Obama comes to New Orleans today…

…hope he sees my Katrina memorial. I put it up for the 4-year anniversary of The Storm a few weeks back but it’s still there on the roof. A little melted, but there.

For the unawares, Brad Pitt has been doing for NOLA what his comely wife has been doing for Darfur: Bringing international attention to the crappiness of a situation and trying to make it better. He’s been making it right.

In the wasteland across St. Claude from me in the Lower Ninth Ward, where an entire neighborhood’s worth of houses were levelled in a tsunami, the “Brad Pitt Houses” have started to pop up like mushrooms and caused a sensation among New Orleans residents and international architectural buffs alike. Twenty-six houses have arisen, and another 200 or so are slated for construction this coming year.

Now, a mayoral campaign has started.

Soap. I sell soap...-colored art projects outlining how many houses got knocked over by the Katrina tsunami and consequently ignored by America's govt. Then I raise money for new sustainable housing and make sure it gets built, so low-income families can move back to the neighborhood they call home, except in architectural-wonder-type eco-structures. No big deal

After all, the swaggering, punched-up, sleepless, inextinguishable leader of Fight Club certainly would win a City Hall fistfight with our notoriously greasy-palmed Ray Nagin.

The view from the roof:

Close-up of friend Laura Konarczak’s “Such and Such” bag lady:

Now I’ma go see if I can get a look at our handsome president’s car! Woot.

(p.s. Brad, I’m serious)

Chicken Little in the Big Easy

New Orleans knows humanity is hanging on by a thread. Waiting for The Last Wave. Nobody’s interested in obliterating natural landscapes to make way for ugly box stores full of useless things here — not when the city is already lousy with ugly empty box stores which used to be full of useless things. All over town, dilapidated but gorgeous ancient buildings sit and stew in the heat, overtaken by vines like scruffy beards waiting for a hot towel and a razor.

take that, pole! have some beauty, assface!

Like the Situationists said: In order to create, one must destroy. In this case, nature took care of the first part and she probably will do so again. At the end of the earth, you look futility in the face and call it awesome. You don’t nuke and pave over it and pretend it doesn’t exist. You let it grow like a beard. You are ready for it.

well, there is a fair amount of RE-paving

You can be a human animal in a place that’s falling down and sinking. You don’t belong to the modern world anymore. You listen to old jazz, and old-world gypsy type recordings, and anything else from when instruments were made of wood and not computers. You brush your hair sometimes. You smell like a cave-person and sweat and slap bugs and occupy yourself with reintroduction to things that matter — and not things. You realize you are made of meat.

and the sky is made of water

At the end of the earth, roads go to shit, plants bust through the sidewalks, living things overtake factories and graves burp up from the ground. Nature bats last, and there’s no point in denying it. Unlike the manicured, tamed, asphalted and strip-malled suburbs to which I was exiled in the winter months, in New Orleans — in the vacant lots where houses used to be, in the marsh, and in the mighty River — Nature is right there to provide when the power goes out. Can’t fish on a golf course; can’t garden in a parking lot.

BIENVENUE EN LOUISIANE … WELCOME CENTER CLOSED FOR RECONSTRUCTION.

.

Well Hello, NOLA

So I recently moved to New Orleans. Bought a gutted house in the Lower 9th Ward. Not sure what I’m doing here … but at least it’s something different.

An hour outside Moblie, on the way down the I-65 from the East Coast, the land gets a lot flatter really quickly. Swaths of stumpy ex-forests line the highway, clear-cut by hurricanes Katrina and Gustav. The trees have grown back some, maybe all for naught — maybe just to get swiped clean again.

Then, on the I-10 right before the big scary Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the roads rise above the terrain, a sure sign we’re coming to the end of the earth. “Marssshhh” is the sound of land hitting water.

Why the F am I moving here? Will any one of the rainbows I chased end in a pot of something, anything, or will I drown first? … More practically, is it wise or folly to ride out a recession in the most recessed place there is?

perhaps something to do with this being the view a few steps from my back yard

There is no desire or strong grasping. Ideally, anyway. There is only the hope of survival in the now-here. Safety in the eye of the storm. Farewell to the family who still do amazing stuff way far away. I’m setting up a satellite camp. The well ran dry, but the river never will.

Whether I rise to the top and float is another matter entirely.

Lovely, lovely filth. Chaos provides.

The Ladies’ Guide to the Apocalypse

coming soon….

Sprock Out with yr Cog Out! (photos)

(a.k.a. Cyclecide’s Best Party Ever)

(a.k.a. how the hell are we going to top this for Pedal Monster in September)

July 20, 2008

Cyclecide Office Olympics presents: Office Chair Slalom!

Guard Bus Donkey

Whisky Ho

Bouncer Meanface

Our Large Father

Paul da Plumber's new pedal-powered sproingy

Extra Action!

Floral Beef: you can't beat their meat

Beer-soaked hot dogs: Anothers satisfieds customerses

the leg was cut off and bloody and on the bar when I got here, I swear

"before I met Cyclecide, I was covered in pigeon shit, alone in a corner of the Drunkyard. but look at me now; I make gross hot dogs covered in beer and clown sweat"

Evil Hot Dog on a Stick Girls

she's got the red dots on her cheeks, ma, I don't think we can save her now... she's got the clown-itis

Pedal-powered cleanup woman. No touching

Cyclofuge: It's No Fun Until Somebody Pukes (tm)

Double Dutchess: Youtube them NOW

"Always dapper; never dandy" - Johnny Payphone

hey lady ... you got a clown on yr back

Bus envy: damn you Sprockettes, how can you rock so

you voluntarily assume

Grass Widow: you wish you could harmonize like that

Yikes

buckle up

MC Mystery Moisture

SF Derailleurs represent the Yay with scraper parasols

favorite things

The "Highest Drummer Ever" ... get it?

Portland's Sprockettes: Bike dance troupe originators

dreamtime

Sad, happy, underwater…

So there’s this a swirling mass of plastic trash in our beautiful ocean. The OCEAN, the heating and cooling system of the planet. Two swirling masses, actually. Both the size of the continental United States.

No, I’m not kidding. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s fact. How deep do these swirling masses of plastic trash go?

I don’t know, have you ever seen a tornado from the top?

I think about this every time I grab a plastic fork to eat one meal with, or purchase tomatoes in a plastic don’t-squish-the-tomatoes box (not often), or throw away a broken Ziploc or ripped bubble-wrap envelope or literally indestructible body-bag of hippie dog food … every time I throw away both trash and my dog’s poop in a plastic bag … that’s what I think of. Those swirling masses of trash.

We put them there.

How in the Sam Hill are we going to clean them up? I mean, even out there in the desert at that big arts festival where I used to be one of the employees responsible for removing every speck of evidence we could, to erase the fact that a temporary city of 50,000 people just lived their alternate-reality lives on for a couple weeks, all told …

That trash went somewhere. Whether the participants took it home with them or accidentally dropped it during a drunken walkabout and we picked it up, it went to landfills. And very certainly, some glow sticks took flight and went swimming in the ocean. Where they will degrade in the sunlight and break apart, to ultimately be digested by everything in the water, from the bottom of the food chain to the top. And the whole ocean will be sick, and the planet will get sick and die.

Strangled to death, stricken with cancer, choked out the same way poison takes over a smoker’s lungs. Proof there are some things that should not be digested.

Just like smokers, the human race is in denial about the state of the planet’s health.

Again: Not science-fiction. This is a very distinct possibility. Probability.

Not preaching, mind. If I could afford it, I might purchase a handmade smoothie and a shot of wheatgrass almost every single day. And it would come in completely non-biodegradable packaging, and even if I did bring my own cup, health codes would prevent them from allowing me to be environmental like that. So maybe I would make my own smoothies and wheatgrass if I could afford it..

So … yall out there drinking Starbucks lattes with the big whip-cream-holding bubbles on the top — toast yourselves to remember when. Because it might all be over sooner than we think.

After all, unexpected cataclysms are as common in nature as gradual change and slow death.

So crazy these days. Nearly psychotic with guilt every time I throw away a piece of trash. Washing the dishes in such a water-conserving way as to seem obsessive-compulsive to the viewers just tuning in. But I have my reasons for washing dishes this way, even though there seems to be plenty of water. I HAVE MY REASONS.

I don’t think it’s my apocalyptic-focused Southern upbringing this time. Everyone can feel everything about to F***ING CRASH. Even when roaming out in the woods or the desert in solitude, I imagine I can distinctly hear the distant roar of the Last Wave. The sound of of Mother Nature taking her shoe off. I think she’s about to throw it at us.

Makes me want to voluntarily take a bath and floss my teeth and put on my tie and pray she doesn’t go get the belt.

Visit Indonesia! (but this could be anywhere, really)

But I don’t want to actively bitch and complain without offering some sort of solution, even if it’s only random and rambly:

Keep utensils in the car when you’re out and about, and try to eat at places where there’s very little to grab and use and throw in the trash. In the old DPW days, where everything was burnable, even the forks and whatnot … we used to clang clang clang with our tin cups on carabiners next to custom-made “fork-spoons” — not sporks, mind you, but one on each end, welded to a piece of rebar attached to a keychain.

I also like to try to buy glass bottles and jars rather than plastic tubs when grocery shopping. But then I end up with a massive collection of jars which annoys my housemates. I keep a lot of bulk items in these jars, and display them on the shelves like candy, secretly pleased with myself about how much harder it is for the human mice in my house to eat someone else’s food when they can’t identify it.

It’s almost a problem. I collect jars like that Genie girl they found in 1970 who’d been strapped to a potty chair her whole life, who hoarded vessels of water around her bed. Like any good (but functional!) pack rat, I hate throwing things in the garbage, so I always dream of some other way to be, where the purchase dilemma of glass-vs-plastic never happens in the first place because I live on a piece of land where I eat mostly only what grew in the dirt there or swam in the water nearby, just like my grandmother.

That’ll happening. Slowly, but it’ll happen. Or almost. There’s more than one person who talks all kinds of jive about my packed-with-useful-things room … like they’re not juuust a leeetle beeet jealous of that touch o’ hoarding instinct which I thankfully picked up from my Depression-era cottonpicking grandparents, and which I knew would come in handy someday.

When you have no skills besides being an art fag and sewing leather patches on holey worn-out Carhartts — then collect materials, hand-make or repair something personalized, and trade, trade away.

Land with a water source. That’s all you need, really. And the fight in yerself to not give up and lie on the train tracks.

Life itself

Maybe we plot out our lives from birth before we get here. Maybe we’re behind the green curtain — players, either enthusiastic or bored, in a game which consciousness invented for itself to grow food and flowers and weeds in. Talkin bout souls, metaphorically. Or personalities. Individual consciousnesses. Whatever inhabits our meat-sacks when we take our first breath, and goes somewhere else when we die.

Maybe we write out our life script, get born, and then GAME OVER — look at the scoreboard, see how we did, discuss strategy with others who’ve also recently finished the game. Or maybe we just get shunted straight into a different world / existence to do it all over again, or to embark on a different journey of our choosing. Or for those who don’t care, there’s the option to just give their tokens to someone else and fade away into the sweet by-and-by.

Maybe we never, ever get to see who made the game.

Maybe we never get to know everything, because if we did, we’d break the game somehow, for good. But one only advances to the next level by surpassing obstacles and limits, not by standing there while the avatar’s legs move in place. Those who have the most fun are the ones who try to see backstage; who lead the charge and storm the gates and try to figure out how it all gets put together. Or WHO puts it all together.

There are ten hundred ways to do this; a million honorable pastimes for humans to embroil themselves in. Thousands and millions of ways to waste time and hurt people, too … so the only satisfaction we ever get, every time we choose to play, is the satisfaction of a job well done. However we interpret it. Do as thou wilt, and harm no-one. (Or, if you’re a Reptilian, see how much damage you can do.) Extra points for unconditional love and selfless service to humanity and/or creation. (Or mass murder and widespread human suffering.)

I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, except for yeah. I only hope I’ve got a pocket full of tokens, because I’d like to be one of the last people at the arcade.

Now that’s what I’d call putting on some pants. Shit is SECURE

Living is the equivalent of sitting down to analyze your favorite song. Meditation is the equivalent of getting up to zone out and dance to it.

I’m new at meditation, but I’m starting to get into it, at the behest of my friends who are tired of my spazzy ways. And for my own well-being, of course.

When one meditates, one gets a glimpse behind that curtain. Some people are too scared of or unfamiliar with free-form meditation to think of nothing — just nothing. So they need an object or a God to focus on. And some — most — people are born into families who teach them the Big Nothing has a name. But higher advances can be made in the game when you realize the patterns in the chaos, and that it’s all showbiz. One showbiz, under “God.”

To meditate is to purposefully sit still and think of nothing. To shut up the chatter and let the brain have a rest. I always feel a tingle in the middle of my head-meat on the left-hand side when I close my eyes and make the shift.

I think that’s the right-brain function revving up. The right brain is where the more base / higher self lives — the unspeaking creature driving the vehicle. This badass motherfucker turns on and gets to work, washing your skull and your attitude and fixing your cells and kicking out junk. But if you look at it, it freezes. When you look away, the tingle resumes, and you get younger and more centered. It’s complicated at first. I’m still new, myself. But it feels good, and apparently studies have shown that blah blah blah.

Meditation can also come in the form of anything which causes you to zone out. For me it’s sewing. I formulate a plan, and cut and arrange materials, and make a playlist on my Itunes, and then the hands just go and my mind wanders everywhere. Then, inspired, I get up to write and pace back and forth between the sewing table and the computer.

It’s a shame so many humans waste that area of their brain by ingesting television. The junk food of the soul. The drug of a nation.

Since I’m on a soapbox, I might as well quote Bill Hicks:

“Oh yeah, and keep drinking beer, you morons.”

(Make no mistake: I’m talking to myself.)

But anyway, life is beautiful, even when it sucks. And meditation is the new hot-shit drug. Is my point.

hamster… wheel… get it? sigh. More corn, please. PS is that hamster balls, or…?

bad moon on the rise

Last night I dreamed I got to go home, to my childhood home, to my parents’ house in Memphis where Dad and Grandaddy built a giant deck in the back yard. But it was the post-apocalypse, and mouth-breathing, overweight, screeching people-animals roamed the streets at night, devouring anyone who remained outdoors in the once-safe suburban enclaves. Something about a new strain of mad cow disease resulting from beef-fed beef … and the people who ate this mass-produced meat going mad with cannibalism.

Mom and Dad had resorted to voodoo to try to keep the cannibals away — and as night fell, we skittered around the deck, chanting incantations and offering up sacrifices of beheaded stuffed animals soaked in ketchup to try to appease the predators. At sundown, we barricaded ourselves indoors.

The next day, Mom tried to take me to school, in some type of tiny little electric car, over pothole-y gravelly roads peppered with food-stealing bandidos I had to fight off with an aluminum baseball bat as she drove. Mom waited for me outside the schoolhouse while I got in an argument with the teacher. Then, we watched in horror as her overtaxed, hard-earned automobile was flattened by a stretch limousine, which was owned by the preacher at the church next door.

no parking

Dressed pimpishly in an electric blue sharkskin Nehru suit, and flashing more gold chain than Mr. T, the preacherman waited for his driver to open the door and unfold a golden stepladder (the limo-saurus had monster-truck tires and suspension). Smiling in Kool Moe Dee sunglasses, the preacher insincerely apologized, citing his need for a parking space (the gravel lot was otherwise empty). Townspeople surrounded us, vibing us to the certainty that any protestations would be summarily dismissed with a wordless mob-style ass-whooping.

Mom and I had to walk home before the sun set, to get back to Dad and help with the nightly fat-zombie-be-gone voodoo rituals. We gave all our food away to the bandidos to avoid being murdered on the road.

The Four Rules of Gun Safety

And now, because I’m bored at watching a ham-fisted action movie and I can’t stand the way uneducated Hollywood douchebags throw firearms around onscreen:

The Four Rules of Gun Safety. Memorize them … or suffer the consequences.

1. ALL GUNS ARE LOADED. ALWAYS.

This HAS TO be your mindset when handling bangstix. When someone hands you a gun and tells you it’s not loaded, politely check it anyway. Negligence can be fatal.

no twirling it like a cowboy, either

2. NEVER COVER ANYTHING WITH THE MUZZLE YOU DO NOT INTEND TO DESTROY.

If you’re not willing to take a human life, never point a gun at a person, whether you think it’s loaded or not. Never point a gun in the direction of your extremities, put it in your pants, gesticulate with it in your hand while at the range, or jokingly take aim at someone’s pet. A gun sitting at rest is safe; a gun in someone’s hands is capable of being discharged.

3. NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY READY TO FIRE.

Rule Three is the reason most people shoot themselves or people who didn’t ask to be shot. Getting all gangster, all Scully and Mulder, like they see on TV. One of my pet peeves in life: Some arrogant and/or dumbass character on TV or in a movie with their finger on the trigger, walking around like the death-bringing object in their hand is a toy… making out with a love interest while pointing a .38 Special at their head, finger ready to go… it gets me flinchier than a horror movie.

In real life, guns make people jumpy (duh), so please, for the love of Miami Vice, hold your itchy finger straight against the side of the gun, directly above the trigger, until your sights are on the target and you are ready to fire.

4. BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET.

Be aware of your surroundings. Never assume anything. Know what it is you are about to destroy, what’s around it, and what’s behind it. Never shoot at anything you haven’t positively identified, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, PUT THE GUN DOWN AND WALK AWAY.

Wish I was a fly on the wall

for…

entrepreneurs crafting menacing hip-hop with the perfect booming beat in a New Jersey basement during a dirty snowstorm. Indie-rockers, bug-bitten and sad, pouring their hearts out on an unseasonably warm night in a cobbled-together studio with threadbare sofabeds and used shag carpet smelling of mold and feet. A ‘70s funk big band with sexy backup singers and all those trumpets, oozing libido and humid sensuality in a cramped, makeshift recording space in someone’s dingy apartment above a liquor store. A simple, painfully universal country tune made by cotton-picking good old boys in under five minutes at a storefront Southern hit factory during the Depression. A bouncy, happy, sloppy pop song recorded by three handsome punk rockers in a gargantuan zillion-track fortress under the watchful eyes of a manager, a publicist, a producer, an A&R rep, a studio engineer, a tour manager, two roadies, a caterer, and their girlfriends. An emotionally troubled hermit and his painfully shy best friend working out their demons on an 8-track in mom’s basement.

Early-grave angels like Jeff Buckley, calling the spirit in the tense moments immediately prior to creating a sound recording they know will make their fans see God

Creating art among other artists, in rooms specially made for creating art, with other artists close by, doing the same thing.

All mod cons. City streets. Underground clubs. Generator shows at the BART station. Bluegrass and reggae festivals in Golden Gate Park. Saxophone-tooting street performers in Union Square. Sunday afternoon punk shows at Thee Parkside. Thundering ragga-jungle warehouse-party all-nighters at the 5lowershop.

New World Music.

Sigh.

This is what people did when they used to talk to each other face to face. They usually ended up singing and banging on things. Some of them were very good at it.

Know your rights

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
…Re-typed and posted without permission from the National Lawyers’ Guild, though I don’t think they’ll mind:

What rights do I have?

Whether or not you’re a citizen, you have these constitutional rights:

-The Right to Remain Silent. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives every person the right to remain silent in the face of questions posed by any police officer or government agent.

-The Right to be Free from “Unreasonable Searches and Seizures”. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect your privacy. Without a warrant, police or government agents are not allowed to search your home or office and you can refuse to let them in. Know, however, that it is easy for the government to monitor your e-mail, telephone calls, and conversations in your home, office, car or meeting place.

-The Right to Advocate for Change. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of groups and individuals who advocate changes in laws, government practices, and even the form of government. However, the INS can target non-citizens for deportation because of their First Amendment activities, as long as it could deport them for other reasons.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS CANNOT BE SUSPENDED — EVEN DURING A STATE OF EMERGENCY OR WARTIME.

May 4, 1970: the Kent State Massacre really wasn’t all that long ago

What should I do if agents come to question me?

1. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TALK TO THE POLICE, FBI, INS, OR ANY OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENT OR INVESTIGATOR.

You are not legally obligated to talk to anyone: on the street, at your home or office, if you’ve been arrested, or even if you’re in jail. If you are driving a motor vehicle, you are required to show your license and registration. Only a judge has the legal authority to order you to answer questions.

If you are contacted, tell the agent you want to consult an attorney. They should stop trying to question you once you say this. You do not have to already have a lawyer. Remember to get the name, agency, and telephone number of any investigator who calls or visits you, and call the NLG, or a criminal or immigration lawyer, before deciding whether to answer questions.

2. YOU CAN SAY NO!

If the police, FBI, INS or anyone else tries to enter your home without a warrant, say, “I will not talk to you until I consult an attorney.” Many people are afraid that if they refuse to cooperate, it will appear as if they have something to hide, or think that they can educate the police. Don’t be fooled. Talking to the FBI can be very dangerous. You can never tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used to hurt you or someone else.

The FBI is not just trying to find “terrorists”, but is gathering information on immigrants and activists who have done nothing wrong. And keep in mind that even though they are allowed to — and do — lie to you, lying to a federal agent is a crime. The safest things to say are “I am going to remain silent”, “I want to speak to my lawyer”, and “I do not consent to a search.”

3. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LET POLICE OR OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS INTO YOUR HOME OR OFFICE UNLESS THEY HAVE A WARRANT.

Demand to see the warrant. If they have a search warrant, you cannot stop them from entering and searching, but you should still tell them that you do not consent to a search. This will limit the search to what is specified in the warrant. If they ask you to give them documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking to a lawyer.

An arrest warrant does not allow them to search your home or office unless you consent to that. Say “I do not consent to a search.” Do not answer any questions. Call the NLG or a criminal lawyer.

4. IF YOU ARE STOPPED ON THE STREET, ASK IF YOU ARE FREE TO GO.

If you are stopped by the police, ask them why. Remember, they are allowed to lie to you. Ask “Am I free to go?” If they say yes, walk away. Legally, you do not have to give your name unless they suspect you of a crime, but it may be expedient to do so — however, be aware that police/ agents may be carrying a list of deportable aliens, and that giving a false name could be a crime.

If you are not free to go, you are being detained, but this does not necessarily mean you will be arrested. They are entitled to frisk you. A frisk is a pat down on the outside of your clothing. Do not consent to any further search. But if they continue, or in some other way violate your rights, stay calm and don’t physically resist police or agents. You will only be hurt and arrested. Stick to “I don’t consent, I want to speak to my lawyer.” and call a lawyer at your first opportunity. You do not have to answer questions if you are detained or even if you are arrested.

5. ANYTHING YOU SAY TO THE POLICE, FBI, INS, ETC. CAN BE USED AGAINST YOU AND OTHERS.

They may pressure you by saying it’s unpatriotic not to answer, or that people with nothing to hide would talk. Remember, however, that even innocent people who have done nothing wrong may say things that the government will use against them or others. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental right under our Constitution.

Repeat “I want to talk to my lawyer” to any officer who questions you.

-What if the FBI threatens me with a grand jury subpoena?

It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a subpoena to get you to talk to them. Don’t be intimidated. This is frequently an empty threat, and if they are going to subpoena you, they will do so anyway.

Receiving a subpoena to testify before a grand jury doesn’t mean that you are suspected of a crime. And you may have legal grounds to quash the subpoena or to refuse to answer questions before the grand jury. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG or a criminal lawyer.

-How should I respond to threatening letters or calls?

If your home or office is broken into, or threats have been made against you, your organization, or someone you work with, share this information with everyone affected. Take immediate steps to increase personal and office security. You should discuss with your group and with a lawyer whether and how to report such incidents to the police and the advisability of taking other legal action.

If you decide to make a police report, do not do so without a lawyer present. See the contact information on the front for numbers you can call if you receive threats. If you suspect government agents are monitoring you, or are harassing you, report this to the NLG.

-What if I am under 18?

Minors too have the right to remain silent; you do not have to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials. If you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against you, you have the right to have a lawyer appointed to represent you at no cost.

Your rights at school: Public school students have the First Amendment right to politically organize at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, publishing independent newspapers, etc., just so long as those activities do not disrupt classes. Students can be suspended or expelled from school only if they violate the law or disrupt school activities. You have the right to a hearing, with your parents and an attorney present, before being suspended or expelled.

Students can have their backpacks and lockers searched by school officials at school if they have “reasonable suspicion” that you are involved in criminal activity, carrying drugs, weapons, etc. Reasonable suspicion means they have to have a specific reason, but in reality, doesn’t give you much protection. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property, but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.

Students can now be stopped and questioned by school officials at school even without reasonable suspicion. If you are not in class, you can be stopped and questioned as to where you are going and why, but they should not stop and question you for engaging in legally protected political activity or because of your ethnicity or religion.

-What if I am not a citizen?

1. CARRY WITH YOU THE NAME AND NUMBER OF AN IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY WHO WILL TAKE YOUR CALLS.

If you are a legal permanent resident, you should carry your green card as well. Navigating the immigration system by yourself is extremely difficult. INS will not explain your options to you. You do not have to reveal your immigration status or answer any other questions. As soon as you encounter an INS agent, call your attorney. If you can’t do it right away, keep trying.

2. KNOW AND ASSERT YOUR RIGHTS!

INS will not do it for you. Currently, all non-citizens have the following rights, regardless of your immigration status:

a. You have the right to speak to an attorney before answering any questions or signing any documents. You have the right to call an attorney or your family if you are detained and you have the right to be visited by an attorney in detention. You have the right to have your attorney with you at immigration hearings with INS. You do not, however, have the right to a government-appointed attorney, so you must hire one or find someone who will represent you for free.

b. If you are arrested or detained, the INS must decide in 48 hours whether to put you into immigration proceedings and whether to keep you in custody or to release you on bond. Under a new regulation issued on September 17, 2001, the INS has an “additional reasonable period of time” in the event of “an emergency or other extraordinary circumstance” to make the decisions whether to keep you or release you. Make sure your attorney talks to national immigration rights organizations if this is the reason INS is keeping you in detention.

c. You have the right to request release from detention even if INS hasn’t said why it wants to deport you. In most cases you have the right to request release from detention by paying a bond if necessary, or to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

d. In most cases, you have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge to determine whether you have violated the immigration laws. If you have criminal convictions, were picked up by INS when you came into the U.S., or have been ordered deported in the past, you must talk to an attorney about whether you have this right and what other legal alternatives you might have.

IF YOU DO NOT DEMAND THESE RIGHTS OR IF YOU SIGN DOCUMENTS WAIVING YOUR RIGHTS, THE INS MAY DEPORT YOU BEFORE YOU SEE EITHER AN ATTORNEY OR A JUDGE.

Leaving the U.S. in this way may have serious consequences for your ability to later enter or to gain legal immigration status in the U.S. However, the immigration laws are complex and many changes are being proposed in response to September 11, so the above information may change. You must consult an immigration specialist attorney to know your rights.

3. TALK TO AN IMMIGRATION LAWYER BEFORE LEAVING THE U.S.

Some non-citizens may be barred from coming back to the U.S., perhaps permanently. This includes some lawful permanent residents and applicants for green cards.

4. IF YOU ARE A FOREIGN NATIONAL ARRESTED IN THE U.S., YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO CALL YOUR CONSULATE or to have the police inform the consulate of your arrest. The police must allow your consul to visit or speak with you. Your consul might assist you in finding a lawyer or offer other help, such as contacting your family. You also have the right to refuse help from your consulate.

The rights outlined above apply to non-citizens who are inside the United States. Foreign nationals at the border (air or land) who are seeking to enter the United States are subject to additional restrictions and do not have all the same rights.

-What if I wear black trenchcoats and listen to heavy metal and openly complain about things?

You’re fucked. Might as well turn yourself in at once, and let the taxpayers’ hard-earned money go toward more productive things like capturing Osama bin Laden.

(okay so I made the last part up. Surely they’ve found Osama by now. I mean he DOES exist. Right?)

Recommended setlist

…for spending all day studying hydroponics and permaculture and imagining a creepy new planet where we have to grow back everything we destroyed (albums to be enjoyed in this order):

Lush – Spooky

Natacha Atlas – Best of Natacha Atlas

Secret Chiefs 3 – Book M

Melvins – Houdini

The Sword – Age of Winters (no way to leave this off any setlist)

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Grand Opening And Closing

Broadcast – Haha Sound

Man … or Astroman? – Project Infinity

Scott Biram – Graveyard Shift

Clinic – Walking With Thee

Polvo – Cor-Crane Secret

“Bend or Break” = off-kilter Chapel Hill opus; makes me want to smash things

Give a “gift of service”

I don’t think I’ll ever do a product endorsement (per se) on this site — besides obvious and repeated references to duct tape, Leathermen, and Sharpies — but I’m still fluey and this seems like a good and important thing to tout. Especially if you’d like to start siding with Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping in this holiday season.

If you know your Bay Area freak-lore, you know Wavy Gravy is awesomer than Santa Claus. He counts as one of the original hippies, lived at the Hog Farm, and still to this day walks around San Francisco and Berkeley in a clown nose and a red-and-white-striped ’20s bathing costume, leading a plastic fish around in front of him on a leash.

The Hog Farm were major players in the whole Woodstock shebang at Max Yasgur’s farm, and planned it out pretty well. When asked by the cops how he and his Hog Farm team were going to handle security issues and fights at Woodstock — which they were in charge of — Wavy Gravy replied: “With seltzer bottles and cream pies.”

And if you’ll recall, violence is not one of the things people focus on when reminiscing about the original Woodstock. Ever. Unlike the debacle in ‘98 when all these chicks got gang-raped in the pit because security there were either far too lax, overworked, or violent themselves. Since I’m a festival worker and erstwhile clown myself, I think this brilliant clown-gineering of one of the world’s most major concert events is one reason Wavy Gravy is my hero.

The other reason is this: He helped start SEVA, a non-profit organization which helps native Americans and people in “poorer” and more remote places around the world get and learn basic things they need: health care, eye care, education, women’s empowerment, and sustainable community services.

…and maybe if we all looked upon the glory and splendor of the Earth a little more, we’d shop and drive a little less?

So instead of rushing around buying crap that’s eventually going to end up in a landfill or a thrift store, this Holiday season you could buy your loved ones, say, a cataract operation for an old woman in Guatemala or a visit to the doctor for a family of Himalayan children. You could help the people who lived in America centuries before the “modern world” invaded re-up their own communities. You could do other stuff like this, of course, without going through Seva, but I’m just tossing yall a line here.

So happy holidays again, and stay the hell away from the mall. It’s not doing anyone or the planet any favors, and you know that. Let’s do something different from now on.

Survival, tee hee isn’t it cute

Let’s get something straight. I don’t fancy myself a rabid survivalist-woman by any means. I’ve never spent a night alone in the woods. I grew up in bland-ass suburbia. I learned basic carpentry from and went fishin’ with my grandfather — who could’ve surely gotten our whole family through the Apocalypse, had he not chosen to store dozens of gallons of oil paint in the bomb shelter — but I ain’t never killed nothin’ bigger than a fish. Never killed anything that bled and ate it, either. I have, however, spent a lot of time in my life seeking out people like my grandfather, who can tell me things he might’ve told me if he were still alive.

I’m not a regular wilderness camper, other than a long habit of coming out to the Black Rock Desert to live in “rustic” accommodations (tent, van, bunkhouse, etc) for one to two months out of the year. I’m not a hunter or a farmer or a nature child. But there ARE things I’ve always been exceedingly interested in without being anywhere near well-versed, and survival is one of them.

she had a lot to do with it, as did an endless childhood supply of fire-and-brimstone sermons about Revelation

Survival. My friends laughed at me, but I never cared. Survival is a pretty hip thing to be into, anyway. I’m only glad it’s not more trendy, because then the stupid people would catch on, and buy all the gear, and talk all the talk, and play along that they wouldn’t be the first to be eaten by zombies when the radiation hits.

And that kind of shit is annoying. Co-opting fashion without understanding the history or meaning of the movement always is. Just ask anyone who’s overheard a second-year Burning Man attendee dressed in a store-bought raver-pimp outfit pompously tell the first-year person standing next to them Just How It Is Here.

(Don’t get me wrong. Much love and respect to all humans and yada yada but everyone’s got something that gets on their nerves like that. At the end of the day we “desert festival workers” know the cowboys in town would stand next to us at the bar at Joe’s Gerlach Club and overhear our endless shop-talk and think the same thing about most of us.)

Anyway, so I don’t know any more than any other suburban-turned-urbanite, college-educated art fag about how to save my own ass if something REALLY went down.

Or I didn’t. Ever since a couple years ago, I’ve been leafing through relevant books and trying to find the time to ingest them thoroughly. I’ve also been pestering Otto and some of the other mountain men and ex-military shitkickers I know for information.

Mostly, I’ve been reading a book called Survival that my friend STVCO gave me. It was written by the Headquarters of the Department of the United States Army.

This is my favorite quote from Survival:

“In all things indecision is more fatal than the wrong choice. Advance or retreat, but never hesitate. Every action produces its reaction, and the Will must foresee the onslaught of contrary forces in time to lessen or check it. All future things hang in the balance between Good and Evil. The Mind that cannot find equilibrium resembles a run in eclipse.”

Basically, in laypeople’s terms, act like you know what you’re doing, and suddenly, you will.

So yeah. Sorry to be all doomsday, but from where I sit, it’s kinda fun. Some of us have been waiting for the (hopefully somewhat mild) smackdown ever since we first laid eyes on Mad Max. It’s worth it at least to get your Apocalypse Starter Kit together, as well as a sterilized, vacuum-packed store of food. Praying you might never need this type o’ thing might soon turn into wishing you had it.

——

And finally, something cute to memorize, from Survival:

S – Size up the situation.
U – Undue haste makes waste.
R – Remember where you are. (they mean pay attention to yr surroundings)
V – Vanquish fear and panic.
I – Improvise.
V – Value living.
A – Act like the natives.
L – Live by your wits, but for now, LEARN BASIC SKILLS.

The Hopi’s Star Children

Our native American friends the Hopi believe in the Star Children. Modern-day hippies call them the Indigo Children — a new strain of paranormally-inclined humans which are believed to have emerged during this Age of Aquarius to try to bring us back from the brink of total destruction — but I’m pretty sure the hippies got their ideas from the Hopis.

Indigo Children can be identified by their ADD, ADHD, OCD, Asperger syndrome, and even autism. Often nervous and fragile because they function on a higher vibrational frequency, they behave much like the three empaths in the Minority Report — unable and/or unwilling to interact with most of the modern world, because it is too loud for them, because they see and feel more than most.

The Hopi contend it is the Star Children who will ultimately repair the Koyaanisqatsi — their word for “life of corruption and turmoil, life out of balance.” Arwen told me this, because Arwen’s mother is a bit of a new-ager and told her. Or maybe Arwen’s mother is a bit of a new-ager because her daughter is a preternaturally talented artist-seer, a reluctant empath afflicted with back shivers and psychic twinges, who walks to the phone before it rings.

When she was a very young child, Arwen was fond of telling her mother “people don’t do that where I come from.” When her mother asked her where it was exactly she hailed from, without fail, Arwen would point to the Pleiades, her favorite star collection. Arwen hates all the New Agey buillshit surrounding “Indigo Children” now, but doesn’t deny the fact she might be one herself. She’s good friends with a Hopi shaman who taught her many things about the world, and the end of the world.

The Pleiades, incidentally, is a constellation directly associated with the Star Children. Her Hopi dude told her that, years later. Not her mom.

Anyhoo, the Hopi believe when the “Blue Star” makes its appearance in the heavens, the Fifth World will emerge. Some “helpers” will shake the earth a couple times, and if they shake it the right way, the Fifth World can come without disaster. Some believe the earth-shaking times were WWI and WWII.

However, if the “helpers” — interpreted as whole populations rather than individuals — fail to make peace and see us as a human family, then World War III will be started by those ancient peoples who first received “the light” (i.e., the cradles of civilization: Palestine, China, India, and Africa). America will be wiped out by “gourds of ashes” that fall to the ground, destroying once-fertile land and rivers, and causing a disease nothing can cure. Ultimately, the Blue Star’s arrival will herald a day of purification.

The white man call this day of purification the Apocalypse.

Most Hopi believe the Blue Star to be (or to occur in conjunction with) a “house in the sky” that was also prophecied — space shuttles, airplanes, maybe a comet. But could it be television? Could the “house in the sky” be the lofty place of importance we give to such a hypnotizing and usually-worthless drug? Could the “Blue Star” be the ominous glow emanating from living rooms all across the world? Could the “purification” be the use of this machine for a massive social shakeup which leads to radical self-reliance and a greater sense of equality and balance?

Could the Blue Star come in time to thwart the “gourds of ashes” in the inevitable third shaking of the Earth? Or are we too late? Too far gone into the Koyaanisqatsi?

Shite. Are we getting ready for World War Three?

The Hopi also prophesy that on the Day of Purification, they will be flown to other planets on ships without wings.

Could the Blue Star be a spaceship?

——

I mean, they’ve been right about all the other stuff. Some Hopi end-time prophecies include the white man building iron snakes that traverse America (railroads), as well as a spiderweb in the air above it (telephone and electrical lines) and stone rivers that criss-cross each other (highways). The second-to-last sign is the oceans turning black — any oil spills going on out there in the world? — and then eventually, the Earth’s poles flip, and everything floods, and the Blue Star arrives.

——

Yeah.

And.

Just one more thing Arwen told me.

The Hopi also say the world is going to end when their tribe’s well runs dry.

The city of Las Vegas just ran the Hopi’s well dry last year.

(ooo. spooooooooky)

today I miss Mississippi

… and green things.

Apocalypse recipe: One year of sustenance

My longtime friend, the esteemed writer Ian Williams, lives in New York City. When the 9/11 horribility hit, Ian and his wife and sister were some of the people who actually ran towards the towers as they fell — not literally, but almost — and they stepped up during the tragedy to … well, to do a lot of things, but basically to facilitate the emergency workers’ ability to do their jobs in the first days. Cajoling gourmet food from restaurants, finding clean bottled water, helping lost children find their parents, passing out clean T-shirts in rainstorms to people covered in dead-body dust, what have you.

Yeah. Gnarly sheeyit, as they say here in California.

Governmental and media response to the tragedy — followed by a cokehead fratboy’s team of Satanic engineers brazenly stealing the last American Presidential election from a decorated war hero (four years after they brazenly stole it from a future Nobel prizewinner) — prompted Ian to propose a new country called American Coastopia. Which caused a nationwide shitstorm of Republican oh-no-you-didn’t-style fallout, which was fun to watch. Anyhoo.

Suffice to say, Ian now takes the idea of apocalyptic-incident preparedness even more seriously than I do. He asked his aunt, who is Amish or something equally as wholesome and closer to the natural way of doing things than most white people are, to compile a list of foods that would allow him and his family to survive a year in his apartment in Brooklyn.

So here’s a repost of the list. I’m not so sure about the food proportions — I for one would want black beans instead of Navy, and way more than 1 gallon of brown rice in a year — but tailor the ingredients to your own dining style.

“Alright, toots, the terrorists have finally won, so let’s take one last look at the outside of our house”

——

SUGGESTED FOOD STORAGE PROGRAM FOR ONE ADULT FOR ONE YEAR

Wheat: three 5 gallon cans

Milk: Instant Dry Non-fat (vacuum-sealed can) four 5 lb. cans (100 quarts)
They now have a Rice Dream Soy milk in different flavors is in the stores in cardboard containers which tastes good, has a good storage life, but not that of the dry milk.

Honey: 25 pounds … REALLY NECESSARY – GOOD FOR YOU AND TASTES GOOD add to other things instead of sugar

Beans: White small Navy beans 1 gallon can

Peas: Split dried 1 gallon can

Rice: Brown 1 gallon can

Corn: Golden Bantam dehydrated and vacuum sealed 1 #10 can

Carrots: diced, dehydrated and vacuum sealed 1 #10 can

Optional Veg.: dehydrated and vacuum sealed 1 #10 can

Fruits: dehydrated assorted applesauce nuggets, apple slices,
date nuggets, peach slices, fruit galaxy 6 #10 cans

Multi-purpose food: anything else dehydrated

Yeast: dry 1 sealed 4 oz. can (can be kept in the freezer)

Sea Salt: iodized dry 2 one lb. Canisters

Vitamin C: 1000 tablets in bottles.

The above will keep you alive for a year but would be very boring. Instead of a lot of the above, I would get a lot of canned fruits, vegetables, and canned meats that you would eat. Tuna stays well. Rotate these goods. Make sure you have a supply of toilet paper and first aid supplies.

The above calls for yeast and salt. I would also suggest baking soda (which can be used as toothpaste and medicine), starch (to make gravy), and a bunch of packets like taco mix, Asian mixes, gravy mixes, etc. to make your food more interesting.

(BONUS: Also from Ian’s aunt. The following items might be the most pressing things to get together first. Super similar to my and Otto’s Starter Kit for the Apocalypse, so you might want to cross-reference both lists during your fun, Tupperware-style Apocalypse Kit parties)

The following is a 72-hour kit that can be put in a wheeled-pullable suitcase or a backpack.

FIRST AID KIT:
cold packs
space blanket
alcohol swabs
tweezers
Q-Tips
Vaseline
Lip sun screen
scissors
thermometer
medicine spoon
2 gauze bandages 2 in.
Desitin (optional)
10 Gauze pads 4 x 4
10 gauze pads 4 x 3
10 butterfly bandages
1 roll first aid tape
first aid book

PERSONAL ITEMS:
Plastic tarp
feminine hygiene items
shovel
Kleenex
plastic cup, plate, bowl
flatware
aluminum foil
mirror
sewing kit
plastic bags
bomb (?! … uh, Molotov Cocktail, perhaps? -ed.)
handi-wipes
mouthwash
good book
tooth paste
playing cards
tooth brush
razor and blades
shaving cream
aloe vera cream
shampoo
soap
deodorant
string
candles
water-proof matches
flashlight
batteries
trash sacks (1 of all sizes)
all purpose knife
paper tablet
ball point pen
whistle
complete change of clothes
glasses or other needy personal items

REPLACEABLES
aspirin
Tylenol
Peroxide
Ipecac
Neosporin
water tablets
baking soda
personal medications

OTHER ITEMS:
cooking device/fuel
dish soap
can opener
snacks
food for 6 meals
bottled water
toilet paper
paper towels
aluminum foil

—–

Oh yeah and one final point: Ian noticed that during 9/11, half the people trying to evacuate the area with the pull kind of stewardess luggage were ALSO running down the street with a broken suitcase. The wheels on the cheap ones pop off easily, especially if you’re running amongst rocks and debris. So either splurge on the good stuff, get an outer-frame backpack instead if you’re strong, or pimp out your own luggage cart with shocks.

… and there you have it. Get thee to a cannery and a hippie food store, and thank you for shopping for the Apocalypse … because if you try to steal someone else’s food when it all goes down, all you might get is a mouthful of lead.

Think I’m kidding? See above. Even nice Midwestern ladies will be stashin’ bombs in their go-packs.

(Q: Why am I so survivalist these days?
A: I dunno, ask Dick Cheney)

“You have reached the voicemail for Hell…”

Call this number.

Do it now.

(415) 648-4112

I myself left a detailed — yet respectful — message for Satan’s secretary Aleister Crowley about how Tom Cruise has been getting out of control, and how they should probably pick someone else to assume the Number of the Beast now that L. Ron Hubbard is dead.

I was going to add a “Hail Xenu” at the end of the message … but I’m not really sure if the Dark Lord is homies with THAT weirdo.

(Seriously, click on the links up in here. Hours of entertainment.)

My 7 favorite jokes

… in which I attempt to exorcise the small collection of zingers I tell over and over again, once and for all, so that I am forced to find new ones. Anybody? Chime in.
_____

Q: What’s orange and looks good on a hippie?
A: Fire.
_____

Q: What’s the difference between a hippie and an onion?
A: Nobody cries when you cut a hippie.
_____

Q: Why does a chicken coop only have 2 doors?
A: Because if it had 4 doors it would be a chicken sedan.
_____

Q: What does a San Francisco stripper do with her asshole before she goes to work?
A: Drops him off at band practice and gives him 20 bucks.
_____

Q: What do Woody Allen and Kodak have in common?
A: They both come in a little yellow box.
_____

Q: What do Yoko Ono and Ethiopia have in common?
A: They both live off of dead beatles.
_____

Q: Why do hippies wear patchouli?
A: So blind people can hate them too.
_____

Thank you! Goodnight.

To Chris Radcliffe: Happy bachelor party weekend, you beautiful freak

This would explain a LOT

Something else I learned from Journey of Man:

When a baby is born … the X chromosomes get mixed together every time they’re passed along. Girls get one X from Mom and one X from Dad. Therefore, the marker with which scientists would’ve been able to trace the matrilineal line geneologically back to the beginning of creation is muddled in the DNA soup. They can’t find who the original mother is — only the original father, the ancient male in Namibia from whom every human on the planet is descended.

But Y chromosomes — girls are XX and boys are XY if yall can’t remember — Y chromosomes are passed from father to son UNCHANGED. Throughout the generations. This is how they found out we’re all from Namibia.

Again: Y chromosomes are passed from father to son UNCHANGED. The X is the variable. The Y is the constant. Not sure how all men on Earth don’t all have the same Y and all look the same, but it’s something like that.

Stuff makes a tiny bit more sense now.

Bible stories about ruthless leaders killing the first-born male of every household in rival kingdoms …

God Himself even threatening the same thing …

The near-worldwide cultural importance males place on bearing a son instead of a daughter …

Why men feel they have a say in women’s sex lives and reproductive rights, and why most everywhere they control it with a chokehold combination of religion and force …

All the way to the old standby headline ‘MAN KILLS WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN BEFORE TURNING GUN ON HIMSELF IN A CROWDED 7-11 PARKING LOT’ …

Yeah.

I guess men are genetically encoded to feel protective of their own blood relatives for a slightly different reason than women are.

I have no point or proclamation. No emotions to superimpose upon this fact-find I stumbled across. Just a profound sense of eureka.

… and each of them harbored their own agenda. The end

——

“That same night I will pass through Egypt and kill the first-born son in every family and the first-born male of all animals. I am the LORD, and I will punish the gods of Egypt. The blood on the houses will show me where you live, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. Then you won’t be bothered by the terrible disasters I will bring on Egypt”. -Exodus 12: 13

p.s. more about the X.

How we got here

Holed up at a friend’s house in the usual avoid-reality post-festival freakout. Avoiding TV like the plague, watching stupid movies, and being enlightened by one DVD in particular: the PBS documentary Journey of Man.

I grew up soaking in Southern Baptist rhetoric, and while everyone else was busy learning evolution in junior high, I attended an evangelical Christian school where they taught us that people and dinosaurs walked the Earth at the same time … because the Bible says they did. So, for people like me who never got the full scoop, here’s a rundown of the show.

Everyone alive today is related. Think about that. It’s possible to work out the past by blood type, and the key lies in distant populations. They’ve traced it all using DNA samples and whatnot. Blood.

The Earth now holds 6 billion people. Our species only numbered 10,000 when a small band left their African homeland on a journey into an unknown, hostile world. Those people are the ones we’re related to. Evidence shows they were superhuman — resilient, strong, fast, and adaptable.

We’re all descended from the San Bushmen tribe in Namibia. We all live in grass and mud huts. We don’t give a shit about the newest coffee table. Do we?

hello, cousin

We do now. We do it, and we don’t even know why. We spread like a virus, at the tippy-tail end of the ape-to-human transformation. And here we are, shitting all over everything. The supernova of flesh and pollution, ready to transform into destruction and nothingness — or to pare back down to a manageable level. We are due for an extinction-level event, you know. Everyone says so.

Anyhoo, this migration also heralded an explosion of creativity. Ritual burial of the dead. Art in caves. Use of materials like bone. The first sensitive artist was born around this time. (Maybe he lost his girlfriend in a tragic raft-building accident and picked up a stick and started writing poetry … maybe she got mad at her tribe for telling her girls weren’t allowed on the hunt, so she fashioned a fake buffalo out of straw and mud and destroyed it with a spear …)

Every archaeological dig of that era shows a balloon of consciousness. When our first cousins left Africa, they had state-of-the-art hunting technology and a brand new language with which to communicate ideas. It used clicks. The Bushmen are still the only people in the world who click.

—–

Between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, the global ice age came. There was a sharp drop in temperature around 72,000 years ago and the sea retreated. Deserts in Africa grew, sea levels dropped, and ice appeared everywhere. Lush pasture turned to desert, and hunters who used to have easy pickins found themselves searching desperately for food. Between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago there were so few humans, plants, and animals on the planet that scientists have trouble finding any archaeological record of homo sapiens during that period.

Humanity was on the verge of extinction, and a small band of smart and daring revolutionaries decided they needed to raise the fuck up on out of there in order to survive. So they turned up in AUSTRALIA, of all places. Our next relatives on the timeline all hail from aboriginal Oz. How do they know? … The only primate species ever to have lived in Australia is homo sapiens, so another tribe of us did not evolve there from primates. We had to get there from Namibia.

But how? … We traveled onshore from Africa through India and along the coast to Australia. No evidence remains, because the route was easy — just beach, aside from only 150 miles of open ocean. It has since been buried by water.

our brothers Larry, Darryl, and Darryl
——-

Then Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans were next to appear.

Everyone else besides the Aboriginals shares a common ancestor in one man they can trace back to those of the same (or a similar) group who left Africa but went the other way — to the Middle East — 45,000 years ago.

One branch of migrants from the Middle East made its way swiftly into India. They were so successful that their numbers quickly multiplied and swamped the original coastal migration evidence.

Another group went to China, remaining in isolation, sealed in by moutains and the sea — and developing a distinct culture, language, and appearance. Two groups went to China via different routes in a pincher type movement.

But nobody lived in Europe yet, even though it was a hop skip and a jump from Ur. We took 10,000 years to reach Europe from the Middle East. Why?

Cro Magnons were the first northern Europeans, the first cavemen with an artistic side. The original cave-painters — ostensibly because they were new arrivals, and the caves became a sort of sanctuary. The paintings look like postcards of an ancient world … a journey that lasted through the beginnings of the Ice Age. They drew woolly mammoths, bison, ibex, and other creatures not found in the Middle East — so where had they been? Wherever it was, they toughened up. They took over caves where bears hibernated for the winter. The Cro-Magnons generally cut an impressive figure, towering over 6 feet tall. They arrived with African body proportions, adapted to warmer conditions, and grew long and skinny. They made clothing and housing to adapt to the colder weather …

… and then the Ice Age cut them off from the rest of the world. Their hair color changed, the shape of their noses, even their height. That’s why honkies look so different. Not enough UV rays got through to let us synthesize Vitamin D from sunshine, and we wore clothes, so our skin was forced to lighten its melanin in order to absorb more.

So why did we take 10,000 years to land in Europe? The answer to the mystery: We took a detour to central Asia. Kyrgystan. That’s how come we drew bison in the caves. The African hunters followed the grassland into central Kyrgystan before going West.

Then, 20,000 years ago, some left central Asia to migrate to the Americas over very arctic conditions during the height of the Ice Age. Some stayed along the way, and became the Chukchi (Russian nomads), the Inuit, and Eskimos. Living inside the arctic circle 15,000 years ago, these humans became shorter, with shorter appendages and fingers to keep a furnace of one’s own body heat stoked at all times under heavy animal clothing.

Thirteen thousand years ago, a group of 10-20 people made it past Alaska across the Bering Strait after the Earth heated back up. Yes, only 10-20 people. After 10,000 years of struggling through the tundra, this small band of nomadic hunters hit the jackpot with America.

In only 800 years, these nomads’ numbers swelled to where people lived all over North and South America. The Navajo are directly descended from the Chukchi.

hi, Mamaw and Poppa

—–

According to James Kunstler’s book The Long Emergency, peak oil passed in the ’70s, and as an industrial society, we are screwed. Things are about to fundamentally change, for good. Those without nearby land to grow food (and, some would argue, the firearms to protect themselves) will shortly be fucked … likely by members of the “former and aggrieved middle class” who are used to the whole give-me-convenience-or-give-me-death lifestyle. I for one have met certain members of country clubs who would probably open fire on anyone who stole their china or told them they had lost their life savings due to the machinations of their beloved ruling class.

And a recent, $24-million U.N. study says that in our short time on the planet, HUMANS (not mammals) have used up a staggering 60 percent of the world’s resources. We have altered the planet more quickly, jarringly, and irreversibly in the past 50 years than at any other comparable time in human history. And America burns through … how many percents of the world’s resources?

Blah blah blah. Boring boring boring. Everyone knows this. Right? Like Agent Smith says in The Matrix: We are a plague. So what do we do?

Nothing? Is it too late?

Why did the first San Bushpeople leave? Were they driven out, like Lucifer from Heaven and Eve from the Garden of Eden? … Did they have no choice, or did they see it coming? … Were they hungry? Were they just bored? Did they crave knowledge, or different people to make out with? Something beyond themselves and their immediate experience? … Sinners! Also: Those who enabled us to survive!

Nothing makes a body fight like the struggle for food, shelter, and breeding partners. And isn’t that when stuff starts to really happen? When you get so hungry you imagine a world beyond your everyday life, and you venture out into the unknown?

Convenience is all around us, but only when we make ourselves uncomfortable can we truly learn anything.

I don’t know about you, but all this laziness, gluttony, and solipsism is making me hungry.

when will it all go dark again?

Dear Gate,

October 4, 007
Gerlach, NV

It is with semi-tight shoulders that I report to you that the Black Hole got a yellow on the MOOP map this year.

Yellow. Not green.

We tried. We tried so hard. We cleaned up all the big shit and put it in the right trailers and boxes and oversaw transpo and then MOOPed our asses off. Busting dunes by hand with a rake. Digging out burn scars. Going over and over the site. Staying later than the other crews each day and using whiskey as a work tool. *burp*

C-Load came out for the weekend to do line sweeps with us. When we found out we were near the Black Hole, we strolled ahead one block to make sure we’d cleared everything. There was nothing there. One cigarette butt, maybe. I didn’t pick up a damn thing and I even full-contact MOOPed the site — crawling on my hands and knees through some newly-formed dunes in chicken pants and a tank top, killing two birds with one stone. Skin exfoliation feels nice.

There was no doubt in our minds we’d get green. We were shocked — SHOCKED — to receive a yellow. 13 was so ornery about it she even got drunk on ginaritas that night and pimp-slapped a couple people with her flip-flop in the Black Rock Saloon. I myself swallowed a fair amount of vodka and found myself looking around for something to beat up. But C-Load brought us a dozen roses each, so that made it better.

Only thing we can think of is that the cleanup managers mistook the border between Commissary and the Black Hole — which changed no less than SIX times during setup — or that some trash from Commissary blew over. To me, it looked like the line sweepers walked through our site without picking up hardly anything at all. But I couldn’t be everywhere at once.

However, all the managers have told me that 13 and I should be exceedingly proud of our yellow. That in past years, the Black Hole has been so red they considered making up a new category: Black (of course). That it took a crew of 20 to 30 people about 4 or 5 different tries to line-sweep the DPW ghetto this season, and the ghetto got a yellow too.

I think for a crew of 3 to 6 people — me, 13, Bloody Knuckles, and a little bit o’ Low Rent and Aristotle and Moses for a couple days there — we KICKED ASS.

We almost got yellow with green stripes, even. Then when Wilde Childe went out with them to look it over and discuss our score (again), they found a tent stake that the MOOP line also missed. But hey: the “Event Horizon” (our camping area across the street) got green. It was just the Black Hole itself that scored a yellow.

More importantly, and largely thanks to the efforts of Super MOOPer ™ Bloody Knuckles … (drum roll, please) … Gate Road, the Gate site, and D-lot were all so clean that they didn’t even send a MOOP crew out to go over it. At all.

That’s right. You heard me.

I stenciled this on everything.
Overheard this morning in the Burning Man Gerlach office:
“We should totally get pink DPW shirts next year.”
“What, are we trying to out-gay the Gate now?”

There is snow on the mountains today. Half the crew has already headed to Reno and points beyond, and we’re trying to decide if we’d rather spend money amongst the blinky lights of Reno and get overserved by Jirish Mike at the Hideout … or if we’d rather chill out in Gerlach and sew clothes and be around a whole lotta no-people for one more night before the rude re-entry to civilization comes tomorrow.

Of course, as with everything, we’re flying by the seat of our pants. Hope to see you all at Decompression on Sunday.

And may I say: Even though I didn’t see hardly any art, visit any theme camps, go dancing one time, or set foot into the Cafe at all … I truly had the best Burning Man of my life. You Gate fuckers are SICK.

Love,
Summer

Golden T-Stake ceremony: photos

Yesterday was the last day of Burning Man cleanup on the playa. Today, the Bureau of Land Management came to inspect the site, to see if the DPW did a good enough job picking up after 48,000 people.

We passed with flying, pirate-flag, I’ll-show-you-Leave-No-Trace colors.

The Golden T-Stake, pounded in at the end of the City map on 10:00, was the last large foreign object remaining from Burning Man on the playa. To celebrate another job well done, we all gathered this afternoon to watch it get pulled out of the ground by the Playa Restoration managers.

After a morning spent cleaning the trailer park and waiting for last night’s party to wear off, we ate lunch and climbed on the bus for one last ride to the worksite.

Judging from the bus graffiti, DPW as a whole are not as literate or quick-witted as they used to be.

The ceremony go-time got pushed back because there was a strange — REALLY strange — dust-storm “wall” stuck in the same place all morning long. It just lingered there, not moving or dissipating. Truly an anomaly.

I mean really. This thing was big. Multi-layered.

Meanwhile, they tricked us (not really) into MOOPing the shoreline where we gathered for morning meeting and lunch every day. Not much there, so we drank beers.

Finally, the wall moved back and we rolled out to the site, where Gage tested the structural integrity of the Golden T-Stake by practicing a little chi gung.

D.A. gave us a really heartfelt and eloquent “we did it” speech — and then christened the stake by breaking a beer bottle on it. MOOP!

Luckily we’re trained to the point of swift Pavlovian response.

Like any good manager, D.A. delegated the task of Golden T-Stake removal to Mel, our cleanup goddess.

But whoever pounded the Golden T-Stake in the ground did a bang-up job.

Damn thing wouldn’t move, even with digging.

Luckily, the DPW are a helpful bunch.

The Wall laid a little lower, and watched the whole thing from a distance.

After some champagne and light wrestling, it was time to pile back on the bus for the last time this year.

And we came back to Gerlach, to the Black Rock Estates trailer park, to start packing and say goodbye to home.

Cheer up, DPW. Like D.A. said at the ceremony: ONLY 335 DAYS ‘TIL CLEANUP.

My dad was right

I do live in an adult version of Never Never Land.

Of course, he was talking about San Francisco. But if he could see me out here, he’d REALLY roll his eyes.

I have barely handled money in a month. Maybe twice. I have no idea what’s in my purse, or where my purse is. Or what day it is. I haven’t shopped for anything other than gas and food, and even then, not much.

I’ve heard little news of the outside world. I haven’t spoken to anyone at home more than once. I haven’t seen my dog (which is the only bad and painful part). As for computering, I only do blog entries and check my messages and then get offline as soon as I can — to hang out again with the same hundred-or-so people.

I’ve taken excellent mini-”vacations” from this already awesome place.

Yes, the accommodations are slim.

But the view is nice.

We get room and board to look for buried treasure.

I miss some of my old Neverland friends — some of them really badly. The ones whose names are carved in the bar with mine so deep they’ve already been partially worn away.

Even the dogs have fun, especially on the night of the DPW Talent Show, when brave souls compete in the “Chubby Weenie” contest, in which the winner shoves the greatest number of Vienna sausages into his or her mouth at once. Some contestants don’t make it without retching. (This year a Gate worker won. Woo! GATE PRIDE)

We even have our own clubhouse.

And we’re miles away from everything, bonding like a wild dogpack in cowboy desert paradise.

All we’re missing is Dr. Hook. Though I think there are a few people here who could substitute in a pinch.

(sigh, this is the last day of MOOPing and then we go home soon … tomorrow’s the inspection, cross yr fingers)

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?

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.

PICTURES I SAID

So apparently with Flickr you have to change the @ to a &# so the link doesn’t break. And then there’s the right-click for the static IP address and … whatever, I already forgot.

Anyway, Pedal Monster. Here’s a very limited visual rundown of the weekend. Also, the years-long standoff with my digital camera is over, and I will now return to using it.

Enjoy.

Moses

the Life-Size Mousetrap

the wiener

welcome to Pedal Monster

ass clown

the Cyclofuge

Reina Terror and the Huffy Toss trophy

Monster stage (featuring Hammer Horror Classics)

bike hump

Gary’s art car

yikes

Murka

she got the bike back. Dejected, he eventually pulled his pants up

this is how it always ends.

$%@#$***cking pictures

Spent all night opening a Flickr account and now I can’t figure out how to post pictures from Pedal Monster this weekend. Yes, finally, pictures. I SAID PICTURES.

I seem to be doing everything right but now I’m going to smash my computer if I don’t walk away. Will try again tonight after the veins in my neck stop popping out.

from inside the lens

July 16, 2007
Ace Auto

Yes, I know I’m supposed to talk about Pedal Monster. Yahoo, what a show, and what a weekend, and I’m aware I’d be a tease to hype something up for days on end and then not follow through with some sort of juicy blow-by-blow of the spectacle’s sordid events.

In fact, it’s what I used to do for a living: Be the person who wrote down everything that happened in certain events thrown by the City’s divergent subcultures, to report it back to the attendees so they could re-live things, either because they were too wasted to remember stuff in their brown-outs, or they were elsewhere in the room viewing some other life-altering razzle-dazzle while I was clawing frantically at pad, pen, and camera in front of the other one.

It was madness much of the while, trying to observe the melee I know to be of future-retrospective-style historical significance while participating in it at the same time — eventually participating enough to where I could be convinced that I was not a poser or a hanger-on. Not being the critic who just writes because they can’t do something themselves — but the critic that became the person who did. Eventually, I was swallowed up by the gravitational pull.

These days, I’m confident that I’ve accrued enough punk points to spare some leftovers to hook up any housewife with a one-way ticket to Plasmatics-ville. I have become fully “embedded” — not that I was ever a journalist anyway, as much as a person who got paid to tell people the stuff I liked or hated and why I liked or hated it.

So I always hype these events now, the ones I’m helping throw, and for some reason, I can’t bring myself follow through on the gossip reports in any substantial way. I think the Internet crutch has allowed me to feel spiritually OK about this, as most information will be out there anyway, whether I myself report it or not. With pictures, too. Also, it’s harder to divulge personal and potentially incriminatory tidbits of information about one’s best friends. Now, as a fully active member of Cyclecide — i.e., Patti Hearsted and unable to find any real time to attend events by other artists in the City I know I should be supporting — I don’t really have much to say the day after a show. Or the day after that.

As it stands now, yesterday, on the Day After Pedal Monster, after wrangling money and clipboards and costume changes and happy cycle-freak drunks until dawn, I got my first full night’s sleep and woke up at 4pm. Then I went to the Drunkyard to help strike everything, and cleaned the shaving-cream-and-flour “pie” bits from the yard, and the broken glass from the BB gun shooting range, and the whippet containers and wilted beer cans kicked behind every pallet and 50-gallon drum on our modern-day Sanford and Son fantasy-lot …

Then we crushed the other end of the car under the 2-ton bank safe under the Mousetrap’s 30-foot crane, and then the car still started after that — when we didn’t have any ether so we poured Tic Tac, the national drink of El Salvador, in the carburetor — and we rode it on idle all around Ace’s strangely-clean pavement and then smashed the windshield with sledgehammers and Texas Toothpicks. And then had more Pabst and hot dogs for dinner, naturally. And pushed my own dead-battery car out to the middle of the street so we could jump it with Mark’s car and drive me home to unpack the gypsy tinsel and all the other stuff and put away the Dead Babies’ guest beds and finally take an epsom salt bath.

Just another weekend, really. How am I supposed to be a reporter about that?

POKER RUN — tonight!

Get on yr bikes and ride:

Horror recipe: eyeballs

Wherein this blog provides expert advice on how to make realistic-looking, free-floating disembodied eyes for your next zombie party or prank with soup.

Courtesy of the bloody good props team over at Thrillpeddlers.

Here’s what you need:

–Condoms – preferably NOT ribbed, lubricated, reservoir tip, or thin for her pleasure. The more generic and ghetto the condoms, the better. Also: purchase clear or whitish, unless you’re going for some alien thing.

–White opaque liquid soap — not lotion or anything else. The Thrillpeddlers have experimented with all types and consistencies of mostly-white liquid, and they say this is the one.

–Nail polish: black, blue-or-brown-or-green, and red — or Sure Shot sign paint, or whatever brush-paint, really. Petroleum products disintegrate each other a lot of the time, so many types of paint will not make your eyeballs last multiple horror parties.

–Scissors (smaller is better).

and…

That’s it.

yowza

HOW TO:

Unwrap and unroll one condom. Blow air into it to separate the plastic from itself. Pump an eyeball-sized amount of liquid soap into the condom and tie it off so that it looks round. Wrap another condom around all this (don’t forget to blow) and tie that one off too.

Yes, you need both condoms — you don’t want your eyeballs breaking before you can throw them at people. Unless you do. (One Thrillpeddlers crew member experienced a singular joy at playing with her one-condom eyeball in front of an audience and having it explode in her hands and goo-drip down through her fingers.)

Cut the condom one inch below the tie-off knot, then fray the latex in an uneven style that makes the eyeball say “I got ripped out of someone’s head.”

Paint a blue, brown, or green (hazel, what have you) circle opposite the tie-off knot, and a black dot in the center of that. You know, eyeball style.

Then ya take yer red nail polish to the knot and all around it, making shaky rivulets for blood vessels. The thinner the brushes on veins and arteries, the better. My Thrillpeddlers’ gore-tech consultants like to sproing hairs from their own heads to obtain the brush-strokes fine enough for scarily realistic blood-vessel effects.

Et voila. Eyeballs that bounce, and don’t cinematically splooge apart in your hand (unless you intentionally leave off the second condom).

Soak eyeballs in cold spaghetti dishes during Halloween, or in an open container of “blood” just behind the victim’s head …

…say, when your mad-scientist mentor is teaching you just how to torture an unwitting and sexually derelict victim … and you pluck out one spherical viewing mechanism from the still-alive kidnapped whore on your operation table … bodily fluids dripping to the floor from the gurney …

And, as your dementor looks on, you study the eyeball, lick it, and then turn the cornea to make it ogle the unfortuate detainee’s other, fully-functional eye … while she screams with the terror only those about to be forcefully blinded can muster …

Yep. Eyeballs.

Thanks, Thrillpeddlers.

Midway recipe: gypsy tinsel

I ‘ve been “stripping” for a week.

Making strips of fabric, that is. Cutting cutting cutting. For days on end. The project ended up looking like some clowns got trapped in a shredder, but hopefully in a good way.

“Gypsy tinsel” is what I’ve been calling it. Although that term sounds a little hippie — and I got even more sketched when a housemate last night said I looked like I was making a Maypole … so I’ve also been referring to it “Steven Tyler’s Microphone Safety Third Delineator Tape,” or somesuch word combination.

The intent is to style Cyclecide’s pedal-powered carnival midway to look flittery and junk-circusy. Our usual ride-barricade method of CAUTION tape not only barely delineates the safety areas — it’s also made of flimsy petroleum product, and therefore quite easy for a dumb-head Weasel Knievel to bomb through it on a tallbike and get kicked in the throat by someone on the Ferris Wheel or whichever ride. But who wants to get clotheslined by repurposed denim and subsequently tangled up in a clown-clothes fabric-strip mess? Hopefully nobody.

For the strippy material, I started with some of the discarded clothing from the free box in our house — choosing bright colors and whatnot, and fashioning them into two-or-three-inch-wide, yard-long sections. Also, Rose gave me bags and bags of cuttings left over from her side-project job of making bellydancing skirts to vend at the events and conventions she attends with Ultra Gypsy and the Barbary Coast Shakedown. Plenty of glittery stuff in those bags.

The delineator “rope” on which the tatters are tied is made of the seams of jeans discarded after the Maker Faire clothing swap. So the gypsy tinsel is as strong as a Jay Broemmel weld. Hopefully it’ll look impressive once all the yards and yards AND YARDS of it are installed at Pedal Monster and the photos start rolling in.

I mean, that’s not ALL I’ve been doing to get ready for our big weekend. I’m just proud I found another Cyclecide-style DIY no-cost solution to a potentially expensive problem (i.e. we can’t afford / don’t have room to store a bunch of metal riot-barrier gates, so this will suffice). It’s light, it’s portable, and if you’re a mutant biker throwing impromptu jousts and events, it could seriously cut down on ambulance-calling time.

Rider still assumes all risk, of course.

Kipling’s “If”

Yeah, Cyclecide is slammed with Pedal Monster. More on that tomorrow.

For today, enjoy this Kipling poem, written in tribute to Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, who in 1895 led about 600 of his countrymen to an unsuccessful raid on the Boers in southern Africa. Just one day into it, Jameson surrendered, and got shipped back to England to be tried and convicted for failing to listen to the order not to do anything yet until he heard from his superior. The defeat was re-cast as a victory in Britain, and the Boer War soon followed. The British really wanted them diamonds in them mines …

I thought the gender-specific gut-kick at the end of the poem was maybe directed to Kipling’s actual son, and not an imperialist with an unhealthy case of hubris embroiled in an ignominious military failure, but whatevs. The rest of it makes me want to do good stuff and break ugly things and speak at high school graduations … so here it is because I gotta go to the drunkyard to help set up the rides.

kipling was a gangster. just look at that ’stache

“If”

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).

Sodom and Gomorrah; Pride and prejudice

June 27, 007
Yay Area

Several polyamorous people currently orbit my world at the moment.

One homey from the wayback resides in the in-law apartment of his five-year girlfriend’s house, where she lives with her agreeable husband and child. One couple opened up their monogamous relationship after 2 years and regularly hosts kinky parties and rope-tying classes. One snagged a new part-time boyfriend, who has a full-time girlfriend, who has a part-time girlfriend, who has a full-time boyfriend. One is finally dating the first non-bisexual man she’s been with in a decade, and wondering if she herself will now be able to date around. Then there’s those nasty, beautiful, honk-if-you’re-horny Porn Clowns.

Polyamory! Woo, spread the germs! I’ll have the staph with a side of herpes

And let’s not forget the gay one who, at Pride last weekend, theatrically banged his two (committed) boyfriends in a hallway full of men fucking, while several other single men looked on and pleased themselves. He said the best moment of Pride (besides that one) was wandering into a hotel room at the pool party to find two incredibly attractive women — one Amy Winehouse clone and one winsome blond-rocker chick — banging each other while couples of various down-south anatomies made out all around them. The Amy Winehouse one actually almost made my gay-man friend hot for women for a second there, he said, when she looked up from what she was doing, straight at him, and winked.

While I as a Southern girl lean more toward standard dating fare, I’m like Elizabeth Edwards — it makes no difference to me, if it’s all consensual. No difference at all what you stick where, inside of who and in front of who. In fact, it’s fun to hear about people exploring themselves and others that openly. Weirds me out sometimes, but other than that, I say do as thou wilt and harm no-one. (Wait, isn’t that what the pagans say? Am I going to be burned at the stake now with all the other degenerates?…)

I didn’t go to Pride this year, but have been witness in the past to the outpouring of love in all directions — thoroughly amazed and overjoyed at the multicolored, drum-beating love of a million people finally being able to be exactly who they are and shout it to the hilltops on their BirthGay.

That kind of behavior scares the fuck out of some people.

Yes, in other American towns where The Gay might try to display their pink triangle — originally a Nazi emblem, it’s worth pointing out — on the side of a dry grassy mountain … well, the judge would probably let the arsonists off easy. But this is the World Capital of Gay, and it’s rad. Once, while hosting a friend from Germany, I took a walk with her through the Castro, and the first time she saw two men greet and make out in the open on the street, she literally burst into tears of joy.

Obvious Statement of the Day: It’s not like this everywhere.

What about a couple hours southeast of the Bay, where the drunk, just-released prisoner at the bullfight in rural California attacked a straight but male friend of mine on the dance floor for being too effeminate in his movements — for “tryin’ to make [the prisoner] gay” just by existing? … That’s some hard-core gay-makin’, if a straight man can work another “straight” convict up enough to make him “angry” enough to break parole.

There’s also the much darker story — whispered DPW lore or buried truth? — about the time at Burning Man when the perimeter guards caught a few guys trying to sneak through the outer fence, crawling on their bellies all military-style, dressed entirely in nighttime camo and ski masks, armed to the teeth with guns and explosives. The rumor states that for hours, Gate crew detained these guys and sort of interrogated them with the authorities, but they refused to say word one about why they were there. Since it was Nevada and the Soldiers of Fortune hadn’t done anything yet except try to sneak into the event with their personal caches of scarily sophisticated weaponry, the Gate crew had to let them go.

So. Sodom and Gomorrah, they say. San Francisco — and Black Rock City, by extension: Teeming buckets o’ sin.

I’ll be a warrior for Christ, the Soldiers of Fortune think. Or Allah, or whoever other dude probably never commanded me to kill fags in the first place, but I’ll just skip the research and tell myself he did cuz really, I just hate that I want to fuc– er, LOVE TO KILL fags. GOD HATES FAGS. He told me so. Just like Son of Sam’s dog.

Sodom and Gomorrah. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase in church growing up — usually paired with the words “San” and “Francisco” — I’d have collected enough money to build my own GOD LOVES FAGS float at the Pride parade. Shit man, the Yay Area is the place where the creative, sensitive, misunderstood, and picked-on outcasts of America (and the planet) come to escape the tyranny of oppressive xenophobia. Something about all that stuff makes the people here pretty nice and open.

My friend, the Mayor of Awesometown, actually HAS researched the Bible. He’s a known Jew who also swings “that way,” so he’s studied heavily on what actually went down in those twin cities of despicability:

Sodom and Gomorrah had spiraled out of control. Not with gay-ness, but with lawlessness. Complete and utter chaos. Not the good kind. Ttotal disregard for human life. So God sent two angels to Sodom to talk to Lot, who was supposedly the last good man in Sodom.

Lot welcomed the angels into his home, and in the night, the men of the city surrounded the house and demanded Lot send the strangers out so the men could rape them. Fresh meat!, they cried. Give it over! … Lot refused. Funnily enough, he even offered his DAUGHTERS in place of the strangers so the crowd could rape THEM instead.

Don’t even get me started on that shit or I’ll get WAY off-topic.

So, the Mayor says, the real sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality, brutality, and the betrayal of strangers’ trust. Wolves preying on sheep. God didn’t take kindly to his angels being cornered by a wild pack of predators, so he raised Lot and his family up on out of there and then smote the fuck out of everyone else.

So the Christians who say San Francisco is the next Sodom and Gomorrah, doomed to be the first to get smote — they don’t really read stuff so much as they listen to the preacher’s hearsay and interpret it through a thick layer of their own sexual discomfort.

But be that as it may, Otto once told me the best time to attack the enemy was at pre-dawn — when they’re asleep, drunk, or otherwise partied out.

Sex and play are vulnerable states. So is the debauchery of wine, pharmaceuticals, and song. Thus, within our explorations, it might do us well to remember that while good and self-realized people are busy enjoying life and trying not to harm anyone … evil, petty, insecure, angry people are lurking, watching jealously in the dark, plotting ways to take advantage of the big-hearted and unsuspecting.

So I’m kinda thinking maybe we COULD be doomed unless the peaceful degenerates start learning how to strap up more.

No, the OTHER kind of strapping up. See? This is what I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter, people. Pay attention. Lesser beings want you dead.

(Wow, my brain just got really dark back there. Sorry about the bring-down. I think I need to eat some ice cream and watch Andy Kaufman videos.)

Colors flying

June 20, 007
SF to Chino’s

Doyle got tipsy a couple months back when he was in San Francisco and left his colors at Amnesia. The 6′6″neo-lightweight is mostly on the sober train these days and can’t hold his liquor any more, and he likes to dance, and dancing in such a hot place as Amnesia requires a certain amount of disrobing, I guess. Being a member of the Black Label Bike Club and not Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, Doyle could’ve potentially been in big trouble if someone else from Black Label had found his colors that night, and not a Cyclecide clown.

you should see him in a diaper

Most bike club members would agree that anybody who leaves their colors behind somewhere deserves to get f’d with — sweet Jesus, did I just doom myself to misplacing my own vest? — but out of all the mutant bicycle organizations, Black Label’s the one that takes the colors shit real serious. They would’ve made him suffer before they gave them back. We only messed with him a little.

Black Label — our direct ancestors, and the fathers and mothers of the tallbike joust — just held their Chino’s run this past weekend. An annual gathering of the chapters outside Minneapolis, this Bike Club event is nothing like Bike Kill … it’s more like their version of Bohemian Grove. Card-carrying members only. They all meet in Minneapolis and go to Palmer’s and ride bikes to a campground and trade secret handshakes and hold confidential meetings and drink lots of beer. And it was to this event that Katy Bell sent Doyle’s colors, via air mail, to another Bike Club member’s MPLS house. No doubt the Black Label kids verbally abused the crap out of Doyle upon the jacket’s ceremonial return.

Word on the street is that some hardcore Bike Club members would’ve preferred to confiscate Doyle’s colors for a painful amount of time, as this is the second time he’s lost them. They’re also known to drop full members back down to prospect status for certain offenses. Of course, this tough-talk rumor might also be some Black Label-style hardcore lore.

All Cyclecide did was to sew a clown nose on the outside, and to beer-elf the inside with Sharpie, and to smash blobs of white greasepaint in the pockets so when he reached in his pockets he’d get clown makeup all over his fingers and then (hopefully) unknowingly smear white all over his face and clown-elf himself.

That’s okay, right?

They’re not going to kill us, are they?

Pedaling; monsters

June 15-18, 007
Bayview, Potrero Hill, the HaightSF

ITEM! The Heavy Pedal Cyclecide Bike Rodeo’s annual PEDAL MONSTER has been confirmed!! July 13-15, 2007, at locations throughout San Francisco, expect a mutant bicyclist gathering of epic and idiotic proportions.

Black Label Bike Club (everywhere), Dead Baby Bikes (Seattle), C.H.U.N.K. 666 (Portland / NYC), Rat Patrol (Chicago), Chaingang (San Fernando Valley), Skidmarxxx (lotsa places), Choppercabras (LA), Banana Bike Brigade (St. Louis), Chopaderos (San Diego), Sprockettes (Portland), Cutthroats (Richmond VA) … I’m talkin’ to all yall. Time to buy plane tickets (or ride yer bike) to SAN FRANCYCLE for some ILLEGAL MAYHEM SO DANGEROUS AND MAYHEM-TASTIC I CAN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT IT ON THE PAGES OF THE INTERNETS WITHOUT BEING SUED BY EVERYONE ELSE WHO WON’T HAVE AS KICKASS OF A TIME AS WE WILL.

Ahem.

And if I forgot any mutant bike clubs I’m sure yall won’t hesitate to let me know.

yes, GORGAR the vain and belligerent urine-eating monster will be there. Tremble in your toe-clips

Also.

ITEM! Cyclecide and the Mousetrap and the Disgusting Spectacle all appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel Show as part of his taped segment on the Maker Faire! Takes a while to load the page but it’s worth it. (P.S. CRAP, I HAD NO IDEA THE EEPYBIRD MENTOS AND DIET COKE GUYS WERE THERE. That’s how slammed we are during shows. Who wants to join Cyclecide? We need some interns so we can wander around and look at stuff occasionally.)

So. This past weekend? Naaaa.

I didn’t go to Simone and Dave’s RoboGames/Combots (a.k.a. “Robot Wars” even though we’re not supposed to call it that because of some copyright issue but that’s what they are) — even though I had free passes because last year members of Cyclecide clowned for the robots and their masters in between battles, clattering around in cardboard robot costumes (the boys) and Beer Can Can-Can ™ skirts made of repurposed barley-soda aluminum. And Dannygirl went all the way, painting herself silver and walking around like a robot all day in a silver helmet and go-go skirt. Last year. This year, we were too overextended from all the see above.

A friend in the Vau de Vire Society / Xeno could’ve gotten me into a special Scion show on Alcatraz, in which they opened up a portion of the world-famous prison that had never been seen before, not even on private tours — the porcelain hose-down-the-crazy-prisoners room and the meds room. My friend played a junkied-out inmate trying to get his meds while a hula hooper went off in the background, ostensibly symbolizing his brain on drugs. And shit! The A’z were there. Yadadamean? That song gets stuck in my head about as often as the Trunk Boiz’ Scraper Bike track currently blowing up cyclists’ email lists.

So. The weekend? Naaaaa.

Tora and his rock’n’roll band Tiger Honeypot played “Double Delicious” at ArtSF. The show feted the release of SF author Virgie Tovar’s Destination DD: Adventures of a Breast Fetishist with 40DDs. So that meant breast-themed art, breast-themed food, breast-themed erotica readings, breast-themed history, and local rock’n’roll bands who very probably enjoy breasts and looking at breasts.

(This is the part where my dad, barely able even to listen to the events I’m recounting so far without rolling his eyes, would shake his head and bemusedly mutter: “San Francisco … the Land of Fruits and Nuts.”)

Even though I’m already a fan of Tora’s wife Trinity Cross’s Field Day Fashion brand clothing line, I only just made friends with Tora Thursday night, when riding in the back of the Waaahmbulance with a bunch of goons, going to the noise metal show on some bus somewhere in Potrero hill. I showed him the Urban Cowboy method of staying upright while sitting on the floor in the back of a van that’s speeding through the hills of San Francisco like the chase scene in Bullitt: Lean in the opposite direction your body’s trying to lean, and stretch at least one arm out for leverage. Just like riding a mechanical bull.

See? I went out. Thursday night. Another atypical punk rock slash crusty event, complete with secret meeting spots and repurposed vehicles and oogles sitting around on the sidewalk with 40s in paper sacks. The bus — was it a MUNI bus with a loft built up on the back of it? … whatever it was, it was awesomely ghetto — pulled up and everyone swarmed it. Short attention spans and the threat of a cover charge determined that we didn’t stick around for the bands to set up. Not when Lowtech was appearing at 5lowershop’s monthly jungle night at UndergroundSF for free.

That’s when the magic happened.

It’s always entertaining when a crowd of well-adjusted partygoers befuddles the Asshole In The Room into spinning out early. It reminds me of electrons and protons and neutrons all colliding with each other — the thing with the negative charge gets pushed away with equal force, bounces off something else, which also pushes it away, so it bounces harder…

One of the gals in my party fell victim to this asshole neutron’s masochistic attention-getting ploys.

“STOP GRABBING MY BOOB,” she thundered, standing safe amid a patio full of peaceful people smoking peaceful plants. Asshole neutron then drunkenly boinged over to me. Puffing on a Camel, he glared at her from across the way.

“He was grabbing my ass earlier,” another Amazonian hollered from a corner. Big girl. Brave dude.

He looked at me. I looked at him. I smiled.

“You’re That Guy, aren’t you?,” I asked him. “You just can’t wait to get your head kicked in.”

He smiled back, stubbed out his cigarette, and went inside. Ostensibly in search of other body parts to fondle on the countdown to the ambulance ride.

Sure enough, half an hour later, I was standing again in the same place, and so was he, and some girl’s boyfriend smashed a pint glass upside his head.

And rather than lunge for the smasher, Asshole Neutron acted as if nothing happened. While the boyfriend yelled, and boyfriend’s friends held him back, and the electron tornado swirled and grew, Asshole Neutron’s countenance morphed from surprise to ecstasy.

Fewer things are more surreal than a zombie lurching next to you, strafed and bloody, casually smoking a cigarette with pieces of broken glass pointing out of his face.

I mean yeah, I feel for the guy. I really do. We’ve all been wasted. But seriously? He kinda got off easy. If any of my male friends had been up in the club, they would’ve dragged him outside and used the sidewalk to ground the glass down into his skull.

But this way … it was sort of … poetic. Never have I seen a man be such a willing slave to his own self-loathing. Also: GO TEAM ALCOHOL.

What’s the point in going out for the weekend when the finale already happened on Thursday?

Extra Steampunk Cheese Pandemonium Station

June 11, 007
Yay Area

Thursday night, the Extra Action Marching Band threw a “Cock-Out Rockout” at the DNA. A Guns’n’Roses cover band called Rocket Queens played (only Appetite for Destruction songs, mind you), and Hot for Teacher gave good Van Halen, and we missed I Yearn for Maiden, sadly. My companion wore my black shiny vinyl pants, a bandana on his head, and my Lynyrd Skynyrd studded T-shirt with a lady with big boobs in a rebel flag bikini on it. I drew a mustache and glasses and a beard on the lady, and gave her a heart tattoo on her silicone implant that says BACON.

Me, I wore the kids’ Harley-Davidson red white and blue shirt I got from the thrift store, cut cleavage into, and shredded tassels into the bottom of and put white and gold beads on the ends like those SHARK ATTACK shirts available for purchase in Myrtle Beach, SC in the ‘80s. (Bonus: On the back, the beads spell out the word METAL.) Also, red glittery legwarmers with baby blue leather elf boots with gray bunny fur on the top if you fold them down. And a black and white tiger-skin bandana in my hair all ratted to the sky (inspired by Silent but Violent’s obsessive IM-ing me pictures of Bret Micheals earlier that day).

Oh and light blue Daisy Dukes with the lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” written all over them in Sharpie.

Sometimes I think I’m so cool. (eyes roll)

Anyway.

The Marching Band … sigh.

Blink blink blink.

They’re. Just. So. Fucking. Awesome.

Then Saturday night was the Steampunk party at N.I.M.B.Y., during which Spy performed her one-woman, one-song, one-triangle act where she covered the Golden Girls’ theme song and we all screamed along. (Well at least I did.) Then she did the other show she does, the Kinetic Steam Works “cooking” show where she smashes things in the Dingus, like shaving cream and mustard, and Stephen mixes them altogether in a bowl while Spy punishes food products and everyone gets splattered. Especially her and Stephen. I tried to be supportive and yet at the same time shield myself with a large posterboard. Oh and there were two steam engines, and a carousel, and tons of machines shooting fire and ice and propane and steam and yada yada whackety shmackety. You know. The usual.

I had no idea Steampunk was a thing. Not just the name of a treehouse that Sean Orlando and crew are trying to fundraise and build and bring out there to the dirt rave in the desert this year. I was completely unaware that there was a movement or a literary genre or a fashion sense or an adjective describing anything having to do with modern adaptations of H.G. Wells and pre-electronic sci-fi adventures and Victorian-looking gadgets with polished brass accents and Goths with corsetry and dreadlocks. Or that it was all called Steampunk. Or that it’s even got its own magazine. Learn somethin new every day on the Internets.

All I know is, I’m pretty sure I can tell you where to find the kings and queens of Steampunk. And they’ve got the coolest toys I’ve ever seen (along with Cyclecide, of course).

Then Sunday night the Cirkus Pandemonium kids did a show in an abandoned Southern Pacific railroad station in Oakland. Which couldn’t have been any more picturesque if it were a fabricated Hollywood set. First we heard the building was slated to be torn down, but then we heard the yuppie-kennel developers didn’t win over the neighborhood anti-gentrification petition and door-to-door campaign. So the building stays. So there’s hope in the world.

Members of the Bread and Cheese Circus performed too. Aerialists and hula-hoopers and jugglers and acrobats and rope-walking and fire spinning and clowns and a big guy in a pink unitard and little top hat and silver crinkly cape. They’ve been going to Kosovo for 4 years now to entertain war-torn children and teach them circus arts, you know. They have actual clowning skills, unlike most of us Bike Rodeo clowns in Cyclecide. Then we climbed onto the roof of the train station and looked out over the twinkly lights of Oakland and the shipping-container cranes on the water.

I’m terribly hung over on propane. Seriously, it’s an actual ailment. I’ve been around pyromaniacs long enough to know. So much more stuff happened, but I’m feeling lazy, and too spread-headed from inhaling carcinogens to recall it all or find the words.

My adrenal gland hurts.

I gotta go wash the mustard off my clothes now.

—

P.S. HATS OF MEAT dot com? Are you serious?

So anyway, last Saturday night

June 6, 007

Michelle and I arrived to Lost Vegas late and underdressed. Despite the rain earlier, the Drunkyard still showed good attendance for its purported last show (sniff), and nearly all comers outfitted themselves in Vegas-worthy garish-wear. Brian Doherty looked handsome as he dealt at the “Crap” table; Belinda the Junkwoman held court behind her Valueless Prizes booth, decked in Santa garb and talking shit.

Lily from the Yard Dogs, who always gives good costume, radiated Nevada / Hollywood cheese — sky-high rich-girl bouffant; piles of gold accessories; bronzer liberally applied; ridiculous white lounge-singer dress. Her lipliner broached her lips’ borders by a mile, while her lipgloss gave her the appearance of just having guzzled bacon grease. In other words: perfect. Later on that night, her amour — one-half of the Wink and Yoni show when he’s not the lead singer of Rube Waddell — would glance at her lovingly from the stage, bedecked in a white suit and plastic lei and terrible wig, plonking out painfully earnest Vegas versions of forgotten radio hits, crooning in his dime-store Elvis vibrato while she blew him kisses. Ah, polyester love.

Kimric Smythe built some new steam-powered thing that served as yet another too-elaborate way to cook hot dogs for the drunks at the Drunkyard (remember Flash and Victoria ironing weenies at the Power Tool Drag Races?). Below the contraption, which every so often spit out little hot dog remnants, Cloe’s intrepid puppy lingered and licked up the spoils from the years-old layer of automotive oil and PCBs and other chemicals on the pavement.

Beside this dog-eat-dog spectacle, the Ramp of Death — over which Otto was to “jump a Harley Davidson … ON FUCKING FIRE” — loomed 9ish feet high and 30ish feet long. All-star pyros like Jim Mason and Steve Valdez and Mark Perez readied the hut they’d built at the base of the ramp, through which Otto was to ride after it’d been set ablaze (and therefore catch fire himself), on his way to the top of the ramp and Valhalla beyond. Where’s he going to land?, I asked several gamblers. Nobody knew.

ramping up. Photo by Scott Beale / laughing squid

Cyclecide had our two-seater Ferris Wheel set up, and of course I gravitated towards it for most of the evening, aiding Linda as she ran the ride and sassed the riders and cheekily turned people away for lack of whiskey to share. Behind us, the Rev. Dr. Howland Owll of the Church of Subgenius officiated short-term wedding ceremonies in a covered trailer which doubled as a chapel. Moses and Spy — who won a precious can of rust from the valueless prizes table, and carried it around all evening like a baby — got married until Wednesday, and Jarico and Linda wed each other (in clown noses) for 24 hours. Just to try it out.

Sparkle Motion, San Francisco’s most “real” dance troupe, showed off their day-glo animal-print thrift-score unitards and performed a synchronized routine to “Eye of the Tiger” — which reminded me (as I’m sure it did many other chicks in the audience) of my own childhood, choreographing steps to Billy Squier with my friends at slumber parties and drawing from the three holy sources of inspiration: cheerleading, Solid Gold, and the Soul Train.

I brought Otto the good-luck charm I’d found on the street at the Love Parade (of all places) months ago: a poster of a bearded, mulleted biker on a Harley that read RIDE FREE TO ETERNAL LIFE with some Bible verses underneath it. “Don’t die, Otto,” I said, “because we need an Otto and because my friend ___ was serious about the blowjob after the show.” (She was.) He stuffed the poster into his sock and smiled.

Then it was time for the finale. In true showman style, Chicken John emceed the crowd into a froth, backed by a full band, three women dressed as Elvis and singing the Otto Von Danger theme song accordingly, and a handful of go-go dancers in sexy nurse uniforms. Before the stunt could begin, the nurses needed to “check” Otto on a gurney on a raised platform behind the stage and the hoopla.

suspiciously like all the other Ramps of Death in our immediate social circle… but much, much taller and stupider. photo by Scott Beale / laughing squid

From the back view, perched on the Cyclecide HQ mezzanine in the rear of the Drunkyard, Moses and Linda and Spy and I saw the magic happen. I won’t give away the secret, for fear of retribution, but I will remind you (as Moses did me) of the televised “disappearance” of the Statue of Liberty — a magic trick in which David Copperfield brought his spectators out to a platform on Ellis Island, showed them the statue, surrounded them in curtains, and orchestrated a glitzy razzle-dazzle hullaballoo … during which time the platform rotated evverrrr sooooo slowwwwly. So when the curtains dropped, the statue had disappeared … because it was just over there behind those other curtains to the side. The audience bought it.

As with any event in this crowd, the vehicle malfunctioned, and Chicken was forced to replace the Harley with a motorized scooter. Ghetto-ass Evil Kneivel shit. “Otto,” now fully “checked,” putt-putted through the crowd and into the cardboard-stuffed wooden hut, which the pyros ignited. Fully ablaze, “Otto” shot from the hut and up the ramp and … split half in two. Half fell onto the asphalt; the other half of “him” got stuck on a nail or something at the top of the jump, and burned quietly while chaos ensumed below. The pyros, now armed with fire extinguishers, put “Otto” out, creating a cloud of white dust through which nobody could see. His red-white-and-blue jumpsuit burned and torn, Otto emerged from the wreckage, victorious.

And I was all scared for nothing.

Rubes. Sometimes I’m one of them. I’m glad, after all I’ve seen, that I can still get conned.

to the victor go the spoils. (and maybe the blowjobs too; i’d rather not imagine it)

I don’t want Otto to die

May 31, 007
SF

We need an Otto when the shit hits the fan. He’s been in nine wars, he says. He’s seen more bad things than anyone you know. Done more, too.

As Michelle Burke told me the other night while peeling rutabagas — who eats rutabagas? — we are the Land of Broken Toys.

And Otto is one of the most broken. And he will tell you that himself.

Otto is a chain-smoking Viking warrior. A beat-to-shit, impossible-to-kill Marine with a thick veneer of caveman letchiness and excessive talkativity covering a missile-quick mind and an enormous bloody beating heart. He would literally snap someone’s throat if they ever dared hurt one of his friends.

Maybe that’s why I don’t want Otto to die. My own interest in self-preservation.

our Palindrome von Danger, sawing things and not people, which is good

Otto is fond of saying that if he hadn’t met all of us, all the BRC-DPW and the larger community of Burning Vacation-going art freaks in the Bay Area, he would have killed himself a long time ago. He likes to speak in hyperbole, but on this one, I believe him.

Saturday night, at Chicken John’s Lost Vegas at Ace Drunkyard in San Franpsycho, for the finale, Otto von Danger will jump a flaming ramp of death. On fire. Over cars? There are varying reports. I still can’t figure out if Otto will be the one on fire, or if the ramp will be on fire, or if there be a wall of fire through which Otto jumps the Harley. Or if they’ll pour gasoline on the ramp and all over Otto and start playing Black Sabbath and hand him a strike-anywhere match and see what happens.

All I know is I have to be there.

It’s probably just another one of Chicken’s bait-and-switch things, right? Some gag like the Bike Rodeo does in our “five cars on fire” skit? How we build a tiny ramp and douse it in lighter fluid and put five little Matchbox cars on a flaming paper plate in front of it? … Like how Chicken would get everybody in the tent at Cirkus Redickuless and talk up the “Man-Eating Chicken” and then Jarico would come out eating a bucket of chicken … right?

It’s Otto’s birthday today. The party tonight at American Steel might be his last.

But I really hope not. We need an Otto.

—–

P.S. Wheelgunner’s in Iraq right now, I think, so who’s bringing the flamethrowers?

P.S.S. I don’t even want to talk about the possibility that the drunkyard might be closing. Cyclecide has our headquarters there. Really — today, I just can’t think about it. Like Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Container? I don’t even know her

May 28, 007

So yesterday, Memorial Day, I’m riding around with Snook and the boys in the Deuce, which is a giant decommissioned military vehicle meant for carrying around tons of weapons and marines and shit. But Snook uses the Deuce to camp out and barbecue in the Desert and hand out beers to dirtbags in. We’re going through Oakland, from the N.I.M.B.Y. warehouse to the Shipyard to see the destruction, and random pedestrians and fellow petroleum vampires are waving hello despite all their best efforts to look cool and over it.

Apparently, at the Shipyard, there were a couple containers welded together on the top layer, above 2 other free-standing containers on the bottom, and the top layer needed to come down in order for Jim Mason and company to comply and play nice with the City of Berkeley. So instead of cutting the welded containers apart with a plasma cutter or something (which is reasonable, in all my experience welding which I learned how to do this weekend with Che at American Steel for Dann das Mann and Karen das Womann’s big heavy artmetal project for the dirt rave in the desert this year) … they were going to do some double-forklift synchronized-swimming thing where they lifted up the top containers and took the bottom ones out and put the top ones on the cement. Except from what I heard, there were no vehicles to drag the bottom ones out after the top ones got lifted, because the only 2 forklifts at the Shipyard — one which is run by a generator bungee-corded to the back of the chair — would be busy doing the top-thing one.

But when we get there in the Deuce, N.I.M.B.Y.-vs.-Shipyard container-rumble style, where our plan is to get in their sight line and drink beers and tell them you’re doing it wrong, we’re managers today, and is there anything we can say to help … there’s no stunt. Not yet. Not for a while, anyway. Steve Valdez is manhandling the forklift and moving pallet racks without taking them apart. Kimric and his dad are there in a managerial capacity as well, and dozens of people are moving heavy things around. So I pull weeds with some chicks on the “Lipstick Job” — which is the fence outside which needs to be painted so it looks like we’re not dirtbags. At which point I feel compelled to quote fellow Cacophonist Chuck Palahniuk about polishing the brass on the Titanic. Pulling weeds with the world falling apart inside the unpainted fence.

Don’t know if the big dumb heavy forklift dance ever happened, because after a while, we said sayonara and went back to N.I.M.B.Y. and listened to butt-rock and looked at the steam engines and watched some dude drive a Cushman with flamethrowers around. Snook made meat on the grill. The grill, not the Dead Hooker Cooker — he’s selling that. He doesn’t need TWO Deuces, he decided. If the Dead Hooker Cooker had an apartment on the back of it like the Deuce does, I’d be in. But it’s just got a grill in a coffin and a big-ass Dr. Strangelove rideable bomb on it.

Anyway, so we’re sitting at N.I.M.B.Y. reminiscing about the Thunderdome party, and I realize why it’s taken me so long to get my head around the Maker Faire last weekend: It’s possibly one of the biggest notches in our collective scene’s lipstick case so far. We’re above-board now. Last year I heard the Maker Faire was about 1/4 the size of this year’s, and this year it was the straight-up Superfriends of Bay Area freak-art and science-ology scenes. Everyone’s coming out of the woodwork, making connections, and blending together. And doing political activism, even. I’d say within a couple years, those of us who don’t die of alcohol poisoning or get crushed by a container on a janky forklift are going to take this show on the road. Won’t be long til someone’s going to be flown to New York to get interviewed and talk about this shit on VH-1 or something. Mark my words.

Yep. (Sound of beer opening)

Wondertwin powers, activate…

Mark proposed to Rose!!

Imagine what the wedding’s going to be like. CRAZY.

Thrillpeddlers’ Grand Guignol nightmare

Wed. May 16, 007
SF

The wind howled like God blowing on an empty beer bottle tonight. I gripped the wheel and navigated the Pacific Coast Highway in Blinky’s “boat with two couches,” trying like hell to keep to the right of the double yellow line. I’d just visited a friend’s house, nestled quite literally on the shore of the ocean, in the sand on a rocky cove in the shadow of mountains. Earlier, we’d watched an old guy push a limp and lifeless seal carcass from the hard-packed shore back into the roiling waves. When the body hit — sploosh! — blood and salt water spewed everywhere.

Turns out it was Ray Bandar, that dude who works for the California Academy of Sciences who they just featured in the Chronicle a couple weeks ago — he’s got a house full of animal skulls from all over the planet. He’d just beheaded the seal to harvest the cranium.

Landlocked fog rested atop green peaks like tinsel; yellow and white lights from houses and shopping centers wrapped the roads, twinkling in the clear-atmosphere layer below the mist. And I thought: What a wonderfully spooky region we live in. Whether hugging the craggy oceanside or blanketing the redwoods, the fog makes everything rather … Tolkeinsian, don‘t you think?

Take any such mystical aura of uncertainty, and add the spectre of murder. Or rape, or torture, or incest, or blood-spattered mad scientists beheading and re-animating (seal?) corpses. Good times, right?

That’s why, in Paris from 1897 to 1962, the rubes couldn’t get enough of Grand Guignol theatre. It scared the crap out of them, and they loved it. The Thrillpeddlers are arguably the premiere torch-bearers for Grand Guignol in the world — the only company who regularly resurrects Grand Guignol plays from the dead (ba-dump, chink) and crafts new pieces in tribute to the style. And they’re based here in San Francisco. Their current show, now playing at the Hypnodrome Thursdays through Saturdays, ends on June 2 — and that’s it. No extensions.

Also! The Thrillpeddlers have just been voted by the Weekly’s readers to be the best theater company in the Bay. I saw the show last weekend, and I’ve got to say, I’m’a’ tell Big Daddy he’s got to go see it — and I usually only tell him he’s got to go see something if it involves zombies. The latest critical review of the Thrillpeddlers’ new show, Hypnodrome Head Trips, sits online here (second listing down) …

… it’s pretty right-on, so I won’t bother writing what’s already been well-written about them. I’ll just say the show made me clap like an undead seal, and then I’ll quote Silent but Violent, who accompanied me to the play.

“That was rad,” she whispered into my ear after the show. “And I HATE theater.”

Flora Grubb Gardens: Not a parking lot any more

May 12-13, 007
Flora Grubb Gardens, BayviewSF

“It’s so weird to see white people walking around on the street out there,” Linda said on Saturday. “I mean really. We used to be the only ones. It’s like the day we filmed the [soda company name redacted] commercial outside the clubhouse. White kids everywhere. WEIRD.”

She’s right. Here in “Mo’s Alley,” so called by Cyclecide because Moses’ sister rented the lot to put her plants on, it’s a completely different scenario on the block. Before, it was a shithole in the larger shithole of the Bayview. Now it’s the fancy and beautiful Flora Grubb Gardens, with a new Ritual Coffee Roasters inside of it. The pimps who used to park their cars in front of it and yell at their bitches at all hours of the day and night must be bummed. But I’m happy, because the only other coffee near me is up Bernal Hill. Bikes and that hill and a non-caffeinated Dilettante are NOT friends.

This is Mo. ….. Um, yep, I know. I know. (photo by Scott Beale)

Mo’s Alley was a thoroughfare for crack dealers and hookers, right in the shadow of the City’s sewage treatment plant, in the ghetto behind the abominable KFC/Taco Bell combination “restaurant” where the customers scream at the beleaguered staff more often than not. The lot used to be Peninsula Oil, then it was a bus depot, then it was a plain slice of tore-up pavement and asphalt with a couple run-down buildings left over.

Cyclecide HQ, until recently, was located right across the street … and they evicted us and now the combination house and shop and yard still sits empty. Don’t get me started.

Flora Grubb has had Cyclecide’s back for a while now, letting us and the Mousetrap store stuff on her ex-parking lot, pre-construction, in exchange for us keeping an eye on it …. so when she asked us to set up the rides for her opening party this weekend, of course we said YES MA’AM. We brought the Cyclofuge, the Ferris Wheel, the Kiddie Carousel, the Spanking Bike, the Dizzy Toy, and the Whirl ‘n’ Hurl. Scott Beale showed up and took photos.

Anyway, two years ago this Fourth of July, we hosted the first annual PEDAL MONSTER at Mo’s Alley, which kicked ass. Carloads of Dead Baby Bike Club members drove down from Seattle, ditto C.H.U.N.K. 666ers from Portland, and Black Label members from Reno, Nowhere, and the couch at headquarters. The 999 Eyes ov Infinite Dream circus brought their live act and their museum of curiosities, and Replicator and A.P.E. rocked us with some blistering dance-metal (RIP A.P.E.’s drummer, killed on his bike by a hit-and-run driver in Seattle). One dude ate a Madagascar hissing cockroach, a band of trolls and ogres played, many MANY fireworks were shot off, and we built a tiny tallbike for the dwarf chick in the 999 Eyes freakshow. She never can find bikes in her size, much less tallbikes. She was stoked. Of course it got stolen a couple towns down the road.

Bike thieves suck.

To put it mildly, we’ve partied hard at Mo’s Alley. We got kinda misty when we saw what Flora’s done with the place.

Dukey made a clown face for the Dizzy Toy (this pitcher also by Scott Beale)

The Life-Size Mousetrap lived here on the lot for a while, all set up with some Cyclecide rides a couple Octobers ago, when we did a special Critical Mass show and some Halloween gigs. Jarico took the old Edsel from the junkyard and Haggis smashed it into the lot’s chicken-shack looking wooden structure we turned into a bar. Victoria shot out the RV window with her BB gun, and we generally blew a pile of BMXers’ and spandex bikers’ minds.

The Edsel is all that remains. Plopped in a corner of Flora’s new building among potted, carbon-eating creatures that look like they’re from outer space.

It’s a beautiful place to buy plants and get coffee. Yall check it out. Those people are NERDS about plants and coffee.

We’ll be at the Maker Faire next weekend. Classes in “backyard ballistics?” A rumored appearance by SRL? Yeesh. It’s going to be AWESOME.

Also! Linda’s note at Atlas made it into SFist. Gotta love her Mexican hot-headedness. Seriously though, bike thieves suck.

I’ll try to shut up about the flies

May 9, 007
post-Stagecoach Music Festival
HOME, finally

For two days, I’ve been trying to think of good things to say. So far I’m having trouble recapping the post-Coachella country-music adventures at Stagecoach in a concise and entertaining fashion. Even though WILLIE NELSON IS THE CLOSEST THING TO GOD WALKING THIS EARTH. And this one guy in the Riders in the Sky can do the hambone on his face. That was awesome.

To sum up: Cyclecide wowed hundreds of kids and their parents at Stagecoach, this 20,000+ country music festival in the Mojave Desert. We tried our best to be the scary, dirty, heavy-metal ride-running, funnel-cake-eating, county-fair carnival workers that we ourselves feared and awed in our collective youth. And I think we succeeded. And sold lots of T-shirts.

not as ‘ardcore as dem

I realize if I’m to start this blog thing, not only do I need to learn the daunting technology involved in putting up links and photos too — I’m also supposed to post frequently as hell to prevent losing my audience. But:

1) I’m still overstimulated from 2 months of constant adrenaline rushes… and I’ve got kind of a poor attitude at the moment. I still can’t get over the flies. So many flies everywhere at that god-forsaken hellhole called Artists’ Camping. Flies covering the bus ceiling, flies dotting the tent ceiling, flies in the kitchen, flies in the bathroom. Flies flies flies. I still itch when I think about it. Two epsom salt baths and a shower have yet not been enough.

2) This line of thinking/ranting leads to me not being able to get over how “artists” are treated in general in America. At Coachella, even the opening-opening bands who play right when the gates open get styled way more than we do. Consistently. We’re talking shade, and their own bar, and air-conditioned trailers and ornate communal areas and crafts-service meals and handmade gifts from the promoters … and they’re not even there for one whole day most of the time. They’ve got hotels and whatnot. Us, we could probably be consultants when the U.S. government decides to privatize refugee camps in Darfur.

if only I wasn’t made of piss and vinegar, they’d land this frequently, instead of slightly less

Maybe the promoters assume we’re used to squalor because, well, we ARE used to it … but for an event that rumoredly makes a $23 million dollar profit, you’d think that we artists, providers of ALL the eye-candy on that giant field out there in Indio, could get our own shower trailer, or maybe a sink and a bar of soap. Whether because of cost-cutting or oversight, the promoters saved on portajohn-cleaning fees, and then spent more on the hospital bills for those who got treated for staph infections as a result of blah blah bitch bitch bitch. See? Not funny.

HOWEVER! I’m exceedingly proud that many of my good friends, and good friends once removed, were pretty much solely responsible for the visual entertainment at America’s biggest rock’n’roll festival. GO TEAM ART FAG!

Now. I’m going out to dinner in the misty California night and have someone else make me food and take care of the dishes.

And if there’s a fly in my soup, I’ll just eat it. Whatever.

Braaaaaaaains

May 5, 007
Stagecoach Music Festival
Cyclecide DJ / merch booth

None of us saw much music at Coachella. We had no time — and if we did, when we got our nightly second winds, we traveled in a pack, mostly. Saturday night we went as zombies.

I can’t remember if Spider or Doyle was the one to originally call Zombie Night, but then Doyle found this white 3-piece suit in the trash, and it actually fit him, so then we had to. After Cyclecide’s shows got more and more surreal throughout the day, with our collective heatstroke advancing at a steady clip, we re-appropriated the contents of our clown makeup case at dusk, piled on the fake blood, and went out strolling.

Helping run the Heavy Pedal Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, after days and days of hard labor and hiking uphill both ways in the snow with no shoes on etc., it’s immensely relaxing to walk around Coachella like a zombie. Fuck trying to look attractive, fuck rushing to see this or that band, fuck posture — this is how we feel. UhhhUUUHHH.

Everyone invented different “character” zombies and got into it. Doyle was a player zombie, lifting his sunglasses and winking one drippy-bloody eye. Spider leaned more toward office-worker zombie with tie and everything. I played a curly-mustachioed, missing-toothed, undead carny who kept trying to sneak and eat people’s brains when they weren’t looking. Lurching around with drink in hand, stopping in crowded pathways to stare into space with hips jutted out at unruly angles, jump-starting again as people gathered closer to see just what was wrong … Spider even drooled. A lot.

Crowds cut us a wide swath, and gawked and took photos — even as they walked like us, but not on purpose. We all swarmed Buffalo’s Fire Pod piece while it shot off big flames out of its eight-foot petals. We raided the Cut Chemist show in the Do-Lab dome and stunned the hip-hop heads in front. We took a special group ride on the Kinetic Steam Works’ black-and-white carousel. We zombie-ballroom-danced around Johnny Amerika’s Movement piece, too, while it belched fire clouds around us. Talk about a photo ops.

We ignored the Rage Against the Machine reunion and pooh-poohed the RHCPs. (“Remember when the Red Hot Chili Peppers used to be the Red Hot Chili Peppers?,” I kept saying, balefully.) But when Manu Chao took the main stage, all semblance of zombie-ness ceased and we ran toward the front and danced and moshed like 15-year-old punk kids. Then the Cauac Twins’ Tesla coils went off and Jesse Wack and company took over our sound system for an extended drunken jam that actually didn’t sound very bad, and we laid around on the Cyclecide stage on the pink carpet and told stories.

Then when they kicked us out of the field after the crowds had gone, some went back to camp and had another party in front of L.T.’s gorgeous Cyclecide fire barrel she made us. Others drifted off into the night, on their way to do who knows what with who knows whom. I fell asleep at a reasonable hour, but I hear Bjork eventually came back to our camp and partied with us, and someone in Cyclecide actually got to do coke off her tits.

Success. Also: exhaustion.

Next, a report from Stagecoach. Which is going on right now and I’m pretending to DJ in the shade. Hey, three carloads of fresh blood arrived last night and kept us up drinking. Let them do some of the work. Most of us still feel like zombies — just without the makeup now.

Plague?

May 4, 007
(now it’s the) Stagecoach Music Festival
Artists’ Parking Lot

For whatever reason, the Johnny on the Spot guys did NOT clean the Portajohns in Artists’ Camping after Coachella was over, though they serviced everything else. On Tuesday, as we broke down the rides for our Wednesday gig in Riverside, Laird said he went to try to go pee and couldn’t even see the toilet seat for all the flies swarming on it.

Ever smelled a bank of Portajohns that’s been baking for five days in 104-degree heat?

And would you think it smelled better or worse than post-Coachella DOG PUKE my Bruno tried to eat again after he threw it up and then we left and came back from the Riverside gig? … Apparently he learned the fine art of post-event groundscoring from his mother. He likes to dig through trash and conserve resources, just like me. YOU, OK? I LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU.

This whole Portajohn / flies / no-showers-for-artists fiasco has caused some health issues. I lost my voice long about Tuesday — whether from carnival-talk or total dehydration or something more ominous I’m still not sure — and so did a lot of other people. Folks who laid on the grass find themselves covered in red and white bumps. Chem trails form Xes above us in the sky on some mornings; on others, not a cloud up in the blue. Water trucks rumble by and planes fly over to spray the grass on the polo fields with Lord knows what chemicals and pesticides. Flies have multiplied exponentially since our arrival.

Now that the powers that be have finally decided to stop making the artists forage for interesting and unlikely places to go #2, as well as to bathe and locate enough electricity to charge our phones, the flies have all dispersed. And swarmed our camps. In the kitchen, in the bus, in my car, all over the dogs and food and people. They’re everywhere. Fly paper doesn’t work because of the new high winds and dust blowing around. The weather might be this way all weekend.

What’s worse, one artist just took a trip to the hospital this morning to treat a staph infection in his eye… which has now got us all washing our hands like Howard Hughes and trying not to panic. That shit’s contagious as hell. We’ve got 4 or 5 days left of this.

Roughing it is fun — but not for this long, in this heat, with this little shade, when someone else is in charge of hygeine. Cyclecide needs to invest in a generator.

no, not that kind of generator. Although it would be nice and I can’t figure out why nobody’s invented one yet

In other news, Monday’s woo-party-party at the Desert Springs hotel pretty much drained anything left in everyone’s batteries. Artists’ groups, friends of, and hangers-on converged on the place, an hour from the site, to celebrate a job well done. Some of the fancy magical Palm Springs spa-waters are located there at the hotel, and we all like to sit around in the many pools after Coachella and swap stories and drink beer and make “clown soup.” (Michelle Burke had to actually request that Cyclecide shower before entering the water — she said she’s seen the combination of greasepaint and dirt in a jacuzzi before, and it wasn’t pretty.)

Turns out that soaking in hot tubs for hours on end isn’t the best thing for sunburned skin on a sensitive Southern girl who’s used to humidity instead of oven-style weather. In addition to no voice, I’ve got a white five-o’clock shadow on my already-red face that makes me look like a burn-victim rodeo clown in reverse. I didn’t mean to jaunt to the Palm Desert in my fancy car for a chemical peel and hot tub soak at a hotel spa, but that’s what happened.

Our Wednesday gig 2 hours away at the barbecue for the UC-Riverside’s end-of-year festivities went off swimmingly. Setup and breakdown in “chilly” 70-80-degree weather. Rides only, no show, 3-hour start to finish with The Well-Behaved Kids (no alcohol or firearms on campus). After that, Conrad’s mom brought us all food (hero!) and we rented three rooms in a hotel and took showers.

SHOWERS, people. Life is good.

Gotta go. Someone’s sound-checking and I’m jumpy to see Willie Nelson … next post I’ll tell a bit about Coachella cuz I think I’m finally decompressed enough.

P.S. I heard George Strait is here camping all weekend — not hotel-ing it like all the other divas. He asked for a horse to ride around, and they gave him one. Champ.

uhhhhhUUUUUHHHHHH

we are delirious.

sitting by a pool at a hotel with air conditioning. For a minute. Going back into the hotness to break down the rides and take them to Riverside to set them up for a show at UCR tomorrow. Then re-breaking them down and re-taking them back to the polo fields in Indio to re-set them up for Stagecoach. Which judging by all the purple wristbands on the 60-year-old vendors and whatnot outside at the hotel pool right now …. it’s going to be Bizarro Coachella.

Two kinds of music next weekend: country and western. I need to go into town to buy a new set of Billy Bob teeth to plump up my accent and bark at the Cyclofuge or whatever ride I’m running this weekend — just to scare the kids. Hopefully I won’t get my ass kicked. I’m from Mississippi though so I’m allowed to talk like that.

But right now all I want to do is take a nap in the shade. Someday I’ll get a whole night’s sleep again.

Overheard in the bar by the pool just now:

“did you find my shorts in your room last night by the way?”

“No but I heard somebody lost their panties.”

“That might be the pair we sold.”

(All this said by a guy who’s got a nametag on his chinese coolie hat that reads “HELLO MY NAME IS GET OUT OF MY FACE”)

OK bye. Swimming

Clown town

April 28, 007
Coachella Valley Music Festival

ITEM! Ratgirl’s grandpa used to eat meat gravy on his chocolate cake. “It all goes to the same place anyway,” she said he’d say.

The gates have opened and the rubes have flooded in. Seventy thousand people rocked out here yesterday. Seventy thousand surprisingly well-behaved and not-totally-fucked-up-on-drugs people.

Did I mention it’s hot? Up to 104, I heard. The dogs stay chained up in the shade in camp all day while we perform and run the rides, panting panting napping napping. They’re luckier than us.

when dogs hate crowds they bite people. Us, not so much. Well, kind of, sometimes

Some days it feels like a pleasant bizarro version of a death march. Mostly, though, being in the Bike Rodeo rules.

“The flies are gonna miss us,” Bill the Junkman said at camp this morning. Yep, and there’s plenty of flies. Next week they’ll be hanging out like, “Remember Coachella? Man, that was awesome. Those people brought food, and dog shit, and tons of dirty hippies showering in a pond-runoff faucet from the polo field all day…”

The Coachella horizon looks like capitalist Burning Man. Steam engine here, Gorey-esque carousel there, geodesic dome blaring drum’n’bass there, twin Tesla coils shooting off lightning over yonder. Johnny Amerika’s piece fires off in the evening, looking like a mad scientist’s laboratory about to explode any second now for 20 minutes at a time.

In the open field amid the stages and food-court tent oases designed with Asian or Mexican themes, Cyclecide runs the midway all day under the hell-sun. Seventy thousand fresh-faced hipster kids adore our pedal-powered carnival rides. Philip Blaine, the art guy at Goldenvoice, said everyone’s raving about us. I’m sure they’re raving about everyone else’s art too. We party-throwers are becoming a viable industry.

and we look good too. right? Right??

The sideshow was short and sweet yesterday — parade of the bikes, bullfight, tallbike joust, moshpit of recklessness. Doyle jousted Otto and won, and then took a pratfall and lost to Linda on purpose. It was so hot that by the end of that 15 minutes of running around I laid on top of a pile of bikes in the finale and pretended to take a nap, just so I could get horizontal for a minute. Of course a couple people laid on top of me so it wasn’t all that comfortable.

Chicken brought up a half dozen people we hadn’t yet met, who ended up “interning” on our rides yesterday and learning the Way of the Bike Rodeo Clown. They get to be carnies, and I think they’re enjoying it. One dude Esben, a Danish bike fiend who used to be in a circus as a child, can ride the stupid Rudy bike nobody else can ride — two different ways. Rudy built it for the sole purpose of watching people try to ride it and fall down. But Esben can flip it up and sit on the handlebars and work it like it’s a tall unicycle. Should’ve known Chicken would bring a top-notch labor force.

In addition to running things, Jarico’s been toiling on his new sculpture, the Melody Maker — an interactive tower that spins a bunch of contraptions with instruments on them that play when the rider climbs up on a bicycle in the tower and pedals. The Melody Maker is nice to perch in at night — to observe the hoi polloi, the sea of heads rocking out to Peaches or Bjork or DJ Shadow.

It’s hard to want to leave our area and Johnny’s next door, though. It’s kind of like Frogger in the thorougfares — too many people going every which way. Even though we’re hams, most of us are antisocial as well, and slightly too old to run around amid the kids. Plus we just enjoy each other’s company.

And now the gates are open again, and we’re half an hour late, and Katy Bell’s dyeing Big Daddy’s and Laird’s hair clown-blue to match Moses’s. They all shaved parts of their heads clown-style, which is basically pretending to be balding, so they’ve all got fake old-man clown hair. Now they’ve got Esben on his knees with the clippers too — what a good sport — and then they’re all going to rinse in the hose all the hippies are lining up for.

They’re gonna give the hippies blue feet. Neener neener.

Again with the buses

April 26, 007
Coachella Valley Music Festival
Artists’ Parking Lot

It’s 4pm. It’s hot. My mechanic, Scruffy, showed up today. He drove Jamie Viada’s carousel down in a truck whose tire wrapped around the axle in a blowout last night. The carousel is part of Kinetic Steam Works, or KSW, the group that built the steam engine.

The steam engine runs the carousel. It also runs the Dingus. The Dingus is an old widowmaker — an electric machine that would punch holes in metal, shear metal, bend metal. According to Scruffy, now it shreds fish, stuffed animals, and bottles of ketchup (catsup?) and mustard. That’s all I know about KSW for now. I’m sure I’ll meet them later tonight.

rock and roll coochie coo

Scruffy and Laird have got the back of Jarico’s bus open, looking at its innards, conferring about its current state. The three of us are drinking water in the shade at camp right now while the rest of Cyclecide puts up the rides on the midway and shops in town. We’re still — still — waiting on Chicken’s bus to arrive with the majority of our crew on board. They broke down last night sometime when the oil filter housing got scraped off and oil spilled everywhere. Or something.

Laird just suggested we climb up on the roof of Jarico’s bus to look for Chicken and company on the road outside. But Scruffy knows all about Chicken’s bus because he drove it for years as a Green Tortoise employee. He says he’ll be able to hear it coming down the road.

Coincidentally, Jarico and company lived at the old Green Tortoise headquarters in the Bayview for a decade before they / we were gentrified out by an overeager landlord who now still pays rent on his own house as it sits empty. The Bayview isn’t gentrified yet. White folks are still afraid of the place.

Anyhoo, it’s final-setup day here at Coachella. All 500 artists are scrambling with their creations, assembling rides and engines, checking audio and video equipment, building impossible geodesic domes, test-flying tiny remote-controlled helicopters, and rehearsing dance routines in the noonday sun on a stage with no wind or shade.

All the rides I know how to set up are at home, and none of the girl-clowns are here yet, so I’ve got no skills to offer but holding it down for the Ladies’ Auxiliary. See, despite Cyclecide’s female half’s reputations — as strong women with few conventional “feminine” tendencies — the fact is, when we’re doing Cyclecide things, at least I for one always end up cooking, cleaning, sewing, and watching the dogs instead of building things and playing with metal.

Whilst preparing sandwiches for the crew back at camp today — which takes quite a longer time to do than it seems it would — I was faced with the conundrum of how to deliver lunch and beers to 10 people on a Swing Bike with no basket or bicycle trailer. And we didn’t have any cold beers or coolers that weren’t full of food. So I came up with a great junkyard Martha Stewart ™ beer cooler:

Take an empty, square 2.5-gallon plastic water jug and cut a 6-inch rectangular hole into the top front of the container. Layer the bottom with ice; place warm beer atop ice. Repeat until full.

So yeah. Waiting on Chicken’s bus. They’re still — still — at Foodsco for just another minute longer, and should be here any second now for the past 2 hours. It’s been a motherscratcher of a time trying to hold this much space in a 500-strong artists’ campground for 23 more people when everybody’s pouring in to be ready for the 11am gates tomorrow. In fact, the neighbor across the way from us is getting downright irate, and even threatened to run over one of our tents with his truck. But I just made friends with the ice guy today on the other side of us. He’s got ice aplenty and he’s willing to share. Things are good.

And so far all crews seem to be acclimating to the extreme heat in a mature fashion by not getting wasted and rendering themselves unable to work the next day.

We’re learning.

It’s been 45 minutes since I started writing this post, and Laird and Scruffy are STILL talking about Jarico’s bus.

Chicken’s bus is here. Scruffy heard its familiar rumble and perked up his ears, like a dog whose master has just pulled into the driveway. Time to rumble with the neighbors over how much space we’re going to take up.

Rousting about

April 25, 007
Coachella Valley Music Festival
Artists’ Parking Lot

Everyone’s in town at the big pre-festival shop. After a good few sunny hours spent unloading the rides and bikes onto Coachella’s midway, we at Cyclecide — half of whom hadn’t slept or eaten — went into Indio for some Denny’s and ice cream and air conditioning. Now the crew’s out at Home Depot and the grocery store, avoiding the heat and stocking up on supplies for the coming weekend.

Lest anybody be mistaken, Big Daddy would like you all to know that there is only one catsup and that is Heinz. All other brands are ketchup and they are an abomination of nature.

I got the easy job: guarding camp to make sure nobody encroached on our space while the town-errands were done. So after some chicken fried steak I dipped into the coffeeshop in Indio, where I caught a ride with a Goldenvoice worker back to the site. (Goldenvoice = the promoter = insanely organized and professional, and they sure do take care of their artists.)

This woman I rode “home” with just finished filming a “fantasy-reality show” called *Pirate Master,* which premieres on May 31 on CBS, in which she and a dozen or so others got to dress up in period-correct pirate gear and sail a real ship around the Dominica Islands in the West Indies for three weeks and search for buried treasure.

I know, huh. Lucky duck.

dis Jupiter. She’s haaaaarrrrrrrd-core

I already lost my parasol, but I found the Internet. The sun is going down and the houseflies won’t let me nap. More rich-guy RVs just pulled into the fenced-in Paul Frank lot (he’s doing all the merch — talk about bucks — but they too are super-nice people). The sound engineers are blasting Gwen Stefani and bland testosterock out of Coachella’s mammoth speaker systems at errant intervals to check the system. And some hippie standing outside his old van across the way from me right now is doing the weirdest version of yoga I’ve ever seen. It looks more like he’s stirring a couple invisible pots, or rocking the earnest lead-singer power-clench while he plays a hair-metal ballad in his mind’s eye.

Half of the SF freak-arts scene is slowly trickling in to set up camp — expertly, efficiently. Everything in its place. We’re all old pros now. Carnies.

(Jarico hates it when people call him a “carny.” He insists he’s a “showman,” and that we’re “showpeople.” I say we’re both — one when we’re performing and the other when we’re loading and unloading. But I digress.)

I’m not even sure who’s playing at this festival. I just hope somebody in the Bike Rodeo remembered to bring the clown makeup.

Chicken’s bus will leave San Francisco shortly. In theory. By sometime tomorrow morning, this area of artists’ camping will be overtaken by clowns.

Time to work all night.

G forces, flung pianos, flaming fiberglass

April 25, 007
Coachella Valley Music Festival
Artists’ Parking Lot

Johnny Amerika and Tirzah are working artists living in Los Angeles. That happens a lot down there, apparently — unlike San Francisco, where a way higher percentage of clowns like us do it for the love alone. Something about SF being the world capital of creative leisure, and Hollywood liking special effects and people that can build weird things and work long hours on inconceivable projects.

Johnny inherited the six-joystick control box for his latest contraption after creating it on the job for an … well, an animatronic animal for Mel Gibson’s *Apocalypto.* Amerika and crew will hand off this joystick box to audience members here at Coachella to let them play with the fire and make it sing. (Most of his sculptures, like Doyle’s and Rosanna’s and Micheal Christian’s and all of ours, are interactive.)

One of Tirzah and Johnny’s most impressive projects has been the Trebuchet, built originally in 2006 for a car commercial. For those who don’t know, the difference between a trebuchet and a catapult is that with a catapult, the object is flung with undertension action, the way you think it would be, while a trebuchet flings objects by counterweight. With a trebuchet, weights on the opposite side of the truss (the long straight part) sit on the high side, suspended in the air, and when it’s released, the weights fly downward and under the pivot point and to the back side, flipping the truss and tossing the object (attached by cables or whatever) in an “overhand” style.

There. Now you know.

In the commercial, the trebuchet flung a car. And then on the playa it flung a flaming piano. Now it sits at the Burning Man ranch sculpture garden until the next dirt-rave there Labor Day weekend, where it will be placed at the farthest point behind the Man out in the open playa. Where it will throw an array of crazy shit and hopefully a couple pantsless hippies. BLOWJOB! (cough)

Doyle of Black Label Bike Club is on Johnny’s crew here. The two of them often conceive of big fire-and-engine projects and then call on each other for help. Most recently, Doyle (along with Heather, Big Daddy, and Black Label Ben) created the REGURGITATOR, a simple yet complicated G-force machine that Big Daddy says looks like a big tube with a tire in one end and a pulse jet in the other. The rider leans on a lightly-padded pole and spins around super fast in a circle until their face-skin threatens to pull away from their teeth and off their head completely.

Doylie and the blowuppy thing he and Dirtyfinger helped Mr. Amerika make

In Zagreb last year, where Doyle and crew participated in a show called “Device Art” (run by a Croatian group called Kontejner), Big Daddy rode the ride for a just few seconds too long. His ears began to bleed, and the whites of his eyes turned red with blood too — I mean really red — and he stayed scary-looking like that for over two weeks. Small-town folks in Croatia cut him a wide berth on the street. Many thought he was the Devil. Linda chewed Doyle’s ear off about it, saying if Doyle accidentally almost killed Big Daddy again there’d be hell to pay.

For last year’s festival, Doyle and Heather and Johnny Amerika and Cyclecide’s Paul the Plumber built the SPIDER RIDE, an insane “carnival ride” named after Spider, the Cyclecider who got mowed down on his bicycle by a hit-and-run SUV full of shit-talking meatheads last year. (He still needs a new tooth, by the way, so please kick down on Paypal if you’re a kind soul with deep pockets.)

The Spider Ride is built from a 1965 1600cc Volkswagen air-cooled engine that spins a 52-inch, 28-pitch, wooden handcrafted propeller. This propeller creates enough air to move the one rider on the other side of a 16-foot oil-derrick-looking tower, who’s strapped mid-air into an elementary school chair equipped with a small Chinese valve-less style pulse jet. (The pulse jet, incidentally, also has been re-engineered to double as a bong.) A three-minute ride can accelerate to a force of over 6gs, causing temporary unconsciousness.

Unfortunately, the Spider Ride broke early on last year — the first time they let a ticketholder ride it instead of one of the crew — when the propeller hub casued the propeller itself to detach from the engine and hurl itself into the ground. Redneck engineering, as always. Know this: Despite all the fun-times-having mayhem, danger and bodily harm are ever-present realities within our extended circle of friends. RIDER ASSUMES ALL RISK. Don’t say you didn’t know, and don’t sue us later.

This year, all I can gather about Johnny Amerika’s fire-plumbing thing so far — called “Movement” — is that Doyle and Tirzah and Matt Williams and Conrad (also from BLBC) helped him build it in a month and a half. But that it was conceived of a year ago. And that it will burn 75 gallons of propane each night.

No wonder the rest of the world hates us.

incidentally, on the same real estate, the Cauac Twins be makin’ twin Tesla Coils to lightning up Coachella at night

BUT! Most parts Johnny and Doyle and Tirzah use are crafted almost exclusively from recycled industrial salvage diverted from the waste stream. So put that in your pulse jet and smoke it.

In Cyclecide news, I was the first one here on the grounds last night. Big Daddy and Paul Dingledine arrived at 2:30am and made me drink a beer with them even though I was asleep. Have to do what Dad says. They showed me a picture on Dad’s camera phone of the NASCAR brand tomatoes they saw in Wal-Mart.

Tomatoes. NASCAR brand tomatoes. That’s totally what’s going to happen to Burning Man if John Law lets the name go into the public domain. I think the jury is still out for most everyone as to whether that will be heartbreaking or hilarious.

It’s 9:30am, and the advance-crew Cyclecide bus just (finally) got here — they left SF at at 4:20pm yesterday, making it a 15-hour trip — and we’ve got to unload everything onto the midway before the heat of the day really starts. Apparently there was a small “fire issue” — the exhaust manifold burned a little bit of the fiberglass insulation in the back of the bus. No big deal really.

(P.S. I don’t know how to link to other pages or do anything complicated yet. Sorry. I’ve got a friend coming up to the festival who will hopefully allay my computer retardation in a day or two and then I’ll go back & post photos and link things.)

This is weird

April 24, 007
The Brewery, Downtown Los Angeles

Nobody’s running around freaking out here at the Umlaut Haus. People have been awake since 9:30, not one soul got drunk last night, and the crew worked smoothly all evening and went to bed around midnight or 1. Aside from all the electrical wiring, Johnny Amerika’s project is finished.

What I’m used to in the days before Coachella is: Swarms of clowns invading the drunkyard, acting hectic and drinking beers and cracking wise and scrambling around like geeked chickens and losing their shit occasionally and packing and re-packing and re-re-packing the bus and the trailer.

or not “packing” at all

Nobody here in Johnny Amerika’s crew in Los Angeles has raised their voice once. Not that we in the Heavy Pedal Cyclecide Bike Rodeo verbally abuse each other and have shitty times on the road. Nope. We’re a red-nosed family of fools who like to get together to create and float in a heightened atmosphere of surreal, frenetic chaos. We’re 2 DUM 2 DIE.

Hanging out with Cyclecide can be a little much to take. Ask anyone who’s gone on tour with us. Sometimes it drives more squirrelly people to cognitive dissonance. Sometimes violence.

It’s quiet in here. Too quiet. Especially considering how many people live here, and that they all have a really big art show this weekend.

Mr. Amerika, calmly filing down something that’s gonna blow up real good

T-minus 3.5 hours to departure for the Coachella Valley Music Festival in Indio, CA. It’s a three-day camping-trip rock’n’roll blowout of epically organized and awesome proportions. Sure, I’d never go as a ticketholder — like most everyone else I roll with to this thing each year, I’m way too used to working while everyone else plays. To being one of the assholes who’s uncomfortable unless we’re making a spectacle of ourselves.

The show is sold out. Tickets are rumored to be going for $300 — for one day’s attendance — on Ebay. When I add up how much it would cost to get out there to the desert, to camp, to buy waters for $4 all day long inside the gates … well, I wonder why people don’t just go to Thailand instead. Of course, many people probably wonder the same thing about folks who attend the dirt rave in the other desert every year.

Most of the artists in Coachella’s midway are dirt-rave vacationers, after all. We know each other from that Burning Ham thing, and from the larger scene surrounding it. We’re bringing some of that to this. Some PLAYANETICS ™.

The truck will get here to Los Angeles soon. Everything’s already lined up in Tirzah and Johnny Amerika’s shop/garage, right by the roll door, ready to go. People are snacking and chatting quietly, and getting the last of their things together.

No shouting, no wrestling, no drinking at 10am, no last-minute rehearsals, no blaring heavy metal or circus music, no millions of dogs barking and getting in the way.

No herding cats.

This is weird.

this is what they’re makin. dont ask me what it does tho

Fashion squares

April 23, 007
Phoenix, AZ to Los Angeles, CA

Jesse Wack brushes his teeth with straight baking soda. He never drinks the tap water anywhere. He theorizes that while fluoride is marketed to the masses to strengthen teeth, it actually dumbs down and destroys the human brain. He says the FDA, a tool of the powers that be, allows destructive elements like fluoride to be placed into substances we consume all the time, to act as sort of a saltpeter for self-awareness, activism, or revolution.

(I’ve got another friend who, out of instinct at a young age, refused to drink the orange fluoride liquid they distributed at school. His brother and sister, who drank it, now sport mouthfuls of cavities, while my friend has nary a one.)

Jesse Wack also never consumes anything out of a can if he can help it, Or anything with stuff in it he can’t pronounce. He eats like a hippie even more than I do — there’s no way I can stomach snacking on dried seaweed or soy bars.

Jesse Wack wants to get all the fillings in his mouth taken out because they’re made with mercury. Same reasoning. Fillings emit toxic gases any time they’re disturbed, by chewing or brushing or talking or grinding or anything else besides sitting still. It’s all part of the big plan to keep us down — one small facet of a sinister infrastructure of strategies invented to muddle the minds of the hoi polloi and keep us focusing on the wrong elements of life on Earth, to prevent us from rising up and seeing that things could be done in entirely different and better ways.

wack attack surveys a painting I bought for $5 and thinks on how to “enhance” it

Jesse Wack is one of the original members of the Hard Times Bike Club, now the Black Label Bike Club, Minneapolis chapter. Not that he has time to ride a bike much any more. He’s isolated himself in Phoenix, in the belly of the beast, away from all his friends, in order to focus on his plans. Any time he’s not working on his paintings or making music in his studio in Phoenix or figuring out how to earn money in real estate and take over the world, he attends seminars and posts Myspace bulletins and researches conspiracy facts. Not theories, he says. Facts.

Even his own mother says he’s crazy. I don’t think so, not at all, perhaps because Jesse Wack thinks a lot like we all do — he just takes it more seriously. Or he’s able to look at the ugly truth for longer than we are without turning his head in disgust. In fact, as a hobby, he stares it down.

His paintings, while intricate and gorgeous, are hard to look at, too, like the inside of his brain. With more tiny lines than a career tweaker’s face, and bug-eyed imagery that flies in the space between Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and H. R. Geiger, Jesse’s work puts a microscope to the synapses of a mind made paranoid — no, not paranoid, just aware — by modern society.

Jesse Wack-style painting takes a LOT of time to do. His favorite paintbrush has like one bristle.

the man is worthy of holleration, no matter how yer slice it

The only place he could think of to tell me to meet him near his house in Phoenix was a strip club, because that’s what’s on the main road there, besides bail bondsmen, pawn shops, gas stations, and retail stores. To me, his neighborhood appears to be the least harrowing section of America’s fastest-growing metropolitan area — the “dangerous” “ghetto” area where Tempe and Scottsdale nudge up to Phoenix proper. As in, the only part of town that doesn’t look like it’s been nuked and paved into one gigantic super-mall in Vegas.

Phoenix is the worst city in the world. I didn’t know this, but I’ve heard it venomously spat so many times in the past couple days that it’s not hard to become convinced, sight unseen. Two hours spent looking for the phone-replacement store made it clear — wherein we actually had to brave a three-block-long mall named “FASHION SQUARE”, built like a casino so you can’t find your way out, full of sheeple in strong perfume and new-looking clothes roaming around with eyes glazed over and arms full of new purchases.

Which sent Jesse Wack and I into a paranoiac, delirious state of near-catatonia.

Makes a body want to try Prozac, you say? Naaa. That’s what most of the country’s recent young serial killers were taking at the time of their sprees. This Virginia Tech guy included, right? … Living in Phoenix, in this eerily square and too-clean city-sized mall, I ponder all the ways in which American culture encourages dehumanization, making the leap to mass murder easier for the already unstable.

Jesse Wack got lost driving us around looking for the place. WHAT IS ALL THIS SHIT?, he kept hollering incredulously. LET’S BUILD SOME MORE BUILDINGS, I shouted back, AND LET’S MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE THAT. Then I’d point to a square pile of stucco-covered puke, and we’d laugh insanely and have another two-sentence variation of the same conversation. WHO GOES IN THOSE PLACES?, I’d wail. WHAT DO THEY NEED IN THERE? … They live upstairs, he’d say calmly, in those yuppie kennels up there, and they come down to go to work at their job at the mall, and then they go home and watch TV, and they NEVER DO ANYTHING ELSE. THEY NEVER GO ANYWHERE.

In short, we were bitching like high-school goths.

Truly, though, sometimes, this world … the horror. Jesse’s own roommate is living that life, stuck on a single track between the house and the used furniture store down the street. Birth school work death. Work home TV bed work home TV bed mall golf home TV bed work TV bed. Repeat til opening fire somewhere eventually, perhaps in a crowded mall like Phoenix’s Fashion Square.

Coincidentally, one of the only other places “of note” Jesse Wack and I have ever visited together for the first time is the Mall of America outside Minneapolis. Which was the second most harrowing mall experience of my life, up until this one. At least the Mall of America had a Hooters and a video game place. Seriously, we couldn’t really breathe again until we got back to where the buildings all shrunk and got ugly in a different sort of way, and the streets were dotted with thrift shops and adult entertainment stores.

How much does it cost to get all the fillings in your teeth replaced?

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much, much better

I made it to Los Angeles from Phoenix with only two tire blowouts in Blinky’s Royale. Instead of hauling ass up to SF to join the Bike Rodeo, then, I parked outside The Brewery compound of art fags in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, to re-group and observe Johnny Amerika and Tirzah and crew build another big thing for Coachella that spews flames.

But first it was Johnny Amerika’s birthday, and they were ahead of schedule on the project, so there was much drinking, and a big art show and a party, and last night at 2am before everyone stumbled to bed they made an indoor campfire in their shop by pouring a half-inch layer of denatured alcohol into a drainless, stainless-steel “sink” appropriated from a TV commercial set. Then they sang “Happy Birthday” to Johnny, who sported no less than six pointy party hats on his head, and let him throw in the match. WHOOSH.

Children of the s(hotg)un

April 5, 007
New Orleans

At this place where I’m staying, a dude lives there whom we’ll just call “Tiffany” — not only because he in fact embodies the diametric opposite of a “Tiffany”, but also because if he ever reads this it’ll piss him off, which is really fun and not hard to do.

Tiffany’s life gets ruined every day all over again when another dude in the house throws on “Children of the Sun,” an obscure, freaky musical-theatre soundtrack from the ‘70s some acidhead produced at a small theater somewhere (the housemate assumes) and then quickly fell off the map, or the deep end, or both.

“Children of the Sun,” therefore, has been enjoying almost as much air-time on the communal sound system as The Sword’s Age of Winters. Too bad for Tiffany, who told me about this stereo-war soon after my arrival in town — about how much he loathed this corny space-rock-odyssey soundtrack of his housemate’s, and how much he would fight that CD if it were a street gang.

Apparently, a week or two ago, a paramour of the housemate’s became upset when Tiffany strode to the kitchen with his shotgun in his hand, removed the CD from its cradle, and took it out in the back yard and shot it. Twice. As usual, nobody could tell if Tiffany’s rage was sincere, or played up for the entertainment of others.

Paramour was driven to tears. Housemate quietly returned to his cave and burned another CD of the soundtrack from his hard drive. Tiffany smiled a rare smile to himself, and re-loaded and re-stashed his shotgun.

Today, something else happened.

After breakfast, the housemate produced a newly-burned CD and placed it in the kitchen’s player for show-and-tell. After half a song, it dawned on me just what this music was, and what might next be done.

Where was Tiffany? Either elsewhere in the house or at the bar next door. I became nervous. Yet, with “Children of the Sun” blasting in the kitchen, I found myself hypnotized to the point of immobility — musically transported on the wings of a flying V guitar to some sort of hair-metal K-hole filled with a spandex-coated orchestra and terribly contrived “modern” dancers. Overwhelmed by glam-cheese, I retreated to Tiffany’s room to compute.

I don’t know how I missed Tiffany leaping over me to grab his shotgun from its hiding place — musta been computing pretty hard — but I should’ve paid more attention to the flurry of boots stomping and keys jingling through the single-house toward the back. BLAM! BLAM! — stomp stomp jingle jingle. A victorious Tiffany, gun still smoking, marched with square shoulders back into the room, grinning evilly as he reloaded.

I missed it. (sad face)

“shotgun” in New Orleans means more than 2 things

In the back yard, another just-arrived visitor explained to the neighbor lady what that noise was — what in the world?… — apparently sometimes, when the sun gets really hot, the tubes inside your bike tires will spontaneously explode. Really? Yes, really. Just from the sun? Yep. Weird huh. Oh well, I’m used to it. Time to go get the patch kit…

(It should be noted that New Orleans had experienced sporadic rain all morning, and the temperature hovered around 60 degrees. It was not hot. Tubes do not explode from bikes hanging on the fence when everyone’s wearing jackets and hats.)

Later that day, Tiffany received a phone call asking why a bunch of cops and National Guardsmen were currently swarming the street in front of his house. Something about gunshots — that’s all the caller knew.

Yikes. Tiffany, sketched about tenuous landlord relations and mightily averse to prison, called the house immediately — and learned that a neighbor down the street had just gone off his meds and started running around the neighborhood waving a shotgun. Not shooting anybody — just freaking out, kind of.

Whew.

–

(Q: When’s the last time a story’s happy ending included a crazy person brandishing firearms?)

(Also, what if a THIRD burned copy of the “Children of the Sun” soundtrack, booming from the system once again after Tiffany left the house that day, ended up triggering the neighbor’s psychotic break? … that’s so totally going to happen in the script later)

Babes in boyland

April 3, 007
New Orleans

Dogs run wild in and out of the single house. Right now there’s a band practicing in the other room. A couple more bands who were supposed to be going on tour are staying here for the moment — passing out each night in vans parked out front, on the couches, in the captain’s chair on the kitchen floor, and splayed out on rugs or in the back yard.

Two evenings ago, we all sat on the front porch as a steady stream of visitors from home and away came through and rapped awhile, and I sat in a wheelchair and listened to The Sword on a janky cassette player — over and over and over again. Any time the music ended, a near-roar erupted from the throngs swarming the steps and the sidewalk out front to rewind the tape. Next door at the bar, every day it seems, arguments both verbal and physical keep breaking out, but are quickly resolved as everyone knows everyone else. Fights occur with the frequency of any group not known for sobriety or glossing over things.

see that one on the left? that’s Honee Princess of Darkness. Bruno’s gonna make an honest woman outa her someday

The contents of the ashtray in the kitchen could be re-constituted into 4 whole packs of used cigarettes. Walls are covered in found posters and art by friends and artifacts fished from the New Orleans waste stream. Dog hair and dishes are everywhere. The bathroom smells like Southern mold and Irish Spring. Two drowned cockroaches the size of hummingbirds float in the toilet; one more lies squished and left at the threshhold. Tubs don’t get cleaned very often. Half of all property in the house is communal, half precious and handmade; some is borrowed, both with and without asking. Some are out busking on Royal Street to make enough money for dinner.

At least one person here has the Fist of Gonzo tattooed on themselves. Once again I enjoy the reverse freakishness of being the only houseguest out of a dozen who sports ink-free skin (except the one dot). I sit at the kitchen table and compute in the glow of Christmas lights, listening to boys play blistering sludge-metal in the middle bedroom. Also, I feel silly for putting makeup on. Nobody notices; nobody cares.

Mmmmm, testosterone.

“they sure gotcha, didn’t they?”

March 13, 2007

(… sitting with the dog in my $27 room at the Needles Inn, on the CA/AZ border, waiting for the mechanic down the street to change the thermostat, which started malfunctioning last night. Not even out of CA and already with the. Meh, it comes with the territory.)

My 1987 Plymouth Reliant was painted a shitty white when I got it, with dents and rust and half-torn-off stickers everywhere from being a City vehicle in the late ’80s and then salvaged from a junkyard. So for HELL ON WHEELS, Cyclecide’s awesome 2006 Halloween event last year at the SF Bike Kitchen / Cellspace parking lot, I commissioned BUTER and JASE to each paint one side of it and collaborate on the roof, trunk, and hood. (They’ve both been featured in JUXTAPOZ and designed shoes for Reebok. They no joke.)

That’s when a regular junkyard car became my pride and joy.

The new “shart car” clearly read “CYCLECIDE” on both sides, in stunning “urban” lettering … until a friend borrowed the vehicle and, in an altered state, left it in the Tenderloin overnight to be vandalized by a couple mouth-breathing taggers who wrote their initials in white paint on one side and just made a scribbly mark on the other.

Fork those guys in the A-hole. I hates them. Still love the car.

Many regular folx on the street still assume this paint job was done without my permission. Sometimes I evangelize about graffiti art; sometimes I just smile and say “yep.” I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of that in my near future. The “yep” side.

Can’t do anything illegal in this beast. No sir. Hey, cops, over here …. Kids on buses in the greater Los Angeles area apparently like to throw rocks at cars, and yesterday on the 10 I was a big, multicolored moving target. Half an hour later, some sarcastic hoodrat yelled out his window “2006 RULES!” … the artwork is signed and dated “2006″ … well, I guess like all graffiti it needs to be covered over with other graffiti eventually. If I make it there, I’ll see if someone in NOLA has cans and feels like fancying the old gal up with a fresh coat of glorious urban blight.

Hard Times Hangover Club

Oct. 18-19, 2004
Minneapolis, MN

The Hard Times Bike Club began one long winter over a decade ago, when some bored gearheads from Minneapolis named Jake Houle and Airaq Shook drove a ridiculous home-made chopper named the “Golden Cow” into their friend Per Hansen’s shop to fix it after Jake rode it like a jackass and broke it. The boys went and got some Black Label beer, busted out the tools, thought of some other odd designs, and months later, they emerged with a gaggle of junked, re-constituted bikes — mostly tallbikes. They unleashed the beasts on the unsuspecting public, riding them around and causing traffic accidents. They gave a few extra bikes to friends, and others came by the shop to make their own alter-cycles. A Minneapolis institution was born.

In 1992, the boys made the group official, naming themselves the Hard Times Bike Club after the cafe where a bunch of them worked. Taking the “ooh, scary bike club” joke one step further, they all made themselves some “colors” — uniform, handmade biker vests with the club’s logo on the back. Some would say that these colors looked more than a little similar to the colors the Hell’s Angels wear. Soon, and on more than one occasion, various Hell’s Angels the Bike Club ran across got seriously pissed about it, going so far as to corner HTBC members, take their colors off their bodies at gunpoint and destroy them, and threaten to break kneecaps if any suspiciously similar colors were worn again.

Bike Club members who once enthusiastically embraced both the club and the joke became intimidated, and some even dropped out of the scene — until someone suggested they change their name to the Black Label Bike Club (after the cheap and delicious beer they all consume like mother’s milk) and change the colors along with it. This brought all the members who’d grown afraid of the stupid Hell’s Angels bullshit back to the fold, and made everyone excited again. The Black Label Bike Club grew rapidly, even going national: they now have chapters in New York, Austin, San Francisco, Montana, Tokyo, Reno, and “Nowhere” (for all the nomads).

Reno chapter’s pretty fun

They joust, they drink, and they bleed; they ride bikes, they destroy cars, they help people in need. (These are reported to be some of their secret commandments. They even have a commandment-bearer, who guards their secret commandments. How gay is that?)

Palmer’s is the Bike Club’s official watering hole. It sits on a patch of asphalt in MInneapolis’ West Bank neighborhood, right around the corner from the Hard Times Cafe. Bike Club members regularly make up a large portion of the Palmer’s staff, so like any other self-respecting herd of broke kids, the HTBC go where they can get hooked up with cheap booze. Also, here’s another selling point for the bar: The cocktails there can kill you. A Palmer’s shot is the equivalent (depending on the bartender) of three to five normal-people shots, so the act of having a few Jack and cokes — a seemingly innocent venture in most watering holes — will, if you drink at Palmer’s, most likely land you in jail, the hospital, or the back seat of a strange and beautiful person’s car by the end of the night.

I’d been talking about going to Palmer’s since we set foot in Minneapolis, but hadn’t made it there even though we’d been in town for a week. I desperately wanted to go with the rest of the Bike Club crew after our Minneapolis show, but by the end of that blustery day, I was too tired and frozen to ride a bike anywhere. It’s a good thing, I guess, because the folks who did brave it out to Palmer’s that night reported back that we’d taken too long to strike and load the show — everyone in the Bike Club who was waiting there for us had already gone home to pass out by the time the Cyclecide contingent arrived. Well, we had all been drinking since noon.

The next night after the show, we finally scored a ride across town, and an outing to The Bar was planned. As a pre-party to Cyclecide’s big field trip to the home team’s endrunkening facility, we were invited to Jake and Luke Houle’s house for a Bike Club / Scallywags / Cyclecide burn-barrel party in the back yard.

“The Big House” is a typical bachelor-gutterpunk-style lair, with beard-hair in the sink, empty beer cans, crap everywhere, f’ed-up pictures and graffiti, and spotty modern conveniences. The Houle brothers live there together (Jake’s the BLBC president; Luke’s a something else important in the club, I can’t remember what). Jake and Luke Houle both cut a square shadow — stocky, smooth-faced, corn-fed farm boys who are half “Indian” (as they call themselves), half white, and together, half the size and weight of an army tank.

When we rolled up on the Big House, younger brother Luke was holding court with some Scallywags in the backyard while older brother Jake played the drums inside their dirty, smelly, junky, Punk Rock Animal House house. We all grabbed a Black Label out of the case and sat around the fire, Jarico telling war stories from the road, and Luke and Koit trading tales of growing up on their respective farms in the Corn Belt.

I asked if there were any tallbike-building clubs out of Minnesota before the Black Label Bike Club came along. Luke said he didn’t think there were — but that Midwesterners all know of someone who knows someone who’s built weird bikes before in their barns during the long and boring Minnesota winters. Vehicle customization is a product of cabin fever, I think.

We looked at the piles of bikes beyond the fire’s glow in Luke and Jake’s backyard. Tandems, trikes, tallbikes, a two-person trike, frames upon frames and parts upon parts, and behind it all, leaning up against a tree … the famed World’s Tallest Tallbike, a red-and-white monstrosity that’s 15 feet high at the seat. I’d heard about this giant before, and it was a rare and beautiful experience for us Cycleciders to witness it.

our fathers, who (make) art in heaven

This five-or-six-frame behemoth must be mounted either by scaling up the side while four people hold it upright, or by climbing out a second-story window onto the seat. It’s been featured in several HoliDazzle parades in the Twin Cities, and always serves to freak people out. The Bike Club got mad when they found out someone else made the Guinness Book of World Records with the supposed “World’s Tallest Bike” — and not only was this other dude’s bike made out of poles instead of bike frames, it’s also shorter at the seat. Only the handlebars are taller. So all the Bike Club has to do to get into the Guinness Book is slap some ape-hangers on that monster and fill out an application.

Luke rode Jarico and Linda on a special romantic date in his rickshaw bike through the park to Palmer’s, and the rest of us piled in cars (I know, but it was too far in the cold) to go to The Bar. There were plenty of familiar faces there, and my fellow Whisky Ho, April, was slinging drinks. (I actually knew the bartender at Palmer’s. I felt a weird mixture of dread and glee.)

I only had two cocktails — or was it three? — and then we all went to the Hard Times Cafe for a late-night bite. I’d been to Palmer’s before, but this was my first time at the Bike Club’s namesake eatery — and I can barely remember any of it. I know the cafe is cute and junky and open at 2am, and there’s a cool big outside covered patio with a giant table where we all sat down to eat and I fell asleep on Koit’s shoulder. I think we caught a cab home. Or maybe someone gave us a ride. All I know is I woke up the next morning with a severe headache and a sense of thankfulness that all I did after a night at Palmer’s was doze off.

That next night, we fulfilled a perverse touristy requirement by venturing out to the Mall of America. For those who don’t know, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota is the #1 visited attraction in the United States, with over 525 specialty stores, 50 restaurants, 7 nightclubs, 14 movie theaters, an indoor amusement park complete with rollercoasters and water flume, and one Hooter’s. It is a nightmare, and a city unto itself.

nuke and pave!

A few Cycleciders stayed home in disgust, but the rest of us were chomping at the bit to see how our more consumption-oriented brethren and sistren entertained themselves during the long Minnesota winters. We came, we gawked, we strolled around in the belly of the beast for about an hour, splitting up into gender-specific browsing herds. We paused to stare at the full-on indoor carnival, then quickly freaked out and had to regroup in the bar where Christina’s brother Robert works. He’s a kitchen manager in the arcade-restaurant next door to Hooter’s, and he hooked us up with the only backstage pass to this pantheon of consumerism that people like us could tolerate: Free arcade games and bowling for all of us for three hours. It was awesome.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jarico and Laird searched and searched for the magical transportation solution that would allow the Bike Rodeo to continue its tour. They finally settled on the RV-and-box-truck combo, and shopped around for the perfect RV (or at least for a company that would let 12 klowns live on one of their RVs for a month and then drop it off halfway across the country). They found one, and brought it over to Gino and Christina’s — and the Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby it wasn’t. A modern, flimsy cardboard box on wheels is what it was, and there was no way it was going to fit all 12 of us comfortably. But it was our only choice. We all reluctantly packed up to head down the road to St. Louis.

We used to have a ritual when leaving a town to go to the next venue, back in the days when we had the bus: One of the Bicas boys in Tuscon gave us an obnoxious noise-toy during the ‘03 spring tour — a toddler’s noisemaker shaped like a farm silo that lights up and plays a tinny, whiny version of “Old MacDonald,” complete with pig noises, cow moos, and a rooster crowing at the end. As the Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby pulled away from whatever house or venue at which we were staying or playing, Jarico would blast “Old MacDonald” over the loudspeaker — a sendoff; a farewell; a final blast of Cyclecide-style irritainment for whoever was waving goodbye.

Since the wreck, the Old MacDonald toy had been packed away, and it felt funny not to have it anymore. But on the way out of Minneapolis, chaos provided a new noise-toy for Cyclecide’s next phase in life: While the salesperson was showing Jarico and Laird around the newly-cleaned and serviced RV before Jarico drove it off the lot, she lifted up one of the benches to show the storage compartment underneath, and what was in there?

A rubber chicken. And not just any rubber chicken — a rubber chicken with an open mouth and a surprised look on its face like a blowup doll’s. When the chicken’s stomach is squeezed, it makes a horrendous, long, drawn-out, gasping-through-blood sound, then emits a simultaneously high-pitched and guttural squealing noise that more closely resembles a pig being slaughtered than a chicken being choked. Ack, that noise … combined with the look on that poor chicken’s face … this thing was begging to be made a permanent member of the Cyclecide show.

“Oh jeez, I’m sorry,” the saleslady said, embarrassed and trying to find a way to dispose of the chicken. “I don’t know how THAT got in there.”

“Oh, no,” Laird said to her. “That settles it. This is definitely our RV.”

…. next installation: St. Louis, Missouri….

P.S. MORE FACTS ON THE MALL OF AMERICA

• Mall of America is the largest fully-enclosed retail and family entertainment complex in the US.
• Seven Yankee Stadium would fit inside Mall of America.
• Mall of America’s 13,300 short tons of steel is nearly twice the amount in the Eiffel Tower.
• Walking distance around one level of Mall of America is .57 of a mile.
• Spending 10 minutes in every store would take a shopper more than 86 hours to complete their visit to Mall of America.
• More than 1,500 couples have been married at Mall of America since opening in August, 1992.
• Mall of America is located on the former Metropolitan Sports Stadium which was home to the Minnesota Vikings and Twins. Home plate can be found in Knott’s Camp Snoopy.
• Knott’s Camp Snoopy – Peanuts creator Charles Schultz is a native of St. Paul.
• There are 30,000 live plants and 400 live trees planted in Knott’s Camp Snoopy.
• The nice waitresses at Hooter’s will sometimes trade shirts with you in the ladies’ room if you like the one they’re wearing better than the one you just bought from the Hooter’s store. (Invariably, after this process, all the boys at your table will amuse themselves by pretending something much more steamy than chicks trading shirts just happened in the ladies’ room.)

Poorest Attitude Ever

Oct. 17
Minneapolis, MN

Sometimes, when a Hard Times Bike Club loves a Cirkus Redickuless, they get together to form an expression of that love. They have a baby. And they name it Cyclecide.

The Bike Rodeo’s fearless bleeder, Jarico Reesce, first discovered the tallbike-jousting, beer-guzzling, fake-menacing charter chapter of the Hard Times Bike Club as a teenager in Minneapolis. Recently transported against his will from Los Angeles to the wintery Twin Cities, an ever-angsty Jarico, already a rabid fan of the bicycle, spotted a couple punks riding tallbikes down the street. Needless to say, he befriended them instantly.

Skip to Jarico’s move to San Francisco 7 or 8 years ago, when he and Johnny Joyce decided to make that mutant-bike, joust-and-bleed thing a bit more idiotic by adding a traveling circus sideshow, a live band, klowns, skits, and carnival-ready midway rides. Behold: Cyclecide.

behold: johnny joyce. a man with poop tattooed on his arm and 2 DUM 2 DIE on the inside of his lower lip. he is your God

During interviews with the press, Jarico always gives the Hard Times Bike Club (also now called the Black Label Bike Club) the credit for planting the Cyclecide seed. When they coast through San Francisco, he gives them a couch to sleep on. Through our intricate web of friends that spans the states, many in Cyclecide and the HTBC also count each other as dear friends and ex-more-than-friendses. So of course we — in particular, Jarico — wanted our Minneapolis show to be good, to pay our respects to our family.

The show was to take place downtown at the 1 on 1 Bike Studio, a shop nestled in an alley among high-rises, in an area of the city that’s probably ghostly quiet every weekend, even when the temperature isn’t close to freezing. The 1 on 1 bike shop itself was no bigger than a trailer — a couple benches, some bike tools, one or two customs on display — but downstairs below it lurked a junkperson’s bike Valhalla: a dark basement that ran the length of two buildings, filled to the brim with bicycles and bike parts diverted from the waste stream. It was hard not to drool.

When we arrived in the morning in our new box truck and Gino and Christina’s passenger van, other folks in the Twin Cities bike community had already busied themselves setting up tables for a swap meet, at which they traded their unwanted and overstocked bike parts and gear. We at Cyclecide promptly improvised a “We Got Rear-Ended Garage Sale,” where we sold expensive beers (we drank the cheap ones), bike tires, and a couple trinkets from the bus that some wanted to see gone, but others couldn’t stand parting with. Fox, it turns out, really meant it when she said she loved that red-and-black stuffed snake that’d been wrapped around one of the hammock poles on the Shoo Shoo, serving little more purpose in its existence than to knock people in the head when they sat down. I tried to sell that snake for $1 and she nearly throttled me.

Of course, the Black Label Bike Club came out in full support, and ended up setting up most of the show for us. Not only were the Bike Club boys and girls not suffering from rear-ended disease, they’re also far heartier, and used to the dreadful cold. We all caught a serious case of Flag Envy when they rolled up: on the back of Jake Houle’s beautiful black super-tallbike flew a large, expertly sewn, canvas-and-leather Black Label Bike Club banner. Linda looked to me, owner of a sewing machine, and gave me a wordless order: Make us a flag. And make it good.

The Scallywags came too — a Christian bike club who frequently rides with the HTBC but looks to be as gutterpunkish as their heathen counterparts. One would assume the Scallywags have different attitudes about the ingestion of substances and the stealing of girlfriends and boyfriends than the HTBC does, though. It was refreshing to meet Christians who weren’t all up in everyone’s grill about being Christian, and they became instant family too. I wonder if the Philistines and their ilk thought Jesus was a gutterpunk back in the day when he was hanging out with hookers, turning water into wine, and kicking over tables in the temple.

The clouds grew darker overhead and the weather got colder throughout the day. Let me explain something here: I was born in Mississippi, and lived my whole life in the South until I moved to San Francisco. I’m not underweight, but I am small, and there is usually a good amount of beer in my already-thin blood. Therefore, I have absolutely no defenses against any temperatures below 50 degrees. Cold weather, in short, makes me angry — angrier than a 10-percent tip; angrier than people who say “Noo-kyoo-lur” instead of “nuclear;” angrier than the superfluous use of dwarves in film. I HATE the cold, the way neo-conservatives hate everything but themselves. Then it began to drizzle — and even before our show was to begin, the weather poetically ranged from rain … to sleet … to snow.

It turns out I wasn’t the only one with a poor attitude — Linda hails from Texas and Los Angeles, so I had a partner in my grumpiness. Everyone else was still plenty sore from the wreck, and soreness and cold don’t go very well together. Even as Linda and I were setting up the props to do the show, we were trying to reason with Jarico that since there were only 30 or so people there, they wouldn’t mind if we just ran the rides. Would they? Couldn’t we just skip the show? It was too cold to wear our klown outfits, and I couldn’t run around anyway. What if the band just played and people rode our bikes around? … There was no way, though. Jarico’s mind was made up, and in retrospect, he was right: Minneapolis is home. The show must go on.

The hardy MPLS souls who braved the frigid afternoon to wait until our showtime thoroughly enjoyed themselves once we got up off our asses and did the thing. Thank goodness. Minneapolis is the one city where our audience would agree with Jarico’s philosophy about Cyclecide: the bikes are the stars, not the people. The klowns gave a half-assed performance, that’s for sure, but nobody noticed, because everyone from the HTBC and 1 On 1 Bike Studio busied themselves riding and riding around the parking lot. They traded Swing Bikes; they fought over the Wrong-Way Bike; they tried repeatedly to run each other over. If a junky bike crashed, as far as this crowd was concerned, it was fair game to mow it down with one’s own bike, wrestle the unskilled (and/or drunk) owner to the ground, and dogpile on top of the whole shebang. In the snow. God bless those thick-skinned Minneapolis freaks.

Of course, in this the homeland of tallbike jousting, the show’s tallbike joust was epic. Luke, the current president, pitted himself against this HTBC member named Mikey who’d broken his thumb during a tequila blackout the night before by punching someone in the face, and as a result wasn’t in peak physical condition. At least that was Mikey’s excuse. Luke Houle climbed atop his tallbike like a ninja ascending stairs, and rode that shit with the most grace I’ve ever seen one of the burly Bike Club boys possess. (I’m told that Jake Houle, Per, Airaq, and Skitch of the HTBC are four of the other jaw-droppingly fleet-footed tallbike riders ever to pedal on the planet.) Anyhoo, Luke pummeled Mikey in two or three matches, snapping the pole of his beautiful HTBC flag in the process. Needless to say, with the Bike Club there, my accident-prone ass stayed far away from the Moshpit of Recklessness at show’s end.

that’s der Big and der Lil, but only one can make frybread which will make u weep

I don’t think it overstating to say that load-out was a miserable death march. Rain and snow had combined to make a slushy mess that plopped on our windburned skin in big heavy drops. It was Jarico’s first time organizing the bikes and rides in a new setup, so everything had to be scrutinized, discussed, and methodically planned. This amounted to a lot of clowns standing around in the freezing rain doing nothing. The 1 on 1 folks, now totally hammered and on some gleeful otherworldly childlike plane, continued to ride and ride. They rode their bikes over other bikes, they rode into each other, they played war-ball with leftover tires, they tried to hoop each other with tubes, they threw tires on the roof and back down again. I could only glower at them, jealous of their energy, their thick blood, and their weather-appropriate clothing.

Johnny Feral, lead singer of local rock powerhouse The Ferals, had shown up to help load, and we stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting for Jarico’s next order, rain dripping down our noses and our breath making fog. By this point, the cold had settled into my bones like a fried hamburger in a fat kid’s stomach. I was in a near-catatonic rage.

“Well, Summer,” he said, “Now that you’ve finally experienced a taste of Minneapolis in winter, perhaps it’ll give you a better insight into our general temperament and attitude on life.”

So THAT’s why all those Minneapolis kids stomp around, snarl, commit crimes, overindulge in substances, hate stuff, break things, and get into fights all the time.

Oh, to have that vigor in the cold.

Fake-Word Scrabble

Sept. 23, 2004
Somewhere between Albequerque, NM and Durango, CO

It was raining buckets when I woke up, and a tin roof symphony clattered low and high on the bus, the bike pile on top of it, and the trailer out back. Outside, everything was as grey as a dying heifer’s eyes, and I splooshed out the Shoo Shoo’s back door in a slip, bomber jacket, and some flip-flops to go find a place to pee. As I walked, my sandals flicked mud up onto my vintage periwinkle blue slip, leaving brown grease-spots all over my backside.

Last night it rained too, and some water got into the converter box. The bus blinkers broke first, and then the connection to the trailer’s lights shorted and took out the whole system. All the lights went out. Jarico and the boys pulled over to the side of the highway and temporarily fixed the problem, and got back on the road. Jarico was still driving when we all went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night, the lights broke again, so he pulled us over into the muddy back parking lot of the Cattlemen’s Ranch outside Amarillo, Texas. By the time I put in some eyedrops and grease-flecked my slip, Shotwell had already crawled under the bus in the mud and fixed it. That man likes to get dirty.

The Cattlemen’s Ranch is a northern Texas icon — a brightly-painted and excellently-decorated hotel / restaurant / truck stop / horse stable that’s most well known for serving the “Big Texan,” a meal so huge that if you eat it all, you get it free. If you take the challenge, they even sit you up on a raised table in the center of the taxidermy-coated dining hall so you can feel like a overeating rock star while you do it.

The catch is, most people are too overconfident in their potential to be the day’s poster child for gluttony, so somewhere in between downing a dinner salad, roll, shrimp cocktail, baked potato, and a 72-ounce steak (that’s 4 1/2 pounds, which is enough meat to feed the entire Cyclecide crew TWO spaghetti dinners), they either give up or throw up. That’s when they have to pay the $53.14 they owe the restaurant and get rolled out of the place.

I felt pretty confident that Bottomless-Stomach Koit could take on the Big Texan and still have room for dessert, but I wasn’t about to gamble $53.14 on it. Since it was 8am, we all just got coffee. Even though we didn’t buy anything at all in the store, the employees gave us our coffee for FREE! Yay Cattlemen’s Ranch. We continued the 287 miles to Albequerque, and it took all damn day.

One thing that touring with the Bike Rodeo has taught me is that Scrabble sucks. It’s a game from the “temth” circle of hell [see below], where grammarians and linguists must be strapped in three-legged chairs and forced to argue about the Hawaiian word “aa” (type of lava rock) and whether it’s “playable” (because it’s in the Scrabble dictionary) or not (because it’s technically a word from a foreign language).

Linda and Tuula met in static trapeze class. Being the two “rock chicks” in the otherwise serious-ish circus school, they soon paired up and discovered that not only did they share a love for subverting the feminine, uber-flowy static-trapeze stereotype with a few well-placed gross-out theater props — they also both enjoyed using the English language as a playground for their sick and perverted board-game amusement. The only rules they play by (and distort) are the ones in the official Scrabble dictionary, which is as much of a “dictionary” as a Big Mac with large fries is “part of a well-balanced diet.”

Tuula is a tall, beautiful Finnish metal goddess with her own band and near-future plans to get a tattoo on her upper arm that has the word “CHEATER” spelled out in Scrabble tiles. Tuula and Linda were the ones who originally introduced me to Scrabble last year — strangely, even though I am a word freak, an excellent speller, and an editor by trade, I’d never played it. Let’s just say that those two language-mangling hellions are the reason I’d rather deal myself some solitaire or smash myself in the hand with some vise grips than play that infernal game of stupidity and base cunning.

Indeed, every time the Scrabble board is brought out during one of Cyclecide’s long drives, it’s a sure bet there will be a bullshit fight that almost gets serious. Today, the source of everyone’s word-rage was my addition of “REDVINES” to the board. I asked before I played it, because another thing I also hate is licorice, so I have no idea if “redvines” is a standard word for “red licorice” or a brand name. Plus, I didn’t give a shit.

Since we didn’t have a Scrabble dictionary, Linda’s hands were tied, and she couldn’t challenge me as she’d made a couple dicey word-choices herself. Big Daddy, another despicable Scrabble freak (and known cheater, I might add) was beside himself that someone had let a proper noun — *that was two words, not one* — get onto the board. Then he played something else on “my” word that he didn’t want to allow, and he and Linda got into it.

This is when I gave up for good, vowing only to play Scrabble again if we could exclusively play words that we had made up ourselves and invented definitions for. So that’s what we did.

Behold the beginnings of the new Cyclecide Fake-Word Dictionary. (Words are listed in chronological order, starting with those falsified at the game’s inception.)

GLURKING – (v.) To hang around in the bushes waiting for gay sex. (From an ancient tribal German word meaning “to rip or tear”)

PIGMAXI – (n., slang) A sanitary napkin for extremely overweight women. (See also “double-wide red-tide slide.”)

FNAST – (adj., slang) (abbr. of “fnasty”) A contraction of “fat” and “nasty”. A derogatory term. (See also “FNASTO,” a person who is considered to be both fat and nasty.)

(This is where the object of the game became to get rid of all your Scrabble letters as quickly as possible, without regard to spelling or wit. I tried to re-explain the loose set of “rules” I fabricated on the spot — you know, just do something like in the New York Times word-making-up contests, or blue-collar comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck dictionary — and I was met with instant derision.

“I can tell exactly what kind of kid you were in school,” Linda said to me. Fair enough — but that comment goes both ways. If I wasn’t an only child, I probably would have killed at least one sibling for being a “NOBITERD,” which according to Che and Linda means “That’s Some Corny Shit.” Anyhoo, the game continued. It was Moses’ turn.)

JIFNIBLE – (n.) A quick bite to eat in a hurry.

(“But ‘nibble’ has 2 ‘b’s,” I said weakly, futilely. “Not when you have to eat *this* fast,” Moses retorted. “Now that,” I said, “is the way to play fake-word Scrabble.”

“But NOBITERD is the best word *ever,*” Linda said, a propos of nothing. Yup, she was one of the kids I always carried during school-group projects with my huge brain, the brain that wouldn’t even fit into the largest cowboy hat they had in the gift shop at the restaurant in Texas this morning where their main attraction is a steak the size of a small car. It’s my turn, and I can’t think of a better word than:)

EDASS – 1. (n.) A person that is widely agreed to be an asshole for trying to edit a fake-word Scrabble game. 2. (n., alt.) An asshole who’s only in special-ed class because he or she is too lazy to be in regular school and would rather get passable grades on the backs of nerdy overachievers. 3. (n.) The morass of existential loneliness and/ior societal alienation in which one occasionally finds oneself as a result of habitually pointing out grammatical discrepancies that our illiterate society perpetuates by default, causing said “edass” to feel like a wet blanket despite his/her best intentions and usually Zen-like attitude toward the confusing problem of illiteracy, even among the supposedly overeducated.

(I got mad arbitrary points from this word and its definition. I was happy again. Koit kept the game rolling by coming up with this one:)

TARWREN – (n.)A tar-covered rock that flips off one’s bike tire and sticks to one’s back, neck, ass, or shoulders.

RAPEALE – (n., slang) Malt liquor.

WUAEEE – (n.) In Tahitian folklore, a vampire who only gets blood from people’s shit.

ZOOLS – (n., pl.) Drooling fools who belong in a zoo.

OIEEEON! – (excl.) 1. What onion-haters say when the chef puts onions in the bus food. 2. The slurred, loudly-exclaimed call one makes when one wants to go to “The Bar” (Odeon, SF) even though one has already gotten way too drunk at home to go out anyway.

UGOLAY – (adj.) 1. Too ugly to date, but just fine for a sport-f^ck.

GODRUN – (n.) A beer run which miraculously results in 8,000 free beers.

HIDEVAN – (n.) A pre-90s vehicle which, by virtue of its lack of windows, gas-guzzling engine, and overabundance of customization, looks as if a child molester or criminal lives inside of it. (See also “chomo van.”)

HIDEVANI – (n., pl.) a nomadic tribe of people who hide in vans and do stuff.

TAUDI – (adj., adv.) The act of being late to a meeting because one chooses to cruise around trying to pick up bimbos (or himbos) in one’s new sportscar.

KWATCH – (n.) Notorious wabbit-hunter Elmer Fudd’s nether regions.

TEMZOOLS – (n., pl.) The kings of the Zools. (“There’s tem of ‘em,” Moses says.)

We stopped keeping score right around “Zools,” but we finished the whiskey and took a nice nap. It ate up a good 3 or 4 hours of our day. Even though certain members of the Bike Rodeo couldn’t help heckling and competing anyway, fake-word Scrabble is still way better than the “real” thing. At least you *admit* you’re making up words. Any overzealous, non-real-dictionary-having Scrabble-heads out there who want to challenge me can jifnible my edass kwatch.

Cockroaches Like Us

Sept. 15, 2004
Rawlins, Wyoming

It’s really hard to fit all your worldly possessions you’re going to need for the next 2 1/2 months into one plastic crate.

Some people prefer to bring giant duffle bags on tour, most of which are shoved underneath the 7-by-10-foot bed area in the back of the Shoo Shoo, but with all the beer and other drinks that are spilled off the 2 RV tables in the middle of the bus on a regular basis, I’ve taken to putting all my stuff in a plastic bin under the front bench.

A few days ago, I spent a good 5 hours in a room with all my crap spread out everywhere, trying to decide what all would fit in the crate that I absolutely needed. It ended up like a Fight Club list of clothing and supplies: one pair pants, one pair shorts, one short-sleeved shirt, one long-sleeved shirt, one jacket, one clown outfit, etc. Then I also have a toolbox full of toiletries, clown makeup, sparse jewelry, contact lens stuff, and other essentials. Packing for tour is always a challenge, made all the sweeter this time by Koit’s idea for a new game: Thrift Scoring Across America.

The game is pretty self-explanatory. While the Bike Rodeo kids are allergic to malls and mainstream shopping (other than coffee, tools, and auto parts), we fiend on thrift stores and junkyards when we tour. The first thing we do, after settling in, pulling the bikes we want to ride around off the top of the bus, and making a plan to promote the show we’re about to do, is to find a thrift store or three. Koit and I have decided to collect a new wardrobe while we cross the States (as if I don’t have enough thrift clothes already), mailing stuff home if we have to in order to make room in the crate for our new threads. The rules are to keep a written track of what we buy and for how much and in what town, and to only buy stuff that we don’t think we could exit the store without regretting leaving behind. Me, I’m asking the universe for a black bomber jacket with a fur-lined hood, and for matching majorette outfits for me and the other klown-girls to alter and Franken-ify as our “formalwear” for when we’re eventually asked to make jackasses out of ourselves on Letterman or something.

malt liquor is SO last season

I quite like being part of a generation (or subculture, whichever) that takes pride in living off free stuff, discarded stuff, and other people’s stuff. Almost as a knee-jerk subconscious reaction to the blatant, rampant, non-participatory consumerism that keeps our giant and varied country the richest and most powerful in the world, some of us have turned instead to thrifting clothes and house stuff, dumpstering food, using old buildings in neglected urban and rural settings, seeing the beauty in ancient landmarks and machines, using discarded stuff people used to love, and generally reacting favorably to things that are broken and falling down. We take pride in the cheap, the customized, and the original rather than the pricey, the uniform, and the depersonalized. We like to fix, to penny-pinch, to MacGyver, to get stuff for less than we should. It’s the opposite of the consumerism — call it cockroachism — and for this, in case of apocalypse, I think we might be the last to survive. The ones the Gap Kids will turn to when the fecal matter comes into contact with the rotating wind machine.

Sometimes it gets to me — irregular showering, less-than-perfect hygiene, lack of health care, no fancy clothes or food, et cetera. But for every time the bus gets fetid because we’ve been traveling for four days straight without the benefit of showers or hotel rooms or any other mod con, there’s some beautiful reminder that we’re not lashed to a salary and health insurance plan, trapped like a cow, fattening in a pen/cubicle until finally succumbing to our predators. (Yes, I know this is cliche territory, but sometimes cliches are cliches because they’re commont truths worth pointing out, no?) The predators I speak of — the Man/Men at the top of our commercially-driven society’s hierarchy — are of like mind as the veal in the pens, more concerned with grabbing than sharing… but they’re bigger, more cunning, and more adept at survival (in the realm of capitalism) than the veal are. Poor things, all of them.

and it’s amazing how u can walk around dressed like this in broad daylight, and quirky Cajuns will just GIVE u oysters cuz they admire yr bravery. or something

I enjoy capitalism. It allows me to choose which kind of toilet paper or potato chips or magazines or apples I might buy in the grocery store. But I also enjoy being able to find ways around living entirely within the system, or living on its fringes, or whatever it is that I and the rest of the Bike Rodeo are doing. For us “one percenters” — and by that I mean anyone who’s chosen to exist outside the proscribed roles of Our Great Society, be they cowboys or artists or hippies or pot farmers or train-hoppers — we are the highest on our particular food chain, with nobody to answer to, suck up to, get checks from, or otherwise impress. (No predators except the cops, for those who mess up or have criminal records, and the drug-addicted thieves, who take what isn’t theirs from people who don’t deserve getting stolen from in order to answer to their own master/predator, which is a chemical and not even a person, which makes drug addicts the saddest people of all… along with TV addicts, psychological invalids who only wait for death, and money freaks, who spend all their time grifting and hustling for something one shouldn’t really care about too much. But I digress.)

I’m also proud that we — Cyclecide Bike Rodeo — are fully functional and self-sufficient members of anti-society, bringing smiles to kids’ faces even as we let their parents break their bones on our alter-cycles and pedal-powered circus rides. Plus, there’s the whole thing where we tout the benefits of human-powered vehicular motion and interactive transportation. And the fact that we make all our bikes and rides out of “pre-cycled” bikes that our wonderfully disposable society throws away. Blah blah blah. Preach preach preach. Like Jarico says, “In the beginning, it’s just a pile of bikes, and in the end… it’s just a pile of bikes.”

Sure, none of us make any money at all while we’re on tour. We hustle in the off months to scrounge up enough cash to see America with the rest of our dear friends in an entirely original and entertaining way. Jarico, meanwhile, spends all his non-tour time setting up shows, working odd jobs, collecting bills (or not) from his roommates, building rides with the crew, and generally worrying his head off about where our next meal / gig / new ride money is coming from. But when we’re on tour, we’re all so happy. Everything is worth it. Anyone who’s ever wanted to take off and see America with their best friends — or run away with the circus — would likely agree with me that our lifestyle is the bee’s knees.

The cockroaches of the world might be laid back, but we don’t have it so easy. Being a functional hobo is hard. (Oh, screw it. More on that tomorrow — enough high-and-mightyness for today). The point is, after stopping for lunch in Rawlins, we went to a thrift store and spent an hour trolling for treasure. Even though the place had a lot of moderately cool shit, Koit and I didn’t find a damn thing. Linda, however, scored big. Guess what she bought.

A bike! ($5)