In the fall of 2006, I found myself broke and living on my mom's couch in Tacoma, WA. It had been about a month since Warped Tour had ended and I was long overdue to get a "real job", but instead of reclaiming my place back in the workforce I opted to live payday loan to payday loan and eat up all of my mom's food until the option exhausted itself.

 One of my best friends from tour, Laura Jean, was on tour with a band she managed at the time, Rocket. The band was opening for the Suicide Girl's punk rock burlesque tour, so me and a couple of friends came to hang out with the Rocket girls. Laura Jean asked if I wanted to come out with them for the last few days on the tour and sell merch for them in exchange for a ride to LA where they all lived. I didn't have any obligations, so the only question I had to ask myself was, "Broke in Seattle? Or broke in LA?" I went to my mom's house and packed a bag with a week's worth of clothes and everything vegan in my mom's pantry and I was on my way to sunny California with 40 dollars in my wallet and a payday loan for 400 dollars that was due to come out of my account in 10 days.

In the few days I spent on the tour, Suicide Girls' tour manager, Sharon, disclosed to me that she was thinking about firing her merch girl and asked me if I might be interested in taking her place. A job? Hey, I need one of those. I told her that I would start right away, but when Rocket's run on the tour ended, I found myself at Laura Jean's apartment in Hollywood instead of with the Suicide Girls who went North to Canada.

 A few days after arriving in LA, I had already eaten all of the food I had smuggled out of my mom's house and spent nearly all of my money on 40s from the corner store accross from LJ's place. I took a walk down the street to Del Taco to get something that would resemble dinner that I could spend less than a dollar on. I was starting to feel pretty sorry for myself until I saw a woman who used to be in a band that played on Shiragirl Stage the summer before begging for change in the street outside. I spent my last five dollars getting us some tacos and coffee and visited with her for a few minutes before going back to LJ's.

Half an hour later, Sharon called. Suicide Girls booked me a flight for the following morning to Calgary to start work the following day. Later on that evening, I met with someone from their office who gave me my laptop (which I managed to break within my first week of tour) and 50 bucks to take a cab to the airport the next day. I gave 20 bucks to my friend, Emily, to drive me to the airport and kept the other 30 to buy food with until I got my first paycheck that came the day before my payday loan was due.

Fast forward three weeks into the tour...

Suicide Girls tour had a day off in Connecticut the same day the the Good Charlotte tour was playing there along with The Pink Spiders and Young Love to support them. My friends Envy and JD worked at the venue and I knew a couple of the guys from The Pink Spiders, so I brought May-har and Miss Krissy Rose to the show with me. (Videos of the girls dancing on stage with The Pink Spiders can be found on youtube).

The Pink Spiders are from Tennessee and can drink Jack Daniels like it's water. Why I ever thought I could keep up with them remains a mystery to me, but that was the last time I have ever let whiskey anywhere near my lips. The bits and pieces of the night that I remember include Terry from Young Love hula hooping and Joel Maddan getting into a tap-off with May-har and culminate with me being thrown off of Good Charlottes tour bus for being too drunk and driven back to my hotel by the cops and thinking I was in a cab until I tried to borrow money from May-har to pay them.

The truth is that was one of the best nights I had on that tour and May-har today remains to be one of my best friends in the world. The only night that compared was our last night on tour together when we sang "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men at karaoke and cried.

There's no way to neatly wrap up this story because it's only a chapter in the story of my life which is far from finished. The best summation I can offer you is the lesson I chose to learn from this perticular period of my life: I wasn't afraid to take a chance and I have nothing but amazing friends and an arsenal of quirky stories to show for it. Would I have gotten than phone call if I didn't buy that homeless woman that taco? Probably. But just getting a phone call doesn't make a very good story.

Back in 2006, I had this ridiculous crush on Pete Wentz.  Me and every 14-year old girl in North America, I know, and I have since come to realize that he is way too big a deal for me and I am just not the competitive type, but  for this story’s purposes, you should know that my I did, indeed, have a  crush on Pete Wentz and was quite vocal about it.  My friends on the tour would tease me relentlessly about digging that foxxy little brown dude (Yeah, I said it. He's foxxy), and I would refer to him as "Petey" as though we were buddies and spent weekends watching nostalgic 80's movies and baking cookies or something. That same year, rumors began to circulate that Petey was having a party at his house in LA the same day the Warped Tour had a day off there.  Whenever one of my friends who was actually invited or someone else who wasn't TECHNICALLY invited but heard about the party through a friend inquired about my RSVP status, my response was, "You might see me there."  Of course, they wouldn't see me there.  I don't really know Pete Wentz aside from shaking his hand at a few parties here and there and, anyway, I had definite plans to get a pterodactyl tattooed on my chest that day.
 

Warped Tour came to LA and the day off began much like any other with the members of our crew parting ways to run their errands and do whatever else they wanted to with their "personal" time.  Shiragirl's drummer was from LA and went home to spend the day with her family.  Our guitar player, Flash Bathory (Now, epic solo guitar goddess.  Look her up.), went to go get her guitars worked on and then to feast on delicious vegan food with her boyfriend.  Our friends in The Vincent Blackshadow and Britt Black were at a tattoo shop on Melrose where an ex-band member (who will be referred to for the rest of this story as “PD”), Shira, and myself were supposed to meet them.
 

PD and Shira had rented a car for the day to run errands with, but apparently PD’s idea of running errands was leaving Shira and I stranded in downtown LA an hour and a half away from where our hotel was (Sadly, this was not the reason she was asked to leave the band.)  This kind of behavior was not uncommon for PD. She “ran away” all the time, but she usually came back, so Shira and I made the best of our situation and did some shopping and grabbed some lunch while we waited for her to return.  Hours had passed and it became abundantly clear that PD was not coming back.  Though it was too late for me to get my sweet pteradactyl chest piece, our friends had been waiting for us at the tattoo shop all day and Flash was already on her way there to meet me with some tofu cheesecake, so we hopped into a cab and headed down there. Hopefully, either Britt Black or The Vincent Blackshadow would have room in one of their vehicles for one or both of us since we now had no ride back to our hotel.
 

No dice.  All the band's rental cars were stuffed to capacity with musicians and their various toys.  Flash and her boyfriend wanted to help, but they were in a 2-seater with the hatchback full of guitars and luggage.  We were fucked.  But I had a plan......
 

I had been talking with my friend, Marc (De Jesus), from Gym Class Heroes on AIM earlier that day and I knew that his band was staying at the same hotel as us, had a huge rental car, AND were all going to Petey's party which couldn't have been too far from where we were.  All we had to do was find a way to get to the party and we were home free.
 

Flash called up our friend, Mikey, who was the videographer for the Plain White Tees on that tour, who we also knew was at the party.  "I can't find where I put the directions to Pete's place," we lied.  Mikey knew we were weren't invited, but he gave us easy directions to the bottom of a hill where he agreed meet us.  Now, we just have to get 4 people in a 2-seater car full of equipment 5 miles down the road.  Peice of cake!
 

Lucky for us, Flash is only four-feet eleven-inches tall, so she fit on my lap in the front seat just fine.  Illegal, but fine.  Shira on the other hand, (and I applaud her for this) had to pull off an amazing impersonation of a contortionist to squeeze in the back hatch of the car with all of Flash's gear.  We found this situation hilarious.  Flash's boyfriend hated our guts.
 

We arrived at the bottom of the hill where Mikey was waiting to meet us with a concerned look on his face.  Aparently, when Mikey said "bottom of the hill", what he meant was the bottom of Beverly Hills.  It was at least 2 miles up to where the party was and he was too drunk to drive himself down the hill, so he was just dropped off.  Shira couldn't move, really, so we had to fit this giant person in the front seat with us.  Flash and I sat sort of sideways in the front in a spooning position (I was the big spoon) and Mikey sat on top of us with his bony pelvis bruising my hip for the remainder of the ride.
 

We finally pulled up at Pete Wentz’s house to a small bunch of confused smokers on the front porch watching the five of us pile out of the 2-seater car like we were clowns in the circus.  We didn't know any of those people, though, so we didn't care.  I tilted my head back to say "Whatsup?" to all of the smokers while they avoided eye-contact with me and walked with confidence into the party leading my motley crew of strays. Thank God people I actually knew were inside!  Not very many, though.  As it turns out, this was Petey's house-warming party and only a handful of his friends were invited.  I practically tripped over Patrick Stump who was sitting on the floor near the entrance when I walked in and saw my lovely Petey across the room with that chick that played Harriet the Spy and some of the guys from the Plain White Tees. Shira saw our friend, Travis, from the Gym Class Heroes and went to go confirm our ride back to the hotel while I darted to the bathroom. 

Famous people and people in bands meet hundreds of people a week on tour and some are better than others at remembering faces and names.  Pete Wentz is a PRO at pretending he remembers people and even though he didn't actually know us, he was quite genuine and friendly when he welcomed me and my friends into his home.  He pointed out where the booze was and prompted us to remind him of where we had all met before.  Pete Wentz pretends to know me, too?  How funny!  We all gave short, vague answers and made our way to the kitchen to pour ourselves drinks, but we didn't stay long enough to drink them.  The Gym Class Heroes had been there all night and we were just wrapping up a long day ourselves.  Everyone was eager to get out of there and get back to our hotel, so we said our good-byes and arrived safely at our hotel thanks to our friends.

It's my belief that the world will take care of you if you let it.  Bad things can and will happen, but if you don't give up and remain optimistic a solution will often be waiting for you right around the corner.

"Be excellent to eachother." -Wyld Stallionz

switched stalls after every time she came in while also alternating who sat on the tank and who sat

on the seat with their pants down and played "20 Questions" and "Guess the Number" via notes

passed on the envelopes our concert tickets came in to pass the time....

KoRn, today, is one of the biggest bands in the world.  And in 1998,

after the release of their album "Follow the Leader", they may as well

have been the only band in the world to me and my high school best

friend, Christina Wheeler.

The band's first two albums had been all but played out by our circle of

friends in anticipation for Follow the Leader's release date which kept

getting pushed back.  When it finally did come out though, it blew us

away.  It seemed to have some sort of addictive quality that made it

impossible to take out of the CD player.  To quote Christina's

high school boyfriend, Doyle, after we pressed the repeat button a fourth

time since coming back to her house after school:  "Don't you guys have

any other CD’s?"  With eyebrows raised (and pierced with safety pins on

the same side as Jonathan Davis), we replied in irritated unison, "Uh,

yeah."  You see, tickets to the "Rock is Dead Tour" (which featured

Videodrone, Rob Zombie, and of course, KoRn) were going on sale that

Saturday at 10 am and we HAD to know that album beginning to end or we

would surely embarrass ourselves.  (I know, right?)

Now, these were the days when shopping on the internet wasn't really all

that popular.  Not to mention that neither I, nor Cori (our other

partner in crime on this particular excursion) had the internet at our

parents' houses.  Christina's parents did have internet, but the only

computer in her house was in her parents' room and her mom made it

pretty public that she was surfing porn on it all day.  (Especially when

we brought boys over. Gross.)  So our only option was to get up super

early and go to the Tacoma Mall Rite Aid which had a Ticket Master

inside.

The last time KoRn had played at the Tacoma Dome, floor seats sold out

in like a minute.  We HAD to get tickets on the floor so that we could

be in the moshpit.  The moshpit was the natural habitat of all of our

punk rock/metalhead friends and the KoRn moshpit was the Mecca of all

moshpits.  So we all met up at the mall at 7 am to make sure that we

would be the first people in line.  And we were the first people in

line.....on the wrong side of the store.  We figured this out pretty

quickly though, and became the 9th, 10th and 11th people in line which

is, apparently, just close enough to the front of the line to get the best

seats in the balcony.

SEATS?!  BALCONY?!  We can't MOSH in SEATS in a BALCONY!!!

We were devastated to say the least, but our devastation lasted only a

short time as we formulated a plan to skip school the day of the concert

and go to the venue to beat the crowd.  Surely, we would see the band

arrive…we could tell them our sob story and they would see how

sincere and awesome we were, allow us to mosh on the floor and be our

best friends for life.  Or a more probable outcome would be that a radio

station had to be giving out tickets and if we were the first people

there, who better to give them to?  Either way, we were sure we would

make our way to that moshpit and have ample bruises to flash to our

fellow classmates the following day at school.

Skipping school was to us like it was for many teenagers: an art form that

we had perfected.  Well, maybe not quite "perfected" since Christina had

accumulated so many "unexcused absences", (She was out of purple hair

dye and grounded.  The logical time to go to the mall was during school

hours.) that she had to get a note from a doctor to miss any school or

she would go to juvenile hall.  We spent the night before the concert in

her room listening to Follow the Leader while she chain smoked and

chugged whole milk like it was her job, in an attempt to accumulate

phlegm.  Hopefully, this would be enough to get her a doctor's note since

she couldn't list her symptoms in Spanish at the only clinic that took her health

insurance.  Sure enough, it was.  As we were waiting for her note on our way out,

the woman at the reception asked in broken English, "You are sexually active, 

No?" and before we could stop giggling, WHOMP!!!  Huge Sack O' Condoms on the counter for all to see. We tried to refuse, but the receptionist didn't seem to get it, so we

took the Sack O' Condoms and made our way to the bus.

We met up with Cori at the Tacoma Dome around 9 am (doors were at 8 pm)

and we weren't even the first people there.  We were, however, the first

people there who had seats.  All of the others had come that early so

they could reserve their places right up front against the grate.  Fuck

that, you can't mosh against the grate.  You can barely move or even

breath for that matter.  When asked why we came that early we responded

with, "Free condom?"  This provided our immature brains with hours of

amusement.  We blew them up like balloons, dared each other to eat the

flavored lubricants and hoarded some of the more delicious water-based

ones to make into miniature popsicles later.  (The oil-based ones didn't

freeze.)  There also were female condoms in there, which none of us had

ever seen before, but we quickly discovered they made fashionable

bracelets after we removed the condom part from the ring and painted it

with glitter nail polish.

Cori disappeared to make out with some random dude as she often did.  He

had a short ponytail, a long goatee and oversized pants held up by a belt

made of hemp…we all agreed he was pretty hot.  Christina and I both had to shit and

didn't want to use a Honey Bucket, so we took a walk around the building

to try to find somewhere with running water to drop our respective

deuces.  In our quest for a suitable facility, some security guard

flagged us down to bum a cigarette.  He agreed to turn a blind eye while

we snuck backstage and said the bathroom was to the right when we walked

in.  "You girls might even be able to just hide out in there until the

show starts and sneak in if you want to."  We both looked at each other

in agreement and the plan was set.  We walked with our heads up and chests

sticking out in an embarrassing attempt to appear as confident and

inconspicuous (yeah right) as possible through the backstage entrance

and headed straight toward the bathroom.  We heard someone

behind  us saying, "Um. Excuse me ladies!" We pretended not to hear

them and rushed to the backstage ladies bathroom without ever breaking

our awkward posture.  We did our business, of course, and then......and

then.....what now?

Doors weren't for about another 7 hours and if we left that bathroom

someone was sure to kick us out.  We stayed in the stalls playing "guess

the number" and "20 questions" via notes passed and written on the

envelopes our concert tickets came in.  The cleaning lady kept coming in

every hour, so to avoid suspicion, we shared one toilet and switched

stalls after every time she came in while also alternating who sat on

the tank and who sat on the seat with their pants down.  I think she

started to catch on after a while.  She knocked on the door at one point

asking how much longer I was going to be in there.  "Ummmmm. I'm having

some stomach problems today."  I replied while we both tried not to

laugh. "It might be a while."

Hours had passed and we could hear the roar of the crowd as people entered

The Tacoma Dome.  The doors were finally open.  Now seemed like a safe time to

leave the bathroom and walk from backstage to the floor.  Plus, we were starving.  We started to make our way to where we thought the entrance to the floor might be

which lead us through a small catering area. No one stopped us from

walking through so we figured no one would notice/care if we had a small

plate of cheese and crackers.  We figured wrong.  We were thrown out of

there within seconds, but not before Christina managed to devour an

entire block of Rob Zombie's cheese.  (Rob, if you're reading this,

we're sorry.  And it was delicious.)  They even confiscated Christina's

ticket, but  they didn't get mine because I lied and said I didn't have

one.  After getting the boot, we walked around to the front entrance to

where the scalpers were  and pooled our money to buy an even shittier seat

than she had before.

We did manage to sneak Christina down to sit with me and Cori.  Our

friend from school, Paul, was there, too.  Down on the floor, blown up

condoms were flying everywhere as Videodrone began their set.  Less than

a third of the crowd was moshing, though.  Christina and I heckled the

non-moshing floor-seaters while Cori and Paul disappeared to go make out

somewhere.  Others around us joined in (with the heckling, not the making

out).  By the time Rob Zombie's set began, we had had inspired a full-on riot

in section 11A which later turned into its own moshpit.  FUCK

YEAH!  We started our own moshpit!  In all the excitement we started

daring people to jump from the seats down to the floor.  "It's not that

high!  Just do it! Pussy!"  We even prepared ourselves to jump with

them.  Before his set ended, though, there were security guards in

orange shirts shoulder to shoulder in front of our section.  No more

plotting.  We would spend the rest of the show in section 11A moshing

between the seats that were banging painfully against our calves as we were

shoved into them repeatedly.

KoRn played an unbelievably amazing set which included "Faggot" and "Kill

You" (my two favorite songs by them) back to back.  To this day, they

remain one of my favorite bands to watch live.

The following day at school, the hot topic (not the store) at the lunch

table was, of course, the concert the night before.  Everyone who was

there went on and on about what they felt were the highlights of the show

while others whined about how much they hated us for going when they

didn't.  We all swapped moshpit injury stories.  When seeing the bruises

on our calves, Doyle commented, "Your legs look like chocolate-chip cookie

dough."

"Yeah, we got them from moshing between the seats."

"You were in that moshpit in the seats?!  That shit looked crazy!"

"In it?  We started it!  We tried everything to get to the moshpit on the

floor and when we couldn't we started our own."

"You girls are crazy."

"You think that's crazy?  We snuck backstage and hid there for hours, but

we got kicked out for eating Rob Zombie's cheese."

"Oh my God!!!  You went backstage?  And you ate Rob Zombie's cheese?  You guys

are the shit."

And we were.