Rational Anthem just finished recording at Black Bear in Gainesville and it sounds great. As much as I wanna talk about different songs, I’ll wait ’til everyone else can actually listen to it. I’m really excited about it though AND I found out the other day that I’m doing the artwork for it, which (of course) makes it even more exciting.
We’re headed for Tampa right now but before I get back to Jacksonville, I’m planning to hit St Pete, Sarasota/Bradenton, and Delray/Boca. Gonna visit a bunch of friends and try to hit a few galleries and other spaces about getting some shows set up for a little later in the year. To that end, I brought a ton of my prints with me, so if you wanna take a look and pick some up or just hang out, hit me up! My (tentative) schedule looks something like…
Wed-Thu: St Pete
Fri-Mon: Sarasota
Tue-Fri: Delray
Here’s a picture of me because posts with pictures of me always get a lot of attention. (PROBABLY BECAUSE I’M SO HANDSOME, RIGHT??)
6 AM. Walking home.
It’s 40 degrees outside and I still haven’t gone to bed.
Pineapple soda, a cigarette,
BRAND NEW RATIONAL ANTHEM playing in my headphones.
What more could an idiot ask for?
—–
I stayed up all night, clearing out my house,
Getting rid of the things in my life that I don’t need.
Some of it is really hard to get rid of.
I still don’t know if I’ll actually be able to part with my zine collection.
And (honestly) I haven’t even considered the records.
But I’m young, itinerant,
I’d rather not be weighed down by possessions.
Do you ever fantasize about your house burning down
And starting over with nothing?
I do.
I’m working to be okay with the idea that if something is important
It’ll come back to me.
I don’t need to cling to anything.
Or only to so much, in any case.
—–
Here’s a cartoon I drew in an Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was the second of three that night.
The third being My Favorite Cartoon.
This one’s not important.
It’s just about me,
Being a resentful little jerk-off.
“Broken Records.” 1/15/13. Pen on scrap. 5×3½”.
There’s no way for me to explain what I was thinking when I drew this without sounding like an asshole. Which is okay – after all – sometimes I’m an asshole!
This kid was rambling on and every word out of his mouth reeked of “here’s some shit I heard some other clueless bastard say at a meeting, so now I’m gonna repeat it at all of you so that I can walk back to my halfway house confident that you guys will think I’ve really got a handle on this recovery thing.”
Which – who knows – maybe that’s me projecting. Or maybe it’s just me being bitter about some girl not paying enough attention to me. And – honestly – what the fuck should I even care? I guess it’s easy to fall into this kind of judgmental/negative thought when you’re compelled to go to more meetings than you’d otherwise elect to on your own. I might have needed that many at one point early on (or I might not have) but by this time last year, I was definitely ready to move on to the next phase. And within a month I had done just that.
“This is All a Misunderstanding.” 12/3/12. Pen. 8×10″.
I started the band Extra Day For Riots in 2003 when I was seventeen. In the summer of 2004, we went on a short tour. At our show in Jackson, Tennessee, we noticed some cop cars parked out by our van. As the hours passed, the cops didn’t. They just sat there. We were never up to any good but hadn’t done anything (on that day) that they’d have any way of knowing about, so we did our best to pretend they weren’t there. Finally, one of them came inside. “Is there a Samuel North here?”
Fuck.
I stepped forward. “We need you to come outside,” they told me. I had no idea what was going on, but I went.
“Are you the owner of this van?” Yeah. “Were you at the Old Hickory Mall earlier today?” Yeah. “A woman filed a report that the driver of this van, before entering the vehicle and leaving the mall, exposed his penis to her.”
What the fuck? I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. And then it hit me.
My belt had broken and, earlier that day, I was complaining about it to the other kids as we were getting in the van. “Check out how ridiculous this is,” I told them. “The waist of these pants is so worn out that I can make them drop just by clenching my butt.” I demonstrated, letting my pants fall off my waist without the use of my hands. Then I pulled them up and we left. At no point was my penis exposed (I was wearing underwear) but I guess my friends weren’t my only audience and – for whatever reason – this person reported an exaggerated version to the police.
I explained what actually happened, but the cops didn’t believe me. “Seriously!” I pleaded. “Here, look.” With my arms out at my sides, I let my pants drop. The one cop eyed me with contempt: “Pull your pants up and go inside,” he said, “we’re done here.”
—–
Right around the time I started drawing just for the fun/fuck of it, I thought of that night for the first time in years. I was sitting inside Tranquil Shores, waiting for group to start, and I picked Alexis‘ notebook up off her chair and scribbled out an even more exaggerated version of what happened.
—–
Wanna see me and little Hembrough playing a high school talent show TEN YEARS AGO? Well I just so happen to have a video of Extra Day For Riots’ performance at Sarasota High School during the ’03-’04 school year. (Hembrough plays bass in Rational Anthem now, but back then he played drums; I sang).
In conjunction with my interview with the band (published in this month’s issue – #76), Razorcake Online just published a short story I wrote about one particularly ridiculous day on our tour back in 2009. You can read it on their website or you can even download it as an eBook! Technology, huh? Scope it out here.
One note: if this were written today, it’d have a radically different tone. My perception back then was pretty out of whack. I trust that you’ll be able to see through the author’s bullshit and identify the real villain and the real victims.
Update: The reviews are pouring in! (Via text messages).
Chris Hembrough says: “The desert story is really good. I got mad and then kinda sad and then kinda smiley .”
Dave Dillon says: “Read that story, its really great. I remember you saying you were writing it a long time ago. We’re hitting the road now. Youre going to fest right?”
Pete Stolp says: “Dude fantasy draft is going down right now.” [But he wasn’t on that tour so fuck him].
“Whatevermind II (Pinkhairdontcare).” 5/12/13. Pen. 8×10″.
I shipped out the inserts for Rational Anthem’s Whatevermind LP this morning. Pictured above is the art that I made for those after I decided that my first attempt didn’t quite match the themes of the album. The band should have the records for sale in time for Pre-Fest next week). “Pinkhairdontcare” is what some little girl nicknamed me while I was filming “No Real Than You Are” (or so I’m told). It was also the caption Van used when he posted his portrait of me on Facebook. My character wears a Rational Anthem shirt in most of his scenes so… – seems like an appropriate title.
Portrait by Van Jazmin.
—–
Today’s been really pleasant. After the post office, I came back home to find a package from a friend, waiting by my door. Aside from the book and the “underwear that is orange,” it had a really nice card/letter. I also got a check in the mail and (now that my bank finally has a branch in this city) I was able to go deposit it. As you could probably tell from my newest painting, financial panic was starting to set in these last couple days. Yesterday, were I to set aside the money I’d need to pay my bills on the first of the month, I’d only have had five dollars to spare. And yet, one day later, I have enough of a cushion that I should be okay. I definitely still need to figure out some ways to branch out and sell more artwork because my current “situation” definitely isn’t sustainable but I think things are gonna be alright (even if I don’t have any evidence to support that proposition!)
(I came up with an idea last night – something I’m planning on ending my entries with… While some people might find it objectionable, I’ve given it some thought and I’m comfortable with it. It won’t change the fact that I still need to “branch out” and reach a bigger audience, but it does have some potential to help facilitate that).
But anyway, riding around town, running errands – the weather’s nice, people are nice (they smile at me) – life is good. I was listening to Against Me! and it occurred to me that their strongest material is probably the stuff they recorded for Fat, which happens to be the period in which I paid them the least attention.
For example, is there any better sentence fragment than “…if this is how I communicate and demonstrate a love of life…” – from “T.S.R. (This Shit Rules)?”
And while I think their weakest releases (outside of the really early demos) are New Wave and (to a lesser extent) White Crosses, there are a handful of really strong songs there. I remember when WC came out, Taylor fucking hated whenever I’d listen to “Bamboo Bones,” mostly on account of the lyric, “what God doesn’t give to you, you’ve got to go and get for yourself.” I found it amusing – not because I wasn’t equally put off by all things even remotely religious or spiritual at the time – just because it was so against the grain. (I like anything that fucks with people just a little bit). It’s kind of brave in that sense: to sing about “God,” in that way, in a band with an audience like Against Me!’s. I don’t know what meaning the songwriter attaches to the word but, when you throw something that vague (and bold) into the world, you can bet it’s gonna be spun all kindsa ways by all kindsa people. Today, I like that lyric a lot.
I don’t really use the word “God” these days but, in the short period in which I was, I liked it. I might not have had the same meaning for it as anyone I spoke to, but it connected me with people that I don’t usually connect with – in a way that I don’t usually connect with anyone. And like today, it just felt nice. Pleasant.
I was updating Storenvy listings when I found the original statement that I had written for “Out All Day” back in June but hadn’t included when I wrote my blog entry around it in early August. So I went back just now and worked it in.
In doing so, of course, I also read what I did write at that point: something about how I had sold a bunch of records and books that day but no artwork. And how I had some ideas as to why that might be, but that the reasons didn’t matter. That’d be true if it weren’t for the fact that I was afraid to acknowledge them. But I can now.
In early August, I was doing my best to be positive and upbeat but I think it was coming across in my art and my writing that all was not well. I had just wrapped with the shooting of “No Real Than You Are,” one of my first entries on this website was a painting detailing a relapse from earlier that day, and I think I looked a lot like a disaster waiting to happen.
I was used to a regular flow of feedback from posting my artwork on Facebook. When I got home to Jacksonville and launched this website in the last week of July, I half-suspected that I’d start to get more than ever (especially in light of the text content I was posting to accompany the art). That didn’t happen. Instead, my stream of feedback ceased almost entirely. After a week or so, I asked my friend David if he had any guesses as to why that might be. “I don’t think people know what to say,” he told me.
At the time, I thought that meant that the things I was putting up here were so earnest and vulnerable that they made people uncomfortable. There might be a little truth to that but, in hindsight, I think it’s mostly because I looked like I was about to fall – back into heroin, misery, and shit – and like I had no idea it was coming. If nothing else though, I know that my soul felt rotten and my strained optimism wasn’t hiding it. I had fallen apart to some extent – more than I was willing to let on (and I still haven’t talked about everything that happened with anyone other than my counselors and a few close friends). I’m sure I’ll eventually get to the point where I’m able to be as open about that period of time as I am about most of my life but – for now – I’m just happy that I pulled through it.
While Heather certainly deserves a lot of credit for my well-being overall, I think that – had it not been for Rational Anthem and the trip they took me on – things could have turned out much differently and much worse. I can say without any reservations that I’m really happy to be exactly where I am right now. – I’m really happy that I don’t have to remind myself to be grateful right now.
Granted, I was in a rough spot last night but those things happen. In fact, in that respect, tonight’s a lot like the night when I actually made “Out All Day” – just twenty four hours after the emotional turmoil that created “Blueprint for a Successful Evening.” I just hope that from here my next piece doesn’t turn out to be along the lines of the one that came next.
I remember in 2008, somebody asked me, “Are you really still gonna care about bands like Drunken Boat and Ringers five years from now?” I stated confidently that I would. And I do! In his review of the Frozen Teens LP, Todd Taylor compares the band to The Replacements, Bent Outta Shape, and Drunken Boat. Obviously, The Replacements get their due every day and Bent Outta Shape still get nods pretty often too. But it’s nice to see that someone else out there picked up on the little something-specials going on in the music of Drunken Boat, remembers them, and still cares as much as I do.
I don’t know Bianca, but in her review of the Peeple Watchin’ cassette, she writes, “If I were in a pit of despair, this would be the soundtrack to my triumphant escape from it.” And that is exactly how I felt about Peeple Watchin’s “I’m Still Here, Asshole” in the darkest moments of this last July.
Marty Ploy’s top five list concludes with “Having Rational Anthem in southern California for a week.” I love those kids too, Marty!
Another reviewer I don’t know (Rick Ecker) writes of The Turkletons (in his review of their split with Lipstick Homicide) that they’re “every bit the equal on this split single.” Like my first little note, I think Lipstick Homicide are a band that have been getting the recognition they deserve but it makes me happy to see that The Turkletons are too. If Lipstick Homicide’s “Not That Easy” is my favorite song on the record, then The Turkletons’ “Geography” is only the slightest scratch behind it. And the lead in that song is definitely the highlight of the record.
A few weeks back, Jesse (Slow Death) wrote something online about all of the records he had in the works and Chris (Turkletons) said something like, “You’re boring everyone.” His response: “What if I told you they were all based around puns and clever wordplay?” Chris: “Sold!” I think I laughed out loud reading that.
Ten thousand years ago, I was supposed to release The Humanoids’ debut full-length on Traffic Street. Those plans took a backseat to my heroin problem but the LP has finally seen the light of day thanks to Darren’s new(ish) label, Throwing Things Records. He gave me a copy when Rational played with The Haddonfields in St. Louis last month, it just happens to be spinning on my turntable as I type all of this, and – like everything else that I just mentioned – it’s one more little thing that makes me happy, one more little thing that puts a smile on my face.
Did you know that there are people in the world who care about shit other than pop punk?
![This is All a Misunderstanding [print image]](https://i0.wp.com/sammythrashlife.com/wp-content/uploads/this-is-all-a-misunderstanding-300x252.jpg?resize=150%2C126)
