Adventure #89: Hayward, CA and Los Angeles, CA

It was cold and windy by the time I made it to Venice Beach, but I didn't care. For the past week and change I've been within a hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean, but my schedule has kept me just slightly inland. And at heart, I am a water pokemon or whatever the hell the astrology thing is. This is Pen Pen pretending that it's not way too cold to be at the beach right now and he's having a really good time.

The long days of driving gave way to long days of hanging out with the wonderful Bob from Global Rev in Hayward and Lindsey in Oakland. (And not Jesse or Carrie because they're both dead to me now.) Performing is fun and will always be where my heart is (and I suppose technically that's what I'm here to do...), but there is little in this world better than staying up until preposterous hours talking politics and economics and revolution and life and the universe and everything over a few beers with old friends. It's weird to think that just a year ago I didn't actually know either of them. But then, it's always weird to think how different my life was just a year ago. This is Pen Pen and the Anonymonalisa.

Back to Venice Beach. I had an hour to kill before my show in LA so I wandered around for a little bit. Growing up in the Northeast, my relationship with palm trees has more to do with dinosaur movies than California. This is Pen Pen being a dinosaur, which he is, because birds are dinosaurs.

At the venue, that old panic began to set in as 8 o'clock got closer and the room was devastatingly empty. Slowly some friends trickled in. Then as I started playing, more and more people, until by the time my set was over, there was a pretty solid crowd there. We all stuck around, and my cousin Jason ended up jumping up and doing back-up vocals for Emily who played after me. It was one of those moments that make touring wonderful. When for a few brief minutes a whole bunch of strangers form a community based solely on unanimous love for the song “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” and a complete lack of shame or self-consciousness. It was glorious. This is Pen Pen being welcomed to LA by the official welcome monkey.

The next day was my day off. The one and only day off on this tour. That was probably a mistake. But I made the best of it. I went to the beach for real for a bit, reading anarcho zines and my cousin's (not Jason, Ciara...all my cousins are writers, apparently) latest book. This time, Venice Beach was warm. The sky was clear. Soon there'd be a long drive to Arizona. Soon there'd be another week of shows as I begin the long trek eastward. But for a few hours in LA, I actually made an earnest attempt to relax. This is Pen Pen just kind of wanting to give the Myspace folks a hug for not giving up.

Adventure #88: Caldwell, ID and Sacramento, CA

“No, Nathan, we don't have time to stop at every abandoned building and take pictures.”

“But I wanna...”

“No! We're already running late and we've already stopped at 3 abandoned farm houses today.”

“But it's what I do! It's my thing. It's mine. It's...my precious...”

“Don't care. We don't have time.”

“Fine. [gollum] Asshole.”

This conversation was had out loud. After a few weeks on the road by yourself you start to turn into Gollum. This is Pen Pen stopping anyway.

 Driving alone without anyone to talk to through the mountains for 6 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours a day, and you start to understand that woman on the street who talks to herself. Just loudly enough so you know she knows you hear her. Just quietly enough that you're pretty sure it might be about you. I've often wondered what happened to get someone to that place. It turns out they were touring singer songwriters. All of them. Next time you see someone talking to themselves on the street, ask for a copy of their EP. The piano ballad; track 4? It's actually pretty solid. This is Pen Pen and another abandoned farm house.

New York Nathan barely tolerates whatever it is about him that makes people on the subway think “This guy! This guy with the headphones on, who is clearly focused on writing something in his notebook. This is the guy I should talk to!” But Touring Nathan? He revels in it. Oh? I remind you of your son? Your grandson? Your great grandson? Tell me more! Do you have pictures? You have a dog, too? Do you have pictures of your dog? (I kind of hate dogs, but I love listening to people talk about their dogs. They get so excited about the most mundane things and it's just great.) This is Pen Pen, this time at an abandoned stable!

The show in Caldwell is fun, but definitely small. But the conversation all night is great. And honestly, at this point in the tour, I'm more interested in having some human interaction than performing. Both is the sweet spot, obviously. But 3 weeks in and having driven some 5000 miles by myself? I'll gladly take a night of talking comparative religion and anarchism with some friends I don't get to see often. This is Pen Pen also liking abandoned cars!

Driving south through the mountains the next day to Sacramento is beautiful, but dull. A meaner person would make a joke about some of the people they've dated. I'm not that person. Neither is Pen Pen. He's a penguin, not a person. This is Pen Pen and his ex.

It's amazing the way trees appear almost the second I cross the Nevada-California border. After 8 hours staring at desert brush, trees are a welcome sight. It's as if they're adhering to some ancient treaty.

“OK, fine, California. You guys get all the trees, but we get all the casinos and whores.”

“That sounds like a fair trade, Nevada.”

“Then we declare these borders official!”

“Ha! I tricked you, Nevada, for we have Los Angeles, where young artists gamble their futures and whore themselves out to entertainment companies instead of making that super personal short film about their grandfather they've been talking about since they were kids! AND WE HAVE TREES.”

Nevada shakes it's fist angrily at the sky, for it knows it has been duped. This is Pen Pen and Nevada's famed tree (just kidding, this picture was taken in California; Nevada doesn't have trees, jackass)...

This is a song David Bowie wrote one time. I like this song.

Adventure #55 and 56: Summer Tour 2012: Los Angeles and San Diego, California

There are some shows you play for money. There are shows you play for exposure. There are shows you play because artistically you think they'll be good. There are shows you play as a flimsy pretext to see old friends. And there are shows you play for their proximity to the beach. The show in LA was the latter. I was under no impression that a show on Labor Day Monday would be anything special, but the venue seemed really cool, and what else were we going to do? So the show was OK. Enough people to make it worthwhile but not so many that we were in danger of being mobbed by adoring fans and trampled to death by the sheer force of their adoration. But you know what was better than just OK? The beach. This is Pen Pen living beside the ocean, leaving the world behind, swimming out past the breakers, and watching the world die.

We spent the next day on the beach in Santa Monica. Then drove to San Diego and promptly spent the rest of the day on the beach. Because we've been in the mountains for weeks and I never got to the beach when I was with my family on the Cape. Priorities. Besides, the show had fallen through and then been resurrected at the last second, so my expectations were pretty low. This is Pen Pen trying to convince a flock of seagulls to come to the show.

Dan, the guy who put it together, is a super rad dude. And against all odds it ended up being one of the most fun shows of the tour. Joshua and I decided both to screw the PA and play totally unplugged in the bar area. The crowd seemed to be into it and participating in all the right bits. Also I'd never played on a bar before, so that was fun. Afterwards we crashed out at this girl Morgan's house who works at the zoo(!!) and said she could get us in for free next time we come through. Also she had chickens and could hypnotize them probably for the same reason that I can sing “Row Row Your Boat” backwards. This is Pen Pen winning at cock fighting through the power of hypnosis.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download and share it with your friends.

Adventure #53 and #54: Summer Tour 2012, Sacramento and San Francisco, California

Touring can be so bipolar sometimes. You're playing and you're getting a good response and you're just on top of the world. Even if there's only 30 people, you're really connecting to those 30 people. And then a guy walks by in a wife-beater that proudly shows off the giant swastika tattoo across his chest and the day is just ruined forever. So that was Sacramento.

We were doing 2 shows. The first on a stage at a mall because I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm really into corporations. I mean, some of my best friends are corporations. And then a second show at a fancy bar downtown. The Nazi was in the mall. Mall Nazis are like Mall Goths, except, you know, they want to exterminate me and my family. Whereas Mall Goths just want to write poetry about their feelings. It's a subtle, but important difference. This is Pen Pen looking for Electric Tree Nazis, but only finding artichokes, which are roughly three times smarter.

The show at the fancy bar was better, if only for its pronounced lack of Nazis. Joshua's brother (not a Nazi) met up with us and was a lot of fun to hang out with. But I decided the most responsible thing to do was to do my nails and get very very drunk to try and forget about the Nazi and have a good time (didn't work...) so the rest of the evening is a little blurry. I probably sang a few songs. Odds are good “Family of Ghosts” was one of them. This is Pen Pen having stolen an artichoke from a tree on the capital mall to throw at Nazis because no matter how many times he types IDKFA, nothing happens.

It was as the show was wrapping up that our place to stay fell through. Being clear headed and sober, I did what any responsible mature adult would do and started to panic. We decided we had 3 options. Drive an hour and a half inn the wrong direction to stay at Jesse (Joshua's non-Nazi brother)'s place, spend all our food money on a hotel room in Sacramento, or see if anyone in San Francisco could house us. I figured it couldn't hurt to send out a tweet to some of my Occupy Oakland friends that I'd been planning on meeting up with to see if anyone had a place we could crash. Amazingly, a guy named Bob who I'd never spoken to before got back to me and said we could stay at his place. I know there are people who have their beef with Occupy, and there are as many fair criticisms as there are unfounded ones. But one thing you can never say is that Occupiers don't take the principal of solidarity very seriously. I make a lot of stupid jokes in my blog, but I remain honestly and sincerely speechless with gratitude. This is Pen Pen bored already of Nazis.

We got to Bob's place, who turns out to be one of the kindest and most generous humans alive. He and I stayed up talking till 5 or so. The next day I decided to head to the Occupy Oakland General Assembly to see if I could connect with any of their puppeteers. None of them were at the Assembly, but someone gave me the phone number of a guy. After, I headed back to Bob's and Holly trimmed my mohawk. For the first time in 3 months, I felt like myself again. Barely 24 hours from being sent into existential shock at the sight of a Nazi in Sacramento during my show and my faith in humanity was mostly restored. This is Pen Pen making a wig because maybe skinheads are just angry that they're going bald and can't grow a luscious Jewfro like me.

The show in San Francisco was fun, though the guys at the venue clearly couldn't care less about it. But a few #OO friends showed up and there was a decent built in crowd. Punkboy livestreamed it and I got some really nice comments from a bunch of folks who watched it online. Talking to Julie Meyers, who was playing after me, I realized there's a decent chance we're remotely related through our Ukraine Jew families. So that was awesome. After the show, we headed off to Punkboy's husband's birthday party and I finally got to meet a bunch of people I've only known through twitter in real life. An essentially perfect day ended back at Bob's place. I can't say enough about the spirit of generosity and support of the Occupy Oakland community (even EastBayRadical...). So touring is pretty bipolar. There aren't a lot of just OK days on the road. But sometimes a really upsetting day can turn into one of the best days I've ever had on tour. This is Pen Pen looking out over at Oakland and wondering if it wouldn't make more sense to cancel the rest of the tour and just not leave ever.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.

Adventures #51 and #52: Summer Tour 2012 Bend, Oregon and Eureka, California

The road to Bend is paved with good intentions. We'll leave it at that. The show didn't happen, but the venue owner was super apologetic and made it really hard to be angry. So we decided to make the best out of a crappy situation and record an EP with their gear. Joshua and I each did 3 songs, and hopefully a few of them will come out all right. This is Pen Pen masking his disappointment through the magic of song!

So we got up in the morning with a long drive ahead of us which would have been much shorter had we not driven out to Bend for no reason. (See? I'm totally not bitter. I'm very professional.) Holly spent the whole drive trying to see a bear from the road, and I've decided to embark on a psychological experiment where I remind her every day about how we saw a baby bear through the trees about 100 feet out from the road. It was about 2 or 3 feet tall, and wasn't doing much, but it was still pretty cool to see a bear in the wild. See? It's like Inception. This is Pen Pen with a baby black bear in the distance, but it's sort of hard to see the bear.

While Holly was trying (and succeeding!) to see a bear (it was in the distance, about 100 feet from the road. Like 2 or 3 feet tall. It wasn't really doing much, but still, we totally saw a bear from the side of the road! How cool is that?) I was trying to see some big-ass trees. We were about an hour north of Eureka when BAM! Big Ass Trees. Everywhere. I got out of the car and literally started skipping aimlessly into the woods. That happened for about 20 minutes when I remembered that my friends were somewhere behind me and I hadn't been following a trail, and I didn't particularly need to see two bears in one day, especially not one closer than about 100 feet away. Luckily there was a Big Ass Tree that made it pretty easy to spot the entrance to the grove so I wasn't abandoned to the plentiful bears of the Crescent City, California region. This is Pen Pen with a Big Ass Tree.

The show itself was fun, though nothing epic. A half full bar. Some random patrons and a bunch of Jarrod West's friends. Following the great West Coast tradition, we were pretty sure the headlining band wasn't ever going to show up. But they did and closed out the night loudly. It was good times. This is Pen Pen finally seeing the actual real Pacific Ocean.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.