I drove up to Chicago on Saturday with "The BJZA" Bart Sod and "Sexy Leslie" Deckard for the weekend.  Got a chance to visit with the newly-expanded Signorelli family-- Mike, Julie, Mama Signorelli, Dean, and fresh out the box, the almost-two-months-old Bella Joy Signorelli.  Got lots of pictures of the weekend that I'll hopefully get up on Facebook later this week, maybe add a couple on here too.  Then we met up with Goodrich at his apartment, had a good time at his friend's apartment party, which I think had an 80s theme or tacky theme.  Mike and I made our own theme which was "kill our 40s and then eat too many jello shots."  Ran into Neil Blakemore there completely randomly.  He was lookin sexy as usual.  Sunday we met up with the always lovely and charming Claire Jennings for a fantastic falafel sandwich lunch followed by a tour of the town courtesy of Claire. 

THE SODS & POGUES:
Backstory:  In 1999, Jonah introduced me to Rum, Sodomy, & The Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God by The Pogues.  In the year following, he and Bart invited me to join them and Linda Sod, our original bassist, in Jonah's garage as a percussionist playing mostly Pogues covers on the "Blatterbox" with Bart on guitar, mandolin, or gazouki, and Jonah singing.  We played a couple coffeshop shows and one show at FN Music, a record store in Muncie during 2001.  In early 2002 we played our first show at The Art Factory and, still not expecting a serious response or really calling ourselves a legitimate band, we were surprised and excited to receive a strong positive response from the Ft. Wayne street punk scene.  So we started having weekly practice, writing originals, and soon became a regular headliner at the Art Factory, while rocking the Irish folk-punk style of The Pogues.  The three of us saw Shane MacGowan with The Popes in 2002, and Jonah flew out to see The Pogues in Vegas last fall, but this was the first time for the 3 of us to see the band that birthed The Sods.

Bjart and I met up with Jonah Sod to go see The Pogues Monday night at the Congress Theater.  Fuckin great!  I got lots of pictures of that show, and a few videos too.  Crashed at Leslie's friend Janie's place Monday night and hit the highway back home Tuesday.  whew, long weekend.  check out the pictures later.