Complete Starwood 99 Photo ESSAYS:

The Bonfire

Einstein's Secret Orchestra concert

Big Brother and the Holding Company with Halley DeVestern concert

Victoria Ganger and Revelry concert

A.C.E. homepage

STARWOOD SURVIVED AGAIN!

7-28-99

Rev. Ivan Stang

Praise "Bob," I made it through another Starwood festival, this time scathed only by the loss by brain damage of a bag of Habafropzipulops the first night, and by a SNUFFLY COLD contracted the last night. I'm now ensconced here in the 4th MegaFisTemple Lodge (the A.C.E. Macintosh in Cleveland), drinking lots of juice and aspirin, laying on an air mattress watching cartoons when not looking at the goofy pictures on alt.binaries.slack.

I had a GREAT time for the 5 days I spent at the Brushwood campground. I usually don't get to spend that much time at Starwood, so it was more laid back for me than usual, even though I did a lot of preaching. I ranted the main devival on Thursday, to a big and appreciative crowd, acted in a "radio theater" reading of Firesign's "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere at All", did another psycho-devival with Lonesome Cowboy Dave and ESO in the mysterious "Puffer Dome" at midnight, as heard on Hour of Slack, and was the main M.C. on Saturday night.

I had time to kill in between, which I spent merely hanging and occasionally selling at Tranquility Base, Chas Smith and Michele George's permanent camouflaged encampment at Brushwood, where Chas kindly let me have half of his big main tent for the SubGenius Swag Store. He had his ambient music CD shop on the other side of the tent. When I wasn't lazed out in a frop haze there, I was watching and videotaping other oddball workshops and events.

The big event at Starwood, the huge Saturday night bonfire surrounded by one thousand maniacs, was markedly improved this year by the presence of 5 gigantic 3-man stilt puppets of an alien-man, bug-man, dinosaur-man, etc., plus a Yeti-like dancer loonie on stilts from the troupe SAFMOD. These bigger-than-life figures lent the 50-foot bonfire a perspective such that the surrounding crowd of drunken, naked drug crazed pagans looked like a writhing bed of drunken, naked drug crazed ants. Like Jane Goodall, I have lived among these creatures for so long that now they allow me into their midst with my cameras. I now have EXCELLENT videotape this year of these creatures' bizarre yearly ritual that has always been kept TABU, hidden from Normal and even SubGenius eyes. I'll try to post those on the Internet soon for all to see.

Big Brother and the Holding Company -- mostly the original band -- played Wednesday night, with their latest Janis Joplin sound-alike, Halley DeVestern, and BOY DOES SHE. She has her own independent band, and does KILLER original material. Einstein's Secret Orchestra blew everybody away on Saturday night, especially this frenetic sumbitch dressed in a complete robot suit made of silver-spray-painted cardboard boxes. Videotaping my friends' bands is one of my favorite hobbies, and this was one of the spazzier looking dance floors that I've had the good fortune to document.

I also taped Vicky Ganger's group Revelry, in which Princess Wei R. Doe sings. Our mighty buddy Regis Sedlock of Soundz Gud Studios in Cleveland was running live sound and recording all this, as he also did at XX-Day, so future Hours of Slack will have no dearth of NEW NEW NEW spaz-outs and lilting melodies.

I met many hale weirdos. The humorless yet smiling asshole variety of stenchclad "pagans" mostly avoid me. XX-Day veterans will be happy to know that there has been a wishful-thinking rumor going around the smarmed-again pagans that SubGenius had been BANNED from Brushwood due to our evil shenanigans three weeks ago. HA!! The pathetic fools. I enjoyed assuring them that XXX-Days would continue at Brushwood until the Saucers come, and that the only thing "banned" were the higher of the high explosives. We can still Launch, Stab, Burn, and Shoot to our little hearts' contents. We just can't Vaporize any more.

Now, the frappy's high and the living is easy. Before I go back to Dallas on Aug. 3, all I have to do is mix and dub another Hour of Slack. I have been managing to make those using a stripped-down, rudimentary travelling version of Tarzan's Radio Station. Also I am helping the A.C.E. folks spruce up this STOREFRONT BUILDING they procured. An ENTIRE LARGE SHOP (former drugstore) BUILDING (with huge basement) in a not too bad neighborhood in Cleveland. The PERFECT cult headquarters for a teenage prostitution ring -- that was the very first thing that entered my mind when I saw the building. We'll see. There's a lot of potential for SOMETHING in that building besides weird bookstore or coffee shop. The sleep of reason begets monsters, and certain THINGS and "RITUALS" in this building could certainly be used to induce the sleep of reason. Soon, the fruits of our experiments shall be realized! The villagers and earth-fools will know that they made a BIG MISTAKE when they didn't give us that LIVING that the world owes us. Our monsters will WALK THE EARTH AGAIN BEFORE IT BLOWS!! THIS I VOW!! HA!!! GUARDS! SEIZE HIM!

Hear My Train A-Comin,'

El Stankisimo

LATE NOTE: The "lost bag of Frop" MYSTERIOUSLY REAPPEARED!!! APPORTED BACK INTO EXISTENCE as if from out of NOWHERE. Go figure. Also, my cold has already gone away since I typed this letter yesterday.