DIARY

I have a thing for notebooks.

I buy them, find them, get them as gifts and start writing in them. The plan is usually to use one for one thing and another for a different thing, but soon after I start, I forget which is which and just grab whichever one I feel like carrying that day.

The best part about having all these random, half-filled notebooks? That I still have them all.

I have the spiral notebook with a sacred heart on it that I bought from Hot Topic when I was 19 where I recap a trip I took to Portland where all of my vegan friends decided we were on "road trip rules" and could eat anything they wanted. A few pages later I write about having seen Converge for the first time and how in awe I was. Thing is, I was still a little in awe the last time I saw Converge in 2009, too. Some things don't change.

There's the red U of U notebook that has a partial outline/notes and reading parts from the first screenplay I wrote back in 2005 and a first person narrative story that I never finished.

I have four different notebooks with GCA podcast notes, SLCFF suggestions, movie review slug lines and Comic Con notes.

There's the notebook in which I used to outline every issue of the second half of Red Pulse back when I was the editor.

A little black one with a "Sharks Are Scarier Than Terrorism" sticker on the front has pages and pages of different line breaks and the formations of the poems I wrote back in 2007. Those were later typed up neatly for my poetry class and I think I still have the critiques I got from my classmates that were too scared to leave their names.

All of them rest on the top shelf of the bookcase right behind my desk, that way, every once in a while I can grab a random notebook and see what I was thinking at any given time over the past 13 years.

I can't bear to part with them. For damn good reason, too.

SICK OF MY FACE YET?

I like uploading pictures here way more than Flickr or Facebook. I don't really know why, but it'll probably continue. You're cool with that, right?

Flamingos. Always Flamingos.

@nomoregardner

Chief.

World Champions.

Art.

1/2 a happy couple. Just here though.

All of the lights.

Hangin' on the corner of 52nd and Broadway...

So close to smiling.

More art.

PICTURE TIME

Sometimes I can be photogenic

One day, DF and I are going to make an indie rock record and this will be the insert

No dogs but dawgz are okay. Badum-bum-ching!

"It's all in the reflexes"

The size difference isn't nearly as great as it seems.

Am I a male model yet?

I miss them already.

PHOTO BOMB

I've been busy.

I Instagram'd and Instagram Instagramming an Instagram

Just peepin' in on Jay Z's place

Against the grain

Parlor games

THE GREAT PAN

The top of Casa De Fletcher.

Click me for bigness!

THE STORY SO FAR

It's been raining more than it hasn't since I've been here, which means a lot of museums and other inside things. It did let up for a few hours, long enough for Dan Fletcher and I to wander around Central Park without getting drenched.

Saw The Descendents, H2O and The Suicide Machines last night and it was the most fun I've had at a show in a long time. So much PMA it was ridiculous.

Also, I've eaten more delicious food than I can handle. Almost.

I MIGHT HAVE AN ANSWER FOR THAT

Have you ever been dying to ask me that one important question, but always been secretly afraid of what I might say?

No? Oh, well, do you think you could pretend? It might help me pass some time.

I'm sure this will only be entertaining for a few days, but have at it. Leave your name or be completely anonymous, it doesn't matter to me.

Ask Me Anything - www.formspring.me/trevorQhale

Yep. That's a Q. Maybe that can be one of your questions. See how helpful I am?

THE BUCKET OF DEATH... THE RETURN

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

I always take my video camera with me when I go out of town. Or I at least try to. That doesn't mean I use the entire time I'm gone, though. I took it with me every time Cherem went on tour, but it would spend 90% of the trip in the camera bag under the second bench. I would be all about it for the first day or two, but then I'd get sick of carrying it.

Last June, we went to California to see a band called Disembodied play a reunion show (The album pictured to the left is on my Top 10 records of all time list, by the way). There were about 10 of us on one flight and nearly two dozen more that drove down separately. I tried to take as much video as I could, but didn't get much. When I got back home, I immediately transferred all the footage to my computer and forgot about it soon after. I started cleaning up my hard drive this weekend and found it, so I threw it all together and released it to the Internets.

There wasn't a whole lot to work with, but I think it turned out reasonably well. And it will be fun for me to look back at in a few years. Probably won't be as much fun for anyone that isn't in the video.

I shot the first hour or so we were there on Friday, didn't shoot anything on Saturday and I ran out of tape at Disneyland on Sunday. This is what I was able to get out of that. Enjoy!

UNBROKEN

So good.

EMERALD CITY

I went to Seattle this weekend to see Unbroken. I've always wanted to see them and I missed both the Chicago and California shows, so I figured this might be my last chance. Totally worth the trip. They were awesome, shit got nuts and I had a good time.

However, I did manage to make one giant, idiotic mistake. I left my bag in the overhead compartment on the plane. Such a dumb move.

I had been off the plane for an hour before I realized it. I had everything important in my backpack, so I wasn't too stressed, but I had no clothes. Kristien drove me to the nearest Target so I could get a few things, so that was a plus but still. Pretty sure i'll never get it back, either. I didn't put any tags on it (since it was a carry-on) and it wasn't in the SEA/TAC lost and found. The nice lady did send an e-mail to the next three places that plane went to, but I'm not holding out much hope.

All I lost was a few shirts, a hoodie and a pair of pants that was falling apart, but I did lose a badass shirt that had an ape king riding a mastodon. Oh well.

I did tourist-y shit all day Saturday before the show: Went to the EMP, the Sci-Fi Museum and the Aquarium. Weather was nice and I spent the whole day walking, then the show that night was awesome.

Nothing too exciting. Sorry for the bland post, it's late and I'm not very creative today.

I think I'll take a cue from Brandee and start making this blog a little more entertaining. After all, isn't that why you're here?

COMIC CON VIDEO

I'm no Marty Scorsese, but I pretend...

FROM THE PAST

I found a stash of cassette tapes and unmarked CD's the other day. I was afraid to listen to any of them for one reason—embarrassment.

I don't know exactly what's on them, but I have an idea. I'm always weary of listening to old mixtapes because I'm somewhat ashamed of the music I used to listen to. Now, a lot of it is still good and I'll still stand by that. There are a lot of bands I liked when I was 15 that I still like now (i.e. Misfits, Social Distortion and hell, Rage Against the Machine even) but for every good song that comes on I dread what might be right after it.

Keep in mind that I was 15 in 1995. That's a long fucking time ago. I didn't have any older siblings to get me into music. The only older guys I knew only listened to U2, so I was kind of on my own. Every couple of weeks, I'd take the number 7 bus down to Sugarhouse and wander around Raunch (which at that time, had moved to the old strip mall that was eventually torn down to make way for the Wild Oats) with babysitting money and try to guess what was going to be good. And usually I only had enough for one cassette single and some Taco Bell afterwards, so I had to choose wisely.

But I digress.

I pulled out one tape, popped it in my stereo (is it weird that I still have a stereo with a dual cassette deck?), hit fast-forward and stopped randomly and I knew exactly what was playing.

Lenny Kravitz - "Are You Gonna Go My Way?"
Not as bad as it could have been, but still. The only reason I ever owned anything by Lenny Kravitz is because I had a crush on a girl who loved him. Naturally, I thought the way to get her was to also love Lenny Kravitz. That didn't work and I was stuck with the man's entire discography purchased from second-hand CD stores with the rest of my aforementioned babysitting money.

Go again. Fast forward. Stop.

Live - "Lightning Crashes"
I don't know why I had this. It played on The Box all the time and it was easy enough to play on guitar. I made my band cover it a couple of times. I can't remember what we were called then. It was a little bit after we decided Renaldo and the Smoothies was too silly and before were came up the brilliance that was Rhythm and Rhymes. Back to Live. I saw them in concert when they opened for Bush and No Doubt, then they kind of faded away. I probably still have their second album on one of these tapes, too.

Fast forward.

Better Than Ezra - "Good"
This is still a good song. I stopped paying attention to anything they did afterwards, but this is solid.

Again.

Hootie and the Blowfish - "Hold My Hand"
Fuck. I don't have any kind of humorous anecdote for why I had this.

Fast forward.

Blues Traveler - "Run Around"
I'm convinced that harmonica sales tripled after this album came out. Then shortly afterwards everyone realized they weren't as easy to play as imagined and they all wound up at the DI.

Go again.

Dave Matthews Band - "What Would You Say"
This is what I was afraid of. I'm losing indie cred by the second and my hardcore scene points are flying out the door at record pace.

Fast Forward.

Soundgarden - "Fell On Black Days"
This is still one of my favorite bands. A little bit of redemption.

One more time.

Candlebox - "Far Behind"
God damn it.

That's just one tape. I like to think that as I got older my taste in music got better, but I'm afraid of all the shitty metalcore that awaits me on one of those unmarked CD's from the early 2000's. I don't think I can do that right now.