tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62576062024-02-20T06:40:43.729-08:00Rude at BonnarooThe Rude Pundit at the Bonnaroo Music FestivalUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-58763419119927136292011-06-12T07:07:00.000-07:002011-06-12T07:35:26.964-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">It Came From Bonnaroo, Part 2: I Should Haven't Given It This Long a Title</span>:<br />The way Grip Narley would tell the story later was horrifying in what it said and more horrifying in the things that the electrician wouldn’t say. Harsh McCord had tried to reach Grip, who was working backstage at That Tent, one of the oh-so-cleverly named locations where music took place. But it was too late as the Tickening took over soon after The Walkmen took the stage. Oh, the vermin had been lured there by the thrashing rock of Band of Skulls, but when the peppy punk band began, as Grip would say later, “It was like the entire ground had exposed high voltage cables running through it. People started jerking and swatting and picking on themselves. When the lead singer leaned back on a high note, he was eaten like his body had been tossed on a current transformer. There was so much screaming. This one girl came towards me and she was just flattening out and the ticks were as big as blood balloons. That’s when I hauled ass, Harsh. That’s when I hauled ass.” Inside Harsh’s mobile insect lab, the entomologist hugged the sobbing Grip, kissing the bearded bear of a man who had been his partner and lover for the last five years.<br /><br />"Go home. Rest. I gotta take care of some shit."<br /><br />Harsh had been to see Ash Cappington, the main promoter of Bonnaroo. Cappington stayed in his underground bunker below the Earth-bearing hand at Centeroo, watching the action from a battery of monitors, sending out his private security force to take care of any problems. Generally, Cappington allowed the pot smokers and the ecstasy-takers freedom since they rarely caused problems and they added to the sales of the food and water vendors. But anything harder and Cappington was swift and merciless, confiscating the meth or the coke and making sure that the offender was arrested swiftly.<br /><br />Cappington had seen what had happened at That Tent, and as horrified as he was, he refused to believe it was anything other than a bad batch of acid or that someone had stupidly laced the joints with PCP. And Either way, when Harsh visited him, Cappington had already come to his own conclusions. “Ash, you gotta shut it down.”<br /><br />“Oh, Christ, Bugman. I knew you’d be trouble when we hired you,” said the middle-aged man in a guayabera shirt and blue shorts.<br /><br />“People are fleeing.”<br /><br />“No, they’re not. Look.” He gestured at the monitors. “I locked the gates. I sent out platoons of dope dealers to give away free shit. They’re gonna be too stoned to care. And they’ll spend. On burritos. On beer. On batik bikinis.”<br /><br />“You bastard.”<br /><br />“What’s the problem?”<br /><br />“It’s the ticks. I told you. I told you that--”<br /><br />Cappington waved off Harsh. “Just stop now. That's bullshit. I took your advice.”<br /><br />“Wait...what?”<br /><br />“Just don’t fuckin’ tell anyone else. They’ll get their recycled panties in a wad. I had the place sprayed down. I killed all the ticks. What happened out in Darth Maul wasn’t our fault.”<br /><br />Harsh thought for a second. Then he blurted out, “I have work to do.”<br /><br />Back in the lab, Harsh came upon a discovery. Dear god, the pesticides not only did not work, but they had a reverse effect when combined with the scent of hemp and patchouli. The cicadas were dead, gone, engorged by guinea hen and other birds. Their larvae were already polluting the trees. No, Harsh realized, it was the pot and body oil. And My Morning Jacket was preparing to play for an audience of 90,000 people. Ash Cappington had signed a death warrant.<br /><br />Harsh called home. “Take the day off, Grip.”<br /><br />“But I’ve been assigned the big stage. The What Stage.”<br /><br />“Goddamnit, stay at the house.”<br /><br />“Blow me, boyfriend. It’s a big gig. I gotta run.” And he hung up.<br /><br />Harsh tried to call back, but Grip had shut off his phone. “Stubborn asshole,” the scientist muttered. That was the problem with a couple of power tops. Neither of them would back down, neither of them would simply let the other one have his way. Their sex was like Greco-Greco wrestling, all nude and oiled, with rolling around and pinning being the order of the day. Whoever won got to fuck the other, but, of course, it was fulfilling lovemaking all the way around. Harsh stared at his phone, wondering if he'd ever feel that fulfillment again.<br /><br />(Note: Right now, I have a mixture of sunscreen, Off, ecstasy, THC, beer, caffeine, and Zyrtec coursing through my veins. So, no, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. To you.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-25825053067872002902011-06-10T08:38:00.000-07:002011-06-10T09:00:14.378-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">It Came From Bonnaroo, Part 1: The Tickening</span>:<br />Roscoe Dupree sat alone in the crowded tent cafe’. A morbidly obese American with a goatee he hoped would hide his double chin (it didn’t), he was sweatily and sullenly filling his backpack water sack with bottles of cold water. It had been a great idea, getting all his buddies from the University of Tennessee-Martin to go to the giant music festival in the middle of nowhere. But, of course, 18-year olds being 18-year olds, everyone else bailed on him, but he had already convinced his parents to let him come, so he decided he’d go by himself. And now, early on Thursday, Roscoe, red-faced and frustrated, realized that he needed to go back to his tent to get sunscreen in the vast outer compound that made up the Bonnaroo campground. He lumbered out, sucking on the rubber straw that came out of the water sack, hoping that he’d at least see a few bare titties on the walk back. He did. They were the last titties he would ever see. But he never got to touch any.<br /><br />When Roscoe Dupree’s body was found later by a volunteer in his camping pod, the girl shrieked at the sight. Eyes wide open, his tent knocked over by what must have been his flailing around, Roscoe lay on the ground, drained of blood, his legs coated with blood-filled hard-black sacs with legs. And teeth. The tickening had begun.<br /><br />Harsh McCord received a text message while he was watching Karen Elson play in one of the three large tents. The British model wife of the legendary Jack White was a pretty damn good folk-rock singer on her own, even if most of the crowd was hoping he’d join her. She had no rapport with the crowd, though. At one point, her patter was to ask, “So, are you camping?”<br /><br />“Jesus,” Harsh thought, “look to your left at all the fucking tents. Sorry if the rest of ‘em weren’t brought here by limo from their helicopters." He glanced at his phone. He was needed immediately out in the camps. The entomologist jumped into the golf cart on the side of the stage and headed out.<div><br /></div><div>Harsh had been hired by the powers that be at Bonnaroo to consult on the insect problems on the farm where the music festival took place. He had already helped them get past mosquitoes, but this had been a bad year in Middle Tennessee. Brood XIX, a flock of 13-year cicadas, had plagued the trees and eardrums of region. And then there were the ticks. Harsh had warned the people in charge not to move the campgrounds into the woods from the fields where they had been in years past. He knew that when the cicadas went on their fucking and egg-laying frenzy, it also drove the ticks to madness. They would attack, constantly. Harsh had wanted the organizers to poison the entire forest, to DEET-bomb the place, but he was told that it wasn't part of the greening of the festival, that it was bad for the environment. The Vanderbilt-educated scientist hoped that things wouldn't get bad. He was very, very wrong.<br /><div><br /></div><div>When he arrived, Harsh saw that some of the security volunteers had cordoned off the area. They were locals who loved the little dose of power and loved even more an opportunity to beat and harass the hippies who essentially gave the town of Manchester its only non-Wal-Mart economy. They tried to stop him, since he was bearded and wore a bandanna, but he grabbed one by the shirt collar and said, "Eat this, fucker," shoving his special badge in their faces. </div><div><br /></div><div>Standing over the tarp-covered body was an EMT. "I don't know why you needed me here," Harsh said. "Just another idiot who didn't drink enough water to go with his beer and ecstasy." Grimly, the EMT pulled back the tarp. When Harsh McCord saw the tick-encrusted legs, a horrible thought went through his head. "Dear god," he said, half to himself, half to the EMT, "I tried to warn them."</div></div><div><br /></div><div>In the distance, he could hear the bands playing, around him were tens of thousands of people barely wearing clothes, their blood flow just a symphony drawing in the feasting ticks. He needed to shut down this festival. Now. Because the ticks would know that they could engorge themselves to bursting, sucking their hosts practically hollow, and then they would breed. And music just attracted them in larger numbers. The louder the music, the better. Tonight's line-up of Band of Skulls and Sleigh Bells would be a smorgasbord of blood.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-67121238606551302010-06-13T08:03:00.000-07:002010-06-13T08:25:53.113-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Day of the Roo, Part 3: Things Start to Get Killy</span>:<br />The first time I saw Marc (with a "c") kill a zombie was, appropriately enough, during the Dead Weather's performance at Bonnaroo. Marc's a hugger, and his girth and height make him both lovable and deadly, like a Care Bear with John Wayne Gacy's face on his belly. As the band played its unholy mixture of punk, metal, and blues, Zeppelin on meth, as Alison Mosshart wailed out at the rain-spattered, stinky crowd, the zombies came through the fences. Festival goers tried to run, but the feeding had started. Marc started rushing towards a girl who might have been cute if she had had her entire face. And if she hadn't been biting the jugular vein of a dreadlock-topped teenaged boy wearing a hemp cloth skirt. I took out my pistol and was ready to chase after to protect him, but Mat touched my shoulder, giving me a stare, "No, let him go. Watch this. It's amazing."<br /><br />Marc had a big grin as he stomped through the mud. "Here, pretty zombie," he called out. Her bloody snarl turned towards Marc. She dropped the violently twitching hippie and started racing at him. "You feel bad? You wanna hug?" He opened his arms. I tensed, my pistol ready. The zombie ran into his arms, but, before it could bite, Marc, truly, deeply, meaningfully, if that's possible, hugged her. Hard. Really fucking hard. So hard that the zombie stopped flailing and went limp. In one final squeeze, Marc said, "It's okay, girlie," and the beast's head popped off like a champagne cork.<br /><br />I turned, stunned, to Mat, who shrugged. "Retard strength. What are ya gonna do?"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-61492868334765735812010-06-12T07:47:00.000-07:002010-06-12T08:24:25.372-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day of the Roo, Part 2: What Is the Roo?</span>:<br />Mat brought me to a door in the middle of the fountain in the horribly cutely-named Center Roo. All things are "Roo" here, it being one of the only sounds most of the zombies can intone. You can hear them in the distance, yawping, "Rooooo," as if calling the others to feed. We went down a staircase to a dripping room where Mat had fashioned a camp. "Those are good guns," Mat said. "You could get a round through three zombie skulls in one shot."<br /><br />"Why didn't Matt ever tell me he had a twin?" I asked.<br /><br />"He's ashamed of me. I decided to sell my soul to the Devil."<br /><br />"For eternal life?"<br /><br />"No. For a job with Dick Cheney."<br /><br />"Sweet Jesus, you poor bastard."<br /><br />"You have no idea. This," he said as he gestured at the earth above, "is not what you think."<br /><br />"It's not a giant compound where you trick people into coming so you can feed the zombies?"<br /><br />He paused. "Okay, it is that. But it's more. Why do you think Donald Rumsfeld resigned back in 2006? Because of the war in Iraq? The failure to capture bin Laden? Child's play. It's because Bonnaroo was the code name of a project started by the Pentagon to reanimate the dead."<br /><br />I interrupted, "To turn them into soldiers?"<br /><br />"Worse. To turn them into walking bombs. The problem was that it worked too well. It worked too well, Lee, don't you see? When did Bonnaroo start? In 2002. Post-9/11. Why the fuck would you put it in the middle of nowhere, to the left of Fuckmysister, Tennessee? So no one would know."<br /><br />"Know what? What did Donald Rumsfeld figure out? How is Dick Cheney involved?"<br /><br />We heard a pounding on the door above. I grabbed the rifle. "Wait," Mat said, "It's not what you think." More pounding. "There's something else I need to tell you." We ran up the stairs. "You're probably gonna need to prepare yourself here."<br /><br />"What? Why? What's going--" The door burst open and standing there was my best friend, Mark, the zombie lord himself. Except something wasn't exactly the same. He had a big, innocent grin on his face, and, in each hand, he held, by their hair, a zombie head.<br /><br />"I did good, Mat. I hugged two meanies and they broke."<br /><br />Outside again, in the pouring fountain water, I fell to my knees, yelling, "I left you for dead!"<br /><br />Mat stepped forward. "Lee, meet Mark's twin brother, Marc. With a 'c.' He's just like Mark, except he's not a zombie and--" Marc rushed forward to give me a bear hug - "he's a bit slow."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-55848867767866354192010-06-12T05:34:00.000-07:002010-06-12T05:36:47.305-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">One-Hand Caveat</span>:<br />Typing with a hook has proven difficult and slow. More later this afternoon.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-79102142227146409372010-06-10T16:09:00.000-07:002010-06-10T16:32:15.343-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day of the Roo, Day One: Matt and the Mud</span>:<br />"Who are you?" I screamed in the dark at the figure who looked exactly like my ripped-inside-out and eaten assistant, Matt. "You're not Matt. Matt died. Who the fuck are you?" The torrential rain pouring down around us, shaking furiously, I was holding the rifle with my right hand, balancing it on the hook that functioned for my left. "You tell me now before I shoot!" He took a step towards me.<br /><br />Why am I back here, at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, one more time, the site of so many of my failures, the place where I lost my best friend, Mark, to the zombies, where he became their mad king, where I've seen so many killed and killed so many more? Why would I return to the fields of Manchester, Tennessee, to walk among the damned during their annual feeding ritual? It was simple: revenge.<br /><br />I phoned Andrew, whose daughter, Laurel, had been turned into Mark's zombie bride last year. "I want to go to Bonnaroo," I said.<br /><br />"You're mad," he replied. "You're fucked in the head. You were lucky you just lost a hand last time."<br /><br />"I need to go. I want to kill them."<br /><br />"Who?"<br /><br />"All of them. But especially Mark and Laurel. Do you want to live on knowing your little girl is eating human flesh and fucking a dead man?"<br /><br />"It's just a phase," he said, his voice filled with lies and despair.<br /><br />"Bullshit. Send me in. I know how to walk among them. I have nothing else to lose."<br /><br />"You have another hand."<br /><br />But the conversation quickly turned to what I needed in the way of supplies, which came down to guns, big Beretta rifle, automatic Glock pistol, and ammo that would take down an armored elephant in one shot. Andrew arranged passage for me through one of the guardians of the zombie feasting grounds, where every year they tempt young human beings to offer themselves to the zombie hordes by providing a weekend of drugs, hemp clothing, and ungodly music. Obviously, this year, seeking to diversify the banquet, Jay-Z and Ozomatli would be playing their siren songs to lure the unwitting noodle dancers. The guards made sure that once the innocents entered, they did not leave until the zombies were satisfied. It kept them from running amok outside Bonnaroo.<br /><br />I arrived in a gushing rainstorm, the fields all turned to mud. I went to where the fence was cut for me, and the downpour masked my arrival as I headedto the middle of Planet Roo to set up a sniper's nest. On my way towards the horrible disembodied hand statue, I fell in the muck and lost half my ammo and one of the guns.<br /><br />Then I turned to see, oh, god, Matt, who now I yelled to stop before I shot him dead. Instead, I saw one of the zombies charging at him and fired, blowing the head off the monster. It was all the proof I needed. I fell to my knees, sobbing, "I thought you were dead."<br /><br />The man knelt next to me. "No, I'm not Matt. I'm Matt's twin brother, Mat. With one 't'. Andrew sent me to help." He reached out and shook my hook.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-6764987954162277342009-06-20T04:00:00.000-07:002009-06-20T05:10:53.596-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dawn of the Roo, Day 4: The Hand Job</span>:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx7-GMvL5QXvPgu5-p2sBLSNqnNGIh7OIgbqj60hWWmk0o7mRl2W5OcE3dX2jNJ64RNv7j8VleOCJvadwlZB46YYP9PXOtA5Qih7_7wixJDf6b9skUVLYwNr9D6Qv3ir7JqVj6Gg/s1600-h/3-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx7-GMvL5QXvPgu5-p2sBLSNqnNGIh7OIgbqj60hWWmk0o7mRl2W5OcE3dX2jNJ64RNv7j8VleOCJvadwlZB46YYP9PXOtA5Qih7_7wixJDf6b9skUVLYwNr9D6Qv3ir7JqVj6Gg/s400/3-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349368974705332338" border="0" /></a><br />The reason for the delay for the conclusion of my tale is simple: I am typing this with one hand. No, it's not that my left hand is occupied right now. Well, it might be. But I have no way of knowing since it is not with me. I'll get to that in a moment.<br /><br />When he performed last night, Bruce Springsteen asked, "Is anyone alive out there?" We few who had not yet been turned into zombies called back, but it was to no avail, despite his repetition of his question. So, using the information Matt had acquired by having anal sex with a comely female zombie who I decapitated with a shovel, we coated ourselves in her viscous goo in order to throw off the zombie scent, and headed into the campgrounds surrounding the central area, also known as, "The Pods."<br /><br />It was night as we traversed the grounds of Planet Roo and passed through the giant fence that separates the zombie home turf from the rest of the festival. As the zombette informed us, going while Phish was still playing was our best bet to travel with the fewest zombies around. We heard the repetition of a single guitar riff over and over in the distance and knew we were safe.<br /><br />The Pods were like watching Fellini's <span style="font-style: italic;">Amarcord</span> on acid. In one, long tracking shot we walked past zombies feasting on a tofu-stuffed child, downing ecstasy tabs like candy, searching mindlessly for limbs they had lost the previous night at MGMT's show. We witnessed every depravity we could imagine and some we could not. Watching zombies have sex with each other is not unlike watching moths rip each other's wings off, such was the violence and dismemberment on display as two male zombies attempted to 69, but instead ended up just laying there with disembodied balls on their faces. We saw them burning the legless zombies, beating each other with bones. It was a Carnival of Eww, a Circus of Oh-Fuck-Me.<br /><br />Finally, in a Pod named "Han Solo," which, in a nearly ironic twist, is one letter short of how I now find myself, we saw the dumpster with "Arise" scrawled across it, indicating we had found the mythical lair of the zombie king. At that moment, we were surrounded by the undead, all painted with what smelled like barbecue sauce. They seized Matt and me and dragged us towards a chalet-sized tent where, sitting in a chair made of skulls and femurs, was my dear old friend Mark, who I thought I had left to the wolverines two years ago.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV69_xdldUdHacDGRP9SE8WVdS7vgBbNxi0xE3P78jOeiD4XGePUuMwOhf9VUDb-VACc_xTCVru3Ix557PhUF3cVvi5KxwVXcSFbYgz9C9fBrKz6dchaNWQBqe9oqQH9WLwk1WZA/s1600-h/4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV69_xdldUdHacDGRP9SE8WVdS7vgBbNxi0xE3P78jOeiD4XGePUuMwOhf9VUDb-VACc_xTCVru3Ix557PhUF3cVvi5KxwVXcSFbYgz9C9fBrKz6dchaNWQBqe9oqQH9WLwk1WZA/s400/4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349372595820453906" border="0" /></a><br />He was undead. He was a monster. He was the lord of the beasts, the master of zombie ceremonies. I only wish he had been wearing pants.<br /><br />Dangling a bit lower and to the left, his head shaved, his legs missing chunks from where, I presumed, the wolverines had bitten him, wearing a Raconteurs t-shirt, he smiled. I nodded and said, "The barbecue sauce is a nice touch."<br /><br />"Bullseye, motherfucker, Bullseye," he gurgled, as if his voice had been devoured. "I appreciate the smoky sweetness. Want some?" His laugh was something that echoes in my head.<br /><br />"Where is Laurel?" I demanded, mustering every bit of strength I could to keep from retching.<br /><br />"Oh, you mean my bride? Come out, darling," he said, gesturing to a flap in the tent, a place so huge it would do a Bedouin proud. There she was, barefoot, dressed in a spaghetti strap batik dress, beautiful, glowing, even, but glowing a dull green, a single bite taken out of her ass, a sure sign that Mark had transformed her. I texted Andrew, telling Mark to hold on a second as I wrote, "Laurel a zombie, send in the horses, get us the fuck out of here."<br /><br />"You left me behind, dude," Mark said. "As sharp as the wolverine's teeth were, they were nothing compared to the bite of the zombies."<br /><br />"You seem to have done pretty well for yourself, considering, you know, you're dead and, fuck, are those maggots?"<br /><br />Laurel seemed transfixed by Matt's eyes. Surely, the smell of zombie made her think they could madly ball. And as she got closer to him, he put up his hands. Unfortunately, the awful zombie guts perfume had faded and his human scent awakened Laurel's monster hunger. She jammed her hand down Matt's throat, reaching all the way to his sphincter as Matt thrashed and shouted muffled cries of pain, but was essentially a shish-ka-bob on the stick of Laurel's arm. The she-monster grabbed hold deep inside Matt and pulled. And then, in a moment that never leaves my brain now, Laurel yanked Matt inside out, exposing his organs to the air, leaving him a twitching, pulsating mass. Laurel and the other attendant zombies dove in to feast. Mark laughed as they handed him the heart and said, "Ooooh, that's gotta hurt." He took a bite, adding, "Too soon?"<br /><br />I dropped to my knees. "Am I next?"<br /><br />Mark made me wait until he finished Matt's heart to answer. "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. You need to leave me tribute. I'd look bad to all these stinky fuckers if I just let you go. But I still love ya, dude. Even if you didn't jump in to fight the wolverines with me." I tried to protest, but he continued, "Yeah, I'd've probably rode on, too." He listened to the air. "Phish is almost over. Then my minions will return. What'll it be?"<br /><br />I swallowed and asked, "Tribute?"<br /><br />"Yeah, yeah, tribute. I gotta eat part of you. But we'll cut it off first and shit, so you don't become a zombie. You can then, I don't know, go out and fuckin' warn people that I'm planning a revolution, to transform all of the earth in Roo World, man, into peace and cooperation and love and flesh-eating, a beautiful thing. Can you imagine what that'll be like?"<br /><br />He was lost, mad, cackling at the idea. I was sort of stuck on the first thing he said. "Cut off a part? Of me?"<br /><br />"Yep. And, sorry, it can't be something small, like a toe or your cock. Nah, just joking. I don't wanna eat your cock, fag." I didn't laugh. He shook his head. "Let's make it your left hand. That way you can still jack off. Better hurry. I hear the sound of a jam band getting tired." A painted, machete-wielding zombie headed towards me.<br /><br />The next thing I remember is waking up at dawn under a pile of straw and seeing that my left hand was gone, the wound pus-covered from a quickie cauterization. I screamed into my arm to muffle the cry and then I stumbled out of the tent to find Bonnaroo abandoned. But a lone horse rider sauntered up to me and asked if I was me.<br /><br />I nodded. "Andrew sent me. He said I was supposed to kill you if you were unharmed. But you are fucked up." I vomited. She reached down and pulled me onto the steed to ride away, ride away, to figure out a way to warn everyone without seeming like a Cassandra or Kevin McCarthy in <span style="font-style: italic;">Invasion of the Body Snatchers</span>.<br /><br />But I conclude this with a tribute to Matt, whose death I cannot help feel I am somewhat responsible for.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLq-SVaCtCMuDCBVKhNgZ2DBRxrmbezLpr0JwemZ-_ZFC1WCFazYeBrsu9OHeARSOCCTYR3kaWE9uBKls2SOwX40-HT_1eW076I1Ts84D814tZTfpgp-h0YNH2Khe_LqZ11pSZcQ/s1600-h/2-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLq-SVaCtCMuDCBVKhNgZ2DBRxrmbezLpr0JwemZ-_ZFC1WCFazYeBrsu9OHeARSOCCTYR3kaWE9uBKls2SOwX40-HT_1eW076I1Ts84D814tZTfpgp-h0YNH2Khe_LqZ11pSZcQ/s400/2-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349376666874437506" border="0" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-3821040085807396942009-06-14T11:55:00.000-07:002009-06-14T08:57:54.560-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dawn of the Roo, Day 3: Observations on Interacting with Zombies</span>:<br />Even though I have had previous experience with the zombies of Bonnaroo, I have learned a bit more through my three days of contact with them.<br /><br />1. If you kill a zombie, reach through its paper-thin skin, grab a handful of guts, and rub yourself all over with its decaying innards, other zombies will think you are one of them by your scent. Thus it is easier to traverse the fields of the ghouls.<br /><br />2. Sex with a zombie is a difficult thing. It's not the potential for fucking right through whatever orifice you're plunged into. You need to fuck a zombie from behind.<br /><br />I learned this and more because I had decided that my assistant, Matt, needed to get more information in order for us to move through the crowds of the undead. So, after Matt had used his axe to hack the head of one noodle dancing Phish fan who jerkily waved his arms as he gnashed at us, I grabbed his stomach and intestines and gave us the perfume of the monsters. Then, after a brief discussion - Matt would call it an argument, but he's young - we "agreed" that fucking a zombie was the best way to find out about the zombie leader we'd heard about in the pods of campers around the Bonnaroo perimeter. He would do the sex part, and I would watch. Oh, and listen.<br /><br />Despite the fact that he's gay, Matt suggested that he fuck a female zombie (or "zombette," as he called them) because she'd be more likely to know where a teenager like Laurel might be, too. I said he wouldn't be bisexual because fucking a thing without a soul is not like fucking a person. He was relieved. After a brief discussion about why any offers of fellatio ought to be obviously ignored, Matt, who, truth be told, is a good-looking guy, which is why he gets so much cock, we decided the way to avoid getting bitten should the odor disguise fail is to enter the zombie from behind. And that he should use a segment of intestine for a condom.<br /><br />A couple of other observations:<br />a. Music is the only thing that transfixes the zombies and stops them from eating the flesh of we captives. Nine Inch Nails throws them into such a fervor, with the flashing lights and grinding guitars, that they end up ripping their own body parts off to beat each other senseless. The Beastie Boys turn the males into raving jerk-offs. Public Enemy confuses them. Bruce Springsteen came close to getting them to give up their zombie ways, but he wouldn't do another encore and was forced to escape in a hot-air balloon.<br /><br />b. If you watch as your assistant fucks a zombie female just to get information that you need in order to find the zombie leader who might be the friend you abandoned two years prior to ravenous wolverines, you probably shouldn't give in to the temptation to jack off. It generally upsets the assistant, especially when you kill the zombie just as he's coming. You have to agree to pay for the therapy.<br /><br />Tomorrow: we make it to the zombie leader's camp. On entering, we see this horrible image that chills us for the potential revolution to come:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZlogtGoiDCwUbFd4YGFa9FFwdJo0WNfYGM1K8uooFlRBgh9Ne4Gwsrz-p_ukaXfhMeA-mszsYJj65lvXDO1tdb3xadeTGubzVN0owPBY85N2xHVjs1LZzpCkUjHpyBLcabuOJqA/s1600-h/4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZlogtGoiDCwUbFd4YGFa9FFwdJo0WNfYGM1K8uooFlRBgh9Ne4Gwsrz-p_ukaXfhMeA-mszsYJj65lvXDO1tdb3xadeTGubzVN0owPBY85N2xHVjs1LZzpCkUjHpyBLcabuOJqA/s400/4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5347212085410298482" border="0" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-87132981878734031302009-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:002009-06-14T00:08:12.558-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dawn of the Roo, Day 3</span>:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH38ELYHE_WaSlDtc6e0-sXTEgMNYkglZI5s0u3lLLKUrlE_dLqjhMYBybk2qZeAXFv7qwatxq6EfcGywBVj64lnw0mkACNexAppaoVISv6DyKY690a9oWtuTr-LkOn7Bq-b-JKw/s1600-h/2-2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH38ELYHE_WaSlDtc6e0-sXTEgMNYkglZI5s0u3lLLKUrlE_dLqjhMYBybk2qZeAXFv7qwatxq6EfcGywBVj64lnw0mkACNexAppaoVISv6DyKY690a9oWtuTr-LkOn7Bq-b-JKw/s400/2-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5347075534736111794" border="0" /></a><br />Pictured: zombie bait - young, fresh, passed-out, lamp-lit.<br /><br />More tomorrow morning, but Andrew called. He received a panicky text from Laurel: "Took sooooo much e thirsty but boy named Drew wl help." Andrew has reminded of how he saved my life back in 1999 during the third Woodstock, how he used Flea as a battering ram to get me through the marauding hordes after I had been injured by a flying water bottle. Damn him. Into the zombies' camps.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-48349188307484226852009-06-12T09:19:00.000-07:002009-06-12T09:36:02.709-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dawn of the Roo, Day 2</span>:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbLEkhU-fNtowl93k-aJXgJXppCwTPv4PCxO4a2U3qMEye-Q9jNyApEHOl3Mg5DsmgCZQvDexKkN8GcuXSXgPrjbU0Hl5lzavzYb-gMDIutd5WU-oFQTsS5SBUZLcC-axYVu99g/s1600-h/3-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbLEkhU-fNtowl93k-aJXgJXppCwTPv4PCxO4a2U3qMEye-Q9jNyApEHOl3Mg5DsmgCZQvDexKkN8GcuXSXgPrjbU0Hl5lzavzYb-gMDIutd5WU-oFQTsS5SBUZLcC-axYVu99g/s400/3-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346476790211339218" border="0" /></a><br />This is a real sign hanging in the middle of what is called "Planet Roo." While it's obvious to many of us, who have seen the zombies walking people under bleachers and behind tents and coming out alone with sticky fingers, licking their lips, it is perhaps something that is needed for people who think they are hear to listen to music. Like Andrew's daughter, Laurel, who I have not been able to find yet. She's tweeting, though, things like, "Delta Sprit played 2 late 2 c, CU 2morrow, Bste Boyz".<br /><br />Matt has made an incredible discovery now that the gushing rain and wind has halted: a series of holes dug by the carnivorous giant moles that occasionally drag down a poor, stoned douchebag who just wanted to bounce to Snoop Dogg, into the earth, only leaving his backwards baseball cap behind. If timed right, Matt is able to crawl through them in order to quickly get supplies. He tells me he's heard a rumor: that there is a zombie in a tent somewhere out in the farthest campground who is trying to get the other zombies to humanize. Matt believes it might be Mark. I think this is madness.<br /><br />Later today: Observations on the inability of zombies to lurch through mud puddles.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVQoQHb_0yQr0e1BCmPTMQ6Qd-s9BIhpf3xQiHKxWtQnyeyH836pF4tic2NqZeHbfRUWvB5SwwZZCINkA785SQfhwkeFm1bkLKrs0f77BfFxqzvpO9_kRfGr2EAuxCepGIQAp77w/s1600-h/2-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVQoQHb_0yQr0e1BCmPTMQ6Qd-s9BIhpf3xQiHKxWtQnyeyH836pF4tic2NqZeHbfRUWvB5SwwZZCINkA785SQfhwkeFm1bkLKrs0f77BfFxqzvpO9_kRfGr2EAuxCepGIQAp77w/s400/2-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346477024055748242" border="0" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-60952930984918039162009-06-10T18:54:00.000-07:002009-06-10T18:55:40.080-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dawn of the Roo, Part 1</span>:<br />Imagine, if you will, the older Union soldier returning to the battleground of Gettysburg. Or the Vietnam vet returning to the rice paddies near the village of My Lai. Imagine the memory of those soldiers, the blood and gore they know poison the earth, how the stench of burnt flesh is stronger upon recollection than in actuality, how the screams of terror, of pain, the begging for life echo still in the air.<br /><br />Such is the visceral impact on me of returning to Manchester, Tennessee, to the Bonnaroo Music Festival. I am writhing on the floor of my oversized Coleman tent as images of the horror of Bonnaroo 2007 come back to haunt me. I have already had a fever of dream of my companion, Mark, who was dragged away by a pack of starved wolverines just as we were escaping. Matt, who agreed to assist me this year, awoke me, telling me that I was swatting at phantoms. Matt is a wayward soul who has resigned himself to his potential death here. But he is a man who knows how to swing an axe.<br /><br />It was two days ago that I received the call. "Last year we nearly lost the city to the zombies," said Andrew, the local funeral director who is an old college friend, "and it's hit my business hard. Can you come back?" It's not that I'm a hero. Oh, no, far, far from it, but he says his 18 year-old daughter has disappeared with some of the zombies' helpers. Her last text message said, "Dad going to roo w ppl i met see u sun lol." Andrew called me because two years ago I survived. I got out, alive, but Mark, oh, Christ, Mark was not as lucky. Andrew wants me to rescue Laurel. And because he saved my life once, I told him I'd do it.<br /><br />It's a hot night. Matt sits outside the tent, slowly, deliberately sharpening a long axe. He wants to make sure the zombies don't get close enough before he embeds the blade in their skulls. He wants me to come outside to talk to the other terrified prisoners here, to tell them how to make it out. I refused. Fuck them. They're bait. We got in by hitchhiking along Highway 41 and were picked up by a van that brought us all the way inside the fence, telling us not to worry, that Phish was going to be here, playing two shows, two fuckin' shows, man. It was a waking nightmare.<br /><br />But we are here now. We are at Bonnaroo. I can hear them in the distance, hollering, calling out, feeding. Tomorrow we will be set loose into Planet Roo to try to survive. It will be time to kill. It will be time to enjoy the killing because if it is a burden, we won't make it home and Laurel is doomed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-19503795014507878822009-06-04T19:34:00.000-07:002009-06-04T19:37:40.845-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stay Tuned</span>:<br />The dead have risen again, and thus the Rude Pundit must return to Tennessee, to the Bonnaroo Music Festival, for a new adventure. Starting Thursday, June 11, 2009...<br /><br />In a 3 a.m. rave tent filled with stoned hippie zombies, no one can hear you scream.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-5680727535649803722007-06-19T18:41:00.000-07:002007-06-19T19:19:58.671-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day Four: Escape, Survival, Showers</span>:<br />The music lasted until sunrise, an unholy rave where the zombies thrashed about to welcome the new day, the Sunday, and the horrors of the final hours of their festival of the damned. We knew we had to make our escape, for soon, we would be all that was left for the zombies to eat. And surely, they would have the munchies.<br /><br />The most creative of the beasts kept drugged out Bonnaroo-goers tied down under the bleachers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghp7Skqyefdv-bgnWl3ASBgOTKA1sWJUIkc-55xila-k0SgEBQcgssNX-GjkEnb0OumfOGUvSlqD-8fdL61bu15A3Hba0k-tfBIBonKsee03OIFGVJAttzHIdDmadobAZCHCEU4w/s1600-h/061607_1615.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghp7Skqyefdv-bgnWl3ASBgOTKA1sWJUIkc-55xila-k0SgEBQcgssNX-GjkEnb0OumfOGUvSlqD-8fdL61bu15A3Hba0k-tfBIBonKsee03OIFGVJAttzHIdDmadobAZCHCEU4w/s400/061607_1615.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077957005813232610" border="0" /></a><br />They were being fattened with a steady diet of soy cheese and deep-fried Twinkies, tossed ecstasy and acid to ensure their pliability, kept out of the sun for the zombies preferred their flesh uncooked, even by the sun.<br /><br />So we crossed into the tent city, the place where the dead thrived, a stinking pisspot that used to be a farm, where tens of thousands of the zombies moaned and attempted to re-create the world outside Bonnaroo, a grotesque version of normal society.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4lxxgGLdOyeJ_lgMAqSIEC2qZPYn52mCs7FDN97UBoACV84eZnU3vWw7BEpix2aWnJYjM8xHCveoV-M3BEt1WagLlKSBbm3jXCoTfBCP1x1sxsfJT26cBMTHSOHDkFAFc5NJi8A/s1600-h/061607_1724.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4lxxgGLdOyeJ_lgMAqSIEC2qZPYn52mCs7FDN97UBoACV84eZnU3vWw7BEpix2aWnJYjM8xHCveoV-M3BEt1WagLlKSBbm3jXCoTfBCP1x1sxsfJT26cBMTHSOHDkFAFc5NJi8A/s400/061607_1724.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077958186929239026" border="0" /></a><br /><br />We set out through the camps, searching, as we were told, for Cowboy Jane, the one true zombie killer. I cannot tell you all the things we saw, for such kaleidoscopic madness and debauchery must truly be experienced. I'll just say this: when particularly rotting zombies offer you their cocks or cunts, they are being literal. And I'll add that mushrooms seem to sprout from the prone, slowly, awfully decaying zombies, the ones that couldn't move anymore. Other zombies cultivated these mushrooms and they were prized like currency among the savages.<br /><br />Finally, we saw the hat, the mauve cowboy hat that told us that we were in the presence of Cowboy Jane. She lived in an RV among the zombies, the better to know their ways. And her ham-hock fists, ramrod arms, and striped umbrella told me that she was our champion. When we first saw her, three dwarf women went under her pleated black leather skirt, all desperately fisting and licking her as she smacked their heads and ordered them to fuck her harder. Cowboy Jane's massive haunches heaved up and down on the dwarfs' faces as she screamed, "Fuck me, little bitches," twisting her tits under her shirt until finally, giving up as so many before must have, three sweaty, moist female dwarfs emerged and collapsed. Jane winked at us and said, "Looks like I done wore these out. Gotta get me some new ones."<br /><br />She hiked up her thong and told us to follow her, which was easy between the hat, the umbrella, and her fuzzy purple boots. "Zombies ain't gonna kill themselves," she said, "no matter how sad they are." She led us through the camp, back to the main concert area, where the zombies had gathered in massive, heaving numbers. We stood behind her as she took in the scene.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHk2yapskeRtcnXU8RdUsyBAzM-o1D1CKQtpUBl6w51fybYXfpGtlIGk5m7M7xg7_KyQqo0bEwOkHLuhazzSwYpPKGy-Zv6rOFSf5vSw0lF9JEsCPnQpM9goKjVIucXRHaC55lew/s1600-h/061607_1709.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHk2yapskeRtcnXU8RdUsyBAzM-o1D1CKQtpUBl6w51fybYXfpGtlIGk5m7M7xg7_KyQqo0bEwOkHLuhazzSwYpPKGy-Zv6rOFSf5vSw0lF9JEsCPnQpM9goKjVIucXRHaC55lew/s400/061607_1709.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077961635787977730" border="0" /></a><br />The zombies began to swell towards us, and Cowboy Jane said, "Stay next to me," and she began her killing rage, punching zombies in the head so hard that their softened skulls just caved in, stabbing them through their eyes with her umbrella. There was grace about her, as if zombie massacring were an art and she was its Van Gogh. Hacking and ripping, she led us to the gate as the zombies lurched towards us until, in a bizarre twist of their murderous ways, they began to get concerned for their own safety and retreated to the comfort of Bob Weir's concert.<br /><br />Cowboy Jane tipped her hat to us. We implored her to come with us, to escape the zombies. "Nope," she said, "I got my place in this world," and with that she strolled into the heat and dust of a nearly empty field.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxlCbzUjrI1eLNrRSy22xwEUe9C8eeGUJ3nk_X0OET2BPCsGViM4bqY6bwQrEsugPPYY75SRKzxbdv9VhXRKDFsnCmxO1TupEL2R8rcunqoN7Mc4BG4jKMEb1wjJWqq9btn_SI_w/s1600-h/061607_1718.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxlCbzUjrI1eLNrRSy22xwEUe9C8eeGUJ3nk_X0OET2BPCsGViM4bqY6bwQrEsugPPYY75SRKzxbdv9VhXRKDFsnCmxO1TupEL2R8rcunqoN7Mc4BG4jKMEb1wjJWqq9btn_SI_w/s400/061607_1718.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077963005882545170" border="0" /></a><br />We got in our van to get away, stopping briefly when Mark had to take a piss. He got eaten by wolverines. He had been warned.<br /><br />And as I left Bonnaroo, zombie paradise, behind, I thought about the monsters, pitiable cannibals, and I wondered how easy it would be to become a zombie, about how seductive their rituals are, about the nights and the lights and the fires and the music, the never-ending music the zombies live by. How tempting, to go zombie.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3905KVimXrp_Vk4HgBCL2-HGvRBVP06ULsXxFy_QBS9zmh7l8GGopxybP1cpVM4iLoPJX6jkJld9JaVyUUHsZhQBQOCpokjnWszDScGQtTNq_iTdwZC9Qs0DLh54yDsEsc_ALA/s1600-h/061607_2100.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3905KVimXrp_Vk4HgBCL2-HGvRBVP06ULsXxFy_QBS9zmh7l8GGopxybP1cpVM4iLoPJX6jkJld9JaVyUUHsZhQBQOCpokjnWszDScGQtTNq_iTdwZC9Qs0DLh54yDsEsc_ALA/s400/061607_2100.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077963757501821986" border="0" /></a><br />And then I remembered that ahead of me was a hotel room with a young couple from Kracow awaiting me with chilled vodka and a hot shower, and I headed on down the highway. Bonnaroo had not defeated me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-41026631829442689102007-06-18T19:10:00.000-07:002007-06-18T19:37:20.826-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day Three, Night at the Weeping Mushroom</span>:<br />Before I detail the adventure of my escape from the deepest circles of Bonnaroo, I need to mention some more of the zombies' behavior I was able to observe. <br /><br />Little could satiate the various appetites of the zombies. When they were denied the sweet meat of human beings, they would soothe themselves with narcotics from the earth, layering marijuana, opium, and dried mushrooms in a pipe and smoking it, a parfait of hallucination and desensitization. I believe it stopped the gnawing pain of their own imminent rot. <br /><br />The zombies' demand for music, music, constantly, was bizarre, to say the least. Of course, the undead have their own moaning melodies, their own bands, operating on some scrap of memory of musicality and dexterity in playing instruments and performing songs that are not unlike the sounds that a herd of buffalo would make while being forced by Indians to plunge off a cliff, the first industrial-level death march.<br /><br />Yet this was not enough for the hordes of the damned. They forced aged <a href="http://www.viewimages.com/Search.aspx?mid=74688167&epmid=3&partner=Google">musicians</a>, ones not quite dead, to play for them, making them perform until they <a href="http://www.nme.com/news/nme/29043">collapsed</a>.<br /><br />The air was dry at Bonnaroo. The dust in the air coated everything, making the zombies seem paler than usual, filling our lungs, allowing us to move more surreptitiously among them. They were not yet ready to dine on us. Occasionally they would gather at a giant mushroom in the center of the site, and the mushroom would spray water on the grateful predators, washing some of the dust away.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWb5HM6G75bG3fRnmBAuqjonwxaJn5yzi7IFhwZyvn17nDkuo9gZD0MgyyoWym-ePyzhrugl64jyUjHRQISAzwQTSspZ4xvk1QUCrjMtOGxok8FmQtVTiKGevA6eG-cUCcEUDIw/s1600-h/061407_2122.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWb5HM6G75bG3fRnmBAuqjonwxaJn5yzi7IFhwZyvn17nDkuo9gZD0MgyyoWym-ePyzhrugl64jyUjHRQISAzwQTSspZ4xvk1QUCrjMtOGxok8FmQtVTiKGevA6eG-cUCcEUDIw/s400/061407_2122.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077596258625139650" border="0" /></a><br />The monsters would also drag their victims to the mushroom, rinsing the dirt off the humans before devouring them in an orgy of limb-tearing and organ-sucking.<br /><br />They created statues of their favorite body parts. Here's a giant pair of testicles in a field of zombies. It has a certain Duchamp-like charm:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7-o63iAWErYqAWX0Z9_awG1_72hieyWrWJp1tnQN1qLpV-bD-iSwAy5JiGcZ5HLhA4iOwD50OCMlUocqMy28i0nEJHQY3PyEwgHuozIlluqEbTFj4uyO1MyWaHm_i6wGrSYPR7w/s1600-h/061407_1950a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7-o63iAWErYqAWX0Z9_awG1_72hieyWrWJp1tnQN1qLpV-bD-iSwAy5JiGcZ5HLhA4iOwD50OCMlUocqMy28i0nEJHQY3PyEwgHuozIlluqEbTFj4uyO1MyWaHm_i6wGrSYPR7w/s400/061407_1950a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077596907165201362" border="0" /></a><br />Finally, we were told how to escape. We would have to wait until morning and go into the tent city beyond the green wall. A gasping man with his feet missing, with his last human breaths, told us, "Find Cowboy Jane. She can lead you to safety. Now please kill me." After arguing over which one of us would do it, I crushed his skull with a garbage bag of broken Birkenstocks.<br /><br />Tomorrow: into the hinterlands and Cowboy Jane leads us out.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-64562420963597321922007-06-18T09:28:00.001-07:002007-06-18T09:29:31.048-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Survival</span>:<br />I survived the Bonnaroo zombie nightmare. My friend did not. More later after I stop the bleeding.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-67443408086303023182007-06-16T07:44:00.000-07:002007-06-16T08:10:26.115-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day Three: A Few Observations of Zombie Culture</span>:<br />Their clothes: The zombie hordes favor loose fitting clothes, when they wear clothes at all. It must be because tight garments would rub off their gangrenous flesh. All colors are encouraged, but only in muted tones with floral designs, more than likely the better to highlight their body paint and henna tatoos.<br /><br />Their rituals: At night, the zombies worship around the ovens that burn their own dead, the ones that have fallen to pieces, since they are inedible. Why not make it into a kind of sacrament, a tribute to their hateful gods?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXhGsM6jDq5ChZKnk41PyBh4lnX63m_k9gpBARnOtfVH6WrNKfbjWR6XRw-XQWlhdGe0hXxxYcTEE3tg1NXaqQoQlxnY2c3kp6GwPySzVnr3E1lNjr7YpU7xyihdXWByew25B0VQ/s1600-h/061607_0024.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXhGsM6jDq5ChZKnk41PyBh4lnX63m_k9gpBARnOtfVH6WrNKfbjWR6XRw-XQWlhdGe0hXxxYcTEE3tg1NXaqQoQlxnY2c3kp6GwPySzVnr3E1lNjr7YpU7xyihdXWByew25B0VQ/s400/061607_0024.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076676865040855970" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Sex With a Zombie: One young female zombie, attractive and painted with flowers and hearts, approached me to talk about what I wanted to see that night. Cautiously, I told her, wondering what cauldron of doom she wanted to drag me to. But her eyes were hypnotizing, her skin not yet discolored, her underarms shaved. She talked about dancing, about how she, herself, wanted to do interpretive dance, which she did for me, hiking up her dress to reveal her long legs and dancing lithe shadows against a tent. It was impossible to resist the siren-like draw of her gyrations. I went with her, able to secret myself into a zombie crowd writhing to to trance music. After, half mad from the spiked opium we smoked, we sweatily balled behind a tent that was there to promote zombie recycling. When we were finished, she told me that she wasn't going to school for dance, but she did it herself and how she wanted an organic burrito and how cool Woody Harrelson is for his crusade for hemp and...then, in the strobe-lit chaos, I ran, screaming to escape before I was zombified.<br /><br />Their likes/dislikes: The zombies like songs that last for an hour without ending, with one note seeming to repeat over and over. Political humor involving sodomy and blow-up dolls? Not so much.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-4730180735236871892007-06-15T08:07:00.000-07:002007-06-15T08:13:25.006-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day Two, Night and Crafts</span>:<br />At dusk yesterday, we thought we saw a hopeful sign: a deep red cardinal chirping in the trees. But we were mistaken. It was actually a white dove coated in blood, singing a sad sanguine song, our dirge, we believed.<br /><br />The zombie hordes gathered at night to dance in celebration of the coming feast.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijS0GpU2E_Mu2ZjcUB56jYOfNGJDseKp_71E1C3h6H-jGkwmR5HD0YviXVy0JA9KI0HJ02FTFrqqI411jRzv0k-KwXm8ga20JfYI0BzNm4w90_zJCjpOn2extsWbjQpBFWHXEuHg/s1600-h/1lhzq2pb.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijS0GpU2E_Mu2ZjcUB56jYOfNGJDseKp_71E1C3h6H-jGkwmR5HD0YviXVy0JA9KI0HJ02FTFrqqI411jRzv0k-KwXm8ga20JfYI0BzNm4w90_zJCjpOn2extsWbjQpBFWHXEuHg/s400/1lhzq2pb.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076308627429798802" border="0" /></a><br />We moved among them to listen to the songs, mesmerized by the thrum of different screeching sounds from different stages.<br /><br />The horrors we have witnessed include the creation of pieces of clothing from the tanned skin of the dead, inked with their tattoos, eerie markings and symbols from cultures far and wide, cultures that seem incongruous with the seeming homogenous whiteness of the zombies, but perhaps markings that identify one monster to another. We weren’t sure, but another zombie seemed to be wearing the scalp of a Rastafarian, although his body was nowhere to be found.<br /><br />Later we saw one roaming around with a necklace of bones, its pendant the skull of a man. It’s hard to know for certain, but the skull looked like one of the two young men we pointed in the direction of the zombies , a moment of regret passing between us, but then the horrible knowledge that we probably saved ourselves for a little longer assured us we were right.<br /><br />The soulless workers have simple tasks: keep the zombies in. Keep them fed and entertained. Don't let the living escape. Dispose of the fallen when they can. They wear pink shirts and red bandannas, colors that seem to keep the zombies off balance.<br /><br />I will write more later. Something is digging in the earth beneath my tent. I think the moles have arrived.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-36419525219488065452007-06-14T16:44:00.000-07:002007-06-14T17:09:17.198-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day Two: A Banquet of Flesh</span>:<br />They opened the gates this morning. The air was rank with the scent of patchouli and rotting flesh. Walking through the morning heat, we ventured into the tent city, not unlike a New Delhi ghetto, seeking some sign of remaining humanity. We had to stagger, staring blankly ahead, our eyes filled with the need for human flesh, periodically mumbling, "Tool's here, man," as if we ourselves were zombies.<br /><br />We don't want to be hunted, but the workers here wear masks as they dart around in their golf carts. The masks hide their features and give them the illusion that they will not catch cholera or dysentery from the port-a-potties and the trenches of the dead that line the outer rims of this nightmarish hellscape. We have named one of them "Dick Ripper" for her preferred method of sexual conquest. She is like a perverse praying mantis. Instead of biting the head off her mate, well, the name explains the horror.<br /><br />I have a confession, a terrible deed. This morning, a pair of young men hopped the fences to illegally enter the Bonnaroo grounds. Why the electricity was off, we don't know. They were filled with hope and asked us what time Bob Weir was playing and which direction they could safely go. We sensed an opportunity to satiate the zombies for a moment or two and sent the men to their doom. We don't know if they got into the center or if they are now a pile of gristle-coated bones.<br /><br />The zombies have constructed an idol to worship. It is a disembodied hand holding the earth. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuOSZJONjuYSONJTbhI2p0exhxEeiX92P2bl0dgMuZnaTYC8lTsTqtzqzU_U1c2uIy9EpCCxHdGJW16IDvgdmoC8-5gYkWV4tvCeXUBsCrJSWI8INdqkwU3qkM2qNv8pErt4cCyA/s1600-h/061307_1639.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuOSZJONjuYSONJTbhI2p0exhxEeiX92P2bl0dgMuZnaTYC8lTsTqtzqzU_U1c2uIy9EpCCxHdGJW16IDvgdmoC8-5gYkWV4tvCeXUBsCrJSWI8INdqkwU3qkM2qNv8pErt4cCyA/s400/061307_1639.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076075462245233538" border="0" /></a><br />It reveals their plans, as well as their menu.<br /><br />Tonight we will venture to the stages where the zombies have created an elaborate charade to lure the living. They will force us to dance and drug us in order to separate the fresh meat from the stale. At a glance at the zombies, you can't tell where the rotting flesh ends and the tie-dye begins.<br /><br />In the distance, I hear the cries of the packs of wolverines. Night is but an hour away. I hope I will be able to write more later. Unless I have to sacrifice my hands so that the rest of my body can escape.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-14892639891259233522007-06-14T07:20:00.000-07:002007-06-14T07:34:24.471-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day One, Night Time, Spiders, Sex</span>:<br />Last night, the spiders arrived at Bonnaroo. Oh, they can spray the fields with all the poisons they want, killing the mosquitoes, the taint-biting chiggers, the blood-nourished ticks, but they cannot kill the spiders. They arrived in legions, filling every section of fence with tiny webs so that it became a quilted flytrap. It's not the size of them, oh, no, but the numbers.<br /><br />I am sleeping in a tent next to a fence next to a dirt road, where all night long, cars and trucks and golf carts of the damned go by. It's a curve in the road, and there's floodlights to make the path clear. I would slice the line, but I fear a sewage truck would crash through my fence and injure me just enough and damage my tent just enough so that the spiders would cocoon me for later devouring.<br /><br />Earlier, I was in the co-ed showers. It is a place to hide from the dust and heat. It is also a place for furtive, hurried sex, where willing and slick partners will fellate you on eye contact, as if seeking nourishment from your seed. The stalls are small, but one woman gestures for me to join her. As we pound against the plastic sides, we talk about a bit about the bands we want to see - me Wilco, she Damien Rice, but inevitably we speak about the spiders. Another man wants to come in there with us, but we are afraid we'll burst the sides. He goes into the next stall to masturbate leaning against our shaking walls. The sex is not good. How could it be? It is merely a desperate attempt to affirm we are alive even as we must pretend we are not.<br /><br />"Beware," one huddled man in another stall told me as he tried to slowly drown himself in the spray. "If you think the spiders are bad, tomorrow the wolverines."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-53563330654593538392007-06-13T12:52:00.000-07:002007-06-13T13:14:38.358-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Day One: The Warning Signs</span>:<br />When one arrives early to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee, one sees the secrets of the festival revealed. Or, as my friend said earlier, "See how the hot dog is made." The workers are busy digging trenches, obviously to have a convenient place to toss the dead. There are tents set up for the pods that will replace the remaining humans. The giant fountain sprays spinal fluid. When night falls, the zombies come out. They are not so much of a worry as I have a mallet that will dispatch them quickly. No, the real problem is the wolves. They move with a swiftness that no swinging camping tool can slow. And what is left is morsels for the foxes. The bugs. The loudspeakers that keep playing "Baba O'Reilly."<br /><br />It is hot now. Even the spiders are seeking shade. We have just begun. The bloodthirst will never abate.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6257606.post-88581425156600043352007-06-12T19:14:00.000-07:002007-06-12T19:17:29.982-07:00<strong>I Am Not a Camper</strong>:<br />But I am not not a camper. I exist in some nebulous region between camper and non-camper. In other words, I've never camped. And, well, shit, is it really going to be camping if I can walk a few feet and buy a beer?<br /><br />I think if one is sleeping in a tent, one is camping. 'Nuff said.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com