|
| 
I'm at home in EG, but just for tonight and part of tomorrow. I decided to come home this weekend for several reasons, and one of them was the Skillet + Tree63 concert that happened tonight at Six Flags. I still had 2 free tickets left from working there this season, and my little sister and I went to the show. She does hate my kind of music, but other people from our youth group were going, including some of her friends. And it also meant riding all the rides before the concert, of course.
I randomly ran into several people that I knew while I was there, which was definitely really cool. By that I mean 3 cool people from Emmaus, 2 cool people I used to take karate with, 2 other people I used to take karate with who aren't that cool, and 1 friend of the family who I hadn't seen in ages.
HAWK NELSON
Hawk Nelson is a sucky, lame, pop-punk band that you could not mosh to properly if you tried. Actually I did mosh with a couple guys, but it wasn't a real mosh pit and it lasted all of 90 seconds. The only two reasons I even went up front to the stage for their set were that I was with people who actually like these guys, and I wanted good standing room for Tree63 and Skillet. However, Hawk Nelson did redeem themselves by playing a cover of "Just What I Needed" by the Cars, which The Insyderz also covered and is a very good song. It was the only good song they played, because they weren't the ones that wrote it. Looking around me, I noticed I was the only guy that knew the words. Hawk Nelson only deserves one picture:
TREE63
Tree63 is a very good band. It was disappointing how the crowd didn't get into their set very much. There weren't really a lot of people watching their set, and it IS praise music after all. However, I do enjoy my praise music very much, so I was one of probably a half dozen people who jumped around during the song "Blessed Be Your Name." I love that song, it's definitely my favorite of the ones they played tonight. It used to be so fun to play on bass at youth group. And they opened with the song King, which is a fantastic song, probably their best known. If you're interested, the video for King can be found here, and I definitely recommend watching it. (That link is gonna open Window's Media Player to play the video). Two pictures of Tree63 for you:
SKILLET
Skillet is AWESOME! I had never seen them live before tonight, and they did not disappoint at ALL. The one thing that WAS a disappointment was that the security guards didn't let us mosh, even a little bit. That was just retarded. Jumping up and down is fun and all, but I was there to do some intense moshing and I was denied that. Olivia took all of the pictures during this set for me, and she stood right up front, directly in front of the metal fence thing, to get good pictures and not get pushed, while I moved back a little so I could move around more. She was standing right next to this kid that had to be six years old. His parents were back a little, but they wanted him right up front so he wouldn't die if people a few rows back got too crazy. It was really weird to see him there. It was a ton of fun, and I destroyed my voice and might have pulled a muscle or something too. Pictures!
Olivia with a security guard that she thought was "hot." Weird.
Me and Olivia, before the show:
Skillet!
John Cooper:
Ben Kasica:
I wish I had more / better pictures of Lori, but here she is:
Korey Cooper playing guitar. Unfortunately I don't have many good shots of her either:
John Cooper, only this time he's yelling!
Lori Peters again. She looks bored? What the crap?
John tries to rock out harder by crouching down:
Another pic of Ben Kasica:
The band again, this time with Olivia's favorite security guard in the picture
Yelling, probably as loud as I can manage:
John Cooper is a red silhoutte
Here's a video, too. Sorry, it doesn't have sound, my camera is lame like that:
| | |
| 
It's a little after 1am right now, and it was my last night tonight! My last night of Six Flags ever, my last night at home, the last time I'll ever see some of the people that were at Denny's tonight with me, the last time I'll be online for a week or so. I'm getting the required laptop from RPI like all the rest of the Freshmen, but we can't pick them up for another week after moving in, which is lame. I have to say that having to be back by midnight every night is crippling when Six Flags closes at 10. Tonight, once again, I got to Denny's, ordered a coke, looked at my phone, realized that I had to leave immediately, left $2.50 on the table, and walked out before anybody even thought about food yet. It's seriously lame. The 2 hours between 10 and 12 don't seem that bad, but after 15 min of running out the Pande line, 15 min of cleaning, then picking up Courtney who wasn't working today, going back to SFNE to rendezvous with everybody because I'm the only one who knows how to get there, going to Bailey's house to pick him up, and then driving down to Enfield where Denny's is, and being sure to leave time to get home... 2 hours turns out to not be a whole lot of time. Thank you very much, Connecticut State Legislature for passing your crappy law about a mandatory under-18 curfew that my parents make me follow.
Alright, I'm not actually that mad, it was lame that I didn't get to
stay long but seriously, I was glad to have been there with everybody,
so many people showed up I couldn't believe it! If anyone from
Division 1 reads this, you guys are awesome.
So I'm VERY pumped for moving in to RPI... It's going to be such an early morning tomorrow, but that's okay. I can't wait to see Michelle and Tom again! It's so cool that I got to hang out with both of them this summer after meeting them at orientation... going to Six Flags with Tom and his friends, and of course the time I spent with Michelle, at Six Flags, at my house, at that Grease show that my friends were in, running into random people in the center of West Hartford, etc. Ah, I can't wait... and just to finally be there. The preparation for this is so drawn out and lasts forever, I'm glad it's finally here! The packing was a pain, but it's (probably) all done now. Ha, although it's a little frustrating that it had to be the 19th that I move in, because the 20th = big ska show at the Webster featuring The Toasters, which would've been AMAZING.
And now, a quote from braveSaintSaturn's "The Sun Also Rises":
"With all the hope that I could beg or borrow
I can't wait, can't wait for tomorrow!"
| | |
|   
Here's an exciting story from Six Flags to make up for the fact that I never update this thing. It's a long story, but it was absolutely insane, so I hope at least someone reads the whole thing. I hope I got most of the details right.
I was working as an attendant at Mr Six's Pandemonium, when suddenly our unload attendant walked out the exit. He was talking to one of the guests as he walked out, and he made a "phone" hand motion to the Andry, our operator. We were really confused, and we were wondering what that was supposed to mean. You don't just leave your position like that. We discovered later that he probably meant something like "call and get a supervisor here immediately, there's gonna be trouble." It held us up, but not too long... you really can't send the car out without an unload attendant there, but we finished getting their seatbelts and lap bar secured. When he got back, I noticed that with him was a family of three black people. The mother was a very large woman, and she was PISSED. She was yelling, "I can see it right there! I lost my earring on the ride and that cost me a thousand dollars! You better go get that right now!"
I saw trouble and went over to talk to her, hoping I'd be able to help him calm her down. All Rides employees know full well that any items lost on the ride cannot be retrieved during park operating hours. We tried to convince her to calm down so that we could explain the policies on lost items, but she still was furious. She wanted to talk to a supervisor, and we called to have Chris come to the ride, and she calmed down a little bit when we told her that he was on his way and would be there shortly. However, she was still very angry and kept interrupting our cycles by standing somewhere she shouldn't be.
Finally, she got sick of waiting for Chris to show up. She started yelling that she was going to jump down into the infield and get it. We never lost our cool and the unload attendant stood between her and the dropoff where the floor ends. Basically, there's a small area right next to the track where the fence doesn't go all the way to the corner of the platform, and that area is painted red as a warning, because there's grass about ten feet below that. The unload attendant stood there in her way, and she yelled something like "Don't try to tell me what I can't do!" and pushed him. I seriously thought he was going to fall into the infield, or onto the track, but fortunately he stayed on the platform. Her husband at this point started telling her not to touch anyone, and she calmed down a little again.
But then, her husband got sick of waiting. I should point out here that she was a very large woman, but her husband was a huge, tall, muscular black man. He told us that he was going to jump down into the infield, and I reminded him that Chris was on his way and told him "Sir, I can't let you do that, I'm sorry." He said to us "Are you going to try to stop me?" and he seriously just jumped down off the platform!
I turned around and made the hand motion to the operator while yelling "E-STOP! E-STOP RIGHT NOW!" He slammed his hand down on the big emergency stop button and there was a huge crashing noise as the power to the ride suddenly cut.
The man walked around in the grass of the infield for a couple minutes and obviously couldn't find the earring that his wife allegedly could "see" from the platform. Meanwhile, the operator was on the phone getting security and maintenance. Then, he actually climbed up onto the track itself and somehow worked his way around cars full of guests that were on the track waiting to enter the station. At that point, he and his wife and their kid all left, and security, maintenance, and Chris had not showed up yet. I really wanted to keep them there so that security could deal with them, and I followed them out and tried to convince them to come back, but the lady just pushed me away and yelled at me and they kept walking.
Then security, maintenance, and Chris all showed up, and we gave security a description of the family and we were able to restart the ride. I really hope that security later was able to find him. I went over and talked to the unload attendant, and said man, I would've been scared out of my mind, when that lady pushed you I really thought you were gonna fall into the tracks or the infield. He said something like "If this was any other situation, I would've just kicked her ass."
| | |
| DAMN THEM ALL. (part 2)
Part one was July 21st, 2005.
| | |
| Pillar and POD concert at the Webster was last night, it ruled! 
I went down with my church's youth pastor Matt, and 3 other guys from my church, so there were the 5 of us. Me and Dan were the only ones that had been to the Webster before, and we were doing a lot more moshing than the other three guys. It was definitely a ton of fun.
Me with two of the guys I went with:
When we got there, Chariot was setting up, so we saw the beginning of their set. Those guys were weird, so we didn't stay long. The music wasn't bad, but on stage they were just really weird. After seeing a little of them, we headed over to the underground, and there was this awesome hispanic band called "Sandoval Band" playing there. Those guys were AWESOME. They are rediculously good musicians and did some amazing soloing, although for some reason everyone was standing around 15 feet from the stage and not moving around at all. Weird.
PILLAR
I love Pillar, I had been looking forward to their set a LOT. It was great, I did some moshing and had a ton of fun, but I wish their set had been a lot longer. I guess they couldn't stay long because they were just opening for POD, but they are awesome. I actually fell down once in their pit, but it was by the edges, and somebody helped me up really fast, so I just jumped right back in.
Yeah, I know, my pics all came out awful. I don't care.
P.O.D.
I hadn't really heard a lot of their music, but even still, it was real easy to get into it, and jump around and mosh and the whole deal. They were awesome, and there were times when the entire crowd just went insane, like in the song Southtown. They played two of their reggae songs, and Dan and I skanked to one of them, but nobody else did... It had those upbeats, so I really had to, heh. That particular song even had a trumpet solo in there, so that's as ska-like as you're going to see at this kind of concert. I went back and forth between the mosh pit and pushing up more towards the front row. It was actually easier than I thought it would be to push up close to the stage and then get back into the mosh pit whenever I wanted to. Matt had my camera, and he was farther back than that.
See the dude with the leather helmet? That was an awesome idea, I want one of those.
After the show, we went out to Taco Bell, and ate until they kicked us out at midnight. That was a sweet concert. | | |
|
