three words to describe the coalesce show last night: sweet merciful crap. simpsons fans will know appropriate inflection.

the only drawback, which at least made for a bit of a spectacle, was the crazy anaheim hardcore kids doing this weird dance that involved spinning and flailing their fists out at arms length in the middle of a big circle, with the finale of doing some sort of roundhouse kick into the crowd that formed the edge of this circle. i was unlucky enough, in trying to get close to the stage, to end up forming part of the front edge of this circle. lucky enough, however, to not get kicked in the head during this little ritual that sure seemed to be directed at getting your foot as high in the air as possible and hurting someone. oddly, because i have been taking this anthropology class and learning about apes, this whole thing reminded me a whole lot of video clips i’ve seen of chimpanzees ‘displaying’, i.e. putting on an intimidation display as a means to establish dominance and status in social groups. maybe i should have videotaped it and gave it to my teacher for extra credit.

i have to say it was a really stupid thing to see people doing, though. do kids in other cities do this at coalesce shows, or are orange county kids just retarded? (mental note: i hope that question brings a lot of search engine results up for this page for “orange county retarded kids” . . . right, i am a loser).

but the show — oh man. it was pretty choice to see “what happens on the road . . .” being played right in front of me. i just hope they don’t break up again too soon.