ooooo, Bohemian Grove

July 20, 007
NorCal

Right now, just an hour and 15 minutes North of my house, the richest men on the planet are partying with a whole lot of the world’s leaders.

It’s the legendary two-week, midsummer, all-male, all-powerful campout at Bohemian Grove. Homeland Security has stepped up in the tiny towns of Guerneville and Monte Rio, where nobody ever wears a suit and tie. Clint Eastwood flew in on his private helicopter yesterday. Paranoid tweakers are running to their basements to re-tape the tin foil on the walls and send Mayday signals over ham radios.

Most years, one of the artists hired to entertain the Bohemian Club gathering plays a show in Monte Rio at the park for the Little People in town. It’s a nice annual gift from the men who run the planet to the hamlets they fly over on their way to their own square and pampered version of Burning Man.

They even immolate an owl. They call it the “Cremation of Care.” And like frat boys, this mensclub conducts all manner of bizarre rituals that are probably far less interesting than the purported daisy-chain robe party and Satanic abortions one hears about. Mainly they just chill out in the redwoods.

I know a performer who was hired to do his act for all the pasty white dudes up there a couple years back at their massive outdoor amphitheatre (featuring the second-largest pipe organ in the world). He went fishing with Henry Kissinger and smoked some of Steve Miller’s homegrown. He gave me a matchbox from the campout, glossy red, embossed simply in gold with the words “Bohemian Club.” I still have it.

Once, while dining at the Russian River Pub on River Road, I met two chefs who had flown in from four-star restaurants in other cities to cook for the guys who decide how resources are fought over and lives are lost.

They couldn’t recount any strange rituals or how-we’ll-destroy-the-world seminars, since staff is strictly sequestered from most social activity — but they did talk about the hand scan they needed to gain entry to their jobs each morning.

Hand scan, yall. How Blade Runner is that?

Earlier, they had served pancakes to our governator Arnold Schwarzenegger. Was he nice?, I asked. I dunno, the dude said. We’re not allowed to look them in the eye.

There are a few quiet protests at the gate, but no black-block demonstrations, no media infestations, no righteous liberal town meetings. Hardly even any complaining — mostly just a Zen-like resignation to the Way Things Are. Why? Well, whether because of the main crops up there (wine and weed) or the druggily pastoral landscapes, the people of West County are more laid back than a collapsed folding chair.

Folks in Northern California tend to live and let live, and to lead by example — policies the highly influential men vacationing in their area might do well to heed more often.

I mean hey, this is America. Even the people who engage in un-winnable wars with economically downtrodden countries to make money off the pain and suffering of others — and their movie-star friends — should be able to enjoy their inalienable right to relax and forget about their worries and decide which $30,000 bottle of wine they’re going to drink with dinner in peace.

Dammit. I wanna see a hand-scan machine in real life.

(goes back to business as usual)

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