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)

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

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…

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.

Desert toiletries and sundries: A list

August 17, 2007
San Frandisco

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

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

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

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

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

(climbs down off soapbox)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOOLBOX

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

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

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

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

Time to attack the closet.