When time came for the Atl show, I was VERY psyched, and decided to go all out for my first show of the year. One of my new friends proceeded to hook me up with a 1/4 of Oregon's finest "fun guy," which I had last sampled in '96 on fall tour. Maybe a little back story is in order here; you see, on that particular tour we had been blessed with copious amounts of said "fun guy"- to the point where consuming it became a daily matter of course (I don't recommend this-that's another story). Anyway, it had been about two years since I'd touched the stuff, but I was most cavalier about it, thinking I knew EXACTLY what I was doing when I ate the whole 1/4...

So the show starts and I am on the lawn with my friends. Chalkdust opened, if I recall, and before it was to the "can't I live while I'm young" part I was laid out on the ground staring at the sky with the entire contents of my pockets (cash and all) spread out around me. When someone asked me if I was alright I knew I wasn't and decided to go for a quick walk around the lawn to clear my head. 

Well I wasn't 20 steps away when my vision and hearing totally went berserk. I knew that I wasn't gonna find my friends again till the end of the show, so I just sat back down in the grass and tried to comprehend my surroundings. Before I knew it the set was over, the lights were on, and people were milling about, doing their set break thing.

It was then that I felt a strange lump in the back of my shorts. Now, I knew my mind had a mind of its own at that point, so I decided I had to check things out firsthand, so to speak, and proceeded to cautiously slide my hand down the back of my shorts and just sort of feel around for anything strange. The random folks around me were rather shocked by this, as their facial expressions clearly showed. I stopped immediately, totally embarrassed and near freaking at this point, but I still could not tell if I had CRAPPED MY SHORTS or not - what to do? 

If I stand up I might really embarrass myself in front of these nice people. After mulling over this for what seemed like forever, I came up with a plan; slowly, I began to crabwalk from near the bottom of the lawn up the hill toward the wall at the back. I looked like a jackass, no doubt, but I made it, first to the wall, and then slowly, with back against the wall, over to the very corner, where nobody would see me with my hand on my own ass, feeling for shit. It was harrowing, let me tell you, but when I got there, after some extensive double and triple checking, I surmised that, alas, I was good to go- no emergency after all, just a very disturbing hallucination.

It was at this very moment that the lights went down, and the second set began. My imagined emergency was over just in time to enjoy a killer set with a clean conscience and clean drawers. After the show I met my new friends at the car, telling them nothing of what had happened, saying I "got lost" or something. In fact, I don't know why I told you this story, except maybe just to say KNOW YOUR LIMITS kids, and if you remember seeing some fool crabwalking across the Lakewood lawn, well that was me, and now you know why.

- Palmer Johnston