Of Naked, Sunburned Yuppies & Clothed, Bad Mormon Actors ...

In the Sept. 22, 2005 Rolling Stone surprise, SURPRISE (say it like Jim Neighbors!) -- there's an essay/op ed piece about the annual Burning Man Festival north of Reno.

The whole time I lived in Reno, I never joined the naked art fags on the playa. I even had a chance to back in Sept.'92 when it was just starting before every jackass Yuppie had one of those inane 'burning dude' tattoos. I regret not experiencing it when it was just a hundred nutty trust-fund artists from the Bay Area coming together for heat stroke, warm beer and experiments with paper mache in 60mph dust storms.

Today tickets for the weekend are pricey and they include ... nothing, I guess, other than the right to park your Barbie Doll-covered Jetta in the desert. Uh, that is something you can do for free in the rest of the Great Basin Desert any time you want.

I had numerous friends in Draino that were hardcore "Burners". One was a 50-something taciturn waitress who worked in an organic cafe and attended Burning Man wearing a leather vest, cowboy chaps and nothing else. Her 60-something husband favored a cock ring and balloon animal hats. Fortunately, my cultural myopia spared me from ever having to see any of this in person, she just described their get ups to me while we chopped vegetables.

Another couple (gay) lived for the fest because it was a chance for them to go en mass and ... wear women's summer dresses for a week. I once offered them the chance to come to my place, put on the women's clothes and prance around all they wanted for, say, 50 bucks a head. Mind you, these were free, liberated gay men, at ease with their sexuality and the pervasive backwardness of 90% of the other residents of Redneckistan.

So Matt Taibbi's op ed piece didn't really surprise me. He didn't say anything about this event I hadn't either 1)heard, 2)read or 3)thought before.

Here's some tidbits from Taibbi's article:

... to me it ultimately came down to just a few basic truths: (Burning Man) is a bunch of hairy art snobs running around with no pants on in the middle of the remotest desert, calling themselves agents for transforming social change.

It is educated upper-middle-class white people rebelling against nothing they can put their fingers on.

The symoblic act -- burning a giant wooden man in effigy -- is just the kind of murky, irony-laden, pseudoprimitive claptrap that appeals to an X-Files generation terrified of taking clear, unequivocal stands on anything.

-- Matt Tabbi

I think Tabbi's a damn good journo and I'd lamely add to his diatribe by adding this link to some of the artwork laboriously crafted and assembled way the fuck out there ... where nobody poor, non-white, under-educated, truly disenfranchised will ever see it.


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In my eternal pursuit of DVD rentals that don't suck, I wanna add this one to the Do NOT waste yer money pile:

Looks kinda tempting, eh? I immediately thought Band of Brothers too. Instead, this "indie" flick, produced by squeaky-clean cult members from Utah is a pathetic rip-off of HBO's Emmy winner. If you look closely at the "awards" listed on the cover of the DVD box, among them are "The Gloria Film Festival" award and the "Marco Island Film Fest Award". Excuse me, WHERE?!

Once again energetic Mormons muscled in on the indie film scene. The level of (religious) propoganda being churned out would make the Moonies or L.Ron Hubbard weep with envy. Instead of Damian Lewis' for-real Mennonite character biting his tongue to avoid saying the s-word, desperate unknowns mouth dialogue like "Geez" and "Oh Damn-Gosh-Golly-Darn!" One of the key characters is called "Deacon" and he doesn't drink coffee or smoke (A clue, Sherlock!). Instead he engages in S&M sleep deprivation and drinks hot lemonade powder (also an S&M thing?).

Deacon carefully lectures the movie's lone Jewish character (read:Christ killer) and leads him toward a greater faith. In the real world, we call that kind of cult behavior PROGRAMMING.

Remember what Harrison Ford's character said in a truly intelligent film, The Mosquito Coast, upon running into a religious nut: "SEE KIDS?! THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN WARNING YOU ABOUT!"


-- Mz M.