EPTSo it started out as a plan to see a friend of ours who'd since left our college. It was originally supposed to be a much bigger affair (of course it became one), and a friend of ours couldn't make it due to plane expenses. To be pretty frank, this entire plan spawned back in the summer, to see this friend of ours because we believed he was pretty unfairly given the slip from the college. It was honestly pretty shitty what the university did to him, and we missed him as well. At the time it seemed like a perfect idea, lots of fun, some drugs, alcohol, and of course friends; while I'm not nearly as big on the drugs and alcohol as my friends, it still seemed like a good mix.
Several months passed and it came to the October weekend. We had purchased tickets for the second week because the first came into conflict with my friend's Sorority formal, which she absolutely-positively-kill anyone who gets in her way- could not miss. Of course they changed the date so we completely could have gone first week. So now its near midterm exams, and we are about to go on a weekend trip to Austin, TX where no work of any sort is going to get done.
We all get into the car, about to go, and already the drama starts. Everyone is already bitching at each other, one of my friends wakes up and has lymph nodes the size of golf balls, and we're all being princesses. We haven't made it more than 3 hours into the drive before the backseat driving starts, and people are already pissed off. Shit was hitting the fan pretty fast. One friend decided that, despite never having taken a class on how to drive, was a pro-driver - of course he also was texting while driving 85 mph, punching the car's tire cycle speed which wasted gas on an already fuel inefficient SUV, and was just generally wrong about highway etiquette - decided that it was time to instigate as much car shenanigans as possible. Another friend, who hadn't driven in over 5 months (or more), got behind the wheel and began to swerve whenever the road shoulders were blocked off. When I drove, I'm not a perfect driver by any means (I went about 100 mph just to do it, so I'm definitely not perfection behind the wheel), I got backseat driven by both of these two NASCAR sensations for 5 hours. 5 fucking hours. 5.
We arrive in Dallas to meet a friend of my friends and get dinner. We get dinner, no Ebola sightings, and say goodbye to the friend after gas station tacos. Much better taco's than I expected honestly. We get back on the road, and the shit begins again. Luckily, I wasn't driving any more, so at least half of the shit throwing stopped for me.
We arrived at our friend's house, and slept almost immediately. The next day we went to one of the friends of the friend we went to go visit. This led to us going to ACL with a group of high school kids who were almost 4 years younger than us, which I was not a huge fan of. The event was packed. There were at least 80,000 people there the first day. We got to the event significantly later than expected and I missed every single person I wanted to see. Especially Foster the People, who were basically my #1 for the entire event because I heard they kill it live. The day was just generally terrible. My sick friend wouldn't quit bitching, and taking her short nerves out on all of us, especially me. When I got sick of it, threw some nerves back, my friend flipped the fuck out and basically kept pissing me off whenever possible. My other friends kept me from seeing the stages I wanted through a mix of one person saying, "Go see what you want" and then another friend saying, "Stick together we don't want to get separated." At that point the night reached a climax where, after I had missed every show I wanted, we left Outkast because they were performing pretty poorly and went to get water. Beck was playing, and I like Beck, so I sat in the grass to listen, and as my favorite song came on my friends decided to leave; that is until one of them heard the opening to 7 nation army, and decided since he was the "leader" to tell us all to wait, then promptly began to leave again. I was pretty pissed, not gonna lie.
The second day was so much better for me. I had promised myself the day before that I wasn't going to let the same deal happen again, because even though the trip was about seeing my friend who had been expelled, it wasn't like I hadn't spent $250 on tickets, plus food, plus gas, plus etc. and there was no reason for me to be upset with that kind of investment. So I split off immediately. I went to go see whoever I wanted. I saw the Rosebuds, Mac Demarco (who I actually saw later in the crowd for Eminem but I couldn't open my mouth to ask him to sign anything, hell I would have settled for him signing my chest), Iggy, Beat Connection, the Tune Yards, and Eminem. Out of all these acts, I'd say I saw my friend group twice total. Beat Connection killed it more than anyone else though, they sounded incredible for having such a small stage.
The day didn't go so smoothly though. The twelve year olds at Iggy were insane. They were pretty much molesting me, and if the roles were switched, they'd have pretty solid cause for a lawsuit. If Iggy was twerking or talking about hopping on some man meat, they were even more crazed. There were about 6 girls who were maybe freshmen in high school, maybe, and they weren't drunk or high, but tried their damnedest to act like it. The butt pinching and humping was more than too much for sober people. Then at Eminem the opposite age bracket did the same thing basically, and after talking to some 35-40 year old people and the guy they came with - because he was from Ole Miss, and I live near Oxford, MS, so we kinda bonded over that, which led to me talking to the three women about Rilke while waiting for Eminem for an hour - my shoulders and back kept getting touched and massaged and grabbed and, yeah. I was totally sober at that point as well, so I was jamming to Eminem while this happening. In the end though Eminem put on the best big stage of the entire festival I'd say, and I didn't mind the touching so much because it was a big crowd and everyone was pretty fucked up.
After the concert though, things got interesting. My phone died after I called the friend I came to visit to tell him where I was, but they had already left, so i was stuck. I was told to walk with the crowd under a bridge because there were no taxis or uber readily available to take me about 30 minutes away. Granted I had now not seen my friends for over 6 hours, and they had no idea where I was. One friend had passed out in a concert from claustrophobia, another had puked, and another started feeling sick. Though they stayed till Eminem, there was no way for me to find them before they had left with 100k people there on day 2. I realized at that point how fucked I was. So I followed the directions given to me to go Austin High School and follow a huge pack of high and/or drunk people across some underpasses and bridges. After borrowing a phone from two different people who were nice enough to take pity on my lost self, I called and found out that the family I was staying with was thinking of putting out a Missing Person alert for me, which I found 70% funny and 30% too real for me to handle. Eventually of course I found my ride home who graciously came to find me, and drove me back to the house where I came covered in mud and extraordinarily hungry.
We had to miss day 3, which sucked, but I think we'd all had enough ACL for at least a year.
Obligatory videos - interesting songs I heard that I liked, I'll spare y'all the Iggy and Eminem
- Beat Connection
- The Rosebuds
- Mac Demarco
