Summer Meltdowns
I'm back from an all-expenses-paid-by-my-bitch's-daddy's-credit-cards summer trip to Barbados, and my bag still reeks of sea salt and the room of the ridiculous hotel we stayed at. Good food, though--especially since I'd spent the previous two or three weeks sneaking into Naeba Ski Resort and Tokyo Dome, ingesting nothing but stolen 100-percent beef hotdogs, various American Pork products, and beer. (Naeba is in the city of Niigata, located on the Northwest Coast. It only took me three midnight trains to get from there to Tokyo and then back into West Japan.) The snow was, of course, melted away, but by the time I'd arrived thousands of people were there, camped out for a weekend rock festival--the face of one mountain was completely covered with colorful tents, all tilted to fit the contours of each slope. I started thinking "efficiency" and concluded that, instead of having to scale my way up to unguarded entrances or having to kill a staff member every time, I could just clap one camper for his wristband and dispose of the body to give myself unlimited access to the campground.
It wasn't difficult either. Walking out to the soggy lawn (it had been raining) and peering through herds of spectators for prey--Fatboy Slim's music drained from the main stage speakers at an unspeakably annoying volume while he danced elevated, both he and his table, halfway between the lights and the actual stage.
I spot a Westerner further up the lawn passed out on his tarp. I cut through a crawl of fans who are inching their way to a separate stage to try and catch the end of a performance by Brahman, a shitty Japanese metal band who think they are Kula Shaker. Meanwhile, the crowd ahead of me is really getting into the mainstage performance and in order to fit in, I contribute a rebel yell, the sarcasm of which NO one detects. Managing not to slip on the mud, I continue dancing and humming my way toward my victim who, judging from his tan and build, is probably Australian. There is a little space behind him, so snatching a plastic bag off the top of a nearby cooler and shaking the rain off of it, I let out another "YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!!" with the crowd and squat down right behind his head, which allows the fans behind him to see our elevated performer, yet blocks their view of my victim. The lights from the stage and people in front of him cast the perfect shadow over us, and I slip the bag over his head and brace myself for the struggle. It doesn't come, however, until it's too late for him, and I easily counteract it by lifting his head up and pinning his shoulders with my knees. The slow reaction and motion of his legs indicates he wasn't merely in a deep sleep, but had drunk too much. Close-ups of Norman Cook dancing to his own complilations with nothing but a megaphone invade the jumbo screens on each side of the main stage, and the crowd's enthusiasm incites an incredible rage within me that causes me to start shouting obscenities at the Australian's face which is now between my knees and gazing up at me, dead. I gasp, "YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED!! YOU SICK FUCK!" Spit starts flying from my mouth and lands all over the corpse, "WHO the FUCK COMES OUT HERE to SEE a D.J.?!! ANSWER ME, you SICK FUCK!! You PATHETIC FUCKING PIECE OF TRASH!!"
Phase two begins which, believe it or not, is more difficult than phase one. This is where I have to convince everyone around us that he's my "friend who just had a little too much to drink, ha-ha". He produces one postmortem emetic episode which, ironically, gives me more credibility as I'm walking him, one of his arms hoisted over my neck and my hand under the other. I smile at those taking notice with a look of "what can ya do? Ha-ha." We both end up falling down at least five or six times before reaching the woods behind the perfectly aligned porta-potties. I had some trouble removing his wristband in one piece, but I put it on and piss on the body to throw the dogs off the scent.
I follow the same pocket of Brahman fans I saw earlier, but peel off from them and trot through the woods to another stage called Field of Heaven where songwriter, Ryan Adams and his band are playing a Grateful Dead cover. The rain is coming down harder and harder and I just close in on the stagefront, and listen. During the next number, I notice Ryan Adams gesturing frantically to the roof of the stage, and trying to get someone's attention in the wings. By the end of the song, it becomes clear that he's complaining about the lights--they're too bright. I'm not as annoyed by this as I am the English guys surrounding me who start trying to heckle him--I mean, REALLY trying to get under his skin, as if he'd never been heckled before. "Pretentious, self-absorbed cunt," one of them behind me mumbles just before Ryan Adams starts lacing into the light guy...and then himself, "YEAH, shine the lights right on the guy complainin'!!...Look, I hate myself enough already--I mean, I'm thirty-...and, and haggard as fuck!" This petty Woody Allen-esque rant is followed up by a "fuck you, RYAN", to which Adams actually delivers a response. This continues and makes me feel quite good about having fed my bloodlust an hour earlier. I just stand there in a pit of mud and disappointed Japanese and English fans, observing--with a surprising calm.
Ryan Adams only ends up playing one more song, the end of which features a very low and repetitive, angst-ridden roar from his guitar which attracts a mixture of several confused gawks and random notes from his own band members. Someone or someTHING must have gotten to him because he just breaks tempo and starts to melt DOWN--stiffly standing, staring down at the glare of the lights on the stage with his egg-washed hair in his face and guitar hanging from his shoulder.
The noise is cut off and replaced with Ryan Adams' voice--still high like Dana Carvey's Church Lady, "I had a blast, thanks a lot, see ya!" And he walks off, abandoning his bandmates and audience. A crowd probably stood there expecting an encore for another 20-25 minutes, but I wouldn't know. I was already on my way to the campground with Ryan Adams' words in my head. "I had a blast. Thanks a lot. See ya."