(no subject)
Saturday afternoon, 12 PM, I met with a friend from work in the city named Brock to attend the metal mini-festival Against The Grain 3 at Fowler's. We entered at 12:30ish after eating hotdogs at the train station, which would be our only sustenance for the next twelve hours. We started drinking beers immediately as soon as the first band played. There were fourteen or so bands on the bill; highlights included Closed Casket, Terrorust, Double Dragon, Truth Corroded and Fuck ... I'm Dead. After each set we'd buy more drinks and go outside so I could smoke cigarettes (there were a group of kids who looked about twelve wearing Slayer and Pantera shirts smoking Camel's), and talk to people from bands that had just played; they all seemed to be on amphetamines of some description, and this made conversation amusing. At three we found some other friends named Pig and Charlotte and intermittently hung out with them. They seemed to disappear at will, and by the end of the day we had lost them for good to boys with long hair wearing Iron Maiden shirts. The singer from Five Star Prison Cell remarked between songs that he had noticed a lot of people wearing these shirts. "Twenty years ago," he said, "we'd call these cunts bogans. Now it's all fucking cool and shit. It makes me fucking sick." Hardcore also seemed to be passe. "Are there any straight-edger's out today?" the singer from A Red Dawn asked. No response. "Good, we fucking killed them all." Injuries were abundant. I witnessed a guy getting knocked out and trampled, another breaking his wrist, someone else leaping high into the air for an attempted stage dive and falling to the ground as everybody stepped out of the way ... The last band finished at twelve AM. Brock and I staggered to the nearest McDonald's and ate while quietly insulting people. We started the walk back to Enigma for the after-party but we were suffering from exhaustion and afflictions and decided to catch a taxi instead. I was in bed by one. An enjoyable day, and a relatively cheap one at that, spending just under a hundred dollars.