After another boiling-tent 7am morning followed by a long wait for the showers, we pack up the car, making the 30 minute trek two times to get everything loaded. Much more hot than the first day. Desert like, even. We drink lots of warmish water and head into the octagon to fight yet another cage match with the skin-raping sun. We lay in the shade tents and slept for a few hours, missing a bunch of bands in order to get the fuck out of the heat.
While sitting in the shade tent, we got a kick out of folding this fake dollar bill up and placing it out in the grass, watching people pick it up, look excited then realize theyâve been had. What assholes we are. I feel like a fucking fourth-grader.
We meet up with my bestest RA-days friend, Ms. Kleeb and start with Phoenix, which put on a silly show, followed by a pretty decent Minus the Bear set. Lots of unfortunate tattoos. We eat some overpriced food and then hit up Gnarls Barkley, who worked the crowd like a prison bitch.
Catching a few minutes of Seu George, Kim and I dip out to urinate and head over to Mogwai. They rocked shit up. Only two new songs, but their old stuff had a nice layer of Mr. Beast-era distortion over it. RAD. More terrible tattoos. The Go! Team followed. I didn't know about their live show, replacing the album-samples with a rambunctious female vocalist who worked the crowd so fiercely and danced so hard my I almost had a seizure. Good stuff.
There were trash-cans and recycle bins *everywhere,* but people just threw there shit whereever. Classy.
Tool ended the night, playing a flawless (as usual) set. A few new songs from their new album, which Iâm still kind of weirded out and debased about⦠They had some pretty crazy updated visuals and Mr. Maynardo was in fine asshole-form.
While playing âThe Pot,â a track off of their new album which was to be released the following day, you could hear the crowd singing along â shows how widespread this whole piracy has gotten. Maybe Tool fans are just extra rabid.
During Tool, there was a girl on what must have been excstacy grinding on her boyfriend directly in front of us. She looked like she was having fun. Her boyfriend didnât. Go figure.
Anyway, ending at 1am, we head to the car to hit the road. We're running on empty from a shitty night of sleep and have been going pretty hard since 7am. Taking over and hour to get a few miles to the freeway, we start driving. We make some shitty decisions in trying to get on to 99 -- the connecting highways are fucking confusing at 3:30pm.
Kim slaps my hand, I step out of the driving ring and take a nap. A bit later, we stop at an IHOP for an amazingly hilarious breakfast. All very sleep deprived, we couldnât stop belly-laughing the entire meal about the most banal shit â like the fact that Ian ordered JUEVOS RANCHEROS. See, not funny.
He also kept flashing his nipple through the hole in his shirt. Okay, thatâs kind of funny.
The rest of the trip was spent taking turns driving with Ms. Kim, passing through some kind of pretty California interstate. The strech of I-5 a few hours outside of Sac-town is actually sort of nice. They slept while I listened to Peeping Tom and got my groove on.
A long motherfucking time later, we roll into Ashland drop Zac and Een off. By 5pm Iâm on my way to my parentâs house with Kim in hand.
Shoot the shit with the parents, drop off their tent (Thanks!), clean up a bit, kiss Kim goodbye and Iâm on I-5 by 7.
The rest is a glazed-eye blur. I was so freaking tired, I kept pinching my leg to stay awake. For the next couple of days my inner thigh kind of resembled an abuse victim. Roll into Corvallis around 10, in bed by midnight to ârestâ for my midterm at 9am the following day.
Livinâ like a rock-star. For serious.
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