Rolling Stone rant.

Noir · Post by **Noir** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:57 am

Umm...

Scroll down: http://byneddiejingo.blogspot.com/2005/ ... -rent.html

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:51 pm

Nice link Noir,

I need you for stuff like this. makes this eplaya nonsense worth it to get a link like that. Is that your blog?

here is what I posted in response:

anonymous wrote: The problem or a problem is that taibi and powers are rather vapid as well.

I like taibi, he's kind of funny, but he is also a little brat as well.

Yes, we've got our little personal freedoms, and yes they mask a greater control, but, hey, welcome to liberalism in the larger sense.

The same goes for the Baffler. so what?
many of tom frank's bugaboos are just his little bugaboos. He rarely digs deeper than a surface disgruntlement, and he denies the agency, yes the agency (to use a Frank bugaboo) of the red state publican.

It ain't the man that is bringing you down, it's your own selfish infantile little pampered ass. You are controlled.
The cooptation of the avant-garde started with...the avant-garde. read tj clark on that. don't cry over rolling stone or tye-dye if you can't cry over the cooptation of montmarte in 1900.

if you flip your perspective and lower your expectations, you start to see some good things happening with things like burning man. no, not that silly self expression stuff. but little things like the ability to set up camp in the desert and break camp and leave no trace. the ability to create a city out thin air. the ability to socialize face to face. incremental changes and innovations are being made at places like burning man. and they might just save our asses when the shit hits the fan. bm is apocalypse training in the age of intelligent machines.

do you have link to the full taibi rant?

ZaphodBurner · Post by **ZaphodBurner** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:45 pm

"Burning Man presents itself as something new and progressive, but in reality it's something old and reactionary: it's the ghost of the Sixties, kept like a castrated, defanged zoo animal in a cage, wallowing wistfully in its own muck."

...says "ROLLING STONE."

LOL!

Give me a fucking break. Personally, I'm glad to read these words because it'll keep the clueless away. Burning Man is about fat, naked, drunken hippies. Don't go. It sucks.

Maybe next month Rolling Stone will do another gasmic tribute to the other defanged zoo animals like, oh, the Rolling Stones, Springsteen, Bob-Drunkass-Dylan...

Bwaaahaaaa.

Just keep spreading those rumors, folks, so we don't end up buried in our own trash like the fucking idiots did at Phish festivals.
-c

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:53 pm

It's Matt Taibbi really.

I have not read the piece. He's one of the clever bratty writers at exile.ru of which the best is john dolan. The war nerd is also pretty good. They kind of raise the anti-social perpetually adolescent writer bar a little so good for them.

More people will keep coming to BM regardless, and that is a good thing.

BM is evolving and the whole leave no trace ethic is spreading not diminishing.
if you remember the old burn everything days you know what I mean.

Yes, we are relatively affluent at bm. at least bm is a glimpse of a view of a vision beyond the Hobbesian economics of scarcity. And it is people having a good time before they die, which is irrefutable, in itself.

Noir · Post by **Noir** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:50 pm

ubu, it's not my blog and the article is unavailable online. That's why I posted that link.

I like her response as well: http://www.livejournal.com/users/heresiarch/138960.html

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:59 pm

Thanks Noir!

I'm checking that link as well. If you see any others worth noting, please post them here, or pm me.

thanks. very interesting. I like her approach, although she falls into the lefty academic trap of thinking putting your freak on is as they say "counter-hegemonic."

I think burning man is politcally interesting for things other than putting your freak on, although I'm not going to knock that. Anyone having a good time at all between birth and death is irrefutable. true enjoyment is consummation, burning.

But, but, politically, pace Taibbi, there is something very interesting about the experiment of Burning Man. Teasing out an articulation of that is interesting to me.

HughMungus · Post by **HughMungus** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:54 pm

Rolling Stone? Please. Who gives a rat's ASS what they think? I don't think they've printed a single thing I've ever agreed with.

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 12:32 am

Since Sears stopped printing that massive catalog Rolling Stone is the new substitute for stocking the remaining outhouses in rural america. It's the best use for it that can be found.

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:00 am

Kinetic IV wrote:Since Sears stopped printing that massive catalog Rolling Stone is the new substitute for stocking the remaining outhouses in rural america. It's the best use for it that can be found.

Bravo!

I have a confession....I'm one of the middle-aged white men that goes to the desert because IT'S FUN. Some of my best play(a)mates are there. If the Rolling Stone article does anything to dissuade spiritual pilgrims from seeking enlightenment there, or political radicals from hatching revolution there, then I consider it a good thing. SO WHAT, that the Sixties are dead? The clothes were TERRIBLE.

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:46 am

Well,

What you said is funny and how can you refute that. Taibbi's piece is supposed to be funny as well.

I found out that a former supreme court justice of Nevada at 85 comes to burning man every year and loves it, is a burner, so how does that fit into Taibbi's description?

If you are playing the game of looking at the politics of something as big as burning man, if there is any politics, which there is, it would have to be something a little more broad than the prey Taibbi is hunting.

Tentatively, I think there is something to notion that burning man is an extreme example of autonomy and individualism that leads to an interdependence and sociality (i hesitate to say community), or combines into a living sociality, a city.

We areconfused, in this country, I would say as to what is private and what is public. What is subsidised and supported by big government and what is not. We are largely ignorant of the massive infrastructure that supports us, or many of us are.

Burning Man is among many other things, an exposing of the infrastructure
of the city. The infrastructure is a game, is art, is a part of the play. One of the nice aesthetic decisions of the designers of The Machine was the way that they exposed the infrastructure of the piece; the way the piece was on big exposed mechanism, and the way you could admire the metal and wood work. no veneer.

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:23 am

Very well put, Ubu...I think of whole cities as being huge, complicated art installations. Whenever I visit Chicago I come home energized and full of ideas for new art pieces, although I really don't relish the thought of living in a hyperurban environment. (It's important to my sanity to be capable of being in the woods within fifteen minutes at all times.) Cities represent the ultimate example of the Covenant of Civilization, what we're capable of accomplishing if we agree to not kill each other for a little while- And Black Rock City is the finest example of them all.
Your observation about The Machine and its exposed guts has me thinking about possible art for next year....Perhaps that concept, combined with the at-times-astonishing difference between night and day in so many installations, structures and camps in BRC.....

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:45 am

nice, robotland.

I had that very same reaction to Chicago the one time I visited it. It really is a city in that sense you are describing. Is it an accident that Chicago became a kind of Athens of the midwest with its universites and its art? The city seems designed with a kind of self-consciousness of what it could get itself up to. I remember reading about how fast it grew, outpacing the much older St. Louis in growth and energy.

You remember the dreamer head: one of the best parts about it was the metalwork underneath, the infrastructure of the piece, which unfortunately was completely obscured by the plaster and by the inside installation. I have pix of it being constructed which I want to put up somewhere along with some musings about it...

I like this "exposing of infrastructure" motif. something about it resonates.

update:

one big exposed mechanism is what I meant to say about the machine.
(can't edit after 60 minutes)

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 12:13 pm

Yeah- the guts are usually the best part! Were you in BRC the year before last? I really got excited about the Kaliedosphere for similar reasons, and took lots of pictures of its mechanism. That it actually altered your perception of the city from the inside while offering a spectacular view made it quite a memorable piece of work!

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 2:30 pm

The Kaleidosphere...I've seen some great art on the playa but it still remains on my list of the more interesting things I've experienced or done out there. I loved it...never really knew who took the time to make it but I'm glad they did.

the fire elf · Post by **the fire elf** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 4:03 pm

the Black Rock desert is a beautiful place the rest of the year...

some aren't meant for it...

let the sleeping be...

work with the awakened...

Noir · Post by **Noir** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 2:32 pm

Leave it to the good ol' Canadians to comprehend the concept. All hail Toronto(my hometown)!

Article 1: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Conten ... 5060001553

Article 2: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Conten ... 5060001553

Take that shit Stone!

ZaphodBurner · Post by **ZaphodBurner** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 4:00 pm

Noir wrote: Article 2: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Conten ... 5060001553

Take that shit Stone!

"Go Deep."

Yeah, that.

Of all the stuff I've read about Burning Man that wasn't here or at the BM website, this one is it. This guy is real. Thank you for the URL.

-c

ubu · Post by **ubu** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 4:04 pm

thanks, Noir, for posting those articles. they were moving.

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 4:43 pm

ZaphodBurner wrote:"Burning Man presents itself as something new and progressive, but in reality it's something old and reactionary: it's the ghost of the Sixties, kept like a castrated, defanged zoo animal in a cage, wallowing wistfully in its own muck."

Funny, I was thinking they were talking about themselves.

What groundbreaking material have they produced since they stopped paying new and edgy writers like HST? Let them have thier parting shots as they slowly drown of stale print, paper boats dont last very long.

RagnaRoss · Post by **RagnaRoss** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 4:18 am

Funny thing RS wants to bash BM. With their affinity for plastering their covers with scantily-clad teenage, pop-wenches you'd think they'd snap up a billion shots of shirtless playa-princesses and they'd give us a 12 page story!

dragonfly Jafe · Post by **dragonfly Jafe** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 6:50 am

Noir wrote:Article 2: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Conten ... 5060001553

Take that shit Stone!

Wow! I sent a copy of this to my mom because I know she still doesn't understand where it is I go at the end of each summer....