I’ve never lived West of Broad, but I’ve surely spent plenty of time there. Well now I do. Along with some help from the boys and the girl, I started moving in. I signed my lease just after 9pm and then started to pack up some shit in a serious way and move it to the new pad. All of this is happening so fast and out of the blue. It’s kind of scary, but pretty fun as well. I have high hopes for this new place, and I look forward to mastering the new neighborhood. I know the gayborhood will miss me, and I will surely miss it right back. Especially Pac-a-deli.

I got the apartment! Despite the fact that all of the other applicants had longer credit histories and larger incomes (maybe), I got the apartment. The guy said “everyone liked you”, so boom, it’s mine. Now I get to cough up $3,600 for first month, last month, and security deposit. Fuckin a.

For the bad news, I may have lost $1,000. Ehh, don’t ask. We’ll see how that turns out.

The first A Reason To Fight gig is history, and most of my predictions came true. Some more than others. I predicted that some people would genuinely like us and say how cool we were. Shortly after our set ended, two girls that didn’t know any of us came up to me with smiles on their face telling me how awesome we were and that they loved it. Unreal. Now, all along I had told anyone that knew about this show that it was sure to be a less than stellar performance since this is really far from what we usually do with Dark Disco Club, and that we didn’t practice all that much in preparation for this show. Having said that, I am extremely disappointed in the way our performance went. As a “singer” I know that I rank extremely low, but considering the genre and overall vibe of the music I can surely say that I have heard far worse. But fuck that, my vocals don’t even matter… someone will either like my voice or they won’t. It’s an opinion, and those are pretty meaningless in the end. What is not a matter of opinion, is song structure, and playing a song correctly or not. Songs that we had down well in rehearsals were a complete fucking mess when we played them in front of a respectably sized crowd. Even “Ground n Pound”; a song that we’ve played a ton of times and nailed was fucked up from the get go. I had to fucking embarrass myself and actually stop the band shortly after starting the song. I mean how hard is it… the riff plys once, and then BOOM, come in. I just don’t get it. And every song had instances just like that. I’m not perfect, and yes I did fuck up one time during the set, during our version of “Beautiful Mutation”. Anyway, here’s what we tried to play:
1. Shout at the Devil
2. Cutter
3. Caress The Ghost
4. Thunder Kiss ‘65
5. Beautiful Mutation
6. Ground n Pound

Bird has torn his ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament). Technically, I think he tore the other one right next to the ACL… or some shit like that. Either way, it’s not cool. Those friggin’ rabbits insist on bouncing around on my boys turf, so obviously he’s going to defend it and chase their asses out of there. I guess he pushed it just a little too hard this week and tore it. He’s on some anti-inflammatory medicine for a couple of weeks, and needs to stay off of the leg as much as possible. After that there is the possibility that he’ll need surgery. I can only imagine what that shit will cost. Yikes.

Like I mentioned before, I will be moving out of my apartment soon. Since I need to clean up and prepare some space for myself here (in the burbs), I’ve been down here way more than usual. I just seem to get stuck here all the damn time. I’ve had to be here for a couple of rehearsals and shit this week so by the time I get all done it’s late and not so easy to get a ride back to my pad in the city. I have not started packing there at all. Not one single thing has been moved or put away. Today is Thursday, and my final day in the apartment is Tuesday, so I really need to get on that shit soon. Of course A Reason To Fight plays Friday night, so that is one more night that is occupied.

Speaking of A Reason To Fight, we practiced last night for a while. By the time we finished my throat felt like a swollen forest fire. It’s way better today, but damn. I must have been screaming at the top of my lungs for a couple hours straight. This gig should be pretty fun(ny).

That photo was taken just over a year ago, on January 17 2005. It was the first one taken in my apartment (aside from a random shot out the window). Now, I am a few short days away from moving out, which completely sucks. It’s my own choice, so it’s not even like I can blame anyone. I just know that during this coming pit-stop back in hell (the suburbs), I will be driven out of my mind on a daily basis. If I get through it without killing myself or someone else, it will be a miracle. I keep telling myself that the upside is that while I’m there I’ll be able so sock away a ton of extra money, which is nice. I just wonder if it’s worth my sanity.
What else? A Reason To Fight has rehearsed, and will do so one more time before we make our live performance debut this Friday night. Look out, bitches. And oh shit… Bird. My poor son has been limping really bad for two days. I waited to see if it would go away, but no luck. It hurts me to even look at him. When I walk in the door he tries to run up and greet me like he always does, but he can barely walk. So sad. So I called the dog doctor and made him an appointment for the morning. I hope it’s nothing too serious.

Well whattaya know, a new version of gethurt.com. I’ve been considering moving the site here since it allows me more flexability than the ghetto system I had on the old site, and it’s probably a bit nicer to navigate as well. Before I moved it, I wanted to be sure to grab some kind of archive of the old site. It isn’t perfect, but what I have is a 22-page PDF file containing every post and image from the last version of the site. It spans from January 30, 2004 to January 19, 2006.

HERE IS THE ARCHIVE.

Also, I’ll work on fixing up the way this page looks over time, so just hit me up if you have any useful suggestions.