going down

I was browsing today's CityBeat review of a Burning Man-esque party in Santa Barbara last weekend ("trance and breaks" - party like it's 1999 for real yo), and I froze at this line: "The morning after I first heard that yarn, I woke up under a tree, where a delightful friend of a few moments’ acquaintance took me into her mouth, eyes glittering ferally into mine."

WTF? I mean, I like Ron Garmon, the writer. I've met him, and I consider him somewhat of a compadre, even if he's an older guy who raves like it's New Year's Eve, 1992 and writes in verbose prose as if he's Hunter Thompson without a point in sight. (Wait, let me try some Garmonese: The bonfires were aglow with the promise of hedonistic pleasures as yours truly spied a sweet young thing, thong a-showin' ever so slightly. This precious waif, all of 20, if that, batted her glitter-lined eyelashes at me as if there were something cosmic in the air. We were amongst the vanguard of the underworld, true Dionysian troopers brought together for an apocalyptic evening of mind-altering desire and body-melding grooves to be placed forth by that shaman we call the DJ. A she-pal brushed by me like a cat looking for nip, but I slipped by unfazed and disappeared into the nocturnal throng, becoming one with the night people under a blazing moon ... ).

But since the major turnover at CityBeat (almost the whole staff has been gutted - and that means pretty much anybody who ever did any serious, notebook-toting journalism there), the standards have gone below the TMZ . A few weeks ago an uncredited intro to the paper's "travel issue" (it was more like a collection of blurbs) made this statement: ""Did you know that Hitler managed to give every German man, woman and child a yearly vacation at either the mountains or the sea?" Now the paper is using blowjobs as a, ahem, measuring stick when reviewing a musical event? Wow. How CityBeat has fallen.

And, while I'm on a roll: On the topic of these dusty, dirty Burning Man-type parties with their psy-trance, pseudo lefties and guys way to old to be hollering at DJs for one more song, I gotta roll my eyes and sigh. That scene has definitely gained momentum, particularly in California, in the last few years. But the people seem crusty, stinky and stoned enough to be outcasts from the Grateful Dead era - folks who didn't initially feel invited to the dance music party but still eked out their own DJ-driven scene. That's fine - it's the American way. But the music (mostly trance) and motif (essentially it's raving on weed and shrooms) are -- glittering eyes and all -- culturally tired as it gets.

[Above: Do people still dress like this? A photo from the party in question].