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 Your Hey Mercedes weblog. The Cast: Robert Nanna Damon Atkinson Todd Bell Michael Shumaker Dan Keehn Chris Bickert Norman Arenas Ryan Snyder 
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July 21, 2001
dan: the next time someone comes in and says hurry up we only have till' whenever is gonna get a frickin' hickory axe handle up side thier friggin' head..what gives people the nerve..one of these days and you're gonna here about it...sorry for the rant but hey, better here than bloggin behind bars..
TBELL: For all of you emailing me like mad, the Lassie Foundation/Duraluxe split on GTA is finally out.. and yes, It's very good. you can download some clips off the Parasol site if interested. Bob you where talking about how cover songs on the radio suck. I don't think a bands first hit song on tha radio should be someone elses hit song, you know? Inspiration and having influences is one thing, but then blatantly admitting you want to sound like Wire(Elastica)? Or whoever? Or just ripping someone else off? Come on! There is a lot of chance in similarities though too, don't get me wrong. Listen to Squirrel Baits 'Sun God' compared to the beginning of Get Up Kids ‘Woodson’ More than likely this is only coincidence, (or am I crazy?) after all, there are only so may notes on a guitar right? More than likely the GUK were’nt to heavily into Squirrel Bait at the time of writing some of their first songs... I've read record reviews of my band saying things like "obviously blah blah is a big influence on them.." and the band mentioned I've never even heard of? Weird.. it's a crazy world.. Sorry, just had to rant a bit.. more later.. it's hot as hell in Milwaukee.
dan: work, yes I'm at work..SUCKS...rode the scooter up though so that was fun, doin' 80 along the 43...stoppin' at fish day for a brew maybe...exciting hey? July 20, 2001
dan: what do you do with a pasty looking permed hair with mustache wearing faded blue jeans and old school (real old school) pumas that are blue and white who is walking around with his head down talking to himself who paused on the sidewalk and looked off into the distance and mumbled something to himself ? dan keehn 7-20-01 I picked up some porn, I mean corn today for the grill tonight..hold it there, here comes a tall blonde ...remind me to pickup some truth serum up tonight ..
dan: warm, humid, sunny day today..it's friday...oh yeah..! party tonight across the street and in the street, ride the bike to work tomorrow and cruise thru port to check out fish days, then it's off to the zoo ..Sunday is the chill out day..word up I'm outty..
Robert: 165 Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order I'm not at work today. I called in sick. Last night, I had a super high temperature, and even though our apartment was hot and muggy, I was FREEZING... and at the same time sweating. Classic. So I told myself if I wake up feeling crappy, that I'll just call in and take it easy all day. Maybe go see a doctor or my sister who is a... NURSE! ... This morning I felt crappy... but I'm feeling a lot better now. Hanging out with Lucky at the P's. Doing some laundry. Bloggin'. July 19, 2001
Robert: I've got a bone to pick with popular music lately. First it was Alien Ant Farm's cover of Smooth Criminal, and now... Incubus. As anyone with good musical tastes can tell you, their latest piece of work (forgot the name, the chorus goes something like "Pardon me while I burst into flames") is a DIRECT RIPOFF of the Dismemberment Plan. Am i right? Seriously forks, it is the most disgusting display of theivery mine ears have ever heard! Not so much the chorus, but the verse. The worst part is, they play this song constantly here in Chicago. And now there will be a million people who will think that Dismemberment Plan sounds like "that one Incubus song." What is wrong with the world today? On a lighter note, I'm delirious. 15 minutes till bedtime. I think I'll take a cab.
Robert: I feel much worse today than I did yesterday. I'm not a fan. No lemon poppyseed muffins for me this morning. I had a nice refreshing fruit cup and some Arizona Health Herbal Iced Tea. Now I'm sipping on some gin and juice, um, i mean Throat Coat Tea. I am ready for a full scale war against germs for the next 6 days. I will be ingesting, well, what the heck, injecting Echinacea into my body. And if you cough, you best be coverin that mouth of yours. There is an upside to being sick. You sorta get an excuse for moping around all day moaning. Usually that sort of behavior is frowned upon. Trust me. I know. Yesterday, I salvaged some stuff from my old apartment. There's still a good 3 trips of junk left. And that's really all it is. Junk. Clutter. Blah... But I just relish it. I came across a bunch of nice items that my roommate left, so I called him to make sure he knew about it. He said, "Oh yeah, you can just throw all of that stuff out. I only took what I needed." Bless the man. I wish I was like that. I can't get rid of anything! In fact, I'm going to nab a few of the items he left for use at my new apartment, such as a blender and a nice dish rack. Somebody stop me! All I do is complain about junk and yet, here I am amassing more of it. Soon I'll have to look for another whole apartment just to house all of this junk. I can understand saving a ticket stub for my old band's show in Tokyo, but do I really need that Batman ticket stub from 1989? But it was an advance screening! It was amazing! - I bet it was. But for the love of God throw the damn thing away. My day might have been going better if I stretched out a little this morning. I did yoga once in my life and the next morning I felt like I ran the triathalon. I was sore, but it was a good kind of sore. Need to get back to that good kind of sore. That's what tour is for. I can't wait. Seriously, it's like a vacation at a spa. Spa spa spa. Jamaica spa. I think we're going to have to call in the medicinal big guns. Nurse! July 18, 2001
Robert: No practice for me tonight. I'm going to take it easy. I'm going to take the long way home to avoid overcrowded buses. Rest. Relaxation. Bahamas.
TBELL: Last night I went to get my copy of Bruce Campbells book "If Chins Could Kill, Confessions of a B-movie Actor" signed yesterday. He was doing a stop on his tour at the local indie bookstore around the corner. He was AWESOME buy the way... he talked for a bit, cracked jokes about Sam Raimi, John Carpenter, and crazy Evil Dead fans.. He then did a signing for about 300 people claiming: 'I will get around to each and every one of you, I will stay until every book is signed, please be patient'. So cool and nice, an awesome guy. Someone at the talk asked him his favorite actors/actresses right now and he mentioned Jennifer Jason Leigh actress and co-writer of The Anniversary Party that I mentioned yesterday. Interesting. His comment most have came from their work together in the incredible Coen film The Hudsucker Proxy, where he plays tough reporter Smitty opposite her Amy Archer. Listening to the new Built to Spill. Pretty good. I'm glad Scott Plouf has finally ended up in a good band post-Spinanes... Time to go play some basketball..
TBELL: Thanks to everyone who responded to my blog. You are the best. I'm starting to think that other people actually read this thing besides Bob, Dan and myself. Hmmm... Yup, the coffee IS a flowin' and i'm rocking the sounds of The Stone Roses. Could life be better? Only if I where on the way to a rock show with my band somewhere in the middle of nowhere, perhaps.. Who knew that Max Perlich had such a long history? He's one of those guys you recognize in movies for years and years, always supporting. An easily recognizeable face, you know, the friend of a friend. The guy behind the counter. The ice cream vendor. The underdog. I think the role I fell for him was as the drug buddy David in Drugstore Cowboy. Oh yeah, lets not forget as the nipple twisting Cole in Gummo, or Matt Dillons' snowplow sidekick in Beautiful girls.. soooo good.. I decided to look up on him via IMDb, by far one of my favorite links, just to check if he was given credit for one of his best cameo roles: The Bust A Move video... Thats right, I said it... Unfortunately, the IMDb does not get that specific. Amazing if it did, cause then you can see how many videos that J-LO danced in before her own career, who where all those fools on the bikes chasing the Smiths in their videos or, who that guy was with the record stuck in his head in the De La Soul video. Anyways, there he his... The guy on the mack in the movie theatre. The shaved head, flight jacket, looking totally Vespa. He was also shown later in the video skating doing powerslides and acid drops. Too cool. That’s so rad. Three cheers for Max!! I think I'll start a fan club...
Robert: Hells bells am i in a bad mood today. I just got off the phone with a nice lady from a local phone service that will gladly take our new apartment on. However, the earliest their guy can get to our place is July 31st! Well past my threshold of pain... And get this: the person will be there sometime between 8 and 6 ! How's that for a nice big window to wait around the house. Luckily I'll be somewheres in between Louisville or Kansas City or I don't even remember. I have to cheer up... Did I mention that they have no weekend hours for these installations? What a bunch of bull. I suppose it's my fault for letting it go so long... I just assumed that they'd be able to install within a week. Guess not. After work, it's up to Milwaukee again for practice, which means yet another exciting trip down the coast via train directly to my lame old desk. I can't wait for this to be over. Think of all of the fun things I could be doing.... Cleaning my apartment, working on some websites, bowling, bocce ball, lawn darts, curling, shuffleboard, parcheesi, don't tip the waiter, operation, let's not pay the landlord... you know, games like that. Again, I'm the one to blame for this. I could have very very easily taken next Monday and Tuesday off, but I guess I thought I owed it to the man. Or at least the man owed me some more celery. Celery. Kind of like monkey. It will be weird not making any monkey from my celery. Hopefully I'll make enough monkey to relax a little once I get home. You know, before I start snow shoveling for bingo chips. Not only am I in a bad bad (Leroy Brown) mood, but I think I'm losing my mind. If I had a tie on, I'd loosen it. And one last thing, I was joking the other day about the "Bleed American" song. Of course I knew who it was all along. Steely Dan.
Robert: Well, it's getting down to the wire. Crunch time. 4 more work days left. 6 more real days left. It's suddenly occured to me that I have got SO MUCH to do before I leave, and unfortunately, a lot of it hinges on things that are out of my control, such as phone connections. Speaking of which, I'm going to do a quick search to try and find a good local service. If I don't find anything, I'll have to give into the beast... at least for a little while. And that sucks. It's in my nature. I have to make a list of items I need to bring on the tour. I need to make a list of items I need to buy to bring on the tour. We always forget stuff, but since the circumstances are a little different this time around, I'm unsure as to how everything is going to work... It will all be fine. I'm just being neurotic. Paranoid. Hypochdriacal. Hypnothermicaneutrologicexigraphiconical. You know how it goes. And to make matters worse, it's been super busy round these parts, which means less and less downtime to relax and contemplate. To list and excecute. To protect and serve. I'll be back.
dan: hey hey hey, It's dan keehn and I'm gonna sing a song for you.....Good Morning troopers, how's everything? Another day at the grind..It was nice getting up early, 630 to be exact. The drive in wasn't too bad either, people seem to be driving faster and faster these days..coffee and a double chocolate muffin for breakfast. Believe this, I can get another station in here at work, it's retro rock though but it's better than top foarty.. you can ring my beeeelllllllllll ring my bell ten after eight and no customers in sight..tonight or should I say this evening I'm gonna grill out...that's right grill out.. I close my eyes only for a moment and the moments gone dust in the wind..? I need some e.smith or something else curse this radio curse I say..burn IT... Burn The Radio the only good thing on these days is NPR..I remember never listening to the radio when I was a weeee lad..just Van Halen.. this weekend we have a party to go to across the street from my house..It's at this guys house who goes by the name of goose, He does kinda look like goose from Top Gun, so we'll cruise over for a couple and shmooze then saturday work till 1pm and then off to the ZOO....I haven't been to the zoo in a long ace time, can you tail gate there.? more later I'm sure... all the young dudes carry the news fruit of the loom July 17, 2001
dan: tomorrow's the day where I get up early and get off early..[dime] i don't know..I think I need to subscribe..
Robert: FYI: The kind lady at the House of Blues informed me that Wednesday night's Vagrant America show is very close to selling out! So if you'd like to go on Wednesday, you best be getting your tickets quick. Thursday is pretty open still, so that's a confirmed safe bet. I'm starving. It's falafel time.
dan: I had a bad experience with mcleod and switched back..that's all I'm gonna say..This is the best salami sandwich I've had in a long time..camping was awesome..That's all I'm gonna say about that too.. Shop smart...shop S-mart mails here.. time to sort..Bob, I've got some of your frying pans..I might as well give ya'll the low down on the sunday after camping..well ya see, awhile back when I was just a young lad I always had the fond memories of..seriously, After we loaded up we went to parnell tower (huge observation tower in the middle of the kettle moraine) once we got top side we looked around and saw dundee mountain, the hill we hiked up on saturday after that it was kinda like the Grand Canyon, where you look out and say..ok, here it is...wow.......lets go..went down the hill to the car to extract a cold one and we threw the disc around for two beers worth of time..then we went to the Hat Bar..where there were, you guessed it..hats from all over fishing hats, mexicali hats, elf hats, baby hats, whatever, had a veggie pizza there and two cheeseburgers and we played pool with granny hawkins' I think her name was Aggie sweet ole lady.. she even gave us hugs when we left and was concerned as to how much we had to drink..played a lot of pool too. Then we went to The Boars nest and I threw darts with mike allen and had a few pitchers..there were dogs there and everything so of course I had to pet them and throw in some commands like SIT......started to head home once there we had to jump marias car then I ordered chinese..then I hit the bed hard and woke up sorer than a rodeo clown..thats it..I could write more but time I've got not enough of..young jedi..
Robert: Todd, you fat whore. If there was only a way I could magically transport the OP906 machine to you so that you can tackle Mr. Campbell in a pile of his own books. Shnikies. Where's Scottie when you need him with that beaming machine? I'm heading over to the House of Blues today to secure 10 extra tickets for each of the Chicago shows. Don't ask! They are for family, alright? I've decided on an OP910, and it will be a Hey Mercedes/Vagrant America daily photo diary and it will be located over yonder at MassiveWasteofTime.com. Don't try going there from work, though. Surfwatch is so bloody dumb, that if the word "ass" is anywhere in the URL, it throws a damn hissy fit. Which really sucks. I'll find out the domain numbers soon so we can work around this ugly obstacle. Together. Forever... I hope to get at least something brewing over there before we leave (other than the HM/VA DPD). We'll see how it goes... In a wholly related story (, Batman!), I was instructed by The Funniest Man in Chicago to call a little known phone company called McLeod to get bare bones service for our apartment line. I wanted him to call, since he's had it before, but he can't. Here's why. In the whole year that he had McLeod service at his apartment, he never got one bill! Hence, he doesn't want to be "found out"... So I called today and some jokester at the company says "We don't offer residential service within Chicago city limits and we never have!" What the? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and it ain't stale wintergreen Copenhagen tobacco "dip". Ironically, Stale Copenhagen Tobacco Dip was almost the name of our band. Thanks DeVlerk. I am the monarch of the sea... I am the ruler of the... So I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and contact Ameritech the Enemy or whomever. It's a shame. I wanted to go all indie up in there. Now we'll actually get billed for our service. What a gyp. Bad coffee today. Good lemon poppyseed muffins, though.
TBELL: It's raining like cats and dogs outside this morning. A wonderful thing if you have nowhere to go outside. Sipping my first cup of coffee, It's Alterra Blue Heeler and it's hitting the spot.. It is officially my first day without a job in awhile, my last day of work was yesterday leaving me a solid week to get all caught up on other things before leaving for tour. And yes, that includes getting the freaking Hey Mercedes Emailer sent out.. Got the rock of The Strokes on right now to get me going, got a lot to do today. Can't stop listening to them lately.. Bob, If I where to suggest a movie if you're in the drama mood this weekend, the Anniversary Party was pretty good. It's got John C. Reilly in it, so it already gets a thumbs up in my book. I'll probably end up at America's Sweethearts before the weekend is out. Christopher Walken and John Cusack?? Get outta here.. On the music tip, has anyone heard a band from Australia called The Avalanches? Tell me more please.. I'm going to a book signing today. My first ever. I'll see if I can get the immortal words "Give me some sugar, baby" scribbled down on the inside cover..
Robert: 168 Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths Lord knows, it would be the first time... The latest skinny here at the ranch is the arduous passing of my employment baton to an indifferent (unwilling?) relay-team member. Make sense? It's makes none to me. But I tell you what I do know: FIVE MORE DAYS left. And then it's clear sailing. Although, I'm assuming I'll probably have to nab another job for November - February, the 3 months off will be wonderous. I suppose I can always shovel snow over at the nursing home when I return. They're always looking for snow shovellers. Today, I'm letting the newbie take the helm, which means I'll be peeking over his shoulder the whole time, giving longing looks to the computer and thinking about what wonderful blogs we can make together. But I digress. The good news is - we're finally going to get a phone line in our new hut, strictly for internet usage. We had planned on going the DSL route, but I think that might be too costly, given our circumstances. It probably won't be in use too much while I'm away, whiling away on the magic bus. The funniest man in Chicago tends to do all of his work on stage all of the time. Me, I have to settle for stage work only some of the time. The other half of the time is divided into practice work and work work (which in reality is blog work)... So phone line it is. And then I can really start gettin down to beeswax on the OP907... I should see a movie this weekend. The Score, perhaps. Good? Bad? Brando? Pants? July 16, 2001
Robert: I'm sore. Perhaps it was the 55 mile hike up to Dundee Mountain, but I downed a High Life and a half at its summit, so that can't be it. Maybe it was all of the wood I chopped up, a la ESPN's world's strongest lumberjack competition. Maybe. Whatever it is, it made me fall into a deep deep sleep once I returned to by new abode yesterday afternoon. The deepest in a long time... and when I woke up, I could barely move. Enter deep heating rub. I guess it's not too surprising that it's getting harder to focus when I'm here. 6 days left. They are not elapsing fast enough. We arrived at the campsite much later than expected on Friday night. One of our car's tires decided to explode, so we had to get that taken care of before we headed up to Middleofnowhere, WI. Of course, we got lost thanks to some crappy directions, and it being the middle of nowhere and it being darker outside than campsite coffee and it being Friday the 13th... well, we were a little bit frightened. A great place to have limited cell phone service, too. But that's another whole pain in the ace. There really isn't too much to say, other than it was a relaxing few days away from civilization. We drank, cooked, ate, swam (30 minutes after of course), hiked, laid around... but by Sunday morning, I was more than ready to get back to Dodge. You can only stomach smelling like Deep Woods Off for so long. I'm sure Dan and Todd can fill in some of the foggier details, such as the presence of the enigma known as John The Butcher and a family of ravaging rabid bears. I was sick, too. I had exactly what I had the third day of the last tour. The infamous Pittsburgh-show-cancelling-virus, hereby shortened to The Pittsburgh Virus, which was almost the name of our new album. It goes through the day as a mysterious itch in the back of the mouth, accompanied by some voice-altering swelling. In the morning, it is extremely dry and sore... Hence, I went straight from our Kettle Moraine tent to a pharmacy to purchase a humidifier. Slept with it last night. Dime. Feel pretty darn good this morning. Billy Corgan via Shirley Manson was right! (also almost the name of our new album) Get ready boys, we've got another piece of equipment coming with us on the bus, and then on the plane, and then in the van. Do we even have a van? (also almost the name of our new album) Hope you remembered the dates. They'll be back the first week of August... I just got a phone call. Another tire decided to explode on the Kennedy Expressway. Just perfect.
Robert: 169 Straight to Hell - The Clash 170 I Will - The Beatles 171 Mary's Prayer - Danny Wilson Life is a little bit better when you have a humidifier. |
