The First Calabrese Show Ever!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh.

I missed it?  Well, that seems appropriate and understandable, for I was in a sick-coma for the last week and a half.  Hell, I'm STILL fighting this snot-beast off as I type.  There's no reprieve, no end in sight, THERE IS NO GOD.

Any other time would have been fine.  Thanksgiving is too good a holiday to simply waste away on the floor in a coma-burrito.  In fact, any other time for this alien entity to enter my system would have been welcome.  I'll readily admit the "pros" of being sick.  Most people tend to concentrate on the "cons," which makes sense when your head is dripping multicolored goo, but I like to look on the brighter side of things.

1. You Can Absolutely Not Give a Fuck

One of the nicer things about coming down with something is the opportunity to drop everything and declare complete "I don't give a fuck-ness" by proceeding to disregard any and all responsibilities.  If you can ignore the crippling symptoms of your foreign disease, you're living high on the hog, set up in bed like a rich king.  It's quite the freeing experience.  The best is if you can get a cold, but, like, a mild cold.  Something that will prove to your friends that it ain't bullshit, but not enough to totally take you out of the game.  Why?  Because you have lots to do, my friend.

2. You Can Watch, Like, a Million Movies

If you're too sick (or, ya know, actually sick) then playing video games and surfing the Internet won't be too much fun.  Both those are way heavy on the hand-eye coordination, which might make ya puke.  But you might as well do something while you're doing nothing, right?  That's why there are couches.  In front of televisions.  The greatest act of Sickness Defiance (remember Rule #1?) is to do nothing.  Be nothing.  FEEL NOTHING.  That's why you watch movies.  And a lot of them.

Thank God for Netflix.  Without it, you'd be stuck watching your favorite films on DVD, which is fun, but that's not fun at all.  No, sir.

As a rule, I like to watch a movie only one time.  Twice, max.  If I really like it, sure, yeah, a couple more viewings will suffice.  I have this weird idea that if I'm spending too much time watching the same stuff more than once, I'm missing out on other stuff that I could be watching.  Like I'm on an infinite hunt to watch it all, every damn movie ever, crammed into my head for lightening awkward social gatherings and dishing out perfectly timed movie quotes.  Everyone loves movie quotes!

It's been about a week and half, but I'd say I clocked in a little over fifteen films.  The worst/laziest days, I hit three movies in a twelve-hour period.  The rest of that time was spent looking at Internet pornrndjfhsppoppp POPSICLE RECIPES because my throat is sore.  The rest of my cocoon vacation was spent, well, sleeping!

3. Sleep, Sleep, Sleep

It's an odd mixture of pain, comfort and delusion when you've put in a solid eleven hours of sleep.  You're often told to get as much sleep as you can when you're sick, so it's only natural to ignore your bladder and keep your eyes shut.  It's for the good of the cause.  I like sleeping, so this is one of my favorite activities while broken down.  Yeah, you wake up sore, groggy and confused.  It's only part of the plan that you feel like turd soup.  But somehow...you feel worse.  But you're getting better, right?  Probably.

The best part?  Four episodes of "Roseanne" and two glasses of orange juice later, you'll once again feel disgustingly tired and won't be able to wait to get back into bed!

So yeah, go get sick.  It's awesome.

Oh.

Our first show ever.  I remember I was gonna mention this.  So now I'm going to mention this:

Modified Arts in downtown Phoenix, AZ.  I'm thinking it was a weeknight.  Headlining band was a band called Bad Wizard, who were pretty cool and genuinely nice guys.  I have no idea who invited us to play.  It's crazy to even think we did play!  Just weird how the ball got rolling right then, right there.  So in honor of this, I've decided to take you on a trip to the past.  Recently, old photos have been dug up.  Actually, snooping around on the web, leading me to an old archive of a photographer's work who may or may not be photographing still have been dug up.  This is from the first Calabrese show ever.

Be prepared.  We look like babies.

Davey and Jimmy, deep in a groove.  Out of the gate, we wanted to be theatrical, in some way or another.  The dream was to have White Zombie's fantastic stage setup (giant pillars made of skeletons, pyrotechnics, robots attacking the audience) but we settled on a TV, a Boglin and a creepy Christmas Elf.

We had the TV running a VHS mash-up of our favorite horror movie scenes, which included everything from "Dead Alive" to that fucked up monkey in "Monkey Shines."  It wasn't as high scale as we wanted, but I know a lot of people dug it.

Me and my shrunken head!  If there was one thing we could all agree on back then, it was shrunken heads.  Somehow it became our mascot/muse for a while, helping us evoke creepy guitar sounds and drum beats.  So we had our TV, Coffin Cases propped up, plastic headstones, the works.  Over the years, we learned to downsize, but I'd like to think the "silly and fun" vibe still remains the same.  Eventually, we learned to roll up our shirtsleeves, too, which helped ease our way into not looking like complete dorks.   

We wanted to be The Ramones.  It's my only excuse for the blue jeans.  I'm sorry.  It'll never happen again.

Hope ya enjoyed the trip!