My Friend, My Friend... Lover? A Tour Synopsis

Zebastian found a time machine somewhere in Belgium.


Where to go with this TIME MACHINE? This was the first question we asked ourselves. Courtney Love's shower circa 1997? The emergency room immediately following the Richard Gere gerbil incident? Woodstock? Altamont?

Actually, there wasn't any debate at all. We promptly set the device to stop at each day of the greatest month in the history of rock 'n' roll, and perhaps the history of all mankind. I'm talking about the My friend, my friend... Lover? Tour of course.

Come along... Relive it with us:

My Friend, My Friend… Lover?- In which Zachary is bound, gagged, and cooked with a recyclable kitchen standby, yet we still manage to begin the tour. Thousands rejoice, thousands more enlist their daughters in after school self-defense classes.



Air Force Fun Mixes Metaphors, Sets Sail- In which we meet a few important cast members for the tour, and the York Fibber's club receives an intimate tour of Nathaniel's most important cast member.

Little Sausage is Well Prepared- In which Little Sausage proves his worth; breaks arms. Liverpool is frightened.

Glasgow Kisses, Birmingham Ghosts- In which Scottish facial hair is studied and ultimately eaten. Also, Birmingham takes us six feet under.

More Facial Hair in Leeds- In which our dear friends Alan and Laura bless our upper lips, enabling mustaches en masse.


Cardiff Report Coming Shortly...- In which the Cardiff report is hesitant to exit my brain for fear of being upstaged by a strange Glaswegian.

Let The River Run...- In which Carly Simon squeezes our mind grapes to the point of insanity, and we are unsure if Cardiff, Manchester, and Nottingham actually exist, or if they are merely chubby drops of mind ether sprinkled upon us from the legendary vocalist. Also, we drink a lot of cough syrup.

Bristol Beecham's Fuck You; Brutality in London- In which we continue our journey to the outer reaches of reality on the back of Beecham's All-In-One cough syrup. It is a healthy steed. There might be a show on a boat in Bristol. There is definitely raping and pillaging in London.



The Blood Arm: Outsider Competitor With Only A Little Chance Of Win -OR- We'll Slay Our 70 Virgins Now, Thank You- In which we land in Tourcing, France, and Little Sausage passes gas. Also, Zebastian instructs the masses how to properly light a TBA show.

Caen Can- In which the French city attempts to kill us via delicious pastries and cakes, and Zebastian's lighting instruction pays off.

Zachary Dreams of Lyon, Stuttgart, Cologne- In which it becomes apparent that our adventures are not a product of Carly Simon and cough syrup at all, but rather of our drummer's infinite appetite for sleep. Lyon, Stuttgart, and Köln are wined, dined, then amorously taken in the missionary position so we can look them in the eyes while we do it.


HasselON, Germany! -OR- Heaven Is A Place In Münster, Frankfurt and München- In which we learn that David Hasselhoff really is incredibly popular in Germany. Also, we get high.

Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen: The German Sexcapade Continues- In which Ian (our Tour Manager) flaunts his ability to conjure hot girls, we are accosted by a gnome and a freaky blue dude, I wet my trousers, and we all assume new identities.


Hannover... Ghent... aaaaand Weeeee're Spent!- In which Germany and Belgium erase their borders and join together in connubial embrace. Flerman—a German-Flemmish hybrid—is adopted as the new country's tongue. David Hasselhoff is elected King.

Now I must go back... to the future!

I love you all,

Ben Lee Handler

Oh yes, just because the tour is over, it doesn't mean that there won't be regular updates to this page. KIT! (KIT = 'Keep In Touch' in American.)

Hannover... Ghent... aaaaand Weeeee're Spent!

Follow Ian's cigarette out the window. (Throw them all out the window, Ian! Smoking kills!) That there town is Ghent in Belgium, and it's beautiful. Before that was Hannover, and it, too, was gorgeous. Some pictures from those magical days:






Really, though, the shows were amazing. We made some lovely friends from Radio Flora in Hannover and the Van Jets in Belgium. (If anyone has any photos from these evenings, please post them to our myspace, as I obviously don't have any.)

I love you so much,

Ben Lee Handler

Stay tuned for a full tour synopsis and plenty more surprises...

Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen: The German Sexcapade Continues

The handsome man on the right is Ian. (The handsome girl on the left is Katharina. She grew from Ian’s knee in Berlin. Later, Katharina divided into two equally handsome girls—some sort of handsome girl mitosis—then those girls divided into four hot girls… In about an hour our dressing room was filled with beautiful women. Ian has this power.) Ian is very important to us. In addition to filling our dressing room with pretty girls, he can drive Air Force Fun from München/Munich to Berlin (10 1/2 hours!) without stopping to go to the bathroom, wake Zachary up in the morning (Zachary doesn’t do mornings), go for three days without eating just for the hell of it, and deal with angry hotel clerks and promoters when we urinate on/fornicate with/set fire to their property.

Also, he and Little Sausage banter at the front of the van with wit rivalling Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets. You have to hear it, really.

These are the places this Beautiful Angel from Heaven took us in the past few days:

BERLIN

Berlin gave us fifty orgasms in rapid succession, bought us a Thai massage, then coaxed us to anotherfifty orgasms at a more comfortable pace. Then it bought us ice cream and used the dessert as lube to deliver us ANOTHER fifty orgasms, these even more furious than the first batch. Under normal circumstances we’d be totally spent, but man, we are ROCK HARD for this city. And we ROCK HARD for Berlin.


Q: How good was the show at the Lido?

A: 150 orgasms good.

The city basically fick die scheisse raus aus mir in the sexiest way possible.

(We’re pretty sure the German capital likes us too… We reciprocate all ‘favors’ given.)

HAMBURG


Mario (our lovely German promoter), Kat (his girlfriend), and Mario’s magic chicken drowned us in Mexicans. We’re still not quite sure what a German Mexican is, but it comes in a shot glass and tastes like a Bloody Mary. Kind of like Nathaniel! (Holla!)

Shit got scary:




This is what I looked like the next morning:


BREMEN

We died and went to Bremen. We changed our names, burned our passports and took up permanent residence in the Krone hotel, where the beds are made out of magic. New Dyan took a job as a schoolteacher, new Zachary became mayor, new Nathaniel got a residency as a cobbler, new Zebastian was hired as a postman, new Ian and new Little Sausage opened a bed and breakfast, and new me finally earned a medical degree and started a small hospital.

Bremen is the Most Beautiful town in the world. It is home to the Cantina (the best restaurant in the world run by the beautiful people pictured with me below) and some musical animals. We’re never going home.


Farewell… forever!

Ben Lee Handler

HasselON, Germany! -OR- Heaven Is A Place In Münster, Frankfurt and München

Every day we’ve been in Germany has been the Greatest Day of Our Lives. It’s as if the country gave us all hydrogen sneakers when we crossed the border… We don’t walk around this country, we float on air without care or worry of ever crashing down. Forget the Hindenberg! Fuck Icarus!, we say, We’re the Blood Arm, goddamnit, and in Deutchland we’re flying OVER the sun!

This is as good as it gets, until tomorrow:

In Münster, Zachary found that every time he hit his bass drum, the smell of the sweetest strawberries would arise.


In Frankfurt, Nathaniel got the best blowjob ever, and Zebastian got the most wonderful surprise when the singer finished.


In München /Munich, Dyan conjured a beautiful piano out of thin air, just by thinking about it.


We’ve only been in Berlin a few hours now, and already I’ve had a threesome with a girl on a bicycle and a blue sheep,


and some dudes gave Nathaniel a car with his picture on it.


I would write more, but I’m being poured a champagne bath, and I don’t want to electrocute myself.

I love you in German, today even more than yesterday.

xxxooo,

Ben Lee Handler

Zachary Dreams of Lyon, Stuttgart, Cologne

Take a place you’ve never thought of going before. Lyon in France, for example. Or Stuttgart and Cologne in Germany. Now hop on a magical blue bus—one with a name: Air Force Fun—and go to all of these cities. See their sights, eat their food, drink their beer, have intercourse with their pets. Think to yourself, Man, there’s no way it could possibly get any better than this.

Then you see him there, sleeping. Dreaming. And this nagging feeling rises up inside you… or maybe it bites you in the shoulder and hits you in the head with a bottle.

What if this—the exotic locales, the exotic beers, the women, the wine, the bestiality—what if none of it’s real? What if all of this is his? What if it's all just Zachary’s Dream?

Please keep dreaming, handsome drummer prince. Keep dreaming…






I love you so much it hurts,

Ben Lee Handler

Caen Can

And then we traveled to Caen.


Caen is a place of mystical forests, wonderous beasts, and magical sausage.

Actually, it's not just the sausage in France that's magical. Don't get me wrong--the UK knows how to feed a band--but in France they really take it to another level. Like, we get off the bus and there's cheese, bread, meats, candy, pudding and wine already set out for us. We think, okay stomachs, take on what you can now, because it's never going to be this good again. But then after soundcheck, not only is it that good again, but they add quiche and pastries. It's better than lunch. And then they take us to dinner.

So I'm getting fat, basically.

The show was fantastic... look at those lights!


We had so much fun in Caen that we let its citizens give us free local beer on our way out.


Your welcome, Caen! It was delicious!

I love you,

Ben Lee Handler

The Blood Arm: Outsider Competitor With Only A Little Chance Of Win -OR- We'll Slay Our 70 Virgins Now, Thank You

We're in France now. A fortune cookie told Zebastian (in French) that we should look to our underpants--that they would reveal the future to us. None of us wear underpants, so we went to the Supermarché to buy some.

And there it was:


But what does it mean?

We've always viewed ourselves a bit outside the mainstream--ever since we chose to play with matches on windy preschool days when everyone else was experimenting with sex and huffing glue. Or in elementary school, when we were more interested in hardcore music than hardcore drug abuse. Or in high school and college when we were more into writing and dancing than cutting ourselves--self-mutilation was the fashion of the time.

We always assumed our outsider interests made us winners... not that they lessened our chances of achieving the Ultimate Goal. (The Ultimate Goal: 70 virgins at our disposal in heaven.)

How the hell does our outsider status give us only a little chance of win?

You know what we say? We say fuck the fortune cookie. We say fuck the underpants too. Hell, fuck the afterlife as well... We'll slay our 70 virgins now, thank you.

Oh yeah, and rock your pants off in the process.

We're winners no matter what any goddamn cookie or pair of underpants tries to tell us.

Tourcoing was awesome.

This is where we ate:


This is what it looked like when the concert got quiet for a second and Little Sausage (our Sound Man) farted:


This is what Dyan looks like when she's invisible:


And this is how you properly light the Blood Arm on stage:



I love you more than you will ever know,

Ben Lee Handler

Bristol Beecham's Fuck You; Brutality in London

In Bristol, we invented the Bristol Beecham’s Fuck You*. This took us on a supernatural journey on a supernatural boat. Or something.

No, the boat was real.


As was my subsequent marriage to a child bride.


Then we were in London, and it was brutal. Nathaniel raped and pillaged a lot.


(Bristol brought out the pirate in the singer, and it hasn’t washed off yet—he hasn’t bathed in a while.)

Honestly, I can’t really remember what happened after the show—Beecham’s—but I woke up at Keith Top of the Pops’ house, so the night must have ended there.

We’re in France now, bonjour!, stay tuned for regular updates!

I love you,

Ben Lee Handler

———————
*Ingredients:

One part Beecham's All-In-One.
Two parts Jack Daniel's Premium Whiskey.

Mix and enjoy!

Let The River Run...

Can anyone confirm that the Carly Simon Easter Special did indeed actually happen on BBC Radio 2 yesterday, and that it wasn’t some shared hallucination aboard Air Force Fun on the road from Manchester to Nottingham? (I’m fairly convinced the talking candy bar didn’t exist, and the midget waving from the roadside seems a little unlikely, but the Carly Simon show was so hauntingly real. And it was totally about us. Sorry.)

I should probably mention that this stuff has become my new life’s blood:


Not only does it cure common colds, headaches, nausea and pregnancy, it also makes life taste good again. The colors… so savory to the touch! Like, I can taste them by touching them! Red is strawberry, blue is boysenberry, the orange is mango... Beecham’s All In One is All For Fun, and I’m never gonna come down again.

We’ve been to Cardiff, Manchester and Nottingham in the past few days.

In Cardiff someone wrote the word “Penis” on the air conditioner,


in Manchester Laura and Alan gave us even more facial hair,


and in Nottingham Zachary got fucked.


Nottingham also witnessed what I’ve officially dubbed The Best The Blood Arm Show Ever. Hopefully someone else will blog about it, because my fingers are tired.

This is what Nathaniel looked like at the end:


I love you,

Ben Lee Handler

Cardiff Report Coming Shortly...

In the mean time, check out this guy's moves during 'P.S. I Love You But I Don't Miss You' in Glasgow:

More Facial Hair in Leeds

If Glasgow is beardly, Leeds is positively mustachioed.


We love Leeds.


I love you,