VIRB

Rosalia's guest bed was too comfortable to get up from, but somehow I did it. But it was tough. We packed everything up and said our goodbyes to Ro and Dan and headed out. We drove down Route 5 from San Francisco. Not a good idea at all. You see, unbeknownst to us, there had been an accident the night before in a tunnel just north of LA. Three people died and 15 tractor trailers were on fire inside the tunnel, thus shutting down route 5. There were no warnings so after we had been sitting in stopped traffic for over an hour, we flipped on the radio to find out what the hell was going on (before that we had had a very successful 5 hour ipod shuffle). We were actually very lucky, because when we found out the road was closed we were pretty close to an exit, so we found our way to the shoulder and drove down it to the exit. We waited in traffic for another hour finding an alternate route, until we finally just turned around and drove three hours out of the way to finally get to Los Angeles. It was madness. What was supposed to be a five hour drive took us almost ten. We raced to the hotel, spent literally 15 minutes there showering and changing and then raced to the venue. Both Uncle Rubin and I were starving and crazy when we got to The Echoplex. We soundchecked and then got some dinner and felt much better, but almost immediately had to go on.
It was a pretty strange show. The crowd was pretty unresponsive and so quiet, we couldn't get a read on whether people were liking it or not. There were sometimes when it felt like people liked it, like during a break in the songs (and the crowd was dead silent) someone would shout out, "I like the videos!" or something like that. Other than that, it was hard to read this crowd. Then, by the time I felt like people were into it, someone shouted out, "You are shit" and then "Fuck off!" This made me feel weird for a couple minutes, although then we were done, so it didn't matter anyway. Hecklers are very strange. On the one hand, you don't want to even acknowledge them, but its hard not to. I try to think of it in a positive light. I think that we affected this person enough to the point where they felt like they had to say something to us. Even though they do probably hate us, they will also probably tell their friends about us and then their friends can make up their own minds about us. Thats the weird thing about when you talk about something you hate a lot. You end up advertising it and thinking about it more than you probably should.
So that was that. My family was there that night and a lot of different friends from all over that place. My brother, Tyler Haines lives in LA so he brought a bunch of friends out, including the band Astra Heights, which you should check out sometime when you get the chance.We all hung out at the bar and shot the shit, talking shop and catching up. This was until I took a giant shot of Patron with my friend Angela. After that, pretty much everything is blurry. I remember my cousin Phil stealing a bunch of water, and a bunch of us went to a diner where we saw Fabritzio from The Strokes. I wouldn't have even noticed him, but Angela and I went to college with him at S.U.N.Y New Paltz back in the day. I had a pretty delicious milkshake, but thats pretty much it. It had been a long, crazy day, so when I finally passed out, it was only a quarter from drinking and the rest from sheer exhaustion.