PARTY HARD

Let's start with this. Yes, my nickname is robot. And yes. I used to drink 3 sparks a day. But, I was sponsored. So I felt inclined to have at least one color serving per day. Lies. I loved the shit. But that's also why I don't get why people still drink it. It's not Sparks anymore. It's not real. It's an orange flavored malt beverage that's eating your stomach away.

My crew in 2005 helped introduce Sparks to the market, when it was only being served in NY and LA. So, every party had it for free and our fridges were stocked. Let's just say when they took it off the market, this little robot got sad and had to find a jet pack to get me all the way home each night. That being said...here are a few random selects from 2005/2006 when the party posse wouldn't function without that all too well known orange tongue. And sorry Four Loco, you ain't got shit on Sparks. Not now, not never.

Cheers to all the friends who helped me funnel my favorite battery acid beverage and fueled me for years of partying, crowd surfing, 12 hour photo shoots and endless touring. And if anyone has a real Sparks on reserve (not Steel), please, send it my way.

I selected a few photo gems to share with you. Featured photos include me & Jade at the Love Yourself warehouse in Los Angeles pre-Magnetic Zeros era, me cooling down a frothy Sparks at The Sounds after party on Vine St., my favorite zippo courtesy of Sparks that even sings to me, drinking and high-fiving outside Capitol Records (a nightly routine), and some old school crews and Sparks built towers and castles.






Can we somehow get this back by popular demand? Drats.

IRRATIONAL
There are some things that are simple and some that are suppose to be and aren't. Let's talk about the stupid cardboard milk or creamer cartons that we could never open when we were 5 and in our mid twenties still can't manage to crack. This happened at Rocket Cat today, while I was preparing my coffee and some dude next to me finished off the creamer and had to open a new container. I took my time putting the sweetener in my cup of Joe while he struggled with the creamer. Then there was nothing to do but watch. "I've almost got it, I just need a tool," he says and then fishes around for a device to actually pry and poke the creamer open. Clearly, I start blatantly laughing at this point. Why can't there just be a nice little spout?! Or a twist off cap like the cardboard orange juice boxes come with? I mean seriously, we're sitting here 4 hands deep trying to rape this box of creamer just so we can prep our coffee. The best part is, once it's open he literally throws a splash into his coffee and says, "Damn...all that work for just that." I felt like I should have shaken the jug up and started spraying it around the cafe in celebration! Of course, then we would have had to spend another half hour opening a new box of creamer.

TIDBITS
I love fun facts. I also love frivolous irrelevant bits of information. Let's talk about the avocado. For one, I'm allergic. But I'll eat the hell out of avocados and guacamole until my lips tingle and I'm reaching for the Benadryl. I like to call it "building up a tolerance."
Furthermore, at Rocket Cat today there was questioning as to why all the lovely avocados were wrapped up in a paper bag. Because they ripen in the shade, dudes. Don't be putting your hard little avocado in a basket in the open air and sun to ripen...because it'll turn brown and mushy. That ain't proper ripening. Avocados fall from the tree and ripen in the shade. Fun facts! So fun, I'm going to go throw some of this fruit on my bagel right now. Yes, an avocado is botanically a fruit. But we treat it as a veggie. Fruit salad!?

Lovely avocado art by Craig Stephens: craigstevens.blogspot.com

HARD & FUN
It's hard. It's fun. It's out of control!! Jacci Stallone has one of the raddest blogs. I love it. I love her. And I love that she asked to do a feature interview on Shadowscene which was just posted today. I made fun of some stuff (as usual), made fun of myself (typical), and explained how it is that I've been having nonstop fun for the past 6+ years.
Speaking of fun...this past year has dominated. I've been trying to top the summer of 2005 for, well, fuck...five years now. And finally, I had to spend a summer in a different city on the opposite coast to do it, but I did it! Philly = top notch over the top wild ass fun. Seriously. Remember parties where people would dance all night? Where there were no holds barred and 'anything goes' was an understatement for the evening. Well yeah. It was like Oregon trail out here for while except this time we've headed East. Pickles has an ingrown claw, Penndelton is bald and I'm thirsty as fuck...but we made it. Let the dance party full music face melting blasts ensue. And mad props to Franki Chan for bringing back CYP2. Los Angeles just got a face-lift. Again.

RECAP SNAP
Oh snap...back from tour. And still tired and wondering when I'm suppose to go to the next city. Recaps are boring. So I'm not even going to try and sit here and blah blah about what happened here and there. My dumb ass should have done that every day but I was too busy being cooped up in a van with four dudes, passing out intermittently for car ride cat naps, or breaking things on stage. Yes, I broke a lot of mic stands. And if you didn't feed me when I arrived to the venue I probably took my sweet ass time making it to the stage because I was too busy snooping around for kibble. I will say overall on the tour, Rochester, Boston, Charlotte and Brooklyn took the lead as my favorites. Rochester was punk as fuck. Boston was some old school stomping ground shit where I gave Kenan a tour of Beacon Hill and Samuel Adams drinking. I had to make KB put the grape drank down in exchange for some brews, but boy did he dig it. Charlotte was the home of The Milestone which is now one of my favorite venues by far. Seedy. Dark. Splattered in stickers and graffiti and has been graced by the likes of Bad Brains, Nirvana, Motorhead and more. And of course, Brooklyn Bowl. BB hooked it up to the point of even having a shower. Where the hell was that midway through tour!? Other tour highlights include meeting the amazing Hank & Cupcakes, having a delightful Israeli dinner, spending some time with friends in Atlanta, buying new socks, surviving two nights of "sleep" in the van when it's 31 degrees outside and you all wear four layers to keep warm, finding an abandoned house in the woods that straight up should have been the Vorhees house and naturally taking a group photo in front of it...oh...and rocking the fuck out.

On a side note, Eddie A. would like to take this moment to give his own rendition of the Biker Daughter tour recap. No, he wasn't there. But if he were this is what he'd say.
Eddie A...as Ellei J.:

Where do I begin! These new socks are so warm, they're the kind of socks that are like gloves, every toe is in its own compartment. SO TOASTY! I want to bring up that in Brooklyn we robbed a bank, and the police delivered pizzas because all of the hostages were getting hungry, we didn't hurt anyone, it was sort of like the movie Airheads we gave the delivery boy a $7,000,000,000 tip then we played a impromptu set on the roof of the bank and then got helicoptered out just in time for our next gig. The cops didn't want to press any charges because we melted so many faces off.
When people say my name it sounds like they're saying Alejandro sometimes!
We all got bowl-cuts in Charlotte and rocked some face off, sold a shit ton of merch!
We brought everyone in beacon hill back to our hotel and ordered the best room service and when we left it looked like Izzy and Slash had been there, good thing we got that shit comped!
I'm most glad to be back in Philly hanging out with Eddie A.
TOUR WAS SICK!
-Eddie A