New Freaks in Town

This town is not only big enough for the three of us...NOW IT'S BIG ENOUGH FOR THE FIVE OF US!

That's right, there are two new Freaks in town: Emily (who has been promoted from Sometimes Freak), and Ashley (who actually isn't necessarily in town, but is a new Freak none-the-less).

Also, a glimpse from our new project:

You are still not prepared.

What's that sound?

Do you hear it? Someting big this way comes. I'd tell you what it is, but of course, I'd have to kill you.

But really: It's coming. You are not prepared.

Freak Transportation Units

Us Freaks go on a lot of adventures, but we have to have some way of getting to them! That's where the Freak Transportation Units come in. So far, there have been three FTUs, each with it's own distinct personality, points of awesomeness, and points of pure suckage. Lets meet them now, starting with...

DARREN

Darren, a '96 Ford Explorer, was passed down to Kari from her Aunt/Great Aunt/Grandma/I don't even know Dawn. When still in Dawn's possession, Darren spent almost every day driving back and forth from Detroit. It wasn't until Kari's 16th birthday when Darren was officially hers. Unfortunately, Kari didn't have her license yet, so Darren spent a good year sitting in the driveway doing nothing but rusting.

When Kari did get her license, it became apparent very quickly that Darren had many, MANY problems. For starters, only his front passenger door opened, if he sat in traffic for too long he would overheat, his AC was long gone, if you could get any of the windows to go up or down it was a miracle, the doors didn't properly lock, many new parts were needed, and he had a wasps nest in his driver's side mirror.

Eventually, some of Darren's problems got fixed: The wasps were killed, he got a new radiator, we could open all but one of the doors from the outside, and Kari could put all the windows up or down with no problem. Sure, you couldn't open the back doors from the outside and the AC still didn't work, but he was all us Freaks had, and we loved him.

Many great things happened in Darren, from almost rolling him getting off the highway to drop off Emily, to cutting across 5 lanes of traffic to get to a Tim Horton's on the way to meet Darren McCarty (whom Darren was named after). Plus, there were all those trips to school, the grocery store, the mall, and various friend's houses that all kind of blend together because the were so freaking many!! Whenever the Freaks had somewhere to go, more often than not Darren was our choice.

Oh, and Darren was a complete badass. He really WOULD eat your face if he got the chance. Whenever Kari started Darren, he would make this totally awesome "RRRAAAAWWWRRR" noise and scare away any small animals in the area. Too bad his badassery didn't stop him from being butt-raped when Kari and Shelby went to Toronto. All those CDs that hobo stole will be missed, especially the expensive imported ones...

Alas, as Darren got older, it became apparent that Kari couldn't keep him forever. So, she got Jack (who I'm going to do a separate post on) and now Darren is sitting in Kari's dad's front yard with a "FOR SALE" sign in his window, waiting for a batch of wanna-be Freaks to take him home. He's still the most badass SUV this world has ever seen.

(NOTE TO KARI: If any of this is wrong, feel free to change it)

TOSHI

I've already done a short little blurb about Toshi on my own blog (right HERE!), but I might as well do it properly here. A '95 red Ford Taurus, Toshi was originally owned by my mom. At the time, he was mostly used to drive me and my sister's lazy asses to school even though we could have walked. Many "fond" memories of my sister picking on me were made in the backseat. But then, this summer, things changed as I moved up to the front seat and Toshi became MY CAR!!

Granted, Toshi wasn't as beat up as Darren, but he had/has his fair share of problems. His AC has gone from not working, to working but smelling like cat pee, to not working again many times, his brakes have completely gone out before and now they make a weird grinding noise, one of his tires keeps going flat, and, though not really an actual problem, his speedometer only goes up to 85. I mean, Darren's went well over 100, COME ON TOSHI!!

But Toshi has something Darren only had for a short amount of time: a way to hook up an iPod or MP3 player to the radio. For a while, Darren had this thing we named Severus Snape that actually went through the radio (you had to set it to a certain station and everything) that we could hook our music listening devices up to. But Snape didn't last very long and we had to force ourselves to listen to the radio. But Toshi, he has something that you put in the cassette player, named Sigmund, that works better than Snape ever could. So we could blast all the Russian power ballads or East Bay Hardcore all we wanted in Toshi without having to worry about it being interrupted by "LOOK ME IN THE EYEBALL!!!"

Now, I have to admit Toshi's MS Paint drawing is a bit misleading. You might be thinking he's a total badass like Darren, but he isn't. He tries his best, though, he really does.

Since we've only been driving Toshi since early this summer, we haven't had that many Freak adventures in him, but the one's we've had so far have been pretty awesome. We took him to the AFI show at Verge in Milwaukee and the Kill Hannah show at the Orbit Room in Grand Rapids. And a few nights ago, when we had a sweet midnight rave in the underwear section of Walmart, Toshi was how we got there.

~~~

That's it for now on the Freak Transportation Units. I'll be making a new blog on Jack, Kari's new car, in a week or so once I get to know him. And by that, I mean get off my lazy ass and draw an MS Paint drawing of him. I mean, it's not that hard, why am I putting it off so much?! Oh, that reminds me, I think this is the first time I've put up one of my MS Paint drawings on the Freak's blog!! NON-ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES ALL AROUND!!

~Peanut

What will the freaks do next? YOU BE THE JUGDE. No, actually, you shouldn't be the judge. We don't have money to travel the world and do stupid shit everywhere. Maybe some day though. I feel so old typing on this keyboard, for like, the fucking blind. These letters on this key board have to be like a meter tell! God damn. Anyway, what's happening in Brighton High, you might ask. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What's happening in the gay commity you might ask? Suicide. No, really, suicide. Links later.

-S

Failure: We do it right.

Normally on this blog, we document the various adventures us Freaks have in Livingston County and various other places we travel to. But today, we are not going to talk about one of our adventures. Instead, we are going to talk about our lack of an adventure because we all fail epically at everything in the history of ever.

It all started out at Kari and Shelby's house where we had just finished up a delicious meal of vegetarian Stromboli. We were just sitting at the table, nibbling at the remaining salad, when somehow the topic of brownies and how we all wanted them came up. At the same time, Kari was texting part-time Freak Emily, who was sitting at her house bored out of her mind. So we came up with an idea: after a quick trip to the store to get whatever ingredients we didn't already have, we would take everything to Emily's and make the brownies over there. It seemed like a perfect plan. We should have known better.

Kari and I ran to the store to get the vegan butter, egg substitute, and soy milk while Shelby stayed behind to give Tweek a bath because he was very itchy. We were gone less than 20 minutes and nothing remarkable happened for either party. We got back, gathered up all the stuff for brownies, and got ready to go. This is when the failure started.

When we got to Darren, Kari realized two things 1). Her keys were not in the ignition like she thought they were and 2). her phone was still somewhere inside. She turned around to look in the house for these things, but Shelby had just locked and closed the door, thinking Kari already had the keys. Thus began our attempt to break into our own damn house. (Ok, it's not actually MY house, but I'm over there so often it might as well be)

First, Shelby tried to pick the lock with a bobby pin, a pointed stick, my pocket knife, and anything else that looked like it might fit into the keyhole. They we all threw our weight against the door, hoping maybe the lock sucked enough to actually give way to our collective 300-ish pound force, but since they just had the locks replaced last month, the door remained closed. After cutting a hole in the screen of the window on the porch but then realizing the window was also locked, we looked around the rest of the house to see if any of the windows might be open. They weren't, but that didn't stop us from trying to get into Kari's room in what I like to call a heaping pile of failure.

Kari and I dragged their really old porch-couch-thing over to the window. While we stood on the seat to prevent it from flipping over, Shelby climbed onto the back part and looked to see if maybe, just maybe, we could open the window and get inside. We couldn't. In a last ditch effort, Kari called her mom (who was in Pentwater visiting their Aunt Noel AKA Shake's mom), who then called a lock smith to come to our assistance.

While we sat in the back of Darren waiting for the lock smith, we started to discuss who's fault this was. We all came to the same conclusion: It was all our damn fault. It was Kari's fault for not making sure she already had the keys. It was Shelby's fault for locking the door before she was sure Kari had the keys. It was my fault for not making sure Kari and Shelby made these mistakes in the first place. After about 5 minutes, the lock smith and his wife showed up and he started work on the door. He didn't have any of his picks, so he had to use this little plastic thingy that didn't work.

As Kari took him to the side door to see if he could get that one open, his wife took the same little plastic thingy and tried it herself. In less than a minute, she had the door open and Tweek attacking her pants. Shelby and I went inside to find the keys (they were on the table under a notebook) as Kari paid the lock smith $40 for having his wife break into her house. Awesome. By the time the lock smith left, it was too late to go to Emily's, but we still wanted those goddamn brownies!

While blasting AFI and Blaqk Audio to drown our sorrows, we started work on the brownies and almost immediatly started failing. We should have known things would not turn out that great when I spilled a ton of sugar all over the floor, or when we couldn't get the clumps out of the egg substitute, or when Kari got flour and cocoa all over her shirt, or when the butter started to solidify while we were mixing it with the other ingredients. But no, we where too distracted by the lack of an "OH!" in Killing Lights because there should TOTALLY BE ONE RIGHT THERE!! Which is probably how we ended up with doughy, overly buttery brownies. There are not enough sad faces in the world :( :( :(

Moral of the story: If you're going to fail, you might as well try to fail as much as you can. Now watch this video to cheer you up.



It videos like this that restore my faith in humanity. Really, I'm not kidding.

~Peanut

Where the hell have you been?

Oh, here and there. Thanks for asking.

But really, I'm surprised that the Blog Protective Services haven't taken our blog away and charged us with neglect. And then put us away to rot in prison. Eep. We've got some silly stories about the past two months to share with ye all, so without further delay, I give you "The Freak Days of Summer: The Past Two Months in Livingston County."

The Tweek of Suburbia

On June 24, The Freaks added a new member to our family - a chihuahua named Tweek. We adopted him from the Livingston County Humane Society, and he is the weirdest, perv-iest dog ever, which means that he's perfect for us! Photospam to follow soon.

I Challenge You to a Duel!

We started a Twitter contest between the three of us to see how many responses we can get from people who are relevant in our world. Since the beginning of the beginning of the contest on June 30, we've been tweeting our little hearts out, and I AM WINNING THE CONTEST. EAT IT.

Freaky Fashion

During the first two weeks of July, Shelby and I had family visiting form Magdeburg, Germany. Crazy, right? My grandma's sister-in-law Ermie, her niece Annie, and Annie's son Duztin all came and stayed for our Independence Day celebration. The first time I saw Duztin, who is sixteen, he was wearing a rainbow rhinestone-encrusted Rolling Stones shirt, those hideous plaid shorts that all the dudes are wearing these days, and white low-top Chucks. Oh, and he had a man bag. I'm afraid of Germany now. Really, I am.

BITCH, I AM FROM CHICAGO!

On July 8, The Freaks took a road-trip to Grand Rapids to see The Chicago Circus, AKA Bad City, Kill Hannah, and The Smashing Pumpkins, at the Orbit Room. We only stayed for the first two bands, because by that time, we were all sick of Mat Devine kissing Billy Corgan's ass on Twitter. All in all, it was a great adventure. On the way there, we Kill Hannah dance partied in Toshi. We got there super early and snuck Shelby and Emily into the 16+ show, but it was a no-camera venue, so we don't have awesome pics, but I'm sure there are videos around here somewhere. We partook in pre-show swag, thanks to Greg, and then ended up in a giant cluster of Kill Hannah fans, which was perfectly okay with us. After the show, we went back to the merch table to hit on Greg and the lead singer of Bad City, then we departed. Hunger became us, so we stopped at my FOR REAL favorite Pilot truck stop (see here for more info) for Subway and disgusting bathrooms. Then later, we stopped at a rest stop because we needed some candy, but then there was this creep guy, so we left and eventually made it home.
Here's the setlist:
"Life in the Arctic"
"The Chase"
"Nerve Gas"
"Strobe Lights"
"Black Poison Blood"
"Kennedy"
"Lips like Morphine"

The short set disappointed us, especially when we found out that The Smashing Pumpkins played for nearly two hours, but despite everything, it was totes worth seeing Mat Devine's awesome feather headdress up close.

When it Rains, it Pours

And when it sprinkles, our tent leaks and we all get pissed.

The third week of July took us for an exciting camping trip to our usual spot in Davison, Outdoor Adventures. It's a "Lakeside Resort" (whatever the fuck that means) that Abby's mom has a life-long membership to, so every year, we go "Girl Camping." This year, like last year, we had to sleep out in a tent in the yard of the cabin. The first night, it rained, but the tent was fine. The second night, however, the sprinklers came on, and we were ambushed on both sides. The tent started leaking, and the three of us were awake and very pissed at 4 am. Not fun. Somewhere between blissful and pissed-ful, Shelby got hit on by a bunch of guys that she wanted nothing to do with, Tweek bit one of Abby's cousins, and Abby's grandpa had a minor heart attack. Oh, and our Freaky Ambassador, Katie, dropped by for a day. It's always good to re-unite with friends.

Mind-Fuck

Cinema these days is nothing to smile at. However, once in a while, a new movie comes along that tickles the Freaks' fancies. This time around, that movie happens to be "Inception." If you haven't seen it, we all highly suggest it, especially if you like your brain being turned inside out and being raped ruthlessly. We saw it with Abby's mom last Saturday night, and we're still all like "WHAT."

The Third Time is NOT the Charm

Last night, The Freaks and the Sometimes Freak, Emily, went to see AFI play at Pine Knob in Clarkston. They're playing with Green Day this tour, and each of us have been really annoyed with Green Day as of late. Especially after last night. If you're trying to make a documentary about the terrible effects of alcohol on washed-up adults, go to a Green Day show. Seriously.

We had been planning this event for quite a while, except it originated by getting ever AFI fan we know (which isn't many around here) to go to the show with us and support one of our favorite bands, since we sorta already knew what to expect when it came to most Green Day fans converting into AFI fans. That plan didn't work. So we had a four-man mosh-pit going on the hill, and everyone around us was completely silent. They didn't even cheer.
Here's the setlist:
"Medicate"
"Girls Not Grey"
"The Leaving Song, part 2"
"I Am Trying Very Hard to Be Here"
"End Transmission"
"Dancing through Sunday"
"Silver and Cold"
"Miss Murder"
"Love like Winter"

After AFI's set, we were men on a mission: to meet someone affiliated with the band. So we walked aimlessly in circles, until we thought we saw Jade Puget in a restricted area by the West Gate, where we came in. Unfortunately, it turned out to be some creepy lady that had the same hair cut and color as Jade's. Slightly defeated, we went on until we were confronted by a group of DFers from Ann Arbor (where Abby and I go to school), who were asking if we knew where to meet the band. We were about to ask them the same thing. We chatted for a while and then went our separate ways. Upon stopping at the only merch booth that had more than just three different styles of AFI t-shirts, we bought the Freaky Protege, Ansley, a Crash Love poster, and then kept on with our search. Instead of finding AFI, we met another DFer named Ashley, who had traveled to the show all by her onesie from Ohio, so she joined our posse and the search continued.

We stopped occasionally to hear what nonsense Green Day was up to, and sometimes it was horrid. Especially when Billy Joe invited a fan on stage to sing "Longview." That girl was terrible. Soon after, we headed to the bathroom by the Jack bar, where we encountered the drunkest girl I think I have ever seen in my life. We all got a good laugh out of her.

Ashley thought she spied the buses outside, so we went to ask if any of the security guards knew if anyone from AFI had been out in the parking lot, because apparently, that was the method that Ashley had used to meet Davey in the past (We're so jealous). The first set of guards were obnoxiously rude, but the second ones were nice. We talked to them for about ten minutes before we went back to the bathrooms to hang out where we thought the backstage area would be. Then we went to go look for the buses.

We walked around the parking lot aimlessly for a while, and then someone got the brilliant idea to tweet Hunter to ask if they were hanging around anywhere. We moved closer to the exit at the East Plaza to wait. After a few minutes that felt like forever, Hunter tweeted us back and told us that the bus had to leave for Dallas immediately following the show and that he was sorry that he couldn't come and talk to us.

We didn't give up. We high-tailed it over to the security guard by the trailers, who told us that the buses leave from the West Gate. So we booked it over there and ran into some Green Day fans who were actually really nice, so we waited for the buses with them.

It took a while, but we finally saw AFI's purple bus pull out of Pine Knob, and we were all relieved that we at least accomplished something. Plus, we all made a new friend.

All five of us had a tailgate party in Darren after the bus left, where we snacked on Wheat Thins, popcorn, and sandwiches. Then we exchanged info with Ashley and got kicked out by security. All in all, a good night, but unfortunately we didn't get to meet Hunter. There will always be next time...and Freaks don't give up.

So that was our summer in a nutshell. You really didn't miss much, did you?

Travel Blog: Milwaukee

This past weekend, The Freaks took the show on the road (hah, Freak Show) to visit the Freaky Ambassador, Katie (AKA Abby's sister) in Milwaukee. Because everybody talky 'bout Milwaukee.

Thursday: The day started on a dark note, because our mother wouldn't let us use the GPS - she had to pick our grandma at the train station in Windsor (because Windsor is so far away and difficult to find), and she threw a big stink about us supposedly getting lost because I'm a female and I can't use instructions printed off the Internet. BECAUSE YOU'LL GET LOST IF YOU FOLLOW ROAD SIGNS. ROAD SIGNS THAT TELL YOU WHERE TO GO.

Shelby had a half-day at school, so Abby and I ran errands for the morning (and by "errands," I mean fucking around at the grocery store for an hour and spending $52 on groceries for the trip because SOMEONE told me that Milwaukee isn't a veg-friendly city, even though it totally is), and were totally geeked by the time 11:00 rolled around. We had Toshi thumping some freaky music via awesome cassette adapter. We stopped for snacks in South Lyon (WARHEADS, BITCH!) and then resumed our Jeffree Star dance party all the way to the middle of nowhere southwestern Michigan.

Along I-94, near the Indiana border, we saw many a raunchy sex shop, which was perfectly amusing to us. Also entertaining was the "Michigan agriculture grows for you!" billboard.

In Soviet Russia, your Maserati is a face!

We stopped again in Indiana at (my favorite) a Pilot truck stop for gas and a lunch of soy ham and Muenster sandwiches, which is where we saw this:

Periscope Jeep!

Back on the road, approaching Chicago, we switched from random music dance party to Kill Hannah dance party, which we grew weary of after NEARLY TWO FUCKING HOURS OF TRAFFIC! I swear that everything that came out of my mouth from the outskirts of Chicago to the Wisconsin border was "FUCK!"

We finally got to Wisconsin, and to Katie's shortly after; around 6:30 central time. We unloaded our stuff and piled back into the car for a journey to Pick 'n' Save, the local grocery store, which must always be spoken with a redneck accent. Then we ventured to Cheng Wong, the best Chinese place known to man, except for the fact that they don't serve tofu. Shelby and I both ordered the mixed vegetables with brown sauce (!), and Abby settled on the chicken with Chinese vegetables, which she describes as "bleh. The chicken was rubbery."

Next came Kopp's Frozen Custard (!), which is the closest thing to God that exists on this planet. The place is a simple building as you pull up, but the entrance around the side is completely glass with a sanctuary-esque waterfall (AKA babbling brook) park close by. Since the place was absolutely packed, we decided to take a seat on a myriad of stacked logs near the street, which offered some riotous humor and non-comfort. I wept about forgetting I Heard a Voice in my DVD player and forgetting the vegan ice cream in Abby's freezer the whole time. I'm still scarred.

When we got back to Katie's, her girlfriend Lacey went to take the garbage out and got attacked by a giant raccoon that was hiding in the dumpster. We played on the swing set for a while, until I almost met my demise in slippery mud, and Katie almost totally ate it on her skateboard. When we went inside, we hung out and learned how not to attempt crime in Milwaukee county: DO NOT STEAL SEWER GRATES. Oh, and we all wept about the passing of Rue McClanahan (why is the world unfair?! She was my favorite Golden Girl!), before drifting off into Blaqk Audio-induced sleep.

Friday: We were all early to rise on Friday morning due to the time change and the presence of the maintenance man fixing the light in Katie's kitchen. While waiting for said maintenance man, we had the radio tuned to 102.1, Milwaukee's alternative station, waiting for the Davey Havok that we were promised the night before. It was kinda lame; they kept pronouncing Havok, "Hav-OK." But it was still nice to hear his sleep-laden voice early in the morning. And I'm a creeper.

We mostly lazed around all day, since Katie was at work and Lacey was lost somewhere in Hales Corners on her bike. At around 2 PM, we all decided that we needed to fancy ourselves up for VergeFest (which was the following day!!), so we walked to Pick 'n' Save while trying to find a Walgreens, which was right in front of Pick 'n' Save, but we didn't notice, even after we walked right through the friggin' parking lot. At first, we ended up walking the wrong way and passing The Olde Store (not kidding), which had an awesome garbage can:



And My Father's Mustache (also not kidding). After we left Pick 'n' Save to go to the Hallmark Store, looking for a heart-shaped hole puncher to give Abby a Crash heart manicure for the show. They didn't have one.

Then we went to Blockbuster, thinking that just maybe there was a small chance that they would have a copy of I Heard a Voice, since Milwaukee is a hotbed of AFI fans and a cult town. They didn't have one.

When we got home, Lacey was playing video games, so we worked on our nails and waited for Katie to get home. After a dinner of barbecue soy sandwiches and cheese pizza, we drove down to the marina and hung out around by the art museum to listen to the distant sounds of the first day of VergeFest and play with sequin tacos. We also stopped for photo-ops, of course, when we weren't busy looking for the Bronze Fonz.

We headed back toward the pier to wait for Shelby's friend Amber, who never showed up thanks to bad planning on the parts of both parties. Katie and Lacey played catch, and Katie got hit in the knee with a baseball. We also found the best boat in existence:

On the way home from the lake, we blasted some rap guys out with Gaga, and when we finally got there, we were all tired enough to go straight to bed. After all, we had a big day coming up (!).

Saturday: The day of VergeFest was upon us, and after months of planning this trip, The Freaks were finally going to reach our goal. Except we ended up leaving late, which wasn't a bad thing, and Lacey stayed home. And it rained. And Weezer fans suck. And the set was really short. And the pit was terrible. But other than that, survey says: TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Festival started at 2 PM, but we didn't leave the house until around 2:15. We had to stop at Walgreens, after we finally knew where it was, to get a silver sharpie, just in case. We ended up using it to immortalize AFI on a bathroom stall door. Oops. It looked something like this:

Except the bathroom stall doors were not lined note pads.

I was stuck driving (ugh) because Katie decided to chug the majority of a serving of liver poison before we left. When we got to the venue, we dodged scalpers and scoped out the place, which was really big, so the stages were really separated and you could barely hear the other bands that were playing at the same time. We sat by the lake for a while and then headed over by the skate demo (which got rained out) for a while before we spotted the playground. We spent a good hour there.

Our original plan was to get over to the main stage at 6 PM, but after we ate at 4 (the only thing Shelby and I could have were a disgusting variety of cheese nachos), the pit was already filling up. The last band before the main acts finished up and most people left, so we ended up right behind the barrier which confined the DFers that had traveled longer distances than us to see the best band ever.

The first band was The Ravenettes, who were pretty good. They were the only band that played the main stage with a girl in their lineup. And she could fucking shred. But we didn't really pay attention to their set, thanks to Davey Havok and Adam Carson's attendance on the balcony. They were also watching the set. Davey had on the brightest pink shirt I think I've ever seen. Oh, and Weezer was up there too, but we don't talk about them.

After The Ravenettes departed, so did Davey and Adam. One of the stage guys was wearing a fedora and had a beard, and we speculated whether or not it was Smith Puget (it wasn't), and we also were privy to the Terrorist Salesman, as Katie called him, because of his completely mingin' beard and uniform grey suit. The next band was Cold War Kids, who were some kind of funky dance alt rock thing (?). They caused stupid ho-bag bitches to try to mosh/dance. One of them was griding on Katie, because apparently she looks like a guy from behind. A really short, feminine guy. Said ho-bag bitches were taken away by security soon after, causing our crowd-family to erupt into cheers. Davey, or at least we think it was Davey, made another surprise appearance on the balcony during the set. Overall, Cold War Kids were okay, but nothing beats what came next.

With the first appearance of Reno (AFI's drum tech, who looks remarkably like Hunter Burgan), the rain began to fall harder. When Smith came out, we started getting smashed together like soy fibers in a Boca burger (vegetarian similes. WHAT.). The biggest surprise of the moment was that Smith had trimmed his beard down to normal, less-refrigerator-y capacity, and he wasn't wearing a fedora. Weezer fans decided to trash AFI before they even started performing, but by the time Adam hit the stage (he was the first one out), The Freaks were in our own, blissful world where Weezer fan douches don't exist. Next followed Jade Puget with the opening chords of "Medicate," and it all went uphill (and downhill) from there.

Here's the set list:

"Medicate"

"Girls Not Grey"

"The Leaving Song, part 2"

"I am Trying Very Hard to be Here"

"Kill Caustic"

"End Transmission"

"Beautiful Thieves"

"Dancing through Sunday"

"Perfect Fit"

"Love is a Many Splendored Thing"

"Veronica Sawyer Smokes"

"Love like Winter"

"The Days of the Phoenix"

"Silver and Cold"

"Miss Murder"

During "Girls Not Grey," Davey almost decapitated Smith with his mic cord. In the middle of "The Leaving Song, part 2," Jade smashed himself in the face with his own guitar. These are typical antics. The A-typical antics happened when I was the only one fighting to "Kill Caustic," and everyone got the memo really late and started fighting to "End Transmission." Durp.

I freaked out for "Beautiful Thieves," I fought some more to "Dancing through Sunday," (which was when the real shit started to happen), Davey went down in front of the barrier on the other side of the stage from our location during "Perfect Fit."

Again, I was the only one fighting to "Love is a Many Splendored Thing." Come on people, the main lyric of that song is, "I HATE YOU!" How do you not fight?

Ben Grey, the lead singer of usual AFI opener Scarlet Grey, joined Davey in the singing of "Love like Winter," but none of us were really paying attention due to douchebags singing the wrong words, crowdsurfers (Jesus Christ, Crowdsurfing Sucks!), and getting separated by the pit monster. Katie got pushed into the DFers (in front of Hunter), who were pissed about the goings-on of the night (especially the rain, which was getting worse, and the wind was picking up. We actually exhaled vanilla lace at an AFI show.). Abby ended up in front of Davey, two rows from the barrier. Shelby and I got sucked back out of the pit and toward other DFers who had been avoiding the whole area. The last three songs were bittersweet, as we won't be seeing AFI again until August, on our home turf in Clarkston. Everybody do the Pine Knob dance!

After the show was over, we all knew that there was no chance that we were staying for Weezer, which is good, because the DFers at the show said that they sucked. Apparently the lead singer was totally trashed and forgot the words of their own songs, and they did some fucked up Gaga cover. Ugh. We stopped at the merch table (where Fritch wasn't) and Abby snagged a tee and Shelby and I got a poster which stares out into the hallway from Shelby's room and creeps everyone out.

When we got home, Lacey nursed Katie back to health. I guess someone jammed her hip into the barrier when everything got fucked. This was Katie's first concert, by the way. We all stripped out of our wet clothing and restored our voices with post-show vegan hot dogs. We tossed our wet clothes in the dryer in the basement, which reminded us of Hunter's creep-tastic video in the bonus features of I Heard a Voice/the secret beginning of the "Love like Winter" video. Which isn't a secret. My driver's license and Shelby's Hot Topic card got dried, along with our VergeFest tickets, which were lame and on receipt paper anyway. After the clothes were done, we did some more AFI-induced sleeping to prepare for our journey home the next day.

Sunday: Sunday morning pretty much consisted of scramble-packing and clean-up, followed by our last trip to Pick 'n' Save, gas for Toshi, and hitting the road. This time, we went around Chicago, even though the tolls can kiss my ass. We partied to AFI, Blaqk Audio, and Hunter Revenge for a vast majority of the time before a sleepy Shelby requested Paramore at the Indiana border. The drive was uneventful until the Michigan border, where we snacked on the remainder of our vegan hot dogs and complained about how much we hated being home. After Gaga in Paw Paw for gas, we grew weary of the highway, so we took the back roads home from Whitmore Lake. It rained most of the way home. When we unpacked, we realized that Abby's Chinese had leaked all over the cooler, and the ice water was now chunky with Chinese veggies. Vomit.

The end...for now.