We must have done something right at 5X-Day, because the Slack spilled over into Starwood, the giant festival of paganry that runs for a whole week, two weeks after X-Day, also at Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, NY.
Those who believe in Slack got Slack, anyway. Those who believe in black magickkkkkk and binding spells and such, got a pretty good dose of those bad vibes, from what I heard.
My sermon was placed at the prime spot on the schedule, 5 pm Saturday, was packed with audience, who ate it up, and went just fine from my point of view, and, finally, resulted in good $ales, including one new Member, Rev. Charlene Mann.
Einstein's Secret Orchestra (with Dr. K'taden Legume) performed late Friday night in a large inflatable dome called The Pufferdome, upon the walls of which I projected our new Dobbsfilm Shorties animation video from two different projectors. The dazzled, bedoped pagans were thus exposed to every subliminal I have ever inserted into my movies, plus every photograph Wei and I ever took of anything weird, plus all the art by Fernandinande LeMur and IMBJR from the year 1999, and the scariest of Codini's animation.
This Starwood featured the largest turn-out yet, 1700 people registered. Musical guests included Gaelic Storm (one of whom turned out to be a long time die-hard SubGenius), Jeff McBride aka Magnus the Magician (another old friend of the Church -- who bought a Blackout Full Metal Dobbshead, incidentally), and R. U. Sirius, best known as the editor of Mondo 2000.
X-Day Drill veterans would be flabbergasted to see Brushwood so PACKED. During these large pagan fests, the place looks like Hobitton or the Ewok Village or Peter Pan's Island, depending on where you're standing. There are four streets of merchants, and the entire area we call alt.slack.village is like a sardine can of tents. On Thursday night, Prof. Chas Smith hosted a party at Tranquillity Base/Bonobo A-Go-Go that was advertised as an "S&M" or "B&D" party, I forget which. It was more crowded and, from what I heard, considerably more sordid than the similar party during XDV. Dr. Legume tended bar and observed. One thing he observed was two big ol' pagans in bondage outfits going at it ON MY FOLDING LOUNGE-CHAIR, which I hosed off as soon as I got home. Drunken swingers kept weaselling into Chas's area on subsequent evenings, hoping for repeat action.
Wei and I again camped in the zone between Tranquillity Base and Rev. Ed Strange's yurt, in "Naked Bob's" side-yard, praise Naked Bob. We remembered to bring jars to pee in late at night, this time.
In personal conversations, I got nothing but good will toward the SubGenii from all the old-timey pagans and drummers. We must have made a better than usual impression last Drill, or else they have simply gotten used to the fact that a person can be "cool" by their standards even without being a long-haired pagan hippie type. Even while wearing pocket protectors. I heard the name "Dok Frop" invoked with awe numerous times by the Brushwood natives, who seem to revere him now in an almost cargo-cultish way; he and Sister Decadence may well be the ones MAINLY responsible for the pagans' newfound Slackwards orientation.
There was some kind of "psychic war" being waged between "witch tribes" that I kept hearing about. Several of the drummer regulars avoided the giant bonfire on Saturday night supposedly because they felt it had been "cursed" or that "a binding spell" would be put on everyone who attended it. A drenching thunderstorm, which started shortly after the bonfire was lit, fit perfectly into this system of Mage-Ickle Correspondences, and was assumed to have been sent deliberately by either good or bad forces, depending on whose side you were on. Some of the fundamentalist drummers were irked at "the wizards of A.C.E." for asking them to tone down their trance drumming during the morning workshops, and word spread that the dayglo A.C.E. wrist bands that identified people as paying festival-goers were themselves "binding spells" or some sort of commercial mayjycck. I am a fairly involved member of A.C.E. now, so if any such binding spells are indeed being used, I will strive to get copies of them and adapt them to SubGenius use.
I can assure anyone who worries about this that A.C.E. does not want you bound to them at ALL, besides the simple Paying of the Attendance Fee. Once they have your money, you do not need to feel bound to A.C.E. for ANYTHING FURTHER, I promise you.
There was a fantastic moment of high theatrics -- and possibly what we would call the most fall-down-laughing example of gross superstition ever seen at Starwood -- when the storm clouds above the raging bonfire threatened to turn into a tornado. Or at any rate, the clouds began to swirl together in a way that was even more menacing than the bolts of lightning and the scary thunder (both of which evinced great whoops from the easily impressed fire dancers). This one peg legged obese wheelchair ridden crone, one that I have had the misfortune to be acquainted with, took it upon herself and her vast psychic powers to STOP THE TORNADO. Hollering at the drummers to go faster and faster, and ululating like an Iranian woman (to quote Pope Meyer), she began by sheer force of PAINED EXPRESSION and HEARTFELT GESTICULATIONS to mentally DRAG THE COLLIDING CLOUDS APART. At least that's what she seemed to be trying to do. The most hilarious part was that some of the bystanders seemed to take it quite seriously. Who knows? Maybe her hollering and maygyicckkal Ditko-esque gestures did indeed save the campground from the tornado. I CANNOT PROVE OTHERWISE! She did however fail miserably in stopping the downpour, which continued all night, and I heard that after her bout of magical battle with the weather, she fell into a deep trance, looking dead to the world but no doubt continuing this titanic struggle on other Planes and Realms from which lowly sane persons like myself are forever cut off.
The next day, she was seen alone in the middle of the field in her wheelchair, carving at the sky with a pair of magic swords, and -- I cannot absolutely confirm this -- waving her wooden leg at the heavens.
One SubGenius who had witnessed the all-night drumming in the storm recounted to me that at one point, he and some others were asked to bring some tarps and frames from the merchants' area to cover the drummers and protect their drums from the downpour. In the process of helping drag these tall metal poles across the open field in a lightning storm, he suddenly realized that he was risking his life for SOMEBODY'S religion.
BUT, Wotan, the Goddess, NHGH, Connie, or maybe even "Bob" smiled on the pagans and even the most accursed went home with all parts intact.
I caught a bad chest cold and am dreading having to WORK today (Hour of Slack 848 was due out yesterday). I caught the cold long before the downpour. In fact I stayed in my tent during most of the all night flooded-bonfire dancing, sound asleep. I was pretty pooped from doing my sermon and then being part of the bonfire lighting ceremony.
Yes, once again, non-pagan Rev. Stang was once again honored to be one of the 8 who get to light the sacred bonfire. This time, one of the torches was named The Torch of Slack -- Slack's first time among the torches of Love, Freedom, Peace, etc. Uh... some of the participants take this stuff more seriously than others. Mainly it's show-biz -- the sponsors of Starwood, A.C.E., are a hard working group who want those who shelled out the $120 or whatever it costs to attend Starwood, to get their money's worth. The bonfire at Starwood is no Burning Man -- it lacks the hundreds of fire twirlers and about half a million bucks worth of pyrotechnics -- but it is still quite an impressive sight, especially once the cave people shed their coats and start their crazy nekkid dancing.
It is absolutely amazing to me how ADJUSTED one becomes to this sort of thing. I remember my first Starwood, in 1990, and it all seemed incredible and fantastic. Now it's just another of my regular cycle of free lance jobs. Ho hum, another flock of body painted nymphettes frolicking around a burning altar... ho, hum, more religious nuts chanting and gesticulating. Ho hum, more fireworks, light show, prog rock and LSD combinations that probably seem "WILD" and "CRAZY" to people with non-SubGenius, non-Scribe jobs.
As usual, I did not attend a single one of the 100-odd workshops taught by experts on psychedelics, folklore, ethnic music etc., but mostly wandered around chatting. Made some new friends, as usual, some of whom are gonna be at the DEVOtional on Aug. 10 in Cleveland and the Devival on Aug. 11 in Akron, and I'm looking forward to that.
But I am gonna have to come up with a new sermon. The List of 12 Most Important Things has now been seen by every single SubGenius in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, I fear.
I added some new material to the rant at the suggestion of a nurse friend at Starwood. She said, "Somebody needs to rant about patients who are too fat to wipe their own asses, and when they get into the hospital they expect ME to do it."
Well, this very concept shook me up. I immediately thought about several good friends of mine who MIGHT be that fat, some of whom would certainly be at the devival. The challenge, then -- how to touch on the untouchable subject of how some people's unmentionables are untouchable by themselves. Without totally alienating and offending my several morbidly obese friends. Because "Bob" has no trouble with GLUTTONY, it's not a sin in our religion, and we certainly have NO problem with ANYBODY being as fat as they WANT to be or simply ARE, "normal" being a statistical red herring used by the Con to sell crap. You can be as fat or skinny as you want, just don't expect "Bob" to wipe your ass for you, is the lesson, I think.
While sitting in the many plastic portable chemical Temples of Excremeditation that dot Brushwood, I created a composition that did indeed touch upon that untouchable subject, and I delivered it to the crowd, and everybody laughed at just the right places and in just the right way, so I felt good about that.
One REALLY fucking weird thing happened to me. A bird shat directly into my pipe bowl while I was holding it in my hand. It's that simple. I was sitting on the porch of Tranquillity Base, between Frappy-loads, just holding the pipe in my hand. By coincidence, Dr. Legume had put on the CD player a recording of Shel Silverstein reciting a poem about an epic contest between the fastest joint roller in the world and the fastest joint smoker in the world. While this oration played, I felt a SPLAT hit the end of the little wooden Pipe I was holding. Where it had once been empty, there was now some kind of Manna from the sky -- a pool of red liquid with tiny seeds in it, exactly like what one would spit out after chewing but not swallowing some wild raspberries.
My Pipe was Empty, yet it was Filled by the Birds.
But what PORTENDS this omen? What did the shitting bird MEAN by that? "You need to be smoking better shit?" "Here's what you're REALLY doing to yourself?" Ya got me. I would love to hear any suggestions as to what this might mean, if anything.
Original file name: 2002 Starwood Report.txt - converted on Thursday, 29 May 2003, 16:43
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