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September 9th-AH! Finally, we arrived in Seoul, South Korea at 4AM. We were shocked to find tons of fans waiting there to greet us at the airport! AT 4AM! COME ON! We’re popular here I guess? We had to make a run for it to get to the car, cause the drive to the hotel was long and I had to start working pretty soon. One fan, a guy, pushed a gift in my face and I grabbed it as we ran…it was a cool black T-shirt, my size, with some Korean writing on it. The BMG lady told me it meant “the bright one” in Korean, so I thought it would be cool to wear it sometime later on (which I did, I wore it the whole time I was in Korea, but it turned out that it wasn’t Korean writing, and it didn’t mean “the bright one”, it said, “friends” in Chinese…. great). Oh yah, this is interesting; we found out, shortly after landing, that a giant explosion in North Korea was picked up by radar in China. There was a mushroom cloud explosion, 2 miles wide that left a crater so big, that it was seen by satellites. Clearly a nuclear testing…North Korea wasn’t saying what it was, no surprise there. Our government was saying that it was probably a forest fire. Uh, hello? A forest fire doesn’t create an explosion like that, 2 miles wide; leaving a crater in the earth so massive that you can see it from space! Come on people! Creepy, creepy. Anyway, we finally made it to our hotel and I went to sleep at 6AM. Work was suppose to start at 2PM, so I had a little time to rest, although my body had no clue what the hell time it was anymore and wasn’t interested in resting. I pretty much did press and radio visits/acoustic performances all day. Chops and I did an in-store signing for fans at night. It was nuts!!! There was suppose to be 200 fans there, but it ended up being the biggest signing this store has ever done. Over 1,200 fans crammed in the most popular record store in Seoul to get our autographs. The screams were so loud that I had to plug my ears when we first walked in. There were pictures of my big head everywhere, covering every inch of the walls in the store!…some 8 feet tall, giant Alex heads! I signed my giant head on posters for all the fans. Unfortunately, we only had time to sign for 550 fans. It took us an hour and a half. Sacha filmed it all on my camera...memories. Chops couldn’t believe what was happening, all these girls screaming for him! Some fans cried when they meet me, some couldn’t even speak, others straight up attacked me and tried to kiss me or grab my hair…the big security guards all around us would take them away forcefully. I was like, “Chill! They’re just little girls!” All the other fans waiting to meet us would scream when I waved at them or said “hi”. It was crazy! After we were finally done, we went to a real Korean BBQ restaurant for dinner. It sucked big time, believe it or not. Why is that? And what’s with the public bathrooms in Korea?…One slimy bar of soap for everyone and one dirty towel to share? It’s anti-productive to even use them. I had just shook 550 wet nervous girls’ hands, so I figured it was worth washing up before dinner even considering the gross accommodations. After dinner we went to sleep finally. Man! That was a long day…flying forever to the other side of the planet, and then working all day. I was crazy jetlagged. Sleepy sleepy time.September 10th-Hey! I do press all day! OK! More radio station visits, etc. I did a 6-page spread photo shoot for “Elle Girl”. They had a real dead cheetah carpet with the head and teeth and claws and everything for me to lie on for the shoot. I felt so bad for this poor cheetah the whole time…I kept petting his dead furry head, “good cheetah, good cheetah”. After the shoot, Chops and I went to do a big music TV show, shot in some college’s gymnasium. 7,000 girls waiting to see us and some other Korean acts perform. Chops and I did a few songs acoustically and the girls went wild! We tried to leave the TV show afterwards and once again, some moron got us lost on the way out to our car! I was like NooooO! Not Again! We ended up walking right up to the entrance of the show we just played! We of course were spotted by hundreds of screaming fans immediately…the jig was up. Time to run. Sacha grabbed my hand and the security guards and us ran for our lives to the car. Girls were grabbing me and pulling my hair...trying to get a piece …hmmmm, reminds me of Brazil! Why you gotta grab the hair? Huh? Ladies, please;) Anyway, we made it out alive, yet a little scrapped up. Chops was on cloud nine, after witnessing his first mad fan dash. I said, “Just wait till we get to Brazil dude.” Later that night, Chops and I did a private acoustic show for 200 winners at a little club. MTV shot the whole show and a beautiful MTV VJ hosted it. We answered some questions from screaming girls in the crowd, and some of them won the chance to take pictures with us on stage. The rest of the girls were getting jealous, I could tell. Chops and I played 6 songs and it went great. The crowd sung along with me a lot of the time, it was so cute! There was another big Alex head poster behind us on stage the whole time, but I’m not kidding, this one was 20 feet high!…the size of a huge car!…massive Godzilla sized Alex head! AAAAHHH! Alexzilla! After the show I felt bad for the rest of the audience who didn’t get to meet us, so I signed for every single one of them before they left. Sacha had found some cop outfit stage prop behind the stage at the gig earlier on. I guess they use that place for plays too. So, Sacha put on the cop hat and belt, complete with one of those black batons that cops use to regulate! Sacha stood by me during the crazy spur of the moment signing…he kept waving his black stick at the fans telling them to watch out! Stay back!…Everyone was laughing, he looked so stupid in the cop hat! We finally went back to the hotel and I went to bed. Tomorrow we’re going to Japan to meet up with the band for more craziness. September 11th-We left Korea early in the morning to fly to Tokyo, Japan. I was sad to leave Korea, it was really cool there and all the fans were so awesome! We’ll be back soon to play some full band shows, I just know it. We arrived in Tokyo late afternoon and started an endless drive through traffic to the hotel from the airport…it took 2 hours. I fell asleep on my bag, and woke up looking like I slept on a waffle iron. We met up with the rest of the band and crew at our hotel’s restaurant for dinner. They were all totally destroyed from their long ass flight from LA. We all ate the buffet dinner at our hotel. We all agreed afterwards that this dinner was the worst meal ever, since that breakfast in Brazil from last year when there were bugs in all the food and they made Styrofoam omelets. Everyone went to bed super early since we were all really wiped out. September 12th-Chops and I did Japanese promo all day and some radio visits too. The rest of the band had a day off and rented bicycles and road around Tokyo all day for hours. They later complained that their “you-know-what’s” hurt like crazy from those little Japanese bike seats. The sight of Corey, a farm boy from Virginia, riding a mini Japanese bicycle through Tokyo, wearing his cowboy boots and a Jonny Cash T-shirt depicting the singer flicking everyone off, is some funny sh*t! I took the band and crew to that GOOD Korean BBQ place for dinner that Sacha and I ate at a few months back when we were here for promo. Everyone ended up eating too much beef. Arms sat in the wrong spot at the table, and all the BBQ’s in the middle of the table that we were cooking on kept sending huge clouds of frying beef smoke into his face all night. His eyes turned blood shot red, his face purple...he had to keep going outside to get fresh air and cry. We beefed him out! I wore my Versace sunglasses to shield the beef smoke. Oh yah. Classy. We got back to the hotel and went to bed. Tomorrow we’re suppose to go to Osaka to play our first show. September 13th-We took the bullet train in morning to Osaka. That thing is fast! We sound checked at the small venue called “Club Quattro” that was set inside a mall. We did a meet and greet, chilled a bit, and then played the show at 7AM. All the concerts in Japan are super early compared to everywhere else in the world…and most artists who come here never have opening acts…weird. The show was great, although the venue was pretty small. We had to wait a while for all 550 fans to leave after the show, cause they were all blocking our exit out of the driveway. They were waiting to meet us. I got lots of cool gifts; Japanese fans give the best gifts! We had to wake up early the next morning to go back to Tokyo, so we didn’t have time to sign for everyone. Eventually all the fans outside left and we made our way back to the hotel. Sorry guys! I’ll meet you next time, promise! September 14th-We took the bullet train back in the morning, fans following us through the train station the whole time. Once we arrived back in Tokyo, we went to the venue called “Shibuya Ax”. We did a meet and greet with an Australian winner and her mom who had won a trip to Japan to see us play. It was the best gig ever! Awesome light show and the crowd was SO into it! But it’s so weird how the audience in Japan gets completely silent in between songs (they do it as courtesy)…but what do I say while the band is getting ready for the next song? They don’t understand me out there! I don’t speak Japanese! I told the fans during the show that we’d sign for whoever buys our merchandise after the gig. Wow…We ended up signing after the show for over 1,000 fans! It took the band and I two hours! The band and people from our label went to a restaurant afterwards...everyone was fishing right there in the restaurant! You didn’t get to eat what you caught though. Meantime, I was going through all the tons of fan gifts I had received at that night’s show at my hotel. I had all the fan gifts from Korea and Japan shipped back to my house in LA…I keep every single thing you know. September 15th-Today was all Japan Promo-interviews at BMG, interviews at radio stations, etc. We went yet again to the Korean BBQ place, beefed up, and slept. September 16th-We said our goodbyes and departed Tokyo for Boston Thursday morning. A nice 13-hour flight to Chicago, and then another 2+ hour flight to Boston. We were about to take off in Chicago for Boston after the 13-hour flight, when the plane in front of us had to land right after taking off…stopping all traffic at the airport. Everyone was like, “Why the hell does it have to come back?” I pointed to the plane in the sky coming towards us with one of its two engines completely on fire and smoking…”Uh, that’s why!” The plane landed safely, and no one got hurt, but there were so many cop cars and fire trucks and ambulances all waiting for it to land. It looked like a huge ordeal. I guess a goose flew into the engine right after take off and it blew up or something…bummer for the plane, bigger bummer for that goose. Please, a moment of silence for this goose…………….and a message to all geese everywhere from me: DON’T YOU F*CKING GEESE FLY INTO THE ENGINE OF MY F*CKING PLANE, EVER! Thank you. OK, we finally took off and arrived in Boston later that night. It was good to be back in America, although I had a great time in Korea and Japan! Thanks to all the fans that came to see us play, we loved meeting you all and we can’t wait to come back soon! Anyway, the band and I went to eat dinner immediately at California Pizza Kitchen in Boston once we were back. So good! Pizza! By this point I had been up for 36 hours…and it’s still Thursday…man, the longest Thursday ever! Time to go sleepy…until next time, good night;)
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