Fri, Feb. 26, 2010
The 1000-RPM a second blastbeats and insane, chainsaw-through-a-subwoofer guitar tone roar out.
Magrudergrind has landed.
The crowd explodes.
The earplug in my right ear gets ripped out in the first second of the first song. I never see it again. The crowd is so violent that I really start to wonder how bad it could get. This is fucking CHAOS. We are slamming the absolute living shit out of each other. There are various failed attempts at crowd-surfing that begin with people hoisting some poor geek up and end a second later with the kid crashing down in a tangle of arms and legs. The Misfits fan is wreaking havoc on everyone who gets near him. He could seriously do some damage. I receive about ten elbows to the head during the first and second song and do my best to shove the shit out of every motherfucker coming at me. There are a few problems with this approach, namely that there are so many of them slamming, so many of them are bigger than me, and so many of them are far, far more energetic than I am. Nevertheless, I feel the rage build and break and I screech incoherently. I lash out. This is what I had waited to do for these last few months. It's brutal, scary and exhilarating, not to mention more than a little painful. Finally, I make an exit from the pit and wait through a song, maybe two, to get a replacement earplug out of the bartender. It's good, because I am seriously getting beaten around in there. Then again, so is everyone else. Replacement earplug in, I get back into the crowd. It is still just as intense. Maybe even more intense. By now everyone is fucking each other up hardcore. I get beaten around. Finally, I get tossed over and collide into someone.
I look up.
It's the 300-pound Misfits fan.
BAM.
I go flying and sprawl out into the ring of people who have formed around the makeshift pit. They haul me up and shove me back in again but I walk out. That's enough for me, for now. I later find out that he put his thumb in my friend Justin's eye. He didn't do any true damage but it apparently hurt like hell, which ranks about a 25 on a scale from 1 to Unsurprising. I hear later that someone gets a bloody nose - not one of our friends, but apparently the blood is flowing pretty nicely. He took a tumble when he tried to crowd-surf. Generally, it’s a good idea to hold off on the crowd-surfing when the stage isn’t tall enough for it. You might think a bunch of Michigan kids tweaking on adrenaline would figure this out, but you would be wrong.
Magrudergrind finish up. The crowd yells for another song. They play another song. I slam again but not too hard and stay off to the sides. I'm tired out.
Misery Index are up next but by now I'm totally finished. So are most of my friends. So we sit and listen to them. They're okay, but compared to Magrudergrind they're nothing special. Still, they work the crowd (who were also completely tuckered out after Magrudergrind and didn't really mosh too much) and seem to be really happy to be there, so more power to them. The really drunk bearded guy in the Steelers cap and the blue-and-white shirt from before, who is still just as shitfaced and still just as frighteningly happy, is doing his same routine to Misery Index and having himself a grand old time. Not many people are still moshing at this point, though obviously the Misfits fan still is, running around in a circle in slow motion. He looks like a overgrown second-grader and probably is.
I look up at the TV while Misery Index kick out the left-wing deathgrind jams. There is some astoundingly tasteless exploitation movie playing on the TV's. It's so aggressively degraded and disgusting that it becomes somewhat interesting to see from a detached, analytical standpoint, though it probably helps that there is no sound to be heard. There is a naked woman impaled through what doctors and cops would refer to as her rectum, covered in blood and filth, with the stake coming out through her mouth. Vlad Tepes would be proud. The subtitles tell us the impalement is part of a strange sexual ritual the restless natives have out here in the jungle. I later find out this PC, family-friendly film, which ends with, among other things, a white woman getting stripped, gang-raped, beaten to death and beheaded by them dastardly ol' debbil natives out in the wilds of some exotic and uncivilized tropical place (where, of course, no white people live - I believe it is somewhere in the savage jungles of South America), is called Cannibal Holocaust. I later find out there is supposed to be supposed to be some sort of message in this film about the media's insane pursuit of sensationalism. Keep it classy, Italian horror directors.
Misery Index finally finish up (the second-to-last song is great) and we head out to the 24-hour diner next door, Thieo's. As befits a 24-hour diner, it’s grimy, incredibly greasy and cheap, with people who would rather be anywhere else providing the service. My father described it once as “ptomaine city” and it’s a fitting description. It’s a great Lansing institution. We all get a long table - there are probably ten or eleven of us - and benefit the potato industry, ordering lots and lots of fries. I get a seat last and start talking to Rachael and James again. I try on James’ glasses and note a similar look to Elvis Costello. James says there is a little bit of a resemblance. There is talk around the table of the wasted bearded guy. It seems that he went up to random people all night, drink in hand, and practiced an amateur mime routine in which he said "I," pointed at his chest, and said "you" and then smiled. It is unanimously agreed upon that it was truly creepy. Rachael says something to the effect that she is so glad he isn’t around here. I agree, and then look up.
Through the glass, I see a shadow out in the winter night point at his chest and then point at me.
Oh dear God.
“Shit. Shit. Holy fuck, it’s him.”
“What?”
“It’s him, he just fucking pointed at me!”
Rachael's eyes widen.
“WHAT?”
He knocks on the glass and the entire table sees him. We wave. He then takes his cock out and tries to piss outside on the diner. He fails. The entire table is dying laughing – because really, what else can you do in a situation like that? He walks in and asks how all us fuckers are doing. We generally assent to feeling fine. He says, “Man, I can’t piss when y’all are looking at me – you remind me of my fucking probation officer!” The entire table is possessed by gales of laughter, because we sense that will keep this random happy. An older woman working at the restaurant comes up to him and tells him he can’t piss on the restaurant. He argues for a little while with her, saying that “it’s outside” and “it’s part of nature.” The waitress isn’t having it. He then ambles over and tells us a story about a candlelit dinner with a lady of his that I don’t entirely catch, but it ends with hot candle wax on his legs and him nearly burning down an Applebee’s. More laughter. Matt in particular is nearly choking on his salad, which gets him the nickname of Captain Salad from the drunk guy, which makes us all laugh more. The drunk guy, who we later found out was called Steve but who will hereafter be referred to as Drunk Guy for the rest of this piece, then says that he made it all up and he was glad we all laughed. Drunk Guy thinks he ought to be a standup comic. Sure, right, whatever you say sir. Drunk Guy wanders off somewhere else in the restaurant, presumably to take that piss he wanted to take so badly, and everyone breathes a little more easily, but not too easily. He’s still here in the restaurant. The fries, and my hash browns, are served and we all dig in as Drunk Guy comes back to ramble more. He tries to take a picture of us with his camera, but only succeeds in filming us, and then, after getting it fixed up correctly, takes a picture or two of the entire table grinning and laughing. I wonder if the nervousness is all over our faces. Maybe it is. Maybe he’s too drunk to notice. Or to care.
Drunk Guy sits at the table and looks at me. “Hey, uh…listen. I have to ask something. A favor.”
A favor?
A favor?
“OK.”
“It’ll involve…uh…monetary compensation.”
My paranoia level is about five times higher than it usually is at this point. It is ringing off the charts. Does he want me to go burn down another Applebee’s with him? Actually, I might not turn him down if he asks me to go do that.
“Can you give me…uh…a ride back to my place?”
FUCK NO, YOU WASTED CREEPER.
“I didn’t drive here… I don’t have the power in the decision.” (This is entirely true.)
He turns to Rachael and asks the same thing. She comes up with the inspired and plausible lie that we all got here by bus. He believes it and walks away to bother other people. Later we find out he found a friend to give him a ride home. (Thank Allah, Buddha, Krishna or Christ.) Finally, we all get our shit together and get out of the diner. It’s about 2:20 or so at this point. I hop into Matt’s car with some other people and start to drive away from the snow-covered parking lot of Mac’s Bar. Only we’re not going anywhere, and the smell of burning rubber is saturating the car. We are stuck in the snow.
A guy with Misery Index comes out and gives Matt tips on how to get the car out of snow. Amongst other things, you need to get your wheels straight, and not rev the car as if you were auditioning for the Indy 500. The car starts going, people who were helping to push the car get in, and the car begins to drive off. Only the door is still open and I’m not in the car. I run for the car. “HEY, I’M NOT IN THE FUCKING CAR YET!,” I yell as I try to get in. “Well, you’re in now so CALM THE FUCK DOWN!” says Ryan, who has Snidely Whiplash facial hair and runs left-wing political clubs on campus. I apologize briefly and we mostly sit in silence as Black Flag’s 1982 Demos play away on the stereo. It’s on “Slip It In.” I say that Henry Rollins has mommy issues. No one says anything. We’re all too tired to speak and I have the feeling the last outburst of mine might not have been too politic. Whatever. I wasn’t in the car and you were about to drive away and leave me in the middle of Lansing at 2:30 in the morning with Drunk Guy on the loose. You could be more understanding of my paranoia. Ryan and his girlfriend get dropped off and soon, I’m back at my dormitory as “My War” finishes playing. I go up to my room, play guitar for a while, and sleep until 12:30 the next day.
(Note: Published elsewhere online.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment