Communion Nightmares |9:15 PM|
I was talking to Chris and Jimmy about old nightmares. This was in relation to where you slept, like what side of the bed, location of the bed, orientation on the bed etc..
Their main fear was of alien attack, so they had always slept as far away from the windows and as close to the door as possible. Obviously, the aliens would be arriving from outside.
Alien nightmares brought up, of course, the cover of "Communion". I was happy (Relieved?) to know that I wasn't the only guy who had nightmares based on seeing the cover of that damn book. Our parents would thoughtlessly leave it lying around, not knowing the pure, high octane terror it caused. The communion cover#. I used to go into the parent's study and pull that off the shelf just to feel that terror, trying to get over it. The title had an odd draw to me, thanks to the Catholic implications. I'd say that book cover was up there with the illustrations from "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". Said illustrations gave rise to more nightmares per capita than all dark basements, thunderclaps, and loon-calls combined.
Jimmy and Chris were far more afraid of aliens than monster or zombie attack. I had always kept my bed closer to the window, so that should the undead hordes break down my door I could escape via tree branches. We all have our priorities.
Bonnaroo Time Line |6:23 PM|
Alright this ain't done. Here's a link to the gallery or you can wait and read a better explanation of most of the images as it is written here.
Everyone had goofy head wear save me. My bandanna was odd but it wasn't bizarre enough
On Thursday I had become separated from the rest of the group, and since their cellphones weren't working I had no way to contact them, not place to meet them. So I started wandering in the way I was hoping they'd wander to find me. When "The Crystal Method" began playing on a P.A. system I knew one of our party would head towards it. I did manage to spot Chris from a fair distance because of his hat. He'd taken off wandering in an attempt to find me. After that I decided it was time for me to find some horrible green head covering. It took some time on Friday, including what my friends thought was a ridiculous detour, but I prevailed. Sort of. http://picasaweb.google.com/Cecil137/Bonnaroo2007/photo#5077476329379632146 The material was thin, and cheap, and non-absorbent. I paid for the rag as they handed it to me and the moment I had pulled it from the plastic I thought "Oh dammit I've been fucked." $5 was about 350% too much for this hideous thing (in the real world that is), but it served its purpose.
We went and listened to the preaching of The Nightwatchman next.
Then Manu Chao Radio Bemba Sound System. That was a truly entertaining show. I couldn't understand a single thing they said (It was in Spanish, I believe) but it was still a blast and it compelled you to dance.
We had listened briefly to Lily Allen on our way over to the Manu Chao show, and she sounded really interesting. She is talented vocally, but upon listening to her album we all found her lyrics to be sorely lacking.
On the main stage that evening was Tool, who put on a hell of a show, at ear-destroying volume. I'm surprised I couldn't see the actual vibrations through the air from those monstrous speakers. The big video displays were showing imagery and videos in the tool visual styles. Creepy shit, I wonder if it's the same crew making those videos or if they have to change them out every so often.
Chris and Cass hit the hay, Jimmy and I tried to locate trouble of some kind. What Jimmy located was "fatigue" and "Cold" http://picasaweb.google.com/Cecil137/Bonnaroo2007/photo#5077476707336754306 I tried out the Silent Disco. http://picasaweb.google.com/Cecil137/Bonnaroo2007/photo#5077476642912244850 The String Cheese incident didn't really grab our attention, so I can't give an honest appraisal of their show.
Saturday:
The next day's initial highlight was Regina Effin' Spektor. http://picasaweb.google.com/Cecil137/Bonnaroo2007/photo#5077476810415969442 She had a truly cute and endearing stage personality, she fumbled the words for her songs a couple times and laughed it off. She played a guitar that she said she "Sucked" at, it was a great deal of fun. There are several more images from her concert in the gallery, and Cass took a video when she started singing après moi*.
I'd been wanting to see her in concert ever since Cass introduced me to her music several months back, and her show did not disappoint. I even waited in a line that was of epic scale* to get her signature on a CD.
After we met back up with Chris and Jimmy we hit the Ween concert, which was enjoyable even if we were pretty damn far from the stage.
We then ran into this ridiculous group of dancers. Every time a song would finish, the cheer would go up "One more song!" The women on stilts were beginning to show a great deal of fatigue, and occasionally would just flat out stop moving around. We did our best to keep up.
Wallet Rifling |11:59 PM|
This morning I forced myself to get up and run, then I lifted weights, and then I did a bunch of stomach crunches and push ups. I beat the fuck out of myself, especially that stupid fucking toe that doesn't want to get with the program. Then it was off to the shooting range with Ryan, and it was then that the woman out of D.C. called. As I may or may not have mentioned, I found a wallet the other day. ChrisH and I had been walking back to his office from Mongolian Grill (I had plenty of free time, who'd have thought) and because I took this walk, I found this woman's wallet.
Me: Some woman was fortunate that I walked with back to your office, dude. Found her wallet on the way back, money intact. Me: She can thank your choice of careers, since clearly you were thinking ahead.
ChrisH: this was my purpose ChrisH: I can quit now ChrisH: thanks
Anyhow, I tried to contact some of the people on business cards she had in the wallet, and they could not get in touch with her. Since I now had to rifle through her wallet I found a few things, like the fist full of credit cards and some dough, oh, and the thousand-fucking-dollar cashier's check.
Luckily with information from the wallet, Wonderlust was able to track down the woman's gmail account.
While I don't expect a reward for this sort of action, dinner would be nice.
Following all of this was a party over at Jason's, and my cognitive functions were beginning to fall down. I had a good time mostly listening, as I didn't want to say anything intensely fucking stupid. Lit a few cigarettes, let the techs-in-fields-not-my-own Grok it up, and ate chips.
Some of the stuff from last week |7:16 PM|
My new roommate and I have already begun a kind of Inspector Clouseau/Cato Fong ongoing gun battle thoughout the house. Luckily for me his nerf shotgun takes forever to reload, and luckily for him my revolver makes a very distinct noise when I load it.
I've never seen the Diet Coke on corroded battery leads trick done before, but it was great and terrible to behold. ChrisH's car had died suddenly in his parking garage, and that just wasn't going to stand. Chris, Cass, and I went out with jumper cables and socket wrenches in hand to see if we could muddle it back into working order. When we saw the 1 inch thick cubes of corrosion and battery acid on the terminals, they wandered off to go seize some of Chris's company's free diet coke supplies. I checked a few fuses just to be safe, and loosed/tightened the battery leads.
Among the many little tricks I've picked up about amature car repair, one of the most helpful was a trick I learned myself, on how to fish lost components out of an engine compartment. I was checking the fuses on his car, when I dropped the starter fuse directly into the engine. I heard the clink, clink of plastic on metal but not the knock of it hitting asphalt. Fuck. I tried the usual trick of rocking the car on its shocks, trying to dislodge the missing component, with no luck. It was only a matter of time before those two got back, and the last thing I wanted to explain is how I lost part of their car inside another part of their car. Now for the neato trick. I needed some long chunk of metal to push the fuse off of its resting place, which isn't something I carry around. Most car radio antennas unscrew easily from their mounting point. (If you have a power antenna you're SOL). With said antenna I was able to dislodge the fuse. In some cases, if you've lost a metal component and have a magnet handy, you can put the antenna near the missing piece, then attach the magnet, and pull the component out. While I hope the readers of this information never need to use it, such a trick may come in handy.
Once the diet coke was poured onto the horribly corroded leads, I was able to re-tighten them, and jump the car. Success! Hooray!
Speaking of Cass, we were at Half Price books a couple of days ago looking for books on starting businesses. We happened to discuss old science fiction/fantasy novels we'd read years ago, and I mentioned liking "Hyperion" a great deal. We found a a copy of it#, notable because on the last page a woman had written "Let's stay together" and signed it (Tina? Gina?). Something tells me her book related gambit did not work, as the book had been sold at much less than half price.
The Chicago Trip |12:57 AM|
I went to Chicago on a day's notice a few weeks back. A nice, eventful trip. The first couple of photos depict when I showed up, and met up with the wedding party during some pre-event celebrations. I finally got to meet the groom, who seems like a nice guy, and treats Erin well. The family was thrilled to see me, and we nice enough to rent me a room at the inn. As I am not the "thank you" card type, I thanked them with a big damn box of chocolate. Damn, I need to send them a Christmas card.
Then I met up with Chris H. (Who just happened to also be in Chicago, and who I would see less than 48 hours later back in Austin), trying to get to second city. A train, a bus, and a lot of walking later, we got to see some mediocre comedy. Well, except for SHAH 2, which is funny for Chris and I, but not anyone else.
Later is the actual wedding, and since the light was so low, not a lot of pictures came out. Erin seems really happy with her husband, which is probably a good thing, since they'll be seeing each other a lot for the next lifetime or so. The whole shindig was well rehearsed, and went off without a hitch. I even managed to do some horrible dancing. I slipped out quietly.
Later that evening, I met up with John L. outside of a best buy to wait for the Nintendo Wii. Also present was his girlfriend, Krystl, who I hadn't seen in years. The last time I saw her, she had hair past her waist, and would only wear skirts, as Pentecostal women cannot wear pants, nor cut their hair. John and I ended up waiting quite a while, in increasingly cold air, then raining, then snowing. Information travels between these groups, these lines, (such as back during the Star Wars lines). Information like how many Wii's Best Buy had in stock (90) or how many Toys R. Us had (5, after all the pre-orders). We played bean bag related games, held each other's places in line, and generally pal'd around with a bunch of other nerds. At about 4 or 5 AM, John managed to find a Walmart that had 20 units that no one else seemed to know about, and instead of having to wait until 9am, we got the damn console at about 6. Those were an important 3 goddamn cold hours.
