“Time to suck Today’s dick” – Pineapple Express

I very well might repeat that line every morning in the mirror for the rest of my life. I am on my last ounce of strength right now, I’m in Montreal for absolutely no good reason and have crippled myself with my exploits over the past week or so, Lollapalooza in Chicago’s Grant Park being the…fuck, I don’t even know, I have lost the ability to put words n’ shit together or function right, I am seriously considering rocking the Velcro shoes again because the concept of laces strains my brain so hard I forget to look both ways when I cross the street. What I thought was a simple hangover days ago has not subsided and I now believe that my temples are trying to pound out Morse code to tell me to simply lay down and die, which would really not bother me much because I recently saw Jonny Greenwood perform live (he plays in an underground rock outfit no one has heard of – Radiohead. They’re alright)

To describe them live is like trying to describe fluorescent lights to a blind person, or the sensation of lovemaking to a solitary gold fish. I just can’t do it. They transcended the sound on their albums, to think that they are capable of replicating songs of Kid A in front of people boggles the mind. As usual Rage Against the Machine inspired civil unrest and had to threaten to stop playing after too many skulls accumulated in front of the stage and fans were fighting for position on top. Girl Talk was a drug fueled bachelor party shot into space as usual and NIN rocked so fucking hard I almost made the effort to learn the titles and possibly listen to one of their songs when I got back. I also drank an astonishing amount of beer for cheap. This was made possible by a couple of boys in the beer tent who had devised a racket that involved me getting drunker for less money, organized crime is a work of art. You were only allowed to buy two beers at once so when my friend Mitch returned with six and proclaimed,

“Boys, we no longer buy our beer from the beer tents. We buy our beer from Shawn”

I simply bowed my head to my liver and sang it a lullaby. Thy will be done.

Festival life is like this all the time, it is the promised land but can really only sustain itself for a matter of days before collapsing and returning us all to the tormenting lives of structure and responsibility from whence we came. It is awesome and I will even encourage the deaf to go as well, even though you can’t hear the music every one treats everyone like family, family members who aren’t really related to you and are hot. A music festival looks like a refugee camp where all the good looking people were finally evacuated and dressed in next to nothing. Oh, and if you actually are deaf they’ve got you covered. Some bands, notably The Gutter Twins (personal favorite), had a woman hippie-swaying and hand jiving out the lyrics. So just absorb the reverb and watch her go, it’s amazing. I wouldn’t get too close to those speakers though, the bass can make your bowels drop sure as they can make the bodies drop.

I need to stop typing now because I can’t afford to exert my mind any further if I want to be able to manipulate a knife and fork for dinner. I am also going to the casino tonight – it will be by far my most Christian outing in weeks. Amen