mad frog saturday night. this is a lipogram. is a paragraph or group of paragraphs or a book that can not contain a particular symbol. in this paragraph i am not including one symbol in our alphabet. oops. okay so i used it twice. so it’s not an actual lipogram, but it is an awfully common symbol so this is difficult. you should try it. it’s as hard as you think. but fun. kind of.

enough of that.

the other night we played at the mad frog for the four billionth time. we still have fun so hey. if it ain’t baroque. the turnout was really hurt by the weather: rain which turned some of the roads into slushy. mystery slushy. that’s the flavor for white sometimes. anybody eat air heads? the white air heads are “mystery” flavor. my favorite. here are some photos from the show from the awesome Niles C. Davis:

my voice was not in top shape. i had a severe tooth ache so i spent a day at the dentist and the rest of the week on the couch on pain pills. apparently that’s not good for singing. i felt like i had no strength

the good news is that we have several area shows this month including top cats with our friends oval opus and another mad frog show before the end of march. check the tour page.

what else is new? the music video has received about 30,000 watches in under two weeks so that is good. i believe the Curvature CD’s are being manufactured which means we are ever closer to announcing a concrete release date. when that happens we’ll be launching a new joehedges.com and taking pre-orders online. we’ll be doing some traveling for a week or two at the end of April including hitting philly and washington dc. THAT will be fun. we are also in talks with a mystery man from texas about partnership that could move us closer to some business goals.

oh and the ghost rider movie was really terrible. but ghost rider was awesome. movie: sucko. ghost rider: awesome. did his pennance stare and everything. now i feel like i’m 13. i got out all my old comics. okay i’ll stop talking about ghost rider for a while. i am regressing.

thanks for all your e-mail and myspace support with the new music lately. i can’t wait to get the album out there.

let me tell you why i wear combat boots. for kicking ass. that is the only reason to wear them. they are designed to kick ass.

i used to read comics. maybe i should be embarassed by this but i’m really not. i am, in fact, quite proud to be a nerd. in junior high it was comics, lord of the rings, even dungeons and dragons. i owned my own microscope AND telescope.

when i was a kid, maybe eleven or twelve, i visited my grandmother’s house pretty frequently. one day i was playing outside when i noticed a box at the end of the driveway. as i approached it i discovered it was full of comic books. mostly issues of “the punisher”. i leafed quickly through the pages. comics are like porn for pre-pubescents. guns violence and rippling muscles. much has been made of the “the nerd saves the day” psychology behind america’s recent super-hero obsession so i won’t get into it. besides, it’s not important why guys like these things. or at least, it’s not important when you are twelve. it’s just visceral, empowering, and inspiring. this was my first encounter with violent graphic art and i will never forget it.

i left the box at the end of the driveway and went back inside, although my mind was bent on it for the rest of our stay. when we left, the box was still there. upon telling my parents about it, they agreed to let me take it home. it was as if god itself had delivered them to me–a box of punisher comics, in all of their bloody glory.

as with most interests i’ve taken up, this quickly turned into an obsession. i started going to comic book stores and buying punisher comics. like batman, the punisher has no “real” super powers. he has an obsession for vengence, and lots of toys and guns. oh–and a motorcycle.

in one particular issue, the punisher is riding from place to place on his bike killing foes, when another mysetrious rider pulls alongside him. then, to my amazement the mystery rider pulls out a zippo and lights his helmet on fire. in the next frame, the bike explodes and from the burning street emerges an ominous figure with a flaming skull for a head. enter ghost rider.

the idea of vengence was important to me as a kid, i guess because i pereceived the world as hostile and dangerous. i was into the most vengeful of heros–batman, the crow, anything tall dark and mysterious. ghost rider is the self-proclaimed very “spirit of vengence”, whose super power is his “penance stare”. ha! but it’s not only vengence that made him so appealing. ghost rider is rock and roll. black leather jacket, boots, hellfire chain, his frickin’ face literally melts off when he gets angry–the guy oozes punk rock and metal. i had little interest in music when i was twelve, but in a weird way i guess i knew i wanted to rock.

i don’t read or follow comics anymore, but i have been waiting my entire life for a movie about my favorite character. i don’t know anything about the movie except that it’s called ghost rider, and that’s all i need to know. it could be the worst piece of crap movie ever (in fact i’m kind of planning for it…), and that will be okay. it is a bit bittersweet, that feeling you get when something that seemed personal is thrust into the mainstream. but on the positive side, when your favorite unknown band finally goes platinum, at least you can say “i told you so!”

lace up those combat boots and dust off your leather jackets! i’m off to the show.

the mitral video has received nearly 5,000 watches in one day! we thought we might be able to get it in the top 100 but the top 10 is super amazingly awesome. thank you guys so much for taking the time to watch and share it. you rock!

Happy Valentine’s Day! while it isn’t a love song, it does have some hearts in it. Big thanks to Eric Stewart the director who worked countless hours on this, and all the people who volunteered their time to be in the montage at the end.

some shots from production: