Paris is Sexy and Underage

We went to Paris to play one of the fashion week parties. Something about diamond bracelets by Cartier--we weren't given any free samples. Everyone in attendance was young and sexy, or old and sexy pretending to be young and sexy, or too young and sexy pretending to be post-puberty. It was all very confusing. And arousing.

We met our European labelmates Second Sex for the first time. We knew they were all seventeen, nineteen at the oldest. Yet they walked up to all of us and immediately began kissing us with tongue. We thought, SCORE! Then we thought, but they can't be older than nineteen, is this wrong? And then they they started French kissing everyone else in the room and it made us so jealous, then angry with ourselves for being so jealous over a bunch of young boys that we had to sit in the corner for ten minutes with bags over our heads just to calm down. Then we went and tried to kiss them with tongue again, or at least find some other fourteen year-olds pretending to be seventeen to get off with. Paris makes us crazy, and we totally love it.





Today we drove to Liege in Belgium where we're going to perform at a festival tomorrow. On the way, we happened into the official theme park for Asterix and Obelix, cartoon characters that Yiannis (our lovable Grecian Sound Technician) always talks about, and we had always assumed were figments of his imagination (he smokes a lot of weed). Yiannis had the last laugh, but then everyone's a winner at the Official Astrix theme park.


I love the shit out of you,

Ben Lee Handler

Our Sovereign State of Love

Zürich is for lovers. It's impossible for us not to fall in love every time we come here. Granted, we've only been here twice, but both times have given us memories (and diseases--love diseases) that will warm our hearts for years to come.

After a brilliant show at the Abart, our dear friends Richard and Robert took us to the Hafenkneipe, our favorite bar in Europe, and partied us under the table and out of our clothes.








Oh, it's grand to be in love...

Yours forever,

Ben Lee Handler

Hard Up in Gay Paris

I woke up about four AM yesterday morning backstage at the Paris Paris club in Paris a little out of sorts, and rightfully so. For one, I was backstage at the Paris Paris club in Paris, instead of in bed at our hotel. And then there was all this other shit: Yiannis, our Grecian Sound Technician, was repeatedly putting-on and peeling-off a sticker from my right cheek, a creepy tall French dude was pinching my left hand black and blue, and one of the club's DJs plopped herself on my lap and had, according to Nathaniel, been making out with my corpse for some time before I began to stir.

One's morning-after instinct when this sort of thing happens--and it happens more than we of the Blood Arm Posse would like to admit--is to blame it all on whatever township we happened to be in the night before. Oh, those Parisians/Londoners/Dusseldorfians/Orange Countians are just CRAZY, we say, pouring ourselves a third eye-opener. How they rejoice in forcing us to party all night, inject goofballs and have unprotected sex with farm animals! The monsters!

Then we go off in Paris/London/Dusseldorf/Orange County/whatever city we happen to be in and cross our fingers that its citizens will attempt to outparty wherever we were the previous evening. Funny thing, it seems that everyone we meet in every city is crazy.

But especially in Paris.

Upon entering the Paris Paris club, partygoers are greeted by a pink Mickey Mouse with a giant boner:


Then they walk downstairs, and there we are with bigger boners:





It was a good night, basically.

I love you so much it's making me crazy,

Ben Lee Handler

Some Festival Pics...

From the Glastonbury and South Side Festivals, courtesy of our lovable Grecian Sound Technician, Yiannis:

Intentional Accidentalism; Glastonbury, Southside Festival

We make a lot of mistakes on the road. We say 'whoops' a lot. But after about the 30,000,000th 'whoops,' one starts to wonder if all these mistakes are really mistakes. Like, every time we say, "okay, no more service station sandwiches," we get drunk and eat a service station sandwich. Or every time we say, "okay no more adopting pet rodents at venues and keeping them in our suitcases," we get drunk and do just that. Or every time we say, "okay, no more throwing dead identical twins boys into the river after we lure them into the van with candy and have our way with them," we get drunk and lure identical twin boys into the van with candy, have our way with them, throttle them in their sleep and throw them into the river. Whoops.

It says a lot about us, I think, that we always wind up doing the things we say we don't want to do. Three things, specifically: First, we are ashamed of a good portion of our desires. Second, we use alcohol as an excuse to do the things we are ashamed to do. Third, we get away with doing the shit we would be ashamed to do at home on the road. And this is just one of the reasons why touring is totally awesome.

Some shit we are definitely NOT ashamed of:

- Nathaniel, Zachary, Zebastian and I taking three different airlines and stopping in two different countries before we are finally reunited with Dyan, Tour Manager Chalkie, and Sound Tech Yiannis in London.

- Performing in front of perhaps the biggest crowd the Blood Arm has ever performed before at the Glastonbury Festival.

- Nathaniel forgetting half of the lyrics to his songs at the Southside Festival in Germany.


- Our love of the chunnel.


- Zebastian's newfound love for girlie ice cream bars.


Now Chalkie is in the middle of our 500 mile drive to Bremen, and the others are working on some identical twin boys they lured into the van at the last service station... time for me to get drunk and join in!

I love you madly,

Ben Lee Handler

Friday Show Photos; A Warning of Things to Come

So the show Friday was out of control. Also, fun!

I intended to photodocument the majority of it, but then got drunk and wound up taking pictures of all our friends "so my International lovers can see how beautiful my American ones are." The resulting images are dishearteningly Cobrasnake-esque, only plus a few years, minus the Atkins diet, and a little more EASTSIDE. (There are also a few from our dear friend Jeff's holiday party... Those are all holiday happiness and cheer, with love to spare.)

Check them out HERE.

Coming soon: A long-overdue feature on our beloved Greecian soundman Yannis, each of the Blood Arm posse's Top Things of 2006 lists, and a year-end CONTEST... Stay tuned!

I love you,

Blee

Pulling Tiger Tail

Over the past week of our headlining tour we have found ourselves falling head-over-heels in love with our main support act, Pull Tiger Tail. It’s a little sickening, really. Like, literally. Every time guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Davo says my name I throw up, Dyan goes into convulsions when drummer/vocalist Jack mistakenly walks into our dressing room, and guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Marcus gave Zachary herpes. We’ve never felt this way about another band before, and as lovesick as we are, we never want to be apart from them ever again.

Don’t take my work for it, see for yourself how adorable they are:




Since Glasgow, we’ve gone on dates with them in Manchester, Sheffield, Belfast, Dublin, and Nottingham, so it’s getting pretty serious. There’s talk of marrying them tonight at King’s College in London, but I don’t want to spill the beans just yet.

Other things we’ve been up to:

-Drinking.

-Eating.

-Drinking.

-Driving. (Well, drinking in the back of the van while Chalkie drives.)

-Drinking.

One more funny story before I sign off: Yannis, our Greecian sound engineer who will have a blog entry entirely devoted to him as soon as I get around to it, loves milk. He drinks a liter in the morning when he wakes up, a liter over the course of the day, and another liter before he goes to bed. Zachary, the drummer, loves alcohol. He drinks a liter of beer in the morning when he wakes up, three liters over the course of the day, then switches to hard alcohol later on. Yannis and Zachary made a bet to see who could last the longest without his favorite poison. To make a long—well, thirteen hour—story short, Yannis won, and now Zachary has to drink four liters of milk in one sitting as punishment. Photo documentation coming soon…

I love you,

Ben Lee Handler

Oh, I contributed to Supersweet’s third group story, and my entry is up now. Check it out!