FBO Jam and convention stuff

["Josh Messerly (Chemistry stud.) " <messer46@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I'm finally in a positon to write stuff after making up for my day
off last week.  It seems that everyone and their mother gave us samples
to analyze at work at the end of last week and the beginning of this one.
I finally got some time to write a proper e-mail.  

First off, I had a good time at this year's convention.  It was the first
one that I stayed at the hotel with the group.  Last year I stayed in Kent
with friends and caught about the last 45 min. of the convention and then
went to the concert.  I think that last year's convention was better
because at the end of this one I was left with a feeling that I wanted
something more.  I am talking about just the convention and the activities
here, not including the concert in the comparison.  I think that the main
problems were the lack of venders at the convention proper, and the lack
of "hang out time".  I wanted to hang out with more people than I did
(while I did get to hang out with some real cool cats).  Most of the time
I got to hang with people came after the scheduled activites like when
Jeremy, Pouya, Jess, Nathan and I went to the Jazz bar (Jeremy and I were
still in stage outfit, though I had ditched the bobby hat by then when I
drunken passer by yelled out "you can't wear that!!") and then when we
took that walk to find food at 2:30 or 3 in the morning (I think that the
front desk people were trying to get rid of us by sending us on a wild
goose chase into the bad part of town).  The pizza place was cool but a
very drunken country bumpkin from Iowa with a splitting headace gets
pretty scared his first time walking through the bad part of a major city
at 3:00 am.  I kept getting freaked out that we were lost.  I got around
better in the daylight and my keen booze hound sense did help me (with
Sara and Ali) to track down a liquer store in the subway station two
blocks from the hotel.  I was suprised when no one in the entire city had
heard of Rumple Minz!  That may have caused the feeling of emptyness at
the end of the convention when I could not attempt to have the "Dead Nazi"
become the official drink of the zepfest and not that god awful
"Tokillya"! :) Another problem is that just the few days of zepfest this
year were enough to get me addicted to Molson Canadian when I can't for
the life of me find it anywhere in Iowa.  It would probably be as skunky
as Molson Ice is here because of the degradation of the beer because of
shipping and storage.  Oh well!  
As to the jam, I am not a pushy person by any means and was apprehensive
about my voice being good enough, remembering the words, and being in
tune.  I was supposed to do three songs in the accoustic set and there was
no accousic set.  The other two songs that I was down to do were "Rock and
Roll" and "Kashmir"  which one was done by the 14-year old girl and the
other was not done.  I wasn't going to be an ass and steal a song from a
girl who had not done anything else.  I didn't know the words to any other
song well enough to sing them without Robert Plant backing me and found
out too late that there was a lyric sheet.  I had a huge headace from
being dehydrated from walking to the convention and then drinking at the
convention.  These are the main reasons that the only song I did was D'yer
Mak'er with the group.  I got the bobby hat (spending most of my cash and
having to subsist on stale pretzles for lunch sunday, so as to have
beer money sunday night, after loseing my bus fare; I found the bus fare
later, D'OH!) for next year also.  I am going to buy a bass next week and
practice up so as to be a real JPJ stand in next convention.  I haven't
played since high school when I was in Orchestra.  I will also sing a few
more songs next year now that I know I won't be too terrible so as not to
fit in. I just hope that I can find my cool pattern bell bottoms by then.   

I did have a good time (so as not to come off as negetive on the whole
experience)  even though the only time I remembered to ask Grant about my
free mug was at the convention when he was only selling them! D'OH! I
wasn't mugged, murdered, or kidnapped and sold as a prostitute in some
East Asian country (which is what my whole family thought was going to
happen)  All told I dropped about a grand in the whole Zepfest weekend but
part of it was canadian money which isn't worth anything anyway!  My best
time for the whole weekend was probably when Jeremy, Jess and I went out
on the town sunday night.  After we got back, I ended up buying a $24
medium-sized room service pizza.  I got locked out of my room and then
went to give Jeremy his key back.  We started to talk again in the
doorway, decided to go back to my room, and then ended finishing the
six-pack or so I had left while discussing various subjects till 2 am or
so. I found out that Jeremy is about as great a ladies' man as I am :) and
that there is a certain point when he is drunk that he likes stale
pretzels (very stale by then).  The picture I have may not come out, but
the image that I am left of the zepfest is a shirtless Jeremy trying to
catch pretzels in his mouth (missing most of them) and then leaving my
room to go to bed (still shirtless) but deciding to take the stairs (from
the 19th to the 5th floor, at least I think he took the stairs:)   ) for
fear of being caught drunken and semi-nude in the elevator by the
security!!!  That whole experience brought my zepfest from a B- to a B+
That is about all for now.  

"Until we meet again and the case is solve-ed" -Inspecter Cleausau 

	-Josh Messerly

"Too weird to live, and too rare to die"- from "Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas"