Rocklahoma Pt. 4: Home Sweet Home

I promise, this is the last post. We will finish the trip here. Seriously.

So, last we left, Warrant with Not-Jani Lane was horrible. This also gave us very little hope for Skid Row, who was fronted by Non-Sebastian Bach.

Apparently, Not-Sebastian Bach is not ready for us to see his face. Nevertheless, he sounded great, really got the crowd into it, and really did all their hits justice. Of course, he was from Texas, so he had to do some major sucking up to the Okies, but luckily, he mispronounced Rocklahoma (at one point, calling it Rocktoberfest) and said "Thank you, Oklahoma City!"

But again, you're not here for the music...you're here for the people watching. Ok, I was there for the people watching. Here's what transpired:

Ok, seriously guys...either be too-cool-for-school hipsters and don't go to Rocklahoma, or
show up, dress the part and fucking rock out.

Now, that's how you fucking RAWK OUT!

These ladies know how to rock out. (I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was not the only creepy guy taking pictures of these fine upstanding ladies).

We watched this drunk guy (left) stumble around while grasping onto his friend (right). Needless to say, he was the only drunk person at Rocklahoma.

This one's mostly just a shout out to Danny Glover out in H-Town. Coke Lot 4 Eva!

As the sun went down and Skid Row finished their set, we anxiously awaited Winger (I forget why; prior to this, my memory of them was their shirt being worn by Stewart on Beavis and Butthead...apparently, I'd underestimated their musical abilities, as learned here). Winger came on stage and basically, rocked the fuck out.

Kip Winger wants you to appreciate his music, not his stunning good looks (he is an attractive man, after all), therefore his visage has been whited out.

The best part of Winger though, was the buildup to the show with the requisite "She's only 37" jokes...and sure enough, during "Seventeen", Kip sang "She's only 35". Extra props for doing the math and figuring out how old Lolita would be today.

Now, many of you will recall the infamous Indian Taco that Mark "enjoyed" the night before. I have to give a special shout-out to the Most Unexpected Food Find, the fried potato chips.


Basically, they took a potato, cut it with a Ro-Tato (according to Mark), then fried the enormous plate of chips. This plate was already half-eaten, and ultimately, was well worth the $4 (cheaper than the Indian Taco, and much less snarl-worthy).

So night fell, Winger left us all wishing we were 17 years old, and Dokken was coming up next.


Dokken put on a good enough show. I'd actually say they were closest to "Heavy Metal" of any of the bands we saw (i.e. they didn't veer back toward any power ballads). Don Dokken was kind of a dork, but at least seemed to care about putting on a good show.

But that was only a warm up to the main dish, Vince Neil. Now, as you might imagine, Wiley was sort of freaking the fuck out...

Sort of like that

Before the show, they showed an intereview with Vince and he looked sober enough, even talking about the upcoming Motley Cruise, where basically, it's Rocklahoma, but on a boat. Imagine the multitude of ways you could end up puking on that ship!

So, with Vince Neil's upcoming arrival, I asked proclaimed Biggest UT fan EVER, Wiley, which Vince was better, Neil or Young. No other stipulations were put, just a simple "Who ya got?". The next several minutes made me lose 28% of the respect I had for Wiley. He soundly chose Vince Neil, not even really apologizing it. I can't even really talk much more about it, it upsets me so. Needless to say, the title of Biggest UT fan EVER is back up for grabs. Stay tuned for the round robin tournament.

Nonetheless, we were excited to hear much of Motley Crue's catalog. Which was partially accurate. Vince came out and ripped through various hits (can't remember all of them, but Dr. Feelgood, Girl/Jesus Don't Go Away Mad, Girls Girls Girls, etc. After about 6 or 7 songs, I think he got a bit bored (as you can imagine, given that he's sober) and just left the stage while his guitarist, bassist and drummer stayed and did a 20 minute 70's classic rock tribute, playing everything from Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath. We never really found out where Vince went, but he came back after awhile, and played a few more hits, along with a few songs I didn't recognize. He did a one song encore, and I think we'd heard enough. He wasn't bad, but he doesn't rock like he once did (or so I've been told). Oh, and we'd been promised that there'd be surprises (many assumed it was that Nikki Sixx would join him on stage), but none arose. A bit disappointing, but what can you do.

But you couldn't take the smile off of this kid's face!

How can you not be excited about blurry Vince Neil!??!?!

It didn't keep this lady from double-fisting.

This lady probably had the right idea though.

There are so many things wrong with this photo, I'll just say that I have absolutely no idea what was going on here.

No joke here, I'll just take the credit for quality photography

Oh, and there were laser beams and stuff.

Bye Rocklahoma!

And that was it. Well, for the night. We still had to wake up the next morning, pack up and drive back to Austin.

After a decent night's sleep, we awoke to the sound of rain. Ugh, we had to disassemble camp as quickly as possible and get the fuck out of dodge.

I tried to explain to Wiley that the cooler as not the best place to micturate. He didn't listen.

The good thing is, we finally got some work out of them. Woke up, packed up everything in the truck within 30 minutes. Good job, team!

Bye Rocklahoma! (For Reals, this time)

So, on our way out of Pryor, OK, we stopped at the trusty Kum & Go for our requisite bathroom stops (don't even get me started on Mark's tour of all Pryor, OK bathrooms...I believe he'll be coming out with a guide for next year's festival). Anyways, we found the most enormous mug-g-g-g-g and purchased it for Wiley (for those that don't know, Wiley is a bit of a collector when it comes to enormous mugs). But he'd never seen a mug like this:

Now, keep in mind the stainless steel mug is 52 oz. That's nothing compared to huMUGous!

What's that? You want huMUGous scaled to a small child? OK!

Don't worry, Wiley, indifference is just a phase. One day, Holland will come to appreciate all the qualities of the huMUGous. Don't give up on him yet!

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. While we were at the Kum & Go, filling up our puny 34 oz mugs Wiley had bought us on the way up, we got to talk to a local cop. Now, let me tell you, if all cops were like our cop friend, well...cops would be a lot cooler. Our paraphrased conversation:

One of Us: So how many people did y'all arrest last night?
Cop: Only about 8...of course, 7 were locals. We don't want to hassle the guests.
OoU: Did you go see any shows?
Cop: I'm not really into all that 80's stuff. Now if it was 70's rock, I'd a been there in an instant!

It went on from there, but sadly, we took no pictures with our new cop friend. Hopefully, we see him next year.

So, huge mugs in hand, we made our way back down Hwy 69. Hey, did you know that Checotah, OK is the home of 2005 American Idol winner, Carrie Underwood?

It sure is! Now, don't go fucking up Tony Romo's fantasy football numbers!

We gratefully made it back across the border without any Oklahoma incident and made a stop off at Watsonburger in Sherman. Now, that was good eats

So good, you didn't even mind that they had Mr. Hankie, the Christmas Poo painted on their window.

What's so funny, Julie?

Ok, seriously, what's so fucking funny? We never did find out.

You know what is funny though?

What's the opposite of Magnums?

Surprisingly, we did not see many cars on the road driving back from Rocklahoma (no shoe polish on the windows, proclaiming "Rocklahoma or Bust" or anything like that). However, we did see one familiar face:

Mark Slaughter had to get back home for the workweek as well. Glad to know we weren't the only working stiffs that had to get back that night.

There's no story here. Just Wiley sans hat.

We made it back home though (well, Wiley's house, that is), safe and sound. A bit tired, but not too tired to take some final pictures.

This was our most photogenic picture.

Step 1: Cut a hole in the Mug
Step 2: Put your junk in that Mug
Step 3: Make her open the Mug

So that's it. I can't thank everyone enough for continuing to read this. I've really enjoyed writing this and really appreciate all the positive comments. While this is it for Rocklahoma 2007, stay tuned for next year. In the meantime, I'm gonna be going back through and recounting Heather's and my trip to Bonnaroo with our friends Jad and Alisa. I don't know if I can replicate the magic of Rocklahoma, but please believe me when I say you will not be disappointed. Check back soon!