We left Nashville around 2pm. On the entire trip, we were bombarded with storms, windy winding mountain highways, and traffic buildup (many terrible accidents on the roads). This slowed us down quite a bit, but the thing that slowed us down most of all was driving around Chatanooga trying to find a K-Mart Justin heard carried Surge. We found it eventually, however they did not carry Surge, much to our dismay. After vowing to never return to K-Mart (not simply because of the lack of Surge, but because it's the worst store ever), we were back on our way. We arrived in Atlanta around 8pm (7pm Nashville time), and proceeded to find the Masquerade, which was actually quite easy. We parked on the street right next to the club, and were instantly greeted by a bum hitting us up for money. He tried telling us that he cleaned up the street for us to park there and would be guarding our cars for us while we were in the concert. Man, what will the bums come up with next?

The club was nice, as far as clubs go. The club itself (dubbed "Heaven" because it was up on the 2nd floor, as opposed to the dance club part, "Hell" down below) was up a flight of wooden stairs. The first band, Your Enemy's Friend, was pretty good, but the 2nd band, Campfire Girls was not. They had egos like Oasis and talent like my pinky toe after I stubbed it on the door. On a side note, I went out to the car to change batteries in my camera after the first band's set, and much to my surprise, our bum friend wasn't guarding our car! And to think I almost gave him some money. Oh wait, I wasn't even thinking about it. Anyway, before Superdrag came on, some annoying Superdrag/Weezer fan standing next to us tried arguing that Pinkerton (Weezer) has the best sound of recorded drums ever. Justin tried putting him in his place (this should be no argument - they're cool, but they do indeed sound like ass) but this guy would have none of it. He told Justin that he knew everything because he just recorded an album. Whatever.

Thankfully, Superdrag came out and rocked us rather hard. They played a fine selection of songs from all their albums. They did not play "Sucked Out", not surprising to me, however they did rock the hell out of "Do the Vampire" and "Destination Ursa Major" among others, which pleased me greatly. During their set, we saw the Donnas rocking out on the side of the stage. Eventually, it was their turn to rock.

The Donnas were greeted with quite a few camera flashes (mine included, as you can see). They took the stage and immediately blew us away with "Are You Gonna Move It For Me?" and "Do You Wanna Hit It?"

They played a lot from the new album Spend the Night, mixing in a couple tunes from the last 2 albums, Turn 21 and Get Skintight. The highlight of the show for me was "I Didn't Like You Anyway" which featured a beyond rockin' guitar solo by Donna R, and the crowd chanting along with "B-O-R-I-N-G"! They ended with an encore performance of "Skintight" and thus ended a great show. We went outside near their bus waiting for them to come out and chill with the people they had rocked for the last hour. After about an hour and a half of watching the roadies load up gear and getting hit up by the persistently stupid bums, they finally came down the steps to get onto the bus. They thanked us for waiting, and hung out with all of us, talking and posing for pictures for about 10 minutes. Check it out:

Donna R: "No pictures of me unless you're in it too!"

Justin with Donna R.

Donna A: "You didn't miss much in Chicago, it sucked - all Alkaline Trio fans"

Chick drummers rule! (Donna C and Jenn)

I gotta get on the bus, my manager is getting upset! Just one more picture!

We ate dinner at Steak n Shake #33 in Buckhead (just north of ATL), found a Motel 6 in Marietta, and called it a night. The next day, we dined at a fine Waffle House next to the motel, and were on our way for ATL day 2. Our first stop was the Roxy Theatre to get tickets for the show, but their box office wasn't open. The sign on the door sent us down the street to Publix, a supermarket that we now call "Pubix" (dubbed as such by my brother when we were in Florida this past summer). We got tickets, a nice little popup map, and some cheap store-brand soda (they had great names: Dr. Publix, Citrus Hit, etc.)

We proceeded to Underground Atlanta (an underground mall) where we saw this older black lady rockin out on her blues guitar and a drum machine. It was damn cool. I got a picture of her, but some guy walked right in front of it and you can't really tell how cool she was by the ruined picture. However, just know that she was almost as cool as trying on hats in the hat store (nice picture, eh?).

Right outside the mall was the World of Coca Cola. We took the $5 tour and got to see videos of old Coke commercials and all kinds of neat stuff. Justin was on a mission to lobby the reintroduction of Surge to the masses, but this was not the place to do so - no one there had any power to help his cause. It was still great nonetheless, because we got to drink all the Coke products we wanted (including Surge). They had 23 varieties of domestic products (some of which included Tab and Fanta - why do they make this crap?!) and 23 varieties of foreign products. I didn't know they made a Barq's red cream soda - that stuff was great! However, I can't say the same about, well, ANY of the foreign sodas. Check out Justin's enjoyment of his favorite fully-loaded citrus soda:

I really like Surge

Damn, this stuff is good

Take that Mello Yello!

Nice polar bear, huh?

After the World of Coke, we headed out to find some record stores. We found a couple, where Justin got a whole bunch of Oasis singles and imports for rather cheap, because the guy at the counter rang it up wrong. I grabbed an Electrocutes LP (The Donnas before they were The Donnas). I've never paid for parking so much in my life. All day, we probably spent $30 parking! We were impressed, however, with how nice looking most of the areas we saw were. Justin kept telling us, "Wait til you get to the real Atlanta, you'll see how much it sucks." He was starting to doubt himself, and I even heard him tell his Mom on the phone, "Atlanta doesn't suck as much as I remember it sucking."

Justin: SEE! I told you Atlanta was a shithole!

I'm not sure if you can see, but that's some public school building, all boarded up and dirty. We got a good laugh out of that. We spent too much time driving around because we were unfamiliar with the town. We never really got lost, but still did a lot of pointless driving. We dined at Joe's Crab Shack for dinner - quite possibly one of the tackiest restaurants ever! Also, before eating, I had to find a place to park. All the parking lot attendants would ask you where you were going before telling you how much it was to park there. What a crock! I eventually settled on this one valet lot for $5 (the cheapest I found). Never before had I left my car to a total stranger on a downtown street, but it was legit, so I did it. The guy could tell I was uncomfortable with it, and laughed with/at me, jokingly saying, "Well, once you turn that corner up there, we're gonna siphon out all your gas after taking it for a joyride around town!" Nice. Anyway, Joe's Crab Shack was alright, but way too tacky for my tastes. They had cluttered crap on all the walls, and the service suffered because our server must have been the dance coordinator (all the servers and cooks came out and danced and jumped around like idiots while they blasted "Cotton Eye Joe" over the speakers). After that, we headed down to the Roxy, where they charged us $12 to park (that's more than Ripoffport!). Luckily, the guy was stupid and thought we gave him $17, so he gave us $5 back. Nice.

We got into the Ash show in the middle of the first band. Some annoying whiny emo band. The second band was even worse. Justin and I would scream random things at the stage, or along with the songs (as we always do during bands that suck, as you may know if you've ever attended a concert with us!). This club was top notch. The floor was carpeted and slanted so if you were in the back, you weren't totally blocked by tall people in front of you. The sound in the place was superb and the joint was well ventilated. Too bad we only got to see ONE good band on the night's bill in such a cool club.

Ash took the stage and ripped into "Lose Control". Under normal circumstances, they would have worked the crowd well, but it was full of stupid whiny 14-year-old emo brats who don't appreciate a good band when it hits them in the face. They played a couple of my favorites, "A Life Less Ordinary", "Walking Barefoot" and "Girl From Mars". Their second to last song was "Kung Fu" which was definitely the highlight of the show. They'd stop at random places in the song to hear applause and to get the crowd pumped. Ash is one of those bands (like Garbage) who really have the whole sound of silence thing down. They know when to stop a song and come right back in. w00t! Their last one was "Burn Baby Burn" which I think most people knew. There was a joke of a mosh pit during the last couple songs, but let me remind you: whiny emo brats - this does not make for a good circle pit.

Jenn and I took some pictures, but we were too far away (and at a bad angle) to get good ones. Unfortunately they weren't the headliners and didn't get to play as long as I'd have liked, but this meant we could leave after they were done (and not have to sit through Saves the Day) and get a head start on the road back to Nashville. We made it home in about 3 1/2 hours - no traffic, no rain, no K-Mart. We did, however, have to stop at "Tennessee Alabama Fireworks", which lit up the sky from 20 miles away (no joke). - check it out:

Dear Lord... and this was when they were closed