From: Modemac <modemac@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Fri, Jul 10, 2009 10:36 AM
My main job was to make certain Pisces' schedule was
adhered to, and
that required me to do a lot of walking back and forth.
But this was
a SubGenius event, and the overall rule governing the
schedule was
SLACK. If a performer was late, so what? We'd be able
to fill in the
extra time. We had at least three performers on Friday
night, as well
as the Un-Costume Ball and the Live Hour of Slack with
Reverend Stang
and Dr. Hal. The best thing to do was sit back, let
the events
happen, and give them nudge to ensure that they would
stay on track --
and they did!
For this year, Dr. Hal had what was probably his greatest
and most
appreciative audience ever! A number of the newcomers
to X-Day said
they were big fans of this mighty philosopher, and they
took part in
his "Ask Dr. Hal" show with great enthusiasm.
And then came the
annual Bulldada Auction -- where wallets were opened,
bidding wars
were seen, and the Bulldada flowed like an oncoming
tide. It may be a
result of the current economonic situation in our country
(the history
books will no doubt refer to this as "The Economic
Crisis of
2008-2009"), but the decreasing financial state
of the United States
gave rise to an INCREASE in the amount of kook crap
available for the
Bulldada Auction. What's more -- the kooks have gone
multimedia! We
had classic books ranging from original copies of "Worlds
In
Collision," "The Making of Kubrick's 2001,"
and even a copy of "High
Weirdness By Mail" (which auctioned for $40!);
we had prints of
obscene R. Crumb artwork (courtey of Dr. Dark); we had
Victorian-era
written erotica (courtesy of Nickie Deathchick)...and
we had LOTS of
videos and DVDs! Christian videos ("Jack Theist
Meets Dr. Secular"),
political conspiracy theory videos ("The Next Plague
-- Avian Flu!"
"The ACLU's War On America!"), cartoons (the
complete animated series
of ''Spawn,'' all in one box), movies ("Hard Candy,"
"Teeth," "The
Adventures of Mark Twain")...not to mention original
artwork, a HUGE
collection of CDs donated by Rev. Pater Nostril, and
much much more!
And Dr. Hal took it all in stride, auctioning off the
finest material
and the crudest waste with a gentleman's touch...at
least, until the
Auction was ended for reasons of beer. Quijibo had
its annual Beer
Tasting event, which took precedence over everything
else (naturally),
and the Auction was continued the next night.
Then came the Un-Costume Ball -- which turned out to
be the best
Costume Ball we've had at X-Day in YEARS! There was
no "theme" this
year, and everyone was encouraged to just go crazy,
enjoy the music
(provided by the legendary DJ Shaver), and dance --
and dance, those
Yeti did. Heck, they even got me to dance on the floor
a bit, for
what might have been the first time in my entire life
(other than my
wedding). And the costumes ranged from the bizarre,
with appearances
by "Bob" Dobbs himself and the creepy Burger
King from those TV
commercials, to the outright obscene (Popess Pantiara
in a sexy
negligee and a staff showing Barbie crucified on a Dobbs
Ikon)...not
to mention the NAKED. For it was here that Bunny Day
and Dildo Val
became X-Day superstars by attending the Un-Costume
ball in two Un-
Costumes -- totally naked, except for cords connecting
each other.
(Their theme was "two babies who had given birth
to each other." I'll
leave it to you to guess where the cords were connected...)
There may
have been a time when the Church of the SubGenius was
a complete
sausage fest, but those days are long gone. Indeed,
lovely naked
bosoms blessed us for the entire weekend, though this
appearance by
these two delectable Sex Goddesses ranks as one of the
best moments of
X-Day for MANY mutants who attended. (The pictures
from this event
are being secretly traded by sundry SubGenii, who know
better than to
post them to Facebook or Myspace where they will be
promptly deleted.
See the secret SubGenius meeting space at IRC #subgenius
for more
information about that.)
Pisces had taken the ingenious step of moving the Costume
Ball up so
that it merged in with the first of the bands that night,
John Deere
Tractor Beam. Reverend Angry Larry and his band belted
out 1960s
surfin' tunes, and even a cover of the "Batman"
TV show theme (with
the name "Batman" replaced with "'Bob'
Dobbs"). But after this came
one of those musical miracles that seem to happen every
couple of
years at X-Day, when a newcomer arrives from out of
nowhere and
proceeds to stun the audience and win new fans. And
lo, we at
Brushwood were graced with the presence and singing
of PHAT MAN DEE!
Towering at a height of about four and a half feet and
dressed in a
golden gown with shoulder pads, this sultry diva has
actually been a
member of the Church of the SubGenius since 1995; what's
more, she's a
good friend of Dr. Hal and Puzzling Evidence. But despite
this, most
of us had never heard of her -- but after this X-Day,
she will
certainly never be forgotten. She has a simply wonderful
singing
voice, which she used with aplomb as she gave us operatic
covers of
Black Sabbath tunes, bluegrass songs about Buddha, and
even closed the
show by shoving her entire fist in her mouth and warbling
"The Star-
Spangled Banner." She stayed the entire weekend,
and she has gone
down in history as one of the legendary X-Day singers.
And from there, we even saw the return of ANDREW THE
IMPALED! Those
who remember his self-mutilating shows from ancient
times were
reminded of those days as he proceeded to insert nails
and 8-inch-long
screwdrivers directly into his skull; though he eschwed
from the old
days when he would eat broken glass and sew his own
lips shut. He
also treated the audience to a lengthy musical interlude,
with the
assurance that he would be back again some day (much
like Frosty the
Snowman).
And lo, in the midst of this revelry, "Bob's"
promise came true and
THE RAIN ENDED AT LAST! The moon rose amid a star-filled
night, and
the ambient techno punishment of DJ 2B wafted across
the fields of
Brushwood as the SubGenii enjoyed a night where they
could at last
walk without umbrellas (but their shoes were still soaked
by the dew
and the thick fog that arose).
Then things began to get weird.
On Saturday morning, I woke up (wow!) to the sound of
drumming from
the Roundhouse. I figured the pagan drum circle had
not ended yet;
but when I looked out and saw the Roundhouse, I saw
three people
drumming. Two of them were SubGenii - Reverend Brainleak
(Eggplant's
son), and the SubGenius who was dubbed RevAnon last
year when
Anonymous attended X-Day. There were a few pagan folks
in the
Roundhouse circle, so I decided to head over and check
it out.
Along with the piles of Bulldada I'd brought to Brushwood
to get rid
of, I also had a box with several pagan items - crystals,
candle
holders, a knife, a set of runes, and a couple of sculptures
- which
had been donated by my wife, especially to get rid of
at Brushwood. At
this point, I thought it would be a good idea to take
something from
my wife's donations and bring it over to the bonfire.
So I looked
through the box of stuff and settled on a small sculpture:
a ten-inch-
tall column with images of Brigid, the Celtic goddess.
(According to a
label on the bottom, this column was made of clay from
India.) I
headed over and said hi, and it was at this point that
I met the guy
who was to be my other ShorDurPerSav for this X-Day:
Brian, the High
Priest of "Tha IS." He was a big, burly,
black dude with long
dreadlocks in a headband, and he was one of those guys
who you can
instantly get friendly with - laughing, smiling, ready
to greet
everyone with a big hug, and always looking for and
pointing out "the
magic" in everything going on around him. Brian
was the one who had
Brainleak and RevAnon doing the drumming, and they were
actually doing
a decent job of it. They'd been going at it for a long
time, and they
were obviously starting to fall asleep while drumming;
however,
whenever they stopped drumming, Brian would say to them
with a smile
on his face, "Hey, have you joined the union yet?"
Their response
was, "No, not yet." And then he'd say, "Then
keep drummin'!" They'd
go on drumming for another ten minutes or so, then the
same thing
would happen. "So, you in the union yet?"
"Nope." "Keep drummin'."
The other drummer was one of the regular pagan drummers,
and he was
helping them keep time. Every so often, one of the
pagan guys would
give himm a mouthful of water - at least, I THINK it
was water -
though when offered a drink, Brainleak refused. I said
to him, "Dude,
when the only black guy in a place full of white guys
offers you a
drink, you should take the drink." Brian got a
big kick out of that;
and he said, "Yeah, I feel safer about that here
than out there!" We
exchanged names and got to talking, and he told me what
he was doing
with the two kids on the drums. He said, "The
secret to joining the
union is to say, 'Fuck you, Brian, I'm done!' But they're
not doing
that, so they keep going on and on!SHow long do you
think they've been
doing that?"
I said, "Well, I've been here about an hour now."
He smiled some more and said, "Try FOUR hours."
As we talked, I showed the folks there the column of
Brigid, and I
said that I wanted to give it to them. Brian pointed
out the three
different altars there at the Roundhouse, and said I
should find a
place at one of them and place the column there. "But
be sure to talk
to her as you're putting it down," he said.
The main altar there at the Roundhouse was a fashioned
from the stump
of a huge tree, and the Brushwood denizens had placed
various items on
it over time. They were weather-worn (especially considering
all the
rain we'd had over the past few days), with the most
notable being a
big sculpture of Buddha placed in its center. I took
the column and
found a spot on the side of the Buddha, and in respect
for Brian, I
said as I placed it down: "Thank you for having
a lovely place here."
And when I placed it down, the wood underneath collapsed,
and the
column sank into the stump for a good two or three inches.
This
caught me off-guard, and I pointed it out to Brian by
saying, "I think
it answered me." His reply: "Dude, show me!"
After seeing the column sunk into the wood, he then
said, "Dude, that
was exactly where it was meant to be! Now, no one's
going to want to
move it. It belongs right there!" So, thanks
to a donation from my
wife, the image of Brigid now sits at the right hand
of the Buddha, at
the main altar of the Brushwood Roundhouse. They even
asked me to
pose for a picture, saying that this moment was okay
to take one.
Meanwhile, at this point, Brainleak got up from his
drum and headed
out of the Roundhouse. Brian asked, "Hey, where
you goin?"
He replied, "I gotta pee!"
"So, this means you joined the union?"
"YEAH, I joined the union!"
And there were laughs and smiles all around.
--
The High Weirdness Project
http://www.modemac.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: X-Day XII, Part 2: Friday Night
From: "Rev. Back It On Up 13" <evielust@aol.com>
On Jul 10, 12:28 pm, "Rev. Ivan Stang" <st...@subgenius.com>
wrote:
> On Jul 10, 12:14 pm, "Rev. Back It On Up 13"
<eviel...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > > Thanks again. These reports of yours
are amazingly linear and
> > > therefore important to the detective
work of piecing together just
> > > exactly what "Bob" did to us
this time.
>
> > That's what amazes me about Modemac's report.
I have no recollection
> > at all of the order of things this year.
I think it went:
>
> > 1. rain
> > 2. campsite setup avoidance
> > 3. dinner
> > 4. sit around fire
> > 5. sit around trailer
> > 6. campsite setup in pitch black storm
> > 7. ...
> > 8. Tearful goodbyes
>
> I think we will have 7 mostly filled in by the
end of the month, if we
> all put our heads together -- but we must put our
heads together
> SLOWLY, in a non-Stooge-like way.
>
> Come to think of it, there was a lot of truly Stoogely
activity. The
> Oreo-Filling-Eating Contest... the Pinata of Wasps...
the SubGang
> Flinging-War... bits and pieces are slowly coming
back to me as I
> gradually scrape the evidence off the various parts
of my body.
Most of my experience was also colored by a brutal and
weird ache in
my leg that made the first two or three days a total
blur of pain and
painkillers.
I thought for sure some deity was fucking with me, giving
me this
weird vacation destroying misery. The same entity that
made sifu
switch to a job that refused his time off requests,
and made him hit a
deer with the truck costing all our vacation money to
repair, and made
storms appear over new york for an entire month prior
to x-day. It
seemed to make sense that SOMEBODY didn't want us there.
That deity can go and fuck itself.
I probably snubbed a whole bunch of people in those
first few days. I
wasn't myself. Oh well.
Next year will be tremendous!