Bonnaroo Etc.

The Bonnaroo music festival was _________.

I made a list of bands that I saw on a previous post, I think, and I don't believe that I left anyone out. I don't see much of a point in reliving every damn moment, and I can confidently say that whatever you imagined Bonnaroo to be, it is. No more, no less. There isn't a moment of boredom, and everything smells like petulli (petuli, pet-choo-lee, whatever.) Beck wore a bear costume and fought another person in a bear costume (and that was about as serious as he got. He played half of every song and at one point his band sat down and got served chicken on stage. It was great.), Thom York (Tom Yorke, whatever) didn't smile, Devendra Banhart didn't have a shirt on, Thurston Moore made fun of people who smoke American Spirit cigarettes, Cat Power was great and everyone loved them, The Magic Numbers played too early, I didn't see Be Your Own Pet because I refuse to believe that sixteen year olds playing pop punk is in any way cool, no matter what Sonic Youth says, and The Dresden Dolls covered "War Pigs" and "White Rabbit."

See? Exactly what you what have expected, and I'm not being sarcastic. I think it all worked out just how I would have imagined, right down to the sex offenders selling pipes, the "sonic forest," and the twenty four hour devil stick playground.

Hippies are really good at devil sticks. I guess when frat boys took up hacky sacks they had to go even more primitive.

- - - -

Alex Butler told me that Jeff Mangum was putting out a new album and possibly touring, and I scoffed, but apparently there is some ligitimacy to the rumors. So, sorry, Alex. Jeff Mangum has flaked on me before, especially with that field recording crap. (NB: I'm sure it's pretty good and interesting and all, but I don't want to hear Jeff dicking around on some cliff in Wales, I want to hear "Holland, 1945.")

There's apparently a note on the Elephant 6 message board, and if you have the audacity to read pitchfork (which I really don't anymore, I'm sorry, I'm at the end of my rope with these people) they have something in their news section.

I emailed Tim about it too, so you could just ask him.

It's one in the afternoon and I haven't done anything with my day yet. I haven't even showered. I'm working at Fenway tonight and tomorrow night (they gave Pedro an ovation last night, I was shocked.), so look for me in the stands or on TV. I'll be the asshole in the yellow shirt hocking big foam fingers.

- - - -

I saw Stephen Malkmus at Bonnaroo too. His bass player was hot from about 75 yards away. Again, typical.

Demon War Yell Down Hell Ride

So I left Rory's graduation party feeling pretty good. I had a lot of fun, I was laughing a lot, I came in contact with people I had not seen in a long time, I met Rory's parents, Wood kept talking to me about something called career day (he apparently works at an elementary school), I called Orlando "Donny" as he was leaving, but nobody cared, and so on and so forth.

At this point, there wasn't that much to complain about.

When I got to Jen's I parked and ran up the street, through the rain, to her apartment. She had already gone to sleep, so I sat up for maybe a half hour with everyone else watching something called "Survivor Man" on the discovery channel. Two a.m. rolled around, and I figured that it was in everyone's best interest to leave, so I left.

Or, at least, I tried to leave.

After driving down the hill for a bit towards South Street, I noticed that the car was bumping along in a funny way. I got a sudden rush of panic, which was quickly replaced by a sense of excitement. Maybe I would get to change a tire! I know how to do that! What fun! So I get out of the car to look things over, and I come slowly to two realizations:

1. I have TWO flat tires.
2. It is probably the work of man or beast, not sharp thing in road.

So someone slashed two of my tires. There was only one puncture on each, so I've ruled out Wolverine.

I call triple A, and I call my house to let my parents know what is going on. These are the two choices that dictate the rest of the night.

My Dad shows up first, and we're waiting for the truck. There's a little bit of confusion because, at first, we were going to tow the car somewhere in Arlington, but my father wanted it to be towed to Fahey Tire in Wakefield (that looks like an advertisement). The truck driver arrives, learns this and, to summarize, he says the following:

"It is 3 am. My shift ends at 5 am. I was under the impression that I was driving to Arlington. I do not want to drive to Wakefield. Another truck is on its way. I am going to leave."

Now he says all of this AFTER he has attached my car to his lift and sat in his truck conversing with someone on the other end of his radio, so from our perspective, we're thinking that if he had simply done his job, he would have been more than halfway to Wakefield right now.

There ensued a lot of bad noise.

My car is still parked pretty much where it died, with a sad note on the windshield reading:

"TWO FLAT TIRES. DO NOT TOW. WILL RETURN IN MORNING. THANK YOU."

I got back around 4 or 5, I don't remember. And, for once, I'm happy my work day was rained out.

Now it's time to pick up the car.

- - - -

It's several days later, more than a week later, and the car has undergone several massive, rather expensive changes. A Dominican man led us through Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Dorchester to 93 back to Wakefield (after making me wait more than three hours in JP), stopping once at a liquor store to pick up some booze somewhere near the Heath Street Projects, but, all told, he got the car to Fahey's Tire Center, and after new tires, new vacuum tubes of some sort, and an innecessary oil change, the car is running rather nicely again.

All of that seems pretty meaningless and extremely distant now, given the fact that I got back from the Bonnaroo Music Festival around two in the morning last night.

I think that my Bonnaroo experiences should get their own post, so I won't say much here, but I will give you a teaser.

I will have to talk about the wonders of Waffle House, the near-frightening frequency of baptist churches south of the Mason-Dixon line, a gollem-like figure in horrid looking black cut-off jeans selling pipes who never slept, Veggie quesadillas, Hari Krishna literature, and a kid named "Balls" who wandered into our camp site on a lot of drugs.

I also yelled "SEX IN DE MUD!" when people were setting off fireworks on the final night, and got a rousing response.

But I'll get to all of that in more detail next time. I need some time to rest on it.

Here is a list of bands I saw, in no particular order:

Devandra Banhart
The Magic Numbers
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Cat Power
Beck
Radiohead
Tom Petty
The Dresden Dolls
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Sonic Youth

Maybe I'll post some photos too. We'll see how much patience I have left. The next few days are going to be filled with work, rollerblading, and wiffle ball, so who knows.

Be easy, friends, be easy.

If you play wiffle ball with me, be warned: I throw chin music.

I just belted out thirty push-ups and ten sit-ups. It was completely uncalled for, unless you can consider it a warm down from my three shut out innings of wiffleball pitching today after work. I'm like the Papelbon of the wiffle ball, only I peg Rob every now and again just to get laughs.

Rob has really bad ADD, and Fred says "He's the worst person to have on any team because he just loses interest at the drop of a hat." About a minute later Rob wandered off into the "outfield" of the public garden and started tearing up some grass.

It's supposed to rain tomorrow and into Thursday, which sucks because there's a good chance that I won't work, and I didn't break four hundred dollars on my last paycheck, despite seven hours of overtime.

It's funny, the way that my job is almost completely reliant on the weather. If it rains, I don't work. I have not one, but two forecast phone numbers saved: CBS and Acccuweather. I've heard that Accuweather is based in Sweden, and while it's unbelieveably organized, your local weather forecast is still going to be more accurate. I'm actually a big fan of wunderground or "weather underground" because it's easy to navigate, and what they don't actually "forecast" they just show you with a lot of radar images.

Sometimes I feel like people who get into the weather are just really unathletic baseball fanatics. They like all the predictive facts and figures (I mean come on, dew point and ERA are practically the same thing), but, in the words of Rob, they're "like that kid on the team that fucks up and everyone has to do puch-ups."

I listened to the Walkmen's new album on the train today, and it was most excellent. Every track is pretty good, and I suggest that you keep listening to the whole thing if you do have it, don't just skip to "Don't Get Me Down (Come On Over Here)" every two minutes. I know it's tempting, it's a good song, but so are the rest, you just have to give them a chance.

Just like the fat kid with the bum leg whos always screwing up and then everyone has to do puch ups.

I didn't need him tonight, I pushed up all on my own. Completely devoid of necessity, reason, and motivation.

Working out has always been something I don't really understand in a lot of ways. There are a lot of people who work out because they have a specific goal- a healthy weight, a certain activity, etc. etc. These goals are usually dictated by something very tangible too. Some broad wants to lose weight because she's getting married and she wants to look good in the dress. Understandable.

But then there are those whose sole reason for working out is to "get big."

And you know, the final product is like thirty pounds of useless muscle bulging from your biceps like awful tumors that plastic surgeons have tried to mask with tanning oil and tribal tattoos, only to realize that they've accentuated them, and that's it. The goal is achieved. Dominic is "big."

It makes about as much sense to me as duct taping tires to your chest, but then, maybe that's why I weigh 145 pounds.

Tomorrow's post may or may not be about fighting people.

Oh my god, somebody stop the ride, SOMEBODY STOP THE RIDE.

Okay, so we're going to start with this:


This is exactly what I am talking about. This is exactly the sort of thing that I am trying to understand.

Work today was slow, so naturally Rob and Andrew (not me) decided to arm wrestle each other. I don't know exactly how this whole thing got started, but I think Phil (my boss) mentioned that he thought Rob's biceps were bigger than Andrew's. Andrew has always carried the Swan Boats Bicep Torch, and so someone challenged someone to an arm wrestling competition.

Arm wrestling is mostly technique, and few people realize this. That's what I say, and what I believe, but I don't actually know what these techniques are...

Alright, EXCUSE ME, but Andy Phillips just came out for a curtain call on a home run that put the Yankees up 4-2 in THE SECOND INNING. The same fuckers that are always crashing on Manny Ramirez for his lacksadasical gait down the first base line are coming out for CURTAIN CALLS in THE SECOND INNING.

Anyway, arm wrestling is largely technique. I couldn't ever win with good technique, because I don't understand the technique, but I am aware of the fact that there is such a thing as an arm wrestling victory that is based on technique.

This is what I was saying during Rob and Andrew's arm wrestling match.

(So Josh Beckett just lasted an inning and a third and it's 8-2)

After about three minutes of arm wrestling (which is an eternity in arm wrestling) Andrew had his wrist bent well, which gave him the TECHNICAL advantage, but Rob was battling well, and I was impressed.

It was about then that Andrew started making the most appaling noise I had ever heard. It was kind of like someone trying to imitate a train coming to a screeching halt.

No, picture a retard yelling, but when you just hear it, you're not sure if it's actually a retard. You're thinking, what is that yelling? Is the culprit developmentally challenged, and if so, how did he learn to yell somewhat coherently?

No, picture a deaf kid screaming because he skinned his knee.

I don't know, at this point I'm just making fun of the handicapped, so if you don't get the image, maybe you should just ask me sometime.

It could be an ape noise, but I'll stop.



Now, please take into consideration that this is going on in front of five or ten customers, this bizarre seizure screaming, and everyone else is just laughing uncontrollably.

I'm watching belly dancing exercise videos on demand, the Sox are down 13-5, and I have nothing else to say.

One more time:

It's Serious Now

Now that I'm typing on my laptop, it's serious. There is no going back now. If at first one may have thought that I had simply created this out of a boredom driven largely by my parents behemoth of a computer, well, we've disspelled that now, haven't we.

Several college students were recently killed when they climbed inside of an air balloon. I'd send you the link to the story, but you really shouldn't have to read anymore than you've already read just there. College has become this thing in the news lately, and it's like the media is just observing a phenomenon of the college system. You get like thousands of people between the ages of 19 and 22 together someplace and, regardless of their academic pursuits, they are going to do the dumbest shit imaginable on their downtime, and, apparently, it's going to occassionally get them killed.

Imagine what you must feel when you get that phone call from the school or whatever. You've been paying tuition, your son is getting pretty good grades, and all of a sudden "Bad news Mrs. Johnson, we found him in an air balloon."

It's really sad and all, but how can you not react by thinking, "Just what the fuck was that idiot doing in an air balloon?"

I feel like I should make it clear that they weren't in the air in the basket being lifted by the balloon, they were actually IN the balloon itself. Death by Mylar (tm).

I just watched the Enron documentary, and it was really good, but I had the first song on the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album stuck in my head for the whole thing, so I couldn't follow a lot of the financial talk. Actually, every time I hear someone start talking about any semblence of the stock market, I hear that song:

Just clap your hands!
But I feel so lonely.
Clap your hands!
But it won't do nothing.
Just clap your hands!
But I have no money.

When I first bought that album I had never heard the band before, and for a moment, about thirty seconds into the first song, I thought I'd made a terrible ten dollar mistake. Turns out it's a good album, and I didn't make a mistake, and everything is going to be just fine.

- - - -

Bonnaroo tickets arrived in the mail today, and they're about as impressive as you can imagine (here's an old one), which I am happy about, because I paid two hundred dollars. It should have a hologram of Tom Petty that pops up and tells me that I'm his "only hope" then offers me weed, real weed, not hologram weed.

So yeah, in short, for two hundred dollars, I feel that I should get to see a bunch of awesome bands AND smoke weed with a Star Wars style hologram of Tom Petty.

With the tickets came a sheet of paper that outlined the rules and regulations for this event. Now, first of all, if you can't get one hippy to follow one rule, how do you expect to get thirty thousand hippes to follow like twenty rules? Things like this form their own rules. Rule # 1 for instance might involve grilled cheese sandwiches and LSD, not "Respect For Event Staff Members."

They're trying to push you to leave the area really clean by the end of the festival with the age old saying, "Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories."

Ok, so do we burn all the garbage or what? If I'm only leaving footprints, I'm either taking the garbage or I'm burning it. And what about all of my shit? I'm pretty sure I came here with a cooler and a tent and a bunch of other people, but I'monly leaving with memories? So they're suggesting that I'm either going to be robbed or lobotimized? I don't get it. And at what point does Jesus carry me in that little proverb?

I bet Dave Matthews fucking wrote that shit.

I am so glad that Dave Matthews isn't playing. The only benefit of Dave Matthews playing at Bonnaroo would be the fact that I wouldn't be going, and thus would be two hundred dollars richer than I am at the moment.

I'm preparing myself as best I can for Tennessee. I have the new magic Neutrogena Sunscreen that has something new and European in it, and I plan on buying several pairs of running shorts and tank tops from American Apparel this week.

I'm dead serious.

I'm also considering buying a bunch of NASCAR merchandise to scatter around the car, just in case we get pulled over at some point. It might counteract the fact that we have Massachusetts plates.

"Now yall know that on this here stretch a high way we's... Is that a dang Dale Jarret medallion?"
"Fuckin right. And that's a Jimmy Williams decoder ring if ever I've seen one."
"You yankees is alright."
"And your southern ignorance is staggering."

- - - -

My uncle said that he went to a NASCAR event with some potential customers or something in Nashville or somewhere (the details are sketchy, I'm not even entirely sure what he does, he works for a consulting firm, but isn't a consultant... the word "demographics" comes to mind) and he said that the most unbelieveable thing happened in this sea of people.

He was sitting in the grandstand, and this guy stood up, shirtless, sunburned, hammered out of his mind. He turned around for a few rotations before yelling:

"JEFF GORDON IS A SISSY BITCH AND DALE JARRETT IS THE GREATEST DRIVER TO EVER RACE AND THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS! NOW IF ANYONE'S GOT ANYTHING TO SAY OTHERWISE, I'LL KICK THEIR ASS!"

Everyone ignored the guy, just like you try to ignore the homeless guy on the train who keeps asking you where the pussy is, but remember, this is the south, so you can't be quick to say that EVERYONE ignored him. The fact is that almost everyone ignored him.

Sure enough, someone else stood up (a few rows back, too, so not someone who was offended by this man's behavior, someone who actually took a personal affront to what he was saying) and sure enough, he got his ass kicked.

What was interesting was the fact that the second man, as my uncle told me, made it very clear before he got his ass kicked that he wasn't offended by the statement that Jeff Gordon was a sissy bitch, but by the assumption that Dale Jarrett was the greatest driver ever.

Everyone knows Gordon is a bitch. But how dare you defile the name Earnhardt.

Hey, good luck with Monday everyone. Doesn't Monday suck no matter what you're doing? It does. Good luck getting through that.

My Weekend

So my friend Jen moved in to her new apartment in JP just a day or two ago, and I went there last night to see the place and hang out with her and Tim.

I didn't know it at the time, but while I was there, the Red Sox were winning an extremely exciting game in the ninth inning. Jen's television was incapable of showing the game, and while it was capable of showing movies, we only had Rushmore on VHS, and there wasn't a bone to be found collectively that had any desire to watch that movie.

Jen fell dead asleep around one in the morning, Tim and I spent an hour or so on the porch talking about how terrifying the concept of marriage is and how awesome Pantera is.

That was pretty much the end of the night in JP. I woke up the next morning, had somewhat of an awkward intereaction in the doorway of the bathroom with Dave, Jen's roommate, and left.

I spent today in a hospital in Springfield, visiting my grandfather, who seems to have something wrong with his leg. Doctors are saying that his blood thinning medication did something terrible to his upper thigh and an abcess has formed, but they don't think it's infected. There's nothing funny about Springfield hospital except for maybe the "No Smoking" sign on the patio next to the children's ward.

I dunno, picture some awful jackass smoking a butt, surrounded by a bunch of bald kids trying to play kickball, so they have to put up a sign.

There was a party across the street from my grandparents house for my dad's friend's graduation. Charlie graduated with an Associates in business administration from Holyoke Community College. He is forty nine years old, and the degree took fifteen years to get, but he still threw a party. My dad's old girlfriend from high school was there, and they chatted for an hour about all the evil drugs they did, friends that died, friends that got rich, how many kids never moved, how many kids did, etc. etc.

My dad took me on a tour of his old High School days, through downtown, his old neighborhood, Tech, Classical, American International, etc. etc. I saw the massive pond he used to skate on as a kid. It ran for miles behind the streets of the strange place where he began his life, and I was struck by how small all of the houses were. It was essentially a housing project made to look like a suburban neighborhood, he said, and minorities, rising violence, had pushed many of the massive irish catholic families out.

There's one advantage to growiing up in one of those neighborhoods. Everybody had upwards of five kids. One family had eleven. They all played street hockey and baseball, skated on the pond in the winter.

There's no place like Springfield.

I drove my dad's truck back and we listened to the Grateful Dead the whole way, not really talking too much except for the occassional "You're following too closely" from my dad and the "Sorry" from me. I'm actually pretty tired when I get back, but I still want to go out and do something, but that something doesn't seem to be materializing.

My weekend was slow and bizarre, and work starts again tomorrow, now that the rain is over, at 8:30. Back to the real world, I guess.

I'm in a really weird place, to say the least, and I'm hoping that things level out a bit before I leave for Bonnaroo in a couple of weeks. I feel as if your days are a balancing act. Whatever your standing on tips forward and backward, and you level it out again and again, but eventually, you'll start to wonder just what will happen if you fall. Where you'll land, and how things will be there.

I think most of us are still leveling ourselves out, unwilling to take the fall, and I include myself in that demographic.

- - - -

The Red Sox lost last night, 6-2 to the Detroit Tigers. So Tim Wakefield gets another loss (I believe), making his record look even less impressive, despite the fact that he's not doing all that badly.

I'm not really worried about the Detroit Tigers. Teams like that always start strong and finish weakly. I think it's important to remember that the AL east is really the ONLY division we have to concern ourselves with, and I think it's a safe bet to assume that the Tigers will fade like the 2005 Orioles, who started off something like 15 games over five hundred and five games ahead of the Sox and the Yankees in the AL East last year, only to descend into the mediocrity that's defined them this season.

And, with that, I am going to lay on my couch and watch the game. I think the Red Sox are winning.

- - - -

Tell your crew to be easy
niggas run around
With them fake frowns sell 'em on eBay

Get word to the DJ
tell 'em Staten Island's in the house
put the record on replay

A Friendly Hello

What better time to start fresh than a Friday afternoon, five minutes to six o'clock, water boiling on the stove waiting to be impregnated with Annie's macaroni and cheese, all bad memories of the work week shoved neatly out of my brain and lodged in the knots that make up my neck and upper back. I just spent about twenty minutes waiting for a rock in my backyard to move because I thought it might be a bunny. That's the kind of inspiring atmosphere in which great things are born, or reborn, or removed from MySpace and replanted in a somewhat more respectable internet venue.

What do you think of the new name? Did you ever see a dog house that's shaped like an igloo? Did you consider it for more than a few seconds? Because if you did, you should have realized that it was both impeccibly practical and impossibly absurd at the same time. You should have wanted to buy one for a moment, just before you relized you didn't have a dog. Then, the next instant sent you red with rage and you wanted to burn the fucking thing for being so stupid, so pointless, I mean, an igloo for a dog. Why does it have to be round like that? What the fuck is wrong with you people?

So you leave the store feeling utterly ridiculous, almost embarassed at yourself and that's what I try to go for with my writing.

Hence the title.

So that's it, I'm just saying hello, and here's this thing, etc. etc., I'm going to get something to eat and call Zach.

I should have my first ligitimate post up by Sunday evening.