Sasquatch! Music Festival, Part III: This Is A Story ‘Bout Billy Berue & Connie Bigs

I call my wife Connie Bigslob. Connie Bigs, or CBS for short. Not behind her back, but straight to her adorable face. I don’t do it out of spite or because I’m a dick, although I’m kind of a dick. It’s also not because she’s a big slob.
Connie Bigslob is actually an anagram of Nicole Gibbons. She goes by Nicole McMorrow now, but I bestowed this nickname upon her a long time ago. Back when she still used her maiden name and thought she had more than enough time to do better than me. Before she decided to settle for less, if you will. Which I really hope you won’t. That’s a horrible thing to say to a person.

So don’t think I mean it in a derogatory fashion, because it is a loving term of endearment. I also call her Muffinstumps and Banana Bread Head, but that isn’t germane to this story.

Man, how does a grown boy get so tired?

Well if you’ve been following along with Part One and Part Two of this story, you have a basic idea. I’m exhausted just writing about it. I still can’t fully believe we lived through it.

Day Two of Sasquatch started like any other day. I opened my eyes, and quietly congratulated myself on not dying in my sleep. I don’t want to say that makes me a hero, but that’s kind of what heroes do, right? Not die from an aneurysm during nap time? Alright, so I’m kind of a hero, whatever. That’s not even the point of the story.

We went down to the lobby to score another delicious free breakfast, compliments of the Holiday Inn Express. I brought a tape measure to figure out the dimensions of the pancake machine I hoped to abscond with at some point during our stay. Connie Bigs always likes to know the logistics of any heist that I ask her to pull off with me, before I yell, “Go Time!!”. It’s a professional move that all the top-notch grifters in the high stakes world of culinary capers do, and my baby lady is the tippiest-toppest of notches.

But when we arrived at the breakfast area it was jam-packed with people, much to our chagrin. Not only were there a lot of people there, some of those people were children. Yeah, I know, right? Obviously we were like, “What the fuck is going on here?”. Apparently “the fuck” that was going on was a big softball tournament. We went to the front desk and demanded to speak to the manager. When he came out of his lair, I asked him if it was hotel policy to allow children into the building. He said that there were rules expressly forbidding pets, weapons, and smoking, but nothing about children not being allowed on the property. I then asked him if he was sure.

He was.

I did get him to concede the fact that children are an insurance liability due to their constant inability to not do dumb shit all the time. Or maybe I’m making that up. Either way, he wouldn’t tell them all to take a fuckin’ hike for us, so we had to actually eat amongst them. With their giggles, cherubic faces and sunny dispositions. It was absolutely disgusting.

The gates opened at noon for the last three days of the festival. We decided that we were just going to go for some comedy shows that we wanted to see. Nancy and Beth, which is a musical duo with actresses Megan Mullally and Stephanie Hunt. We also wanted to see Kyle Kinane and Nick Offerman do some stand up comedy. Three, maybe four hours tops. We planned to be there all day on Sunday and Monday, so an early Saturday sounded perfect after a late Friday. Listen, I’m forty-something, not twenty-nothing. I need my rest sometimes. We headed out from the hotel around two o’clock under cloudy skies.

By the time we had reached The Gorge it had become bright and sunny. We really lucked out with the weather. I heard that it was cold and rainy pretty much all weekend at home. But it was sunny almost the whole time at Sasquatch. Which works out good, because I like to get a nice tan going before I get horrifically sunburned. Even with multiple liberal applications of SPF-Irish, I still have a tendency to turn a nice shade of ouch.

When we arrived for day two, we were pleasantly surprised to find no traffic. We pulled right into Day Parking and high-fived each other like cool people are prone to do. Uncool people sometimes high-five each other too. We are definitely among the former and not the latter, though. I think. We made the six-minute walk down to the entrance and Day two was officially underway. One of the best things about a music festival, besides all the music, is watching all the people. The weird people, the drunk people, the weird drunk people. All of them.

The worst part is, with five stages going at once, you are bound to miss some good bands. Which happened to us a few times during the weekend. That’s the nature of the music festival business. You can’t see them all. So sometimes you have to just accept the things you cannot change, and have the courage to listen to the bands you do not know. Like it says in the bible. Not that bible, the other one.

We went to Customer Service for the VIP platform bracelets, and unlike the first day, they were there this time. We made small talk with the same girls that helped us before and then headed to the Yeti stage to check out Nancy and Beth. If you ever get the chance to see them live, I would strongly recommend that you do. They did a great version of the George Jones classic He Stopped Loving Her Today, as well as a sick cover of Riskay’s Country Club Classic Smell Yo Dick I totally had to Google that.
Unfortunately my arms get tired due to my advanced age and I can’t hold my iPhone up for more than 53 seconds at a time. If I could, I would have continued filming and you would have seen Nick Offerman, who is married to Megan Mullally, come out and do the rap at the end of the song. I can’t remember how it goes exactly, but I think it was something like, “No, you can’t smell my dick, bitch”. But that’s just an educated guess.
They put on a really good show. Great voices and very funny between song, and mid song, banter.
This dude was actually dancing around next to us during their set, so I decided to record him. I’m glad I did, because just watching him makes me giggle. Good memories.
After their set we headed over to the El Chupacabra tent for the stand up shows. We got there about five minutes before Kyle Kinane took the stage. He came out on stage and opened with, “How the fuck are you Coachella? You want to know how to piss off a shitload of nerds at one time? Fuck up the name of their music festival!” Then he spent ten minutes ripping on all the freaks there. He was fucking great. He did a solid fifty minutes and killed it. As he was winding down his set, the tent quickly filled up for Nick Offerman. Beloved by legions of fans for his portrayal of Ron Swanson on the NBC show Parks & Recreation, he drew a huge crowd.

Shortly before he took the stage, a younger boy right in front of us fired up a blunt, just like Snoop Doggy Dogg Lion y would have done. Now, the good people of Washington state voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana last November, along with the level-headed residents of Colorado. So people were smoking reefer weeds all over the place at The Gorge with no fuckin’ hassles from the man. That’s the way America should be. It is absolutely insane that we lock people up for smoking marijuana in a place we call “The Land of the Free”. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

But I can drink my face off at a bar and get behind the wheel of a car and kill a family of five? Hypothetically speaking. I have never actually done that. The killing people part. Driving drunk? Sure, I used to do that occasionally. every single night, back in my younger days.

Lil’ Snoop turned around to us and said something along the lines of, “Would you two like to partake in my time-honored. religiously accepted, and voter approved peace-offering?”, or maybe it was, “Want some?”.

Not wanting to come off as a couple of troglodytes , we graciously accepted. After a couple of rips off of the goods, we settled in for some comedy.

But then it happened. I got wigged out. The crowd around us was packing in and there wasn’t much maneuvering room. It was hot and I had wicked bad cottonmouth, dude. I made a comment to Connie Bigs that if the crowd started crushing forward, she should jump over the barricade and save herself, don’t worry about me.

Of course that comment did not have the intended effect, or maybe it did. I don’t know. I was fuckin’ high. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the people that got crushed to death at The Who concert that time. Naturally, she started getting freaked out too. She told me later that she kept thinking, “Is that gonna happen? It’s a comedy show, not a rock concert. How am I going to get over the barricade? Can I make it over the barricade? What the fuck. Bill?!!”

About ten minutes into Nick Offerman’s set, she turned to me and said, “I think I need to leave.”

I looked around at the sea of people and said, “I don’t think we can get out right now. Are you okay?”

She confirmed to me that she wasn’t okay by any stretch of the imagination, and she really needed to get out of the tent post-haste. So I turned around, took the love of my life by the hand, lowered my head, and big boy shoulder pushed our way out to the welcoming whoosh of fresh air.

We sat on the grass outside the tent and CBS wasn’t looking good. I said, “Do you think that younger boy slipped us some PCP in that blunt?” She gave me a weak chuckle, so at least she was trying. A for effort, Bigs!

I told her to sit right there and I would go get something to drink. I ran over to one of the vendors and got two bottles of water. The girl wouldn’t let me have the caps to the bottles, due to venue policy. I understand that it must suck to have to clean up all those bottle caps, but try running with two open bottles of water through crowds of people when you may or may no be fucked up on PCP. It’s an athletic endeavor.

When I returned to Connie Bigs with the water she drank some and still didn’t feel that great. She said she felt like an asshole walking out during the show. I said, “Who gives a shit? We’re still here, we can still hear him. Lets just sit on the grass, listen to some comedy, and trip chill the fuck out.”

So that’s what we did, and it was excellent. After about fifteen minutes, Connie said she was cold. I said that it may be because we were sitting directly in the shade from the port-a-potties. We laughed at that for a while. It’s good to laugh. Everything was better. Connie Bigs said something about maybe not telling people about what big pussies we were. I told her that I was totally writing about it. She said, “Oh, you definitely have to”, and so I did.

We watched the end of Nick Offerman’s show from outside of the tent. Nancy and Beth joined him onstage for a mashup of Hits From The Bong and Son Of A Preacher Man. It was fantastic. We hung out for another hour or so and then headed back out to the parking lot. We chilled out at the car for about half of an hour or so, taking in the scenery, smoking butts, and cracking each other up. We do that a lot. That’s why Connie Bigslob is my sweet beautiful baby lady.

We left early enough to drive back to Wenatchee in the daylight. During sunset actually. It was phenomenal. I have never felt so small and insignificant in my entire life as I did on the drive to and from The Gorge Amphitheatre. It is incredibly beautiful in the daylight, unbelievably breathtaking at sunset, and absolutely fucking terrifying in the dead of night.

Up Next. Part IV: Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends