Luke Skywalker's ROTJ Lightsaber is Tattoo(ine)’d On My Arm

Why doesn’t Lord of the Rings have a celebrated day? Tolkien bros are slacking. 

Happy Star Wars week. Or day. Or whatever. I love Star Wars yet I can admit that it’s kinda dumb. And like… most of the movies are not very good. But when it hits, it’s the best. I have a lot of Star Wars memories. A lot tied to my grandma who took me to Toys R Us and we’d crush those toys. I remember putting in a rain check for the Lando Calrissian figure. In my opinion, the beauty of Star Wars lived on the edges (the characters that only appeared for a sec but were fleshed out in the non-canon books and encyclopedias) and they’ve…. uhhhh…. successfully mined all that IP for mostly crappy shows. Still enjoy them but psa to team George Lucas, let’s take our time. 

(reign check? rain check?)

Andor is the best Star Wars product thats ever been produced. It’s near perfect. Second best thing is the Rise of the Resistance thing at Disneyland. I rode past a full size AT-AT. LFGSD.

Also, Kylo Ren was so close to being a badass villain but then Rise of S***W***** came out and basically ruined everything. 

Imagine we were like hey… here’s a riff, but the secret to the riff is found only a blade/knife and the indentations of the knife match a fallen star destroyer and that’s where the McGuffin 4.0 is hidden. So stupid! 

GUYS - Its so stupid. And here I am, typing about Star Wars looking at my life size Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace standee. Full size podracing ready Anakin. Super normal. Super bad ass (see my personal instagram story for reference).

Star Wars. Song of the Day is for sure gonna be Niamos. 

Band Stuff - We’re writing. We’re demo’ing out songs in the garage. Oh man, remember when Kylo and Rey fight the red guys in the red room? That was dope. Sorry… band. We’re at the point with our songs where they are “written” and we have “demos” but NOW we take them into the garage and play them. It’s tedious and I wish we could skip this step, but I think it’s good. Good in a “it makes the songs better and recording them easier” way. So… we’ve played “Never Die” live and now we’re working on “Dumb” and “Spoiled Intuition.” We play them. See how they feel. Clunky? Heavy? Smooth? Too Hard? Too fast? And then we’ll re-edit them in the computers and then get them ready to record. If I were to guess, I think Rogue One Vader at the end is the coolest thing. Sorry…. If I were to guess, I’d say you’ll get a new single from us by the end of the summer. If not sooner. I don’t know. Things are happening. 

More band stuff - we have shows. Two local. You should come. You’ll hear new stuff. Then we head out to hang with Idle Threat. That route changed. Maybe it’s TMI. Maybe I speak too soon, but I don’t care, If you’re reading this, you’re basically in the band. Buy merch. Han shot first. So yea, that route changed cause Ernie Threat and I emailed a bunch of Chicago and Grand Rapids area promoters and none of them got back to us. I think Chicago was being weird and the GR spots didn’t respond. One did but they said they don’t do shows on Sundays… which was the day we were looking for. Kinda like the Stormtroopers looking for C-3PO, but we didn’t have Jedi mind tricks to convince venues to reply. 

Sooooo we’re headed into Arkansas for the first time. And Kansas. Fun? Nashville, then Little Rock, then Kansas City then Indianapolis. Supposedly. 

We have another local show on August 1. Roadies again. Planning on shooting a music video.

MOAR band - like the Kylo “MOAR GIF.” We’re trying to get an east coast thing to happen with NIV. I can’t remember if I mentioned that. It’s further along today than it was last week, but I doubt it’ll happen. It should and would be rad, but I’m not confident. 

TV - Gosh, I can’t believe I made it this far without mentioned “Widow’s Bay.” Apple TV show with Matthew Rhys (Brent says to go watch “The Americans”). It’s like… what if Pawnee was a haunted island and not a happy go lucky town of misfits. Parks and Rec but haunted island. Yea. Or if the mayor from Jaws was trying to keep a whole island open despite knowing it’s doomed. It’s very good. Very funny and very scary. Big recommend from Team Austin. 

Ok good bye. I think that’s it for this week.

Star Wars.