sadly i’m re-smelling it as i’m re-telling it (a flashback)

saturday

i got to two rivers on saturday feeling better than i had since thursday. why? i actually got a whopping five hours of sleep before that one. sleep dep by my normal standards, but damn refreshing compared to the two and half i’d crashed on thursday night. maybe the sleep dep helped in the hallucinations i thought were just my minds reaction to the overwhelming dead head funk of the day before…if i saw teams of polar bears and toucans having canned cheese fights in the middle of the parking lot that WAS a hallucination, right? before you answer, keep in mind that was the most normal of the three or four things i thought i saw. i’ll say this; the dead head factor was a major player on saturday in so many ways…

first off, there was their predominant absence. funny how that works, huh? when the dead don’t play, the dead heads tend to leave. what that meant was a slight drop in attendance between day one and day two of wet willie weekend 2k3. while my eyes glancing at attendance numbers weren’t as happy, my crystal-clear sinuses were very happy. combine that with the lack of hallucinations, and all was fairly well. but since i DID sleep for about five hours on friday night, i’m still not sure if it was a clear nose or a rested head to blame for the lack of delusion. but i digress…

let’s focus on the ones that were there on day two. can i call them neil heads since neil young headlined the second day? probably not…they were very clearly leftovers from the day before. some in more ways than one.

ya see, we had these wristbands. and as we told EVERYBODY that we put them on, you had to keep your ticket stub with you AND the wristband on your wrist to get re-entry both days. very simple. very cut and dry. surprisingly, none of the dead heads asked me if they had to leave them on when they showered that night. go figure. i did start volunteering that information in the hopes that it would encourage them to maybe, just maybe, bathe that weekend. optimistic lil’ me…no such luck.

but the real drama came on day two when people would bring up wristbands in two (or more) pieces and a ticket stub and ask for re-entry. obviously, this presents a bit of a security nightmare because the dead had about half as many folks in the parking lot as they did in the actual show. and we all know the dead crowd is ALL about sharing. how are they to know someone bailed day two since the dead weren’t playing and just gave up their shit (or sold it for beads, or ‘shrooms, or hemp jewelry, or whatever) to someone who wanted to go in on day two?

exactly…

so, we got to argue. and get called names. and get yelled at. and get quoted how much the tickets cost them (like we weren’t fucking aware…it IS what we do for a living, ya know). here’s a six pack of excuses out of the hundreds i had to sit through…

1. it slipped off while i was swimming…

my response was a two-parter. number one, we had to put them on to where we could only squeeze one finger between the band and your wrists (and there are some nasty motherfucking wrists at a willie / dead show, lemme tell you). if one of the tent crew put it on too loose, security sent them back to us to get re-banded. so i explained that the only way it could have slipped off was if he was getting dragged by a boat across the lake by his ankles. then he said it split, not slipped. so i asked where his girlfriend’s was. he said the same thing happened to her. i told him,”nice try”.

2. i never got a wristband…

again, nice try. if the security saw you with a two day ticket and no wristband, they escorted you back to us immediately. also, we were yelling it out constantly while people were waiting in line. but, you tried…you just failed. these things happen.

3. i didn’t know we had to keep them on…

yes, you did. we told absolutely everybody. sorry to be a prick and all, but when four of us talk ourselves hoarse (for those who know me picture how much talking that takes to achieve) i damn well KNOW everybody got told. and if you didn’t know, why did you bring back the wristbands the second day? stupid is as stupid does, i suppose.

4. it slipped off when i got to lathery in the shower last night…

i am so kidding on that one.

5. i cut it off when i went to dinner…it’s just a wristband, man; what’s the difference?

this was actually a two-part excuse. i was just about to be cool to this guy, until he said the second part. then all bets were off, ’cause he said it in a kind of “fuck you” tone. my response? “the difference is, if you had left them on like i told you too, you’d be in the show right now…but if you wanna pay again, you can go back.”

6. they ran out of wristbands and told me to come back today…i got here at 7:00, and they were out of the day’s allotment since it was so late…

this one i found VERY interesting. ’cause i was in the tent (with very short exceptions) from 7:45 am to 10:15 pm on july 4th. we never ran out of wristbands. in fact, we were still working off the same case of 25,000 wristbands on saturday (keep in mind these were only for two day pass folks, single ticket folks didn’t get one…). he also went on to say it was a supervisor that had told him that, and i WAS the supervisor when he said he had come by. i repeated the words, “no untorn ticket, no wristband” over FIFTEEN times. in two languages. when i started on the spanish, he shouted “I SPEAK ENGLISH!!!” i replied, “well, i’ve said the same thing a DOZEN times and it hasn’t sunk in, so i thought that would help…” he was not happy. i did not care.

7. i snapped it off my wrist when i was having sex…

no, chester, that’s not sex. that’s tossing off. whacking. flogging the dolphin. whatever you wanna call it. doesn’t count as sex. sorry.

(and i did the extra one since i cheated with the shower comment)

what did all this prompt in me?

my comment at the end of the day?

“if one more patchoulli-wreaking pseudo-hippy motherfucker gets in my face about how they fucked up their god damned wristband i’m gonna show the little shit why the powers of the world solve their disputes with swift and blinding violence instead of peace…”

i don’t think i’ve ever made a group of security guards laugh that hard ever…next show for me? nelly on saturday…time to get my gangsta on.