I got a show tomorrow at the Hitone small room with my queer folk punk band The Wailing Banshees.

There's also two shows next weekend in Atlanta with Stay Fashionable

I realize I should probably keep up better posting on NG all the shows I do. I doubt I've even mentioned Delta Ondine I've been drumming with for over a year now, even though that act has gotten me paid more than any other.

My cousin Dougie got out of rehab and wants to get a band together called Serotonin Syndrome. He says he's got a bassist and a drum kit.

Last time me and Dougie got a band together it was Indeed We Digress which was really successful. We also played in los Psychosis together.

Dougie is a bit of a character. He drastically changes his personality every few months to be almost a caricature of a person. It's endlessly entertaining but really unhinged. He's a weird guy and he's done a lot of weird shit.

I'm kind of down if can get booked, but I'm probably not gonna put too much effort.

It's wild to think back on all the bands I've been in and people I've played with. So much insane and improbable shit has happened at a certain point it's stops being believable, even to me as I lived it. I see the evidence everywhere but somehow I still feel like it's all made up.

There's whole recordings of songs I wrote with bands I barely remember being in.

It's incredibly surreal. I'm a deeply unserious looking person but I've done all kinds of serious stuff. Like if you me in a bar and I told one of my stories you'd swear I was lying.

It makes it hard to relate to people. I do stuff all the time other people only experience in tv shows and movies.

I say this because it's incredibly unglamorous to crash on floors and live in rest stops and gas stations.

I don't think I'll be the first person to point out financially you're lucky to break even.

I'm old as shit and i'm still playing tons of shows, even after a fucking plague.

It makes me difficult to relate to.

I've been really spaced out and batshit crazy this year. I think it's because it's an election year and there's been so much big shit going on in the news. I went crazy in 2017 and nothing was ever normal again.

But I can play drums pretty good and mandolin okay. Which ironically makes everything somehow ever crazier.

Why can't I have a normal ass skill like welding?

I played the Basement in Nashville sunday, I played Hi Tone big room friday, and I played hernando's hideaway like 3 hours ago.

I never feel like I'm busy, but goddamn I'm playing shows like I'm busy.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/ne4nb6NPmBmqC3cX/

Long, dark story about Dai's aunt. Can't really go into details but it's a closed casket. Suicide.

Dai's destroyed, there's a lot of drama around it, we don't practice for nearly two months.

Somehow, though, we pulled through.

I really need things to calm down.

Next show is in nashville. Hopefully we can get our shit together between now and then.

Just an update for anyone who gives a rat's ass:

I am incredibly unwell. Like, really really bad mentally. It's a few days from the anniversary date and I'm batshit crazy, not sleeping, eyes big as fuck all the time, literally forgetting who I am or how I got places. Ears ringing, eyes don't want to focus, body numb, just bad bad stuff.

Like, imagine if you zoned out and your body just like, kept going. On it's own. Without you.

That's what's going on right now.

It's weird because I'm still capable of doing all kinds of complex shit, I'm just like, not there right now.

Currently drinking valerian root and tamerind tea to knock it down a bit.

I'm uh...

I'm back.

Announcing for deathmatch again.

It's been what, like 12 years?

So this guy, Mike Roach, made a deathmatch wrestling themed band called Mudshow.

So I contact the guy, and I'm like "So, you're into deathmatch... you ever met Tony Myers? He used to be the big deathmatch guy in around here."

So Mike looks up Tony, goes on a roadtrip to see him wrestle deathmatch.

But what I didn't know is Tony's portfolio is "being the guy who can get wrestling gigs in Memphis and knows Lawler"

So Tony sees this as an opportunity to do more mixed Deathmatch/Metal shows, like the old SnV league.

And Mike is ALL FOR THAT SHIT.

So now I'm the guy who got Mike on the inside of deathmatch, for which Mike is extremely grateful.

So he books me to ring announce, a thing I haven't done in forever.

I just got a dental crown put in, and I'm in the process of my yearly descent into madness. Already started having bad nightmares and stomach problems, and the anniversary date is still like 6 weeks away.

Mentally, I am ILL.

And now I'm gonna announce for dudes who carve their foreheads open with light tubes.

My life is surreal as shit and doesn't make any sense. I am not currently being treated for my severe dissociative PTSD. I have a really, really large pile of both [criminal content redacted].

Its never going to make any sense, is it? None of these things should exist, and yet somehow not only do they exist, but they are major parts of my life that even decades cannot erase.

Album's good though. Check it out.

https://youtu.be/dicDUGSJCh4?si=4hZn5Wgl-5Fg6Z3D

EDIT:

I did a livestream with Merrycrest Sessions.

I did more livestreams from Hernando's Hideaway with Delta Ondine on instagram too,

Here's like, a link or something

I'm in the middle of a run of 3 shows in 4 days and I'm already two shows in.

Tonight I'm doing the Valentine's show with Some Kind of Nightmare at Growler's.

I remember back in the bad old days of newgrounds, I'd talk about doing shows and people would be all "PICS OR IT DINT HAPEN!!!!111" and then I'd be like "But I swear guys, I'm like a musician IRL, and I record stuff sometimes but I'm all busy and it sounds like crap most of the time" but I wouldn't, you know, have pics.

Now that everyone's terminally online, you can't cut a good fart without someone livestreaming it.

As you know, I am super comfortable with livestreaming and livestreams. I've never had an absolutely horrific experience as a result of some dickhole doing dumb shit for FB live, not me.

Been a ton of shootings lately and we're in the early start of a super shit election year, all stuff that makes me crazy as fuck. My stomach's been doing backflips for days.

Like there's news today just a few hours ago somebody shot up the super bowl parade. The actual fuck?

There was just another spree killing in memphis a few days ago.

So yeah, I'm doing great mentally, no problems.

Had a super weird experience at Merrycrest, because Dai introduced me as the drummer from Sin City Scoundrels, and dude was all "Oh shit, that's a blast from the past, I remember him from Los Psychosis" and I've joined two other bands since then, let alone unmentioned acts.

It's just fucking weird to see some dude with a relatively wide array of experience on the local scene be aware that technically I've had multiple eras of drumming in various bands. the Merrycrest dude knows his shit. The wild thing is I kept talking about the deathmatch shit, because next month I'm supposed to be MCing for Mudshow's record release at Hitone. There's going to be three separate death matches that night.

Back in my Sex and Violence ring announcing days, there was never any good video of me anouncing, and the audio was always shit. Even if you bought the DVD we'd redo the commentary in higher audio quality in post.

It's weird being remembered as the dude with the super bonafide psychobilly credentials, when there are also a lot of people who remember me as the death match ring announcer guy, so many that over a decade later I'm being asked to MC a deathmatch show.

Like, before SnV deathmatch, I had a lot of trouble getting booked, and that was my bread and butter gig getting bands shows. That was my big dream back then, just get my bands booked for SnV deathmatch shows.

People who know me well, people who've known me for years, have no idea I was deeply, deeply involved in death match. I used to have long hair before death match, and got my head shaved after a match by Psycho, which is how I got the stupid haircut I have to this day.

I have refused to mention Snv to several therapists, and dissociation issues I have with having such a wildly violent period in my life. It's still surreal as fuck to me to occasionally get a phone call from Tony Myers just to shoot the shit.

Like when the scandal with Vince Mcmahon came out, I got a call from Tony at work about it.

Tony eats broken glass in japan with some of the biggest names on the island.

Don't believe me? Same channel I just shared, oh look, he's in japan with a chainsaw.

And I'm supposed to be able to relate to other people. I'm supposed to function in this boring ass world.

I'm having flashbacks to the smell of broken light tubes right now.

I have a show in 2 and a half hours.

I got 4 hours of sleep last night.

I worked all day.

The.

Fuck.

Playing the Hi Tone small room twice in the next three days. Been doing a weird Blues Brunch thing with Delta Ondine at Hernando's Hideaway. I think there is video on IG.

*goes to look on IG*

*sees show offer for jan 19*

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0r2IwPg8nR/

There it is.

Been ill one way or another since before thanksgiving, even got a staph infection that was incredibly brutal blood wise. Like burst when I bent over to pick something up kinda bad, like go home early from work bad.

So much blood.

Been extra crazy lately, I don't generally post when I'm well, lol.

Like, girlfriend's been noticing I've got the spacey eyes.

An infection that went septic killed Omar Higgins.

I mean it's just surreal.

I'm sure I'll ace this on autopilot like everything else, lol.

Thursday night, Punk Black at Growlers

Friday night, small room at Hi Tone

Saturday 1p Delta Ondine Blues Brunch at Lamplighter.

I'm fine. Everything's fine.

I'm not a complete wreck of a human being who can barely function.

I'm like, a bad ass music person who can work 40 soul crushing hours a week and yet still add another 9 hours of labor to my week without utterly falling apart.

So my band Stay Fashionable performed a new song I've tentatively called "They Say" in this video. Watch me get in trouble because that's not the official title, lol.

I thought the flyer was particularly nice.

There was a baby goat, but I didn't get any pictures.

(EDIT: PICTURE ACQUIRED)

Here's a picture of the baby goat someone else took, though.

So yeah, we did a new song and didn't fuck up the first performance. I did peg a guy in the head with a fist full of rose petals, but to be fair I didn't know I could get that kind of distance.

My therapist told me he's quitting on me last friday. He says he's getting a new job, but I've been dumped by 3 therapists before and I know there's two ways they go about it: they either try to have you hospitalized, or they stop taking your insurance. He told me he was trying to stop taking my insurance last session, so it seems like his story is changing.

However, last time I quit going to therapy was because they were trying to have me hospitalized, so I take this as an improvement.

I might use this as an excuse to drop out. It's pretty clear therapists don't want to work with me, because I'm fucking nuts. The therapist hinted he thought I was delusional a while back. I think he thinks I'm too far gone to be helped, which I kind of already know. There's so much social pressure to get treatment for PTSD but I've been going for half a decade now and I don't really feel it's ever helped. And it's not like I'm going around doing fucked up shit all the time, either.

People find out bad shit happened to you and they start treating you like shit, as if having disdain for you will prevent bad shit from happening to them.

People who have never so much as tourniquetted a gunshot wound wanting to judge me for how doing that sort of shit changed me.

I mean, shit, even the former prison guard therapist is giving up on me. How do you even do that? Apparently I'm crazier than dudes who are in prison, and the bad thing is I know dudes who are as crazy as me and they all have really bad records.

Still having really bad nightmares, insomnia, stomach problems. Stuff therapy was supposed to fix. not just treat, but fix. There are plenty of people who go into emergency rooms with a "heart attack" or "vomiting" who get told they have a mental health issue and get referred to therapy. I work in medical billing, I know how this goes. Most people with A-Fib's main problem is they worry too much about the damn A-Fib. Car engines can run like garbage for years, hearts are no different.

The reason I'm so fucked up about it is now I have the worst case scenario: I'm well documented to have a severe mental illness. I know this may shock you, but doctors don't... try as hard to save crazy people, especially crazy fat people. It's called "diagnostic overshadowing." Medical doctors HATE the mentally ill, and generally assume they're all drug addicts looking for pills, because many are.

But hey, my band still gets booked even though I'm old as shit, and ugly, and poor, and kind of mean.

Here's a picture of the show taken by local tambourine player, booking agent, and merch vendor Maribeth.

Ashe couldn't make the show because he had to work.

I took the kid and he managed to last for three sets, which is pretty good considering it was hot as unholy fuck.

Here's another pic taken by my girlfriend, Jana:

I gotta remember to post more about shows. I've been kinda out of it mentally for a month or two, but I'm finally getting my shit together. Not that I haven't been working and doing the occasional show.

I feel like I should double down on promoting on NG, because this place deserves my content and other places don't.

I mean, just look at fucking Twitter. Goddamn it's a shithole now.

And FB? Everything's limited as fuck if you're self promoting.

So I guess this is special content for all my newgrounders.