Notes on a Quest....

45 days...

Until the Man burns...

I have to admit...even though I swore Burning Man off a few years ago (it's fucking EXPENSIVE folks!)..I'm kindof missing it right now. I do have some weird, wild and very fond memories of the experiences I've had there. The last time was for L. and D.'s wedding. Good times. I just WISH I didn't have to drive the day after the reception. My head just wasn't right for that experience. Luckily we had the casinos of Reno and a hot shower to bring me back slowly...

Santacon....

Well,  dear readers, I attended my first SantaCon last night.  Santacon began at 10am Sat. morning.  As Yanni and I reflected later over cheap drinks in a tiny Lower East Side bar, what respectable New Yorker would actually be up at that hour?  In New York, it's generally agreed that no one shall rise to greet the day before noon.  At least on the weekends.....

As we guided ourselves out of the bar and went along our merry way to meet other Santas (or as Yanni put it "I feel like we're going to the mothership!!), a drunk screamed at me from the sidewalk, "Hey Santa, gimme a chainsaw for Christmas.  Dat's right!  I wanna chainsaw for Christmas!!!!"

And ten minutes later we were packed into a bar with hundreds and hundreds of other Santas who were all swilling booze and staggering about on the sidewalks outside.   We continued in this fashion all evening.  We made many friends.  I drunkenly sang Karaoke at one point to a country song to a crowd of at least 200 cheering and jeering Santas. 

And then much, much, much later I spent the night in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. 

Some things are better left untold though.  Here are some pics so you more or less get the gist:

Me, early in the SantaCon experience

Admittedly, not a SantaCon themed pic, but still the bathroom graffitti I encountered last night warrented an honorable mention.....  It's an east coast city rivalry kind of thang....

Burning Man AVI files.....

I know you'll all been waiting with baited breath. Well, here are a few short .avi files to check out from the Burning Man event.

the FireConvalcade was filmed the night of the Burn. Lots of people spinning poi. Imagine that! This video does have a nice shot of one guy that really dazzled us with his fire spinning. There are hundreds and hundreds of people spinning fire like this in front of the Man before he gets set ablaze. It's really pretty amazing.

The next video is of Moses. He was the minister at my friends' wedding. Here, he is depicted in his natural environment.

Here's two of Scotch, my good friend. This one and this one show him with his freakish creation. the Talking God. Talking God was a big hit and adorned our bar with blinking green eyes and a strange tendency to sing along to electronic music.

And finally, I could resist a small video of the actual Burn.

And that's all.

Burning Bar.....

I'm just now starting to get excited about going to Burning Man this year. It's only two months away. Time to scramble. This coming weekend I have to go down to Redwood City and begin construction on the Smitecamp Bar. Ghengis and I had talked it over briefly the last time I was down there visiting him and Vida Encantada. One of the ideas I got excited about was putting more of a weird God-smiting theme into the bar. Then Scotch had the idea to order a talking Christmas tree off of the net. I have no idea what that will be like, but we will soon find out.

The idea I pitched to Ghengis was to mount a cut-out of God's head on the roof of the bar, have his eyes glow red and him shouting "you Shall Be Smote!" as the bartender hits a secret button inside the bar. The hapless victim is then dragged to the stocks on the nearby stage and given a light smiting.

Of course, at the end of the week, we burn the bar in all those giant bonfires and start anew......