the best chapters

good morning…

Well fuck it, I guess I should get 100 our of the way, that way I can start fresh at 101 for the new year. I don’t usually make new years resolutions, and not really planning any this year, except that I want to double my blog posts in the coming year. So hopefully you should see a post every 1.825 days in 2008.

I just realized something.  I started this blog in the middle of February, and wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.  The first post did not go up until June 24th.  So that means, that 200 posts is not a big increase over this year.  So we are changing my goals for 2008.  We are going to shoot for 260 posts. Which will basically be 5 posts a week.  Deal?  Deal!!!

It was a strange year for work. Started out with the end of my office gig, man that was a good time. I loved getting paid to spend money, if you guys want me back, I am available. The company went from 27 employees Feb 21, to 3 employees on Dec 31. Is that what a recession will do to you?

The great fridge / freezer mishap of 2007.

While waiting for work to come up, headed down the coast with Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death. Not sure you can call this work, since I didn’t get paid, but more because it was basically a 72 hour party up and down I-5.

Then I ended up doing a tour as an LD, tour lighting, who would have known that it could be so hard. My first hip hop tour, El-P with Hangar 18, Yak Ballz, and Slow Suicide Stimulus. It was a good learning experience, and I would do it again.

Before I could even get off of this tour and start worrying about what I was going to do next, I got a call from Lalo. It was actually a message first, saying he had something interesting to offer me, and that I was the perfect person for this job. That made me curious. So then it was off to The White Stripes as “B-Show Coordinator”. A job that looks confusing on a resume.

How about if I told you that I got to book The White Stripes. I also was The White Stripes production manager. I was also The White Stripes monitor engineer. I was also The White Stripes Front of House engineer. Now those look better on a resume. And technically they wouldn’t be lying.

And then I became the “security supervisor” which was a fun job, and that left time for me to also be a tour carpenter (second carpenter), tour lighting tech (third lighting tech), tour sound tech (third sound tech), as well as sometimes tour down rigger, and one hot and humid day in Alabama, I was a tour up rigger. They kept me busy.

 

Shit, now what am I going to do. Oh, you might not understand how funny this is, but I was making this list of bands that I worked for this year, and totally forgot about Blonde Redhead. Haha. I am so glad I quit working for these guys. I have only left a band on a bad note once before, and we have since made up, but I quit Blonde Redhead 50 hours before my plane to europe was set to leave, and I have never been happier. I do miss this little dog.

The annual family reunion was next. What a blast. The Murder City Devils in Austin, Texas. That makes good sense.

I have two records on my phone, plus a few other songs by friends and for ringtones. The first one is The White Stripes Icky Thump, because I miss hearing it every day on tour. The other is MIA Kala, which I put on because that record blows me away. So when on the plane home from Austin, I got the call that she was looking for a new tour manager, all the pieces of the 2007 puzzle came together. I mean look at how she dresses.

I have been promised an outfit like this, and it is one of the things I am most looking forward to in 2008.

It was a pretty slow year for me this year. I spent most of it at home actually. I was in Seattle for 203 days in 2007. The rest of the top 10 Cities of 2007 breaks down like this…
London 18
Phoenix 11
New York 8
Austin 8
New Orleans 7
San Francisco 6
Portland 6
Las Vegas 5
Los Angeles 4 (tied with Montreal, Cincinnati and Boston)

I flew about 50,000 miles this year, on a total of 28 flights.

That is just shy of twice around the earth. And almost 4.5 days in the air.

I did all that without any flights to the Southern or Eastern hemisphere, which is a pretty big bummer. Come on somebody must need somebody for their Big Day Out tour in 2008. Drop me a line.

Happy New Year and good health to all. Watch out for robots and hey dad, see you next year.