May 2007

Part 1: Party Like A Rockstar

By May of 2007 I’d been working for my boss “PA” for almost a year without being given much in return. So I was invited to come down with him and the entire company to a music festival in Wilmington, NC, which to my knowledge is the first road trip I’d ever been invited on in all 23 years of my life. And it is, to this date, the last. It was an excruciating 12 hour drive to the festival from NY, but once we were there, we were in the company of rockers, with free booze flowing at the concert venue and a beach nearby. How could I pass something like this up?

But there was one catch. There was a band we would be traveling with, and PA demanded that I film their every move with my trusty camcorder. They did 4 shows in 2 days, and if I missed one second of footage I would risk getting the axe on the best gig I had at the time. I would get the axe eventually (See “How Youtube Lost My Job"), but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be here.

So after 2 days of heavy drinking and beach/pool parties in Wilmington, I was asked (rather, forced) to accompany PA and two of the band members about 4 hours out of the way to Chapel Hill, where they had one gig which was pretty much them playing in front of a record store to 5 kids, and a second gig at Jack Spratt Coffee House, essentially a Starbucks. What PA did not tell me though, was that we knew no one there and had no place to stay. This small fact will factor in later.

I decided that since I’d come all the way out there to do utterly meaningless work – like let’s say if the band never makes it no one will ever care about my stupid videotape- that I should do something ballsy, something to make the people of Chapel Hill remember me. And there happened to be free booze at the coffee house gig for anyone associated with the band. So I got wasted.

At a certain point about halfway through the set, PA instructed me to get beer for the band so they could continue playing (the manager had the told the band they could play for as long as the booze was flowing) Simple order. But the bartender was nowhere to be seen. And I didn’t want to keep the band waiting, so I got behind the bar and began pouring the beer by myself.

And I could not continue, because although there was a band onstage performing, all eyes were on me. The entire room exploded in laughter. The band could not continue for about 5 minutes because everyone was laughing so hard. But PA was not amused. And since I was already pegged as the “drunk kid” in the room, I decided to push the ante even further.

At a certain point during near the end of their marathon set, I decided that their mics needed a little tweaking. So sitting near the unmanned contol board, I pushed one of the knobs up to 11- as far as it would go. And then a large sound filled the room, literally a wall of feedback. Everybody had to cover their ears, all 10 of the assembled crowd. And as PA came over to rectify the situation, he gave me one of the most priceless facial expressions that I have ever seen, an expression that can simply be described as “I hope you die a horrible and agonizing death, you bastard”.

Then the lead singer of the band began to make up lyrics about me on the spot: “Never, ever, let a drunk guy do your sound/Associating with raging drunks will come back around” I can’t make that shit up. The singer, let’s call him “Sec”, just happened to be a master of improvisation. I was immediately banished to the back of the room until the band was done.

I was hoping there would be a wild party afterwards, since I had heard much about Chapel Hill babes. A girl on her 21st birthday even offered to have the band come celebrate at a bar with her girlfriends. But they refused. Why? Because some dipshit who claimed to be a “producer” offered to have the band make a record in his studio. And they agreed- even though they had never met the guy in their lives, and their first record wasn’t even coming out for another fucking year. What pretentious jerks.

So we all headed over to this joke of a studio. It was in an abandoned warehouse, and some of the equipment looked like it could have been made by Fisher-Price. But stll, the band recorded. And not just one song, or two songs, but an entire record, which was an all-night session. And I was not feeling well. The previous two nights of hard drinking and loud volume, combined with the 15 or so beers I had consumed this night, all caught up to me at once. I was about to pass out.

Part 2: Another Night Goes To Hell

Then came my savior. Or so it seemed at the time. Following around the band all day were 2 women. One was the owner of the record store where the band had performed earlier, “Reena” . She was OK- looking. And then there was her obnoxious friend- a wart hog with no redeeming features whatsoever. PA looked at these two women, and laid it right out. “This kid is about to pass out, and he can’t do that here in the studio, while the band is making its next record. We need total concentration on this record, because our company is tired of promoting shitty records, and having a passed out guy in the studio is not conducive to genius. Take him home.”

So I get into a car with these two strange women, and drive with them like 10 minutes. This night might not end so bad after all. Then I got out of the car when they arrived at their house. But, only Reena got out. “Um, excuse me where are you going? This is my house. You’re staying with my friend” Reena said. The look on my face, and the reaction in my head can simply be described as “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

I almost vomited right there. This bitch is lucky I didn’t retch in her car. So, yes, I had to get back into the car with WartHog, and drive yet another 15 minutes before getting to her house. In the car, she talked about her boyfriend. A lot. She talked about her car. A lot. She even talked about knowing several gang members down the street from her. A lot.

She talked about stuff she KNEW I didn’t care about. So what did I do? I put on my fucking headphones, put the volume on my Ipod up to 11, and zoned out. Without her even realizing I wasn’t paying attention. After what seemed like forever, we got to her house, then I plopped down on her couch or something and passed out.

When I woke up the next morning, it was one of the only true “where the fuck am I” moments I have ever had. I didn’t recognize the house, and didn’t remember whose house it was. Didn't even remember who I was there with And then, I heard it. “BOOM! BOOM!” All the floorboards creaked and pounded as WartHog awakened. She came into the room and immediately began right where she had left off the night before- talking, talking, talking. I immediately got out my phone to call PA and get him to come rescue me. But wait, what is this? My phone was dead.

I desperately looked around her house to find anything resembling a charger. Nothing. Then I remembered, I was very far from PA. FUUUCK! After about half an hour of listening to her drone and listening to her farts, wart hog bodily functions, etc, I remembered something. PA had forgotten his sanity in agreeing with the band that they should make a record in this stranger’s studio, but somehow had remembered to exchange numbers with this fat girl. What a bizarre stroke of luck.

I called him through her phone, agreed to a meeting point, and told her to start her car. I was being rescued. But on the way, I would have to make a stop by her sister’s house. So here I was, with some complete stranger, going to this complete strangers sister’s house, and having to listen to Warthog as she explained to her sister who I was.

I saw her sister, first thing I said is “We just hooked up”. The look on her face was one of pure shock. I mean of course that was far from the truth- Warthog was fucking disgusting and I wouldn’t touch her with a 20 foot pole. But for all I had been through the last night, there was nothing I wanted more than a little entertainment.

As the two sisters fought and argued over whether Warthog had just cheated on her boyfriend with me, I snuck into Warthog’s sister’s room to see if she had Internet. There was a computer, and just as I was about to write a desperation Email to PA’s cell, a voice scared the hell out of me. In a thick Southern accent, “Um, who the fuck are yew”.

It was Warthog’s sister’s boyfriend. He was a skater-punk looking dude. I desperately explained to him the situation, and instead of being freaked out that a complete stranger was in his girlfriend’s room, he said to me “Dude, I just finished this documentary about the skateboarding scene in Durham. It has footage of me trying to turn this house into a skate park. Wanna watch it?”. I firmly replied "Um, no, you low-rent Bam Margera wannabe, I just wanna use the fucking Internet."

So I demanded he leave, took control of the computer, and decided to give WartHog’s sister poetic justice. She had questions over whether I really slept with Warthog, so to prove my point, I opened up a browser, went to a certain website, and pulled up a story entitled “Fucking A Fat Girl” (I won’t say anymore, for fear of the copyright infringement birds). I left it up there for the bitch, her sister, her boyfriend and all to read. That reaction was probably quite the shitshow, although I never got to see it.

Warthog was done chit-chatting her sister, and was ready to roll. My parting words to her sister were: “I’m just a dirty rockstar from the North. In five months you’re gonna wish YOU had slept with me.” Then finally, I got in WartHog's car and drove to the arranged meeting point. I met back up with PA, and began the drive back to Wilmington for another night of rock music and free booze. I thanked WartHog for “her hospitality” as I was switching to PA’s car. I meant more like “making me almost commit suicide.” My night with WartHog, and my Chapel Hill antics, were the talk of the company for the rest of the trip and the 12-hour drive home.

Imagine though, if PA had never gotten her number. I would have been stranded there in some redneck North Carolina town- stuck with this complete stranger, her sister, and Low-Rent Bam Margera. And what if Warthog’s boyfriend was a serial killer and was going to cut me up with his gang member friends and put me in a dumpster somewhere when he found me sleeping in her house. Who knows? You can never trust a stranger. But thankfully, I’m still sitting here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work on my own Fat Girl Story.