A New Chapter Has Begun.

For those of you that haven't been following (because there's really been nothing to follow), let me get you up to speed:

I went to Burning Man this year. It was a bad experience for a number of reasons that I won't go into at the moment.

I couldn't find WiFi out there (at least not stable enough to update the Blog), so I pretty much gave up halfway through. Hence, no updates for quite some time.

And, um... yes, I'm going back next year. In case anybody's wondering.

And finally, a new film project is finally underway. No details yet, as it's in the weird morphy stage where nothing sticks, and new ideas keep changing the course of things. I'm working with Adam again, so it should be a very high-quality venture.

I'd write more, but I just got Firefox and ScribeFire installed on my new work PC. Oh, yeah, I changed jobs as well. This is a good thing! If the last few days are any indication, I'll have lots of time to update things as we go. I'm really jazzed about it.

Anyways, I gotta go. More later...

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The Gates Are Open, and I'm in Wyoming

Driving 1200 miles is one day does odd things to a man. You think about the darndest things while piloting down the road... things like why they have that band singing "Viva Viagra" in that commercial, and why Woody Harrelson hasn't been heard from lately (topics unrelated).

Casa Bonita was awesome! I haven't been to the one in Tulsa (now called Casa Verde or something) since I was a kid. But I don't remember the one there having a 30-foot waterfall with a diving show. Most impressive... but I am not a Road Jedi yet.

We're in Evanston, Wyoming tonight, and frankly I'm too tired to go into much detail and will be asleep pretty much as soon as I shut the notebook. We made great time today... here's hoping for tomorrow. I'll do a longer entry then, I promise.

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The State of Kansas Has Stolen My Mind. Please Help Me

Kansas. Wow. I don't even know how to describe this. I guess it would
be fitting to say that it's sort of like purgatory, but with more corn.
We're on I-70 heading westbound. Stopped at a Dairy Queen for some
sustenance, and because we got tired of counting grain silos. When I
began giving them names and referring to them as "my cylindrical road
buddies," we knew it was time to stop.

Seriously, stay away from
I-70. Please. If not for you, do it for those you love. This is where
the road turns bad: insufferably straight, with seemingly no little
towns, rest stops, et cetera to momentarily distract you from the
cornfields. We have 2x4's in the van; we considered stopping for a bit
and making some crop circles, but decided against, as we would likely
be shot or (worse) be discovered for the out-of-town neo-hippies we
are. Then things would've gotten really ugly.

I know I sound
bitchy. Can't help it. It's my blog anyway. Don't like this road.
But... Denver is not far off, with the promise of Casa Bonita and
oxygen deprivation. Stay tuned...

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We're Not in Kansas Anymore...

Well... technically, we are. Newton, Kansas, to be precise. The little guidebook-thingy they seem to have for every American city says it's the home of the Chisolm Trail Festival, right under the photo of some strange Shriner event that seems to feature a train made of 50-gallon water drums, bearing a horde of small children, being driven through town by some type of ATV.

Yep, we're officially on the road.

I began to feel better about things as I finally hit the blacktop after a day and a half of vehicular finagling and packing; the winding velvet-black ribbon beckoning me to drive, baby, just drive. There's something both soothing and stimulating about cross-country travel that just can't be replicated any other way, the long stretches of banality punctuated by the occasional spark of enlightenment, or at least a funny-looking taco stand. I have met the Road, and it is me.

I think it was Jim Morrison that drew a parallel between the interstate highway system and the bloodstream of our country. It's a good metaphor. I am a lonely corpuscle being pushed along by the heartbeat of this amazing thing called America, and I couldn't be happier to be here, thankful for the opportunity to steep myself in my biannual insanity.

Bernie's reading some sort of religious material. Never figured Bern to be the searching type, but I guess we all are, at least on some level. I hope my incessant tapping isn't bugging him too much. Knowing him as I do, he wouldn't tell me anyway. So I'll resolve to keep typing until he throws something at me. Or until I get boring. You decide which happens first.

Man, we got a late start. It seems fairly certain at this point I won't be able to see the lunar eclipse from the playa on Monday night. Damn. The view of the stars from out there is just unbelievable. It always reminds me of when I was a kid, growing up out in the country. It would get so absurdly dark out there. A child of lesser constitution would likely be spooked by this, but not yours truly. I never felt afraid of the night. Not with all the stars. And there were SO MANY STARS. Picture Carl Sagan with his trademark "billions and billions" speech and you'll get the idea. I've never seen skies like that as an adult--too much light pollution from my city living--until I went to Burning Man. I'm sure I'll have some entries on Nevada's native beauty at some point. For now, rest assured it's really pretty and nice, and I'll send pictures, but you'll have to wash my car first. 'Cause that's how I roll.

More later. I'm tired. We found a motel with Wi-Fi, and that's good enough for now. Besides, Bernie's looking at me with wild eyes and picking up a shoe. G'night...


Ow.

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Time keeps on slippin'...

You know when you're a kid, and you're waiting for Christmas, and the days just can't seem to pass quickly enough to get you there? You try to sleep at night and get the whole visions of sugarplums thing going on (or in my case, Ataris and cartridges) and just can't get any rest. The tree in the corner mocks you as you pass by, holding its gleaming boxes, filled with unknown magic, that you can't touch until That Time comes...

Okay, keep thinking about that excitement. Then mix it in with the sheer unmitigated panic of knowing that not only haven't you set up the tree or bought any presents, but you also have the entire family coming over for a dinner that hasn't yet been purchased, much less cooked. Oh, yeah, and it's December 23rd.

That's where my head is right now.

A quick rundown on the state of the camp: we are rapidly running out of time. I've spent the last several months pouring in the coal to build up the steam on this temporal freight train, and now I can't seem to find the brake lever. Bernie has made great headway on bringing stuff up from Big D, including some super-nifty tiki chairs and other accoutrements. I have been trying to take care of much more prosaic duties, the primary one being the repair/optimization of the RV.

The RV is not going well.

Oh, don't get me wrong, it's clean and the packing has begun. I started laying in supplies some time ago for the trek ahead, so that part's going pretty well. And, since we're on an especially tight budget this year, I've enlisted some good free labor to help with the RV, namely an ace mechanic buddy of mine from Muskogee, who happens to have come up today to do just that.

What's the problem, then? The quick answer is the same as always: money and time. I've been waiting on the deposit check from our old place for several days now, and thought I would have it
by now. I don't, and likely won't until next week sometime. By the time I do have this check, of course, the M-Town mechanic will not be able to help me. It has to be today. So, I wangled some favors and have borrowed just barely enough to get the parts we need.

Well, this sounds promising so far... we began work, got the genset started, fixed the vacuum leak in the RV... and then the AC stopped working. Worse yet, it appears the battery disconnect may be fried. I'm hoping we just overheated it by running too much amperage at one time, and maybe it'll cool off by tomorrow. We shall see.

These are kind of small setbacks, and I think we can work with it. We Burners are a crafty bunch. So, really, I wasn't just totally despondent at that point.

Then I made the mistake of dragging out the whiteboard.

I don't have time at the moment to post a picture of this thing, but all the notes we have make it look less like a camping trip and more like a military operation. I've got sections for electronics, communications gear, combustible safety, first aid, vehicle mechanics... and this isn;t even counting the stuff for the bar itself. Altogether, there are well over 200 different items on this list. Some are "action items" (simple to-do's), some are things to purchase, and some are things already purchased that just need to be packed up.

I'm going to attempt to sleep, and see if I can keep from having nightmares about a huge white dragon with multicolored markings that wants to worry me to death.

One final thought to leave you with... we leave in 10 days.

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ELECTRIC NIGHT AFIRE: BURNING MAN 2007 SPECIAL SECTION

Hello and welcome to a NIGHTly News Special Edition. For the next 3 weeks, I'm going to the annual Burning Man festival in beautiful Gerlach, Nevada, United States. During my journey, I'll be detailing my day-to-day experiences in the blog. We'll be going cross-country from Oklahoma (a 3600-mile round trip, for those of you keeping track at home), so there's no guarantees that we'll be able to get connected, wifi being the random creature that it is. We'll do the best we can. Meantime, just to get this part out of the way, let's open up the floor to questions... You there, the guy being circled by flies.

"Um, yeah. I've been living under a bridge eating all the freeze-dried food I bought for the year 2000 thing and sleeping in a pile of my own feces. What the heck is Burning Man?"

Dude. It's called Bathing. Look into it.

The quick answer is that it's a big huge art festival held annually in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. Around 40,000 people show up and live in a desert for a week with no vending or connection to the outside world (save for a very sporadic wifi connection). They create theme camps and other entertainments for the pure heck of it, and torch a big wooden stick figure at the end of the week. When it's over, every scrap of wood, piece of glitter, and butt of cigarette is removed, leaving the desert as blank and empty as when we came.

This, of course, is the explanation we give when we don't want to talk to people for 6 hours after we've paid the check for dinner and need to go to the bathroom real bad 'cause we had too much coffee. The real answer is WAY more complicated and involved, and is subsequently far beyond the scope of this humble blog. For the real scoop, brew up a pot of coffee (but not too much) and head over to http://www.burningman.com . Seriously, you'll be there for a while.

Okay, now you've got the quick-and-dirty version of what exactly Burning Man is. Now for more questions... you, driving the Hummer.

"So... you're, like, living in a desert for a week, right? Well, what do you do when there's nothing around you? I mean, seriously, people think it's boring here, but we have malls and Starbucks and..."

Stop talking. Now. And go get me a latte.

You have just named a big chunk of the reason people go to this thing. It's a commerce-free zone where there is no advertising permitted. There are no sponsorships or endorsement deals. Participants are encouraged to (temporarily) modify any commercial logos on their vehicles to make them weird or funny. We make our own fun without having Red Bull or Budweiser or somebody pay copious amounts of green to make it for us. The primary mode of participation is the Theme Camp, which means you set up a public area based around some sort of... well, theme. Hence the name. Some examples include Christmas Camp (free candy canes, sit on Santa's lap and make a wish) and Thunderdome Death Guild (exactly and completely like the death-battles in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, except with foam swords*).

While reading this blog, you may occasionally run across things that are hard to believe or seem to be pure fantasy, the ravings of a lunatic brain left on the stove to boil over, preferably with some garlic and carrots in a chicken-stock base. However, if there is one statement I will ask the Gentle Reader to indulge me in, and to believe unquestioningly, it is this one: BURNING MAN IS NOT BORING. If anything, it's a kind of sensory overload. At any given time of day, you can walk from your camp to the portapotties and see giant robots shooting fire at each other, a sixpack of recliner-sized cup cakes being driven around like go-carts, and a 30-foot-tall George W. puppet with no pants. And you can see these things while you are sober. Unlike the person asking me the next question, who appears to have just vomited in his own pants. Your question?

"Hooookay. Sho you're out in thish deshert, and you're a-buildin' a camp. Whash a kinda camp yoush guysh gonna... BLAAAARRRRRRF..."

Aww MAN! I gotta clean that up... Wait. Get the stinky guy, he won't care.

I believe the question is, what kind of a camp are we doing? And the answer would be: The Tikiplex 12. It's a hideous mutant offspring, the result of a Cinemark being forcibly sodomized by a Trader Vic's (and secretly liking it). We're going to be serving good rum drinks and watching bad movies. As I work through the details, I'll be posting information on our playlist. For example, at this moment in time, the playlist, which I am still working on, includes Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an early Peter Jackson film called Bad Taste, and The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

Speaking of the Zed-word: In spite of this being the "test year" for the Tikiplex camp concept, we're going against our own good sense and hosting a special event. The Black Rock Burner Hostel (another theme camp) is hosting the Tuesday Night Zombie Crawl. We'll dress up in Zombie drag and lurch through the city, dragging one foot and screaming for BRAAAAAAIIIIIINS. Then, everyone's coming to our camp, where they'll be served Zombies, by other Zombies, while watching movies about still other Zombies. It promises to be a grand time, so far as the longstanding Burning Man tradition of NOT bringing cricket bats remains observed this year.

Got time for one more... you, the blonde girl with the diploma.

"Hey, why are you pretending that other people are asking you questions? This is just you typing both parts and acting like it's other people. Isn't that a sign that something's really wrong with you?"

WOW! Is it really midnight? I gotta wrap this up... hey, was Stinky 2000 gonna get me the latte, or was it the guy in the Polo? Anyway... watch this space for more updates. If I know myself well enough, tomorrow should be the HolyCrapIt'sTwoWeeksUntilWeLeaveNothing'sReadyGAAAAA edition.


* A footnote about Thunderdome: Foam swords do not complete safety make. As an example, the camp displays my favorite sign ever. It says "Days since last injury: 0." It's painted like that, permanently, without even the pretense of fake numbers to flip. Beautiful, and true--it's not at all unusual to see young people carried out on stretchers after much attention from a variety of EMTs.

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From the Department of Bizarre Coincidences, #1

It seems as though, lately, there have been a wide variety of bizarre coincidences surrounding me. And it's not stuff I'm looking for, either--you know how sometimes people will bend facts to fit the things that supposedly happen to them? I really don't think it's that.

I shall offer an example that happened today.

I work at a Call Center. Not the most exciting thing one can do with their free time (I think that's reserved for bungee jumping, or porn), but it pays the bills nicely, and I work with some good cats. At the aforementioned Call Center, we sometimes have Theme Days, like dressing up like the 50's, or making pinatas without papier mache (no, we really did that. And yes, it's spelled "papier," so I don't wanna hear it). Today was Surf Day, where everyone who wore a Hawaiian shirt got to wear jeans, so of course I wore an Oxford, so as not too look too incredibly doofish.

Anyhoo, pal Bernie calls me today. I love hearing from Bern. He's always got something funny to say. Or he's been drinking beer, in which case everything he says is funny. If I manage to keep up with the Blog this time, you'll hear a lot more about Bernie.

Bern and I are going to Burning Man again this year--and for the first time ever, we actually have a camp theme. It's Tikiplex 12, a combination tiki bar and cinema, serving popcorn and margaritas as moviegoers partake of such classics as Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Lining and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. I'm pumped.

Exposition complete--back to the phone call. Bernie is calling to let me know he found a bunch of leis at a Dollar Tree or something in Dallas (where he lives). They're 6 for a dollar, which beats my previous lowball of 4 for a dollar from Oriental Trading Company. This is not the strange part.

The strange part is that, as I was taking this call, I was wearing a cheap lei that was given to me when I walked into the building today. A lei that I later found out came in packages of 6.

Okay, you're saying. Big deal. You have a surf-sorta camp theme; you're having a surf day at work. Who cares?

Well, you may be right. But let's do some math, so to speak. Here are the variables:

• We're doing a tiki-themed camp this year
• I was having a Surf Day at work on this particular date
• We did not plan for Bernie to shop that day; he just happened to have some free time
• Bernie was unaware of the Surf Day, and since I couldn't talk to him at the time and was unable to call him back, he probably still isn't
• How many companies make cheap poly leis in packages of 6?

One of the guys I work with, Ken, says that Carl Jung (I think?) had lots of things to say about coincidence, boiling down to his belief that there is no such thing. It's worth noting that there have been several other oddities the last few weeks, I just haven't written them down. It's important to note that this does not make me afraid or freak me out; rather, it makes me feel like I'm onto something, like maybe I'm just in the right place at the right time.

There's more, but I'm tired. I will continue to post these strange things as they happen. I just hope I haven't upset the balance by being cognizant of what was happening around me.

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Hey There! Long Time No See!

Um, a large latte. Double-shot, please. Yeah, whipped cream's good. Do you guys have the... Oh, hey! How are you! Wow, you look great! Jeez, how long's it been? Really? That long? Good grief. Well, time flies, doesn't it?



And what've you been up to? Wow, awesome. I didn't know they made that legal. Oh... it's not? Well, I'll just pretend I didn't hear that part, eh? Heh, heh. ...Oh, me? Oh, yeah, busy, busy, busy. Actually got a decent job for once. Semi-management thing. It's pretty engaging. Takes a lot of time from other stuff I want to do, but I enjoy the work, so I guess I'm breaking even. Yeah! Yeah, I still do the "movie thing." It's just taking me longer now. I'm writing three different projects at the moment. Of course, by "writing," what I mean is "making a sentence every third week but only when the moon is full," but at least I'm keeping it going. I've got three different editing projects going at the moment, too, but I didn't write any of them.



Granny? No, Granny's doing great! She bought a house in Glenpool. Isn't that awesome? Well, except for me having to move all her stuff from the house in Muskogee and the rent house she's been in for the last year. We're almost done, though. Hopefully within the next couple weeks we'll be completely finished. She's in really high spirits about it (except for the moving part). She loves the new place, it's beautiful.



Oh yeah, you know better than to think I'm missing Burning Man! Yep, this is gonna be year five. This time, we're doing something new: the TikiPlex 12. It's a movie theater serving margaritas and popcorn. We'll be showing stuff like Meet the Feebles, Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, and all-time classic Pink Flamingos. I can't wait, I think it's gonna be the best Burn ever. Already got my tickets, even!



I'd like to let everyone know how excited I am about all this stuff (don't worry, there's some family things too), but you see, I have this Blog, and I never update it. I'd give you the address, but it's pretty much pointless, 'cause I only update it a couple times a century.



But then again... you never know. And hey, thanks for the coffee! ...You didn't know you paid for it? Oh, hang on, that's my phone, gotta run! Nice seeing you again! Tell your mom I said "Hi!"

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Winners List, and thoughts on Blue November

(Note: the following has been posted on the electricnight.com home page for the last 2 weeks. After some thought, I have decided that the blog is the better place for this. I will be reloading the electricnight.com site with an uncommented version of the winners' list tomorrow evening.)

---

This is the (long-awaited) formal announcement page for the winners of the 2006 Blue November MicroFilmFest. It has taken me an extraordinary amount of time to get around to posting this; everyone has been exceedingly patient with me and I very much appreciate that.

The reason it has taken so long to do even this small act is simple: I didn't want to touch anything regarding the festival, didn't want to do anything with it, didn't even want to think about it. Truth is, I don't
feel much like writing this right now, but I feel that I must, if for no other reason than to move on to other things.

I have been in love with Blue November for the last several years. I was there at every one, and it seemed to get better each time. Somehow, on those nights, the science and the art of filmmaking would commingle and produce some truly wonderful things. But I made one momentous mistake: I thought that, just by being a part of things, just by virtue of being there, that I would be able to channel the lightning the way Captain did. Essentially, I was foolish enough to think that something that so uniquely reflected Captain's vision could be a reflection of mine as well.

I set up the venues, got the advertising, coordinated the acts... all the physical things that are needed for a festival were there... but somehow, the magic was not. Worse yet, important bridges were burned (or at least strained) by various things that happened during and after the event. And as far as attendance goes, at times I felt like I was twisting people's arms to get them to come out. This is not a position I want to be in, and yet it all comes back to my own actions. I didn't fully realize how much was at stake until it was really too late to do anything except strap in, hang on, and pray.

Captain and I had a very deep conversation about this over the Christmas holiday. We both came to the same conclusion: he should have the Blue November name, and he should run the festival, in his own way.
Blue November is not mine, and I discovered through my own experience that it never really was. It was a weird kind of liberation; on the one hand I hated letting go of Blue November, but on the other I would be free to pursue other things, and maybe do my very own festival - from scratch this time - at some later date.

And so, in closing: no, there will not be a Blue November 2007. Not in Tulsa, at least. The original Blue November has moved to Seattle, which is perhaps a better home for it anyway. And no, Captain and I have not had any sort of a falling-out. This was a very mutual decision for us both and we are still good friends. Yes, it's my sincere hope that those who attended in 2006 enjoyed the event, and though I paint a
rather bleak picture here, keep in mind that what you're reading is my own internal monologue - from an audience perspective, Blue November was still very much worth attending, if only to catch what I felt was an especially robust program of fresh art and performance (there was no "filler;" if nothing else, I was extremely happy with this year's selections). And finally, yes, I enjoyed seeing all of you this year, and hope to see you again down the road... in some other month besides November.

I appreciate whoever's reading this for putting up with my rambling. It's a very passionate subject for me, and I likely won't talk much about it after this.

Thanks, and God bless.

--Bret Mix

AND NOW, THE WINNERS:


Best Performance:
Brian Ross and Matthew Christian
for Life's Little Gaps
(Director: Scott Hillhouse)

Best Production:
Purgatory House
(Director: Cindy Baer)

Best Picture:
No Place Like Home
(Director: Courtney Fathom Sell)

Auteur of the Year:
Edward Martin III
for various projects

(Note: I finally figured out how to EDIT a post, not just, uh, post a post. My apologies to Courtney Fathom Sell, who was incorrectly listed as Courtney Fathom Wells until tonight. Thanks for your patience, Courtney, and I wish you continued success.)

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