UPDATE 2:03AM: I hardly drank at all this weekend — three beers Thursday, two Friday, three yesterday and one today — but I’ve got a Palm open now writing on the deck where I’m staying and the moon is two days past blue but still bright enough to obscure most of the stars. Could be worse. Easily.

While I’ve still got my adrenaline up from Iron Man ending off Stoner Hands of Doom XII at the El ‘n’ Gee in New London, Connecticut, I wanted to take a couple minutes out and note one more time what a tremendous experience this was, covering the fest front to back like this for all four days. It’s been wild, tiring, exciting, tiring again, also wild, though still tiring, but most of all it’s reinforced in me what’s most enjoyable about SHoD, and that’s the sincerity and passion with which it’s put together and presented.

On that note, I owe thanks to Rob Levey, to Cheryl Levey and to Connie Crader and the whole SHoD crew, who were gracious enough to change out shirt sizes from the raffle box (no way that size large Pilgrim shirt is getting over my head, let alone onto my body thereafter), to everyone I met along the way, especially Johnny Vomit, whose counsel was both wise and vehement, Pete and Chris, Davis Zaius, and all who came up and said hey, that they’d read my stuff before or were keeping up with these posts over the course of the four days. Of course Evil Fanny, whose legacy goes without saying. Joe Wood, whose class continues to boggle my mind. The list of awesome bands pretty much reads like the whole feature itself, so I’ll let that stand, but it was great of course to see Negative Reaction, Admiral Browning, Curse the Son, Summoner, Roadsaw, John Wilkes Booth, Black Thai, Infernal Overdrive, Ichabod, Revelation, Akris, Devil to Pay, Kin of Ettins, Black Cowgirl, Elder, Black Pyramid, on and on of old and new friends. I lift my quickly depleting Palm in your honor and hope that if I left you out, you’ll understand that it’s only because I’m terrible and please forgive my terribleness. Whether I mentioned you or not, thank you for reading.

Last but not least — actually it’s first, if we’re using my heart as the metric — thank you to my loving wife, The Patient Mrs., without whose indulgences conceptual, practical and financial, none of this would be possible. Ever. She continues to astound on a daily basis more than I have words to say, and as I sit and listen to the ocean roll in and my pulse rate finally seems to be coming down, I can barely begin to express my astonishment and appreciation. If anyone out there is reading this, I’m the luckiest boy you know.

Tomorrow I’ll try to hit up some of the days’ worth of emails and Facebook messages I’ve neglected to this point, but other than that, it’ll be persistent vegetative state as much as I can possibly get away with it. We’ll resume some measure of normality on Tuesday, and I may have some more general SHoD-based observations throughout the week — if nothing else there are more pictures I want to post — but this’ll officially end the “Total Coverage” feature for Stoner Hands of Doom XII, so once more and as always, thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.

Tags: SHoD, SHoD 2012, SHoD XII, SHoD XII Total Coverage, Stoner Hands of Doom, Stoner Hands of Doom 2012, Stoner Hands of Doom XII

This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2012 at 1:41 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.