Enlightened Banana

You want? Here you go! More writing to come soon, sorry for the lapse!

For a look at what we have been doing recently, check out The Couple In A Camper

New Year!

Well it has been too long since I have written anything here! A lot happened in 2012, I will try to catch everybody up as much as possible. I will definitely make it my goal to write on here a lot more. I have been working on a painting the last few days, I hope that it turns out well. Stay tuned!!

For the Langerado Collector

Come and get em while they're fresh, this years 2011 limited edition Langerado Is Canceled commemorative posters!!

This is available this year only, notice the fine craftsmanship and the exquisite detailing on the misspelling of the word "canceled". This is a collectors item, truly to be cherished. Add it to your collection, and if you don't already have it you should obviously get your hands on 2009's canceled poster, your collection would not be complete without it.

Notice how they could have simply cut and pasted the original canceled poster, but they didn't. They took the time to make it fresh, and uniquely their own. Here's to another fine year from all of us looking forward to the 2012 "Langerado is canceled" commemorative poster.

The Unofficial Governor Rick Scott Biography (A Political Parody)

----The Following Story is entirely fictional and for entertainment purposes only. Any similarities to any politicians, either living, or deceased (God willing), corrupt, or sincere is entirely coincidental. Nobody was harmed during the writing of this story, unlike during the writing of quite a bit of legislation these days. Reader Discretion is Advised----

     Rick Scott was born with a silver spoon. Unfortunately at some point during childbirth the spoon became dislodged from his mouth and became embedded within a more insidious orifice. This would be an unfortunate beginning to what would eventually become one of the most notorious lives ever lived.
     Rick Scott was born in Illinois, a state renowned for not having ever had any known instances of political corruption, or any kind of economic corruption for that matter either. At a very young age Rick was caught playing “for profit doctor” with another one of his male classmates. His teacher suggested to his parents that they ought to raise him in Missouri, where those sort of things were more acceptable. And so he was uprooted from his humble beginnings, a move that would cause him to hold great disdain for all public school teachers for the remainder of his life.
     It was in Missouri that Scott first became good friends with Satan. While attending high school young Rick was heavily influenced by the popularity of Quaaludes. It would be his fondness for ludes combined with their decreased availability that would later propel him to become involved in the pharmaceutical industry. In order to fuel his constant need for Quaaludes high school Rick Scott would perform special “favors” for the  school janitor Stan Fluerica. One day after particularly sweaty favor session young Rick proclaimed his desire to become the most powerful dark wizard in the world. “If only I had real power, I would show those Muggles” young Rick bemoaned.  It was then that janitor Stan began to undulate more unusual than normal, and as his horns protruded from above his eyes (both the lazy one, as well as the good one) Stan Fluerica revealed his true identity as the prince of Darkness, Satan himself. “Oh powerful Satan” Rick exclaimed “I should have known it was you the whole time, for no mere janitor could have filled such a young lads whimsy as you have, my liege”. “Save your tongue, foul human. For you will need it to weave the most masterful lies this realm has ever seen. One day, your simple utterance of not having recollection of your own actions will have greater power than you could ever imagine!” his voice echoed. “I offer you this simple exchange. I will bestow upon you the most vile being this world has ever seen, but in order to do so you must sacrifice to me the luxurious, bountiful locks of hair frame your head so well”. Young Rick sat, looking quite puzzled for a moment at the proposition at hand. “But my beautiful hair is the only thing that has ever brought me fancy. All charisma I possess would be entirely obliterated”! “You must decide, and the decision must come before your eighteenth birthday. At your simple beckoning I will bestow upon thee what you desire, the choice is yours”.


 TO BE CONTINUED...

House Judiciary Chairman Representative Lamar Smith

So there is a bill circulating in the House of Representatives right now which intends to remove federal penalties from marijuana. In order for the bill to be considered by the house it has to clear its committee assignments, specifically House Judiciary committee. Unfortunately the Chairman of that committee, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), will not even place the bill on the committee's agenda for consideration. A campaign was started today to contact him and urge him to consider HR 2306. Within minutes his Facebook page was flooded. Soon after that his page was disabled, only to be up again for a few minutes with the ability to comment removed. Not too long after that the page disappeared completely. It is quite cowardly of an elected official to limit access to him for his consituents simply because he does not agree with their opinions regarding an area of public policy. To simply ignore the will of the people goes against what Democracy is supposed to mean. Please help me in trying to contact Congressman Smith and tell him that he cannot simply ignore the will of the people, and if he doesn't take HR2306 into serious consideration, that  voting him out of office will be OUR serious consideration.
http://lamarsmith.house.gov/
202-225-3951
https://lamarsmith.house.gov/ContactForm/

Update: Congressman Smith has taken any and every measure to insure he doesn't have to have contact with any of his constituency, as he has taken down his Facebook page, blocked his twitter and Youtube accounts from allowing people to post on them, and has redirected his phone lines to an automatic answering service. I also found this video on NORML.org, very poignant.

Bear Creek 2011- Get Excited

 

Can you Read that?

Good?

Enough Said.

Hangout Music Festival Review

     I just finished sleeping 14 hours after returning home from the Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The weekend was amazing and I met a lot of wonderful people. While this was one of the funnest festivals I have ever attended, that is not to say the weekend was without issues. As such I will now offer my version of this weekend, along with my own cheers and criticisms. Perhaps you attended and had a completely different experience, this can always be the case with such a large event. These are simply my opinions based on my experience over the weekend.
      My girlfriend and I drove in from Tallahassee on Thursday night for the weekend, I had a Public Policy exam and she had work, so we ended up leaving around 8. Since the festival was in central time zone we gained and hour on the way there and ended up arriving at Gulf State Park around 11.
     When we arrived the park was already filling up. The people volunteering the front desk were obviously working overtime as I have never seen a park station so busy, let alone at almost midnight. While the woman who checked us in was quite friendly, her friendliness only served to frustrate us as she chatted us up and took 20 minutes to get us a camp site, we had been driving for hours and just wanted to set up and chill out. We ended up with a spot right across the street from the waterway, and right when we pulled up our next door neighbors were busy spinning their new fire hoop.
     The Park has a strict rule that even though you can have up to eight people and 2 cars per site, you are only allowed ONE camping unit, be it trailer, RV, or just a simple tent. Since there were 5 of us and none of us had a tent big enough, nor would we ever need one that size again we opted to buy the biggest tent Walmart had with the strict intention of returning it at the end of the weekend. We put together our "rented" WalMart tent despite the best efforts of the instruction manual authors to keep us from our task, we drank several beers and smoked several items, and laid down for bed.

     On the first morning, Friday we woke up and made breakfast. Afterwards my girlfriend and I unloaded our bikes and began to head down the beach to the festival venue. When we arrived we locked our bikes up to the most clusterfuck of a bike rack we have ever seen, it was simply 4 fence style barricades layed out in a parking lot, the slots in the fence were not wide enough to accomodate a bike tire through, so most people had opted to lift their front tires over the top of the fencing, which made for quite an awkward task. It was at this point that we realized we had to go through two monsterous lines. The first was a completely unorganized box office line where we would exchange our tickets for wristbands. The line was completely just a crowd pushing their way towards the front, eventually forming the loosest sense of the word line when they got towards the front. We stood in that line for over an hour, and when we were 3 people back from the table a lady started yelling "If you only need wristbands they have them at the front gate". Considering we had been there for over and hour we were not going to simply leave now, so we waited a few more minutes and got our wristbands there. Never mind the fact that the line we were in turned out to be for buying tickets, even though the festival had been advertised as "sold out" for the last month.

     We then proceeded to the actual main gate entrance. This line was also highly unorganized, and had absolutely no recognizable end goal. All you could see was people in front of you, there was no entryway actually visible, just hordes of sweaty people. We had brought some water for the line, but we had been told we could not bring water inside, so we had only brought what we thought was sufficient for the line itself so we wouldn't have to pour any out and waste it. Well after our first hour in the second line we had long been out of water, we were wedged in between thousands of people, nearly everyone around us looked just as frustrated and dehydrated as we were at that point, and to make matters worse they hadn't even opened the gates yet, so as the first bands of the day were scheduled to begin playing they would be doing so to an empty venue! After what seemed to be about two hours the line started moving, and when we got to the front we were told "This is the line for wristbands, if you already have  one you need to be in that line". So we were moved into yet a third line, which thankfully moved very quickly, but the point is throughout all three of these lines not one was clearly labeled as to what it was for.

     When we finally made it into the venue we high fived others who seemed just as excited to finally be in as we were and then we saw one of the worst things you could be greeted by at a music festival, a fucking police k-9 unit sniffing everyone as they entered. We ignored this ghastly scare tactic as we set forth to try and find water. On the map of the festival we noticed there was only ONE WATER STATION SET UP TO ACCOMODATE 350000 people, and when we went to look for it it wasn't even where they had labeled it on the map. When we finally did locate it we were shocked to realize it too had almost an hour long line of people waiting to have their bottles filled from a hose coming out of a nearby bath house. We decided to skip this ridiculous crap and simply opted to fill our water bottles out of the sinks in said bath house.
     The first band we saw was Easy Star All Stars, who put on an awesome show, including some of their Dub Side of the Moon Pink Floyd covers as well as their Reggae Radiohead songs. After that we decided to walk across the venue to check out Beats Antique at what would come to be known as one of the worst parts of the whole festival, the Boom Boom Room. I have to say not knowing anything about these guys Beats Antique was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. It was a DJ who mixed crazy ethnic music while also playing violin and keyboards at times, while drummers played in the background and a girl belly danced on stage. Fugging Phenomenal.We ended up taking a short break after this, my girlfriend went into town to look for a new bathing suit top, and I rode my bike around looking for a cheap single serving beer and a burger.

     We got back just in time to catch Bassnectar. It was around this time that I began to realize the Boom Boom Room might not have been as good an idea as they might have conceptualized it to be. The tent was only large enough to fit a couple thousand people, not a lot considering this festival had 35,000 attendees, but many of the artists which had even caused this festival to be so popular were scheduled to play there over the weekend. This tent was also set up nearly catercorner to one of the main stages, the Surf Style stage, thus cutting off a good portion the main thoroughfare and cramping the front area of the Surf Style stage. The crowd for Bassnectar was so thick that you could not find enough room to hula hoop and still be close enough to actually here anything. If you did try to get close you could not get as far as the edge of the tent unless you wanted to be a dick and rack up a bunch of negative karma shoving your way through a whole lot of people.

 Next we made our way over to see Sound Tribe Sector Nine. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE STS9, but their set at this festival was not as psychedelic as it normally is. They were playing a more jazzy greatest hits type set, presumably to cater to the more family crowd that was there. Never mind that it was also a daytime set (why?). This family friendly set type turned out to be a running theme for the weekend. Anyway I was not feeling them as much as I normally do for this set, so after a few songs we decided to tromp through the sand and check out My Morning Jacket. These guys honestly put on one of the best sets of the festival. I have been at a lot of festivals they have also played at, but never really gotten the chance to check  them out. I was quite blown away by their performance, their songs varied greatly in style, but none were lacking in quality.

     We came to the conclusion that none of us were really interested in seeing Widespread Panic seeing as how they play almost every festival regardless of whether we came to see them or not, so we began our bike ride back to the campground. About half way there we realized my girlfriends bike tire had become nearly flat. Both her tires had not been staying inflated, and I had put that green stuff that is supposed to stop leaks in them before we left. One of the tires still wouldn't stay inflated so I had purchased two new tubes just in case and replaced that one. Now the other one wasn't staying inflated either. If ever there were an anti-endorsement for Slime brand fix your bike tire crap it would come from this experience. We finally made it back to the campsite where I ripped the tube from the tire with my bare hands, replaced it with the fresh one, and then proceeded to inflate it until it blew up in my face. Literally, it exploded. This truly sucked because we had tickets to the Rich Aucoin late night show. Luckily two of our campmates had shuttle passes and were not going to any late night shows so they let us borrow them for the night.

       When we arrived for the late night set another disappointment of organization occurred. There had never been any mention as to where the late night shows would occur, and any inquiry into the matter amongst festival staff was met with confusion and replies of "I'm not really sure". Since the buses only went to and from the main venue we assumed that was where we needed to go. When we arrived we were assured by all staff present that both late night shows would have to go through the same gate, where thousands of people had lined up for Bassnectar. After waiting in this line for almost half an hour we were then told by the staff at the front of the line that the entrance to the Rich Aucoin show was in fact at the other end of the venue, and we had been told to wait in the wrong line. When we then walked across to the other side of the venue they asked to see our tickets, but they had been purchased will call. Nobody working that entrance seemed to know who was charge of will call, but we were told they were letting people in for free anyway, which was pretty frustrating since apparently we spent 15 bucks each on late night tickets even though other people were just getting in for free.   

       Thankfully when we got in Rich Aucoin was worth every cent of that ticket. Rich Aucoin was what my girlfriend liked to call an A.D.D. child's wet dream come true. This guy mixed crazy sing alongs with confetti, squirt guns and silly string. He came out with entire packs of glow sticks electric taped to his arms and he put a giant playground parachute over the crowd and threw beach balls on top, and literally crowd surfed on a giant surf board. If you ever get a chance to go see this guy, definitely do so!

         Another issue that arose late Friday night/Saturday morning came in the form of the shuttle buses. As I said before we had borrowed our friends shuttle passes and been picked up from the campgrounds on the blue line shuttle. When we were leaving to return after the late night show we were informed that all buses in the direction we were headed had been consolidated for the rest of the morning to a single all purpose line. This bus was to stop at all points along the way except for one problem, it proceeded to the last stop first, several miles away from the festival. So even though we were at the camp grounds only a few miles away, the closest possible stop, we had to drive 10 miles down and then back track through every possible stop before we could get off. And when we finally got close to our stop the driver informed us he was told not to leave the main road, and he tried to drop us off at the end of a dark country road to walk back several miles to the actual camp ground we were picked up at. If I had actually paid for those shuttle passes I would be demanding my money back right now.
        Saturday I woke up feeling pretty hung over from Friday's festivities. We decided on an easy breakfast of cereal and bananas instead of cooking anything, as none of us felt making any sincere kind of effort towards anything productive that morning. Since my girlfriend's bike tire had been pretty much rendered useless the night before we opted to drive the car to just outside the festival and pay to park in someones yard. I wish we had done this every day, it was perfect. We were able to fill our car with all necessary essentials and come and go as we pleased for the day, drinking all the beers we could just outside the front gates without having to shell over 6 bucks for them.

     The first act we saw was Medeski Martin and Wood, they put on an awesome funk jam as usual. At this point it was probably the hottest time of the whole weekend, luckily enough  right at this time we found a well hidden water fountain  in a small pagoda that helped us out for the rest of the weekend. We stayed under that pagoda and kept hydrated for the remainder of the MMW set and headed over to the infamous Boom Boom Room to check out Xavier Rudd.

      When I first saw Xavier Rudd several years ago he reminded me of kind of an Australian version of Jack Johnson or Dave Matthews, but this time around he put on a much jammier show, at times playing crazy beats on his trademark didge while playing crazy guitar loops over them. All in all his show was seriously badass, I was quite impressed. You can even download a copy of the set he played for free from BT.Etree.ORG, just search for Xavier Rudd Hangout.
   One act we had been interested in seeing was Ceelo Green. My girlfriend and I had been watching "The Voice" and of course we sang the song "Fuck You" a bunch on the drive up. Unfortunately when we went to where he was supposed to play the stage was empty. After waiting a while the Foo Fighters unexpectedly showed up on stage and said that Ceelo had apparenly said Forget You to us. This was sad as this is the second time I have heard about Ceelo no showing or being late for a festival gig (the first being at Coachella). Luckily the Foo's made it up to us with an early surprise set consisting of covers. Ceelo eventually showed up after about 40 minutes, did 2 songs and then dipped. What a turd.

 I've got to say Primus was one of the highlights of the festival for me. I have been a huge fan since I was young, and I have seen many Claypool shows, but never Primus. They played what could only be described as a greatest hits set. I was 14 again, loved it!!
    There is probably one band that sells festivals for me over and over again, and that band is The Flaming Lips. Now let me make this very clear, Hangout is the ONLY festival I have been to where I was unable to find party favors. You know what I am talking about, so that is all I will say. So needless to say this was my first time seeing the FLips "unhindered". I have heard a lot of people say that they are not as good when you are in such a state, but I say bullshit. My only complaint is whose freaking idea was it to give these guys a daytime show? Poor planning. Luckily the sun set about 30 minutes before the end of their show, so the opening was a sort of toned down set, and then towards the end they fired up the background screen and did the coming out of the digital vagina bit and crowd surfing in a hamster ball. Classic.

  One thing I must say now is that while having a festival on the beach is fun in theory, it is no fun in real life. First of all the sea was fenced off so you couldn't take advantage of it when it go too hot. Second all the stages were so far apart that walking through sand became a chore, not to mention sand got in everywhere and everything. Also the logistics involving trash were horrible. Even though they did spot cleaning countless breezes sent trash flying into the water, and loads more trash became buried under tons of sand only to be unearthed one day in the future to be swept out to sea and kill animals. Pretty lame.

        Sunday we got going late, we missed Matisyahu although we were able to hear him play from a local balcony. At this point we had given up on the shuttle buses altogether, they were unreliable and a rip off. We opted instead to pay a local to allow us to park our car in their yard, where we also retreated to between sets in order to freshen up the party.  Ween was phenomanal. At one point Deaner took issue with a police boat docked near shore and yelled "Hey you, you in the boat, FUUUUCK YOU!!". This was not taken well by some of the family members in the audience, as one woman grabbed her child and told him "did you hear that? That was not nice" as she escorted him away from the show. Fucking A Ween!

     Finally Paul Simon. This for me was a bucket list thing. It was amazing. The only thing that could have made it better is if Garfunkle had suddenly showed up for a guest appearance. Just think about what seeing Paul Simon would be like live. It was like that, only better. I wish I could describe it, but if you could put it to words than the experience wouldn't be as magical. After he finished his set Paul said he would be back next time (doubt it) and then fireworks were set off over the gulf.

         So what can I say about the whole weekend? I saw a lot of good music, and met a lot of great people. It almost felt as if all this happened DESPITE the best efforts of the producers and law enforcement to prevent such things. I know the producers didn't go out of their way to make this festival shoddy, but they certainly didn't go out of their way to alleviate this situation either. This was certainly not what one could call a "Rager" more like a bunch of young urban professionals mixed with middle class, middle aged families who could afford to rent a beach condo for the weekend. More like an expensive vacation with a concert than a festival. I had fun. Would I go again? Quite frankly no. My money is better spent at smaller, more intimate shows where I feel loved and appreciated, not herded and exploited for money.  Bottom line- poorly organized, too many overzealous cops, most of the crowd is not very friendly, trash is handled poorly, accommodations were scarce/expensive/far, but hey the music was awesome!!!