I went down on chem trails (again)

Sept. 29, 007
Black Rock City

Sicky. Cough cough: The sound of gravel. Sweating repeatedly through the sheets as I sleep for 24 hours in a row. Shiver shiver shiver. Lung butter and nose emissions the horrifically unnatural color of a hairstylist’s polyester pants in the ‘60s.

I’m not the only one, by any means. I’ve lost my voice too so can’t really wander around and see yet if my and Russ’s intuitions are correct. But we remember this from 2002. The “monkey pox” was slightly different then — more like spewing out both ends, along with the shivering and sleeping and all — but it “feels” the same. Like they’re changing it up a little every time, just to see what happens.

It always comes when they spray the chem trails.

Everyone in the DPW got sick in 2002. Everyone — even those who never get sick. And again in a couple other cleanup years, I hear. Some go down multiple times. In 2002 we thought we’d just rapid-cycled a bug or two amongst ourselves — I mean, we live in insanely close quarters. Playa restoration for Burning Man is half labor camp and half summer camp for a bunch of hard-drinking, hard-living, forward-thinking misfits.

What freaked me out was finding in 2002 that all of Gerlach and nearby Empire had ALSO gotten sick. With the same thing.

Even on tour with Cyclecide — that’s living on a bus with a dozen dirty bike rodeo klowns for 2-3 months in a row — does “group sickness” never behave this way. Not this violently.

Before yall dismiss me, take a look at this picture and ask yourself: Is this a cloud?

Does God make Xes in the sky above a community’s head when He (of course “He,” right?) disapproves of its sinful behavior?

Do these Xes then slowly fan out to cast a disapproving glare of Heavenly sun-blocking cotton where at breakfast there was not a cloud in the sky? (Is it angel’s hair?)

This is where you say: Silly goose, you’re a paranoid survivalist freak. Commercial planes cross the Black Rock Desert all the time. With such frequency that they make humongous Xes in the sky before their con trails — relatively harmless substances the airlines dump out of their fuselages while they fly — fade away? Yep … lotsa people on their way from Sacramento to Salt Lake City. So much they criss-cross the second largest mass of flat land on Earth at least four times an hour.

Well, do they fly over this particular area of land at around 4am? All together, in FORMATION?

Let me ask you this: Don’t you think the people who control the air — that would be the people who lie to you, invade your privacy, and attack sovereign nations under false pretenses, all for their own best (monetary) interests at heart — also CONTROL THE AIR?

Chem trails don’t always have monkey pox in them. I’m not saying that. Sometimes I think they’re just cloud-seeding, and that global warming is already way worse than anyone in the government wants us to know. The best case scenario I can think of is that sometimes they release small doses of chemical-warfare liquids in order to immunize us for when everyone who hates us tries to attack. But I think that’s giving them too much credit.

My only hope is that they’re training us (part- and full-time) desert rats to morph into some sort of warrior class, resistant to disease and ready to fight when the shit hits the fan. This is a fairy tale I tell myself to counteract the fact that our current administration is only fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan because their buddies in the weapons and oil industries don’t want to lose control, don’t want to give that money to someone else, and don’t want America to turn into an anarchic, murder-happy society too close to the Mad Max series for everyone’s comfort.

Then nobody would go shopping.

—–

Yesterday, Russ and Hollis were cruising out to the hot springs when they saw a creepy, governmental-khaki, shiny-new truck with two collared-shirt dudes inside and a GIANT 20-foot antenna in the truck bed. Russ and Hollis — who are also quite aware of the unfathomably weird things that happen out here — put on their sunglasses, hoods, and game faces and sat still. The other truck, knowing they’d been spotted, pulled up and asked “Is this the way to Frog Pond?” — the same way if you’d found them broken into your house in the middle of the night and they asked “Is Mike home? Oh uh, I must have the wrong address.”

Then they accepted the directions, pulled over to Frog, didn’t go in, and quickly assed out of there and on back across the playa to the highway.

Yes, they could’ve been rocket guys or some other type of nerd. But both Russ and Hollis said that was NOT what was going on. Either those men were listening to us or they were taking readings.

Earlier that day, an enormous black military helicopter flew 40 feet above the MOOP line, across the desert floor, and back up to the airbase in Winnemucca.

Out here, you know when something doesn’t sit right. It’s not fantasy — your intuition turns up to eleven when you come to a flat space the size of Delaware with no buildings or cars or people around. You just know things, even when someone is in your face telling you the exact opposite. Ask anyone who’s ever worked setup or cleanup for Burning Man.

Intuition. Something we as humans have lost among the cacophony of modern living. Something we might should try to find ways to get back.

—–

Some locals say it’s aluminum up in there. That they’re killing us, and/or dumbing us down. I’m not sure about that … but one summed it up thusly: “The government is f**king with us. It’s like the Tuskegee Experiment all over again.”

I’m not into this sort of thing as a rule. I don’t believe many of the “conspiracy facts” my friend Jesse Wack believes. I just always want to see behind the curtain. So I look. And I see them — the chem trails — out here and back at home in the BayviewSF, and everywhere else in America I’ve been. I’ve heard the planes, seen the planes, and felt the sticky film on my van the morning after some occasions when they’ve crossed. And now I’ve personally gotten the monkey pox TWO TIMES.

Everything important I have come to believe in my time on this planet does not blindly follow people or movements or religions or books or Websites — it comes from observing and gathering empirical evidence. And maybe it is just a bug this time, but we’ll see how many people in Gerlach and Empire report to us about having the monkey pox again.

I think this is pretty important. It’s more likely to be true than not, given the other things our American government has done to its own people in the past century.

I think if you don’t think so, you should look up.

technical difficulties

Please stand by.

Someone knocked over my computer in the Crack Rock last night after accidentally swallowing too much alcohol. My DJ set came to an abrupt end, just at the start of the panic attack. I didn’t lose any data but now the thing won’t close and the charger doesn’t work, so I’ve only got 7 minutes left on my battery. I’d talk more about it but I lost my voice (again) singing along to Journey with everyone.

It was a full moon. That’s all I think I can say about the party without getting killed.

Gerlach High School girls’ volleyball game tonight. DPW is all invited. We’re not allowed to cuss or bring booze but I think it’ll be pretty awesome anyway.

I’m scared of the party tonight

It’s 8:16pm in the Black Rock Saloon in Gerlach, Nevada. We all just ate, at least. Thankfully. Lining for the stomach.

Dukey and Charlie and Vaughn and Party Guy and Fraser are holding court behind the bar at the Crack Rock, already shirtless and/or partially de-pantsed. Dollar bills and cigarettes tucked in thongs. Bouncing their junk and molesting incoming customers and crawling around on the bar like strippers.

They’re calling it ‘Coyote Icky.’

Dr. Dre is thumping on the sound system — no wait, now it’s Lionel Richie — and bow ties are being paired with hotpants and old lady wigs. There’s an electricity in the air that says: Someone is going to puke tonight.

(Wait, now it’s Culture Club.)

I feel sorry for whoever passes out with their boots on first.

he love you long time

Car porn: DPW / Gate vehicles

This is the opposite of the Bonneville pictures I took.

Snow day field trip

Fall has come, suddenly.

The rains came too, last night. For hours. And wind — enough to shake the trailer and rock me to a fitful sleep. This morning, it was no surprise when Coyote and D.A.’s call came in from the playa: Too wet. Today will now be about cleaning up personal camps and trailers and preparing to leave in 10 days.

13 and I went to the ranch to handle some Gate business. That place has changed since last I visited it. Mainly, it’s not a giant mess any more. A lot of work has been done. It no longer feels like home, not like the days of Jalisco’s / Palmer’s and bucket bombs and flaming redneck soccer. It feels like work. Progress. (sigh)

Then on the way home we visited the “Salty Balls” playa. (We don’t know the real name.)

It’s on the other side of the 447 from “the” playa, and it’s small, and made of entirely different stuff. And after rainstorms, it definitely smells like an ancient lakebed where the free-range cattle out here come to shit.

The salty balls up close. Grass blows across this playa, and it snowballs, and accumulates salt and seeds.

13 likes salty balls.

This is what they look like when you cut them open.

The salt sounds like snow when you walk on it. Crunchy.

The crunchy part.

Pieces of the crunchy part look like clouds when you hold them up to the sky.

See? Clouds. Cute.

This is what’s under the crunchiest parts. It feels like corn husk, or rice noodles. It’s pink.

Tiny flowers at the shoreline. Also pink.

13 found a dessicated snake corpse.

We paid a visit to the shot-up Thunderbird.

Then we found this.

Okay, okay. Enough about clouds. But stuff like this is why I’m out here

MOOP archaeology

Sept. 20, 007
Black Rock City, NV

Found a makeup case in a dune today.

A makeup case which aliens must have packed.

ALIEN #1 PACKING FOR BURNING MAN: “Let’s see… in order to simulate the appearance of a female human, I must cover the portions of newly-grown skin which protect the eyes and mouth in gradients of pigment.”

ALIEN #2, ASSIGNED TO THE SAME MISSION: “Female humans of breeding age also habitually carry fiber-based bullets designed to stop the flow of shedding uterine lining. Here, have one.”

ALIEN #1: “A black pencil, a reflecting device, and … What am I missing? … Ah yes. An implementation tool for applying the pigment. This simulated horsehair apparatus should do it.”

ALIEN #2: “The makeup transporter seems sparse. Here, have another palette of variously colored frosted powder.”

Whoever it is that packed this makeup case, please tell us what you want with us. Are you friendly? Because I can’t quite tell yet by the looks of that operative you planted to act like he’s one of the DPW crew.

No, no, not the narcs — those two are WAY obvious. Government types always are. I’m talking about the guy who disappears right after work, never eats, never shows any skin but his face, and always wears sunglasses. And when he puts on sunscreen when we’re all putting on sunscreen, it doesn’t blend in and turns his skin a weird shade of lavender.

Yep, I’m onto you people. Or whatever you are. Next time, at least try adding an eyeshadow brush and some mascara.

Lint Farmers on Tatooine

Sept. 19, 007
Black Rock City, NV

They changed the name of what the DPW does from “cleanup” to “Playa Restoration” a couple years ago. The Burning Man Borg are as aware as anyone that naming is power, and that naming something right lends the right ideas and attitude. And the DPW are not Black Rock City’s janitors. We are its guardians — carrying out the final task to make sure a Burning Man can happen next year. That Burning Man is indeed, once again, the single largest Leave No Trace event on the planet.

Lollapalooza, Coachella, the Love Parade, Tour de Fat — at every single one of these festivals I’ve attended and worked, a metric ass-ton of crap covers the ground both during and after showtime.

I know, I know, Burning Man is an entirely different animal — a city of willful interaction and self-reliance rather than a passive concert-environment of spectation and consumption — and it shows. Events based on commercialism always hire an army of blue-collar workers to pick up trash and clean up the puke after everyone leaves.

At Burning Man … well, the community’s standards could always improve, and a couple bad apples spoil things considerably … but it bears repeating: The workers of Black Rock City are not out here because we’re janitors. We’re here striking and winterizing the infrastructure of the City — and then, we spend about three weeks doing a massive idiot check. Which allows the BLM to give us the go-ahead to throw it all again next year.

Three weeks of a 75-person crew stooping and MOOPing, and the desert floor once again becomes cleaner than ever in the years between when the Gold Rush-era settlers first crossed the playa and when Micheal Micheal first suggested moving the burning dude out here. Out to the place where it looks like Luke Skywalker’s parents might pop out of the ground and Jawas lurk at the base of the mountains by Frog Pond.

Breakfast is served on the playa now instead of at Bruno’s in town, so we can have our daily fire-barrel experience before Morning Meeting. We might live in town now, but DPW cannot work efficiently without the regenerative effects of live fire.

——–

D.A., the head of Playa Restoration, said in his welcome-to-line-sweeps speech yesterday that, with the way we clean up after ourselves, we citizens of Black Rock City can teach the world how to be. I say with this little trash on the ground where two weeks ago, a teeming city of 48,000ish people got into some weird shit — we are already teaching the world how to be. Most folks who come out to Burning Man can’t help taking this kind of behavior home and spreading it around and leading by example, even just a little bit. It’s just so … satisfying to make things better. To work for fun. Work is art. Art is work. Do stuff.

The ratio is this: One cleanup worker for every 800 or so residents of Black Rock City. But nobody seems to be worried.

Good job, everybody. Except you over there. Tape your Astro-Turf and stop bringing unshelled seeds and glitter to the desert, jackass.

The ravens score all the good stuff before we do. Jewelry, shiny tokens, mystery pills. I’ve always longed for an ornithologist to compile a photo essay of birds’ nests on the borders of this half of the Desert. I’m sure they’re disco-fabulous.

By the time Line Sweeps start, most of what’s left for us to pick up is: coals, wood chips, string, shade cloth bits, carpet pieces, Astro-Turf frayings, Zip-Ties, glittery pieces of tinsel, and human hair. Let’s just put it this way: The amount of work done does NOT correspond directly to the tonnage accrued at the end of the day in one’s MOOP bucket.

So, SO much bending. Muscles hate me.

Why do we slave, then? Because we get to be zombies together. You don’t need drugs when you’re lurching over the hot desert floor in the bright sunshine, with repurposed water receptacle in one hand and MOOP stick or Leatherman in the other (it’s like a bird’s beak!), scrutinizing the ground for the tiniest of particles to retrieve and dispose of. Walking around in swoops like a pigeon on crack for 8 hours a day for three weeks. Having batshit conversations and teetering on the brink of dehydration.

It’s fun if you think it is. I mean, where else in the world can you find a Post-It note that says:

Danny said: My friends are going to hell. I said why? D: Because they’re dirty … I’m really gonna miss my friends when I’m in heaven.

——-

Things got weird after lunch as we Line-Sweeped the Esplanade. After a temperate morning, heavy grey clouds suddenly formed in a circle around the sun. In the distance, the horizon blackened, and a low sky rained a curtain on one side of us, obscuring the desert floor like the Mists of Avalon. Workers kept pausing in MOOPing, wondering if we should take cover. The rain threatened to fall, but the clouds held in a pattern that mirrored the open circle of the City map we were scouring, and the ring of clear sky around the sun stayed and stayed. The clouds poofed out and morphed from one ring into six distinct shapes.

I really like pictures of sudden storms, and clouds that look like they contain a half-dozen quasi-omnipotent sky-Ents watching over us … so I took my camera out … and it wouldn’t work. Change the batteries, it said. So I removed the batteries and tossed them into my future (still-empty) Moop DeVille and — they exploded. Not all big or anything, but battery acid went everywhere inside the plastic, ruining the drinking-water bottle I also store in there.

Then, a massive dust cloud formed on the horizon, in front of the black curtain and below the sun-ring. I took refuge with 13 in the “company car.” Our hair stood on end and the whole vehicle felt electrified, like the inside of a Tesla coil. The mink collar on my coat Low Rent the Clown gifted me popped and crackled with static, and shocked my face over and over to where I had to take the jacket off. Even my pen malfunctioned temporarily, like the ballpoint had frozen into place.

This doesn’t look to-scale at all. The thing was mammoth

I loaded new batteries into the camera. I snapped one picture of the Dust-Zilla … and then the camera crapped out again and wouldn’t turn over. No “change batteries” warning or anything.

These were certainly new, freshly-unwrapped batteries — that I threw in the MOOP bucket and THEY exploded.

And THEN! 13’s Ipod played “Sexy Back” over the top of the Queens of the Stone Age we were listening to, in and out like two radio stations fighting, even though she hadn’t put “Sexy Back” on the playlist in days.

Then the rain started to come down, and we all got to go home early.

—–

I saw three different crazy-looking prehistoric bugs today.

No Jawas, though. Not yet.

First Day of Cleanup

Sept. 17, 007
Black Rock City, NV

People have always customized their MOOP buckets. Now 13 has just raised the bar with her MOOPcedes Benz.

We’re talking T-shirt jersey sewn onto the opening and on the grip to prevent scratching, and moleskin under the knuckles for lessened chafing. Plus the cherry paint job and safety-pin-and-bead-based flair, still in progress. Tonight I’m going to have to get to work on my MOOP DeVille…

Stinkin’ Linkin crew: A pictorial

Sept. 16, 007
Bonneville to Reno

“Cars are recreational vehicles. Not just transportational. This is where cars are appreciated for what they truly are. These guys love their machines, and they respect them. I ride a bicycle every day to work so I can talk shit about cars if I want to. But when I do use cars, it’s with a great amount of respect for how much joy they can bring.” – J.T., lead mechanic / engineer, Stinkin’ Linkin crew

Mutt and J.T. wait with Andy as he lines up and gets ready to race. He got up to 162 on the second day but then spun out a little, so he had to re-prove himself in the lower speed categories again. Every other run hovered somewhere between 110-140. They didn’t want to push the car too hard, because unlike anyone else at Bonneville, they now have to drive their competition vehicle 2000 miles back home.

Andy suits up in full (hot! in the desert sun!) fire safety gear.

Every car has to purchase special racing fuel from the (smart as hell) fuel guy, and get their tank sealed and labeled.

Mutt and Zack (another integral mechanic on the Stinkin’ Linkin crew) watch as Andy gets the final go-ahead from a race official.

A page from Zack’s sketchbook. See what I mean? These dudes are touched by the hand of the Mechanical Gods.

On Saturday, the boys took a GPS speedometer out to the course and conducted their very own first annual World Tallbike Landspeed Record competition.
First place: Andy Overslaugh, representing Flanagan’s Pub, NOLA
Second place: Zack, representing Triumph of NOLA
Third place: Mutt, representing Black Label Bike Club (nowhere chapter)
Fourth place: J.T., representing Bienville Studios
Fifth place: Journalist guy from Zero to 60 Magazine, representing New York City

Before the World Tallbike Landspeed Record competition, they rolled the tallbike through the Tech Inspection tent — to the bemusement of old gearheads, who despite their years of tinkering with vehicles had never seen such a low-tech marvel of engineering before

On Friday, J.T. went through the driver’s safety course and took a run on the track himself. He gained a new-found respect for Andy’s driving abilities on the salt, which had become squirrelly and rutted and torn up after days of wear and tear. J.T. clocked in at a blistering 78 mph.

Twas quite poetic to take my own boat with two couches out on the ancient lakebed. As a fellow Royale owner once said: I don’t turn right; I turn STARBOARD.

This one’s for you, New Orleans.

Bonneville car porn pt. 2: More Salt Flats pixxx

The Stinkin’ Linkin from New Orleans

September 14, 007
Bonneville Salt Flats

After spending more than a month working for Burning Man, I am now officially unused to seeing cars without windows busted out, dents upon dents, lewd things spray-painted all over the dusty doorless body, crap covering the floors, and at least one dildo planted somewhere. It seems forever I’ve been living among the Gate and DPW’s ultra-hoopdis and stripped-down Road Warrior apocalyptomobiles. Make no mistake — to cultivate such a look is an art form. The group must continually destroy the vehicle, while adding more crap to it, to keep a rotating pattern of stylistic chaos going at all times. As Zoo Lander would say, “it’s derelicte.”

The World of Speed event at the Bonneville Salt Flats is the opposite of that. Vehicles out on the salt are the fantasy cars young future mechanics hang as posters on their walls. Styles range from roadster to Rat Rod to might-as-well-be-a-missile … with a few exceptions. There are barstool races, there is an Indian motorcycle seemingly held together with plywood … and now, there is a bombed-out, re-upped, Mad-Maxed, scary-looking spectre of a reminder of the biggest loss-of-life-and-property tragedy America has experienced.

And it goes f**king fast for a mostly-street-legal car.

That’s the thing about the Stinkin’ Linkin. Not only is the car a subtle political statement about Katrina and the nation’s neglect, it’s also a lesson in utility. To quote Chicken John (who stole the quote from someone else but I can’t remember): Those who have done so much with so little for so long are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

The ‘98 Lincoln smelled like death when they first transported it to the shop. The death of friends and friends of friends, to be precise, and the pummeling of America’s soul-city by both nature and failed government. The only “pinstriping” on this menacing flat-black ride is a red and brown stripe where the water line had risen to. Everything below that level was covered in yuck.

They may look like punks, but J.T. — before he co-conceptualized the Stinkin’ Linkin with his pal Andy — designed the Hellcat and the Wraith. (Say that to anyone super into motorcycles and watch their jaws drop.) For years, he was head designer for Confederate Motorcycles, and it’s an understatement to say he arrived on this Earth with a preternatural understanding of engineering and mechanics.

(That goes true for most everyone out here at World of Speed. As a person who thinks almost exclusively in the right brain, I’m flummoxed, and honored to watch the machine-nerds work.)

Andy owns Flanagan’s Pub, a popular watering hole in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He’s got facial tattoos and even though he tries to downplay it, I love walking behind him in the pits and seeing people’s reactions to his appearance … and then how most of them are friendly anyway. Largely because Andy’s so friendly.

Andy and J.T. with their baby

Mutt has only been beknighted with the position of Mechanic #3 because Trevor couldn’t afford it and Neal got called off to go to Iraq with the National Guard, so J.T. asked him to be the third pair of eyes on the machine out at the Salt Flats. And Mutt’s been smiling the whole time, all day long. He never does that. He’s living the dream.

He says out of all the countercultural festivals he’s ever encountered — Rainbow, Burning Man, traveling stuff etc — he’s never felt more comfortable as here in the desert with a bunch of conservative old men.

“They’re not trying to be cooler-than-thou,” he said, “or acting like what they think ‘happy’ is supposed to be. Nobody’s all, ‘Oh, you rode out here in that? That’s cute’ … or, ‘I remember when 160 was a big deal.’”

There are at least a dozen other people who comprised the Stinkin’ Linkin crew in New Orleans, and many of them have traveled here. Some of them double as a documentary team. The Flanagan’s crew are affable and polite and easygoing — i.e., Southern — and slowly but surely, they’re becoming the darlings of the race.

And they seem to be the only ones who have driven their competition vehicle 2000 miles to race at Bonneville for the first time. With a basically street-legal car. For them, this was a budgetary necessity — and largely a badge of honor. Most other cars out here are babied, even if they are “vintage.” This utilitarian maneuver was part of the goal: to make something new and better out of junk. Victory out of sorrow.

They don’t know how fast the Stinkin’ Linkin can go, because it has to jump through all these hoops before Andy can put the pedal to the metal. You’ve got to crawl before you can walk. In the trial run, Andy clocked 99, and simultaneously figured out not to switch to fifth gear at the finish line. He needed more space, and then on the longer course he clocked something in the 120 range. I think. Yesterday he got all the way up to 163 but then he spun a little (salt is hard to drive on) so he has to go back and prove himself in the lower categories once more before they can see what the Stinkin’ Linkin can really do.

Which they’re doing right now, so I gotta go. It’s never been more exciting to hear a bunch of cars idling. They’re all thoroughbred-level machines at the World of Speed — even the rescued stray.

Bonneville car porn: pixxx from the Salt Flats

Sunrise over the pits:

The beloved Stinkin’ Linkin, rescued from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt despite the smell by a skilled team of punk rock mechanic/engineers, and driven all the way here from New Orleans, LA:

… and some o’ the other eye candy out there:

From Black Rock to Bonneville

September 13, 007
Black Rock City to Wendover, NV/UT

Oh, nothing. Just, you know, going to see the most beautiful cars in the universe, that’s all. No big deal. (self-satisfied sigh)

Burning Man’s first days of cleanup make for infrequent blog postings.

Apologies, but anyone who’s been out to the Black Rock Desert in a labor-type capacity knows it’s impossible to get by without physically working on something all day. You just do it because you have a strong work ethic, and/or because if you don’t, you’ll be asked to leave. It’s also impossible not to be so exhausted by day’s end you either crash right after dinner, or accidentally swallow too much beer and DJ a dance party for Face’s birthday at the Black Rock Saloon. (Hypothetically.)

I don’t know if anyone knows this, but it gets really hot in the desert in the middle of the day. Picking up someone else’s trash can make a girl a little … testy.

So I’m taking a break before I burn out. You know where else it’s hot? The Bonneville Salt Flats, where I’m watching some friends from New Orleans race at the World of Speed.

Which has been a dream of mine since childhood, implanted through osmosis by my engine-loving, race-car-driving, airplane-mechanic-teaching relatives … and ossified with my first viewing of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

——

Prior to the event’s end, I was appointed a cleanup manager (“MANAGER”! HAHAHAHAAAA…ha…heh…hm) for Gate and Perimeter’s personal camping area. Apparently the “Black Hole” was red on the MOOP map last year (that’s “they left a lot of stuff behind for the DPW to clean up” in BM-talk) and the Hydra — our three-man Gate management team — didn’t want that to happen again. So 13 and I had to clean up after the boys, basically. They were too burned out.

We had our girl Bloody Knuckles helping us, too, so we kicked ass and took names. Especially the name of that one dude from a different department who squatted (by invitation) on our real estate, post-event, and then — even after I personally made sure he understood the Gate’s-on-thin-ice situation — he merely packed up his belongings and left the rest for us to clean. We’re talking human hair, carpet pieces, tiny coals, astro-turf frayings, wrappers, and big dunes that collected around his domicile, filled with more of the same … thanks dude.

Anyway I’m sure everyone’s dying to know that the petses have left. At least for the moment. They’ve taken an extended vacation to “let the RVs air out” in a nearby Nevada resort town.

(Rather than having to return the RVs to the rental place after a strenuous alkali-dust cleaning, and because they’re all fairly into camping now, they just purchased their rolling palaces flat out. JEALOUS, but I wouldn’t want to drive anything that big.)

I know this whole Burning Man thing started out as playtime for them, but as anyone who’s been to Black Rock City could’ve predicted, this event really, REALLY messed with their perspective on life. So they’ve gone to chill out and reflect and decompress. Some of them are talking about coming back for cleanup, which makes me squirrelly. But who knows, they’re from Los Flake-eles. And if they DO mean what they say, maybe they’ll actually fit in. (Haha! Stranger things have happened.)

They’ve changed a lot since I met them. Even their posture. They stomp around like us now, keys jingling, boots flapping, Mag-Lite dangling from leather belt … sorry to say this, pets, but I still don’t trust actors. It’s because I personally can’t tell when people are lying — or up until recently I couldn’t — and, well, it’s an actor’s job to lie.

But I also don’t trust a couple new DPW faces here nobody seems to know. As with anything else, I (and others) will reserve judgement and see if our Spidey senses are misfiring.

Anyhoo.

Another day, another ancient fossilized lakebed filled with visually entertaining evidence of the limits of human accomplishment. Yep, life is good. More tomorrow (I hope).

The “Skank Rag”

September 11, 007
Black Rock City

Yesterday 13 came to work wearing a rolled-up bandana tied just under her right knee. I merely thought she was making a hair-metal fashion statement, but then she told me the best tidbit of playa innovation I’ve heard since coconut juice.

The “Skank Rag” may be untied and used as a wipe on those frequent occasions out here on the Black Rock Desert when over-hydration leads to peeing behind cars rather than in the Porta-Johns. It also doubles as a handkerchief, when playa boogers become encrusted in one’s nostrils to the point where they must be excavated.

Yeah. It sounds gross. But it holds the grossness all in one place. Just below your knee, and far away from any infection-ready cuts or orifices. And nobody will ever suspect you’re not just taking style cues from David Lee Roth.

Shoes, parachutes, fires, food fights

September 6, 2007
Reno to Black Rock City

It’s been a red sun at night for about 4 days now. Apparently there’s a fire in Susanville, and everything’s all purple mountain’s majesty from late afternoon til dark. The brush-fire could’ve been started by an irresponsible Burning Man ticketholder throwing a cigarette out the window; it could’ve just as easily been a hunter or cowboy failing to properly extinguish his campfire. The Anti-Paul Addis, maybe?

We’ve all gone a little loopy again, with 13 dumpstering a half-burned parachute from the DPW Depot to make a hot toga-ish dress for the Last Supper (the final night of commissary on-playa) — and riding back to the Black Hole in the truckbed with the parachute all splayed out behind her like Priscilla Queen of the Desert, singing nonsense to herself that sounded like a trumpet mixed with a chicken clucking. Today was a half workday for the DPW, and we’ve all got to move to the trailer parks in town now. It feels like an ending, and we’re celebrating. Cleanup is going beautifully.

Last night a nice lady returning for her broken-down car stopped at the Gate and gave me a new pair of really swank tennis shoes. My Chucks had started to “turn,” so I was asking the universe for some — and they came to me, all expensive. But white, so I spray-painted them black. And now my feet are happy. C-Load got a girls’-clothes outfit too — flowy tassely scarf, white pillowed jacket, off-white lace stretch tank top, white beanie hat — and during one of my brand new inexplicable blackouts I woke up to him catching me falling off the truck bed, and I panicked and started to fight because I thought he was a date-rapist raver.

He got rid of the hat. Now the outfit is perfect.

——-

Confidential to my pet narcissist, who prefers the word ‘vain’: You say you don’t want to be called ‘narcissistic’ because Narcissus didn’t do anything at all besides look at himself in a pool. I disagree. Vain people actively try to manipulate others to their own ends. Naricssists can’t help it. They just look at themselves for a living. And Narcissus is good at it, so others who are too afraid to look at themselves for that long will come from miles around and gather to watch he who dares gaze at his reflection all day. Then, in my legend anyway, Narcissus falls out of love with his reflection and goes all the way to not being able to stand the sight of himself at all anymore. Pond-side and cramped from sitting crouched over the water, he starts to act bored, and gets up to stretch and look around for other things to look at, and the audience boos, and Narcissus is forced to contend with the hatred of those who tried to live vicariously through his shameless vanity and failed. They boo because their disappointment and fatigue is mirrored in the hero who is supposed to love himself more than anything else.

You can step away from the pond, you know. Look at something else, and don’t pay attention to the booing.

For the Last Supper, they set up one long table for everyone still left in the Black Rock Desert to eat as a family. We got there late, and wanted to sit together, and there wasn’t enough room so we set up another table off to the side. And everyone gave us shit for being exclusionary Gatestapo kids’-table haters.

And of course, Gate crew started a food fight. Everyone knew it was going to happen. It’s a tradition. Both senior staff and commissary crew eyed us suspiciously from the moment we walked in holding multiple bottles of red wine. Nobody in Gate really tried to hide the fact that we were the Bad Kids — smirking, eating nervously, going back in line to get ammo (I mean “seconds”), and involuntarily casing the place like hooligans about to plant a mailbox bomb.

Alas, the food fight came to a quick end when a co-worker turned around too quickly and fell on top of me and pinned me between himself and a chair that collapsed onto the floor underneath me. (For some reason I’m more than ever a magnet for injuries.) Everyone had a good laugh, though, and our awesome commissary manager simply walked over to the main perpetrators of the fight (smeared with watermelon and mashed potatoes) and handed them a broom.

This is a work channel

September 5, 2007
Reno to Black Rock City

Dust storms start around 4 again on Tuesday, and don’t abate all night. My pet celebrities have stuck around; they’ve fanned out to work with the various departments and big art installations which floated their boats. During our meetings in Los Angeles earlier this summer, I presented the pets with my favorite post-Burn possibility of staying late for cleanup, and scolded them in advance if they tried to hang out on the desert with us and spectate rather than provide labor. Turns out the petses are not afraid of hard work, and I think the ego smash is doing them all a world of good.

Well, most. One of the couples isn’t faring so well, and while the woman keeps pitching fits about returning to the comforts of home, the man thinks the best solution to their current problems is to stay out here until they’ve resolved the issues tripping them up. Whilst refereeing a domestic dispute between them earlier today, I agreed with the man, and told all the pets that if they haven’t figured it out yet, this environment of few distractions tends to put a magnifying glass to both joy and problems.

I don’t know how to talk to a woman who’s threatened by all other women, other than to try to calm her down and tell her to stop it. She’s so beautiful, and she’s constantly undercutting herself, which pisses her man off. I wasn’t hired to be the petses’ Burning Man therapist, and I’ve got too many other things to do, but I want to help them if I can.

The pets reported other visions besides the “UFOs” playing in the Temple burn the other night — the highest-maintenance chick claims she can’t see herself in mirrors any more. Her man, sick of her obsessing over it, finally smashed ALL the mirrors in his and his friends’ RVs. (Don’t worry, the nanny MOOPed up the glass with a vacuum cleaner she brought.) Perhaps the insecure chick got a hold of the brown acid, and that’s why her man’s got his hands full. But I’ve seriously been tripping myself, and everyone deals with weird-ass events in his or her own way.

Radio transmission on Gate channel I recorded right before the storm:

“Gate, Gate. There’s a massive storm swell mounting in the West that’s definitely coming straight for us.” *click*
“Heh. Heh. You just said ‘massive’ and ‘mounting’ in the same sentence.” *click*
“Don’t forget ’swell’.” *click*
(sound of rubbing — or masturbating — with radio in hand) *click*
“Check out the red moon.” *click*
“Christians say that means it’s the end of the world.” *click*
“What’s that sailor’s saying?” *click*
“Red sun at morning, sailors take warning – red sun at night, sailor’s delight…Nothing to do with the moon at all. You’re fucked.” *click*
(pause)
“Does the Bible say anything about raining mud?” *click*
(more rubbing) *click*
“This is a work channel!” *click*
(more rubbing) *click*

Aristotle raised Moses and me on the radio to go get something in the Steal Me truck before anyone else did: Many, many pieces of expensive plywood and 2×4s. Late-goers tearing down their camps after the big communal burn barrels have been transpo’d back to the Ranch drop their unwanted wood off to burn at the base of the Man, where remnants of the giant tree trunks still smoldered. There was to be a scrap burn that night, just to get rid of wood that’s easier to make disappear with fire than cart to a landfill …

In this post-Katrina world, it’s hard not to find it offensive that so many resources go to waste out here. But at least we’re not as wasteful as those involved in the stage and screen. Half the camps my LA friends lived in were made of dumpstered materials from movie studios.

Anyway, our slapdash wood-saving environmentalism was rewarded with not one but TWO spendy flats of plywood covered in gender-equal, relatively tasteful pornography.

Next year at Gate, there will be a porn shack.

—

Conversation between Gate staff at the commiscary:
Kristy: “We’ve got too much beer.”
Entropy: “There’s no such thing as too much beer.”
Me: “Yes there is, if it’s shitty Republican beer. Coors, Coors Lite, Bud Lite …”
Matty: “Give it to the DPW. They’ll drink anything. They’re all butt-ugly and they need to drink a lot so they can fuck each other.”

—

Q: Why don’t they let Bunnies fight in Thunderdome?
A: Two bunnies enter, six bunnies leave … (thank you I’ll be here all week)

Whiteout!

September 4, 007

Black Rock City(ish)

Strange things are afoot at the Circle BM.

The only six people I talked to at all yesterday — including some of my pet celebrities as well as 3 people from Gate staff who did not hang out Sunday night together — reported the same thing: Two “UFOs” watched the Temple burn. Oblong and smooth in shape, and totally silent and greyish-black, they were visible first underneath the clouds in the full moon, and then in the smoke from the flames. Indeed, they seemed to be PLAYING in the smoke from the flames, and swooped around like bats, way too close to the fire for any normal “human” plane to not have melted.

The pets in particular were freaked out by this. I had to reassure them I’d seen similar things in my years out here. I always feel “we’re being watched” during Burning Man, especially on the weekends … but I know it’s only the government. They listen to us, too, all week. I’ve caught more than one narc pretending to be really f-d up and “falling asleep” by our fire barrels, eyes moving under his lids like someone awake and spying. And the “UFOs”? Secret operations in the vast deserts of America and all that. It’s the perfect place for it, after all.

A few Burns ago I saw with my own eyes a group of black-ops helicopters, barely visible in the smoke from the Man — and Danger Ranger was standing right by me and he saw them too. I’ve also been out at the Ranch during setup and looked up at the sky at just the right time to witness three stealth bombers fly underneath a big cloud. Couldn’t hear them at all. That was AWESOME.

The B-52s have already visited us this week, creeping across the sky like fat giant bumblebees. So have the fighter pilots, who busted out with an insanely loud sonic-boom flyover yesterday. Just saying hi. I’m sure whatever my friends saw at the Temple burn was nothing more than our tax dollars at play, with some new-fangled fireproof flying machine Uncle Sam thought he’d test out and give the pilots a treat at the same time.

Other than that, I still feel crazy from inhaling so much exhaust on Gate Road two nights ago. The time-honored post-burn Exodus whiteout started yesterday afternoon, just in time for me to take the Steal Me truck away from the Black Hole and toward the Gate to collect trash. So I spent a good 2 hours driving, stopping, driving, stopping etc. in zero-visibility conditions.

This Chronicle photo represents 100% visibility compared to yesterday and last night

Or at least I thought it was 2 hours, but when I finally made my way back to the Black Hole in a state of dusted-out exhaustion (lost my goggles, and the windows on the Steal Me don’t roll up) it had been FIVE hours. I guess I kept spacing out during the waiting times, hands gripped to the steering wheel, frozen into place, literally unable to move. I hope the gasoline hasn’t caused epilepsy or whatever makes you freeze in whatever position you’re in and “wake up” in the same position and not know how long of a time has passed. Or is that cataplexy? Not sure. All I know is I’ve never done it before, and though losing control of one’s body is unpleasant, the trippy voices and visions that come along with it (UFO-themed, naturally) make me not totally averse to having it happen again. Just so long as the car’s not moving at the time.

The Native Americans believe dust devils out here to be the spirits of ancestors. I enjoy going them one better and saying the dust storms after the event are the ancestors’ way of saying now get the fuck out of here. Whether because of the increased population or the increased cluelessness of same, yesterday’s whiteout felt far more violent and full of intent than any I’ve ever experienced. Electronics going haywire; everyone stuck in the middle of a task and isolated from each other. We’ve all got the Crazy Eyes. I’m praying the ancestors will go easy on us again once all the tourists have left.

It’s clear out now and I just had 10 hours’ sleep, so I’ve got to roll by the pets’ place and see if they want to play desert janitor with me before the weather kicks up again (maybe). And Uncle Sam, if you’re reading this, I wouldn’t mind another flyover today. I know it’s kind of gross, but my grandfather taught airplane mechanics for the US Navy for 30 years — so in keeping with the ancestor theme, I’m of the opinion that a plane that can break the sound barrier is just about the coolest thing I see out here. Aside from UFOs, of course.

Exodus = poisonous

September 2, 007
Black Rock City

I think I saw someone break their neck yesterday. I don’t believe in breaching the privacy of the injured so I’m not going to give details on how it happened. But I’d rather not see a sight like that ever again. A human who is probably awesome, lying on the dust in a pile of still-burning coals, unconscious, shaking and convulsing, with the panicked significant other weeping off to the side and asshole spectators taking pictures of the whole thing. I did real good though; I didn’t break their cameras. Just almost.

You’d think people would know that in emergency situations if you can’t help, you should stand back, be quiet, and think positive thoughts. But no — we’ve got the bossy drunk telling people to clear the area even as he’s wobbling and threatening to fall on top of the victim and the paramedics. We’ve got other dudes trying to restrain the drunk, which turns into a shouting match right beside the victim’s ears, when the victim might or might not be struggling to go towards the light and nobody else needs the distraction either. We’ve got freaked-out self-righteous spectators loudly proclaiming what idiots we are to put ourselves at risk in such a way, and how none of this would have happened if dirtbags like us had a higher sense of self-preservation. And we’ve got the naked guys gawking on bicycles, which is never a good time — especially when someone might or might not be dying.

Call it prayer, call it intent, call it positive thought, call it whatever you like. Just DO IT when someone gets hurt. We can talk about what a dumb idea it all was later on, when the victim’s being helicoptered on a Life Flight to Reno. Meanwhile, keep your mouth shut, and stand the fuck back.

—-

Yesterday was the day when 30,000 people endeavor to exit the Black Rock Desert on a single road, in three to six lanes of traffic. Trying to keep participants wrangled in the lanes when they’ve been sitting in their cars and RVs in the hot sun all afternoon is hard. But you know what’s harder? Standing in the middle of thousands and thousands of cars idling for 11 hours in a row. Nobody wants to turn the engine off, because if traffic moves, someone else who hasn’t cut their ignition will snake in front of them in line and then they’ll get home 5 minutes later than they would’ve if they’d just kept the car on.

Those who think they’re special enough to take a shortcut or break the fence get dealt with first by perimeter, and then if that doesn’t work, by law enforcement. Our staff was stretched as thin as could be last night because everyone wanted to see the Temple burn, but we handled it. Even though we all took years off our lives with the amount of exhaust we breathed in.

Woohoo! Burn it! More carbon!

Someone threatened Arwen’s life and threw a beer bottle at her when she tried to stop his car to do the exit procedure. She tapped on his window with her bare hand and he lost it. Of course it was an expensive car. Dude had a problem with anger and with women, to say the least. Now he’s got a big ticket and a court date.

Another cracked-out raver chick in a Ryder truck, honking in line every time the car in front of her dallied even for a second, supposed if she played chicken with me standing in front of her vehicle that I would just move out of the way and she would get home quicker. I stood my ground, and avoided crapping my pants out of fear, and then I got to stand on the running board of her car with my shift lead on the other side of her, explaining to her the difference in size between myself and a GIANT MOVING TRUCK and how maybe she shouldn’t play around that way … while all the cars around her continued apace through the lanes.

They don’t call us “Gatestapo” for nothing.

Within 30 minutes of starting shift, I radioed down to the DPW depot for proper respirators. Regular old dust masks weren’t cutting it at all. By the eleventh hour, I felt like a baby seal covered in crude oil. Both 13 and I literally almost passed out, and I prayed for my celebrity pets to roll up to the Gate in their special car and come get me, but of course they were hiding in their RVs in the daylight and then enjoying the Temple burn and all the after-parties. I’ve convinced the pets to stay for a couple days of cleanup, the way I always do it, to avoid the insane traffic and to help the environment by not idling for hours on end — and to see what the desert’s like when hardly anybody’s here and maybe even go to the forbidden hot springs with me. They’re into it; nobody’s got projects to work on for a couple weeks at least.

Crybaby finally came to rescue me on The Void (2nd best art car ever) and brought me a glass of milk to draw out some of the toxins. Then he ended up working for an hour while I laid on top of The Void and pretty much had a fossil-fuel-induced meltdown. I’ve been sick off propane before a couple times, working at the Fire Arts Festival, surrounded by belching clouds of art-flame. Now I can say for sure that the exhaust from gasoline is much more evil. It’s a crazy-maker. No wonder bridge-toll workers have one of the highest rates of suicide.

Crybaby took us to the Steampunk Treehouse, which I hadn’t seen yet, and all the drugged-out E-tards up inside it were asking me if I was OK. That’s when I knew I was in a bad way. Back flashes in my spine going crazy; twitching and convulsing like a person with a broken neck.

Gasoline is death. We’ve got to figure out another way to live. What’s it going to take? Right now, as I type this, all comers to a supposedly “green” event are inadvertently poisoning the workers who make it happen. God bless America, right?

Embarrassed at my oil-slicked baby-seal-ness, I climbed out of the Steampunk Treehouse (without hurting myself, magically) and stumbled home alone. No less than 30 people asked me if I was alright. I kept looking into the sky for the meteor shower that was supposedly happening, and started to hallucinate. The stars above me seemed to group together into three words, and flash like a Reno casino sign: THIS IS WHY. THIS IS WHY. THIS IS WHY. THIS IS WHY.

Scary.

I woke up to discover I’d lost my voice completely. Not sure how I’m going to handle working another shift in the toxic cloud of death today, but I just turned on my radio and it sounds like we’re short-staffed again. So it’s time to get off the computer and go inhale more dinosaurs, and pray for a solution to the killing of the planet.

He burned again

September 1, 007
Black Rock City

I always get nervous on Burn day. Ever since 9/11. If our current administration is evil enough to either cause the World Trade Centers to fall or to at least allow it to happen in a false flag operation, then they’re evil enough to drop a bomb on America’s largest concentration of smart and revolutionary freaks and try to blame it on the terrorists. Luckily, though there were two shockingly huge explosions (the Man and Crude Awakening), they were both on purpose. I think.

first the Green Man, then the Black Man, and now: Disco Man

The pets played til sunrise on Thursday and slept all day Friday, just like me. They came to meet me at my 6pm-to-midnight Gate shift — one of the girls can’t help but mistakenly and repeatedly call us the “Gatekeepers,” which is cute — to help me MOOP. (That’s both the verb and the noun for Matter Out Of Place, or to pick up said MOOP.) Most of them are “environmental” celebrities, after all, so they wanted to know about the playa restoration which begins to take place now, at the end of the week when we start to panic we’ll experience a deluge like in 1998 or a massive dust storm or something.

They quite enjoyed the experience. While sifting through the dunes accumulated around a large pile of palm fronds — which irresponsible ticketholders dropped off in D-lot rather than return to somewhere besides the playa like we told them to, so they could hurry up and get inside — one pet commented how he felt like he was tending an environmentally-responsible Zen garden. See? They’re cute.

Funny how the petses and I share a commonality of being overloaded on crowds. We all sat on the ground in D-lot with nothing around us but little tiny pieces of plant matter that won’t biodegrade … wanting to be on the outside, away from the action, watching the City and the light of wasteful-but-pretty propane fires from a distance. The pets enjoyed looking at the weird clouds that seem to hide spaceships, and listening to the radio chatter, and absorbing the “vibes” far more than they do cramming themselves into the increasingly clueless oblivion of it all. Even if they do have the second best car in the universe. They can’t wear dust masks and hats and goggles ALL the time.

—-

Friday night, on Gate shift before the pets got there, Twelver pointed out some dude who looked very, very similar to our early Man-burner Paul Addis — dressed in a suit, riding shotgun in an expensive shiny black Cadillac SUV. I saw him too, but only just in time to get a glimpse in the passenger window at his profile. It could’ve been him, for sure. They ID’d him but the name on the license didn’t match up. Well, DUH. Don’t forget how smart Paul is. I’d carry a fake ID too.

—-

Rolling around the City listening to techno techno techno techno UNCE UNCE UNCE UNCE makes me go and thank my girl 13 for bringing Sexy Back — I mean full-on, song-herpes-for-life bringing it back — because now, whenever I hear techno, I will involuntarily sing “Sexy Back” to myself on top of whatever relentless inorganic beat is playing. Where once I felt the rage of sonically being pounded into the ground in one place over and over and over — I now feel cleansed.

CLEANSED.

Thank you, 13.

—-

I thought about skipping the DPW parade before the Burn. The prevailing attitude during the parade had gotten nasty in the past few years. You’re not supposed to rampage people’s camps for beers who don’t want to be rampaged, and you’re not supposed to yell “FUCK YOU” to folks who have just given you a beer. The order goes like this: Pile on the cars and yell “FUCK YOU” or stick up your middle finger and holler “WE’RE NUMBER ONE” or “TWO WORDS FOR YOU, HIPPIE: PANTS!” — and then participants toss you beers like ticker tape and then you say thank you and go back to being a fake asshole. Luckily, everyone else was on the same page, and the parade rocked. I’d planned on packing the back of Cowboy Carl’s truck with a bunch of hot chicks, but instead we piled on top of a Gate fleet van and (of course) blared “Sexy Back” over and over. Much whiskey was endrankenated and thank goodness we offset it with enough coffee to avoid falling asleep before the Burn.

Because Arwen made the masks that hung at the base of the Man — proudly rebuilt by the DPW in literally 2 days after the Paul Addis early burn — we scored Inner Circle tickets, and watched the show with our other friends who built and guard the City. Front row! Us, the firemen, and then the Man. This year’s Man Base — massive tree trunks piled into a teepee shape and bolted into place, basically — gave the statue a now-more-than-ever similarity in appearance to the Wicker Man, which was nature-creepy, and heartened me with its clean design and simplicity. He burned long and strong, and when he fell and everyone rushed the center, we rushed the other way, back to the cars (how American) to roll to see Mark Perez’s massive oil rig tower burn. Which was the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen in my life.

Also reportedly the largest controlled explosion ever, or something. It was purty. They blowed it up real good.

I didn’t see the petses all night. I wonder who did.

And now, after Camp Carp’s Black Sabbath Pancake Breakfast (my favorite event of the year), it’s back to work. The tourists will be pouring out of the City for the next two days and we’ve got to look in the back of all the trucks to see which karmically doomed assholes are stealing everyone’s bikes. It happens every year. I don’t mind missing the Temple burn — I hope I get to catch a thief.

Just when did work become play, and vice versa? I mean, not that I mind…

The elephant is in the room

August 31, 007
Black Rock City

Rich people are weird.

Now that the non-disclosure agreement has come through and they’ve arrived on-playa, I can tell some of it. Not all of it, but some.

I’ve got pet celebrities now. They’re from Hollywood and they’re in all these movies some of us love very much. I’m not allowed to say how many of them there are, but it’s less than half a dozen. One of the “pets” (as I call them) discovered Burning Man through a producer or agent or somesuch friend of theirs, and went to the Website, and ravenously read through the whole thing, and came upon some stuff I wrote when I was working for the DPW a few years ago. He Googled my name and researched my Cyclecide stuff and the blog I started back up this summer, and he decided I’d be the perfect person to employ as his group’s Burning Man planner.

Yes, I said Burning Man planner. Yes, I got paid. A lot. And you know what? It was fun. Not all rich and famous people are douchebags, as it turns out.

I took multiple trips to LA this summer, and stayed at a big fancy house with air conditioning and such expensive stuff it made me nervous to walk around. I ate nice food their chef made and played with their kids and practiced Spanish with the nanny and got kind of pampered by their small but friendly staff. I swam in a big pretty pool and watched inspirational movies (The Wild One, the Mad Max series, Bladerunner, Waterworld, etc) with people who are in the movies (not those ones though). I observed them as they dealt with the paparazzi — not a pretty thing. And I got to tell some rich and famous people what to do.

First rule: I could be as bitchy and up-front as I wanted to be. Other than that, my orders were to make sure, above and beyond everything, that they blended in. They gave me checks and I went shopping for appropriate food and drinks, dietary supplements, supplies, and clothing. I talked to them about the different kinds of camps they could set up (of course I’m not telling which model they went with) and we drew the layout together. They insisted on bringing the chef and the nanny for the kids, and I advised them to hire a handyman as well. They commissioned one of my mechanic friends in Oakland to make them a Road Warrior-style art car, which we trailered up to the desert early and dusted up and broke in for them. The star-camp’s staff have been here on the desert already for a few days, and I’ve been trotting over to see how setup has progressed. The celebs themselves flew in Thursday morning.

Luckily for them, a massive dust storm blew in that afternoon, and immediately gave them the plebeian whited-out look which screams “I’ve been here for ages.” If the pets truly wanted to go all out in “our” style, as they told me they did — to lean toward the appearance of desert-rat utilitarian workers rather than blinky furry E-tards — they had to dirty up. They’re all so clean and perfect and sculpted and well-taken-care-of in the default world, it gave me quite a rush to make them lay down on the playa and do dust angels. Sort of like if you really did get to push the bitchy high-school prom queen into the mud. No — if she laid in it because you told her to.

We talked a lot about how I’m accidentally racist against rich people, even though I plan on being one someday. The pets are (mostly) not all that spoiled — pampered, and used to the high life, and entitled at times, but not tantrumish. They care about the Earth, and the Green Man theme drew them in. They put their money where their mouth is and donate a large portion of their incomes to charity. In short, they don’t suck. If it were some blond bolt-on-boob-job pop star asking me, there’s no way I would’ve said yes.

Needless to say, they adore the car my friend made. It plays loud-ass music so nobody can talk to us, and the mechanic (who sometimes doubles as the driver) fiddles with the kill switches and turns on the beepers and and shines bright spotlights out in front of us. Basically, the car was designed to drown out everything but the immediate experience of riding the car itself. All while back-lighting us dirtbags — and now incognito celebrities posing as dirtbags, ironically — with stark white bulbs and flashing siren lights.

The view from the car, pre-Paul Addis burn night

We rolled around together all Thursday night after the Gate Pride parade. Bedecked in welding goggles and hats and dust masks, my pets passed with flying colors. I wouldn’t let them come with me to the Gate Pride party. Not only because I was certain the pets couldn’t quite yet hang with getting kicked during an impromptu wrestling match with weapons, or being razzed by my drunk new-family members, or having to listen to Little Matt’s car blare “Sexy Back” 300 times in a row. Everyone in Gatestapo / Perimeter would’ve been weirded out by their presence, even if they don’t watch TV or know who the pets are. Gate Pride was a private party. No pictures, even. We’re sort of aboriginal about that stuff.

My mechanic and a couple other friends and I swiped the petses from camp in the wee hours of the morning. The girls had showered that night in their giant castle of an RV — even though they’re tough chicks, they’re still Hollywood — so we made them wallow around on the playa and do dust angels again. (They wouldn’t wrestle each other — not the face!) We rolled to all the sculptures and they marveled at stuff and we marveled at them marveling at stuff.

Sometimes one or two of the pets would sneak up on a raver and remove their own dust masks and goggles in a dome and smile all big until the look on the raver’s face had run the gamut from surprise to confusion to eureka. Then they’d fade away into the pulsing throngs and come giggling back to the safety of the pointy tetanus car. They only got kind of freaked out twice: once when my mechanic accidentally pushed me onto the barbed wire hanging from the side of the car when he fed me a Whip-It from his mouth, and I was bleeding and didn’t care — and once when he stopped by his camp to pick up a sledgehammer … just because.

It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. And the petses’ lives, too. A dirtbag exchange program, as it were. The pets were quite horrified by the violently rude manner in which we interact with each other, but they stayed with me, and got into it, and didn’t run screaming, and actually caught on to the vibe fairly quickly. Most of them are actors, after all.

Do I feel bad about accepting money to sculpt and fashion a group of people’s Burning Man experience like a wedding or a bar mitzvah?

Does the LLC feel bad about accepting money?