Graveyard

Clearly I've decided that it's much more eventful to post a new entry every four months or so, rather than twice week, as to avoid complete and utter disregard to my life's musings from other people utilizing this 21st century social networking tool known as blogger. Basically what I'm saying, is that I don't want to bore the fuck out of you. So what has the Kimball been up to? Prepare to be cum-blasted....

Weight of the World is over. We broke up on tour in Tallahassee, Florida, when Nick and Conor got into a shouting match outside a 24-hour gas station right down the road from the venue. The shouting match ended in a bloody nose and trash being strewn across the street. The cops showed up, the ambulance showed up and I had to do all the talking, as usual. The rest of the night consisted of me trying to awkwardly take care of Nick's broken nose, while somehow figuring out if we were going to to finish the tour or not. We didn't finish the tour and we missed the next show in Orlando with Change Of Ideas. Conor flew home and Bruce and I had the daunting task of driving our asshole guitarist Nick all the way back to Vermont. He only gave us $30 for gas too. What a piece of shit. I hope he rots in West Rutland for the rest of his life. And don't be fooled by what he says. He may have gotten punched in the nose by Conor, but he was asking for it. Now I feel slightly awkward saying that, but this is a person who called one of my best friends a chlamydia-ridden whore slut and tried to beat up a friend just because he had a bit too much to drink and decided to watch our set. Nick was also a control freak and felt like he was being personally assaulted every time the rest of the band disagreed with him on any issue, which in actuality was 90% of the time, because he clearly has some sever mental issues that he hasn't learned to cope with.

So if you see Nick and you talk to him, he'll probably talk a ton of shit about us and proclaim that we "punch poor kids in the face." And yes, he will always use his unfortunate economic situation to validate his despotic and vindictive behavior. Also, Nick is the most uneventful and dull person to go on a tour with. To him, everything is a bad idea and he'd rather just sit in the van complaining to his girlfriend about how uncomfortable sleeping is at night on someone's floor in Maryland. Every time we went to do something fun with Change of Ideas, he would always opt out and alienate himself somewhere obscure and sulk. It was really annoying. He wouldn't even go bowling with us in Virginia or explore a sketchy porn shop in Tennessee. This is hardcore. It's not supposed to be glamorous. It's supposed to be about having fun and making the most out of every moment, because they're too short and real life is miserable and never ending (unless you stumble piss drunk onto oncoming traffic). So mix Nick's desire to be as plain as mashed potato sandwich with mayo on white, with his militant, skewed perspective on straight edge, than you can see why things ended the way the did. We all knew it was coming, but didn't expect it to come at such a horrible time (5 months of tour preparation down the drain). So yeah, fuck Nick.

The fun didn't even end there! We had decided that we may have a last show in Vermont, with Soul Control, Defeater and Unrestrained on Sept. 17th. In the two weeks prior to that, Bruce, Conor and I had formed a new band with Nate and Mikey X on guitar. This band consists of much shorter, faster and aggressive songs. I would say more youth crew, but with a modern heavier influence thrown in. Stoked on the new project and putting into perspective what happened to Weight of the World in August, we decided that this band would play the Soul Control show instead. When I informed Nick, he retaliated by breaking into the WOTW myspace page and deleted all 2000 of our friends, all our contacts, emails and anything else that may have been useful for the new project. He also found it humorous to try and break into my personal email account and attempt to delete it. That failed. So the new band, aptly titled CRUCIAL TIMES, played the show with Soul Control and Defeater. Over 150 people showed up and it was a blast. We'll be recording our demo sometime in the first week of October and it'll be released subsequently on a short run of cassette tapes. So look out for that! And now that I mention it, Crucial Times features Mikey X on guitar, who sang for seminal VT hardcore band Fight Back and played guitar in My Revenge! and The Scams. He's been straight edge since 1995 and completely respects my decision to get completely fucked up on a Friday night at Esox. Hell, Mikey has even hung out with me at Esox and picked up some beer for me once, but he still hasn't broken edge! Why couldn't Nick have been like him!

A couple other cool things have happened since the birth of a new band and the prior mess. Change of Ideas kicked out their bass player and in dire of need of someone to pluck the thump-staff, asked me if I'd record the bass tracks for their upcoming full-length album. I graciously accepted and bought a plane ticket to Orlando. I'm leaving this Friday actually. Recording the album, is Charles from Offsides/No Harm Done. I can't begin to tell you how stoked I am to be working closely with him! Closely following the agreement to record with COI, they asked me if I'd like to join the band permanently. So apparently, COI will not be doing many local Florida shows anymore and aims strictly to be a touring band. In this context, I can still live in Vermont and simply fly down to meet up with them when they are going on tour. According to Chris, their singer, the next tour will be a week-long tour of Mexico and Texas next spring and I get to go on it! So psyched!

So I got some stuff to look forward to. Unfortunately though, I am still single and my penis is eternally in hibernation. Now that I think about it, that last line was very tasteless. Oh well, we're all human. I got a new job part-time job at Spectrum, as a peer-outreach worker and it's a great job, but I really wish they'd give me more hours. I'm barely paying my bills at the moment and that's even with my work at The Vermont Gay Guide too, but that's all commission based which totally sucks. I applied for over 30 full-time jobs this summer and didn't get a single one. I got interviews and good vibes, but nothing else. I really hope having a four-year college degree pays off someday, because I'm sick of the bullshit.