Travels

Aug 19, 2006 14:48

So... It's Saturday. Yay, lazy Saturday. I guess not much has happened since the last time I posted... Well, except that I went to see THE MOST AMAZING MOVIE EVER. For those of you that haven't seen Snakes on a Plane, do so. Now. Right now. Immediately. I'm not joking. Samuel L. Jackson is badassery incarnate. And any movie that features the line "I am getting tired of these motherf**king snakes on this motherf**king plane!" ::shoots stuff:: is aces in my book.

Additionally, I went to the Oriental Institute on Friday, which isn't usually the way of things, but they wanted me to start on my other job there - namely, standing at a copier for an hour and a half scanning handwritten notes to

oh, God, Matthias just walked in in a skintight shirt. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Right. Scanning handwritten notes (for the Demotic Dictionary Project) to the network. It's about as exciting as watching paint dry. But hey, I'm getting to work closely with people who are tops in the field, so it has its advantages. I had a chat with Foy about how cool it is to be able to say I contributed to the project. He seemed to know the feeling. Foy helps Francois on the project, doing I'm not really sure what, but he's young and cute and very nice. So I don't mind getting to work with him. :-P

Anyway, I promised you guys I'd tell you about my trip to New Jersey. I left Houston on Thursday, August 3 for Chicago - we did it all by round trip to make life easier. So I flew back to Chicago, and sat around waiting... and waiting... for my flight to Jersey. Apparently there was bad weather in Newark, and flights were backed up. So my flight got delayed by an hour, and then by another half hour, but then ended up leaving earlier than expected. Luckily, I've managed to train myself to fall asleep immediately on planes, which is good because I'm impatient and get motion sick, so flying is not my favorite thing. So I crashed out on the flight, and awoke when the tires hit tarmac. The only problem arises when I hear the stewardess saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Baltimore..." WTF? Turns out we had circled Newark for over an hour, and had to touch down in Baltimore to refuel. That took about 45 minutes, and then we were back in the air and circling Newark for another 30 minutes. Finally, I landed, a good solid 4 hours late or something. Matthias' mom, his aunt Ann, and his littlest brother Willy were there to pick me up. On the way back, we called Ted (his middle brother), Anton (Ted's best friend and a member of the band), and Matthias' dad to come meet us at Chili's for dinner. We went by Ann's house to drop off my stuff - we stayed there because Matthias' house was having some water leaking problems, and it was really hot, and their house was huge and had minimal air conditioning - and then went by Matthias' house. His family's house is beautiful. It's really old, and enormous, with 3 stories and a studio on the third floor. It's also insanely cluttered, a fact about which his mother was apparently pretty disconcerted, but I think we all know I wasn't going to care.

I got the grand "I want to show you my room!" tour from Ted and Will, and crashed out on Ted's bed for a little while. Then Ann and Mrs. Jamison and I all went back to the airport to pick up Matthias, who wound up getting in around midnight. I fell asleep in the car on the way back, and as soon as we got to Ann's, Matthias and I went to bed.

We woke up good and early the next morning, so we'd be on time to OZZFEST! Oh, man, it was the sweetest thing ever. It was so cool to be surrounded by metalheads. We spent a good chunk of the day at second stage, and I got to see some really cool bands that I'd never heard before. We did a little moshing, although I couldn't really go in the pits because I had forgotten my boots and was wearing only flip flops. I was tempted to crowd surf, but never actually got around to it, and didn't want to get separated from Matthias, Ted, and Anton. At one point we were surrounded by 3 pits, which was a little scary. People are packed tight in there like sardines; it was gross at times when you found yourself smashed up against a huge white hairy guy without a shirt on. I gotta say, it was pretty sweet for me because I had three huge guys to defend me on all sides. The only unfortunate thing was that 2 of the bands at this Ozzfest, namely Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold, really brought out the emo asshole crowd. They tend to be rude and obnoxious, and just get in the way because they think they're better than everyone else. Atreyu was on second stage, so I was in the pits when they were on. Because they sucked, or maybe just because they're the pop music equivalent in metal, everyone started moshing harder than ever when they came on. That was when I got kicked in the head by a crowdsurfer, and another one landed on me and injured something in my shoulder. After that, we took a break from the pits and wandered around.

There were a few cool exhibits there; a bunch of Dimebag Darrell memorial guitars decorated by members of other metal bands. Some of them were pretty cool. We had some lunch and did a little shopping; I bought a wooden ankh necklace. Then it was back to second stage - the only problem being that they kept turning the music up, and it was getting way too loud. I really wanted to listen to Black Label Society - that's Zakk Wylde's band, for you uninitiated, and he's the god of metal guitar playing - but I was incredibly sick and tired of being touched and shoved and having to listen to loud music, so we sat that one out.

By the time it got dark, main stage had kicked in. These were the headliners, and some of them were amazing. Dragonforce started it off - it was like Dream Theater on speed, which is like disco on crack. I wasn't really a fan, and it turned out that their front man was kind of a jerk. He could tell the audience wasn't a huge fan of the band, and started treating them badly. In truth, we were all just a little tired. Then came Lacuna Coil, an Italian metal band with a female front man, and they were pretty cool. Kind of haunting; a unique style. Hatebreed was next and they sucked. That's really all that needs to be said. I slept through them. After them was Avenged Sevenfold. They also sucked, but they took it to a whole new level; they covered Walk, by Pantera. If you don't know why that's a cardinal sin of metal, leave a comment and I'll explain it to your unenlightened soul. They had a pretty poor audience reaction as well. After them, though, was Disturbed. This was incredible for me, because they're one of two bands that turned me on to metal in the first place. Their front man is a really classy guy. They're one of the few groups that do melodic metal well. Even though by this point I could barely turn my head, due to my shoulder, I had to get up and headbang (causing myself further injury, of course). They were incredible. To describe it any further would be to cheapen the experience, as it were. Good Lord, I thought they were amazing.

After Disturbed was System of a Down. They had the audience rabid. Their set was incredibly fast-paced, with no breaks. They were a lot of fun, too, and prompted further shoulder damage. There was a drunk guy behind me who kept trying to get me to stand up and dance; normally I would have obliged him, but my shoulder was killing me. Finally, we got to see Ozzy, which was... a little sad. He came out and jumped around, and sang a half step off at all times, and forgot the words and names of his own songs... we only stayed for five of his songs, and then left, because by this point I was immobile. We all crashed as soon as we got home.

I'll update further concerning the rest of my trip at a later date, so that these posts won't get absurd. In the meantime, go listen to some metal music.
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