party like its 2099.

if you are smart, you will be at this:

if you came or attempted to come to our video premiere at bear country last month, you know that it got shut down by the police before midnight which really sucked. we were planning to go on all night. we had live bands. we had three djs. we had live comedy lined up. we had a ton of booze. anyway, being that it was ruined and a lot of people never even got in the door, i needed to re-do the party. here are all the details:

SATURDAY DECEMBER 26, 2009
DINGBATZ / 620 VAN HOUTEN AVE / CLIFTON, NJ
DOORS OPEN AT 8PM / VIDEO AT 9PM / BANDS AT 10:30PM

LIVE PERFORMANCES BY:
FLESHTEMPLE
McRAD
COUGH
THE DIRTY STAYOUTS

PROJECTION SCREEN SHOWING OF DIVISION EAST "TOMORROW" AT 9PM

$30 - OPEN BAR FROM 8PM-10PM AND SHOW
so basically the show plus $20 for 2 hours of limitless drinking which is a pretty good fucking deal if you ask me.

$10 - AFTER 10PM JUST FOR BANDS (OR ANYTIME AFTER 8PM IF YOU DON'T WANT OPEN BAR)

DVD COPIES OF THE VIDEO WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR SALE. WE WILL ALSO HAVE TONS OF SHIRTS/HATS/STICKERS AND OTHER MERCH AS WELL.

COME DOWN AND DRINK YOUR HOLIDAY PAIN AWAY WITH A BUNCH OF PARTY ANIMALS.

40s, blunts and all types of ill shit.

some updates/upcoming shit etc.

first of all, can you say budget? i was asked to do a flyer and i had zero time to do it so this is what it looks like haha:


(division east video showings at drop-in for our upstate new york peeps and wonderbar in asbury park for our south jersey peeps.)

i had a little more time to work on this one. but not much. and poor emma was bored as fuck and fiending for scotch watching me do it:

(my dude is throwing this benefit to get some kids toys for christmas. december 11 @ hartleys in north arlington. come through if you can. if you can't and still wanna donate a toy, hit me up.)

also - the re-do of our premiere party that got shut down by the cops last weekend will be december 26th at dingbatz. one of the original bands can't play (njdots) so i am working on a line-up as we speak. right now its looking like cough, fleshtemple and mcrad, but that's not set in stone quite yet. i should have all the final details in the next week or so. most likely the rundown will be an 8pm-10pm open bar. video showing at 9pm and bands starting around 10-10:30pm. i believe it will be something like $30 bucks for the 8-10 open bar and show and either 8 or 10 bucks if you come after 10pm just for the show. we will have dvd copies of the video for sale along with a bunch of other division east merch and possibly the debut of my t-shirt line (if i can finalize the artwork and get them printed in time). i will be mass circulating an official flyer and facebook invites as soon as everything is finalized.

obsession.

been heavy grinding lately. all kinds of print and web work. for starts i finally finished a long running project for my homegirl tara. she does writing, producing, directing and voice-overs for the likes of such channels as VH1, Syfy, IFC, Food Network, TBS and a ton of others. basically she wanted a fairly plain and simple website, and we went back and forth since early this year with design concepts and changes, etc. so the final product is finally done and it will definitely blow up my spot and get me some major exposure which i am fully stoked on.

http://www.tararao.com/

next up is this major dvd release i am doing for division east. title is going to be toxic avengers. my man davy is filming and editing. it looks super sick. all shot in super8 and the soundtrack is awesome. skating is awesome. lotta fresh young talent killing it in the streets. so naturally, i have to step it up for the packaging, artwork and everything else.

layout is a 4-panel digipak 5x7. the thick cardboard joint with the plastic inlay inside and a foldout poster. it will be laid out basically like this. i have most of the front cover done, but i'm not going to preview the any of dvd artwork before the premieres. but it is looking pretty dope i can tell you that. i do have a super rough concept draft of the basic logo though:

the final version is gonna be tweeked a little more with all kinds of like toxic waste barrels and nuclear silos and all types of shit. but this is gonna be the general feel of the text.

in addition to all the print work and packaging, i'm also doing all of the on-screen stuff aka dvd menus, titles and credits. this project is definitely consuming my life pretty heavily. well that and jamesons. but what else is new.

we were originally doing the premiere for the video at the clairidge theater on bloomfield ave in montclair, but they gave us a date and then pushed it back a month so we scratched it. instead we are going to do a series of premieres at five different places. i just sent out the artwork for this ad which will be in the upcoming issue of focus.

(colors are slightly off on this because its a copy of the actual print version and doesn't show up in true form on normal monitors)

so needless to say, i've been a busy boy. i'm also trying to finish up lunch, dinner and take-out menus for the avenue bistro in clifton but i'm still waiting for some more info from them. next projects are going to be some business cards for tara (see above), possibly stickers for fleshtemple if madden and pete can get me logos and whatever i need and then my own website because i need to start really grinding and getting my name out there and stop stressing over silly little things in my life. word the fuck up.

underground.

Friday was quite an interesting and eventually shitty day. I woke up from a drunken thursday night and stumbled across my room to take a piss. Apparently, I must have kicked off my sneakers in a daze before I went to sleep. So I step on this god damn sneaker in the middle of my floor in the dark when i get up, and I roll my ankle terribly within about 10 seconds of being awake. I screamed loud enough to wake the fucking dead. And mind you, this is about 6 hours before I'm supposed to be at dingbatz for the division east/death traitors show that I was throwing there that night. Awesome.

So I pace my apartment for a while and just try to walk it off. It seemed like it was working. But no, within a few hours this fucking thing is ballooned to ace bandage status. Fuckin great. So I limp my sorry ass to the show and luckily ran into someone who hooked me up with a handful of vicodens. 3 bucks a piece. I was siked. I hooked my homegirl up with one and took the rest. Then I drank heavily and the pain was cut to the barest of minimums. I attempted to dance around a little bit for some of the bands, but I could feel it was doing damage and I had to stop.

Either way, the bands were sick. Kids were throwing down and a lot of booze was being drank. Troublemaker and black kites were brutal. Caught in a trap ruled as always. Fleshtemple had people real siked. The painful urination set was ridiculous, complete with blow-up dolls and lots of fake blood. Finally, the cough set with my brother, rocco, jp, joey ott (in his short shorts) on guitar and jannson on drums started at like 1:40. It was absolutely sick and if you left for that you were a fool.

Regardless, thanks to everyone that did come out. Unfortunately, there were a lot of other shows going on in the area that really split the crowds, so the turnout wasn't quite what we expected. But we still did pretty decent and by no means did we have a bad turn out. Hopefully the next show we do, we can collaborate with people that throw shows in the area so we're not all putting on shows in different places on the same night. But all in all, it was definitely a fun show.

Anyway, I wake up saturday and my ankle is seriously jacked. I mean like three times the size of my other one. It looked like a fucking grapefruit. So I ice that bitch, wrap it and lay down for a few hours. Later in the day, I scored a perk. That ruled. We also got a gallon of carlo rossi wine for 13 bucks, which is my new favorite. That also ruled. With my ankle being fucked, I attempted to invite a bunch of people over saturday night to hang out at my place. Me and dan cooked mad food and we had a fucking gallon of wine. But apparently, everyone was too cool for school. Its all gravy though. I was pretty incoherent from the perks and wine anyway. Conversation with me wouldn't have been too interesting.

Either way, I got my homegirl carson to take some flicks at the show, and I took a few myself. This first group of photos are hers, and you can check out her stuff on her flickr page.

































here's some of the photos that i managed to take:



























And for those of you who didn't go, you definitely missed out on some immensely talented bands. Next time I put on a show, make it a point to be there and support the underground. You won't be disappointed.

Cheers and thanks again to all the bands that played and to all the people that came out.

get your face punched in.

yeah so this show on march 6 is gonna be pretty wild. about a month and a half ago, my man GDP hit me up and wanted to collabo on a show at dingbatz. he's got a band called fleshtemple who are fuckin ill as fuck. he wanted to do a division east & death/traitors show. if you don't know about the death/traitors, you better ask somebody. straight outta brooklyn, these dudes make some really sick t-shirts and throw together a lot of sick events in the city. Check out their website: www.deathtraitors.com. they are sponsoring this show with us and will be doing some random product tosses/giveaways/etc. they rule.

the line-up we have is sick. with the exception of one band, i have seen every other band and know for sure that they are ridiculous. the one band i don't know is called troublemaker, but i checked out their myspace and they sound awesome. plus they came with a big recommend from GDP. they will be kicking off the night.

next, we have the black kites, who i saw at the meatloacker a couple months ago. these dudes are fucking ridiculously brutal, and caused the meatlocker to erupt into straight chaos. i was really blown away when i saw them.

from there we have my boys caught in a trap from queens. straight up, old-school new york city hardcore. these dudes are fucking awesome dudes to listen to and party with. i'm real siked they are making the trip out to jersey for this one.

after them will be fleshtemple (there is a link above). a lot of hometown heroes in this band. you will be siked.

to close off the night will be my good friends painful urination who always put on a sick show, complete with tons of outlandish stage props and costumes, and music that can drive you to murder. and as a special treat, directly after the painful urination set, will be an improv set by cough, which consists of my brother, rocco and joey ott from painful urination, and ryan jannson on drums. make sure you stick around for that.

all in all, this is going to be a fun night. i don't fuck around when i put a show together, and to collabo with GDP and the death/traitors means it will be just that much more insane. don't miss this show. FRIDAY, MARCH 6 2009. doors open at 8pm. first band at 9:30pm. get there early and support the underground.