What an interesting night.

It started with me heading over to Ferny’s early so I can miss the rush hour traffic.  Together we did some work and sipped some fine Belgium beers while waiting for David Schwind to show up.  Turns out, David thought it’d be a good idea to start driving from N.Cal where he’s at only 8 hours before the concert started.

Well, it wasn’t a good idea. He got stuck in traffic, blew a tire, had to backtrack for a couple of hours because the Grapevine (a stretch of the I-5 freeway) closed down because of the, get this, SNOW/ICE.  Snow and ice, in California, are you kidding me?

So Fernando, his brother, Ramiro, and I ended up cruising to Inglewood for the concert by ourselves – we figure we’d meet David there instead. Alas, by the time we got there, David was only at Santa Barbara… two hours away with NO traffic.  Poor sap, there was no hope for him since he was stuck IN TRAFFIC (with a spare tire no less).

However, Ferny, Ramiro, and I plodded on, determined to get our metal on.

But we were met with challenges.

Sneaking It by the Security Guards – for YOUR Sake

First off, how in the world were we suppose to get our FlipVideo into the concert when the sign specifically said “no video camcorder device”?  After all, we needed the video for your entertainment purposes (which you shall get).

Ferny proposed the idea of telling them it’s my cell phone. Uh huh… right.

We decided to hide it instead.  After proposing a few inappropriate spots to hide the camera (I’ll leave that to your imagination) we decided to try hiding it in his sock.  Why the sock?  Because after carefully scrutinizing the pat-down process, we noticed that some of these security guards don’t pay attention to the ankles (slacker employees…)

So we went for it, and we got in, score! (Suckers, guhahahaaa!!!)

Of course, then we found out we entered the wrong checkpoint – DOH!

No worries, after waiting in another line, we got to the front, showed our tickets proudly only to have them tell us that those weren’t the “real” tickets (we printed them online) so that we had to backtrack to the ticket office to pick up our REAL tickets.

Okay, our patience was getting a little thin by now, it seems like no one knows what’s going on.  But like good sports, we go to the ticket office to find out what’s going on.  Well, as it turns out… the tickets we got really weren’t tickets.

“What do You Mean These are Parking Tickets?“

Well, they were, just not the type we thought they were.  They were PARKING tickets.

That’s right, Mr. MIT Fernando Ceballos purchased four parking tickets online for us.  This explains:

1. Why parking was “free” for us
2. Why these tickets were so much cheaper than what they were selling for

However, how Ferny got four parking tickets by accident, I”ll NEVER know.

After all is said and done, we refunded the (3 remaining) parking tickets, purchased the real tickets and headed inside.

Metallica Live – Ground Floor!

Once we are in, it was good times!  The band was rocking, people were having a good time.  Some lady was either having a seizure or was dancing really hard (I want to say the latter but I am not too sure…)

I was on the lookout for mosh pitters, priming my elbow for the deathly Cobra Strike to the first unlucky pitter to bump into me ( or was that the Monkey Attack?)  But nobody did so I went back to enjoying the concert.

Flashy lights, coffins for decorations, black exercise balloon balls flying around, flames so high and hot I can feel the heat 50 feet away, loud insane music, drunk fools – oh sweet goodness.

As the night wore on and as I got more o’ so delicious beer in me, I started looking for the mosh pitters.  I mean, come on, why not right?  Lucky for us, we found/started one for a brief while and went a lil’ nutso knocking into each other.  Gawd, the guy who created this whole mosh pit concept must been the same guy that came up with the game, Bloody Knuckles.  Purely pointless, violent, and utterly stupid (but why not right?)

After the concert we headed home and awaited David’s arrival.  1:00 AM he FINALLY makes it and we head off to get some late-night tacos.  Mmmm…. tacos.

And that, my friend, was my first experience with Metallica.  Good times.

Raymond Fong
P.S. We lived up to our promise, we gave some good personal development stuff (I think…) in our video, so be sure to watch for it. Unless I accidentally forgot to hit the record button – not sure.

Today outta be interesting…

I am spending the day with my buds Fernando Ceballos and David Schwind.  What’s the big idea?  Metallica my friend, that’s the big idea.  For some odd reason, when they asked me if I wanted to go when we were all down in Austin, TX visiting Mike Dillard, I said yes…

I don’t even like Metallica that much.  But heck, I like new experiences so why the heck not?  (Besides, Ferny bought my ticket so… )

Of course, it was only afterwards that I learned about the mosh pit.  AND it was at that same time I learned about how one of our friends got his eye socket broken while “moshing” inside a mosh pit.  SWEET!

Mosh Pit Goodness...

Oh yes, and I also learned that I should gring ear plugs.  AWESOME!

Who can say no right?

Well, no worries, I’ll strap on my steal-toed boots, bring my mouth guard, get a football helmet along with the shoulder pads, and I should be good to go.

Besides, Ferny and I think it’ll be fun to interview David today throughout the whole event.  We are suppose to interview him on some personal development stuff.  And what better venue than a Metallica concert?  We’ll have the whole thing recorded so we’ll see how it goes

Stay tuned.

Raymond Fong