We came, we saw, we rocked it out.  Couldn't have asked for a better day or a better show.  Thanks to all the performers, thanks to the audience, thanks to the Bergersens for helping to make this possible.  Thank you everyone!  We had a blast.

Now that Bergerstock is over, I actually have some free time to think about the fact that I'm leaving for college on Thursday.  I know I'm not ready.  I haven't started packing at all.  I haven't started reading that summer reading book yet.  I haven't been able to get in touch w/ my roomate (either noone picks up and they have no answering machine, or it's busy for hours).  But mostly I haven't thought about how big of a change this is.  If my sisters represent a certain trend, then this is probably the last time I will truly be living at home.  I mean of course I'll be home in the summer and vacations and stuff like that, but after college I'll probably go get a job somewhere and an apartment or something, cause that's just what people do.  I wish it wasn't.  Although I know there's plenty of people who don't even have the opportunity to go to college, they just go straight into work.  And I suppose they have to miss out on a great four years, but at the same time, college is not for everyone.  And not every job sucks.  Just the majority do.  It's just lately I have these thoughts about being older, doing some busy work that I really don't care about, but being married and having kids.  And that's sort of what salvages everything.  You feel that you have a second chance at living if your kids can do what they want in life.  But then again, I think loving your job isn't always the most important thing, long as it can keep you alive.  For the most part, you can still find time for the things you love.  I don't know, I'm just babbling, but I just feel like I'm too timid to really try to do anything out of the ordinary with myself.  Like continuing to study tap or writing songs.  Or maybe I'm too lazy.  I don't really know.  I wish I could talk to my Grandpa about it.  He could do anything he ever put his mind to.  When he was only about 15 he had to drop out of school to get 2 or 3 jobs and support his family.  There were 9 kids, and the father had passed away.  So there's my grandfather, this little Irish kid in Brooklyn, the third youngest in the family, but one of the main providers.  On top of that he went back to night school to finish high school and was valedictorian of all the night school people.  He used to do art.  One time he sent in one of his paintings for an art contest on the radio and he won, but he was too shy to go pick up his prize.  He also loved music, mostly classical, but he liked other kinds too.  He liked folk music I believe.  So anyway, with whatever extra money he had for himself, he'd get a record here and there.  He grew up, went into the navy during WWII, although I don't think he ever went overseas, came back, married my Grandma and they had two kids.  My grandfather eventually worked for MTA and held a very high position  as supervisor of all the trains on statin island I believe.  He retired the year I was born.  My grandmother also is the type of person who just met face to face with all of life's challenges.  Growing up, she was an army brat.  Whenever her father got stationed somewhere else, she had to move, so she never really had a long-term home.  When she was old enough, she inlisted as a nurse for WWII against her parents' wishes and went all over the world.  Her first plane ride was in a B52 bomber over the French Alps I believe.  She made it out, despite living without many luxuries and she has so many stories I still don't think I've heard them all.  I hope I can have a life like either of them.  It seems like that would be so fullfilling and you wouldn't have much to regret when it's over.  But I never had that inherent knowledge of so many things, like my grandfather.  Although, maybe that came out of necessity of being a poor kid in a family of 9 in Brooklyn.  And I never had that headstrong confidence like my grandmother.  I've had an easy childhood.  I couldn't have asked for better, more loving parents.  And I've had great friends as well.  Sometimes I think the easier you've had it, the harder it is to make it on your own.  Of course there's a million reasons to refute that statement, but in some ways it is true.  Because we are all very much a product of our environment and everything is relative.  We're constantly affected and constantly changed by every experience.  So I guess, here's to college and everyone who's making a change in their life now.  Here we go!      

OK EVERYONE THIS IS THE REAL DEAL!!!!

BERGERSTOCK IS ON FOR SUNDAY, AUGUST 22nd, 2004!!!! 

RAIN OR SHINE.  The forecast is clear so hopefully no worries (knock on wood), but if it does rain, we have tents and we will do an acoustic show underneath the tents. 

What you can expect:

1)  CD'S!!!!  At least from our band.  We have our cds and we have copies for all of you.  So buy them.  3 bucks.  If you only have 2, 2 bucks.  If you only have 1, and we really like you, 1 buck.  If you're over 65, it's free!!!!

2)  FOOD!!!!  There will be hot dogs and hamburgers and maybe some potato salad and macaroni salad.  Soda, too.  NO CHARGE!!!!

3)  Yup, guess who's back for another Hollywood masterpiece... it's SUMMIT DRIVE!!!!  Who knows what their lineup will be, maybe Greg will be drumming, or maybe Chester.  Maybe Chester will play bass or maybe Gonzo.  Maybe Evan will sing or maybe Butterscootch.  Either way, they're gonna bring their pop punk/emo mix and bring it hard!!!! 

4)  That band that I'm in... whatever we're called!!!!  The name doesn't matter b/c we're just here so our music can beat the shit out of you!!!!

5)  TIM KUBART YO!!!!

6)  FRANK BARILE!!!!  This shit is gonna be OFF THE HOOK!!!!

7)  AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, YOU CAN EXPECT TO GET YOUR FUCKING ASSES ROCKED!!!!     

THE SHOW WILL BEGIN AT 5pm AND GO TILL 9pm.  FREE FOOD FREE SHOW.

IT IS REALLY HAPPENING SO YOU ALL BETTER GET YOUR ASSES DOWN TO 69 SOUTH CRESCENT DRIVE FOR SOME GOOD SHIT!!!!

Once again, everyone's invited, bring friends if you like.  Maybe not if your friends smell, but otherwise it's cool!

Hope to see you all there!!!! 

Peace out!!!!

Currently Playing Carry On By Crosby Stills & Nash see related

Crosby, Stills, and Nash was the best live show I've ever seen, hands down.  ROCK ON HIPPIES!!!!

In other news, our cd is done!!!!  Scott and I went to Staples yesterday and got 150 cds to burn so now we just need to work on a name and cover and shit like that and then we'll start selling them.  I would prefer to charge 2 bucks, Scott said 3.  Definitely no more than 3, it's not like we're really in debt b/c Jake recorded us for free and 2 bucks a cd would make back the money we spent on blank cds plenty.  So anyway, everyone get ready for our cd to beat the shit out of you!!!!

In other news, Spinati's party was fun.  YEA SEAN!!!!  And all the other weird little kids that were in Spinati's basement.  "I'm the fastest!"  Then, Gonzo mumbled under his breath, "You're also the ugliest!" 

Yea, woohoo and beedeepbeep for Summit Drive.

That's all for now, peace out.

"Alex, smile if you don't believe in god!" - Steve

Alrighty.  Updates on my life.  Well I went to Boston with Mike.  That was awesome.  We went up to see Dispatch's final show and stayed in my sister Colleen's apartment.  It actually worked out very nicely because she was moving on that Sunday.  The concert was on Saturday.  So we came up on Friday, stayed over 2 nights, we helped her load the U-Haul truck, she came to the concert with us, and we just went out a little bit in Boston.  It was nice.  Although, loading the U-Haul was a job and a half, let me tell you.  Her apartment was in one of these gorgeous big old victorian houses and her and her 3 roomates shared the 2nd and 3rd floors.  Her room was on the third floor, so that's where we were lugging most of the furniture from.  Not to mention she had these winding stairways.  It was an adventure, but I'm glad we were there because otherwise she really would have had no help.  Boston is really nice.  Although, we didn't really see the heart of Boston because my sister lived in Summerville.  Summerville is a part of Boston that's almost suburban.  It' really residential, you forget you're in the city except that there's still stops for the T (which is their subway system).  So it's a whole bunch of neighborhoods with these huge houses and parks and trails.  Also, Summerville is made up of individual "Squares," each one being its own stop on the T.  Colleen lived in Davis Square.  And aside from all the houses, each square has its own "downtown," so to speak.  Kinda like downtown Farmingdale, a nice little mainstreet with all sorts of stuff.  Only it's much hipper than Farmingdale and the whole area seems to be just young people.  It's like a huge college town (which I suppose it is).  Everyone's young and everyone's very liberal.  I can see why my sister loved living there so much.  Friday night we went to this cafe in Davis called the Diesel.  I got an Orange Creamsicle drink that was very good.  They had a couple pool tables, so me and Mike played a game.  Then this guy who was walking around asked if he could play me for money.  I said I didn't wanna play for money, so he asked if he could just play me anyway.  We played and I was pretty far ahead and I kept expecting him to like come back and win like a hustler or something, but he didn't and I won.  That was that.  We also ate breakfast at a couple of nice little diners.  I like Boston, I don't know if I'd ever live there, I'm not much of a city guy.  Then again, Summerville isn't very city-like.  We shall see...  So anyway, the concert was incredible.  Over 110,000 people showed up.  That's absolutely insane, especially for an independent band.  People came from all over the country and from other countries too.  It was at this place called the hatch shell.  Picture a coconut cut in half and stood up on its side and then a stage placed inside of it.  That's what the stage was like and they just played to a huge open field.  There was also a river right along the side of the field.  People were swimming.  People were climbing in the trees.  And the weather was really nice.  They played pretty much all of my favorite songs by them, and then some.  They played for about 3 and a half hours.  Finally they closed with The General.  If any of you haven't heard the song, go d/l it, it's great.  During a couple of songs, when the lyrics were about water, everyone took it upon themselves to start chucking their water bottles in the air.  Seriously it was like a cloud of water bottles.  Hundreds of them.  I mostly faced away from the stage to block all the bottles coming towards me, but every so often I glanced up to look at it, it was nuts.  Some guy got hit in the eye and was bleeding, but he had a big smile on his face.  And then someone threw like a cardboard drink thing with a straw, like you'd get at a fast food place, and I saw it going flying a little in front of me and some kid reached up and caught it perfect from the bottom and started drinkin it.  Anyway, they're coming out with a dvd of the show which I'll have to get and hope that I have a dvd player to watch it on.  Alright, enough about Boston.  Well just one more thing, anyone going to school in Boston - Chinatown bus goes from Chinatown NY to Chinatown Boston 20 bucks round trip.  Can't be beat.  It's fine too it's a coach bus and they have one go out every half hour.  I highly recommend.  Ok, moving on now...

Yesterday we finally finished all our recording!!!!  It sounds really sweet.  Jake just has to do the final mixing and stuff and then get it back to us.  I can't wait.  Now we really have no more time to delay with band names and album names.  I just had a long productive talk with Liz Scisci.  First she asked if there was any theme to the songs, like musically or lyrically.  So I said well it has a general theme of protest.  There's a war protest song on there, an environmental protest, a social commentary piece, and in general it just has a sort of modern day hippie feel to it.  So she looked up protest in the thesaurus and gave me Blackball, which means to like vote against something or boycott it.  In general it means dissaproval and I also just think it sounds cool.  But then I asked my dad and he said it's more something a bad guy does, like to ostracize.  Like in the McArthy era, senators and writers and lots of people were blackballed when they were accused of being communists.  So maybe if we twisted it around to like suggest we're blackballing the authorities type of thing.  Like "Blackball The Man" or something.  I don't know.  I'm going to bring that suggestion for an album name to the band and see what they think.  So then we got on the subject of band names.  And she said she could see why I wasn't so hot on The Flaming Croutons.  So she said something about naming her kid the flaming crouton and I mentioned how I really like the name Juniper, like if I ever had a daughter.  It's an American name, just refers to the Juniper shrub that grows berries.  And she said how she likes it and added that she'd like to name her kid Skylar which means the learned one.  So I thought, "Juniper Sky."  Sounds nice to me, got the whole earthy hippie thing going for it, it's well thought out, and get this:  Juniper berries are black!  Eh?  Blackball- Black Berries!  Catch my drift!  Wierd connections baby!  Yea, ok so that part isn't as important.  But still I'm kinda stoked about these names I hope the band likes them and maybe we'll finally be able to settle.  Anyway, that's that.  I can't wait to hear these finalized songs, it's come out real nice I think.  Once we have the cd, I'd like to bring a copy to Borders and see about getting a show going there in the cafe.  And hopefully still we can pull off a Bergerstock.  I'll keep you all posted.  Well that's all on the band.  Speaking of music, check out Summit Drive on Pure Volume!  They've got some of their demo up now, so give it a listen!      

I got a Bob Dylan shirt... it's brown and it has lyrics to Subterranean Homesick Blues on the back... it's good.

I also got a Dispatch shirt when I was at the concert.  It's gray.  It says Who Are We Living For on it, which is the name of one of their albums. 

Yesterday I picked up The Rolling Stones Rock N' Roll Circus... with Jethro Tull, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Who, The Rolling Stones.  Yea... pretty cool

I also picked up a Guster cd... I'm enjoying that.

Last week I got my roomate's name in the mail.  It's Shanqin Zhang.  He's from Flushing, Queens.  I have yet to call him.  I'm afraid I may mispronounce his name, but I'm glad he's from Queens, we may understand each other better than if one of us was from Upstate.  For one, we'll probably both call Soda SODA.  Not fucking pop. So yea, that should be good.  Alright I'm just about done here, time to wrap things up. 

My deepest sympathies go out to Gonzo's family.  Nona was such an amazing woman and really an inspiration.  It's good that she got to go in peace and not in any pain.  And it's so amazing that she lived to 104, and up until like a year ago had almost all of her mental faculties still there.  And could still walk around and help cook.  And still went to see the plays at the high school.  And she was always surrounded by plenty of family.  I really think that's great.  She will be greatly missed but, like Gonzo said, she lives on in everyone's hearts.

Warped Tour is for babies.  Yesterday, Draven, Paul, and I were in the same mall as Ashley Simpson!!!!  WOOHOO!!!! 

It's startin to get nice and cool out, I love it.  It's like autumn, my favorite season.  I think my leg hair is growing back from when Gonzo and Evan trimmed it.  But what with the cooler weather and all, I'm about to go put on some pants and hide these bad boys away!  Have a great day everyone!  Peace out. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSEPH SPINATO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I GOT THE TIGER!!!!

THE BLACK INDIANS ARE STUPID!!!!

I WANT TO GET THE MILK OUT OF YOUR PENIS!!!!

SO PAUL, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT GIRL GEORGINA?

OH, JOEY.