ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Up until about a week ago, I'd never set a single foot in Colorado. I've driven through a few times while on tour, but we were never able to book a show and I didn't really have any other reason to head east.

I just got home from spending almost a week there (over the course of two trips) and it was pretty great. I had no idea what to expect, but I loved the city. If it didn't snow just as much, if not more, than Salt Lake City in the winter, it would be on the list of cities that I would actually consider moving to (but probably never actually will).

The first leg of the trip, I drove out in a rental car with my friends Casey and Oz. For the second half, I flew, but met up with Casey, who drove out again with Paddy and Justin.

I covered most of the trip here and here, but I've got a bunch of other pictures, too. Some of them showed up on Instagram, some showed up on Twitter (my own and The Fucking Reserves), but there were a lot more and I didn't want to clog everyone's feed.

If you're interested, head over to check them out at my Flickr account. There's a bunch of other stuff for you to root around in, too. You can lurk my life all the way back to 2004 if your little heart desires. I don't mind.

ADULT PAINS

My man Andy Carter is having his first solo art show this weekend, and Friday is the opening night party. Everyone should come down to Fice and check it out. The address on that flier is actually wrong, but it's next to Este Pizza's downtown location at 160 East 200 South.

Andy's always been kind of a night owl, so while everyone else is sleeping, he's wandering the streets, taking pictures of the homeless people he meets, and asking them to tell him something about themselves. He's turned some of those photos into paintings and others into gel medium transfers, and they'll be hanging on the walls of the store for the rest of the month.

Eventually, these paintings and some of the photos he's taken will be collected into a book, with excerpts of the conversation he's had with each person. This is the first step, so come out and support.

Oh, Andy is also the guy behind Pangea Speed, which builds amazing motorcycles and custom bike parts. If you have a motorcycle, I'm sure you know all about him and his work. This is just a little extension of that.

I'll see you there.

TULIP

Let's talk a little bit about Tulip for a minute.

I met Mike Farfel years ago through punk rock and hardcore shows. I didn't know him much beyond being Gardner's friend and they both lived in Heber. Gardner and I got along really well, but being vegan kind of does that. You're always running into the same people at the same restaurants and such but I never really hung out with Mike.

He always seemed like a great guy, just quiet. He always supported the stuff I did whether it was promoting shows or putting out CD's (I did that for a bit). I never knew he was a writer until Gardner told me as I was putting together the first issue of Filler. I asked him to send something my way and he gave me an excerpt from a novel. I read it, thought it was a little weird but liked it all the same.

When it came time to do the Top 5 videos, he said he was interested and I jumped at the chance. That's where I learned that he'd actually finished the book he gave me the excerpt from and was shopping it around to publishers without much luck. It's really hard for a first-time author to get anything published these days and self-publishing a novel is pretty much frowned upon. He was eager to get it out there, so I asked him if I could read it.

He sent me the file and I read it in about three days.

We had talked briefly during the video thing and I told him if he hadn't found a publisher by May, I'd turn Old News Records into a publishing company and do a small run of Tulip. May rolled around, I got accepted to Craft Lake City and we hit the ground running on the book.

"Bogged down by the existential angst of the American Dream, Tulip has long since given up on any search for meaning—until a voice he's never heard sneaks into his head. The small miracles of life, paired with the new voice, sets him on a path of moral awakenings and trials by the Devil's hand. Through it all, Tulip seeks love, fights back hoards of entitled masses and finds a new hope and respect for humanity. At the same time, Tulip must decide if the voice in his head is real or if reality is just falling apart."

It's a fun read and it will make you think about a few things in your own life.

If you want to get a copy, it's available in my shop now. Buy it, read it, tell your friends about it and let us know what you think.

MY FRIENDS OVER YOU - CANDACE JEAN

Candace Jean is one of my favorite artists and also, one of my oldest friends. I've been a fan of her artwork for as long as I've known her and I used to convince her to use her talents to help my old band Cherem make merch. She did that on more than one occasion, helping us with t-shirts and the first ever demo that I still have a copy of in a box in my closet. There's even a dude with a tattoo of her stuff on his leg. That's dedication.

She and I have also been threatening to make a comic book together called GRUDGE CITY since sometime around 2005. I have the outline ready to go, but haven't scripted it yet. I keep putting it off because sometimes I feel silly having her use her time drawing a giant super hero battle (for free) when she has so much else on her plate. You know, things like working two jobs, being a mom and making amazing other pieces that make her booth at Craft Lake City a huge success each year and her online store an awesome place for gifts the rest of the year.

She has a new solo show opening tonight, December 11 at the Downtown Library. It's called 'Fictitious' and is full of her own renditions of famous children's book characters. Max in his Wild Thing crown, James and his Giant Peach, Mowgli and his jungle fame, Pippi Longstocking—everyone is represented in her gorgeously detailed style.

I'd show you some sneak peeks, but then you might not go see them in person. You can take a look at her Instagram (@candacejean) and Twitter (@mycandacejean) for a little bit, but you should really come out to the opening party tonight and see it all in person.

(I would have just stolen a few pics from the actual Instagram website, but it's down just like it always is.)

So there you have it. Come out to her art show, visit her website, her web store(s) and take a look at some awesome artwork. The flier is up top there, but here are the details again:

FICTITIOUS
Opening Reception, December 11, 6:30 - 8:00 pm
SLC Downtown Library, 210 E. 400 S.
Downstairs next to the Children's Department

And here is her website, so you can get all your Christmas stuff from there.

c a n d a c e j e a n 

P.S. She's incredibly shy, but if you walk up to her and tell her how much you love her stuff she'll be forever grateful. Also, if you could slip in that you're really looking forward to that GRUDGE CITY comic, that might put us both on the fast track.

Below is a little video that SLUG made in the run-up to Craft Lake City last year. It gives you a little behind-the-scenes look at how she does what she does. Enjoy. I'll see you tonight.

MY FRIENDS OVER YOU - ANDY CARTER AND PANGEA SPEED

I've known Andy for a while now, probably going all the way back to when we all spending the majority of our time at HC shows and doing hoodrat shit with our friends. He moved to California for a bit, and when he came back he put all his time and effort into starting a custom motorcycle parts company called Pangea Speed.

Slowly but surely he's been building (awful, awful pun intended) a pretty solid fan base and getting a lot of recognition. He's been asked to build a custom bike for this year's BORN FREE festival in California (which I may or not be attending) and a friend of his helped him make a little teaser video about his process and what building motorcycles means to him. It turned out really great and I'm stoked he's getting more and more popular in the bike community, because that's a pretty big deal for a straight edge kid building bikes in an airport hangar in Bountiful.

Andy keeps a great blog if you're interested in the kinds of things he's doing and even if you're not, you should still check it out to see what you're missing.

Pangea Speed - Professional Metal Masher

MY FRIENDS OVER YOU - BLOOM IN SATURATION

I know very, very little about fashion and I know absolutely nothing about makeup. Neither of those things speak to me the way they do to others and it usually sounds like someone mumbling gibberish in a foreign language when I overhear a conversation about it.

What I do know a bit about is passion. I love when someone has a passion for something and puts all their heart and soul into it. I may not be able to relate to the exact thing they're referring to, but I love that they get so into it. It makes me happy.

That's how my friend Stephanie feels about both makeup and fashion. She has a passion for it that is almost unparalleled.  We met when I started working at Happy Sumo back in 2006 and we immediately hit it off talking about movies, comic books and other stuff. What mostly struck me was her knowledge of comics, though. As silly as it sounds, when a girl knows about comics, reads them and can actually carry on a conversation about them, they immediately become one of my favorite people.  Stephanie is no exception. She uprooted her life in Salt Lake City last year and moved away to Arizona and sounds like she's doing okay for herself.

Before she left, when she was working the MAC counter at Nordstrom, she started a blog. It took her a little while to figure out what she wanted to do with it, but once she did, it turned into a fantastic mix of tutorials, tips and everything else you could want from a fashion blog.

She also knows a thing or two about baking and is an excellent photographer which make her blog a lot of fun to search through even if you're not all about her primary influence. And I won't lie, it doesn't hurt that she's pretty easy on the eyes, either.

So, ladies, do yourself a favor and head over to her blog, Bloom in Saturation, and pick up a few tips from a professional. And gentlemen, just head over and look around. Maybe you'll find a gift for your GF's birthday or you might even learn a few things about your wardrobe from a female perspective.

Just don't ask me for her phone number. Not gonna happen.

B L O O M  IN  S A T U R A T I O N

MY FRIENDS OVER YOU - 108

Sometimes I need a little push—a little something to get me going on this blog. Granted, I'm doing way better than I was couple months ago, but I still only update a couple of times a week. The list I have next to my computer is starting to get longer again, so that's good, but I also wanted to throw out a new weekly feature.

Just like the title implies, it's called MY FRIENDS OVER YOU (and yes, it is named after the incredibly catchy, sort of cheesy guilty pleasure song by New Found Glory).

Every monday, I'm going to pick one of my friends that has a blog (and I have a lot) that I routinely check and enjoy and talk about how much I like them and why you should look at their stuff, too.

So, shall we?

This is my friend Colby. We met somewhere around the turn of the century (I've always wanted to use that phrase) and we quickly bonded over awesome things like veganism, Rage Against the Machine and our love of surface piercing. Okay, that last one is a total lie, but Colby is a fine piercer. He worked at Good Times Tattoo for a long, long time and managed a short lived vegan coffee shop down by Gateway called Under the Bridge (because he was/still is way in to Red Hot Chili Peppers, but he'll never admit it). He even came on tour with Cherem for a week, but then had to get back home to make sure everything at the coffee shop was okay.

Then, while we were still on tour, he packed his shit up and moved to New York City—and that's where he's been since summer of 2006. Well, mostly. He likes to take off a lot to random countries and wander around until he runs out of money and has to go back to piercing famous actors and beautiful models that come through New York Adorned.

He also has a weird obsession with the number 108. He sees it everywhere. So naturally, after we saw THE RING years ago, we were hanging out at his apartment and while he was in the bathroom, I set the sleep timer on his TV so that it would turn on at 1:08 AM to a channel that he didn't get. It was hilarious.

But anyway, he's a great dude and you should really be checking his blog on a pretty regular basis. It's got good stuff.

108 Manifestations - J. Colby Smith.