getcher asses out here!

Okay, hi. Good morning. My wife is still pregnant and still at work. She’s due to burst oh, nowish, but she can’t stay off those conference calls, boy. Wow. Just saying, if I have to suddenly go this morning, that’s why. There’s a baby a’ comin. Okay, so quickly, on to business:

As you may recall, on Friday I wrote about the two girls who got beaten up with baseball bats while walking home from a bar. The one girl is from Ireland and she’s still in a coma last I heard. The other girl is awake, but she’s pretty fucked up. Broken skull and stuff.

Well, that sucks. It makes me feel bad that we’ve suddenly got this “Visit Chicago! We’ll beat you within an inch of your life!” kind of city slogan right now. I mean, we’re good folks here. Or, I should say there are tons and tons of good folks here and just a few baddies. I mean, I can only speak for myself and my friends, but none of us have EVER beaten anyone with a baseball bat. Not for money, not for fun, not even out of frustration. Okay, one time I was hitting baseballs and I accidentally knocked my brother’s tooth out with a bat on my follow through, but first of all I was maybe nine. Second of all, who sneaks up and stands right behind someone who’s hitting baseballs? I maintain that one was an accident and should not go on my ‘hitting folks with bats’ record, which is otherwise, not to belabor the point, spotless.

Okay, we’re getting off topic, and today’s topic is really quite good if I say so myself. It involves two girls that are in the hospital with broken headbones because some horrible shithead came upon them when they happened to be stumbling home from doing one of my favorite things (boozing with friends) in my favorite city.

As someone who’s stumbled home from my share of bars at 330 in the morning, I feel a deep connection to this plight.

I’ve been speaking with my co-conspirators and we all feel terrible. SO, here’s what we’re gonna do: Me and my friend Chris and my friend Neil (both fellow stumbling-home-in-Chicago enthusiasts) are going to get together one night and play some songs that we’ve written for anyone who wants to pay to come see us do it. We’ll be calling ourselves the Lawrence Arms, we’ll be performing at the Subterranean on Wednesday the 19^th of May. The show will be 17+ and every single dime of the money will go to these girls to help them with their bills and their rehab and…fuck, honestly, I don’t even care what they do with the money. If they need some hot fudge sundaes, fine. Go for it, get the biggest fucking hot fudge sundaes you can get. It’s the least we can do as a city, right? Of course it is. Okay, I’m off topic again.

The point is, Lawrence Arms is doing a benefit for the girls that got hit with bats and you all should come. You all should tell all your friends about it and you should tell them to come. We’d really like to get as many people out as possible and this is pretty short notice, so spread the word. I promise great times. There’s gonna be dj’s and raffles and shit downstairs and we’re gonna be playing upstairs. I’m putting my head together with Toby and Chris and Neil to come up with some suh-weet openers. The thing’s gonna be off the proverbial chain. AND it’s all for a very good cause.

Come on Chicago! Let’s come together and change our new city slogan to “Chicago! Yeah, we’ll beat you within an inch of your life, but we’ll also help you get fixed up afterwards!” That’s at least a start. Maybe then we can move on to something like “Chicago! You didn’t get beaten at all last time you were here!” and eventually “Chicago! It’s cold as shit most of the time!”

That’s gonna be sweet, people. Know what else is gonna be sweet? This show at SubT in two Wednesdays. Get your tix early, as that’s a small room and it’s gonna be a sweaty mess of mofos in there just getting awesome. You don’t want to miss it because you snoozed and the tickets all got sold, right? Of course not.

I mean, ask the brits, we’re fresh off our UK tour and we’re playing pretty well. We got five K’s in kerrang for fucks sake! And with the exchange rate, that’s like eight American K’s, so we must be kicking a lot of ass right now.

Also, it bears mentioning that since I’m about to have a baby, this show will feature me at my most sleep deprived and hilarious, AND it’s definitely gonna be the only chance to see us for a while, anywhere. SO, come on people. Fly in from Japan and all that. I know it’s short notice! It’s for a great cause.

Finally, no. We don’t know these girls. We’ve never met them, I don’t think we have any mutual friends or anything like that. Just practicing a little something called ‘good citizenship.’ Hopefully, this will make up for the time I peed in the construction site cooler when I was 17.

Ah, I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.