oh Fest, you exist only to make me jealous

The main line-up for this year's Fest was just announced. Sure it's in October, but who cares? Gosh, I really need to go someday. And you can bet I'm not going alone either. If you don't know what Fest is, it's basically a punk rock festival that is too awesome to have a proper name. It's right here in our very own punk rock powerhouse town of Gainesville. And by punk rock, I mean cool punk rock, not lame mohawk stuff. But knowing me, you can probably figure that out. Anyway, the line-up is AMAZING. As always it's got some of my all time favorites; Against Me!, Hot Water Music, Banner Pilot, Teenage Bottlerocket, Samiam, Lifetime, Bouncing Souls, The Menzingers, Chris Wollard, Red City Radio, The Riot Before, Make Do and Mend, Carpenter, Tigers Jaw, etc. etc. etc.

Now for the serious rant of my entry today. Last night I had nothing else to do so I turned on my TV set and flipped through channels. Eventually I found something that actually didn't involve guidas or naked teenagers. It's this show on A&E called Beyond Scared Straight. It's based on a 1970s documentary that was similarly called Scared Straight. On the show, it has these kids who are juvenile delinquents. Ya know, the kind you see at school who sell/take drugs, are alcoholics, involved in robbery and fights, stuff like that. They're taken to an actual prison with people who started in the same place as them. The prisoners knock sense into them, or at least try to. Look up some stuff on Youtube or Wikipedia and then come back here. Beyond Scared Straight isn't as harsh as the documentary it's based off of. It's definitely got less berating from the prisoners and less cursing, among other things.

Now that I've set the stage for you, I bring us to the actual point I wanted to make. People have had complaints about this series/documentary. They say it's too "rough" on the kids. I don't mean to be rude, but what the wocka flocka(*I'm making an attempt to not use foul language anymore. So I have to use baby words from now on. Bear with me.) are they thinking? "Rough" is the only way to snap those kids out of the path they're on. They won't listen to adults who say, "Oh I have a good career and I never was involved in crime." They don't care. Because they aren't aware of consequences and still see themselves having a good future. That, or they want street cred and try to be hard. Those kids have to listen to some guy that has been in prison for 30 years tell them that they're making the same mistakes as him. They need to hear that guy scream in their faces and tell them that they're nothing but soft messes trying to be hardcore. Why? Simply because it's the only way they will listen. That prisoners' past is their future, if they don't start changing for the better. It might seem rough to quiet kids like us. But for all those delinquents, its the only way they'll start changing. Not all kids change by the end of the show. In my opinion, if they don't change after seeing all those things, there isn't much hope left except leaving it to God.

One of the things that got to me about this whole thing is that I know quite a few people that should be on there. I shouldn't be saying that. Whatever happened to having an innocent childhood? Don't give me some BS answer. You choose who you want to be. There's no actual excuse for crime. A lot of days I go home feeling sick because all I ever hear is people going, "Oh man, let's get drunk on Saturday! And then let's get high!" There's so much more to live for than that. You don't need to depend on being a criminal.

I might write more over this later. I want to write over marijuana (in which I'm totally going to rage. Don't even get me started right now.) and Christianity in prisons. See ya next entry.