Brain Poops

8:30 Friday - At home, Los Dangeles

Groggy. The sleeping pills from the night before haven’t finished their job just yet, but feel hell-bent on completing the mission anyway. Jesus… I haven’t seen 8:30AM in a long time. It’s as I remember it: overrated and bleak.

My bags are already packed from the night before. They are a few feet away from the base of the bed and looking up at me with their sad, polyester duffel-bag faces. I flop over them and make my way to the kitchen.

Fridge doors are complicated when you’re waking up from six hours of sleep and expecting to be awake another sixteen. I fumble the door open and slam down three cokes to combat my foggy brain functions.

I grab my bags, give NickyNik a quick phone call and belch off on my motorcycle towards the airport. I’m absent the fear of long-term parking costs, since on my last trip there I realized they don’t charge for motorcycle parking for any length of time. The wind wraps me up like a long lost lover, then it smacks me around like a long lost lover finding out about the other lovers in your past.

10:00 - Los Dangeles International Airport.

Nick leaves me a voice message saying he has to piss and that he’ll meet me at the terminal. Well not exactly those words, but you get the drift.

I walk into the ticketing area, mouth agape at the horde of travelers shuffling through the queue. It was a bedraggled, coiling square dance with a lame band, only the band was equipped with weapons and authority instead of instruments and talent. After 30 minutes in three lines, two donation solicitors and one hung over TSA, I headed to the terminal to meet Nick.

The terminal is only slightly air conditioned, which makes me ponder just what the hell they do with all the profits from grossly overpriced chihuahua ashtrays and fast food. It’s gotta be 90 degrees in this fucker! My glasses get foggy in a Dilbert-in-a-strip-club kind of way and I stop to clean them off.

I put them back on and see Nick waiting for me in front of a window. The scene looks as if Norman Rockwell had been working in the 90s covering transit: Nick reading the LA Times with his head down to see over his spectacles, the terminal umbilicus attaching to the airplane behind him. I compulsively check that I indeed washed behind my ears and say hello.

We talk for a few minutes about how we think it’s going to be. He has a friend who worked the Ball for a few years and described it as “Gnarly.” I’m absent Cali surfer slanguage, so I just say I think it’ll be swell and tighten my necktie.

We board the plane, amazed at the fact that Southwest doesn’t assign seats. The feeling is like that rare type of high school teacher who, after 6 periods of role-call-based seating before, says “Oh just sit wherever.” We plop down next to a salt-and-pepper haired pilot reading a newspaper and introduce ourselves. I’m of the mind that he should be up front flying the airplane, but my manners put my tongue in a full nelson and beat it unconscious.

12:30 - Outside Oakland Airport.

It’s been two and a half hours since my last cigarette and I’m breaking for the automatic doors. The nicotine cravings in my head are throwing themselves around in a pissy mosh pit and screaming at the top of their spoiled little lungs.

The doors open and a blast of fresh, smog-free, slightly chilled Oakland air hits me full force. So this is what air feels like! A cigarette has already made its way to my mouth without my knowledge. I picture it inch-worming its way from my pocket up my chest and wriggling into smoking position as I ignite my Holy Fire.

I see a woman who I helped earlier smoking near the bench and walk over. I’m quickly joined by another orphan smoker looking for company. He’s about 6′2 and he dresses and acts like he has watched “Swingers” for the last 3 days straight. He apparently was in town for “business and pleasure in Reno,” which I took to mean “giving hookers money.” We talk until I get tired of him trying to be clever and I pick up my bag.

“So what do we do now?”

Good question. Especially since we don’t have the details on our shuttle transpo from the airport yet. I ask Nick to look around for a chap with pink hair called Halcyon while I call Emily, our contact at the Ball. No luck getting in touch with her, but then again she’s got a convention to run so it’s more than likely she is busy.

“Hey I think that’s him over there… I think I remember him from Pixelodeon,” said Nick.

I whirl around and a “HEY HALCYON” is out of my mouth quicker than “Joe the Plumber” from John McCain’s. He has a little whirl of his own as I put on my glasses.

Strolling towards Nick and me was a flamboyant rail of a guy [who looked like he'd been beaten with an oversize pink highlighter] with his porn star girlfriend¹ following just behind. I don’t know what to expect, since my preconceived notions view fashionable people as a threat to my wahoo.

Within two minutes I’m at ease. These are not Hollywood fashionistas, I think, They are the open-book, lets-go-to-Burning-Man-and-wear-fake-pink-fur kind of people. We start talking about what anyone who has made a name for themselves on the internet talks about: the damned internet.

I break from the conversation to talk to Emily, who tells me that a car is on the way. I scribble the driver’s cell number on my arm and give him a call. “Blue four-door, be there in 5 minutes” he says. We drag our stuff to the curb and wait.

As with most conversations dealing with internet video, we’re pretty bored with the topic after 10 minutes. We enter the puberty-like “Getting-to-know-you” stage, fraught with potential drama, conflict, and embarrassing body hair.

Yet again my fears are shot down in a blaze of awesomeness and candor as we all frankly talk and laugh about our strange stories and backgrounds. We’re only a few minutes into the convo before the car arrives.

¹: Not a derogatory sentence, in spite of how some people might take it. Ashley and Halcyon are two of the sweetest people I have ever had the honor to meet.

CONTINUE to Part 2 [NSFW]!