Well, it looks like my plans to blog my Cornerstone Festival 2008 experience might fall flat on its best intentions. [...hold that thought -- I just successfully logged on to the fest site. Thanks, Scott!]
If I can get an online connection, I'll blog as if it can be read. We took two days to drive from Austin, TX to Bushnell, IL so as to make it more bearable and less torture. (I guess it's a 19-hour trip straight, which we've done a few times)
When we arrived around 5pm on Monday, the festival looked like it was already hopping. Cars, RVs, tents and people were all over the place. It's kind of like the first day of school, in that people watching is very fun and easy. You're seeing people you recognize but don't know (think big high school) and run into old friends that you see once or twice a year (now you can imagine the smaller school experience, hehe). After parking the long 32-foot trailer we pulled (in the first backup try, which was very nice and stress-free), we briefly setup camp and then headed over to the food court for dinner. Most of the same vendors from previous years were there -- the Hawaiian Shaved Ice place** and the Elephant Ears and Corn Dogs place, Subway, Pizza Hut, a cart that sells Gyros, and the Italian place that has a nice seafood alfredo dish with garlic bread. Our girls (my wife and two daughters) all got the alfredo while I couldn't resist the gyro.
We found out that the booth space we requested was kinda old. Apparantly, the fest does keep records of previous year's booth locations and our choice spot from last year was a relocation effort assisted by the cool guys that organize the merch tent. This relocation didn't make its way into the official spreadsheet, so another organization was at our spot. Turns out they requested the same booth as last year, like we did; and -- lo and behold, they were the ones that we switched places with last year. The head guy here runs all the booth assignments and he moved us into the corner spot we had requested via email, leaving the other folks a note about the relocation. He asked us if we wanted to be so bold as to move some crates the other guys had left. He grabbed one and we moved their stuff. I was feeling kind of unsure about all this. I don't like to be a "demand my own way" kinda guy, because that's pretty simple bottom-line "treat others the way you'd want to be treated" stuff. The organizer was obliging our request, and that was super kind. I hoped the other folks wouldn't be put out. I heard this morning they were fine with it. It helps that they originally requested the spot they were now in, so we were both getting what we originally wanted and requested ... that's funny.
My daughter is playing Guitar Hero here in the trailer. The opening lines to Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast" from the cover band performing the hits are floating my way. It's funny how hollow the song can sound if you don't hit the notes. Ya gotta admit, this is a pretty fun game. My oldest is better at the game than I am (she's not missing any notes). My wife suggested that we should send her on tournaments to earn the family money, but I know better. I've seen some experts play the game at the SXSW Interactive Festival and know how good some of these game shredders can be.
I put ** next to the Shaved Ice vendor, because I have an old Cornerstone story. Back when the HM Magazine Stage was in a smaller speaker tent, we had a rented RV parked next to it. A guy named Bill Conine had another rented RV parked next to ours. Bill was a big and tall guy with a friendly smile. I could imagine him a tv evangelist (old school style), though. Anyway, I borrowed a hose to refill the water storage tank in our RV from the Hawaiian Shaved Ice vendor. The guy in charge of that cart said it'd be okay, so I strung the hose through the exhibit hall (I think) and into the port for the tank opening. As I was filling it up, Bill approached me and asked if he could fill it up after me. Against my better judgment (never let anyone borrow something that you're borrowing), I said, "Sure," and told him where to return it when he was done. I left and found out later that the owner of the Shaved Ice booth had returned to a long line of people waiting snow cones. They ran out of water and he asked where the hose was. He followed it to Bill's RV and laid into him with an anger-filled tirade that let him know how upset he was. He had a long line of customers waiting and here Bill was using his water hose. It's not very proper of me, I guess, but I can't help laughing at that story. I laughed with Bill when he told me shortly after it happened. I apologized first, but that was a gross situation I was glad I avoided.
I was hoping that this booth moving thing wouldn't turn out like that. I'm glad it hasn't. It's not too hard to keep peace with people around you. Sometimes conflict happens. Sometimes it's flat out your fault and, obviously, could have been avoided. Other times there are other factors involved that brew a "perfect storm" of conflict. Those can be hairy, but they test ones character.
Anyway, so last night the Anchor Stage was going until around midnight. There were a couple of really good bands playing that stage -- especially the second-to-last one. I'm going to find out who that was and post it. Nice sounds. The band prior to them was a really tight metal band with lots of grinding and death metal growls. The Anchor is a church in Nashville that reaches out to a youth culture that thinks, looks and dresses entirely different than their older family members. It's neat to see such a fellowship in the Deep South. They have an Anchor Prayer Tent that is always manned right across the road from the stage. It's cool to see that kind of simple and faithful service. Sometimes it takes a lot of guts to approach such a place, but they're often really special places of refuge where love is in the air. People with sympathetic ears and an eagerness to intercede on behalf of a concerned or hurting person is a good and (dare I say it) a precious thing.
As Dave Ellufson (who now fronts a band called F5) might say, "I got my God fix" early today. I was coming back from the HyVee store with a shaver in hand and ran into Jimmy Ryan (who said his new band was going to play today). He was talking with a member of For Today (a really great band on Facedown Records) about God's faithfulness. Jimmy apologized for "bringing that up out of left field," but that kind of "God talk" is something I really, really enjoy. I added my two cents worth of agreement, bringing up the "extreme example" of Hosea and God's instructions to the prophet to marry a prostitute. It's a beautiful book that God uses to illustrate His faithfulness in spite of our faithlessness. Jimmy laughed, because they had been talking about Hosea. He totally is digging chapter 2 of that book, which has me and the guy from For Today (I forgot his last name already, which sucks) jones-n' to get back into the book. It's been awhile since I read it last. For Today guy asked us to pray and we huddled together and he prayed for us both. It was just a brief moment in time, but it was better than a nice big hot mug of good coffee in the morning (and I'm saying a lot by comparing it to that, ha ha ha). That was nice.