♥ with all my crooked heart.

The Fictional Diary of Jesse T. Lacey: Breakups and Brothers.

Dear Diary—

One of my brothers started a band. I’m not sure which one it is. They all start to look alike after a while. I know it’s not Rory, because he’s Brand New’s sound guy. Or maybe lighting… he does something like that. I have no clue. I guess the one with the band is just gonna have to start answering to Not Rory. I tried glaring at him at dinner until he cried and stopped trying to play music like me— what if he gets more famous than me?— but Mom asked me if I needed to use the bathroom… so I stopped.

I went home and did the only thing that could cheer me up… I told the fans I was ending Brand New. Oh, Diary, it was beautiful. They begged, they pleaded, they wept… let’s see if Not Rory can do that a decade from now. Bet he can’t. If I ever really end Brand New, no one will believe me. I think that’s the greatest part of all of this. They’ll keep waiting for an album or a tour, thinking I’m just being mean, and it won’t come. Ha! They’ll be left with nothing but old albums and Not Rory. I’ll move on to solo fame, and then I’ll move to Las Vegas and have my own show, like Elvis did. I’m so much cooler than Elvis.

— JL.

Ps. I was told last night that John Nolan told a bunch of fans on some chat site that we weren’t friends anymore. I didn’t know this. I just figured he was too busy to answer me when I sent him “Adam is a fuckhead, come back and play banjo in my Mumford & Sons cover band!” texts. WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO DO THAT? He’s a fool. I’ll ask Kevin.

The Fictional Diary of Jesse T. Lacey: Moose, Werewolves, and Thieves.

Dear Diary—

It has been a while since I’ve written. Derrick is gone, probably to the Shrieking Shack to transform. On tour, yeah right. Like he’d be even mildly successful on tour without me. He’s wearing Hulk Hands in the new issue of Alternative Press, and talking about me. Well, he’s really talking about guitars, but he mentions me, so… yeah, talking about me.

Vincent’s little cotton candy haired brother’s band, Thieves or Bandits or whatever, they put out a new record today. That’s cute. I am not in that band, so, I don’t think it’s gonna go anywhere. Vincent says I’m conceited, but he’s said that since I wore that crown around on Christmas, so I don’t think his opinion matters much.

Who do you think would win in a fight, a moose or Garrett in werewolf form? Moose are scary, but I watched Garrett eat a piece of beef jerky and had nightmares for days. We’re going to Canada and touring because Jesse Lacey taketh and Jesse Lacey taketh some more because it’s funny. The minions whining makes me giggle, and as I’ve written before, their sadness sustains me. I wonder if I could start a break up rumor and make them cry… yum. Brian says if Garrett is a werewolf, then I’m a dementor. He shut up after I called him a house elf and wrote HERE LIES BRIAN, A FREE ELF, on his bunk… but he also stopped making me sandwiches, so… fuck.

— JTL.

The Jesse Diary I wrote last night will be the final one.

They just aren’t getting the reception they were before and I feel like I’m annoying you guys. So, haters, you win. No more diaries. They will still be up, I’m not moving them or deleting them or anything, there just aren’t going to be any new ones.

I got so many followers and met so many amazing people, and I love you guys, I truly do. I hope you don’t unfollow me. I’ll still be snarky, awful, and I’ll still make fun of Jesse, and I’ll definitely still run TFBN, don’t ever doubt that, but The Diaries will be no more.

Okay? Okay. So Brand New has this album coming out some time this year so get stoked on that.

The Fictional Diary of Jesse T. Lacey: Jersey and Werewolves.

Dear Diary,

I really like New Jersey. It’s far enough away to be considered “touring”, but not so far that I can’t be back in my bed by bedtime.

We’re doing Bamboozle and the minions that don’t live in New Jersey are angry. I just want to tweet at them “JESSE LACEY TAKETH… AND JESSE LACEY GIVETH TO NEW JERSEY”, but Brian says that’s probably a bad idea.

Derrick and Garrett are turning into werewolves, and not the oh la la kind from Twilight, like the OHMYGODTHEFUCKISHAPPENING kind from Harry Potter. They’re getting progressively furrier and soon they’re going to have a thirst for human flesh. I’ve been subtly slathering Vincent in tomato sauce while he naps to make him seem tastier than me. I don’t think it’s working. I also put french fries in Brian’s pockets, but he just eats them. Stupid, don’t you know I’m trying to get the werewolves to eat you instead of me?! I don’t think I can be in a band with werewolves. They can smell fear, so I don’t shower anymore. I figure that would make me taste bad, too.

I can’t wait for Bamboozle. I want to see that Skilletz boy that used to wear make up and scream in First Place To Last. I hear we both spent 2004 listening to Morrissey in our cars. Also, BON JOVI FUCK YEAH.

— JL.

The Fictional Diary of Jesse T. Lacey: Rumors and Rock City.

Dear Diary,

CHEERS. And I don’t mean the bar where everybody knows your name. We’re in the UK and I’m once again trying the lingo, mate. Wait, that wasn’t Londonese. My bad.

So we’re in the UK, like I said, and Vincent is being a fucking wanker. He’s stopping me from tracking down my dad. I know he’ll want to see me. Maybe he’ll be there when we play Manchester. So now all I have to do is wait. And stare at stupid Garrett’s new beard. He sort of had it on New Year’s which is the last time I acknowledged his presence, but now it’s like… it’s perfect and it must be stopped. I can’t have Garrett “Isn’t He A Tech?” Tierney upstaging me, not in front of my dad. He might not sign the adoption papers if he sees that beard! I glared at it earlier, hoping to reduce it to tears, because that works with the minions— I mean fans— sometimes. Turns out, according to Vincent The Arsemonger, beards don’t cry. I asked Garrett politely to shave it, but he said no. So now I have to resort to other methods before Thursday. I’ll have to shave it off while he sleeps.

So the internet, other than being a place where the minions go to mock me, is also a place where our so called friends go to leak information about us and post pictures of me in the nude (STILL. NOT. FUNNY.), not at the same time, thank Morrissey. So someone (probably stupid Garrett and that beard of his) leaked about our new album and our Spring Tour, both of which we are now not doing. JESSE LACEY TAKETH, AND JESSE LACEY TAKETH SOME MORE… BECAUSE IT’S FUNNY. I know it might be cruel, Diary, but I can’t have people knowing what we’re gonna do before we do it! Where’s the MYSTIQUE in that? The surprise? More importantly, where’s my fish and chips I ordered?

I’ll worry about that later. One cannot worry about such trivial things as food when there’s a beard upstaging you in your own band.

Oh, and to top it all of, Sherman announced tour dates with La Dispute today. Fuck him. Why didn’t he ask them to tour with Brand New? Why do Priesthood Refs get everything?

I’m going to cheer myself up by watching videos of our performance tonight and repeating “I am a John Lennon in a band full of Ringos” to myself over and over. That usually helps when Vincent gets hotter than me.

— JL.

PS. The next person that calls Rory “Baby Bearbot” is getting smacked. It’s not funny anymore, Brian!

Jesse Lacey Diaries FAQ.

First off, thanks. Thanks to everyone that has ever liked one of them, thanks for the boss messages telling me how I make your day better and how whenever there’s BN news you check for a Diary. That means more to me than I can ever express, honestly. I never thought they’d take off the way they did. I thought there would be one and it would get a few notes, but… shit you guys, you’re awesome.

I get buckets of questions asking about Jesse’s Diaries. Due to the overwhelming need for something to do at 5 AM, I figured I’d do a JLD FAQ.

1. How did you start writing them? I started writing the Diaries after Jesse said at a show sometime last year that it would be Brand New’s last show. I wanted to write something snarky and a bit funny about what he could be thinking. Thus, FDoJTL was born.
2. Will Jesse ever have his own blog? No. Jesse won’t have his own blog. I already run another blog and it’s hard enough to do. Plus, making a blog for him sort of feels like trolling. So I placed a convenient link to everything tagged “Jesse Lacey Diaries” on the top of my page. It’s easy enough to find.
3. Where do you get the inspiration? I just hear something about Brand New and morph my viewpoint into that of a narcissistic frontman with an unhealthy obsession with Morrissey. It seems to be working so far.
4. Will any of the other members have a diary? No. No one cares enough about any of the other members for them to have a diary. It wouldn’t get any notes at all. I’m under the assumption most people think Garrett Tierney is a tech of some sort. That was humor. No, I won’t be doing a diary for anyone else because I find it really hard to make fun of the them.
5. What do you think Jesse would say if he saw the Diaries? “Are you wearing a belt? I’m about to sue the pants off you,”. That’s the worst case scenario. The best is that he just laughs it off.
6. Why don’t you ever add Rory or any of the other Laceys into the Diaries? They’re a big part of his life, after all. They’re a big part of his personal life, I’m sure. I will write some awful shit about Jesse for laughs, but I feel vastly uncomfortable even knowing his siblings’ names, let alone writing about them. I do think Rory is the cutest Lacey, though.
7. Would you ever consider writing one for Adam Lazzara? Um. It would have to flow with Jesse’s diaries, and that would basically mean Adam’s would be nothing but drunken rambling and general dick-ness. No one needs that.
   
8. What would Jesse think about (insert thing here)? It will either make him cry (if it involves Morrissey), make him angry (if it involves TBS in any way) or make him laugh (if it involves pain to people who aren’t Morrissey or himself or if it involves viral videos of babies giggling, JL is a sucker for giggling babies).
9. Why don’t you do a daily Jesse Diary with events from his every day life? Why wait for a news? I wait for news for two reasons: so I’ll have something worthwhile to write about, and so I don’t bore you guys. If I wasn’t waiting for news and I was updating every day/week/whatever, you guys would want to rip out my heart and feed it to an Alot.
10. I hate you, you’re a waste of life, go choke, Jesse hates you, etc. For some reason, this is a common message. Jesse hates you. I’m so glad Jesse has sent you, random person on the internet, to inform me of his burning hatred. It appears he actually has a team of young girls whose only mission is to bombard my blog with messages about his supposed unending anger toward me. Jesse, if you read this, it would probably be a good idea to retire these girls and get new ones, they’re having trouble coming up with synonyms for “cumdumpster”.

The Fictional Diary of Jesse T. Lacey: Youtube and Jesus Lacey.

Dear Diary,

We have a Youtube channel now. I wanted to look at it, but I wasn’t wearing pants and that scared me. Brian assured me the webcam wouldn’t record me and screencap it to make me look like a fool later, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I went to the closet, got out my snowsuit and a fake mustache, and finally felt comfortable enough to sit down at the computer and check it out. I read some of the “comments” people were writing on the videos, and, Diary, it’s awesome. These kids really think I’m Jesus.

So I decided to see if I could do miracles. I tried to turn water into wine but Vincent just got frustrated when I stole his water and switched it with Yellow Tail. He said I at least could have bought good wine, but the Yellow Tail was cheap and I’m running out of mailbox dollars.

I decided I was going to multiply Brian’s fish sandwich for everyone to eat but he hit me with an empty Yellow Tail bottle I had hidden behind the couch when I ripped the sandwich into tiny pieces to give to our famished crew. Turns out catering had them covered. Okay. On to the next miracle.

I tried to walk on water, but hit my head on the shower door. Turns out I probably shouldn’t have showered first, there was still soap on the floor and it made it slippery.

Maybe I’m not Jesus, Diary. Maybe my fans are just weird. I mean, I want them to love me, but… their worship makes me kinda nervous, like the time I accidentally ran over Brian’s mom backing out of his driveway, only no one is yelling at me “get off her fingers” and calling me an idiot.

I guess I’m just not Jesus. I think I need to apologize to that girl in Costco because I yelled at her to “stop trying to make Jesus Lacey pay for his pickles”.

In possibly related news, Vincent has a handprint on his forehead from “facepalming” too much.

— JL.