A Day at Siren

10:00am - 2:20pm - Run stupid errands with Tom that involve running all over town, cupcakes, and Jamba Juice.
2:20pm - Finally get the train to Brooklyn.
2:46pm - Change trains. Stare at girl in dredlocks and patchwork skirt writing in her journal. See flyer for "Siren" sticking out of her hemp bag.
2:54pm - Very pale, skeletal, tousle-haired couple in black, with their arms wrapped around each other board train. Don't smile or talk to each other the whole time.
3:14pm - Brooklyn. Drunk guys in Birkenstocks get on. Start talking loudly about Siren.
3:36pm - Still on the train. Weird hardcore kids with parti-coloured hair get on. They are reading the lineup for Siren.
3:45 pm - Still on the train.
3:53pm - Get off the train. Station is full of skinny people in inappropriate clothing. Lots of buttons and ironic t-shirts. Wish we hadn't come. People are wearing crocheted wool berets at the beach in August.
3:55pm - Search desperately for bathroom. Wish we hadn't bought Jamba Juice. See only port-a-potties.
3:59pm - Shell out 25 cents to wallow in puddles of urine and streaks of fecal matter in only available bathroom. Am angry.
4:03pm - Hear opening chords to "Dreams" by TV on the Radio. Get excited. Try to find an in point in the audience. There is none. Stand around a corner and listen for a while. Get bored. Try to go round the other side to the back of the audience. Is like watching a finger-puppet show through a glory-hole. Get bored.
4:05pm - Go sit on the boardwalk.
4:10pm - Laugh at the freegans.
4:11pm - Laugh at the Japanese couple in the matching outfits (Victorian babydoll dress, platform mary-janes, knee socks and lace bonnet, complemented with sepia velvet suit and ivory silk shirt).
4:12pm - Ogle the shirtless hippie with the fro, the hackeysack and the kickass abs.
4:13pm - Laugh at the nordic muscleman in the shortshorts and his lissom Asian buttboy.
4:14pm - 4:52pm - Play a game called "Which one is settling for the other?" The premise is as follows: Watch couples go by and try to figure out which member of the relationship is settling for the other. It's not hard.
5:02pm - Get accosted by a guy in a purple velour tracksuit clutching a bottle in a paper bag. The jacket is unzipped. He has knife scars going across his stomach. Verbal exchange goes as follows:

Dude: "Hrumblemumblerumble."
Laura: "I'm sorry, I can't hear you."
D: "HRUMgrumblumbleble"
L: "I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what you're saying"
Tom: "We don't have any money, sir"
D: "I Need A Woman's Advice"
L: "Oh. Okay. Sure. Go ahead."
D: "My woman, she's always accusing me of cheating. Now I take care of her, you know, I pay the bills, I buy her nice clothes--"
(Tom sniggers)
D: "--Hey man, shut up. I bet I earn more money than you!"
T: Oh, no doubt. I'm sorry, go on.
D: "And I love her very much but she's always accusing me of cheating! How do I make her stop? I mean, I take care of her, you know?"
L: "Well, have you sat down and talked to her? Like just told her straight out that you're not cheating on her?"
D:"Yeah! And she don't believe me! She just keeps accusing me of cheating! Now, my mother always said "Whoever accuses is guilty"--"
L: "Oh, I'm sure that's not right. Maybe she's just scared about losing
you. I think she's just paranoid."
D: "I'm no cheater, you know? I mean, I got muscles but no teeth. But I don't cheat. You know, my mother said that "Whoever accuses is guilty."
L: "I think that she's just being paranoid."
D: "If your girlfriend kept accusing you of cheating on her, what would you do man?"
T: "What?"
L: "If we were hypothetically dating, and I kept accusing you of cheating on me, what would you do?"
T: "Um. I don't know."
D: "Exactly! Now I don't know what I'm going to do! I can't take much of this any more!"
L: "I don't know what to tell you, sir. All I can tell you is that you should sit down with her and talk or something. I mean, if she's going to believe what she's going to believe there's only one way you can convince her otherwise and that's to talk to her. I'm sorry, I'm not very good at this."
D: "Yeah, I guess. Thanks."

5:27pm - Walk out on the pier and watch all the Mexican families crabbing. They seem to be having more fun than we are.
5:29pm - Discuss whether piles of radioactive crabs are edible.
5:32pm - Discuss how incredibly beautiful Coney Island is in such a crappy, derelict, industrial way. You can travel around the world and very little compares to the sight of that huge, peeling Ferris Wheel shimmering in the hazy polluted light.
5:36pm - Walk back. Listen to opening bars of "Gay Bar" by Electric Six. Go back to sit on the boardwalk.
6:13pm - Decide to go look at the merchandise booths. Walk past Stilwell Stage where Mission of Burma is cooking up cacophony.
6:14pm - Discuss why people like Mission of Burma. Their caterwauling appeals to neither of us.
6:15pm - Take a free Mission of Burma button.
6:20pm - Decide to go to the Aquarium.
6:30pm - Change mind. Go look at hermit crabs.
6:35pm - Agree that the Siren Music Festival sucks.
6:40pm - Talk to Asian dude from Prefix Webzine. He likes my Unicorns shirt and tells me not to worry because he's going to change into his soon. Try to figure out why he told me that.
6:41pm - Tom asks me if that's my new Asian boyfriend. Haha...not funny.
7:00pm - Find a girl with the same haircut as me. Am irritated.
7:23pm - Tom ditches me to go pick up Eric Neff from the airport.
7:32pm - Dig my way through the crowd to wait for Trail of Dead to set up.
7:52pm - Trail of Dead hasn't set up. A skinny, tall kid with acne moves into my field of vision.
7:54pm - Skinny, tall kid's dad comes to get him. Ha ha.
8:12pm - Trail of Dead still hasn't set up.
8:220pm - Trail of Dead finally starts.
8:29pm - First song "Will You Smile Again?" ends. It was good.
8:31pm - Second song "Relative Ways." Completely out of tune.
8:32pm - Trail of Dead announces that they are completely drunk. Dedicate next song to George Dubya Bush and say "Let's kill him!" Crowd cheers. Hate them for being so typical.
8:34pm - Third song "Days of the Wild." Cross fingers and hope that singer falls off the speaker that he's standing on. Doesn't happen.
8:35pm - Guitarist gets clocked by a bottle of water. Ha ha.
8:37pm - Singer announces that he is out of tune, "But it doesn't matter. Use your imaginations! You all have imaginations, right?"
8:38pm - Begin "Another Morning Stoner" at triple time. It's out of tune. Singer manages to hit a total of four notes. Imagination not helping at all.
8:39pm - Bandmates stop song because it's too out of tune.
8:40pm - Roadie hands another guitar over. This sucks. They start from where they left off. Singer is still out of tune.
8:42pm - Wait hopefully for roadie to hand another singer over.
8:43pm - Song ends. Decide to leave.
8:48pm - Board train.
9:14pm - Train leaves. Am crammed into a corner with my head shoved at an angle into in somebody's armpit. Can see a huge pocket of empty standing space in aisle, blocked by a fat chick in a ToD shirt and her stupid boyfriend.
9:22pm - Get cranky and shove people out of the way so I can access said standing space.
9:23pm - Kick somebody in the nuts and summon my ninja warriors.
9:24pm - Ninja warriors kick ass.
9:25pm - Ninja warriors finish kicking ass.
9:26pm - Ninja warriors stack bodies neatly and mop up the blood.
9:27pm - Ninja warriors and I sit down and have a snack.
9:28pm - Ninja warriors and I try to figure out why people like Mission of Burma. We don't know. Summon the mystic oracle to tell us why.
9:29pm - Mystic oracle consults sheep knuckle bones and coloured stones.
9:30pm - Mystic oracle tells us that it's because hipsters are stupid. Now it all makes sense. Oracle offers to teleport us home.
10:00pm - I arrive home and go to bed.

Listening to: "Smile Like You Mean It" by The Killers