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