KingLou Drops Science 2.0

2 nights in a row! Gunshow has suddenly become the group that is being asked by other groups to come and perform at their shows. And not the kind of shows where we're asked to perform because the other group needs an audience. That is kind of nice! Friday we performed with the Chicken Ranch, an all girl group. We had performed with them once before probably 8 months ago. Then in Providence two of the girls caught our show and ever since then we've been seeing each others shows. So we got invited to come perform and it turned out to be a great night. Both groups had pretty good shows. We were two members short (Ryan & Dan W.) so Ashley's husband, Nate, sat in with us. We got a nice high energy intro and off we went. The only problem was the suggestion... "Audience"... we all froze. Maybe only 5 seconds... but it was kind of funny... We were all like. "Hmmm... audience... what do we have to say about that... man I don't know...." Eventually we snapped out of it and did some decent scenes. Like 1) Drug Abusing Student Wins Sports Prize. 2) Man at Museum is Full of Art. 3) Freaks debate the Failing Farm. 4) Mind Battle 5) Organ Grinders Funeral and a few more. The set went over really well. Afterwards we got a lot of really positive feedback. Chicken Ranch had a great set, someone had a birthday cake and we all patted each other on the back. After the show we were asked to perform next week Saturday for the Pygmy Marmalade show. It was a nice pat on the back. Saturday we performed with The Scallywags. The show was well attended and again it was me, Ashley, Matt and Ashley's husband, the fantastic Nate. The show line-up was Gunshow up first, then oddly some band and finally the Scallywags. As usual at Juvie Hall there was not a lot of time to time inbetween shows so we got in probably 5-10 minutes before the show was supposed to start. What I hadn't forseen but should have been retardedly obvious was that the band was going to need time to set up. So 30 minutes later the show started. However unlike the Friday show that started with it's high energy intro the Saturday show started with a weird sort of awkward intro. To quote "But to start us off first we have... where is Gunshow... oh, there you are... Gunshow." So with that we came on stage. The audience was silent. We took our seats, got the suggestion "Nosehair" and did what we do. Again there was a weird lull at the beginning but eventualy we got started. By the end of the show we had a pretty good set going. The problem was that the set was probably 15 minutes. At least it seemed very short. We had scenes involving a support group for people who shave their bodies because they find it incredibly attractive, a support group for people who become assholes when they get cancer and a throat slashing born from a battle to see who would be king of the bath tub. I kind of wish we had known it was only a 15 minute slot but whatever. By the end we had people into it and afterwards we got a lot of praise again. One of Matt's friends thought the show was great but that it was written. That is my favorite compliment so it made my day to hear it. It was great of the Scallywags to ask us to play and it was great to see another sketch group strut their stuff. In other news Trent Ermes, super Gunshow fan and all around awesome guy, is back in town for a few weeks and came to show. It was a nice surprise. I am back to reading "Fortress of Solitude" I have a very distinct feeling that this book will not end in a happy way.

This morning I learned a NYC Donut Cart don't. Now some people might say the #1 rule with the street cart is "Don't buy anything from them." Well, we're already past that one. So what I learned today is don't buy anything glazed on a day when the temperature is over 85 and the humidity is close to 95%. My bowtie style donut was bereft of glaze. No doubt it had shed most of it's sweetness on to the wax paper beneath it. Not to say it was not tasty. It was deep fried after all and some of the missing glaze had been aborbed into the bowtie itself. Still there was no visible glaze. I was considering buying something else, especially after seeing the sad pile of bowties and other glazed items sitting in their own sweat. But when I got to the window I saw that the man who runs the cart with a smile had already prepared a bag of "The Usual" I was late for work so I just sucked it up and grabbed it. It's been an hour since I ate the donut. I am alive just not as glazed as I would like. Maybe I need to have a bucket of glaze here in my office... yeah... that sounds like a bad idea.

On Saturday I greedily opened my freshly arrived copy of the new Harry Potter book. Oh! The Half-Blood Prince! How exciting!! I started reading it at once and have made it about 1/3 of the way into it. But already I have been bombarded with fucking spoliers. Little bits of info that are ruining the book for me. It seems like a problem that has become epidemic. It was leaked early on that another character is going to die in the book. Fine. Whatever. I will brace myself. Yet everywhere I go on the web people are doing fake spoilers. Probably some are real but I just have to dismiss them for the time being. "This person dies" calls one thread. "that person dies" calls another. Total downer. In this rush to discuss everything that happens to everyone we're drowning in information that we may not want to be exposed to. It's fucking tough. I should know better. I should just not log on when I am reading something that I want to save for myself. Good luck with that, Lou.

Today we are hosting Ace's Official Birthday Party. We're have a retarded amount of people over. Family, friends, friends of family, friends with babies, nannies and more. It's been a super retarded event in the planning. I am surprised we don't have a pony and a clown coming. Long-story-short we have 40 people coming, 2.5 cases of beer, 4+ bottles of wine and over $250 in food. Jodi has used this party to push a lot of agendas in the home. She finally hung all her wall art (with the help of my brother), bought a screen to hide my computer and all it's grossness, bought a plant, cleaned up the bookshelf again and other general points of order on her never ending list of things to make the apartment look great. As usual we ordered all our food from Fresh Direct. I am starting to think that it was a mistake in some ways. Things on Fresh Direct seemed to be getting out of hand and I didn't want to get the beer from there since it meant that the delivery guys would have to lug the beer here and then we'd have to tip them all this extra and so on. I decided to go to the local beer distributor, which I have never been to, and buy all the beer for the party. I decided I was going to ride my bike there with the bike trailer in tow. Usually I would be dragging Ace around. But today the cargo would be beer. Delicous beer. As usual I was freaked out about doing something I had never done before and was kind of nervous when I got there. And again as usual it was really easy and all my worrying was for nothing. I managed to buy three 12 packs and 3 individual six packs and fit them neatly into the trailer. Let me tell you that was not a light load. I figure that it was somewhere between 55-60lbs. I rode carefully to the green market to rendesvous with Jodi and Ace but then realized that I was going to be useless since I was having trouble getting around at slow speeds. I wrestled the beer into the building and collapsed triumphantly on the couch.

Last weekend was Ace's 2nd birthday. We spent it flying out to Milwaukee for a number of reasons. The first night we were in Milwaukee we went to get some mexican food at Botana's or something. It's the new hot spot there. the old favorite, La Fuente, has become to busy and people finally moved away. People mentioned that Botana's had really delicious food and so on. For the most part it tasred pretty much like La Fuente to me. Maybe because I ordered something very safe. Afterwards we drove to the East Side to meet Chris Robles at Trocodero. We sat upstairsin the Red Light bar. It was nice and quiet. Eventually we stumbled (drove) home. Mainly we were in Milwaukee taking part in a massive surprise party the next day.The Goal: surprising our friend Kate's boyfriend. The Surprise was that as an early birthday present (40th) she was taking him to France for some Tour De France stages and a general super romantic time. He is a major cycling goofball. The surprise was pulled off with precision and a good time was had by all. The shitty part of the trip was that I really can't stand the rest of the people who were at the party. These are people whom I knew for pretty much the 8-9 years I lived in Milwaukee but never connected with. Mainly due to their hard drinking blue collar ethos which always seemed partly contrived to me. That and some of them just can't seem to relinquish their weird need to be clique-ish. My bad feelings aside we had a nice time. Ace ran all over the place and we had a few snacks. Ace eventually busted his face on the street while playing with a nice vintage tonka. We left pretty much once that happened. On the 4th of July we drove to nearby Greenfield and caught the local parade. It was a slow but earnest affair. For some reason Greenfield associates the 4th with pelting people with handfuls of tootsie rolls every few minutes. there was seriously an almost constant stream of candy being hurled at us from the parade marchers. There was a lot of no name local politicians walking behind fancy cars and a few clowns. My favorite part was the crazy cheerleaders and the Model A Ford clubs. Very cool. After that we drove to Kopp's for a malt and a burger. It was so much food and so good and so bad for me. It actually put me in a food coma. I passed out for like 2 hours. When I woke up we had a birthday party for Ace with some of the Milwaukee relatives. There was a ton to eat and drink. More brats, more beer, more cheese. It's easy to understand why people get so fucking fat there. the entire time I was there I don't think I ate a meal that didn't involve cheese. the party went really well. Ace made out in gift land. We arrived at in Milwaukee with literally zero trucks. After the party we were a 5 truck family. So many trucks.... After the party was over Jodi and I drove back to the East Side. I went to my friends house at the area they call "the Compound." It's a bunch of houses with a common yard that are inhabited by a bunch of nice people who like to party together. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and the compound will be demolished in a month or so to make way for new condos. It was nice to hang out there. the next day we flew out of Milwaukee and back to New York. Midwest Airlines had basically fucked us on the way out to Milwaukee. They wouldn't let us know if we were flying out until like 5 minutes before the flight left because it was over booked. the way back we had seat assignments but when we got to the airport they let us know that the plane had gotten changed out and the new plane had less seats. So our seat assigments were fucked and we were no longer sitting together. As it turned out the plane we got switched onto was actually the charter plane regularly used during the season by The Milwaukee Bucks. The plane was the same size they just took out extra seats for the big guys and added all these seats that face each other, like on a train with a table between them. There was so much leg room on the plane it was silly. Ace was great on the flight back and we made it home in one piece. Hurrah! Now I am back at work. My assistant is on a 3 week vacation in Veitnam so I am a little on the lonely side here in my office. One last note. yesterday on my ride to work as I was approaching Columbia I was riding along the sidewalk on Broadway when I managed to ride my front wheel into an open sidewalk grate. Besides a jarred jaw, neck and shaken confidence I was fine. The wheel fell in to the fork and then popped out again. Then the rear wheel also fell in and popped out. Seriously, I walked by it this morning. The gap is almost the exact width of the tire. I must have been on some zen groove to drive it in there. I am going to ride home this afternoon if it doesn't pour rain... Lets hope the bike is up for it.