how did you pass your new years day?

so my cousin went to highschool with cedric and omar back in el paso. he remained friends with cedric but never talked to omar much. so he texts cedric about the show they'll be having in san francisco on new years day and cedric replies, "dude come on over... i'll get you backstage passes."

the only thing required was that we wore a costume. my cousin bought himself and i a mask for the show but on the plane to l.a. i forgot my mask. i asked one of the attendants and one of the pilots overheard and said, "oh, yeah i saw the mask." so he goes looking for it... no luck. we arrived at san francisco and first think we do is look for a mask. no luck, either. so we buy paint for a paint-mask. i ended up looking like a cross from the dude of The Crowe and a pro-wrestler. we get to the show and go back stage and met cedric. first thing cedric noticed, was of course, my costume... totally freaked out. so i later washed it off...

anyway... the mars volta were fucking insane. i got a couple of shots on my cell phone of their performance... but sadly, i got a cheap phone and i couldn't zoom in a little closer. regardless, we were enjoying the show on stage.

later after the show my cousin and i were drained from our trip and it was already 2 a.m on Jan 1. and our plane was set to leave in about 4 hours. later, we chilled with the mars volta in their dressing room. my cousin was totally giving cedric shit about how horrible he used to try to mimic parry farrel... it was so unreal... i never hung out with rock stars like that.

then my cousin tells cedric that our plane would leave like in 3 hours so he's like, "ok, so what are you gonna do in the next 4 hours? sit and stare at the wall?" then my cousin's like, "no. i'll alternate with the ceiling." cedric just laughs it off and persuades us to go chill with him at his room.

so we did. (who the hell is ever gonna pass on that?) so we head onto the van with cedric, omar and a few other friends of the mars volta. as we're exiting the building i was right behind cedric and suddenly right before us were a pack of swarming fans screaming out to cedric asking for autographs (omar managed to sneak into the van unnoticed). my cousin and i were right behind cedric trying to believe what was just happening.

later we get to the room and it was about 4:15... the room was packed with d.j. shadow, other musicians and a few 2 or 3 groupies. one of which was our friend that went along with us. (crazy thing was our friend was the only real hot girl of all those groupies).

anyways... so i'm sitting their in the room next to cedric and they start rolling a joint. then he offers me some and so i'm like, "no, thanks." then my cousin tried to say no, but he was totally suckered in. then a few of the other groupies that were there go up to us and introduce themselves to us.... i knew they were thinking we were musicians but my cousin and i were like, "nah, we're just friends with cedric."

15 min later we had to say goodbye... called for a taxi that took us back to the airport. and on the plane we were totally bummed about not getting an extra day to stay in san francisco. crazy times... i'll never forget it.