Holy Shit! Festival Madness!

This is a photo of Burning Man circa 2004.

Last night, part of the man burned during the lunar eclipse, an unplanned event and likely (my speculation) arson.

I guess Burning Man has become so popular, so 'in,' that the lowlifes have taken residence . A forecast of this unfortunate situation has been evident with the stealing of art work, sabotague of the toilets and blatant theft of bicycles. The few bad apples always have to ruin it.

http://www.burningman.com/. For the latest news, the web site is the place to go.

This really sucks, and holds a mirror up to our culture, or whatever passes for culture these flawed-celebrity days. Be prepared for another griefathon (Tina Brown's word) on the anniversary date of Diana's death. My disgust is total. But the festival will go on, and I hope the man will burn again on Saturday at the proper time with all the proper celebration and respect. Amid drums and fire dancers and the hoopla that we know and love. With Festival Madness, the good kind.

Grapeshot

The Trial

Today I take the train into town to the new Federal Courthouse to view a civil trial. Since I know or know of the plaintiffs and those being sued and have a lot of knowledge of the business and how it was run and why things happened, I have a real insider knowledge, and I am curious to know whether the trial will skew the facts as I know them. It takes all morning to select the jury, 45 people who looked as though they were collared for jury duty while mowing the lawn or washing the car. Not even a sport coat among them, hell, barely a shirt with a collar. Out of a pool of 45, they barely got 12 due to all the preemptory challanges and so forth.

Result being, I had lots of time to read, and since I had schleepped the NY Times along, I read the interview (Michael Kimmelman) with Tina Brown about her "Diana" book. Ms. Brown used a lot of cool words and phrases, some of which I wrote down, thinking a good word is (sometimes) hard to find and maybe some of these will be useful in Festival Madness, which I am on a marathon to revise.

Remember, you read it here first, the coolest new word everyone is using is "hubris." Was all over the Times today. So remember hubris and use it daily in a sentence ever so often until it is not only a part of your active vocabulary, but rolling off your lips like a scholar of ancient greek tragedies. You don't need hubris to use hubris.

Some other cool words and phrases: valedictory, revisiting, crystallized, naval-gazing, candor, notational subject, panache, gloss, marginalized, griefathon (apropos of Diana) festival of inclusion, fever of the moment, dot.com moment (whatever the hell that is) and best of all, "I drank the Kool-Aid."

More on the trial anon. Of course I don't want to name names or reveal who what or where. These people are dreadfully litiginous. Hey, that's another good word. I'll tamp down my hubris and see ya tomorrow.