Losing Your Coachella V-Card

Apatow-comedy parallel alert! By my age, most rock-lovin' dudes who grew up in Southern California are able to sit around -- maybe at a beach bonfire, maybe around a Lake Forest hookah set-up, or maybe over a steaming bag of Pedro's Tacos -- and swap tales of how "experienced" they are with the Coachella music festival. As previous Heard Mentality posts by Albert and Ryan indicate, most of these stories seem to involve weed, awkward sleeping situations, heat stroke, parking lots, bathrooms and/or Jack White.

Either that, or it's: "Seriously, [Bjork/Portishead/Radiohead/The Pixies/Daft Punk/Jack Johnson (JK on the last one)] at Coachella may have been the best [##] minutes of my life."

In situations like these, I sit silent. Somehow, while I've lived in Orange County pretty much my whole life, I've never made the trek up to Indio to see the fuss. Not that I didn't want to. I've got a few stories of my own -- about how Coachella ambitions were quashed by incidents large and small, plus a healthy dose of laziness.

But this year: I'm gonna do it. Saturday, at least. I'll be there. Yet, strangely, I'm not spending too much time wondering what it's going to be like. My mental image of this festival is pretty clear.

There's sand. There's heat. There are crowds. There's stench. There are tents. There is amazing music. There are famous people. There are porta-potties.

What am I not anticipating? What are the things at Coachella that people don't tend to blab about afterward? If you've got advice for n00bs (beyond the sunscreen warnings), leave a comment.