punks not dead july 29th, 2000 well. i must say, *that* was an interesting couple of days. now i'm sitting here with the worst sunburn i've ever had in my entire life, little white bleached spaghetti straps where my thrift store sunflower dress was, and a nice little pair of stripes down the front of my neck where my necklaces were hanging. i'm exhausted and sleepy and sore, with a sleeping starfish in the next room and myself heading in that direction sometime shortly. i have been promising to accompany my brother and his friends to the vans warped tour for months now. this festival finally occurred yesterday, and i had perhaps the quickest crash-course in some of life's strange lessons that i'm not entirely certain i've recovered from. here are a few: 1. sunscreen is a good thing. you will really, really regret it if you forget to bring any. the afternoon of punk-o-rama seemed to look more like the commercial for lobsterfest. 2. the hippos kick ass. i had seen a video on television of "wasting my life" and really liked it, but of course never gave it a second thought...they were the first band of the afternoon, and i fell in love with them. more fun than a barrel o' monkeys, that. yum. 3. water should never cost two dollars a glass anywhere. just get your handy-dandy plastic squirt-bottle that one of the various booths so generously provided you with for free, and fill it up with water from the bathroom sink. 4. "here, have a backstage pass" is code for "let's go back and fuck". you have no idea how stupid i felt having to explain that i simply wasn't that kind of girl, and he must have gotten the wrong impression. 5. short people can mosh, too. perhaps not as hard as the big, strong boys, but we can stand our ground...kind of. at least we don't get hit in the head by people's feet while they are crowdsurfing. (of course, we can't really see the stage, but hey...technicalities.) 6. when average-joe likes a band, he buys the album, puts up a poster, cheers for the musicians, and waves his hands in the air. when punks like a band, they buy the album, steal a poster, throw things at the musicians, and flip them off. go figure. 7. ska music has a certain dance that goes with it. i think it's called "skanking", but i'm not sure about that. anyway, i was introduced to this and fell madly in love. and the mighty mighty bosstones rock at this. 8. i'm sorry, whatever your feeling is about drugs, 10-year-old kids should not be hanging around smoking pot. i mean, come on. shouldn't you hit puberty first? i mean, all that stuff they say about it making hair grow on your chest...you do know that ain't true, right? 9. i'm not entirely sure if beer, skateboards, and human cannonballs are the healthiest combination, but it sure as hell was entertaining. 10. small town girls like me - we don't know shit. i hate it when my naievity becomes so heavily underlined for me. i want so badly to believe in the goodness of people, and i am continually proven wrong. with aforementioned run-in with frontman-who-wanted-to-sleep-with-me, i felt just like i did when i was five years old, and the neighbor boys down the street lured me inside a doghouse telling me they wanted to show me their "lolipop", causing me to run out of the place screaming as soon as i realized they were taking their pants down. i've been sexually harrassed all my life, and i'm sick to death of it. i'm nice to a fault. i'm nonconfrontational to a frightening degree. i wish i could just take some bitch-pills. carry an aura of "i-don't-take-no-shit." other than the negativity caused by my unpleasant run-in, it was a wonderful experience. my brother called it a punk version of the scottish highland games. in a way, i'd have to say he was right. there were events and festivites, food and music, and lining the walkways were all of these booths of punk merchandise, either advertising a particular band or product, or promoting a particular cause. napster even set up a life-saving booth that sprayed a mist of water over anyone who stood beneath it. (i love napster, i can't say that enough.) and if it hadn't been for the ickiness i felt after not telling guy-who-deserved-to-be-told-off off, i would have had a splendid and joyous fun-filled time completely. well, all except for the sunburn. and that by the time nofx played, i was falling asleep against the railing, i was so beat. visiting lyndsay this afternoon washed away any residue negativity from the day before. somehow something as simple as sitting on her couch talking about everything, sharing chicken viola! and listening to faith and disease made me feel all warm and happy inside. and i think Aisling had much fun tearing up all her magazines (sorry, lyns!)...but it was wonderous. and it marks the second time in my life that going to that house has improved my mood by leaps and bounds. i'm going to miss that house - i think there was something really magical about it. i think i'm cursed. i deleted a chain mail email the other day, and everything seems to be going crazy. this whole thing at the concert happened, i'm more sunburned than i've ever been in my entire life, i literally bumped into another car on my way back from lyndsay's place (it didn't hurt either car, though, so she was nice enough to forget about it), and then i got lost on my way back home. yes, you heard right - i got lost. this route i've been taking at least once a month for the past three years, and i get lost. it's really funny - i ended up taking the same route that a certain mister john puster and i took many years ago when i made a similar mistake (headed towards asheville instead of bristol...all of the sudden i'm crossing a river and wondering "hey! how did this get here!?") and ran up through newport and cut around to greeneville that way. quite a bit out of the way, but some beautiful countryside. john and i made the drive near midnight, and i remember the hillsides bathed in moonlight and me sticking my head out the window and wanting to touch the sky. today, i got lost up around there, and ended up almost in the *real* mountains before i got a clue and turned around...that's sheer magic, let me tell you. i want to live in those mountains one day, the north carolina ones. the big ones. stand on top of my big mountain and see the entire world below me. *that* would be something. in the meantime, i'll settle for my comfortable little foothills. because they really are foothills, in comparison. i'm just a foothill, in comparison. i'm too chicken to be a mountain.