UP #9: Cemetery Gate, Rural Wisconsin

Posting from: Decatur, Ga.

UP #8: UPhat Created

UP #7: Creation of the UPhat, Part One

UP #6: Loading the UPmobile with Supplies at Wal-Mart

Suburban Milwaukee.

UP #5: Wisconsin State Patrol at Accident Scene

Notice that I-94 is closed in the background due to flooding.

UP #4: Econo Lodge, Milwaukee

We slept late and hit the road for Madison. Major flooding turned the 90-minute drive into an all-day adventure.

As for the Econo Lodge, only the check-in area was remodeled.

UP #3 Econo Lodge, Milwaukee

We had booked double beds, but this was all we got.

UP commenceth.

Dan dreamt of a mole/bug that entered his skin and became permanent. I dreamt I was covered in legged, gray worms that crawled all over my skin and had to be peeled off. When we awoke, the sign outside said we were in an Econo Lodge near the Milwaukee Airport.

Now we're awake. We have nine days. We have a gigantic, oversized JEEP CHEROKEE MOBILE CONTINENT, because the rental car place ran out of normal cars. We have a vague semblance of a plan. We need breakfast and supplies. Then we're checking out Madison and tomorrow we head north through cheese country.


***Originally posted 6/14/08, 10:40AM. Reposted 10/2/08.

UP #2: Unveiling of the UPmobile, Gen. Mitchell Airport, Milwaukee.

This was supposed to be a mid-sized car.

UP #1: Transport Arrives

Weeks of planning get put into practice. I remember transferring onto an earlier flight to try to beat a storm in Chicago.

Here Begins the tale of the UP,

pronounced "yoop," the journey of two young men in search of meaning to the upper peninsula.

CPCCPCIII

That's the College Point Class Conflict Pub Crawl III.

Before I get started on my Michigan photonovella, I'd like to confirm that the Third Annual CPC² will take place on Friday, November 28, beginning with dinner at the Five Corners German restaurant (if it's still in business).

The bar route has lost Halligan's once again. Those on the first CPC will recall that it was seized by the NYPD and sealed. The bar was open last year, but it's out of business once again.

Details on past CPC activity can be accessed here.

Update: Link to "Scene of Apparent Violence" from last night.

Up to Seven Stabbed Late Last Night at Astoria Club.

4:37 a.m.

All of New York City is a drunken circus right now. Tourist couples in too-tight clothing are arguing on the steamy, desolate streets of Midtown. The cops are responding to a scene of apparent violence at a club in Astoria, trademark red and white lights everywhere. Yellow cabs and livery cabs are ferrying drunks in any possible direction in all boroughs. Lights are still on in many homes. Even our usually quiet one-way street is jammed with pairs of headlights competing for asphalt. Everyone is awake or outside because they can be.

Amid these many chaotic scenes, the INFRASTRCTURE boys return home via the upper deck of the Queensborough Bridge. We have completed a marathon 12-hour recording and arranging session in a fancy Manhattan studio 400 feet above the hoochie-laden streets. When you play for that long, which I don't usually do, awakeness goes away and all that remains is muscle memory and punch drunkenness. You lock into your fellow musicians and the equipment you are using and you try to make something good.

Tonight, we made several very good things. A lot of remixing is required before we can share, and we didn't record vocals, but we're very proud of what we achieved. We need some serious sleep, though, before we can appreciate it.

It was also nice to find freshly baked brownies when E. dropped C. and me off at home. Things are finally beginning to work.

Next Episodes

I'm crazy busy with work and the next few projects that you'll see here. More specifically:

Untitled EP. An incarnation of INFRASTRUCTURE will be getting together in NY this weekend to start recording an EP. The oversimplified track titles, according to recording priority, are "Climber," "Busted," "Cul-de-Sac People," "Misery," and "Home." The personnel will be Erich Rastetter on keys and rhythm guitar, C. Bellinger on bass, Greg Caputo on drums, and myself on lead guitar. All of the personnel are angry young men from Queens. The band will sound like a combination of early Elvis Costello, early ZZ Top, and Wilco. What can I say? We're white people.

UP. Very soon, the blog switches completely over to a chronological retelling of the trip Dan Meade and I took to the Upper Peninsula this past June. Photos will serve as the main narrative element, with text filling in only where necessary. Any posts I've already put up will be re-posted to fit the narrative/chronological order of the trip. There are some really good photos in this set.

The Fall Excursions. If art-traveling is fun, why do it only in June? I have to clear the days off, but it looks like I'll be meeting up with some friends in SoCal, hosting the third annual College Point Class Conflict Pub Crawl in Queens, and putting together ABBQI, the first open-invite barbecue roadtrip to the Hill Country of Texas.

Read on (or listen, or view), or join me on one of these trips.

The Bird and the Bee

$12 in Boston.
$35 in New York.

The 89/93

Sometimes, when I stay up really late, I see the 89/93. The 89/93 is a bus that doesn't make any sense.

The 89 is a bus that runs from Clarendon Hill, Somerville to Sullivan Square, Boston. The 93 is a bus that runs from Sullivan Square to Downtown Boston. Both of these buses start running around 5:20 a.m.

Once in a while I have a weekend visitor and we are sitting here in Teele Square, drunk off our asses, at around 4:20am. We will see an OUT OF SERVICE bus heading down Broadway eastbound, then returning westbound with 89/93 on its route indicators. This bus exists on no public MBTA schedule, and it rolls through Teele Square an hour before either the 89 or the 93 start running.

Sometimes, I am sitting here riffling through photos I want to post or working on song lyrics at, you know, 1 or 2 am. It is always under these circumstances that I remember the few times I saw this 89/93. Does it really exist, and, if so, what purpose does it serve...especially if no one knows about it? Should I stay up and see if it returns? Going to bed seems like conceding all types of defeat.

Ed the Republican

C. and I sit down to dinner at the 99 Restaurant in Assembly Square. Unlike most national chains, the restaurant is impeccable and the floor sparkling. Soon after ordering, an older divorcee takes the open stool next to us. Before long, conversation happens. He's a republican. Ballots in multiple languages are an affront to his patriotism, since John Quinzy Adams made English the national language in 1786. The liberals want to build low income housing in Assembly Square and move the T stop to the projects so the welfare moms won't have to walk so far to the train. He knows a great bar in Bimini--it was featured in a famous thriller. He made his ex-wife become a Marlins fan after she abandoned Boston, her children, and the Red Sox. He rents out property in New Hampshire, the "live free or die, motherfucker state" and when his international student tenants lit charcoals in the gas grill, he showed up wearing a .45 to yell at them. The last mayor of Somerville, a liberal's liberal, tried somehow to cancel out his concealed carry permit but political connections prevailed. I'm not sure if he is packing heat at dinner, but I don't want to ask.

As I work through my turkey tips and 48 ounces of IPA, I think: I shall refer to Ed as my new Parrothead friend. Sailing the Virgin Islands and hanging out at the shooting range. It just fits.

When he gets up to leave, he puts on a dark green bomber jacket that had been draped over his stool. Three logos adorn the jacket: one on each sleeve and one on the back. All include Jimmy Buffet's name.

Somehow satisfied, my perpetual hopeful hopelessness justified, I leave. C. and I plot an awesome urban exploration of abandoned Assembly Square, chug Jim Beam in East Somerville, drink more at the Cantab. After all that, I finally get home to write this up, having traveled many miles using nothing but public transit and my own two feet.