A little snag...

We've finally got some computer time. Sorry for the absence.

We're in St Paul, Minnesota where appearantly "it's not cold." It's snowing... that's flakes of frozen water falling from the sky!! I guess we'll start worrying when the locals think it's cold. I don't think we'll see that.

Anyway, back to the shows...We played the Fireball Espresso Cafe in Falcon Heights, MN with Edel Veis (MN), The Fit (Brooklyn, NY), Mike from Dying Midwestern [with Sean and Tommy from Small Towns Burn A Little Slower (MN)], and The New Renaissance (MN). We'd like to thank all of them for letting us play and cook our food in-doors. So to all of them... a great, big, warm "THANKS!" Also Thanks Sean for putting us up for a couple of days and throwing a show on our day off... and the beer. It's cold.

Saturday- Ankeny, Iowa right out side of Des Moines...the show at the Junkyard was great, the kids were great, and our hosts were most definately great! Troubled Hubble (Chicago) and Sounds Like a Winner (Des Moines) played the show. Thanks to Kurt and Mr. Hanna... sorry we made you late for church. Awesome show. We'll definitely be back!

Lets see, a quick note to Sean from Chicago... Dude! Is your dog okay? We saw him poop out another dog then he shook and passed out. We hope he's okay.

We are freezing our genitalia in Chicago! We hopped on a show at the Prodigal Son last night, it was really cool except it was almost too cold to do anything but light yourself on fire. I personally couldn't feel my fingers until the third or fourth song. Anyhow, thanks to the Slats (Iowa and there abouts), Crush Kill Destroy (we believe are from Chicago but we were too cold to ask), and of course our favorite band in the whole wide world...the Rosario Focus (Jersey City, New Jersey... represent). All of these bands kicked ass, thanks again for letting us jump your show. Thanks to Sean who helped us find parking, took us under his roof, made us warm and let us watch Singles. Well kids, it's off to Des Moines (did i spell it right?) and hopefully it's nowhere near this cold and we regain the feeling in our blue, frost bite ridden limbs. Remember, you can now order our CD online at Ballyhoo Withdrawal. laters-j

Our CD is now available to order online at Ballyhoo Withdrawal.

One day, Jorge, we'll have insurance and we'll ALL get new glasses. Well, okay maybe not Mike. But we'll at least get him a freakin' mask so he doesn't breathe in any more viruses. Geeesh. I'll see you (not squinting, of course) in a few days.

Oh... hey, get your prescription, and for around $80.00, we'll get you some new glasses at that place in the mall. We'll save up. I want you driving, buddy. -D

Okay, I just posted something and somehow managed to erase it. I'm an idiot. Well, we apologize for getting sick on you. We've all kind of scattered across the great state of Texas, but we will resume the tour on the 20th of this month in Chicago. We hope to see you there.

This is a message for the bastard or bastards that stole my glasses at the greyhound bus terminal in Austin: They're prescription glasses man! Did you think I wouldn't notice they were gone? JERK! What an ass. - jorge (You'll know who I am from all of the squinting I'll be doing for the rest of the tour). There, I've vented. Anyway, we'll see you guys in Chicago and keep spreading the word. By the way I'll be taking greyhound back to Austin on Monday. If you have a soul you'll see fit to bring my freaking glasses back. Okay, now I'm done.

We've all taken ill.

Okay, we could probably deal with having a cold, but not with THE CHICKEN POX! That's right, Mike's "strange rash" turned out to be Chicken Pox. I'm sure you all know the prescription for Chicken Pox... rest, rest, rest. And stay at home. So, we're cancelling a few shows. We plan to pick up again on November 20 in Chicago.

So, I get some time at home. Of course, I got Jared's cold so how much fun will that be? If I get to feeling better, maybe I'll get that loft built that we've been talking about.

We're hanging out in Tyler today. Not much has changed since the last diary was posted except now three of us are sick, Darin is not one of the three. It looks like Mike has the chicken pox or he is slowly mutating into the toxic avenger. By the way, it is Mikes birthday so if you like to send him birthday wishes, get well soon type stuff or even if you just want to ridicule him feel free to do so on the guestbook. We've had to cancel the show for tonight which was scheduled to be at the Fire Bird in Fayetteville, AR. Sorry kids, Mike needs a big bowl of tomato soup. Well, i guess thats it for now. -jorge

We're all tired today. Something about the last few days has drained us. Jared is sick, like with a cold or something. Mike's got a weird rash or something. Hmmm, maybe we should disinfect the van.

The show in San Angelo went relatively well. We played with Top Gun Dropouts, Before Braille, & Jupiter Sunrise. Looks like we'll be doing some dates with Before Braille in January. They were all real nice guys. It was my first time to meet them. The rest of the guys played a show with them before I started playing back in September, so I guess they were all chums before this show. Check out their web page: www.beforebraille.com

The Tyler show tonight was a bit of a disappointment. Not many people showed up. I guess you can blame that on me - I didn't get the promotion machine going like I should have. "Thank you" to the 15 paying people that did show. I think next time we play Tyler, we'll do something different - like an old-fashioned hall show, or maybe a warehouse show. I'll have to look in to that. The Texas Radio (formerly The Fan Club / The John Garvin Fan club) played the show. I like those guys. They've got a good thing going... kinda Deseparecidos-ish... which is a good thing. Keep it up guys. Do they have a website?

I'm sleepy.

What we're listening to: 1-10

01) No Knife "Riot for Romance!"
02) Sparta CD "Wiretap Scars"
03) Schatzi "Fifty Reasons to Explode"
04) The Promise Ring (RIP) "Wood/Water" & "Nothing Feels Good"
05) Hot Water Music "Caution"
06) Cursive - all
07) Jawbreaker - all (Thanks Jim!)
08) Death Cab For Cutie - all
09) Counting Crows - all
10) John Vanderslice "Mass Suicide Occult Figurines"

Okay, this blogger thingee will replace our normal tour diary page. It's a lot easier to update the blogger than it is to do the other thing. Besides, we can all post whatever we feel. And hey, maybe I'll get out of typing up all their crap. Poor guys... So, I've put all the past diaries on this one post. From now on, it'll be individual posts... i hope. - Darin

11-9-02

Yeah, so we had quite an interesting day yesterday. We arrived in Arlington about 4:00 PM, and decided it would be best to make some money pimping CDs at the mall. I dropped off the kids with the intention of going to Kinko's and working on some web page updates, etc. I was distracted by the Sprint Store next to the mall. (We serioulsy need to pay our outrageous phone bills). So I thought I'd run over to the Sprint Store and see what damage I could do to my credit card. Earlier, I came up with the idea of putting our 2 phones on one account so we can share minutes and cut down on phone costs. Turns out that was pretty ingeious on my part, because that little plan-o-mine will cut about 40% off our phone expenses. Good for me. Now, if we can just get Jared's bill caught up, we can put this brilliant plan into action.

Well, I barely had time to rejoice in my new discovery when I receive a "pay phone" call. It was Jorge... oh and some guy in the background saying, "Did I cuss you? Did I cuss you?" Jorge said, "Um, come meet us at Kinko's coz we just got kicked out." You see, mall security guards don't take too kindly to CD solicitation by The Conversation. So, this is becoming a pretty frequent occurance. It took 3 security guards to kick the guys out of the mall. I really don't think they had much else to do. One of these days we're gonna sell a CD to one of those rent-a-pigs.

So now it's, oh about 4:45 PM. The Hulen Mall is our next target. No problems there. I couldn't find a Kinko's with a phone line. That's my only complaint.

Around 6:15 PM we head towards Olio's rehearsal space for the invite-only show. It turned into a practice for us. We appearantly disturbed the peaceful neighborhood around Granbury Drive, because the piglets came to shut it all down. I'm not real sure what all happened after the cops came, but I think our contact for the show was hauled off in the piggie-mobile. They searched him as hard as they could to find some sort of contraband material. I'm kinda thinking that cop was out to get somebody, cause he was a pure difinitive cop/dickhead. We quietly loaded our gear while all this happened. One of the guys in the rehearsal space next to the one we played in said that we should probably "get the fuck out of here." So we did.

Hey, "O.P." Thanks for everything. I hope everything's cool. Next time, let's play The Wreck Room... what do you say? - Darin

11-07-02

Howdy! Here we are in Nacogdoches, Texas at Java Jack's. Great show. Our set was a little short, but a great show nonetheless. Much thanks to Popsickle for setting up the show and rocking hard... and giving us a place to stay. Lufkin kids, thanks for coming out. And the Level shirts kick ass. - Jorge


11-06-02

Okay kids, we blew it again. Let's catch up. The show on my birthday was tiny, but we got free pizza... I think that's where Mike left off. The next day (October 30th) we were off to Gulfport! We played a cool show at Hawg's Tavern with some local boys and a band from Jackson. My amp broke, so I just sang, but the kids didn't seem to mind.

We spent Halloween partying in New Orleans. We got drunk, hung out with James Dean from Jupiter Sunrise, and Jorge is very sorry about the hotdog buns.

November 1st in Tyler sucked, but thanks to our friends for coming to the show. Grey Sky Campaign rocked, and I'd like to thank Craig for hanging out after the show. On November 2nd we played in Lufkin, Texas. And even though we were so late that we almost missed the show, it still rocked. I want to thank all the kids in Lufkin and Dave at Dave’s Skatepark for being so cool (that’s why we’re going back on January 18th).

The next day we played with After The Fall and The Booked in Corpus Christi. Aside from the rain, the show was great! We're pretty used to the rain now. It's rained just about everyday everywhere we've been. No rain today... nice. Monday we played at Taco Land in San Antonio! Small show, nice people, free beer. Okay, for reals... we'll start doing these every show. Thanks - Jared

Afterthought: "Domestica" could be the best album ever, the pink album is the best Sunny Day, and together or not, Jawbreaker rules.

10-29-02

It's been a few days since we last documented anything, so I'll try my best to recall all the important little tidbits. Okay, let me see... where did we leave off?

After a somewhat grueling drive from Birmingham, Alabama straight to New Brunswick, New Jersey, we played to a standing room only crowd. I should mention that we played in a very small basement, nonetheless it was a packed room. We played with some pretty amazing bands that night (all of which were from the Jersey area). Dots Will Echo was a bit more poppy than I would consider us, but they rocked. Risk Relay was up next. They rocked out the house, as well. Darin says they reminded him of The Icarus Line, but not quite so crazy. The Rosario Focus closed the show. These guys are 3/4 of the now defunct Plug Spark Sanjay. I loved Plug Spark when they toured through El Paso, and was a bit disappointed to hear they had broken up. But their new project, The Rosario Focus, was just amazing. We definitely recommend that everyone check them out: www.therosariofocus.com. They're a cool bunch of guys, as well.

And speaking of cool guys, we had the pleasure of meeting a fella by the name of Jim Testa, the editor and publisher of Jersey Beat fanzine. We'd like to thank Jim for the great feedback, and especially for the Jawbreaker CDs. Oh, if anyone gets a chance, check out the Jersey Beat web page at www.jerseybeat.com. There's a lot of great reviews and info about a lot of great (and not-so-great) bands.

So now I'm done pluggin' the zine, I'll go ahead and mention that our second show in Jersey at Uncle Joe's in Jersey City was just as cool as the first show in New Brunswick, with the exception of the rain. It's been raining ever since that night. So on we drove in the rain. We didn't have a lot of time to get to our next destination, so we left right after the show. Blacksburg, Virginia awaited. There's some really friendly people in Virginia. Overall, it was a good time. The past few days are a bit of a haze for me, so forgive my vague ramblings. I promise I'll be a bit more tedious with them in the future. We're all still getting used to things.

I really don't have much to say about the past two shows. Pensacola, Florida was a good show, as was our Atlanta show. Many thanks to Mark from Jupiter Sunrise for helping us out with those. Today, I'm sitting here in Barnstormer Pizza (Montevallo, Alabama) hunched over a notebook scribbling diligently and desperately trying to get this entry done in time to post for tomorrow. I assume tonight's show will be reviewed and scrutinized or revered or whatever by some other member of the Conversation. So, I'll sign of with some exquisite pizza in my belly and some cheap beer on my breath. Oh, one last thing... today was Jared's 25th birthday, so the next time you see him, give him a slug or two. - Mike

10-23-02

Well, here we are somewhere in Alabama, and so far all is well. I don't know how many people have been checking this part of the web site to find nothing, but I'm going to fix that right now. We've been gone for almost a month now, and it's going to be hard to sum up in any sort of tolerable length, but I'll do my best.

Texas was great as always, and we had a lot of fun with West Beverly. I think we're planning an East Coast thing with them some time soon... should be cool. The South was great! I want to thank everyone for coming out to the shows and all the bands we played with, especially Winterset and An End To October... see you fuckers in February!

Now, I've got to get to New Orleans. Well, we were out on Bourbon Street pimping our new full length, and we end up selling a CD to the lead singer of Gwar... GWAR! So we talk for a short while with Dave (that's his mortal name), and it turns out that his band is playing at the House of Blues on the following day. We didn't have a show on that night so Dave put us on the guest list and throws in a few back stage passes. Needless to say, the show was incredibly foul and vulgar... it was probably one of the greatest shows we've ever been to. Fucking awesome!

We also want to thank Karla and Jim from The Picts for letting us crash for several days at their house. I guess that's all for now. I know this could be better, and I promise we'll be paying more attention to it in the future. I Just thought I'd throw something up for now. Now it's off to the Northeast for some shows... two months to go. Davey, wish you were here. Bye for now! - Jared