Feral Futures pt 2

The Wild Roots blog had great information about itself and the Feral Futures campout. The directions were detailed with numbers rather than names, though. Being a literary person I like words. Being a logical person I can follow numbers. FYI: 602 is not on Google Maps nor the Latitude 40 topos. It is, however, on a small rectangular wood sign once you make the turn off 501. How’s that for numbers.

Once you get to Pine River Campground they have another sign provided by Wild Roots in a car window detailing trail directions to the main camp. If I didn’t see him on the way out I would assume that Tom was still there waiting for his deer cart to load equipment in for a water filtration exposition. The cart was about half a mile in, pushed off to the side, abandoned by the initial group struggling to get it up the rocky trail. I sent a bicyclist fisherman heading back with word of it’s situation for him. Poor Tom.

You will walk past 3 miles of barbed wire to the Weminuche Wilderness boundary. Main camp is about another mile and a half. They hung a green bandana from a tree, intuitively instructing those in the know their whereabouts. On my last pass someone constructed an arrow with rocks and an animal vertebrae.

I met the crew led by a guy named Nathan, who runs the Wild Roots blog. He said this was their fourth year doing this event. As it turned out I had met Nathan once before at a holy! holy! holy! show in Durango. He put me on the Rise Up email list under the name Dirty Hands. He claimed that holy! holy! holy! would probably play at their gathering on the solstice. “If you see a bus in the parking lot, they are here.” They put on a really great show. The Beehive Collective opened with a seminar on The True Cost of Coal. Then the lead singer gave a talk about activating against strip mining before taking the stage and convincing the audience to get naked. I like to walk by that building soon to be a parking lot and say, “I got naked there.” It is one of the few places in a Colorado city that I can say that compared to Houston.

I met other folks with names like Grasshopper and Kenney Eye and Juniper and Nettle. No Ben. Nobody knew the hitchhiker I picked up a day ago.

I ate lunch up the river and swam by myself. Coloradans don’t like to get wet. When I mentioned this to Nathan he said, “That’s not true. My friends and I live to go swimming.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “swimming isn’t the only way to get wet and it’s the only one Coloradians can think of offhand.” Texans in full business attire in the middle of the summer will thank you if you shoot them with a water gun. As Nathan finished filtering water into a large canteen, a girl pulled a bundle of plants she had soaking in the Pinos to the shore. I followed her out to a group that congregated to learn how to weave a net to catch fish. I wonder how well that worked. Grasshopper returned my map and we talked about Tuckerville, an old mining town turned ghost town up in the hills of Vallecito. I shook my hands, thanked them all by name and left.

Somewhere in the woods along the trail someone was playing guitar and a girl’s voice was singing. It was beautiful. Ten minutes up I saw Ben hiking in with a group of Australians freaked out by how many guns they saw openly displayed on the horseback trail. He told me that five minutes after I dropped him off he was picked up by a kayaker heading up to the lake. The kayaker bought him drinks all night at a local bar and offered to let him camp out in his back yard. Ben obliged and made a late start in the next day, the day I saw him. I told him I would try to make it in on the solstice for holy! holy! holy! After the show I would get people together for some night swimming in the buff. We will see. I have lots of work to do that day and it is a hike in.

Tom was waiting about thirty yards past the cart tha had moved maybe ten. It was repacked with medical supplies. He informed me that national parks at federal. Although they honor state laws concerning gun control they do not honor state laws concerning medical marijuana. I wished him and his glaucoma well on their way and made my own journey back to the car.

Feral Futures pt 1

I picked up a hitchhiker named Ben. I like picking up hitchhikers. I’ve been there. On the side of the road. Waiting. Walking. Taking rests. A break from the weary road. Running low on water. Hoping for someone. Anyone. Some kind soul to save you from the beauty of the road that has turned desolate. He was a “friendly.” I could tell from his labels. He had a nice pack that he was sitting on top of at the time of the extraction. That meant he actually walked most of the time. Unlike those yahoos with shit strewn about all over them. Or a duffle bag. Those guys aren’t adventurers. They aren’t ready for anything. They aren’t moving. They are just waiting to get to the next place. He wasn’t. He had a pack. The head of the pack had a hand drawn robot character. He wore a Phishing hat. I picked him up.

Ben told me he was heading for Vallecito Reservoir, a lake with three rivers flowing into it. From there he was heading up the Pinos to Pine River campground. He didn’t know all these names, of course. I knew them from the road and trail numbers he spouted off from a list. My brother and I tried to drop a canoe in from that campground, but there was no river access from it. Everything along the banks was privately owned by horse ranches, who probably strung up barbed wire over the stream even though all waterways in Colorado are public use. The nearest put in to run the Pinos is three miles up from the trailhead. This happened to be where Ben was going.

He was heading to an Eco Activist meet up for the next 10 days. “Like a Rainbow Gathering, if you know what that is.”

“Yeah, I was with the family at a National in Arizona a long time ago.”

“Cool, then, so, yeah, you know. This will be more like Regionals size-wise, but there should be people from all over. I’m coming from Texas.”

We talked about that for a minute. He had a bad time in Houston on that section of the trail and swore to never go back. By the end of the ride I learned enough about Feral Futures and Wild Roots to want to see what this camp out was all about. He invited me to join them when I could and ultimately admitted that I softened the whole Texas experience for him just a little.

The next day I scheduled my hike into the forest. I wanted to see where that trail went anyway.

And Then I Returned It.

The STIHL 171 was too heavy and did not have much in the way of vibration control so I returned it and put in the order for the 192 CE. This is not to be confused with the 192T CE. The T is an arborist’s saw designed to cut limbs from treetops and in confined spaces. It has a top handle trigger for you to operate it with one hand, but in the carving world it is less wieldly than a two handed rear trigger. They are basically the same saw with different trigger controls. One site said the T is the worst saw to loan out because people are always trying to use it one handed without much experience and end up losing arms and legs in the process. The 192 model is lightweight with intense vibration control. It was always my first choice but because most dealers do not carry it – I went with the 171. Stupid mistake. Go with your gut. It will take a little while to get it in the store for me. Of course, I have waited 3 years thus far, I can wait a week or two longer.

So, I Bought a Chainsaw Today

This was not an impulse decision. I have been working with an 18″ Echo for the past 5 years chopping logs into firewood, cutting down dead trees, and clearing slash from the fallen. 3 of those I have been interested in the prospect of chainsaw carving. Still a bit timid toward the monetary embarkment of a new artistic skill, I researched the topic to death until I finally said, “This summer I am going to get me one.”

Normally saws come with a 3/8 chain on a regular bar that looks like a fish. Detailed carvings require a 1/4 chain on a bar that tapers almost to a point. To change that bar and chain requires a sprocket with a 1/4″ pitch. Not all chainsaws can be modified in that way. Eventually I decided on a STIHL model 171 because there is a STIHL certified shop in Durango and it was the least expensive for what I was doing. Originally I wanted the 192 CE arborist saw simply for the weight of it, but the top handle trigger made it difficult to maneuver. You can get them in the rear trigger for about fifty bucks more. This made the 171 over a hundred dollars cheaper for the sacrifice of a little more than 3 pounds.

Now I have two saws. Three if you count the outdated Craftsman with the equally outdated and broken oil pump. Outdated in this realm means finding a replacement part is next to impossible even with the vast resources of the all powerful internet. The Craftsman is still usable. You just have to keep manually lubing up the bar and chain after every few cuts or so.

The first two recommended projects are an eagle and a mushroom. The eagle allegedly teaches you every basic cut you would do with a carving saw. The mushroom is designed to be easy, quick, and repetitive practice without a schematic. Everyone knows what a mushroom looks like, right? There are a lot of stumps leftover from thinning the forest this summer. I have a feeling they will all become mushrooms.

Well, gotta go. I got logs to cut.

This Dryness

 

New Short Story by Tyson Moore – This Dryness – a kafka-esque metamorphosis of man into fish satirizing a fanatic science minded eco community he is having trouble living with

“My armpits itch.

I come from a wet area. I am not accustomed to this dryness. A hot and humid climate where people swim to work instead of walking. Or they drive. Everybody drives there. Nobody walks. I do not walk. I no longer can walk. I sit on the couch hoping the pain in my feet, the neroma, the swollen nerve located between the big piggy and all the little ones, recedes enough to make it into the bathroom for another shower.

The shower helps. Sometimes I just lay down in the basin of it, letting the water hit me like rain. It is all because of this dryness. This dryness makes my skin crack. It peels. Not like a sunburn. There is nothing warm about it. It stings. It is cold inside and dead on the out.”

go here to read more

also featuring a group show of art and photography from santani, lena abujbara, mawhrin skel, Fröhner-Ehmke-Gretscher-Gruber-Roloff-Richter-Schuh-Beck (aka – joe babel), zamburak, andrea gerstmann, ronnie mukherjee (aka – sumanta226), and alyssa nicole

 

image by Ronnie Mukherjee

Tuesday Trike Night at the Dark Horse: Fail

It is rare that I attend an event and not have a good time and even rare that I feel compelled to write about it. What happened this past Tuesday at the Dark Horse in Boulder for me to feel so completely underwhelmed by something that should have gotten my motor revved? The burgers were great. The beer kept flowing. Most of my friends here were there with me for a going away party that my roommate, Nick, organized. The energy was flowing and we all filled out team slips to compete in the adult tricycle race around the bar. I will tell you. The host.

When you are given a microphone you should use it wisely. You are the central figure to tie in the various acts that follow with enthusiasm and encouragement. You are the instigator of the audience. You are to keep them entertained during lulls and drags along the course. You are to make them forget the dull. You return their attention to the fun they are having. Our host this night did not deliver. When he felt a loss of words for what was being witnessed he used profanity, which does not normally bother me if it is used creatively, but research shows that cussing makes you less likable even if the observer is a regular potty mouth themselves. He used the same jokes in rapid succession following each other like he thought maybe we did not hear him the first time. He went beyond failing to encourage the abnormal behavior of the participants to downright dissing their efforts. He was slow to keep the ball moving and uninteresting in his wit. None of these things are befitting of a host. When he took a bathroom break we almost cheered that he had removed himself from the stage except we were all waiting impatiently for our turn on the cycle. I expected more from a place that obviously likes to screw with their patrons.

Which one would you choose?

I will give the event this: It has potential. Free drinks meaning shots and beer. A large, welded big wheel trike for adults with ramps up and down and a crowd of people cheering you onward on your plight around the central area of the back bar to a spot in the corner where you take a shot, spin around in a barstool, relay back to the starting point, chug a beer, tag up and send your partner round for the same ordeal. You get to pick a team name, perfect fodder for a good host to chum about with while everything gets ready for the go, and a theme song. Why were there not more crazy helmets or costumes? I did not see one. Why were there not more terribly drunken wrecks part for real and part for show? There were a few. Maybe we should have had them chug a beer before they got on the bike rather than at the end. Or at both points. It still would have come down to that damned host to keep the crowd together cheering. After five heats things began to dissipate for the audience and the entire event became suddenly not as humorous.

One team spilled his beer. The host completely missed it. You have to pay attention to those sorts of things and call them out on it. Another team was obviously too drunk to be behind the wheel of the kiddie rides in front of Walmart. He called them out, but not the right way. He was discouraging rather than en-. Say something to the tune of, “We got a real winner here, folks. He has been practicing. Everyone needs to take two steps backward out of this guys way for the wide turns and weaving.” The guy was larger than most. He could also have said in mimic to the boss, “Did we remember to put the beeper on that thing in case he decides to back up?” Another group lost his group member, so he went two round by himself. He got more for that than the guy who spilled his beer. No matter how hard we tried, the host would not let anyone get into it.

It was Team Rocket’s turn, us. They could not find our song. I purposefully picked something obscure because he said that they could find it. They couldn’t. They gave us Team America instead, “Fuck YEAH!” We had our pit crew set up at the shot table interval waiting with salt on his neck, a lime in his mouth, and a shot of that Mexican powerhouse, Tequila, hovering near his breast. Yes, “his” breast. Greg took the first wave. he had some difficulties rounding the video game dead man curve, licked it, slammed it, sucked it, spit, took the required shot of grossness provided by the competition, spun in the stool, and ate it at the next corner. The host was speechless. He had nothing to say. So he fell back on what he knew, cusswords. My thoughts were this, I am going to get messy. He did say two things that could have been better if the energy was consistent. First, as I threw the shots all over everywhere, “You know we do not have showers,” and then following me reentry to the trike, “Are you going to make out with me next?” I should have stood up for that and made the attempt to do so, but my mind screamed, “Go! Go! GO!” So I went and instead made the attempt to run him over. He was standing right in front of me, but still I angled the wheel to make him leap backward. To further emphasize my lack of caring to the no shower policy, my beer chug consisted of dumping it onto my face and catching what little I could in my mouth. It was Budweiser. I do not drink that crap anyway. He says, “Well, now we can get back to normal racers.” Why would you want to do that? We were entertaining unlike you. You should want more people like that to keep alive the cheap gimmick of getting people into the bar and keeping them there drinking.

I have an idea. Get the guys from PropGay to host their homosexual takeover on a Trike Night. Then, you guys will be in for a show. It is just too bad more of them do not wear dresses to those things.

Oh yeah – And get some speakers that actually have bass.

A Date, A Command, A Band – A Good Time

I spent the early part of the day making faerie wings for a friend who will wear them next weekend at the Gay Pride festival in Denver. They were not being made specifically for this event. The faeries told me he needed wings, so I started to make them for him. Most times you have to do what the faeries ask of you after asking yourself why you think they want you to perform such an action. In this case their advice was noble. I set myself to task. No sooner than I had begun in this fashion than they took over my body and hands, sewing dark pink sparkly spines into the shoulders and span, attaching ribbons, and ripping white fish net fabric only to reattach it with tattered love. Some like to make their wings pristine. I prefer the worn throughout ages look, much like the magic of the “used future” that Lucas experimented with in the original Star Wars. At the end of this day’s enterprise I was confident that I would be giving him the gayest thing he might ever own. There is a certain amount of pride derived from this for me, a predominately heterosexual male.

No matter how much I wanted to keep them for myself, I knew they did not belong to me. I was the vehicle for the faeries madness to supply him with a set of aviary devices. But these pixies and sprites did not leave me with nothing. They inspired a story, still in progress, about life choices and consequences that should be released on Stories of the Flea later this season. Jotting this down for editing was the next part of my day.

I called him after his own work day to stop by the house and take a look. He mentioned the style of the lead character in Were the World Mine, a movie about a homosexual boy who gets the lead faerie Puck’s part in a highschool version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. He finds a love potion hidden in the play and turns the whole town gay, including his school basketball star crush. My buddy also had my hard drive, that he was transferring 250 gig of music onto from his personal collection. He could also bring that by. He said he had to leave now because he was going to a concert with another friend being met there. Based on his description, a punk marching band at the Fox on the hill, I invited myself.

They were amazing. March Fourth took the stage with percussive rhythm, a vaudevillian circus of performers, men on stilts, a human puppet show rebelling against the authority of the stringmasters for a night of DIY chaos. Speaking with Joel, a trumpet player in the baker’s dozen or so carnival players, everyone makes their own costumes. Decked in tribal silver face paint, twirling Dali moustaches, black and beaded bodices, striped socks and sleeves, welded spikes on bass drum shoulder pads like something out of Castle Grayskull if Skeletor would have beat that pansy He-Man, hairs of every color, and a layer of that apocalyptic used future dirt that I mentioned before coating their sweat stained bodies I knew there were faeries among us. I was with my people. They had a tribal feel in the same vein as Crash Worship, a similar style group from the 90s, except with a little less darkness and no fire. March Fourth could use a little fire, but that was the thing that got the Worship banned from most places. It was either the torches or the shooting of Roman Candles off the stage that did that. Finally, they resigned to only play in spots that had some sort of horrible accident in its past, like children drowning in the river or the end of a dead man’s curve or next door to a building that burnt down. That was back in the days before ‘goth’ was a genre, people still made their own clothes to go to raves, and raves were non-elitist outdoor events for adults in the know instead of a bunch of kids wanting to experiment with drugs.

LaTisha Strickland, named after a character in a Russian spy novel and one of the energetic dancers, caught my eye before the encore begging for one more song with a single digit pumping the air. She followed suit with her own finger brandishing wind, enthusing the audience for the chant of another. Our sign language conversation went from one finger to two, asking for a second song to be added to the one that looked like it was about to start. She returned my query with seven fingers in the air and I thought that was appropriate, although probably unreasonable. During the movements of that encore performance, she brought out the feather to fan and blow on the audience, who might just as well been working as hard as the band, but still I thought she needed the air more than us. Half naked and dripping with my own sweat, the room cleared as the music finalized. I lingered for a moment, catching my breath, and saw Ms. Strickland sitting on the corner of the stage talking with a group of fans. I went to thank her for her portion of the performance. She mentioned the sweet deal the band got on a house through the International Hostel and that they would all be hanging out there later. Of course I had to ask how a fellow member of this family could get invited back to this Thanksgiving Dinner of sorts and she said I was invited with the tone of telling a brother he was more than welcome to join them on their excursion back to their mother’s place.

Outside I met Blake and Matt flirting with the stilt man, Aaron Lyon, and a cocompatriate, Christopher (not Chris), last name unknown but it might be Long, who has a wife that would happily pay big money for photographs of her hubby making out with another dude. We parted ways with the promise of return later in the evening. Despite work in the morning, Blake agreed to accompany me to the afterparty after a stop at home for a quick refresh, a beer pickup, and a hula hoop grab. LaTisha informed me that Amy was very particular about who played with her hoops so I figured I would bring my own.

We sat outside on the front stoop for a spell crafted of fresh Twilight beer from Deshutes Brewery in Oregon (the origination of this motley crew) and an American Spirit smoke from an African guy outside the Mountain Sun’s Fish Out of Water show a couple nights previous. Christopher joined us while we talked about tigers in the trap with Uranium bullet teeth and frickin’ laser beams. Rich Cawley, the metal worker who designed the M4 ninja star belt buckle, assisted the esoteric conversation out there on the porch and would be a major player in our later evening rendezvous on top of the bus.

Amy Hatfield, the focus of the front page ad and hOt.hOOps teacher, spurred conversation about the kinetic LED hoop I was building for my sister with her collapsible hula hoops. We played with the 40lbs force weighted neodymium magnets I had in my pocket to power the thing as I explained the design of tubes within tubes and coils and reflector sockets. Throwing the ball bearings at her broke one of the cylinders. I did not mind. She could break anything of mine I owned including my heart. She invited us inside to come check out their home on wheels in the back yard. It is nothing special from the exterior, but getting inside is another story. They had beds and seats for the bulk of them in a red tinted glamour of stow away compartments, iTunes flowing music provided by Sid Phillips, the Boone Fairy, and a no ladder entrance to the top, where the rest of the gang drank dangerously from the external sundry supply box seats.

Giggles, Jen Forti, People’s Republic of Portland (buy her stuff here), proclaimed she has been told that she laughs too loud by her fellow bandmates. She brandished this natural talent of amusement for us and still I thought it could be louder. Not that it was not enough to put smiles on our faces, but to be obnoxious it would have to sound more like a cheerleader through a megaphone huffing helium. Anyone who tells you that it is wrong, honey, is just jealous. Jen’s character was one of my favorites. With the spirit of a mime she tried to fit in with the cool kids a la a rope tussle and a stilt war. Constantly, she ducked under and hopped over members without a single place because her skills were too broad to be pigeonholed. Good for you. Keep on chuckling.

We also met Faith Jennings, another dancer of the macabre and hatmaker clothing designer. Utilizing my mnemonic devices to remember names, i told her I did not believe in her nor did I believe anything she would say based on principle. Her famous quote from the evening – “The best part about being in the band is not about the music. It is about making out with the groupies.” They debated about the usage of the word ‘groupies’ and concluded it for our benefit with the change of the word to ‘fans.’ Andy Shapiro, a newer member, who learned to play saxophone just so he could run away with the M4 circus, retorted, “You guys are fans for life. Right?” Sure, you guys are great, unless you do something stupid like go J-Lo ubermainstream and stuffy. I will tell you though, I am not rushing out to get a tattoo right away, buddy.
Even though it is a cool logo. Later he would end up with the perfect traffic cone and Katie Presley’s cell phone sized MP3 player pretending to be the modern punk rock equivalent of the RCA dog. Are those bugle boy jeans you are wearing?

We stayed on top of that bus most of the rest of the night. On a restroom run into the house, trying to conserve the interior traveling tank’s capacity, I saw LaTisha, the instigator to this journey, sitting on a vinyl couch with Luke Solman, trumpet player. She welcomed me, glad I made it, and I let them continue. Twos had begun to separate for the sake of intimate conversation time. Jenny DiDonato and a former member of the band who moved to Boulder a while ago talked on the stoop near the tigers with frickin’ laser beams while I hooped in the street to realign my bearings.

One member I would like to discuss is the bus driver, the Neal Cassady of the group, known by the crafted name of Bangkok, don’t ask him why, and better known as Alex. They have the categories of the Brass, the Beauties, and the Beats on their website, but not the vehicular counterparts that get them to where they are going. They are a valid an important part to the crew. They keep it all moving. They make sure everyone who needs to be on the bus is on the bus when the bus starts moving by taking off at scheduled times. At the very least he needs a spot on the web lauding his accomplishments and relationship with the craft affectionately known as the Razzle Dazzle, or Razz, or a number of other nicknames they declined to tell us. Razzle needs a spot in that category as well. We need the story of the name derived from the Hollywood Bowl and that ninety year old Broadway showtunes singer, who gave it her ancient energy, her blessing, through song to keep on trucking from town to town for the sake of entertaining these millions stuck in the real world.

We left the night with that song in our own hearts.We hugged you all. We never gave Aspen the whiskey, but he found it anyway. We hope you enjoy your travels not only when you look back after the time has gone, but while you are in the midst of it despite the strength of such magnanimous personalities because I know they can be oppressive. I have been there. Keep beating your drums. Keep blowing your horns. Keep on moving and keep on playing. As the command goes, “March Forth!”

Fish Out of Water

Walking a friend home last night, involved in a deep conversation about the social stigmas placed upon the American culture regarding homosexuality despite the youthful curiosity of childhood, we passed the Mountain Sun, a brewery pub in Boulder with the best beer you cannot buy in stores. They were the only establishment rocking hard enough for us to take notice. Some funk band was jamming out inside with a small crowd of people dancing out front. When the population floods out of the hall where the band plays still grooving, it is always a good sign. We made the end of the block, gave our hugs, set our stage for the morrow, and parted ways. You bet I went back to see what they were all about.

The group was called Fish Out of Water from Mendocino, CA. They were kids wearing bellbottoms without shirts and I think they brought their own panties for girls to throw around. I only caught the last two songs and the encore, but it was enough. One song had two endings, the airplane, and the drown to stop. They thanked everyone for a good time. Everyone thanked them by yelling, “Its only one o’clock. Why the hell are you stopping?” So they brought out the little tykes xylophone keyboard and whanged away with the drummer on an instrumental. Two boys from Bongolov (playing July 10th at the Drafthouse) jumped on the mic for some ambient rhythm flow devoid of many real words or so it seemed. It was like Lisa Girard rapping to a George Clinton lullaby.

Fish Out of Water is playing again tonight (June 7) at the sister spot of the Mountain Sun, the Southern Sun. You should go.

Behind the Ogden and Over to the Cheeky Monk

We set out onto the Denver night with the focus of seeing David Rhinehart at a house concert hosted by as place called, “Behind the Ogden,” which was by the plum de nom, behind the Ogden. The venue was not a real venue at all, meaning it was devoid of licenses or even chairs for that matter, but it had drinks, a performance space, and music. It also had a table of vintage, and soon to be vintage, americana materials neatly arranged around the CDs of the artists for sale. The centerpiece was a table diner style ketchup and mustard rack. Instead of the condiments there were, very confusingly I should add, a single bottle of Wonder Bubbles. This home did not look like the type of home that would be very accepting of some stranger walking in and blowing bubbles all over their wood floors. Believe me, I was tempted.

Recently, a girl my roommate invited over noticed my construction and decoration of faerie wings. They freaked her out. In a juvenile, third year psychology major mindset she rationalized the creepiness with mental disorders fresh from her most previous classes. One of those, among other upsettingly judgmental accusations, was that I had age identity issues. I accept the truth of this to an extent. Much of my writing has reflections of it. Daily I struggle with the modern quarter life complex of being an adult, yet maintaining a youthful demeanor and playfulness. In extreme cases it is difficult for me to find my fit. Tonight was no different. At the house concert I felt too young to be there. Passing the Ogden and the Fillmore on the streets I felt too old.

Eventually I could stand it no longer. I took the soap outside to play. The evening air had the right amount of humidity for bubble perfection. Surprisingly, I did not take their hula hoops for a spin. When the music started again, I laid out on the cool, soap scum free, wood floors. The atmosphere was very church like. Rhinehart slowly brought the energy up a notch, keeping it in the tolerable realm for the stoic audience, then back to comfort. He was holding back. Only during the “Murder Song” did he reveal his desires to cut loose a little more. The song was still slow but the content, a man who killed his wife contemplating the life taking of the widow next door, breached. I would have liked to see the same show with a rowdier crowd.

Afterwards, we crossed the streets of children at the Tech N9NE concert to the Cheeky Monk, a belgian style bar with Dubbels, Trippels, Saisons, Kwoks, and ales from left to right. I was not so much in the mood for drinking until I had the fried pickles. The waitress brought me a glass of sweet and sour cherry mash called Kasteel Rouge. It was good. Really good. I must also mention that they are the only bar I have ever been that had Delirium Tremonds on tap.

More than the street with the kids trying to be all grown up in their hot pants, dreadlocks, struts, and puking in corner trashcans; more than the adults trying to be kids with their do not disturb bubble containers, vintage paraphernalia, choral recital halls in living rooms, and sleeping in designer sheets; the Cheeky Monk was my place with my people. They served us quality. the wait staff stooped to our level of immature dialogue, and they let us make noise sitting outside on the patio. They would have had no problems with us blowing bubbles and nobody needed to puke in the waste bin.

The Great Rubber Duckie Wrangle

Boulder Creek Festival – Monday – Memorial Day 2010

Every American town in existence for more than 50 years previous has some odd celebration with a competition or event unusually individual to their character. Take for a single instance Gloucester, Massachusetts with their Greasy Pole. Hundreds of Italians walk the plank in a multi tiered, costumed, onslaught of slipping and sliding, drag for the day spidermen in honor of Saint Peter, the rock. Their objective is to grab a firm hold of the flag at the end of the mast and take it down with them. You can only walk on a Saturday if you won on a Friday. Sunday is the big day, the finale, where the winner no longer needs to walk for the rest of the day because the fellow competitors carry him from bar to bar. He or she no longer needs to pay for any drinks that either and they will be drinking whether they like it or not. You can only walk on Sunday if you won on a Saturday. To keep the membership full on the remaining days of the weekend, these walking honors are retrospective. If you have ever won on one of the earlier days, you may walk in the next. Then, I would suppose, the people who started the tradition started dying or getting to old to walk 25feet over the ocean on a lubed up log. They started having knee problems and poor physical conditions. What were they to do, but hand the honor down to a younger, more fit, family member or close friend? The last day is filled with the townies walking for grandfathers, great grandfathers, great great grandfathers, uncles, brothers, sons, close friends of the family, as well as those that won throughout the weekend.

Greasy Pole – Saint Peter’s Italian Festival – Gloucester, MA – 2006

In Boulder the physical competition to kick off the summer is the Memorial Day weekend Bolder Boulder 10k run. Sorry, no pictures of that. I had a friend that ran it. I wanted so badly to be at the starting line motivating her beginnings or at least at the finish rooting her on, but the rest of the weekend caused a blight to my own energy leaving me in bed until well past the comings and goings of the costumed crusaders pushing themselves to victory and then into the afternoon when most had already returned home, showered, and changed back into civvies. She saw a stoutly athletic woman running in a lacy pink bra and said to herself, “I must beat that lady.” She did. She finished at 60:58, fifty nine seconds more than what she hoped to finish by. I ran a 5k in San Diego for the homeless on Thanksgiving, more like I walked the 5k, in a little more than 2 hours. For double the distance at half my time, I was impressed.

The Great Rubber Ducky Race – Boulder Creek Festival – Boulder, CO 2010

The unusual event is the Great Rubber Duckie Race. They dumped over 7,000 ducks into the creek with numbers on their butt for a short, but furious, sprint downstream. It took longer for them to rig up the drop than it did for every duck to make it to the end. Children stood on the banks with nets, catching and releasing the yellow favorites of the Ernie fame. Rubber Ducky, you are the one. Like all modern day weird festivities like the greasy pole, the activists get involved. Instead of motor oil to slicken the pole, now they use all organic matter like rotten bananas and vegetable butter. In Boulder the eco friendly modification involved a mesh wire fence across the creek. Still, the stubborn ducks leapt over and under the barricade despite the effort of the wranglers in front and behind and then further behind for the missed stragglers. Last, but not least, another group of kids with nets at the park even further behind scooped them out of the pool. Some man yelled at me for getting my own. Actually, he yelled at me for tossing them over the rapids to the bank on the other side so the children there could have some too. His exact words were, “Don’t throw them. Hold onto them over there. I want them all back.” Blake, who stood near the naysayer on the other side, called out to me, “Only in designated areas.” Evidently, the ducks had an allotted area of the creek to do their thing. Beyond that must be stopped. 10 years ago they let them swim all the way to the next reservoir. Kids in Erie were picking out ducks for the rest of the summer. I heard rumors that the original race involved real ducks spray painted bright gold with lead based paint, but I do not believe them.

I could have understood the man’s worry if it concerned some tyke falling into the cascade, but it was not. It was about money. The organization did not want to buy new ducks for the following year at a dime a piece. Lets do the math. 7,000 divided by .10 equals 700 bucks. This is not a figure to shake your head at. We will be generous and figure a quarter of the ducks will need to be replaced from damage or loss or thievery. 700 divided by 4 is 175. Still, this is a week of rent for me. Now we get the big numbers. It cost 5 bucks a duck to compete. 7,000 times 5 equals 35, 000. The prizes come out to less than 5,000 making it 30 grand even though all of them are donated to the cause. Screw you, buddy. I am keeping my ducks.