Morton Malaise

Name the early summer festival described here:

At least 10,000 in attendance, travelling from all over the country. Caters to people of all ages. several stages with massive amounts of bands. hippies. vendors selling tie-dye. Illegal narcotics and mind-altering substances readily available for a reasonable price if you know where to look. Camping on-site.

According to the PJS, I am describing Summercamp. I am not describing Summercamp. Based on many, MANY first-hand accounts, I am describing Cornerstone, the “Christian” festival going on in Bushnell this week. Did the PJS say anything about Cornerstone being an open-air drug market, ripe with self-indulgence and foggy with pot smoke? Nope. It’s a nice little festival in a small town for Christian music. Meanwhile, Summercamp is portrayed as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah(sp?), with naked people parading around, screwing everything that moves and smoking, snorting, shooting, and swallowing everything they can get their hands on.

I GUARANTEE if MEG were to send the manpower to Cornerstone that was present at Summercamp, more arrests would be made.

But how is that possible? This is a good, Christian festival for good, God-fearing people! Well, God-fearing or not, teenagers at music festivals are GOING to use drugs, and they’re GOING to have a good time.

The discrepancy in reporting between Summercamp and Cornerstone is quite sickening, and the Peoria Journal Fishrag should be ashamed.

…is going to be completely batshit crazy. Thursday is my birthday, and since it falls on a Thursday and not a Friday or Saturday, I will be spending it with my family.

Friday night, I will be at the Winchester in East Peoria to REALLY celebrate my birthday. I think I invited most of you, but in the event that I missed you on myspace or you don’t have myspace, everyone is welcome. I plan on getting there around 7 or 730. It’s my birthday, buy me a fucking Car Bomb.

Saturday morning I have to get up early (before noon) and go to the DDL for a new license, as mine expires on Thursday. I can’t wait to stand in line with all of those weirdos nursing a hangover. I also have to get new stickers for my license plates, as those expire at the end of this month as well. Nothing like the last minute!

Saturday afternoon/early evening (630), I will be at the Chiefs game, compliments of my employer. Also compliments of my employer is the free beer and buffet. I am on a mission to float the kegs before they stop serving.

Sometime around 830, I will have to leave said baseball game and head for Dunlap, where Troy is having his annual 4th of July Roman-style ass sex orgy. No, not really. It’s actually just a big party with lots of alcohol and fireworks. Last year the field caught on fire and the bonfire blew all over the yard. It was awesome. Anyway, we’ll camp out there, and probably wake up around 9 and start chugging Troy’s AWARD-WINNING Bloody Marys. Mind you, it’s sure to be unbearably hot, and there’s no shade for miles. Nothing like 50 drunks sweating liquor at once.

It’s sure to be a good time. I won’t say I’ll recap later, because some of what happens may be of questionable legality. Cannonball!!!!

This video is 5 seconds long. I dare you not to watch it 40 times.

I have grown rather tired and quite nauseous with our “modern” rock station. I will now share with all of you the reasons why.

1.) Your tower is no longer new. Please stop telling us about it between every song and every commercial.

2.)There is no need to continually remind us how much kick ass rock you play. Especially since most of what you play was made before most of your listeners were born.

2.)Anna Kincaid. That’s all I have to say about that. Nice enough lady (when she’s not being a bitch), but really not good for the radio.

3.) 9 songs an hour in the morning. That’s only 27-30 minutes. Unacceptable.

4.) Airing 30 minutes of commercials and soundbites of people saying wacky things is a sure way to lose the last 4 morning drive listeners you have.

5.) That “brand new” single you just played? It was released to radio stations six months ago. We’re not stupid, please don’t treat us like we are. Maybe if you started playing Icky Thump 2 months ago like everyone else, I would try to listen.

6.) 102.3 now has an average year of song release later than yours. Ouch.

7.) Matt Bahan- It’s not OK to talk like that in real life. It’s sort of creepy. And for God’s sake, stop frosting your hair. You look like this old guy I knew in Florida that chased 18-year-old girls around. Wait…Did you used to live in Florida?

8.) It’s Not Over by Daughtry is not “Kick Ass Rock”. It’s MAYBE power pop. Just quit it.

9.) Morning X Trivia is not the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, unless it can offer me a secure job with a six-figure salary, full pension and benefits, and a company limo.

10.) Don’t sponsor the URA. Just don’t. It’s painfully obvious that your “DJ’s” have no fucking clue who or what they’re talking about when they read the copies about it. Until I start hearing moe. and Phish on your station, GFYM.

I’m sure I’ll come up with more, and as I do I will add them. Feel free to tell me what pisses you off about 105.7 the Ex in the comments.

I stand with my feet square, shoulder width apart,
And I look across you, America.

From my front door, I see all of you.
I see your rivers and your plains,
Your mountains
And your billowing smokestacks.

I see what our forefathers saw, 230 years ago, so full of hope for
A nation of vigor and sincerity,
And my eyes swell with tears.

A cool breeze blows,
And the crickets chirp as two cars cross in the night.

Where have you gone?
What happened to the Federalist Papers,
the Magna Carta,
and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Where are you,
Thomas Paine,
Patrick Henry,
Ethan Allen?

You must be so ashamed.

The battles you fought, and the words you wrote,
All mangled, perverted, and tangled in a mess
of politicking, kiteflying, and barrels of pork.

If you could see us now.
If you could stand, with your feet square,
staring across the plains and the rivers,
The mountains and the musket smoke.

I am ashamed.

I am ashamed of the indifference and the atmosphere of fright that
Mass media and affluence have created.

One of you once said, a nation that sacrifices liberty for security
Shall lose both
And deserves neither.

I stand, my feet square and shoulder width apart,
And I cry for our America.

There is a great event going on at the Riverfront this weekend, called the Universal Rhythm Assembly. Well, the music is going to great. As with everything in life, the bad comes with the good. The purpose of the event is to “…showcase many different special interest groups involving everything from the ecosystem we live in to issues that involve the world as we know it.” Fucking moonbat orgy. Of course, with bands like Oteil and the Peacemakers, Omega Moo, Groovatron, and Backyard Tire Fire, the moonbats are going to come. That doesn’t mean they need to put up booths. Let’s see if I can guess what some of the booths will be.

- Hemp Jewelry and Clothing

- Little rocks, supposedly useful for warding off showers and jobs.

- Planned Parenthood

- ACLU (Disclaimer: I am a card-carrying member)

- Head shop. There will definitely be a head shop, probably selling those nifty hitters that look like car antennae and pens.

You may be asking, “Gee, MM, you went to Summercamp and didn’t seem to mind.” That’s right. Because Summercamp was about the music, not the moonbat causes. Check out the website. Front and center, Causehead City.

Fuck it, I just want to see Groovatron and Omega Moos. I’ll even take a shower before I go.

For those who don’t pay attention to Myspace bulletins, my party on the 29th has been cancelled until further notice. The tenants of the home, who are friends of mine, are a bit nervous about getting any more noise complaints. I can certainly understand their quandry, as they’ve had two or three neighbors come over and say something, and they’ve only been in the house for a few weeks. I guess four mid-twenties men with varying work schedules living in the same house with a monstrous, comfortable front porch may not be the best thing for a “quiet” neighborhood. Rather than have them on edge the whole time, I have elected to cancel the event. I’m sure we’ll do something else in its place. More details forthcoming.

Bottom of the ninth inning. Magglio Ordonez on third. One out. Down 6-5. 1 game back in the AL Central. Now is NOT a good time for TWO STRIKEOUTS IN A FUCKING ROW!!!! Just a thought. I’m no Billy Beane (Sabermetrics Billy Beane, not Gay Billy Bean), but simple common sense would tell me that I might with one out, oh, I don’t know, hit a sac fly, or try a squeeze play. With two outs, I might, oh, I don’t know, try to get a ball on the ground through the right side of the infield; hell, a single to anywhere but left field. Just not a strikeout.

Piss.

Well, I suppose now that it happened like two weeks ago, I should write something about Summercamp. First and foremost, it was the three most fun days (this sentence is so grammatically awkward, and probably wholly wrong) I’ve had in a very long time. Most-well, all of my festival-type concert experiences have been drawn from Ozzfest and the Buzz Bake Sale. Testosterone, sun, and alcohol fueled bedlam is a nice way to describe both of them. Maybe it’s just me, but any show where a girl has to fear losing the vast majority of her clothing and/or being fingered while crowd surfing is not a good thing. True, the music was incredible, but whoever came up with the idea to have a hard rock festival with the second stage on unshaded blacktop in the middle of August in South Florida is a fucking schmoo. At one point I heard one of the event staff say they were measuring temperatures of 130 degrees in front of the second stage three feet off the ground. Great. Skinheads and spooky kidz sharing a very small space, listening to extremely aggressive music, drinking the whole time.

Summercamp was completely the opposite. Whereas the previously mentioned festivals had a palpable tension in the air, the air in Summercamp was filled with what felt almost like an ethereal glow (No, that wasn’t pot smoke. I’m sure you’re the first person to make that little joke.). Everybody was friendly. People were inviting their neighbors to their food, their drink, and yes, their drugs. But the drugs weren’t as prevalent as I thought they would be, nor were they anywhere near as bad as the fishrag PJS made it out to be. People weren’t slinging pills and herb through the crowd with reckless abandon and returning to the tents for massive Roman orgies. Didn’t happen. And believe me, we LOOKED for the orgies.

Lest I forget, there was music. A lot of fucking good music. I saw several bands whose names I didn’t know, many of which I will never know, but the music was absolutely amazing. It’s kind of nice to see a band you have never heard. It puts you in the crowd as a clean slate, ready to form an opinion of a band based on the where their music sounds the best: coming from a stage in front of you, live. A lot of the bands on the camp stage and the second stage were amazing, but the highlights of the weekend were certainly Les Claypool, Umphrey’s McGee, and moe. I’m going to break the memories of these three into a separate entry, because I don’t want this one to become War and Peace-ish in length.

One thing I did want to mention was the kid that flipped out on the first evening, and then ended up kicking me in the face. This kid was smoking Wet, or tripping, or something. He ran up to a girl standing about 5-7 feet to my left and gave her a full-on headbutt. After he did this, a bigger guy (just a guy in the crowd, not security) came up behind him and put him in a choke hold. The kid wriggled around and kicked enough to get away, at which time he ran about 5 steps in front of me, and jumped onto the ground and began convulsing. Two BIG Samoan-looking security guards came out and tried to hold him down, but couldn’t. I threw my cigarette away and knelt on the kids feet to stop them from kicking. I then took my knees off and wrapped my hands around his ankles. When the security guards were ready to pick him up, the one sitting on the kid’s waist was going to grab around the ankles and carry the bottom half. When I asked him if he had the kid, he said yes. He didn’t. As soon as I let go, one of Mr. Wigglesworth feet swung up and hit me half on the cheek, half on the nose. While it hurt, I got lucky enough to avoid a nosebleed or a broken nose, so no harm, no foul. After they carried Mr W. back stage, I never saw him again. I’m guessing they asked him to leave.

Things I am sick of hearing about from the girls in my office:
1.) The menstrual cycle. This includes all discussion of sanitary products used specifically during “Aunt Flo’s visit.” (Yes, they do refer to it in this manner. I find it a bit appaling.)

2.) How bloated you are because you are premenstrual.

3.) How many Weight Watchers points EVERY FUCKING THING YOU EAT is. Seriously, does everyone in the office really give two fucks if a god damn Peanut Butter M and M is half a point? I sure as fuck don’t!

4.) What your granddaughter did after she had a margarita at her aunt’s house.

5.) The cute (yet incredibly pretentious and really quite rude) thing your daughter did/said/wrote last night.

6.) What you’re having for lunch. As a corollary to this, do not say “Pizza, huh?” when you walk into the lunch room and I am eating pizza. I know what it is, and you know what it is. I don’t see myself dressing a piece of veal up like a slice of pizza anytime soon. This also applies to the time when I walk in the front door in the morning. It’s pizza in the morning, it’s pizza at lunch. It’s not Cinderella’s pumpkin.

7.) Your Nazi Amway-ish candle/tupperware/jewelry party.

8.) The color of the fluid coming up from your sick relative’s lung.

9.) This is a personal favorite. If I say no thank you, I mean I DO NOT WANT TO BUY A CANDY BAR/MAGAZINE/BAG OF SOUP/PLEDGE CARD FOR YOUR CHILD’S FUNDRAISER. Showing me what everyone else got is not going to make me feel guilty enough to buy something. If I get hungry, I might buy a candy bar later. If you push me, I WILL be rude to you. Get over it.

Also, I do not want any emails that include the following things: Why men are stupid, kittens, scantily clad men, videos of cats doing kooky things (AKA things they do because they are fuzzy, smelly wastes of life), anything involving the war, Amber Alerts, jokes more than a paragraph long, chain letters for free money, stupid urban legends that are easily dispelled if you do 12 seconds of research, or home remedies for bug bites/the clap/pink eye.

That is all.