gotta stop staying up until like 5:30am.

when i tongue my front teeth they feel shiny and clean. this is how i judge whether or not i've eaten badly on any given day. fun fact.

also: from now on i'll be putting in brackets some info about random names i may mention to give you context. if there's any names you want to know about that i forget to do this for, leave a comment and i'll hop to it.

i went to bed too late and woke up at about 2pm. rohin had woken me a little earlier to see if i wanted to go play pool in a "real texas pool hall". i was keen but i fell back asleep. after eating nothing for breakfast we (rohin, jack and i) headed into town to meet claire (she's a music promoter and manages art vs. science) and once we'd done that we started walking toward the thrift/vintage shops to find boots and coats. it took ages to get there, we must have walked for a half hour. we stopped at a cafe and i got an orange juice and some yoghurt with granola. we exchanged "unfortunate accidents involving stray object trajectory and placement" stories.

claire had her phone fall out of her pocket while walking down the street once and into a bucket of water that just happened to be there. i told them about powys' phone flying out of his pocket as he jumped for joy on the street after he, ben and i had our application for bruce approved. his phone flew out of his pocket and got run over by an 18 wheeler. i was the only one who saw it (in the rear vision mirror), i had to tell him he'd done it when he got to the car with ben and i inside. the phone still worked. incredible! then rohin told us that two weeks ago in townsville someone was mowing their lawn with a big heavy duty mower. one of the blades came loose, flew out of the mower and about 30m across the street cutting a woman's head clean off. the blade continued on for about 50m after that. people walked up cause they'd seen something weird to find a body and a head lying a few metres away. this actually happened. what a world huh.

claire looked up some stores on her blackberry so we started making our way around. first place we went was allen's boots. they had more boots than i have ever before seen in my life. i found one pair for $1200. i found a pair of sea turtle (yuck) boots for $500. the boots i wanted were around $300. toooo much. we moved on. at a st vincent de paul i bought a mid-length brown leather jacket (double breasted) for about $50. would have been hundreds new and at least $150 at a vintage store in australia. insane. jack got some boots from there also. we found a vintage store that had a ping pong table in it. ro and i had a few games. definitely going back there.

we ended up at a store called new bohemia where i found my boots. they fit like a glove. dark red (almost black). called deep oxblood. sounds nice and southern huh? bought those suckers, snatched them right up. from there we checked out a few other places before ending up at an organic grocery. jack got some coke, i got carbonated grapefruit juice & a bottle of water and claire got carbonated apple juice. we enjoyed those drinks until jon and the rest of the guys came and picked us up to go register for our SXSW passes. after a bit of parking confusion we finally registered and went for a walk to meet rich (our US/world manager) and then go say hi to aaron (he runs spunk). after saying hi to aaron we all (minus claire and jord) walked back to the van and came home where i had some tomato soup with some rice & adzuki bean chips. nice. also jon/joe cooked some fajitas so i had some of them too. i am now full.

tomorrow...begins hell.

speak soon.

failed to enter the void.

i ran down the street in the rain...got right to the ticket box in line...sold out. next screening is the same time as one of our sets. sigh. looks like i'll have to wait until it gets released which could be a while. boo hoo right?

hangs and driving.

so after the show we went and got some hot box pizza. it's this franchise pizza outlet that have a pretty rad one going on denton. a bunch of our friends work there and so they gave us a lot of free pizza. hellooo money saver. after that we headed back to leslie and courtney's house for a bit of a party. apparently shiner bock was the beer we definitely had to try, and so we did. it was pretty sweet. also had some millers high life which wasn't as good, but canned beer is rarely as good as bottled anyway. had some interesting conversations with wes and lance about ayn rand, politics in our native countries and architecture. also leslie/courtney told me a whole bunch of stories about living in the south like how leslie's dad would wake her up at night when she was a kid to "hold thuh torch while ah shoot surm armadillas", and how she was the prom queen and the song they danced to was "freebird" by lynyrd skynrd. in-credible.

we settled down around 4am then leslie/coutney caught me before i went to bed reminding me they were going to introduce me to metalocalypse, so we watched that for the next couple of hours and talked about metal before i went to bed. after a few hours sleep we all got up and went to breakfast at some place, the name of which i forget. then we all went into the square (centre of denton) and looked at all the thrift stores and boutiques. i bought the great gatsby on lance's recommendation which i'll begin after i finish all the books i brought over in the first place. i found some amazing snakeskin boots but the toecap was coming loose and digging into my toes. didn't stop joe from swooping in not long after and buying them. sigh. i bought a sweet leather vest.

we went and had some more hotbox which was delicious and said goodbyes (or "we'll see you in austin"s) before picking up the nord from UPS and heading on our way to austin. we stopped at a home depot (which is basically a bunnings warehouse) and got a power inverter so we could laptop for the rest of the trip. i torrented the oscars the other night and tried watching it but the second half of the file was broken. lame. we carried on and now we're in austin. i'm trying to get to the screening of enter the void at midnight but it's not looking good. sigh.

speak soon.

just finished first US show...

...and it went surprisingly well :)

we played alright, sound was pretty good and the crowd seemed to dig it. maybe just because we're australian, not sure yet. some guy said we were better than the flaming lips but i think he was drunk. sorry guy, we aren't better. have you even SEEN the flaming lips?! dudes have orange EVERYTHING and massive inflatable balls and everything. we have a banjo. no competition.

i think we're getting pizza from this place called hot box. they do that thing that nandos in australia do where they use all this sexual innuendo on their shirts like "want what's in my box?" and junk like that. ugh. solid pies though.

speak soon.

show tonight.

i'm at the venue we're playing at tonight, it's called dan's silverleaf. from memory, the last post ended when we were at house of blues?

we practiced at the house of blues in dallas. it was really something. dan acknroyd knows how to run a classy joint. after that we went to the apartment where our manager rich was staying which was pretty rad. from there we went to the mavs/knicks game at the american airways arena. i wasn't expecting how huge the arena was...it was the size of rod laver arena in melbourne, maybe a tiny bit smaller. just for basketball! amazing. i had a "grilled cheese sandwich" which was a burger bun with a piece of chicken in it, no salads or sauces. not quite what i was expecting...

from there we headed back to the house we're staying at after dropping by to pick up the rest of the guys from the apartment. when we got back to the house they had the makings of a party so we hung out for a bit and then retreated into the loungeroom to set up for sleeping. we watched knocked up for a while too, weird US edited television version. bleeps and everything. overdubbed lines over the cussing. amazing! i went to sleep about 4am and woke up around 12:45pm. we lost an hour due to some daylight savings styled thing which was weird but oh well.

from there we went to a studio run by a gentleman named eric who plays in a killer band called midlake. he let us practice there awhile and then we packed, eric came, locked up, and then we left. eric said he'd make it to the show tonight, we said rad. i hope he can make it, he ruled. we went to the venue which was just down the road and unloaded. rich, joe, jack and i went and got some traditional ice cream from this ice cream parlour in the centre of denton. it was super kickarse. i had butter ice cream and i felt my teeth melt as i ate. from there we went to get dinner for everyone else, salads and these things called po-boys. joe got a gator one. it tasted like popcorn chicken.

i just managed to fix my mouse pointer and now i'm sitting outside at dan's silverleaf, the bar we're playing tonight. the opening band playing now came all the way from dublin to play! i guess they're doing sxsw as well. also i learned we might be in austin in time for me to go to the midnight screening of enter the void (gaspar noe's new flick) at the film fest. i'm super excited.

i better go set up.

speak soon.