Sometimes I sit here and watch 9767896 videos of live Emarosa and Dance Gavin Dance performances because I’m so afraid I will never get to hear Jonny sing in person ever again. PLEASE STOP SHOOTING UP, JONNY CRAIG.

***

In other news, I got my hair chopped off the other day. It’s not man-short, but the longest layers skim my chin. I asked Chooch the next day if he liked it, and without even looking at me, he said, “No.” Granted, he is very surly in the morning, but he is also HONEST. So I was pretty bummed. Right before I took him to school, I prodded him some more.

“Do you think it’s better or worse than before?” I asked, like my future on America’s Next Top Model is on the line.

Watching the news (he watches the news every morning now and is really interested in what the “traffics” is like), he sighed and said, “Well, did you like your hair before?”

I thought about this for a few seconds. My hair was getting to be too long and the ends were pretty obliterated. The color was bland, too. “No,” I answered him confidently.

“Well, then I guess it’s better,” he said in a tone that implied, “Good job, you just answered your own question.”

Naturally, 80% of the office freaked out over it (except for WENDY WHO DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE!!!) and you all know how much I love to be gang-praised. Which is to say, as much as I like to be gang-raped. I think I had longer conversations about it with the boys though, which was kind of weird. Chris even stopped bouncing his fucking orange ball long enough to put his hands under his chin and call me adorable. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT EVERY GROWN WOMAN WANTS TO HEAR.

No really, I’m OK with “adorable.” When you have the face of a turtle, you will take whatever complimentary handout you can get.

Probably the fact that I pull unflattering faces should be my main concern of model-rejection, not my hairstyle.

Fantastic song, sick video, brilliant artist. I love me some Captain Midnight.

Haven’t heard of him? Check out the Q&A I did with him last year.

Nothing takes the edge off the impending Hallmark Holiday like some fast-moving zombie action. Get stoked on it!

The sound on this is atrocious, but let’s be real for a minute: I’m not posting this for the song. This is one of my favorite videos to watch on YouTube because Jonny doesn’t look as much like a red neck crackhead for once. (Probably also because it’s from the 2008 Pierce the Veil tour where he was only a quarter of the hot mess he is today.)

Chooch stayed home from school today, and when I showed him this video on my phone, he sighed and half-sang, “It’s peanut butter Jonny time.”

***

Elsewhere in my pathetic existence, I have designed a total of 7 different blog promo cards. Anyone want a stack to help spread the word about some idiot’s mediocre blog? Comment here or email me your address and I’ll send you some: butgavincantdance@gmail.com

On December 17th, Henry and I were Cleveland-bound again, this time for the Craig Owens solo show at the Grog Shop. You might know that I have had a long-standing love affair with Craig Owens’ music ever since he was in Chiodos, even though I feel that I’m starting to out-grow him a little bit at a time. (I love his new band, but there is this braggadocian cloud he’s been riding lately that I’m just not a fan of. It’s really hard to explain, because he acts all Kumbaya at his solo shows, but when he’s on stage with his band D.R.U.G.S., I kind of want to vomit into a hobo boot.) Regardless, Craig still has a way of warming my soul so I thought it would do wonders considering the depressed state I had been floundering in.

Plus, all that time to irritate Henry while he’s trapped in the car with me and the constant rotation of Jonny Craig projects oozing from the speakers, making me fan my face? You can’t get that kind of joy in regular therapy.

Henry’s favorite part of the trip was all the piles and piles of snow that began to appear as we drew nearer to Cleveland. He knew that it was supposed to snow later that night, but didn’t know that it had already previously snowed the night before. I did know this and made the mistake of casually saying that I had seen snow pictures from some Cleveland people on Twitter and Henry was all, “YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS?” like the fallen snow was code for me taking his mom to get a clandestine piercing.

Apparently now on top of sitting around looking pretty, I have to keep tabs on the weather. I’m so overworked in this relationship.

Getting lost, sliding in snow, PISSED.

By the time we made it to Coventry, we were starving and running out of pre-show time. There’s a Winking Lizard near the Grog Shop and we settled on that, because we had eaten there before and I was reaching that point where I was so hungry that I honestly didn’t know what I wanted and we were about to come to blows. Henry ordered a chicken caesar salad and I honestly did a spit-take. I mean, it’s unusual for men to order a salad to begin with, but Henry? HENRY? BLUE-COLLAR HENRY? I have not once in my life seen this man eat a salad unless it was atop a blood-dripping burger.

“What are you suddenly watching your girlish figure?” I asked him.

“No, my stomach is still messed up*,” he mumbled. So what does he do? He orders a salad and a side of wings. He threatened to make me cry if I took a picture of him and his salad.

*(I still think I brought home some kind of Bavarian virus from the music box museum.)

I felt like living large so I ordered some gingerbread cocktail in spite of Henry’s pursed lips and shaking head. It was pretty much the worst thing I have ever imbibed this side of an egg cream, which made Henry go on a tirade about how I just wasted $6 and I was like, “Jesus, I’ll offer to wash the dishes if your piddly Faygo salary can’t afford a $6 cocktail, go cry in your pussy caesar salad.” It’s just a matter of time before one of us tries to stab the other at a restaurant.

We had just enough time to run down to Big Fun after dinner, which is one of my favorite places to shop in Cleveland. I was hoping to grab some last minute Christmas bullshit for Chooch, but the most annoying people in the world were in there (most of them were probably en route to the Craig show, I’m sure) so I got fed up. I was also going to buy a pair of reindeer ears, because Craig had tweeted earlier that he wanted all the boys at the show to wear Santa hats and all the girls to wear reindeer ears, but then you know what? I got this sudden jolt of self-righteousness and said, “Fuck this, I’m too old to be playing sheep.” So I put it back and got some giant rubber mustache for Tommy and Jessy’s dogs. Next time Craig does something I tell him to do in a tweet, we’ll talk.

Besides, I hate being like other people. I enjoy being the plain old lady at the back of the show. Reindeer ears would only distract from that.

We got to the Grog Shop just as the first opening band was starting. I grabbed us a spot at the bar and immediately began chugging Strongbow. It was either get drunk or be emotionally vulnerable and cry through the whole show. It was bad enough there was one acoustic emo band after the next playing all kinds of wrist-cutting melancholy.

I don’t remember much about the opening band. They were local and their name had something do with Wolves. But the second band, Envoi, came out and I was immediately taken by the singer.

“He is so fucking hot and totally my type,” I hissed at Henry. By this point, Henry likely could have achieved a buzz off my breath alone. I like to slam back some Strongbow, ok?

Henry didn’t respond, so I repeated myself.

“He’s not that hot,” he muttered. At first I thought maybe he was just sulking, but he’s typically a pretty decent wingman so I was confused. That didn’t stop me from tweeting things like, “I can’t wait to date rape this singer after the show, just as soon as I chuck my kid’s carseat out of the backseat.” I mean, I had it so bad that I kept latching on to Henry’s bicep and squeezing, while making purring sounds that probably made everyone around me uncomfortable.

After their set, I kept my eyes on him, willing him to come over to the bar. He had huge gauges and was wearing a slouchy beanie and scene glasses – TOTALLY MY TYPE, RIGHT GUYS? Henry was still frowning over my latest conquest.

Finally, he did end up coming over to the bar, and squeezed in right next to where I was sitting. I was so stunned that I swiveled by seat away from him and mouthed to Henry, “WELL IS HE HOT OR WHAT?” Henry was firm in his stance and said, “No, not at all.”

I quickly spun my head around, letting my eyes scan him just long enough to determine that, oh fuck, Henry was right. This guy was so not hot at all. Not even his sex-voice would have been enough to win me over after finally seeing him close up.

“My eyes are really bad,” I said, returning to my can of Strongbow. At least I know I can still trust Henry as my wingman, even when he wears my pink Delia’s scarf.

Then we were totally making fun of this flapper-wannabe with an angel halo head topper and she totally ended up being with Craig’s “band.” I think she just stood there playing the tambourine. I was not impressed. But before I could find that out, we had to get through two more bands, one of which was My Arcadia, a female-fronted band we recently saw at Warped Tour. I liked them better this time, though I did admit to Henry that I wished the singer was just a smidge hotter. She had good stage presence at least.

Sometime before Craig took the stage, our friend Jason arrived and Henry immediately turned into a sycophant. He’s so ridiculous when it comes to bromances. He practically clotheslined himself against the bar, trying to get the bartender to put Jason’s Boylan’s on our tab.

“Can we go now?”

Craig came out and chose to cover Bieber’s “Under the Mistletoe” as his opening song. I thought it was a joke at first; who wouldn’t? He slowed it down and made it all breathy and serious; I kept waiting for him to stop abruptly and say, “Sike, naw!”

But no. He was serious. This was unironic. I seemed to be in the minority, considering that all the kids in the crowd were going ape nuts over this. I kept frowning at Henry and rubbing my chin, like this was going to help me suddenly make sense of things. It just sounded absolutely ridiculous.

At least the next song was “Lindsay Quit Lollygagging”, and I adore that song so much, you guys. It takes me back to a pre-pregnancy time. But for some reason, I kept finding ways to make everything about Speck, so I started crying, and since I was drunk, it was that stupid half-sobbing/half-laughing psychotic meltdown which usually leaves me wanting to punch people and there just happened to be a group of 4 or 5 asshole chicks next to me who I always see at Craig/Chiodos shows and I’m pretty sure they’re from Pittsburgh and I just really hate them. They do all these horrible exaggerated Glee-movements while drunkenly singing along with flipped-back heads, but this is just when they’re not SCREAM-CONVERSING with each other over top all of the songs.

The last time I felt like fighting while drinking Strongbow was at a Chiodos show in Columbus, only this time it was two jocks standing behind me, talking shit on the Penguins (too bad they won the Stanley Cup a month later, motherfuckers).

Anyway, I think I lost some love for Craig that night. He talked too much and there were times when he was borderline cult-leader up there on that stage. And he’s all “OMG I LOVE MY FANS” to such an extreme degree that it’s almost hard to believe his sincerity. I really don’t like feeling this way! But he leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth now. And also, I paid to hear him sing his fucking songs, not all the kids in the audience. I really dislike that he only sings three words and then gives away the mic.

Meanwhile, Henry’s caesar salad began knocking on the exit door, so he took off for the nearest bathroom, after refusing to poop on the prison-like Grog Shop commodes. I didn’t see him for at least four songs. Which ended up being most of the set, since the Grog Shop double-booked and Craig had to be off the stage around 9. Totally fucking weak. I knew this ahead of time, but I guess I assumed all the other bands would have cut their sets short to give Craig more time. And I also feel like Craig wasted so much of his set on stupid songs.

I really wanted to hear “Bibles and Badges” and we all know it’s all about me.

He did a few D.R.U.G.S. songs (none I particularly care for), “Intensity in Ten Cities” (not my favorite but at least it’s Chiodos), a Cinematic Sunrise joint and a song off the mediocre solo EP he put out a few years ago. Pretty disappointing show, but I was still happy to be out of the house, drunk, and having some quality time with Henry. (I know, right?) And it’s always a treat to see Jason.

At one point, he brought his puppy Charlie out so everyone could say hello and all that did was make me sad again. “SHE’S GONNA DIE SOMEDAY!” I was screaming in my head. I miss my fucking cat so bad.

The last song he sang was “Baby, You Wouldn’t Last a Minute on the Creek,” one of my all-time favorite Chiodos songs. He left the stage and had a bunch of guys hold him up which was cool, but that just made it easier for him to give the mic to the crowd. HI CRAIG, CAN YOU SING ONE SONG IN ITS ENTIRETY? At least let me get a quarter of my money’s worth? Cut the summer camp bullshit, please. He kept stopping during every song, putting his hand behind his ear and screaming “WHAT?” while holding the mic out to the crowd. I cringed every time.

I get that he wants it to be all intimate and shit, but then go for more of a Storyteller’s vibe and DON’T STOP SINGING.

Still, when he left the stage, I turned and walked back to Henry and Jason with my lip all protruding like a TV tray. Jason pantomimed straining to lift it up from the floor while Henry gave me that “Please don’t embarrass me by crying” mustache bristle. Afterward, we hung around and talked to Jason for a little bit before heading back to Pittsburgh, where Henry thankfully only needed to stop twice to tend to his explosive diarrhea.

(I also asked Henry some questions about his night at the show, which I will type up here tomorrow! And hey, don’t forget to tell me if you’re Team Poor Henry or Team Blame Henry!)

Me, about Taio Cruz: “Oh, I always thought that was Akon.

”

Mike: “Not quite as high-pitched.”

Laura: “I’m surprised you even know that.”

Mike: “I watched a biography.”

Laura: “No more winter breaks for you.”

Meanwhile, Henry was bristling his ‘stache.

Is it weird that I still don’t feel like writing much in here? Trying to push through the pain by writing about the night from several weeks ago when Henry and I were in Cleveland for the AP Fall Tour. There was a guest list mix-up and I ended up not having a “plus-1” so Henry almost lucked out. However, Jason was standing right there and called over Dawn, the AP marketing person, who hooked Henry up with a laminate. He thought he was such a superstar after that and it was nauseating.

This tour’s lineup was: Sharks, The Swellers, Title Fight, Gallows, and Four Year Strong. I had previously seen all of these bands except for Title Fight, and Gallows had a different singer when I first saw them at Warped Tour in 2007. I had a feeling that Henry would enjoy himself more at this show because all the bands are pretty bro-centric and have an older fan base. No Minnie Mouse-bowed scene girls in the crowd dyking out over Craig Owens this time.

Personally, I was really looking forward to seeing Sharks again, since their set at last summer’s Warped Tour got rained out. These guys are so young (all under 21 I think), yet they remind me of a band that would have played on the Young Ones. Skinny British kids, straight-up punk rock, no gimmicks or schtick. It’s refreshing and full of heart. Even Henry looked relatively undaunted.

Since it was the last night of the tour, some of the other bands passed out signs for the kids in the audience to hold up during Sharks’ set that said “Go home, wankers” and rolls of toilet paper were being hurled from the sides of the stage. Watching the bands fuck with each other was my favorite part of the night.

I liked the Swellers so much more this time around than when I saw them in 2009 with Alisha. I think I wasn’t really into that kind of music much back then, this newer wave of pop punk, but my musical tastes are constantly in flux and I have grown to appreciate this genre of music over the years. I think that’s the one of the most fun and exciting things about being a music fan, is when you suddenly realize, “Hey, this band actually is kind of great” and then you have an entire back catalogue of records to dive into. I could never be that pigeon-holed fan who won’t give anything else but their favorites a chance.

Except for ska. I am done giving ska a chance. Me and ska are never going to prom together.

The Swellers ended up being Henry’s favorite of the night. I offered to buy him some of their albums when we came home, but he was all, “No, that’s OK” because Henry doesn’t ever like anything enough to want to buy the album unless it’s Judas Priest.

Title Fight ended up being the sleeper hit of the night for me. I had a vague interest in seeing them, but they definitely weren’t my priority. However, they killed it and totally won me over with their 1995-high school boy looks. Henry did not like them at all, so I made sure to play them constantly in the car for the next week.

Still not a fan of Gallows. I just don’t like that kind of hardcore punk and their new singer really got under my skin. However, some old drunk dude got whisked out of the pit by security, so there was that. (Except that I missed it because it was the ONE SECOND I glanced at my phone to check the score of the Penguins game.)

Four Year Strong closed out the tour, and it was bittersweet.

And then shit like this happens:

After the show, we got a table in the after party’s Foundation Room with Terri and Christian, at which point we filled up plates with cookies, cheesecake squares and heaping mounds of whipped cream for dinner. I was excited to hang out with them some more and talk about music (it’s not easy finding other adults who want to talk about music with me), yet we ended up talking about hockey the whole time. And amicably too! Even after I lorded the recent Penguins win over them. Jason kept coming over to check on us, and seemed alarmed when he found out that Pens and Flyers fans were discussing hockey.

“Did you check Erin’s purse for a knife?” he asked Terri and Christian. What little faith he has in me!

Eventually, it was time to call it a night. We had a two hour drive ahead of us and it was after midnight. A few years ago, that would have been no biggie, but I am Old now (kind of) and I didn’t want to stay over because I was in a big hurry to see Chooch. I guess I really am a mom after all.

I think I’ve listened to this pretty much all day by this point. It makes me feel like I’m swallowing my heart. I can almost not hear my big-mouthed child saying “MOMMYMOMMYMOMMYMOMMY” in the other room.

I should be en route to Columbus, Ohio right now to see my beloved Dance Gavin Dance, but since their singer Jonny Craig is such a class-act and got arrested a few weeks ago, the rest of the band canceled the tour. So instead, I’m sitting at home watching some of their old live videos on YouTube and driving Henry nuts.

Chooch even let me rest my head solemnly on his shoulder for a few seconds. That helped. Except that he had peanut butter on his cheeks, which then got in my hair.

Fuck you, Jonny.

WAIT NO, NEVER MIND, I STILL LOVE YOU, JONNY.

The crowd in this video is priceless.

(I finally made a Jonny Craig category for my blog. It’s going to take me hours to tag all my Jonny posts. Good thing I have the night off work.

Because I would NEVER do anything blog-related from work.

)

I think I’m pregnant just from watching this. It will always be one of my favorite Emarosa songs, but acoustically it kind of makes me want to faint. I wish Jonny Craig was still in Emarosa, but at least I’ll always have YouTube.

Henry just walked by and said, “Don’t care.”

This song is giving me bona fide chills right now. I liked A Lot Like Birds pre-Kurt Travis, but he adds a brand new element of awesome. I’m enjoying him so much more in this band than when he replaced Jonny Craig in Dance Gavin Dance.

I went out for coffee with my friend Evonne yesterday. (Working evenings while having a kid in school has suddenly opened up a world of coffee and lunch dates for me.) She is really into laws of attraction and that whole Secret phenomenon and is always urging me to visualize what I want and open a door to it in my mind. (Mostly this speech is preceded by, “Did you write that book yet?”) I always say, “Yeah sure, I’ll try that” or “No, but I’m working on it” where “working” can be loosely translated into “thinking about it occasionally but then feeling exhausted and watching shows on The CW instead.”

“You just have to think about what you want and put it out there in the universe,” she said. “If you really want it enough and concentrate on it, it will happen for you.

”

Later that night, something clicked. I remembered Tuesday night, sitting at work and rooting through my purse. One of the pictures of Jonny Craig that I had stuck in a cheap frame for our trip to Tennessee was at the bottom of my purse, looking all lonely and rejected.

“I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you Jonny,” I said out loud as I taped the picture to my monitor. So then I had Jonny on my mind (Henry loves that) and spent the rest of the night at work listening to Dance Gavin Dance and wishing that they’d go on tour before the end of the year. When I got home that night, I went to their Facebook page, which is rarely updated, just to see if anything was happening with them since they actually weren’t going to be a part of the Rock Yourself To Sleep tour as previously promised throughout the music blogosphere.

The most recent update was from a few hours earlier that day, announcing their new fall tour. So there Evonne, I did it and it worked. This Law of Attraction shit might come in handy when I’m finally ready to take down Katy Perry.

A Lot Like Birds is also on this tour and Henry said we could go to the Columbus show. I ONLY HAD TO ASK HIM ONCE. Either he really fucking loves me lately or he’s just tired of fighting. (Or he has secretly grown to love Dance Gavin Dance, chances are slim.) Anyway, you just know I ran around the house screaming. It’s on a work night but I already requested off. I told Barb if it’s not approved, I’ll quit and she said she’ll quit too. BECAUSE AIN’T NO LAW FIRM KEEPING THIS BITCH FROM JONNY CRAIG.

“I’m not going to eat from now until November 14th,” I said to Henry, all serious-like. “Then maybe I’ll have a chance to run off with Jonny.” (The sad thing is that I was only partially kidding.)

“Yeah, do that,” Henry urged supportively. “Because then when you’re in Western Psych with an eating disorder, I won’t have to go see Dance Gavin Dance.”

In other news: I’M GOING TO SEE DANCE GAVIN DANCE IN A MONTH!

Thank god it’s Wordless Wednesday because I’m being tortured slowly by fuckerbitch allergies. Anyway, here is a scan of a photo from when I met The Cure in Canberra, Australia back in 2000.

Someday maybe I’ll tell that story on here.

But not today.

Definitely one of the Top 5 Moments of my life; but right now, at this moment, I’d be happy with just meeting The Cure for allergies.

(I’m the girl on the left with the long, stupid hair; not the man in the doorway, tonguing himself.

)

Thank god I have a friend like Casey who finds YouTube gems for me. This has been the only thing that’s succeeded in getting the psycho Russian girls’ cover of Demi Lovato’s “Skyscraper” out of my head. It has a very Wicker Man*-esque vibe to it.

I am beyond obsessed, perplexed and smitten with this video.

MAYBE ENOUGH TO BECOME A NUN.

(* The original, not that Nicolas Cage abomination.)

If there was a way for me to put this song into my veins, I think I would find a way to get over my fear of needles something quick-like.

I have to see them again before the end of the year or my heart will shrivel up into a prune. (And then Henry the Elder will try to eat it.)

Oh, Jonny.

Back in April, Kaitlin surprised me at work by baking me a lamb cake because I was so obsessed with this nagging vision I had for a photo shoot that absolutely could not happen without a goddamn lamb cake. What happened after that, though, was a series of mishaps and it was clear that this cake and I were just not meant for each other.

• It fell on the way home from work that night, the moment I was left unsupervised with it
• Three days later, the head fell off en route to my mom’s house for the shoot
• It was raining
• The head fell off five thousand more times while I tried to set up the table outside in the rain
• My mom is an asshole so I couldn’t use her kitchen for the shoot like I had envisioned in my head
• It was raining and Henry was there
• Corey and I weren’t on the same page and it was raining
• Henry was there

I gave up after about 45 minutes, threw a huge fit with Ketchup and frosting all over my hands; it was a pretty bleak scene. It all boils down to me being a black cloud for baked goods. The last time Kaitlin gave me macarons to photograph, my cat Don sat on them within 2 minutes of me setting them down.

Anyway, the whole lamb cake ordeal had become such a sore subject for me, that I never even posted the (few) photos I was able to salvage. Then my friend DJ Shortpants unexpectedly caught some inspiration from the lamb cake blog post and produced a song that perfectly complements the creep-factor of the frosted Easter deight. I’ve listened to it unlimited times already, and even played it in the car on the way home from the fair Saturday, the dark country roads providing an apropros atmosphere.

DJ Shortpants himself gave me permission to post this here for everyone to enjoy (and you should!). Thank you, DJ Shortpants!

GET IT IN YR HEAD, YA’LL:

And while the spirit of the lamb cake is being summoned, here are some pictures from the photo shoot from Hell. (Literally from Hell—it was in my mom’s yard.

)

Maybe someday I’ll try again, now that I have the perfect music to accompany it.

This pretty much sums everything up in my life right now.

What’s doing it for you right now?