Johnny Cupcakes

The other night, my friend Juris got a 360 in skeeball. You only get 9 balls, and 50 points is the highest possible amount you can get per ball. These are the old-school wooden balls too. That means he got an average of 40 points per ball. Rick and I tied with a happy high score of 340, before Juris smashed our hopes and dreams with his new high score.

Rumor has it, that Erich scored a 400 during insomnia night. Now I didn’t see this take place, but when I went into the cupcake cave to watch him try again, he was getting 50’s and 40’s with ease. I might have to go and say that 400 may possibly new high score.

Above you’ll see Chuck and Erich, longtime friends. Chuck’s real name is John, but when he joined On Broken Wings, there was already a handful of John’s in the band, so I called him Chuck. Now 87% of the people in his life, call him Chuck. Made up of skin, blood, and implanted gps bits, he use to be the road master on tour. Chuck’s now a firefighter, EMT, and he’s dating a nurse! I was joking with him the other day, about how it seems like he’s playing house. Most young boy’s want to be a firefighter, and little girls want to be a nurse. I just thought it was funny/cute/all americanish.

Anyways, Erich is the friend I had mentioned who use to be our roadie/tour manager back in the day. He’s now living in Philly doing some James Bond meets Macgyver type work, making good money and getting flown out to different places. He’s a funny, caring, memorable character.

After breakfast and hacky sack, a bunch of us had a snowball fight to start off the day. While slipping on ice and dodging doggie kah-kah, snowballs, and random thugs, we had a good time.

Haahaha… When leaving our breakfast haven, I glanced over to the right and saw a group of thugs playing hacky sack in the basketball court, next to the outdoor Weymouth skate park. Despite the winter weather and complete randomness, I thought it would be fun/funny/memorable to join these kids in playing a few polite games of hacky sack. I didn’t want to go home until I got a “full hack”. I haven’t played this, or seen this game for at least 10-12 years! Carefully balancing on the icy trail towards the courts, we finally made it over there. These kids were probably very confused. Wheeler, Chuck and I played with them, while our other friends cackled at us in the back-round. I gave Chuck my camera so he could document this random act of hackyness. While playing, the thug kids slowly started leaving/heading towards the typical high school, berserker bass-booming vehicle. It was nice of them to let us join their hacky sack circle. Thank you kind strangers.

After awaking from the painful night of ping pong, and after taking care of some work, we went for breakfast at this amazing spot in Weymouth called, Niko’s. I’m a breakfast maniac, and it was my first time here. I’m usually eating at another great, local spot (which I will write about a later time). Friendly, quick service. Delicious meals. Everything was perfectly cooked too. Niko’s was a great new taste for my tumtum. I didn’t get too many photos of the food because I was busy engulfing every last bit!

After making some pasta, and dipping lbs of bread into this amazing olive oil that Amber sent me for Christmas, a ton of friends and I played ping pong from 7pm until 6am. No joke. I was doing awful, but I couldn’t stop playing until I got a small winning streak (which didn’t happen). Thank you Dad, for the awesome Christmas present! This solid ping pong table-top, fits perfectly on my pool table. In replacement of counting sheep while sleeping, I find that this new addiction has got me counting ping pong balls. Congrats to Wheeler for the long-time winning streak. And congrats to Steve, for the ultimate ping pong trickery and speed technics.

Thank you Eliza, for the wonderful, cute, delicious, Oreo ice cream igloo cake. With the warm chocolate chip cookies that Emma brought over, we created the bestest ice cream cookie sandwiches! Lucas, Wheeler, Chuck, Erich, Steve, and myself – devoured these treats. Perfect fuel for the intense ping pong tournaments and hang out session. It’s fun times like these, that make the long, dark, depressing winter nights not so bad.

Check out these funny bear-claw mittens that we played with for a solid 20 minutes at Sears, during the crazy Christmas rush last week. Besides this, the highlight of our night was when we finally left the mall with some delish smoothies from Planet Smoothie.

Meet Josh and Maggie. Josh is a long time friend. We met through touring. He plays guitar in Evergreen Terrace, and does vocals for a great straight edge band, Casey Jones.

Josh and Maggie helped me a ton, getting my house ready for the holiday season. Wrapping presents, laundry, poster hanging, shopping, eating lbs of Hershey’s kisses and more. Josh literally almost lost his head when slipping on a sheet of ice, while carrying a new arcade machine into the cupcake cave of wonders.

Josh and I have shared some of the most fun times, crazy stories, and awesome memories from touring together throughout the U.S. and Canada. Friend, business man, entrepreneur, musician, drug-free advocate, idea creator, and professional wrapper – he’s an all around great dude. Also, up there with my uncle Eddie, Josh is a great story teller.

I miss this duo already! Thanks again for the good times during this cold, dark winter!