And now for something REALLY important…

I agree wholeheartedly with Amanda here:

[T]here is a problem afoot that plagues the outdoor music festival. I think the issue at hand is that festivals like this attract both the genuine music fan and the assholes who just figure it’s going to be fun without thinking about what a music festival is and how it might not involve everyone paying attention to your sorry ass act the fool because they’re too busy paying attention to the show. So if you’re someone like this, you get to the show and find that it’s kind of boring because people are just staring at the stage and dancing. And you decide to liven things up, which is where shit begins to go deeply wrong. So please, do everyone a favor and refrain from the following:

Here are some of the better ones:

* Unleashing a bunch of beach balls on the audience.

* Sending one person up to the front of the stage and figuring their presence means that it’s cool to bring 20 people down to shove people out of the way who’ve been standing there for an hour.

* Crowd surfing is officially lame.

The last one is the most important. This isn’t 1999, and Limp Bizkit isn’t onstage. If you’re crowd-surfing at, say, the Flaming Lips’ performance at Lollapalooza in August ‘06, and you happen to surf into our section, you’re going to get hurt. If you, say, surf into our section from behind and kick one of my friends in the face, nobody’s going to grab you and you’re going to land flat on your back from about six feet up. And if history is any indication, you’re going to make this weird wheezing sound and stay on the ground for a while, then slink away. In the end, it’s just not worth it.