We last left you in the overcast streets of Portland Oregon. We drove off paper towel in ear and all to the dark streets of Seattle. I had a stomach ache and was sleepy but luckily I kept a steady eye on my “Happy Valentines Day” pin which kept me in high spirits. We got to Seattle with time to kill (WE MURDERED IT) so we went to this kewl sandgwarch bakery place near the venue. We met our main girl Jill C. who was running the show and then went to scope down town for a few moments. This was when I called the kaiser phone line and a nurse told me I need to get that thang out of my head. Unfortunately there is no Kaiser in Seattle… Blood started spilling out of my ear into this pair of boots I was looking at and I was arrested for beating Sean in public because we drank six quarts of Vodka each to ease the physical and mental stress. I tipped back the boot filled with ear blood, pretended to drink it to fake out the police officer but then spit it in his face (like Gangrel from WWF) and we ran to the gig.

We started playing and Sean and I both exploded to a room full of pizza and chirping birds. It was fun but also caused me to go into one of my first coffin rests (vampire) and brooding sessions of the tour. The girl playing after us was Sharaya Mikael and she was the trees knees. Check her out. She’s on a 5 month tour going to every U.S state. grl iz bonkerz (in a good way). We bounced out fresh (glock fully loaded) to the E.R to get my ear removed. The doctor that helped out out once got paper stuck in his ear too so it was funny. Everyone else coming to the e.R was bleeding or choking so the nurses and doctors really liked me. We all had a laugh and I was finally free from clogation. the quote of that night was the doctor saying “It’s a boy” as he pulled out the paper towel. That night we slept in the greatest guest room of all time. Also chilled with a poodle. So many canines…

The next morning we buhbuhBOUNCED to the tourist trap pikes place market. It was straight up ridic. The best part about it was meeting the pen and ink artist Patrick Kerr who had some great words of inspiration. “Just pick up a pen and draw, do what feels good.” he was cute/awesome. After doing all that hub bub we went up the street to the arcade “gamewerkz” and got hyphy on some videogames. Sean kilt a bunch of mofuckas in Tekken, I got enough tickets to get a shitty yo-yo and a mario gummy… It was good times. I think I was dehydrated at this point. (this is important info) On the way back to the car we dropped into this tobacco shop hopefully/hopelessly asking if they had snuff. No one ever has the right snuff. but O M G this shop had the presidents blend! The only blend I sniff… I was elated. I tucked it away in the breast pocket of my denim shirt. Now we started heading towards to most rindonk part of the trip… The border.

We cruised steady to the border, I snoozed and we listened to david gilmour. I was awoken by Sean as we pulled into this park where the border is. We waited in line for a while and then we pulled up the the booth. Reliving this is getting me really nervous and uncomfortable already. This really REALLY stern lady prodded us with questions and had really dark sunglasses on the whole time that made her eyes look permanently cartoon angry. quote of that moment: her-“any plants…animals… raw meat in the car?” sean-“No” kevin-“wait… we do have a bell pepper.”

Well i guess we look like shady characters so she made us pull into a parking lot and an officer told sean to take off his sunglasses. He was wearing leather gloves so every time he pointed his glove tightened and it made a scary noise. We went into this building and stood around anxiously. Some guy was denied getting into Canada because of “Negligent Homicide” :-o. Eventually an officer talked with us and made us empty our pockets. Sean had the camera in his pocket because he wears cargo shorts (because he’s a nerd) and when we were in Chico the girl who let us stay with her had a gun so obviously we took pictures holding it. The police man didn’t like that. He made me sniff my snuff in front of him; kevin-“it’s old timey” cop-“ok so what else do you do… other than old timey tobacco?” He thought we had narcotics in the car. I wasn’t allowed to keep my hands in my pockets. Sean was dehydrated now. (I think I got water somewhere in between.) After some sort of hubbaloo we made it through somehow. They cut off seans pinky because of all the trouble. (He’s out of the band)

We were really stressed until we got to the hostel, where there was no parking at we had to pay $15. Then we were stressed and unhappy until we got to the lobby and checked in and the guy said we had no reservation. then we were stressed, unhappy and hating canada. They had another room we took. There was a fight across the street. Sean was jamming to classic rock (Punching the steering wheel… it’s a bad thing) the room was really warm and we shared a double bed. We put down our bags and went to drink some beers legally. A really big beer and a veggie burger later we were feeling better.  We went to sleep while the pigeons shrieked wildly outside all morning and night.

We awoke the next morning to go splorin. We walked around and clowned a bit. Drank lunch beers, played larivee guitars, got free porn from the thrift store. It was then time to scope the show. We went to trees organic cafe and checked in. Ate some yuppy sandwhiches then played. It was a great crowd, great set and everyone was peakin off yola (metaphorically) when we finished. Then our boy Frank Patrick set it off with some songz n stompin. Unfortunately no one offered us a floor to sleep on so we dropped $80 on the cheapest hotel in lovely East Vancouver (the equivalent of san franciscos tenderloin). To our excitement however the Patricia inn was connected to pats pub. Pats pub was closing in 30 minutes and had $3.50 draft beers. Time to drink fast. It was also karaoke night. We drank fast and got to experience a little bit of Vancouvers hipster scene. Sean sang R.E.M’s “Losing my religion” like a rockstar (he had his lanyard on) and i sang Wham!’s “last christmas” it was neato. We retired to our room with one bed for the second night in a row. The only difference this night was that Sean kept  trying to dream cuddle with me. I wasn’t havin it though. We woke up and hit the streets again.

We met up with our friend from S.F Daria and went to granville island. They wanted us to buy stuff but we wouldn’t do it. Unless of course it was afternoon beer, which we HAD to buy. We had some mid day red ale. I fell asleep in public on a grassy hill. Sean tells me people were staring. It was a good nap. The kind where I drooled.

I’m not sure what else we did other than eat gelato until the show. I think i was feeling ill. All that afternoon beer was throwing me off. We got to the venue for that night with high hopes. It was the second story of a fancy pub, legit stage, bar, 4 bands. We knew we would have a great time. At least we thought we would.

This is where my southern thumb comes out. The bar wouldn’t give us free beer. So we bought two local brews in bottles… keep in mind this aint even draft. Bartender says: “that’ll be 12 dollars”. boingbox number 6, this bar fuckin blew it! The first two bands were kewl and we made sure to say what up to them. We were playing third. Apparently they were too cool to hang around and they literally left the minute they got their last piece of gear out of the venue. Folks… This is a big moment for us all, these two bands, in their entirety have recieved the most severe thumbs down of the entire tour. They blew it. We played the most awkward show ever but luckily our girl Daria came through. (not to mention all the phantoms) The band after us was pretty pretty brutal classic rock but sean and I were feeling defeated despite the brutality. Nobody was giving us a place to stay and there was no way we were going to buy another room. We put into effect the tactic of looking sad and hanging around the venue for as long as possible (it wasn’t that hard… we were emo and had no place to go.) Our main breh Alex the sound guy said we could crash on his hardwood floor because we looked real sad. We were yarmphed up and went to his place. We discussed the cutthroat nature of Canadian musicians and how being on the run from the law in BC would be intense because it’s so big. Also he has a fantastic collection of hats. quote of the night: “we would totally play with your band if you hadn’t broken up.” “AYYYYYYYE???” they really do say “aye” in Canada. All the time. It’s awesome.

We woke up and nervously approached the U.S border. We were hoping we’d get through no problem but of course we were wrong. Quote of that moment: “pop the trunk… oh a whole box full of cds.” boing -_-. We handed over our keys and got questioned (although in a much nicer manner than the Canadians.) long story short he found the tour flier and said he couldn’t believe Canada let us in with all our merch without a work permit. (we’re making a whole lot of money right) I guess Canada was too concerned with the narcotics they thought we had… boingbox. The officer was a very nice man and charged us $10.75 for some sort of reason and told us to scram. We celebrated with portabello mushroom burgers IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM ONCE AGAIN. Onwards to Tacoma…

TO BE CONTINUED.