It's fucking cold in Florida

In the past I've had no trouble finding time to hang out with a computer on tour, but so far I've had scarcely a minute to spend internetting - hence the lack of blog updates. Sadly, I don't have a ton of time right now either. I'm in Orlando, a city I normally associate with warmth, sun, sunglasses, flip flops, and hardcore kids that wear Nikes. Unfortunately it is below freezing right now, my sunglasses and flip flops are pouting in my backpack, and the show that happened tonight was with a small handful of lame crust punks that were extremely reluctant to donate any money to the touring bands. We were doing really well in the beginning of tour (financially), but we've been losing money in the last 3 or 4 days. And on top of lame, poorly promoted shows, someone stole a bag containing over a thousand dollars worth of cables and pedals from us outside of a show in Hickory, NC. Unfortunately for that person we will be driving through the same area on the way back up north, and if we are able to identify the culprit he or she will most likely be severely beaten. Other than nearing the brink of financial ruin (and let's face it, I'm never THAT far off), tour has been awesome. Swallowed Up is awesome, our road crew (now also known by the name of our gang, Ruff Elementz) is awesome, and not having to go to work is really awesome. I still spend a reasonable amount of time stressing out about the amount of money I owe to Visa compared to the amount of money I can potentially make in the next 6 months without getting a regular job (which, since I have so far struck out in several attempts to identify irregular sources of income, is approximately none), but it's hard to be actively stressed about anything when one spends the bulk of one's day in a van full of one's friends, reading, listening to music, napping, and congratulating each other on how cool, handsome, and straightedge they are. Some highlights so far include the second show in Haverhill, MA, where I ran into some old scene-acquaintances; New Brunswick, where kids were fun, got way into Swallowed Up, and hung out at the merch table talking about how much they liked our zine distro and hand-assembled records; Richmond where the show sucked but Lee's roommate Paul baked us bread; Asheville where we hung out with ian; Savannah where we skated a backyard skate park, and Waldo, FL where we slept at Fiz' farm last night. Hopefully I will be inspired to write about tour so far in more depth at some point in the near future, but I have a lousy record with promising more detailed entries, so I'll keep ya'lls expectations low this time around.

Yay! Tour!

I'm leaving for tour in two days. Fucking finally. Being on tour is always way better than not being on tour. I've missed waking up with no obligations, I've missed long half-asleep van rides, I've missed late-night silliness while cooped up with close friends, and I've really missed the south. Shorts and flip-flops here I come. You can check out my tour schedule on the website of the band I'm going on tour with, Swallowed Up.

When I get back from tour I will be unemployed. I saved up enough money to pay rent and minimum credit card payments until April, so I can coast for a while, but with several thousand in credit card debt looming over me I will need to get a job not too long after returning. I'm awaiting a response from Golden Voice, a concert promoter to whom I gave a resume, and from a college acquaintance that has some experience in the merchant marine world. If neither of those leads works out, I'll probably get all spiffed up and go door to door in SoHo looking for retail work in a low-foot traffic clothing store, relying on the appeal of young, hip, tattooed boys to the older gay customer base of stores like John Varvatos. And if that doesn't work out... I'll probably go back to couriering. But I'm seriously so sick of it, I hope something else does. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know. I need a job with minimal commitment and flexible hours because tour, traveling, spontaneous weeks off etc. are very important to me. Ideally I'd like to work somewhere that pays enough in a short amount of time that I can afford to work for a very intense month or two and then take off for several more months - the Ordinary Seaman gig is a perfect example. If you or anyone you know has ever worked on a ship, get at me.

Unrelatedly, I'm also looking for music recommendations. I've been getting into a lot of new punk/hardcore stuff lately but I've had a hard time finding out about new bands on the low-key side of things. Lately I've been listening to a lot of Appleseed Cast, Maritime, Pygmy Lush (Mount Hope), One AM Radio, Bon Iver, and, as always, shoegaze, and I'm looking for more stuff like that. Suggestions?

Resizing

My dearest Welch explained to me in nearly incomprehensible tech-ese how to fix my image cropping problem, and gist of it is as I feared: either resize the photos or learn to program CSS. But I'm more of an outside of the box thinker, plus I'm lazy, so instead I'm going to leave them alone and suggest that if you want to see the photo full-size you can right-click it and click "view image" or your browser's equivalent. You can see everything you need to see in most of them anyway (bad composition notwithstanding), so the only ones worth viewing directly are the one of me moshing and the one of Chris cowering. Resizing them probably wouldn't be worth it anyway, since one of the drawbacks of fisheye photography is that everything looks smaller.

And while I'm writing, perhaps an update of the extended-break saga: my boss called today to tell me not to come in to work on Tuesday - which would have been my first full day since December 19th - because they over-scheduled, so it looks like I have until Wednesday to perfect the art of doing absolutely nothing worthwhile. Today is shaping up to be a productive day of not being productive, as I have already completed my entire to-do list as of 1:30pm. Unfortunately I will have to leave the house today for a tattoo appointment at 6. I will post pictures of my new blasphemous Buffy tattoo once I get home.

Boxing

EDIT: all of my pictures are getting cut off a few inches from the right. If someone can explain to me how I can avoid this problem, I will mail him/her/hir a signed print of any one of the recently-posted photos. Leave a comment or email me at jackhsamuel - at - gmail - dot - com.

I worked a half day on NYE-eve and have not been back since, so this past week has turned out to be an extended Christmas break. Never fear, I've managed to stay busy with such activities as watching 9+ hours of Buffy and Angel in one day, sitting in my room alone and reading Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar while a hardcore show happened in my living room (I made an appearance for Surroundings' set and was rewarded with a Hatebreed cover to which I moshed like it was 2002), having a contest to see how many Cheerios Chris could stack on my face (he won), bashing holes in the wall with David's old golf clubs (and subsequently knocking the head's off against the second-floor supports, leaving us with formidable weapons in case of disrespectful show-goers/asshole 4th floor neighbors/cops, which we have so far only used to throw at Chris and Matt's wall in an attempt to play oversized darts), and mosh-boxing our houseguest/temporary roommate Kyle Bryant. The idea for mosh-boxing came to me in a flash of brilliance when Ben put No Warning on the stereo in preparation for the Weezy vs. Chris bantam-weight title match and everyone started dancing around the recently-cleared out living room. The basic idea is this: box while moshing. It turns out that mosh-boxing is far more tiring than moshing or boxing alone, and despite riding my bike 50+ miles a day for a living I am apparently way out of shape. Nonetheless, after taking a few taps to the jaw in the first several minutes, I managed to land a left cross that changed the tone of the fight in my favor and ultimately won. Pictured below: the devastating and fight-ending left jab a split second before reddening Kyle's nose, me moshing while Kyle (off-camera) recovers from an earlier and slightly less devastating right jab, Kyle moshing in a seemingly-celebratory fashion while I square up, and Chris looking terrified by Weezy (their fight was a draw because Chris accidentally nailed Weezy in his little man parts several times in a row). There are several equally good pictures that don't make Chris look like a coward, as well as a few of Kyle not about to get punched (to be fair, despite ultimately winning, I far from dominated the entire fight), and a couple good ones of Benny - the referee - moshing in between fights, possibly while listening to the bad Death Threat, but Chris didn't email them to me. Perhaps I'll make an additional post once I have them. You will notice Benny in the background of the third picture moshing the shit out of our wall (yes, he is wearing bib-shorts underneath camo shorts).

Sweatpants

This year I've made several resolutions. Mostly the usual types of things: learn to stop stating my opinion as fact, start doing BJJ again, write music, read The Brothers Karamozov (this will be the second consecutive year I've made this particular resolution, but I feel good about it this time). However, in addition to resolutions, I've also made a New Year's bet with my good friend and new roommate, Chris Garnett of Swallowed Up fame. As of midnight on January 1st, we are both wearing sweatpants every day. Exemptions are allowed for work or extenuating circumstances that involve externally imposed dress codes (going to the ballet, being the best man at a wedding, etc.) but otherwise, only sweatpants, underwear, and PJs allowed. The idea came from a conversation concerning the inability to look cool while wearing sweatpants, and we decided that it would be a fun excersize to pit our stubbornness against our shallowness. The loser of the bet can chose one of the following punishments: getting a sweatpants-related tattoo from the winner or playing off-key Nirvana covers with a ukelele in the Union Square subway station for an hour. Though it started as a competition, it quickly became more of a supportive partnership in which we encourage each other to stay strong and not give in to our superficial tendencies to care whether or not we look like complete schlubs.

At midnight everyone else at the Stronghold's pizza party was on the roof watching out for fireworks (which I'm told never materialized), so Chris and I were forced to shoot our ceremonial donning of the sweatpants using the self-timer on his camera. Continuing to work under the theory that fisheyes make everything look more exciting, we used the fisheye lens that Chris Riot (not to be confused with Chris Fuck Yeah AKA Chris Garnett, Chris from the Bone Yard who now lives in 210 and whose last name I don't know, or Chris French from the Stronghold AKA 206) taught us how to attach to the camera. Below are the last photo taken of me looking good for a while, and a photo of my caterpillar-like transformation. If you want to see the whole series of me undressing, they are on my myspace.

Life is more dramatic with a fisheye

Having a job is such a bummer. I can't even enjoy my days off because I spend all afternoon thinking about how much I don't want to go to work tomorrow and I get nothing done. Whilst procrastinating on the couch this afternoon I commented to Chris that one of the drawbacks to getting tattooed frequently is that pictures become out of date very quickly. He offered to take some faux-candid shots of me lounging on the couch, accidentally displaying my recently completed sleeve from its most attractive angle, with his new fisheye lens that he got for Christmas. Unfortunately he couldn't figure out how to affix it to his camera, so instead we spent the next half hour following each other around the house, holding the lens up to one eye and keeping the other closed, because everything looks cooler and more exciting with a fisheye. The highlights included Lucy (the dog, not the sister) scaring the shit out of me when she jumped up at me, Chris' muscles (and presumably mine as well) looking great while he hit the punching bag, almost falling through the gap in our second floor, and running into assorted tables, chairs, and people. Sadly, once I returned to normal vision I was reminded that I've accomplished almost nothing today, that I have to go to work tomorrow, and that my life is actually not very interesting, plus the edges of my vision were kind of blurry.

On-The-Job Celebrity Sightings and The Future of My Acting Career

Before I get started, I have an announcement regarding my building:

A unit opened up in my building down the hall and the landlord offered us a chance to fill it with friends before they take it to a broker, so for everyone who has asked me if we have space, this is the time to move in! The total will probably be around $2400 and I don't know how many rooms are built into it right now but it's about he same size as mine and we have 10 people living in our place very comfortably. Let me know if you are interested.

Ok. Yesterday morning I finished typing, threw on pants - and then gore-tex socks, rain pants, gloves, my ear-warmers, and gloves, because it was cold and raining/snowing all day - and headed into the city. It was a pretty busy day and I pulled in about $150 between 10 and 6:25, when I was almost late to my last acting class. Yes, that's right, I took an acting class. After I booked a commercial at an open call a couple of years ago I went out on a handful of auditions and got one callback but no jobs, so I asked the agent that was freelancing me for suggestions and he told me about this class, and, given that if the class got me one day-long job it would pay for itself, I figured why not. Last night was the last class, so they had two agents from top agencies come in and watch us get interviewed and read copy; I think I did pretty well and one of them seemed at least marginally interested in me. I have no expectations, so if something happens, great, if not, whatever.

But back to my work day. We have this client, Scott Cooke, and I have no idea what they actually do. I know it is something involved in entertainment, because we often take out mailings to various media outlets, but we also sometimes do seemingly random jobs like, for example, the day before thanksgiving when I picked up two pies from a bakery, wrapped them in wrapping paper Scott provided, affixed a gift note to Katie Holmes from her manager (John something) and delivered them to the theater where Katie is doing a show. Unfortunately I only got as far as the stage door security guard. So why was Scott Cooke hand-writing a note on behalf of Katie Holmes' manager? Are they personal friends? Or was it business? The plot thickens! Yesterday I picked up a garmet bag from Scott Cooke and delivered it to Emmy Rossum, Golden-Globe nominated actress, and, more importantly to me, co-star (with Jake Gyllenhaal) of The Day After Tomorrow - my favorite natural disaster movie. She lives in a smallish building in UES with no doorman, so she buzzed me in and signed for it herself. As I handed her the cold garment bag, she smiled and made some comment about how it was cold outside. I said something to the effect of, "summer yesterday, winter today, it's crazy out there," thanked her, slid the slip into my clipboard, and headed back to the elevator. I don't really get starstruck, so I wasn't nervous or excited or anything, it was just kind of neat. I only wish I was more clever on the spot, because I would like to have stories not just about delivering things to celebrites, saying thanks, and walking away, but about chatting them up, if for no other reason than to prove how cool I am. And the real bastard of it is that I thought of a great response as soon as I got outside. See, when I mentioned the bizarre weather, I should have followed it up with, "let's hope tomorrow New York doesn't flood and freeze over," and maybe even run with it and say, "because my dad isn't an arctic researcher and climatologist plus I'm not as good-looking as Jake Gyllenhaal." Ok, maybe it would have been better to leave the last part out. Here's to fucking staircase wit.