11am Whiskey Shortage Panic

Shitbags!
Cockmongers!
Douchehounds!
Decent, loving, hardworking friends of mine!
Unite and rejoice, for it is once more, new post time!
Last night at the Mel, a friend and I were talking about the subject of interaction between customer and salesperson, and (I think?) I promised to blog about it.
More specifically, we were talking about the differences of people growing up with and without experience in the service industry. The first point raised is one that I think is pretty universally accepted, with the exception of the people it ought to apply to.  I feel that in order to graduate college you should have to work a service industry job.  Bear with me debutantes and celebutards, I'll explain my reasoning.  As most people who have worked in a food/beverage service capacity know, the public is, in general, a vast slobbering mongoloid-ish group of bastards, whiners, shit talkers, and non tippers.  And simply put, to avoid being a mongoloid-ish, whining, shit talking, non tipping bastard, you really need to deal with their kind, all up close and personal like. Nothing makes you think twice when eyeing a tip jar, talking to a waitress, or coming into a bar or restaurant five minutes before closing time like some service experience.
See, when you've been there you get an entirely different perspective. You start to think "wow, this guy probably depends on the buck or two I throw in here," "I know I said medium rare, but fuck it, rare's fine.  She's got four other tables and she looks pretty frazzled," and "Nope, they're quite ready to blow this joint, I'll go to taco bell."

Taco Bell: because you're drunk

It's a pretty basic concept but it's one that apparently a lot of people are missing, because, fuck me if I don't see bartenders, waitresses, tattoo artists, hairdressers and the lot get treated like shit every day.  You heard it here first, shit's gotta stop folks.  Just be a decent person mmkay?

The second point has to do with (subjectively I guess) cool jobs.  My previously mentioned friend, is dating a bartender and owner of the (in my opinion) coolest bar in town.  From what I'm told, his kids still think he's a total dork though.  Think I just made that example up? Well fuck you first off. Second, here's another.  One of my tattoo artists is semi famous at least.  He's appeared in a lot of magazines, won a lot of awards, and people travel pretty far to get tattooed by him.  Yet from what he tells me, his kids are in no way impressed by any of this.  Now I'm no expert in cool, far from it.  In fact, the shit you kids listen to is lame and probably too loud, and your clothes are silly and ill fitting.

This is what cool looks like to me

However I'm baffled by how the offspring of people who I consider to be well respected pillars of cooledom, think that their parents are any less than that.
Think about it, if you grow up with a "counter culture" kind of parent, and you decide to do some rebelling, how do you do that?  Start watching Glenn Beck?  Furiously organize your sock drawer? Lock your room and blare elevator music?  I dunno, I have no conclusion here, other that teenagers are fuckin' weird.  Yeah, I was, you were, and current teens are. They're strange and confusing, but eventually booze will level the playing field, so fuck it.

As always, if someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes
-Pretzel

Oedipal Rhinoceri

Today I'm working on a t shirt design for The Sinking Ship.  It's a pin up girl, and I'll be honest with you dear readers, I really wanna bone her.  I think that means it's a good design right? I mean pin ups historically are kind of an idealized notion of what/who the artist and target audience would like to bang, so my desire to hump a bunch of pixels is completely justified isn't it?  Eh, I'm using Damon's computer so I suppose the sweet sweet love I would make to that .jpg file would be a bit of a party foul friendship-wise.  The point that I'm really trying to drive home here  though is, when we print 'em, buy a goddamned t shirt you cretins, cuz I worked really hard.

This is related to nothing, I just like adding pictures

The old band-sky is working on a new cover song.  I'm not gonna tell you what song it is, but it is gonna be pretty gnarly once we get it down.  The goal is to have it ready for our new years ever show at the Mel, so ya know, maybe come out and find out if we've learned it or not. Even is we haven't though you should probably buy me and Damon a shot.  Matt too come to think of it, but not Noah. Never Noah.

Oh yeah, go read this, it's pretty great.

I'm out, damn the man and such
-Pretzel

CHILdren????

So i know alot of you out there in the interweb world are wondering why me and my wife michelle dont have kids yet. Granted, our kids would rule the planet, But i didnt know most of these thing were even wrong.  

cheers, 

damon!

Doolichand!

Morning urrybody! OK it's not actually morning, but I just woke up a bit ago so in my world it's fucking morning, if you don't like the way I choose to categorize when morning is, well, there's the door jerkwad.

Still there?  Good, I'm not sure why I got all confrontational there.  Let's chalk it up to low caffeine levels in the bloodstream and we'll Hakuna Matata that shit away.
Today I'm sitting at home with my dear friend/ roommate/co-worker Michelle.  We're playing Xbox and drinkin' coffee like there's no tomorrow, so needless to say today is going well.  Earlier there was some NHL 11 going on, but currently I'm just typin' away and  watching her play Fable 3.  There are some pretty gnarly victorian steampunk-y looking propaganda posters during the load screen, which I'm pretty fond of.

NASA just made their much hyped announcement about astrobiology, and I gotta say I'm disappointed.  Yes I understand the implications of the discovery of the bacteria, but I really wanted either a half autopsied withering pathetic alien desperately gasping for air, or an H.R. Geiger-esque alien freaking out and smashing itself up against some foot thick bulletproof glass.  Ah well, some lame ass microbe that thinks arsenic is tasty will have to do I suppose.

Fuckin' Bacteria...

Tonight the band practices, and I think we may start working on a cover song.  I'm pretty stoked on it, we haven't really done any covers in quite a while, so it should be a good times all around.  Who knows maybe we'll play it at our next show (New Years Eve, Melody Inn!)
Well homies and homiettes, I'm getting hungry and I want more coffee, so entertain yourselves for a while and maybe find me an alien or two.
Most tremendous ups to Brooklyn
-Pretzel

SOOOOOO TIRED!!!

 Hello you schmucks!

 so ive been really busy and havent wrote in a while and thought i would a little today. Not much as been going on except writing new songs and working on a bar me and my friend Andy are opening. So pretty much all my time is down at the bar until it opens probably write before christmas.

So last night im working at the bar and waiting to go to Louisville to go see Mike our old guitarists new band play. After Gary picks me up at 10 pm we head to Louisville wich is pretty much a straight drive down 65. We have to stop at a gas station outside of columbus so gary can by some fake pot, Called K2. gary loves to get high. And in the bathroom i buy for a small fee of 75 cents a GLOW IN THE DARK TINGLER RING!!!!!! IT seriously looks like its made outta chicken fat. Thats the color of it. 

Im gonna try to use it on the wife but id be surprised if shed let me, Just cause it looks like dirty chicken fat, plus i bought it in the shitter at a gas station. So we're off to the monkey wrench. 

The monkey wrench is a really neat bar and its about midnight on the dot when we get there. Mikes band has already played and the place is kinda dead but everyone is really nice. Its great to see Mike and meet his band and friends and also John from Falls City Beer is there. 

John buys me beer and shots and then takes us all down the road to the new spot of the new Falls City Brewery. Its still empty but the Bright Green Falls City van is there and there plenty of bottled beer. After runing around this huge place we find a stash of wheel cheers and begin the first annual Falls City Wheel chair derby. I didnt race, I was the sexy check who dropped the bandanna to let the was begin. After what felt like many rounds of races, Gary was the champ! if your not first your last!. after our victory we said our goodbyes and headed back to indy where the Best Pal and Wife where still up! Ended the night with some Drinking.

that is all my friends, not to interesting but i havent wrote in a while. 

cheers mother fuckers!

damon

Ruuuun to The Hiiiiiiiiiiills

Check it out I made a header for this blog thingy!  I need feedback on it though, what're your thoughts my friends, is it too much? Too gaudy?  Eh, screw you hypothetical people who don't like it, I think it's pretty rad, it's even a mustardy shade similar to my favorite blog Bad Sandwich Chronicles, cuz I'm all about subtle little touches like that.  It's how I let y'all know I care.
Let's see here, what's going on in Involuntaryville?  We played a show with the Circle City Deacons, who by the way you should all check out, it'll be quite worth your time.  We had a few technical difficulties, but overall I think our set was pretty good.  The Deacons totally rocked and I got to sing along to their cover of The Slackers' Old Dog.  The bar we played at was pretty cool, and they were making "Involuntary Punch" that night.  I didn't have any due to my distaste for mixed drinks, but it was pretty rad having a drink named after us for a night.
We don't really have any shows set up for a while, which is a little bittersweet.  Playing shows is probably my favorite thing in the world, but our down time means we get to work on some new songs, so I suppose it's not a bad trade off.  We're working on a song Matt wrote right now, it's a great song, but it's quite difficult to learn, so you'd all better cheer really loudly when we play it for ya.
If you weren't aware of this already, Damon's building and opening a bar.

Shit's gonna be awesome!

He's been quite busy jackhammering, laying pipe, and other things that don't sound like sexual references.  I do, however have his word that he will post on here soon, so keep your eyes peeled for his triumphant return.
Since I can't  think of anything else worth sharing, I'm gonna draw this edition of Shits Ridiculous to a close.
Send Nudes
Pretzel

Him again? I wanna hear from the singer guy!

Whattup there internet?  I was gonna wait on Damon to update this but I'm bored at work so you get another serving of me today, we're stuck with each other so let's make the best of it okay?  Let's see, I guess I should talk about the KISS show huh?  If we haven't mentioned it on our smash hit blog before, The Involuntarys covered KISS for halloween.  There, backstory established, on to the witty banter.

Yeah, that happened

Man, there was a huge light up sign courtesy of our friend Rusty, confetti cannons courtesy of our friend Gary, bitchin' costumes courtesy of everyone's girlfriend/wife/roommate who took pity on my pathetic ass, so to summarize...it was pretty awesome.  I'm told that Greg from Punk Rock Night was standing on the bar to watch us, which is quite flattering.  I had to sing "Beth" which, to be honest, I did a pretty piss poor job of.  But hey, it was a one time deal and everyone else was pretty drunk too so no harm no foul right?  So there's my show summary, sorry if it's a bit scant, I was hammered.  Our guitarist "Lee" has a pretty cool description of the show if you don't mind reading filthy leadist propaganda.

Enjoy the page views Lee

After the show I helped load out into the trailer and promptly passed out in the back of the van.

...lazy segue to slightly embarrassing yet hilarious story about my end of the night...

Now if you aren't a heavy drinker, first off kudos to you.  I'm not being sarcastic, you will most certainly outlive me and probably don't make an ass of yourself as often as I do.  Second, losing portions of the day is probably not something you deal with often.  I have an already fairly hazy memory, but when you add copious amounts of liquor like I have been known to do, shit gets real spotty real quick.  The morning after the Halloween show I woke up in my bed still in my Peter Criss tights and makeup, quite confused, due to the fact that I didn't exactly remember anything after getting off stage.  From what Damon told me, I stumbled into the house after having disappeared for several hours, and when asked how I got home or who took me home, I would only yell "the car outside!"  I wanted to check my phone for clues, but I had left that in a backpack I brought to store shit in due to the pocketlessness of spandex, and the backpack was nowhere to be found.

See? pocketlessness

Armed with Damon's testimony, and my (like I said before, hazy on a good day, which this was not) memory, I spend most of the day wondering how exactly I had gotten home, and hoping I hadn't drunkenly offended anyone.  I kinda ruined my thunder on the end of this story earlier if you remember; I passed out in the back of the van.
Yes Virginia, that's the climactic end of this story, drunkie fell asleep in the back of the van, nobody noticed him and confusion ensued, hope it brightened your day a little.
I think I'm gonna call it  a day on this "typing out words" shit,  as I've achieved my goal of making part of the day go by faster.  Now if blogging could make me some breakfast, that'd be a different story, due to the lack of delicious hashbrowns on my keyboard though, I'm officialy donesicles.
send nudes and potato based breakfast foods
-Pretzel

Di-wrecked Hit Part Something Or Another/

Drink 1.
PBR tall boy and a shot of Evan Williams, Damonicus and I are watching South Park and eagerly awaiting the presidential guest spot on the Daily Show.  I think if the president guest starred randomly on one show a month, advertising revenue would go way way up.  Imagine with me that this policy I just made up and Obama's presidency coincided with "Friends."  Okay first, imagine the theme song playing, stupid little hand claps and all.  All of a sudden, the fucking president pops onto a couch holding an umbrella, all the while wearing a lime green turtleneck and bowler hat.  We both know you'd love the shit out of that.  If you think I'm wrong, imagine the same thing but with Lincoln instead.  Now you're wrong and can't shake the fact that you just might be a racist.
If you see my best pal/roommate/bass player/singer/only person who responds to my drunken texts between now and October 30th, you had damn well better refer to him as Gene Simmons. 


Drink 2.
Second verse same as the first.   We're watching a documentary on Shane MacGowan after the daily show.  My cousin from Ireland (who's not really my cousin, but a good friend who, when he's in the U.S. stays with my family and visa versa for us in Ireland [see, cousin is a lot shorter than saying all that])  has a brother, who used to be Shane MacGowan's personal driver.  I'm not sure(oh shit Obama just walked out!) where that was going, but I'm sitting at home, getting really stupid drunk, and writing about watching a movie about a man, who's famous for getting really stupid drunk, and that's at least a little bit amusing on some level right?  Meh, shot of whiskey time.

A message from Damon. 
As I float towards buzzed land, I realize I love President Obama, but I hate that he uses the word "folks" as often as he does.  Fuck he just did it again.  I rejoice in the fact that we have another bottle of bourbon.  Big ups to Brooklyn, fuck what you heard.


Drink 3.
To be fair, drinks one and two included shots of whiskey and there was another in between drink 2 and drink 3.  Technically I suppose this is drink 7, but that kind of brings about a whole Fahrenheit to Celsius argument about documenting alcoholic beverages, and I just don't have it in me to pander to 2 separate systems of measurement.  Plus, to be totally honest with you guys, I'm now on drink 8 if you include that shot i took before I started this sentence.  Alright, I'm going to think up a solution here.  Refer to all my drinks not by numbers but by actors in my favorite movies? I think so Drink number John Candy in Cool Runnings!
I love you Shane Mac Gowan, but I cannot understand a goddamned word you say.  It's not just the Irish accent either, I know how that accent works.  Take any word with a T+H combination, then insert a hard T sound.  Thank becomes tank, third becomes turd, and so on.  Seriously Shane,  you're an amazing musician but you look like a Celtic Meth head and I don't understand anything that you don't put in singing form whatsoever.  I'm not making this up at all, go listen to any pogues song, then image search their lead singer.  Beautiful not from this earth, shouldn't be allowed to exist in a mere mortal fucking singing voice and yet...

that's rabid mulleted squirrel man is what it's coming out of.

A message I forced out of Damon while Michelle fitted him for his Kiss costume:
The only thing better than drinking whiskey or beer, is drinking whiskey and beer with your wife and your best pal and I'm doing both!

I feel that I should mention about now, that my best pal Gene Simmons, has to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow and, despite it being my day off, I have to wake up at 8:30 to get tattooed.  Yeah, we do this shit for the fans.  I'd like to see Justin Bieber forgo sleep to entertain his friends by pounding shots and making observations about life and the things within his direct line of sight.  Seriously though that would be funny, I can't imagine he handles his booze well.

Note from Damon:
Shane McGowan's first band was called the Nipplerectors, but their band made them change their name to The Nips

I'm gonna make Mac n' Cheese and then indulge in Drink number Steve Buscemi in Airheads.

...long pause for food preparation break...

After long contemplation, I've come to this conclusion:  Talent it would seem, is something that if you weren't born with, you can't cultivate to anything especially meaningful, and or good via practice, hard work, dedication, etc. (e.g. William Hung)  In that same  vein of thought, it would seem that if you're born with a talent , it's gonna shine through no matter what combination of gin and Sinead O'Connor you shovel on top of it.
Seriously though, to clarify, in most cases, in order to be good at something you have to practice a whole fuck-ton, but if you weren't born with that certain intangible spark that makes talented folks tick, well sorry about your luck Stefani Germanotta, you're only hope is the 3 Ms: Makeup, Muppets and Meat.

Ugh, my dear roommates are going to bed, which means I have no one to bounce my brilliant ideas off of any more, and should probably also go to sleep.

Send nudes!
For real
c'mon

-Pretzel

Where We're Going We Don't Need Pop Tarts

Tomorrow night Damon and I are getting extremely intoxicated and writing you guys a double feature, so tune in Wednesday Night/maybe Thursday morning depending on how the night goes.  

I know this is a short and half assed post, so here's something I hope makes up for it

Yeah, you're welcome.

Oh, also Saturday night The Involuntarys will be transforming into KISS at the the Melody Inn.  Be there, I don't wanna hear all the "Sorry bro, my girlfriend wants me to go to some party that night" or "I don't live in Indianapolis" or "I'll still be recovering from that awesome monkey with a gun picture you so generously Google image searched for us" talk.  Seriously, I'm wearing spandex and singing, how can that not be your top priority?

Don't swim for an hour after eating.  Seriously, Don't.

-Pretzel

The Glamours Of Playing Punk

Evening ladies and gents!  Damon and I just got home from playing a show in Fort Wayne.  I know you're all dying to know how it went and hear my hilarious spin on things, so I'll cut the foreplay skip the cuddling and never call you again.  

Here's how the day was planned to go: I cut out of work early, we drive up to Ft. Wayne, melt faces with rock and roll, get paid bajillions of dollars and retire in the tropics.  The way things actually went down were far more interesting.  About one hour outside of Indianapolis the radio starts to cut out and it becomes apparent that either our battery or alternator is slacking off.  We pull off to an auto parts store, after some poking around under the hood and some phone calls it was determined that the alternator was to blame.  At this point we're not late but if we try to replace the alternator we will be, so we decide to power through and fix the car once we're back in Indy.  We drive on, and a few miles from the venue as we pull off the interstate the power cuts out again.  At this point we decide that, fuck it, we'll just  have our friend Pete Dio tow the trailer to the venue, we'll  stay the night and deal with the van early in the morning and I'll make it to work maybe half and hour late or so.  The only problem with this plan is, Pete doesn't have a trailer hitch.  Now things have gotten a bit stressful, we were supposed to be on stage about ten minutes ago and we have no idea how to get our gear to the bar.

Enter Mike.

Mike is the gentleman who pulls over to help us, he's got a trailer hitch and he'd be more than happy to tow our gear wherever we'd like provided we give him gas money.  Sure he knows where the bar is! Hell, he was just there the other night.  Let me paint a picture for you here guys, Mike is driving an extremely run down canary yellow pick up truck.  There's a woman in the middle seat, and a black kid (mike and the woman are both white) in the passenger seat who I never heard speak a word.  The bed of Mike's truck is ridded with trash; two lamp shades a broom handle, a broken chair, a stepladder and so on.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, mike's on meth.  Yeah, hopped up, bad teeth and all.  At this point in the game we're all pretty stoked that we're gonna get to play so we agree, we'll pay mike twenty bucks, he'll take our trailer to the venue, and Mister Dio will pick up the rest of the band.  Now, you all know me.  In addition to being a dashingly good looking  and charming man about the town,  I'm famous for my grand ideas, and as I thought about our plan, one occurred to me.   "Pretzel," I thought to myself "habitual meth users are known for stealing to support their habit.  Someone should probably go with Mike to make sure that our gear doesn't end up in a pawn shop."  I speak up, saying that someone should probably go with Mike to unload into the bar.  Mike agrees, soon I'm in the bed of the truck and we're on our way.  A block away Mike leans out the window and yells "Hey man, I'm gonna go the back way."  Now an idea starts to form in my head,  sure the contents of the trailer are valuable, but on the black market I'm pretty sure the contents of me are too.  As we drive I get more and more worried.  We're driving and there's not many retail spots around, just a lot of abandoned factories, and every time we get about two blocks away from flashing police lights Mike slows to roughly ten miles an hour and turns off onto a different street.  I start to look around the bed of the truck for anything I can use as a weapon because now I'm convinced that my drums are gonna end up in some thirteen year old kid's basement and my kidneys are gonna end up in his dad.  Finally we arrive, I pay Mike, who offers to tow the trailer again tomorrow because, "y'all pay well" and eventually the rest of the band arrives.

The show ended up being great. Lots of beer was spit, lots of beer was drank, we ran into a bunch of people we knew, and at the height of our drunkenness we all slurred a rendition of Olympia WA. with our new friends, it was very Irish drinking song-ish.

Cut to the next morning, we've overslept by a lot.  At the most, I'm gonna make it back for about half the workday, but there's still hope that I can slip in unnoticed.  Thundernuts (awesome, I know) the Drummer from Riverbottom happens to be a mechanic, and helped us  put in a new alternator.  We thank him and get on our way.  roughly a half hour into the drive my boss calls, he's quite pissed at the amount of work I've missed and informs me that I shouldn't come in for a couple of days.  Ordinarily, not a big deal, but I'm pretty broke at the moment and can't really afford to miss three days of pay.  So, a bummer to be sure, but hey, I knew the risks and I'll get by.  The upside to being told not to come in was that now I had time to go eat delicious cheesy hash browns at IHOP.

Oh yeah, and we found the awesomeness below this at a gas station on the way back. 

Well, that's all I've got for today, be all that you can be, stay black and proud, fight the man, and stay in school, I'm gonna go get a drink.

Fondest Regards,

-Pretzel

The Glorious life of the B.M.V

So after a long night of drinking and seeing Erica at  the melody inn for her 21st birthday I had to awake and go to the B.M.V. to get plates for the bands trailer. Why, well because tonight we go  Ft. Wayne and play with The Riverbottom Nightmare Band. 

I walk in with coffee in hand and the first thing i see is this gorgeous young lady doing 360's in her electric wheel chair yelling "This is ridiculous!" ha! i was already amused and had been here all of 2 seconds.

The computers were down and people had been there for a couple hours, I was amazed at how fast adults turn into children when they have to wait for something. Overly speaking loud "i could go to kokomo branch and be done before you guys get me dont here!" and "why is this taking so long, i got things i gotta do, thats what im going to do. Im going to go do things and come back!"

But my favorite line of all was a guy whos rationalization was... " We have to wait this long cause of the computers being down! they didnt have computers when they built the pyramids. Hell they didnt even have calculators!" But in my favor, the computers being down manage to confuse who was next and i got moved up ahead of everyone, even the ones that came in 2 hours ago. SUCCESS.

And throughout the bitterness and the screaming baby and sarcasim. i had a good time and got what i need to roll our new trailor. See you mother fuckers in FT. Wayne!

cheers- damon

god help you if you get past our spam filter

This morning I decided to reply to some scams

SHITS IS RIDICULOUS

And you know it is. So why should'nt we make a blog about really nothing at all, orrrrr pointless, maybe some what entertaining situations as viewed threw the eyes of The Involuntarys rhythm section.

After all, theres always stupid storys about being in a nobody punk rock band, working at a tattoo shop or being drunk a good bit of the time.

However, im not sure how far this will go do to the laziness of all involved!