WAKA WAKA WAKA

I realized while I was there that I'd been to lots of several-day-camping festivals before

and lots of outdoor, lots-of-bands music festivals before

but never a several-days-lots-of-bands-outdoor-camping-music festival before.

IT WAS RAD.

Almost too big, but just manageable.

The two best things for me were that one, every single day I saw a completely different band that I had never ever heard of before and they blew my fucking mind so hard that I ended up spending food money on buying a CD, and two, every single day I got to see DIIIIRTFOOOOOT.

Other highlights were trying to estimate the per-capita number of people with dreadlocks there, and realizing that the per-capita number of curly-haired people was much higher than in the real world. Driving out to Ozark for the first time in something like a decade was fun, too, since I used to go camping out there all the time back in high school. On the way back to my regular life I stopped and tooted around the town a little bit, having flashbacks every three blocks.

There are some seriously weird people in the world. I didn't get photographs of nearly as many of them as I'd have liked. Also sometimes people do a lot of drugs. All I was interested in was my whiskey, my rum, and my herb, but the morning after the first night there I heard a gentleman walk through and catalog the drugs he'd done the night before. He listed having smoked marijuana, opium, and cocaine (I thought when you smoked it it was called crack???) and having eaten rolls, mdma, and acid. I can't remember whether he said anything about mushrooms. And that's not all that was there, of course people had pills of all sorts, and one night as I was meandering back to my campsite, a gentleman said simply, "Nitrous?" No thank you, crazy bastard.

I camped with my friend Lacy Lou and her boyfriend and a team of friends of his that were all cool people and fun to be with, so that was a pleasure. I also got to spend a lot of time in the Dirtfoot camp, once I realized exactly where it was located, so that was even more fun.

THE GODDAMNED MOON BALLOON. was a large orange globe strung to some vendor's tent. It was fun watching all the people who were screwed up on one drug or another pointing at it and going LOOK AT THAT BEAUTIFUL HARVEST MOON. No, my friend, the moon is the giant white thing over there. That orange thing you're looking at, with seams and a long string tailing from it? That's a balloon.

THE LITTLE HULA GIRL THAT COULDN'T. There were lots of hula-hoopers there, and some of them were pretty good. One of them was mind-bogglingly awesome and spun with three hoops going different directions at different times. Most of them were TERRIBLE. Drunk or stoned or just awful naturally, but trying so hard and failing consistently. I heard a story about one girl who kept trying to throw her hoop up and catch it somehow. She hit three different people before someone finally talked her into stopping.

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