Ozzfest report - the People

Amy took my humble ass to Ozzfest, and we had a great time at what was largely a Speed Metal Carnival. So many strange things...

Amy made fast friends with Daniel and his brother Tim. We were lucky to meet Daniel and Tim, as they were clearly on loan from an opium den in Sacramento. Daniel was an outgoing, thin fellow who had his hair moussed into stumpy horns and he had a wary look about him, as if the guys with white coats would catch up to them any minute and return them to the Psych Ward. Tim (whom I have renamed "Mungo" due to his gargantuan size and past-head-trauma demeanor) was much more Zen about it, as if the white lab coat guys were an eventual certainty and there was no point in troubling his mind over it.

We briefly met a former Marine who early in the day had already drunk enough to put him in the condition (familiar to me) where the mind still operates, but only on about half of the available cylinders fire. Five seconds of observation confirmed that the speech and major motor functions were online, but memory and higher reasoning had cardboard signs hung upon them indicating "Closed for repairs."

This meeting wasn't significant in itself, but there'll more about Full Metal Basket Case in a bit...

We made our way to the lawn seating, and about halfway into the show, three Pakistani-looking folks showed up, doing the same shifting and grooving as everybody else. Before long though, they stood out. Two of the three were a couple, a young man and woman. The first thing they did to set themselves apart was that the woman mischievously poured an ounce of beer into her date's butt-crack. Cute, and naughty, we all observed. He jumped and wriggled and boogied away from the frigid, wet wedgy just like you'd expect, and I thought he was mature enough to have taken this good-natured prank in stride. I was mistaken.

Minutes later, I see him grab not one but two beers (I'm told one of them wasn't even his), and dump them over his girl's head, in a very third-grade, overkill effort to get his girl back. Apparently, the chill beer on his vertical smile had taken its toll on his ego, and he branded himself a small-minded child in an attempt to salvage it. The excess beer (do you know how much those things cost?!) ran off onto the prone tweeker in front of us, soaking into the guy's shirt, hat and blanket. Fudge-Paki apologized to Tweekie, but not to his own girlfriend... He then spent the next hour dancing and thrashing and budging closer and closer to us, until Amy was grudgingly forced to put a foot into each of my jeans pockets and watch the concert from full-mount. We eventually moved. What a douchebag!

On the way back from the bathroom, I passed by Full Metal Basket Case, embroiled in a very intense, accusatory conversation with an angry little Metal Minx. I'm not sure what she was pissed about, and I don't think he had a clue either, but the snippet of conversation I heard was thus: "You know when you were talking to my boyfriend?! Well, that wasn't my boyfriend!!" And then she grabbed him, palm-up, by the lower jaw, and shoved his face back as hard as her poor impulse-control would allow. FMBC reset his cranium, and as soon as his glassy eyes reset upon the vengeful vixen, his right hand shot out in a looping-but-terse trajectory and clapped that bitch square on the jaw with the sound of a fastball hitting a catcher's mitt. Security and some do-gooders closed in to cool things out, and I continued on to my lawn seat, reminding myself that you don't go around assaulting a half-in-the-bag Marine and expect some twisted form of chivalry to save you from getting your eyes crossed.

Not that I needed reminding, but hey, we all can use a refresher now and then.

That's it for most of the people-watching. Oh, did I mention some strange boobs were bared in the name of Girls-Gone-Wild-type sisterhood (the best kind of sisterhood)? That 12 hours after the show, I could still taste the cigarettes and pot? That Amy is a fucking trooper for getting me home to watch my kid, even though she was near death at 2am? No? Well, they were, I could, and she is.

Ozzfest '07. What a show.

Camping quickie wrap-up

Camping up Highway 4 was a lot of fun. Among many things, I:

• Hiked the Emigrant Trail back to Lake Alpine
• Hiked the Gann's Meadow trail back to nowhere in particular, camped for the night
  
• Hiked a trail near Sourgrass and skinny-dipped in the North Fork of the Stanislaus River
• Crapped in a hole (out of necessity, it wasn't on my "To Do" list)
• Met a guy who introduced me to his brand of beer (Thanks, Dave!)
  

I took lots of pictures, but haven't sorted or cropped any of them yet. However, I have put the bite on my Dad for the use of his fancy camera for the next trip...!

Grizzly Adams ... out!