DO STUFF

I know the guy who did it. I know the guy who burned the Man early. Not well, but I know him.

In fact, I once had a painful and hilarious BB gun shootout with him in a very crowded room during intermission, with him dressed as Hunter S. Thompson for his astonishingly excellent play and me bartending, serving the “Good Doctor Special” (PBR, whiskey, and a whip-it $4). I menaced people with a semi-automatic BB gun all night at the bar, and onstage, he made us laugh and cry and scared the fuck out of us, as two of his main props were a pistol and shotgun loaded with blanks. Sometimes he would fire the guns; sometimes he wouldn’t. Sometimes he’d pick them up and point them at the audience. He was sort of my hero even then.

Of COURSE he did it. It makes so much sense. I won’t side with anyone, and remain ambivalent about the Man’s early burning (Arwen’s masks are OK by the way), but I will say AMEN to this excerpt from his official post-arson statement:

We could give a fuck less what you all think of us for doing this. Most of you are newbies who have been drawn in by the semi-religious nature of the event, or maybe just the easy drugs and easier sex. You have nothing to offer the event other than your fucking money and obedience. You spend the rest of your lives in mortal fear of everything that insurance companies tell you to fear, and pretend that you’re free and clear because you spend four days at a desert bacchanal where spinelessness is not only encouraged but genetically replicated for implementation in successive generations. In short, you are the swine of which Thompson spoke. Get over yourselves.

Some of us live quite well without fear. Doing so requires the ultimate in what Burning Man used to represent: personal responsibility and individual liberty. That’s all been lost in the last decade of Burning Man’s history. Consider this operation a history lesson that was desperately needed.

Hallelujah. Testify. The Good Doctor would be so proud. PS, Paul: NICE MUGSHOT.

All over the City, which is the whole world right now to the 37,000 of us here, people are getting their (real or imagined) freak on, but all I want to do is sit at the Black Hole with an ice-cold Pabst on the back of my neck. Little Matty came back last night so I had to give over the car, but at least I got to ride around with him and particiHATE.

Took another trip to the forbidden hot springs too, this time with ScareCrowe and one of the founding members of the Ethyl Merman Memorial Choir. I’m drawn to the perimeter, to the mountains and the full moon and the watching-us clouds and the spirits I squint to see out there in the dust devils. What Burning Man? It’s way more awesome on the border, out in the sticks.

We are shit magnets. The old guard, the Bad Kids, the Black Riders on our junked-and-chopped fleet of stay-the-fuck-away-from-us vehicles. Fitz got pulled over for a cup full of iced tea; several others are constantly tailed by BLM rangers. Black Rock City is now too big for us to be us; too big and too full of wasteoids who can’t hold their drugs and liquor and can’t understand the concepts of good-natured aggression and controlled chaos. Everything else is all blinky and flashy and thumpy and multicolored, and we are all dusty in black, with vehicles made of shit-parts, also dusty in black, lit simply with siren flashers and stark white bulbs when something really needs to be illuminated. Otherwise, we prefer stealth.

As with any other subcultural movement, fashion has started to overtake the substance behind it. Glow sticks blinky lights furry legwarmers body paint glitter pimp hat E-tard assholes. I don’t want to talk to any of the people here I don’t know, and half the ones I do. I feel the movement is in danger of becoming as much of a self-parody as the hippies, even though the original hippies were actually quite awesome. All I know is: I never need to see a 60-year-old shirtcocker in a spandex too-short cheerleading uniform EVER AGAIN.

In fact, I’m calling it: Our generational movement will NOT BE called “Burners,” as in “hippies” or “beats” or whatever else. IT WILL NOT. This is only a vacation. The rest of the year, most of us are doing stuff. We are the DO STUFF movement.

DO STUFF. It’s catchy, it has nothing to do with Burning Man, and it’s a command as well as a blanket term for all of us all over the world who don’t know the difference between work and life. (As long as it’s all play, we’re cool.) All of us who are anti-television, anti-pray-for-death. Those who have taken the red pill, who have pulled the feeding tube out and are powered exclusively by kinetic energy and the physical detritus of capitalism. We are always in motion, no matter what. We build and make rather than shop and watch. We enjoy manifesting art and useful things out of other people’s castaways. We burn down anything that doesn’t work and build a new one in its place. WE DO STUFF.

So I sit on the porch at Camp Carp, scribbling in my notebook, so completely irritated with the bongo players next door I accidentally holler WHERE THE HELL IS MY SLINGSHOT while a BLM ranger threatens to arrest one of my friends right to the side of me. The case doesn’t look good: the driver ran into the fire barrel and knocked it over. In past days, we would’ve laughed at this. He did it on purpose, goddammit. We’re going to clean it up anyway.

We all know what we’re in for when we do dangerous stuff. Now we just get told what to do. It sucks. But then the Rangers let our boy off easy, let him go with a ticket for driving with no light, and THEN someone cracked him open a beer and they cheersed each other even as the Rangers hadn’t driven away yet and were still shining their klieg lights into our dark-on-purpose socializing spot on the Esplanade. Cheers, dude! … (this is where Little Matty ditches the car and goes home and says fuck it, who wants to go driving around when we have this shit to deal with.)

Maybe we don’t have any sense either. Maybe we’re jaded and angry and not so fun to be around for all the blinky-furry people here. But we see the whole picture, and we’re sorry we’re being rude but we’re trying to warn you: FUCK THE FASHION AND LEARN THE LESSON. We are smart, and we are necessary. All of us, here on the playa and way far beyond, in garages and warehouses all across the world. ParticiHATErs and wet-eared furbies alike. This is but one gathering of the most open-hearted, open-minded, creative people on Earth. We freaks are the ones who have to save it. Who else will? The rich?

Otto once told me that good always wins because evil also fights other evil, and so evil’s resources are split. But nowadays, I think the evil might be encroaching more than ever before. We (the human race “we,” not the Do Stuff “we”) are literally on the verge of an extinction-level event, and we caused it, and we all know it.

So whether you think PAUL ADDIS UBER ALLES or that he should be shot, take his words with you when you leave Black Rock City … and DO STUFF.

p.s. i hate you guys
p.s.s. i love you guys

Arson!

Yes! NO! The Man burned last night. Early. Because someone set it on fire. We would always joke about that in the past, and last night, it actually happened.

The night before that, Rabbi accidentally punched me in the jaw and almost dislocated it, only a couple days after 13 accidentally kicked me in the face. So I got all even more twitchy and back-electrified than before, so I excused myself to go to bed for a while, and Arwen and Crybaby and Moshe went on a perimeter shift. (Back flashes have gotten super bad for both Arwen and me. It’s weird.) They picked me up at 4:30 a.m. and we took Crybaby’s truck to the hot springs nobody is allowed to visit, to watch the sun rise.

Trains roll right by the hot springs which smell like sulfur, and I joked that Moshe must be the Devil because all this sulfur bubbled up when he got in, and the train rolled by and it bubbled up again and flash-heated the water way hotter than before. Then for some reason a half an hour later the sulfur started to bubble up AGAIN again as if another train had rolled by, but nothing had happened, and we were all weirded out. THEN we saw a shadow on the mountain across the valley in the sunrise, when there was no cloud to correspond to the shadow, and we became convinced the other hippies squatting in the hot springs (who were waiting for the line at Gate Road to stop flooding all the way back to the 447 highway) were doing acid, because we must have got a contact high to see that thing. We all saw it.

So Monday is the new Saturday, apparently. The population doubled overnight, and then doubled overnight again. Clown car music in an official Gate vehicle. Unlicensed megaphones carried by unfunny people. Dickno ™ music enclosing. Crush on crush on crush on crush on. It was Makeout Monday but I decided to sit it out and eat my mouth for Fakeout Monday with Crybaby and that was about it. No more action than that.

We rev the engine of Little Matt’s car as a musical instrument and/or a horn. Arwen and I get to be total bitches at the Gate all day in the hot sun while cranky people with overheating RVs and strange please-take-your-shoes-off compulsions give us shit because all they want to do is get inside.

At night rolling around on the car, we have to explain to people constantly how and why we’re mean sometimes, and how that part of a city exists and always needs to. Justice does not always come in the courtroom. Kinetic Steamworks will not let you on the back of their steam engine, hippie, because it’s so explosive and dangerous of a machine you actually have to have a special license to drive it.

Also, Matty’s car is pointy-metally and hazardous and is filled with kill switches and barbed wire, and we work here, and the tourists are here now so we’re freaked out and we only want to hang out with each other. We know we wouldn’t exist without the tourists and there’s no other reason to be here but to build and run Black Rock City for them, but it’s carny law, and we know you consider this your “home” but we live here. Call us elitist if you like but it’s just more like we’re tired and over it already, even if we are having the swellest of times and never want it to end. Best not to try to talk to us; we’ll only bring you down.

We grabbed our people to watch the lunar eclipse and hung out outside of Jub Jub and laid on the car and the moon turned to a clipped fingernail and then all the way red. Stickerguy Pete brought me my Black Rockalypse logo stickers — yellow on black; so badass — and I joyously passed them out to everyone I saw. We rolled to Gate to watch the moon come out the other side of behind Planet Earth with all our new friends, and that’s when we heard the transmissions over C-Load’s radio: THE MAN IS BURNING. RIGHT NOW. NO JOKE.

With the Black Rockalypse stickers and all, which don’t mean a thing except I like to quip and do logos, I was afraid the Rangers thought I did it. Burned the Man, I mean. Again, wondering if the hot springs pond had acid in it, because otherwise why would I be so paranoid about that shit? They’re only stickers.

So yes, the Man was burning. SHIT ARWEN’S MASKS ARE UNDER THE MAN AND THAT MEANS THEY’RE BURNING TOO. Holy shit holy shit holy shit. Get in the car, get in the fucking car. We accidentally ditched some of our people at Gate — what the F are we supposed to do about it? but it’s like hearing one of your children is on fire so you just head in that direction no matter what.

we didn’t even get a chance to take pictures of them all hung up and pretty

We get there to the center of the City where our lofty wooden icon is on fire and having a shower, and 13 tells us we have to help be Gate and Perimeter and help secure the perimeter outside the Man Base and keep people beyond the LED light barrier a few hundred feet around the Man. That’s when we notice we’ve got the only car inside the lines — must be in the front row! — and we have to walk around in a big circle and keep everyone back while the firemen douse the Man and all of Arwen’s masks.

The ground was all wet afterward and nobody knew the extent of the structural damage — will he fall now? — so they cordoned off the area and it’s STILL cordoned off today and we can’t see if her masks are alright. They’re made of plaster and paint so it’s very iffy. She worked all summer on those. We went back to “home base” of the Black Hole after the Man burned, and we met a passerby around the fire barrel who got pictures of the whole arson thing — he talked to the guy who did it, watched him climb up to the Man’s right leg and light it with a flare, and snapped photos as he was pursued and arrested with a quickness.

All the arsonist would say, that our man by the fire barrel could overhear, was: “I know John Law. I know John Law. I know John Law.” Which freaks me out personally because while I’m sure John Law would secretly smile to himself about something like this, he would never sanction or approve of putting anyone in danger. And any prank he would pull on Black Rock City would be so much more complicated and hilarious.

Anyway this arsonist dude committed some serious crimes, and it’s on federal property, so he’s going to jail as hell. Over and over again forever. And the Man is still standing, and he’s the charred-up Black Man now instead of the Green Man, and of course they’re rebuilding him, and 47 hours from now it’s going to be like nothing ever happened. Except there will be SO MUCH MORE law enforcement, so I have to clean out the PBR cans from Little Matty’s car because they’re busting people driving art cars for all manner of stupid shits they didn’t do.

I would try to figure out more photo stuff, but I worked Gate all day in the dusty hot sun again and couldn’t take pictures of the charred Man, and everyone else is rollerskating at the Black Rock Roller Disco right now, so I gotta go.

Wonder if we can see if Arwen’s art is destroyed tomorrow. Or if we will get pulled over for having a pointy car full of people who look like dirtbags. Or if I will see anything else tonight that will freak me out, like a lunar eclipse or the Man burning without a plan or a shadow on the mountain with nothing causing it.

Rollerskating!

Delirious.

August 24, 007
Black Rock City

Delirious, delirious, delirious. We hung Arwen’s masks all day on the giant trees at the base of the Man, before we went to work at Gate all night.

DELIRIOUS I tell you.

List of weapons:
Sexy Bat
Slingshot
Mallet
Hammer
Rusty sword stashed in the car
Machete
Leatherman
2 flip knives
Little axe
Big axe

We’re going to have to put them away by tonight when the floodgates open for the event proper. Don’t want any of the expected 40,000-odd participants getting the wrong idea; don’t want any douchebags using them for evil instead of fake menace.

Shift leader-guys like to roll around in Matty’s car with me dressed in my cop uniform hotpants onesie with a Mag lite and Sexy Bat and HIGHLY DANGEROUS MOTHERFUCKER baseball hat, telling people in D-lot what to do, and catching people who are trying to sneak in. When the shift lead yells at them for being leeches, they look to me for sympathy and I just sit there like concrete, engine revving, like Cool Hand Luke’s chain-gang manager with expressionless mirrored sunglasses on. We get into it. We’re role-playing just like everybody else.

Sindo’s birthday was combined with Viking Night for maximum party effect. Mostly-naked hot girls in theme costumes writhed around to the metal I played from behind the blurry plexiglass DJ booth Jub Jub camp was inspired to install last year after some F’d up raver chick spilled a margarita all over their equipment. So I was mostly isolated, trying to rock the party where the challenge for Sindo’s birthday was to kill 48 bottles of Jameson’s — a pallet full of whiskey, people — so it’s probably good I ended up stuck back there away from the libations. I hear the pink punch was also spiked with who knows what. Yikes.

Certain members of Gate one-upped the Ladies’ Night tradition to Ladies’ Night II: Shirtcocking Viking-aloo — they de-pantsed and overtook the yawn-ho-hum topless girls with a round of thong-shaking on the walkway stage with the stripper poles. I leaned out the back of the DJ booth occasionally, holding up my Sexy Bat in my furry legwarmers (not that kind but close, and in the ironic-back-to-serious way we all are, like Low Rent the Clown’s mullet or 13’s hot asymmetrical skater haircut with skunk stripe, or the fact that some of the Gate staff insist on shirtcocking even though I am vocally against pantslessness in all forms).

We get so delirious from the heat and the sun and the dryness and the climbing around in the back of Ryder trucks we get our words in the wrong order. We’re doing everything right, hydrating so much we have to pee every 20 minutes and eating the most hippie shit ever. The only “drugs” Arwen and I have done are electrolytes and kombucha and coconut juice and niacin and vitamin E lotion and shea butter … and we’re still just as crazy as if we had done stuff that’s much more illegal. Out here, you absorb the energy of the group and become more … “one” than in the default world. (I know, I know, but it’s true.)

Arwen keeps getting back flashes up her spine and mine keeps electrocuting me and making my muscles seize up and my ribs pull back out again from the wreck and making me shake and twitch when someone has to massage my spasms to make them lessen. It freaks people out because I’m an I Don’t Care Bear at the gate and tears are running down my face and I’m slouching and stretching and twitching occasionally and the bunny ears on my warm fleece thrift-store why-are-they-bunny-ears-if-it’s-a-Care-Bear-costume hat are thwapping out like whips each time my electricity in my spine acts like frayed wires on a power line.

The other night at a Big Rig Jig barbecue, the ladies of the camp had posted a menu for different types of mustaches they were distributing to their guests with Sharpies. You could even try one on before they drew it on you. There was the Fu Manchu, the Don Johnson, the Prison Pussy, the Casanova or something like that … a dozen mustaches, at least. I chose the Hitler / Charlie Chaplin mustache to go with my I Don’t Care Bear suit. Should I do it again this week? The mustache, I mean? Not sure. Staff understands the deep irony and non-hateful nature of it all, but some of the ticketholders might get all butt-hurt and complain to a ranger that someone dared draw a Hitler / Charlie Chaplin mustache on themselves here in the new millennium. Satire is protected under the Constitution, you know.

At least I’m not as bad as certain members of a certain Burning Man staff going to Ladies’ Night in blackface. Who’s offensive? Yes, but we are laughing as we introduce ourselves with weapons in hand. Laughing DELIRIOUSLY. I guess it unnerves some, but what we’re doing is inviting them to join in the game of playing crazy. Sometimes they lose and think we actually ARE crazy. But we’re not; we’re just testing them to see if they pass. And if they take themselves seriously at all, they lose.

Douchebags speeding in giant RVs along Gate Road and kicking up dust clouds are the exact cause of the dust storm that’s beginning to happen tonight as I write this. Arwen and I just made a whiteout contingency plan in camp: sewing projects and sketchbooks stowed in the car just in case it’s a long one.

It’s definitely time for me to go to bed. Part of me feels like putting all my clothes on to go stash all my tent-belongings in the car right now; the other part feels like going to sleep to relive the delirium in order to be able to have the energy to shake the dust off everything and clean out my tent in the morning, in case Gate and the Rangers can’t catch all the speeding vehicles full of people cranky and road-tired and overeager to get to the best week of their life all year.

Tonight at midnight, we open the Gate.

Must remember to put the axes away.

I got my sexy bat (yeah)

I practiced swinging the golf club at Gate the other night when it was slow, trying to learn some baton-like tricks with which to impress the new arrivals as they roll onto the Black Rock before I poke through all their stuff for stowaways. So then, coming onto shift the next day, a co-worker told me an anonymous ticketholder wanted him to pass the message along that I needed something more menacing to swing in the rows. So he left this for me:

Best playa gift EVER. Everyone’s jealous of it. I wish it could talk, to tell the stories of what all it’s fucked up in the past. It’s got spikes on one end of it and a brass knocker-out-er thing on the other. I taped it up with electrical tape for better swinging, and dubbed it the “Sexy Bat,” in honor of the Justin Timberlake song which 13 (the head lane frau) plays over and over on a jambox she hoists onto her shoulder and struts around with everywhere when she’s not working. Spider found about 1200 different mashups involving “Sexy Back” and, during the slow time of the night, played them intermittently over the Gate channel on the radios for like 20 minutes straight.

Heidi says I’m a natural-born searcher. Spider wanted me to train to figure out how to search the really long semi trucks when they come into Burning Man all packed full of crap, and my training was this: Get on up there and climb in the back of the rig with your Lil’ Partner (the golf club) and poke around for hippies and kittens and guns and live plants and whatever else isn’t allowed.

So for the rest of the day, this was my job by default. Apparently I’m the monkey. I’m now covered in bruises and scratches. Also, 13 kicked me in the face accidentally the other night when she was bloodying her manager’s nose in a good-natured, rolling-around-in-playa-dust wrestling match, and now my lip is cracked and swollen, and I don’t care if I sound like a hippie but so far this is really the best Burning Man I’ve ever had and it’s 4 days away from even beginning.

Two birthdays were celebrated at the Black Hole (Gate camp) last night. Spider taped a semi-expensive bottle of whiskey to one birthday girl’s hand with electrical tape and threw the cap away, and kept making her drink it when he saw she wasn’t actively drinking. The other birthday boy got the traditional DPW/Gate-style “Happy Birthday” singalong that sounds more like a chorus of drunks going RAAAAAA. But perhaps that’s the reason I thought of Viking Night in the first place (which is tonight), because of the way we sing “Happy Birthday” to people.

Rolling around in Matt’s car is the shit, even though we all wish he was here. We had a Gate meeting where we all said our name and told our totem animal (mine is a mastodon because I like metal and things with horns, and the band Mastodon), and the meeting ran so long we forgot we were going to prank the DPW ghetto by pretending we didn’t know Ladies’ Night wasn’t on Wednesday, and dressing up in drag and invading their camp. Oh well.

The traditional Ranger party last night was nice and tame and square and that’s what the Rangers are for. They take care of your body while your mind is away and deal with almost everything that sucks. Sam X and Dylan played accordion and flute for them and we had an Elvish hoe-down and then went cruising. Everyone went to sleep early but I’m in charge of the most beautiful car ever and we can sleep when we’re dead. We Gate bitches can’t go to bed until we make sure there’s absolutely nothing else going on, apparently.

I need a nap.

Bad boys, funny-lookin’ girls, and one amazing car

August 22, 007
Black Rock City

OMG dude freak OUT. Look at the car I get to drive.

Little Matty got kicked out of the event for some things he didn’t even do. Everyone’s really bummed about it, and he was being so good, too. Little Matty’s from Thunderdome camp, and other than Thunderdome itself, Matt’s car is the first and last thing I remember about Burning Man. It’s a Mad Max fantasy come true, and it’s the most beautiful car ever made. Indeed, to me, it sort of embodies what I love about the place and the whole thing.

And Doyle is in charge of the car since Matt got kicked out, and C-Load after him. Neither of them want to be seen in that car, as it’s garnered quite a reputation for mayhem with the Rangers. Both of those boys have art cars already, too, so Doyle thought Matty would enjoy the fact that during the event a bunch of hot Gate chicks would be piled on his car.

So Doyle put me third in charge. Which means not only do I get a vehicle for the event — I get THE vehicle. I am, for now, the guardian of the most bad-ass vehicle of all time.

Best day ever. Matty, if you’re reading this, I’ll take care of your baby like I gave birth to it myself.

——-

OH YES IT’S (past) LADIES’ NIGHT

A number of years ago during Burning Man setup, some of the ladies of the DPW and I were stuck on the ranch in the middle of a big fat sausage party. Not only were we surrounded by boys — they were burly, power-tool-wielding, heavy-equipment-driving, Carhartts-and-boots-wearing boys. No metrosexuals at all. Suffocating a bit from all the testosterone (not in a sexist way, but just saying) we gals decided we wanted to have a “Ladies’ Night,” to trade skin products and lipsticks and groom each other and gossip and honky-tonk in a girly-girl estero-fest. No boys were allowed, and all the girls were told to gather in the commissary after dinner.

Coyote and Will Roger showed up in dresses. So we had to let them in and put makeup all over them. Other macho boys watching from the periphery (and not being allowed in, seeing as how they didn’t have the proper attire or body parts) marveled at how easy it could be to get chicks’ attention just by lowering your guard enough to put on a dress.

The following year, all hell broke loose. “Ladies’ Night” became the otherworldy, chaotic, gender-bending Thursday-prior-to-the-event ritual we all celebrate before the tourists get here — to get our ya-yas out in the privacy of our own desert home and watch the men wear dresses. And boy, do they wear dresses. They go all out.

Years went by, and Ladies’ Night morphed and grew. There was MCing; there were trophies; there was a massive Walk-Off. Someone built a runway and a stage and a red carpet at the entrance and a stripper pole. There were DJs (NO RAVE MUSIC GODDAMMIT) and there was extreme drunkenness. There was even an epic party-crashing episode on the part of the Gate staff — who dressed as clowns and rammed a clown car into the side of the commissary and Rabbi put some chocolate cake batter in a Ziploc and pretended to take a Cleveland Steamer on Spider’s chest.

And then the creepy sex people started to take over.

Spanking booths? Fuck off. This is not the event yet; take your glowsticks elsewhere. Ladies’ Night became too big, voyeuristic, too furry-legwarmer-and-blinky-light crowded for my taste (and a lot of others). So I threw a bomb: I called VIKING NIGHT for Thursday night.

I don’t even know what that means yet, aside from gathering to wear fur and leather and listen to heavy metal (particularly The Sword’s Age of Winters) and go RAAAAAAR. But the Viking-Night-calling served its purpose: Ladies’ Night was moved to another secret night and location. Some people in Black Rock City have even taken to arranging their schedules to get on the early arrivals list in order to be here for Ladies’ Night — but sorry, it already happened. And if you come to the Gate and ask where Ladies’ Night is on Thursday, we’re going to tell you it’s in First Camp. And then there will be marauding. And berserking.

Early Man

August 21, 007
Black Rock City, NV

Right now, doing an evening shift at Gate in perfect weather where you can wear only a tank top until midnight and there’s no wind almost seems like a get-to-know-you gathering instead of a job. But whether because of impending dust storms (it’s going to be a dusty year) or the fact that the Early Arrivals list is starting to trickle in, I know that’s all going to change drastically, and soon it’ll be more like waiting tables in the biggest slam ever. We were so slow last night I got to practice twirling my golf club and Arwen made a stencil of my new Black Rockalypse logo:

Soon, maybe tonight even but definitely by Thursday, there will be a line of cars at Gate Road that stretches forever. All ticketholders to Burning Man must be searched, ID’d, and confirmed on a computer list to be able to pass our Gate and come inside the event. One must be legitimate to live on the Black Rock Desert in the middle of August. We don’t want anyone here who’s lollygagging about. It’s demoralizing for the workers.

Yesterday we did our first Gate sweeps with Marshall and Spider and put wristbands on everyone who didn’t have one already. They’re pink and they say SUZY’S PONY RIDES for no reason (Spider ordered them; he’s gay but not just in a sex way; Suzy never actually seems to be available for said pony rides; she’s always just left for Gerlach.) Then we hung out with Cowboy Carl by his trailer at walk-in camping and he told Arwen the story of when he once had a tweaker fence-helper who didn’t want to NOT listen to the testosterock radio station out here before the event. Cowboy Carl told him to turn his radio off and listen to the sound of the world moving. Dude turned it off, but bitched about how (like LL Cool J) he can’t live without his radio, and turned it back on. And then he went back to fencing, and seemed unsettled, and turned it off. And on. And off. And on.

30 minutes later he turned it off, and, finally OK with himself and the sound of the world moving, never turned it back on again.

This is why I love coming out here before the event starts. This is why I’m thinking about staying on Playa Restoration Crew until October.

So many new faces here inspired me and others to comment about the ever-evolving nature of the event, and of the staff itself. I’ve been DPW for 10 years and am now defecting to Gate. The old DPW, the one I love, has been replaced with a newer, bigger, more enthusiastic and less carny-jaded staff of mohawked and dreadlocked freaks who built a complex “ghetto” with a lookout tower and (of course) a very large bar. Cowboy Carl remarked about how the old DPW were 40 percent workers, 40 percent half-time workers, and 20 percent lazy sunzabitches who could easily lure away the slack 40 percent to help hold the couches down back at camp. The new DPW, while we don’t know most of them, are more of a … machine. Like the Borg. Not the Staff “borg” but the Star Trek Borg.

We’re gonna go put up some fence with Carl at Gate Road now. Fence is one of the shittiest jobs there is, but hanging out with Carl is worth it.

Black Rockalypse

August 20, 007
Black Rock City, NV

Apologies for the late posting today — someone knocked over the Internet tower in their vehicle last night during random festivities, so I was forced to foray into Gerlach to be a computer dork. It’s alright though, as I hadn’t yet completed my pre-Burning Man in-town rituals: 1) eat at Bruno’s, 2) call my Mamaw from the dusty payphone outside, and 3) have a beer at the once-where-Flash-got-shot-and-now-volunteer-gathering-center Black Rock Saloon and carve something into the bar (it’s allowed).

Ahhh, Bruno’s. Air conditioning is nice. But it feels weird and alien to the human system of how to cool yrself. Anyway, I recommend the chicken fried steak. It’s cholesterol-tacular.

—-

For the first time in two years, I’m home. I know it’s cheesy when people say that — all the “welcome home” crap you get at the Burning Man greeters’ station along with unwanted hugs and spankings — but for about 500 or so of us, it really is home. We are the workers, and we make the city run.

On the drive in, down the beautiful gypsum-flecked desert highway, I caught myself being a little ho-hum about it all. Bored, but content — not like a vacation, but like going home. I should be concentrating more on the splendor and the glory than mentally reviewing checklists of what to do when I get there and how to be a good Gate worker. This feels like the commute to a job.

But it IS a job, even if I’m only volunteering. For a long time now, I can’t tell the difference between work and life any more. I think that means I’m doing it right.

—-

UPDATE: Welding goggles are the cat’s pajamas. And they’re cheap. They come with shade lenses in for daytime (welding) and they unscrew for clear lenses at night. Forget all those other cheezy goggles you see in the City and go to the welding store.

—-

Arwen and I arrived on the Black Rock Desert at the Magic Hour — sunset, when everything turns pink and purple and shimmers like it’s been lit for a special photograph — and pulled over onto the open playa to put a protective coating of shea butter in our hair and dig jackets out of the trunk. Early Man was a good one, with Otto fabricating a 25-foot Burning Dude in a recliner chair with a beer in one hand and a funny cigarette in the other. Someone else made a Viking ship-thing with angel wings. Big Daddy fashioned a tribute pyre to the yer-doin-it-wrong even two days ago when Dan Das Mann tried to crane one of his humongous statues for the infathomably massive Crude Awakening project, and the statue took a walk and smashed two porta-potties.

Whiskey bottles passed around with frequency both spreads and kills germs. I played designated driver in Doyle’s new truck with the awesome pixillated-camouflage paint job and we cruised around for a while — again, magic time, before all the tourists arrive — and then Doyle passed out on a couch in the DPW ghetto. He followed the rules and took his boots off, but then someone put his boots back on him just so they could beer elf him. The Sharpies came out and the cameras too, and the duct tape and a couple unrolled condoms just for good measure, until someone felt sorry for him and took his boots back off. Someone else put them back on and duct-taped them on and then it started to feel like the scene in Young Frankenstein where the monster gets chained up and the villagers finally feel like they can fuck with him. By morning, someone had washed his face off and re-buttoned his pants and Doyle played it off like he meant for it all to happen.

—-

Tonight is my and Arwen’s first Gate shift. Last night we laughed through our first on-playa Gate meeting and I got a sweet pin that says THANKS FOR NOT HUGGING. We’re excited about the themes for Gate crew this year: 1) they’re bringing sexy back, and 2) tongue-in-cheek fascism, since ticketholders are going to get mad when we tell them they can’t have plants, we don’t care if the theme this year is the Green Man, you still CANNOT BRING PLANTS, and then we burn them up right in front of their eyes. No swastikas, of course, but a little Hitler mustache and a clown nose goes a long way when you’re rifling through people’s stuff and looking for stowaways and poking blankets with your golf club to see if they say “ouch.”

…and I swear this cloud and its four minions beneath it were watching us on the 447. It just sat there in the sky for ages.

Desert toiletries and sundries: A list

August 17, 2007
San Frandisco

But first, an anecdote: Trolling the Mission for dust-proof sunglass-goggles that don’t make me look like a bug-eyed raver — WHY DON’T THEY SELL THOSE? ANYONE? — I passed a thrift store that shall remain nameless which sported a window display captioned BURNING ANGELS.

This display consisted of wire-and-pantyhose “angel wings” — you know, the kind that pokes your eye out in crowded domes when drugged-out giggle-chicks are dancing to the UNCE UNCE UNCE — “angel wings” festooned with chicken feathers and loose glitter.

CHICKEN FEATHERS AND LOOSE GLITTER. (cue guttural DPW growl)

Hey. Why stop there. Throw some carpet and astroturf frayings, sawdust pieces, “live” (soon to be dead) plants and flowers, used tampons, and half-eaten raver candy into the display and you’ve got yourself a standard nightmare scenario for the Burning Man cleanup crew.

Oh yeah, before I forget: Please tape all unfinished carpets and astro-turf with three rows of duct tape (one folded, one top, one bottom) BEFORE you get to the desert. Doing it after you get there (or with any other type of tape) is not sufficient, as the dust will negate all your tardy efforts with a quickness.

(climbs down off soapbox)

And now, at the request of newbies who say they need help picking stuff to bring, here’s a list of what’s in my toiletries right now. I’m not done yet so double-check against your own radical self reliance for things I’ve forgotten so far.

Keep in mind I’ll be out there for weeks and I’m sort of a girl scout, so you don’t have to cobble together all this stuff. But if you’ve got room, then go for it.

>**************<.

MEDICAL STUFF (in a Mom-tote from the thrift store, 50 cents)

First-aid kit, 2 Ace bandages, pointy tweezers
Band-Aids, mercurochrome, extra wet-proof adhesive medical tape
Benadryl stick for bug bites (wet nicotine and tape will do in a pinch)
Tea tree oil (so many uses you should look it up)
Cough drops; ginger for stomach upset
Saline for rinsing out eyes in dusty weather; eye patch if that doesn’t work
Spray catnip (the best non-toxic mosquito repellent EVER)

WATERPROOF LIQUIDS AND LOTIONS BOX (‘70s plastic traveling case, $1)

Vitamin E oil; almond oil
Eucerin and other kinds of fatty lotions my friends gave me when they got bored
Sunscreen; face sunscreen
Face scrub and cuticle softening oil I probably won’t use
Toothpaste, toothbrushes
Wipey face-pad things for refreshment; fancy hand-me-down spray toner
Extra contact lenses, solution, cases
Arnica oil for sore muscles and bruises
On-sale aromatherapy bottle of “comforting geranium” (I put it in my clown nose)
Shower gel, shampoo, conditioner (please try to control your laughter)
Shea butter for hair protection
Foot brush and pumice; nail clippers

NON-LIQUIDS BOX (‘60s traveling case with cool satin interior, $3)

Various makeup in plastic zipper case, to be stored in cooler so shit don’t melt
Barettes, clippy jaw-things for hair, no-pull rubber bands
Safety pins; sewing kit
Cotton balls, cotton pads, Q-tips, napkins
Washcloths (so nice to sponge down before night & re-apply thick-ass lotion)
Mirror, brush, headband
Flashlight, tent light that velcros to stuff
Vitamins
Lighters, matches
Six pair sunglasses (yes I said six — not having sunglasses is the worst thing ever)
Mustache, clown nose, earrings, leather string, O-ring bracelets, Billy Bob teeth

TOOLBOX

Hammer, flathead screwdriver, Phillip’s head screwdriver, mallet
Twist-ties, wire
Alien tool (bikes), Allen key
Tape measure
Grommets, grommeter
Big black paperclip thingies, carabiners, rubber bands, rope
Electrical tape, Scotch tape
Scissors, Sharpies
Rags, big garbage bags, little plastic bags, Ziplocs of all sizes
…. and of course, the Holy Trinity: Leatherman, Duct Tape, and Zip Ties.

And finally, as a wise man once said: Don’t forget to bring a towel.

No, I’m not talking about Towelie. I’m talking about Ford Prefect from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

A fictional book which, incidentally, has the words DON’T PANIC printed in giant letters on the front of it.

Time to attack the closet.

Open letter to Chris Cornell and Mike Ness

One of my friends subscribes to XM radio. Yesterday, listening to Soundg… I mean Audioslave and Social Distortion’s newest songs on the satellite feed, I thought to myself: This is the sound of my once-favorite rock stars dying a slow and AOR-oriented death.

Chris. Mike. Level with me: Why do you keep making watered-down versions of your once-Leviathan-like music long after you know you’ve started to suck?

(remember this, Chris? YOU WERE A GOD.)

And you DO know it, don’t you? I can hear it in both of your voices. Chris, are you aware I once drove a three-hour drive in an hour and a half just to get to a Soundgarden concert in time? I’ve never driven that fast in my life and never will again. You looked like a shirtless lion Jesus onstage, your eyes glowering; your voice like the most beautiful air-raid siren I’ve ever heard. Now you sound like you’re flipping through a Pottery Barn magazine on the mic.

I mean yeah. It’s hard to Write With The Fire when tons of hangers-on claw at you and try to take whatever it was that made you magic and eventually douse it out. How does one keep The Fire? I dunno, Mr. Ness and Mr. Cornell, I just expected you to be the ones to have figured it out. You’re not the Strolling Bones, after all. You’re not rock’s biggest example of capitalist pig-dom.

Question: Are you just jaded puppets, or are you deaf now, or are you really that addicted to the fame and the lifestyle? Why do yall just keep signing contracts that bind you to record your shitty 10th-15th album? Wouldn’t it be better to quit while you’re ahead and retire and do charity work, or either start sticking your neck farther and farther out, like Trent Reznor with the new single he’s got, the one that has probably landed him on some government assassin’s to-do list somewhere?

Don’t yall read comic books? WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY. Why are you, like suburbanites with mortgages and 2.5 children, just stopping where you are to sit on your laurels for the rest of your lives? Mr. Cornell, take a hint from your activist axe-man Tom Morello. Mr. Ness, at least you could do some totally insane side projects like Mike Patton.

I mean, all artists want to be Working Artists. One day I’d like to be able to afford matching skin products and fancy dinners out for all my friends too, and items of new clothing by up-and-coming designers … but I don’t want those things enough to start making art that sounds like I’m suicidally bored with myself.

Why can’t you just bite the bullet and be heroes to us? Can’t you see we need some other ones besides Al Gore and Tommy Chong?

Recipe: Momma’s Southern-fried chicken

August 14, 007
Dixie to SF

Okay, California. I totally love you — so much I now say “totally.” A lot. I never used to say that before. Also, I catch myself saying “right on” every once in a while, but I’ve still managed to hold out on the whole “hella” thing. Anyway.

I totally, totally love you, California. I think I proved that over a decade ago when I threw everything into my car and left Chapel Hill and drove straight here. I’ve been faithful to you ever since. However, with that trip I took to the restaurant the other night, and the way-too-much I spent on food there that I didn’t really even eat, I think there’s something you need to know.

YOU DO NOT MAKE FRIED CHICKEN WITH BREADING. YOU DO NOT. Bread, breading, breadcrumbs, or any other bread-type item is NOT involved in the making of real Southern-fried chicken. NO BREAD.

Rather than browbeat you for it, I’m just going to tell you what my Momma told me when I was a wee lass in the fields (okay, suburbs) of Tennessee.

Incidentally — and I remember it well, because we were all SO proud — a week or two after I first learned to make our family fried-chicken recipe, there was a special on 20/20 or somesuch other news program where a reporter went around the country trying to find the absolute best fried chicken recipe on the planet. Mom wasn’t on the show, but the lady who won, out of all the recipes, did her fried chicken the EXACT SAME WAY as Mom.

Now, with her permission, I’d like to share that information with the world. The fried chicken situation in California has gotten dire. I can only guess that the rest of the planet is forgetting, too. Or maybe they just never knew. At any rate, this is no time for secrets.

What you need:

-Flour
-Egg
-Salt
-Pepper
-Chicken
-Canola oil, sunflower oil, or peanut oil
-Two flat bowls, a fork, and a pan. And a plastic bag.

(really, it’s that simple)

Flour goes in one flat bowl. Egg, whipped with the fork, goes in the other. Salt and pepper (don’t be stingy) go in both; fork ‘em again.

You can dip it more times than that if you like. You can also take the skin off if you’re worried about cholesterol — it’s still so delicious it’ll make you want to slap somebody.

Chicken — boneless is more fun because you can ghetto-tenderize it by putting it in a Ziploc or plastic grocery bag, setting it on the floor, and whanging it with the pan — gets dipped in the flour mixture, then the egg mixture, then the flour mixture again.

That’s the important part: FLOUR TWICE. Also: Deep grease, and HOT. How much oil? Enough to cover half the chicken when it’s sitting flat.

Annnnnnnd fry it up. Put a lid over it to steam it as it fries, and then take the lid off to crisp it up at the end. Flash-fryer might be better but we never had one o’ those.

See? It’s easy. You have no more excuses. Next time I put fried chicken in my mouth and it’s got BREADING on it I’m going to call my Momma. And THEN you’ll be in trouble.

To their credit

No wonder men are so disengaged. Historically, I mean. What, you want to talk about the tea cozy you knitted today when I’ve just blown four men’s heads apart with a musket? Seriously. All I want to do is have some fun. Take off all 14 of your skirts and that ridiculous underwear and bend over, or I’ll find someone else who will.

Lark snapshots pt2

August 10, 007
Mendocino to SF

More chicken scratch diary from Lark in the Morning (hippie band camp):

We set up the coffeehouse first thing. Going for a Turkish / Tunisian oasis-tent vibe. The girls practice making chai and reciting (and arguing about) the method. My mom takes out a pen to write it down … NO! NEVER in the history of the coffeehouse has it been written down. It’s forbidden. Also: it’s the most delicious chai in the history of tea leaves.

Gypsy tinsel has been thought of already, apparently. They call it Gypsy Rope, though. It’s an old Renaissance Faire delineator they invented when people were having so much fun at Black Point’s original Faire they couldn’t bring themselves to leave. The Gypsy Rope, made with rope and ribbon instead of jean-seams and belllydance-pants scraps like mine, was Security’s “hey babies, look at the rattle, now geddoutathere, Faire’s over, goodnight” aisle-maker into the parking lot. This is now the second thing Cyclecide has accidentally “channeled” from the Ren Faire, after Paul the Plumber’s Chik-N-Pult. I seem to be the only person in camp (including my mom) who’s never been to the Ren Faire.

I overhear the greatest conversations waiting for the shuttle between classes: One dude and his Ghanaian friend are bringing classical music to Ghana for the first time — via donated instruments for kids and hopefully a radio station too. Dude and his friend talk a lot about the possibility of one day hearing Beethoven’s Fifth on thumb harps.

We dip out to the Eastern European dance, where a gorgeous older woman with long straight hair and elf shoes makes squeaky noises and leads the crowd in a number of hand-holding, foot-shuffling line dances. I’m into it. This year, I’m all about the Balkans.

Last year at Lark, through my studies, I discovered the connections between the gypsies and how their route traced from India through North Africa, the Balkans, Hungary, the former U.S.S.R., France, and Spain. Then I saw Latcho Drom and felt 1) stupid for not having seen it yet and 2) clever for making the movie’s connections on my own, with no help.

Balkan classes, Turkish gypsy dance classes, bellydance classes. That one 10/8 meter song the Turkish symphony class practices each day makes me feel like I’m riding on a camel, swaying back and forth in the woozy heat.

5/8, 7/8, 9/8 … it’s like gypsies are so focused on being impoverished and discriminated against and kicked around, they even like to make their music sound like they couldn’t afford that last beat per measure. Or somebody stole it. Or the wagon wheel is broken and they have to hurry up and leave before the authorities figure out they’re playing instruments they might’ve lifted from some respectable property-owning family in town.

Still, I love gypsy music, to an intuitive degree. To where the bell in my heart starts to ring really loudly and force me to think of past lives I might or might not have lived.

Late most nights in the coffeehouse, after many campers have gone to bed and the fire has gotten low, a quartet (guitar, violin, upright bass, dumbek) practices a song in 13/18 meter.

13 freaking 18. I can’t get it. I don’t like to say “can’t” but I really can’t get it.

I feel like my brain is spreading apart.

I have a headache, in the best possible way.

Lark snapshots

August 9, 007
flashback to Mendocino

Thursday night at Lark in the Morning (“hippie band camp”):

Dinner under the Mendo redwoods, in a grand and Christmas-lighted dancehall made entirely of same. Beads all over the ground outside, among the wood chips and pine droppings — a remnant of the Christian kids’ camp that was here before us. Look with kids and Sadie, who’s singing the blues, for buried treasure and find enough to make a pirate earring.

Was unpacking in the tent cabin when I heard my favorite sound on the planet: the Gaita. Galician bagpipes. Last year’s barbecue dinner on Friday night ruled harder than anything else at Lark: when half a dozen Gaita players faced off against the Balkan brass band and the Brazilian percussion group and they all played “La Sansonette” together. I remember that snippet in time when I’m feeling down. It’s my happy place.

Went to listen at the next tent cabin over. Three guys eye-locked and blowing hard in a triad of noise half the human population finds horribly offensive. The Gaita is a weird instrument where if one plays, it’s not all that impressive — but when two play together it sounds like three, and three sounds like five, etc.

Apparently you can make a Gaita (not very easily) from leather and rubber cement and a $200 chanter. More than likely you’ll tan the hide wrong and smell like dead animal every time you play. Otherwise they cost around $1200, straight from Galicia. I wonder if I adore the Gaita more than Scottish bagpipes or any other kind because of the shiny tassels. I also wonder if the shiny tassels are the reason why two of the ravens in the trees seem to be following this one Gaita player around everywhere he goes.

Later on, in the coffeehouse we spent all day decorating, a dashing old hippie flirts with my mom. In the middle of suggesting earplugs for a peaceful sleep, he says “well, I’m a musician. I don’t mind the noise.” I smile and think of all the opera my mother’s sang, all the stage productions she’s been in, all the piano and dulcimer and recorder she’s ever played, and mostly all the hundreds and thousands of children she’s taught to understand music in her career as a K-12 Orff teacher and I laugh.

“Mom,” I say, “I feel like we’re trapped in an episode of a show called MUSICIAN — OR FEMALE?”

“Honey, I don’t think he meant it that way,” she says.

“I know, Mom,” I say. “They never do.”

Later, I fall asleep to the mellifluous cacophony of the Greeks playing bouzouki and oud on one side of us, Turkish singing on the other, and Gaita outbursts here and there. These are the folks whose summer vacation means a mystical return to the past — to a time before recorded music.

I like it here. I can hear everything.

Burning Man is the new punk (and not in a good way)

August 8, 007
SF bunker

I had no college radio growing up, no cable TV, no computers. My intake of popular culture remained so tightly regulated all the way through late high school that the only gossip I knew of punk rock had been repeated by my parents and their friends, usually after viewing some sensationalistic prime-time news special about how uncontrollable youths in California or Manhattan had grown bored with life and started to and dance angularly while bumping into each other — or to cannibalize babies, depending on the individual’s interpretation of the news story.

Also, everyone at my church thought anyone who would name their band the Dead Kennedys had to be in league with Beelzebub. Also, the handsome, rebellious older son of my mother’s teacher friend at school had been suspended for a week for writing ‘TOO DRUNK TO FUCK’ on the side of his high-top Converse shoe. That’s all I knew about punk.

lil’ angry jello… awww.

The blues is the blues. Not aggressive so much as resigned. Punk rock was the first Western music genre (well, second after Wagnerian opera) to manifest in both lyric and tone the malaise humanity has felt ever since our knuckles scraped the ground, in addition to the blind rage which inevitably lines the underside of any hypocritical, capitalistic society. Punks sang with total fucking honesty and outright aggression, just to stoke people into reacting.

They named their bands after the worst things with which humanity had blighted the earth: The Germs, the Exploited, the Murderers, VKTMS, Agent Orange, Misfits, the Damned, the Dictators, Gang Green, the Skids, the Dead Kennedys, Suicide, Television. Fear didn’t really “destroy the family” as they said — Lee Ving just shouted the words over and over (“We Destroy the Family”) to see what would happen.

He wasn’t screaming about his own apathy as much as everyone else’s. About apathy and desensitization as necessary weapons in an awful world. Along with his shit-kicking peers, Lee Ving was the town crier rudely pointing out a breach in security that needs fixing. The cartoon villian embodying evil and callousness, who forces the bystander to either do something about him or run the other way.

Suddenly, supposedly Satanic bands like KISS meant nothing. Punk’s superheroes were regular people experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion. Keep on the sunny side? No way. Reagan was in office. Too much fucked up shit was going on. Punk rock was merely saying what everybody else was thinking — so naturally, the status quo concentrated not on the social ills depicted in song, but on killing the messenger.

Now, the funny thing is, punk is a commodity. A lifeless echo of all that rage and nihilism. Sure, every three or four years I buy a piece of clothing on sale at Hot Topic too — but … well, they say that once the fashion aspect of any subculture has overcome the meaning behind it, it’s dead.

I for one predict furry legwarmers, blinky LED-light clothing, and watered-down Mad Max attire will be lining the racks at Hot Topic within the next few years…

Noooo… Kill them…

I Don’t Care About You

August 7, 007
SF bunker

I’m freaking out today, all full of news both good and bad. Anxious to blog-blurt stuff about my conflicted-ness but I have to wait for a non-disclosure agreement to come in the mail. Today all I can do is pace around and listen to really loud punk rock.

Punk rock. Without it, many of us would be in jail.

The first time I ever heard punk rock with my very own ears also coincided with my first makeout session. On vacation with my churchgoing parents and their equally wholesome friends in Daytona Beach, Florida, I sunned myself out on the sand a couple yards away from my folks … when I found myself playing eye hockey with a lithe, tanned surfer boy I thought far too good-looking to be in my league. Eye hockey: how brazen; how exciting. He might as well have been a magazine picture of a surfer; I sported braces and a perm, and a bony body and giant feet.

I thought it was a joke. I’d seen the Lilli Taylor movie about the pig party.

Much to my surprise, the surfer dude came over and introduced himself to me AND my parents. Let’s call him Rocco DiMezzo, Jr. — playboy teenage son of a playboy personal-injury lawyer with a pink stucco house right on the beach. He spoke to my folks like an adult, and not even in an Eddie Haskell way — so my dad actually let me agree to meet him later. Only for half an hour, but still. It was something.

We met up that night in the hotel parking lot, and sat together in his surfing-friendly Volvo and listened to music and kissed. On the tape in the car stereo, over an army of guitars with a metallic buzzsaw tone I’d never heard before, a rowdy hooligan growled on a cheap microphone:

“I SEEN AN OLD MAN HAVE A HEART ATTACK ON THE STREETS OF MANHATTAN — WELL HE DIED WHILE WE JUST STOOD THERE LOOKIN’ AT HIM …”

Guitars bee-swarmed in the background, and on the chorus, a pack of wild young boys screamed along with the hooligan, all pissed off about everything: “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU! FUCK YOU!”

“Who’s this?,” I asked.
“Fear,” Rocco said.

“I SEEN MEN ROLLING DRUNKS, BODIES IN THE STREET — I SAW A MAN WHO WAS SLEEPING IN PUKE AND A MAN WITH NO LEGS ROLLING DOWN FIFTH STREET” –

Rocco put his hand on my leg, bit the lobe of my ear, and crept his fingers up underneath my Daisy Dukes to the soft hairs at the tippy-top of my inner thigh. I’d been kept from ugly, inner-city, dregs-of-society scenarios my whole life, and this dude on the tape player was singing about them as if they were no big deal.

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU! FUCK YOU!”

Fear. I didn’t know whether Rocco was telling me the name of a band or giving me a command, and with that, I was instantly, honestly turned on for the first time ever in my life. For a socially-awkward Sister Christian, I sure had a lot of body parts that began to pulsate in ways I never experienced until just then, whether because of Rocco’s wandering tongue or (more likely) because of Fear’s naked rage.

I didn’t even know what to do with my body, or what Rocco was going to do, or could do, with my body, in the 15 minutes I had until my father would come out into the parking lot and drag me away from the car if I hadn’t returned to the hotel room. I also had a strong suspicion Dad was having my mom periodically check on me from some dark balcony, so I didn’t let Rocco go too far. I only knew the sensations in my groin and in my brain were probably a result of me doing a bunch of things God said I wasn’t supposed to be doing at once, and I didn’t care if Rocco’s fingers went any further as much as I cared about turning the volume up or putting some big fluffy headphones on and finally getting to listen to punk rock while my parents weren’t around.

Here I was, at last, making out with a boy who could drive a car and at the same time listening to the Bad Kid punkers, the ones I’d heard to stay away from — the neglected, angry spawn of the Me Generation, breaking bottles in alleyways and experimenting with illicit substances and celebrating the dark side while I played handbells at church banquets and practiced piano and studied advanced math.

Rocco’s tongue explored my braces, and I marveled at the smoothness of his rippled brown chest peeking out from his open white button-down shirt while Lee Ving, Fear’s animal frontman, roared about the horrific realities of city life. Grim vignettes and caveman choruses shouted out loud with all voices and instruments echoing the frankness about the way things were that nobody was allowed to point out in my community without putting it all on ‘Satan.’

I think I also realized Rocco DiMezzo, Jr. didn’t care about me. Fuck me. And more importantly I realized that was okay, because it was just making out for 15 minutes, second base only, and God wasn’t involved and probably didn’t care about me — fuck me — or whether or not Rocco DiMezzo, Jr. kept trying to put my hand on his stick shift.

I tasted my first kiss from a bad boy’s mouth, one who would stomp my heart to bits if I “let” him, and in the background, Rocco’s car stereo was busy being honest about his emotional stance so he didn’t have to. He might not have said what I wanted to hear or done what I wanted him to do, but at least he wasn’t lying about anything.

It was the beginning of my awakening.

That night, I started to be able to put name to my anger. And from then on, punk was there to help.

…and who among us DIDN’T watch Reform School Girls over, and over, and over, and over….

Lark in the Morning

August 6, 007
Mendocino to SF

Called “Hippie Band Camp” by attendees as well as good-natured teasers at home, Lark in the Morning just celebrated its 27th year. A nine-day old-world music hoedown in the Mendocino redwoods, Lark (for short) has been called “Burning Man for musicians” by people who aren’t yet aware that you have to bring all your own food and drinks to Burning Man, that Burning Man’s population hovers around 40,000 as opposed to Lark’s mere 700ish, and that Lark is older.

Oh and that Black Rock City is a blah blah blah who cares right now I’m still high off of Lark. Make fun of me for hanging out with hippies if you like — these are the good kind of hippies. The ones who are Us from one generation back. The ones who Did Something, and Continue To Do Things. The righteous ones.

But whatever, the commonality is that a particular crowd of people plans for and dreams about it all year. Also, anyone studying the history of the event will find the old guard of attendees are indeed “our” direct ancestors — those dedicated to creating temporal environments where one’s wildest creative dreams can come true. At Lark Camp, musicians can bust out and start tooting their own horns (sometimes literally) without shame, retribution, or funny looks. Most are from Northern California and/or the West Coast, hailing from or gravitating toward a fairly liberal lifestyle, and more able to pick Ramblin’ Jack Elliott out of a lineup than Tim McGraw or Barry Bonds.

All instruments are acoustic, and no recorded music is played, except in some dance classes where the musicians can’t make it to provide live accompaniment. The Mendocino Woodlands transport the festivalgoer back to prehistoric (or folkloric) times, when troll families lived in hollowed-out mossy tree stumps and very large dragonflies (fairies?) flew around few-and-far-between humans with a palpable sense of entitlement. It’s an otherworldly scene to the extreme, especially when one walks down a nature trail and hears a chorus of violins, a Brazilian drumming ensemble, or a lone bagpipe wafting through the Tolkeinsian forest. Some say Lark is a modern Brigadoon.

Lark in the Morning’s founder, Mickie Zekley, taught himself guitar at age 16, and by 19, he’d begun studying sitar with Ravi Shankar. An encyclopedia of Forrest Gump-like experiences lives within him: residing in sight of the Hog Farm, busking at the early days of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, and accidentally being dubbed “King of the Hippies” at the Elysian Park Love-In … all before he’d turned 20. His best friend Bob Thomas — a charming and superhuman artist, musician, and all-around character — designed the Grateful Dead logo.

Quickly becoming a proficient player and performer of dozens of instruments from all over the world, Zekley ended up as a proprietor of two shops (also called Lark in the Morning, after the old Irish tune) that sell some of the most remarkable artisan instruments that exist in the world today. Lark “camp” started as a Sunday music party at Zekley’s Mendocino house, and when the drunk bagpipers became too numerous, he moved it. Now, once a year, the “good” hippies, and their children, and their ticketholders, and their “native” musician friends gather under a vast and mystical canopy of ancient trees to take classes and play religiously analog (old) world music together for 10 days.

Yeah, it didn’t suck.