bite the head, yadda yadda yadda, part ii

so, monday decided to be a monday and SUCK royally. they do that sometimes. and what combats a good, sucky, monday vibe?

(i begin to make horn noises with my mouth here)

nu-nah-nah-nuh-nah-nuh-nah-nuh TEQUILA!!!

yes, or as i like to call it, mexican tylenol. it doesn’t really KILL the pain, just makes it to where you aren’t really concerned with it as much anymore. so that was me & josh at dinner last night. tequila. and plenty of it. not so much to where i couldn’t drive safely (as verified via phone to kathi…although initially she was concerned), and there was some food thrown in (essentially for absorption purposes) but leave me alone here….it was a suck-ass day (even though i didn’t go to work till the ass-crack of NOON), and i have to work shows after work both today (it’s tuesday morning as i’m writing this) and tomorrow, so if i was gonna alcoholically cushion the monday pains, it was gonna have to take place ON monday…

there was some coolness to monday, though. money. i got to count up the cash from me & shane’s fiesta excursion. half way through, steve (one of the bosses) walks in and starts going over everything i have. for my own personal safety at future shows, i won’t reveal exact numbers, but he sat and watched me methodically count the tail end of the small bills and quarters and had a calculator in his hand at the time. as i plinked down the last set of four quarters, he looked at me and said, “amazing…all those tickets, all that cash, and you’re only $1.00 off. i don’t know how you did that..” (keep in mind we don’t use cash registers, and it’s not uncommon for drawers to come up off balance…of course, the more you pull in, the more margin of error they allow you…shane and i were allowed a fairly sizable margin of error)

“what’s more amazing,” i added, “was the fact that tickets were $14.50, and we kept running out of quarters. we burned through the $200 we got sent down with, then i bought a total of another $100 off the vendors in the place, then another $50 from the bar down the street (thanks to bombay bicycle club for REALLY coming through in a pinch for me), and the another $70 of the $100 i made the promoter’s runner get for us. when we ran out, and people bought single tickets, i’d ask them if they had the fifty cents, and if NOT, if they’d ‘donate’ it. if they agreed (they usually did…people don’t typically say ‘no’ to me) we’d only give them $5 in change then wait till they were out of ear shot, and turn around and give someone else (typically cute and female) six bucks in change to balance, but you had to mentally remember where you were on that sort of thing”

“damn,” said steve, “that makes it down-right impressive you were only $1 off”

“nope,” i replied, “what’s impressive is…(i reach into the bottom of my backpack and he sees a flash of gold in my hand) people ACTUALLY though these damn sacagawea dollar coins would be popular”, and i slammed a single coin to the table. “me and shane are DEAD FUCKING ON!!!”, i half shouted. damn, we’re smooth.

speaking of smooth, a lot of SA concert goers AREN’T. at every sunken garden’s show i go to, i see this.

it should first be noted that sunken gardens amphitheater IS truly sunken…i.e. it is surrounded by cliffs. and due to the fact that it’s city land those cliffs are patrolled by san antonio park rangers. anyway, so at every show, i see some fool drop down the shorter area into some trees at the back of the venue and then sprint his ass off into the crowd, which means clearing a rather sizeable, grassy area where all the food and booze vendors are. as he does this, park rangers from all around try to pounce him. the goal is to make it across the flatlands, up the hill, and into the crowd right in front of the stage…

the problem with trying this on sunday was that during the day the food was as big an attraction as the bands, so the poor slob who tried it crested the hill to see NO crowd he could blend into, and when he stopped to figure out what to do, the long arm of the law LITERALLY grabbed him.

whenever i see one mid-sprint, it always reminds me of the scene in “born in east la” where cheech marin and sever other mexican nationals are sprinting into the us. this illusion is helped along by the fact that sa park rangers wear the same shades of green and gold as the border patrol….except i’ve NEVER seen an sa park ranger who is either caucasian OR over 5’5″. don’t let the size fool you, though…these motherfuckers can SPRINT. and reach. and most importantly, cuff.

damn, now i can’t WAIT to work the next sunken gardens show…