I was half asleep on a 3 am car ride to Kansas City to board a plane to st croix. I was listening to goodnight bad morning by the kills which of course is a super relaxing nice song. suddenly I was jolted back to reality by an extremely loud tune. turns out “we are going to be friends” was mixed at a louder volume than the kills. but I had a mini heartache because of a nice acoustic song

True Story; I used to work at Kroger stocking groceries all night (11pm-7am shift) and the only thing that kept me going was good music, especially the stuff from TMR. I know, that’s not THAT great of a story, so I’m also going to include a weird flash-fiction piece that I wrote that works with the subject. I hope y’all enjoy it.

“NyQuil in the Living Room”
By Avery Tindol

It’s three a.m. and you’re removing the batteries out of the clock that hangs on your kitchen wall because the fucking ticking is driving you mad. You can’t sleep— haven’t in days. Every little noise is amplified by the late-hour-silence that encroaches your apartment. There’s a half-empty bottle of NyQuil on the coffee table in living room, which you just bought yesterday. You go get it- skip the step where you pour it into the plastic medicine cup, and instead drink the viscous, deep-purple gunk straight from the bottle. It goes down gag-inducingly slow. You can still hear the clock ticking. How could that be? You’ve been listening to it for the last two hours, lying awake in bed, motionless, staring at the back of your eyelids and it’s probably repeating in your head to cancel out the silence. The aftertaste is insufferable, so you go back to the kitchen for water.
The fight you had earlier today with Jeff, your boyfriend, is weighing heavy on you. You remember how things got nasty. How in retaliation, you said something to him that you swore he’d never find out. As soon as the words slipped from your mouth, your body froze in immediate regret. He lost his temper— called you names that you haven’t been called since you were tormented by the reactions to rumors started about you back in high-school. You yelled something back. His temper grew worse. He spiraled toward you, fuming. You were frightened by the idea of what he might have done, so you picked up the first thing you saw— a kitchen-knife. You demanded that he get the fuck out of your apartment. He did. The thing that’s bothering you now— you can’t even remember how the fight started. The whole encounter seems like more of a blur. Blood was boiling, and everything seemed to have happened in a flash.
The ticking seems louder now. You look over at the clock on the counter. Still ticking. You flip it over and notice that the batteries are still in place. Didn’t you just remove them? You remove them again and the ticking ceases. It’s quieter, but now you can hear a light thumping noise coming from your bedroom.
You slowly make your way down the dark hallway towards your room, feeling gravity’s grip dragging you down from the lack-of-sleep and NyQuil-high. As you get closer to your room, your heart beats faster. Faster. You start to get light-headed and feel that you might lose balance, so you stop. Take a deep breath. Tell yourself not to lock your knees. It’s completely silent right now, except for the buzzing of the street lamp outside. Before you step into your room, you reach through the door slowly and flip the light switch. The light doesn’t turn on. The ceiling-fan does. You walk into the room through pitch darkness. Once you feel the breeze blowing down on you directly from above, you reach up, searching for the string. You find it and pull it, the light turns on, much brighter than expected. Your room is trashed. The blankets that should be on your bed are on the floor. All your dirty laundry is spilling out of your hamper and onto the floor below. But there’s no thumping noise anymore. You start to question if you actually even heard it in the first place. Maybe you’re just delirious. You need to sleep. Sleep.
Then you hear it. Thump. It’s coming from your closet. Thump. You slowly turn and face the direction of the noise. Thump. It’s followed by a scratching sound coming from behind the bottom of your closet door. It sounds like the claws of a tiny animal pawing at the door. You freeze. You’re trying to move, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. The slow scratching continues.
You finally find courage to move and approach the door. You reach for the handle and turn the cold, steel knob. Your stomach drops when you see Jeff is lying on the floor on his stomach in a pool of blood- deep, dark, and drying. His skin- pale as paper. His breathing- slow and raspy.
“You have to g-g-get me to a hospi-”
Before he can finish the sentence, you slam the closet door shut in his face. You cry and tell yourself there’s no way what you just saw was real. It couldn’t be. The knife never even came close to him. You need to sleep right now. Sleep. But you feel wide awake. That’s when you remember that there’s still a little bit of NyQuil in the living room. Go get it.

Other than the typical studying and clubbing, my most memorable all-nighter was a Payday board game marathon when I was about 8. My friend and I played all night thinking it was a great idea. @Dwanye ? Tulsa. Cain’s in October!!! @MrBigStuff I know how you love NO! I wish bad mojo on that dude ?

(I hit send too quick the first time lol) Last December for my mom’s 50th Birthday and my parents’ 20th anniversary we took a big splurge-and-celebrate-both-because-they’re-in-the-same-month trip across Europe and started in London. I got up early at like 5 or something to pack, getting everything ready for 3 weeks away. We left late, 10pm or something and got on an 8 hour flight, which is where I fucked up. I didn’t think about the time we would land and time differences and everything and assumed we’d land at night so I could go to bed. As I finished the second movie I watched on that flight (which probably had something to do with it) I saw the sun rising through the window about an hour before we even landed and realized my mistake. We landed in the morning, in London, and I had not slept in over 24 hours already, but now it was too late (early) to just pass out. We couldn’t check into our Airbnb and stop lugging around 6 suitcases for another 4 hours, and I was already zoning out every time we stopped walking as soon as we got off the plane, and it was classic dark rainy sky-could-be-mistaken-for-the-sweet-release-of-sunset London which wasn’t helping anything, and neither was the half hour train ride with its built in sleep inducing ambient noise or the extra cab ride to the wrong place and back. Finally we got the key, went inside and dropped all our stuff (on the third floor, which wasn’t fun with the strength of my footing at the time). The sun was still up so it was still earlier than I’d have liked to set my body used to sleeping but at this point I just wanted to worry about it the next day. I was about to fall asleep when I was reminded that we had dinner reservations that would keep us out even longer, and it was still birthday big milestone once-in-a-lifetime trip so I couldn’t just stay in and slip into a coma like I wanted to. By the time we got home it was late enough that I figured I’d just try to fight it to a normal time to go to sleep since I was already so close. I had long since hit the point where everything feels like it’s 5 feet away and 5 feet too close at the same time and you have to concentrate for like 30 seconds to understand one sentence. Sitting down was not an option at this point. Even standing my knees almost buckled at least 5 times. There was a soccer game on and either they were breaking every rule I know of the game, I was seeing things or I just couldn’t comprehend any game more complicated than connect 4 at that point. By the time I finally gave up and went to what felt like the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in (at least that first night) it was still earlier than I wanted to last, especially compared to when I usually go to bed at like 3am, but I was already surprised I made it to a time with PM in it so I took what I could get. I never quite recovered from that until I got home but it got more manageable over a few days. Now I pay very close attention to what time all my flights land.

I lived in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada and 4-6 times a year my wife Wendy and I would drive to Tulsa Oklahoma to visit her family. I would power through the 16 hour drive by myself. No sleep straight through. Legs numb, eyes dry and running on fumes. So we just decided to move to Tulsa! (Tulsa is a badass city!). Also my wife is a massive OJ fan!!!

so back in the early days of Record Store Day I decided to line up at midnight thinking I’d easily be the first one there. nope. some guy got there thirty minutes before me. oh well at least I had someone to talk to. The only record I really really wanted was a New Order 12” with a different sleeve and ( I think) a slightly different mix of Ceremony. Friendly guy in front of me asked what I was after and I told him. we chatted about music etc and in fact he wasn’t really aware of New Order so I had no worries on that score. it was a mild night which unfortunately brought out ALL the drinks and weirdos. ‘why are you here?’ ‘ what’s Record Store Day?’ ‘where are my pants?’ Several fights broke out during the course of the night so no sleep for either of us. no one else joined the line until around 6am when four guys turned up at which point the heavens opened and we all got soaked. the store finally opened and to my horror the guy in front bought a huge stack of records including my beloved New Order which as it turned was THE ONLY COPY!!! I went home cold,wet and sans New Order. I had a stinking cold for two weeks and a further two weeks later I bought the damn record from EBay. at cost. with free shipping. Bah

last December for my mom’s 50#>

1994 – Junior year of high school. Buddies and I decided to go to the big city from our little rural town and hang out at a Ticketmaster window all night for some Jimmy Page and Robert Plant tickets on the No Quarter tour. We were the only idiots there. Spent all night just acting stupid and possibly getting a little less than sober. We were first in line when the window opened and bought our tickets. And, in typical Ticketmaster fashion, we still ended up in the nose bleed section. Still not sure how that happened. Still a fun time that makes me smile when I think about it.

No story here but I would like the folks out there to know that even if you weren’t a fan of OJ’s first album that this is worth your time to at least taking a few moments to check out. Power pop surfy goodness all throughout.

Oh, I stayed up 24 straight hours once just to see if I could do it. I was delirious at about hour 22 but did make it to 25 hours total. It looks like I am the first post so that should count for something. Plan on going down to TMR Cass on Saturday hoping that the color variant is still available. Thanks TMR!