likt men ballen, Olen

Wowie. You have no idea how my weekend was. Maybe after this post you'll have some idea, but it'll still be vague. In fact, that's exactly how I remember it, a vague succession of things. Was there even a weekend? I don't know. Maybe it never happened.

FRIDAY NIGHT:
Show at the Rockcafé. Dylan's birthday show. I don't really know Dylan, but I sure as fuck celebrated his date of birth.
Drinking beer with the Rak. I saw King's Blood, which was okay I guess. I don't know anymore. Krikke Get Wise's brother is in this band, and he like to jump-mosh. I think it was cool.

Saw some Two Minutes Hate songs. Especially the one where he does that famous line about world war. I met their drummer Arno some time ago and he's a cool dude, also good drummer. Band is okay, reminds me of similar acts like Dead End Sin maybe. What do I know.

Saw a minute of Hawser, don't care. I basically spent the night drinking beer with Rak and other assorted buddies. A friend of mine, as Rak later told me, was pretty buzzed up on something and he was talking a lot. I think that's cool, cause I don't have to say a lot. But it didn't strike me until Rak told me. We met a Greek and Dutch dude (Erasmus students maybe?) who were whack. Whack.

I moshed to Ashes cause I love them. New record is really good, I bought it now and it's seriously really good. Show was cool, drunkmosh and singalongs. Frandz.

Skipped Get Wise in favour of beer. Up the punx. But they're a p. cool band, they're on tour now so you should check 'em out. Maybe.

Lotsa beers. Hung out with Rak and this girl Nele, who was supposed to crash in my couch (as was Berre Ashes, but we lost him, sorry dude!). Me and Rak talked this girl Alicia with who Nele went to school and she was apparently stupid or something so we said something stupid to her. I have no clue what. She wasn't pleased. Whatevz, babes. Careless. Drunk. Other cool things probably happened but fuck if I know. We went home, had chicken nuggets and slept til 12. Slept like shit.

SATURDAY:
I promised Koen Sex Toys to come and see their set at Skatefest, but they already played at 13:30. So when I got up at 12, I actually did my best to catch the bus to Olen. DON'T GET ME STARTED ON OLEN JUST YET. Olen, Skatefest. Bus was right on time, I went to get some cash cause I knew I was gonna spend it.

I managed to catch 3 Sex Toys songs, one on my way to the bar, the next one dedicated to me (their cover of Gay Bar, fuckwads) and the last one, a new one of a year old. Cool.

The next band I wanted to see played at 7pm, although there were a few cool bands before that as well, Like Homer and Get Wise. Anyway, back to the start. Since I had no bands to see and guts to fill with alcohol, I got another beer. I ran into Werner, who I had met the week before, and we hung out. He's old but he's a really nice dude. He's "with it" with punkrock and such and it was really nice talking to him. He also has a blog and writes for rockblog. Naturally, he's my arch rival, but it's okay. We're cool.
Around the same time my best friend in the world also arrived and he had beer in his car so we decided to drink beer, get him cigarettes in Olen (suck) city and we met Jelle and Nicolas OTC there. This would mean the night was gonna be cool. Disastrous, yes, but cool.

Back at the fest-site Two Minutes Hate played, again. We've discussed that. Beer.
I wanted to see Think Ahead cause someone told me they were cool, but for some reason we went back to Olen and kinda missed them. Whatever. I'm only here for the scenepoints. Why should I watch bands? Beer and scenepoints, all I need. Beer and scenepoints, that's my deal.

I saw Get Wise this time, but only half. I spent most of my time hanging with the punx at and around the bar. Same for Generation 84. Probably the same for Homer. I think I ate a vegan thing during Homer. Homer's cool. Same for the Headshots. I must've been pretty flipped up at this point.

WELL YEAH I WAS. I think I even got to my second round of jetonnekes by then. Perfect opportunity to go watch the Setup and mosh the living shit out of... myself? I don't know, I love The Setup so I decided I'd go and show the pitfuckers who's the boss!!!!!! Obviously, I'm not the boss, The Setup is. They played a good set, I was really stoked on the setlist. Full of hits. They did good, as usual. I put on my crucial shoes and did this weird thing where I'm moshing but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Crowd reaction was underwhelming, but it was fun.

Tech-9 and Pay No Respect are bands. For some fucked up reason.

But I was stoked for The Connection! 60s rock and roll revival with Geoff Useless. I don't necessarily adore the band, but I do adore Geoff Useless and I'll take any excuse to jive to tunes like Stop Talking and Crawling Out The Wreckage Of A Saturday Night. Yes, admittedly, those are the only tunes I recognized. I hope I've danced with babes, but I think I mostly danced with Bram. Which is good enough. Good band, fun show.
Talked to Geoff after the show, he's one of the people I really admire musically (mostly for the work on Let It Go), and I told him that The Guts are/were way better. But he's cool and nice.

After the hardcorekids could stretch their limbs one last time to the tunes of First Blood, it was time for Off With Their Heads to play. Mind you, I was"in pretty rough shape" (as Ryan Fischer would inform me the next day) and I actually don't remember much. But they undoubtedly played a great set of great songs  about bad things. I remember that the set was very long, an hour or so. I kept thinking they were playing their last song, and then they'd play another. Anyway, people danced, swung their fists in the air and sang along to wanting to die, wanting to go home and feeling like this every night. The uge.

Then we went to the bar for more beers. I got behind the bar and got a beer, then other assorted friends found their way behind the bar. I hung out with Matthias, who was a dude volunteering there, he was v. cool. They gave away free coke, which is cool. We tried to get free beer but they proved to be more suspicious than expected. Anyway, great start to a great after-party. After a while of hanging out at the fest-site, a couple of my budz, who were crashing in Olen, decided to head to this loserville and go to a bar.

SATURDAY NIGHT - the following has nothing to do with Skatefest, punk rock or anything, but it's a funny/fucked up story.
(listen to this)
Bar of choice: Muziekcafé 't Oor. Don't go there. Don't ever go there. Narrowminded, racist, chauvenist folks. We didn't know that, so we took a chance in this seemingly cosy and cool bar.
We arrive at the bar and for some reason I find myself in the middle of a conversation with two girls, with no idea why I'm talking to them. Possibly because one of them was wearing an pyjama (although she said it wasn't). See, that's how ridiculous this bar was. People could be wearing PJs and thinking it was fashion. The other girl was really angry/psychotic. But they were probably the funnest people to hang with in the entire bar. Anyway, we ate their food, played nagelke-klop and jerked around and everybody started to dislike us for some reason, the #1 reason being that we we're fucking around and "we were not from there" and we were folks from the punk festival. Whatevz.
Next thing you know, 2 tables (stacked with glass) "fall down", people got more pissed at us, 2 of my buds get kicked out. The owner, who already reprimanded us for no fucking reason whatsoever, got really mad.

N: You have 5 minutes to leave!
J: Oh good, I can take another beer then!

Holy smokes, great reply. The rest of us stayed behind and chatted with inappropriate old dudes, inappropriate young dudes and those girls, who were apparently best friends since that night. That's Olen for you, I guess. The young dudes thought we were annoying those girls and they got jealous and even more pissed. Dude in orange shirt had a bad temper, man.
Then 'one of us' said something he shouldn't have said, and the addressee totally overreacted by headbutting him, causing a pretty nasty gap in his eyebrow. WHAT THE FUCK OLEN? See, I'm not saying we were on our best behaviour, but at least we didn't cause harm to anyone, we didn't intentionally evoked a fight by FUCKING HEADBUTTING SOMEONE. People are whack. And then this orange shirt fatzoid started yelling and violently pushing us outside of the bar. I guess they were tired of our shenanigans? Well, I was tired of your inability to handle situations, your lack of relativization and your chauvenist stance towards us the entire night.

Some dude: I'm gonna kick your teeth out!
Me: What? Don't do that, I need my teeth, man.

Fucking lunatics. There was this one dude, a young guy but a real sweetheart, I think he was also at Skatefest and I danced with him during the Setup (but I could be wrong, could be someone else). And he was the only dude in the entire place who was at least a bit considerate and able to handle shit. Jelle was about to lose shit but I think I sobered up enough to drag him the fuck out of there.
Seriously, fuck them. Again, I'm not saying we did nothing wrong, but they're fucking idiots. Shit was pretty fucked, so we went to the parking lot to find the other guys drinking some bottle of wine they found. Hehe. We discussed the situation and concluded Olen fucking sucks and I hate the place. I'm generalizing because I don't give a fuck.
Went to sleep when the sun started coming up, slept for shit, everything hurt, no regrets.

SUNDAY:
Guess how I felt? Yep, like shit. Woke up in the passanger seat of Jordi's car. The other fellows in the fellowship all left to do shit and I stayed behind with Jordi. We then had hot, vigourous fries in De Nieuwe Wannes, a snackbar conveniently situated next to café 't Oor. Wannessaus, not recommended.
After a while we met up with Domien en Wouter to go to Middelburg, in Zeeland. Off With Their Heads played there with The Real Danger and some other bands. Whoo!

The first band, Bad Temper, wasn't really convincing. So I hung out outside. It was actually pretty chilly.

Pizza.

Missed Scallywags. Didn't see Sweet Empire. The Real Danger played a good set but those Dutchies are weird. And I still didn't feel top notch. Some new songs, some old ones, then some skinheads and some weird dude who threw a beer bottle at an amp and tried to crash the monitors or something? Whut whut.

Off With Their Heads played again, this time I was sober enough to actually enjoy the show. Started off slow and after 3 songs their amp broke down.
After an ironic "Hey, we're professional musicians." they re-started and things got pretty cool after all. Lots of dancing, mostly Belgians actually. Peukie did some acrobatics and everybody seemed to have the best of times to the tunes of the worst of times. They played a really long set again, could've just skipped the "slower" songs actually, but okay. If they want to be a professional band, that's okay. And their catalog is big enough to afford 1-hour sets. Highlights for me were the songs from Hospitals (Your Child Is Dead, god fucking damn), Janie and I Am You. Best songs. Angry songs.

Gonna see them again at Fest, stoked as fuck.

Got home tired as fuck and I felt old and broken. But also happy.

Mom: How was your weekend?
Me: Oh, you know. Cool. Had fun.