It's a National Geographic Adventure!
First, my apologies to all of you and to President Clinton: every single Amazon assocates link on his blog, including that one that (I swear!) was there for my book, disappeared within 24 hours of my linking to his page. Please don't send the Secret Service after me.
But there is better news today: A very nice review in the August issue of National Geographic Adventure. They don't provide full content online, but here is the review in full, written by Anthony Brandt. I present it without comment:
"You're in the desert, a flat, alkaline, dust-choked nowhere the temperature of molten lava, and it's empty, totally empty. Until, all at once, a whole city rises up like one of those fabulous desert mirages, an anti-Disneyland of tents and trailers, art cars and light shows, people playing golf with burning toilet paper rolls, a kid in a gorilla suit hiding out in a Porta Potty, a dwarf car-surfing behind a pick-up truck...There are hundreds of bizarre, unpredictable things going on all at the same time, and it's wild--a circus, a zoo, a carnival of the senses. All inhibitions and personal boundaries collapse. The ordinary has vanished.
You're at Burning Man. Or you're just reading a book about it.
The author's name is Brian Doherty. He's a participant-observer of this annual ritual in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, and his is a delightfully engrossing read. For one thing it's a sort of biographical dictionary of some of the weirdest people on the planet: Steve Heck, for example, whose motto is "Don't Be Me" and who makes art out of junk, piling pianos one on top of another, sometimes dozens of them, as a free-form altar to the out-of-tune, then torching the whole. And the Rev. Al, who one year walked around smothered in mud wearing a tire, which was covered with lit sterno cans, suspended from a chain around his neck. Or the 30,000 others who now attend this thing, dressed, many of them, as someone else.
Burning Man is one of the very few events in American culture that brings together hippies, punks, suburban families, Internet millionaires, academics, cab drivers, Honda drivers, techies and tree-huggers and melts them down. Like any true adventure, it strips the clothes off your character, opens you up to self-inspection. Doherty's book is an excellent introduction to the madness. If you can't make it to Black Rock, buy the book."
But there is better news today: A very nice review in the August issue of National Geographic Adventure. They don't provide full content online, but here is the review in full, written by Anthony Brandt. I present it without comment:
"You're in the desert, a flat, alkaline, dust-choked nowhere the temperature of molten lava, and it's empty, totally empty. Until, all at once, a whole city rises up like one of those fabulous desert mirages, an anti-Disneyland of tents and trailers, art cars and light shows, people playing golf with burning toilet paper rolls, a kid in a gorilla suit hiding out in a Porta Potty, a dwarf car-surfing behind a pick-up truck...There are hundreds of bizarre, unpredictable things going on all at the same time, and it's wild--a circus, a zoo, a carnival of the senses. All inhibitions and personal boundaries collapse. The ordinary has vanished.
You're at Burning Man. Or you're just reading a book about it.
The author's name is Brian Doherty. He's a participant-observer of this annual ritual in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, and his is a delightfully engrossing read. For one thing it's a sort of biographical dictionary of some of the weirdest people on the planet: Steve Heck, for example, whose motto is "Don't Be Me" and who makes art out of junk, piling pianos one on top of another, sometimes dozens of them, as a free-form altar to the out-of-tune, then torching the whole. And the Rev. Al, who one year walked around smothered in mud wearing a tire, which was covered with lit sterno cans, suspended from a chain around his neck. Or the 30,000 others who now attend this thing, dressed, many of them, as someone else.
Burning Man is one of the very few events in American culture that brings together hippies, punks, suburban families, Internet millionaires, academics, cab drivers, Honda drivers, techies and tree-huggers and melts them down. Like any true adventure, it strips the clothes off your character, opens you up to self-inspection. Doherty's book is an excellent introduction to the madness. If you can't make it to Black Rock, buy the book."
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