Blog:Danimatian

I feel great. I got up at 6:30 and went to the gym! I haven't done that in months. If only 6am me could see 8:30am me and know that it is worth waking up sooner to feel great!

Last Friday night, I got together with Mike, Page and Fish to talk
openly about the strong feelings I've been having that Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note.
Once we started talking, it quickly became apparent that the other guys' feelings, while not all the same as mine, were similar in many ways --
most importantly, that we all love and respect Phish and the Phish
audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don't want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act. By the end of the meeting, we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.

So Coventry will be the final Phish show. We are proud and thrilled that it will be in our home state of Vermont. We're also excited for the June and August shows, our last tour together. For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We're done. It's been an amazing and incredible journey. We thank you all for the love and support that you've shown us.

-- Trey Anastasio

i really wish you could get by without the use of money. i am barely gonna scrap by on my little trip to California. leaving the house with about $200, I will get a paycheck direct deposit while I'm gone but my bills will also auto-pay themselves leaving me with about $300 to play with from 6/15 - 6/28. So i won't be shopping during my trip. Just an adventure on the cheap. I'll be with good friends so the struggle with be worth it but I wish my car payment was at the end of the month instead of the middle. GRRRRRRR

I'm so sick of paycheck-to-paycheck living

Got a new summer 'do

Brought about by the hot and humid weather and the fact that I'm goin to California on the 11th.

OK. Not sure if I really have time to let this all out right now.

I am at work. I got off the plane from Vegas at about 6am. Went straight to work, slept on the couch, woke up and took a shower. I got maybe 2 hours of sleep counting the plane ride and the couch, but probably less as my mind was racing too much to fall right asleep ( a recurring problem as of late)

So here we go.

Friday (The Bachelor Party)
I worked until about 2. Then I had to go pack. I worked until past midnight on Thursday so I had to leave work way earlier than planned to pack for my trip. Little did I know that all my conservative time planning was in vain as my plane was 2 hours late due to a storm affecting the jet I would be on while it was in New York City.


The flight was decent. Lots of turbulance but that really doesn't bug me. What did bug me was when I saw Venus in the sky and then they announced it as being the International Space Station. It was totally Venus. It's very visible this week.



So I land in Las Vegas and I have to make my way downtown. I had never previously been downtown so this would be my first time seeing OLD Vegas.

I find a shuttle that would take me to my hotel. As I walk up the driver he says "You're late, Phish was last month."
"Ha, sure thing buddy, but I was here then, too!"
I start to hand him my bag to put in the back with everyone elses and he says "You keep your bags. When the cops pull us over your stash will be close by."

He takes me to Fitzgerald's, the Irish Hotel/Casino off of the Fremont Experience downtown.
This place was white trash city. I met Erich and family at the second floor restaurant, The Shamrock. This would be the first time I saw a very pregnant Keshia.

So here starts the Bachelor/Bachelorette party. Or so we thought (I never saw boobs.) Someone had a plan but kept it secret from EVERYONE not just the bride/groom so we basically left and couldn't get into the place because half of us weren't dressed well enough. Which is what I mentioned when we left the hotel but they were like 'no big deal' and then later it was a huge deal. I won't get into the melodrama but we ended up just wandering around until 7am. Getting breakfast at Mandalay Bay and then going to sleep. Getting breakfast and then going to sleep would soon become a theme for this weekend. I drove everyone "home" and we crashed.

Saturday (The Wedding Day)

Saturday started at about 2pm or so. We went to an outlet mall. I bought some fine clothes I look pretty damn cute in if I do say so myself. Wrinkle-free dress shirts are THE SHIT.

You can't plan a wedding and have it go flawless, but when you don't PLAN a wedding its just chaos. I won't go into all the chaos as I've already filtered most of the drama from my memory banks. I will spare you the same. The most notable thing before the wedding would be this: I went to go meet the folks I was driving with AT THE CAR. However they were waiting for me IN THE LOBBY. So I'm bored by the car and I start to play with my camera (Jason Roth has had it for months so its like a new toy again and I love how powerful my camera is.. WOOT WOOT!)
I start zooming into the mountains in the distance and just loving how great the picture from my little camera is. Then it happens. I failed to securly tighten the shoe of the flash bulb atop my camera and it falls 7 stories onto the asphalt below. SHIT. $500 down the drain and now the pictures I take will look too dark to be any good. I was depressed, I think I'm over it now, I'll get one on ebay or something. I never should have bought such a good one in the first place.

The chapel caught on fire the day before so I suggested that we have the ceremony outside. They wanted to do it inside by candlelight but I was like "sorry, you're all BLACK, the video camera won't pick up any of you, it will just be darkness." So outside was much better!

The ceremony was beautiful! Those two are so perfect for each other. It was pretty much all just family so I felt honored to be a part of the weekend. I haven't known Erich long but we've become close since I met him in 2001. And to think I first met his wife a day before I met him and I thought she would be perfect for ummm *ME*. haha.

Afterwards, we went to the hotel and toasted, laughed, etc and it was a great time. About midnight we left the newlyweds and I took off to The Strip with the wedding party, which was just 2 people besides the bride and groom. We went to Paris, parked there and walked to the nearest place to find alochol. They drank, I played some slots and then we moved on. My favorite thing to do at Paris is to mutter in fake French like I'm drunk and watch how people react to me. My dream would be to get a girl to pretend to be breaking up with me in French as we fight loudly in front of everyone.

Our goal was the pyramid of the Luxor, easy to find as it shines a bright light up in the sky. We found ourselves at New York, New York and we stayed there past dawn.
A lot of good the Luxor light shining in the air does when the Sun is out again. I won $300 on the Monopoly slots (not the one I was obsessed over at Harrahs in April, a totally different Monopoly!)

we drank and drank and drank and I never got drunk but kept trying. The white russians were horribly watered down. We met a crazy dude from Boston and he followed us for about 3 hours. It was hilarious. Good times.. good times..

After dawn we left and went to the Luxor. This is where I won $150 on a Blazing 7s Slot. Hell yea. I also won $50 on blackjack but I lost it on a single bet of roulette.. easy come.. easy go...

so we left the Luxor at about 8 or so. We were laughing at how PAST dawn it was.. the sun was about 1/4 of the way into the sky. I saw a Dennys and laughed "Probably the only night I stay out this late and don't end up at a fucking Denny's."

So into Denny's we go. I got a veggie omelette. I started telling Angela and Rahsin about the Casino Denny's north of Flamingo drive. I started lying and made up this gimmick where instead of serving you alcohol while you play at the casino they serve you mini-pancakes. Rahsin went nuts, he wanted free pancakes so bad he thought it was the coolest thing he ever heard. Hopefully he doesn't cry if he ever finds out I was a lying bastard that morning. We went down to Paris to get the car and I think I fell asleep sitting up but thats pretty hazy so I'm not sure.

Sunday

Sunday I did not move. My goal (as of Saturday afternoon) was "I want to wake up by noon EST" Well I didn't get to BED by then it would be impossible. Therefore I was a lazy bastard. I didn't get up for breakfast with his family. I didn't want to move to go to the outlet mall a second time. (come on.. more shopping?!??!?) Good thing Erich felt the same way. I called him to ask where something was and he's like 'we're watching Ray Charles across the street, come on down!" I had thought he was hella far away but that wasn't the case. So I left my shoes in the hotel and figured I wanted some flip flops, I'd buy some along the way. They made fun of my barefootness and we left the saloon after a few minutes as I had missed Ray Charles' entire set by that point.
So I go into a shoe store to find sandles and they kick me out for not wearing shoes. I went into Walgreens and got some there. They felt good in the aisle but when I paid for them and took them outside I found out I had paid for the WORST sandles of all time.

At this point everyone parted ways, Erich and I went to my room and watched the wedding video I recorded the day before and chilled on the beds and just talked.

I played some more slots, won $10 and off to dinner we went. I left to make sure I was packed. Lost $60 on slots and got ready to bail to the airport. They said not to take the shuttle that would have gotten me there on time, but instead to go with his family.

I almost missed my flight. It was so damn close that my heart was racing and my adrenaline was pumping for the first hour of the flight. Really though, how horrible would another day in Vegas have been, I would have gone jet skiing with the friends of the Boston guy I met, Ryan.. he knows models I could have been partying with. hmmmm.. maybe I should've run to the terminal slower... I'd still be there...

The flight back was kinda weird. I was anxious. I couldn't sleep for most of the flight as my normal bedtime at this point wasn't until another 6 hours and I was in the seat that doesn't recline in front of the emergency exit. I managed a less than an hour nap and we landed in Detroit safely.

I drove straight to work. Slept on a couch and took a shower @ 9. Now I'm really tired but somehow still making it OK.

woot woot
is my new favorite phrase.

Well Kim at my work came up with a great idea.

We now have a goal for the summer. To get invited to Meg White's pool parties!

Yea what a great idea. We just gotta get close enough with friends to get invited over.

yo this blog might stop being updated as we move to new servers, they are not yet compatible with blogger grrrr. but it will all work out soon.