The Day I Met Linkin Park
I was out and about on Monday afternoon, running some errands with Jessica Honeycutt, when I received a phone call from Steven Green. Steven had just read that Linkin Park was holding a surprise signing for the release of their new album, “Minutes To Midnight”, at 8 PM in Los Angeles, at a store called “SURU”.
A few hours later, Jessica and I arrived at Fairfax High School, just down the street from SURU. Hurrying down the sidewalk, we were shuffled into a long line by some event staff. The way things were to go down were as follows:
-We were to follow the line into the SURU store to purchase the album and receive a wristband.
-We were to then get into a second line for wristband-holders only.
-At 8PM, Linkin Park would arrive and would sign CD’s purchased by anyone with a wristband.
And so Jessica and I began our wait.
All kinds of crazy people showed up. Little kids, teens, moms, dads, old women, rockers, punkers, rappers, blacks, whites, Asians…
I was soon very glad that we arrived when we did. The line backed up behind us fairly quickly.
Here you can see the two lines. The one on the left is for the people still waiting to buy the CD and on the right are the people who have already received their wristbands:
Finally, we inched up to the entrance of the store:
There were a bunch of really cool sidewalk-chalk drawings on the ground in front of the store. This was my favorite:
We finally made it inside the store. The store clerks were running around like crazy, trying to get people through as quickly as possible.
Suddenly, amid all the people running around like heads with their chickens cut off, I caught of glimpse of… Chester Bennington? Indeed! Linkin Park’s lead singer was in the store, being interviewed by man with a camera much larger than my own.
Chester was swallowed up by the crowd again, and Jessica and I purchased our CD’s, got our wristbands, and left the store to join the second line.
It was about this time that Steven and Dan Freeman showed up.
The two boys started their routine ridiculousness, telling stories of bathroom encounters with strange men, Vegas adventures, and near-death experiences. Jessica’s face remained rather consistent during all of this:
After the sun had completely disappeared, I took notice of the Scientology building across the street:
Not too long after that, a woman walked over from the building with a bunch of Scientology newsletters and started handing them out to everyone. And by “handing out to” I mean “shoving into the hands of”. When Steve attempted to hand it back, the woman jumped backward quickly yelling, “WHY?!”
As time crawled along, everyone got increasingly restless:
The ridiculousness of Dan and Steve continued:
Jessica’s M&M’s kept us from starving to death:
Dan solicited a salad from a nearby restaurant, but then proceeded to drop his fork, and thus resorted to eating it in much the same way as a dog drinks from a toilet:
Finally, our line inched back into the store, and there they were. Linkin Park was seated at a long table, signing CD’s as people passed by.
I set my CD down on the table, and one by one, the band members signed it, shook my hand, and passed it along to the next guy. I thanked each of them individually along the way.
My CD is the one almost touching Chester’s pinky in this shot:
The guys were making all sorts of crazy faces at everyone’s cameras:
After passing by the table, we were escorted through the back of the store, where our wristbands were cut off (I assume so as to prevent anyone from handing it off to a friend, allowing them to get something signed without acutally buying anything).
Jessica and I made our way back to the high school and began the drive home, listening to Linkin Park’s new album.
There are a couple things that I observed during the sixty seconds I was at the signing table. All six of them are kind of small. None of them are tall guys, and they’re all very thin and scrawny. Brad, the guitarist, especially. I sort of felt like I was going to break his hand while I was shaking it.
The other thing I observed was that out of all six of them, Rob, the drummer, was easily the most gracious out of all of them. He was the only one I felt had no ego whatsoever (though none of them were being cocky or anything), and I felt like he was the most appreciative of all the fans. He just came across as being very humble.
The whole day was pretty sweet. I wasn’t expecting to meet my favorite band when I woke up Monday morning. I suppose that’s one thing I can remove from my things-to-do-before-I-die list.
