Saturday 25 June 2011

muddy waters

How are you supposed to find your tent amongst that ?

This week-end is Glastonbury festival, the most famous of all the UKs music festivals.
Obviously I am not there.
Well how sad would that be if I was, sat in my tent with a rubbish dongle connection writing on my blog. Although I have a few friends that are there and unbelievably have been posting updates on Facebook.
YOU'RE AT A FUCKING FESTIVAL ! Go listen to music, play with poi and forget your phone. We're all going to see 3466 photos of your muddy boots and toilet queues half an hour after you get back anyway.

I do love camping and I have been to plenty of festivals, but I preferred them when they were smaller, illegal, free and run by travellers. Nowadays for the most part they are huge commercial affairs, and while the money they now make means that the best bands will play at them I have no desire to get lost, caked in mud and lose my tent and my mates.

No thanks.
However this year I did consider it because U2 (who I love) are playing. But then why pay all that money for the week-end for one band ?

And the one thing that always pisses me off about live music is you wait all night for the one song you really love and what do the band do ?
Point the microphone at the audience for them to sing it. Fuck off ! If I wanna hear me sing it I can stay at home and do that anytime.

Bono has just done that . . . “Is it getting better . . . . “ *points mic at crowd and stops singing*
Yup, glad I’m not there.
Instead I am watching it from the comfort of my sofa where it is warm and dry and will be sleeping in my king size bed as opposed to a bound-to-be-deflated-in-the-morning airbed.

I hate it when that happens.
You go to sleep in a cold but otherwise relatively comfortable tent and wake up in the morning in a sauna with the indent of several large rocks in your arse because the sun came out and then the plug came out of the mattress.
Either that or some drunken knob trips over your tent ropes and the roof caves in. As much as I enjoy camping I still like my little comforts.
I have been known to take my quilt and several cushions, much to the amusement of friends. I get the last laugh though because I can guarantee if it rains them fuckers will be wanting to come and sit in my tent. Whose the smartass now and no I don't care if your back aches and you need to crash out for a bit.
Yeah right.

Talking about crashes the thing that’s annoyed me the most this week has been the death of Ryan Dunn. Well not so much his death as the apparent facebook / internet wide mourning that’s followed, and the rumours that the whole thing is an elaborate stunt. Of course it’s tragic when anyone dies, I’m sure his family and friends are devastated and rightly so, and possibly they take some comfort from the knowledge that their loved one will be missed by so many people, but I wonder how his mother will feel if people are asking her if it's real.

I have seen plenty of people saying that he was a legend and a hero.
And a couple of days ago I saw this :

You're kidding right ? Nope she's deadly serious.

But is he really some sort of hero ?
Yeah Jackass was the best thing to come out of MTV, no doubt endless repeats are going to be shown now too, that can only be a good thing.
But lets clarify a few things here - apparently the last thing he did before he got into his Porsche and drove it at 110mph in a 50mph zone killing himself and his passenger, was post pictures to his twitter account of himself drinking in a bar.

Is that the kind of person you call a hero ?
I don’t think so.
Heroes save lives, they don’t endanger others. A hero is the member of the emergency services who risks his life to save others and pulls victims from car wrecks, not the fools that cause them. If an ordinary member of the public had been driving that car they would be all over the papers for being a criminal and killing the passenger.

Nuff said.

Don’t portray him as some kind of James Dean cult celeb who was ‘taken all too soon’ - yeah, I’ve seen that statement used a few times in the last week - he killed himself he wasn’t ’taken’, but he took a friend with him. Use his well publicised death as a lesson to other idiots who think they are invincible and drive like cunts after drinking.

In irresponsible hands a car is a murder weapon.
I know - one killed my mother.
But if anyone reading this happens to attend the funeral please tell Knoxville that if he feels the need for a sympathy shag I’m happy to oblige.

Best not mention this post though.

20 comments:

  1. hey that's where lin is ... from the BlueLight project promoting our wares :) but you won't be there to meet her lol~

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  2. I might have gone to Glastonbury to see Shirley Bassey perform if I could have watched her from a tall tree rather than mingling with the crowd.

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  3. TY! I am so sick of people treating Dunn like some tragic hero. He killed himself and one other person because he was an idiot who did not believe in drunk driving. If he had lived no doubt he would be getting away with the death of his passenger due to money, and we would all be pissing and moaning about the fact. His death does not make him suddenly a hero, nor his actions any better.

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  4. I agree. I like the Jackass boys (Knoxville especially, I certainly wouldn't kick him out of bed, I would do my best to comfort him in his time of need). While this is sad, it's rather hard to mourn for anything other than the friends and family left behind to suffer. He somewhat brought his death upon himself by his reckless actions, and killed his buddy, too.

    My father died at the hands of a drunk idiot behind the wheel of a car, so I have little in my heart for glorifying this sort of occurrence.

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  5. @Andrea, if you're playing glasto next year I'll brave the mud and come.
    @GB, how very unacommodating of mr eavis.
    @Jamie, I'm glad you agree.
    @Tats, I'm sorry to hear that - seems you and I have more in common then we realise. But you will have to take sloppy seconds on Johnny.

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  6. To be honest, I've never been interested in Glasto or any other music festival (asif you could'nt already tell), but tonight I caught some of it on the TV. What got me most was that big fat open dusk sky above the stage, reflecting the one I had here and some really good music from artists I had never heard of and who I immediately 'Shazammed' to get their stuff. The south of England is in for a hot 3 days and those guys down there are going to make some memories that will last them a lifetime. Oh..and they might get to some concerts too. ;-)

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  7. Amen on the Jackass comment.... I've been sticking a fuck into people all week over this and receiving nothing but abuse back which has made me quite horny, So if Knoxville isn't up for the sympathy shag, give me a call.

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  8. @Ian, they might make memories but will prob get that messy that they don't remember.
    @Bizz, I'll bear that in mind.

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  9. You're totally right about the camping thing. I just went a couple days ago. Freezing cold at night, burning hot at fucking 8 in the morning. Eight! It was IMPOSSIBLE to sleep in. Even butt naked.
    You're lucky you have an inflatable mattress though, I just had a sleeping bag. Hard floor was hard :(

    My boyfriend says that the Dunn thing is just a prank. If it is, that's a terrible prank, but yet they're known for doing those. I'm not really sure what to believe. He also likes to drive really fast, coming down the canyon from Angeles National Forest (where we were camping, up to 5k feet) he was going pretty fast, especially around corners. I got mad at him for doing that, there were even memorials here and there on the canyon for those who've died on it.

    He won't be doing that again though, not on a 2 way canyon. In his defense, they were very wide roads though. But still. Why are boys such idiots sometimes?

    Putting it that way, Dunn is definitely not a hero.

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  10. Great post! I agree with you that Ryan shouldn't be considered a hero. Driving drunk and killing yourself and taking out someone else is a terrible thing. I think he got caught up in the whole "celebrity - jackass" lifestyle. Quite frankly, I'm surprised one of their crew hasn't died before this...

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  11. @PB, no I was worried that the internet might break without me if I left it that long.
    @Amp, if you go again insist on the mattress. I don't think it's a stunt, for a start where are they gonna get a body from and that's really a joke too far - even for Jackass.
    @krouth, funny - I said the same thing, some of the stuff they've done it amazes me there hasn't at least been a serious injury.

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  12. Both Jackass and outdoor music fests are in my rearview mirror. I'm gettin' old fast.

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  13. My abiding memories of camping are of horizontal rain, ducks sheltering in my sodden sleeping bag, and shivering inside the family car whilst my mother claiming she could see blue sky every 5 minutes. It was always a mirage.

    I have never been a Jackass fan. You want to put yourself in ridiculously dangerous situations for a laugh? Then reap the consequences.

    And Glastonbury? Last year my mother phoned me out of the blue to announce that she was having a backstage tour, and that she did not know if the people she was meeting were famous. We did not speak for a couple of weeks.

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  14. i don't camp. period. but i did pay a ridiculous amount for a pretty big festival in the US this year. of course i bought the vip tickets so i could have a more private bathroom ;-)

    as for mr. dunn... the whole thing is just terrible. that anyone feels admiration for him at this point is ricockulous.

    xo m

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  15. @flip, you and me both.
    @NE, I wonder who your mother did meet ? Maybe her and Jayz are homies now.
    @Mina, "ricockulous"...hilarious - I'll be using that word again !

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  16. oh- like the new look to the blob!

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  17. Just popping in to visit. Glastonbury is a corporate day out not a pop festival. It may as well be Hay on Wye

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  18. Funny! I am with you on the festival malarkey - back in the day we huddled in the back of a transit van (still dont know who actually owned it!) with a spray-painted Smilee Face on the side and we hit the motorway to join the convoy to an illegal rave of some sort usually ending up on a service station car park - most of the time we got turned around and sent packing by the motorway police and never actually go there but boy those were the days!! One trip to VFestival was enough for me and fumin was an understatement when Travis basically let the crowd sing their songs for them - turn the mic round to your own face and do your job nob!
    Anyway - Good to meet you (sort of)
    Off to deal with Mad Minnie!!

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  19. @Vi, I only knew about it because it was all over fb, and I don't check that very often. And although I watched Jackass the name on it's own would've meant nothing.
    And yeah, I agree.
    @MsR, Very true.
    @NF, I think I might've seen you there - who knows really ? I was always so smashed EVERYONE was my new best friend.

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  20. New to your blog...I'm enjoying your rants! I agree re: festivals. I like the small, earthy festivals. Once a festival gets too big it loses its charm.

    My stomach dropped when I read about your mom. I'm so sorry that you lost her in that way.

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