how does one measure success? how does one measure the success of a picnic? is it the amount of delicious hot dogs chips and JTM’s consumed? the enjoyment of safe family-fun games like frisbee? perhaps the warm breeze of a mild summer day despite a 30% chance of scattered showers. it’s all these things and more my friend, and a successful picnic is what we had.

okay we did have one minor incident involving a frisbee and a fingernail.. but mostly the day was smooth. as far as i know, we are the only rock band on the planet hosting these kinds of picnics with street team members/friends and fans. and we have had quite a few of them. that’s because we are awesome. what’s not to like about a picnic? i encourage more of it, all around, for everyone, all the time.

including Dan, Drew, and i and Audiodown (the rocktastic middletown band on the C.C.’s bill) we probably had 30 or 40 people, although i don’t really have a good wide picture. we mostly just hung out and ate and talked about music. later i drove one of those fancy radio-controlled cars, decked-out JFK style.

the car belongs to our friend Jaden, a remote control car enthusiast, who could use his enormous muscles to kick your ass if he wasn’t so nice.

after we had split into fliering groups, we started to clean up. it started to rain. that sort of put a damper on the fliering, but now that i’m thinking about it it was much better to have rain for fliering than picnicking, two funny looking words wet or dry. in my car was all girs–lissa rachel alison and brittany. i was not complaining. girls smell nicer, and are generally more effective when asking retail store owners permission to hang stuff up. thanks a ton girls. kick ass.

between four or five groups, i think we covered most of the well-traveled areas in m-town. right click this image and select “save as…” to download the flier we used.

thanks to everyone who came out and/or brought food and/or helped hang up fliers! it was a fine day.

this morning i did an interview with the middletown journal, mostly about what’s been happening with nostalgia. here is the press release we are using. we are getting ready to send it to lots of ohio area (and beyond) papers. if you have a paper in your area that you think might be willing to do a write-up, pass it along to them or let us know and we’ll have our managers work on it.

tomorrow i am getting my hair cut, then we’re having band photos.
talk to you soon!

joe