Burning Man

Someone recently sent me a video of Burning Man revelers reciting Oh, the Places You’ll Go.

It sent me to the medicine cabinet.

Just watching it gave me a sugar rush by way of heatstroke via straight-up migraine. But nothing can cure what ails me.

Lacking a peyote button or those handy Hunger Games suicide berries, I am forced to resort to blogging as a way to alleviate my malady. Burning Man started in the mid-80s as an artsy-fartsy homage to the Solstice, burning effigies as a form of “radical self-expression,” clearly a hippie euphemism for a low-grade case of pyromania (and not the totally rad Def Leppard kind). I love fire like the Heat Miser but this creeps me out. After sitting through The Wicker Man only to watch a dude burned alive as an offering for the harvest, I am not down with towering infernos.

Then there are the hipster hippies dropping acid while dropping trou. No. Just no. The Places I’ll Go? Pretty sure my list doesn’t include Black Rock City.

Things I Want to Make Out With

The time is nigh: the book version of Things I Want to Punch in the Face is now available for pre-order, thanks to Prospect Park Media! All of your favorite posts, plus a few new ones—100 gems in all—have been gathered in one gorgeous book that you crack open when: 

• you can't sleep on a red-eye because of that yammering man behind you
• you need to sober up by reading my peach schnapps cautionary tale 
• you want to feel better about yourself in comparison to the seat hogs, sidewalk hogs, emo punks, steampunks…