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:: 05.31.2003 ::
Me again. I recalculated and realized that I didn't actually make 500 salads the other day, probably only about 250. I think. About 20 trays of 12 salads each, I'll let you do the math. I spent about an hour yesterday trying to figure out how much money I am making here, but doing multiplication in my head while making up trays of cottage cheese is not my forte. Does anyone know an easy way to remember what 6 times 8 is? cuz I seriously forgot like seven times. In the end I decided that I'm making 50 dollars a day. Which sounds ok. But I'm also reading a book about homeless street vendors, who make nearly twice that. per day. I guess my cost of living in lower since I don't have to buy drugs, but seriously, why don't I just move to New York and sell stuff I find in the trash? It makes more financial sense.
If I'm spelling words wrong, please forgive me, the computers here don't have spell check. well, I bet they do somewhere, but my half hour is almost up, and I don't feel like trying to find it. There are about seven people from Rushmore here who want to use the four library computers. And except for the librarian, that's it. Man, this place must be dead in the winter. what would they do without us?
last night I watched The Real World Hawaii and played Truth or Dare Jenga. Tonight maybe I will write postcards? Wheeee . . . ! I go to work in an hour.
:: Aaron Humphrey 11:07 PM reply [+] ::
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:: 05.28.2003 ::
I'm in the Keystone, South Dakota library wearing a yellow tee-shirt, a floppy beanie and keys to my dorm around my neck. For some reason I decided that my summer would be spent working for Mount Rushmore food and beverage. I think this reason is that I am crazy.
So far things have been pretty good, though. The scenery here is spectacular, and everyone is really really nice. Half of my co-workers are from Estonia, which is a country I didn't even know existed last week. So far I've just been working in the kitchen for the Rushmore cafeteria; the first day I think I made something like 500 salads. We're less busy now that it's Tuesday, so I don't think I made any today. No, I probably made like 30 or something.
There is no Internet where I'm living, so these correspondences will probably be less frequent than they have in the past, and I won't be able to check my e-mail that often, but please don't use that as an excuse to not send me any.
You can, in fact, send me ACTUAL mail at:
Aaron Humphrey
c/o Xantara Parks and Resorts
1300 hwy 244
Bld. 81
Keystone, SD
57751
Write that down right now! And then . . . write to me! I have quite a few post cards just waiting to be sent, but I don't know anyone's address, so I can't send anything to you unless you send something to me. I know this is a digital world, but come on, real-life is fun, too! Send stuff to me?
:: Aaron Humphrey 5:22 PM reply [+] ::
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:: 05.16.2003 ::
Tomorrow morning i fly out to oregon.
A week from today i will be in south dakota.
Thanks to everyone for what has been the best few months I've ever had in california.
I'm coming back.
:: Aaron Humphrey 1:13 AM reply [+] ::
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:: 05.02.2003 ::
Here's my belated Coachella report. I review some of the bands, but am fully aware that I've never been very good at writing reviews. so I didn't stress over making this a great piece of writing. it's just what I though.
Came back to the room after one am last Friday to find two desperate messages in my voice mail from my friend Andy: “We’re on our way down! Call us whenever you get this message, it doesn’t matter how late, eleven, two, whatever, just call.”
When I got my phone card to work they were at a gas station in Sacramento. Andy and Neil, two of my three best friends from high school. They’ve both got live-in girlfriends and jobs and apartments now. They don’t even live in the same town anymore. But they’ve managed to ditch everything (including the girls) for this weekend: a southern California reunion and the biggest rock festival on the west coast. They in Andy’s parents’ mini van at four in the afternoon and by the time I’d called they were over half way to Los Angeles.
They drove non-stop while I slept, and called me again around eight am from Peter’s dorm room at Loyola Marymount University. An hour later and I met them in front of my dorm in my pajamas and a paper chef’s hat I found lying on the floor. I said “who’s ready to cook up some fun?” Neil said “I drove all night for this?”
We found “breakfast” at Wendy’s, then came back to my dorm room and played video games for a little while. Then me and Peter watched cartoons while Neil and Andy slept. Just after lunch-time we hit the road, stopping only for sunscreen and disposable cameras. Then it was a three-hour drive to the desert. On our way to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Andy won four tickets just for being the first person in Oregon to call the radio station and say he’d be able to the desert in time. His mom’s van has a TV in it. Peter and Neil watched “Chairman of the Board” while Andy drove and I held the map.
We got there around 24 hours from when Neil and Andy had left Oregon. The place was packed. We crossed two fields of parking lots before we made it to the line to get in, which was nearly half a mile long. I listened helplessly as Ben Kweller rocked through his set, and then Kenna, appeared as a guess performer for N.E.R.D. We discovered Kenna’s music two Augusts ago, but he’s still yet to have an album be widely distributed. From what I could hear, the Coachella crowd didn’t seem to know him as well as I did.
Through a bit of maneuvering we managed to make it into the festival a lot quicker then it first looked like we would, but I was still disappointed that we missed Kweller.
We found a tent where someone semi-famous was having a question and answer session where we rested for a little bit, then wandered around and managed to catch The Hives. From then on, it was music, music, music!
The Hives
We were on the fringe of the crowd, so it was kind of hard to see them. They all wore suits and the bass player looked old and pudgy, but still rocked, so that was cool. The lead singer kept going on and on about how awesome The Hives are, which Neil and Andy kind of hated, but I thought it was hilarious. They put on a good show, but strangely it was not as electrifying as when some kids from our school pretended to be The Hives for Airbands last semester. To their credit though, it was still pretty early and it’s hard to rock in broad daylight. They should have been later on the bill.
Queens of the Stone Age
No Dave Grohl L But they did have three different singers, including one who just came on in the middle of the set without being announced and sang three songs. He was dressed sort of like Ash from Pokemon, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on purpose. They rocked quite solidly.
Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals
The reggae-rock act sent in to calm everyone down before the Beastie Boys I guess. He sang a song about how awesome it is to do marijuana and all around me people started toking up. Ha ha. I thought this act would annoy me, but it was actually pretty good.
Beastie Boys
First of all, they took like a year to get onstage. I guess they spent the time setting up video cameras and projectors and stuff, but I don’t really think they needed all of it. But no one asked me. Finally Mix Master Mike came out and then the show got started. Speaking of MMM, he had a bit of trouble because it was really windy and at one point the wind blew a record off of one of his turntables! Anyway, the Beastie Boys themselves were interesting, because they’re just three skinny white guys with short hair and gray sweatshirts. They weren’t even trying for a rock star presence, which wasn’t bad, it just was weird. Best moment of the night was when they started to play Brass Monkey, and then were like “wait, you guys already know this one so well you don’t need us to do it” and then changed songs really quick. I guess it made some people mad, but I thought it was cool. Some people were also mad that they were speaking out against Bush and the conflict in Iraq, but I give them props for that, too. They were pretty classy about it, really.
It took us an hour to find where we’d parked the van after the concert, and then we spent another fifteen minutes driving around with me standing shouting through the sunroof looking for Neil. By that point the line to get out of there was actually not moving at all, so we parked the car to take a nap. Andy woke up three hours later to a parking lot that was mostly empty except for a police car checking for stragglers. The plan was to find a place to sleep in Palm Springs, but we ended up just camping out in the Ralph’s parking lot in Indio. Next morning we loaded up on food and bottled water from said Ralph’s and drove back to the festival parking lot (which was really just a big field) where we ate and rested. I crawled underneath the truck next to us to write while everyone else slept in the van.
At about two we headed back to the festival, and got in a lot quicker this time. First on the bill was:
Ben Folds
I’d seen this guy in concert last winter, so while I’m a huge fan, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. He came out wearing a girly pink hat, though, that was funny. I would have enjoyed the set a lot more if there hadn’t been a 30-year old guy behind me belting out all the lyrics to all the songs. Sigh. He didn’t play anything I hadn’t heard before, but it was still fun. Thought I saw Ben Kweller wearing an NYU shirt backstage while Folds was playing.
Mars Volta
Oh man. Guitarist and lead singer were jumping around and throwing their instruments all over the place in the most eloquent thrashing I’ve ever seen. They were really loud, and my friends were too wimpy to handle it so we left after two songs, but I was riveted.
Sonic Youth
Hey, they’ve got a girl in their band! I guess these guys have been around for a really long time. I hadn’t heard their stuff before, but it sounded pretty cool. While I was watching this band play it struck me that electric guitar-driven music is going to fade away one day, and we may be the last generation who can listen to it and truly make sense of it and appreciate it. I could have just been that too many people around me were smoking pot, though.
Jack Johnson
Sunday’s low-key main-stage act who cooled things down and encouraged people to get high before the real rocking started. Good, but not as good as Ben Harper from where I was standing.
The White Stripes
Hype hype hype, whatever. They were the best act of the festival and truly unique.
Iggy and the Stooges
I guess Iggy Pop hasn’t played with The Stooges in 30 years, which would explain all the rockers older than my father who were in the crowd for their show. I have no idea how old Iggy Pop is, but he tore up the stage like he was 20 and on serious drugs. At one point Iggy jumped on top of two large speakers, got on his hands and knees and thrust his hips vigorously. Two stagehands immediately ran over to the speakers to try to secure them. They watched Iggy very nervously throughout the rest of the set. Iggy cussed a lot, but seemed genuinely glad to be there. It seemed very historic to me somehow.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
When the band started to play By the Way my first thought was “oh man, this sounds terrible because everyone around me is singing along” but then I realized it was because Anthony Kiedis can’t really sing that well. It wasn’t terrible, but didn’t sound nearly as good as the CD does. The rest of the band was really solid though, and I couldn’t help but think that if they had a different lead singer they could be really spectacular. They ended with Give it Away, which seemed to get the biggest crowd response. It’s not their best song, but was definitely their most rocking moment of the night. You’d think they’d be tired of playing it.
Andy and Neil were both up really close to the stage for the Chili Peppers (me and Peter like our space, so we stood farther back and I accidentally jumped on Peter’s toes during the fast songs). They met up with us running to the car (which we’d parked in a place that we’d remember) practically bouncing off of each other. It was rock and roll.
Neil and Andy slept as me and Peter drove back to Chapman, blasting One Hot Minute to stay awake. Got back at three-thirty am and slept.
:: Aaron Humphrey 10:47 PM reply [+] ::
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