Half Hearts and Korn - A Wrecktrospective

The following story takes place in July of 2005...

First some background information. I graduated high school in 2003 at the ripe old age of 17. Sometime in 2004 I was kicked out of my moms house because at the time she was bat shit crazy controlling and didn't like that I was 3 houses down at my buddy's past 9pm or whatever. For sure the words, "but I'm 18 now mom, I don't have to listen to you" were uttered. She basically said come home now, or don't bother ever coming back. So I grabbed my very few possessions (a bed and a dresser) and bailed. I ended up setting up shop in my friend Nathan and Jay's apartment in the living room. It was also around this time I quit my job at a grocery store and started working for the plumbing company I currently work for, driving around parts and stuff. Basically I had to wake up at 6am every morning, and living in a living room of a bunch of 19 year olds party apartment was a little counterproductive. I didn't want to be a turd, but staying up until 4am every night just wasn't working. Sure, I could do 1 or 2am here and there, but there were several times I fell asleep while driving on the freeway only to wake up a few miles down the road like, dude what the fuck? It was fucking scary. So when the lease on their place was up, I casually mentioned "hey, lets get Kevin his own bedroom, huh?"

We moved into a 3 bedroom apartment in Oceanside and continued our shitty existence. Drinking and Top Ramen and more drinking. Once we forgot to pay the electricity bill and instead of fixing it, we filled the kitchen sink with ice and beer and said, "this will do." Another time we ran out of alcohol, and sat on the back porch smoking cigarettes and drinking mouth wash. What I'm trying to tell you is we were those piece shit youths, enjoying being out on our own in the big bad world.

2005 was a pretty embarrassing year for me musically. Have you ever gone back and listened to music you used to be stoked on and just shuddered? Look, I liked good music as well, but for every Hot Water Music there was a Rufio. For every Against Me! there was From Autumn To Ashes. Let's just say I felt right at home and was legitimately stoked for Warped Tour 2004 and 05.

A random Tuesday in July I made my almost weekly trip to Lou's records to blindly buy some CD's, because that's what I did. This was pre-internet band stuff. If you wanted to find new bands you read the thank you section of the liner notes or bought a compilation CD. Never heard this band, but fuck it, they are on this record label, or I saw another band wear their shirt, so I'll probably enjoy it. One of the CD's I bought was Paradise, Found by a band called Fight Paris. They were on Trustkill records, so how bad could they be? The answer was very, very bad, but I didn't know that yet. The only thing I knew about the band before hand was they liked Rock N' Roll, partying and fucking. (The opening track of the album is called Fuck Me Stilettos and starts with the classy line, "Damn right that sluts my bitch, she fucking sucked my god damn..." Seriously. Those are the words they chose to start their album.) I bought a good handful of CD's that day, so I didn't have a chance to even listen to it before later that same night we get a phone call from a friend of a friend who says "this band called Fight Paris just played a show and needs a place to stay tonight." I was pumped. Fuck yes, this band who's CD I just bought wants to stay at our place? And they party? I Party! Let's do it! (This was before I got into the DIY scene, and realized most bands you can drink with and talk to. But for young 19 year old Kevin, this was amazing.)

So these fucking guys and our friend and some random lady who called us show up at our apartment. First thing I notice is one of the band members is missing. "Isn't there 5 of you guys?" I inquire. "Yeah, but (so and so) won't leave the van because she (points to the girl) said she won't fuck him tonight." And so the night begins. These so called party animals brought a 24 pack of Coors Light, so there was that. One of the guys saw our Nintendo 64 we had hooked up and immediately challenged Nathan to a game of NFL Blitz, and proceeded to get his ass whooped for half an hour until he finally just gave up. Meanwhile, I was talking to one of the band members and he was explaining how "yeah, they like to party hard" and they even made a band shirt out of the Coors Light logo. "You see, Fight is in the Coors font and Paris is in the Light font, like their logo, but its our name!" Riveting. It was around this point I looked at Jay and saw the glossed over bored look in his eyes too, and he nodded at me. It was time to liven up this party. "Who wants to do shots?" Of course everybody said yeah, because if you didn't know by now, they party. I had a handle of Captain Morgan for reasons unknown to me, so we pour out the shots for everyone, and I take the bottle since we ran our of shot glasses. We do the standard cheers, they take their shots and I take a drink from the bottle. And I keep drinking, and keep drinking, and keep drinking. Everyone looks on in horror as I chug the rest of the bottle of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum. Why did I do this? No idea, I was 19 years old, one month away from 20. Logic wasn't exactly my strong suite.

I woke up the next morning at around 9 or 10. Head pounding. Eyes blurry. I was a good 3 or 4 hours late for work, so I grabbed my phone and called in sick (the only time I have ever done that!) I had the urgent need to puke and pee, hopefully not at the same time, so I headed to the bathroom as fast as I could. Something looked strange as I ran through the hallway, but I didn't have time to check it out because as soon as I crossed the threshold into the bathroom I started spewing. When I was finished, I headed back to check out the damage. There was no sign of the band, there were beer cans everywhere, and the empty bottle of Captain Morgan was in the grass downstairs. OK. I headed back to my room to see what had caught my eye earlier, there were red hand prints all over the hallway walls. It looked like a scene from a zombie movie. Fuck it, I didn't have time to worry about that right then, so I went back and laid down. Only something was off. Everything was sticky. And red. I ran back to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to see I was completely covered in fake blood and sharpie. Then my phone rang. It was work, I absolutely had to come in because I had an appointment that day to get my brakes fixed by our mechanic. Fuck.

I had a few flashes of what happened the night before and the rest I pieced together from stories. It started out on the patio smoking cigarettes. Our down stairs neighbor (I believe his name either was, or we just called him Ed for some reason) came out to do his nightly ritual of coughing really loud while smoking and creeping in the parking lot. Apparently I had enough because I just screamed at him to shut the fuck and go away and threw the empty Captain Morgan bottle at him because I still had it in my hand for some reason. It must have been around that time the band told me to calm down because apparently I yelled at them (and Jay still quotes this to this day) "Or what? Is Fight Paris going to have to Fight Kevin?" Look, I had almost a gallon of disgusting Captain Morgan slowly shutting down my brain, wasn't exactly on my A game. I have no idea how long I stayed on my feet, but I did briefly unblackout to everyone in my room and I was talking to the guy with dreadlocks about shitty tattoos (I had just gotten my first tattoo like a week before, just the outline of the heart on my wrist, and half of it fell out, so I was kind of regretting it) when he pulled up his shirt and showed me his Korn logo tramp stamp, and I realized, maybe it wasn't so bad. Then nothing. Apparently Jay had to hold my dick so I could piss all over everything in the bathroom (thanks Jay!) and then I finally passed the fuck out. It was about this time the band decided to sign me, and found a bottle of fake blood in my room (don't know why it was there) and emptied it all over me*.

Lesson learned: Know about a band before you let them stay at your house, or you might succumb to alcohol poisoning or worse, absolute boredom.

After I finally got around to listening to this bands album, I realized even then in the midst of my darkest days musically, that they fucking sucked. Both as people and musicians. Seriously, that album was fucking terrible. I think a few years later the band broke up, only to fade away into absolute obscurity. Thank fucking Jesus.


*About 6 years after the fake blood incident, I bought a new mattress, and when they came to take my old one away, had a fucking blast explaining the giant human shaped blood stain. In all fairness though, I'm pretty sure the sketchy mattress people didn't even fucking care.