Two weeks after the shameful victory of X-Day, I had to drag my ass back to Brushwood for the big STARWOOD event thrown by Cleveland's A.C.E. (http://www.rosencomet.com). I had HOPED to honor my contract with ACE by recreating Brushwood on my Escape Planet and having an Improved Starwood minus the serious people. Instead, I found myself standing in the exact spot of my "tar and feathering", right across from that stanky pond, in front of a few hundred mostly unsaved pagans and a smattering of SubGenii who had NOT been to X-Day. As additional sensory punctuation, I was suffering from a medium bad case of vertigo caused by an inner ear infection.
AND I RANTED MY ASS OFF!! BECAUSE EINSTEIN'S SECRET ORCHESTRA WAS THERE! AND PRINCESS WEI and REV. BLEEPO! And we TORE THE ROOF OFF and CAVED IN THE STAGE! In fact, we pulled off such a dad blamed, "Bob"-buggering GREAT DEVIVAL, one that was recorded SO WELL by Regis Sedlock and crew, that none of us see ANY REASON not to use it as our first "real" devival CD, probably through Triage. The fact that it was NOT an audience of all-saved SubGenii, telegraphing all the punchlines at the top of their lungs, is partly what makes this recording especially suitable for "mainstream" fringe specialty alternative novelty release (as opposed to only distributing it ourselves, like our tapes are nondistristributed).
It was the FIFTH time in a year that ESO and I had done this same basic devival format, except that this new version opens with X-Day excuses, explanations, clarrifications, and justifications. The "WE DON'T CARE, WE'RE RELIGIOUS FANATICS!" basic approach. ESO supplies a constant rug of cool music behind my sermonizing, which stops now and then for them to do a scary song. We still end with the Earth Anthem and SubGenius Lullaby, with the ESO/Doors Jam ("We Are Not Men") as a completely accidental encore. Due to this tempoary illness I kept had vertigo attacks right in the climax, which made me grip the pulpit to keep from falling over, and rant as if my very life depended on it -- the only way I could stay conscious. I later got several compliments on my "intense ranting" during that bit...
NOT recommended EXCEPT when there's a DAT recorder running. Not worth it otherwise. PRAISE A.C.E. for hiring ULTIMO SUBGENIUS SOUNDMAN, REGIS SEDLOCK!
THE STARWOOD MERRY-GO-ROUND
Having vertigo is like having free but impure drugs pumped into you all the time, but due to my misspent youth I at least knew how to "go with the flow" and experience Starwood as if I had been on somewhat crappy acid. So I had a great time. On Thursday I just wandered around with ESO, and videotaped their Thursday night jam. Actually I staggered around like a drunk, even though sober as a judge. With screwy ear-balance-tubes it's hard to sort up from down in a dark campground. On Friday I snoozed at the swag table and then videotaped ANOTHER great ESO jam AND watched Ron Slabe's amazing multimedia and fireworks show, this time with a CRAZED mess of lasers. On Saturday I hollered through a "workshop" -- mainly just told true life tales of SubGenius adventures -- then did the devival with ESO, AND THEN PARTIED ALL GOD DAMN NIGHT LONG AND MET THE DAWN WITH THE DRUMMERS -- WITHOUT LOSING MY VOICE!! Yes, once again I was up at 7 am on a Sunday morn at Brushwood, only this time with the MOST insane of ALL the drummers, at the remnants of the bonfire. The HUMUNGOUS bonfire. In fact, just about the most fun I had the whole weekend was videotaping the "lighting of the bonfire" ceremony that the A.C.E. core weirdos perform -- mainly because it's normally TABOO AS HELL TO VIDEOTAPE PAGANS AT BONFIRES!! ( -- 'cause some of them have BOSSES BACK HOME who don't know about the NAKED CAVORTING BY NIGHT!!) I had a blast videotaping That Which Is Too Sacred to Videotape. Or appearing to. I actually just focused entirely on the Sacred Bonfire Lighting Geeks, who are old friends and were PAYING me to tape them, but it still pissed off the more paranoid of the New Age loveburgers. EH EH EH!! Just doing my job as a SubGenius.
Since I got back to the home office I have been taking it easy while trying to ignore the wobbling of my interior gyroscopes. INVOLUNTARY SLACK again, I guess. I've been gradually sorting through the videotapes of X-Day that have come in. (From 5 videographers so far.) God DAMN is there some weird shit on some of these tapes. I'm glad I WASN'T at SOME of it... Were I REALLY ENERGETIC I would edit and upload all the new X-Day related text and pics and spew, AND I would do still frame grabs from the X-videos. But I am NOT REALLY ENERGETIC!
However, I did assemble some simple collections of pictures (video frame grabs, some doktored) which are available on SubSITE for the compulsive collectors, the super-curious and the stalkers.
STARWOOD PICS at SUBSITE
STARWOOD SUBGENIUS DEVIVAL with Einstein's Secret Orchestra
EINSTEIN'S SECRET ORCHESTRA
Starwood Jam
BONFIRE LIGHTING CEREMONY, PARADE and BONFIRE
Misc. Starwood portraits, scenes (Firesign Clones, Jeff R., Wei-Bleepo mugging)
And now this:
From: Dorian Winterfeld <dorian@greenbelt.com>
Subject: Arise RealVideo
Rev Stang -
I met you at Starwood and threatened to put "Arise" on my RealVideo Web
page. Well, I've gone and done it. Go to:
and scroll to the bottom. NOTE: you must first install the latest
greatest RealMedia Plug-in, the RealPlayerG2beta. I have a link to it at
the bottom of the page.
It's only the first 20 minutes of the video and it's only
encoded for 28k and 56k modems. At 56k it looks OK, but at 28k it
probably looks like crap. My goal is to record the whole 80 minute affair
for 28k/56k/128k(ISDN) but I have a few technical obstacles to overcome
first. The 128k version (only seen by peole with ISDN or higher speed
connections, but that's a lot of people at universities, etc) will
probably approach the quality of the original video. Anyway, if you want
to link to it from www.subgenius.com here's the direct URL:
http://pooky.myhouse.com:8080/ramgen/idbd/arise.rm