bandana jesse - unedited ramblings about fear at the RNC

september second 2008

so our peace group was able to procure an hour slot at the "free speech stage" right infront of the excel energy center from 7-8pm, we're gonna talk about our "Peace Island Picnic" slated for thursday on harriet island and maybe give a little preview.
all the while i'm thinking: gee its nice of the city to have a stage and a mike set up for us right next to the action...
I think that they allready have two or three musical acts

monkey song
jesse
ryan
claire
girl from music school
delehanty bandmate, john i think not john himself, other john? no wait jesse thats right, he plays with lucy too, okay i think... but not other jesse(bandana jesse, i'm a traitor i'm sorry....
i cant see the faces of some of the cops, legohelmetshields
i cant see the faces of some protesters, bandanas

anyways i'm thinking that some of these acts are gonna come to help coleen(Rowley, one of the main organizers) promote the picnic
i hop in my car, my sister has been waiting 3 minits while i find my tennyshoes
i drop her off five blocks from block E downtown where she works at an icecream shop
traffic is just poopy cause of ron paul and i gotta get to st. paul
i take 94 to snelling to selby and park about 100 feet from the cathedral.
i stand and debate wether or not to bring my guitar along

btw on the way back i couldnt remember how to get to marshal, driving down selby i took a left and ended up on grand before i realized i should have gone north, i couldnt think

anywayz i decide to haul it along while walking to this place i havent researched how to get to, just the intersection, 7th and 5th
i was worried about looking like a duschbag walking around with a guitar, but i thought i could back up the other musicians there or something
boyscouts say be prepared
i ask a cop from phily if he knows where the free speech stage is or free speech forum is, he says hes from phily
i say, oh, no worries, thanks for coming out to minneapolis(i dont know why i said minneapolis, nerves)
he mustve been nervous too cause he smiled at me like he was going to cry, which gave me courage to keep looking. one cop told me the only way to access that area was to walk over and around by the capitol, then find a bridge


on my way to find a bridge i come within a block of the "of course everyone knows who the special guest is gonna be" concert which i wanna check out but i figure i'd better find my own little thing first.
i find a bridge walk over and figure i'll let the crowd intuit for me where this place is
i get to 7th and st. peter street, where mickeys diner is

jumbotron megatron

anywayz i look down 7th and its completely vacant, and theres a bunch of cops and scary cops standing in the street, but a crowd is still meandering down st peter

pauls got the sword, peters got the keys
i got you baby, baby you got mes(i'm a gemini)

anyways i spend the next whoknowshowlong walking around convention happyland looking like a doooooshbag with a guitar asking cops where the free speech stage is, how do i get to 5th and 7th?
nobody knows

hes happy to see me, jesse
incurious george monkey song

nobody knows so i just starty walking along the scary fence figuring i'd find it that way
i get to the river, nothing doing, so now i have to walk back along this fence walking past all these people who've now seen the same douchbag guitar guy twice
i say excuse me as i cut between countless happyland press lines and delegate lines and lines of people who deep down just want a country where they can raise thier little baby like Ivan to be a happy baby and a happy person, hapiness, persue it
i just want to get there swedishsocialismstyle, and they wanna do it bootstrapsnohandoutsgaysandprotestersandterroristsaregonnaripoutmyeyebrows ....rickstopputtingthoughtsinpeoplesheadsyoudontknow ... style

i make it back to mickeys i'm all alone i follow the fence, i pass the scary cops, i walk alone down 7th, i find the stage
coleen is there, tom is there, ross, and about fifteen other people, five of them freespeechstage workers
i'm late and i feel ashamed
coleen has called two of the music acts and told them that there's no crowd so they didnt come, but the peace sisters came because they drove all the way from chisolm or someplace like that even though the other acts came from much further, but they were tired and coleen thought they wouldnt want to play for ten people on a bullcrap policestage surrounded by fences at the end of a two block claustrophobic bottleneck with a copcork. 7th st w
i remember when this girl i was totally gonzo for for like ten years, i'm not even craping you, she got married to the luckiest son of a gun ever in the church on that street like two or three summers ago.
i sat next to my bro-inlaw and we didnt take communion cause i was scared to piss off someone. we could have, cause i dont think the priest was checking Catholic IDs, but i wanted to be respectful

MLK said everything hitler did was legal, and i cant stop that thought

anyways what a different street that was! surprize bagpipes played and everyone walked out of the church and down the street to the reception, i was so happy for them both! she never had a steady for the seven years i was trying to trick'er into thinking i was a rad dude. senior year nobody even asked her to the prom, i'm not even crapping you! i thought every guy in my high school was INSANE!!(she was buds with my sis and my sis told me not to and you gotta trust yo sis so i asked someone else and counted the days till prom thinking what in tarnation is wrong with every guy in my school! she ended up going with some guy her family knew and he was a nice guy and i know cause our after prom group consisted of me, my sis, my bud matt, the perdiest girl i'd ever seen(the girl i probably should have asked just for the heck of it, despte my sis), and our dates. we went down to this dock south shore of lake harriet and just hung out. i busted out laughing at one point, my buddy matt asked what was so funny. i sais that the tree had said something funny and i couldnt explain. they probly thought i was bonkers). she went to chicago for college and i lost touch. then 5 years latter i was soooo happy she thought that i was such a non-dooshbag that it would be cool to invite me to the wedding... probably just because she'd invited my sis and she didnt want me to feel left out or something, but still...
i didnt go to the reception cause i had a jug show, which actually was canceled but since i didnt turn in the fishmeatorveggiecard i didnt want to show up to the reception without a placesetting
iwent home and ran around harriet and calhoooon i was so happy. i wanted to thin down and make myself a better person cause i knew with all my heart surprize bagpipe wedding happiness is waiting for each and every girl and boy who just believes...

this was a coupla summers ago, and i hadnt even heard of Obama LOL! everyone makes fune of how all those Obamanuts feel, they shouldnt, thats how i felt, all hopey

what a different street now

sorry i went off on such a tanget
i'm so afraid to write more, but my mom loves me no matter what so i will

i want to be an Obama nut, i dont know why i'm not
i'll vote for him
i want to go back to that happy street, i want to stay there...

a while ago i went to match.com and got a free sample weekend, forgot to cancel and paid for a month, DANG! i did meet a gal and we met again at como zoo, i told her i'd be wearing a yellow hat, mustve looked like a douchbag. we had some laughs and she was nice but niether of us really looked like our pictures and it ended after a while. that was the halfwaypoint the halfway street methinks...

today, now, on this street i'm 51percent peaceactivist, 49percent posersillyhead
and i want to go back...

but now i'm on the freespeech stage playing for three of my heros, seven other people i sorta know in the movement some stage hands, and the looming EXCEL ENERGY CENTER with arnold governator and other guy flashing on the stadiumbigTV thing
and fences and nothingness

coleen bless her soul claps on one and three

i completely butcher the songs, i drop my pick, my voice cant hit the highs i forget the words...
songs i've played to roaringcrowds at the 331 Club, 100percentattentive crowds at the javajack's hoot, and in my fantasies to millions
i feel like such an idiot, but i'm with my peace vigil peeps. theyre all 20ish years older than me and i dont want to let them down

on the way home i brought my guitar in the biffy with me cause i didnt want to leave it outside - fear comes in many shades -

the peace sisters played a song with the altered lyrics "where have all the protests gone"

i'm so deflationed
two dudes show up with signs and ask where the protest is at

they also played a song that made fun of bush looking like a monkey, which i hated because i dont think you should make fun of people looking like monkeys, but i dont hate the peace sisters cause i know they got good hearts and they dont mean nothing by it, they're just poking fun and i cant take a joke
some of the other kindly old dudes with more love in thier eyes than a jesuspicture get up and start reading poems but i cant listen because i'm too busy saying sorry and making excuses for such bad tunes to everybody


AND THEN IT HAPPEns...the stage manager says they're gonna have to shut the stage down because theyve heard

and believe me i'm not even crapping you, i learned every single song excvept two on the grey rage album with the guy on fire. now all i can play is the song with that one riff in dropped D that goes "Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh/Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-NUH-NUH/Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-NUH/Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-NUH/ CH-CH-PLING

i held Ivan, andrews baby. i was soooo afraid i was germy, i was so scared i'd get him sick and andrew and abbey would hate me forever. andrews my best friend but he prefers hetero lifemate as abbey is his best friend

OH MY GOD TAKE YOUR FUCKING MASKS OFF ALL OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

anywayz seriously were was i? oh yeah wait and here's another thing about that 7th st w wedding! this gal i was rambling about earlier? i met her in fifth grade and we had class together the next 7 or 8 years couldjyoubeleiveit and the only people from South high school at that wedding were me, my sis, and some 98ers(who were always and still are older and way cooler than us!)

um... oh yeah back to it. they said the like twothousand people were headed this way and they'd be looking for a stage and so they packed up the truck stage and now it looks like a truck and not a stage. i had to show them my ID to play on the damn thing.


they say that we might be able to get away over there and so i go over there but all the scary no face cops say no going this way even though i can almost touch the cathedral where i parked and where its safe

i'm trapped and all my vigil friends have gone cause hippies like me are efing scared of anarchists man, we are pussies and a half
seriously man like half of them coming are pissed i later found out that they pulled the plug on RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!!! dude i would have been T.O.ed as hell back when i knew all thier songs if that'd happened to me. I thought of myself back then, i was not the folkfag i am now, OMG i said fag i think that was not me talking, i'm sorry i'm sorry
and i'm trapped and they flood and its a plethora of people, i stand and watch and use my guitar case to elevate me to see as many people as i can, and i actually chill out alot cause most everyone looks just like me in the face and body posture, body language
and then it hits me WHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
WHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!WHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
WHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!WHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
copy paste a million times! Dude!!!!! Like twenty minits

oh yeah the other group was the human rights march and they really should not have made the free speech zone a dead end man! they did like five minits of megaphoning i couldnt hear and then you've got a shtton of people who want to move forward but cant and its either storm the castle or retreat and no one wants to retreat cause we dont want to be cowards and leave our friends to get gassed and peppered, but i think i'll chill a bit cause then claire who is good friends with another of many gals whom i've loved for no good reason at all is there and i go and talk to her and its nice to see someone i know my age, she tells me about rage(that rhymes). i think claire is cool with me cause even though i wrote her friend a poem for no good reason and i didnt know joe was her boyfriend that was a while ago and her friend and me and two other peeps walked up near the pirate ship stage and sang songs about worms under the stars and it was all good and no one was falling in love with anyone for no good reason. actually i've noticed i havent written her name yet cause honestly i cant remember if its spelled megan or meghan, i think its megan, but you really should not not not write poems with triple puns trying to impress girls when you dont know a hundred percent how to spell thier name
her brother has a minnesota nice shirt on, i'm not even craping you

but yeahWHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!WHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!! hey its still on the copypastey control-WHY THE CRAP DID THE PULL THE PLUG ON MEEEEEEEE!!!!!! oops there it goes again but yeah WTF man. i'm like so super serious that i know i wouldnt have mucked up my peace songs if it had some how worked out that they hadnt shut dowwn the stage and all those people could listen to me and wouldnt i feel important and rockstarish and lennony fresh!


i think to myself while i just watch the "WHO's STREETS? OUR STREETS" chanters and sort of put my fist up and try to become one of them but end up feeling like just the same poser ass douchbag with a guitar case i've been all day

i see ryan and his girl. ryan is one of my heros, we're in a facebook relationship cause i think we both think its hilarious when people we dont know all that well think we're gay
i read his writings about being in palestine and other things he writes about and i feel so god damned ashamed i cant remember every single detail he's ever written. i mumble something about anarchy and he says something like "yeah man i've never been too down with anarchy" but really i want him to turn into a 10 story tall RYANMCVAYMONSTER and fucking eat that bullshit helicopter and rip off the excel's roof top and spit fresh chewed gushing bubbleyum all over everyone in there because it would be so funny man.

but we walk down the road back towards mickey's diner and there's like 200 scarycops there gaurding mickeys cause its like so old its protected by the historical society or something

i still cant remember the name of the church. i'm not Catholic, allthough I've always wished i was

and cops are blocking two of the streets leading anywhere near happyland and the nasal guy is like "Please keep moving,

oh and some kid says "please let us get some pancakes!" super funny, like something ed would say

but the copnasal guy kept on saying "everyone remain calm and do not stop here, this is an unlawful assembly...
and i see my vigil peoples hadnt made it very far but the tide of retreat is puling them away now

and then a bandana face guy comes up and i'm afraid he's gonna like jack my guitar or something, but its Jesse. we make alittle small talk about how this is all bullhonkey

he's happy to see me

he's such a nice dude in my memory. he's mostly finnish but he looks mexican, which is funny dont you think?
the tide is moving and i'm super scared again and i'm like, "lets go stand on the sidewalk" cause like i think maybe the cops are just mad that so many people are Jwalking...
Jesse says oh man i'm apart of this
i'm apart of this
i'm apart of this
i'm apart of this
he puts his bandana on
i walk away and stand on the corner all i hear is "STAY WHERE YOU ARE, THIS IS NOT AN UNLAWFUL ASEMBLY"
STAY WHERE YOU ARE, THIS IS NOT AN UNLAWFUL ASEMBLY"

STAY WHERE YOU ARE, THIS IS NOT AN UNLAWFUL ASEMBLY"

oh my god is that jesse talking, is he talking to me? i chill abit and all of a sudden there's a crapton of human rights parade marshalls trying to get everyone to leave and i have no idea who I am. i'm so scared, i'm sheparded away by the peace hippies, i walk up the road and see another jesse who i played in a band with a couple of times but then jon went back to wisconson for the summer. i mean i knew his name was jesse, but i had just totally betrayed another jesse like 2 seconds ago.


i just tried to find bandana jesse on facebook to see how he's doing and if he got maced or something. but i hadnt seen him in almost a year and probably wont see him ever again, so... you tell me

i dont know
i dont know!
i think i can start to understand why Bob Dylan stoped writing topical songs. i'm not quite there, i still got alot of john lennon wannabeing to be, and do.
hopefully by thursday's picnic i'll be who i was 12 hours ago, before 7th st w

on my way home i stoped at andrews and held Ivan, thier new baby boy. they gave me cookies and beer and all i could think was holy crap these two friends of mine are so... good. and i dont want to see anyone for a while unless i can see thier face.