Burning Man Burns Early, Hilarious!

The wooden man that burns down at the end Burning Man burnt down a few days early.

The climax of the annual Burning Man bacchanalia in a Nevada desert was scheduled for Saturday, when the 40,000-plus attendees were to gather around the 40-foot-high man-statue and watch him burn.

Instead, the effigy went up in flames four days prematurely early Tuesday, and a San Francisco resident faces felony arson and destruction-of-property charges in connection with the crime of burning Burning Man too early.

Good work Paul Addis, that is the name of the man who spoiled the fun, in the words of the great poet Tupac, I ain’t mad at cha’.

I can see the organizers with their soiled and grubby underwear in a bunch, bitching about it.

“Dammit, our ‘experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance‘ was ruined by an individual who didn’t follow our exact rules for when the effigy was supposed to burn down!”

Hmm, irony.

The point of Burning Man is to escape the constant rules and regulations and social pressures of the modern world and to celebrate ‘community, artwork, absurdity, decommodification, and revelry‘. (Wikipedia)

I’m not sure if Paul burnt down the effigy as protest against the hypocrisy of Burning Man, or just because he is a douce, but boy am I pleased.

It’s not that I hate Burning Man, it’s okay and I don’t knock people who enjoy the festival, each their own, but I do have to laugh when “counter-culture” events (that attract 35,000 people) fall prey to their own ideology. Like when graffiti artists complain about other graffiti artists painting over their “art”.

You want radical self-expression and revelry? You got it.

You charge $200 plus dollars to celebrate decommodification, don’t get all huffy when someone beats you to the punchline.

Let’s hear from some burners.

“I am disturbed that the Man is burnt. As I looked at it, I was going, ‘This can’t be happening,’ ” said Bob Harms of South Lake Tahoe, a seven-time burner.

“Some people were chanting, ‘Let him burn, let him burn!’ and some were chanting, ‘Save the Man, save the Man!’ ” said Kyle Marx of Eugene, Ore.

I would have been laughing, watching it burn. Wasn’t that the point? Who cares that it wasn’t saved for the finale? Who cares that Paul took it upon himself to get the thing crackling? Isn’t the point of Burning Man to let go of our anal plans for our lives, to escape the carefully-constructed reality of the modern world? To do away with schedules?

If people would live their lives everyday with self-expression and revelry there would be no need for Burning Man. The only Burners I know all have white-collar jobs and take a vacation from their suits for a week to go to the desert only to come back bragging about how “changed” they are, how enlightened. Then they return to their soulless, daily endeavors, except with an exaggerated sense of superiority.

Artists and free-thinkers for a week, corporate whores the rest of the year.

Burn early, Burning Man, burn early.

Farmers Markets

At around 7:00 o’clock my bladder woke me and instead of sliding back to bed after fixing that little problem I put on my shoes and and burst out into the morning.

Mornings are rare in my world.

I did something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time now. I ventured over to the Studio City farmers market. There’s something about buying your produce directly from the growers that has always appealed to me. You know it’s fresher, it leaves a smaller carbon footprint, and you’re helping small businesses survive.

I picked up some honey, a vintage-looking western t-shirt, fragrant misty blue flowers for my wife to wake to, and some fresh blueberry bread.

There was plenty more that I wanted to get but my hands were full and I took that as a sign I should quit while I’m ahead. There’s always next Sunday.

Afterwards I hit up Armstrong Nursery for the rest of my plants that I needed. Home by 9:30, not a bad start to my day.

I don’t get to experience mornings often because of my work schedule and being a night owl, but when I do I don’t let it go to waste, I grab that sucker by the horns and bring it down into the dust where I tie up its legs and spring to my feet with both hands triumphantly extended in the air.

There’s not too much point to this morning’s post. I just felt inspired to share. The morning is such a special time; a time of quiet solitude, basking in the cool relief before a hot August day. Walking pleasantly with my hands clasped behind my back, I felt like I was at church, smiling at people, nodding mornin’ to the vendors….

What is it about food displayed out in the open that is so reassuring?

I guess, in some sense, it connects us to our roots. Before Vons, and Jons, and certainly before Gelsons; back in the day, open air markets were the benchmarks of civilization, it meant survival. Now, they’re for yuppies and hippies and me.

I noticed a lot of babies in strollers, that too is reassuring. Food and offspring and money changing hands; all you need to know about life on planet earth you can learn at a Sunday farmers market.

Happy weekend, all.

Notes From the Ant Empire: Babyface

The dog days of summer are upon us.

I typed this while the sun burned through the grime-stained window of my hovel and melted the keys. The plastic letters stuck to my fingers, so later that day I walked around with words attached to my fingers and palms; words that didn’t make any sense so when I showed people my hands, they meekly shrugged at me.

Furdkolp basmblebod.

“Sorry, pal, can’t help you.”

If there’s one early memory we all share, whether we’re aware of it or not, is of trying to communicate something of great importance and only being able to wail. All the words we knew sounded like the ones stuck to my hand. They made sense to no one but ourselves.

Gobbledegook. Jabberwocky.

There’s something tragic about that — the trials of infants — the miscommunication that results in an adult staring down at you in the crib making their face into funny shapes while you’re pleading for some milk, for someone to free you from sitting in your poop; while you’re hollering about the existential rapture you’ve experienced, being shoved from the womb into this world of immediate want and need, “god dammit, I feel like I’m going to hurl, someone burp me!”, some bozo is holding their ears forward and puffing up their cheeks, grunting like a gorilla.

Like you even know what a gorilla is.

“That’s why I’m a poet, babyface.”

I’m still struggling to get people to understand me.

I still have the same complaints as infants.

Their eternal wail.

I don’t like it here. It’s too bright. Why am I’m alone? It’s too cold. I miss the good old days where everything was soft and cared for and warm. Where the sound of a heartbeat is the only sound I heard but the only one I needed, the most beautiful lullyby.

It was the sound of life and love as one.

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Talk about an unfortunate incarnation, to be one of Michael Vick’s pit bulls. Bad News Kennel, appropriately named, is an example of humanity at its worst. What a pitiful and unnecessary plot turn his biography just underwent.

But fuck Michael Vick! Those poor clueless dogs…

What did the pit bulls know about their executioner? Not the blazing speed, or the rifle of his arm? His mansion, his American dream, was their prison and hell. They didn’t know the glory of the man outside their cages, readying the ropes.

But they were just dogs though, right?

I have no sympathy for the quarterback’s downfall, in fact, I’m pleased. The one good thing from the recent orgy of celebrity scandals and disgrace is that the stranglehold of idol worship that held this nation dumbfounded is starting to weaken.

O.J. Michael Jackson. Bill Clinton. Robert Blake. Paris Hilton. Britney. Chris Benoit. Barry Bonds.

Michael Vick.

It’s a chorus of fallen heroes, an analogy for modern times. The lesson: money and fame does not equate merit, nor assure happiness.

A recent poll attests to this lesson reaching the kids of America.

The survey of the nation’s young people found only 1% name money as the thing that gives them the most joy. Twenty percent name spending time with family, and 15% cited friends.

Yet financial issues are among several problems atop the pile of things they say make them most unhappy. And while a majority are happy with the amount of money they and their families have, money ranks as their fourth-highest source of stress, and 55% say there are many things they can’t afford.

We’re coming around to the idea that C.R.E.A.M doesn’t rule everything around us. There’s a quiet awareness that all of this excess can’t endure forever. There’s something deeper, more meaningful.

Regardless, we’re still under the influence of its demands; bills, needless things, keeping up appearances, etc, bloody etcetera. That’s the true tragedy: to knowingly waste your life working a job you hate for shit you don’t really need.

To not even consider the other option is a foolish sacrifice the overwhelming majority of us make — the material trappings of this golden age rain down like low-interest confetti, shopping malls are nothing but giant roach motels — even I partake in the feast, I buy books like Bradley Nowell bought bags of heroin.

The thing is, it’s not like there isn’t another option.

I’m going to be a writer one day. I’m going to get those words out bright and clear. I’m going to live the life I want. If not, I’ll get them out dark and muddled. Until then, I have artofstarving.

If you want to surf all day and serve beers at night, do it. If you want to be an artist, buy some paint. You want unicorns, start gluing horns to horses. Don’t feel obligated to follow in mom and pop’s footsteps. You have your own shoes to wear.

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Damn, nature is a tricky bird.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: pigeons.

Inspectors began documenting the buildup of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago. Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span’s framework helped the steel beams rust faster.

Shit piles up on the bridge, kids
you think you can walk under it?

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There is a 84 year-old man still rolling his Model A ’round town. The first car he ever owned. A romantic sentiment is behind the longevity.

Mr. Curtiss said he was 15 in 1938 when he bought the car, which sold for $400 when new, from a Derby man for $10. It was during the Depression.

[...]

Mr. Curtiss also has a strong emotional attachment to the car. He met his wife, Dorothy, shortly after he bought it, when he was 17 and she was 14; they had been married 56 years when she died in 1998. The initials they carved on the steering wheel as teenagers can still be seen. “She was the first and only girl I ever kissed in the car,” he said. “It’s priceless because of that, as far as I’m concerned.”

If this guy can make his car last seventy years we should be able to do a better job taking care of ours. I drive a 1988 Volvo, and before this little article thought that was a feat of endurance. The old boat runs pretty good. The bar was previously removed from the steering wheel so at the top it’s hollow and soft and I can twist and squeeze it like a stress bag when stuck in traffic. My name is also etched into its body, in the hood, although romance is not behind that sentiment but whiskey.

It’s time we look at the big picture.

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Sometimes a flash of light in the shadows of the room is only that; a flash of light in the shadows of the room.

The Melting Poles, Bad Metaphors, and Love

The sun is too hot today.

I don’t dare step out on the concrete for fear my cheap rubber shoes might melt.

At noon I was woken up by church bells, first time I’ve heard them in three years. The church is three blocks down and I pictured the parishoners filling into their seats in their starched-suits and conservative dresses. I thought of a boy in the back nervously staring at his hands folded in his lap.

It was this thought that propelled me out of the bed like I was fleeing fire ants. The sky was a cracked egg spilling in through the windows and I dressed in shorts and bravado ready to take it on.

Alas, a giant alas, once I opened the door to the porch the blast of valley air singed the hair on my face and I retreated expeditiously to the comfort of my air conditioned micro-environment.

(The writer in me wonders how he can think in conditions like this? a day so scorching it was made for lizards alone? what story could possibly live at the bottom of such a geothermal vent?)

Before I fell asleep last night, I was lying awake thinking about the North Pole. I was thinking about the ice; how if it melts the world’s great cities will drown. It dawned on me: an Oprah ‘aha!’ moment. Why not build pipes and aquaducts all the way south to the parts of America that will need it? even further if need be? If the Southwest is going to have a drought why not tap the runoff from the north? is it really that hard?

We could drink our way out of this catastrophe, continue to water our crops, power our waterslides, and proceed to divot up golf courses with errant swings. Most importantly, it will buy us some time.

I saved the world and I was barely tired. Can’t do much for the polar bears though.

The clock was fluttering like flirtatious eyelids.

“You can’t be no poet,” the poet mumbled, “if you ain’t a drunk.”

“Shut up, John. Shut up.”

If my life was an extended metaphor it would be the sea.

As soon as the keys are pushed I cringe. Did I really just think that? much less write that?

That’s the kind of crap you can’t take back when your name is in print and lights. Amatuerism that will come back to bite you in the butt like the dog in those old Coppertone ads.

I grinded some coffee beans in my Magic Bullet and brewed a pot of fresh coffee to help me adjust to the day. The sound of the water gurggling through the filter got me thinking about the Industrial Revolution and Love.

Love with a capital L.

As evolution dictates, the wider spread of the gene pool allows for successful adaptation and advancement. The societies that had more liberal marriage patterns moved into First World status quicker than those that clung to the old way. In some places of the world arranged marriages still go down. Places that are struggling to keep up. Think of the lack of romantic love in the Middle East and think of their problems coping with the 21st Century.

If I was a lady I’d rather be repressed by a bikini than a burka, especially in the summer.

On a purely Darwinian level, when arranged marriages decreased and individuals began procreating with a wider diversity of DNA carriers, the descending generations evolved socially, perhaps in time, genetically too.

In addition, on a cultural level, finding your own spouse sets the stage for self-determination and free will, key components of capitalism and modernity. The drive to mate was now a wild free-for-all, where before even a poor family could probably hook up with another poor family to hitch their kids, not to be cruel but it’s the truth, now there’s no guarentee — it’s sink or swim.

A few centuries later, think of the billions and billions of dollars the beauty industry and dating services make every year. On a more obtuse level, the bars, the clothing industries, fitness clubs, advertising…

Yeah, sex sells, because we all want love. And capitalism has pimped that.

Our entire world economy runs on trivial, needless consumption – this blog definitely included – gadgets and distractions to fill us up and define us. Plummage of sorts. The car you drive. The house you own. At some point that urge is sparked around puberty. Tweens are the worst sort of consumers. They also fall in love at the drop of a hat. I was a hopeless romantic at that pimply age, still am, though only one woman holds my fancy now. When I was in middle school, though, I blushed at every toss of hair and glimpse of bare neck and every year I needed new shoes, a new backpack, and new shirts or I felt woefully ill-equipt to survive.

Now my wife loves me clean shaven or not and I’m okay with shopping at Target.

I love my car. I love my jeans. I love this band.

Love really does make the world run.

(I’m still staring into the vent like it’s some sort of crucible, trying to spot something meaningful inside it. But it’s difficult this close to it. Life is a story told in the present. The moon rises scimitar-shaped. The city lights leave a fine layer of dust upon the mauve sky as if we humans were searching for fingerprints in the heavens. I guess that right there is some sort of story: the story of our times.)

I’m grateful to have found love, and like George Bailey I want to lasso the moon for her.

I want to give her the world.

Now that it is night, I walk downstairs and turn off the AC. I ask my wife what she wants for dinner. She replies, “Indian.”

That’s all right with me.

I get out the Brita, pour myself a glass of filtered water, drop in an ice cube and watch it bob up and down until it settles to the surface. I wonder what the melted ice caps will taste like?

Probably salty.

Today in Los Angeles…

Today in Los Angeles…

The sun shone August bright, Cindy Langston strode into the Borders on Ventura Boulevard with her cotton dress flowing deceivingly free behind her, her frog shaped glasses hiding bloodshot eyes.

She was on a mission to elevate her library, the few shabby books that accounted for it at least; hopefully to find answers to questions she tries to avoid because the shape of them in her mind forms a dreary prospect of her future self.

But lately it’s been happening, the existential fog of endless sunny days and liquor-drenched masquerades.

What the fuck am I doing here?

Anyway.

The night before, after the show, the lead singer, sweat still on his brow, told her of this book he’d just read, his bashful eyes staring into her soul, she could have sworn, as she stirred her straw and watched the cranberry & vodka tidepool and listened to the clinking of the ice, that he was an angel of sorts, here to save her. An angel with whisky breath and a torn white t-shirt.

That’s when he put his hand on hers.

The bookstore reminded her of college, made her long for a time that was only a handful of years ago but might as well be separated by mountains, as indeed they are. They were. They are, they were. She thought of Boulder tenderly, those drunken care-free nights in the snow, bouncing bar to bar and seemingly having hundreds of conversations with a hundred close strangers.

Here; she goes out to the fancy places, with the fortunately beautiful and the paparazzi, and she is lucky to yell into a couple of ears, luckier to steal a moment or two of talk by the bathrooms. You never really meet people in this town, she was thinking, you just introduce yourself and hope to remember their name.

Cindy found the book the musician had insisted she buy. She picked it up and the blue cover with the boy in the boat with a tiger gave her an unsettling feeling. The price was an even fourteen bucks and just today she noted it had been 14 months since she moved to L.A. She probably had a dollar saved from each month, just enough to buy this book.

Where the fuck has it gone?

The money? The money. Money. Money. Money.

Cindy read the back cover, feeling her hangover worsen under the bookstore lights, amid the dust and the quiet, roaming people, and with the struggle of reading the text. A pang in her temples, nausea, the need to get out of there and get some fresh air. She felt like she had one second to make a decision.

Put the book back down and continue to flirt and fake it all the way through until the looks fade; or buy it and change her life into something meaningful, something her parents would beam at?

What was it that he had said about the book again? Fun and enlightening? Was he a musician or a book critic? And what was his name again?

She felt a chill blast her side like a walk-in freezer door opened nearby and turned to catch a fussy, bedraggled twit of an old man with exploding ear hair staring at her lasciviously and gumming his lower lip.

Eech, this fucking town!

She returned the book to the shelf and pirouetted out of the Borders into the flash of the afternoon sun shrieking into the San Fernando Valley. Cindy now had fourteen dollars to spend. If she was going to be stared at like that it might as well be by struggling, handsome rock stars and B-list TV actors.

It will take more than a book to change this girl, she thought to herself with surprising pride. She was already making plans for the night, had an urge to dance. Her hangover cleared with her decision and flight.

Conversations and books are overrated, anyway.

New Okkervil River

The new Okkervil River CD, The Stage Names, has really been a fixture in my stereo as of late. If I played vinyl the grooves would have broken through the bottom of the record by now.

Check out their Pitchfork review.

It’s the type of music to fall in love to, or to listen to on a lazy Sunday out on the porch, or late night after a good emotional bout with the bottle. There’s a timelessness to the album that instantly makes this a classic. Conceptual yet… not. Romantic and pessimistic and forlorn and dangerously hopeful.

It’s kinda country, kinda indie, kinda folk. Lyrically sharp, musically loose – it’s an amazing album of seamless contradiction.

My favorite tune is A Girl In Port, with one of the most beautiful choruses to grace my ears in quite a while.

Let fall your soft and swaying skirt.
Let fall your shoes. Let fall youir shirt.
I’m not the ladykilling sort
enough to hurt a girl in port.

Check out their myspace page to listen to the album for free while you can.

Okkervil is playing the Troubadour on Sept. 4th. If anyone wants to accompany me to the show, let me know. I’ll be the guy in front with a checker shirt and a pabst blue ribbon singing along off-key.

From You Can’t Hold the Hand of a Rock and Roll Man

This week’s fast as last week’s flash of interstate,
when you starved and never ate
This week’s splashed a sick, gold cast across your face,
as you roam on silk, ripped tippy-toe alone through Silverlake
– splayed astride a snow-white mare, on a non-stop all-night tear.

Support good music. See them live. Sept 4th. Troubadour. With me.

21st Century Cross

It is no secret that I’m an atheist and adamantly so. What may surprise you is that I am fascinated by religious iconography, especially the cross and prayer candles. I am also partial to saints.

The symbols are interesting to me, despite being a non-believer the passion behind faith is awesome to ponder. Religion is a force in the world, albeit one I watch from the sidelines, a mover of man you can’t help but to address as an artist.

I messed around with the cross, incorporated some of my heroes.

I have made a bunch of these with different gems. Different colors.

I plan on making more once I get off my sinfully lazy butt.

Here’s a closer look.

Left to right:

• Frida Kahlo
• Mr. Happy
• Borracho

Underneath is Johnny Cash, flipping the bird. Probably before June, while he was still drinking and hell-raising.

What’s it all mean?

I could ramble off a short discourse about the polemical nature of art and its intersection with religion and culture and commerce and how in America, in the 21st Century, we worship celebrities – and our adulation often brings them down, sorta like what’s-his-face, they set themselves on fire so we can stay warm – even religion itself has produced celebrities through televangelists and novels like the Left Behind series; why can’t we mash it all up and come up with our own modern allegories?

But that would be a lie.

I just think they’re cool.

Now, who wants one?

Sorry about the picture quality folks, rounded glass is a riddle to photograph.

Romney Wins a Meaningless Poll

A completely meaningless vote took place today in Iowa, something called a straw poll, to see which Republican candidate Iowans preferred for president, except McCain and Guiliani weren’t even on the ballot, because, like I said, it’s meaningless.

Anyway, Mitt Romney won.

Huh? Oh sorry, he was governor of Massachusetts for awhile. He’s got great hair and teeth.

AMES, Iowa – Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won an easy and expected victory in a high-profile Iowa Republican Party Straw Poll on Saturday, claiming nearly twice as many votes as his nearest rival.

Romney had been expected to win the test because he spent millions of dollars and months of effort on an event that was skipped by two of his major rivals.

I don’t think he has a shot because he looks too much like a robot.

And I don’t think corny, Ward Cleaver videos like this will fly anywhere else but maybe the corn fields and Utah.

***

***

Sorry, Mitt, it’s 2007.

That crap won’t wash anymore.

Not just him though,  any Republican is going to have a hard time in the general against Hillary or Obama.

The state of the nation is not in a good shape, the economy, the war, immigration, the environment, an on and on, the roof is caving in you might say. If your house is falling apart you’re not going to call the same contracting company that fucked it up in the first place. Bush has spoiled the Republican brand image for years to come.

George Bush is like Eddie Mush from A Bronx Tale. “He’s a jinx, put him in the bathroom.” Any one of those Republicans is probably going to lose in November, just for being around him the last 8 years and catching his kooties.

Ha. Ha.

So what does that mean? Hillary is the next president? Bill gets to have sex in the White House again, maybe even with Hillary? Is this politics or a soap opera? Is there a difference? Who knows.

Stay tuned!

God in L.A.?

I think God has forsaken L.A.

That’s okay, He doesn’t really fit in around here anyway. Don’t bother looking, He’s not on any of those star maps either.

There was a wild river that was the lifeblood for the Native Americans in this area for hundreds of years before we came along and sealed it in cement, at least we had the decency to kick the Native Americans out before we did that.

It now looks like this.

There were creeks everywhere too, now they’re just the names of our streets.

One day, far, far from now, some form of people will study our graffiti like ancient Sanskrit, trying to deduce the meaning of our religion, our way of life.

In this scenario, taggers will become unlikely Gods.

On my quest to find religion in L.A. I come across the question:

Is it possible to worship a sewar?

Notes From The Ant Empire #6: Bandannas, Tragedies, and The Summer of Hate

Bandannas should only be worn by cowboys, chollos, and golden retrievers, and possibly pirates.

That is a beautiful sentence. One worth a closer look.

It’s strong, declarative. It’s a proclamation: Bandannas should only be worn by… then there’s rolling alliteration: cowboys, chollos… then there’s a little comedy: and golden retrievers… then it amends itself with the addition of pirates, a great addition to any sentence.

Try it.

They walked down the beach holding hands, lovers framed by the setting sun, and possibly pirates.

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My family comes from Minnesota. Most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins still live back in the land of 10,000 lakes. As many of you know there was a disaster earlier in the week in Minneapolis, a major bridge spanning the Mississippi river collapsed and 6 people died.

As I write this it’s the first time I entertained the idea that I had relatives on that bridge, relatives that perished in the murky waters below. I’m assuming none did, or I would have heard by now. Does it make me heartless to not jump to worry right away though?

I read many articles about people worrying about their loved ones, making desperate calls to the city, stuff like that. It never even crossed my mind.

I always find that overreaction a bit dramatic. Six people in a city of half a million is rather statistically small. People get shot, get into car accidents, fall from buildings in those numbers all the time. Why aren’t people always in a state of panic?

I guess, when you think about, we probably should be.

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If 1967 was the summer of love. 2007 is the summer of hate.

Politics. Donkeys hate the elephants and the other way around. Everybody hates music right now. Christians, Muslims, Jews fussing with each other, (and that’s one fuckuva euphemism for ya’) Barry Bonds is going to break Hank Aaron’s record and the fans are pissed. Television is nothing but crime stories and reality shows that glorify lying, treachery, and conflict. We are a spiteful generation.

The children of the 60’s fled to the suburbs too and then the exurbs, all buying inflated look-alike homes on prairies and in the deserts and in isolated enclaves where they watch Fox News and tsk-tsk from a distance.

I live in the porn capital of the world, the San Fernando Valley, Southern Cali, Mulholland’s stolen orchards. Across the country, though, you take a long drive and that’s all you’ll see, interstates dotted with K-Marts and lonely teens lingering in Dairy Queens.

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Don’t you know

Nannoo is flowing,
put on your headphones,
Atomic clouds are blowing,
put on your Ugg boots