The Format and the Twilight Zone

Look, you all know that I am a frig­ging doo­fus. The fact that you know this is prob­a­bly part of the rea­son you read this [if, in fact, you read this]. Thus, it might not sur­prise you that, in my typ­i­cal over­en­thu­si­as­tic way, I could pur­chase con­cert tick­ets that are not even worth using as toi­let paper [too heavy a bond weight and not absorbent].

Oh, The For­mat was good enough. I’ll give you that. Although the singing was­n’t near­ly as good on the album they did have a nice healthy pop vibe and a fun atti­tude. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they only played for about a half hour.

Here is where things get bad. Buck­le your seat belts and make sure your tray tables are in their full, upright and locked posi­tion. You also might want to haul out the vom­it bag because this could quite pos­si­bly make you hurl.

I picked up my friend Les and we got to the pavil­ion about a half hour before The For­mat came on. I did­n’t real­ize just how close the place was from Lake­wood. As we approached the will call, I men­tioned to her that I was hop­ing this would­n’t be full of Coo­ing Weteyed Emochil­dren™. I have since learned to fear anoth­er type of con­cert-goer alto­geth­er. The mid­dle school slash ear­ly high school MTV zom­bies [MSSHSMTVZ]. Girls that age are still fuck­ing scary. It is no won­der I was so weird­ed out by them when I was that age [christ, i sound like a geezer]. They are like evil mag­ic aliens with cell­phones- flit­ting around hug­ging each oth­er, grab­bing each oth­er and point­ing at each oth­er. They were like a cloud of gnats, or, as I was soon to find out, like the Con­struc­ti­cons. [nods to Patrick]

So the sheer abun­dance of this demo­graph­ic was trou­bling. I expect­ed the poof-paint t‑shirts but I did not expect the inap­pro­pri­ate use of every rock and roll crowd clich?. Who the hell crowd surfs to pop music? Dum­b­ass high school kids, that’s who. Who the hell mosh­es to pop music? Vil­lage idiot high school frat­ties-in-train­ing, that’s who.

So frig­gin Yel­low­card comes on stage and Les and I ful­ly enter into the Twi­light Zone. The crowd goes apeshit. A cou­ple hun­dred scream­ing MSSHSMTVZ girls sound like a ring­wraith with a toothache. Thank­ful­ly the scream­ing went high­er than my hear­ing reg­is­ter and was suc­cess­ful­ly neu­tral­ized. These girls are like Con­struc­ti­cons because they are rather laugh­able and insignif­i­cant when tak­en alone, but when they join their pow­ers they are dev­as­tat­ing.

Let me just get this over with. YELLOWCARD IS A TERRIBLE BAND. Dur­ing their first song I not­ed that they resem­bled less a band and more a group of frat boys who picked up some instru­ments in order to make MSSHSMTVZ girls get their panties wet. My ini­tial feel­ing was­n’t far off since each band mem­ber sound­ed like he was play­ing his own song in a dif­fer­ent key and time sig­na­ture and than the oth­ers. The drum­mer was like a mal­func­tion­ing robot. He played the god­damn same drum lick at the same tem­po no mat­ter what the hell the oth­er band mem­bers were doing. But it gets worse.

What the oth­er band mem­bers were doing most­ly con­sist­ed of skip­ping around stage and stand­ing on top of the speak­ers. Yes. I said skip­ping. SKIPPING. WHAT THE FUCK. SKIPPING! And any­time one of the ‘band’ mem­bers stood on a speak­er the crowd went into orgas­mic parox­ysms at how rock star these guys are. Yeah, like no one has EVER stood on a foot high speak­er before. Well, you would have thought no one ever had con­sid­er­ing how the crowd react­ed. One of these flea cir­cus clowns played an elec­tric vio­lin. He must have been the ring­leader of the incred­i­ble suck­i­tude. He skipped the most, the girls got the wettest panties look­ing at him and he was also the dumb­est fat­faced goober I have ever been tor­tured by. He skipped the most and did a cou­ple of [i must admit] impres­sive back­flips off of one of the footh­igh speak­ers, but then he would start skip­ping again. Skip­ping is worse than jump­ing jacks and I did­n’t think any­thing was worse than on-stage jump­ing jacks.

The For­mat struck me as a bunch of guys enjoy­ing being a band and hav­ing fun get­ting a crowd into their music. Yel­low­crap seemed com­plete­ly con­trived. The sunken-chest­ed skin­ny-ass [not that I can talk] lead gui­tarist was so obnox­ious­ly nasal-loud in his vocals that I did­n’t under­stand a good god­damn word of any of the songs. Then, to my ever­last­ing hor­ror, he starts say­ing ‘Boo­bies! Show us your boo­bies.’ Ear­li­er, when remark­ing on the ille­git­i­mate use of crowd-surf­ing and mosh­ing, I had expressed a deep con­cern that these thir­teen year olds would flash the band. And now, lo, yea ver­i­ly and behold, a few of the MSSHSMTVZ girls raised up their shirts and flashed the band. Thank­ful­ly I was in the last row and only saw the back­sides of these raisin-tit­tied lit­tle girls, but Yel­low­crud seemed to enjoy it — frig­ging pedophiles. They thanked the girls and said ‘That is the most boo­bies we’ve seen on tour! Three! Thanks!’ Which either means that some poor girl in the crowd has only one breast or that some girl had three breasts or that Yel­low­carp [sor­ry for the insult carp] can­not count. My vote is with the last option.

It was like the worst crap ever but even crap­pi­er. My mind bog­gled, gib­bered and set­tled into a com­plete state of flum­moxed cat­ty­wam­pus­ness so we bailed ear­ly because it was so bad.

Then I had a tasty milk­shake.
THE END.

*UPDATE*
I kept Les­ley’s $4 in change from the park­ing and for­got to thank her for show­ing me the won­ders of the Clifton Din­er. I am an ass­hat.