When I woke up on the floor of Thom’s living room, Maryn was sitting by my head watching a movie. The first thing she asked was if I wanted to play, and since I’m a sucker for kids, I obliged. We didn’t do anything too active since I refused to actually get up off the floor, but we did what we could. Thom asked if I’d watch her while he ran to get her some juice, and I said of course. Ten minutes later, he was back with the juice, poured the three of us a glass and sat down. He asked about everyone that we hung out with in high school, if I ever saw anyone or what had happened with in their lives. I had to tell him the truth Most of them were either going through rehab or still in the thick of whatever their addiction was. It was hard to tell him about the kids that I used to be so close to, but now barely knew.
When everyone else was finally up we decided to get some quick lunch before it was time to pile back in the van. I ended up driving (surprise, surprise) and we were following Thom. About halfway there, while stopped at a stoplight, a car rolled up next to us and the old man driving informed us that the trailer was open. The first thing that ran through my head was, “Holy shit, is my stuff close to the front of the trailer?” Since I was usually the one to pack up, I had a pretty good idea where everything was, and felt a little calmer knowing my stuff was all towards the back. All the while, no one had done anything except for try and blame each other for leaving it open.
“So,” I said, “somebody want to jump out and shut the fucking thing or sit here and argue a little bit more.”
Dan jumped out, shut the trailer and got back in the van. The argument continued the rest of the way to the restaurant until we pulled in and everyone piled out to see if anything was missing. Only one thing was gone: Clint’s luggage.
He and I borrowed Thom’s car and retraced our steps back to his house, twice, but to no avail. It was gone forever. He wasn’t too broken up about it. He said the only thing he’d really miss was his Misfits shirt, and thanks to Hot Topic, those are now readily available. We got back grabbed a quick bite and were on our way to Oceanside.
I stayed in Oceanside a few times when I was little. Well, littler I guess. I’m not exactly huge now. Anyway, whenever my family would go to Disneyland, we’d rent a house in Oceanside or Balboa. I remember it being pretty nice, but when I was 6 everything was nice.
The show was at the Oceanside Recreation Center, right on the beach, and it was a benefit show. This was the show that Mike Hartsfield, he of New Age Records fame, helped set up. Two of his labels new bands, Angels Die and Hellfire Trigger, were on the show, so add Aftermath and Cherem is the odd man out. That’s not counting the opening band, Pink Robots, but I think we’d all just assume forget about them all together.
Now, being a Rec center, the stage was in the gym and it was huge. It was the equivalent of playing a high school dance only with less people; a lot less people. It was raining outside, and if there’s one thing that scares the hell out of everyone in California, it’s rain. For some reason, no one dares to leave their house if it’s raining in Southern California so there were very few people at the show. To kill time while we waited for some people to arrive, we played basketball. I tend to get a little competitive when it comes to sports, so I tried to take it easy, but it didn’t work too well. But my team won, and I guess that’s all that matters. See? That’s the competitive side.
When it was finally time to get our shit set up, Jake wasn’t happy. He didn’t want to play on the stage and was saying they weren’t going to play unless they could set up on the floor. I didn’t really care either way, and Brook wanted to play on the stage so he could run back and forth. He ended up being in the minority and we played on the stage and pretended to be a much bigger band than we actually were. Cherem played next and included River Runs Red for the three people in the crowd that knew it.
After we played, we met a kid that drove all the way up from Tijuana, Mexico just to watch us. He bought a bunch of stuff from us and Aftermath and that alone made the show worth it. To know that there were those two kids driving from another country just to watch us do our thing was the one of the best parts of the whole tour.
When we were all packed up, we piled in the van for the long drive to Arizona. We all have friends down there, so it was one of the places we were looking forward to the most, but after about half an hour of driving, Austin asked if we could swing in and visit his mom who lived in San Diego. None of us minded, and we ended up staying the night. His mom offered to take us to breakfast the next day, and we were kind of excited about that, but when the morning rolled around, we had all overslept and needed to get on the road if we were going to make it to Phoenix in time to get BBQ tofu that I’d been hearing about for a week and a half. Like I said, this tour was more about good food than good shows
