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Staged and Wedgied | ||||||||
Let's begin with the revelation that I have more than one birthday. All of my life, I've been told that I was born on July 15th, 1987, but, according to my mom's math, I was born July 17th. Shannon, my "older sister," mentioned that she's five days older than me and mom piped in, "So you were born the 12th?" and then went on to argue with Shannon that I was born two days after my actual birthday. As a joke, I now have two birthdays, July 15th and 17th. It just so happens that the same year we realized this, 2004, was the same year Less Than Jake were playing in town at Market Street Pub on none other than the 17th. For those of you who don't know, Less Than Jake are a Punk-Ska group from Gainesville, Florida for more than 10 years who made it big and sold out. I still like their shows. Anyway, Dale bought me a ticket to see them that night. The two of us went with Alex and Shannon. The first couple of bands were horrible. One of them had a lead singer who was either raging drunk with a good voice or extremely homosexual in a blatant way. Another band, side project of LTJ's bass player Roger "Rehasher", refused to start playing until a certain someone whose name I have forgotten got on stage. Upon arrive on stage, he proceeding to jump off and crowd surf. Basically, they made us wait for someone who wasn't even part of the band. So, after a long wait that involved chanting "Less Than Jake" numerous times and singing the lyrics of "Gainesville Rock City", Less Than Jake finally made their appearance. I'm not going to give you a song by song account of the show, but it wasn't a bad show at all. During one of the songs, I decided it would be quite a thrilling experience to go crowd surfing for the first time in my life. I, therefore, grabbed onto the two peoples' shoulders in front of me and started pushing down to lift myself up. The person next to me was a man of a little-more-than-medium build and spiked bleach-blonde hair. He saw my struggles for crowd-surfing-dom and decided to give me a helping hand. I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts with a studded belt, knee-high socks and brand new green Chucks. The bleach-blonde's first plan of action was lifting me by the waist. When this began to fail, he decided the waistband would be better than the waist. Grabbing my shorts, he lifted up pretty hard, giving me a massive wedgy right in the middle of a mosh pit. It wasn't a pleasant experience. After that, I still had some faith in him and he tried the ol' "step on my cupped hands" method and then the "step on my bent knee" method, neither of which worked. At that point, I gave up and ran into an-almost-circle-pit pit. I later found my way to the bar and was getting water and I heard the strangest thing behind me. It was this high-pitched, raspy voice saying something I couldn't quite comprehend. I wasn't sure at first if the person was talking to me or not, so I turned around and there stood Mr. Bleach-Blonde. I could now clearly see his mouth, which seemed to be closed on one side. His voice was the most ill-fitting sound to his body, I thought someone else was talking through him. "I'm sorry about in the pit there, man. I was trying to help you out, but nothing was working." "Oh, it's alright, man." Later in the show, I was over on the side of the "dance floor" (if that's what you'd call it) talking to the people I was with and Chris (guitar and vocals) was asking for someone to tell a joke. Well, I didn't really have a joke in mind, but Shannon and I did our best to make me known to Chris. All the luck in the world flowed into me that night, for Chris, with his searching eyes, spotted me and told me to come on stage. You must understand the complexity and extreme awesomeness of this situation. A Less Than Jake show isn't exactly one where people can randomly jump on stage and then jump off. Every stage they play at is blocked by a barricade that reaches most peoples' chest. Behind this barricade stand about ten gaurds. It's not exactly the easiest thing to get on stage. However, I managed just fine, thank you. As I mentioned before, however, I didn't exactly have a joked planned out. Through Chris asking who I was and giving me the mic and all that stuff, I was desperately searching my head for a joke. They, of course, were expecting something like "What did the two tampons say to each other? Nothing, they were both stuck up bitches." I, on the contrary, said this (censored version, sorry): "Two penguins walk into a bar and ask the bartender where the bathroom is. He points them to it and they woddle off. While they're going to the bathroom, one of the penguins falls over. The other says, 'Forget this,' finishes going to the bathroom and starts to leave. The bartender realizes what happened and says to the penguin that's leaving, 'Hey, you can't leave that lyin' in there!' To which the penguin replies, 'That's not a lion. That's a penguin.'" I'll wait for you to get the joke before continuing on... So, Chris stood there blank-faced for a bit, about two people laughed, and then I proceeded to get my biggest onstage bashing ever. "So we'll see you next year when you're in 10th grade." "Fuck you." "What grade are you going into?" "I'm a Senior." "Oh! Does anyone here want to take Chris to prom and screw his brains out afterwards?!" (About five people, apparently) The best part, if I can say there was one, was Buddy noticing the toilet on the back of my shirt and making me turn around to show the crowd. I shook JR's hand, Chris' hand, gave Roger the nod and got off the stage to something like, "You have a lot of balls, man." Though, the joke couldn't have been that bad, because a bunch of people told me they liked it afterwards. They at least know who I am now. Damn. I should've been wearing an Anthrax shirt. |
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