What I Got Out Of The Cow Pasture

“Come on, Seth. I need some beer. Just get out on I-24, drive North, South, East, West, I don’t care. Just bring me some beer. I can’t get it myself. I gotta get out of this cow pasture.”

She had a high, forceful backwoods voice. It was pitched somewhere between human and feral dog. It was the kind of squawk I always imagined issuing from Flannery O’Connor Characters. She was brash, and loud, and more than a little frightening. I certainly hope Seth brought her some beer. I fear for his wellbeing if he did not.

“If you bring me beer, I will marry you. I will marry you to-fucking-night. My dog will be the best man. Hell, I might even turn straight for you…ah, naw, that ain’t true.”

It took me awhile to turn around and sneak a peak at the girl. I was terrified she would catch me looking. Who knows what kind of raged boiled within this hillbilly lesbian. I imagined her perfectly willing to quite literally chew my face off. But I took my chance and stole my glance. She was smaller than I expected, thin – she might have weighed all of 90 pounds – with a bony compact frame and short, brown boyish hair. She looked like Huck Finn imbued with old man Finn’s anger. Her size did little to alleviate my fears. She could certainly gouge my eyes out and kick a hole in my chest before I could swing a fist. It’s axiomatic: crazy beats strong every time.

Eventually, Marissa and I turned one way and the hillbilly lesbian turned another and walked off into the Tennessee night, wandering among the tents and cars howling for Seth to just bring her some beer with the unabashed force of a backwoods banshee.

The hillbilly lesbian was by far the most interesting, and entertaining person I ran into at Bonnaroo. There were other people. For instance, the gentleman shaking and shivering as he begged every passing person for speed was the saddest. The young couple we met waiting for Elvis Perkins in Dearland: the most earnest. Our campsite neighbors who kept a careful schedule of what psychotropic drugs to take and woke us up at 5 A.M. with by yelping “ You know what we need right now: MARSHMALLOWS!”: the most annoying.

When people ask me why I went to Bonnaroo again (which is a perfectly legitimate question since Bonnaroo contains so many of the things I hate: immense crowds, not showering for three days, hippies, hipsters, druggies, frat bros, smug self-importance, and unrelenting heat to name just a few), I do have a few answers. I went because my fiancé, Marissa, wanted to go. I got a chance to check out bunch of bands. I love road trips. But in hindsight the thing that draws me to this sort of gathering, is the people. I am an inveterate people watcher. I’m not always much for social interaction, but I do have a fascination with observing people interact. Bonnaroo is like a big, steaming, seamy, often quite gross petri dish for the science of people watching. People are away from home, in a permissive atmosphere, and perfectly willing to make fools of themselves. It is really quite wonderful. So, while I could knock out some quick blog post about all the bands I saw. Rank them from the pretty great (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Phoenix) to the pretty terrible (I’m looking at you, MGMT). I’d much rather just write about some of the more mundane, stupid, mystifying, and interesting people and events I witnessed over the weekend.

Bonnaroo fosters the sort of open, permissive atmosphere that makes what I imagine to be fairly normal people to act like total idiots. This is immediately noticeable in how people dress. Most people don’t pull out Speedos as clothing, but I saw it, along with pink jump suits, Transformers masks, and even one person wearing a perfectly accurate Teen Wolf costume (Okay. I might make fun of everything else, but the Teen Wolf costume was freaking awesome. It was uncannily accurate, like he spent five hours in makeup before hitting the festival. We only saw him for a second. He ran out of the pit at Nine Inch Nails and off into the night too fast for anyone to get our cameras ready. The only way it could have been more perfect is if he reverse two-handed dunked into a random basketball hoop then jumped onto the roof of a Style’s driven truck).

By far the most baffling fashion trend was girls wearing fairy wings. I don’t really know where this comes from. I’m going to take a shot in the dark and guess it has its origins in the club scene. I have absolutely no idea what goes on in clubs these days (or ever for that matter), so that’s my all-purpose guess for where things young people do I don’t understand originate. Do the kids still go clubbing? Do they call it clubbing? Do they still do the ecstasy I heard so much about in the 90’s? Do I really care? Back to the point, girls be wearin’ wings. It seems like an odd fashion choice for a music festival. When moving through a large crowd is it really a good idea to add a two foot wingspan. The fairy wing craze did lead to one of the more memorable moments of the weekend. Again at Nine Inch Nails – before the glory that was Teen Wolf – we were standing behind a group of young women all wearing fairy wings. One cute little girl was wearing her wings with a bikini top and really pushed the outfit over the top with a pink tutu (Because why the fuck not). Suddenly, we saw a gentleman running up from the stage area with his hand clamped firmly over his mouth. It looked like someone drank a little too much, and was ready to… ah… get rid of some excess. Unfortunately, the fairy girl did not see the gentleman, and was not able to get out of the line of fire. Her friends ended up wiping vomit off her back. It was awesome.



I saw surprisingly little vomit this trip, although there definitely seemed to be a much more prevalent party drug vibe. We did overhear this chestnut: “The guy at the tent next to ours came out, looked up, and said ‘It’s raining. I’m going to go back to my tent and do meth.’” We, on the other hand, spent the rainy portion of the trip in our tent playing Crazy Eights. To each his own. So, I guess meth has hit the party and/or hippie crowds. Or maybe, it’s always been there. I don’t really know much about meth. Or the party and hippie crowds, for that matter. But we did have a fun game of spot the meth addict running for most of the weekend. You know who won? We all won. Except for the meth addicts. They’ve already lost, pretty much everything.

It was a good weekend for people watching. There was a lot more I could write about. For instance, the show off jumping over a large puddle only to land on a guy carrying a beer in each hand. There are also probably a ton of other things I’ve already forgotten. Still, it was overall a good weekend for catching some bands, and a great weekend for watching Americans acting like assholes. And that’s what it’s all about.

Shalom