8/14/02 “DRINKING DECADENCE DESPAIR AND INDULGENCE IN THE LAND OF OZZ” PART ONE
I woke up to the humidity that is August in Chicago. I knew it was going to be the start of a long ay. I walked across the street to the MK ULTRA Office an began to pack my essentials for an overnight visit to what some metal heads wait for 364 days of the year. Only this time it was to be Ozzfest 2002. I’ve attended Ozzfest every year since it’s early stages in 1996 when filter and Prong played w/ Ozzy in Indiana on the fourth of July, and it was scary then. It began getting scarier every year since. I only missed one year, 2001. 2001 was a bad year for AZ and it was a bad year for me in terms of bands that would be playing that year. Manson was the only act that’d appeal to me. And it wasn’t worth braving the mullets to see a 45 minute set of Manson. So I opted to skip. Even now I have no regrets.
The guys from ROC, Kenny and Mike stayed at the old MK ULTRA office for a little over a week that year. Some days they’d drive as far as 8 hrs to attend an event, and then trek back to my place. From what I’ve been told, they like the water. But I think they enjoyed the big budget porn. But that’s another story. And I’m writing about Ozzfest 2002.
That morning my attorney and partner in time made it know to me that she was feeling too ill to go to the festivities that we agreed to attend which was the night before Ozzfest. SuZn, one of our photographers secured a room at the ski lodge months before. She was staking Scott, and got a room for just under $500 for two nights. Our share for Saturday night only was $120. I figured at that price this was the sweet of suites. That’s as much as some of the resorts I’ve stayed in w/ Susan, not to be confused with SuZn. Nevertheless, my attorney and I took the 22 downtown to rent a car. Went rented a new Dodge, and took it to the grocery store. We stocked up on necessities and I got supplies for the tailgating and the pre Ozzfest party. “…two bags of charcoal, seventy-five cans of domestic an imported beer, five jars of high-powered salsa, a half-full bottle of aspirin and a whole galaxy of multi-flavored veggie burgers, chicken legs, vegan hot sausage, and, Frontera Arbol Hot Sauce, Frontera Red Chipotle Salsa and lime flavored tortilla chips…..also a quart of tequila, a quart of Capt. Morgan rum, a bottle of Jim Beam, a pint of vodka, and a dozen mixers…but the only thing that worried me was the . Arbol Hot Sauce. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible, or as unforgiving than a man in the depths of an Arbol Hot Sauce binge.
The most important item other than food and liquids was music. I went thru my library and chose the type of music only a couple of post punk hell raisers could enjoy sans the company of my attorney, who just happens to be of the female persuasion. The person I had chosen to take her place was my mailman, who also happens to perform as a guitarist in a Mexican punk rock combo called Mas Loco Amigos. A Latino gentleman who in person has always had me convinced that we was partially born and bred a Samoan. He was a former Mexican wrestler in his native land. A masked champion who was known in his homeland as “The Latin Of Doom” but he was retired by Santanico in the brutal Mexican Chair Fight in 97. Rather, he was forced into retirement and works for the postal service under the American name Greg Tovar. The Cd’s I chose to bring in the silver Dodge (we christened the car Silver Bullet due to a lot of its power being charged by Coors Light.) was: TYPE O NEGATIVE “Slow Deep And Hard”, and “Bloody Kisses”, PRONG “Cleansing”, DANZIG, JOEY RAMONE’s “Don’t Worry About Me”, THE RAMONES “Ramonesmania” MINISTRY “Greatest Fits”, and “Filth Pig” THE CRAMPS single “Let’s Get Fucked Up” WHITE ZOMBIE “Super Sexy Swinging Singles”, ROB ZOMBIES “The Sinister Urge” and “ American Made Music To Strip By”, REVOLTING COCKS “Linger Fickin Good” MISFITS “Famous Monsters” MY RUIN, TITO AND TARANTULA, IGGY POP “Beat Em Up” FILTER “The AMALGAMUT” The CULT “Pure Cult” an CRANK IT UP “a collection of covers about cars and riving”. The latter was only for the latest TYPE O song, a cover of DEEP PURPLE’s “Highway Star”.
Armed with bottled water to flush our systems to prepare for the abuse it would be about to endure and energy drinks to boost our stamina, the AC was blasting and the music was loud. For the first hour of the drive we didn’t speak, we just banged our heads to the heavy tunes. The trip began with the comp of driving tunes, and then PRONG. We were somewhere around Six Flags on the edge of the desert when the tunes began to take hold. it was only one song into the CD, the opening track of “Slow Deep and Hard”, in fact it was my favorite song of all time. A song about betrayal and psychological retribution: Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity. Tovar looks over at the end of the tune and inquires in his broken English and thick Latino accent, “Was that all one song amigo?” yes, I replied, a near 13 minute opus. He was buying this one Monday I knew it. Mission accomplished, another one sold. Someday TON would pay me a huge fee for the CD’s I’ve pimped for them since our meeting in ‘94. Driving on the desolate rural highway where the locals who lived far and few between line up their lawn chairs and beer coolers roadside to wave and laugh at all the tattooed long hairs that’d journey to Alpine Valley for concerts. To them it was as much of an attraction to scoff at us, as we do at them. It was an equal trade off of amusement that none of us seemed to mind.
We arrived at the entrance of the lodge, and security tried to veer us to the concert entrance. “No fucking way!” Tovar screamed out in the clearest English I’ve ever witnessed him speak. Yes, I agreed, no damn way on this earth would we enter a lot full of Christian rockers who were all on hand to see Creed, a band we all loathe, who happened to be at the venue that night. We gave them our press credentials, MK ULTRA would be our way into the lodge and what we thought and hoped would be luxury in midst of the Land of Oz, which is what it would be transformed into by daybreak. But the true horror we were about to behold. “Ye Fucking gods!” the Ozheads had already transformed the hotel and it’s lot into bad beer and tattoo mullet heaven. Oh, we were going to get killed I thought for sure. I don’t know if it was my pre burn tan or Greg’s Central American skin tone but we had heard the word “N*!” being screamed throughout the halls as we wheeled our massive cooler and food items up to room 202 where our saviors SuZn and Scott were starving and already toasted from alcohol and drug abuse. The room smelled of weed and we kept hearing that dreaded “N-word” echoing thru the halls.
Maybe it was paranoia or mullet fear, or mullet envy, but they were everywhere. But we were safe inside. Scott asked if we ha the grill. They were both starving dammit and ravaged fiends with the motherfucking munchies. “Suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the resort halls were full of what looked like 80’s mullets, all swooping and screeching and swarming all around the door … Greg opened the door and shadows flutter across his face. The reflection of mullets swirl within his eyes. I push in close to one eye ball …SCREECHING SWIRLING MULLET-LIKE SHAPES! AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!! He screamed. I knew he was in dire need of his first beer. I cracked him open a cold one. And Scott’s voice was screaming: Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals? “I asked him, “What are you yelling about?” He replied, “Never mind. It’s your turn to drink.” He mixed me a very strong rink. There was already too much blood in my alcohol system. “No point mentioning these mullets.” I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. We decided it would be the rooms door open to stay alert of the beasts. Besides, nobody brought a portable stereo and we could listen to all of the rooms playing different Ozzy records in unison. It would be a soundtrack to the savage racist members who took over this lodge. And if it was a resort it was certainly a reflection of its inhabitants. Certainly not worth the price paid. The wallpaper was peeling, there was NO ICE in the ice machines and the cost was easy to explain. It was a way to cover the damages and repair needed the next day after the majority of the celebrants tore the Inn to bits. It was their insurance. The lounge was the saddest part of the entire estate.
SEE PART TWO
Zander ALPINE VALLEY, – Tuesday, August 13, 2002 at 14:02:23 (EDT
DRINKING DECADENCE DESPAIR AND INDULGENCE IN THE LAND OF OZZ” PART 2
So here we were at the Alpine Valley Resort. SuZn fired up the camera and we approached the outer perimeter of the lodge, viewing the balconies of many a shirtless metal-head. These were die-hard Ozzy fans. A lot of them drove ½ day to stay at this broken down lodge. They had a lot more booze running thru them by 7pm than I could hope for by the time I would retire around 4AM. But that’s another story. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all of my years of documenting the rituals of this breed, it is that once the crank is running thru their systems an they’ve pumped their bellies full of Budweiser and Miller High Life they love nothing more than the roving eye of anyone with a video camera. Granted they’d likely “kick our asses” if they could remember spilling their guts to us, but that has never been the case. We wasted no time in starting our docudrama, which wasn’t slated for filming till the lot opened the next morning. Tovar had gotten quiet. I think the former champion was afraid, but after we poured several beer bongs of Amstel into the man, he got his groove on. Between visits into the trenches that the other guests used as their rooms, we’d occasionally step into the lounge. It was full of it’s own lounge lizards. Hell no, we didn’t need the parking lot; we had all we needed right here in the fucking hotel drinking facility. All we had to do was get them out of the lounge and into their own environment. And that didn’t take much. Just as we came prepared so did the metal fans. Why did they even bother with the overpriced drinks in the lounge?
Every room was stocked. Bud boxes were stacked against the wall each one on top of another as if to create some sort of noise reduction. Things began to get a little vague and blurry as the midnight hour approached. For some reason against my wishes SuZn felt the need to keep taping my Latin counterpart and me. Though I haven’t seen the dammed testament as of this writing, I imagine there are over a dozen instances where you see and hear me say something like, “STOP FUCKING RECORDING ME!” In fact truth be told she was asked not to record us but the shirtless wonders and their female prey in their bizarre mating rituals and bellows of incoherent banter. At some point latter in the wee early hours of the AM, a lost and sobbing girl who appeared to have not eaten in recent memory was running down the hallways tossing beer into peoples arms. She was coming in the right direction and before long had re-stocked room 202 with loads of free alcohol. She was indeed the bee’s knees for a hotel full of booze soaked party hardy metal heads. I even walked to her room where a young child aged 13 was asleep on the bed oblivious to the decadence and destruction going on around his adolescent existence, and good for him and his well being. So I aided her in pilfering the last of the booze from her room and transferred it to 202, where it rightfully belonged. Seems she was upset with her date that had abandoned her for another girl from another town, and was in another room. This was her way of paying him back and my hosts were more than happy to oblige. In fact so were the others in the rooms around us. Such was the revenge that in my mind, I’m sure some hung-over fellow was wandering the puking lot the next day trying to retrieve his bounty, knowing that for his sins he would be paying $6.50 a cup for warm non-light draught beer. After we restocked our massive cooler with the catch of the day and had a few shots and toasts we retired. The next thing I know is I missed the wake up call and at 745Am was back up and in the shower. No sooner was I done that Greg got rinsed off and we were pulling our newly refilled cooler and grub out to the Silver Bullet. On the way we witnessed the janitors with brooms and dustpans sweeping up the yard of shattered windows and broken bottles. Sad as it is that these people are who they are, they can’t handle a good time with out doing this type of thing thus resulting in inflated room rates for hardworking journalists such as us. A song by NASHVILE PUSSY comes to mind, and that song is; “You Give Drugs A Bad Name.” 8:15AM We enter the lot and pull into VIP parking. There’d be no long lines for no long walk and us across the lot. We were in the front row and within minutes had the grill lit and were well on our way to Beer for breakfast, beer for lunch and beer for dinner. We used the food as a sidecar or chaser. It helped soak up the mass of liquids swimming around in our stomachs. The nice thing was we didn’t even have to re-start the buzz, we still felt the effects of the indulgence of the prior festivities. Hell, there wasn’t even time for a hangover. As soon as Tovar figured out how to use the camera we were taping, but the bad news was about to hit us. Low battery.
SuZn in her “ultimate wisdom” and all of her random taping of us just roaming the lot and sitting around the room had doomed our mission. We had very little to go on and now I’d have to contact the Copyright people in DC and change the title of our film in the works. My attorney and Scott the ticket scalper showed up at noon. Then Scott and SuZn showed up. I looked at Greg and he was confused. Scott meet Scott and Greg meet Scott and Scott and SuZn and Susan. My Mexican friend thought for sure at this point I put something in his drink so he had nothing to do but drink more. He had that look like if I was going to fuck with his mind he might as well get a head start on me. In the meantime we made friends with a few of the security guards an they kept us out of trouble an the trouble away from us. Besides, nobody could cross the line from paying patrons to VIP access. Everyone partook in my spicy chicken recipe with the exception of Susan who refuses to eat anything that is on a bone. Then it was off to Ozzfest where it was all down hill till Zombie came onstage at 645. But for the first time in history I didn’t leave after the little Ozzy movie. I figured with all the poor old guy had been thru recently with his wife fighting cancer the least I could do was stay in my seat in the center of row 10 and give him some respect. But to this date it is the first time I’ve ever seen Ozzy for more than 5 minutes. This is the end. I hope you get the picture because it may not have come out on film.
