I don’t know that I would really call this a tradition, but sometimes on Mother’s Day, Henry will act like The Best Man On Earth and take me to DelGrosso’s Amusement Park, about 2 hours outside of Pittsburgh, so that I can ride the fuck out of the Wacky Worm and shovel potato salad down my throat in the style of violent porno cunnilingus.

Or, you know, pie eating contest.

Plus, moms ride for free on Mother’s Day.

This year, we didn’t have to rent a car! Yay new car! We listened to Dance Gavin Dance THE WHOLE WAY THERE because it was Mother’s Day. Oh OK, let’s be real: every day is my day when it comes to radio control. The best part is that the stereo system is so good that Chooch chattered away in the backseat and I COULDN’T HEAR A WORD HE SAID! Ahhh, a mother’s bliss.

However, I did hear him pipe up from the backseat and request Circa Survive. I was like, “WHAT SRSLY? You want me to put on Circa Survive?!” and he said, “Yes. ‘Act Appalled’.” I almost broke my finger off in my frantic attempt to queue up this song post-haste, because I have been waiting NINE YEARS for my son to like Circa Survive. I used to listen to their first album constantly when I was pregnant with him! And I tell him that all of the time and he just rolls his eyes. But on this day? On this day, he sat in the backseat and sang along because that little fucker knows all of the words and has probably always liked them but he’s just like HIS DAD in  that regard.

 Henry pretended to hate The Used for like, 6 years!

God, what a great Mother’s Day present, hearing Chooch’s little boy voice singing along with Anthony Green. That was way better than the makeup from Ulta, and it was FREE!

My second favorite part of the day was when we got to Delgrosso’s and the old lady inside the admission booth looked at me skeptically and asked, “Are you….the mom?” YES I AM NOW GIVE ME MY FREE WRIST BAND, HERE JUST PUT IT ON ABOVE MY OTHER WRISTBAND FROM LAST NIGHT, THANKS.

And then right away, it was Wacky Worm time!

Chooch wanted to ride in separate worm-compartments and I threw an actual fit while we stood in line, and then accused him of not giving a shit about my feelings, and on MOTHER’S DAY OF ALL DAYS. Finally, he was like, “Jesus Christ, OK. Pick a damn seat!”

I hit my leg SO HARD when I sat down. The Wacky Worm is not kind to us tall kids.

Immediately after this, I went up to Henry and said, “FOOD.” He put in our pizza, came over to the bench Chooch and I were slouched upon, making fun of people, and handed me  the receipt. “Here. Listen for our number to be called while I go and order the potato salad.”

WTF? How did this become my problem!?

Of course, Chooch and I forgot about our big important task almost immediately, until I realized a few minutes later that a number greater than ours was being called. “WTF, did we miss our number?” I asked Chooch. So we got up and stood closer to the pizza windows, and I totally panicked while numbers were called out of order because HOW WILL WE EVER KNOW IF THEY CALLED OURS ALREADY?

It was so confusing and I kept emitting audible groans of disgust and anguish because why do I have to do this thing?

! It was probably the worst part of my day, maybe.

But then our number was called for real and Chooch and I had already devoured our slices by the time Henry came back to our table with his hot dog (which Chooch took from him) and the potato salad.

Henry is always the last one to eat.

Anyway, I was really mad because one of my biggest pet peeves is when Chooch gets food all over himself. I feel like, at the age of 9, he should maybe have a better grasp on his food-handling by now, I don’t know?! So I said, “PLEASE do not get pizza on  yourself, I’m begging you” and by the time I turned back to my own pizza slice, a glob of sauce had sluiced right off his chin and plopped right smack onto the crotch of his shorts.

I called him Sauce Crotch for the rest of the day and now I’m going to draw him a picture of Sasquatch wearing stained shorts, but don’t worry, he’ll also be holding a slice of pizza in his hand so it will look less like a menstrual mishap.

All you potato salad aficionados out there, ya gotta try DelGrosso’s. It is fucking ON POINT. I referred to it as “Creamy sex” once and I stand by that statement. Henry bought some shitty supermarket brand potato salad the next day and I was like, “Why do you have to bring this ghetto shit in my house? The day after Delgrosso’s, really? You’re killing me.”

On the Crazy Mouse, Chooch practiced all of his swears in one long tangent and I just don’t care to stop him from swearing anymore. Just don’t do it in school and I’m fine with it. Parenting sometimes takes mental strength which I do not have a lot of.  I feel tired just typing that out, to be honest.

There was some young kid on the carousel who had a 1990s Billy Ray Cyrus mullet and of course I took an entire series of photos, but I’m not going to post them here because I have a tiny shred of common sense that is telling me that might not be wise. (I’m trying to be smarter about blogging, and it’s been a struggle.) But my lord, was that mullet majestic.

The thing about Delgrosso’s is that once you ride the Wacky Worm and the Crazy Mouse, it’s like “………………….”

It’s a really small park and the rest of the rides are your typical carnival/county fair assortment: Paratroopers, Tilt-A-Whirl, carousel, Music Express, pirate ship…basically it’s a bunch of different ways to self-impose whiplash and/or motion sickness. I’ve gotten ridiculously sick here before, to the point where I had to lay down across a bench and pray to the Vertigo gods to reset my eyeballs and put the color back in my cheeks. I try to pace myself now, which means Paratroopers/45 minutes of nothing/ice cream/Music Express/45 minutes of nothing/watch Chooch play games/Tilt-a-Whirl/OMG I’M DYING LET’S LEAVE/go home.

Chooch is like, “I can’t wait until I can ride this shit with my friends and not my weird MOM.”

I couldn’t get  my eyeballs to stop moving back and forth after this ride and it was concerning.

We let Chooch go off and buy his own drink and then for a good 5 minutes there was a mild concern that he had been kidnapped. Don’t worry, he came back to us. Just like a boomerang.

A sweaty, foul-mouthed boomerang.

I wonder what it’s like to be Chooch.

Pre-Tilt-a-Whirl nausea.

The Tilt-a-Whirl was being worked on all day but we just happened to be standing near it when they declared success and a Delgrosso’s ride operator walked on to give it one more test run.

“IS IT OK NOW?” I called up to him, and he kind of nodded, sort of, so Chooch and I raced to get in line and Henry was like, “Seriously? The gate isn’t even open yet.” It took everything in my power not to turn around and shout “FIRST!!!” in the faces of the asshole kids behind us. MOVE A LITTLE FASTER NEXT TIME.

I guess the ride operator was trying to overcompensate for the ride being closed all day, because he left us on there for a good three minutes.

That’s about two minutes too long in Spinny Ride Time.

And you know how sometimes the Tilt-a-Whirl is a big fat dud? Your car doesn’t get any good spins? Well, this particular go-around was chockfull of violent spins, which were ultra giggle-inducing at first, but then it quickly turned to stomach-churning and I was afraid that I was going to giggle chunks of potato salad right out of my open mouth, so I was pretty quiet for the last two minutes.

When I stumbled off the ride, Henry was waiting there to say, “Good for you” with that smug fucking look on his face. And then, “So, I guess you’re ready to go home then?”

Twist my arm.

But first! One last ride on the Wacky Worm. Never too sick for the Wacky Worm. (Until I am.)

I wanted Henry to carry me to the car but he was just like, “You haven’t lost THAT much weight.”

***********

The next day, we were in our weekly meeting and our boss asked if we all had a nice Mother’s Day. Glenn spoke up and said, “Tell everyone what you did, Erin!” because he knows I hate talking in our meetings, so I mumbled that I rode the Wacky Worm but out of everyone in the room that day, only Glenn and Amber1 know about my Wacky Worm obsession so I mumbled a brief explanation and everyone was kind of like, “Oh. Ok.”

#misunderstood
FUN FACT: If you Google image search “Wacky Worm”, a picture of Glenn comes up on the first page.

On Mothers Day we went to Delgrosso’s  and I had a fun day.  Of course Mommy wanted to go on the Wacky Worm first because she’s obsessed with it. So we went to the bathroom first because if I say I have to go the while we’re there daddy will get pissed. So after the Wacky Worm we went on the Crazy Mouse and  a lot of the rides were getting maintenance checked and we waited in line for a while. Since the ride only has 5 carts we went on in like 5minutes. Then mommy and  I went on the Music Express and the Umbrellas. Then  I got ice cream which was Chocolate Marshmallow and I wanted to go on the Pirate Ship (aka Pharaoh’s Fury) by MYSELF because Daddy never gets a bracelet and mommy didn’t want to get sick because she wanted to go on more rides. While I was in line Daddy was EATING my ice cream and I only had a quarter  of it and daddy had half . In line I screamed at him and the people in front of me laughed.

But mommy gets to eat ALL of her ice cream (she just said “Because I’m the best”)

Daddy gave me 1 dollar for 1 game to win on and I picked  a game where you have to put BALLS IN A CLOWN’S MOUTH (which sounds so wrong) It was pretty easy minus the fact fact where you have to get 1 ball in each slot. It took me 2 tries to win. I won this CUTE ,PURPLE ,FLUFFY ,DELIRIOUS , AND PRETTY  PIG. I won it for mommy and then she said “Oh thanks, you can keep It in your room though.” I was okay with that. We named him Pukey JR. Then mommy and I went on the Tilt-a-Whirl which was under maintenance but we were the first people on the Tilt-a-Whirl since the whole day. It wasn’t a surprise but every time mommy wants to go on the Tilt-a-Whirl she gets sick. The last ride of the day was the Wacky Worm. We had a fun day at Delgrosso’s.

(BONUS!!!) The day before Delgrosso’s daddy and I went to Michael’s then Ulta to get mommy a present for Mothers Day. I really wanted a sticker book for while we are going to Delgrosso’s and in the car  for 2 hours. Daddy wondered how much it was I said 13 US DOLLARS and 20 CANADIAN DOLLARS. He said “OH HELL NO I BUY ENOUGH S*** FOR YOU!” I threw a fit the whole way into Ulta and I put on makeup in there and daddy was pissed. On the way back home from Delgrosso’s we went to a restaurant called Valley Dairy. Our waitress was named Sarah and some waiter was basically doing our whole service because Sarah was slow and having a rough ,rough day. (Speaking of having a rough day, Sarah in my class was having a rough day because her nose was bleeding like all day Tuesday and Wednesday.)

Sarah finally came to our service and asked for our order. After dinner I ordered a Clown Sundae and I sadly made fun of it and mommy said Sarah was having a rough day. I liked the sundae though that’s all that matters.

HAHA SIKE. This is just another post about Warped Tour and not actually the maniacal manifesto/illegible murder confession that I think some people (Henry) have been nervously expecting.

Every time I look at the Warped Tour lineup for 2015, I feel like I might have immaculately conceived. The only downside is that there is no way I’m going to be able to see every single band on my list; there are just too many and some are bound to overlap. #musicfestivalproblems

In all of my obsessive Warped Tour thinking/planning/daydreaming, I uncovered some photos of Chooch that I never posted from his first time at Warped Tour in 2013. They were lost in some random desktop folder, probably Henry’s fault.

Christofer Drew is offering 45-minute songwriting classes this summer and Chooch and I have been talking about whether he wants me to sign him up for that or not. It costs extra, and if he’s going to get all starstruck like the last time he met Christofer, then that’s kind of a waste.

Chooch was all pissed off a few weeks ago because he was waiting for the bus that takes him to the after school program, when some middle school girl walked past him, saw that he was wearing a Pierce the Veil shirt, and said, “You probably don’t even listen to Pierce the Veil.” Bitch, he was singing Isles and Glaciers songs when he was still sitting in a CAR SEAT, so shut your dumb face.

If she only knew that he was practically born into this scene! Last night, I was YouTubing live Dance Gavin Dance videos while Chooch was putting together some Minecraft Lego thing, when he said, “Put on something from when Kurt Travis was the singer.” And then we watched an entire A Lot Like Birds show.

Because clearly, Chooch is a poser.

I hope we see that girl at the Sleeping With Sirens show next month. You know, if she was able to get tickets before they sold out in less than 5 days.

I posted a picture of my Warped Tour ticket (it’s the special 3D collectors ticket with Choonimals artwork, duh) on Instagram and WARPED TOUR REGRAMMED ME!

^^^^ Totally the apogee of my Instagram tenure.

TWO MORE MONTHS. TWO MORE MONTHS. TWO MORE MOTHERFUCKING MONTHS!!!

Sometimes my day can be so spectacularly disappointing (all work-related, nothing that actually matters) but then something music-related happens to save the day. Pierce the Veil was added to the Warped Tour lineup, and even though everyone pretty much already knew that because of a leaked flyer, it was still awesome to find out for sure!

This year’s Warped Tour has the potential to be better than 2008, which was my favorite one! 

Shit got real once the sun went down at Knoebel’s….

…REAL DARK. OH!

And that’s when some of the rides went from being normal to OMGHAUNTED. Like the antique cars. They were closed all day long in preparation of the sun setting, and I was excited to ride those boring things because they had haunted scenes set up, which Chooch and I could see every time we ascended the inaugural hill of the Phoenix. On the Hallo-Fun brochure, there was a warning that the seasonally-haunted cars might be too scary for kids under 13, but from what we could see, it was your typical VFW-caliber haunted house decorating.

Kitschy and adorable.

However, people started standing in line before the ride even opened, and the line was LONG, so we never got to ride it. Because HENRY was all, “You will never have time to ride this.”

So Chooch and I entertained ourselves by taking selfies on basically every ride that we went on, because we’re Those People.  One of our favorite rides is the Cosmotron, which is essentially just the Music Express but inside a DOME and they TURN OFF THE LIGHTS and then what happens next is an epileptic’s cautionary tale. I was amused because We the Kings was playing while Chooch and I were on it and I have never hear WTK outside of Warped Tour. I don’t particularly care for them, but they’re well-suited to soundtrack the Cosmotron.

We exited on other side of the building, which Henry wasn’t prepared for. When we came back around, I spotted Henry with his back toward us, waiting for us to come out of a different exit. The compulsive hider in me grabbed Chooch’s arm and tugged him behind a bush before Henry had a chance to spot us. “Let’s sneak up on daddy,” I whispered giddily and then Chooch as usual tried to hijack my well-crafted plans of sneak-uppery by attempting to creep from a different direction until I yanked him back my way, which involved walking around a building and coming at Henry from the opposite direction of the Cosmotron. I’m sure we didn’t look suspicious at all.

But then stupid Henry was waiting for us because he has a fucking sixth sense when it comes to our presence and was fully prepared for the sneak attack. I blame Chooch. Henry probably saw him when he tried to deviate from the course.

The Looper. What a piece of shit this ride is. Chooch and I struggled with it when we were there last there, so this time I flat out asked the ride operators what the secret is to get the fucking thing to flip all the way around, because I saw other unevenly-weighted pairs succeeding so I knew that there had to be a way to conquer this bitch in spite of the weight imbalance. The two guys were like “blah blah blah” and I thought that I understood what they said, it sounded simple, but then the ride started and it only worked once! Chooch was livid and kept screaming at the guys to help us and I was like, “THEY’RE NOT GOING TO HELP US WHILE THE RIDE IS MOVING, GOD!” And then Chooch was making me feel incompetent but I fucking swear I was doing it right! By the time the ride stopped, the muscles in my legs were on fire from me trying to use my body to physically flip the cage. WHAT DID YOU DO TO HELP, CHOOCH?! Nothing but run your mouth, that’s what!

Here, Chooch was mad. He wanted a caramel apple or something. Apple cider? No! A restroom. He had to pee. So Henry was like, “Erin, go take him to the bathroom while I buy stuff for myself to eat because it’s Henry Time.”

Henry’s tone implied that taking my son to the bathroom was something that A Real Mom could pull off effortlessly, therefore he was fully prepared for me to fail.

And…I did. Almost.

We headed the direction that Henry thumbed us, but I just can’t get a good grasp on the layout of Knoebel’s! This was only my second time there and it’s just confusing, OK? Chooch and I were trying to consult a map, and then we thought that we found a restroom but it was some fake-log cabin thing that was closed. So then Chooch became mad because he thought he might piss his pants, and I became panicked and started to shut down, which is what happens to me in those Rise to the Occasion moments, where Real Moms are lifting cars off of toddlers and getting out stains with nothing other than their own spit, and I’m just standing there, stock-still and comatose, while the world moves around me.

WE ARE LOST. WE ARE SO FUCKING LOST. WE ARE SO FUCKED! is what I kept muttering over and over again while Chooch flipped the map upside down and then tilted his head to a right angle in an effort to crack the code.

Tilt-a-Whirl, motherfuckers!

I’m not sure what was going on in this shooting gallery, but Chooch keeps better at it because Henry taught him how to aim but he won’t teach me, god forbid, so now I don’t even bother to ask for quarters because WHY BOTHER.

A cob-webbed Santa, my favorite kind!

This thing.

If I thought I had any friends who loved me enough to drive 5 hours in my honor, I would totally have my birthday party beneath the birthday cake pavilion at Knoebel’s next year. That thing makes me feel so festive.

Ugh, Chooch and I went on the Satellite, which we had at Kennywood way back in the day and everyone called them the salt and pepper shakers but I feel like that wasn’t the real name. Anyway, if you ever ride this son of a bitch, you’ll understand why people called it the salt and pepper shakers because it’s literally like you’re a fucking grain of salt and some fucking giant is furiously trying to shake you out onto his disgusting bowl of giant slop. This ride is terrifying and painful and I rammed my shoulder so hard against the cage that I kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking I had rolled over onto a rock but NO it was just the BRUISE on my shoulder. Chooch found this endlessly humorous, because he’s my son, and we’re both dicks.

Anyway, that picture up there is a view from when we were stuck in the air while new people were being herding into the cage below.

Creepy Henry, watching us have fun without him on the Whipper. Fuck you, Henry.

I don’t know how this started, but Chooch and I suddenly have a tradition of screaming SELFIE!!! every time we’re whipped around the corner. I’m sure we don’t sound like obnoxious pricks AT ALL.

Henry could have rode this with us but I guess $1.25 in tickets isn’t worth being smashed in a rounded car with two screaming assholes.

I was supposed to share this with Henry, so what I did was eat all of the whipped cream and caramel first and then I left him two apple slices.

This picture is kind of gross. Did the chef just splooge all over that apple and now he’s watching it drip down into an ejaculatory peak? I mean, look at that self-satisfying smirk on his face! Stop jutting your ass out!

Also: Why have I never considered using an ax to cut my apples?

The Downdraft is basically the bastard son of that No-Named Yellow Piece of Shit that sometimes makes an appearance at the Westmoreland County Fair. I thought that I knew what I was getting myself into but then the fucking started before I was ready for it to start, and I don’t mean that they engine kicked on and then the ride slowly started up. No, I mean there was literally no warning, it just fucking shot out into the air and my head snapped back in the same sort of inhuman angle reserved for exorcism movies, so that felt great.

I dubbed this the Bowel Loosener.

Henry actually bought this hat for Chooch which was crazy because Henry never buys anything for us at amusement parks, except for food because he knows better than to not feed us.

All in all, it was a great time. The only time I got super angry was when we went into the arcade to have our way with the photobooth, but some ridiculous hipster couple kept hogging it because they were consistently unhappy with their photos and kept going back in for more. Seriously? Perhaps photo booths are to advanced for you then. Maybe stick with iPhone selfies? Or better yet: go to Urban Outfitters and hog THEIR photo booth. Hipster douchebags.

I have been dying to go back to Knoebel’s ever since I was there on opening day in 2013 with the DAFE crew. I know this sounds weird coming from the likes of me, and that this is the opposite of what I should like, but this park is ADORABLE. It’s all quaint and family-friendly, far away from the Big City and rife with fluffy dogs on leashes. And that’s just on a regular day! They have Halloween-themed weekends in October, so Henry earned a million brownie points (do those still exist? is there an app to keep track of them now?) by taking us there last weekend.

It was goddamn precious. Leaves on the ground. Hay bales painted like pumpkins. Ghosts hanging from the trees. A Halloween-music light show on the front of some building. There were no chainsaw guys or zombies popping out from behind garbage cans, but who the hell cares? Sometimes a little Halloween Lite is just as magical.

Also, the novelty of amusement park rides in the fall!

On the way through the parking lot, Chooch declared that whoever stepped on a leaf first loses. Because I am an 8-year-old too, I was all about this game and nimbly tip-toed past crisp leaves skipping across the pavement in front of me, all while giving Chooch sharp shoves to try and make him trip up, Once we crossed the threshold into the park, though, I decided that we should stop playing because I wanted to look around at the seasonal decor instead of keeping my eyes on the ground.

“Besides,” I added. “Everyone knows I won anyway, Chooch.”

“Hey! I didn’t step on any leaves either!” Henry cried from in front of us, and I laughed because what the fuck, guys? Who invited Henry to our reindeer games?

I didn’t know this until we got there, but Chooch could have worn a costume and participated in the trick-or-treating stops around the park. I am always so woefully unprepared.

CHOOCH: I thought the skeletons in the car were Ron and Jim from the tombstone right in front of it.

First up, Chooch waited in line for the much-anticipated new ride of 2014, Flying Turns. It was the longest line we’d wait in all day, because this bitch is a hot commodity. (It took something like 8 years to build it, I think.) They had cute Halloween decorations set up along the line though, so we at least had things to distract us from the violent thoughts and ideas our minds were drawing up regarding the three teenagers in front of us who were totally obnoxious and kept rough-housing (ladies and gentlemen, I’m officially my dad) and every time they would lower their voices and side-eye me, I was certain they were making fat jokes.

(Chooch can’t write his thoughts on those kids because I won’t let him swear of make violent statements, so he said he has nothing to say then.)

Did I mention that there were signs along the way that threatened an approaching weigh-in? Because of the type of coaster this is, and physics that make my brain bleed, the ride attendants have to make sure that the weight is dispersed between the cars in a very precise manner and that SOME RIDERS MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RIDE TOGETHER. I texted Henry and said, “Great. I have to get weighed just to ride this thing? I want to die.” And he was all “lol.” I’m sorry, how is my body dysmorphia/eating disorder/obesophobia FUNNY? Fuck you, Henry. Have fun sitting on benches all day with the old people.

Turns out, it wasn’t that big of a deal. There were three large metal plates on the coaster platform that you had to stand on with your riding partner while waiting for your turn, and the weights weren’t displayed, and even if they were, it was a combined total anyway. Chooch and I got the front car and several pre-teen kids filled up the other two and I guess my thunder thighs didn’t break the ride because we made it back in one piece.

All of that for a ride that seemingly lasted for all of 40 seconds and was just OK.

Meanwhile, Henry had been roaming about like a child predator on the loose, and won Chooch some stupid plush peace finger thing, but it says YOLO on it. I kept hoping Chooch would lose it.

CHOOCH: I had it put in my sleeve and I kept acting like it was my hand and just holding it up.

I think that the Phoenix might be my favorite wooden coaster of all time. It makes me laugh so hard that my face hurts (I KNOW, I KNOW: AND IT’S KILLING YOU). The second time Chooch and I were in line for this, we had an actual argument over where we sat the first time (he said it was the third car, BUT IT WAS THE FOURTH).

Anyway, the first part of the Phoenix has you going through a tunnel, which is fun on its own, but at night it was all foggy and lit up with Halloween shit! IT WAS SO EXCITING! CHOOCH AND I SCREAMED LIKE ASSHOLES!!!

CHOOCH: When it was nighttime, me and mommy were just talking and then we didn’t even know a hill was coming up and we screamed like idiots.

This park is really not that big at all but Chooch and I would have been lost, literally, without our maps. Except that later that night, we had our maps and still got lost, literally, when Henry was naïve enough to think we could handle finding a bathroom on our own. Yeah, good one, Henry.

After Chooch and I went on a ride called Fandango and he continually cried YOLO instead of POLO when the ride operator wanted us to play Marco Polo, I decided it was time to break for food before I lost consciousness or murdered some nearby campers. Whichever came first. So Henry got in line to procure food for us (pierogies and potato pancakes!) while Chooch and I went to find somewhere “nearby” to sit but apparently it wasn’t near enough for Henry, who had a hard time finding us. MAYBE IT WAS INTENTIONAL, HENRY.

We took pictures of ourselves while sitting next to two scarecrows who were apparently on break. Remember when we all carried around 35mm film cameras and practically no one took selfies because what a goddamn waste of film? Those were the days.

Then Henry pouted because he didn’t want anything from the place Chooch and I chose to get food from, like he wasn’t grazing the entire time Chooch and I were on the rides. No one’s crying for you, Henry.

CHOOCH: While we were in line for the Black Diamond, daddy was creeping on us and everybody else. He went on the side of the Black Diamond to look at the eagles, I guess. That’s what he said. Nobody else had a group of two and they needed a group of two for the coaster, and we were the only ones that had two and we got to line jump and it was so awkward. But I was happy because we actually got to go on quickly.

CHOOCH: This lady was eating an apple and it was so awkward because she was creeping on people and I was laughing.

I only took this picture because I’m jealous of people who can eat apples without cutting them up first. SORRY THAT I WASN’T RAISED ON A FARM!!!!

I know, it sucks to be at an amusement park!

A few months ago, my friend Kristy asked for two volunteers to be a part of her Zombiefest 2014 costume. I stepped forward (you know, as best as one can on Facebook) and offered my person to be costumed without even asking questions, that’s how much trust and faith I have in Kristy’s brilliant mind. She is hands down the most enthusiastic zombie-lover that I have ever met. She makes all others look like posers, you guys.

Turns out, her idea was the Golden Ghouls!  She had already claimed Dorothy, and her 5-year-old daughter Sarah was Sophia. I chose Rose, because she’s the one I could relate to most. This left Kristy’s friend Bethany as Blanche, and she pulled it off excellently!

Here is a quick recap and photo dump!

This was me, pre-wigging.

And I made this pin to help people decipher who I was supposed to be. It was especially helpful anytime I wandered off without the rest of the Ghouls.

Kristy was hit on by this tiny zombie right away. We learned his name is Solomon and his…handler? showed us a picture of what he normally looks like and it was basically a photo of some Chippendale-esque man. What a transformation. (His middle name is Azrael, in case you were wondering.)

Kristy ripped one of the shoulder pads out of Bethany’s “Blanche blazer,” leaving it to jut out subtly. It was such an awesome touch! Almost as awesome as the yard flamingo impaling Dorothy. I think that was my favorite part of the whole ensemble. OK, tied with Sarah’s impression of Sophia.

Since Betty White is still alive, I happily got to go as a non-zombied Rose. (I’m really weird about having fake blood, etc on my face!) If this jinxes the universe and something happens to Betty, BLAME KRISTY!

One guy came up to me and asked, “Dolly Parton?”

“No, Betty White,” I explained, pointing to my pin. And he still asked to have his picture taken with me. Every part of me wanted to say no, because you know how I hate having my picture taken. \But he seemed like a nice guy, so I indulged him. Henry took the picture for him and then smirked at me for days afterward.

I was just happy that I somehow fit into a petite-sized dress. How the hell…? (Something creepy happened when I found it at Goodwill.)

Cheesecake Defense.

There was one guy who knew who I was, even when I was split up from my lanai-lounging ladies. He was behind one of the vendor booths and, as I was browsing the selection of skull rings, he said, “You arent’ from St. Olaf, by chance?” I was like YES OMG THANK YOU. And then I came back and bought two rings and a pendant because their stuff was wonderful. Go look!

Originally, I thought this would be a good opportunity for Chooch to finally wear that dreaded post-apocalyptic Claw Machine costume that the rain thwarted last Halloween, but then Henry pointed out that we wouldn’t be able to fit it in the car. So it was a game time decision to just stuff his head into a clown wig. Thank god our house is basically just one big prop closet.

We’ve been to some other zombie events but this was our first time attending Zombie Fest. It was the downtown convention center this year and I guess this was also the first time that they charged admission to get in. Judging by their event page on Facebook, the majority of the hardcore zombies were NOT happy about this, the location, or really anything. I didn’t really have any violent opinions either way. Sure, it was kind of boring, but I do get bored easily, so one should not gauge the liveliness of Zombie Fest by my boredom compass. I guess it was expensive? I wasn’t paying attention. All I know is that I got a great deal on a bunch of adolescent jewelry.

Henry went as himself/Faygo expert. Big surprise.

I kept imagining that Duff Goldman was underneath that Ronald McDonald suit.

Ran into Patty and Tim!

These two were my favorites! I love gnomes gso gmuch.

Chooch, after he sweated off most of his makeup by playing soccer with a blow-up brain.

Wiggin’ out over water.

Side of brains, aka tasteless mac n cheese.

I loved these guys! Colonel Eagleburger’s Something Something Band? I can’t remember. Bu they made me feel super festive. Weird Paul was there too, but he played before we got there. I saw him sitting at his merch table and wanted to ask him if he remembered when he brought pretzels and Uncle Wiggly to one of my game nights. 

Alas, that required energy I did not have.

At least that OTHER GUY was stoked to have his picture taken with me. Christ.

All in all, it was a pretty fun time! Thank you, Kristy!

Hey fellow viewers today i’m going to  tell you about The Zombie Fest 2014. First,We had to take forever because daddy couldn’t find a parking spot dumb him lol. So yeah that’s really bad.

Next, We found a parking spot YAY!So we got in and talked to Kristy and her 5yr old Daughter Sarah. We had to wait forever for Kristy’s Friend Bethany. I was a Zombie Clown Mommy was Rose from The Golden Girls, Kristy was Dorthy from The Golden Girls, Bethany was Blanche from The Golden Girls, Sarah was Sophia from The Golden Girls.

Last,  Bethany finally got here and we went into the convention and when we were walking in i saw Foxxy from 5 Nights At Freddy’s a horror game its very scary. I told mommy i wanted to say ” I like your 5 Nights At Freddy’s Foxxy Costume but I was Scared of him. So we got in there were Rita stands, Games, other stands like Zombears, necklaces, Um that’s really it for that. Kristy bought or won an inflatable brain and me and Sarah and Bethany played soccer with it I won obviously. So then Mr.Claus and Mrs.Claus, 6 elves, and 3 daughters were giving out presents a lot of people were taking pictures with them. One of the elves wanted to take a picture with me so bad. So i guess I had to. All in all, Now you know all about The Zombie Fest 2014 Convention in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania USA.

Here’s a funny video of me pretending to be a zombie when i was 4 years old. I hope you enjoy it!!! I’m acting like a drunk stripper LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

The truth is, I have purposely been putting off writing the last installment of Riot Fest, because it feels like once I write it, then that’s it: Riot Fest is truly over. The whole weekend was so perfect to me, especially coming off the tail end of a summer that was emotionally draining, just a total black spot on the year. Maybe it seems like I’m being overly-dramatic, god knows that’s basically my default, but I’m serious when I say that my three days at Humboldt Park felt like a religious retreat, in the same way that some people climb mountains to escape their past, cast out their demons in sweat lodges, or rail a quadstack off a hooker’s ass in the back of a 1984 Pinto.

This is how I heal.

The whole weekend was a collection of experiences and heart-clutching moments, stepping stones that paved the way to the culmination of my catharsis: The Cure.

As I mentioned in my last Riot Fest post, The Cure was scheduled to play the main stage at 7:45, so we made our way over there during Patti Smith’s 5:45 set in hopes of getting a decent spot.

My expectations were low. I even told Henry that I didn’t care if we ended up across the park by the food trucks. As long as I could hear The Cure (and not shitty Weezer who were going to be playing at the same time on a smaller stage), I was fine. Besides, I had been dragging Henry around like a rag doll all weekend, and I knew he probably wouldn’t want to be standing stock-still in the middle of 50,000 people at the end of the day.

Except that Henry grabbed my hand and pulled me further into the crowd during Patti’s set. Every time even the smallest gap would open ahead of us, he would continue to squeeze us in. And he kept doing this until we finally hit a wall of unbudging people. Still, I was impressed with his determination and how far it got us, so I wasn’t complaining!

After Patti was over at 6:45, people began leaving the Riot Stage, which opened up more spots, so Henry once again tgook  my hand and started weaving us closer to the stage. He got us to a really great spot, about 50 heads back from the stage. This was pretty remarkable, considering most people had been standing there all day in order to get a close spot.

Don’t tell him this, but Henry was kind of my hero that night.

Social Distortion began playing on the stage adjacent to us and I was so thankful that we got to listen a decent band for the next hour, because I was so full of anxiety waiting for The Cure, that I couldn’t imagine adding shitty music on top of that. Also during this time, we made friends with the people around us, like an older couple (Henry’s age, probably, haha) from St. Louis. The wife was really kind to me and even offered to take the above picture of me and Henry, which is why he’s smiling — because a stranger is taking the picture. She reminded me a little bit of my friend Natasha, who is also a rabid Cure fan, and I think that’s why I liked her so much.

The view behind me. 

The only downside while waiting was the two middle-aged assholes in front of me, who spent the whole wait loudly talking about how they’re such seasoned music festival attendees, and how they saw The Cure last year at ACL and then the one guy, the one who was wearing a huge professional backpack that jutted so far from his back that it kept hitting me in the face, extracted a video camera with an extension stick thing and I was just like, “Oh great. And he’s a rock documentarian, too.”

I don’t think that’s a word.

Then they started making a big deal about passing a joint back and forth, like LOOK AT US, WE’RE OLD AND STILL SMOKE POT! and I honestly had to cup my hands in front of face in case I needed to catch my eyeballs when they rolled out of my head.

When I heard of one them mention Weezer’s upcoming set, it all made sense to me. Weezer fans. Of course.

My new friend from St. Louis pulled me closer to her so that dildo’s backpack wouldn’t hit me in the face anymore, and I thanked her profusely.

She was also extremely good at blocking people from getting in front of us once The Cure started. We worked hard for our spots way before The Cure came on! You can’t expect to wait until after they start playing and just steamroll your way  through. Bitch, you gotta work for that shit.

I like Social D just fine, but when they were still playing “Ring of Fire” at 7:45, I was like, “I FUCKING HATE YOU SOCIAL D! STFU! GO HOME!” And then Mike Ness kept screaming, “ONE MORE TIME!” and the crowd over at that stage would sing the fucking chorus ONE MORE TIME and it was so obnoxious and we were all getting super agitated.

So they went a few minutes over. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but that was like an entire extra song that The Cure have played at the end of the night!

But as soon as the last note of “Ring of Fire” petered off into the air, the lights on the Riot Stage came on and the most beautiful sounds to ever have been crafted enveloped us all in such warm beauty. And then Robert walked on the stage and my hands flung up to my chest and basically stayed there for the next two hours, along with the burning lump in my throat and the stinging tears in my eyes.

The Cure, you guys. The motherfucking Cure. This was my fifth time, but it might as well have been my first. Seeing them will never lose its value to me.

I have never been the type of person who could separate herself from the show unfurling in front of her long enough to keep track of the set list. Luckily, I knew that Chain of Flowers (the best Cure fansite in the world) would have me covered.

• Open
• Fascination Street
• Sleep When I’m Dead
• Push
• Inbetween Days
• Play For Today
• A Forest
• Before Three
• Lovesong
• Just Like Heaven
• From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
• alt.end
• Pictures of You
• Lullaby
• Close To Me
• Hot Hot Hot
• Wrong Number
• The Caterpillar
• The Walk
• Mint Car
• Friday I’m In Love
• Doing the Unstuck
• Bananafishbones
• Want
• Hungry Ghost
• One Hundred Years
• End.

We were this close! Not bad for waiting until 6PM to stake out a spot!

Around 8:30, the idiots in front of me (who acted all smug as  they recounted all the times they’ve seen The Cure and the proceeded to just stand there like lumps once the show started…some fans they are) got their Riot Fest alert on their phones that OMG WEEZER was about to start over on the Revolt Stage, so they turned around and began pushing their way out of the crowd. I cheered and then moved up into their vacated spots, which came with a better view of my beloved Robert Smith.

Aside from those Weezer dorks, we were surrounded by true Cure fans. Those who knew all the words, knew to thrust their hands upward when Robert sang, “Put your hands in the sky” during From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, and who didn’t engage in banal discourse with their friends. I know that if we had stayed in the back, I would have been miserable and forced to listen to drunk assholes scream to each other about sports and god knows what else. Just like the miserable time I saw them at miserable Coachella, where drunk frat boys screamed out, “Play Just Like Heaven, Fat Bob!

” and then booed every time deeper cuts were played instead. Fucking Americans. The Cure graces our country with their presence and this is how they’re treated. Coachella will always have such a sour connotation to me. The hipsters can have it.

I can’t think of a better way this weekend could have ended. My favorite band in the whole entire world with my favorite person in the whole entire world (ugh fine, I’m referring to Henry and not Robert Smith). There’s no one else I would have rather experienced this with, no one else who understands how much this band and this music means to me.

When we first started to get to know each other back in 2000/2001, before we were dating, Henry made me a Cure screensaver. Totally out of the blue. I was like, “OK. You have my attention.” I know that The Cure headlining this festival is without a doubt the reason Henry didn’t say no to me.

And he actually said that this was his favorite part of Riot Fest and not because it signified that the end was near.

He even displayed moderate levels of PDA throughout the night by placing his hands on my back!

From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea – Chicago, Riot Fest 14-Sep-2014 from itsaperfectday on Vimeo.

Thank you to this person ^^^ for recording this because my heart felt like it was about to combust inside my rib cage during this one. One of my all-time favorites, ow ow ow. 

There was supposed to have been an encore, but they ran out of time. Thanks, Social Distortion.

Even though I think this was the shortest of the 5 Cure concerts I’ve been to (clocked in at just over 2 hours), I have to say this one ranks #2 on my list. Right under Canberra, Australia for the Bloodflowers tour. It was the perfect crowd, the perfect ambiance, the perfect company and the perfect weekend. What else can I really say about it, short of copy/pasting every synonym for “heaven” and “perfect” and “emo” and “STFU Erin, we get it.”

****

“You know what would have made that weekend even more perfect?” I asked Henry on the way back to Pittsburgh the next day. “If you had proposed to me during The Cure. Way to go, you blew it.”

Because even during moments of extreme, euphoric perfection, I still manage to find the flaws. But I wouldn’t be me otherwise. Right?

RIGHT?!

Shit. Before we even finished breakfast (that’s a word with which the Econo Lodge takes great liberties), I was already feeling that panicky “today is the last day” sensation percolating in my gut.

(I’m sure Henry was experiencing very different feelings. His was probably more of a giddy countdown.)

We accidentally found a fly-by-night event parking lot on our way to Humboldt Park the day before, so Henry decided THE HELL WITH UBER, we’re going to entrust our car with these people that are wearing neon construction vests so they must be legit.

It took us three days to figure out there was an actual area where we were supposed to be waiting for our stupid Uber rides. 

The sketchy parking lot cost the same as a one-way trip with Uber, and it wasn’t my money Henry was using anyway, so what did I care. All I knew was that we were only two blocks away from my homeland and I couldn’t wait to get there.

And stand in line for an hour. Because even by the third day, the gatekeepers hadn’t gotten their shit together.

All three days, we were lucky to not get stuck by any assholes, at least. The guy in front of us, whom I dubbed Dwight Hader, because he reminded me of Dwight Schrute and Bill Hader, was there by himself. “I’m just here for Patti Smith and The Cure,” he said nervously. “Basically, I’m going to get all the way to the front of the stage for The Cure,” he told us of his Riot Fest plans.

“Were you here the other days, too? What was it like? What’s the food like? Is it expensive?”

“Do you think I’ll be able to take in my water?” he asked anyone who was listening.

He was very concerned with his unopened water bottle.

Would it be confiscated? Did he have to drink it all now? Because he wasn’t thirsty yet. He wanted that water for later, when he was raging to Patti Smith. BECAUSE THE NIGHT BELONGS TO WATER.

The girl behind me pointed out that empty water bottles were allowed in, because there were refilling stations. But she and I both said that probably an unopened bottle wasn’t a good idea. The girl’s boyfriend was like, “Eh, just do it. Smuggling in water is so punk rock, man.” And Henry was like “IDGAF what this kid does.”

Meanwhile, the couple behind me were talking about all of the ska bands that they had seen so far at Riot Fest and I was so thankful that I wasn’t there with them because ska is pretty much the only music genre that I flat-out dislike. There isn’t one ska band that’s redeemable to me. I’m sorry if you’re a ska fan. I promise we can still be friends. Just get those fucking trumpets out of my face. I DON’T EVEN LIKE THE JAMAICA SKA SCENE IN BACK TO THE BEACH AND THAT IS LIKE MY FAVORITE MOVIE.

1. Whispering, “It’ll be alright, Water Bottle. We’ll figure something out.” 2. Googling “will I be detained for bringing an unopened water bottle into Riot Fest?” // “ways to make a water bottle in your pants look like a medical condition that security guards won’t ask about.” // “smuggling contraband into a music festival- WWJD?”

MENZINGERS

• TheMenzingers were due to start playing a few minutes after the gates finally opened. (DwightHader and his unopened bottle of water made it through unscathed!) But we had enough time to hit up one oftheRiotFestmerch booths soIcouldfinallybuy the hoodie I wanted,whichofcoursewas sold out so I got all shitty about and ended up buying a t-shirt that I didn’t even want and then I proceeded to bitch about it on the way to the Roots Stage so Henry was like OMG I WILL FIND YOU A FUCKING HOODIE but apparently he said this to himself because I had no idea where he had gone off to, leaving me to stand alone with strangers by the stage. Then he returnedrightbeforetheMenzingers came out, and he had the hoodie I wanted, but then I was still mad because now I had a t-shirt and hoodie in the same design and that seemed so unnecessary so I threw another tantrum and then Henry was like I AM GOING TO COLD COCK  YOU but instead of doing that, he grabbed the t-shirt from me and stormed off and then the show started so I hadtowatchtheMenzingers by myself.
  • This was surprisingly the only time we fought all weekend.
  • I hated not knowing where he went/what he was doing/if he was coming back.
    • Every time I glanced behind me, I thought I saw him, but it was always one of the other 8700 guys wearing a blue flannel that day.
• Even though I was quietly stewing over this hoodie/t-shirt emergency, I still found some room in my head and heart to enjoy the Menzingers. I only have a very base knowledge of them, thanks to my friend Terri, and since I know how much she loves them, I made a point to check them out. It was a good way to start the last day, because they got everyone pumped right out of the gates.
• I texted Terri the lyrics to the one song they played that I really liked, and she was like, “That’s from their new album. That song is so emo!” Which totally explains why I liked it!
• After their set ended,Ipanic-strickenly made my way through a moving wall of people, desperately looking for Henry, near tears (I HATE FEELING LOST), but then he grabbed my arm and I suddenly forgot that I was in the middle of hating him because YAY I’M NOT LOST ANYMORE!
  • “You were never lost,” he sighed. “I knewwhereyouwerethe whole time.”
    • In case you were wondering, Henry apparently exchanged the t-shirt for an XS for Chooch, which made me mad all over again because why the fuck would Chooch want a t-shirt from a festival he didn’t go to?! And to back this up, when we gave it to him, he was like, “Ok….?” and then right away noticed that one of the bands on the back of the shirt was Pity Sex, so then he was like, “REALLY, MOMMY?! REALLY?!” all annoyed and exasperated.

LAURA STEVENSON

• There was nothing on Sunday’s line-up that was OMG URGENT for me to see until Billy Bragg played around 2.
  • To Henry this meant: YAY LET’S GO FIND A TREE TO SIT UNDER FOR A FEW HOURS AND CLOSE OUR EYES AND HOPEFULLY DIE.
  • To me this meant: Let’s wander around and check out the other stages! We might find our new favorite band!
• Of course, my plan won out and that is how we wound up at the Rise Stage in time for Laura Stevenson, who has an accordion player and is just the most adorable thing I saw on stage all weekend. I’m notoriously picky when it comes to girl singers, but her style was kind of old Tegan andSarameetsSherriDuPreefromEisley, in a way. I immediately adored her.
  • Especially when she pretty much announced every song as, “OK, this is a sad one.”
    • I love sad music.
    • Her music was the deceiving kind of sad though, where it sounds happy and upbeat but, no.
• Laura’s between-song-banter was painfully awkward at times, which endeared her to me even more.
• Fuck it, go listen to her on Spotify and then buy her albums!

Henry’s mad because we were kind of matching. Also, I think this was right before La Dispute and he hates La Dispute.

THE FRONT BOTTOMS

• Right after Laura was done playing, The Front Bottoms came on the adjacent Revolt Stage. This is another band that I have read and heard a lot about but just never bothered checking out. Since we still had a little bit of time to kill and the stage they were playing on was conveniently located near the one Billy Bragg would later be playing on, I dragged Henry through droves of lost locust-people and claimed a prime spot near the side of the stage.
• And then they came on and proceeded to captivate us for their entire 30 minute set.
  • If you can win me over with your stage presence alone, then you’re doing it right.
  • If your music is good enough to back up your stage presence, then you’re golden.
• I thought Henry hated them, but he admitted later that they were a high point for him.
  • Last week, I came home from meeting my friend Katrina for coffee, and Henry was flat out listening to them on xbox music. “SO WHAT?!” he cried in defense, like his mom just busted him watching tranny bukakke.
• They reminded me a little bit of Never Shout Never for grown-ups, so I wondered if Chooch would like them too. Spoiler: he does.
• My favorite part was when Tiny Moving Parts stormed the stage and started fucking with them. I LOVE IT WHEN BANDS ARE FRIENDS WITH EACH OTHER.

BILLY BRAGG

• WhenIsawBillywas listed on the line-up, I died a little of excitement. This guy is a living legend and I made Henry get right up front for him.
  • We were surrounded by a lot of Older People so I thought Henry would feel safe.
• In high school, I dated this real piece of shit. Pretty much everyone called him Psycho Mike, because well, that’s what you call a guy who intentionally sets his best friend’s house on fire (thankfully,whilethe whole family was on vacation, but still) all over a video game.
  • Yes, I knew this going in to things, but warning labels don’t ever deter me.
  • Anyway, Psycho Mike and I didn’t have much in common, musically. I would cringe when he would play Anal Cunt in his car and even though I bought him the Misfits boxed set for Valentine’s Day one year, I made it clear that I didn’t want to listen to it. We would meet in the middle with classic rock mostly, but occasionally he would play things for me that I actually liked. Some of those things were: Neutral Milk Hotel, Hayden, and Billy Bragg.
• Billy Bragg is a British folk/punk singer-songwriter who sings a lot about politics, which usually isn’t my cup of tea, but there is just something about him that has always appealed to me. I thought Henry would be all about him too, since Billy is known to sing in favor of all those blue-collared blokes like Henry. But Henry was just like “eh” when I asked him if he enjoyed it, which basically means Henry is clearly a fascist.

 Henry not understanding why everyone was all FUCK YES during Billy Bragg.

• My favorite Billy Bragg songs are “Must I Paint You a Picture,” “St. Swithin’s Day,” “She’s Got a New Spell,” “The Man in the Iron Mask” and “A New England,” none of which he played, but he did play my ALL TIME FAVORITE which is “The Milkman of Human Kindness” and the 17-year-old slut-who-was-fucking-around-with-a-psychopath-in-1996 in me was so stoked.
• Billy also made me super stoked about Scotland, which I had otherwise not really thought about at all because it’s basically me and my music under a rock. But on this day, I was like, “YAYSCOTLAND! GO GET ‘EM!” And then suddenly I understoodwhysomemenhad been walking around Humboldt Park all weekend in kilts and carrying Scottish flags.
  • I catch on quick.

• Might sound extreme, but getting to see Billy Bragg live was a milestone for me. I have literally waited half my life! This man is a living legend. Familiarize yourself with him.

TINY MOVING PARTS

• On our way to the Rock Stage, immediately after Billy Bragg, we got to catch a little bit of Tiny Moving Parts.
• Henry said he doesn’t remember this happening at all. I think he might have been buying more cheese-on-sticks and beer?
• TMP iskindoflikeneo-emo I guess? It’s definitely a sound that I really adore. And they are really energetic and passionate on stage, which is what made me stop mid-trek to the Rock Stage and say to Henry, “They are calling to me.”
  • I like them way more live than listening to them, say, while driving to the dentist or writing in my blog.

LA DISPUTE

A rare moment where Henry got to sit for a few minutes until the girl next to him annoyed him to such extreme levels that he suddenly didn’t care about resting his weary joints anymore and actually stood up and moved. And no, surprisingly, that girl wasn’t me. 

• I let Henry stand far away for La Dispute because he can’t stand them. But I was like, “See ya, sucker” and elbowed my way through the crowd along the side of the stage until I was nearly to the front. I stopped right before I hit prime crowd-surfing / circle pit real estate. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that deep down, I have some fragments of the “Sensible Mom” gene and I remember to keep myself safe.
  • Otherwise, I just feel like I would be such a great candidate for Idiot Who Broke Her Neck At a Show.
• Have you ever listened to La Dispute? They are a part of a music genre that I am in love with. Like, if I could mold it into a penis, I would fuck it. It’s technically post-hardcore, and Jordan Dreyer shouts and barks the lyrics with so much emotion, that it’s, for me, the equivalent of listening to some kind of passionate Sunday sermon. Their songs tell stories that make the hair grow erect on my arms and I spent most of the time standing there with my eyes closed and, at times, wishing I had a wall in front of me to punch. There’s an urgency to the music and the way the vocals are delivered that make me feel uncontrollably aggressive. And then….sad.
• When they played “King Park,” we all went fucking nuts.  This song is about a shooting and all of the elements and emotions surrounding it, and it is raw, devastating, angry, sad, honest—this song is REAL LIFE. The way they build up to the crescendo of this song, OMFG—it’s like climaxing for real.  Jordan started hoarsely shouting “Can I still get into Heaven if I kill myself?” and that’s when I realized that I had been crying through the whole fucking thing.

• “Wasn’t that fucking amazing!?” I cried afterward, reunited with Henry. “Not really,” he mumbled.
• I walked away feeling like I could start a revolution. Or at the very least, make a REALLY GOOD POSTER about MAYBE starting a revolution.

TEGAN AND SARA

• I first saw Tegan and Sara in the year 2000 at now-defunct club in Pittsburgh called Rosebud. I didn’t know anything about them but my friend Wonka was like, “I heard one of their songs on WYEP. PLEASE GO WITH ME!” Wonka was my prime concert-buddy back then, and we went to tons of shows where we barely knew who we were seeing, plus I was buying my ticket with my AmEx that my mom paid for, so why not? It was us and maybe 40 other people and I think Tegan and Sara walked away with all of our hearts that night. They were VERY different than they are now, way more stripped down, way less pop. But their stage banter was just as on point. We got to meet them that night and I still look at that picture, of these twins who look so different now, and I laugh because I remember saying to Wonka, “Holy shit, these girls are going to explode!”
• They were playing on the main stage at Riot Fest to some tens of thousands of people, so I’d say that they definitely exploded.
• I didn’t want to get too close because I knew we were going to have to split before they were done, and I didn’t want to make our exit any more difficult than it needed to be, so we stood pretty far away. The problem with that is that the further away you stand, the more likely you are to surround yourself with people who couldn’t give a fuck what band is playing, they’re just going to stand there and brag about what college their daughter is going to. Sometimes old people are WAY WORSE at shows than young people.
• The first time Henry saw Tegan and Sara was with me in 2002/2003 at the Hard Rock Cafe. He didn’t know anything about them but it didn’t take him long to realize that he was a man in a roomful of lesbians. At one point, he tried to go to the bathroom, but a girl with a shaved, rainbow-tattooed head was blocking his way (not even menacingly! she didn’t know she was in his way!), so he turned around and came back. I think about this EVERY TIME I hear a Tegan and Sara song. GOOD TIMES.
• And before you’re like “Tegan and Sara are so Top 40,” please watch this video:

• Sure, they’re mainstream now but I will always believe that they still have a little bit of that quaint singer-songwriter ethic that they did when they were teenagers. I just love them.

Never had time to play Riot Putt. :( Or go through the Zombie Contamination Unit. Or ride any rides. Or see the sideshows. TOO MANY BANDS. 

 MINERAL

• We cut out of Tegan and Sara in order to run back to the Rock Stage just in time to see Mineral, who have recently gone on tour for the first time in 17 years. I’m so happy Riot Fest was on the super-shortlist of shows they were doing, because god knows Pittsburgh was nowhere on that list.
• MineralisstraightupEMO.
  • I fucking love emo.
• Mineral broke up in 1997, before I ever had a chance to see them. The singer went on to form The Gloria Record, another band that I fucking loved so hard but never got to see live. Henry claims he has no absolutely no recollection of a band called The Gloria Record and I was like “ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID, I LISTENED TO ONE OF THEIR ALBUMS COMPULSIVELY IN 2005!” Then I even played him my favorite song (“Good Morning, Providence” — if you look at my Spotify sidebar, it’s actually the second song listed in my “Perennial Favorites” playlist, COME ON HENRY) and he was like, “Nope. Don’t know it.” That man is a master of tuning things out.
• However, Henry admitted that Mineral was “pretty good.” The whole time I was just standing there in awe, thinking of how grateful I was to get to see them after all this time. So grateful that I almost wrote an emo poem about it.

PATTI SMITH

• After Mineral, we decided that we should probably make our way back to the Riot Stage because if we waited too close to The Cure’s start time, we would never be able to get close enough. Patti Smith was playing at the time, so we pushed our way through the outskirts of a crowd of aging hippies screaming along to “Because the Night.”
• If it wasn’t for the sake of the Cure, I never have would have stopped to watch her. I’m sure that makes me something of a heathen to a lot of people. I can definitely respect her! I understand the mark she’s left on not only the music industry but also the political landscape. She’s a living, breathing legacy. I get it. And while it’s not particularly my thing, I am definitely glad that I can say “I saw Patti Smith.”
• She is old as shit but fuck if she wasn’t rocking the shit out of that stage.
• There were men older than Henry standing around us who were screaming “PATTI!!!” so fiercely, I feared that they were going to hemorrhage.
• In between every song, Patti would stand on her soapbox and promise us that we can change the world. “PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER!” she kept shouting and everyone screamed so loudly that they turned into South Park Canadians.
• By the time her set was over, I definitely didn’t feel like I could change the world, but I would have liked to have changed into a pair of more comfortable shoes.

I’m going to end this here because I’ve been writing it for four days and I want The Cure to have their own post. Because they’re the motherfucking Cure.

If you’ve read any of these word-dumps, I am eternally grateful (and extremely shocked)!

Even though Saturday was all sunshine and blue skies, Henry and I mustered up enough Smarts to make an early morning run back to Target to buy boots. Good call! Because while it never rained again that weekend, it also never warmed up enough for the mud to dry. There were sludgy, thick pits of mud all around the stages and I got great pleasure out of purposely stomping my way through them because I HAVE BOOTS NOW, MUD-BITCHES.

The mud was so dangerous in some spots that there was an actual struggle to unstuck my foot, and I wondered if Henry would cry for me like Atreyu for Artax if the mud ultimately enveloped my entire person.

Anyway, enough about the mud. Let’s talk about THE BANDS.

frnkiero & the Cellabration

• Just like the previous day, the goddamn gates didn’t open on time so we barely made it to the Rock Stage in time for frnkiero. This was one of the first of many mile-runs Henry and I made that day.
• If you’re up on your current music events, you might know that Frank Iero was in My Chemical Romance (RIP) and the Cellabration is his current project.
• There were three guys standing next to me. One was standing slightly in front of the others, and the other two were like FUCK YES THIS IS GREAT WOO!!! And then one of them leaned forward and yelled to their friend, “GOOD CALL ON THIS ONE, MAN!” And that guy smiled and nodded, as if to say, “Yeah, I know, right” and it made me smile to witness this beautiful example of one friend introducing his other friends to glorious new music. But just as quickly as I felt happy, I BECAME ENRAGED and thought aboutall of the times HENRY HAS NEVER THANKED ME FOR DOING SUCH THINGS.
  • And before you think smugly to yourself, “HAHA that’s because you don’t have any good music to share” LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE because there have many occasions when I have been like HERE LISTEN TO THIS to one of my poor friends and then they’re like “Wow, hey. That’s actually good” and I’m like “I KNOW, BECAUSE THAT’S NOT ME SINGING.”
    • Needless to say, Henry was not exactlywow’d by Frank’scellabrating.
      • Though, he DID like My Chemical Romance back in the day.
• You guys, while I really enjoyed this set and talked at length to Henry about how that was such a great way to start the day, I found something out today that, had I known this prior to 11:30AM that morning, would have changed everything: one of the other bands playing at the same time asFrankIero, was a band that I honestly didn’t even give a second thought and for some reason was one of the few bands I hadn’t heard of that I didn’t bother researching. And that band is the Pizza Underground, a parody band of the Velvet Underground that changesall of the lyricsto be pizza-related. Which OK, that in and of itself is pretty fucking fantastic, because pizza. And one of the members even drums on an empty pizza box. But guys,MACAULEYCAULKIN is in this band and I had no fucking idea until this morning and now I feel like I failed at Riot Fest.
  • BECAUSE I DID. F-, ERIN RACHELLE KELLY!

The sky was so goddamn beautiful on Saturday. Even Henry was like, “Yeah” when I said, “THE SKY IS SO BEAUTIFUL!”

RX BANDITS

• Somehow, I have managed to never see the Rx Bandits a single time in their 18 years of existence. I know. Henry was thankful that they played on the same stage as frnkiero, so after that set, we had about 30 minutes to causally mill about the area. I think maybe we got beer. It was noon by then, so it was OK.
• Made it back before they started and got a good spot in the front, but a little over to the side, which is my favorite place to be because you just never know what kind of crazy motherfuckers are going to be in the pit. I mean, my paranoia is off the charts when I’m in a crowd of people, and yours should be too. PEOPLE BE CRAZY.
• There were a lot of older people gathered around for Rx Bandits, so I thought that would make Henry unclench a little, but he was still frowning every time I turned around. So…
  • One of those older people was a man standing next to me, who was telling one of the security guys his idea for a zombie movie about zombies on crystal meth and then to me, he turned and screamed, “ISN’T THAT A GOOD IDEA?!” and I was like “Wow. I’m sure you don’t have any experience at all with crystal meth.”
• Rx Bandits were pretty dreamy, you guys. Why can’t Henry be like them.
  • The Sound of Animals Fighting ismore or less Rx Bandits and Anthony Green, so Anthony potentially could have performed THREE TIMES that weekend. JUST SAYING, RIOT FEST.
    • God, I might have died if that had happened though.

• Of course my favorite part though was when one of the Riot Fest staff delivered pizza to the line of security and then they all stood around, having a casual pizza party while Rx Bandits provided the soundtrack. I couldn’t stop laughing to myself about this and then later, Henry mentioned something about it and I was like “I KNOW I TOTALLY TOOK A PICTURE!” and he was like, “Yeah, I figured.”

THE DANDY WARHOLS

• Another band I’ve never seen live. Riot Fest, I’m having your babies.
• Their set started at 2:15 and this was one of the last times the main stage was this sparsely populated.
• To entice Henry, I said, “MAYBE THEY WILL PLAY THE VERONICA MARS SONG” because these are the termsin which you need to put music to get Henry mildly interested.
  • Of course they played THE VERONICA MARS SONG, but Henry just smirked.
  • Please check out the video at the end of this post for a peek at two tutu’d guys trying to get people to play fetch with them while THE VERONICA MARS SONG plays in the background.

By the afternoon, it was THIS CROWDED ^^^.

Can you imagine if the Wacky Worm had been there? The Wacky Worm + three days of amazing music might actually be the closest I’ll come to being raptured. Oh well.

TELEVISION

• Here is where the scheduling started to get dicey. I wanted to see Television and City & Colour, but they were almost playing on top of each other. Television won out, because hello—Television. Pretty legendary band. Unfortunately, by the time we waded through the exponentially-thickening crowd, we got to enjoy* two entire songs before I looked at the time and realized we had approx. 15 minutes to make our way from the Rise Stage to the Rock Stage, and if you read my “Riot Feast” post, you might remember that I mentioned that these two stages are a good mile a part. Which is whatever, if you’re strolling along a path in the middle of the mountains. But when you’re trying to part an ocean of human bodies swimming upstream, that mile feels like for-ev-er.
  • *And by “enjoy,” I mean that I only vaguely remember standing there and looking at a group of grizzled Brits on a stage because my anxiety was still through the roof from all of the STRANGER DANGER I had after a thousand people touched me when I was pushing my way to the Rise Stage.
• I hope I get a Television do-over someday. :(
• “Marquee Moon” though:

SAOSIN

• But you guys: Saosin.
• Halfway to the Rock Stage, I checked the time on my phone and literally screamed, “FUCKKKK!!!!” and then I dropped my dead weight (i.e. Henry) and ran the rest of the way.
  • Henry claims he “wasn’t concerned” because I was wearing a bright orange Epitaph backpack so he always knew where I was in the crowd.
• Got a great leg workout as soon as I reached the sludge-like mud-pit making up the perimeter of the Rock Stage. I can only imagine how graceful I looked.
• Can we talk about Saosin for a second? Great. So this was my first encounter with Anthony Green, back in 2004. I never got to see them live though, because shortly after I started listening to them, Anthony left the band and went back home to form Circa Survive. Saosin went on to get a new singer (Cove Reber; I was “meh” about new Saosin) but then they kind of stagnated since 2010. ANYWAY, 2014 is the 10th anniversary of their EP with Anthony Green, and so they reunited to do a handful of shows last spring (NONE OF WHICH CAME TO PITTSBURGH). When I saw that they were playing Riot Fest, I gave Henry the most incredibly pathetic dog eyes I could muster, lower lip practically usurping my chin that’s how far down it hung. And that’s the thing about Henry, you guys. He might not like this shit, but he knows when things are A Big Deal.
• While waiting for them to come out, I made friends with the most delightful gay boy whose name I never asked for because who cares. I’m going to go ahead and guess that he was 20? 21? He was super adorable and his Aztec cardigan looked so nice and warm and he was drinking some sugary cocktail from a bright pink plastic cup and we expressed mutual sentiments about Anthony Green’s beautiful face even though I was mostly there because I love the music but PEER PRESSURE.
• And thenSaosin came out and everyone just went fucking nuts because whoever would have thought that Anthony would ever be on a stage with them again? There was nomudding this time around, but he did antagonize the FUCK out of the crowd which had security so goddamn pissed off. “I’ll give $3,000 to anyone who can make it up on stage. These guys are BORED down here,” Anthony said, waving his arm toward security. so there were bodies flying over the barricade left and right and one of the older security guys looked like he was about to ‘roid rage.
  • My favorite part was when some kid was pulled over the barricade and directed to go off to the side, but then he turned around real quick and faked like he was going to try and make a run for it but then started laughing and held up his hands in surrender. All of the security bros were cracking up, but their leader, the older one, looked like his head was going to pop off his shoulders. And then one of the other guys pointed at him and called him a pussy and I honestly thought they were all going to get fired right there. That security guy was PISSED.
  • Toward the end of the set, Anthony upped the ante to $10,000 to anyone who made it on stage and hugged him.
• “I WANT HIM TO SIT ON MY FACE!” my little gay friend turned around and screamed at me and I was all like “YEAH ME TOO I HOPE YOU WON’T STOP TALKING TO ME IF YOU FIND OUT I’M AN OLD LADY!”
• I was just a little to the right of whoever recorded this:

• The crowd EXPLODED during “Seven Years” and I was 25 again.
  • Taking on seven years
    the holy ghost had left alone
    Test my arms, kick like crazy
    I’ve been trying way too long — AHHHHHH!!!!!!!
• I was so fucking pumped during this set, that I was actually trembling by the time it was over and I was excited to find Henry so I could squeal in his. “OMFG WASN’T IT AMAZING!?!??!?!” I cried when I found him standing a million yards away where there zero threat of anyone contaminating him with sonic euphoria. He was like, “I don’t know. No.” And then, “Anthony is a psychopath.”
• If you’re a Saosin fan, some kind gentleman recorded their whole set and it’s on YouTube. I’ve already watched it 3 times. (I know, such a low number for an obsessive bitch!)

DIE ANTWOORD

• Right after Saosin’s set, we had to run over to the Roots Stage for Afghan Whigs, which is adjacent to the main Riot Stage, where Die Antwoord was still playing. I was happy that we got to hear the last two songs, because while I’m not OMG DIE ANTWOORD, I can definitely get behind their exceptionally weird appeal.
• Die Antwoord is something that HENRY actually knew about before me. And he doesn’t even remember. But it was a few years ago and I can’t remember if I was coming home from work or what, but he was like YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO!! and it was for Enter the Ninja. We thought it was some kind of joke, so years later, when I found out that they had become something of an international sensation, at first I was like “WTF?” but then “Yeah…I can see that.”
• The aforementioned “Enter the Ninja” was their closing song and everyone was just going nuts. I’m glad we got to be there for that. Afterward, as everyone left the stage, you could still hear Yolandi making these weird video-game sound effects. And while that was still wafting away into the ether, a verrrrrry different band was starting their set on the Roots Stage in front of us….

AFGHAN WHIGS

• I was really stoked to see the Afghan Whigs. I’m not a super fan by any means, but their Gentleman album definitely got played a lot by me during a certain time in my life. They also bring back fond memories of trading mixtapes with my pen pals in the 90s, which is how I heard of them in the first place.
• Even with the sun shining so brightly on Humboldt Park, Greg Dulli made the atmosphere feel decidedly dark and tense. I loved it.
• What I didn’t lovewasthethreemiddle aged people reliving their youth and racking up nostalgia points in front of me. It was clear that at one point in their lives, maybe when they were in college in the late 80s, they were allFUCKYESAFGHANWHIGS. But on this day in 2014, they were more interested in mildly rocking back and forth and volleying banal conversation between them.Theoneladyhadlongclearly-dyed red hair which she kept whipping into my face every time she turned with force to tell her bitch-friend something definitely un-Afghan Whigs related. BITCH GO HOME AND WATCH THE VIEW.
  • I absolutely can’t stand people who go to shows and then talk through the whole thing. Like, why. Stay home and listen to them on your fucking Bose speakers BECAUSE I KNOW YOU HAVE THOSE.
• They’re actually playing here tonight in Pittsburgh but I sadly already have tickets to a different show. Otherwise, I would totally go see them again.
• I just asked Henry what he thought of the Afghan Whigs and he mumbled “I don’t know.”
• Fun fact: About 10 years ago, I had a huge fight with Christina because she lives in Cincinnati and that’s where the Afghan Whigs are from but she was like, “I don’t know who that is” so I screamed, “THEN YOU’RE A FUCKING RETARD.” And then she cried and probably wrote a poem about it, which, now that I think about it, pretty much sums up our friendship.
  • Say Anything got sacrificed for this band, but I think I might be seeing them in December, so I don’t feel too guilty. I’M SORRY MAX BEMIS, UGH.

NOSTALGHIA

• On the way to Chicago, I had on the Riot Fest playlist on Spotify and there was one song that came on that made me feel like it was 1999 and I was a faux-goth all over again. I looked at my phone with a quickness and saw that it was Nostalghia. Then I quickly checked out the lineup and said, “Sorry Wu-Tang, I never liked you anyway” and that is how we ended up at one of the smaller stages, having some creepy bare-footed broad singing her strange blend of gypsy goth at us.
• I liked it when she screamed.
• This was one of the few times Henry said he liked something. Nostalghia booty shorts it is, then.

This is where I let Henry sit down for 10 minutes.

THE USED

• This band. This fucking band.Ican be doing so well and then I will hear “Blue and Yellow” or “I Caught Fire” or any fucking song by The Used and my heart feels like it’s bleeding literal tears. So my brain was like, “Erin, check the schedule. Find another band to see at that time.” And maybe I should have. I’ve seen The Used a shit ton of times, dating all the way back to the days when Bert stillpuked on stage. (And Henry hated them.)
  • I think this was the first band (among MANY) that Henry hated when we first got together, but this was also the first band that, years later, he admitted to finally liking. Sometimes the Henrys of the world can be swayed, you guys. It does happen.
• But, like a sucker, I trudged through the mud back to the Rock Stage, where Henry ditched me for quite some time because “the lines were long” for the porta potties which clearly means Henry was “shitting in the porta potty.” I was really mad that he left me all alone in the middle of a big scary crowd because these motherfuckers were ANNOYING AS FUCK. Seriously, we somehow picked the worst people in the world to stand near, but I couldn’t move until Henry came back because I was purposely standing right under a big flag-thing so he would be able to find his way back to me after giving his bowels the ol’ expunging.
• As soon as they started, it was like a foot to the gut. It was like my heart was the mom’s head from “Heavenly Creatures” and two dumb cunts (2005-era Erin and Christina) were murdering it with a brick. It was just like that.
• At one point, I turned around and planted my face in Henry’s stomach. “It hurts,” I said. “I know,” he answered and gave mesome kind of awkward “there there” head pat. But…I guess that’sto be expected when you lose your girl-virginity to The Used’s music.
  • It probably wouldn’t have hurt so bad if that Bandaid hadn’t recently been ripped off on my birthday with one innocent, well-meaning phone call. So fucking stupid.

• This will never be a good idea.
• There these dumb bitchesnexttousfor awhile who stood with their backs toward the stage and scream-talked the entire time,exceptwhenever Bert would yell, “WHERE ARE ALL THE HARDCORE USED FANS?!” they would all turn around and scream with their fists in the air. Henry was like, “Well, sometimes they were singing too, so they at least knew the words” and I was like “Oh, you WOULD defend them!” Fuck.
  • But then we moved to another open pocket within the huge crowd and the rest of the show was a much better experience, except of course for the fact that my heart was slowly breaking in two.
• Aside from the sadness, the only complaint I have is that Bert spent entirely too much time talking and trying to start sometype of a revolution.
  • But then they played “Box Full of Sharp Objects” and I was content.
• Afterward, I started to wonder: Do Bert and Gerard Way still hate each other? And if they do, does that mean the rest of the My Chemical Romance guys hate Bert? Did Bert and Frank Iero see each other at all that day, and if so, was it OK? And then the obvious parallels were drawn and I made myself stop thinking about broken, failed friendships. Because I didn’t come to Riot Fest to be sad, motherfuckers.

TAKING BACK SUNDAY

• No, I apparently came to Riot Fest to be COLD. By the time Taking Back Sunday came on at 8:45pm, my toes were so cold that they hurt. I kept trying to get Henry to put his arms around me so I could warm up but he is pretty much the worst at knowing how to transform into a coat. God, how I hate him.
• We were standing way off to the side for TBS and there were zero assholes around us, so it was a nice way to end the second night. They played all the songs I wanted to hear and I was close enough that I could still see Adam Lazarra swinging his mic, which has become a pretty iconic image over the years. He’s so goddamn good.
• Flaming Lips were playing at the same time, and from what I could tell afterward from the pictures, not much has changed since the last time I saw them so I don’t think we missed much, other than the power going out on their stage. Yikes. But yeah, Wayne is still climbing into his giant hamster ball.

I took this at Coachella in 2004.

• During their set, I started to think about how Riot Fest was like 6 Degrees ofEisley: Say Anything was there, and MaxBemisis married to SherriDuPree, but then New Found Glory was also there and Chad Gilbert was ALSO married to Sherri for a minute but now he’s dating Hayley Williams, and Max and Chad have publicly bashed each otherandfor awhile there was a pretty big Team Sherri/Team Hayley divide until Sherri finally was like “OMG guys stop. We don’t hate each other.” And then Adam from Taking BackSundaywas engaged toCHAUNTELLEDuPree but left her for a waitress. (Who, to be fair, he wound up marrying and I believe they’re still together, and nowChauntelleis married to a nice man.)
  • I was clearly a little delirious at that point.
    • I tried to tell Henry about all of this, but he was like *snore.*
      • Which is probably what you are doing too, assuming you even made it this far.

  And now I will leave you with a little video recap of Day 2:
  

Staying true to our chronic unpreparedness, Henry and I arrived at Humboldt Park Friday afternoon wearing newly-purchased raincoats from Target because we stupidly failed to account for a weather forecast that clearly stated 50 degrees and rain.

It started raining before we even made it to the main entrance. And then basically never let up. TGFRC.

The whole time we were walking to the entrance, my heart felt like it was going to explode. Henry kept telling me to slow down but I was like YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH! My god, I waited months for this day! I couldn’t wait a minute longer to be among my people. I was so giddy, it was scary.

The tickets said that the gates opened at 2pm but of course that was all a sack of lies. We were among the first 100 or so in line, so at least when they FINALLY opened up around 3pm, we pretty much had the run of the place until later in the day, when the less hardcore fans started showing up. There were already bands playing on 4 stages by time we collected our bearings and scoped out the layout. And admittedly had a fight because I was apparently looking at the map upside down and kept telling Henry he was wrong about everything. But then I realized that Circa Survive was playing on the Riot Stage (the main stage! Because they rule!) in less than a half hour, so I dragged him through mud and made him stand all the way in the front, which he hates. While we waited for Circa, we got to catch the last few Title Fight songs on the nearby Roots Stage, so that was nice.

It looked like this for a few hours until about a million more people showed up. Then it looked like this with about a million more people. And mud. Because the more people, the more mud, y’all. And guess what your girl was wearing?

TOMS.

Like an amateur! I don’t know what I was thinking. But I also wasn’t wearing socks so that was really great by the time the temperature dipped into the low 40s.

CIRCA SURVIVE

• This girl was standing in front of me while we were waiting for Circa to come on and she kept making intense eye contact with me and then raising her eyebrows and I was like WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, STOP. And of course, out of the estimated 160,000 fans in attendance that weekend, I saw her repeatedly.

• What a way to start off the weekend. A Circa Survive set in the cold, drizzling rain with a shit ton of people. It was fantastic and Anthony was stomping around the stage like your basic psychopath.
• During “The Difference Between Medicine and Poison Is the Dose,” Anthony jumped off the stage and started smearing mud on people’s faces and I was like OMG I WANTMUDDED BYANTHONY! But we were over too far. Even Henry KIND OF smiled when he saw what was going on. (Surprisingly, he actually watches even though he doesn’t like any of these bands. Although, he found some winners that weekend! We’ll get to that later.)
  • Here is a video that I pulled from Instagram from user elizabeth__edens. I was standing near the guy in the yellow rain poncho; too far away for Anthony to reach:

• I’m not sorry, Anthony Green is a fucking scene godfather at this point in the game. I have so much respect for him, it’s disgusting. (Henry wishes I had that much for him, haha.) Here is a man who kicked a drug addiction, married the woman who stood by his side through it all, created a beautiful family with her (two little boys and another baby on the way!), and somehow manages to juggle more than one musical project at a time with panache. AND HE’S A NICE GUY. Jonny Craig should take some pointers from him.
• I kept thinking, “I’m watching Circa Survive instead of being at work. My life ain’t so bad.”
  • Henry kept thinking, “I’m watching Circa Survive instead of being at work. My life fucking sucks.”
    • But we all know he would have internally been like FUCK YES if Anthony had rubbed mud into his grisly beard.

EMAROSA

• Immediately after Circa wrapped up, we had to run over to the Rise Stage, where Emarosa was going to start at 5:00. I had major heart palpitations while waiting, OMG. I love these fucking guys so much.
• As they usually do, Emarosa started their set with a long, dramatic lead-in until Bradley finally ran onto the stage and basically puked up his soul for all of us. I honestly couldn’t take my eyes off him, it was pretty pathetic.
• I don’t think I ever used the cat-with-heart-eyes emoji as much as I did during their set.

• Bradley Scott Walden > Jonny Craig.

• Some Jonny Craig sycophant tweeted that she stayed for one song and then had to walk away because “new Emarosa is just so terrible, like a joke. They should just quit.” And then of course Jonny retweeted her. I was still OMG JONNY CRAIG4L when Emarosa released their first single with Bradley, and even I was able to honestly admit that they struck gold with this new guy.
• They played A Hundred Crowns and I don’t think I took a single breath during it. Flawless.
• I asked Henry repeatedly, all weekend long, if he thought they were good and his answer every time was yes. HENRY SAID YES.

FAILURE

• Gah, you guys. I love Failure, but they broke up in 1997 and I was too busy being a yo-girl then to know they existed until I went through a pretty heavy phase in my early 20s where I was obsessed with Ken Andrews. So, the closest I ever came to seeing Failure was when Ken’s other band, Year of the Rabbit, opened for A Perfect Circle in 2003. But fuck, Failure’s “Fantastic Planet” was (and still is!) such a solid album. I used to call Henry “Sergeant Politeness” all of the time, after one of their songs. (With a heavy dose of sarcasm, of course.)

• The huge problem with festivals is that it’s impossible to see every band because there are so many stages. (Riot Fest had SEVEN.) And of course the universe was against me in putting Failure up against Emarosa. Luckily, there was enough overlap that I was able to bolt back to the main stage from the Rise stage in time to see/hear the last three songs, once of which was The Nurse Who Loved Me, which is my all-time favorite Failure song.
• Unfortunately, since their set already started and they were playing on the main stage, the above picture illustrates how close we were able to get, haha. I mean, we could have attempted to fight our way through the crowd of two stages (the Roots stage is just out of sight on the lefthand side of that photo, so a lot of that crowd was actually waiting for the next band that was about to take that stage), but I just wanted to be able to focus on the music and not elbowing my way though a wet, miserable crowd.

• Here is a picture of what my feet looked like during Failure. What kind of shitty blogger would I be if I didn’t include gratuitous shoe shots.

FROM INDIAN LAKES

• It was a happy accident that we got to catch this set. After Failure, I checked the schedule and deemed that it was a safe time to get food, because there were no must-sees. So I grabbed a Thai tofu wrap and then wandered over to the Revolt Stage while Henry was busy finding something for himself to eat. (He has to take care of me first.) I had heard of From Indian Lakes, but not heard them, you know? So I didn’t even know who was playing until I consulted my app.

• I was feeling them right from the start, but then they played this song, and I was like FUCK YES:

PIANOS BECOME THE TEETH

• I’ve liked these guys for some time now but this was my first time seeing them (although, I’ve seen their bassist and drummer play with United Nations) and they blew me away. The style of post-hardcore that they play has quickly become one of my favorites, the lyric-delivery is emotional but somehow even more urgent (like with Touche Amore and La Dispute, the latter of which I would get to see the next day and thought my heart was going to explode). I would put them high up on my Riot Fest highlight reel, and I’m even more stoked to see them open for Circa Survive in December.
• Henry was like, “meh.” He haaaaaaaaates this genre of music so bad, you have no idea. Which is why he is not going to the aforementioned show in December. WHICH IS IN PHILLY WHICH MEANS I’M GOING WITH TERRI AND CHRISTIAN!!

MASTODON

• I sacrificed Mastodon for Pianos Become the Teeth, and I stand by that decision. However, we made it to the Rise Stage in time to catch the tail end of their set on the nearby Rebel Stage. It was really raining hard by then and for some reason, three separate groups of people approached me to get directions to other stages/inquire who was playing next on the Rise Stage, all of which I shockingly knew the answers to because this is my wheelhouse, you guys. So it was OK that people were seemingly mistaking me for an official Riot Fest attendant. Maybe I have a future career, after all.

One of the two ferris wheels.

Mud.

OF MICE & MEN

• I’ve seen these guys so many times at Warped Tour, so I could have easily swapped them out for someone else, but truth be told, there wasn’t anyone else playing at that time that I really cared about. And besides, these guys inflate my soul and make me feel like I can do ANYTHING. BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IN ME.
• Henry was miserable at this point. It was like 8:00 and fucking colder than Sarah Palin’s heart.
  • He made it to the second song before mumbling about going to “stand over there.” I didn’t even look to see where he was pointing, because his exodus meant that I was free to move closer to the stage, woo!

• Admittedly, this is not a band whose albums I rush out to buy when they’re released. Actually, I rarely even listen to them at home. But I goddamn love them live. Austin Carlile is so charismatic and he just makes me feel so pumped and like I’m 16 again, and that who gives a fuck if my TOMS get even more ruined, I’m going to fucking jump around in this mud with everyone else.

• Henry said he thinks Austin Carlile seems like a dick, so we fought about that later.
• This was a great end to the first day.

It was 8:30 by the time OM&M were over. I think the only two bands remaining that night were Jane’s Addition and Rise Against, but I’m not into either of them enough to endure any more time in the freezing rain. I honestly think it was briefly snowing at one point, and I promise there is no hyperbole usage there.

We passed some of the zombies from the haunted house on the way out. Then we took Uber back to the hotel and spent the next hour trying to warm up.

Here is a little video compilation from Day One. WATCH IT OR NOT, I DON’T CARE!

The aptly-named “Riot Feast” food vendor list.

When we go to Warped Tour, I usually smuggle in some granola bars because:

1. Food there is exorbitantly-priced

2. There are basically no options for vegetarians. It’s burgers and chicken strips or GTFO.

I was pretty worried about the food sitch at Riot Fest, since we’ve never gone to it before. But apparently, this year’s Riot Fest was the biggest one yet, so I don’t think a lot of people really knew what they were in for it. Which was: food trucks for daaaaays. It was the best of the county fair and local staples all lined up on one street and even the options for vegetarians and vegans were downright staggering. There was so much for even me to eat that I was sad I ran out of time!

We honestly had no time at all to do any tourist-y things in Chicago (it was literally: get up, stand in line, watch amazing bands for 10 hours, go back to the hotel and crash), so it was really awesome to still get to eat like we were vacationing in the city. And we could see the city skyline from Humboldt Park, so there was that, too.

Riot Fest didn’t start until 2pm on Friday, so we only ate once that day. Henry had some sickening duck sausage contraption and I had a fucking fat Thai-tofu wrap. This bitch was goddamn rotund, all distended from the gluttonous amounts of tofu and vegetables rammed into that sturdy wrap. It was cold and raining when I got it, and I ate it like a hobo in a snowstorm: double-fisted, jacket sleeves half-covering my hands, hood pulled up over my face, like I hadn’t eaten since that day 6 weeks ago when someone threw a can of anchovies at my forehead. I kept talking about how good it was, but really I’m not sure if I was even able to recognize tastes and flavors at that point of the day, because the weather was so miserable and we were exhausted and overwhelmed by hordes of people. But I sure as fuck felt 1000% better after that was able to quickly go back to dictating which stage we needed to slip-and-slide to through the mud.

The thought of drinking coffee at Warped Tour makes my belly ache. But last weekend at Riot Fest, the temperature fluctuated between 40-65 degrees. Coffee was welcome. Especially on Friday when it was so cold and wet that I’m not sure it wasn’t actually snowing at one point, but the line for Dark Matter was Cedar Point-levels of long. We actually couldn’t even find where it ended because there were so many people everywhere, that food lines just kind of snaked around in no real order and then disappeared into the masses. So I did my standard JUST FORGET IT!!! foot-stamp and went back to shivering beneath my flimsy, lightly-lined windbreaker. It was OK though, because I hit it up the next day before a line formed and it was delicious. Coffee is such an efficient attitude-adjuster. Henry can attest to that.

The only gripe I have is that Dark Matter apparently teamed up with the band Mastodon to make a limited edition blend that’s aged in bourbon whiskey barrels. Mastodon was playing Friday night, so I feel like this would have been an obvious thing to have available. But I know that I will be ordering a bag online, at least!

THIS CHEESE, YOU GUYS. THIS CHEESE WAS EVERYTHING. The menu:

Queijio de Coalho Brazilian-style Grilled Cheese on a Stick:
Original w/ black rum maple syrup
Hatch Chile w/ hot pepper jelly
Garlic w/ mojo de ajo
Smoked Bacon w/ pineapple chipotle

The Hatch Chile was my favorite. Also, I liked it better when I thought their name was Drunkow.

Over the course of the weekend, we had each of the top three. Surprisingly, Henry didn’t get the smoked bacon one for himself, unless that’s what he was doing one of the 8298374892759093245 times he slipped away to “pee.”

Ugh, I wish I was eating this damn stick-cheese right now. I CAN STILL TASTE IT IF I SQUEEZE MY EYES SHUT TIGHT ENOUGH.

I also buried my face into an arepa on Saturday, which is like a savory corn cake and mozzarella, cooked on a griddle. I miss arepas. I want more arepas. Fuck the pie party, let’s have an arepas affair. (Thank god Pittsburgh’s Conflict Kitchen is focused on Venezuela right now because I’m going to eat the ever-loving shit out of some arepas this weekend.)

At some point on Saturday, I also inhaled a bowl of sweet coconut rice loaded with fresh blueberries, strawberries and raspberries, so I was in a pretty mild mood. (Henry thanks you, food trucks.)

(And this is not to mention all the STRONGBOW I chugged all weekend too. Strongbow is my favorite cider in the whole entire world, and pretty much nothing was going to bring me down with that shit in my system. Not even the $7 Henry had to continually hand over for beverage tickets.)

On Sunday, I finally grabbed a grilled cheese from the Cheesie’s truck I had my eye on all weekend. I got the only one that didn’t have MEAT on it, the Caprese. A grilled cheese is no longer a grilled cheese once you start desecrating it with meat, I’m sorry. Those sandwiches need to have another name. (No offense to my carnivore bros out there.) It didn’t matter though because my Caprese was wonderful and it came with a small tub of pesto mayo, of which I made sure to scrape clean and I didn’t give a fuck who was looking. Pesto is the shit.

I also had more stick-cheese, and also a roasted red pepper and goat cheese tamale from Dia De Los Tamales, which was so good that I wish I had ordered more than one. I’m such a food-ordering fuck-up. At some point, we also ordered some baos from Wow Bao (mine was vegetable wheat, Henry’s was who cares) and they too, like everything else lined up in that park, were a mini riot fest for the mouth.

I think Henry ordered something from Big Pork, but I was way too involved in my own masticating to give his stuffed maw even a glance. I wanted him to get a Chubby Wiener just so I could tell Facebook that Henry was eating a chubby wiener but he “wasn’t in the mood for a hot dog” and I was like “Who said anything about a hot dog?”

Oh and we split a peach and bourbon hand pie from Blue Sky Bakery! I liked it but Henry wasn’t impressed, probably because it cost $4 and was really small. Every time we walked past their cart that weekend, I swear their menu kept growing and I wanted to eat it all. But….bands > food.

Oh, but we didn’t gain a single pound*. I estimated that we probably only sat down for a total of 30 minutes a day (and by “day,” I mean a Riot Fest day, which was approx. 10:30am-10:00pm; Friday was only about 12:30-9:00, though). The rest of the time was all walking, standing, running (for me), bouncing (for me). I found out afterward that it was about a mile’s distance from the Rise Stage to the Rock Stage. Contrary to the map below, there was no way to cut across the park other than following the road along the perimeter.

Which, by the way, didn’t connect into a full circle. All the water was fenced off and the road going through the middle wasn’t accessible. It was also nearly impossible to cut through the grassy areas to get to each stage, because there were ridiculously-placed VIP sections blocked off and as the days on, the population around each stage had become so dense that the only way to cut through was to put your head down and charge. It’s a miracle that Henry and I never became separated. Can you imagine? I would probably still be in Humboldt Park, laying behind a porta-potty in the fetal position.

I wish I had worn my pedometer, because it would have been interesting to see how many miles we walked each day. Saturday especially had us going from the Rise Stage to the Rock Stage more times than I would have preferred. (And one of those times, I ran most of the way because during Television’s set on the Rise Stage, I realized we were cutting it close for Saosin on the Rock Stage and I needed to BE UP FRONT FOR THAT SHIT.

So, I ran.

Henry did not run. But I was wearing a bright orange Epitaph backpack so he said he knew where I was at all times. Like I’m his child.

Thank god for accidental exercise.

*(There was a funnel cake truck there that probably would have made this statement untrue had I caved and indulged in one. Each one basically had the contents of an entire dessert cart balancing on a bed of funnel cake. AND I SAW BRADLEY SCOTT WALDEN FROM EMAROSA IN LINE FOR ONE ON SATURDAY AND ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK!!!!!)

That’s a lot of people. 

You know that feeling you get after you go to a really fucking amazing show, that sinking pit you fall into once the adrenaline and euphoria wears off? That emotionally-crippling post-show depression? If you give even a tiny turd about music, you know what I’m talking about.

This is the hardest and farthest I’ve fallen post-show. All three days of Riot Fest were like a fucking fairy tale for me; and I mean all of the good parts, no poison apples or trolls under bridges.  It hit me really hard this morning. I came into work and slammed my purse down, sighing heavily. Glenn asked me in his standard non-caring monotone, “What’s wrong.” I HAVE POST-SHOW DEPRESSION, I cried. “OK. You can still listen to their music, you know” was his dumb, non-helpful advice.

OMG THAT’S NOT THE POINT UGH. You don’t think I haven’t been obsessively YouTubing Riot Fest performances, GLENN?!

I have so much to write about. The bands, obviously. But just the whole atmosphere, the sketchy Uber rides, the FOOD OMG THE FUCKING FOOD — there is so much I want to tell you guys! I’ve been on the verge of exploding every day at work because I want to talktalktalk about it so much but no one carescarescares!

But before I even get started, there’s something totally painful that I need to do: I need to thank Henry on this space. Because aside from buying the tickets (literally the only thing I did), Henry took care of every last minutia to make this past weekend a reality for me. Even though he hates this shit and hates spending money and hates crowds of music fans and hates standing around all day, Henry did all of this for me and I am pretty overwhelmed by it all. I mean, not that Henry doesn’t normally do anything for me, but this was something that I honestly thought he was going to say “Fuck no!” to. I mean, when I asked him three months ago if we could go, I actually laughed a little bit because it didn’t seem like something he would ever say yes to.

It just meant so much to me. I’m a pretty lucky broad. And even though Henry frowned a lot (like in this picture, where he was frowning because we matched), we barely fought at all (and the few times we did, it was because I missed my last feeding), he admitted on the way home that he had “a little” fun. It’s going to be hard to top Riot Fest.

I mean, unless WE GO AGAIN NEXT YEAR?!?! HENRY?!!??!

You know how sometimes things just feel wrong from the moment you wake up? That’s how I felt Tuesday morning when I sprung (seriously) out of bed and did my IT’S WARPED TOUR, MOTHERFUCKAS feet-stomp on my bedroom floor. I felt so excited but also kind of disjointed, like something just wasn’t right. And on paper, it had all of the components of being the perfect day, because for the first time in years, the temperature was only going to be 79 degrees! Usually it’s almost 100 and we have sweat rolling down our backs before we even get through the gates.

My plan was to be out of the house by 8am so we could stop somewhere and have a real breakfast along the way, something better than the McDonald’s shit Henry usually plies me with on Warped Tour morn. I wanted pancakes or something, I don’t know. Something that would get me through the day.

But Henry ruined my plans as usual by being woefully unprepared so it was 9 by the time we pulled away from the house. Chooch was so tired that he brought a pillow from the couch and slept on it the whole way to First Niagra Pavilion, which is about 40 minutes outside of Pittsburgh, I guess. We hit all kinds of construction and had dumb Subway for breakfast which I didn’t want and then Henry got me HOT COFFEE from Starbucks instead of ICED COFFEE and the day was ALREADY RUINED, I COULD JUST TELL.

AND THEN, AFTER WAITING IN TRAFFIC FOR UNLIMITED MINUTES, HE PASSED UP THE ENTRANCE TO THE VENUE AND HAD TO TURN AROUND AND WAIT IN MORE TRAFFIC COMING FROM THE OTHER DIRECTION AND I WAS CRYING BY THEN.

But we finally parked, and gates still hadn’t opened yet so I was starting to calm down. Then Henry and Chooch had to go to guest services so Henry could get his complimentary Parent Ticket, so I stayed back and saved their spot in line. But then they never came back! They got in a different line! And Henry was texting me about how they walked past a camera crew that was potentially filming the next season of Warped Roadies and then he sent me a picture of Warped founder KEVIN LYMAN who happened to be standing near them and I was like “WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO MURDER MY FEELINGS!?”

But standing in that line alone for 40 minutes was about to prepare me for the rest of the day….so, thanks?

The best part, though, was that my line moved faster and I got inside way before they did. If you’ve never been to Warped Tour, the one thing you need to know is that the very first thing you’re going to want to do is run to the Inflatable, which has the day’s schedule on display. You can also buy a paper schedule for $2, which we always do, but the Inflatable will tell me much faster which bands are playing like RIGHTNOW which is important because shit starts as soon as those gates open. The one band I was looking for, The Marmozets, wasn’t listed on either the Inflatable or the paper schedule and I was like WHAT. #WarpedTourProblems.

I met up with Chooch and Henry in time to take Chooch’s picture with the Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! panda. (Pretty good band, too, if you’re into French pop punk and Goonies references.)

(Which I am, so…)

(And true to form, this was the second time in a row that I missed their goddamn set because of scheduling conflicts. #WARPEDTOURPROBLEMS.)

One of the smartest things bands do before the gates open is send someone around all of the lines with a sign that has what stage they’re playing on and when. That’s how I knew without even needing to consult with the Inflatable that To the Wind was playing at 11:15. I excitedly texted my friend Terri to tell her, because she likes them too and I told her I would report back.

I mean, if my WRONG COFFEE hadn’t already woken me up, I could have for sure counted on To the Wind’s set to have me thoroughly caffeinated. Nothing better some gritty hardcore for breakfast.

This was around the time that we started to realize Chooch wasn’t just tired, but possibly ill. He started out standing during To the Wind’s set, but then ended up sitting down Indian-style, right next to a bunch of guys who were hardcore dancing so I had to be Chooch’s human barricade. I thought he was just being a lazy jerk at first, but then as we were walking to another stage, he was like, “My head, throat and stomach hurt really bad” and I’m no nurse, but I was able to piece those clues together and hypothesize that perhaps my son was sick.

Weird, hunched-over gait. Not asking for every single shirt he saw in Merch Alley. Only taking a few timid licks of an ice cream cone and refusing pizza, chicken strips and a cheeseburger. Yep, my kid was sick.

I at least got him to take one selfie with me, but this was during the first hour and he hadn’t yet reached the pinnacle of his plague. Henry was actually going to just take him home and then come back that night to get me, but then we saw that the Summer Set was doing a meet and greet later than afternoon and asked Chooch if he wanted to do it. That sprung him to life a little bit, so we bought a Summer Set shirt and got a skip the line ticket. Then Henry took Chooch to the hillside and let him sleep under the shade of the trees while I ran off and did my own shit.

This was Henry’s view while he sat next to Sleeping Chooch:

I really wish Henry would take some fashion risks like that. But NO: non-descript t-shirts until the motherfucking day he dies.

Obligatory Warped Tour photo of me being blissed-out and Henry hating his life.

I miss this scene already.

A lot of the bands I follow on Instagram were like SERIOUSLY, CHECK OUT K. FLAY AT WARPED TOUR! so I did and she was alright. Kind of like if God changed his mind and made it possible for two men to conceive a child together and Mike Posner and Bizzie Bone decided to give it a whirl and next thing you know, we’re welcoming K. Flay into the world. She had a very laid-back California hip hop vibe going on and it was mildly entertaining, but not enough that I was like, “HOLY SHIT I MUST BUY HER SHIT RIGHT NOW.” Still, it’s always cool to see a girl killing it on any stage at Warped Tour.

Speaking of, some low-tier music journalist wrote a piece about how Kevin Lyman hates women because he doesn’t have enough female bands at Warped Tour and usually I’m all for girl power, but I had to strongly disagree with her in this case. I don’t go to shows based on the gender of bands. I go based on if they sound good or not. Kevin Lyman should definitely NOT pick female bands just for the sake of meeting some imaginary, unspoken quota. Um, remember when he had Katy Perry there in 2008? God, that was just terrible.

The bottom-line is that this is just a male-dominated scene. Not on purpose. I just think that there aren’t a ton of girls who get into playing music and decide that they want to be in a hardcore or metalcore band, and that’s the genre that makes up most of Warped Tour. I think Kevin does a good job seeking out girl bands that he feels sound good and fit the criteria. It’s not his fault that there aren’t a ton to choose from.

In all the years I’ve been going to Warped Tour, the lack of girl bands has never crossed my mind.

THAT BEING SAID, I was really looking forward to seeing the Marmozets, which my pal Jason described to me as “Hayley Williams fronting Dillinger Escape Plan.” I’ve had hearts in my eyes ever since. Anyway, Jason told me yesterday that the Marmozets missed two weeks of Warped Tour because of goddamn Visa issues, so it wasn’t that they were playing on some invisible stage that I couldn’t find; they just weren’t there at all. Super sigh. Another day, Marmozets. #WarpedTourProblems

At one point, I came back from my rounds (which included having one of the YOUNG boys at the Clean Water refill station flirt with me, yessss) to find Henry and Chooch in this state:

That’s how we knew Chooch was definitely sick-sick: he kept saying he couldn’t feel the heat of the sun even though it was beating down on him. He had goosebumps, even. But every time he saw me, he would murmur, “Where’s my Summer Set shirt!?” and I would say, “In my bag” and then he would go back to sleep. He really did get a lot of rest there. I didn’t drag him around and make him do shit.

Surprisingly.

Soon, it was almost 2pm and I was faced with a terribly difficult decision: SAVES THE DAY OR BEARTOOTH?!?! UGHHH! In the end, I went with Beartooth only because I’ve seen Saves the Day before (god, I love them so much though, and it would have been nice to hear some stuff from their most recent album, UGH #WarpedTourProblems). Turns out though choosing Beartooth was life-changing. No, I’m not being melodramatic. Their set honestly breathed life into me.

Typically, I will stand off to the side because I’m “old,” scared of getting hurt, and Henry is usually with me and we all know Henry ain’t going in no motherfucking pit y’all. But this time I was alone. So I pushed my way further into the crowd, forgetting for the moment that I absolutely hate touching other people, and next thing I knew, I was getting pushed further and further into the pit and it was just what I fucking needed. Not that I generally feel like an old person, but something clicked during Beartooth and I felt like myself. Like the person I used to be a really long time ago before shitty Real Life changed me. I didn’t care what I looked like or who was looking at me or if I looked like a mom or if I was going to get hurt or if I was going to hurt someone. I just went in there and raged and even fought the urge to apologize when I jumped on someone’s foot and then I got to shove someone in a hammerhead shark costume and it was like a fucking awakening, like my own personal version of Cocoon and Caleb Shomo was my Steve Guttenberg. When he screamed, “You guys paid to come to Warped Tour, and it’s up to you to make the most of it, so get the fuck up!” I screamed myself hoarse, because FUCK YES I WANT THIS TO STILL BE THE BEST DAY EVER! Yes, there were some roadblocks, poor Chooch was sick, there weren’t any of my favorite bands there, but goddammit: IT WAS STILL WARPED TOUR. And that was all I needed to have my day saved.

It also didn’t hurt when Davey from Vanna come out to guest-scream. God, he’s fucking hot. Basically, I walked away from that stage wanting 57 different Beartooth tattoos and a membership to their fan club. Do bands still have fan clubs, or am I REALLY being a 35-year-old right now?

Soon after, it was time for me to collect Henry and Chooch so we could get in line for the Summer Set meet and greet, which was a huge cluster and Henry was having a hard time holding himself back from assaulting the throng of fangirls who kept encroaching on us.

I missed Every Time I Die while waiting in this never-ending line with Chooch, so next time he tries to say I’m a horrible mom, I’ll be sure to throw this back in his face. I DID THIS FOR YOU, SON. #WarpedTourProblems

Chooch was able to muster enough energy to stand up and smile with the Summer Set. He adores them so much and knows all the words to their songs. They’re not really my cup of tea, but at the same time, I don’t mind when he puts them on. It could be way worse, you guys. They really pushed people through as fast as possible: you’d get to the front, give some dude your phone, pose, then split. It was like a factory line, but trust me: I’ve seen how long these lines get and they have to do what they can to keep things in control, so it wasn’t like it was overtly rude or anything. However, when it was Chooch’s turn, he went to walk away after the picture was taken, but they called him back over and each one gave him a high-five. I thought that was super sweet, so it made me like them a lot more and I didn’t groan or act put-out when we had to watch their set later. (It was actually pretty fun.)

But first I had to go see my favorites in Of Mice & Men! They were a last minute addition to the Warped roster and I was really happy because they’re always so good.

Here’s an accidental video I took of some dude’s underwear, which I found on my phone the day after and couldn’t stop laughing, so I showed Chooch and he was like “I MISSED OF MICE & MEN?! UGH!” :(

They have played my favorite song by them—“Second & Sebring”—every single time I’ve seen them, but not this time. I was like, “WHAT ARE YOU KIDDING THAT’S IT YOU’RE DONE!?” when they played their last song and said goodbye. *WarpedTourProblems

Chooch was able to hang on long enough to watch The Summer Set, but the poor kid had to sit down in the parking lot through the whole thing.

The struggle is real. #WarpedTourProblems

Here are two different angles of Henry hating his life:

Even though he was feeling like shit, his little lips still moved along to all of the words, and at the beginning of each song, he would look up at me and tell me what song it was. He was especially rejuvenated when they played “Fuck You Over” because OMG a song that enables him to swear freely. We left after their set, around 6:00, which sucked but he wasn’t getting any better. I was torn between Mom and Teenager: I wanted to leave so my kid could get better rest, but the spoiled teenaged brat side of me was like, “I’M NOT DONE HERE!” In all honesty, there was really only one more band that I really wanted to see, so it wasn’t that big of a sacrifice.

The next day, Chooch (feeling much better) was looking at the schedule and lamenting over all the bands we missed. “We missed Crown the Empire!” he cried. If he wasn’t my precious kid, I would have been like, “YEAH AND IT’S YOUR FAULT!” like when Christina’s sister made us leave early in 2007 and I wasn’t done yet and I still complain it 7 years later, clearly. But instead I just felt super bad for him because he really honestly wanted to see some of the bands there. Of all days to get sick.

“I felt so much better during Summer Set,” Chooch said with melancholy. “My throat stopped hurting and everything. But then when they were done, my throat started to hurt again and I wanted to leave.”

And then he asked, “What was that first band we saw?”

“To the Wind,” I replied. “You hated them, didn’t you?”

“No!” Chooch yelled incredulously. “I was really enjoying them! I just had to sit down because my legs were hurting. BECAUSE I WAS SICK.” We’re going to be hearing about that for quite some time, I think. But then we started talking about how one of the guys in To the Wind has a prosthetic leg, so that distracted him from filing his emancipation paperwork.

Chooch wore his Summer Set shirt for the next two days until I finally made him change because have you seen how heavily my kid sweats? Also, I love that he’s not deterred by a shirt with flowers on it.

I still have post-Warped Tour sadness, even though it didn’t go off without a hitch, it was still my Christmas in July and I made sure it was a beautiful day. Like Beartooth preached: Warped Tour is all in what you make of it. I could have sat around and pouted, but I didn’t. I waited all year for that day and fucking hell, I was going to make the most of it. Besides, I know that next year will be better. So let the countdown begin!

(This was probably the best Warped Tour Henry has ever been to because he literally got to sit the whole time and not have his dumb beard bristled by banshee-like bands.)