link up with the Shadow Government bros and grab some breakfast. Behind the club, there is some amazing graffiti. Alright, full disclosure, we were the ones who wrote this, and by us, I mean Jeff.

The weekend title is officially set in stone. Or wood. Whatever.

Breakfast, family sit-down Iowa diner styles. I have a malt for revitalization efforts.

Well-fed, satisfied, proud of our fuck-the-world adventure continuation, we pull into Chicago ready for more awesomeness.

Gargoyle crests, for reals. Only in Chicago.

Tubs and ETC had never been to Millennium Park before because they are ignorant of the world. Time to disabuse them of their naiveté.

Portals to new worlds are opening before us.

Self-portrait. Medium: the reflection of a huge silver bean.

This dude is crazy-looking.

Crazy-dude reflections. Totes poignant.

Sometimes moving to Chicago sounds pretty doable. Pictures like this help.

After our millennial adventure, we cruise over to the Beat Kitchen where Shadow Government are playing tonight. We are totally like Deadheads, following a band around the country. Except our band is slightly less popular and actually uses their two drummers effectively. Oh SNAP. Jerry Garcia's corpse just got totally burned.

As ETC is sitting at the bar an older fellow next to him writes a note to the waitress, it says "To Kim, with Love." ETC makes his own version of this note and gets a free beer. Way to go dude.

While sitting at the bar and crushing brews before the show, we start a long-exposure lighter art project.

ETC.

Pot leaves, dude.

Pentagrams.

Upside down burning cross will light your cigarette.

Deuce Cities.

Vision Qwest (broadband service).

Now is when McTubbins takes over as guest blogger for awhile. You can tell his pictures because they are so totally "ephemeral" (his words, not mine). This is me and Jeff watching the band.

This shit is crazy ephemeral, son.

Bar art projects continue. Can you tell that 3/4ths of us have B.F.A's?

Underwater Blowjobs. The newest craze sweeping the sexual deviant subcultures. Tubbs has come up with away to create a device to make these BJ's totally portable. It involves a bucket, a chicks head and dudes dong.

It should be noted that I have taken to saying "Wazaaap!" like the old Budweiser commercials this entire weekend. It is hilarious to me, for some reason.

Continued ephemerality.

McTubbins is in charge of the photo machine again, his mission, to take photos of hot girls and their asses.

After the show we head over to Joel's house (aka Andy Koufax) for yet another after-rager. Here, we are introduced to the Chicago concept of "Beer Sabres." Everytime you finish a can of beer, you stack it and tape it to the other ones you've finished. By the end of the night, you should have a) some awesome evidence of how drunk you probably are and b) a sword, you know, like, for fighting.

Luke Tweedy gets knifey, and then he gets hyphey.

Old-school bros.

Pete Biasi is the master of the Beer Sabre, and includes Red Bull in his sword as well. Interesting approach.

Continued partying, continued beer stacking. So real, so many ways.

You know your party is top-notch when people tag your junk mail.

Sabrelicious. As you can see, the night is getting interesting.

Yes.

Oh no, I've grown a beer sabre out of my head, these are risks we all have to take when partying in Chicago. A Mike Lust sighting is made.

This is the part of the night where everybody at the whole part starts counting down in a shout "5-4-3-2-1....YEAH!" and lifting their beer sabres in the air. No one is sure why this started or what it all means. Regardless, it is a powerful group proclamation that continues over and over again.

Bring it in close

Brosephs Broing Down.

Sombrero? Yes. Sombrero.

Joelgurt and Bobadams.

Photos lose focus when drinkers get hopeless.

4am, Tubbz and I find Jeff alone sleeping in the street, we take him upstairs and find a nice bit of carpet for him to dream on. Endgame.

J/K, though. J/K for real

2007-03-21T13:47:00.001-05:00

Yo, yo, yo. Three times yo. Here's what's been going down in the upper-middle-west. Let's start at the latest Record Club in mid-February. This time its at McTubbins and Tall Bikes place (aka E.L.S.). I give Tall Bikes a hard time about not sporting his ketchup mustard outfit; he one ups me by showing me his new banana glove outfit. Keep em' comin' brother.

Holy shit! Limited edition chocolate poop swirl vinyl!

The record club crew, deep in discussion of Converge, Oneida and whatever crazy prog-shit from the 70's that Tubs and Tall Bikes make us listen to.

Thanks to long lens exposures, Portland Avenue turns into a hellish lake of fire.

Fast forward about a week. It snows a shit ton in the Deuce Cities. Like 35 inches in a few days. Schools and offices are closed. We take full advantage.

Our parking lot is plowed and now we have a huge snow pile next to our car. Totes sweetness. Jeff and I can't resist and we go outside to play "King of the Mountain" winter snow-styles. For perspective, I am on top of the snow hill looking down right now.

Beers are like babies and we have to protect them at all costs.

The next night is a Minneapolis sledding party with Blestos, 50's, Danny Tanner, me, and Jeff. Nicole bails even though this whole sledding thing was her idea, what a bitch. Total blog burn. J/K, though. J/K for real.

When we were kids we had hot cocoa breaks. Now its a different kind of stimulant.

2 sleds. 2 legs. One dude. Blestos is very brave.

50's goes Toboggan surfing. Our version of the Winter Olympics.

The snow crew. We're tired and cold and decide to head to 50's for cider and whiskeys.

50's fashions Jeff a Budweiser t-shirt in honor of his first love, beer. Very lifelike detail. Bueno, Bueno!

The King of Beers and the Prince of Peace.

Whiskey shots all around. Yeesh.

Fast forward to the next night, The Future CD release party! Besides having the best band name ever (ex: "I saw The Future last night and it was great"), these guys are masters of the fog machine and pink lights.

Rage.

Fast forward. Jeff spends most of his time studying for a grad school test called the GMAT and I'm left lonely and ignored. I decide to invest my time in making sweet puzzles and finish three in one weekend. Next step: gluing and varnishing; these puzzles will make sweet place mats. So crafty, so many ways.

March 14th, it's my guy Tubbs' 26th birthday! We all meet up at the VFW for cheap drinks and karoke.

Jawz makes these sweet red velvet cupcakes -- letters spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY AARON.

Tubbz is down and celebrates by eating his cupcake in one bite. I bet he gives amazing blowjobs. J/K, though. J/K for real.

New Russian Avant-Garde Books. Happy Birthday to you my weird-ass friend. What do you get for Christmas -- German futurist shit?

Carlson Brothers Bro Down. Owatonna awesomes.

Lazerbeak sports a new zip up sweater. Very worldly. 50's and Jeff stifle their laughter.

Tall Bikes and Tubs belt out some karaoke JAMS (capitalization intentional, intended to imply force and intensity). Not only is it Tubs' birthday, but its Tall Bikes going away party. He's leaving us all for a few months for a farming internship on a farm in Western Minnesota. Hopefully we can go rage with him in his farmhand shack some weekend this spring.

The next night, our good friend from Iowa, Will Whitmore, plays a packed show at the Triple Rock.

Johnny Law, Johnny Law, he ain't the smartest man you ever saw.

Fast forward to the next day, its St. Patty's Day! St. Paul has a high proportion of Irish in its population and loves its traditions, so the entire downtown is flooded with a ton of drunk people wearing green. Our friend, Greg, (aka G-Sax aka G-Money aka G-$$$$) is on the St. Paul Bouncing Team (previously discussed in the last blog) and is flipping chicks into the air with his team.

Families line the streets in green, drunks line the windows of the bars, watching safely inside while clutching pints of Guiness. There is a thin line between the onlookers and the parade. I wear red to be a bitch.

Green Party.

What goes into the mindset of someone who chooses to wear a full leprechaun outfit to the parade? Are they expecting to get laid? Very perplexing. A green shirt would have been fine.

G-$$$$, post-bouncing.

His fun meter is pretty high after the parade, but as you'll note, there's still room for improvement.

Here's how we improve it. Alary's (cop bar down the street) is a shithole the other 364 days out of every year, but St. Patty's Day sends the crazyness into a new stratosphere. A guy walks by as I take this photo and says, "Now that's just not right." Really? I thought he'd be into it.

Alary's is way too packed and this guy keeps almost throwing up on our shoes, so we head a few blocks down to Matty B's. It's hard to tell from this photo but we're actually in the lower-level of the adjacent parking ramp. It's been rented out by Matty B's and is packed to the gills with drunk St. Paulites, a really loud cover band, Vikings center Matt Birk walking around saying hi to everyone (he's the owner -- get it? "Matty B?"), and yes, but of course, a huge ice-sculpted beer bong.

Jesus. It's hard to tell, but this ice sculpture beer bong says "MB" for Matt Birk. Here, Jeff's brother (visiting from Boston) is shoveling beer down the ice chute into Jenn's mouth. Rage in the name of Irish culture: complete.

It is within 10 hours of this photo that I wake up and feel like death. Turns out I have the flu. I am sentenced to my bed for the next 72 hours. Two words: total bummer.

Bears, Bulldogs, Basketball, Building Better Bombs. Bam!

2007-02-19T23:06:00.001-06:00

So there's been a bit of a blog absence -- a blogspence, if you will. I'm slowly becoming a victim of the Winter Blues (aka TWB) and I blame my sub-par blogging skills on this midwest winter.

To fight TWB, Jeff and I buy a shit ton of tickets to Timberwolves games. Seriously, we buy tickets to like 700,000 games.

At the first game, against the Detroit Pistons, we run into the one and only Todd Guelker (inspiration for the infamous quote"Fuck Todd" and the slightly less popular "Todd is dead, dude") at the game. We are suprised and impressed by his dedication to the Wolves, as evidenced by his sweet KG jersey.

The Wolves lose a nail-biter in double overtime, total bummer. The entire last quarter I'm distracted by this guy sitting in front of me who is totally uniterested in the game and is way more into using his digital camera zoom feature to take photos of the cheerleaders' tah-tahs down at courtside. He seriously does this for like 45 minutes, despite the wedding band on his finger.

That weekend, we're having a pre-party beer with our badass cats.

We head down the hall to our friends/neighbors Todd and Britt's place. They just eloped on a mountaintop in Colorado (yes, for real) and are having a post-elope party with family and friends. This is their bulldogs, Ike, who weighs 8,000,000,000 pounds. Bulldogs are so crazy looking and they really love not moving. Siting and laying around is their M.O. Now you know the deal on bulldogs.

The happy couple --Todd and Britt Hansen (formerly Knippel, yikes)! The party is a relatively fancy affair. Todd is repping some just-got-off-work banker steez and Britt is rocking some cocktail dress 1930's vibeage. Jeff, Beak and I are there, wearing bluejeans and button-up shirts. Not fancy.

Family photos. You know a party is getting crazy nutso when babies are involved. Though it is hard to get them to do a kegstand, admittedly.

We wish the new couple well and head off to Beak and Cam's in the TPC van. Here, these assholes are listening to demos of their own band's new songs on the drive. Total nerds.

At Beak and Cam's, we are Getting Amped (capital letters intentional). Tomorrow is the next game in a several week stretch of Big Bears Games. If the Bears win tomorrow's game and go on to the Superbowl, Cam's going to get a Bears tattoo. That's dedication.

The best way to prepare for tomorrow's game is to do video karaoke, obviously. Here, J.C. gets really real on a song that none of us recognize. Notice the Bears gear. He's already in the game mindset.

Beach scenery provides the proper emotional and mental context for belting your heart out.

Scotch + beers + robot voice on the karaoke microphone + Jeff = this move right here. The night once again goes late. We all crash out and dream of a Bears victory in the NFC championship game.

The next morning. Pregame Bloodys with super-spicy mix concoctions.

It should be noted that, despite the audacious partying and fun that comes the night before a big Bears game, the acutal process of watching the game is extremely stressful and anxiety-ridden. When the Bears fuck up, we all clench up and grind our teeth and hold our faces in our hands and pray to Allah and grab another handful of Cheez-Its and a Premium Can.

Yes! Victory! Stoop-smoking celebrations.

A repeat of the previous weekend, I do believe.

A few days later, me and Colzoz head over to our old pal Nicole's new house in the Como area of St. Paul. She too, now has a bulldog. Its name is Matilda.

BAM. Fast-forward a few days. My co-worker Caylie recieves flowers from her boyfriend at work. Check out the awesome note. Wow. This calls for endless teasing. She breaks up with her boyfriend 5 days later and something tells me his poetry may be to blame.

BAM. Fast-forward a few days. 50's is back from a two-week stint in China. We missed the asshole, so we meet up at the Bulldog to welcome him home. His whole family was on a adventure to visit his brother who's teaching Chinese kids how to speak American. He brings back with him a pirated version of Snakes on a Plane, candy, beach sand, and some Chinese money. He takes time to describe to us the shitting situation on the "mainland." Totes N.C. (not cool). Apparently it's just a hole in the ground, and you are responsible for bringing your own toilet paper to public places.

Fast-forward to that Friday night. Blestos invites us down to Medicine Lake in Golden Valley to check out to the Shanty Project. Basically, a bunch of awesome artists get money to build ice houses on a frozen lake and make public art installations out of them. Blestos and his crew are some of these awesome artists. Needless to say, I'm down for this. We put on longjohns, bring a case of beer and get ready to hunker down.

Blestos' shanty is the Postal Ice Shanty, set up to look like an old outpost postal office. You can actually send mail to and from their shanty (they've got a P.O. Box). There is some question as to whether or not all this is actually legally-kosher with the USPS, but tevs. We take advantage of the opportunity and write some letters to peeps.

www.postalshanty.com

A letter to my mom from Fingertap and Jeff.

A letter from Jeff to 50's. Thanks to Blestos for a top-notch postal experience.

The next night, Saturday. We're still not over this whole "winter blues" (aka TWB) thing so we decide to stay in and watch downer movies like An Inconvient Truth. Total raging Saturday. Here, Whittier is so into getting brushed, that he tries to permanently forge the brush into his fucking face.

Halfway through our chill movie night, Jeff's co-worker Greg (aka G-Money aka G-$$$$) calls us (pictured, in the jacket). He's a block away at Alary's, after celebrating the Saint Paul Winter Carnival all day. We decide to head down. Two side notes for the uninitiated:

1) The St. Paul Winter Carnival is basically a city-sanctioned booze fest for old-school working class St. Paul neighborhood dudes. It's been going on for decades. It involves medallion hunting, dudes dressing up in all red and calling themselves Vulcans and getting wasted at a new St. Paul bar every night, a "Bouncing Team" and so much more.

2) Alary's is a block from our house and is known for a) being a cop bar b) being a Bears bar for Chicago transplants c) being usually full of douche bags and d) being the kind of bar where all the bartenders and waitresses are odd-looking St. Paul girls who are required to wear almost no clothes while working.

G-$$$$ is totally stoked becuase he somehow walked onto the Bouncing Team earlier in the afternoon parade, a lifelong dream for this old-school St. Paul kid.

For those of you who don't know, the Bouncing Team is a huge part of the Winter Carnival festivities. Their role is to hold a huge round peice of cloth and bounce hot chicks several stories into the air during the many Winter Carnival parages. Check out this clip of Greg on the news.

Hot chicks and Jag Bombs. FUCK. YEAH.

Alary's predictably blows and we hear a rumor about a secret Vulcan party over on Selby at the St. Paul Curling Club. It turns out to be a lie, so we head to Costello's instead. Greg and Carly (his lady, pictured here in the sweet winter Twins hat) have been drinking since noon and are getting pretty awesome. Photographic proof above.

These are the kinds of things that people write on cars in St. Paul.

BAM. Fast forward. Another T-Wolves game. TWB ain't no match for KG.

BAM. Fast-forward to the Superbowl. The Bears are in! Which means a huge, massive rager at Beak and Cam's. The have a Superbowl party every year, but the stakes will be much higher this year. To celebrate, Danielle (aka Danny Tanner aka Meryl Streep) and 50's make this amazing football shaped cheese dip with realistic finger grips made of almond bits.

The game starts well enough with the Midway Monsters returning the opening kick for a touchdown. Excitement builds. This picture doesn't do the party justice either. There were literally like 30 people spead throughout the house on 3 different TVs. All eating cheese dip and drinking keg beer.

Later on, the score is not looking as good. The Colts are totally sonning the Bears. Cam is hopeful the Bears will pull through this and be victorious, but alas its not enough. Sadness reigns, but keg beers softens the blow.

Fast forward. Home improvement time. I spend a long-ass time assembling and hanging new kitchen cabinets. A success if I do say so myself. What did we do before Ikea?

Fast forward to the next weekend. Time for tour. TPC is doing a weekend in Sioux Falls and Fargo with Building Better Bombs to do some Dakota Damage. The land is flat, the air is cold, the time is right. This proves to be a fairly rageful weekend.

Friday night, the show is in Sioux Falls at Nutty's North. Yes, the name of the club is Nutty's North. Yes, that is the name for real. Nutty's North. Apparently, there is also a Nutty's South, but we have it on good authority that that place totally blows. This club has huge 4 foot tall barrels full of peanuts. Noice.

Here, Jeff shows us what he's about to do: bring the rock on Dakota. He will not, however, be drinking Coors Light while bringing said rock.

Relevant water naming. This shit was purely American.

TPC and BBB get this sweet backstage VIP that used to be a girls bathroom. It's stocked full with beers and lockers.

50's preps for the show by getting serious. Ryan from BBB is in the background, trying to fix his aching back which he claims he threw out while eating a too-intense Burger King Whopper. Sure, very common.

Fun with local press clippings.

This crazy Jack Daniels statue is just standing around backstage. It definitely needs to come out for public showing.

TPC rocks for the Sioux Falls kids.

BBB does the same.

Yep, there's our guy -- JD. Jeff offers him a helping hand.

Get pissed.

This guy is stone cold chillin'.

So weird.

Great show, man. No really, loved the set. For real. What ah....what kinda cabinet is that? Does it have a D.I. connection? Oh, sweet. Yeah, yeah, no for real loved the set dude. Really great stuff. Lotta energy. You look like you're having a lot of fun up there.

Who are these people, you may be asking? On the right is McTubbins' brother and on the left is his wife. They live in Sioux Falls and came down to the show, leaving their little one with a babysitter for the night. We seriously kick it with these dawgs.

Me, backstage in the V.I.P.

After the show, we head over to Steven's place to crash. Isaac and Jeff get kissy kissy.

Steven has a Will Whitmore skateboard deck! If I skateboarded I would totally get one.

The next morning we hop in the vans and head up north to NoDak. BBB have pretty much the same exact van as TPC. Noice.

Dakota dreamscapes.

In Fargo, at load-in we notice a band called His Mischeif has left us a friendly message. Pretty sweet. Our Deuce Cities sticker collection remains affixed to the front of the stage of the Aquarium from when it was put up in summer of 2006.

We're in Fargo early, so we head down to the Chinese Buffet down the street. This is the kind of Chinese Buffet that has chicken fingers, french fries and ice cream on the menu. Bastardized Midwest versions of the Orient are much better than the real deal.

After food, we head back to the club. The show is in the upstairs portion of the venue. Downstairs is a whole nother crazy frat-vibe bar that has blackjack tables. That shit ain't legal in Minnesota. BBB takes advantage by losing a bunch of money to the dealer.

Eric (aka ETC) is along for the trip and makes this extremely life-like drawing of Jeff's hair on a bar napkin.

TPC rocks for the kids. Awesome note: the kids in Fargo will spontaneously and-without-warning clap rhythmically to your songs during slow break-down parts. Truly inspirational.

ETC tags the bathroom up nice. Hardland/Heartland.

After the show, we drive 45 minutes to Detroit Lakes, MN to Ryan's parents' cabin. It is so quintessentially a "lake place" and the perfect aftershow party venue. 50's does his best impression of this thing on the wall.

Disturbing imagery.

There is a sweet bedroom with some crazy woods-scene murals going down. This bald eagle is totally bringing a whole fish to its babies.

50's once again, impersonating wildlife. He needs to train a little more at this cause I can totally tell which one is him. Also, that little blue bird has a worm in its mouth.

Yes! Lake places.

We proceed to get awesome and play a rousing game of Catch Phrase. BBB vs. TPC. Worth noting: Stef wears a golden dinosaur hoodie and baggy green stretch pants.

Getting awesomer, finding things funnier.

Let's pick this intensity meter up a notch. TPC proves victorious. The deal is that the losing team has to walk to the middle of the frozen lake.

Even though TPC winds, they choose to accompany BBB out to the middle of the lake for two reasons. First, its good sportsmanship not to rub your victory in the face of your competitors. Especially when its fucking Catch Phrase and not, like, I don't know, the Olympics or some shit. Second, we are feeling awesome enough that walking to the middle of the lake in the middle of the night in freezing cold conditions sounds like a good time.

Getting ready for the lake walk.

Further lake walk preparations. This walk will be a big deal.

As we're walking out the door, I spill my beer all over Jeff. This is hilarious to me at the time and the first thing I do is document it with the blogging machine rather than go get a rag to clean it up.

The crew, ready now for the lake walk. Notice Drew's full body suit.

Lakewalk ghosts. Beers clutched close, breath freezing in the air, no one awake for miles. It's safe to say that we won this night.

Still walking. It was a big lake.

We leave our mark. Total street team type shit.

Back to the lodge.

This night, too, goes late. Things get awesome.

Harsh reality the next morning. We pack up and drive back to the Deuce Cities.

That night, TPC and BBB are playing one final show for the weekend. A secret house show in South Minneapolis to celebrate the release of BBB's new album. At the show, the ever-awesome Vader Clan present TPC with their 2006 Christmas presents -- engraved flasks. You can't tell, but they all have nicknames on them. Beak instead of Aaron. 50's instead of Matt. You get the idea.

TPC brings it "old school."

BBB also partakes in the rocking of the old school fashion.

Basement parties can be fun. I had forgot.

Jaws is drinking a beer? Hell has truly frozen over on whatever fruity girl concoction she usually drinks.

Champagne Supernova

2007-01-15T20:24:00.000-06:00

New Year, New Blog. It's been awhile, so there's a lot of ground to cover. We're starting with the first real snow fall of winter a few days before Christmas. Nami is enraptured with the snowflakes.

Christmas eve dinner. A bunch of Jeff's extended family meets up with a bunch of mine at my folks' place in Minnetonka. Total red wine/porch-cooled High Life bottle binge.

In my holiday finest, with Jeff's Uncle Paul shape-shifting into alternate realities behind me.

This is my Uncle John, looking dapper in an open-necked shirt/gold chain/chest hair hint kind of style. He challenges Jeff, my brother and my dad to join him in the Polar Bear Club New Year's Day jump. Do you know what this is? You should. It's when a bunch of pasty-white Minnesotans jump into a hole cut into the frozen death trap of Lake Minnetonka in the name of adventure. After some holiday spirits, they all agree to take part. Stay tuned for results.

Kumbayah bitches. My grandma and mom convince Jeff to bring his guitar and help facilitate a holiday sing-along after dinner. It skirts the thin line between heartwearming and totally gay.

Deuhs-family Christmas!

All of the used bows go around the neck of my parents' dog, Scout. He is not happy about it all but goes along with the torture so he can hang out in the living room, which he is not usually allowed to do. All in the name of Jesus and whatnot.

Mike gets a crazy winter hat. He is obviously very excited.

These are my present from Jeff, authentic original series red Ray Bans! My dad tries them on.

The next morning we have some waffles and tangerines. Mike wears his new hat. After that we head over to Jeff's folks place in Roseville for the Allen-family Christmas.

Christmas cookie decorations. An annual tradition.

Jeff makes this angry snowman, so he writes "Mad" on its stomach. Later we decide that it could also say "Mao" and be a reference to communist China. You be the judge.

Jeff's brother Erik and his mom make the patented "Concentrating on Cookies" faces -- sort of sticking one's tounge out and wearing wire-frame glasses.

My new glasses totally make me look like Bob Dylan right?

Fast forward a few days, look at this kitten! Jeff's parents finally relent and get a little kitty after months of uncertainty. Its name is Franny and it is awesome at playing kitten games.

That same night, we head over to Beak and Cam's new house! They just closed on it and there is no furniture yet. But that won't prevent us from drinking beers in it and pretending what it will look like when it has stuff in it.

The Cam Clan, fixing drinks in their new kitchen.

Confidence and pride from Beak Q. Homeowner over here.

Fast forward to the next Friday, Nicole's birthday! We start the night at the E.L.S. (aka East Lake Strong aka Tubs, Jaws and Tall Bikes' place). Tubs shows us this sweet guitar he got for Christmas. Funny guy thinks he can play.

With my new glasses, Lucy and I have matching color schemes.

We head over to Northeast to Stasiu's for Coles' rageathon. Totally Northeast to the maxxx -- dimly-lit, low hipster quotient, cheap beers, inventive shot selections, a menu consisting of popcorn and frozen pizza.

The first of many shots for the birthday girl. This one was a lemon drop, I think.

Getting awesome, getting celebrated. FYI those earrings were a gift from Jaws, the danglies on the end are money signs.

There is a live band playing rockabilly jams tonight (yech) which leads Coles and her old sorority sister from Mankato to bust some serious moves. I think this move is called "Take A Shit on the Floor."

The night gets a little crazy and ends drunken. I crash at Coles. The next morning we all head to the Triple Rock for breakfast and a little bit of the hair of the dog. Side note: we decided recently that this phrase stems back to midevil times when people would get bit by wild dogs and the only way to cure it would be to kill the crazy animal and rub some of its hair into your wound. We are 100% certain that this is true.

Ripplechip shows us his new hairstyle -- The Minot Monster.

This is a sweet picture of me, 50's and Danny Tanner (aka Meryl Streep) from the night before that I didn't manage to blog with my own camera, but I liked it so much that I took a picture of it. Totally trippy. In Nicole's state of Birthday drunkeness she insists that the three of us pose like a totem pole.

Fast forward to New Year's Eve. All of our friends are out raging, but Jeff and decide to have an awesome stay-at-home night with each other. We drink lots of champagne, eat lots of food, and have some good times.

The dinner I made. Red pepper pasta with fresh basil, garlic bread, ceasar salad, Budweiser bottles.

Window hanging while listening to records. Happy 2007.

The next morning, hungover from champagne, we drag ourselves out of bed and head to Excelsior for the Polar Bear jump. Interestingly, both my dad and my brother have pussed out and elected not to do the jump. Jeff is loyal to my Uncle's cause and still agrees to jump. Wisely, I am bundled up in my jacket, taking pictures of the whole crazy scene.

Before the jump, Jeff and John are scoping out the scene. There are seriously like 600 people here, including my high school photography teacher and Jeff's youth pastor from when he was little.

The two warriors are getting closer to the front. My Uncle John shows us what he's working with. It is seriously cold outside and these assholes are going to jump in a lake.

Here they go. Crazy jerks.

The warriors, post jump. Cold but elated. Notice the "G" on Jeff's arms. That means that he is a Guppy, the rookie. He has ten jumps to go before he can graduate to Shark. He and John decide that they'll come back every year until they are Sharks. Check back to this blog in 2016 to see the footage.

After the momumental jump, we head over to my parents for spaghetti and more champagne.

My parent's neighbor Ken comes over. He is a handyman by trade, hilarious asshole by nature. Check out his awesome new Christmas socks.

Fast forward a week -- Record Club! We meet at Blestos house for record listening, brew crushing and meandering conversation. I bring one of my two new Dylan boxsets.

I also bring Nirvana's "Bleach," another Christmas present. Yes.

Jeff brings Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" which features his karoke standard "Livin' on a Prayer."

Speaking of Nirvana, Blestos has a copy of Insesticide -- original pressing, blue marble vinyl! He bought it in Fargo for like $10 even though it easily nets $60 on Ebay.

Tall Bikes brings some crazy 60's records. 13th Floor Elevators, bros.

Blestos also brings in a record featuring a blind guy who whistles really awesome. We are curious where he got this record. His response: "Oh well I just wanted to bring some new kinds of music. So I went into Hymie's and said 'hey I'd like to get a whistling record,' and the lady behind the counter directed me to this one." Huh. Really?

We can't decide what's more interesting: that the lady new exactly where to send him for high-quality whistling records or that Blestos new with confidence that what he was missing in his life was a whistling record.

Jules brings over this sweet record from the bargin bin in Sioux City, IA. Terry Gibbs. Trivia: is this a dude or a chick? The anwser may surprise you.

Fast forward to Friday night. We can't do backyard movies in the winter, so we project them on our window blinds in St. Paul. The movies: Rocky III and Rocky IV -- the best in the series by far.

Premovie libations.

Training montages make up easily 60% of both movies.

In Rocky III, Rocky gets trained to beat Mr. T by Apollo Creed -- his former nemesis. At the end of this training montage they tape part in an awkwardly homoerotic embrace on the beach.

Coles and Jaws are celebrating their simultaneous last days at MCAD with champagne and crazy faces.

Chug in the name of occupational freedom, ladies.

After a brief intermission, we start in on Rocky IV. Rocky is now totally rich and has a robot servant that brings him cakes.

We are spellbound by the cold war paranoia and visceral camerawork.

The movie climaxes with Rocky's triump over Drago, the superhuman (read: 'roid-abusing) communist Russian boxer. The Russian crowd at the fight is so moved by his underdog spirit that they begin rooting for him! Rocky, beaten and bruised, surveys the communist crowd and says "If I can change, and you can change, maybe we can ALL change!" The crowd erupts. Tubs and Jeff are so amped that they begin leaping up and down, screaming and pointing in celebration.

Coles sleeps over. This is us the next morning, hungover, tired, learning about the new iPhone in bed. Simply amazing BTW.

That night is the Green Mill manager apppreciation dinner! My first ever. We eat expensive food, drink expensive drinks and learn about each other -- all on the Green Mill tab.

Fancy pasta.

After the dinner, already feeling pretty awesome if you know what I'm saying, we head over to Beak and Cam's place. Now it has furniture in it. We are sleeping over and raging all night to prepare for tomorrow's Bears game. Cam and J.C. (pictured here) are from Chicago and excited beyond recognition for the impending playoff run from the Monsters of the Midway.

No doubt, no doubt.

Jeff gets outfitted in a retro edition, celebrates by playing air guitar.

Fuck yes.

We are so ready for tomorrow's game.

Things get real, things get late, things get interesting, things get a little gay.

The best way to prepare for an important game is to party so hard the night before the game that you can't function the next day. Go Bears.

2006 Year in Review.

2006-12-28T18:53:00.001-06:00

2006 ALLEN FAMILY CHRISTMAS CARD
By Jeff and Alison Allen, St. Paul Minnesota

2006. Wow. Holy shit. What a year.

The above map was made by Alison. It charts all our movements in 2006 and, as you can see, it was the year we brought the Allen party nationwide. Special shoutouts go to our recently-engaged friends from Chicago, Bob and Urs, who had the map idea first. We shamelessly copied it (and maybe improved it? Oh snap!) cause we thought it was such a great idea.

With so many media sources giving you their lame "Year in Review" of the "important" events of the year, we thought we'd throw our hat in the ring and give you a rundown of the best stuff that happened to drunk, poorly-dressed people from the Midwest in 2006.

Consider this equal parts a) news-anchor-year-in-review b) Christmas-card-to-our-friends and c) sweet-ass-blog post. The Trifecta of Awesome. The Trifecta of Allens.

TPC RECORD RELEASE PARTY

What a way to start the year. We billed it as the "Hugest Most Biggest Awesome Huge Party in the History of Ever" and quickly realized that we had a lot of work to do to live up to the hype.

At one point, our entire apartment was filled with still-wet paper mache volcanoes, thirty industrial garbage bags filled with balloons, a giant TPC flag, two smoke machines and 4 confetti cannons. All the hard work paid off and both shows sold out. One of the best nights ever. You can see the end of it all in the video above, thanks to our friend Isaac.

JANUARY HOLD STEADY TOUR

The day after the release show, TPC hit the road for three weeks opening for the Hold Steady. Jeff was stoked that Alison was coming along for the ride. TPC had toured before, but never on a tour of this magnitude where the shows were usually full and the band usually got many, many drink tickets.

Suffice to say, we had some really amazing times on this trip. We accomplished a lot, including building up a inhumanly high tolerance for alcohol. See video for evidence.

TWO ARMS TWO TATTOOS

To commemorate this crazy year and its crazy adventures, we both got inked this year. This was a first for both of us and we're glad we did it. Both of us had it done in New York, at the same parlor, by the same guy -- but six months apart.

The artist ended up being someone that Jeff had played a show with a year ago. It was a friendly face. Shout out to Myles!

TWO OCEANS, ONE GULF

The Atlantic - Florida

Gulf of Mexico - Florida

Pacific - California, and Oregon

The ocean is as old as time, bros. Wrap your noodle around THAT jewel.

ST CLOUD AND DULUTH

In May, we did a weekend tour of Minnesota's hidden jewels: St. Cloud (aka tha 320 aka the Granite City aka Shots Cloud aka The Home of Anti-Semitism) and Duluth (aka Vision Quest Portal aka the Air-Conditioned City aka that 218).

We took our dawg Coles with. Along the way, some ravenous sea gulls stole our pizza and Coles and Alison kept a drinking ledger. Rapper nugs are "xtra credit," apparently.

NYC FRIEND TRIP WITH TUBS AND JAWS

Later in May, we took a friend trip to New York to pick up the new van that TPC was buying and drive it home through the coalmountainrustbelt of middle america. Our good friends Tubs and Jaws came along.

After raging in NYC for a few days, we headed home, stopping in Pittsburgh (inexplicably Jeff's favorite city) and Chicago to see friends on the way back. We slept on Bob's roof deck in Chicago and considered this an important achievement.

THE HOTTEST WEEKEND OF THE YEAR

I mean, seriously, it was wicked hot, as they say in New England. Nasty humidity. To beat the heat, our guy 50's took us up to his parent's lake place in Cross Lake, MN. There was boating, tubing, adventure, homemade pasta-making and a lot of sitting in the warm water in a plastic deck chair while drinking High Life from cans.

TPC AT FIRST AVENUE

In July, TPC headlined a show at the infamous First Avenue Mainroom (ever see Purple Rain? We haven't either, but you get the point). They were crazy nervous that no one would come, but it ended up selling out. This was hard to comprehend.

There was more confetti cannons and handmade stage prop mischevity. That is not really a word, but tevs.

MANY MANY LOST PARTIES

Somehow, everyone we knew (including us) discovered the television show "Lost" in 2006. It was crazy addicting. Lost Parties gathered where we would all sit around Cam and Beak's plasma-screen and dissect each episode with the precision of a ninja and the passion of a hobo.

END OF SUMMER TOUR AND ALL NIGHT DESERT DRIVE

There are times in life where you feel like you're winning. It's hard to put it another way. You're just winning. You've won and you are continuing to win. Somehow, these moments often come when your sleeping schedule is on the opposite spectrum as the rest of the civilized world.

In August, we drove all through the night from Austin, Texas to Tucson, Arizona. It took 18 hours. We felt the cool desert air at night through open windows. We saw the sunrise and head truck stop breakfast at 5AM. We won. We were winners.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY TOUR

If you've never been to San Francisco, then you are most likely an incredibly depressed person. Seriously, its like no other place on earth. While on a TPC west coast tour in September, we took advantage of a day off and had a tourist day on the bay.

50's made a camouflage friend.

GUITAR HERO

A continuing story line throughout the year was Guitar Hero. In case you haven't heard, Guitar Hero is a video game that lets you play lead guitar on some of the world's hottest and most famous jams including "Carry On My Wayward Son" by Kansas, "Free Bird" by Skynyrd, and "Killing in the Name of" by Rage Against the Machine.

There were countless Guitar Hero parties, including some formal competitions. Here, McTubbins is a pirate rocker. Alison's band, Jazz Nugs, has won many accolades from The Daily Dose on their awesome shows.

WE BOTH TURN 25

Quarter of a century. In September, Jeff celebrated his ascent into manhood by throwing a kegger at our house and partying with the visiting Thunderbirds Are Now and our good friend Will Whitmore.

In December, Alison celebrated her ascent into womanhood by hanging at Mancini's, driving to Iowa City to see The Hold Steady play a show at the Picador, and throwing a friend feast party at our place (photos of that to follow).

CMJ NYC w/ Colez

In November, TPC was on an East Coast tour to hit up CMJ. Alison flew out with Coles to take part in the craziness of the weekend festival. We went to 100 billion shows, 300 trillion bars, 225 million restaurants and walked 800 trillion city blocks to do it.'

FRIEND FEAST '06

The last of Alison's birthday celebrations and the first celebration of holiday spirit. A ton of people came over, all dressed in Holiday or Cosby sweaters, to rage in the name of J to tha C (aka tha madd sin absolva aka Jesus).

50's made everyone a delicious feast, Coles and Chips brought Greenie Mix, everyone else brought beer, the iPod brought the dance party pain.

So, that was our year. Obviously a lot of other things happened that aren't discussed here, much of which was experienced without being drunk, rest assured. But these were the highlights. The highlights of what was easily one of the best years of either of our lives.

We hope 2006 treated you kindly as well. 2007 should be pretty alright too. Maybe. Probably. Most likely. We hope. See you there.

Win, Lose or Draw

2006-12-19T21:54:00.001-06:00

Thursday night, Jeff and I walk down to Rice Park in Saint Paul to see the lights. Way to go Saint Paul!

This is what outer-space looks like. Similar to a Christmas tree in Downtown St. Paul.

The next day is Jeff's office party, free dinner and drinks bitchez at a downtown Mpls steak place. Jeff and I go to Pizza Luce prior to the party for pre-party libations and as a result show up buzzed and ready to socialize in a spirited fashion. This is not always a good thing when you're trying to play it cool with your boss.

The bill. Yes that's $2805.88. Holy Shit!

Afterwards we decide to go to a kegger in Highland Park with Jeff's co-worker Greg. I take a photo of this wallpaper in the bathroom of the party apartment.

The thing about this party is.... there's plenty of wrinkles if you know what I mean. We're hanging out with old people. As in like, 35 and older. In their wise age they have bought a keg of Summit. We chat it up with our new party friends and hear stories about their kids and jobs.

This guy on the left spots me across the room and takes a seat next to me. In the most sincere voice possible he says: "Hey, you've got a camera lemme ask you something. Do you think I can be a model?" I am stunned. He goes on to explain that since I have a camera I should know whether or not he should be a model. I politey let him down and try my best to slither out of the situation. Yikes.

Hoes and Bros old style. We dip out and head to Costello's for a night cap.

Yes, we are crazy. On Saturday morning, Jeff and I decide to brave the masses and head out to the MOA (Mall of America) to gather the last of our Christmas gifts. Jeff poses in front of theme park formerly known as Camp Snoopy, now known as The Park at MOA. The Charles Schultz estate apparently had a high asking price for the name.

Binoculars for a better view of the park.

As Paul McCartney once said: Simply having a wonderful christmastime, The party's on, the feelin's here that only comes this time of year.

Side note, Paul McCartney officially wrote the worst song in history.

We stop for lunch in the food court, Jeff has a veggie burger from Burger King and I get a Stuffed Enchilada Burrito from Taco Bell. It reminds us of high school lunch hour, skipping out to go to Ridgedale in Minnetonka for Cinnabon and Taco Bell.

Chaos ensues at the MOA rotunda area, and we go to find what all the commotion is about. All American Rejects (aka All American Retards) are doing a record signing. There is something distrubing about a band of 30-something males who write music that is exclusively listened to by 15 year old girls. Totes NC (not cool).

Later that night. December is full of birthdays and today it's Danielle's birthday. We go to her house to celebrate. Pictured here is a piece of baked brie from 50's, just what every birthday party needs.

Danielle and 50's have the greatest party idea ever and decide to host a drawing contest. They put phrases on construction paper and everyone has to draw what they see. See below for results.

Cyclops, author unknown

Blue Whale Robot, from Colezones

Bully, from Colezones

Big Things, from Jeff (notice Jupiter doing a bong hit)

Minnesota, from Jeff

Wisconsin, from Jeff

Slash, from Colezones (notice that he's playing a VW car for an amp)

Lazerbeak, from 50's

Water Wings, from Jules

Destruction, author unknown

Lost, from McTubbins (notice that is the best drawing form)

Pagoda, from Danielle

Stupid, from Doogs (notice that it looks like this guy has a huge boner from his Segue)

Stevie Wonder, from Ripplechip

Opposites, from Doogs (Jesus fighting a Ninja Turtle)

A young 50's Dad guarding a Lemon Meraunge Cake

An old 50's Dad guarding a glass of whiskey

Let me introduce you to the new McTubbins. Gone are the hexagon glasses and dirty beard. Arrived are the chiseled features and boyish South Dakota charm. Way to go broseph.

Nicole makes a funny smile and allows me to blog about it, so I do.

The thing about having you birthday in December is that sometimes people buy you Christmas type gifts. This happened to Danielle, someone got her this christmas tree made of minerals or some shit. Her and 50's watch it with curiousity.

Adam's at the party and he's in fine form. More news coming soon.

Luke Kyle is there and seems to be somewhat surly.

50's, Adam, Jeff, Danielle and myself are the leftover friends of the party. We sit by the fire and hear stories about Adam's future wife. He's decided he will marry someone with "Purple Nurples" and who's down for being fucked 400 times in 1 hour. Hilarious.

I take a photo when I make it to 5am! We stay up til' 6:30, Jeff and I sleep over.

Hamming it up.

Next morning, we survey the damage. Today is Danielle's real birthday.

We celebrate by going out to breakfast. We are now all 25 years old, except for Beak, but he doesn't really count.

Danielle, 50's and I induldge in a meal called the "Heart Stopper" which consists of 3 eggs, 4 peices of bacon/sausage, toast and hashbrowns. Jeff decides on a much healthier Tofu scrambler. What a gay.

Clean plate club. I did it for you Danielle, on your birthday!

We decide to celebrate the day by taking a Saint Paul adventure tour. We start by going to the Wabasha Street Caves, which are unfortunately closed.

We then head over to the very dinky Saint Paul airport in the back of 50's work van. I guess they don't have flights on Sundays.

Danielle has a supply of wings in her van, I can't resist trying one on.

Next stop Dayton's Bluff, where we look out over the land that is Saint Paul. Used to be an ancient Native American burial ground, FYI.

Saint Paul Grafitti.

We're hanging out at a place caled "Carver's Cave."

We start to explore and find this stroller in the tall grass. Some baby got totally thrown off a cliff.

A collection of sports magazines from the mid 90's. Carver's Cave is starting to seem like a place where people go to die.

We find a note from a guy who's in prison.

It reads: Chris, It's me Bro just chillin' Bro. I don't for got about you Bro. Staying in E house St. Cloud. I don't have a hollat to say so rit back, tell jemmy to rit to me. Garls B.

The envelope.

We also find some sort of legal document from a guy who's lost his driver's permit. Maybe the same guy from prison.

We start exploring. Down the bluffs, we take a trip through this hole. This place is awesome.

50's is the leader of our trek.

Here he is crawling through a small cave.

Danielle reenacts her birth. This is her coming out of the vag.

"Waff Hearts Scoops"

People etched their hands into the soft sandstone. Totes sweet.

Jeff nicknames Danielle "Danny Tanner" and sets it in stone along with her birthdate.

M + D = 4EVA

We continue our exploring and head into the grime steeze that is East Saint Paul.

Jeff is sure we just entered a portal into Pittsburgh.

Later I wrap presents, very expertly I might add. Eat that Nicole, yeah I'm talking to you, let the present wrapping competition begin!

The following are photos from last week's Friend Feast by guest blogger Brian Lesteberg (aka Blestos)

Christmassive Nights

2006-12-12T21:25:00.000-06:00

I promised an epic blog. I deliver. A portend of what's to come -- a raging Christmas Friend Feast Rager Birthday Party in St. Paul, Minnesota. Notice the presents under the tree. They are all cases of beer, every one of them. But let's start on my birthday.

This is my real birthday. I take the day of work and my parents take me out to lunch. The food isn't great but these ice cream testicles sure are.

Then I go to my mom's house and she somehow tricks me into spending my birthday afternoon helping her put up her Christmas tree.

Birthday self-portraits in the suburbs. 25 years young.

To wipe the sour taste of the afternoon's domesticity from my mouth, I apply kamikaze shots at Costello's in St. Paul. The crew comes out for bar food and drinks. St. Paul old-school neighborhood guys aren't amused by our presence, but that's all good. Ripplechip is my rage friend cause everyone else has to work in the morning.

After dinner, we head down the road to Mancini's, an old-school St. Paul dinner club instituion. It used to be some top-awesome mafioso scene in the 60's -- martinis, tommy guns, bribery. Now its a wonderful po-po-mo slice of St. Paul that has pull-tabs and vinyl boothbacks.

Boys table, optical switcheroo.

Girls table, optical switcheroo.

Martinis. Danielle is not ready for this.

Tall Bikes buys me a whiskey shot. A rare moment of boys-booth and girls-booth diplomacy.

Jay-Z and I share a birthday, today he's doing shots down at the 40/40 club.

A clearer picture of the Mancin's scene. Total chill classy vibes.

More Mancini's steez.

Fast forward to Thursday. Jeff and I drive down to Iowa City for a birthday road trip. We're going to the Picador, an awesome bar that used to be Gabe's. It was gonna get closed down but our friend Jacki from Lawrence Fucking Kansas (aka LFK) stepped in to buy it and made it even awesomer.

Driving photos. I'm inspired by the Fields of Opportunity.

Midwest.

Continued Midwest. Windmills on the horizon.

Total fucking windmill.

Before the show we go to the Deadwood with Craig for some brews. The whole staff sings happy birthday to me over the loudspeaker!

C-Fizzle. Now with neckbeard.

The show is packed and loud and sweaty and drunk. It's good to see these guys in a small venue, up close.

Franz makes the worst keyboard face in the history of keyboard faces. Somehow its endearing. At this point, I am getting very very very drunk. It couldn't be the heavy pulls on the whiskey bottle could it?, no, no... It must have been the 12 beers I consumed in less than four hours, yes that must be it.

I get invited onstage during the encore. I am wasted. Seriously wasted. I stumble around for three songs in the background and think I'm awesome.

The next morning. Hungover. Breakfast at the Hamburg Number 2 (the first one burned down, according to local folklore).

Holiday decorations.

These three words sum it up.

I get eggs benedict, a rare indulgence.

Jeff gets a mexican veggie burger. We share a pie shake. They put a whole piece of pecan pie in the shake machine with ice cream and BLAMMMMMO. Deliciousness. We can't finish the shake and the waiter is kind enough to put it in a to-go cup for the long drive home.

We drive home after breakfast. We start cleaning and preparing for tomorrow night's friend feast rager. It's being held at our place and will feature dinner, drinking, and hanging out. 50's and Danielle stop over to help us get ready.

This is an awesome picture of Nami. She is helping to clean by laying on 50's scarf.

We set up a massive and intricate string of christmas lights throughout our entire place. Macguyver-type shit.

Cleaning and preparation require beer for help.

This is what preparation looks like.

BOOM. The next night! 50's and Jeff cooking the meal and drinking beers. You may be wondering about their outfits. Here are the rules of the night.

1) All participants must wear Christmas or Cosby sweaters.

2) All participants must bring beer wrapped as a Christmas present. The beer will be placed under the tree and opened like a present when the beer supply runs low.

Allen Christmas Photo 06'

The table set up. Our entire place is consumed by tables. Colezones looks on at the meal preparation looking striking in her suburban mom Christmas cardigan.

We buy Nami a Christmas sweater but she doesn't like it much. It says "Cold Paws, Warm Heart" it should read "Cold Heart, Warm Paws." Yeah.

Coles and Chips bring over Tony Jaro's Greenie Mix (as learned about in this blog). You can buy it at the liquor store, but only at the one across the street from Jaro's in NE. Notice everyone's festive outfits, including Beak's khaki pants.

50's sweater is probably the best one. The penguins have demonic-lit red eyes. Satanic caroling.

Holiday jello shots! Julie makes them and they are a) delicious and b) filled with vodka. Snowflakes made of whipped cream.

Window wenches. Note my awesome Christmas tree. I spent a lot of time making it look sweet.

The meal is ready! 50's slaved over the oven to create this awesome huge meal with shit tons of awesome shit.

Friend feast! Neil is pointing to his potatoes to show everyone that they're really good. He and Ripplechip have gone the Cosby sweater route.

Jeff shows us his engorged belly following the feast.

This is what our place looks like from the outside when people are raging in it, holiday style.

We want the whole world to feel the holiday spirit, including our hallway.

Isaac and Meghan are jewish. Isaac for real, Meghan by marrying Isaac. They bring in this sweet-ass menorah. We don't have any candles, but cigarettes are a good replacement. We totally take joy in mocking their religion.

Until they get smoked.

Coles and I shotgun in honor of the birth of Jesus (aka J to tha C). Notice my greay sweatshirt. It has Santa's face on it.

All the beer presents have been opened. Unto us is born the son of God.

Shit is getting real.

Cam drinks deeply from the cup of life (aka vodka red bulls).

Mike Deuhs and Jurg-Dog.

Dance parties commence. Clipse and Jay-Z and Ludacris. We are white people.

Most people head home around 3AM, but a small devoted crew sleeps over and goes all night. Nicole and I put on TPC release show t-shirts and partake in some "Indian Wrestling" where you lay on the ground, lock arms and wrestle with your feet. Everyone's a winner.

50's and Mike Deuhs get violent while wrestling. Note the multi-tasking smoking prowess of 50's.

Yeesh.

Yes, that is exactly what happened.

Ripplechip crashes out.

Christmassive nights.

These are the rocks that I got

2006-12-03T16:22:00.000-06:00

Okay my friends, I've been totally slacking on the blog. My deepest apologies. I'm gonna make it up to you in the next blog though, I swear. There are some special things planned for my upcoming 25th birthday, including a major friend feast. So let's rewind for a second and I'll get you up to speed on what's been happening in the 612.

First of all, about two weeks ago there was a cat in a tree somewhere in South Minneapolis. News at 11. Poor guy.

The latest and greatest edition of Hardland/Heartland. This one is at The Church, a crazy huge old church that is now host to shows and art installations and drunk friends, like us. Crazy portal animations (courtesy of McTubbins) are accompanied by epic battles by some neon dudes and gatekeepers or some shit. Very interesting. We bring an artillery of beer in our bags and proceed to get into it.

After the art happens, dance parties happen.

McTubbins dancing party/sweater friend. These guys give each other pointers on one-of-a-kind dance moves as well as fashion advice.

After the Church ragings, we head to Nicole's for gin shots and sleepovers. This is a taste of what is to come. Next edition, Holiday Friend Feast hosted by yours truly.

Friends that share are friends that care. I am a crying member of the Crypts gang.

The next morning I head out with Iceberg and MeBVamp to a lunch show and potluck for Signal to Trust and STNNNG's new records at the 7th Street Entry. This is amazing. I eat a sloppy joe and a sandwich and I consider a quesadilla but decide on the green bean caserole instead. Shellac plays a secret set to start off the show, very awesome.

It's Isaac's Birthday. We go to Mickey's after the show for birthday shakes! The shakes are so good that these guys grow moustaches.

Later that night its off to Northeast for further celebration of Isaac and Neil's birthdays. The Yacht Club is the scene. A smattering of 50-year old working class regulars and us annoying drunk youths. Generational clashes. Isaac is again wearing his awesome Fluer-De-Lis sweatshirt. 50's holds down the scarf contingency. Tubs holds down the hexagon glasses demographic.

Thanksgiving day card parties at my parents place. Pinochle is a game of champions.

Okay so this is a pretty weak attempt at a blog, I left my camera at my folks house when I visited for thanksgiving and haven't gotten it back til now. Things that were not blogged about include: a game of dice with McTubbins parents (visiting from Madison, South Dakota), a Guitar Hero party at Isaac and Meghan's, and a Doomtree Blowout at the Mainroom that included rap, rappers, beats, baggy shirts, backwards caps and rhthym and poetry.

Thank god for Lazerbeak.

Like I said earlier, it's my birthday tomorrow, then I'm gonna head down to Iowa Fucking City (IFC) for the Hold Steady (THS) show at the Picador, from there it's straight back to my house for a momentous evening of food, beer, friends and Cosby Christmas sweaters. I'll make up for the absence, I swear. It will be worth the wait.

Cats and Guitars

2006-11-15T18:50:00.001-06:00

Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for the ordinary blog viewer, Guitar Hero II came out last Tuesday. This makes for awesome video game parties but not a lot of crazy action for blogs. There is only so much excitement you can get of images of people standing, holding fake guitars, and looking with great focus at a TV screen. But man is it fun! Here, my band Jazz Nugs gets a 100% perfect score on Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil" on the first try no less.

Holy shit, dudes. When you beat the last level, a giant UFO descends upon Stonehenge (where you're performing for thousands of druids, naturally) and takes you to outer space. Cause, like, that's how good you are at fake video game guitar. Too good for this planet. Who rules?.., I do, at Guitar Hero!

The crew comes over for a full-scale celebration of the new game and a session of Lost. This picture is awesome because of Doogie and Blestos' expressions, as well as the fact that Nami the Cat is totally just chilling behind Blestos' head, checking shit out. She will make many more apperances in this blog edition.

Ripplechip shows us how to blow smoke rings. Nice work, dude.

Multi-player madness. Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name Of."

Mustaches are always funny.

Even when used in terrorist-like contexts. This is the best photo ever taken of me.

Nami, the party cat, returns.

The next day. Here she is trying to communicate to me and Jeff from up in the loft storage area.

We move the bed to the living room and play Guitar Hero. A lot. Here you can see Nami again, the cross-eyed top of her head peeking into frame. Crazy cat.

Jesus, more Guitar Hero. The party moves over to Coles spot on Saturday and the fake video game guitars come with. Colezones tries to connect with her inner rock demons by summoning the dark lords of headgear.

Dudes take this shit seriously. Ripplechip's new French Canadian Fur Trader look is intimidating to Waff, who deals with his fear by drinking beers.

Fast forward to Wednesday night, the second edition of Record Club! Some peeps come over to our place for this round. The rules: everyone must bring one record that they bought in the last few weeks and play it for us while we sit around and drink. Iceberg shows Tubs his "Why Are You Laugh" LP.

Clap Your Hands Say Record Club.

Blestos (stoned? probably) gets totally engrossed in our photography books. Studying up for how to use his Jerome Grant monies, perhaps.

Records listened to: The Faces, The Police, Randy Newman, Television (did anyone else know these guys were good?), DMX ("Its Dark and Hell is Hot," thanks to McTubbins), and some crazy jazz records I can't remember. Lucy the dog likes all of it.

This might have been a vision quest

2006-11-07T14:11:00.000-06:00

Let me set the scene: It's Wednesday, Nicole and I have taken a few days off of work to head to NYC to rage for CMJ. We leave early in the morning and make it to the city in no time flat. We begin to realize that flying is the close relative of teleportation. It's not as fast but has the same effect.

TPC being the gentlemen they are pick us up at the airport. We take the queens Highway and head towards Manhattan. On the way we pass this graveyard which always blows my mind. So many dead people in one place. Gravestones turn into skyscrapers on the horizon.

First stop, the bar. Would we have it any other way? Answer, NO! Jordan sniffs out a bar with two-for-one PBR's starting at $2 bucks a beer, really we're drinking beers for a dollar a piece in a bar, HOLY SHIT. Within minutes the bartender is forcing purple tasting shots down our throats, we're happy to be hanging out in NYC. True Friends.

Syd Butler of the Butler Family shows up. He flashes a crazy smile and we know it's on.

Beak makes a sad phone face. He wants and needs his friends attention, he's not getting it. Waff is in full business mode and we won't see him without a phone attached to his ear for most of the weekend.

We document our being in new york by taking a photo. We're getting drunk, example given.

Next bar on our list, the Hi-Fi. Our bros in the Hold Steady have just finished a grueling tour of the whole country one day earlier but decide to come out drinking for some reason, which is sweet.

Nicole is into the two-for-one High Life's. It's happy hour all over this city and the crew is taking full advantage of it.

The Hi-Fi makes the mistake (or genius move?) of selling us beer cans without opening them., leaving them vulnerable to aggressive shotgunning. I take advantage.

The evidence.

Obviously, drunkeness is starting to set in. I try and take a photo of theses assholes but it's just not working.

Nicole flashes the devil sign, really. I'm a little amazed. Everyone's down for more chilling and more beers.

We leave the Hi-Fi and head way the hell across the city, seriously it was like a 45 minute walk. We go to a venue to see Swearing at Motorists. There's no room for our crew on the list but Joseph figures out a sweet way to sneak us all in. We head in and enjoy the first show of CMJ.

Swearing at Motorists sings the "Cup of Gin" song for TPC. Jordan is mesmerized.

45 minutes back to where we were, we have another beer at the Hi-Fi and get some pizza. Polls show that the pizza was unsatisfying.

Syd tells us about a secret David Cross show in the East Village. Another long walk. We midwesterners are not used to having to use our bodies for more than 5 minutes at a time. David Cross is hilarious, for the 15 minutes we see him.

We pick up the van and head to Brooklyn to see Thunderbirds are Now. Here, Syd shows us photos of his new baby Lyla. He then goes into a rant about how his "love made flesh" and blows our mind. This is a little too intense for me, but I appreciate his wisdom.

We meet up with other MPLS friends Meghan and Isaac, as seen here. I think these girls have eyes for my Waff. Leave him alone ladies, he's all mine.

Danielle is visiting too, 50's discovers vodka. Yeah that's right, Vodka.

Hey Look it's Jared Leto, ahh, total bummer, I mean it's Steve Hanhel. He's bringing CMJ passes for TPC.

Thunderbirds are a little sleepy! I think. They are saving all their energy for the four shows they are doing in three days.

This was a fun night. After the show, the bar passes out free Sparks and I quickly proceed to spill some on my camera. But hey, what can you do? My blogging machine is my party machine.

Okay, we finally make it to day two, we wake up in total awe of all the shit we did in 12 hours the night before. We couldn't even remember all the shit we got into. The most interesting part of this photo is the woman's hair at the counter in the background. Pretty awesome, right? I guess you had to be there.

Either they left the Christmas decorations from last year, or they are on top of their shit this year. We'll never know.

Dog prints in cement. I like it.

Nicole buys a Dizzy Cizzy from a street vendor and is given a straw with it, she takes full advantage of the straw. Noice job buddy.

Jordan makes a weird smirk, I think he should make this face more often. Jeff makes the same old tough guy taking a photo face and it still kind of works for him, but Jordan's face, that's really something.

We end up in Manhattan at the Paul Frank Showroom. Sometimes bands get free stuff, today TPC and TAN! get free jacket, shirts and beers. You guys are all going to look so good when you leave this place!

These guys look Nice in their new gear.

Me and Nicole get the same jacket, only different colors. We look pretty good.

Aaron's eyes turn into buttons, totally fucked up.

Nice job, Doomtree Street Team. You got a sticker on a meter pole in the East Village. This should really raise your profile. We flash the Beak signs in response.

We walk about 1000 blocks back and forth before we find this Indian restaurant to eat at. The deciding factor is that the food is cheap and the place is covered in red hot chili pepper lights and mirrors. The food is okay, but it does the job. We've now got a good base for raging

Another 1000 blocks from the Indian Restaurant is the Afro Punk show in Lower Manhattan. Building Better Bombs is playing as well as P.O.S. Stef is there and he shows us his new $30 Grills which include fangs. Very awesome dude.

Isaac is wearing his awesome Fleur-de-Lis sweatshirt. Jeff sports the tongue sticking out pose and 50's keeps it real 50's style. We can't drink here as drinks are $7 dollars a piece. Hasn't this place heard of a $2 PBR, I guess not.

Building Better Bombs was really fucking good. Isaac turns into a mad man as always.

After the show we head back to our friend Corey's place for left over beers and vodka drinks. A little weed toking happens too. Nicole and I fall asleep on a couch watching Almost Famous while having a conversation about how serious actors can be sometimes.

The Next morning, our stomachs lead us to the Lower East Side. We get some sandwidges and hang out in court yard with this dog who is definitely not allowed to eat our food. Sorry little guy.

After lunch we head to Iggy's next door for the good old $2 PBR. Ahhh.

I try to read the paper but a jagameister candle sitting on the table accidentally lights it on fire. We all think it's pretty funny at the time. Now that I'm writing about it, it really wasn't.

Howard meets us at the bar and shows us these weird tricks he can do with an inflated latex glove. Very impressive.

When I saw this sign, I thought it was the funniest thing ever. Seriously this shit is funny.

Jordan unfortunately tears his jeans right on the wiener slit. He is totally wearing christmas boxers out of season, and this is revealed to the world. Dude no Christmas undies until after thanksgiving.

These guys all look so good. We are ready!

The first of about 5 band dudes attempting to crowd surf. Fatal Flying Guiloteens are the most successful and the most not heavy.

Wow TPC, you look rageful. So angry. Jeff has anyone ever told you that that guitar is seriously the ugliest guitar ever made.

Nicole and I sneak out of the FKR showcase show for a little bit and stop over at this Mexican shop that is supposed to sell to-go margaritas. Last time I was in NYC I was able to get some of these delicious treats in a coke cup with a straw. Not this year. We have to drink them inside. We are a little disappointed but we soon get drunk and forget about all of that.

Now it's time for Thunderbirds. Angela loves these guys. Yes duns.

Ryan Allen has made the biggest rock party foul and has totally forgot to zip his pants. Sorry dude that sucks for you.

Scott Allen demonstrates how sweaty he can make a Paul Frank shirt.

I wish I knew who party phil is. He sounds like my kind of guy.

Only we can make History! Everyone jumps on stage to sing along.

We head back over to Brooklyn, stop to get frozen pizzas and more beers. Corey takes us up to his loft via a massively frightening exposed freight elevator. How scary, but what a good idea when you're wasted. Sunglasses at night always cool.

While the pizzas are cooking we head up to the roof to chilax. It only takes about 5 minutes to realize that it is fucking cold outside.

Okay yes, fast forward to the next day, Boston MA. TPC is playing with TAN! at TT the Bears. We meet up with Jeff's brother and he takes us over to a party that is well under way at 6:00pm EST. How come no one has ever told me about Edward 40's Hands? What a great idea. We're all game, but we're pussies and decide to have 12oz PBR's taped to our hands instead.

So many beers taped to hands, I can't get over the genius of this idea.

Nicole takes over blogging as I get taped up.

The crew including Ben Wang.

TPC, way to go.

Boston kids love TPC, namely Jeff's brother Erik and all his MIT friends. Pogo dancing is happening all over the place in zany off beat rhythms. So insane I can't even comprehend.

Thunderbirds are Forever!

This hand is a document of all the shit that I did in a 48 hour time period. Nicole we did it. Rage it up my friend.

Jeff and his brother Erik. Do they look like brothers? I'm undecided.

The ride home is not like a teleportation machine, more like a very fast car.

Let's do this.

2006-10-30T23:04:00.000-06:00

Okay guys, I'm filling in the gaps. I had some camera issues last week and had to borrow cameras, now it's time for catchup. These are photos from our lost party two weeks ago. Yeah, Fuck Off, nice sassy coffee cup Onion.

So Desmond borrows a tie-dyed shirt to cover up his nakedness, good call Hurley.

This lost party comes with haircuts included.

Dogs love boogers, seriously. It's like they think they are owed them, and they'll do whatever it takes to get them.

Abi shows up, Hi Friend, it's been awhile. BTW does anyone ever tell you that you look like Jaws, cause you do.

Hey Assholes, the twins lost, seasons over. Get over it.

First foggy glasses of the season.

Serious Smoking Sessions. Seriously.

These guys know something funny.

Riding Drunk home inspires "fast car at night" pictures.

Okay, this is one is the last left-over photos. The night of the shoeshiners cd release party my blogging machine (camera) was out of batts, so I had to use Nicole's cell phone. She just bluetoothed these bitchez over to me tonight, and I can finally ad the pics to deucecities.

Now we're catching up. Tuesday night, we head over to First Ave to see The Hold Steady play a rock show. We're all placing bets as to see whether or not THS will play an hour long encore of their first record front to back. The good news is this doesn't happen and we all lose the bet.

So many people. This sucks balls when your only 5'4".

50's take charge and gets us up to the front, I don't have to worry about looking at the back of the guy in front of me. Good going friends.

Signature Finn moves, I like it. There's not as much "hand-clapping" as I was anticipating, but I've got a new move though called "punch dancing" and I brought it. BTW look close and you can see ripplechip filming in the background.

Franz is seriously fucking crazy, he plays the harmonica like he knows what he's doing.

You're serious with that thing? Seriously?

Thursday night, tubs gives us a glimpse of his Halloween costume. I'll give you a hint it's he's not gonna be Luigi.

We head over to The Future show at the Hexagon. I finally make it out to the show, after months of empty promises. Good going guys.

Friday morning, I head with TPC down to Chicago for the start of their tour. The van passes over the 200,000 mile mark. Pretty sweet. Congratulations Silver Fox.

50's and Jordan coordinate their cigarettes with their lighters, very fashion conscious guys. Way to be.

What do I do? Where do I call? I'll take two of those please, It's on.

Weird fucked up sculptures at the venue. Too weird for words.

Oh yeah, I totally forget that it's Halloween, people are celebrating almost 5 days before the actual holiday. Totally awesome and crazy. Nice costumes sluts.

Pensive moments for TPC.

So serious.

Smoking competitions, the loser buys shots. Whoever can let their ash burn the whole way down to the filter first wins. Jordan loses, Matt wins, second round, I lose, Matt wins. All is fair in love and war.

It's a tight race.

Our party table.

Jeff takes his first in focus photo, way to go buddy.. thanks for contributing.

TPC brings it.

Saturday morning, we go out to breakfast at the Gold Nugget in Downtown Chicago. It's Halloween so all the servers are dressed up in crazy costumes, of course. We have some intense times with coffee creamers.

Pyramids.

Matt shows us this trick where he stabs himself in the eye (but really it's the creamer) and it gives the effect of his eye exploding. Believability results are undetermined at this time.

Oh no you didn't.

TPC drops me off at the mega bus stop and I start the long journey home. Bye Chicago, you're like a giant MPLS.

Wisconsin can be pretty sometimes.

Julie picks me up from the bus stop and takes me over to a party. Ripplechip is testing out this mustache and seems to like it. He says he's gonna grow one for real, we'll see.

Doogie is unbelievably stoned out of his mind. He can't even keep up. I take this photo to prove to him that his eyes look like shit. Rumor has it he leaves to play video games at his house and is found sitting up in a chair drooling all over himself. You did it tonight buddy.

Tequila shots with worms and all, super gross shit.

The boys head out to more parties and us girls head back to Jules place for a vag party of our own. Nicole gets it.

Jocelyn is down.

I don't deny I went to art school.

The vag party family portrait.

We play "circle of death" which as I recall is called "categories" but tevs, we all end up getting wasted. I fall asleep on the couch while a raging dance party goes on all around me. Way to do it guys.

Sunday night! Bob Dylan bitches, 2nd row tickets, me and my dad.

We're pretty close huh? It's totes awesome. I hate big concerts but this one was really sweet, thanks bob. I'll tell the crew that you said, "Hi"

There's a first time for everything, tonight was the first night I got awesome with my dad. Love you lots Daddy-O.

Next stop NYC, stay tuned for crazy east coast adventures.

Wiggin' Out

2006-10-23T20:53:00.001-05:00

Friday night. Northeast Minneapolis. Tony Jaros' on Lowry and Marshall. Greenies. Vodka, Tom Collins mix, Sour, Jello mix. Delicious and potent. Our low key chill night will end up not resembling a low key and chill night at all.

Coles shows us what its like to wear what you're drinking.

Tony Jaros' is known for the Greenie and not much else. They recognize this though and plan their shit accordingly.

Back at Coles place after the Greenies we listen to Hole's "Live Through This," naturally. Apparently, everyone in Olympia, Washington looks, talks, and fucks the same. We also discover Nicole's hidden adoration of Gangsta Rap from 94'.

Coles shows us this sweet-ass new temporary tat she got from the vending machine at Taco Bell in North Minneapolis. "Smile Now, Cry Later." Truly words to live by. Notice how badass the clown on the left is and how tortured and devasted the one on the right is. Apparently, this is supposed to make us treasure the good times? Perplexing.

Sleepover ragings. Everyone goes to bed but me and Coles and we stay up late, re-listening to the Hole album and hanging out with this mirror.

The next night, after the TPC/Shoe Shiners show at the Triple Rock, a shit ton of peeps wind up at 50's and Danielle's house for more backyard firepit shenanigans. Shit got real.

Jesus, this is fucking scary. Danielle pulls out a bearded mannequin head and uses it to severely frighten all of us with its near-lifelike qualities and stoic visage. Here, Beardhead is totally partying down with some pizza and a Twins hat.

Now Beardhead gets down to some hip-hop jams and busts some serious moves. God, this is weird to look at.

Danielle also pulls out her wig collection, with hilarious results. Jules is a confused and flustered aunt from coastal Florida, I'm a jewish mother from Jersey, Nicole is a fretting Lutheran mother from Bemidji.

Danielle is a coke-addled debutante from Soho.

I swear I didn't steal from the church collection plate.

Peter Vader, father of the genius Shoe Shiners, is in full effect, reppin' the wig and rockin' the thumbs up.

Wow. Just wow.

Huh.

Iceberg in full effect, beard and all. The night goes late, the fire burns hot, the beers run wild, our hearts are pure.

The next night, we find out that our good friend Brian (aka Blestos) is one of 5 people to win the Jerome Grant for emerging artists for his amazing photography. This isn't a picture of him. But it is a picture of us at the Loring Pasta Bar in Dinkytown, having a short notice fancy-friends dinner to celebrate Brian's awesomeness. Just imagine Felicity, Ben and the rest of the UNY crew hanging out in NYC and you can imagine us.

Fancy friends, red wines, tablecloths.

We are mature and fancy. Check out these video clips of us being so mature and fancy. This one That one

Continued maturity and fanciness.

The big winner, soaking up the adoration, adulation, and libations. Nice work, Blestos. Next stop: THE WORLD. Brian's new nick name: B.T.S. that's short for "Big Time Shit"

It's a Dre Day.

2006-10-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

Wednesday night, and the feeling is right. Lost is on, and the second episode of the new season is only slight less sucky than the first. For a full analysis, and to view the Allen Fam's stint at being guest bloggers click here .

Nami sleeps sitting up. She is an old Chinese maid.

Fast forward to Friday night, the sun is setting upon one of our deuce cities and casting an eerie orange glow on the glass condos, law firms, and financial groups that make up downtown Mpls.

Me, Jeff, Coles, Ripplechip, and 50's go to Pancho Villa on Nicollet for some authentic Mexican foodstuffs. Any Mexican restaurant that doesn't give you free chips and salsa is just plain rude. Pancho Villa comes through in the clutch.

Crazy pink wallpaper patterns and old black and white photos of Mexican cowboys complete the experience.

After dinner we head over to 50's and Danielle's for some bonfire ragings.

The night is cold, really fucking cold. So everyone bundles up
in coats and scarves, cuddles close to the raging flames and warms their
gullet with delcious alcoholic drinks and tobacco smoke.

My brother Mike Deuhs shows up with his crew, Lucy and Jurg-dizzle. Ski goggles? Really? You're gonna wear ski goggles? Whatevs.

Gymnastics hour commences, a ritual at 50's backyard parties.

The only way you can tell these twins apart is by the polka-dot underwear of the asshole on the left.

Jules and Tapp arrive and Jules immediately dives into acrobatics with passion and confidence. Tapp looks on and prepares for a nasty fall.

Sometimes you need a friend to help get you up in the air. Truly heartwarming.

More teamwork.

Inside for late-night Pictionary. The inside of the house is not much warmer than the outside. Fuck autumn in Minnesota.

Tapp's drawing for "scraggly." Apparently, a drawing of Jesus was his best idea.

Sporting my new sunglasses, still perfect in every way.

The night goes late and we end up all sleeping over at Coles. Here we are waking up in her bed, while her pet chihuahua tries to lick Jeff's face off and Royal (the boxer) looks on confused.

What fixes a hangover better than bloody mary's? Well, some rest and water probably, but they're not as delicious or fun.

Holy Shit, It's Snowing.

2006-10-11T09:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've heard requests for the "hat tossing in the river" incident that was conspiciously missing from the last blog. It was quietly removed due to it's sensitive nature. Now that the cat is out of the bag, and all parties are aware of the incident, I've decided to bring it back.
To set the scene...we're sitting down by the river peacefully drinking beers when for no fathomable reason, other than the fact that Jules has a rageful hate of John Tapp's floppy golf tournament hat, she throws the hat into the cruel, cold waters of the Mississippi. This is not like Julie at all, and the next day she feels great regret when John asks about the whereabouts of the hat. It was truly a crazy thing that happened.

The hat sinks. Bye.

Tuesday morning, we go to the first of two postseason Twins games at the Metrodome. We are totally amped and can't wait to see the Twinkies go to the World Series. Unfortunately the Twins lose this first game, despite the patriotic pregame festivities. We are sad.

The next day. A new day, a new game. I take Colez to the game since Jeff is working. We get really excited cause it's a close game, until the A's win. We can't believe it. We go home like heartbroken little puppies.

The metrodome is sold out both days. Look at all those homer hankies.

Fast forward to Saturday night. Everyone's favorite architect Finger Tap turns 26! The celebration goes down at the local VFW #246, which is noteworthy because it is the only bar in Minneapolis that successful comingles middle-aged grizzled war veterans with twentysomething assholes like us who are subconciously digging the irony of being in a VFW while simultaneously genuinely and sincerely enjoying the cheap drinks and chill atmosphere. Yet another example of the newly discovered post-post-modernism (aka po-po-mo).

Karoke ensues. Jeff visits 10th Avenue Freeze Out. Go Boss!

Sing along bitchez, sing along.

One of the craziest Brian faces ever recorded. I like it. Doogie is a sassy gay hair stylist.

Look at these stylish assholes.

Brian sings a song for John. Totally heartfelt.

This is the part of the night where Jeff has a lot of things to tell a lot of his friends. He starts by dropping some authentic knowledge on McTubbins.

Nicole is the next victim.

Jeff's done talking. There's only love and admiration here.

Julie sings a song with John's mom, Cindy, and Cindy's friend Sarah -- both visiting from Cannon Falls, MN for the celebration.

Monday night, a fall walk down by the river.

A picture is worth 1,000 gay words.

Later we go over to McTubbins new place (aka East Lake Strong aka E.L.S.) for a record-listening gathering. Brian soon joins. We rotate clockwise and we each choose one side of a record to play. We decided to start a record club, details forthcoming in future blogs.

Jeff and I bring over a bin of records spanning all eras and genres.

Scoops arrives.

I find my dream sunglasses and McTubbins lets me borrow them for an indefinite amount of time. Big Time Fuller cheerses the occasion.

I make a joke and decide that Tall Bikes' nickname when he wears this outfit is "Ketchup and Mustard." I like it.

This is what a record listening gathering looks like.

Jaws comes home and gives Lucy a hug.

I don't even know.

Here's to a quarter century

2006-10-05T08:42:00.000-05:00

We had some massive nights. The biggest weekend of the fall, with the most crazy shit going on starts on Friday night with McTubbins art opening in Uptown. He's put together dozens of fucking crazy and beautiful pieces for his show and the results are nothing short of dope.

Crazy bastard.

Here Isaac (aka Iceberg) is enjoying some crazy chasm beasts.

After McTubbins show we head over to a warehouse-gallery show in Northeast celebrating the new studio of Burlesque design. Some bands and rappers are playing. Here Jeff and Pittsburgh Dave engage in some brokeback appreciation.

Beak enjoying the copious posters on display.

P.O.S. plays to a packed basement gallery space, with Paper Tiger trying to look useful in the background. Nice try, dude.

Eventually, the set turns into some 80's hardcore punk type situation with P.O.S. standing in the midst of a sea of dancing punks as he raps.

The next night is the real rager. It's Jeff's 25th birthday and we get not one, but TWO, kegs for the occasion. Here they are before the nights festivities begin -- just waiting to be raged upon by experienced keg-standers.

The night starts at the Triple Rock, where our good good friends from Detroit are playing. They're called Thunderbirds Are Now and they consistently rule as a band and as dudes. Here, Scott pulls a table from backstage in front of his keyboard and rages on it as he plays the keys.

They bring up some of us to sing on the last song. Tambourines actually give you bruises on your hands if you play them too hard. Jeff and Beak learned this the hard way on this night.

Also playing at the Triple Rock this night is Will Whitmore, our good old friend from Lee County Iowa. He's on tour with Lucero and is here holding down the bar with us. Here, Jeff is already being fed birthday beers.

After the show, everyone heads to our place. Julie has made animal-themed birthday cupcakes. The frog had marshmellows for eyes. A real "Animal Collective" huh? HA!

Coles is there, repping shit hard in front of the donation jar.

Howard from Thunderbirds and Matt compare cheek structures. Winner undecided as of press time.

Blestos, Tapp, and Doogs all look awesome. Later, people remark that this night marked the return of "the old Tapp" which I think basically means loud, drunk and hilarious.

Tubs and Jocelyn show up. Hugs not drugs? No. Hugs AND drugs.

Wow.

Yikes.

Matt Duff brings 50's back his suitcase that he left in Pittsburgh while in tour in November of 2005. The jeans have mold on them, but the red bath towel is still as stylish and functional as ever.

Ryan from Thunderbirds puts on his best "bad-ass with a digital camera" pose.

Jeff and Julie, who now insists that we call her "Jules." You heard it here first. This is now her nickname.

Isaac is dared to eat a cupcake in one bite in exchange for one free record of his choice from our vinyl shelf. He obliges and actually succeeds! Jeff drunkenly forgets to offer him a record before he leaves and Isaac is too nice to bring it up. In sum, Isaac totally got punked.

A trend emerges. The animal collective is destroyed.

Jeff puts on his new personalized Twins shirt that I bought him for his birthday. The fact that his name and age are written on the back is both ironic AND sincere, which is an example of the newly-discovered post-post-modernity (aka po-po-mo).

Mike Deuhs shows up to support Jeff on his birthday.

Nami is a party cat. If she was big enough she would do a keg stand.

Matt Duff. A brilliant man.

50's, Jeff, and the newly-arrived Will begin freestyle rapping to 1990's rap songs. The lyrics revolve around these themes: 1) this ain't no earthday/it's jeff's birthday and 2) we really understand black culture, our appreciation of rap music confirms this.

Did I mention it was Isaac and Meghan's one-year wedding anniversary this night? The lovebirds in action.

Neil is in town for a few months from Boston. He puts on his best rage face here.

Yes.

Late, late, late, late night crew ends the night on the floor. This is after the cops asked us to turn down the music.

The sun is coming up, but the beers are still going down for Jules.

Me, at my finest.

A retired soldier. Honorably discharged from the party militia.

The next morning we head to breakfast at the Triple Rock to send the Thunderbirds dudes off safely to the rest of their tour. Jeff lets everyone know just how fabulous they are and just how slightly-still-drunk he might be.

50's orders a Bloody Mary with style, grace and panache.

Scott, Rickles, Neil and Mama K.

Outside the Triple Rock Beak wishes Jeff a happy birthday again. Best friends since they were twelve.

The whole crew before we say goodbye.

After they hit the road, Jules, me, Jeff and Angela from Detroit head down to the river in St. Paul for more keg beer (stealthily placed in empty water bottles), lip gloss, and sunglasses.

A great looking crew.

That night, we head over to First Avenue for the Minnesota Music Awards. TPC are up for some awards and are always up for more drinking.

They win! Two awards, even. Like assholes, they thank the Minnesota Twins for their success. All in all, one of the longest and most frenzied weekends in a long time.