Originally we were going to spend two days at Magic Kingdom because I thought for sure we wouldn’t have enough to get everything in. Less than halfway through the day, it became evident that we were definitely going to be able to get everything in and even rode Space Mountain twice because the line was so short near the end of the night. So we decided to spend our second Disney day at Hollywood Studios and it really feels like it was a solid choice.

I didn’t realize it until the other day, but I’ve apparently been there before. I honestly thought that all these years that my family and I went to Universal Studios the last time we were in Orlando but nope, turns out it was MGM which is what Hollywood Studios used to be called. Thanks Wiki, for holding my hand as I slowly made my way down Remembrance Lane.

Another fascinating look into my childhood!

My only memory is that it was very small, new, and had little to do so my dad bitched a lot about what a waste of money it was — typical Kelly! Bitching even when he wasn’t the one who paid for it!

There’s definitely more to do now, but it’s so small and the lines were so short that we really tried to pace ourselves. First though, we went to the guest relations place so Chooch could get a stupid “It’s my birthday” pin because we never got around to doing it at Magic Kingdom on his actual birthday. Which is just as well, because now we got to spend an entire day LIVING A LIE. So every time someone wished him a happy birthday (it was always like a janitor or snack booth cashier though and Chooch was getting SO ANGRY, haha), it felt like we were BREAKING THE LAW. Thrilling!

Right after that, I checked the app and saw that there was a super short wait for the Aerosmith coaster thing, so we headed straight for that.

I mean, after Henry took us 8 wrong ways and then he and Chooch started fighting over the map. Like, give me a break, am I right?

I believe we only waited 15 minutes or so and it was a very quick wait. Granted, we were there during a slower season, but it still seems like Disney is doing it right as far was keeping the lines moving.

Henry got to ride with some broad who was there with her husband but they “always go through the single rider line.” She was a huge talker and kept babbling on right on up until our ride finally launched. Maybe they choose the single rider option because her husband can’t stand her.

The very first thought I had was, “Wow, this ride would be so much better if it wasn’t Aerosmith.” It was really fun, your standard indoor coaster, but obviously an Aerosmith medley was blasting through the building for the duration of our fake trip in a stretch limo and I was not feeling that aspect of it.

I think it should be refurbished into the Toto Coaster. JUST PLAY “AFRICA” THROUGH THE WHOLE THING!

There’s some Star Wars stuff at Hollywood Studios. None of us have seen the new one yet and actually, I’ve only ever seen the original three (numerous times, though), but I still felt like we all collectively knew enough to get some level of enjoyment out of it. There was some 10 minute movie that was also playing but it turns out it was just like one giant, extended trailer for the new one.

Now that I think about it, I don’t think I added this to the Times Henry Fell Asleep list. I’m slacking.

Stood in line for fucking THIRTY MINUTES to meet Not Actually Chewbacca for THIRTY SECONDS (and that’s being generous). Star Wars trivia was playing on TV monitors that were sprinkled around the queue and Chooch kept answering the questions out loud which would have been fine if he was EVER CORRECT. “Stop drawing attention to the Mediocre Star Wars fans!” I hissed because people honestly were starting to turn and stare and I felt like LINDA HAMILTON in Children of the Corn.

OUTLANDER!

He wanted to also meet Kylo Ren but I cried, “YOU HAVEN’T EVEN SEEN THE MOVIE!” I wanted to ride things, not meet awkward teenagers in costumes.

But the problem was that there just weren’t very many rides there, so we did something that we never do because it goes against everything we stand for*: WE WENT AND WATCHED SHOWS.

*(Not really, but I wanted to keep with the whole Outlander theme.)

We watched some condensed stage version of Beauty and the Beast. Chooch sat alone several rows up from us, because he decided he needed to make 85 people stand up so he could barrel through and take the last seat in a full row.

At one point, I had to put my sunglasses on to hide the tears rolling down my face. Totally not my tears though. It was the invisible midget sitting on my face.

Henry just rolled his eyes but I know he walked away silently praising Gaston for his unrelenting desire to hold a bitch back.

My favorite thing is when Chooch and I decide last minute to stop following Henry and meander off in our own direction without alerting him to the change of direction. And then watching Henry tense up as he eventually realizes that his back feels lighter because his burdens have gone missing. And instead of shouting, “HENRY DEAR! OVER HERE!” we just continue doing whatever the fuck we went because we’re our own people and he doesn’t own us.

The only time things got hairy was when we missed lunch because we wanted to eat at the SciFi Dine-In Theater but we couldn’t get a table until 3:15 because we’re bad planners, so then Chooch and I spent a good two hours speaking in tongues and vomiting pea soup until we were finally seated in some classic car table thing and I bitched because it wasn’t as cool as the other ones and Henry snapped, “If we sat in one of the other ones, I’d have to eat alone!” to which I responded, “Yeah, so?”

There were loops of sci-fi films playing on a large screen in the front of the room—I have never been in a restaurant more quiet in my whole life. Every sat in their cars, staring at the screen while their mouths chewed in slo-mo. It was like being in a roomful of pod people. I felt like I was going to get shushed for talking.

But I still talked anyway.

I dared Chooch to order an Ariel punch, which came in a collectible LITTLE MERMAID cup with some light-up Ariel thing attached to the straw. He was like, “I don’t give a fuck” and drank the shit out of it.

Meanwhile, I apparently poured my beer wrong because I rarely ever drink beer, let alone pour it, which caused Henry to jump at the chance to ridicule me because how often does that opportunity present itself. MAYBE I WANTED MY GLASS TO BE 3/4 FULL OF FOAM.

I ordered the veggie burger and it was actually super delicious. Shout out to my co-worker Elaina for the pointers! At the end of the meal, Chooch said to our waitress, “Excuse me? It’s my birthday” in an attempt to finally get something better than the attention of a Disney garbage man.

“Oh really? Happy birthday,” she said in a thoroughly unimpressed tone and I bet you felt stupid, kid, didn’t you?

But then she came back with a plate of ice cream and a cupcake, lit candle and all. I wanted to take a picture because when don’t I want to take a picture but he blew out the candle too soon and basically ruined what probably wasn’t going to be a beautiful memory, but you can’t be sure!

The Great Movie Ride thing was equal parts cheesy and amazing. IT WAS LITERALLY LIKE RIDING THROUGH NUMEROUS MOVIES. My favorite was the Wizard of Oz part. Chooch liked all the James Cagney gun fight shit. Henry liked our tour guide, Rachel.

U + God = ???? We stood around for a bit, waiting for the plane to finish the equation but it never did.

Chooch is a huge Andy Griffith fan ever since visiting Mayberry last summer. (I mean, not really.)

In addition to cheesin’ with the characters, Chooch also makes me take his picture next to every display he deems worthy of a photo op (which is essentially every single one).

I was terrified to ride the Tower of Terror because I hate drop-rides. But I also didn’t want to NOT go on it because even HENRY was going on it. (He vowed to ride everything at least once since everything in Orlando costs a zillion dollars + any chance of our kid going to college on our dime, so he wasn’t about to waste a single cent.)

This ride ended up being hands down my favorite at Hollywood Studios, and it managed to come in second overall when Magic Kingdom was factored in. And there’s like an actual part where you’re riding down a hallway too so it’s like WHEN IS THE DROP GOING TO HAPPEN, PAPI HOLD MY HAND!

And the drop wasn’t even that bad, mostly because I couldn’t really tell exactly how high up we were since it was inside. (Although there is one point where you’re hovering in front of an opening that looks out into the park. Holy fuck.)

And one of the gothic ride operators said happy birthday to Chooch, which he dutifully added to his “Is Hollywood Studios going to pay adequate attention to me or will I have to blow this bitch up?” tally.

In addition to Beauty and the Beast, we also took in a riveting Little Mermaid light show thing (Henry fell asleep) and the Indiana Jones stunt thing, which I thought was going to be lame but found myself getting all swept away and super excited when JEFFREY, one of the STUNT GUYS disguised as an audience member, ran right past me! There were all kinds of explosions and gun shots.

Henry actually stayed awake.

One of my co-workers was talking to me in the kitchen last week and he said, “All I remember about MGM was that there was some super lame Indiana Jones stunt show” and I basically had to turn my back so he wouldn’t see me cry. It wasn’t lame!

And then Chooch used the Disney gift card given to him by Chronica for his birthday to buy a Stitch plush because he can’t go anywhere without buying a stuffed animal.

They’re expanding the Pixar area and building a whole new Star Wars thing, so if we ever go back to Orlando, I think Hollywood Studios will be on the itinerary. There were way less strollers. Also, I don’t think I hated anyone there.

The last time I was at Disney World, I was 10 years old and barely remember anything other than being a permed dork who hounded characters for their autographs while my dad spent the entire time singing “Yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me” thanks to one spin on Pirates of the Caribbean.

What I learned is that 26 years later, Pirates of the Caribbean is way more awesome than it was in 1990 and dorky kids are still chasing characters for autographs except that now you need to get a fucking Fast Pass for that shit unless you want to spend half your day waiting in inexplicably long queues for some kid in a costume to forge the signature of an animated character.

And my kid was one of those dorks.

He only wanted to meet Chip and Dale though because he saw a picture of me meeting them in 1984 and he is like obsessed with being just like me because I’m fucking fantastic.

The line was really short because who even cares about Chip & Dale anymore I guess now that all these horribly animated, newfangled characters are on the scene, but there were two high school graduates a few people in front of us who totally monopolized C&D’s time and had them signing like 69 different things including their idiotic graduation caps and then had unlimited photos taken and then danced with them and finally C&D’s handler was like “OK the Stars have to take their break now” so the girls got to SKIP OFF INTO THE SUNSET with them while the rest of us normal people in line with their age-appropriate CHILDREN stood there in disbelief and then the grandma in front of us was screaming at her granddaughter who appeared to be 12 or 13 for having teh audacity to WANDER OFF after she was told to SIT ON THE BENCH OVER THERE and the granddaughter was all, “I WAS SITTING ON THE BENCH” and the mom very quietly said, “OK guys, drop it” but grandma just kept railing on granddaughter and then granddaugter was ugly crying.

I wanted to leave but Chooch was like ITS MY DYING WISH and Henry was like STOP RUINING HIS BIRTHDAY so we continued to wait.

When it was the people’s turn in front of us, I was impressed by granddaughter’s ability to turn off the tears in time to jump in with Chip, Dale, her mom and little brother while smiling brightly for the photographer. What a nice big FUCK YOU to grandma. That old hag ain’t gon’ ruin no granddaughter’s day.

Meanwhile, Chooch whined about not having an autograph book so I dug out a receipt for him to have them sign, hahahaha.  #DisneyN00bs

But when it was his turn, their handler was like “the fuck is this?” and gave Chip and Dale two pieces of actual paper to sign for Chooch. It was pretty embarrassing but I was like “The answer is still no” when Chooch asked again for an autograph book.

There was no way we were wasting anymore time standing in line for this shit.

I probably would have made a concession for Pluto though. Does anyone still even care about Pluto? He was always my favorite. The first time I went to Disney, I was 4 and my DAD wouldn’t let me bring my favorite stuffed animal in the entire world with me, so my Pappap was all, “Haha we’ll show him” and proceeded to buy me any Disney plush I wanted  while we were there because he was the best man to ever exist. Anyway, the Pluto one was my favorite.

I started to tell Henry this story and he sighed, “You’ve told me this story so many times” with an eye roll. Rude!!

My Pappap gave me the greatest childhood ever and if I can give Chooch even a tiny glimmer of that, I’ll feel like I made my Pappap proud.

It’s a Small World is one of the few rides there that I have any sliver of memory of. Funnily, I remember more from my first trip there than the last trip when I was 10; this is likely due to the rage black outs since my brother Ryan was around by then and I was still extremely butt-hurt over the fact that I wasn’t an only child anymore.

OH THE PERILS OF BEING ERIN RACHELLE KELLY.

I really felt that this ride held up. It made me giddy.

Even Henry was choking back a smile or two. Hard to imagine, I know.

The ride that didn’t hold up in my mind was Big Thunder Mountain. I was just OK.

All three of us agreed that Space Mountain was the best though! It wasn’t anything like I remembered.

Mid-afternoon, we were strolling about, probably with linked arms because you know how we stroll, when someone started shouting “Riley! Riley!” In case you didn’t know, that’s Chooch’s actual name that he goes by pretty much just in school and nowhere else, lol. Turns out, it was his friend from school! He was there with his grandma, and they had lost his parents, so the grandma asked Henry if he would please call her daughter so they could be reunited.

So Henry did that and I can’t believe that lady even answered because I NEVER ANSWER MY PHONE IF I DON’T RECOGNIZE THE NUMBER and it’s weird to me that people actually will answer EVEN IF IT’S A 1-800 NUMBER!!! Anyway, Henry explained the sitch and said, “You know what’s funny is that my son actually goes to school with your son” and then it turned out that she was standing not too far away from us….

…IN FRONT OF IT’S A SMALL WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She said to Henry, “Wow, it really is a small world after all.”

And that was our super-touching Disney moment.

I think the lowest point of the day was when this family of fuckers blatantly cut in front of us in line for Pirates of the Caribbean and I couldn’t even believe the audacity. Not only did they cut in front of us, but also a lady who was with her HANDICAPPED MOTHER. I was so outraged by this and Henry was like, “Please don’t.” So instead, I just stared at them non-stop and made loud, passive-aggressive statements about people being rude motherfuckers and Henry just sighed deeply as a new wrinkle etched itself under his right eye.

Here’s a picture I took of them afterward in order to SHAME THEM on the Internet. (The guy with the stroller and blue balls balloons was not a part of their rude family so he can remain shame-free in this matter.

Other things to note:

• Haunted Mansion was way better than I ever remembered
  • So was Splash Mountain
    • My favorite part of this ride was when some dickhead served as a placeholder in line and then suddenly, his entire family came barreling through the line to join him, we’re talking a good 12 additional people! I was so livid about this because HELLO THAT IS NOT THE PROPER WAY TO STAND IN LINE, but then as we were nearing the front of the line, it was nearly those assholes’ turn to ride, when one of the Disney broads called out, “Is there a party of two?” and as luck would have it, Henry was too scared to ride this one so YES, MA’AM THERE IS A PARTY OF TWO! Chooch and I got to jump ahead of those pushy assholes. WHO’S LAUGHING NOW!?
      • My least favorite part of this was standing in line sandwiched between two families of tiny Elsas, UGH to the max. I am so glad my child isn’t into that shit.
• Even in April, it looks like every single person in the country has descended upon Lake Buena Vista, but the lines for the actual rides were extremely reasonable, except for:
  • The 7 Dwarfs Mine Ride, which we got tricked into waiting for a good 90 minutes even though the sign said THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES. And friends, it was not worth it.
    • However, what was worth it was that Henry had to ride with some dad, who said something to him immediately after sitting next to him, and that something made Henry laugh very hard, but he very conveniently “couldn’t remember what it was” when Chooch and I interrogated him afterward.
  • Peter Pan’s Flight, which was always over 75 minutes every time I checked, but then we waited until the parade was happening and literally walked right on.
• Decent vegetarian options, especially at Pecos Bill’s Tall Tale Inn — their veggie rice bowl was a motherfucking dream come true for this meatless mouth.
• The stupid Little Mermaid ride made my heart melt a little bit. I forgot how much I used to love that dumb movie. I even bought the soundtrack (ON CASSETTE) from the Scholastic book order in 4th or 5th grade, doesn’t really matter, I was a fucking dork in both grades. Listening to all of the completely off-base names Chooch was coming up when when he was trying to remember “Ursula” may have been my favorite part of the day. One of them had approximately 8 syllables and the only thing he had right was that it started with a U.
  • Pretty sure Henry slept on this ride.
  • There was absolutely no line.
• We almost accidentally got in line for some story time with Belle attraction which turns out is literally having Belle read you a story. Nope.
• I fucking hate strollers. There were soooooo many strollers. EVERY WHERE. STROLLERS HERE AND THERE. Boooooooooo, babies!
• We had a Dole Whip and I guess I don’t really get the mania over those because I know I have soft serve here in Pittsburgh that tastes pretty much exactly the same…what am I missing!? I actually didn’t even finish mine, but gave it to Henry who had given his to Chooch who had spilled him approximately .0005 seconds after Henry handed it to him. The circle of Dole Whip.
• The monorail is decidedly NOT as fun as I remembered it to be.
  • We took it back to the parking lot that night, and it was mayhem. We didn’t get to sit with Henry, and Chooch said, “I feel bad for daddy. He’s sitting next to some Duck Dynasty guy.” I didn’t get to see though because there were people standing in between us. I told Henry about it later and he said, “I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. I was sitting next to a lady.”

When Henry wouldn’t ride the Barnstormer with us. :( ALSO, HE’S TOTALLY LOOKING AT THAT BROAD.

Overall, I’m glad we went when we did because it turned out to be far less stressful and intimidating than I had imagined it to be. No one got lost (although Chooch and I did leave Henry once by the carousel and then “forgot” to come back) and we didn’t even really spend as much money there as I thought we would. I’m trying to remember if we fought at all and I think that we probably did at some point, but clearly it wasn’t major enough for me to immediately blog about right after unfriending Henry on Facebook.

Henry’s thoughts: I liked Space Mountain. I liked the Haunted Mansion. I would say the park was pretty people-friendly, easy to move around.* It was too expensive.

Chooch’s thoughts: It was way more than I expected. I thought it was just going to be like a couple of rides, a couple of food places, and just. But then when I went there, I saw a FANTASY. It was AWESOME. There was so much to do. There was a lot of rides. But Big Thunder Mountain wasn’t as fun as mommy remembered it so that was a big bummer**. That’s it.

*DISAGREE. SEE: STROLLERS.

**I must have bitched about this more than I remembered that day.

****

My first day back at work last week, I was telling my co-worker Carrie about Disney and how, while it was a fun experience, Henry and I probably won’t ever go back.

“No, you’ll go again. You’ll have to take your grandkid, Emarosa!”

Touché, Carrie!

I fluctuate between thinking I don’t do enough for my kid and wondering if I’m enabling his Spoiled Brat status. But, you only get one childhood and I really wanted to get him to Disney before he was too old to give a shit. It kind of goes against everything Chooch stands for when you think about it, but he has always been very WHEN ARE WE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!? even though we’re totally not a Disney family.  I think the last Disney movie (animated, anyway) that I saw was Lion King. Kind of not sorry about that, either. I didn’t like how the animation changed, OK?!!

Disney always kind of seemed like it was out of reach for us though because we’re not good at planning and saving for “real” vacations. But then we got roped into that time share which has turned out to be a good fit for our weird lifestyle and Henry found a way to make it work for what was kind of a poorly-planned almost last minute surprise birthday trip.

And by “almost last minute,” I mean that unlike normal families who start planning Disney trips a year in advance, we booked everything 2 months in advance and then had to deflect and ignore Chooch’s constant suggestions about where he wanted his birthday party to be.

I did a pretty good job of keeping things under my hat; only a few people knew about it because I just really didn’t want it to slip out. I didn’t even mention it on here until I was live-blogging on the way there!

Somehow, we managed to make the secret last all the way up until the morning of his birthday when we were driving to Magic Kingdom. Guys, my kid is fucking smart as shit, but WHOA NELLY is he dense. I started recorded him when we told him what was going on and his initial reaction was an ambivalent, “Oh. Cool.”

HONESTLY? YOU’RE GOING TO “COOL STORY BRO” ME?!

I was just about ready to tell Henry to turn the fucking car around, we’re going home, when Kid Genius in the backseat had a moment to think about this, let it sink in and swish around in his brain, before having an A-HA! moment. “We’re going to Disney World? REALLY?!?!” and then he lost his mind.

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I’m not going to lie, it was pretty magical and I’m still so excited that we managed to make it happen! He’s a good kid 90% of the time and I try so hard to fill these formative years with happy memories. My childhood was pretty great and I want Chooch to grow up and COMPLETELY LIVE IN THE PAST LIKE I DO.

Oh my god, I miss the 80s!!!!!!! Wah.

Here are some photos from his birthday at Magic Kingdom. I will be back with part 2 once I collect all of my thoughts. HOLD ONTO YOUR MICKEY EARS. Such revelations forthcoming.

I love how miserable he looks here but I swear to god he’s not. We had literally just walked through the security check so we hadn’t been around each other long enough to have misery oozes down our faces yet. I think he was just in the middle of saying something.

Duh.

When isn’t he in the middle of saying something.

Chooch and “Uncle Walt.” It was honestly hours into the day when he asked, “Wait—are we still going to visit Uncle Walt?” I gave him the universal look for “Are you an idiot?” I let that marinate for a few seconds and then he gasped, “Oh! Walt Disney. I get it now.”

Jesus Christ.

You’d never know it, but Henry was pretty much in an OK mood all day, even after Chooch knocked over his $6 Dole Whip float before even taking one bite.

At Home Henry would have made Chooch pay for it and then chained him up for a few days in the attic. But At Disney Henry was like, “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE CHOOCH YOU’RE LUCKY IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY” and then took a few deep breaths and went off to fetch some napkins. Then we went on the Jungle Ride and he was OK again.

Maybe I’ll try to coax a review out of him sometime this weekend.

Drunk on Disney.

Huge shout out to Time Share and Tax Refund for making this thing happen.

In hindsight, it’s kind of hilarious to me that a family like us (a bunch of dicks) was even at Disney World at all. Chooch kept yelling at me, “You can’t swear at Disney World!” and I was like, “For fuck’s sake, kid. I’m fucking sorry! Look, there’s that cunt Elsa!”

WHAT A MOTHERFUCKING MAGICAL DAY.

Does this finally erase that time Child Protective Services got called to our house? Lol forever.

You guys. I found out recently that Henry has never been to Disney World. Apparently he was supposed to go when he was Chooch’s age. He went to Florida for two weeks to visit family and they were going to go to Disney on week two but Henry ended up getting SWIMMERS EAR or something — I don’t always pay attention when he spins his yarns–and so this was his first visit. It took him FIFTY YEARS to get there. The moral is never give up! And also, visit Disney before swimming with your family.  

I don’t know why I thought Henry was going to be stoked for this experience, like it was some late-bloomer, coming-of-age feel-good tale. Because of course he wasn’t stoked and it was none of those things. From the tram to the ferry to the park entrance, he was very “MEH” as you can see in that first photo up there, and there was no twist ending, trust me. 

Here is a collection of photos from Henry on Day One and Day Two because why not. 

DAY ONE: MAGIC KINGDOM

We made Henry wait some absurd amount of time (90 minutes maybe) to ride the Seven Dwarves Mine Ride thing and he got paired up with some other dad who immediately started yukking it up with him and Chooch and I heard Henry LAUGH before the ride even started! When I asked Henry afterward what the man said to make him laugh, he conveniently “couldn’t remember.” Probably some SERVICE joke. 

Henry rides alone on Big Thunder Mountain. HOLD ON, HANK! (That should be the name of Henry’s emo band.)

Unimpressed with the line for the Jungle Ride….

…but slightly amused about taking a boat ride full of mechanical animals and bad puns. 

Confused by all of the magic and happiness. 

Sleeping on the Little Mermaid ride. 

Ambivalent to ride through Winnie the Pooh’s story and also not cool enough to have ears. 

Henry said he wished they had a “First & Last Time” pin. Dang Henry. Maybe if they had more places to nap? 

DAY TWO: HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

This park had less lines to stand in and about 90% less strollers to dodge, and In turn, Henry seemed a little less hemorrhoid-flared. 

Here we find Henry angry because when he buys pretzels for himself, we always eat most of it, but when he buys one for us, we never offer him any. I mean, you have legs Henry. Walk up and get your own pretzel ok thx. 

Family portrait: me, Chooch, pretzel with cheese. Also, some rando. 

When Chooch and I changed directions without alerting the warden. 

At the SciFi Dine-In, Henry wouldn’t let us get one of the good tables inside the old cars because then one of us would have to dine alone (lol it would have been him) so we had to sit at some dumb table which wasn’t as cool BUT WHATEVER HENRY WANTS, AMIRITE. Here he is considering getting the Ariel punch in the souvenir cup but remembering he doesn’t have enough security in his manhood to get away with it. You know, like Chooch. 

Running tally of all the attractions Henry has fallen asleep on so far:

• Carousel of Progress
• Little Mermaid ride thing at Disney
• Little Mermaid show at Hollywood Studios (a splash of water woke him up lol)
• Walt Disney Productions film
• Muppets 3D

Because I lead such an exciting life, I stayed up late Friday night watching old Wildwood, NJ videos on YouTube.

There is something REALLY ENCHANTING and perverted about watching the home movies of strangers and I don’t give a fuck, I’ll do it until I die.

I would say about once a year, I go through heavy Wildwood withdrawals and I need to nourish myself with copious amounts of nostalgia, even if it’s another persons memories.

My family vacationed in Wildwood every summer. It’s one of the few spotty memories I have of my birth dad, and also some of the best memories I have of my mom.

My grandparents came too, every summer, and it was just the fucking cherry on top of the entire year. I can’t think about that beach and boardwalk without being flooded of the best memories and thoughts of my Pappap. Literally, the best memories of my whole life were made in fucking New Jersey, of all places.

I haven’t been back since 1991 and as much as I want to, I’m also terrified because I don’t want to see how much it’s changed.

I stupidly made the mistake about 10 years to look at the Morey’s Piers website and I felt like Morey himself had kicked me in the gut with a steel-tipped boot, that motherfucker.

ANYWAY. Before I wind up just straight up living in the rabbit hole, let me get to my point. One of the videos I watched on YouTube was a clip from a 1994 documentary and now I’m utterly obsessed (what else is new) and going to buy the entire film because how I can not have a chunk of cinema like this in my private collection:

I’m kind of sad that I only ever experienced Wildwood through the eyes of an innocent child, there only to ride some fucking dark rides and eat a goddamn hot dog at Hot Spot B. I never got in a fight with anyone there other than my step dad. And I didn’t even put him in the hospital!

Let me preface this with a preemptive apology because I know without even reading it that this post is sloppy as fuck. I wrote it like a lunatic on frosted Ritalin. I JUST GET SO EXCITED ABOUT THESE THINGS! One day I will come back and edit. Months later. I’m such a professional.

Sunday was a great day! We had the best weather of all three days (dry, sunny and warm!), a really great Lyft driver (Venus!) who dropped us off at alternate entrance which had NO LINE. And apparently the main gate hadn’t opened yet because there was practically no one inside. It was eerie and quiet. We had time to kill before any of the bands started, so we finally got some shopping in. I’m still daydreaming about all of the merch booths, to be honest. (Just to be clear, you know that anytime I say “to be honest,” everything else is a bold-faced lie, right?)

Interestingly, we noticed that the schedule for Sunday had been revised because a band had dropped off, so now there was a block of time for one of the smallest stages that just had three question marks in lieu of a band name. “WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!” I asked Henry, who gave me his standard IDGAF glare.

Our experiences at Riot Fest really couldn’t be any more diametrically opposed. It’s like comparing Julie Andrews spinning around in the hills of Saltzburg to Charlie Sheen in Platoon. How we work as a couple is a mystery.

The third and final day of Riot Fest was the one day were I didn’t have a ton of bands that I absolutely needed to see; there were really only three. But there were a few playing on the two smallest stages that I had a passing interest in, so we spent a large portion of the day in that area. This was also the most sparsely populated area, so Henry was extremely thankful. The bands playing on these two stages all day were mostly in the emo/indie category, if I’m forced to pigeon-hole them. It’s a sound that I really love, that No Sleep feel, so I wound up walking away with several new bands pinned to my heart. Loitering at those stages was like being at a mini Fest, which attending has been on my bucket list for years.

(Not Henry though. His review of basically every band we saw all weekend is “*shrug*” so I quit asking him to contribute to these posts.)

• Signals Midwest – Indie/punk band from Cleveland; they had a slight Balance & Composure feel to them, and I was down for it. Solid start to the day and a sneak peek of what the small stages had in store for us that day. I wish that all of the bands had their own merch booths there, like at Warped, because I would have for sure bought their record or a shirt.
  

• Foxtrott – I really am super picky when it comes to female-fronted bands. I don’t know what it is about me and the female voice, but we aren’t friends. However, on the drive from Pittsburgh, I looked up Foxtrott on Spotify and, while there was only one song on there, I actually liked it. When I saw that there was nothing else going on at the same time, I added them to the schedule in my Riot Fest app. (Isn’t technology strange? I barely remember the days where we’d scrawl set times on our hands at festivals. There actual schedules being handed out at the gate every day at Riot Fest, but if you programmed your own schedule into the app, you’d get fifteen-minute reminders to get your ass to a certain stage, and believe me — those were really convenient.)
  

Henry’s style icon during Foxtrott. He also had another style icon who looked like if a young Jeffrey Jones was a gym teacher in the 70s.

• Cayetana – Caught a minute of them because Signals Midwest gave them a shout out so I figured, sure, why not. Turns out they’re a girl band. What is my issue with girl bands?! I think it stems back to my strong adversity to 4 Non Blondes. (Sorry, Linda Perry. You just don’t do it for me.) Let Henry use the porta potty and then we split for the Riot stage.
  
• Kevin Devine – If you can believe it, this was actually Henry’s pick. I never really gave Kevin Devine a chance before (although I did briefly like his collab, Bad Books, with Andy Hull), so when Henry asked me who he was, I was just like, “I dunno, dude. A man who sings with a band.” He’s one of those guys whose music blends into the background for me, but we had nothing else pulling us in a different direction at that time, so we made the hike over to the main stage. And it was a great set! Totally one of those situations where I like a band better live. “Good call, Henry,” I said, giving him a hearty pat on the back. He just sneered at me. Like he does.

• Souvenirs – On the drive to Chicago, I was reading the bios of some of the bands I hadn’t heard of, and Souvenirs mentioned in theirs that they’re influenced by Sunny Day and Mineral. This was enough to get me to the Revolt stage at 2pm. My plan was to watch them for 15 minutes and then run to the main stage to see Hum, but they were so goddamn good that I wound up staying for almost the whole set and sacrificing the beginning of Hum. While we were at their stage, I got a Riot Fest alert saying clarifying the mysterious “???” addition to Sunday’s schedule: Taking Back Sunday were going to fill the slot! I thrust my phone into Henry’s face and even he admitted that it was cool. TBS on that small-ass stage? I consulted the schedule and saw that this conflicted with Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness. But TBS on a stage that small? Sorry, Andrew; can’t pass that one up.

• Hum – As a fan of shoegaze, once upon a time, I needed to see Hum. They were playing the main stage and while they sounded great, it was hard to engage in them because we weren’t very close. It definitely brought back some memories, but I definitely would have preferred to see them in a club venue. I feel like something got lost in translation out there midday, on such a large stage.
• New Politics – We watched two of their songs, but they were pretty bland, radio rock-sounding, and low-energy. Ditched them and went back to the two smaller stages, and thank god for  that because the band playing on the Revolt stage was much better.

• Modern Chemistry – Skipping out on New Politics proved very fortuitous because Modern Chemistry was way more my style. Also, it turned out that I was standing near them during Souvenirs set earlier, when I kept saying to Henry, “God, why can’t you dress like THOSE guys?!” Cling is currently my favorite song of theirs and I’m really anxious to see them again, hopefully soon.

• Taking Back Sunday – Thank god we had already been loitering around this stage, because once word spread about the surprise set, people fucking poured into that tiny area, which guaranteed hadn’t seen that much of a headcount all weekend. There really isn’t a way to describe seeing TBS on such a small stage with no frills, other than FUCKING AWESOME. Total Warped Tour vibes and honestly, I thought it was better than their headlining set. I don’t know many people in my demographic who don’t find certain nostalgia in this band. And there was something special about seeing them that day, all humble and #soblessed to be playing a second set in the middle of the day; it just intensified the feels and hearing those old songs (admittedly, I stopped following them after Louder Now) was such a goddamn throwback. I don’t need all the fancy lights — I just want to see Adam up close, swinging that fucking mic. “We are Riot Festing SO HARD this weekend,” he said at one point, and it was just really nice to see a band of that size and stature so into it and genuinely excited to be there. The crowd was great too and Henry actually said these 30 minutes (yes, they stayed within the 30 minute set time that was vacated!) was the highlight for him of the entire weekend.
  
  • Later on that afternoon, Henry nearly knocked me over when he excitedly pushed my shoulder and said, “LOOK LOOK LOOK!!! It’s Adam!” as Adam Lazzara casually strolled past us as we walking from the Riot Stage. It’s so amusing (and adorable) to me that he (unwittingly) knows so much about the scene that he can recognize people.

• Manchester Orchestra – Man, I kept telling Henry all weekend, “Just wait until you see Manchester. They are so goddamn good. You’re going to love them!” I have only seen them once before and it was one of those shows I attended with a pile of fake Mexican shit (akaex-BFF) so I generally try to block it from my mind. This particular show was in Cleveland, and Manchester was opening for Brand New. I was already a casual fan of theirs, but I remember being 100% blown away by their stage presence. Unfortunately, Christina and I started fighting pretty much right after their set ended, so the memory of this show is completely tarnished for me. It was such a terrible night that I didn’t even blog about it. Ugh. Needless to say, I was really looking forward to a do-over and because of this,Iwantedto be up front. They were playing on the main stage, but itwasstillearly-ish so it wasn’t impossible. I was at the barricade, off to the side (seriously, I can’t stress this enough—never underestimate the power of side-stage) and the girls I was standing next to were so fucking nice, itwasalmostconcerning. The one was obsessing over my finger tattoos and the other was admiring my jewelry and at one point I thought I might get mugged? But no, they were just really nice and added to the beauty of the Manchester Orchestra experience.
  • I haven’t seen pictures of them in awhile, so when the band came out, I was waiting and waiting for Andy Hull until some other guy who sounded exactly like Andy Hull began singing, and that’s when I realized that holy shit, Andy Hull lost a TON of weight.
  • They were just as excellent as I remembered.
    • Um, apparently not according to Henry, though. He had a major adverse reaction to them, to the point that he said it was literally the lowest point of the weekend for him and that he was almost falling asleep and that he hates them. We actually had a mild fight about it last week because I was pressing him for more details. I don’t CARE that he hates them, but I wanted to know WHAT exactly he hated. Andy’s voice? The songs?Theactual music? The fact that Andy made a mockery of Henry’s beloved industry by wearing a trucker hat when he clearly is not a trucker? But Henry was all, “I don’t know! Stop asking me! Don’t make me hate you, too!”Oooh, OK tough guy.
      • It didn’t help that when we were in Philly, Terri had the same questions because she too enjoys herself a little Manchester every now and then.

Cookie Time during Manchester.

• Superheaven – total 90s grunge vibe with these guys and I loved it. Again, those two small stages were killing it on Day Three. I didn’t get a chance to check out the line-up over there on the other days and I have much regret. There were a few bands that I already know and like who were playing there that I had to miss because Riot Fest just has way too much good shit going on at once, bands like Joyce Manor, Sleep On It*, Foxing, Knuckle Puck, and Have Mercy. That might be the biggest first world problem I’ve ever had.
  
  • FUN FACT: On Day Two, a group of guys walked past us early in the day, before any bands were playing, and one of the guys stood out to me. He was wearing a Fuck Seaway shirt and I suddenly had the urge to enthusiastically cry, “THAT’S SICK!” It dawned on me that it was the singer from Bonfires, who recently opened for The Spill Canvas. I excitedly texted my brother Corey about it and then I found out later that Sleep On It brought him out for a song, but of course I missed it.

• Beach Slang – I almost didn’t stick around for them. I’ve listened to them in passing and it was one of those “I don’t care either way” feelings. I definitely didn’t hate it, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. However, seeing them live flipped a switch inside my ears. They’ve got it all: musical ability, good songs, entertaining stage presence, a frontman who could be the next Charles Manson—he’s that effervescent and charismatic. I fell for them hard. HARD. After 30 seconds, Henry leaned in and said, “I’m gonna, um, move back a little and sit down,kbye” and I just murmured, “Yep” and then moved up closer. When James broke a string on his guitar, he tried to get their guitarist Ruben to do the Jonathan Davis beat box from “Freak on a Leash,” but Ruben was like, “No, I will not do that in front of these people” so then some guy in the crowd said that he could do it, and James let him come up to entertain us. It was pretty funny and props to that guy.
  • Also? James has the best, most adorable laugh of all time and I will definitely be seeing them again. THAT IS A THREAT, BEACH SLANG. I am going to come to your show and love you and then not talk to you, so there!
    • Not at all the music, but his voice reminds me a little of Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs) and Blair Shehan (Knapsack/The Jealous Sound <3).
    • Take all of my money.

• Airborne Toxic Event – Caught the end of their set on the main stage while waiting for Snoop. It was OK. I never really got into them much.
  
• SNOOP -Guys.SnoopDogg.Themotherfucking D-O-G.Doggystyle ruledmyfuckingLYFE in high school. My notebooksandfolderswere covered in Lodi Dodi lyrics and sketches of Snoop. My parents fucking hated this era. HATED. I was such a yo-girl, it was scary at times. And when Riot Fest announced that Snoop wouldbeperformingDoggystyle IN ITS ENTIRETY? Oh snap. We started out closer to the stage, probably around the area we were standing for Faith No More, but I got ridiculously paranoid. This was a much different crowd. Lots of former frat boys, drunk off their asses, high as fuck, looking to relive their youth. We still had about 20 minutesbeforeSnoopwas scheduled to come out and I was alreadyfeelingagitatedand also slightly concerned for my well-being. “Back, move back,” I shouted over the boisterous crowd to Henry. We ended up moving two more times before I finally felt safe and comfortable, and we were REALLY FAR back by then. But I didn’t give a fuck. I could enjoy it just fine back where we were. I really just wanted to know that I was in the same general vicinity of this rapper who was such a huge, defining part of my life. I know that sounds dramatic, maybe, and I wish I could force all of my old high school friends to weigh in on this (probablywithexhaustedsighs and annoyed eye rolls). Anyway, Airborne wrapped up their set on the neighboring Riot Stage and the Rock Stage lit up with green lights. And then…nothing. 7:45 came and went, still no Snoop. 8:00 came and the lights shut off. People started booing.Trashwas thrown on the stage. We waited and waited, for an announcement, something, anything. People started chanting his name. “I don’t think he’s coming,” I said wistfully to Henry. But we stuck around,justin case. And finally, around 8:15, the lights came back on and some DJ came on stage making some grand, flourishing introduction for Snoop, but then Lady of Rage came out instead and started performing Afro Puffs and those of us who weren’t drunk (definitely not the man in front of me) were like “The fuck?” This weird intro just went on and on, because clearly they were stalling, something was definitely happening behind the scenes. I started to get worried that we were going togetsomesecond rate,last minute MC in Snoop’s place, but then he finally came out, flanked by two gyrating dancers and someone dressed as a dog. It was NUTS. However! He didnotplayDoggystyle in its entirety, which was really disappointing. Especially when Drop It Like It’s Hot happened. I hate that song. But!Hedidperform Lodi Dodi and I am not afraid to admit that I cried and then buried my head in Henry’s shoulder. AndIrememberedall of the words, even though I honestly haven’t listened to that album since probably 1996.
  • He spent more time BS’ing on that stage, making big productions of smoking his weed, and was eventually told that he only had 3 minutes left. At this point, he had only performed for about 25 minutes and was supposed to have an hour set, but Riot Fest gave zero fucks that he got a late start. They weren’t going to let him go past 8:45, because Modest Mouse was ready to go on the Riot Stage. So he gets his 3-minute warning and flips the fuck out. I mean, he’s Snoop Dogg, so even when he was flipping out, he was still talking slower than Janna on a Sizzurp high. “Thesebitchassmotherfuckerstryna tell me that I only got three minutes left!Pssssssh, fuck that shit!” and he went on to allude to the fact that it was Riot Fest’s fault that he was late to begin with, and then told his security team to guard the monitors to make sure no one tried to unplug him. He had just finally startedtomoveonto a new track when BOOM, plug pulled. Riot Fest was not fucking around. Snoop’s stage completely shut off and Modest Mouse started playing on the Riot Stage. Right on time. The crowd collectively was like, “AW SHIT!” Who does that to Snoop!? It was hilarious, but it really did suck too because I was looking forward to seeing him all weekend.
    • Still, those 30 minutes were enough to resurrect a little bit of Yo-Girl Erin. Mostly though, it just made me crave Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, which I listened to the next day on the drive back to Pittsburgh. Henry was thrill-thrill-thrill-thrill-thrilled.

• Modest Mouse – I can’tevenpretendto be a Modest Mouse fan. I genuinely liked them in 2004 because it was hard not to. They were fresh-sounding. “Float On” was the jam. That was back when I was really into that type of music, like Death Cab and honestly pretty muchanythingonBarsuk. Riot Fest provides this magical, flower petal-lined path down my musical timeline and it is undeniably funtorevisitall of these old sounds that dominated so many formative stages of my life. We didn’t stick around for much of Modest Mouse, but just having them on my radar again inspired me to dig back into my archives for other old bands I used to listen to love around that same time, like The Prom, French Kicks, Now It’s Overhead, Kind of Like Spitting,TheNotwist, Ugly Casanova.AndobviouslyXiuXiu, but I never stopped listening to them.
  • Vintage feels, man. Vintage feels.

****************

I’m beyond depressed that it’s over. But I took so much away from the weekend. Imagine spending one day trudging along from stage to stage at a music festival when music isn’t really your jam. Now tack on two more days and think about how bad that must have sucked for Henry. I don’t know many people my own age who would think something like this is fun, let alone a 50-year-old. I gotta give props to Henry for doing this for me and for barely complaining. I’m going to admit to something GROSS, but we even held hands a lot. Probably because I was in such a state of euphoria that I had no idea what I was doing. But man, I love Henry. I couldn’t spend three intense days like that with anyone else. Thank you for making this whole weekend possible, for making sure I ate enough to survive, and for preventing me from getting lost in some random Chicago ‘hood. Adult supervision is a good thing in some cases. This was one. Henry, you da man.

Shows in general are so therapeutic and cathartic for me, so festivals like this are the equivalent of a lobotomy, I guess. I never realize how much stress I’m carrying and how many bad feels I’m internalizing until I leave a show and realize that I’m holding my head higher and gritting my teeth less. Music chases the bad noise out of my head. I know a lot of people reading this can relate, and if you can’t, just think about the thing in your life that gives you the most pleasure: watching movies, eating fancy food, 10-inch weeners on midgets.

It’s like that.

**********

Last night, I had a dream that my brother Corey was picking me up for work, but he couldn’t find my house. I was getting really pissed because how could he not know where I lived? He asked me to text him directions, so I sent him a map.

It was the map of Riot Fest. The fucking illustrated map of Riot Fest with all of the stages and the Ferris wheel and the bright green Douglas Park grass. Because in my dreams, that is where I live.

Saturday was a beautiful day: blue skies, in the low 60s, and the line to get in wasn’t as clusterfucked as Day One. We only stood for about 10 minutes before the gates opened and had plenty of time to roam before any bands started.

If I had to say one thing about Riot Fest (me? limited to one thing? can you imagine?) it would be this: It feels like your entire person is an excavation site and Riot Fest is digging up parts previously forgotten. Even a week later, I’m still letting music guide me down memory lane and it has been tremendous fun, if not eye-opening to how much much things have really changed. Some of those bands, good Lord, I haven’t listened to them in 10+ years, and the memories and feelings that came over me were overwhelming – most in good ways. These weren’t necessarily old wounds being torn open, but just some decent feels having the dust brushed off. Although it did make it even more evident that 2004 is a time in my life that could use some more healing. Watching some of these bands, like the Dear Hunter for instance, made me ask myself why I ever stopped listening to them in the first place. And I can’t remember. Other than the fact that there is just so much music to listen to and some bands just inevitably fall through the cracks. That felt like the theme for Saturday though; all of these bands that I was so excited to see even though I haven’t listened to any of them in years.

Seriously though, I’m going to try to be brief for real this time. Wish me luck.

• Chon: We recently saw these guys open for Circa Survive a few months ago, so I threw Henry a bone and told him we could skip them. They were the main stage openers though, so I at least got to still hear them while we stocked up on food tickets and bought some deep dish, which we ate like Fat Americans At a Concert while watching….
  
• The Ataris – I have never really given a shit about them, not because I think they suck or anything, just because I never really bothered and no one has ever tried to force them on me, either. I did think it was kind of odd that they were playing so early, but what do I know. They were playing on the Roots stage, which had slight hills on either side of it, so Henry and I stood on one of those while eating our pizza. Because, Fat Americans At a Concert. (Seriously though, if there is one thing I really don’t like, it’s eating at shows. I think it’s weird and kind of disrespectful to stand there shoving food in your face while a band is playing. But we were just trying to get it out of the way because there was a long day of stage-hopping ahead of us. So, we joined the douchebag masses and fed our faces.) “Did he change his hair?” Henry asked. “What? Who?” I replied, which always comes out as a frantic yell while I whip my head from side to side, looking for what, I don’t know. “The singer for the Ataris,” Henry said, pointing at the stage. LIKE I KNOW?! The Ataris could sit next to me on the trolley and I would have no idea it was them. Why is Henry so concerned with band hair?! (Never forget: Sceney Todd.) Then they played their “Boys of Summer” cover and I was like, “Oh yeah. Them.”
• The Dear Hunter – Another band that I used to really love and then inexplicably stopped following. I’ve seen them once before, when they opened for Thrice in 2009, but it was at a really annoying venue and the experience wasn’t optimum. But at Riot Fest, the crowd was fantastic and I could see perfectly because it was the stage with the tiny hills and the crowd wasn’t too large yet. Henry asked, “Who are these guys now?” and that’s basically my favorite question because then I can start rambling useless facts and playing connect-the-dots with other bands (“The singer is Casey Crescenzo and he was also in The Receiving End of Sirens, remember when I loved them, and you know who else was in TREOS? BRIAN SOUTHALL do you even know who BRIAN SOUTHALL is well he basically wrote the entire Isles and Glaciers EP, so go suck a dick, Henry.” And that’s how it goes.) The Dear Hunter was exceptional, but my favorite part, maybe even in my Top 5 moments of the entire weekend, was when the guy next to Henry offered him a joint. Father NARC politely declined and I lost it; Henry was so annoyed, but if I hadn’t laughed with abandon, my cheeks would have holes in them right now from when the force of my pent-up laughter ripped right through like giddy cannonballs.

• Gwar – I mean…I associate Gwar with my ex-boyfriend Psycho Mike and I usually try to avoid them, but this time I was like, “Fuck it, we’ve got some time.” I still don’t like their music, but their performance was mildly entertaining. The only song I knew was “Meat Sandwich” because I’m a poser.
• The Movielife – YES! I was really looking forward to this one, because the Movielife haven’t been together since…2003? Someone help me out here and Google for me; I’m tired. I wasn’t a rabid fan, but I have always liked Vinnie Carauna (he was the main reason I got into Set Your Goals back in 2009) and I Am The Avalanche, so this was a must-see for me. And they fucking brought it! Vinnie looked so happy and the camaraderie within the band seemed great. It was basically one massive singalong while Henry stood there, squinting at his phone, looking at a visual history of the Ataris’ hairstyles.
  

• Dead Milkmen – My friend Bill texted me that morning and said, “Please tell me you’re going to see Dead Milkmen today” and I was like “BILL. YOU KNOW IT.” I’m by no means a huge fan, but this is one of those bands that I used to always hear my BFF Christy’s older brother talking about when we were kids. I’ve always considered this a “big brother” type of band because of that, and it always made me sad that I didn’t have my old big brother who was teaching me about good music. (I mean, I actually do have an older brother, but I didn’t find out about him until I was 19, so…) Then in 8th grade, I had a pen pal from Seattle who used to make me mixtapes and she too loved the Dead Milkmen. I felt like I owed it to my youth to be at the Rock Stage for their set that afternoon, and I’m so glad I was, because they were wonderful, and the crowd was great. I love festivals like this because they give me the opportunity to see bands that I normally wouldn’t see at a club show. My favorite part was when Joe went off on a tangent about hipsters and how he couldn’t believe that Riot Fest was making the Damned and Echo and the Bunnymen play in daylight, all of the hipster bands should be playing those slots because hipsters love the sun and gentrification and riding their bicycles and opening trendy popsicle stands—and it was all true. Every last word of it, and I was laughing so hard because fuck a hipster. I just want to be able to walk into a coffee shop and order a cup of coffee without some asshole with stupid hair, wearing a scarf in summer judging me. I originally planned on leaving their set early to run over and catch the end of Babes In Toyland on the Rebel Stage, but the Dead Milkmen were just too much fun. Even Henry was like, “Yeah” when I said, “Wasn’t that awesome?”

• Desaparecidos – Early-20s Erin pissed her pants when she saw this band on the Riot Fest announcement. Henry was like “Who?” and I snottily yelled, “DON’T YOU REMEMBER THEM?! CONOR OBERST’S SIDE PROJECT FROM WAY BACK IN THE DAY!?” and he was like “Nope, but thanks for essentially giving me the heads up that I’m going to hate them.” I used to love Bright Eyes before it was hipster to love Bright Eyes, before Winona Ryder dated Conor Oberst, before your mom came home from Whole Foods with her hemp satchel stuffed with organic Diva Cups and kale and started telling you about the haunting song she heard at the check-out counter, but JOKE’S ON ME YOU GUYS because just admitting to any of this is basically publicly outing myself as a secret hipster. But seriously, who cares. I is for everyone and Bright Eyes is the shit and at one point in my life, they were everything to me. Actually, the Saddle Creek record label had me eating out of their hands back then. I loved Cursive (still do) and Now It’s Overhead and AZURE RAY! Goddamn, I was a different person back then! And Desaparecidos was one of those bands. I loved them because I hated George W. Bush and their music was smart and political—they were on my side, and not on Henry’s; I used to be smug about that. (I know, it’s hard to imagine.) I never had the chance to see them back in 2002, so I was READY. This was one of those times when Henry mumbled about going to get a beer and then he never came back. But that was OK — I was fine because I was amongst my people. And Jesus Christ, Desa fucking went hard. I forgot how much I loved that beautiful Midwestern emo sound. And seeing Denver Dalley brought back such memories! I struggled all weekend to remember the name of the band he used to be in, and I was determined not to google that shit. “Remember we saw them at Club Cafe? Now It’s Overhead opened for them?” I kept pressing Henry. “Nope,” he’d answer disinterestedly. “His band name had something to do with math. Not Subtraction….” Then, late Sunday night, I shouted from my side of the bed, “Statistics!!! It was Statistics.” Henry was like, “No one cares.” But I digress, seeing this band was amazing. Seeing Conor Oberst was amazing. Being so close was amazing. Life was just amazing that day. All days. LIFE FUCKING RULES. CHOOSE LIFE. FOREVER AND EVER. KUMBAYA AND JAMBALAYA.
• Echo and the Bunnymen – Seriously, fucking Echo and the Bunnymen. I got to hear “Lips Like Sugar” live – another bucket list item. I would have liked to have been closer for them, and also to have stayed for their whole set, but remember when I mentioned in my Day One post that there were three bands that were the Big Draws for me? Well, the third one was about to start during Echo’s set.

Saw this bro’s cat shirt and tried to ask him where he got it but he was so fucking high, his answer was covered in drool and question marks. So his friend was like “I BOUGHT IT FOR HIM. I SAW IT IN A STORE. I BOUGHT THE SHIRT AT A SHIRT. CATS.” Wow, thanks guy. Luckily, I posted it on Instagram and one of my friends said Urban Outfitters sells it, but I guess that was like, so last season because it’s not in stock anymore. SORRY CHOOCH, I TRIED.

• Alexisonfire: Fucking fuck fuck fuck.  This is the band, out of all the bands that weekend, that walked away with my heart. I listened to them heavily from around 2005-2007, but I never got to see them live. A thing that you should know about that time in my life is that I was unemployed for most of it, and then pregnant, then I had the thing (a/k/a Chooch) and then I worked from 4pm-midnight. So I was either poor, pregnant, figuring out how to be a mom, and then working shitty hours; all of this is to illustrate how infrequently I was going to shows back then. It was near impossible, and I had to be very choosy with what shows I did go to because $$$. Not surprising, I was extremely depressed during these days too. Major correlation there. When I was working the job with the horrible hours, Alexisonfire used to come up a lot on my Zen and I just loved them because I had some aggression, one might say. This was around the time I was really starting to get into post-hardcore more exclusively, and would soon discover Chiodos, which just changed my whole world, musically. Alexisonfire was right there in the middle of it, so I was really anxious to see them last weekend, especially because they haven’t toured in ages (Dallas’s main gig is now City & Colour, and Wade fronts Gallows). I got up as close I could, near the barricade on the right side (that’s my sweet spot at shows; never estimate the side of the stage) and Henry was like, “I’m gonna….” and then ran away. Which is fine, because sometimes I prefer to be alone during these times.  I mean, I knew I was experiencing some level of excitement while waiting for them to start, but what I hadn’t anticipated was the grip they were about to have on me. The feelings and emotions that came over me as soon as they started playing was inexplicable…and also maybe a little concerning. I was crying and losing my mind, quickly remembering just how much I used to like them and knowing that this was all out of my control — I was about to walk away from that stage TRIPLE liking them. It was nuts how many of those songs I haven’t heard in about 10 years, but the words came right back to me. I like City & Colour just fine, but Dallas Green was born to sing in Alexisonfire. From the moment he opened his mouth, I could barely breathe, and George was a fury of testosterone on that stage, and by the end of the set, he had bent the mic stand around his neck, folded it in half, jumped on it, and then folded it again. I was inspired to do the same thing, using Henry’s neck though. “So are they like a big deal or something?” one of the security guys asked the girl next to me, watching the crowd lose their shit. “Oh god, yeah,” she laughed. “And it’s because they haven’t toured in a really long time.” He nodded but you could tell he was like, “The fuck.” One of Henry’s friends, I guess. It’s crazy how something just clicked; all those times I listened to them years ago, I liked them so much but not like this. Not on this level. They blew me away and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since, constantly playing them while I get ready for work, in the car, in my head, relearning all of the nuances and split second parts that make my heart flop. After their set that day, I slowly walked back to Henry, who was standing far back not near anyone, looking distressed and angry at what he had just been subjected to. “CHILLS” I shouted to him, and he rolled his eyes. I need to see them again. Immediately.
  • My co-worker Aron likes to keep tabs on me via Instagram and then he’ll walk by and casually namedrop something I’ve posted on there, just to prove that he’s in the know. So on Tuesday, my first day back to work after the glorious weekend, he came over and said, “So Alexisonfire, huh? SO GOOD, RIGHT?” I agreed and then said, “But….just so you know, it’s ‘Alexis On Fire,'” because he pronounced it ‘Alex Is On Fire’ — a common error! “Goddammit, are you serious?!” he asked in defeat, and it was so funny. Poor Aron, he tries.
    • When they played “This Could Be Anywhere In The World,” I sincerely I was going to cry my big ugly face off and I am CRYING RIGHT NOW just thinking about it. (Also, back when I liked them years ago, I always wanted to sing “The city is burning” instead of “the city is haunted” and I was doing the exact same thing last Saturday during this song. Old habits.
      • Honestly, I just want to delete everything else in this post and replace it with every last Alexisonfire video I can find on YouTube. I am smitten. LIKE A MITTEN.
        • ON A FUCKING KITTEN.

Setlist

1. Accidents
2. Boiled Frogs (<3)
3. Old Crows
4. The Northern
5. We Are the Sound
6. .44 Caliber Love Letter
7. Dogs Blood
8. Drunks, Lovers, Sinners, and Saints
9. This Could Be Anywhere In the World
10. Young Cardinals
11. Happiness By the Kilowatt

I had my fingers crossed for “You Burn First” but it’s ok — they made up for it by playing 12 other songs that I wanted to hear. 

Can I go back to last Saturday now or….?

• Drive Like Jehu – Post-hardcore is one of my favorite music genres, a real close tie with 1980s synthpop for first place. And DLJ are veritable grandfathers of that scene at this point, so there was no way I was missing them. The crowd for them at the Rebel stage was pretty dismal, and definitely older. This was another big deal because they broke up in 1995, and only recently reunited last year, but have only played a handful of west coast shows. I had to, had to, had to see them. Also, their drummer is Mark Trombino, who has produced some of the greatest records (like goddamn Jimmy Eat World, for Christ’s sake) and admittedly, I was hoping that there would be booth for his donut company, Donut Friend. I AM OBSESSED WITH DONUT FRIEND! Their donuts are named after emo/punk/hardcore bands! Custard Front Drive! Drive Like Jelly! Fudgegazi! They could taste like dog shit for all I know, I’d still buy them all because music. (I got to see Drive Like Jehu live! What is this life.)

• Billy Idol – A few months ago, “Eyes Without a Face” came on my bedroom radio and I said out loud to the monster under my bed how much I would like to see Billy Idol live one day. I mean, it’s Billy Idol. And then because I said it, my under-the-bed monster made it so. (With a little help from some warm virgin blood and Faygo Moon Mist.)  Billy headlined the Rock Stage and when the monitors weren’t completely cutting out, he sounded fantastic. But there were some major, disappointing sound issues happening. Still, the crowd was great and it was basically the only performance that Henry and I were both looking forward to all weekend, so it was a nice, bonding moment and I think we held hands for a minute or two. And then, “Eyes Without A Face”! Gah, the childhood memories. This song, and “Drive” by The Cars are two 80s ballads that make my arm-hairs rise and my idiot heart fold in half. (OK, fine: “Is This Love?” by Whitesnake, too.)

• Taking Back Sunday: After Billy Idol was over, Taking Back Sunday was ready to headline the Roots stage. They were one of the second night headliners last year too, and I had deja vu as my teeth chattered and my feet froze into blocks of boot-shaped ice. We didn’t even attempt to get close to the stage for them, opting instead to stand back where the crowd was less dense. I promised Henry we could leave after a few songs, because he’s 50, you guys. He needs rest. I really wanted to hear “MakeDamnSure” before we left, but alas. Normally, I would pout about something like this, but the whole entire day was….I almost said made of win. Who even says that anymore.

Meanwhile, people were near death behind us at the Riot stage, where System of a Down was headlining. I watched some videos and read a lot of online accounts and “horrifying” is the only word that comes to mind. A lot of it had to do with the muddy conditions, but it sounds like the incident was in large part due to obnoxious, drunk, overzealous and disrespectful fans. I love festivals, you know I love Warped Tour to death, but this is shit you almost never see in a club show. (Or, for that matter, Warped Tour. You know why? Most of the people there are underage!) I feel like festivals bring out thousands of people who just don’t really go to real shows, and they don’t know how to act. People were falling into mud because the crowd wouldn’t stop pushing, even before SOAD came out, causing a domino effect until there were dog piles of people in the mud, unable to get up and some unable to breathe. By the time SOAD started playing, they apparently had to stop their set at least three times to allow paramedics to literally SAVE PEOPLE FROM DYING. This is why I won’t put myself that close to the stage like that in festival settings. Pack mentality scares the FUCK out of me. I love music, I love shows, I love supporting my bands, but I also love being alive. Some of the things I read on Reddit were horrifying, the way some people were treated, literally being pushed over and stood on, having their faces shoved into the mud, breathing in that dirty water and absolutely thinking they were going to die.

Nope. That’s not for me. Not at 36, not even at 21. I think the most scared I ever was at a festival was at the Rolling Rock Town Fair in 2001. You want to talk about a football field full of wasted, aggressive nu-metal-loving frat boys? Good lord, I thought that whole field was going to burn. Every time I see footage of the Reading, Leeds, or Glastonbury festivals, my chest feels so tight. I just don’t think I could ever do a festival that size.

Nope. Riot Fest is probably as large as I’ll go. And that’ll be over there, standing off to the side, thanks.

System of a Down aside, the whole day was one majestic moment after the next, ending with the best Lyft driver of the entire week, Bobby, who was hilarious and candid, hates No Doubt, and gave us an off-the-cuff tour of the Chicago outskirts the whole back to our hotel. Bobby was the fucking shirt, and as I rolled out of his car, I drunkenly told him he was the best Lyft driver of my life, and I wasn’t even DRUNK.

I have been on the verge of combustion all week because all I want to do is talk about the weekend but I’m trying not to be annoying (Henry is reading this, feeling puzzled right now. “Trying not to be annoying?”) Riot Fest, these things that you do to me. I can’t even.

While I’m trying to sort through my cluttered, unsophisticated 15-year-old’s diary full of thoughts on all the bands I saw this past weekend, let’s talk instead about the VENDORS.

Music festivals are RUDE. You’ve already spent Heaven’s rent on a ticket (and if it’s more than a one-day festival, plan on eating lots of pb&j for the next month since you just sacrificed  your grocery money) and now there’s all these food vendors and merch tents lining up to take your car payment too.

I mean, unless you do a better job at planning for these things than I do. Which, thankfully, Henry does. He had been saving for months! What a novel idea that I didn’t even consider.

The downside to this is that he had been hoarding actual cash money so that we wouldn’t have to use our debit cards at all that weekend. I say “downside” because that money was in HIS wallet so I had to constantly ask him if I could buy things and I felt like Chooch, begging for every shiny thing.

What a strong, independent woman I am!

I’m so used to going to Warped Tour, where we’re at the mercy of the venue-provided food options. And it’s overpriced bullshit food too, like chicken tenders and nachos that cost $10. A vegetarian’s nightmare. But Riot Fest is a foodtruck Valhalla, and almost every food vendor has vegetarian fare for all of us plant gourmands. I was really sad last year because I felt like I didn’t have time to take advantage of this bevy of meatless options lining the perimeter of Humboldt Park. This year, I vowed to eat a shit ton of foods!

Aaaaand….I failed to eat a shit ton of foods. I’m sorry, but food < music. All three days, we grabbed something quickly for lunch before hitting the stages, and if there was enough downtime in between bands at some point, I would declare that a second feeding was allowed.

Henry didn’t like this rigid feeding schedule that I put us on, but shit gets real out there in the field, OK? Those food lines get so long after a certain point in the day and that’s time that I just don’t have to waste.

Day One:

As soon as I saw the Dark Matter tent, I was ON IT. I have been smitten with this coffee ever since last year’s Riot Fest, and I occasionally order bags of their coffee online—they’re the reason I drop-kicked my Keurig to the curb and bought a French press. God love them.

Henry handed me some cash and took off for a porta-potty, leaving me to approach the Dark Matter tent with way too much enthusiasm. There is something about Henry’s presence that keeps my exuberance dialed back (I think this is also known as STIFLING), so anytime he leaves me alone, I can get kind of over-the-top.

Like a dog off its leash.

“I LOVE YOUR COFFEE,” I yelled at the guy in lieu of saying of hello. I don’t even know if he is the Dark Matter guy. I don’t think he was expecting to be yelled at in such a positive matter that soon after the gates opened. “I’M FROM PITTSBURGH AND SOMETIMES I FIND MYSELF SITTING AT WORK, DREAMING OF DARK MATTER.”

“Oh wow, that’s really cool!” he said after I finally shut the fuck up. “Here, take some stickers and a pin,” he insisted, pointing to the free shit along the counter. And then, after filling up a cup for me, he said, “Wait right here,” before walking to the back of the tent.

Henry had returned by then and asked me why I was still standing there.

“I don’t know, he told me to wait here,” I shrugged, dreamily sipping my cup of wet happy. And then the Dark Matter guy came back and handed me a free t-shirt!

God, I love Dark Matter.

And I love Riot Fest.

AND I LOVE YOU.

(I didn’t bother giving my nails a fresh painting for Riot Fest. They barely hold up during a regular show, let alone a three day fest.)

Quickly scarfed down a vegan taco from Tica’s Tacos. It was OK. It had a plantain on it and plantains are good. But all I cared about was chewing that shit up quick-like and running to the next stage. Henry ate ribs or something. I’m not sure.

I made a mess of my taco.

I was really excited about Puffs of Doom after Googling them when the Riot Fest food vendors were announced.I was going to get some banana Nutella concoction but at the last minute decided that my mouth was feeling particularly contrary to bananas that evening (I have flip-flopping taste buds) so I yelled “NO GET THE PEACH ONE” to Henry who has to do all of my food ordering because I get anxiety. (I hate decisions!)

I’m OK in actual restaurants though. I just get nervous when there is a line of hungry people behind me waiting to order their food and here I am, being in the way as usual, god forbid.

And there’s another tangent no one cares about.

The peach thing was just OK. I split it with Henry and usually I want to eat all of things for myself. He ended up getting some delicious white chocolate dessert egg roll thing and split that with me and it was much more delightful than my peach puff.

Henry had fries for dinner because it was the shortest line and Faith No More was about to start; I had nothing because in case you missed it, Faith No More was about to start!  Food was the last thing on my feeble mind at that point.

I had a late vending machine feast at the “hotel” – generic chex mix and half of a Snickers. Concert lyfe,  y’all.

Day 2:

Older than Henry!

We got some Connie’s deep dish as soon as we arrived at Douglas Park. I know, I know, it’s no Giordano’s or whatever, but it got the job done.

Later I had Guinness ice cream because I love beer-flavored food but not beer-flavored beer. It was really good. That’s my Yelp review.

Dinner was another hectic scramble because we had a very small window of time and everything was crowded except for that idiotic Puffs of Doom place and some Billy Goat burger stand next door. So I had a savory artichoke puff which I ate so fast because I was in such a hurry to get to Billy Idol’s stage  that I don’t even remember what it tasted like. Spinach artichoke dip inside of a puff pastry, I’m going to wager.

Day 3:

Again, we got there before any of the bands started, so we hit up the Fat Shallot, where Henry got some type of weener and I got a grilled cheese. It wasn’t too fancy, but it got the job done. I don’t know why I was so excited about the food vendors being announced, because I knew that this was going to be a weekend of eating out of necessity and nothing more. To be honest, I probably could have gotten by on protein bars. Goddamn Henry, throwing wrenches in my festival schedule with his annoying habit always having to eat.

We spent a good portion of Sunday afternoon at the two smaller stages because the lineup over there was tight as fuck. Dinky Donuts was in the vicinity, so Henry bought a bag of chili cinnamon ones and they were so moist. MOIST MOIST MOIST.

Warm and moist.

I loved them.

We split curry fries later that night while waiting for Snoop Dogg.

I know, we really lived it up.

As far as merch goes, there was so much I wanted! One of my favorite Etsy sellers, Martha Rotten, had a booth there. (Not to burst your bubble, but her name is FRANCENE not Martha.) I was excited to meet her in real life, and we had the most awkward exchange of all time, because ETSY PEOPLE ARE AWKWARD. I should know. I’m one of them.

Anyway, I own one lone Martha Rotten piece:

I was really trying hard to add to my strange jewelry collection (she has a pewter Last Supper cuff that I had my eyes on) and I think that Henry was actually going to cave and give me money (Weak, Dependent Woman Almost Gets Permission From Big Man, story on page 6) but you know what happened next? I suddenly turned selfless and decided that I would just buy something from her shop at a later date, and instead just bought my KID things because I missed him so much and like my mom before me, I know all about buying a child’s love.

We bought him this cat shirt from Harebrained Designs (they’re partners with Period Panties, lol):

And one of my favorite t-shirt companies of all time, Choonimals, was there again! I’ve been following these guys for years, ever since they first started popping up at Warped Tour. This past summer, they actually partnered with Warped Tour and not only sponsored the two main stages, but also designed the 3D commemorative ticket for 2015. I love their animal designs so much and as usual, it was tough to choose one, and I started to get real gushy at this booth too, like the t-shirt version of Dark Matter coffee. “I GO TO WARPED TOUR EVERY YEAR AND JUST LOVE CHOONIMALS AHHHHHHH” as I shoved my bulging eyeballs back into their sockets. Henry was like, “OK PICK A SHIRT SO WE CAN LEAVE BEFORE THIS MAN CALLS THE COPS.” We ultimately settled on this one for Chooch, which he’s excited to wear for picture day:

It was cute — he was like Choonimals!! as soon as I pulled it out of my Epitaph bag.

Last year, this artist–-ChuckU—was there and I was drooling over his prints but Henry was like POOR PEOPLE DON’T BUY ART, MOVE ALONG. This year, I finally talked him into buying one of the cat designs for Chooch, who already has the best cat art collection in his room.

Some of my other favorite vendors were there again too, like Then Now Always (I bought one of their necklaces at Riot Fest last year and every time I wear it, I feel happy) and KoalaCore (the best t-shirts!) but Henry kept reminding me of his blue collar status and also the fact that we’re going to Philly this weekend and we don’t want to sleep in the car, do we? I hate having his gruff voice of reason in my ear CONSTANTLY.

(Don’t even make me calculate all the money he spent on beer, though! But, I guess he had to numb the pain somehow.)

Stheart was there again too and I was straight casing their tent; I think I was alarming them. I just really wanted Henry to buy himself one of their slouch beanies because I like him in beanies but I like him best in SLOUCH beanies because then he looks slightly more my type. He was so close to picking one out but then was like “NOT RIGHT NOW” so I guess I’ll just get him seven of them for Christmas, along with a closetful of fitted flannels, gray jeans, TOMS, a neck tattoo, and The Artist In the Ambulance on vinyl.

***

Today at work, I low-key cried at my desk because my body is nothing more than a giant flesh-chalice of  emo blood and I can’t even go to a club show without collapsing into a melodramatic lump of post-show depression, so how do you think I’m handling the first week after three entire days worth of music? NOT VERY GRACEFULLY.  I will try not to be too ridiculous with my music recap posts. NO PROMISES.

Henry’s response to my “I JUST CRIED AT MY DESK, WAH RIOT FEST” text was “oh erin.” He must have been too tired to type out “honestly.”

I’m very fragile right now. Handle with care.

Today was the last day of Riot Fest and I decided to take some Hipstamatic pics because how goddamn cliché and basic.  
“Why does this feel like Day 16….”

 We accidentally got there today too early and walked right in, because our Lyft driver (Venus, she was THE BOMB) dropped us off at an alternate gate that apparently no one uses. We had like an hour to roam around and finally get our shopping done (I wanted to buy Chooch every single cat shirt we saw but Henry was like I AM A WAREHOUSE MANAGER AND YOU ARE AN OFFICE LACKEY, WE DO NOT HAVE MUCH $$$ LEFT, HELLO.  Then we went to the area where the two smallest stages are and waited for Signals Midwest and Foxtrott to start our day off.

Yesterday, after I was joyfully jumping through mud puddles with wanton abandon, Henry asked me if my boots were waterproof.

“Yeah, duh,” I said. And then I stomped through another filth swamp and said, “Ew wait….no.”

The weather today was gorgeous (low 70s and sun all day) but there was still mud everywhere. Henry was such a bitch about it too. Like “OMG EW MUD” and he would jerk me another direction.
What a man.  
During Hum’s set. I was late getting there because I fell in love with Souvenirs.

 I was really fond of the sound that my boots made every time I pulled them out of the muddy quicksands, even after I realized they weren’t waterproof, I figured, what did I care. I’m not the one who does laundry.  

“THE RIDES ARE $5 A TICKET, ERIN. AND EACH RIDE IS MORE THAN ONE TICKET!” – when I asked Henry why we never ride anything.

  
New Politics.

 These were some MOIST MOTHERFUCKERS. The chili cinnamon ones were A+. I wish I had some right now.   I took so many sips of Henry beer all weekend that I think I like it now. (I’m not a big drinker at shows so for all three days, I actually only had two Strongbows.)

  
Looking at his phone and doing the math: 2 more hours until Riot Fest ends.

 If you hate when I write about music and shows, then probably avoid my blog for the next week because it’s going to be Riot Fest word diarrhea all up in this blog commode. SO MUCH HAPPENED! I love this weekend!!

    On our way back to the hotel after a beautiful, chill first day of Riot Fest. The weather was awful when we were waiting in line (of course the gates didn’t open until 90 minutes after they were supposed to) but it was gorgeous for the rest of the day. No repeats of last year!

The drive to Chicago was super uneventful. We left after work yesterday and drove as far as South Bend, IN and crashed at the Waterford, which is my favorite hotel in South Bend. (Also the only one I’ve ever stayed at, but Henry was going to book a different hotel and I flipped out because WATERFORD.) Got to Chicago around 9:30 and then Bobby from Lyft carted our asses to Douglas Park. So many beautiful bands were seen today. 

Here’s a picture of Henry giving some French Canadian broad directions in a city he doesn’t even live in. Professional driver 4 lyfe.  
I’m really looking forward to taking my boots off and hounding Henry about what parts of today were his favorite. I feel so heart-eyed right now. 

Not even the dump Henry has us staying in can ruin that. (But it comes close. Hilariously, Golden Girls is on right now and Rose, talking about Miles, just said, “He’s not just frugal, he’s frickenfrugal! What, it’s a Scandinavian term.” #apropos.)

Henry, walking past the computer: “You’re still writing about Kennywood? What the fuck.”
Me: “It was our first time going there alone! It was kind of a big deal.”

I have a lot to say. Sue me.

***

Even at the ripe old stinky age of 36, there are very few rides I won’t go on. Even at county fairs, I’m all about the crazy death traps that fling a bitch all about, upside down, and inside out. (Well, until this happened.) Sure, there are some spinny rides that make me sick now when I ride them, so that sucks. But there are very few that I flat out refuse to ride.

And if I do, it’s because of heights.

I’m afraid of heights, big time. Even on steel roller coasters, the only thing that scares me is that initial climb. After that, I’m fine, but I can’t stand the suspense of slowly creeping up that steep hill. Ew. I think I can trace this back to the fall of 1983 when my bitch neighbor BECKY left me stranded in her tree house, and I just sat there and whimpered for hours (HOURS) until her dad realized that there was a human perishing alone in a tree in his backyard and came to rescue me. I was afraid to climb down the ladder, OK?

To this day, I am not friends with a single Becky. (Rebeccas and Beccas are cool, though.)

During the summer of 2005, I was at King’s Island in Cincinnati with Henry, ex-BFF and her sister. There was this ride there called Delirium, one of those pendulum-type rides, but larger than I had ever seen. I desperately wanted to ride it but all three of my riding partners bitched out. We walked past it before leaving the park that day, and I’m going to tell you a secret: I WAS REALLY GLAD THAT NO ONE WOULD RIDE IT WITH ME. That mother was frightening to watch;  it flung people so high into the sky that just watching it from the ground made my legs quake like Aunt Fran’s mystery Jell-o salad.

Last year, Kennywood replaced their Pitfall ride (one of those free-fall bitches that I hate and only rode once during its entire tenure at the park) with their own version of Delirium: The Black Widow. This one is actually larger than its King Island sister, tossing idiots 146 feet into the air as opposed to Delirium’s wussy 137. It is this disgusting behemoth that just sits there like a fat ass, looming in the distance, laying in wait, and I shudder every single time I’m in its vicinity. Chooch and I made excuses last year to not ride it.

“Maybe next year, when I’m 9,” Chooch promised no one in particular.

“Yeah, maybe it’ll have fallen into the river by then,” I said. “I mean, yeah, next year. We’ll ride it next year.”

So….when we were at Kennywood this summer, that was technically “next year.” And Chooch is 9 now.

And It hadn’t fallen into the river.

I asked him, after we rode the nearby Exterminator, if he wanted to ride it.

“Uh, sure….” he slurred with hesitation and uncertainty. “But um, how about later? Like, when it’s dark.”

But then Stanley happened, and I thought, “If an 80-year-old man can ride the Black Widow and live to tell the tale, then I certainly can ride it too and (hopefully) live to blog the tale.”

So we did it. Chooch and I got in line, which didn’t seem very long, but we ended up standing in it for a good 30 minutes; Stanley was right—the load-time for the Black Widow is really long. And that’s OK — I’d rather the ride attendants take their time checking each individual safety harness than just shrug and shout to the operator, “Eh, looks good from over here. Go ‘head and fire her up.”

You know, like they do at the county fairs.

Shudder.

Not only was the wait kind of long, but it was probably the most somber line I’ve ever stood in at an amusement park. If people weren’t outright voicing their fears and anxiety, they were standing with long, serious faces. Personally, I fidgeted a lot, bounced from one foot to the other and then even pulled out my third foot to bounce on that one too and that’s how you  know I was anxious. I tugged on my hair, I compulsively checked my phone, I asked Chooch if he was sure he didn’t want to just do this next year or never.

And then I stood there and watched, agog, every time the Black Widow took a new batch of 40 idiot fucks for a perilous swing.

During this, Janna texted that she was on her way. I told her we were in line for the Black Widow. Her response was “Why?” or “You’re idiots” or “OMG NO” or “Do you have a Will?” or something like that. That time of my life was a real blur.

Finally, the line started moving again. It was cut off right at me and Chooch. I fingered my imaginary rosary and blew a discreet kiss to the heavens.

But then one of the ride attendants told people to move down and I realized it was because he was making two seats available for us.

Noooooooo.

Chooch, suddenly brave, bolted over to one of the empty seats while I walked with knocking-knees over to one of the cubbies to stash my bag. I considered trying to stash myself in one of the cubes too. But Chooch needed me. Must be strong for Chooch. Such brave. Very courage. Strength. Valium. Self-administered cold-cocking.

I climbed up into the seat next to Chooch and together we struggled with the seat belt. Always a great start. Eventually, the attendants finished their rounds and, assured that we were all safely harnessed, gave the thumbs up to the ride operator. The platform slowly sank, taking my stomach with it.

There was a young girl to my left, and her mom was on the other side of her. As the arm of the Widow started swaying us back and forth, gently to start, the mom said, “OK, time to go to my place of Zen.”

“Can you take me with you?” I called over top of her daughter. The mom laughed and said, “I hate this ride too! I only ride it because of my daughter, she’s autistic and can’t ride it alone.”

By this point, we were being swung higher into the sky, and also, to ass-fuck us even harder, the part we were sitting on had started to spin.

I immediately started speaking in trucker-tongue. I expelled from my mouth the ghosts of hundreds of dead sailors, their nasty lexicon came with them. My words were so filthy that literal crumbs of soil began falling from my lips.

But that damn girl was sitting next to me, and her mom was so sweet and kept talking to me during the whole ride, trying to calm me down, so I began to make a conscious effort to swap out “motherfucking cunt of Satan’s mom!” with a more sterile “oh man!” or “hoooo boy, this is a real doozy!”

I tried to distract myself by seeing how much of the Jabberwocky I remembered after being forced to memorize it in seventh grade. (None.)

I asked myself what I wanted to do if I made it off the ride. (Cower in a corner. Hug someone. Buy new underwear. Go to church.)

And then, suddenly, I felt OK! I had acclimated! “This isn’t so bad!” I yelled to the mom just as someone to my right shouted joyously, “WE AREN’T EVEN HALFWAY THERE YET, WOOOOOO!!!!” I opened my eyes and he was right. We were still so close to the ground, with so much more height to gain.

So then I started saying things like:

• THIS IS THE WORST!
• NEVER AGAIN!
• CHOOCH, I HATE YOU!
• THIS IS NOT OK!
• I’M READY TO COME DOWN NOW, GUY! STOP THE RIDE!
• WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?! in the Key of Kerrigan
• MY BOWELS JUST FELL OUT, MORTAL COMBAT-STYLE, DID YOU SEE THAT? THEY FUCKING FROZE MID-AIR AND THEN RE-ENTERED ME! THIS RIDE MADE MY BOWELS TRY TO RUN AWAY!

And by “saying” I mean that I was wailing these things so loudly, that I had accumulated an audience down below and by the time the Black Widow showed mercy and brought up back to the ground, there were people in line who were laughing at me.

But let’s back it up.

When we eventually reached the 146 feet that the Black Widow brags about on Kennywood’s website, I had no choice but to just let my muscles loosen, accept my fate, and allow the air to penetrate me. I just hung there like a rag doll and took it like a bitch. I felt Barbara Hershey in the Entity.

I’m not sure which part was worse: grimacing at the clouds or flinching at the cement below.

As the ride came to a complete stop, Chooch was like, “Yeah bitches! That was awesome! Woo! Mommy, you look awful, lol.”

And it wasn’t motion sickness, either. Don’t get it twisted. I was sick from pure, unadulterated FEAR. I felt poisoned by panic-induced adrenaline; one of those final, desperate shrieks had all but taken my voice (and my spirit) from me for the rest of the day.

I almost fell out of the seat after my harness was lifted, just dripped right onto the platform into an oozing puddle of flesh and piss. My legs were quaking and I was having trouble steadying my eyeballs in their sockets. It felt like the first time I tried to get out of the hospital bed after having a C-section but without the INCISION.

Weak, confused, like a fragile baby deer learning to walk.

A FRAGILE BABY DEER WITH A HUNTER HOT ON HER TAIL.

I don’t even remember gathering up my bag and walking out of the exit.

But I do remember standing across from the Black Widow afterward and feeling a sudden surge of empowerment! I’m not sure I could say that I “conquered” the Black Widow, but I made it through the whole thing without crying! I mean, I felt some drops on my face at one point, but it was probably just the wind making my eyes water. Or, you know, bird pee.

Definitely not tears.

Would I ride it again?

Probably!

I make stupid choices.

Maybe I’ll wait a few years, though.

By the time we washed our hands of the Black Widow, it was time to go to the entrance and meet that other black widow, Janna. We passed by the Swingshot en route, and Stanley was still going strong. Chooch and I screamed his name real loud and then smiled smugly, like, “Yeah, we know him” when people turned around to stare at us.

The day was already fun, but once Janna got there, it was like OFF THE CHAIN fun. Whatever that means. I always thought being on the chain was supposed to be fun?

Janna just really brings out the maniacal douchiness in Chooch and me. It’s not any certain thing that she does, but she is kind of an enabler. Like, she’ll try to make us do the right thing, but quickly realizes that we’re lost causes, so she’s just like, “Fuck it. Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

She’s been saddled with one form of me or another since the 90s. She’s pretty good at shrugging it off.

We waited all day for Janna to get there before partaking in my favorite tradition: GOLDEN NUGGET ICE CREAM CONES. They’re just the best.

And holy shit, EXPENSIVE!

“Everything here is so expensive!” I texted Henry, who replied, “No shit.” I don’t like knowing these things. It’s better when Henry handles the food and beverage and ticket department while I twirl around like Julie Andrews on a goddamn hill.

Seriously, these cones are the best. I’m not certain that these are exclusive to Kennywood, but I can say that I have never seen these types of ice cream cones anywhere else.

I feel like this was my standard mask for the day.

Chooch lost the race, in case you wondered. I LOVE IT WHEN I BEAT HIM!

This was one of my favorite moments of the day. Chooch and I had reconvened with Janna at the Potato Patch, after we finished riding the Thunderbolt. Janna asked us if we wanted any of her fries, and Chooch disgustedly snipped, “Uh, no. I just saw that one fall out of your mouth and land on the other fries!”

“It did not fall out of my mouth!” Janna cried defensively. “It fell off my fork, Chooch!”

“No, it fell from your mouth. I saw it. I don’t want your germy fries.”

Janna was so offended and pissed off about this, and I just sat there and laughed while eating her germy fries. I don’t care if it fell out of her mouth, Potato Patch fries are amazing, and even better when I didn’t have to stand in line and pay for them myself.

They continued to bicker about this and I smiled to myself, happy that Chooch was adeptly carrying the torch. Just a few weeks ago, Corey and Chooch went to see Minions. Janna was meeting them there; apparently, on the way to the theater, they passed a car that had been pulled over by a cop. It was a car similar to Janna’s, so by the time they got to the theater and bought their tickets, they had convinced themselves that it actually was Janna. When she arrived at the theater (“Late!” Corey told me), they started mocking her endlessly about getting pulled over and from what they excitedly told me afterward, she was getting really irritated and defensive.

I love this. It’s like a brand new generation of Janna Torturers.

The quote of the night was born as we stood in line for the Skyrocket. Completely out of the blue, Chooch turned to us and said, “Japanese horror really takes it past the limit.”

I mean, he’s not wrong.
  

Fucking lemonade. DRINK THAT SLOWLY, SON.

The Kangaroo is a ride that I often overlook, but this time, we made sure to mount that bitch. I love kiddie rides because it makes overzealous cheering and frenzied screaming effortlessly fall from my body. Chooch likes to get in on this exaggerated enthusiasm as well, so we’re on the Kangaroo, flailing about and wooting like frat boys when I suddenly noticed that the people in the car in front of us kept turning around and looking. Even Janna was like, “This is fun. Whee.”

“What are they looking at?” I shouted.

“Us,” Janna pointed out, and that’s when I noticed that we were the only idiots expressing any joy whatsoever, so that just made me ramp it up to “Go home, you’re drunk” levels. Nothing comes more naturally to me than the simple act of obnoxious behavior. (This just in: Janna has confirmed that this was her favorite moment of the day!)

Near the end of the night, Janna wanted to ride the Whip, which is conveniently located right next to the Exterminator. And I really wanted to ride the Exterminator again, even though Chooch and I had already ridden it twice earlier that day.

“I hate the Exterminator,” Janna complained. “It always gives me a headache!” But Chooch and I looked at each other like, “Aw shit, this bitch isn’t actually trying to say no to us, is she?” So then we bullied into her agreeing to ride it. We’re skilled in the art of persuasion.

On the way there, my phone rang and it was Henry facetiming us! I screamed, “HENRY!” and Chooch snapped his head back and cried, “DADDY?!” and then we fought over the phone. I was so happy to see his stupid face! Janna watched on in amused horror with an expression of “Jesus Christ, you idiots haven’t even been away from him for a whole day!” on her face. Don’t judge us. We’re very attached to our caregiver.

Then we hung up on Henry because we had reached the entrance to the Exterminator. After a short wait in line, we  screamed and laughed our way through the ride’s duration while Janna sat there in a static state of “Ugh.” When we exited the Exterminator a few moments later, I started laughing riotously.

A Kennywood employee was in the process of covering each car on the Whip with a black tarp.

The Whip had closed for the night while we were riding a ride that Janna didn’t want to ride! OH THE SWEET STENCH OF SCHADENFREUDE.

“Sorry, Janna,” I said with faux-sincerity and a mouthful of giggles. She was just rolled her eyes and acted like she hadn’t had her heart set on it.

Chooch and I wanted to ride the Swingshot again after that, so we made Janna stand there and attempt to photograph us screaming our skulls out of our heads. We hoarsely shouted, “JANNNNNNA!!!!” during the whole ride like it was some foreign word for “wheeeee!” Sometimes I wonder what we look like to outsiders.

Fucking awesome and cool as shit, I bet.

This was a stellar way to close out the summer. Kennywood4lyfe!

OK

Chooch was all smiles and giggles all day long, but every time I would go to take a picture, he would put on his Sad Boy persona because he wanted Henry to see how sad we were without him. Which is great, but he didn’t tell me why he was doing this until the day was almost over, so I look like I’m forcing my child to spend time with me, like oh wow look at that lady, trying to be a loving mom all of a sudden. I look like my cheesy smile is about to engulf him whole.

I always forget how abusive the Musik Express is. Why can’t they line those bars with pillows?! I had bruises for the next week. Henry would find a new one and ask, “What’s that fr—–” and I would cut him off with, “Musik Express, OK? GOD, LAY OFF WITH THE QUESTIONS.”

Maybe I should let him think my bruises are from trolley-trauma—I bet then he’ll start driving me to work again!

In line for the Jack Rabbit, one of the most hilarious wooden coasters of all time. Please, People of the Internet, come visit me so we can ride the Jack Rabbit together! When I was in middle school, my best friend Christy and I would sing the “It’s beyond me, help me Mommy” part from the Rocky Horror Picture Show song “Don’t Dream It” as we ascended the first hill, the one right before the double dip. I think about this every single time I ride the Jack Rabbit; it might be time to teach Chooch so we can dust off that old tradition.

Or maybe CHRISTY and her kids can just come to Kennywood with us next summer!?

I was trying to get a picture of that Historic National District sign, don’t flatter yourself, Kid.

Second lunch at Johnny Rockets. Should have just taken him here to begin with, because finishing off chicken strips is always a guarantee with him. I got to have coffee while he ate and it was fantastic. I always forget that I’m an addict until I haven’t had any for four hours and start to get snippy with people and everything around me seems amplified and blown out of proportion. So when the waitress told me that they don’t serve iced coffee, I all but cried, “I DON’T CARE, BRING ME REGULAR THEN.” And so she did and I sat there nursing my steaming cup of coffee with a drunk smile on my pudding face.

Our Johnny Rockets visit was nice because we got to slow down our pace and talk about things, like Minecraft (snooze alert) and MUSIC and the derpy people around us.

Chooch didn’t like his fries because they were “American fries” and not “French fries.”

Chooch wanted to pretend like we were drunk, so…
 

During one of our line-waits for the Racer, I noticed a little girl further ahead of us in the queue. She kept making eyes at Chooch every time we passed each other. Finally, when the line stopped moving and she found herself across from him, she blurted out, “I like your hair!”

He made this annoyed smirk and rolled his eyes! “Thanks,” he muttered.

I felt so bad that he snubbed her, so I told her I liked her shirt (I did! It had ice cream cones and hot dogs on it) and that seemed to brighten her up a little. Then when the line started moving again, I made sure to tell Chooch that he was rude as fuck back there.

“WHAT DID I DO?!” he yelled, and I was like, “JUST BE NICE TO GIRLS, OMG.”

Actually, now that I think about it, this happened after Janna joined us and that little girl’s rejection was probably a major trigger for her. Lol supreme!

I used to love this ride, but it’s currently on my puke-a-rama black list ever since I almost puked after riding one of these at Waldameer last summer. Or the summer before that. Who knows anymore. THE DAYS ARE ALL A BLUR. I used to ride it alone because Chooch was too short but now he rides it alone while I sit on a bench like a basic mom.

Thunderbolt! I’m suspicious of amusement parks that don’t have wooden coasters.

  

Chooch will only drink lemonade and milk because he’s a freak and a huge disgrace to his father who slings FAYGO for a living, so we had to bounce from one refreshment stand to the next in search of something non-carbonated to coat his precious throat. I was getting so pissed! Just drink water! WWHD in a situation like this? Probably go straight to the correct beverage stand on his first try because he has done it so many times before while I’m not paying attention/standing in line for a ride/looking for a new boyfriend/crying about something.

Also, lemonade is expensive!

I mean, how great are amusement parks once the lights come on? It almost makes me forget how much it costs to get in. ALMOST.

Chooch was supposed to help me caption these but he’s a punk ass bitch who all of a sudden “has to do homework.” OH OK.

One more Kennywood post to go! It’s the one where Janna makes her grand entrance and I almost lost consciousness on a ride.

After a series of post-lunch gentle rides, Chooch and I got in the short line for the Swingshot, a ride that used to terrify me and I boycotted it for a good five years after the first time I rode it. I felt ready to give it a second chance two years ago, and it’s been heart-eyes, death-trap edition ever since. It’s basically like being on a giant swingset, but the only thing that really freaks me out is that the safety bar only goes over your lap and not over your shoulders, so there isn’t anything to hold on to. And the scared little four-year-old girl in me desperately needs something to cling to!

A girl and her younger brother were in line behind us and the brother was very calmly stating over and over that he really did not want to ride this. She was very firm with him.

“Too bad, you’re riding it,” she said bossily, her youthful visage already in the beginning stages of memory-foaming her future resting bitch face. I mean, she was probably only 10 or 11 and already had a semi-perma-scowl dripping off her jowls. We made eye contact and I smiled nervously at her because I’ve seen Village of the Damned and it’s better not to anger the children, but my smile was met with unspoken haughtiness.

Again, people who are not amused at amusement parks can GTFO.

“Oh my god, look at that old man!” Chooch cried, pointing at the Swingshot, currently in motion. “He’s like as old as grandma!”

“I was just noticing him too,” I said, meaning to imply that hey, look at us! Always on the same wavelength, this mom-and-son duo! But of course, Chooch took this opportunity to make it into a competition and sneered, “OH OK. I SAW HIM FIRST.”

So then we argued about who saw the old man first and somehow during this we missed the girl’s brother escaping her grasp and leaving her to stand in line alone.

There was only one side of the Swingshot running that day, so the line moved a little slower than normal. We ended up just missing getting on the next round, but the ride operator said we could ride that one if we wanted, we just wouldn’t be able to sit together.

“No way, I can’t sit by myself,” I laughed nervously.

“But you can sit next to our VIP!” the ride operator continued, trying her best to fill the ride to capacity. “He’s 80-years-old and trying to ride this 80 times in a row today.”

“What?!” I cried, ogling the Elder sitting patiently at the end of the ride. “That’s amazing.”

“Earlier in the season, he rode the Jack Rabbit 80 times, too,” she said, before sliding the gate closed and giving the “all clear” to the ride operator behind the controls. I watched in awe as the Elder maintained his relaxed composure while being catapulted into the air. I forgot about hating on the girl behind me and focused all of my attention on this new subject.

“That man is a bad ass,” I said to Chooch.

“I’m going to sit next to him when it’s our turn. Will you save me a seat while I put my bag in the cubby thing?” I was already tossing furtive glances over my shoulder at the people behind us, trying to determine if any of them seemed like a threat. I felt compelled to cry out “I CLAIM SEAT 3!” but everyone knows you never announce to a crowd what you want! That’s a sure way of handing some motherfucker the ammunition to give your dreams a head shot. Chooch did that once at another park, I can’t remember where we were, but we were in line and he opened his big mouth and said, “I WANT TO GET THE BLUE CAR” or something, and no fucking shit, I watched the boy’s ears in front of us as they perked up and he side-eyed Chooch, and I knew it was over. Chooch just gave this asshole his idea and sure enough, once the entrance gate was unlocked, that little fuckboy bolted straight to the car that Chooch had his heart set on. (Because these are big issues, you guys.)

I mean, not gonna lie, I would probably do the same thing.

So, I was really getting anxious, feeling like I was going to pee my pants, nervously doing the standing-in-line jig. Even though we were going to be the first ones on, I had this fucking bag that I had to stash away first. GODDAMN YOU HENRY FOR NOT BEING THERE. He always holds my stuff for me when I’m on rides. :(

I whispered one more to Chooch, begging him to make sure no one took that seat.

“No, because I’m going to sit next to him,” Chooch said defiantly. So then we fought about who was going to sit next to the old man for the next minute until the ride was over and the entrance gate slid open for us.

I ran over to toss my bag into one of the cubbies while Chooch ran to claim a seat. I was pretty much ready to accept defeat because Chooch is the worst, but when I turned around, I saw that Chooch was climbing into a seat two down from the old man, leaving the seat next to him open for me! I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY GOOD FORTUNE.

“I don’t feel like talking to him, so you can just have that seat,” Chooch mumbled, which is his way of saying I LOVE YOU MOMMY AND I WANT NOTHING MORE THAN FOR YOU TO BE HAPPY.

I happily stuffed my ass into the spare seat and immediately turned to the old man and yelled, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ARE RIDING THIS 80 TIMES.” There is this weird dichotomy with me in that I am often pretty reserved and introverted because I just don’t have the energy for small talk.

But the other side of me is a blown-out Leo, almost a caricature where I am TURN ALL THE WAY UP. A few years ago, for example, I was having lunch with an acquaintance. This person doesn’t really know me very well outside of my blog, so when we would meet up, he would get the sweet, polite, intense listener version of myself. One time he said to me, “You know, I love your blog. I love how you developed yourself into a character. But I gotta tell you, if Blog Erin was who you were in real life, I wouldn’t be friends with you.”

This really took me by surprise, because “Blog Erin” is very much who I am. This isn’t an act. I am actually at times even more full-blown “in real life” than I am “on the blog,” and it was just incredibly frustrating to sit there and listen to someone act like they know me, when they had only been given the opportunity to see one facet of my personality—ya gotta earn the rest. I feel like most everyone is like this! But, what do I know. I’m halfway to recluse when it comes to interacting with people these days.

That being said, as I sat there on the Swingshot, waiting for the ride attendants to finish their safety checks, I was Full Force Blog Erin with this guy. I was eager to meet him, to talk to him, to give him the chance to touch my life. I just felt drawn to him, I don’t know. Any 80-year-old who is attempting to ride something 80 more times than my dumb boyfriend, who is practically a spring chicken by comparison, is worth talking to.

“This ain’t nothing more than a giant swing,” the man, whose name I had learned was Stanley, answered my maniacal statement.

“True,” I agreed, thinking about it. “I love this ride, but it still scares me.”

“Pffft,” Stanley swatted at the air with his hand. “This ride is safe. I like the Black Widow too, but it takes too long to load that ride, so I chose the Swingshot instead.”

Whoa. If Stanley rides the Black Widow, then I should definitely stop being a bitch baby about it. I asked him what number he was currently on and he held up a metal counter in his hand. Ride #16. What a goddamn bad ass.

“What are those on your fingers?!”

I held up my hands and curved my fingers into air quotes so he could see my quotation tattoos.

“Are those real?” he asked skeptically. I nodded and he did a little eye roll and shook his head in a “kids these days” fashion. I asked him what made him want to ride this for 80 times that day, and he said, “Because it gives me the chance to sit with pretty young girls like yourself!”

OH STANLEY, STOP! No, don’t really stop.

And he continued to talk to me as the Swingshot fired up, sounding like a dragon swooping down from the sky, and I began to scream because it gets me every single time.

You are literally staring face-first at the cement below!

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Stanley yelled against the rushing wind. “We go soaring over those trees!” he laughed.

YEAH, AND THEN LAND WITH A WET SPLAT AGAINST THE ROAD!

After the Swingshot returned us to terra firma, Stanley agreed to take a selfie with me.

“You make sure you show that to your boyfriend!” he said in that sleazy way that only men his age can get away with. I laughed and said I would, and then after retrieving my bag and walking passed him to the exit, he yelled over his shoulder, “You keep that picture forever! Don’t you forget me!”

Honestly, how could I? We may have only spent 5 minutes in each others’ lives, but it was really inspirational—don’t laugh! Stanley had me so stoked on life! I walked away feeling giddy as fuck, like I could do anything, perhaps maybe even tackle my knee-buckling fear of the Black Widow later on.

Stanley, you are the motherfucking man.

It didn’t feel right closing out summer without a trip to Kennywood. We normally go earlier in the season, but skipped it this time in favor of another park, so I decided that I would take a day off work so we could go before Chooch had to return to school. Unfortunately, because they were short a person at Henry’s job, he was unable to take any time off work and enjoy life like a regular person with a job that doesn’t suck.

I didn’t care. My day off was approved and Chooch and I were going. The End.

Except that we do EVERYTHING as a family. Going to Kennywood without Henry seemed unnatural. Dirty, even. Also, horrifying.

Henry still did everything he could to ensure that our day went off without a hitch, including PRE-BUYING OUR TICKETS FOR US. Some people at work were concerned about me having to drive there but I was like bitch please. I know how to drive! Getting there was pretty much the only thing I wasn’t worried about. It was more of, “What’s going to happen if we need an adult?” Before I left work the day before, Wendy even asked me if she should be on stand-by.

You guys have no idea how good we have it with Henry. Or maybe you do. But sometimes Chooch and I forget. Not on this day, though. Oh shoot, not on this day.

Even with all of these murky unknowns, I woke up that Tuesday morning feeling positively giddy. Kennywood has always had that effect on me! I threw on my favorite Cure t-shirt, checked the weather (I’m growing up!) and when I saw that it was going to be in the low-70s all day and even cooler at night, I had the good sense to actually stuff two long-sleeved shirts for me and Chooch into my Draven drawstring bag. I even remembered my portable charger for my phone!

And then Chooch and I had a huge fight (he was wearing a Minecraft shirt and I told him to change because I didn’t want to look at that all day—-ha-ha, I love it when I get to confuse being a mom with being a QUEEN) and I screamed “THEN WE’RE NOT GOING TODAY!” and he was like “FINE!” and then we both indulged in a big pout in separate rooms of the house, during which I texted Henry in CAPSLOCK and he was like “Calm down, what happened” while probably rolling his eyes and feeling even more stressed out than usual.

I stomped downstairs to heat up my coffee and made accidental eye contact with Chooch, who was sitting on the couch in a different shirt, putting on his shoes.

“WE’RE STILL GOING, YOU KNOW,” he snarled brattily, and I tried to snarl back at him but then we both started cracking up.

“I hate you,” I said to him lovingly. Because I show my affection in opposites.

And so we left the house around 10:00 because the park opens at 10:30. As we walked to the car, Chooch groaned, “Why do you always have to look like a teenager?” to which I yelled, “OMG THANKS!”

We had no trouble getting there. I parked without any sort of tragedy. We remembered to take the tickets out of the glove compartment. Made it through the gates without becoming part of a hostage situation.

I don’t think I have ever been to Kennywood this early in the morning! It was wonderful. Not too many assholes were there yet, but also most of the rides were not yet running so we just kind of walked around, looking like n00bs. We decided to head over to the Exterminator, because that’s our favorite ride and the line for that one can get pretty long, and most of the wait time is inside the stuffy building, where there is always at least one motherfucker who feels compelled to fart. Mmm, the stench of flatulence in a crowded room on a humid summer day.

There was already a pre-line that had formed, but only about 10-15 people. At 11:00, some song started playing around the park and everyone was smiling knowingly at each other, and that’s when I definitely realized for sure that in all of my 36 years of visiting Kennywood, I have never been there when it opened and this “good morning” song was new to me. Definitely a n00b.

Right after, a Kennywood kid came out to officially open the line, and we walked right in and started our day off in a good way. The Exterminator is like a wild mouse-type of coaster inside a dark building and it makes me crack the fuck up so bad every time. One time, I rode it with Blake and Alisha and came sickeningly close to peeing my pants from laughing so hard. Or maybe I did. Just a little!

After the Exterminator, I was feeling really amped because we just successfully partook in our first ride of the day. But then when we exited the building, I remembered that Henry wasn’t standing off to the side by a garbage can somewhere, nose-in-phone, waiting for us. Chooch and I exchanged looks, but then I cried, “LET’S GO ON THE THUNDERBOLT NOW!” and he was like “FUCK YEAH, THUNDERBOLT!” On the way, we passed the Black Widow, which is Kennywood’s newest ride. It’s this gigantic pendulum-type thing that swings sorry souls to wicked heights. Chooch and I made 87 excuses last summer to not ride it.

“Should we ride this today?” I whispered.

“Uh….yeah sure. But later. Like, when it’s dark,” Chooch waved it off nervously and then we ran away.

On the way to the Thunderbolt, we were sidetracked by the Turtles! The Turtles is one of those great old-fashioned rides that has persevered for ages and is a historical landmark at this point. (It seriously is. It has a plaque.) It’s one of only two tumble-bug rides that remain in the world, and while it’s “just a kids ride,” it still evokes so many obnoxious laughs. Partially because ha-ha we’re on a kids ride, and partially because I always forget how rough of a ride it is. And when you pass by the beginning part of the track, there’s a recording of a slow, drugged-out sounding voice that says, “Tuuuuuuuurtle.” So Chooch and I pretty much walked around the rest of the day, randomly shouting “tuuuuuuuuurtle” to each other.

LOOK AT US, making memories without Henry. Oh, what a concept.
  

Chooch ended up changing into a Dixon Brothers (The Walking Dead) shirt so that we could spend the day together without my eyes crossing in sheer boredom every time they fell upon his idiotic Minecraft shirt.

I mean, I get that Minecraft is supposedly some great learning tool for children, somehow, but I just hate everything about it and I’m not ashamed to say so. Get fucked, Minecraft.

Basically no line for the Thunderbolt! We could have walked right on, but we decided to wait an extra couple of minutes in order to snag the front seat.

The second of approximately 87 selfies that we would take throughout the day. SELFIE ON EVERY RIDE!

Kennywood is built on a hill next to a gross river and across from one of the sad, industrial sections of Pittsburgh. It helps keep it real, you know? It’s definitely changed a lot since I was a kid, and a lot of beloved rides were replaced with flashier, more modern ones, and the admission prices have skyrocketed, but deep down in the heart of it all, Kennywood still has that quaint, blue-collar working class essence about it. Aside from Alisha and the foreign exchange student who lived with my family in 1995, I just realized that I have had very few opportunities to pop anyone’s Kennywood cherry, so if you want to come visit me next summer and go to Kennywood, you should. That’s pretty much the only tourist destination here that I will actually be able to fill your head with facts about.

Everything else, I’m like, “I don’t know. There are three rivers there but fuck if I know the names.”  And, “Oh I don’t know, some Carnegie guy.” But, Heinz ketchup and Kennywood! Those are topics I can yammer on about.

(Truthfully, my Heinz ketchup facts only extend as far telling people to slam the heel of their hand against the 57 if they need to get the ketchup flowing out of the glass bottle.)

Kennywood has some great wooden coasters. Last year was Chooch’s first time on the Thunderbolt because it has one of the highest height restrictions. Being able to ride everything together now is the best!

Hairband collection.

Racer selfie!

Jackrabbit!

There still wasn’t much of a crowd around 12:30, so we had been ride-riding for a good 90 minutes with very little wait time. This made us get hungry earlier than normal, so we decided it was time to take a break and eat. Also, Kennywood isn’t a huge park, and I didn’t want us to get burnt out too early, because Janna was going to be meeting us later in the evening after work. (Kennywood has a cheaper “Night Rider” admission option.)

“Hi Janna! Sorry you just paid $22 for a ticket, but we’re sick of Kennywood now. K, bye!”

Honestly though, I’m sure she wouldn’t be too surprised if that actually happened, coming from Flake 1 and Flake 2.

Our food tradition at Kennywood for years has always been to get pizza at this food place that’s next to Kiddieland.  It’s not that the pizza is like OMG ITALY! or totally gourmand, but it’s familiar, decent, and fast. Also, Henry always deals the pizza procurement while the rest of us sit down and bang our fisted forks and knives against the table. This was my first time even walking into the pizza shack!

THE HORROR!

“Do they take credit cards?” I asked Chooch and he was like “The fuck if I know, I’m 9.”

And of course, as soon as we started walking toward the entrance, a family of about 10 swooped in from the left and beat us. Literally, the longest line we had to wait in all fucking day. I was PISSED and texted Henry to let him know this. He was just like “lol” and then probably miumbled, “Better you than me.”

It took these assholes so long to place a simple pizza order that I had plenty of time to familiarize myself with the shoddy, prison tattoos that the mom had on her arms. One was the outline of Tweety (obviously), but the line was really thick and fuzzy and didn’t CONNECT. She had the angry mom-bark to go along with it. The musk of Newport halo’ing her jowled face. The Yinzer-attitude after a Steelers loss.

I couldn’t stand this broad. Especially when she was rude to the old man who handed her the pizza box and kindly suggested that she hold it with two hands. “I GOT IT” she snapped in that angry mom-bark, rolling her eyes at him. As she walked away, pizza box balanced precariously on one forearm while her hands were full of plates and beverage, I silently willed her to trip in her Crocs. I hate when people are assholes to old people! This guy was probably someone’s grandfather and I decided that I was going to be obsessed with him.

I think his name was Roy. I knew at the time, but later I would meet another old man (no, Henry didn’t surprise us with a visit) and quickly booted Pizza Server out of my heart.

Sorry, Roy.

“There’s nothing to make fun of without daddy here,” Chooch said sadly. I agreed, and we had a moment of silence for Henry. Then I made Chooch get a napkin and wipe the pizza off his face, because that’s the only maternal instinct I have: to shudder at the sight of food-faces.

Mr. “I’m so hungry, order me two pieces please” only ate half of one. Normally, Henry’s role is to finish our food for us because WASTE NOT WANT NOT or whatever it was that the Pilgrims said.  But he wasn’t there, so I had to stuff down my own slice, plus Chooch’s leftovers, and I felt like I was going to die.

“Well, at least I don’t have to buy myself dinner now,” I muttered and Chooch was like, “I SAID I’M SORRY, GOD! SO FAT, SO SAD!”

After pizza, we had a costume change because the day had turned overcast and it was chilly as fuck for August. I loved it. I made Chooch ride the train and he was pissed, but after homeboy turned me into a pizza compactor, he was going to have to suffer through a mild ride with me so that my stomach could settle. I’m not a big eater at amusement parks! Afterward, Chooch said that he wanted to wait for Janna to get there before riding the train so that she could slam her head off of it again. Seriously, one of our favorite Kennywood Memories!

It looked like rain almost all day and yet not a single drop fell. These are the best days! The weather plus it being the last weekday that Kennywood was open for the season really kept the crowds at bay.

On Noah’s Ark, this lady in front of Chooch was such a miserable bitch who complained about every single thing and at one point, when we were still in line, she miserably cried about how she just wished she was drunk right then, at which point we made accidental eye contact and I was scared that she was going to start yelling at me. Maybe she had bigger issues that she was dealing with, but it’s really hard for me to understand how you could be at an amusement park, literally a park created to amuse people, and be a miserable cooze.

And then her kids were warning her of the moving floors and precarious staircases inside the Ark and I was like, “Just let the bitch fall!”

Usually during a Noah’s Ark walk-thru, I will violently shove Henry along and he will mumble, “Stop. Stop it. Stop. STOP!!!!” I was tempted to use that miserable bitch as my Henry stand-in but also didn’t want to get ejected from the park so early on in the day. It was fun to imagine, though.

I’m ending this installment here because I have other things to do, but don’t worry — I have so much more to say.  SHOCKING!

Anyone who even casually knows me would probably say “obvi duh” upon hearing me declare that Warped Tour is my favorite day of every summer. And probably punctuate it with an eye roll. But it really is the one day a year that helps me relate a little bit to religious zealots, because being around so many of “my people” at once is a really powerful, exciting feeling. Much like being at one of those colossal mega-churches with people passing out and screaming.

A few weeks ago, I made a poster of all of my pictures from this year’s Warped Tour, which was one of my favorites.

And I feel weird saying that, because this year’s was rife was drama and controversy, starting with the allegations against Front Porch Step earlier in the year. This has been written about ad nauseum on the Internet, so I’ll keep it short: Jack Mcelfresh, the singer behind the Front Porch Step moniker, was using his scene status to lure underage girls via social media. Several of them finally spoke out about it via Tumblr, complete with screen shots of text messages and gross pictures he was sending them. I had never heard of him until we took Chooch to see Never Shout Never in Cleveland in 2013. We were hanging out by his merch table most of the night and he gave Chooch a free poster, which I thought was so nice, but also — we were there with the editor in chief of Alternative Press, so I’m not stupid. If I wanted my music to be acknowledged by the biggest publication supporting my scene, I’d give out free shit to a kid, too.

Now I just feel gross about it.

FPS ultimately was removed from Warped Tour; literally no one wanted to see his face after all of this. But then he made a surprise one-off appearance at the Nashville date which inspired massive outcry and widespread disappointment from those who had the misfortune of stumbling across him that day and everyone following along from home. This really put Warped Tour and its founder, Kevin Lyman, under a lot of fire and public scrutiny. Kevin defended his choice to allow Jake play in the Acoustic Basement that day by stating that he was working with Jake’s counselors and that this was part of his recovery process. While I have mad respect for Kevin Lyman for organizing my favorite music festival year after year, I will be the first to admit that this guy just shouldn’t even give statements to the media and he definitely should think harder before tweeting his opinions, because he is a master word-mincer. Every time he opens his mouth, he makes it worse! So he basically made himself look like a misogynist (and I truly don’t believe that he actually is) while essentially minimizing the issue at hand. Jake Mcelfresh is not the victim in this situation and he should not have been given a platform, even if it was only for one Warped Tour date.

That shouldn’t have even been an option. I will hand it to Kevin though, he made himself available every morning and invited any concerned fan to come and speak to him directly about this before the show.

So that was one big issue, and it was enough to start the #boycottwarped hashtag.

The second involved my old buddy, Jonny Craig! It’s never a dull moment with him. Quick backstory: the last time he played Warped Tour was in 2010, back when he was still in Emarosa. He caused a lot of drama and Kevin Lyman had to get Jonny’s mom to come out so they could attempt an intervention. Ultimately, he was told he’d never be allowed to play Warped again. But for whatever reason, Kevin decided to give Jonny a second chance, so five years later his new band Slaves was invited to play the second leg of Warped. (Emarosa played the first half.) Of course, Jonny started off by being super cocky about it, because everything Emarosa does, he thinks his idiot band can do better.

They managed to play…three dates, I think? Then people started commented on Jonny’s Instagram asking things like, “Hey, why didn’t you guys play today?” and of course, no one would respond. Well, Jonny sexually harassed their merch girl; it’s believed that he shoved his crotch in her face and made her touch him. I know, so uncharacteristic of him! He never even denied it, but still managed to make it worse by choosing douchey ways to express that what he did wasn’t “wrong.” He flat out replied “lol” to the merch girl’s vague tweet about how upsetting it is when alcohol turns decent people into monsters, which turned out to be her discreet way of alluding to what happened to her. Girl was traumatized, and rightfully so — she had only just met the band days earlier.

Some girl named Shelby who has known Jonny for some time and has also worked as his merch girl in the past, posted this ridiculous defense of Slaves online, about how women need to have thick skins to work in the music industry and that you have to expect things like this to happen, and how she can attest, without even being there, that Jonny was just joking around and that if you can’t “be one of the guys,” you should find a different job.

WHAT A WONDERFUL WOMAN! Teaching all these girls out there that they should just expect to be groped and humiliated by men, and if they can’t handle it, they’re clearly weak Lesser-Thans, right? So fucking sickening. Way to leave your own dirty finger print on rape culture, lady! The last line — really? So this girl should just go home and then Slaves can just carry on the rest of the tour like nothing happened? She should be punished but not them? I just…I can’t.

The bottom line is that being a merch person is still a job. Do you go to work expecting to be sexually harassed? Me either. So why should Slaves’ merch girl? She was just trying to make a living like everyone else.

All of this culminated into a huge divide behind the scenes at Warped Tour. First, Kevin kicked them off the tour, but then decided, for whatever reason, to let everyone involved in Warped Tour decide the fate of Slaves. They had a town hall meeting one Saturday night after all the fans were gone, where everyone was invited to say their piece, and then vote on whether Slaves should be kicked off or not. I have become Twitter friends with Jonny’s ex-fiancee, Amanda, over the last year, and she had a friend who was at the town hall meeting that night. She and I DM’d each other for hours that evening, on pins and needles waiting for the outcome.

Can I just pause for a second to say that this is a band full of dickhead members who tweet things like this?

Alex Lyman is the Slaves guitarist, and I honestly think he’s worse than Jonny Craig. People get fired from their jobs for saying things much less bad than this on the Internet. But it’s OK because he’s in band, right guys?

According to Amanda’s friend, about 300 people showed up that night to vote. It started with Kevin telling Jonny that he’s done with him, and he’s done with his band, but now it’s up to his peers to decide his fate. It was, obviously, a landslide vote to have them removed from the tour. Jonny was incredulous, and during all of it, he still wasn’t owning up to what he did to tip over that first domino. He kept accusing everyone of judging him based on his past, when sadly, it sounds like a lot of the bands that voted him off were doing so because they were worried that the Warped Tour environment was reversing his recovery process, while also trying to reason with him that getting drunk every night was not something that he should be doing. The rest of his band got real defensive about that and kept saying things like, “he’s an adult, he can handle it” which is hilarious because Jonny Craig is one of the most emotionally-stunted people I have ever encountered. He is the true definition of Man Child, which is why deep down, I honestly feel really sorry for him.

Billboard interviewed Kevin Lyman about the decision to remove Slaves from Warped Tour; yay — more face/palm Warped Tour media spotlights.

My favorite part of this latest Jonny Blows It Again episode is that a bunch of bands started wearing “Bring Back Emarosa” shirts. <3

Meanwhile, Fronz from Attila was having a major feud with The Wonder Years and Buddy from Senses Fail, who went on to tweet a virtual manifest of the state of the scene and how shit needs to change and Kevin Lyman needs to quit giving stages to these immature brat-bands. And Coop from Hands Like Houses posted a picture of himself flipping off the YouTubers tent and saying that he wishes the kids at Warped Tour would stop paying so much attention to the people who have nothing beneficial to say (truth), which incited an Instagram riot with all the teenage girls who are obsessed with the Warped YouTubers.

I know shit like this happens every year, but it seemed especially bad this time around, resulting in Kevin Lyman to give another cringe-worthy interview in which he seemingly chose his words in haste, leaving them open to easy misinterpretation. (Warped Tour will never be a 21+ event, guys. That’s not what he meant. Kevin knows his Warped Tour bread-and-butter demographic is the teen girls!)

It’s depressing to see that most of the people defending Jonny Craig are GIRLS. The victim-shaming on Twitter alone is enough to make me want to cry for all womankind and scream at them to get off Twitter and go burn a fucking bra. And then I read comments about how bands have been doing shit like this forever and how come it was OK back then, it was brushed off as “Oh, that’s so rock n’ roll,” but now all of these bands suddenly are expected to be held accountable, and the scene is becoming so “pussified” and “sensitive.” How about, no—it wasn’t OK back then. But I think it was easier for bands to get away with bad behavior in past decades because their lives were more secretive and more protected. With social media, everything is out there. It’s easier for smarmy musicians to bait underage girls, and it’s also easier for them to get exposed for doing so. It’s better, and it’s worse.

This is why I’m relieved that Robert Smith of the Cure has barely any Internet presence at all. He still ensconced in beautiful mystery. And how rare!

The one silver-lining I took from all this drama is seeing how many bands I respect speak up about the state of Warped Tour, offering solutions, begging the ones who are giving the scene a bad name to hear them out, trying to resolve beef without violence, and just ultimately coming together in an effort to make this community stronger. Also? There are a lot of men out there in this scene who give a fuck about women’s rights and are willing to go to bat for us. Misogyny and rape culture is rampant at most music festivals—not just Warped—and in many music scenes, but it is refreshing to see that this is something that my scene is being vocal about and recognizing that shit needs to change. The discussions that have been going on all summer long over at Absolute Punk have been smart, intelligent, and a sign that there are people out there who are open to change and willing to fight to make this scene good again. Also? Asshole behavior and sexual misconduct will not be tolerated or brushed off as “it’s just rock n’ roll, bruh.”

It’s a lot to think about, and something that we’ve been talking about a lot in my house, Chooch included. As a music-lover, I don’t want to ever stop going to Warped Tour. But as a self-respecting woman? Things need to change, and soon.

There comes a point where it’s not actually just about the music anymore.