Burning Man 2006

I've been meaning to put up a post about my Burning Man experience for 2 months now. Well, here goes...

Now that I've been twice, I feel that Burning Man is an event with diminishing returns. That may sound like a criticism, but it's not. There's nothing in the world like the first time you set foot on the playa and turn slowly in a circle while letting your senses absorb as best they can the rich palate of the human creative spirit on display stretching in every direction for as far as you can see. But you only have one cherry--and once it's been popped, it's popped. Oh sure, you can pretend subsequent experiences are just as good as the first time, but you're just deluding yourself. It doesn't mean they're necessarily worse--just different. Like any good, solid, mutually-respectful relationship, Burning Man takes creativity and maintenance to keep it interesting. If you do not put forth the effort, you are left with diminishing returns.

I keep in regular touch with exactly two people from my high school days. Steve is one of them. Coincidently, after about 12 years of being out of touch, he turned up 2 hours down the road in Santa Cruz. I was pleased to learn that one of my best friends in high school, and roommate for 2 years after, was living so close. He owns and operates a tire shop. Every year in August, he is innundated with vehicles getting ready for the pilgrimage to the Black Rock Desert. Although he had never been, the experience of helping outfit vehicles for Burning Man made him both familiar with and curious about the event. Not long after my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first child in June, we decided that 5 days in the desert doing everything that people do out there was probably not the best environment for a mother-to-be. So all of the sudden I had an extra ticket, and Steve said he'd take it before I even finished asking him. As luck would have it, he and a friend had just bought a circa 1970 lime green 20ft long motorhome specifically for tailgating and events such as Burning Man. A plan was coming together.

We had about 12 people in our camp this year, half of which were playa-virgins. I drove up with two of them, all the while dazzling them with stories of what they were getting themselves into. But there's really no way to paint an accurate picture. We arrived at 3am and found our camp pretty quickly; most of our crew had arrived 2 days prior. There's not a bad time to arrive at Black Rock City; this city truly never sleeps. I hurriedly set up my tent and got out to the playa in time to watch the early dawn turn into a glorious sunrise from under the Belgian Wafflehouse.

That morning I got my first taste of what turned out to be my favorite saloon in all of BRC: Tikila Sunrise. Set up in the middle of nowhere, with walls made of the horizon and the sky as a ceiling, this saloon featured a bar and furniture you'd expect to see at at any kitschy Hawaiian bar, a giant tiki statue and 2 swinging saloon doors. We quickly learned that simply wandering up to the bar from the netherlands resulted in a) much ballyhooing from the other patrons, and b) not being served at the bar. However, entering through the saloon doors resulted in a greeting similiar to the one Norm received at Cheers. The hours of operation were 4a to 9a--nothing like starting off the day with a margarita, shot of tequila and a baby carrot chaser. I made it a point to start each day here, and usually ended up staying until "last call." It was entertaining to hang out and observe whatever passed by. Various art cars would park and play great dj sets. One gal had a polaroid camera and took pictures of everybody there and stapled them to the bar. (It was great to see the front of the bar hung on a fence in San Francisco at the decompression party a few weeks ago with all the pictures still attached--brought back great memories!) There was a posse of what must have been stunt-doubles there each morning tossing eachother across the tables and out the door after the slightest provocation. I was disappointed to see on my last morning that the saloon doors had been completely flattened by an art car that was now parked in front of the bar. I though to myself, "how rude!" Maybe I said it outloud, because one of the guys driving it loudly declared, "this is a BAR not a CLUB!" and promptly marched out back to play a game of bocce ball. That art car came in handy later for hauling home a female patron who had finally had enough fun and passed out limp on a table. My friend Dave quickly recovered the beer he had given to her; it was still cold.

Having experienced much exhaustion and fatigue the year prior, this time around I was determined to keep a better pace. I'm a morning person by nature, so getting up at 4am is rarely a problem for me. Besides, sunrise on the playa is my absolute favorite part of the day, so I decided I would try to incorporate my regular home schedule into the Burning Man scene. My up and at 'em hours were roughly 4a to 11p each day which set me at odds with most of the rest of my camp as they were usually rallying when I was going to bed, and going to bed when I was rallying. Truth be told though, I was never wanting for company, as most of the night crew was still going strong at 4am--and by then they had a bead on where all the hot spots were at the moment.

One of the cardinal rules at Burning Man is to leave no trace. It's taken very seriously by the organizers, but not always by all the participants. In an effort to cut down on MOOP (matter out of place, aka: garbage) around camp, we elected to ban those ubiquitous red party cups. Although we still managed to generate a fair amount of trash, it certainly could have been much worse. Next year, we will aspire towards even less.

Speaking of our camp, this year we added another parachute shade structure (one for covering the tents, and one for the "living room") and Dave set up his "mini-mog" in the living room. The mini-mog is a home-built 2 amp, ~800 watt portable dj system thats design is loosely based on Space Cowboy's Unimog. The mini-mog proved to be quite popular with our neighbors; especially during our Pancakes with Harry Belafonte breakfast special.

I could drone on and on about the minute details, but I'd get sick of typing and you'd get sick of reading, so I will return to my original thought about Burning Man being an event with diminishing returns. I can see how each year I will have to put more and more energy into my participation if I want to continue to get anything out of the whole experience. It will always be interesting and fun, because there's not many places and times in your life where you are able to stand over a blank canvas and encouraged to let your mind explode. I went through the trouble of planning, shopping, sewing; completed the roadtrip, helped coordinate, organize camp and cook--I may as well maximize each and every moment.

Burning Man is like life. The older you get, the more energy it takes just to tread water.

P.S. King Tut has more and better pictures here than I could be bothered to take.

Borat Review

Comedy is tricky; one person's joke is another person's offense. While hilarious at times, all told, Borat is mostly offensive.

There were 3 very funny scenes that immediately spring to mind: kids running up to the ice cream truck then being scared away by the bear, the naked wrestling match (an instant classic!) and trying to stuff Pamela Anderson into the wedding sack. The rest of the laughs were mostly cheap shots derrived from stereotyping, and uneven stereotyping at that.

He took the safe route: negative stereotyping of southerners/whites/evangelicals/gunshop owners/patriots/cowboys (not to mention Kazakstan) or any combination thereof, neutral/slightly positive stereotyping of blacks, and excessive hyperbole (i.e. rendering the situation so outlandish as to be unbelievable) when taking jabs at Jews. Muslims? He knows he'd be a dead man walking if he mentioned them in any way, but he thought it okay to insult a preacher's wife at dinner, mock our national anthem at a rodeo, and show a Christ-impersonator being poked with a pitch fork. I would have had more respect for Mr. Cohen had he tried to do something like fake his way into a synagogue kitchen and start butchering a side of pork on the cheeseboard and filmed the reaction of the Rabbi. That's not so outlandish when compared to his other antics.

Mr. Cohen does Jews no service in this movie. The running of the Jews was funny, but only a Jew could get away with doing that. Only a Jew could get away with walking into a gun shop and try to buy a handgun and baiting the shop owner by saying, "it's for killing Jews", thereby making the gunshop owner appear complicit in Jew-killing because he didn't say anything to dissuade him (imagine the outrage if say, Mel Gibson made a scene in one of his movies like that). Only a Jew could get away with throwing money at salbugs and running away because those crafty Jews transformed themselves.

That's all fine really. Self-appropriating the most outlandish myths about a race/group and desensitizing them through comic-hyperbole goes a long way toward removing the venom, but I don't think it necessarily has a place in a movie like Borat.
Everybody gets humiliated except the Jews, and he papers over that with hyperbole which does Jews a disservice. That's why I would have respected him more for butchering a pig in a kosher kitchen, for example. He'd have held his own people to the same standard as those he mocks.

All in all I'm left feeling he's just a punk-ass taking comedy to a new low.

It's things like this that make me want to move to Montana

San Francisco School Board votes to dump JROTC program

After 90 years in San Francisco high schools, the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps must go, the San Francisco school board decided Tuesday night.

The Board of Education voted 4-2 to eliminate the popular program, phasing it out over two years.

90 years of tradition undone in one night.

"We're really shocked,'' said fourth-year Cadet Eric Chu, a senior at Lowell High School, his eyes filling with tears. "It provided me with a place to go."

Of course, the liberal do-gooders know what's best for Mr. Chu.

The proposal approved by the board also creates a task force to develop alternatives to the program that will be tried out next year at various high schools.

OOH! a task force! After hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless, exhaustive studies conducted over many years, I am certain they will come up with something really fabulous.

Their position was summed up by a former teacher, Nancy Mancias, who said, "We need to teach a curriculum of peace."

Because war is, like, really really bad. And like, what if they threw a war, and like, nobody showed up? And ya know, it'll be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force, like, needs to hold a bakesale to build a bomber.

If I'm not mistaken, the JROTC is an elective. Nevermind that though. What's important is to just imagine peace, and like, it'll happen! honest! But you have to really imagine it--no cheating!

The board's move to dismantle the popular program was led by board members Dan Kelly and Mark Sanchez with support from Sarah Lipson and Eric Mar. Casting votes against it were Jill Wynns and Norman Yee. Board member Eddie Chin was absent.

"I think people should not despair too much," Sanchez said. "I think now the work begins -- to work within the community to develop new programs that will fulfill the needs of our students."

Yeah, I'm sure they're all over realizing those new programs. In the meantime, the kids can help themselves to a nice game of "non-confrontational, no-contact tag", or "please do not smear the practitioner of alternative lifestyles".

About 1,600 San Francisco students participate in JROTC at seven high schools across the district.

Opponents said the armed forces should have no place in public schools, and the military's discriminatory stance on gays makes the presence of JROTC unacceptable.

One-thousand six-hundred young San Francisco adults learning the meaning of honor, duty and discipline. That's not important, what's important is that the military says if you're gay and in the military, if you don't tell anybody you're gay, nobody will ask you if you're gay. I personally think that policy is asinine--who cares if you're gay and you happen to want to serve your country? But what's more asinine are the suicidal-pacifists who use that policy as a point of perpetual outrage with the intent of undermining the same military charged with protecting their sorry, self-righteous, touch-feely asses.

"We don't want the military ruining our civilian institutions," said Sandra Schwartz of the American Friends Service Committee, an organization actively opposing JROTC nationwide. "In a healthy democracy ... you contain the military. You must contain the military."

Contain the all-volunteer military, otherwise they will overrun this nation and control everything. Quiet! I hear the jackboots right outside my door! By the way, it seems that the left is doing a fine job on their own ruining civilian institutions such as public schools.

"This is where the kids feel safe, the one place they feel safe," Robert Powell, a JROTC instructor at Lincoln High School and a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said earlier in the evening. "You're going to take that away from them?"

Apparently, Lt. Col. Powell, that answer is yes. It's better if they're out on the street causing trouble. That way, they can realize the victim status that is rightfully theirs--and the left can come to the rescue with another brilliant scheme paid for by other people's money.

Opponents acknowledged the program is popular and even helps some students stay in school and out of trouble.

Yet they also said the program exists to lure students to sign up for the armed forces.

"It's basically a branding program, or a recruiting program for the military," Kelly said before the meeting.

The JROTC? A recruiting program for the military? get out! who knew? Besides, it's a well-known fact that everybody in the military was duped into signing up. They thought the application was for summer camp, not boot camp.

Earlier, Mayor Gavin Newsom weighed in on the debate, chastising the board for the effort to eliminate JROTC.

"The move sends the wrong message," he said. "It's important for the city not to be identified with disrespecting the sacrifice of men and women in uniform."

Newsom also said he believed the vote would push more city residents away from the public schools.

"You think this is going to help keep families in San Francisco?" the mayor added. "No. It's going to hurt."

BRAVO MR. NEWSOM! Though I can't help but wonder why you didn't lobby against this harder if you had so much conviction. Nevertheless, as somebody who will have a school-aged child in the not-too-distant future, I couldn't agree with you more.

A budget analysis found that the district could hire nine teachers with the money the district now spends on JROTC -- enough to cover the gym and elective courses for the 1,600 students should the program be eliminated.

oh yay! 9 more unmotivated, underpaid teachers. Hey, at least the Teacher's Union will come out ahead.

As Michelle Malkin put it: Cities, like civilizations, die by suicide, not murder.

I really love living in San Francisco, but not enough to commit suicide for her.