We’re Painfully Uncool Sober Nobodies At Coachella, Laugh At Our Misery
We're very green and everyone can tell, which might be my fault because I lost my phone on the first day and had to write "lost iPHONE 4S, cat case," and then I found it later and Ari took a picture of me with the marker board.
Hi! Are you at Coachella? Yes? No? Either way, you are way fucking cooler than myself and Ari Eastman, who are currently floundering in the dregs between sober professionalism and not-professional-enough-for-anyone-to-give-a-shit-ism. “Poor you, dumbass entitled brats. Be thankful that you’re there.” BABE. I KNOW. I AM SO HAPPY TO BE HERE, BUT I AM TRYING TO INTERVIEW ARTISTS WHO JUST WANT TO DO ART AND BE SOBER AND OBSERVE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT SOBER AND DO NOT WANT TO BE OBSERVED.
https://twitter.com/ivegottatheory/status/586800662832230400
https://instagram.com/p/1WWOlZPYAx
Sorry for yelling, the bass is really fucking loud.
Anyway, Coachella is the most corporate music festival ever and it’s kind of tight: you can always charge your phone, pee, find a private place to cry, and you stand a decent chance of finding your phone if you lose it. It’s clean. There’s ‘art’ everywhere, especially of the #sponsored variety. It’s powerfully uncool but it’s enjoyable and useful, kind of like us.
https://instagram.com/p/1WWdi8J9Xi/
We’ve been dividing our time like this: 50% between freaking out over trying to get to places, 41% freaking out over losing the wifi (we know, it’s lame and we wish we could burn it all down and just run free without pants on and never use a laptop again but our jobs depend on screens so the pants are on) and not being able to get shit done, and 9% enjoying music, people, and surprisingly affordable tacos.
https://instagram.com/p/1TrVnXp9b7/
The media tent is both like your best friend’s mom’s house and a high school cafeteria: hospitable and accommodating, and full of a bunch of people trying to do the same sort of things who vaguely recognize each other. It’s weird, for us at least. We’re very green and everyone can tell, which might be my fault because I lost my phone on the first day and had to write “lost iPHONE 4S, cat case,” and then I found it later and made Ari take a picture of me with the marker board.
https://instagram.com/p/1UVfFdJ9SB/
Yeah, so it is my fault. Plus Ari looks like she could be a cool 19 and she’s out here being cute as hell, so people kind of give us this once-over that’s like, “LOL, how did these BFFs walk out of the mall and into the media tent?”
We giggle a lot at our tiny crises: me losing my phone, Ari nearly passing out, us never having wifi and constantly trying to write things on our dying phones. Everyone is sympathetic and giving zero fucks because they are trying to enjoy themselves and/or work — this is the creative-appreciative energy coming from all sides: the crowds, the media people covering the festival, the artists and their stressed out publicists. It’s a certain kind of magic, a summer camp sort of thing.
https://twitter.com/frizzyfilazzo/status/586675653975506944
Even when you’re sweaty and mad and miserable and questioning your choices, you kind of can’t help but put your hands up and enjoy it, or lay down and let it wash over you while you say “fuck it” to a beat that you don’t even know, by a DJ who’s younger than you, in a tent full of people less sober than you, on a field full of talks, trailers, and tents — where no one cares about you. Nobody at all, not even you. And it’s kind of nice.
That, or I’m incredibly secondhand stoned. 
