Toronto Ontario – On June 11 at the Ontario Centre on the Budweiser stage, Thrice, Deaftones and Rise Against joined thousands of screaming fans, as they performed their set lists. This was my third attempt to go see Rise Against, due to timing and other setbacks in the past until now, I had never seen them but I have been a loyal fan since high school, and I was stoked to finally get the chance.
Rise Against, played last after Deaftones. Personally I am a bigger Thrice (who played before Deaftones) fan than I am a Deaftones fan; however I was not there for either bands and regardless I enjoyed them both. I was slightly disappointed however because although I knew all the tracks that Rise Against played, apart from the two new songs off their latest album Wolves, I felt that the show didn’t go on long enough.
The set list went as follows:
-
Ready to Fall
- The Good Left Undone
- Re-Education
- Satellite
- The Violence
- Help Is On the Way
- Give It All
- Welcome to the Break down
- People Live Here
- Prayer of the Refugee
Encore
13. Savior
I didn’t attend the concert on my own. Lizzie one of my best friend’s since high school came along too. As we sat in our seats in the 300th row, just under the stage canopy, I spied a familiar head; I say head because his back was to us but his light brown, curly hair, that peeped from his dark cap, practically gave him away…
I turned to Lizzie who sat on my left and harmlessly made a comment to her that went something like, – hey! Wouldn’t it be funny if we saw Alex here…
I was also on my second tall can at this point and was feeling rather silly and I giggled at the thought of that person really being him. I nudged Lizzie and directed her to point at the person I now assumed to be him and continued to comment,
–Doesn’t that guy kinda look like him? I kept nudging her because I do this to Lizzie and I wanted to make sure she was paying attention.
I’m going pause my story momentarily- so I can explain to you who Alex is. Alex is and old ex-boyfriend of our friend Stephy, of whom we all assumed was gay. We still used to hang out with Alex after they broke up, until he denied ever dating Stephy despite the fact that we all knew they had and for almost a year prior to their break up. Since then however none of us had seen him in years.
What eventually gave Alex away to Lizzie, before he had even turned around to face us was not only his save the dolphins sweater and his strikingly obvious Rise Against tattoo but also his same, damn, matching, save the dolphins hat that I had noticed, which by the way he only wears to hide his reseeding hairline (he’s my age). If all those pieces of evidence hadn’t been enough, his multi-colour man purse would have easily been enough to face facts.
Alex wasn’t alone at this concert; with him, he had a female companion- girlfriend or friend? Neither of us could tell. She didn’t seem very interested in any of the bands that played that night either. Needing to know more and to find out if it really was Alex after all, Lizzie and I spent quite a bit of time waiting for him to turn around so we could see his face. He would occasionally turn his head to the side so he could talk to his companion and we would get a glimpse of familiarity. I think at this point what we were doing, couldn’t really be called stalking though, right? I mean it’s not like we were fallowing them around them around or anything, we were simply observing.
When Deaftones set list finally concluded was only then, that he turned to face us and we finally realised we had been right all along. What were the chances that he would have got seats exactly two seats ahead of us?
The two began to make their way from the stage for the break when the three of us locked eyes with one another. Only moments after doing this Alex promptly lost himself in the sea of people, that were exiting the venue to go get food, drink and merchandise. Lizzie was now stuck on the fact that we had just seen Alex, I on the other hand had moved on to bigger and snottier things.
When I saw the tumour that was growing on Alex’s friend’s nose it was like my heart stopped just out of pure shock. Hey! Pinocchio your sister called, she says she wants her nose back. It was as if an elephant and a human had performed coitus and in doing so had conceived a baby with three hands and one of them was on her face! Okay well maybe not a hand because it was more like a talon curved at the end of her nose than a finger. When she sneezed it probably sounded like an elephant calling for its mate. I bet if Toucan Sam ever saw her, he’d probably wife her up right then and there!
Every time I looked at her nose I imagined her going in for a kiss and accidently picking out her victims eyes… did I say victim? Oops! I meant date. I could see her screeching at them let me love you! As snot leaked from her fist sized nostrils. All I kept think was please Alex, please don’t break her heart or we are all done for… her nostrils and their discharge could drown cities. Think about it, one day you are at home on a nice Sunday evening just enjoy a hot cup of tea and bam! Mucus breaks down the doors and windows and floods your house, suddenly you are swimming in boogers and all this could have been avoided if Alex had only loved that big beaked girl right…
Maybe I am being a little harsh but I do not like big noses the fact is, I hate them. This wasn’t anything personal towards her, I just hated her nose and because of that I spent days after the concert, fantasizing about ripping it off her face with my teeth. I figured even if I broke it, it would still be just as big, only a little more crooked. So my only option would be to just take it be to saw it off if I had too (these are the dark places my mind starts to take me when faced with big nosed problems). If I’m being honest with you, a big nose is the only deal breaker I have when it comes to being your friend. I can’t be friend’s with a big nosed person because eventually I know I will end up punching it right off their faces.
When I tried to explain to Nikki G the next time I saw him, just how bad her nose was I had made up sound effects for it and I used my hands very expressively to recreate her nose on my face. Even attempting to do this, I still failed to recreate it as well as I would have liked but hey, I tried and that’s what counts right?
Born and raised in Toronto, E. V. Hutcheon studied journalism at St Lawrence College in Cornwall Ontario.
She currently lives in Toronto with her family, three dogs and a rabbit, near the Humber River.