Mission: FAILED (slightly censored)
Sunday, November 28th, 2004Ok so my plan a couple of Fridays ago (the 19th) was to see seven concerts in a row (on consecutive nights). I already had a few lined up and I read an article recently in Stomp and Stammer about a music reviewer trying to do the same thing. I figured I might as well give it a shot. Friday night I went to see Neon Christ and Go-Devils. They also had a band called Ladies Night playing between the other band’s sets. That confused me at first because I thought the website meant ladies night at The EARL. That didn’t make any sense because they never have a problem getting people in there and that’s the cheesy kind of thing they do in Buckhead and Midtown. Ladies Night had there name on lite-brites in front of their setup. Lite-Brites (check out the link) cool, I’ve had hours of fun with them in the past. Anyway they show was very good and my self-imposed mission was off to a good start.
And that’s as good as it got. The next day I was awaken to a guy from down the street doing work on our roof. Since it didn’t seem like I would be getting any more sleep I decided to get up. About an hour later my roommate brought his Little Brother and a friend of his over. Since my roommate went on the roof to watch the work I was commissioned Big Brother for the day. My roommate’s little brother Devante has been bugging me for months to see my guitar and now I had to kids begging me constantly so I broke down. I pull my guitar case out and they comment on my “Don’t Mess with Texas” sticker, apparently the slogan is used in some current song. I open the case and a wave of noxious fumes hits me in the face like a pissed off girlfriend who just caught me checking out another woman. It basically smelled like a dead skunk that was feasting on rotten eggs before his untimely demise. I saw some mold at the end of the guitar and my heart shrank like the Grinch’s. The waning increased when I lifted the guitar out of the case, it looked like an elementary school science project gone awry. Multicolored mold in various stages of fuzziness inside the case and on the back of the guitar and the stench was unbelievable. After I had removed the guitar from the case I noticed the worst part of the damage, the soundboard was caved in. So basically my guitar is toast and probably my case as well. Not the best thing to happen with a wicked hangover.
The kids kept asking me to go play basketball, I was waiting on my roommate so I suggested we play some football in the meantime. Man was that a bad decision. It went well for about five minutes, then we started running routes. Sanchez Devante’s friend was running a couple of routes with Devante running coverage. I kept anticipating incorrectly so Sanchez and I weren’t connecting. I then told Sanchez to run a buttonhook, I guess I didn’t explain it well enough because he ran straight for Devante and instead of turning around he kept faking spins and ran to the right. He was getting close to the fence so I knew he would have to turn around soon, so I fired the pass. Not super hard but with a little pepper on it (this was an authentic fullsize football BTW). He turned around right when the ball was at head level and it promptly smacked him right in the eye point first. I didn’t know a kid his size could scream like that. Man was it loud! There was a slight delay so I think he was playing it up a bit and not being able to open his eye probably scared him more than anything. I get along really well with kids (maybe because we are on the same mental wave length) but a lot of times I seem to end up hurting them unintentionally. I need to learn to pull back a little better I guess. So after icing Sanchez’ eye down and explaining to him he doesn’t have pink eye they resumed their basketball nagging. Since football was out now (they would’ve played some more but I had enough) I finally acquiesced.
Because it was about four and I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I stopped by Australian Bakery first. The woman behind the counter asked if I was “a big brother” that day. I replied that I was subbing. She was really cool with the boys explaining what they had and suggesting things. When they brought out the food, she gave each of them a free bag of chips. Very cool! I love Australian Bakery, I go there quite often and I would make it a regular lunch stop if I worked closer to it. After eating and dropping off a library book (reviewing coming soon) we headed over to Brownwood park. I have two court options by me and I chose Brownwood since we were closer to it. As I pulled up I noticed that the courts were empty, there was a man and his little girl at the jungle gym and some guys playing cards at one of the picnic tables. Here’s where I made my mistake, I had a bad feeling about the guys but instead of going to the other park, I got out. A couple of minutes after we got on the court one of the aforementioned guys came down and asked if he could shoot with us. Sure I said, he seemed to be fairly young and fucked up on something but not too bad. right after that I realized my mistake, the other three were heading down the hill. The first thing I do when I meet another man for the first time is size him up and try to determine if I could take him out or not. It’s nothing personal it’s just something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new employee at work or a relative, or friend of a friend. Just habit I suppose. After sizing them up I figured I can take on two relatively easily. Four though would be very tough, the thing that really worried me though was that I had two kids with me. All of them seemed to be fucked up. Judging by their eyes, my guess would be crack. So instead of enjoying the game I spent most of the time conserving energy and keeping an eye on our new acquaintances. Fortunately we left without incident. I dropped the kids off and went home and promptly crashed for an hour or so. Later on that evening I went into work with my roommate to shutdown some servers for an impending power cut and went home after that. I was going to see Helmet that night but after the days events I wasn’t feeling up to it, hence my mission failed.
To sum things up here’s a handy key.
Good:
Got to play with kids
Received my new lighter
The kids said my muscles were “solid rock”
Free chips from Australian Bakery
Nothing happening with the crackheads
Bad:
Hitting Sancez in the eye with a football
Finding out my guitar was ruined
Stressed out from the crackheads
Going into work on Saturday
Winner: Good
-Alex