Supermoon
Best Day Ever: Google Glass, Warped Tour, & “Hesher”
Last night was a supermoon. Bigger! Brighter! The woman god cometh so close to earth we can reach out and touch her! I know all this because I was scanning my Facebook news feed from the comfort of my pitch black, non-windowed, rumbling coffin-pod called a bus bunk. No, of course I didn’t actually see it. I laid there, unable to sleep, mind racing, face lit by phone glow in the early hours of the morning while the Warped Tour caravan charged on, but for good reason. MAs the official Warped Tour 2013 slogan goes, I was recovering from my own personal “Best Day Ever!”
Let’s start at the start, get up from the get. June 22, 2013. I wake up at 9:45am in the parking lot of Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA and change immediately into my “show clothes.” This basically consists Target brand athletic chonies that don’t funk up my pants and a loud ass shirt. Derek G. Taylor and I hop on our shiny new neon orange $99 Mongoose children’s bike (also from Target). I’m steering, he’s on the pegs. We wobble along until we reach our destination: Googleplex.
We park our bike next to the Google brand day cruisers. The obnoxious orange clashing against the rigid quad-chromatic scheme of their bikes reminds me how much we probably stand out as gentlemen of the traveling punk rock circus on their pristine campus. Layers of sunblock, sweat, and funk accompany us through the doors to what they call “The Garage.” This is where we will meet Google Glass.
We sit down with a lovely host named Svetlana and are presented with Wallpaper.’s very own Glass. We tour their campus, taking pictures and making dumb videos. It is an exclusively utopian future for us in that moment: perfect weather, well manicured landscaping, a beautiful tour guide, and the technology of tomorrow to capture it all with. We. Are. Stoked.
We jump back on the Mongoose and sprint towards the venue. Of course we lost track of time and are set to perform in like zero minutes. If you are unfamiliar with Wallpaper., I should inform you this is our hometown show on the Warped Tour. This is the big one. We throw on some quick jumping jacks and Monster drinks and charge the stage for our 2:15pm set. As predicted, it’s BANANAS.
We rush to our merch booth and our greeted by over 250 happy faced fans. One of which is crying (our first). We vigorously sign Chuck Taylors and take selfies until we reach the very last kid.
Then more running.
Back to the bus! Back to the bus! We all take baby wipe showers while cris-crossing in the narrow aisles of our skinny house, microwaving hot pockets and veggie patties, gathering clothes for the video shoot. Yes, you heard right. We have to get to San Francisco (45 minutes away) by 5:00 to begin shooting a music video for our new song “Hesher.” Since the bus cannot move until its scheduled 12:30am departure time, we enlisted fans (found through Twitter) to give us a ride to and from SF in their minivan. Thanks TJ!
We arrive in San Francisco (late but not too late) and immediately jump into the music video for “Hesher.” It’s a grimey DIY style video shoot directed by Frank Door and booked only 4 days prior. It’s a standard Wallpaper. video, only what usually takes 18 hours to do we have to condense into 6: moshing, pissing in water bottles, breaking shit, and Novena and I spitting a half-HighLife half-water concoction into each other’s mouths. We wrap at 11:57pm, throw down a few chugs of Fireball and Maker’s Mark (courtesy of our rad video extras) and hop back into the Honda. Speeding down the 101, crammed in the back seat, Novena says “hey guys, it’s a supermoon tonight!” I lean across her and Derek, struggling to see it but all I can make out is its incandescent glow radiating through the marine layer. Fuck.
We get to the bus. I can barely see straight. I grab TJ and friend some free merch for their troubles. I load the Mongoose into the cargo bay and drag my body into the bunk. I don’t even remember to look to the sky. It doesn’t matter. I had the best day ever.
