When people get together in mobs, sometimes their behavior goes south. It’s like the Internet – nobody knows who I am, so I can just act like a jerk. For shame! The past couple of days at ACL Fest 2012 make me think that either y’all had mothers who didn’t teach you any manners or that you have forgotten them.
Didn’t your momma teach you not to litter? There are trash cans and recycling stations everywhere; use them. So you have to hang on to your empty beer can while you’re listening to the rest of Freelance Whales today. Boo hoo. Put it at your feet and then pick it up when you go to leave. C3 Presents, the well-oiled machine that puts on ACL Fest every year, is enticing people 
to pick up trash in exchange for a T-shirt and clean-up crews are at the fest around the clock, so you can also just give your trash to one of these unsung heroes. What you shouldn’t do is throw it on the ground, if for no other reason than because it’s the wrong thing to do. Besides, hippies might stub their bare toes on your empty nip bottle.
Didn’t your momma teach you to say "excuse me?" I don’t care how many people you’re wandering through, when you bump into someone, you say "excuse me" or "sorry." We know … if you don’t get to the front of the stage to see The Roots, this entire experience will be a waste for you. It’s a life-defining moment that you will never forget and whose celebration will produce a hangover that will haunt you for 24 hours. You can still be polite and say "excuse me."
On the flip side, didn’t your momma teach you to get out of the way? When someone does say "excuse me," make some room for them to get by. I find it sort of crazy that in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people, some of you are stubborn enough to say “This is where I’m standing, and I move for nobody.” Unless you’re Gandalf, shouting “You shall not pass!” suck it up and get out of the way. Although I understand the mental and physical strain it puts on a person to have to shuffle half a step to the left to let someone through, when you’re dealing with a crowd of this magnitude it’s best to go with the flow.
Didn’t your momma teach you to hold your alcohol? I know mine did. When you’re attending a three-day, 12-hour-per-day music festival in 90-degree heat and high humidity, you pace yourself, amateurs! I arrived at the festival on Friday at about 5 p.m. and saw a young fella being hauled away in a medi-golf cart, vomiting over the side. The staff taking care of him were yelling to the crowd, “I hope he had fun” as a warning. It was the first day. It was 5 p.m. on the first day. Beer. Water. Beer. Water. Food. Beer. Water. Beer. Get the idea?
Maybe today I need to head to the festival with an apron and a rolling pin and start handing out some punishments for bad behavior. After all, when momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
