Second and Below

My Holiday Travel advice can be summed up in 3 words: Don’t do it! Okay, fine. Be that way you stubborn little shit. Congratulations on having a family you love enough to travel at the absolute worst time of year but a family that doesn’t love you enough to understand why you’d rather visit in March. I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. If you must travel, show up early. I say that not because of the volume of people but because of the types of people who will be flooding the airport. All the people who never fly are flying during the holidays. It’s straight up amateur hour. If it was Showtime at the Apollo, the Sandman would be exhausted from sweeping away all these busters. Prepare yourself mentally, physically and spiritually because you will run into the following people: Stingy Susan: Can you believe this bottle of Coca-Cola is $5? Yes I fucking can Susan, because we’re in an airport where the common laws of capitalism and decency cease to exist. Stingy Susa...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to die of exposure in a major metropolitan area? If so, go to Austin, TX in August and you’ll find out real quick. My first trip to Austin was in 2007 for the National Poetry Slam. Most of the events were in the evening but there were a few scheduled during the day throughout the festival. I had mapped out a trip across the Congress St. Bridge to the club Antone’s for an event that started at 12pm. It was a brutal walk but manageable. The AC inside was blasting Arctic levels of cold and it made me forget about the heat. My dumbass should’ve gone back to the hotel but I decided to be a hipster and checkout a record store that was an additional half-mile or so away, not realizing that I was now a solid mile from the hotel. I attempted to walk back in the 2pm sun but the heat was debilitating. I’m not too proud to say that when the sprinklers in front of a downtown high rise went off, I dove into the low spraying streams. Another ...

  I’ve been to Ulm twice and if you take out all the hours I was either sleeping or performing, I’ve had a total of 2 hours to explore. Neither of those hours was during prime time but goddammit, I was gonna do my best. First time to Ulm I had no interest in exploring. I had taken a long-ish train from Zurich where I had spent the previous few days walking roughly 10 miles a day throughout Switzerland with my girlfriend. I tacked on some shows at the end of our trip to say hello to some friends and return some favors to promoters who had hooked me up in the past. When the train pulled into the station at Ulm, I could see the Ulmer Munster, the world’s tallest church. I thought to myself, “Great, I’ve seen all the sites.” My friend Ko picked me up from the station and we went straight to the venue for the show. Afterwards, I ate some late-night falafel with my friends Thomas and Lara and then passed out. I woke up the next morning in time to eat breakfast at the hotel ...