i can almost smell this bit (that’s bad – a flashback)

tuesday was just an odd day. it really was. from my screwed up sleep pattern to my screwed up work schedule, it was just off all the way around. i fell asleep slightly after midnight monday night after draining down one of my cordless phones earlier in the evening. (if i can TYPE this much, picture how much i must actually TALK). i had just cast it aside like an empty beer can and moved on, but at about 2 am the thing had regained enough juice in it’s battery to realize it needed to be charged, so it told me so. loudly. often. and i had to get out of bed to put this beeping piece of shit back on it’s base; then it was back to sleep. but not for long…

the running theory on this is that it was a dream i only SLOWLY woke up from, but i referred to it as an audio hallucination. i woke up around 4 am to loud club music; kinda like josh’s c.d.h. nightmare that he actually LIVES day to day. i sat up in bed like, “WHAT THE FUCK?” but when i sat up, i woke up. or so i thought. i could still hear the music. i flew out of bed and turned off my fan (i have a fan at the foot of the bed ’cause it’s HOT ’round here and typically i can’t sleep in silence…silence is unnerving to us gemini folk…) and after the fan was off, i could STILL here the music, but it faded out like the song was over and then never returned. that “fade out” has been described to me as when i ACTUALLY woke up. makes sense, but still kinda odd…and it basically meant i slept like ass all night. (not to be confused with sleeping like you GOT some ass, which is actually quite soundly)

thanks to my odd sleep pattern, and everything that could spring up (utility bill, out of gas, needed to buy stuff to “trick” calum and buffi back into eating, etc…) i got into work about forty-five minutes late. but since i can kinda, sorta set my own schedule, nobody cared. (i HAD called and let them know what was up). but my office stint was incredibly short lived, which sucks ’cause the office is air conditioned…the backyard is not. and why on EARTH would i end up at the backyard all afternoon sweating like a farm animal? why else?

damn, dirty hippies.

and this was part of the “o.h.” tribe. the original hippies. the bay-area unbathed. the grateful dead. (who’s fan base, like all jam bands, coincidentally smell like rotting corpses). phil lesh and friends. i don’t remember what phil did in the dead (i wanna say bass, but i’m not 100% on that) but he WAS one of the original members, and so when he comes to town to play some dead tunes, people show up; not as many as when widespread comes to town, but still a good chunk of folks; it’s just this crowd tended to be a bit older. not as many “trustafarians” in their patchouli-scented beamers and saabs. but it’s a combination of the heat and the hours that get to me; or the pointless hours IN the heat, to be more specific.

see, this show STARTED at 5:00, and since the backyard opens doors an hour and a half before showtime, they threw open the gates at 3:30. for some ODD reason, they like the box office to be open and ready an hour and forty-five minutes before doors, which put me out there at 1:45. remember how HOT it was yesterday around here? i was out in it from 1:45 to 9:00. ouch. and what’s worse is the fact the first hour or two you just SIT THERE. nobody really hits the box office that early. we had ONE guy come up to the main one the first hour or so, and that was just to ask if we had the guest list yet (this same guy was on the list for all three widespread shows and kinda looks like an older, longer-dreaded version of the main guy from the counting crows).

then we split up, and this time i worked the slower, west entrance. and i HATE working that entrance. for one, the box office is not built to house an adult, so i always nail the back wall with my elbow. for two, it is ALWAYS slow starting over there. we arrived on site at 1:45…i helped the first guy at the west box office at 4:45. THREE FUCKING HOURS of sitting on my ass, doing NOTHING, and getting paid for it. understand, to SOME people, that’s killer. but to me? i’d rather slam my manhood in the cargo door of a 1985 ford aerostar mini van than sit around bored. so combining this with the predictable, pungent cloud of hippy funk (NOT meant as a musical statement) and i was basically in my own personal hell (and for the record, even at the insane, sold-out widespread panic shows we still just sat there for the first hour and some change…it’s really making it tempting for me to stop working shows at the yard).

on the upside, due to the ever-increasing population of the city of bee caves (and just about everything else around austin) there are noise ordinances in effect, so i got out around 9:00…but it’s not like you can go out or something ’cause by then you’re sticky, sweaty, and smell like a mixture of deep woods off and deep-down-dirty-hippy. so, i headed home, surveyed the puppy damage (minimal) and crashed. only got woke up once all night (copper) and now here i am. it’s creeping up on 7:00 am, and i’m starting my day at our downtown “office” (old office, but i need some stuff i have stored there) so, it’s a shorter commute, and i can leave a bit later, no i’m gonna lay down for a morning nap. (okay, now i DO sound old) but remind me to tell you about the recurring hippy show occurrences that has me altering my appearance later in the week…

Replies: 1 Comment

glad to hear that you don’t like silence….