Goodbye Riot Fest: Liveblogging Home To Pittsburgh

Well, we just went to get breakfast at the FANTASTIC Econo Lodge ($69 a night, friends!) only to see some girl in her early 20s, wearing unstrapped overalls and a tube top thing (are we still calling them tube tops in 2015, or has Urban Outfitters given them a more hipster-approved title? Like Uberband? Post-tube? Totesbandeau? Rackshizz? Lena Dunham’s Boob Thong?), standing near the food with some older lady who was saying, “This is not right, this is a food area” and then the girl said, “I need help” and the lady said, “THEN I WILL CALL THE POLICE” and I noticed the younger girl was holding a clump of hair and looked like she was probably high on meth. 

I mumbled, “Oh. Nope,” and Henry and I spun on our heels in tandem and came back to the room. 

That being said, IT’S LIVEBLOGGING TIME. Just a warning: my phone LOVES to autocorrect my blog posts when I’m not looking so I can’t be held responsible for any ludicrous typos. Just the normal ones. You know how bad I am at GRAMMAR. (Seriously. I forgot the “at” in that last sentence at first. I am so good.)

8:00am: Henry just came back in from taking HIS stuff (and not mine?!) out to the car and said now the girl is sitting out there, eating a muffin, and all of her stuff is in garbage bags. 

8:05am: We just checked out and that girl was sitting in the lobby going round and round with the front desk clerk, who I think now might be her SISTER?! She was like DONT WALK AWAY FROM ME! and the older lady was like I HAVE CUSTOMERS! (OMG me and Henry are now a part of this story because WE WERE THE CUSTOMERS so now, years from now, when they tell this story around the fire on Christmas Eve, when they get to the CUSTOMERS part, I hope they describe me as “That young Jennifer Anoston-looking sweetheart” and Henry will probably be “and her old, grizzled captor.” 

That girl totally lives there though. 

8:41am: We’re on the road now and I’m nostalgically playing Riot Fest music for Henry who is unenthused and just yelled at me for not helping him get change for the toll booth, to which I countered, “Yeah well, I don’t have my sunglasses!” (?) Henry said, “That’s not my fault. I can’t be in charge of your sunglasses when I’m already in chafe of everything else. Like, your tampons.” Haha it’s true. 

But really: Alexisonfire and Beach Slang up in here right now. 

9:36am: Henry just flipped out because the toll booth lane we were in had a malfunctioning ticket thing and he pulled over and left me in the car (DANGEROUS) so he could be a good professional driver by skipping off to the highway office thing and reporting the broken machine. Also, because he needed to get a ticket, I guess. He just came back to the car and exhaled deeply, like he’s so winded from being a turnpike kiss ass. 

10:13am: Welp. Just took a detour to LaPorte, Indiana’s historical society because they have the wheelbarrow that a mass husband killer used to cart away their bodies. But…they’re closed on Mondays. Henry just threw a royal bitch fit as I quietly whispered “sorry” and then proceeded to crack up. But hey, LaPorte is kind of pretty, isn’t it Henry? Kind of? No?

   
 
 LAPORTE, represent. 

10:46am: twenty minutes into Set Your Goals, Henry casually asked, “Is this the little guy and the big guy?” AW HE REMEMBERED! And the big guy was actually just regular-sized, but the little guy was so little that he made the other guy look big. I forgot how much I loved this band! I went nuts over them during the summer of 2009 and made Alisha go to their sold out show at Mr.Small’s on my birthday. It was a total sausage party and some fat guy shook his sweat all over Alisha and she did that thing where she tries to murder me with her Fairuza Balk eyes. 

11:52am: PS I think we crossed the time change line thing. 

12:13pm: At a rest stop near South Bend and a bunch of Riot Fest travelers were there too and now I feel homesick for Douglas Park. (THAT IS WHERE RIOT FEST WAS, OK?!)

12:43pm: I just had a huge epiphany.   I was just telling Henry stories from when I had to take Home Ec in middle school, and how much of a disaster I was. “I’m not surprised,” he mumbled. It was because we were talking about buying a sewing machine for a project we want to do (“we” lol) and it made me think about when I had to make these boxer-type shorts and mine should have been so cute because I had CANDY CORN fabric but instead they just came out looking wrecked. As I was telling Henry this story, I was overcome with a sense of doom and these repressed memories of home ec misery came flooding back to me. I forgot how much I disliked the teacher and how panicked she made me feel, especially during the cooking portions of the classes. I would get sick to my stomach on home ec days. Is it any wonder I rejected domesticity?!

1:55pm: just left the Four Season family restaurant in Montpelier, Ohio and I was so happy to finally sit down for a meal after three days of eating while standing in the middle of thousands of people. Henry ordered lemon rice soup becausethe hipsters on Yelp told him to. He said it was great but it was made with chicken broth so I couldn’t form my own opinion on this matter. 

   
 I ordered the Four Seasons omelette which was basically a Greek omelette and HUGE — I was so excited until I took a gigantic bite because I’m so fat and IT WAS LOADED WITH CHICKEN. I don’t know how I missed that on the menu. Luckily the pieces were giant and easily pick-outtable. I could only eat about a third anyway and then Papa Pig swooped in and ate the rest. I messaged a picture to Chooch and he was like “haha figures.” Now Henry is ranting about how he’s fat because Chooch and I never finish our food and apparently we hold a gun to his head and force him to eat it for us. 

Meanwhile, I paid 50 cents for a copy of Frank Talk to read at the table so I wouldn’t have to talk to Henry. My new life goal is to get something printed in a future issue.   

WHAT IF HENRY AND I HAD OUR OWN MAGAZINE? Wait….I guess that’s just my blog. Maybe I should start charging for subscriptions! Jim & Pat seem to have a real racket going on. 

(Just kidding-I’d never charge anyone to read my typo-laden bullshit!)

3:24pm: IM BACK. I was getting car sick SUE ME. I spent the last hour regaling Henry with stories of Erin the Yo Girl because seeing SNOOP DOGG last night really reactivated that dormant gene. I was telling him about seeing Bone and Biggie back in the day and he’s sneering at me in a way that makes me feel like he’s maybe relieved he didn’t know me then. Especially when I got to the part about lining my lips and wearing almost-brown lipstick. That’s how we did it back in the mid-90s OK?!

4:26pm: You know I’m in a hurry to get home to Chooch when I eschew the Roadside America temptation. CHOOCH I MISS YOUUUUUU. We’ve been messaging and video-chatting via Facebook all weekend so that’s been super helpful. We’re never away from each other for more than a day because we’re REALLY ATTACHED TO EACH OTHER OK. Also I just pretended to shoot Henry in the face at the end of Mr. Bill Collector and he was not pleased. YOUR RENT’S DUE MOTHERFUCKER.  

5:12pm: Chooch just facetimed me and I got to watch him eating pierogies so there’s that. 

 

6:40pm: Well, Most Boring Liveblog Ever, I’m about to be home in 5 minutes! Would have updated more but my WordPress app is lagging big time and all I have been doing anyway is talking with Henry about music for 8 hours and you guys don’t care about that shit. HENRY sure doesnt! KBYE!

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EDITED TO ADD: So on the way home, Henry was like ” I dunno why you keep whining about missing Chooch because you know you guys will be fighting within 2 minutes, so….”

Came home and Chooch came prancing across the street to meet us in the parking lot (yes, he looked both ways—Henry taught him how to cross the street unjackassedly) and after hugging each other and squealing, we immediately started arguing about whether it was a stick or dog poop that Chooch nearly stepped on in the grass. 

“Thirty seconds,” Henry mumbled. 

Seriously though it was fossilized poop!

(OMFG I missed Chooch so much. He was so excited to see us and even gave us weird nose nuzzles before he went to bed, what the fuck world am I even in anymore?)