Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, St. Louis

It is inevitable that a music festival would fall on the hottest day of the summer. And it is fitting, not in a cruel sense bent on torturing innocuous fans, but in terms of what a festival is about. Though writers, publicists and even attendees themselves may regale us with stories about how festivals offer tiny moments of transcendence, in sharing a bowl with the couple from Iowa camped next door, or singing along to the epic chorus of the main stage's headliner with 10,000 of your closest friends, they are all lying.

A music festival does not offer transcendence; on a good day it will be fun and you will get mildly buzzed and maybe even make out in the grass while Spoon plays and that'll be 50 percent pretty cool. On an average day, however, it will be hot and muggy and unattractive people will seem to breed like rabbits and worse, remove clothing as the day goes on. There is nothing poetic about sweating together with thousands of people; it just starts to smell really, really bad. And it is with this disclaimer that I will now tell you about Warped Tour.

There were seven stages the day I attended: the two main stages, Lucky, and 13 (which will serve much confusion throughout the day), and the smaller Smartpunk.com, Ernie Ball, Hot Topic, Hurley, and Hurley.com stages. Why Hurley and its website deserved separate stages, the world may never know, however this is perhaps not the place for an ill-advised rant against the commercialization of punk music; we are, after all, at the Vans Warped Tour and everyone here loves Boys Like Girls.   

Speaking of those bands, this year's bill for Warped Tour seems to boast no large household names like Fall Out Boy, and all those other bands that ignorant people seem to point to when they claim they hate "Emo." In fact, this year's tour organizers decided to change the order of the tour's lineup each day, negating any point of announcing headliners. Red Jumpsuit Apparatus is allowed to play an extra 10 minutes due to fan votes, but I have a feeling it's not quite the same as saying My Chemical Romance is playing the main stage. This is what Warped Tour's 13^th Year has done to me within 10 minutes of arriving and perusing the day's lineup: I find myself pining for a "Helena" sing-along.           

I am accompanied by two of my braver friends, and the heat is sufficiently draining enough that we walk around for the first hour aimlessly, like zombies at the mall in Dawn of the Dead. Everyone around us seems to be reacting to the 100+ degree temperatures similarly, with the occasional chick in arm bands passing out every so often. Though the youth of this crowd would suggest otherwise (I imagine alcohol vendors do terrible business on this tour; the only people old enough to be buying are parents accompanying their 13 year old kids), everyone appears to be devoid of energy.

We stop by The Fabulous Rudies at the Hurley stage and a tiny crowd of about 50 onlookers listlessly watching, and only about five kids (god bless ‘em for their spirit) struggling to skank. I almost want to commend them for trying, but all of a sudden I remember that I hate third-wave ska. We move on.         

The walkways are lined with vendors as far as the eye can see. Each act on the tour has its own stall, as well as countless other sponsors hawking colorful studded belts and skull-printed apparel. It's easy to bash the tour for its unabashed commercialism, but everyone here seems to embrace it so fully that it could be that the tour organizers are just giving the kids what they want. Fans don't just want to buy a tour-only Chiodos shirt, they expect that they will have the option. If Cute Is What We Aim For weren't allowed to sell purses, I would anticipate a riot.          

We decide to watch The Spill Canvas, described by one of my companions as "a band that probably listened to a lot of Deep Elm bands in high school, and maybe even owned a couple of the Emo Diaries comps, but whose music has been filtered down so many times and through so many different channels that it just kinda sucks." I tend to agree, and though there was once a time when a band could name their album No Really, I'm Fine or Sunsets and Car Crashes and it would be epic and awesome, we seem to have passed that era. If anything, the few and far between decent guitar riffs that emanate from the Hurley stage don't hint at hope for progress, but seem to exacerbate just how far downhill the term ‘emo' has really come. I want to cry and go put on some Cap'n Jazz, but then I realize that's exactly what I'm expected to do and it's about around this time that my head really starts to hurt and I regret drinking so many Red Bulls.          

Temporary and slight relief from the heat comes under the shade of the giant amphitheatre. In our addled state, we sit down for what we think is k-OS, but is actually P.O.S, a similarly named act who also happens to be one of Warped Tours obligatory hip-hop acts. Similar to his "punk," "grind," and "emo" brethren, P.O.S wears his influences on his sleeve, with his voice and delivery emulating first Nas, then Twista, and even Talib Kweli. "How many of you have never been to a hip-hop show," he asks. Dozens raise their hands. "Alright, this is what you do," the rapper continues, and he begins to wave his hands in the air with only a few half-heartedly following him. Later, after his equipment has broken down and he starts on an anti-Bush bashing rant, P.O.S will make perhaps what is the truest and most disheartening comment about Warped Tour all day. After an offhand comment, he catches himself and remarks, "Wait, all of you guys are too young to know about Fugazi."                      

New Found Glory plays on the Lucky stage and the crowd is immense. Suddenly it's the early 2000's again and Orange County pop-punk rules MTV. I find myself knowing all the words to most songs, and fuck it; I loved this shit when I was younger, as did everyone else. It just so happens that I grew out of this and apparently people who go to Warped Tour every year never did. We lose the more daring member of our party who leaves to go crowd surf during a cover of "Kiss Me." NFG closes with "My Friend's Over You," and it rules just as hard as it did in 2002, which further contributes to my theory that Warped Tour is about giving the people what they want. Apparently the band's released a new album recently, but I doubt many in the audience ever got past Sticks and Bones. Given only 30 minutes to play, each band delivers their few signature hits, maybe a novelty cover if we're lucky, and everyone's happy, except for perhaps New Found Glory themselves, who I'm sure have loved playing the same set everyday for the past five years of their lives.        

After New Found Glory and a much-needed snow cone, our party travels to the other main stage, 13, to watch Chiodos. An interesting development amongst the Myspace/Hot Topic crowd is the increasing proliferation of young girls claiming they like grindcore, post-hardcore, or whatever HORSE the Band claims they are this week. To paraphrase a friend, you can tell how good a grind or metal band is by the size their t-shirts come in. Real metal is fat ugly dudes who only buy shirts XL or larger; if you can get a women's babydoll, the band probably sucks. Chiodos is a member of the latter group, although while I am personally not a fan, I'm told the early stuff totally ruled, man.

If anything good comes out of trekking out past the sad little half-pipe erected to try to preserve a shred of the tour's ties to skateboard culture for the set, it's that we notice the wrestling ring off to the side, boasting a Lucha Libre wrestling match in fifteen minutes. After Chiodos finishes, a heavy, black hype man gets on a mic and begins promoting the match, though this generally only involves him asking repeatedly "Do you want to see someone get hit upside the head with a chair?" and creepily pouring ice water on young girls. "Damn, it's hot out here," he observes. "Chocolate's melting, vanilla's melting, even lemon meringue pie's melting," he says, pointing to me. The man is nothing if not politically correct.           

I am in the company of a die-hard wrestling fan, so each wrestler is met with cries of recognition. Unfortunately, these only emanate from said person, and all in all, there are about 10 people watching the match, including the promoter. Little Charlie Manson cleans house, and yes, someone gets hit upside the head with a chair. The wrestlers clearly don't give a shit, blocking their blows quite obviously, but it's understandable given the circumstances. It provides a nice respite from the rest of the day, anyhow, and one of the wrestlers winks at me right before he throws someone. It's all a little surreal.          

The next hour passes by hazily. We watch part of Sum41's set, whose lead singer thanks us for supporting music by coming to Warped. I, not to be outdone, thank him for supporting music by marrying Avril Lavigne. They close with the rap/rock classic "Fat Lip," admirable for its chorus of "I'll never fall in line/ Become a victim of your conformity" and its use of the word "kerbuffin." Pointing out unattractive people is no longer funny by this point, just stomach-churning, and by the time we pass by Meg & Dia covering that god-awful Blind Melon song with the Energizer Bunny, I start to get angry and shake my head vehemently at the grandmother that walks past with blue and green hair.          

We decide on Coheed and Cambria as our last show of the day. One of our party claims them as his guilty pleasure, though when I catch him screaming all the words to each song I begin to suspect their relationship may be a little deeper. We run into acquaintances while waiting for the band to go on, and I am treated to a discussion on the total manliness of lead singer Claudio Sanchez. Of all the crowds we have seen today, this one is perhaps the frattiest, with jaunty baseball caps and American Eagle ringer tees in abundance. (Unsurprising, perhaps, given the band's over the top prog-rock leanings.) I am hoping that an all-out brawl will ensue between those who wear Hot Topic and Abercrombie, but given that the two stores are owned by the same company, it ends up being more like that the family baseball player and the family misfit have decided to put aside their differences and mosh in the pit together. Aww.        

It's perhaps during this set that I'm at my worst; I'm tired, sweaty, and I'm being jostled by people who don't really know how to hardcore dance at all, but nonetheless find ways to punch me in the face. I want to go home; I want this to be over. I will admit that I did not come to Warped Tour with the purest of intentions; I thought it'd be a laugh, and I thought it'd be a little fun at other people's expense. But shit stopped being funny after about a full two minutes and after the 30^th Paramore shirt, you're pretty much desensitized to the point where you can't even make a joke about fat chicks wearing arm-warmers in August. This may have been a mistake.         

And then I see the crowdsurfers. This is not the most experienced crowd; people are dropping left and right and if you're a tall guy, forget about getting past the skinny girl in front of you. And I realize that this may be the perfect way to end this day, being literally let down by this throng of dyed hair. Oh the metaphors. One of my accomplices, now experienced in the ways of crowdsurfing, taps on the shoulders of the two guys in front of us and merely points to the sky. They hoist her up and she disappears. I follow her and I am thrust upwards, being pushed violently from one section to the next, inadvertently kicking a few heads in the process. But they don't drop me. And within ten seconds, I am pushed straight into the arms of a burly security guard whose sole purpose in life is to catch scrawny teenagers; Holden Caulfield should've applied for this job. I am set down quickly, in anticipation of the next kid who will come this way, and I walk away feeling dejected. Is that all there is? I wonder. Shame on me for expecting anything more.            

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm gonna go listen to some Jawbreaker. | Cindy Gao