CMJ Post Game Analysis

I don't really know how to approach writing this. I think I'm just gonna go down the line of things I remember happening. If anyone from WONY reads this, and I left something out, just add it as a comment.

• At first it looked like we were going to have major trouble getting into the hotel. It was 2 rooms, equipped for 6, and we had 9, plus they had a huge sign saying "YOU MUST DISPLAY YOUR KEY WHEN ENTERING ELEVATORS" sitting right next to some guy stationed there, but we never had trouble.

• We all went to the Javits Center together, and got our badges, along with bags of free stuff.

• No one wanted to go see the 'Team America' pre-screening except Lisa P., so me and her got on a bus and went to Lincoln Center. We stood in a line of like 400 people. Finally got in, watched it (I'd say a 5 out of 10), Trey Parker and Matt Stone came out and talked to everyone for like 15 min., and then they raffle off a guitar signed by them. I won. Find out later the whole package is worth like $1500 - $2000. First thought that popped in my head was "Going on eBay so fast."

• Me and Lisa go and meet Meg and Kristen Miller at Irving Plaza. Some band where they played literally Halloween music was on stage, then Sonic Youth came out. Me and Lisa somehow fanagled our way into the VIP section of Irving, the bands walking by us and all that. We are so hip.

• Day 2 begins back at Javitz to see Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys make no sense. He really gave me a feel of what drugs does to you after 35 years. We also saw Ted Leo and Saul Williams (who are they?) speak about politics.

• Me, Treats, Daly, Meg, and Miller went to some place by the Williamsburg Bridge. Free beer for a few hours. Good time.

• Trying to get back into the hotel, we got stuck in some area of the building that just had a staircase going up forever. It was like The Shining. Actually, the entire hotel was just like the one in The Shining, especially when RedRum was written on our mirror in ketchup. Or catsup, if you're a moron.

• Meg and Daly introduce me to Sparks, and take me to an Indian restaurant. I've never seen anything like this. There are like four of them right next to each other in about a 15 foot space. When they see you are considering eating Indian food, they all start SCREAMING at you to eat at their place in broken English. They yell promises and incentives at you. One guy yelled 'FREE WINE!' at us. We went there.

• Unfortunately, and as I expected, the caveat was that it was only free wine if you order an entree.

• You can never recognize what you are eating when eating Indian food. Everyone else just picked up these random orange things that looked like alien eggs and bit them. It was gross.

• The food wasn't bad, but I didn't see anything special about it. Honestly, the best part was the experience. You have to go to an Indian restaurant at least once in NYC.

• Rob, Laz, and other Alumni showed up at the hotel that night. Me, Rob, and Lisa K. went to some bar, me and Rob talked about big boy adult stuff, and Lisa sat and stared at us. Whoopsy.

• I can't remember what I did Friday. The whole day is a blank to me. All of these things are just mixing in my head.

• I do remember losing everything I own during this trip, however. I lost the key card to the room the first night, then I thought I lost my $300 CMJ badge the next morning (Feldman was sleeping on top of it), I thought I left my wallet on the subway (it was in my pocket), I thought I left my jacket at the Team America premiere (I didn't wear it), and I dropped my ATM card in the Bowry Ballroom. I am seriously a 7-year old.

• Saturday we went to a panel of RCA Record execs, two gay directors, and the manager for a band called My Chemical Romance. Although the panel was titled 'Anatomy of the Music Video', all I really got from it was that if you're not an established artist, the record company gets to fuck with you as much as they want to, but if you have sold some records, they will kiss your ass forever. It made me really mad.

• Saturday night was out of control. Me and Daly more or less split a bottle of Smirnoff together, and I drank about 3/4 of a small bottle of 99 Apples by myself. The pictures will speak for themselves. Everyone was out of their minds.

• We first went to the Bowry Ballroom, and saw some band called Mates of State and a hip-hop group called Aesop Rock. It was ok. I dropped my ATM card on the ground, and luckily Kodi found it, otherwise I'd have been so fucked and pissed off my face would have exploded.

• We then went to the Pussycat Lounge. The 'free beer' they advertised having was more like a case of Amheiser World Select for about 200 people. Needless to say, there was no more free beer after 20 minutes. CMJ really fucked us all over when it came to that. It wasn't the fact that there were naked girls there that made it fun, it was the fact that all of us were there together when there were naked girls there that made its so fun. Kodi and Lisa P. left like an hour after we got there, because Kodi was out-of-his-mind drunk, and kept snapping people with the rubberband that came out of his $5 sweatpants he bought. The rest of us went back in, and Treats fell in love with one of the strippers, and gave her all his money, ran out of money, then tried to hand them folded-up napkins as a tip. He also took a picture in the strip club, not of the girls, but it still got confiscated by a bouncer. We finally pulled him out of there when he started to wave his bank card at the girl.

• Outside, Treats kept up this behavior by ripping open a bag with 1,000 page phone books in it, and put them under someone's windshield wipers.

• I don't remember who I came home with, but I do remember taking pictures inside the cab. For no reason.

• Meg, Daly, and I went to the KFC in Penn Station at 3:30 in the morning. Miller was sleeping in the room so we ate it in the hallway. For some reason, Meg started talking in this foreign accent, and we ended up having a 20-minute conversation with each other in this Eastern European/Russian voice. Meg kept talking about her "muffin", a.k.a. a biscuit. Every sentence started with "In my country...." It was really funny.

• What wasn't funny was when I woke up four hours later and started to puke. A funny thing happened during this experience, because while the KFC mashed potatoes were coming out of my mouth, they were also coming out of my nose. I froze over the toilet, as I had shit coming out of every hole in my face, trying to blow it out of my nose onto the bathmat, but the bile burned the inside of my nose every time I did so. It was one of the low points of my entire life.

• It was finally time to leave. We got our stuff and headed to Grand Central Station. Since we had to kill some time, Kodi sat on the floor, and wrote on napkins things like, "Check out my cornhole Give me change" and "Slide MetroCard here" and propped these signs against himself, with his ass in the air. Not many 21 year olds could amuse themselves with a pen and napkin for an hour and a half.

And that sort of concludes the trip. If you want to see the pictures, you can check them out here. Also, if I forgot anything, put them in the comments section, the link is right under this article. Overall, I spent about $200 in the city, but the trip was definitely worth it, and I suspect CMJ 2005 will be as equally out of control.