Pittsburgh Show and our Manager's Wedding!

Here's the situation.

Panda crashed the Blaze. She's in the shop (all cold and lonely) and WE need to play a show in Pittsburgh. We also need to get back in time the very next morning to help celebrate our manager, Ryan, devoting his life to ONE woman! (Also happens to be the ONE woman who'd let him)

Just kidding Ryan! Yer a catch and Meredith knows it. But back to the point.

We have to drive 8 hours there, play a show, hang out with our dear friends, and then haul ass 8 hours BACK to the land of suits, open bar, and wedding band crashing. FUCK!!!!

Okay. Here's what we did. The kind Gentleman Rocker AARON ZIMMER loaned us his A-M-A-Z-I-N-G van for the trip. Her name is "Queen Anne's Revenge" and she's a force unto herself:

Zac was bar-backing at Don Pedro's in Greenpoint till 4am so Pat went down there to pick his filthy-shoe ass up at 4:30am. They both got to my house at 5am , we loaded everything into Queen Anne's Revenge, and then picked up K around 5:30am. Pat was still shaking from 17 cups of coffee and just blasted through the first 4 hours of driving.

I sat shotgun and we watched the sunrise together while holding hands ala Thelma and Louise (so romantic). K slept in the back but we were bored (no radio in this van) so Pat figured it'd be a good time to pull the 'ole Brake and Scream.

Eventually the caffeine wore off and Pat needed some shut eye....K 's behind the wheel...time to PUKE!

Things were moving along alright...I was pleased with my new fanny-pak....

..minding my own business....then a GIANT bee just slapped me in the face going 70 mph and landed on my shirt....that thing felt like a baseball to the head!

After I regained consciousness, I took some shots of a perfectly nice day....

Everything was rainbows and cotton candy...UNTIL we drove through this mountain...

How is it that THIS was waiting for us on the other side??

WTF?!?!

K did a good job handling "QAR" but this was one of the weirdest things...We went through a tunnel..not the Witch's Wardrobe (or maybe we did? But somehow I feel like Narnja wouldn't have 18 Wheelers)

We drove through the next tunnel and hoped for something better than all this rain...

But when we got to the other side...we saw THIS in the middle of the road!!!!!!!!!

STOP THE CAR!!!!

I'm just kidding guys. There actually WASN'T a Giant Baby Head mounted on the top of a Muscle Man's Body in the middle of the highway....but there was more shit weather. ugh

Some of you know that we love Pittsburgh, some of you don't, but let me just say, "We Love Pittsburgh." The inhabitants are of the kindest nature and there's a LOT of talent over there. We rolled into Scott Peterson's house about 2pm and he set us up with "napping stations." One of those was being occupied by his new baby boy, Wyatt...

Wyatt

If you remember, he was front row at our last show with Donora...we're honored to be his 2nd concert ever. I later woke him up screaming Johnny "Guitar" Watson licks at the top of my lungs...sorry Sarah! :(

Scott got us some beverages and we hung on the porch listening to the Meeting Of Important People record...(whom we were about to play with).

Scott

After a 2 hour nap we got to spend some time with Sarah, order some pizza, shower, and head over to Thunderbird for the show. We were real excited to play with Ben Hardt and Meeting Of Important People cuz they're friends and they sound great. MOIP have 2 songs that I couldn't stop listening to for a solid week so they were kind enough to let me sing and play tambourine...Listen to "I Know Every Street." www.myspace.com/MeetingOfImportantPeople

Totally sucks we didn't take any pics, but at least someone sent us this one...

The show was a lot of fun, but we had to skip our usual slumber party/brunch hang cuz our manager was getting married back in NYC! Time to say goodbye and get back in the van...

Zac had the first shift....he drove for 4 hours then passed the wheel to K. By the time I woke up it was daylight and my turn to drive....we all got home about noon. We had to be at the church on Park Ave by 5pm. We took a quick disco nap and put on our Sunday's best....

We were excited cuz Pat got a new suit and I found a '60s tux from New Orleans.

We were both kind of competing for the same date...

K's Daughter, Sola

Sola always selects her courtiers via Pinky. That's Pat's pinky....I guess he won??

C'MON!!!

whatever, wait till she finds out he eats Cheeze-Its in bed...gross. The ceremony was 50 parts Jewish , 40 parts Christian, and 10 parts BOOOOORING. (Dear Ryan, we're kidding. The ceremony was great and the Native Indian Poem was a hit)

The Cocktail Hour (open bar) was waiting so we hopped in the shuttle and drank top shelf with a view of Central Park...werd!!!

Within the first 20 minutes I had a drink spilled all over my leg. Ah.

We mingled, drank, and ate food that had sticks in them. We took our seats and let the lovely lady say grace....

I think it went something like this, "Pat, Pat, Pat....I love Pat. Pat. Amen."

I gave the English girl at our table my best British accent...looks like it wasn't too convincing.

Now's where shit got pretty hilarious...we got wasted, eventually kicked the wedding band off the stage, and used their instruments to serenade the newlyweds.

We love Meredith and Ryan very much so it was fun to hi-jack the band's stuff and play "I Would Die 4 U," of which, this particular version never stopped. We just kept playing until the wedding band mosied back up, but Zac was on drums and never stopped playing!

When he looked up he was surrounded by a wedding band playing Jon Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer." ha!

Eventually I snuck around the back and started playing with him....

At this point we had all been out and about for 40 hours so we went to the after party, but I passed out quickly, K went home, but Zac and Pat kept the candle burning for another few hours in the lobby bar....

...solid Saturday.

~D