City Living

Old friends and new...... If you are attending Burning Man this year, feel free to comment or message me with your location, any events or things of interest, or places and times you are playing music.

I will be with my old new paltz, new york/california pals and some others right next to Pink Mammoth. (Pink Mammoth is a San Francisco-based, well-established yet unofficial party spot with a pink bar, serious dancefloor, daily packed happy hour, and house music. It is usually at 8:30 and G).

Get a teenytiny notebook, keep track of the happs and where people are at, and slip it in your fanny pack with your altoids....

Our crew will be next to/behind Pink Mammmoth, at approximately 8:40 and G or G/H. Unofficially, we are Camp in the Cut, or the Infinity Crew. Just keep your eyes peeled for weirdo pretty people in the shade, and listen for lots of laughing. And strong, male accents from New York. (Yeah....I know.... them's the breaks....)

Our more exotic amenities include but are not limited to:

homemade tv film set with a backdrop to film Charlie-Rose-esque interviews, hosted by Roscoe

strange large pick-up-sticks like structure, with fabric somehow involved

graffiti wall

cuddle pool

lots of homemade absynthe, tried and true



My personal endeavors this year are modest and reasonable. They include:

-Bartending Thursday around 4pm or so at the Burning Man Radio station, right next to the DMV. This is in conjunction with The Billion Bunny March.

-Putting up alot of my poetry. Debut of internet-unfriendly pieces including "Paper or Drop" and "Where the Good Green Grows" along with the usual R-rated and comedic classics. Poetry will be taped to the outside of portapotties. Especially at 8:30 and G.

- Tequila. I will be bringing alot of great blanco tequila, so if you need a pick-me-up, you know who to find. (Delicious juice optional)

- Postcards with a Metropolis-themed piece of my writing called "I am What I am". I will be giving them out, and I will have stamps, can mail them for you from Black Rock City post office, and then they will have a postmark from Black Rock City. Bring an address of a friend who can't make it this year.....Or send one to your grandma......

- Firehooping with my broken firehoop

Finally, we will also hopefully have a tiny camp on the opposite side of the playa, between 2 and 4. It will be called Bizarro World and contrary to my main place, it will be for serious, desperate partying measures only. This will be a party survival camp with little to no creative visual arts, save the flesh of hot, intoxicated bodies. Box wine and granola bars will reign as Queen and King here.

So, that's it as of now. I would love to see you! And please, message me or comment about where you will be or what happenings you are looking forward to being around for

My Evening Has Been Nice

my evening has been nice. this is for a few reasons. i drove to manhattan to pick up 2 burning man tickets for $250 each. i found this deal on craigslist. the drive went well; i like driving around nyc. it was very enjoyable. and now i have burning man tickets for myself and my best friend erin who has not been yet. she is my bestie- my honorary sister, and i am so excited.

then, driving home, i thought of white castle. a few days ago on the way to the beach, a friend and i stopped at the drive-thru and ordered 2 cheeseburgers for the taste. we paid, but he drove away without getting the food and we did not realize it until a few minutes later. we are dum-dums. shortly after thinking of white castle, i saw one. so i went. i parked; this white castle was nice, with 2 outside umbrella-clad tables, and no bulletproof glass. i could go there on a date. i got many things off the menu, including my first chicken rings. the chicken rings were good, but they seem like an exotic chicken from another planet, like jupiter or mars. i could tell i was not eating actual chicken from earth. but they did taste good. and i had a conversation with a fellow white castle customer because we both like whitecastle - he had not had it in 5 years but saw it on his way to church and just had to stop.

i picked up a tiny pulled pork sandwich for my best guy friend aka the brother i always wanted aka myk tummolo aka dos melo. it is his birthday tonight and i want to see him eat the tiny sandwich with his fat fingers, all in one bite.

this evening is nice because my other brother i never wanted, saylor, is back from south america.

plus, my roommate is back from san diego. she is a big sweetie. and my other roommate and i got to chat for a while and catch up about life.

the moon is beautiful tonight, as is the weather

and the icing? i let the neighborhood cat into our apartment and she/he has been hanging around for a while, and i feel like it's my cat for the time being.


that is just some of the ways my evening has been nice.

The After Effects of The Burn....

I was talking earlier to Tumas Luminous, a very close friend of mine from New York, whom I picked up in Reno and brought to his first Burning Man. He mentioned how he has been all fucked up since Burning Man- physically and mentally. He went through alot out there in the desert; he and his girlfriend broke up, and it really hit him hard.

I can tell you that I also had an emotional, mind-fuck out there as well. I can't pinpoint exactly what or why, but I am significantly different than I was before. I had gone years without crying, save once. Years. I mean, maybe a once-a-year teary-eyed minute or two,, but I don't even think that to be true. And as far as a good ball...nah. Well, it poured out of me throughout Burning Man this year. It was not even sad crying for the most part, which is strange. And often times other people I was with were doing the same. Strange. The air sometimes was so intense. Who knows. I can't tell you, cause I am not used to this. Anyhow, a few days after the Burn, I even felt the remnants of my emotional spooging. I cried again, but this time it was fueled by 10 hours of powerdrinking, absynthe from some weird jar, and pent up emotions regarding a suitor. A quintessential crying combo.

My mind is different now. I can't tell you how, but it is. I am more confused about life- my options, future, blahblah, etc. But I am more sure about what I do not want my life to be. And it's hard- seeing much of the world around me running their races. I step into the race occasionally to secure myself financially enough so I can step out of it again. And although the race I step into is closest to the fringe of races in general, it is nonetheless a race. I make money, I save money, I spend money, I make money, I save money, I spend money. I am a hamster in the wheel. I am not complaining- this is the garden of my great life! The wheel is a luxury wheel. I am by no means simply existing.

This time last year, I believed that yes, I am part of the matrix, but it is not necessarily a part of me. I didn't even know what a matrix was, perhaps because Keanu Reaves is my least favorite actor ever. What I really believed, or hoped, is that I am a part of traditional society, but traditional society is not a part of me. Now, I feel that there are just as many reasons that this is true as there are reasons for it being false. I especially realize the latter when I pay my cell phone bill every few months before they turn it off (even though I have the money to pay it on time). Or when I had a bunch of parking tickets in San Francisco that were later sent to my parent's house in New York. Or when I buy stuff, which I do often. I can't help it- I like stuff!

Now, I know in Guatemala, for instance, if I were to live there more permanently, I know I would still have a cell phone. But it would be pre-paid. And I would not have a car, but I would still pay to ride a bus. And I would still buy stuff- I told you- I like stuff. And yes, I know it is possible to do these things in the US (which I do- ridiing the chinatown bus to ny, riding 3 or 4 subways in an hour, taking the bus to New Paltz, turning a 3 hour car-ride into a 6 hour ordeal). I know it is possible here, but it is just easier to do away from here.

Cause no matter what I am doing here to distance myself from the rat race, I feel like there is just so much more here that reminds me I am in it. It is a conundrum or something. And I did not even plan writing about this rat race stuff here- I'm just noting the emotional after-effects from the desert.