oh gosh.

WARNING: this entry is long.

i'm dreadfully behind. sorry everyone. part III coming later.

alright so we left denton on the 12th. we travelled to flagstaff which is in arizona.


it snowed a bit which was sweet. the next day we woke up and went to the grand canyon and it rules awfully hard. on the way we found a smaller canyon which was pretty epic and awesome, and not a lot of fences.



in that second photo, where jord is sitting...very, very high up. and he's sitting right on the edge. it's a drop straight to the bottom from there. i got serious vertigo up there. also we found some snow.


after that we went on to the canyon. it was big.


this is me at the canyon. it was really, really big. looks a bit like a painted backdrop actually. sigh. after that we got some postcards. then we headed into a town to get some lunch. taco bell.

******TACO STORE REVIEW BREAK******


this was a taco bell attached to a kfc. UNEXPLAINED. i mean, why would you combine the two? this was disturbing. like it really got to me. a CHICKEN store...and a TACO store. why were they not just single stores? anyway.


you can see here that no one is attending the counter. why is this? it was like this for about 2 minutes or so after we walked in. fast food people should be all over you like a bad stink asking "WOULD YOU LIKE TO ORDER" almost before you've walked in the door or even had a chance to decide you're hungry and going to eat their fast food. the lady who eventually served us was nice, at least. the food took a little while to come out. i ordered the...uh..."stufd burrito"? in beef. i think.


this was the view once i sat down. pretty boring, you will agree. step it up, taco bell. my burrito looked like this:


fairly well wrapped. the rolling was firm and comfortable to grip. soft to the touch, but not floppy. just as a good burrito should be. after a bite or two, the taco took on this shape:


there was rice, guacamole, sour cream, salsa and beans. every good burrito should contain at least this. accept nothing less.

******END TACO STORE REVIEW BREAK******

we headed on. eventually wound up in bakersfield, CA. i walked to a barnes & noble and bought a book which is a bunch of directors talking about their first films. pretty cool, i've devoured about 280 pages in the last 2 days. it's that good. solid sleep, woke up, free breakfast (including waffles, thanks hotel). we set out to get to davis, CA. we got a bit lost but wound up at the venue for the night, freeborn hall (at UC davis). the show was with passion pit and mayer hawthorne & the county. we loaded in and soundchecked after mayer.





the show went pretty sweet. mayer and the dudes were really nice and passion pit were too. i love it when good bands are good dudes. ultimate win. after the show we headed off to turlock, CA (somewhere in CA...) to sleep. i slept on the floor cause there wasn't enough beds. so did bree and mark. what a time to be alive. bailed in the morning after some FROSTED FLAKES and headed to pomona, CA to the fox theatre for the show with pavement. this theatre...man. incredible.




watching pavement soundcheck was most excellent. such a legit band. i ran off to find a lady who i was told bore the name of "maria": she had the keys to the projection booth which i noticed sitting up in the dark upper balcony of the theatre. once i found this lady (who happened to be incredibly nice and awesome) she showed me around. and boy, what a sight...




i bet you're looking at it and thinking "eh, that ain't much of a sight" but to someone like me...hoo boy. not quite the mother-lode but still very impressive. the further 35mm projector is going to be junked because it sucks but the foreground one is still in impressive nick; they're keeping it for history's sake but getting 2 new/refurbished 35mm projectors donated from a heritage society. they've got an original follow-spot in there and a slide projector...both from the 1930s. quite amazing.

they showed the wizard of oz not long ago and admission was $1. $1! for the new print from the restored negative! amazing. i wish i could have gone, apparently it was a full house. kids were loving it, adults were loving it. everyone. LOVING IT.

******GEEKY CINEMA INFORMATION GO******

the fox theatre, as maria informed me, was opened in around 1931. it was originally owned by fox studios (which joined with 20th century in 1935 to become what we know today as 20th century fox) hence the name. it seats around 675 on the balcony and i'd estimate around 1200-1300 on the floor (the seats were taken out, this is just my guess). the belltower:


originally used to store the air conditioning for the entire theatre. it would intake air through the roof and using tunnels/pipes it'd feed it throughout the building to cool paying clientel. it is now used as a storage space. here's an inside view:


the balcony area was originally just a roof but more recent owners decided to turn it into an ourdoor area. it rules a lot. all the interior detail is original with a few exceptions. unfortunately a club owner who hosted a bunch of raves in the place decided to paint the entire interior black which must have looked hideous so a new paint job was in order when the theatre was being properly restored. it also originally had a pipe organ to accompany silent films (by 1931 they were still doing the rounds despite talkies coming into vogue around 1927) exhibited there. the pipes remain but the organs...gone. sadly. the carpet is replica of the original.

they've recently got a nice digital projector in there (i'm not a fan but this one was pretty legit) accompanied with a semi-new surround sound system which was most excellent. go dolby.

a beautiful theatre. it's a pleasure/honour to play here and i can't wait to come through here again and see a film.

******END GEEKY CINEMA INFORMATION******

we headed out to get some dinner and i snapped a nice photo of the sun setting behind the main facade of the theatre.


and a nice one of bree and jord standing in front of the sign (the sign is still surreal):


we had some solid dinner then headed back to the fox and played. it went surprisingly well. i met a tech fellow named tim who works for the mars volta who looked EXACTLY like andy serkis. quite remarkable. maybe i should get a photo before we bail. i forgot to mention the band room was upstairs which made for a fun walk each time to get our stuff but looked pretty nice out once the sun went down.


we're driving somewhere tonight to sleep. next couple of days is a show with beach house, coachella, frightened rabbit tour...going to be intense. will hopefully be more dilligent with blog entries. and entires to my tumblr of film stills. and part III my favourite songs. phew.

catch.