To complete the Mad Max effect, Burning Man has its own Thunderdome. Two people dangle from the top via bungee cords and go at each other with padded bats.
This year the Billion Bunny March descended upon the 'dome and claimed it as their own. I was not there to witness the event, but legend has it that the following was uttered: "Two bunnies enter, 40 bunnies leave."
I'm sure a lot of people think of Burning Man as a big mindless party, but a more accurate (albeit only slightly less simplistic) account would have it as a rave in an art museum. The playa would be nothing without the art installations dotting the landscape (to say nothing of the art people wear and ride and drive, etc.) Here are a few of my favorites. Award for Best...
Boys' Toys: Big Rig Jig
Explaining the geometry of this one is a bit tricky so I'll just let you look at the picture. Yes, those are 18-wheeler tanker trucks stuck together and planted in the desert. You can see people climbing on them, but what you can't see is people climbing IN them. The inside is a jungle gym filled with fake vines, and you could go all the way to the top. When I reached the tip, I found one of the builders lounging on pillows sans clothing. He looked like he'd been there a while and asked if anyone had any games to play. Devoid of Pictionary, we thumb wrestled. (Here's a video and an article about the Jig.) [image source]
Mindfuckery: Homouroboros
Bang for the Buck: Skyline
At night, from a distance, it was just a line of bright dots stretching into the sky. Easy to miss when in every direction on the horizon you see mushroom clouds of flame. But then you spot it and try to figure out what it is. My first hunch was a big balloon attached to a string with lights, but then it starts to move in weird, snakelike ways. It's not immediately obvious that it's hundreds of balloons, attached 5-6 feet apart, each with its own LED. I watched as other people tried to figure it out too. The artist told me his goal was to make it a mile and a half long. So with just some balloons and LEDs and fishing line, you have a playaful of people staring at the sky and and scratching their heads.
Bang for the 2,000 Gallons of Liquid Propane and Jet Fuel: Crude Awakening
Despite days of anticipation, and a proximity much closer than that of the camera used for that video, Katie, Suzie, and I just couldn't keep our eyes open. It had been a long week, and we were in for a, ahem, crude awakening. [image source]
Use of Ping Pong Balls: Big Round Cubatron
I found some hi-res aerial photos of this year's Black Rock City. (Unfortunately they've chopped off deep playa territory.)
I also found my tent.
Also, it's funny that I should travel to the middle of the Nevada desert and find Astor Place right next door to our camp, considering that's my subway stop here in New York. If I'd known ahead of time, I could have saved a lot of money on airfare.
So, I went to Burning Man this year, my first burn. (In playa terms, I am no longer a virgin but a burner.) It was truly a glorious experience, filled with images like the one above. Yes, that's an untouched photo [source] (click to enlarge.)
Here's a photo of the Temple in front of one of the four pots of gold:
Geoff, one of my campmates, climbed on his bike to see how close he could come. He returned with this tale (paraphrased): "Out of everyone in the world, 45,000 people come to Burning Man. Of those, 100 chase the rainbow. Of those, three hop the boundary fence to get there. I could not die satisfied without meeting the other two."
Later, he wrote:
So I did the (emotionally) logical thing: I hopped on my bike and tried to find the end of the rainbow. I could see it out in deep playa, for Christ's sake.
I discovered that the trash fence was in between me and my goal. At the trash fence were a hundred people who had just been forced to the same conclusion.
Indistinct on the horizon were two people who evidently did not care that someone had put up a piece of orange plastic in between them and the end of the rainbow: a dangerous and radical concept.
I dropped my bike and jumped the fence. I wonder if I have ever felt so uneasy in a situation that I knew to be entirely safe. Looking back at Black Rock City, and a hundred rainbow-seekers gawking at me, and thinking about my four years on the playa, I felt a tragicomic exuberance in the back of my throat and the pit of my stomach. When I look back on that moment and imagine it, our little city seems so painfully beautiful, and the people in it so proud, fierce, and vulnerable.
I had a long, surreal conversation with the Boys of the Horizon that I will carry with me as a protective talisman for many years.
Eventually Perimeter picked us up. They said very little beyond these sage words: "Inside good, outside not so good."
I am holding in my hands a big black oily rock from the society beyond the fence.
may the playa provide,
Geoffps. I do not recommend harassing Perimeter. They are really nice people and they are working while we are playing.
The double rainbow happened on Friday afternoon, after the second huge dust storm in two days. You cannot fully appreciate its beauty without surviving one of these things. This video demonstrates the winds, but not the full white out conditions (which were sometimes an alien yellow or red). During the storm on Thursday, I briefly ventured from our camp's hookah dome, in which 30 or 40 people eventually took cover, to check on my battered tent. I barely made it back. The dust burned my chest, visibility was 5-10 feet, and I had to walk slowly with my arms out to avoid collisions. Here I am (second from left) in the dome with some campmates early in the storm:
(In the foreground is Josh, who programmed and built some of our brilliantly trippy lighting displays. Yes, that's a red monkey tail.) The dome soon filled up, but really, there's nothing like a good weather emergency--and some music and beers--to bring people together.
More tales from the burn to come.
It's been almost a month, but I'm finally giving you a link to some pics from my trip to Kenya in April. You should totally check them out because they are awesome.
There are animals eating each other, hunting each other, and fucking each other; people fighting with sticks; and tribal warriors giving me dance lessons.
In fact, I'm willing to bet that you will have a better time looking at them than I did taking them, because you will not be hampered by concerns about malaria, cockroaches, or third world mass transit/B.O.
Of course, you will not have Holly to serve as your beautiful and charming travelmate (and bikini model.) Pole sana, rafiki.
Dear blog, I'm sorry to have neglected you for so long. You see, there have been some changes, and I've been busy. The last time we talked, I lived in San Diego. I now live in New York. Why? I've got a great new job as the News Editor of Psychology Today. (I appreciate your help in getting me that job, btw.)
Some notes on my third time driving across the country:
Last night PBS broadcast an episode of NOVA titled "Deadly Ascent." The NOVA crew climbed Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska with a team of researchers and mountaineers to figure out why our bodies break down at high altitudes and low temperatures.
The team carried lots of extra food in their packs, because a storm could pin them down for days. To make matters more volatile, the team included one Dr. Howard Donner. I could see it in their eyes: no one wanted to run out of munchies in the wilderness with a Donner.
Of course, their fears may have been unfounded. Last week a pair of archeologists revealed that they could find no evidence of cannibalism among the Donner Party. Using electron microscopes and DNA tests, they analyzed thousands of bone fragments at the Alder Creek campsite where the Donners spend 4 winter months in 1846-1847, but, alas, none of the bones belonged to people. The undramatic findings do not bode well for the archeologists' negotiations with CBS regarding the upcoming series CSI:Alder Creek.
Even without people eating people, the NOVA episode contains some level of adventure. But my favorite Denali account remains Art Davidson's autobiographical tale of the peak's first winter ascent. Even the book's title gives me the chills: Minus 148 Degrees. (That's with windchill, but still...)
[I feel somewhat odd categorizing a post about the Donner Party under "Travel" and "Food and Drink," but what's done is done.]
Ever wanted the inside scoop on the NASA shuttle program? This month, astronaut Mike Mullane, who's gone spaceborne three times, reveals some of the dirty details in his new book, Riding Rockets. Reuters published an interview with him today.
On the business side of things, he claims the shuttle is "the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown, by anybody." (Obviously he hasn't experienced Captain Whizbang's Olde Time TNT Caboose to the Stars.) On the whimsical side of things, he provides TMI regarding the depth of his preparation for astronaut selection. "I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses." Hallelujah.
Today, that level of preening might designate Mullane a metrosexual. But in close quarters, internal hygiene is not so trivial. In an account by astronaut Harrison Schmitt of his 1973 trip to the Moon, Schmitt describes a stinky side effect of lunar life support:
All of us had to live with hydrogen gas in the water used to reconstitute various foods (basically the same as today's trail foods)... Although the convenience of having a continuous supply of fresh water should be obvious, hydrogen going into our guts with the food had to come out, much to the discomfort of crew mates.
(Overall, accommodations suited Schmitt better than some of the camps on his geological field trips in Norway and Alaska. "Certainly you had no black flies or mosquitoes to bother you on the Moon," he told me recently.)
On Mullane's website, we find the following bold announcement: "Riding Rockets is written for adult readers. It is inappropriate for children." For a more tame tale, check out Sally Ride's To Space & Back, written for young readers. (Full disc: I work for her.) But, as it turns out, kids are interested in poop too. (Who knew?) Sally's book has a full-page photo of a shuttle shitter. And when she speaks to kids, the most popular question is, "How do you go to the bathroom in space?" Very carefully.
A friend of mine just returned from Costa Rica, smuggling a 2000-year-old jade god figurine back with her. She didn't know it was illegal to remove the item from the country until after the purchase, when the the seller pointed out, "Oh, and if customs stops you, just tell them you brought it with you here." (Expect supernatural payback to ensue shortly.)
Supposedly the item has special powers. If you wear it over your solar plexus, it calms your emotions and heals you when you are sick. And for the ladies: "He also explained to me in very funny English without saying any gross words that if women have cramps, you put it in a glass of water for a while and then take it out and drink the glass of water and you'll feel better," she told me. Oh and mysteriously it "can't touch metal." The cost: a chunk of change, plus a chunk of soul.
Well I survived my first trip to Vegas (barely...I became sick upon return, delaying this post several days.) What can I say about this town? It's a slice of American life. Mullets, sequined t-shirts, and denim shorts galore. Funny, I never thought of Sin City as a family destination, but there were thousands of kids tagging along with their wide-eyed and open-walleted parents. Some of the attractions ARE a little like a kids' theme park, except when you walk outside, instead of Mickey and pals you have dozens of men in neon shirts labeled "Strippers Straight to Your Room" handing out fliers. (What's with the flicking?) I wondered whether they get up in the morning, open their closets to reveal 20 neon t-shirts on hangers, and ask themselves, "Pink or green today?"
Vegas gambling refused to secure its appeal to me. Watch a dealer burn through your chips in mere seconds? No thanks. Spend all night playing poker with friends at nominal wages, with full-volume potty-mouthed trash-talking? Yes please. And they didn't have several of the games I looked for. Where was War; Pick a Number; Rock, Paper, Scissors? What, no Monopoly tables? I kick ass at Monopoly.
