California Part 2 - The Sound & The Fury

After we hit up 6 Flags we spent another night in Anaheim and then headed out to Hollywood. We got there fairly early, checked into our hotel and went and rented a car. We drove around Hollywood for a bit and through Beverly Hills which was pretty crazy. It wasn't like I imagined it but some areas were super nice. We hit up In-n-Out Burger and headed to Venice Beach. We got to the beach area and parked our car to walk along the shore, we spent about an hour walking in the wrong direction and had to turn back to find the well known area of Venice Beach (the level from Tony Hawk). We made it there and looked at a bunch of the shops which all had pretty much the exact same shit. There was also a bunch of graffiti on the walls there that we checked out, some of it was pretty wild. We headed back to Hollywood and once we were there Lennea and Connor got in a bit of a tustle so Lennea and I walked down Hollywood Blvd together while Connor grumped it up in the hotel room (we later found he actually pulled a solo mission and walked around Hollywood). Me and Lennea saw some weird ass people walking around, there were bands playing in the street, break dancers, people dressed up in all sorts of costumes like Jack Sparrow, Spiderman, Jimi Hendrix, KISS, etc. and there were also hella bums cruisin around, one of them was super sketch wearing nothing but socks and pulled a sidewalk lay down cigarette smoke. It was pretty much just a big party with bums hangin. On the way home we got some sleazy pizza and almost saw two dykes fight in the middle of the street. Tight.
The next morning we returned the car and cruised Hollywood a bit more. In the evening we had to make it back to LA and catch the Amtrak to Santa Barbara. The ride was pretty cool cause we went past the LA river and got to see all the crazy graff. There was tooons of it, just non-stop and most of the stuff was amazing.
We got into Santa Barbara pretty late and made it to our hotel room where they scammed us out of another 100 bucks, but it was the only place we had to stay so we had to suck it up and pay. Californians are sleazy. We hit the hay and at about 5:30am we got a knock at the door, it was Lindsey, Grant and Cole from Kelowna/Calgary who were going to stay with us for the weekend. They set up their sleeping bags and we talked for a bit before goin to bed for a couple more hours. We checked out Santa B a bit in the morning and went to a mall that was way out of any of our price range and ate pop-tarts (We left Grant sleeping in the hotel room while we did this). After getting breakfast we headed back to get Grant and found him still sleeping. We dragged his large red-headed ass out of bed and went to the venue.
Day 1 of Sound and Fury was super fun, I probably enjoyed it the most out of all the days. I was super excited instantly because me and Connor found/reunited with Clarke (you readers may remember him from our Rainfest adventure as our crazy red-headed American friend), we talked to him for a bit and watched a few bands. I can't remember the exact order of the bands so I am just going to do a highlight list of the bands I was diggin.

Highlights of Day 1:
- Seeing Swamp Thing, they put on a wild live show with tons of energy. Their guitarists were givin'r hard. I was bummed though because I bought some Kayne West sunnies at Venice Beach and they were in my pocket and got moshed into a few different pieces, but whatever it was worth it.
- Sabertooth Zombie played a super fun set, such a unique band that does whatever they want. A kid got really hurt during their set though which sucks and they had to end their set early. Hope that dude is ok.
- Trash Talk was crazy, I feared for my life the entire time, especially when their roadie got the mic and just started ruining people. I remember him from Rainfest though and knew to steer clear. I also got KO'd during their last song. Apparently some kid stage dived feet first and I got it right to the dome and the next thing I knew a bunch of peoople were around me picking me up off the ground.
- Have Heart was awesome as always. I love this band. Kids were going nuts and didn't stop stage diving the entire time.

After the show was done for the day we headed to In-n-Out with Clarke and his buddies. There were tons of people from the show there and we ran into one of the dudes we met on the Amtrak(I didn't mention this earlier but his name was Phil and was from Toronto, he also had a sweet moustache). Once we finished our meal we just headed back to the Hotel, hung out for a bit and then fell asleep.
On Day 2 we all got up and went downtown Santa Barbara in the morning. Grant and Cole were fighting non-stop which was hilarious for the entire trip. Cole got mad at me and Connor because we called Grant a "day-walker" (a red-head that isn't super pale and can go out with being a noticeable ginger), but we said Cole was to red-headed and pale to be a day-walker. He then freaked and called himself "the night rider". Grant then told Cole that he acted like no one had ever been nice to him in his life and that he had a black soul. During our downtown excursion we saw the sweetest thing on the whole trip. A bum walking around with a dog and standing on top of the dog riding it was a cat and on top of the cat was a rat. They were all walking around riding each other like a pyramid. So fucking rad. We also hit up Fatburger and Grant pussed out of doing the King challenge. Day 2 of S&F was the weakest in my opinion but there was still some good stuff.

Highlights of Day 2:
- Trapped Under Ice was rad I hadn't really gotten into them much before but they really impressed me with their set. So heavy and tons of gnar mosh. Including a naked dude moshing the whole time.
- Colin Of Arabia played a good set, not as many people were into it as I would have thought but they were still good.
- Paint It Black had a really fun set. It was cool cause they came on right after Death Before Dishonor and played like the complete opposite style of hardcore and totally burned the DBD singer for using the word "Faggot".
- Guns Up! was by far the wildest set of the whole weekend. Kids were going off! Lindsey got caught in a mosh and got a wicked shiner + bloody nose + bloody mouth.

After the show we were goin to go party but everyone was hella tired so we just went back to the hotel and hit up 711. Everyone was trying to sleep while me and Grant kept them up talking about baseball all night. Grant is ill.
Day 3 we went back downtown to hang/do some shopping and we ran into cat-rat-dog again which was awesome because I could never get tired of seeing that. At one point the cat got off of the dog and the rat hucked the gap from the cats back to the dogs back. It was super epic. Day 3 of S&F had a crazy amount of good bands but I was so tired that day that I don't think I enjoyed it to it's full potential.

Highlights of Day 3:
- Lewd Acts brought the slime and kids were getting grimey. Their singer was also going nuts and jumping waaaay into the crowd and bashing his head with both the mic and the stage.
- New Lows, I am so hyped on this band. So heavy and kids were moshing hard. Clarke was givin it his all during their set. I love Clarke.
- Shipwreck was really cool. I was never super into this band before but I listened to them a bunch before the show and actually listened to their lyrics and they are amazing, the dude can write. Their live show was also alot of fun.
- Sinking Ships played an amazing last set. Lots of jokes and funnyness, kids were also going pretty wild and piling up on the stage to sing along for the last time.
- Ceremony, I had super high hopes for their set and was actually a bit dissappointed. Don't get me wrong it was still gnarly as fuck and Ceremony is just good so you can't go wrong but everyone was hyping their set saying it would be the gnarest of the weekend and it definitely wasn't, although they do get the craziest circle pit award.

After that was over we went back to our hotel room and had pizza with Clarke and his buds. We then went to bed and got up hella early to catch out Amtrak back to LA where we had to catch our plane back to Seattle. That part of the trip went smooth but once we got to Seattle we found that the 7pm greyhound was sold out and we would have to wait till 11. Luckily I asked at 7 if we could get on and the driver said yes so we didn't have to wait an extra 4 hours. The ride home was good except for the border, the guy we got was a dick and was trying to be sneaky and trick us into admitting something but it ended up just being really awkward and taking a long time but we made it through easy enough.

We made it back home to Vernon the next day and I was actually kinda bummed to be back. I had so much fun in Cali with Con and Lennea and I wished the trip was alot longer. Hanging with Lindsey, Grant and Cole was also alot of fun, those dudes are hilarious and I now consider them all super good buds. Seeing Clarke again was also rad, I can't stress enough how amazing this man is. If any single girls are reading this I would highly recommend getting your freak on with Clarke Holland.

Anyways, thanks for reading this I know it was alot. Hopefully you enjoyed it! Until next time, BYE!

- Dan

California - Part 1: Rides and Stuff

I have decided to do this trip in two different posts because I don't really feel like writing tons of stuff all at once and it will be much easier to read instead of just jumbling everything in as one.

This trip to California was originally going to be myself, Ramsay and his girlfriend Jessica and my girlfriend Lennea. However, Ramsay and Jess both had other deals so they couldn't go anymore and my bro Connor decided to step in and come along and I am hyped he did.
We headed out of Vernon on the 17th and went to Vancouver to stay the night with Lennea. The drive was pretty quick and when we got to Vancouver, Justen was at my place hanging with Lennea and had a pretty sweet gun that shot both plastics discs and plastic bb's at the same time. Tight. We turned in pretty soon after we got there but not before Connor got hot soup spilt all over his hand due to Justen being a meathead. In the morning we made the trek to the greyhound and had to bus about 5 hours to Seattle. Once we got to Seattle we had to find our hotel and had quite the ordeal locating it. We spent one night in Seattle and caught our plane to LA in the morning.
The plane ride was actually alot of fun. We flew with Virgin America and they had these crazy touch screens in the backs of their seats so you could watch tv, movies, listen to music and play video games. Me and Connor spent some time playing Doom until I managed to freeze my screen and it would no longer work. Anyways, the flight was short and we got into LA in the early afternoon. We caught a bus and made our way to our hotel on Disney Way which was about a five minute walk from Disneyland. Since it was already kinda later in the afternoon we just went shopping at this shopping center by our hotel where we all got some pretty rad sunnies and Connor got a Hollister necklace...which he actually wears. After shopping we made our way to Downtown Disney and looked at all the shops there, some of them had some pretty crazy stuff, namely the store that had the Arnold Palmer memorabilia for nearly 500 bucks. We ate at the Rainforest Cafe that night which was fun but I thought the food wasn't very great. Once our dinner was done we headed back to the hotel and watched the Disneyland fireworks from the porch of our hotel room. Me and Lennea then walked to a grocery store to get some food and see if they had cheaper passes for Disneyland. We went through some pretty hood ass areas to get there and once we did we found that the Disney passes were the same price as they were at Disneyland. Lennea ended up stealing one after sketching about it for half an hour.
We woke up early to get to Disneyland before the rush the next day. Me and Con got into the park easy because we already had passes with Lindsey Allen had given us (thanks a bunch Lindsey) but Lennea's pass totally got iced at the gate because it hadn't been activated due to it being stolen. She ended up having to buy a pass. I had a blast at Disney, we hit all the good rides numerous times and stayed there all day. It wasn't as busy as I thought it would be, but I definitely noticed that there were toooons of shady/scummy looking characters there. I never noticed that when I had been there before, I guess when your young you don't noticed that typed of thing. The highlights of the day for me were Indiana Jones, Space and Splash Mountain, Fantasmic, spending 9 dollars on churros and obviously The Enchanted Tiki Room. Connor also got ruined by a bee in Toon Town and his finger swelled up to the size of one of his legs (which is huge) and spent 20 bucks of a piece of the cursed Aztec gold from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Day three in Cali we went to California Adventure, which is the other Disneyland park for all you nooblets. We got there hella early so we could beat the rush like at Disneyland but we found California opens alot later than Disney (I'm sick of writing California Adventure and Disneyland so now they will be referred to as CA and DL) but they did let us into the small shopping area of the park. To beat the rush we decided to wait near the area where the rest of the park was roped off so right when they unroped it we could hit the roller coaster. The park opened and we pretty much speed walked to the coaster area with about a thousand people speed walking behind us. We got there and found that there was already tons of people there waiting in line for the rides, so that was super wack. We got in the line which we assumed was the line for the coaster and waited in it for about an hour before we noticed that they were giving out 3-D glasses to everyone in line, we then realized we weren't even in line for the coaster which sucked, but the ride we actually went on was fun. It was a Toy Story one where you got to shoot guns. The day at CA was fun but not as fun as DL, there just aren't as many good rides at CA. The highlights of the day were the roller coaster, Maliboomer, Big Grizzly Rapids, Tower of Terror and Soarin' Over California.
On day four we rented a car and drove out to Valencia to hit up 6 Flags. The drive was kinda long but it was cool so see some California desert-ish landscape. We got there and it was crazy hot and for some reason Connor thought it would be a good idea to wear a dark blue shirt and pants. So the first thing we did once we got in the park was find a store buy Con some cooler clothes, he ended up buying a yellow Homer Simpson shirt for like 20 boneyays. We tricked Lennea into hitting X-2 as the first ride of the day (which is the gnarliest ride) and she actually enjoyed it so I thought she would be able to do all the rest of the rides but she still wussed out hard for some of them. 6 Flags was fun and we hit all the rides but the lines were so damn long it totally hindered the fun. I also lost my phone on one of the rides so now I am phoneless which is really wack. The highlights of 6 Flags were X-2, Goliath, Scream, Superman, the super sick Batman play they put on and seeing the cop in it almost eat shit really hard trying a jump on a dirtbike, and meeting Pimp Masta Pimp who was some 8 year old black kid who tried to set up a long distance relationship with Lennea.

This is all I am going to write for now, I'll finish the trip in my next post. It will have all the info on Sound and Fury and some stuff about the trip to Hollywood. All the theme parks were super fun and I had a good time at all of them and I'm glad I went even though they cost me tons of money. I would suggest that everyone hits Disneyland up sometime. Thanks for readin!

Van City (pic)

Whoops I was gonna post this in the "blog" but forgot, so here it is!

Van City

This past weekend my brother and I made the trek down to Vancouver to see Have Heart and Verse play. It originally started out as just being us two making the trip but all of our friends also decided to drive down and spend the weekend hanging in Van, and I was happy with that. In our car it was me, Connor and Steve, but Ramsay, Jessica, Sean, Joe and Dave also came down in seperate cars.

Me and Con split the driving on the way there (Steve drove for like 20 mins but claimed he was too tired to drive and just napped the whole time...weak) and I was the unlucky one who had to drive into Vancouver. We got stuck in traffic for about an hour and finally made it to my/Lennea's place around 6:30. Justen got to our place around the same time as us and after we dropped our shit off we headed to the show.

The show was rad, I was hyped to see Verse and Have Heart, but was bummed on the fact that not many people I knew showed up for it. I guess Vancouver isn't into those bands. Shits wack. Conrad and Tyler did show up though, I was down for seeing those guys again since I hadn't in a long time. Anyways, onto the show review! Bodyguard played first and it was actually kind of awkward. All off the kids just stood at the back and I just felt really odd being in that room. Circles played next and it was pretty decent, I'm not huge into that band but they put on a good live show. Verse was up third and their front man was hasslin everyone cause they were hidin in the back and he pretty much forced them to move up, which was good. They played a pretty good set but you could tell they weren't that hyped cause not many people were getting into them. Oh well though I enjoyed myself. Have Heart headlined the show and alot more people got into them than any of the other bands. I was super pumped on seeing them and me and Con were up front singin along the whole time. It was alot of fun and they played pretty much all the songs I wanted to hear.

After the show we all headed to Foundation for Nachos and we met up with Ramsay, Sean, Jess, Dave and Joe there. As always the Nachos were delicious. Everyone parted ways after the meal and once we got back to my place we just headed to bed.

Saturday we went downtown Van and got breakfast/lunch at Cafe Crepe. I got a 12 inch hot dog that had the gnarliest mustard ever. It pretty much destroyed my nasal cavity for life. My parents called a bit later to tell me that they were almost to my place with a bunch of furniture I had asked them to bring down so me and Lennea rushed back to my house to meet them. We had a super rough time getting the furniture down the stairs and into my house, namely the couch. I have no idea how we are getting that thing out of there once I move out. Once we got everything in and organized my parents told me that they were heading back to Vernon (I thought they were staying the night) and I was really happy with them for driving all that stuff down for me. Thanks mom and dad! They left and me and Lennea headed back downtown to watch my bro and his friends get SBF tattoos.

They all got tattoos on their wrist at Adernaline downtown. The tattoo was SBF in a font called "The pooper" riding a skateboard. After the tattoos were finished we headed to Alex's house for a party.

The party that night was pretty wild. Alex and his roomates rented out 13 bongo drums and tons of maracas and other instruments for it. So at any given time there was 10+ people playing music that sounded like it came out of Jumanji. I was having alot of fun at the party until buzz kill Lennea said she had to work and made us leave since she was the one driving.

On Sunday we hit up Metrotown for a bit, did some shopping and got lost trying to leave which caused us to be trapped in the mall for an extra hour. Finally we made it out and headed for home. Steve wimped out again on the driving and only drove to the toll booth before claiming he was too tired to drive. So I drove the rest of the way home.

The trip was alot of fun and I was super pumped to see Have Heart and hang with the buds all weekend. This week of work has been pretty good as well, the house we are painting has a pool so me, my bro and Michael have been takin some mid-day swims. Today I jumped from the roof of the house into the pool, it was pretty badass...and I hope Agi doesn't read this.

Anyways, thats it for now.

Thanks for reading about my life...bye!

Canada Day Weekend

Lennea and her friends came up from Vancouver on Friday to party at Funtastics this weekend. When they got to Vernon we headed to the beach with my brother and his friends. All us Vernon boys enjoyed the water and Lennea and her friends sat in the hot sun while wearing black sweaters, weird. We went to see Wall-e later that night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was barely any dialogue in the movie but Pixar still managed to make it really funny and entertaining. I would def recommend going and checking it out.

Saturday me, Lennea, my bro, Sean, Ryan and Jess all went to the beach together. We swam for a bit and played a game of soccer. Me and Con got worked by Sean and Jess and didn't even get a goal (I later found out that both of them played Rep soccer). Later that night we headed up to Funtastics to party and watch Kim Mitchell (I don't know who he is either). Lennea and her friends all got shittered and partied hard. Lennea fell down and barely remembered the night. It was fun to see a bunch of people up there that I hadn't seen in a loooong ass time. We got home pretty late and Lennea's friend Andrea got in a big argument with Ryan Baker, which was both funny, annoying and awkward. Ryan ended up going home as a result.

Lennea and her friend's left on Sunday and I headed over to Sean Cromies house for a BBQ. It was a good time except the hot dog I ate was not sittin stellar and made me feel sick for the rest of the day. Later on me and my friends all headed up to Funtastics again to watch BC/DC (AC/DC cover band). I had fun again and people were going wild for BC/DC which I thought was hilarious because seriously...they are a cover band. Vernon is hick. The highlights of that night was the mosh pit during BC/DC and super drunk Steve getting super into it and two-stepping to them. Hilarious. Some dude also got beat up because he tried to attack Sean and apparently Connor busted the dudes nose.

The weekend was super fun and I really enjoyed seeing people up at Funtastics but so far this week has sucked. Were painting a house out in Armstrong so I have to get up super early and drive out there so I can work on a roof in the blazing heat. So bogus. Tuesday night was fun though, I went out to Kelowna with some people to watch the Canada day fireworks which were good and I'm sure blew the Vernon ones outta the water.

I am really looking forward to this weekend when I head to Van to see Have Heart and Verse and start moving my stuff into my place there. Maybe I will write about that once I get home.

Thanks again for reading...if anyone even is.

- Dan

Been Awhile

I haven't written on this thing in awhile, I guess nothing to exciting has been going on but I figure I should try and write some stuff just so I don't forget everything I have been doing.

My bro, Steve and me all went painting last Thursday. It was the first time I had gone in a loooong time so I was kinda nervous about doing a shitty piece. Things turned out alright though and I was happy with what I came up with, I still got smoked by Con and Steve though (pics at bottom). That weekend we went out to Lumby on Saturday to watch Clayton in a skateboard comp. It was a good time, and Clayton did real well. He ended up getting 2nd place, props. Sunday we went out wakeboarding and I got shown up real bad by both my bro and Clayton, which sucked. We took Sid out for dinner at the blue heron that night for fathers day.

During the week I saw Cory and Kenzie since they were in town. I hadn't seen Cory in a long ass time so it was good to see my bud. We went to see Kung Fu Panda Friday which was awesome and I would recommend anyone reading this to go see it.

That's pretty much all I've been doing for the past couple weeks, it's been fun but I don't think it makes for very exciting blogs. Hopefully next time I will have some wilder/funnier stories for the 2 or 3 of you that read this.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

- Dan

(Mine is red)

Vanguard + Weekend

Thursday night me, my brother, Steve, Clayton and Sean all drove down to Kelowna to see Vanguard play with Crusades, Horizons and a new band from Calgary called Voices. Steve drove us down and we were all crammed in the back of his car. I am 100% convinced he could have moved his seat up to give us more room but he refused saying he was "too tall," that shit was annoying but whatever.

We got to the show and said Hi to all our Kelowna buds and ran into some out of towners that I hadn't seen in awhile. I saw Vango who is always a nice guy and Hunter who was goin on the "tour" (it is only like 3 dates) with Vanguard, it was good to see those dudes. The show was kinda last minute so there wasn't as many kids there as the last Kelowna show but it was a pretty decent turnout. Voices started it off and were pretty solid even though not many kids were getting into them, I'm guessing this is because no one had really heard them before. Crusades played second and played a solid set. People were gettin into them and moving around and Ramsay hit his head with the mic several times and started bleeding (very Ceremony-esque). Horizons played next and had another solid set, I am not even entirely sure who the actual "official" members of this band are. The last band to play was Vanguard and their set was alot of fun. People were moshing and singing along alot. I am liking Kelowna shows way more these days than a few years ago cause kids actually get into bands now.

On Friday, Lennea came up from Vancouver. She got in around 8ish and we gave Connor a pretty slick haircut when she got here. It was short on the sides and slicked right back on top with Brylcream, super greasy. That night we went to see "The Strangers" which is not a very good movie. I don't recommend seeing it.

Saturday was my cousin Jessica's wedding. So we all had to get dressed up and head out to Kelowna for the ceremony/reception. I usually don't enjoy weddings but I had fun at this one. I got to see all my family and some of them that I rarely see these days. The reception was a good time cause we got lots of free food, (although lots of it was gross "fancy" food) and my cousin Lance who I hadn't seen for 4 years was there gettin boozed and being really funny. My uncle Rick is also growing a sweet pony tail and a badass beard which was sweet to see.

That night we went to Clayton Lanoue's house for a party and a game of "Dog Pong." Dog Pong is a game that they invented that is like beer pong except you throw hot dogs into buns instead of balls into beer.

The rules were:
- If you landed your dog in a bun then the other team had to eat that hot dog.
- If the dog flew off the table and a member of the other team caught it in their mouth then the opposing team had to eat 2 dogs.
- You went until one teams buns were all gone and then the losing team had to eat all the other teams remaining hot dogs.

Our team was me, Clayton and Connor. We got worked really bad in the only game we played and all of us ended up having to eat 4 hot dogs each. I scored 2 dogs into the other team's buns and so did Connor, Clayton was held pointless and was the obvious weak link on the team. The rest of the party was a pretty good time, I saw Brittany Tegert who I hadn't seen in about a year and Ian was being his usual hilarious self and making everyone laugh.

That was pretty much everything exciting that happened this weekend. I was happy Lennea came up and I got to spend time with her. Next weekend I am heading to Van to see her and hopefully some friends as well.

Thanks for reading!

- Dan