On September 21, 1993, Nirvana released the “In Utero” album, the long awaited follow up to “Nevermind” (“Incesticide” being a collection of old singles, outtakes and b-sides). Nirvana had been my favorite band since 1991, I never wavered on that like the other Pearl Jam and Soundgarden jerks I knew. My close friend had his mom take him to get the cassette, something I knew I wouldn’t be able to contrive due to my mom’s disdain for my interest. He let me borrow the tape for a little while, but I feverishly yearned to have a copy of my own.

One weeknight while my dad was out of town for work, my mom and my older sister were headed out somewhere for the evening, and I hatched a plan. My hometown of Aurora didn’t have anywhere where you could buy music, the closest option was the neighboring city of Solon. I not-so-subtly asked my mom what time they would be home, and I calculated that I could ride my bike to a store in Solon, buy the album, and make it back home before they got back.

Right after they left, I put on my Cleveland Browns jacket and began to pedal like hell. They had recently built a housing development that acted as a bit of a shortcut to Solon, something I had noticed the previous year when carpooling with my friend and his dad when we both went to summer school at the Solon High School. Something I didn’t count on was a light rainfall occurring, but it was now or never.

After turning the corner out of the development, I started down the main stretch towards my destination, Route 91. The rain was picking up a bit, and there didn’t seem to be a ton of street lights to help out. It’s probably in my mind, but I seem to recall semi-trucks and their horns going “BERRRRNNN!!!” at me while passing to my left in the pouring rain. I eventually got to market area where I went to Blockbuster Video* and got my grubby wet hands on the album. As soon as the deed was done, I got right back on the horse and headed back.

I got back in plenty of time, but I made the mistake of leaving my jacket out in our living room. My mom took one look at the wet, muddy splatter all over the back of my jacket and angrily demanded an explanation. I told her that I inexplicably decided to go out and ride my back around in the immediate neighborhood while she and my sister were out. “Oh, so THAT’S why you wanted to know when we were coming back,” she growled. In retrospect, while this was better than the truth, I’m not sure how normal it seems for someone to lie in wait for a parent to leave so they could maniacally ride their bike around in circles while it rains, but she bought it, and that’s the important thing.

Included here are pictures of the tape, as well as my route to Solon. In the past when I’ve told people this story, they often say “You rode your bike from where to WHERE?,” but if you look at the map it’s only around a half an hour. One short P.S. for the tape - as we were a church going family, I did attend Sunday School, and one Sunday morning when the teacher (or whatever) was out of the classroom, I put the tape in the player they had there just to be an obnoxious cool dude. During the outro of “Heart-Shaped Box,” the pastor’s daughter got up and angrily pressed stop on the player, which caused a little damage on the tape which can still be heard on it today.

*This didn’t seem to make sense, so I was wondering if my memory was failing me, but I looked it up and there was a time starting in 1992 where they would sell music, not sure how long that lasted.

I had a dream last night that there was a branch of the military called "Peach."

My older sister and I were moderately deprived of pop culture growing up. A major crossroad I remember occurred at her (probably 9th) birthday party at our house when she received Madonna's "Like a Virgin" LP as a gift from a friend. I knew there was no way it was staying in our house for long, so I stared at it in awe for as long as I could before its inevitable departure. It was taken to Kmart and traded in for a children's record.

Because of this deprivation, we often ended up being distant observers of culture as opposed to its participants. To this day, my sister has a tendency to imagine past scenarios as if they were real, generally gleaned from the bits and pieces of television we were allowed to watch. There was one instance where she claimed that my friends and I used to come into our house after playing football yelling "FOOOOOOD!!!," and raid our refrigerator. Although I would play sports with my neighborhood friends, our house wasn't a destination for snacking as we never had anything very good, so I can say with 100% certainty that this never happened.

Based on this, Mary Alice and I have gotten in the habit of saying "FOOOOOOD!!!" to each other, and below is an AI-generated image of "Football boys running into a house," and they look like Sloth from The Goonies.

When I was younger and would hear about the “Wild times of the 1960s,” I presumed the President could allow or disallow this sort of behavior, and I pictured John F. Kennedy chortling like a reluctant father and saying, “Hahaha, ok, you kids go ahead and have fun.”

If you grew up in Northeastern Ohio, you knew about the Chagrin Valley Roller Rink. It was the place to go for all your youthful 1980s romantic escapades, or just to hang out with friends. I didn't end up going there until long after I would hear the other kids talking about their good times had, so naturally I felt left out.

There was one day I was sitting with a group of kids and this girl was talking about the night before at the roller rink, and I chimed in with my own fabricated tale. She innocently remarked "I didn't see you there?," to which I triumphantly retorted "I was in the BACK with the TRANSFORMERS!," as if there was a section of the roller rink where there was a place to buy Transformers toys, or at the very least gather to play with them. The girl gave me a bewildered look, and then moved on with her life.

Mary Alice has heard this story many times, and has said that she pictures me sitting alone in an empty room of the roller rink with a deranged look on my face, mindlessly smacking the Transformers together and making a cheap plastic "Chik! Chik! Chik!" sound.

As a sensitive little kid, I was traumatized by the opening scene in the PG-rated James Bond movie "Live and Let Die" where a guy gets stabbed to death, and so I was under the impression that all movie ratings beyond 'G' were due to upsetting violence (as opposed to profanity, adult situations, etc).

So when "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" came out and I saw that it was rated PG-13, I wondered to myself what kind of violence the movie contained. In my mind, I pictured "Friend of Ferris" (Cameron) being like "Hey Ferris, I hear it's your day off!," and Ferris going "Yep!," and stabbing the friend.

I had a dream last night that I was part of a group that was intending to be the first people to watch a wrestling PPV underwater in a submarine. The event was a live broadcast of the “This Tuesday in Texas” event which aired on December 3, 1991, which included the ordered Hogan-Undertaker rematch by President Jack Tunnney.

We rode around on top of a bay trying to find a place to dive, but the water was too shallow. We gave up after a while and decided to drive the submarine on the street to try and find a place to watch the match. We drove through some grocery stores, but we only found people in the lobby staring at TVs with text that said you had to order the event to watch. Meanwhile, the main event was halfway through, and the Undertaker punched Hogan’s face which made a pile of goo land at referee Earl Henber’s feet, who for some reason was with us in the submarine instead of the ring.

Last night I had a dream that we were somewhere in Baltimore and I was trying to put up a sticker that looked like this on walls. I was going to put one up an outdoor restaurant in front of this group of guys, but I noticed them reading the sticker and thought they may try to beat me up.

I then went to a bathroom that had an enormously long line that went relatively quick, but I eventually got to a stall where I got to put up this sticker and also pee. I went to go wash my hands, but it was a sink that was on top of someone's dinner plate. Mike Tyson was there, and he told me where the water and soap came out. He tried to implore me to not get the soap and water in the person's dinner, but I couldn't help but splash on the plate. Mike Tyson remarked, "Looks like someone's gonna have some intwisting sides," and I left the go find Mary Alice, who was annoyed because we had dinner reservations at 6.

1988-1994

The house where I grew up in my hometown of Aurora bordered right on the city of Twinsburg, so much so that once you turned the corner on the street where I grew up, you had crossed over into the village of Reminderville, where (according to Wikipedia) 83% of the area is part Twinsburg City School District. When I was very young, I was not allowed to go into that area, which was divided by a marina which had a small beach and a playground at the end of our block, so I didn’t give it much thought for a while. I recall my older sister once making a remark about how the ice cream man was probably scared to come to our block because “Those kids would probably throw a bomb in his truck” if he chose to leave their neighborhood. I never thought about the kids that lived there being different from us, or even had a concept of who they might be.

One late summer day I was at the marina with my friend Kenny, and we were building a sand castle by the lake. We were minding our business when this gruff, portly boy began to cave in our sand castle with his feet. I yelled at him to stop, but he kept on doing it. As I started to rise to my feet to challenge him, he reared back and punched me in the face. I had never been punched in the face before, I was only in fourth grade, and this action seemed so adult. He hit me in the face a second time, and my glasses went flying off. At this age, I only knew how to do the “let’s try and maybe wrestle the other guy to the ground?” move, and so I tried that against him, but he seemed to get the better of me with that, too. I found out later this kid was only in second grade, but I think he was a little taller than me and definitely more beefy. 

After this pummeling, I walked home with Kenny crying and defeated, and I told my dad about the whole thing while blubbering through tears. My dad walked with us back to the marina to confront the kid, and made us both laugh by stomping and “making muscles” when we left. I’m not sure what exactly he would have done to resolve the issur, but by the time we made it back to the marina he had left. That Monday at school I told my friend Doug that my face was sore because this second grade boy punched me, and I really don’t know why I chose to offer that information. He didn’t seem to believe me, in a weird way. Kenny and I both saw the boy again at the marina a couple months later, and he had a pair of nunchucks that he was playing around with, hitting the playground equipment and almost daring Kenny and I to get hit with them. He bizarrely claimed that it couldn't hurt that much, because the nunchucks might as well be “made of ice.” 

I would see this same boy again at times over the next several years, and I always quietly wondered if he (or any of the Twinsburg other boys) were able to tell us apart or cared enough to remember us from one encounter to the next. There’s a season 6 episode of the Simpsons called “Lemon of Troy” where the boys of Springfield were engaged in a bitter battle with the boys of the bordering town, Shelbyville. The boys in Shelbyville (Twinsburg) are bigger, badder, dumber, and more homely than the boys in Springfield (Aurora), and I’ve always told Mary Alice that this is a mirror image of what it was like. In the still frame here, Bart has just triumphantly reveals to a Shelbyville boy (who is basically the Shelbyville version of him) among some other townies that he’s “Bart Simpson,” which draws blank stares from the group. It’s only after he tells them he’s from Springfield that they want to beat him up, and I always suspected the Twinsburg boys were the same kind of self-absorbed toughs who didn’t know or remember us from anyone else, they only knew to be physically aggressive once they realized we were from the other block up the hill.

One evening my family and I came home after being out all day and saw that the basketball hoop in our driveway was all bent and mangled. This was particularly upsetting to me, as I was really into playing basketball at the time, and had dreams of being the next Mark Price. A few days later my friend Louie told me that he and my friend Aaron had witnessed what happened from down the street; Aaron’s bedroom window had a view of my driveway, and he said that they both watched a boy he knew from Twinsburg (where he had once lived) named Justin hanging from/pulling on our hoop in an attempt to break it, along with a few other boys. I decided to overlook the fact that Louie and Aaron were bigger than the kids they were watching and might have thought to go stop it, because at least I had an ID on the culprits responsible. I had never even heard of this kid, but Louie and I were on the same baseball team, and lo and behold a short time later we played against a Twinsburg team that Justin was on. 

On the night of the game, I was playing second base in the field, and at one point I had an opportunity to face the kid while he was standing on the second base bag. I was still a little guy in the 8th grade at this point, but had suffered enough abuse in life that I was becoming a real hothead and wasn’t too worried about consequences. I said to Justin something to the effect of, “So, destroy any basketball hoops lately?” He looked at me with dead eyes and said “Yuuuup!” Then I followed with something like, “And you broke my basketball hoop?” He turned to me again and gave another “Yuuuup!” After the game, I hatched a plan - if you know anything about youth sports, at the end of each game they have the kids line up and high five each other while robotically saying “Good game, good game, good game…” When I passed Justin in the line, instead of high fiving him I gave him a shove. He stopped in his tracks and turned around looking confused, saying “Who you pushin’?!” I began to wonder if he knew what the hell I was even talking about when I had confronted him. It seemed par for the course for the Twinsburg boys, just to brainlessly act and react without any thought. The coach on their team bellowed something like “COME ON GUYS, NONE OF THAT!”, and I seem to recall the guys on my team being happy for me that I least got a shove in. 

I was still upset that Justin had gotten away with breaking something so important to me, so Louie hatched a plan where I would call his house and menace him. When I called, his mother answered the phone, and asked who was calling. I paused, and replied “Some kid.” She angrily demanded “Some kid WHO?,” and I blurted out “SOME KID WHO JUSTIN BROKE DOWN A BASKETBALL HOOP OF!” I then told her everything I knew he’d done, and she started yelling out to him for answers from the phone. I heard some murmured whimpering from him in the background, and she assured me she’d take care of it. Looking back, it absolutely reminds me of the part in The Christmas Story where Ralphie falsely tells his mother that Schwartz taught him the F-word, and then you hear Schwartz crying and getting smacked over the phone when Ralphie's mom calls Schwartz’s mom to tell on him.

They weren’t all bad times; One summer afternoon in around the same time period, the toughest boy in my grade at Aurora (who could have easily taken any one of their guys) was playing baseball with me and my friends at the marina, when a Twinsburg boy came by riding his skateboard, which prompted our version of Nelson the bully to yell out, “So what’s this kid gonna do, kick all of our asses?!” We all laughed confidently behind our fearless leader, as the kid passed without a word. It was a nice position to be in for once, because it felt like it was me and my friends who were always outnumbered and getting bullied by them. For example, there was a time when I was at the marina tossing around a football with my friends Scott and Bob, and we were greeted by five Twinsburg boys who asked us if we wanted to play a game. Instead of doing a four on four game, they insisted that the five of them play the three of us. After a brief time of getting obnoxiously mauled by them, Scott suggested the next time we have the ball we just take it and walk away without saying anything. Once we did, they started after us, calling us names. This one boy ran up to me to douse me with a full bottle of water, and he either missed me on purpose in order just to be threatening, or had terrible aim at point blank distance - I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter, because it was pretty typical of them to seem completely deranged.

You’d think eventually they’d have grown out of it, but they never seemed to. In the Summer of ‘94 I had purple/red-ish dyed hair à la that one era of Kurt Cobain, and one afternoon I was walking in the Twinsburg area with my friend Mikey, when we heard heckles coming from a nearby yard. They were coming from a boy I was familiar with, who I had watched grow up and go through different phases of his life. He had gone from being kind of a geeky glasses guy, then had an alternative rock look, and was now a tough guy wearing a gold necklace and a white v-neck undershirt. He was standing on his porch with two other giggling oafs. “Hey!” he called out to me, “Nice hair! I used to have hair like that, but I never went out in public!” I had remembered when his hair was like that, and wondered to myself why he'd chosen to have hair like that if he didn’t want it to be seen in public. I could also tell that, as usual, based on how he was addressing me that he had no idea who I was, despite my having seen him around my entire life. He yelled more and asked me “Who my fat ass friend was,” and since we were outnumbered and outmuscled, we had no choice but to keep walking.

Later that Fall, I was riding the school bus in the morning and the driver asked me if I knew a kid from Twinsburg named (using his initials only) named M.B. I knew the name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. She told me that he had been killed in a car accident the previous night a couple miles from my house. Louie was also on the same bus route, and when he got on the bus he confirmed that M.B. was the porch heckler. I couldn’t believe it, I had just seen him that Summer in my driver’s ed class, where once again, I don’t think he recognized me. When I got to school, I found Mikey smoking pot behind a tree and I told him what had happened to M.B., and he said something like “Sweet! That’s so awesome.” I honestly felt upset by the news; Unlike Mikey,  I had watched this guy grow up and now he was gone. I found out that he had been driving like a maniac with a passenger I knew (from Aurora, ironically) who was also a total dickhead, blew through a four way stop and got slammed into by an oncoming car on his side (passenger survived). Even though I felt rattled by what had happened, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a fitting end to the rivalry seeing that we were now on the verge of adulthood, and hopefully this would teach all those jerks a some kind of lesson about karma. (Never mind that I almost died in an accident months later). I know that sounds a little inhumane, but I was 16, and I’m certainly not using his full name in case anyone in his family ever Googles it.  I recall seeing a memorial plaque for him where it said something like “Sweet Loving Angel,” and I remember thinking that they couldn’t have known him that well.

Image courtesy lovelettertocolumbus.com

Show #50: July 22, 2006

Columbus

Andyman’s Treehouse

w/ Greenlawn Abbey

The Lindsay

Rosehips

I generally have a negative feeling when I think about this show, because I had the sense that people were getting tired of my shit, like "Haha, yeah we get it, TV show songs," like I was starting to get in the way. I distinctly remember an implication that my set tear down was taking too long, which sent me into a bit of a spiral and pretty much ruined my night. (Note that these were before the true days of EG being "us," so it could get especially lonely up there). But I suppose the upside to these moments is the realization that you need to regroup, come at things from a new direction if you want to continue. I feel like the second half of 2006 was a cold shower that descended into a total shitshow, but I'll get to more of that later. 

Whenever I hear people complain about the current harshness of "their scene," I tell them it's nothing compared to the mid-2000s in Columbus. Whoo-doggie, if you were there you had to develop thick skin real fast. That said, in a search to find any reference to this show online, I found a delightful website called Love Letter to Columbus, which reminds me of the happier times. I don't recognize the name of the person behind it or an exact date on the posts, but it references this show (Rosehips were a late add) and overall is charmingly Columbus-ey and a nice walk down memory lane with some familiar names, I highly recommend it.

Excited to announce that we have a salubrious and sudorific concert film that was created by our friend/filmmaker Dylan Mars Greenberg. As you can see by the title card, it was shot in Brooklyn, this past June 19th. It starts with a short interview of us, and then to the show. So check it out for a few or more, I'm sure you will adore and not find a bore, snore, or chore.

Mary Alice is leafing through old photos for reasons we’ll get to in due time, but we came across this one from 1997 of a man who we dubbed “the jerk” who was walking around Sea World with sunglasses and green suit when she visited my hometown for the first time.

This one photo does not do this guy justice for how weird he was acting, at one point culminating in his looking back to check out a woman who passed by him which caused him to walk face first into a bush. It was like we were watching a TV show, and to this day I don’t know how he could be such a miracle.

Show #49: July 16, 2006

Columbus

High Five

w/ Blue Eyed Gunslingers

The Moops

All the Day Holiday

We were invited to perform at this show as part of a “Sunday Showcase” or a residency of sorts that the Blue Eyed Gunslingers (or maybe the venue?) were doing. I can’t say for certain, but they for certain met us at an Andyman’s show. A band we would play with later called the Rosehips was also supposed to be on this bill, but I believe they dropped off that day because a member was sick. (I was the one who added them, so I recall getting the cancellation call. Remember calls?)

All the Day Holiday was a band of youngsters from Cincinnati, who I did a little research on and found out that they were signed to an “Artist Development” contract, which made me want to throw up. To their credit though, it looks like they made a “Breakout Band” list in Rolling Stone a few years later before going on an indefinite hiatus in 2010. (As time progresses we begin to experience the egos and seedy underbelly of the business, and I don’t want to be a dick about stuff, but I need to strike a balance here. So if anyone in that band ever wants to take a swing at me, my name is Ron and I run a venue called Carabar).

I was excited to see The Moops (of course named for the Seinfeld “Bubble Boy” episode) because I thought they would be like-minded based on their name, but not especially. I was trying to find a picture of their logo on a sticker because it was all over the city at the time. I can still see it clearly in my mind, it said “The Moops.”

I realized just now looking at our show list that this was the last show we ever did at the High Five. Memories are a little fuzzy, but I believe there may have been a management/policy change there that kept us away. I think they may have gotten into having people rent out the room for private events. Eventually they closed up shop and it became a joint called "Circus." One night I went with Mary Alice and our friend Tonya to do karaoke at Circus, and they wanted to charge us a cover just to get in. I was really drunk and mad, so I spat on their window. Mary Alice got really pissed at me, and I think that marked the end of our relationship with the building. If anyone who worked at Circus ever wants to take a swing at me, see above. 

I had a dream last night that I was on a quiz show with Barack Obama and Bill O’Reilly. They were to face off against each other to determine who knew more about politics, and I was to team up with O’Reilly. I wondered why I was invited to be there, because while I have a decent knowledge of politics, I should certainly not be on a quiz show about it. There was also cooking involved, and Obama was spilling sugar everywhere. He was casually swearing and wearing street clothes, joking that he didn’t have to worry about such things anymore.

Michelle Obama was the host of the show, and one of the questions was “What was my father’s name?,” and none of the contestants knew. Michelle had tears running down her face, saying that she had been married seven times, and I wondered how she had time for that. I was in the midst of admitting to everyone that I didn’t know we could use our phones to look up the answers, and then we switched locales to my old middle school.

I was talking to my teacher Mr. Miller about how even though I was a college graduate, I could never figure out how to finish high school, and I wasn’t going to worry anymore about going back. We decided to take a group picture with all the middle school students on the top of a hill, and I noticed a pair of my sunglasses was lying on the hill. I then accused a man and a woman who passed by behind us in a truck of stealing it from me. It turned out that the dealership had my truck all along.

Fall 1994

Solon, Ohio

After my Summer at Sea World, I'm not sure why I chose to pursue a job at the Solon Kmart (pictured here, 1978) other than for the kitsch value of it. Much like Sea World, I had spent a good portion of my youth there so it was familiar. When I was younger I'd often go shopping there with my mom, and around this period of my life I was successfully stealing cigarettes from the store while on those same (less frequent) shopping trips, so I knew they were trusting. Lastly, this girl at school I liked whose mom worked there approached me and told me she had heard I applied for a job, so it was all around in my best interest. 

I seem to recall it starting well enough, but they were on to me and my smirk pretty quick. I didn't set out to get fired in a few days, one thing just led to another. (Besides, my getting fired stories are always solid). I was assigned to be a cashier along with several other new young hires, and we started doing training, with the signature red vest and everything. We were asked to take turns and rotate with each other to train on the register, simulating employee and customer transactions. We were encouraged as the "employees" to compliment the purchases of the "customers" at the register, and to say things like "Hey, this is a nice (fill in the blank)." At one point this boy was playing the part of cashier, and softly muttered to whoever was playing the customer, "Nice shirt," and it was charmingly hilarious. Of course, that meant I had to up the stakes a little. When it came to my turn to be the customer, I made a finger gun point at the boy and shouted "THIS IS A STICK UP!!!," which elicited roars of laughter from the children and left the trainers unimpressed.

When it came to my first (and I believe final day) of actually being on the job, I worked at a register while being shadowed by one of the trainers. I remember it being a little rocky, because this was when people were still writing out checks, and they had to be called-in and/or stamped in one of those plastic check sliding deals. I remember a customer telling me with a smile "You're doing great, Pete!," which was the last good thing that happened there.

During the initial training, they had told the trainees that there was a method to collecting the cash from the register at the end of a shift, which involved putting it in a bag and securely storing it, and I thought I remembered that the bag was stored under the register that was being used. This is where the innocent version of me comes to the surface, because this is the type of thing that I still get easily confused by. If I'm shown something completely new, I need a little time before I can mentally grasp it, because I tend to either space out or panic and overthink things. Whatever I did with the bag at the end of my shift was wrong, and I guarantee you they thought I was plotting to steal the money.

At the end of the work day, I was called up into the supervisor lady's office, and she told me they were firing me. I was genuinely shocked, because I didn't think I did anything that bad. She told me that I didn't handle the money correctly, they didn't like my sticking up the register, and I think generally found me obnoxious. She gave me plastic bag of two work days worth of payment, and asked that I be on my way. I walked down the stairs from her office, and I felt that I had to retaliate in some manner. There was a paper employee schedule hanging off a binder attached to a wall, and I smacked it with my hand, knocking one piece of paper off of the binder. Within seconds, I heard the "BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!" sound of the supervisor running down the stairs, almost as if she was already expecting to have to further confront me. She yelled at me about what I had done, and I told her it was an accident and that I just bumped into the binder. She told me she was going to call security and have them escort me out, but I ended up being able to walk out on my own. She followed me the whole way, shouting that I was never to come back to the store again, and while I told my friends later I responded with "Fuck your fucking store!" or something, I think I just said "Whatever" and stormed out.

I had gotten dropped off there by my mom, so I took it upon myself to walk straight from Kmart, over the nearby railroad tracks, and down a hill to Burger King where two of my best friends worked to apply for a job. It was honestly where I should have gone in the first place, I'm not sure what the hesitation was about. I also don't recall how I explained to my mom that she was to now pick me up from Burger King. I worked there for a span of three years before I left for Hawaii.

One last Kmart note - I had unknowingly taken one of the red Kmart vests with me, and I was asked to return it to the store. I think at one point I had intended to, but I ended up throwing it out of the car window while driving. I looked back it in the rearview mirror, lying on the road as rain fell.

My flight out of Seattle is delayed, so I thought I’d take this time to review the Singles soundtrack song by song, as I listened to it most days I was here in the name of being festive. Please enjoy this visual of the dearly departed longbox.

1. “Would?” - Alice In Chains - Obviously one of the most kickass songs ever.

2. “Breath” - Pearl Jam - I feel that this is one of their better songs. For me, this band has always had the disadvantage of not being Nirvana, but I actually think the “Seattle sound” title is better suited to them, at least from a marketing perspective.

3. “Seasons” - Chris Cornell - I actually always preferred it when Chris Cornell sang lower, like a lot of the songs on Soundgarden’s “Superunknown” album. Other people disagree, but it’s honestly why I never liked Soundgarden, because it just sounds too much like 80’s metal to me.

4. “Dyslexic Heart” - Paul Westerberg - A lot of people shit on this era of Paul as it seems a million miles from The Replacements, but I associate both of his songs from the soundtrack so much with the movie that it doesn’t matter to me.

5. “The Battle of Evermore” - The Lovemongers - This band is essentially Heart, and they’re covering a Led Zeppelin song. I’m not really a fan of either band, but this song has a cool and mysterious feel to it.

6. “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” - Mother Love Bone - I don’t mean to speak ill of someone who died so young, but the people who thought Andrew Wood/MLB would be “it” were completely insane. Kurt was always going to lead the revolution. This band just sounds like a slightly artsier continuation of the hair metal that came before it, the kids would have never gone for it.

7. “Birth Ritual” - Soundgarden - You know how I feel about Soundgarden, and the chorus doesn’t sound like he’s saying “Ritual,” it sounds like he’s trying to say “Situation” but stops at “Situa.”

8. “State of Love and Trust” - Pearl Jam - Another banger, quite frankly. And it always makes me think of the part in the movie where Kyra Sedgwick finds out that exchange student guy is a dirty dog.

9. “Overblown” - Mudhoney - Before Nirvana retroactively bankrolled Sub Pop, they were counting on Mudhoney’s “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge” to be their salvation. Get real, Jon and Bruce.

10. “Waiting For Somebody” - Paul Westerberg - If you can’t manage to enjoy this song during the opening credits, there’s no hope for you.

11. “May This Be Love” - The Jimi Hendrix Experience - I always liked this song despite never having explored Jimi Hendrix in any serious manner.

12. “Nearly Lost You” - Screaming Trees - Hell yeah buddy.

13. “Drown” - Smashing Pumpkins - This band has no business being on this soundtrack and was likely included because Nirvana declined. Billy Corgan is a fartface.

Overall, I give the soundtrack a rating of 103.

I had a dream last night that we were at this enormous house warming party for a couple, and people we knew had even flown in for it. There was one room where people were doing karaoke, another room where people were playing Twister, and a group of people outside in a pool.

The booze was flowing like crazy, people were already passed out early. I got up to sing “Interstate Love Song,” but the speed of the song and the words on the screen were all off. I went in to the Twister room to meet someone I knew had flown in but I had never met before, and she was about one foot tall. She introduced me to her boyfriend, who was around the same height.

We decided to leave after just having a few drinks, and the next morning a newspaper ran a story about the party, and the headline read “Two people killed, good.”

Summer 1994
Aurora, Ohio

I remember it all starting with my dad growling at me, "We expect you to get a job this Summer," as if I wasn't already looking forward to finally having money of my own. I believe my first stop was to apply at McDonald's, the very same one that had built just a few years earlier by a vague process where the townsfolk were advised to "Put a yellow ribbon on your mailbox if you want a McDonald's in town." It may or may not have already been a done deal until my initial interview. I sat down at a booth and interviewed with this girl who told me that boys had to make sure their hair was cut above their ears. I told her it wasn't gonna happen.

I had made a point to recently become a freak, a grunge dude, a punk rocker, an "alternative guy," or whatever mixture of weirdo label we could never really collectively decide on in the early 90's. Kurt Cobain had just died a couple months prior, and I was already in the process of growing my hair like his, come hell or high water. She laughed and said something along the lines of "I know it's kind of taboo to ask," and I still don't really know what she meant by that. She also inquired if "I was in a band or something?," and I shyly told her yes, because in my mind going to my friend's house and randomly wailing on an electric guitar through a tiny amp meant I was in a band.

I don't recall where else I applied if anywhere, and I think I might have gotten the tip about a Sea World mass hiring from somewhere, so I ended up in some building filling out an application alongside a bunch of other kids. (This is where I pause and let you soak in the fact that I grew up right behind a Sea World. I suppose it was always my destiny to work there; we went there countless times when I was growing up, and on Summer nights would often perch ourselves by the window and watch their nightly fireworks display over the lake. And get this, we also had an amusement park called Geauga Lake right up the road from that. It's one of those times where I have to lament the fact that growing up was so difficult, because on paper this all sounds pretty magical).

I do recall when hired that they also had a "boys cut their hair" policy, but I thought the hell with it, I'll just take the job and then refuse if anyone ever asked. I figured if worse came to worse, I could tuck it away in the crummy Sea World trucker hat we were given to wear. I was officially hired as a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant called Mama Rosa's, but they weren't going to open until a couple weeks into the season, so I was assigned odd jobs around the park until then. The first job I was given was to prepare food in their employee commissary. I made friends with this boy I was working next to, and since I had recently decided I was now a smoker, I asked him for a cigarette. I learned a valuable lesson that day that if you put a cigarette in your pants pocket, it will break.

The next job I was given was scooping ice cream, which was extremely hard work. This was before the days where they had those heated spoons to assist with scooping, and digging into the ice cream was like trying to penetrate hardened cement. I honestly wasn't strong enough to consistently create sizeable scoops for the cones, so a lot of people got screwed over. Time seemed to move at a blindingly fast rate, and I ended up with a lot of bruising on my arms. I do remember a mom telling her kid to "Tell the guy what you want," referring to me, and that was the first time I'd of ever been referred to like that, and it was pretty cool.  

Once my job at Mama Rosa's began, I discovered I would be washing dishes alongside a couple of guys I knew from school, Chris H. (who I knew especially) and Chris G., who was a grade behind me. There was also a young looking and stout boy named Eddie, some additional auxiliary characters I'll skip over, and Bill, our 18-year old supervisor (for more on Bill, click here). I shortly realized after starting that this job was very hard work, and time moved very slow. The dishes would be bussed from the tables in the dining room, then given to us to clean in a steamy back room. First we'd rinse the dishes with a spray valve, pile them onto a rack, then send them on track through this large industrial washer. Once the dishes came out the other end, they were blazing fucking hot, and I took to eventually wearing rubber gloves to handle them. Bill had worked there three Summers already, and had somewhat proudly declared to all of us that in that time he had lost some feeling in the tips of fingers from handling the hot dishes, and I wanted no part of that.

In addition to the main dishwashing area, we also had "pots and pans" handwashing duty, where if one was assigned to they disappeared for hours at a time. I also was introduced to the concept of a "wet dry vacuum," which smelled terrible. I would use it to clean the floor when I was on closing shift, sometimes until 12 or 1 AM. I realized long after the fact that I would often be working an illegal shift for a 16-year old, often more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week. One day I worked a 12 hour shift, noon to midnight. They asked a lot for $4.65 an hour.

I got into the habit of singing loudly while I worked out of sheer boredom. Word got out that I could sing, and this dopey kind of tough guy waiter asked me to demonstrate for him. I sang a few bars of Teenage Fanclub's "Mad Dog 20/20" while he stood looking at me, and when I was done turned to someone and said "Can he sing?" in a manner indicating that I hadn't just sung in front of his face. We eventually managed to get a CD player back there, and Chris H. brought in The Crow soundtrack. I found myself singing with great expression Nine Inch Nails' cover of "Dead Souls" by Joy Division out loud after just one listen, which Chris H. pointed out was a bit odd. I agreed that it felt awkward, and wondered to myself how many times does one need to hear a song before they can rightfully sing it out loud? 

Chris G. would consistently crack me up. He was so strangely funny for a 16-year old, and would make these bizarre quips throughout the day. It's not like he was an underdog either, he was a good looking guy and a great soccer player, but he also wasn't the upper crust of popular. He would obsess over Julio Iglesias, and would randomly ask the waitresses if they liked Scott Baio. I can honestly say this was a precursor to the concept of "Sitcom-Core," because one day we found ourselves laughing hysterically while both asking the waitresses "Would you let Charles be in Charge of you?" (to which one enthusiastically replied "OH yeah.") One night recently Mary Alice and I had both had a few, and it suddenly became the most important thing in the world to try and locate Chris G. We found a Facebook profile that could be a possibility, and so I messaged this person, but to this date the message has not been viewed. I will make an addendum to this story if this ever changes.

Despite the long hours we all put in, it was amazing that we got anything done. We'd fuck off for what seemed like hours at a time. We naturally would spray each other with the sink valve when given an opportunity, and eventually it broke from all of our abuse. We invented the "glove bomb," which involved filling a rubber glove with dish soap and throwing it at someone. Sometimes the waiters would steal food from the kitchen and bring it in this secret utility room that was behind ours, and eventually we started doing it too. At one point I just said fuck it, and started stealing beers from the restaurant cooler in broad daylight. I remember standing near the front of the secret room downing a beer while a waiter walked past me laughing. I was a pretty skinny kid back then, so quickly drinking two bottles of beer got me drunk for the very first time.

The debauchery didn't end at work. I went to my first rock concert that Summer, and I had to lie to my parents to get there. I told them I had the day off from work, and was going to the aforementioned Geauga Lake with a friend that day. There was a comedy of errors that made my lies fall apart. First, they had said when we started at Sea World that if we ever felt like "We needed a day to ourselves," or something generic along those lines, that we could take the day off. When I called in to the restaurant that morning, I told the girl who answered "Um, I need, I feel like need to take a day," and she interrupted me and said "You're sick?," and I said yes, and she laughed and said "Sounds good." Whoever I spoke to didn't tell my supervisors until much later that day, so they called my house leaving messages asking where I was, which my parents heard. Second, a person who was supposed to be a part of the lying cover up made the error of calling my house and said that they were my friend who my parents had just seen with me, and when confronted he hung up on them.

The lineup for the show included L7, Violent Femmes, Candlebox, Material Issue, Sons Of Elvis, Gigolo Aunts, Machines Of Loving Grace, The Judybats, The Clarks, and Hot Tin Roof (possibly more, but that's all the info I'm seeing). I was skinny and small enough to easily be passed around, so I'd stand outside the mosh pits (which seems absurd considering most of the bands listed) and give bigger guys the thumbs up, like "pick me up and pass me around the place," which they gladly did. I ran into some people from work there, including a couple of cute waitresses who were high or drunk or something, because they kept asking me if I was 18, and I stupidly said I wasn't. They asked me to headbang and I sheepishly obliged, and they were like "WOOOO!" I later found out that the singer of Candlebox (who was headlining and my friends and I made a point to miss) was trying to hook up with one of the waitresses and invited her to do coke with them backstage (she declined), and when I heard that I was so scandalized, like I knew a sinister dark secret about this famous band.

During Machines Of Loving Grace the sky opened up and a huge downpour began, and my friends and I took shelter in various tents at the fairground (One of my favorite stories/memories from one of tents is documented here). After a significant delay, they started up the music again, and we all ended up soaked head to toe in mud. We were exhausted and decided we'd had enough, and left during Violent Femmes. I knew I needed to somehow explain to my parents how I ended up covered with mud, and I figured I would tell them we someone had a mud fight at the amusement park. When I got home, my parents already knew everything, and were quite upset with me. For what it's worth, I did hear later that my mom called the mom of my "alibi" friend (who was perfectly ok with him going to the concert), and started an angry rant when she found out what was happening, to which my friend's mom told her "Well, maybe if you loosened up your rules a little, he wouldn't rebel as much," which amazingly got through to her. The next day at work, one of my supervisors approached me and asked "Are you feeling better?," and in the middle of my reply laughed and said "YEAH, RIGHT, how was the concert?" 

Again I say, the debauchery didn't end at work. One of the restaurant managers threw a party at their house, with the caveat that "the 16-year olds couldn't drink" because she had thrown a party the previous Summer where the 16-year old employees had gotten busted by their parents. We badgered and pleaded with her until she eventually gave in, declaring "Ok FINE, the 16 year olds can drink, just DON'T GET CAUGHT!" I played pool at the party while smoking and wearing a Nirvana t-shirt; I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I looked so cool. I think I had three beers plus some sips of Zima, and I was pretty sauced. Someone put on heavy music and this girl started a "mosh pit," and sent me drunkenly over a couch. I got a ride home along with Bill from another girl, who was absurdly lecturing me about my getting drunk, saying "What are you going to do, have Bill carry you home the rest of your life?" I got home, and somehow did not get caught.

As the Summer wound down, I determined that despite this time of reckless fun I would not be returning next year. The job didn't pay a whole lot, and was pretty backbreaking work. I started to abuse the luxury of my not returning along with some other employees who did not plan to return, like taking excess or multiple breaks to the commissary (where I have a specific memory of hearing on the TV that investigators had found a "bloody glove" at OJ Simpson's house). On one occasion, one of the managers asked me where I had been after taking a second break, then immediately followed before I could answer "You don't care, do you," then turned away. That one stuck with me. I didn't want to be a jerk and make people sad, I just found it funny to suddenly be able run amuck at the park. I quit one week before the end of Summer because I wanted some time for myself. During that week, I went back to Sea World as a visitor, and walked in to the employee area in street clothes just to be obnoxious. I was told amidst some laughter that I couldn't be back there, and that was that.

There's so much more I could say, but probably not enough room on the internet to say it. I left some things out from this time because they're a little too painful, like getting in way more trouble than I mention here, involving the police and such. But since I put that stuff aside, all this really made me happy to revisit. I feel very lucky to be able to retell these tales. Sea World is now long gone, and no I didn't see Blackfish, I don't need to be reminded that keeping a killer whale captive was weird and wrong. Besides, we were just washing dishes. I hope one of my old co-workers stumbles across this one day. Long live the Mama Rosa's dishwashing crew of '94.

On September 21, 1993, Nirvana released the “In Utero” album, the long awaited follow up to “Nevermind” (“Incesticide” being a collection of old singles, outtakes and b-sides). Nirvana had been my favorite band since 1991, I never wavered on that like the other Pearl Jam and Soundgarden jerks I knew. My close friend had his mom take him to get the cassette, something I knew I wouldn’t be able to contrive due to my mom’s disdain for my interest. He let me borrow the tape for a little while, but I feverishly yearned to have a copy of my own.

One weeknight while my dad was out of town for work, my mom and my older sister were headed out somewhere for the evening, and I hatched a plan. My hometown of Aurora didn’t have anywhere where you could buy music, the closest option was the neighboring city of Solon. I not-so-subtly asked my mom what time they would be home, and I calculated that I could ride my bike to a store in Solon, buy the album, and make it back home before they got back.

Right after they left, I put on my Cleveland Browns jacket and began to pedal like hell. They had recently built a housing development that acted as a bit of a shortcut to Solon, something I had noticed the previous year when carpooling with my friend and his dad when we both went to summer school at the Solon High School. Something I didn’t count on was a light rainfall occurring, but it was now or never.

After turning the corner out of the development, I started down the main stretch towards my destination, Route 91. The rain was picking up a bit, and there didn’t seem to be a ton of street lights to help out. It’s probably in my mind, but I seem to recall semi-trucks and their horns going “BERRRRNNN!!!” at me while passing to my left in the pouring rain. I eventually got to market area where I went to Blockbuster Video* and got my grubby wet hands on the album. As soon as the deed was done, I got right back on the horse and headed back.

I got back in plenty of time, but I made the mistake of leaving my jacket out in our living room. My mom took one look at the wet, muddy splatter all over the back of my jacket and angrily demanded an explanation. I told her that I inexplicably decided to go out and ride my back around in the immediate neighborhood while she and my sister were out. “Oh, so THAT’S why you wanted to know when we were coming back,” she growled. In retrospect, while this was better than the truth, I’m not sure how normal it seems for someone to lie in wait for a parent to leave so they could maniacally ride their bike around in circles while it rains, but she bought it, and that’s the important thing.

Included here are pictures of the tape, as well as my route to Solon. In the past when I’ve told people this story, they often say “You rode your bike from where to WHERE?,” but if you look at the map it’s only around a half an hour. One short P.S. for the tape - as we were a church going family, I did attend Sunday School, and one Sunday morning when the teacher (or whatever) was out of the classroom, I put the tape in the player they had there just to be an obnoxious cool dude. During the outro of “Heart-Shaped Box,” the pastor’s daughter got up and angrily pressed stop on the player, which caused a little damage on the tape which can still be heard on it today.

*This didn’t seem to make sense, so I was wondering if my memory was failing me, but I looked it up and there was a time starting in 1992 where they would sell music, not sure how long that lasted.

I had a dream last night that there was a branch of the military called "Peach."

My older sister and I were moderately deprived of pop culture growing up. A major crossroad I remember occurred at her (probably 9th) birthday party at our house when she received Madonna's "Like a Virgin" LP as a gift from a friend. I knew there was no way it was staying in our house for long, so I stared at it in awe for as long as I could before its inevitable departure. It was taken to Kmart and traded in for a children's record.

Because of this deprivation, we often ended up being distant observers of culture as opposed to its participants. To this day, my sister has a tendency to imagine past scenarios as if they were real, generally gleaned from the bits and pieces of television we were allowed to watch. There was one instance where she claimed that my friends and I used to come into our house after playing football yelling "FOOOOOOD!!!," and raid our refrigerator. Although I would play sports with my neighborhood friends, our house wasn't a destination for snacking as we never had anything very good, so I can say with 100% certainty that this never happened.

Based on this, Mary Alice and I have gotten in the habit of saying "FOOOOOOD!!!" to each other, and below is an AI-generated image of "Football boys running into a house," and they look like Sloth from The Goonies.

When I was younger and would hear about the “Wild times of the 1960s,” I presumed the President could allow or disallow this sort of behavior, and I pictured John F. Kennedy chortling like a reluctant father and saying, “Hahaha, ok, you kids go ahead and have fun.”

If you grew up in Northeastern Ohio, you knew about the Chagrin Valley Roller Rink. It was the place to go for all your youthful 1980s romantic escapades, or just to hang out with friends. I didn't end up going there until long after I would hear the other kids talking about their good times had, so naturally I felt left out.

There was one day I was sitting with a group of kids and this girl was talking about the night before at the roller rink, and I chimed in with my own fabricated tale. She innocently remarked "I didn't see you there?," to which I triumphantly retorted "I was in the BACK with the TRANSFORMERS!," as if there was a section of the roller rink where there was a place to buy Transformers toys, or at the very least gather to play with them. The girl gave me a bewildered look, and then moved on with her life.

Mary Alice has heard this story many times, and has said that she pictures me sitting alone in an empty room of the roller rink with a deranged look on my face, mindlessly smacking the Transformers together and making a cheap plastic "Chik! Chik! Chik!" sound.

As a sensitive little kid, I was traumatized by the opening scene in the PG-rated James Bond movie "Live and Let Die" where a guy gets stabbed to death, and so I was under the impression that all movie ratings beyond 'G' were due to upsetting violence (as opposed to profanity, adult situations, etc).

So when "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" came out and I saw that it was rated PG-13, I wondered to myself what kind of violence the movie contained. In my mind, I pictured "Friend of Ferris" (Cameron) being like "Hey Ferris, I hear it's your day off!," and Ferris going "Yep!," and stabbing the friend.

I had a dream last night that I was part of a group that was intending to be the first people to watch a wrestling PPV underwater in a submarine. The event was a live broadcast of the “This Tuesday in Texas” event which aired on December 3, 1991, which included the ordered Hogan-Undertaker rematch by President Jack Tunnney.

We rode around on top of a bay trying to find a place to dive, but the water was too shallow. We gave up after a while and decided to drive the submarine on the street to try and find a place to watch the match. We drove through some grocery stores, but we only found people in the lobby staring at TVs with text that said you had to order the event to watch. Meanwhile, the main event was halfway through, and the Undertaker punched Hogan’s face which made a pile of goo land at referee Earl Henber’s feet, who for some reason was with us in the submarine instead of the ring.

Last night I had a dream that we were somewhere in Baltimore and I was trying to put up a sticker that looked like this on walls. I was going to put one up an outdoor restaurant in front of this group of guys, but I noticed them reading the sticker and thought they may try to beat me up.

I then went to a bathroom that had an enormously long line that went relatively quick, but I eventually got to a stall where I got to put up this sticker and also pee. I went to go wash my hands, but it was a sink that was on top of someone's dinner plate. Mike Tyson was there, and he told me where the water and soap came out. He tried to implore me to not get the soap and water in the person's dinner, but I couldn't help but splash on the plate. Mike Tyson remarked, "Looks like someone's gonna have some intwisting sides," and I left the go find Mary Alice, who was annoyed because we had dinner reservations at 6.

Scrooged b/w Frozen Danny (2013; 10 year anniversary remaster)

A Christmas miracle from The Electric Grandmother!

Brand new single "Scrooged" about the 1988 holiday cinema classic starring Bill Murray. B-side is the remastered version of the EG Christmas classic "Frozen Danny," about the episode of Full House where they get stranded in an airport on Christmas. Free download of course, we don't want your suck ass money, unless you're offering.

The album art is a combination of two AI-images, thank you to Lydia Glass for help with the combining. (This isn't an endorsement of using AI for album art, it's just a single and we were rushing so who cares. Looks pretty neat though). Mastered by the amazing TJ Lipple.

Growing up I didn't have a ton of toys because my mom thought having less stuff meant we were morally better than our next door neighbors, which why I was delighted the one Christmas my Aunt bought me a Transformer, Mirage of the Autobots. I couldn't have had it more than a week when my friend Gavin broke it in half while trying to transform it. I accused him of breaking it by being too careless with it, which he of course he denied as a future professional Tennis player (seriously, he has a Wikipedia page, I had no idea).

My dad offered that he could glue it back together, but only as one version - the transformed car, or the transformed guy. I chose the transformed guy, because I was always more into their personalities. The toy itself is I'm sure long gone, but I pulled this picture from Ebay, because the back of the legs is what I remember, but they got glued backwards I'm just now realizing after all these years. He was like President Skroob in Spaceballs after Snotty beamed him down. I had to fight for every Transformer after the fact, because my mom insisted "they broke." Thanks a lot, Mr. Tennis Ball.

Show #48: June 24, 2006

COMFEST 2006

Columbus

Goodale Park

The Off-Ramp Stage (11:15 AM)

According to Wikipedia, “ComFest is a free, non-corporate, music and arts annual festival currently held each June at Goodale Park in the Victorian Village area of Columbus, Ohio,” so if you don’t know, now you know. When we first started doing shows, I never pictured Electric Grandmother as being a Comfest act; I didn’t think our brand of wackiness would fit in very well, but mostly that we used visual projection that either needed to be indoors or in darkness, and night time slots at this outdoor festival were hard to come by. But people kept encouraging me to apply, which I eventually did, figuring I’d shoot first and ask questions later. I remember rationalizing out loud one night at the Treehouse that the thoroughly wacky Gil Mantera’s Party Dream had performed at Comfest (“Yeah, but they suck!” - Quinn), and people kept encouraging me to apply, so I eventually did, figuring I’d shoot first and ask questions later.

Lo and behold, eventually came the email informing that EG had been accepted for the festival. A committee member named Mark Fisher had seen one of our shows and dug it, especially our song “Sick Little Boy in Scotland,” which is about a letter writing campaign hoax that I was unwittingly a part of in second grade. Our buddy/committee member Ryan Jones, the manager for The Lab Rats who were on the verge of exploding (and who were EG fans), put us on the cool band “Off Ramp Stage” as openers on the same day The Lab Rats would be closing (sweet hookup dude), with the idea of us being like “Saturday Morning Cartoons” for the attendees, which was pretty neat.

The preparation for the show was pretty taxing for Mary Alice, as she was trying to format the visuals for our show onto a video iPod, which we planned to run through a television that we were going to prop up on the stage. She spent an entire day doing this only to find out that the iPod jack was fucked up and wouldn’t connect properly to the TV, and I thought she was going to lose it and beat me into oblivion (remember that EG is still mostly a solo project at this point, and these are all thankless tasks). It then dawned on us that we could just use a DVD player to do the same thing, and I tried to calm her rage by noting that at least all her work had led us to a solution, but it didn’t help.

I was skeptical about anyone coming out to see us at 11:15 AM, but I guess I didn’t know Comfest too well, because people were there. I don’t recall if I was able to get a famous Comfest beer (see above cup) this early, but I think I might have. We performed with the TV, some traffic cones, our bubble machine, and rocked out in the morning heat to a smallish but solid crowd. We got good feedback, then probably had a funnel cake.

Actually, we probably went home after that, because I had signed up to volunteer later as part of a “quid pro quo” (just kidding, sort of) for performing, and would have wanted to shower and change. Mary Alice had gotten a pretty bad cold, and was content to stay at home the rest of the day to watch episodes of Lost on iTunes. I'm not sure when exactly I came back to the festival grounds, but I was certain to get my beer on before my volunteer shifts began. I also don’t entirely remember what I did as far as “volunteering” went, but I imagine I was pretty ineffective at doing it. I do recall working at the Gazebo stage in the evening trying to set up equipment and sort of stumbling around, and this lady was like “Ok Pete, you’ve had enough beer,” so I guess she was in charge? As the night fell, I lamented to this older volunteer guy that I wasn’t going to be able to see The Lab Rats at the Off-Ramp Stage, and he was like “Just go!” I explained to him that I couldn’t because I was still doing a volunteer shift. He laughed at me and said, “Man, this is Comfest. Do you think someone is back there writing down your name that you skipped out on your shift? Just go.” With that, I bolted off through the darkness in drunken glee towards the writing sea of humanity watching the band. I’d estimate there were at least 500 people spilling out of the tent, people crowd surfing, total topless chaos.

Mary Alice came to pick me up around the time they were finishing their set, and she had begun to feel much worse by then. She was in no mood for my merriment, and nearly killed me when I asked if she wanted to after-party at Andyman’s.

A few days later I got an email thanking me for my volunteering, so I guess they forgot to write my name down.

Mary Alice: I definitely had a funnel cake for breakfast that morning but it was so hot in that tent and I just remember feeling sticky and miserable the whole time.

Now I will reveal something I’ve never told another soul: my mom passed away the previous December and we inherited her fancy little laptop, which we used for shows for several years hence. I hadn’t signed out of her iTunes account and at the time the most current season of Lost was only available to purchase and as we were both still in school at the time, I didn’t have $40 to spend, so I used my mom’s still active iTunes account to buy it. I can reveal this because I would NEVER do this now (not just because our financial situation has changed but also because I’m a lot less depressed and Machiavellian than I was at the time) AND I had to miss all of the fun because I had bronchitis but I do feel that this is still one of the worst things I’ve ever done.

Finally, I hate that I come off as such a grumpy asshole in this story but cannot deny that every word is 100% true. It was—a very different time.

I still drink water from my Comfest cups every day.

Show #47: June 10, 2006

Graduation Party Show

Columbus

Andyman’s Treehouse

w/ Southeast Engine

Paper Airplane

This image here is not the flyer from that show, it’s a crummy approximation that I did just now, the real one is lost in time and outer space. The original that Mary Alice did used that sepia-toned version of the Belushi poster as the background, but it was a more robust presentation. I recall it prompted someone on a message board to slyly reply, “What do you mean ‘again’?” I booked the show in advance because I thought it would be a hoot, but I had not decided on who to contact for support when I got this odd message on MySpace. This guy named Ryan wrote me something along the lines of “I see you have reserved the night of June 10th at Andyman’s for yourself. Ha ha, well played sir. But perhaps you will rue the day for this dastardly deed, etc…,” something weird like that. He was in a band called Paper Airplane, and was interested in booking the same night for himself and the band Southeast Engine, so I figured what the heck.

And yeah, this show was in honor of my receiving my undergraduate degree from Ohio State. My parents were coming into town the next day for the actual ceremony, so we figured we’d have a huge kegger the night before. “But I thought you dropped out of high school?,” I hear you yelling. It’s true, but it’s amazing what getting your GED and completing two years of community college can lead to. It’s kind of the story of my life; I take the long way in. We decorated the Treehouse in a bunch of generic Graduation Party motifs, stuff like streamers and cardboard cut-outs of mortarboards and signs that said things like “You did it!” We got a bedsheet so that we could make a toga for me to perform in, and let me just say, don’t ever try to perform in a toga. More on that soon.

Southeast Engine went up first, and I recall the singer at one point looking around the room and saying “Is this someone’s graduation party?” After Paper Airplane performed, we began to set up, and I realized I was missing an important adapter. I asked on the mic to blank stares if anyone had “An ⅛ plug to anything at all,” and then we made that painful and somewhat familiar decision to head the short distance back to our place to get what we needed. When we returned the crowd was miraculously still in the back area where the once mighty tree penetrated the roof, but we had to work quickly to keep them there. We assembled my toga, which lasted about three songs before I thought I was going to die of heat stroke. Through gasps I begged our friend Shaun to go into the back and grab my t-shirt so I could change back into it. Maybe some other people can pull that sort of thing off, but holy shit. I’m not one to normally ditch a gimmick mid-show, but it felt like my body was engulfed in flames.

As the night wore on, the somewhat unfamiliar crowd dissipated, but I remember one dude who was steadfast in enjoying the show, doubling over in laughter. It didn’t make the whole thing worthwhile, but I remember we became buds with that guy for a little while. It was actually one of those gigs that made me want to quit, which seemed to be happening more and more around this time. But I pulled myself together and graduated the next day at the Horseshoe, while guest speaker John McCain made timely jokes about students joining Facebook.