My Big Mouthful of Fart Wayne...

I survived gearfest and all I got was this shitty blog post.

So, as expected, Gearfest 08 sucked duck balls. It was basically Sweetwater Sound trying to unload the same shit they sell online for, like, 8 dollars cheaper, and then there were a buncha lame-ass presentations and booths and shit. And the fucking decibel level of this fiasco basically turned my withered peanut-brain into withered peanut bread-pudding. Mmm... pudding.

Everywhere you looked, there'd be some wanker wanking away on a guitar. I'd think, "Hey, I hear a band," and then look up to see some balding longhair dickwad standing in front of 20 amps playing Joe Satriani solos over some pre-recorded backup band. Basically, this:



Here's the riveting, packed to the rafters presentation I went to about the newest version of Digital Performer:



That is not to say, however, that the weekend sucked shitballs. Quite the contrary. I had a fucking incredible 24 hours in Fart Wayne and I owe it all to my tripmates, whom I will call "Craig," "Brain," "Fill," and "Nyason." I literally have not laughed as hard or as long as I laughed this weekend in many, many years. My spleen still hurts. As do my nipples, for some reason. Strange.

I won't get into everything because a) most of it won't translate and 2) I don't feel like it. I will attempt to convey a few highlights.

Let's see, after Gearfest, we went to the hotel and had some drinks in the restaurant. It felt like one of those round tables in some New York deli, where wrinkly old comics sit around and try to crack each other up. I was already wheezy from my chest congestion, but after an hour at that table trying to make each other blow nachos out of our collective nostril, I pretty much needed a fucking oxygen tent.

See, I'm trying to 'splain it, but it's not funny. You had to be there.

After that, we went to a Fart Wayne Wizards minor league baseball game, which was a blast. "Fill" was blowing shit at the Dayton Dickwads' first baseman for the whole game and I was convinced I was going to take a line-drive to the face. We drank beer, watched fireworks and then picked up some hooch at a liquor store called "Cap'n Corks."

Oh, okay this might be a great story. As we were unloading the libations in the hotel parking lot, this drunk, bald, body-builder-looking dude with no shirt and a tumbler in his hand walked by us and said something like, "You guysh don't appreeshiate yer freedom!" We kinda looked down at our feet and nervously mumbled, "No, no, we do, we do," as he shuffled over to his pickup. We tried to high-tail it the fuck outta there, but he came walking back toward us, and this time we noticed that he had what looked like the handle of a BIG knife sticking out of his waistband.

Oh fuck.

So, the dude comes up to the car and, after asking us if we had any spare Oxycontin, launches into this half hour rambling monologue chronicling everything from his recent discharge from Iraq, his broken back that he got from paratrooping into a log, the $350 bottle of Merlot that he was drinking (in a tumbler filled with ice), his father's recent suicide that was actually a murder, the reason he was carrying a giant fucking knife in his pants (which was the fact that he's been working as a bounty hunter and just missed catching a guy last night who would've netted him $10,000 in bounty money), his beautiful daughter whose whereabouts he is constantly monitoring on his laptop that has 16 different Google maps windows open at all times, and the fact that he's been home from the war for two days but he hasn't called his family yet because he doesn't want them to see him in the shape he was in. Oh, and the fact that he hadn't slept since he got home. And that he wanted us to got to Cap'n Cork to check out "the dark-haired lady behind the counter with the giant cans."

Later that night, I sketched a picture of the dude:



Sheesh, even that crappily drawn likeness is giving me the fucking willies. Five bucks the dude has this blog open on a 17th browser window on his daughter-monitoring laptop. Please don't hunt me down, bounty-hunter-marine-dude. I'll get you some Oxycontin if you just leave me and my family alone. Oh well, at least I have a good reason never to go back to Fart Wayne.

I know this is a rambling pig-fuck of a post... actually, it pretty accurately reflects the rambling pig-fuck of a night we had there. The rest of the evening is somewhat of a blur. I remember eating a wretch-worthy abortion of a meal at a place called the Cork 'n' Cleaver -- it was supposed to be seared tuna, but it tasted more like cold, chewy turd-jerky, heavy on the ass sauce. I also remember trying to choke down some of the Absinthe back in the hotel room, but having a bit of trouble because the glowing green liquid burned my uvula off and melted my neck. And I remember waking up on Sunday morning feeling as if someone had snuck into the room overnight and shoved a fucking burlap sack filled with sand and cotton up each nostril and wiped the inside of my mouth with urinal cake.

But most of all, I remember having the best time I've had in, like, forever, and just laughing my skinny ass way the fuck off. Those dudes are the greatest, funniest fuckers in the world and we have to find a way to do something like that more often. Thank you Craig, Brain, Fill and Nyason for reminding me that I'm not just "Dad" or "the Old Man" or "the weird, pixelated guy on the tv," but that I can also still be, I don't fucking know, just one of the guys, I guess.

Here's to Gearfest '09!