"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful"

Boy, did we have a weekend. We had one of those weekends that all you can really do once its over is lean back in your uncle Lenny’s duct-tapey EZ chair, un-button the top button of your elastic pants, and give one of those deep, watery, gratuitous sigh/farts of total, serene, pleasure. Sorry for that one, uncle Lenny, but don’t act like you never did that.

So Friday night we made it out of work early enough to get a couple of white t shirts. I got a white tank top and a white T, no-bra (shuddup Bubba, I was braless as promised), KP ended up bra-d but leaving golden tickets like KP’s braless either requires weeks of planning and an elaborate sort of pulley system, or the type of stones that even KP doesn’t have. Gall. Chutzpah, you know? Anyway, we chugged our little braless asses on down to the Intersection and saw us some GWAR.

HELL YEAH WE SAW GWAR AND IT WAS LIKE THE FUNNEST THING EVER!!!

When I saw the ad in Recoil at the beginning of the month, it seemed like something I should probably see once before I hit the old dusty trail and I knew that I wouldn’t be disappointed. Beavis and Butthead never led me astray before, but I didn’t know it was going to be as much straight-up fucking FUN as it was. They’ve got this whole concert thing down. Even though 23 years into it, it felt just a tiny bit half-assed (YouTube “Phallus in Wonderland” if you’d like a visual) at the Intersection, they still put on one hell of a crazy metal show.

Picture this: five oozing, gnashing, blood-soaked space monsters wearing nothing but 37lbs of foam rubber and makeup and t-bars rocking the shit out of you, tastelessly, with the amps turned all the way to 11. It really was that cool. They had this whole little act thing going on, featuring crowd favorite, “band manager” and magician, Sleazy P. Martini running for president on the platform that “90% of yous should be dead already”, John McCain being strangled with his own intestines at the hands of the Ninja Turtle-lookin’ thing aptly named “Bonesnapper,” and Hillary Clinton’s tits being ripped off by Oderous himself. Obama’s head was just swinging from the back of his blood-spurting neck cavity. Me and KP got totally soaked with blood and space jizz (see above picture that KP ganked from Bubba) from the giant dick gun. I can’t believe you weren’t there to see this. If you were (unless you were that guy hanging all crazily from his back skin on a couple of fishing hooks, what the fuck, dude?), it was great seeing you, and drop us a line if you’d like to share your experience, or if you know of any other metal shows like that one where we can get soaked in blood and space jizz ‘cause we will totally go there. It will be like a date, only braless. And way more metal. We want to make coffee more metal. We want to make everything more metal.

For those of you who were just born yesterday, or maybe you’re so creepy and home-schooled that you thought the end of Harry Potter 7 was too hard to handle, GWAR has long ago, along the veins of Spinal Tap, DethKlok, and Tenacious D, crossed the bridge from ridiculous parody to actually awesome. They were (as they shouted “FUCK KISS, FUCK LORDI, FUCK SLIPKNOT”, I knew that they were right) the grandfathers of this pilgrimage. They were ridiculous enough to be excellent back when only Burt Reynolds was ridiculous enough to be excellent. Back when people were still thinking that they were actually awesome enough that they didn’t have to laugh at it, much less embrace it fully and shoot it out of a giant dick gun onto all of their pie-eyed, zombie looking, blood spattered fans. This is why I love satire the way I do, and this is why you all should go and see fucking GWAR. It was so much fun I wish it were still happening right now.

Official verdict: more excellent than Dr. Phil coming totally unglued on Oprah and calling all of his half-retarded radish-looking Chia pet patients “half-retarded radish looking Fat Cows.” That would be pretty excellent though. That’s right, Dr. Phil, don’t let Oprah push you around any more! You can’t make a ho a housewife! GWAR was still more excellent.

So then (cause we can’t, we won’t, we don’t stop!) we hopped in my little blue (Nu)Porche and made it to Ann Arbor, a little hung over and fully rocked out, in time to tailgate with Kipp and his friends, who might be the GWAR of tailgaters. These dudes do it right. I’m talking satellite TV’s in the back of their HumVee’s, fifty men deep shot gunning beers every beer oclock and beer thirty, and a straight-up sports cooler filled with Jager bombs. They had the grill going, they had the chili, they had a megaphone that said “Don’t Be a Dick” that was manned by a guy that was a total dick. Again, I was surprised at how much fun we had. But once condom man walked by and our boys hoisted that tailgate trophy (I don’t even know if they knew who was playing in the actual game…who cares! Go Blue!*), it was time for me and KP to hit the bricks (conspicuous paragraph break)

and we booked it back to GR in time for the Griffin’s home opener, where they won 6-4, and our own little guy from Muskegon, Abdelkader, totally almost decapitated some guy. You go, Kid! Current Griff’s muscle and part-time Wings enforcer Aaron Downey (though he isn’t Quincy, siiiigh, it was still nice to see his mug) had a few juicy hits, and Oulahen (you single, buddy? I’m looking for a new hockey boyfriend…) knocked some other dude’s block off.

Just so you guys know, now that hockey season has had a substantial kickoff and we’re headed underway, this will likely be an integral but not consuming part of T Shirt Size: Awesome from now on. Griffins games cost next to nothing and you can sit really close (look for us, the two half-sleazy but not totally road-whored-out chicks screaming for blood in section 121), especially on home Fridays when they have $1 beers and dogs and if you hold up a sign that says “Blow Me, Zane” I will personally buy all of your $1 beers and dogs myself. I better see you all at a bunch of these things. They have our stamp of approval for sure.

Oh and dads, you should probably leave your little kids at home, UNLESS YOU ARE THE DAD FROM SATURDAY NIGHT, YOUR KID KICKS ASS. That little guy was like six (not much older than Darren Helm, I think…) and he was fist pumping, air drumming, and screaming “SHOW NO MERCY” all night long. Best. Kid. Ever. If you’re interested, dad, me and KP will totally babysitt him a few times a week just so he can trash-talk people who try to hassle us. “The lady said she wants diet, bitch. Yeah, you heard me grandpa, what are you gonna do?” Please, dad? If my kid isn’t exactly like that someday, I’m selling him to Douglas J. Wednesday I should have my list of sweet last-minute Halloween costumes out, so stay tuned.

*for the record, KP is a State alum and therefore cared immensely about the game. And she was balls deep in Blue territory, but she held her own like a champ. Stef didn’t really care either way, but wore Blue for camouflage, and a place to wipe her run