Welcome to Planet Hippie!

Question: What’s red, and yellow, and looks good on hippies?
Answer: Fire

My old roommate Dave used to tell that joke a lot, and until this weekend I didn’t get the full force of how accurate and poignant it is. This weekend was Bonnaroo (or Tennessee Woodstock if you will) and I had the privilege of attending it with my good friend Rob (who graciously sprung for tickets knowing that my broke-ass couldn’t).

Being a veteran of such hard rock concerts as Metallica, Tool, and Air Supply (shut-up…I was dragged there by my sister for our birthday. I was young and didn’t have musical taste back then) I was sure that attending a “festival” with a bunch of hippies was going to be a piece of (insert baked good of choice here…I’m going with Magic Brownie). I was so wrong.


The trip started out like any other olde fashioned road trip. We listened to some tunes, talked about music and movies, and I was attacked by my truck after calling it a piece of shit for getting such horrible gas mileage. After pulling to the side of the road, flashing apologetic waves to the people on the other side of the yellow lines that we narrowly avoided side-swiping, and changing my shorts we decided that for the duration of the trip we would change the moniker of my truck from "piece of shit" to Larry and that we would treat Larry with the respect and admiration that he deserves. Thus, we made it all the way to Manchester without further duress.


Once we made it to the festival grounds, it was time to find a place to camp. The problem was that several thousand people that had arrived the day before had also come to this same conclusion, and it took us thirty minutes to find a suitable place to place our tent ("suitable" meaning a place that wasn't already inhabited by an R.V. or a mass of twelve hippies that all came in one small Hybrid Volvo). After finding a spot the next step was to stake our claim by putting up our tent. This proved a noble notion, but one that was wrought with inconveniences of its own.


It seems that the camping industry has come up with a new type of language, or at least a variation on the English language as we know it. You see...when I see the phrase "graphite poles and anchors included" I foolishly assume that it means what it says. If I had been better versed in camping logic then I would have immediately realized that what this phrase really means is "we just stuffed a twelve foot by ten foot sleeping quarter into a bag the size of your pancreas, so no room was left for even a Tic Tac, let alone graphite poles and anchors. Good luck getting this thing to stay up." So here I am with our neighbors, Andy and Mark, rigging up a support structure with PVC poles that Mark had in the back of his truck. Thankfully we got redneck neighbors who were willing to help and offer us a beer afterwards, instead of hippie neighbors who probably would have watched as we became very frustrated at our situation before telling us to "chill out, man."



With the tent up and anchored against the wind (using an ingenious combination of bubble gum, curses, and prayers) we now felt confident that we could begin the mile walk from our camp site to the actual festival grounds.



The walk from the camping area to the festival was both an exercise in patience, and a crash course in the field of merchandising. This monument to...hell I don't know (we called it the Hippie Tree) was the marker to let us know that we could now purchase "hand made" glass bongs, tie-dyed shirts, crappy hemp jewelry, and other hippie paraphernalia along the way to the stage. And there were actually people buying this shit! We learn something every day. It's all about the sales pitch. If I ever go back I'm gonna make me some money somehow. Here, let me try my advertising.

"Get your tie-dyed lint here. This lint was hand plucked from the pockets of eighty monks who spent seven years meditating on the peaks of Kilimanjaro. This lint was colored using only dyes that were not tested on animals, and lovingly wadded up just this morning to maintain freshness. A mear seventy dollars for this Holy lint that is reputed to have healing powers if mixed with humus and placed forcefully into the anus with a large glass bong."

Okay, how about this...

"Punch a hippie in the face for twenty dollars!"

This will certainly surprise the hippie that I grab at random and hold for the paying customer.


Yet I can't dispute the fact that the two bands that we had made the trip to see were very good. This is the view that we had of Beck while he was performing. If you look past the sea of hippies you can almost make out the stage. Thank God for Jumbo-tron monitors, huh. After moving about a quarter of a mile to our left we were directly in front of the stage, and only two football fields away instead of three, and could enjoy the monitors as they parodied the actual band with puppets. It was hilarious to Rob and me, but I saw some hippies (who were clearly stoned) with worried looks on their faces. I'm sure they were wondering whether everyone else was destined turned into puppets or whether they had been sold a bad batch of mushrooms.


We went back later that night to catch the Radiohead concert, and about halfway through we met Bob (or least I'm calling him Bob because his actions warrant it). Bob was kind enough to almost trip over me while I was sitting in the grass, but not kind enough to actually trip and fall when I was standing and waiting for him to topple. Bob, who was evidently tripping some good balls, was encouraged by his friends who shouted such inspirational phrases as "There's no gravity on the moon!" and "Slava lesh mora plupa!" (I believe that this last was a stoned slur, but it seemed to get Bob's attention because he then closed his eyes and began nodding like it was the most profound thing that anyone had ever said.)

The next day we woke at nine o'clock and had the tough decision of whether to wait the seven hours to catch the only other show we wanted to see (Lewis Black) or to hit the road before the rain began and turned the dirty hippies into muddy hippies. Rob and I made the wise choice of getting an early start since the prospect of spending another seven hours on Planet Hippie just to catch a thirty minute comedy show made me suddenly want to set fire to something. More than likely...a hippie. Now that would have been entertainment.