i got a two laned slip and slide yesterday. we were shopping for my dad for father's day. and we ended up getting a slip and slide. "i swear to god chelsea im never taking you shopping with me again" - mom.

its fun though, these two lanes so you cna race, and a flag at the end that the winner has to grab/wrestle out of the hands of the person who REALLY won to steal the title in a cheating fashion ... ala my little brother aka sir cheats alot or more commonly known as sir sucks a lot.

so pat calls me as im mid slide and says hes ready to go to the show ... and im certainly not. but i work better under pressure and was able to be ready in time to let him finish his pizza in the car.

i got a new cell phone (attention span of a flea today apparantly) well its not exactly new. its old-school cell phone. the one i had when i was in 9th grade before it met its doom in my toilet. its so much bigger and less cool looking. im having a hard time accepting it. and ... AND! it doesnt have a blue light. im back to the ugly ugly blah aggh green color that it used to be. with like 100000 less ring tones and 4000 less games and it sucks royal balls! but it does call ... and i can see the display ... so i guess ill have to live with it.

so pat picks me up and we head over to the show ... even though it started at 4 and its 6:30 already. and after pat's excellent navigational skills the night before i was slightly reluctant to go all the way to westtown or whatever with him. but we managed to not get lost and pulled up right in the middle of dirty larry's set. they have a bunch of new songs which are so much better than the old ones, tim even wrote one which is pretty cool.

with several occasions of stealing pat's keys, and starting his car with him locked out and laughing/about to kill me, and the arrival of jen, and the blowing of bubbles, jersey calling went on to play an excellent set. minus excellent vocals. then finally no regrets went on for the final set and to celebrate their cd release.

little background here: its getting harder and harder these days to find places for the local bands to pay. clubs charge too much cover so the fans are reluctant to come, the churches have been relatively good to us, but the neighbors complain or the are too uptight, whatever the reasons ... the scene has been hit kinda hard by the lack of places to perform. so it figures that some asshole had to ruin last night too.

the lead singer of no regrets was called to the side in the middle of one of their songs. this guy who was there watching us, hes the dad of a girl thats a fan, and hes one of our strongest backers to get the grownups to say yes to our shows ... and he was standing there on the side telling the lead singer something that obviously upset him. the music stopped and the lead singer announced that the show was over. some asshole had sprayed a fire extinguisher all over the church and the show was over. the band members were extremely upset. it was zack's last show with no regrets ... going to california. his birthday ... and such. really sucks.

they said that if anyone could help clean it up it would be really nice. there was no doubt in my mind that i needed to help out. to show these people that all the kids werent like that. that one bad kid doesnt define the rest of us. we lined up outside the church entrance while most of the people filed out to go home. people talking around us about who did it. from what i heard it was some girl ... lived down the street, barely connected to this music at all. tried to pick fights with a few people. a real douche bag.

after they filed the police report they let us in. i wasnt really sure what to expect you know, i didnt really know what was inside those extinguishers. walking into the church was surreal. everything was covered in this off white dust. just covered. there were footprints all over the carpet. it was a real mess.

at first it was like 5 of us, then 10, then 20, and in the end there were almost 40 people in that tiny church all cleaning up the mess made by one. they saw it i know. they know we're not all like this.

the dust was immediatly stirred up into the air. it was hard to breath and it tasted terrible. this sour chemical taste. it rose in the air and then resettled, letting nothing get accomplished.

wet rags were much more effective. vacumes going, kids, who half of them probably wouldnt even think of going to church, walking up and down the pews dusting, whiping, coughing.

i had time to think while i was vaccuming. i thought about how i was fretting over the really pointless stuff. who cares if hes changed, youve got better things/people to worry about. its his loss ... whatever cliche thing you can add in there. but in the back room, sweating and breating in this dust, this thick yellow dust. i put it in perspective again. keep in check is all ...

it was an incredible sight. people mumbling about how mad they were, but how glad they were to help. the bands and the fans, joined together ...

the clean-up went surprisingly quickly. everyone filed out with thanks from the grown ups. the bands whoever.

we finished the night off with pat driving the wrong way on a do not enter street. showing me a bakery he likes, his grandmothers house, and the diner, where apparantly the entire show went afterwards.