Atlantis to Interzone - Klaxons - Xan Valleys EP - 2006

So I guess I've strung you guys along long enough with the tale of the third guy who broke his hand punching me in the face...incidentally, this was also the last time I was punched in the face.

As I've probably mentioned on this blog before (I'm too lazy to check) I worked as a summer camp counselor for several summers in my late teens/early twenties. My second summer there, I was twenty and was generally having a pretty great time. For those that have never worked at a summer camp, you are basically locked into a 24 hour a day, 6 day a week microcosm with a lot of hormonally overdriven other teenagers and given the responsibility to care for children. You get nearly no sleep and even less pay, but on the plus side you spend a lot of time with hot and sweaty college girls.

One of the girls at the camp was a crazy Irish girl who drove most of the boys mad. She was a mess of curly hair and long freakled legs and evil manipulations, she knew all the boys wanted her and that she could get whatever she wanted without giving much in return...and mostly what she wanted was attention.

So one day, her non-camp employed boyfriend came tearing into camp on a motorcycle, convinced (not unreasonably) that his girl was not being entirely faithful to him. Much drama ensued and at the end of the fight, the guy swore that if she didn't follow him out, he was going to kill himself. When she refused to acqueise, he tore off on his motorcycle, making a rather sad show of ditching it in the gravel to give some authenticity to his "suicide" attempt.

Now this is where it gets complicated...for insurance reasons, because he had made a suicide attempt on city property, the camp was not allowed to let him leave the premises until the paramedics arrived to examine him, but because he had tried to commit suicide on 2 prior occassions (Probably each time with the same level of seriousness) one more reported attempt meant that he would have to stay at an inpatient pysch facility for 2 weeks for evaluation. For this reason, he certainly did not want to be detained for long enough for the authorities to arrive.

To prevent his leaving, the camp director gathered the 4 biggest guys in the camp...of which I was one (ok, I was the smallest of the 4, but I still made the list) and had us surround him to keep him from getting back on his bike. Now keep in mind that 3 of the 4 of us had some kind of history with the crazy girl...so we weren't exactly viewing this douchebag as a guy to be respected. Seeing that he was surrounded, he decided to try to fight his way out...and the way to go was through the smallest of the 4 guys. Unfortunately for him, his punch landed right on the point of my chin breaking three fingers in the process. The pretty much put an end to the fight.

Incidentally, I ended up running into the crazy Irish girl years later in NYC. Not much had changed. We had a 6 month spell of quasi-dating/sexually charged friendship that ended in a bar fight...but that's a story for another time.

I enjoy the energy of Klaxons...you definitely don't want to listen to them before you've had your first cup of coffee...but they'll get you going.