So you want to know about Ozzfest? (C’mon, I know you do…).
Well what can I say other than it was loud and smelly and hot and utterly enthralling in a people-watching sort of way.
We had free tix so neither Cory nor I felt too obligated to check out many of the bands. In fact we basically only watched Rob Zombie who is very entertaining – though he is starting to look a bit weathered.

So yeah…people watching – isn’t that what this is really all about? If we had paid for our tickets I’d say we got the most entertainment out of the food line alone where I was almost certain we were going to get caught in a riot after they started shutting down registers for no apparent reason.

We had this guy in front of us (wearing a shirt featuring a frog resting on a block of ice and the word “chill”) who was threatening to beat up the poor $5.25-an-hour food service workers. We had two yahoos in back of us who just wanted to get their beer and get it now. There was a family of four to the right of us arguing about the merits of chili cheese nachos versus garlic fries and then there was the guy to the right of them who punched his hand through the freaking window because the service was too slow.

The guy was wearing Scooby Doo shorts so it was a bit difficult taking him seriously even when he did have blood dripping down his arm.

My favorite moment of the day, however, was watching Eve the dominatrix torture the preppy boy wearing Abercrombie & Fitch boxers.

Witness this little charming tableau:

“What is this?” asks Eve as she examines the top of a pair of underwear peeking out from the waistband of the young college-age boy she has just chained up to a giant velvet and metal-studded X.
“Abercrombie & Fitch? Who wears Abercrombie & Fitch boxers?”
Eve tugs at the designer skivvies so that they hang over the top of his jeans. “I hate Abercrombie & Fitch! Just for that you’re going to be a girl.”
With that Eve – who was not wearing much more than vinyl and mesh underwear herself, takes a tube of bright red lipstick and smears it into two bright clown-like circles on the young man’s cheeks.
He smiles and his friends - who’ve pooled their money to treat their buddy to such behavior and are now watching from a (safe) distance - roar with approval.
Eve just shrugs, pulls out a thin whip and prepares to get down to business.

God, it was beautiful. Just beautiful.

But hey, if preppy boy S&M ain’t your thing then Karen Charman has an interesting Alternet article on Recasting the Web: Information Commons to Cash Cow” where she examines the evolving business-consumer dynamics of the Web:

The Internet itself is not going away. Rather, technological advancements, changes to the rules governing its use and the continued consolidation of media empires are combining to turn it into a conduit of commerce, booby-trapped with barriers and incentives designed to keep users where dollars can be wrung from them. As a result, a lot of freely accessible information and websites may become difficult or impossible to connect to -- hindering the efforts of those posting that information to reach others.

And, somewhere along the same greedy lines, Billboard reports that the Recording Industry Association of America is blaming web piracy for a 10 percent drop in CD shipments during the first six months of 2002.

“While the RIAA acknowledges that other factors, such as the decline in consumer spending, played a role in falling music sales, president Cary Sherman says illegal downloading is the main culprit. "Cumulatively, this data should dispel any notion that illegal file sharing helps the music industry," Sherman says in a statement.”

Gee, you don’t suppose high prices and music that just generally sucks had anything to do with it?
Now that many major retailers are starting to offer new CDs by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and the Vines at dramatically-reduced prices during the first few days/ weeks of sale it will be interesting to see if there’s any change in consumer habits.