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At this point my camera card was nearly full and I only had one exposure
left. This was it.
What ended up happening was this:
Spork and few other insisted that they needed to go get the puppets.
So they did. I'm not sure what we all ended up singing but...wait, I remember.
We sank the Minky Boodle song to Mary J (Queen of the Prom!) using the
puppets. She was moved enough by the experience that she decided to reveal
a secret...that her and Gareth will be the one she spends the rest of
her life with. [See pic above.] From what I remember we sang the 'Ma-Na-Ma-Na'
song. You know it. It's the muppet song that goes:
"Ma-na-ma-na...do DOO dooDOOdoo...manamana..doDOdoDOO..."
Ok so we did that for a bit and there was a dude with, I believe a saxophone,
who just kicked ass. No, it was a trumpet. He played some song we all
know, but I forget what it was. Anyways it was this perfect moment because
at that point all the hippies had gotten tired playing drums under the
pavilion and listened and for one moment everyone was on the same page
and when he hit this last incredible note, this cheer went out over the
entire area and everything was just perfect.
We then decided we needed to find a bar.
At this point it was incredibly late and it was still raining. We made
a plan to drop the puppets back off again, get supplies and go in search
of something. Everyone by this point had given up and gone to bed.
We decided that there was only one place to go...and that was the Puppet
Karaoke Bar.
No one was even awake at the Puppet Karaoke Bar but we went there anyway
and just started serving drinks.
What ensued really can't be adequately described in either photo or text.
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This is essentially the only existing photo from the morning.
I know it doesn't look like much.
I had long put away my camera and dawn was coming. The only reason we
have the photo is that Dana went back and got his digital.
I decided to not try and describe all that went on, but like the drinks
we were pouring that morning, I'll just grab the random ingredients.
-First, we were all completely cracked out of our heads and it was now
dawn.
-Wet puppets were obscenely strewn everywhere and I was running out
of cigarettes
-Sloan showed up
-The other Sloan showed up
-It was imperative that a wrestling match on the stripper stage be held
to see who was the real Sloan
-Somewhere in the midst of this the actual Puppet Karaoke people woke
up and joined us.
-People started singing acapella with the wet puppets
-Spork took 30 minutes to figure out how to make a "Spork Special"
I don't think she ever did.
-I think one of the Sloans started bleeding after about an hour
-This went on an on seemingly for hours even after the sun rose and
I realized that looking around at the sweet madness while in the midst
of convulsive laughter and tears, booze and mud in all directions, that
I could confidently believe with all of my heart, that nothing like
this was going on in any place on the entire surface of the Earth.
I looked up at XT who I had been sharing mind-meld with all morning
and that knowing came...One senses it. It's the time when you
know that if you are to make it out of this at the right point, you
have to leave now. Ahead of you is an invisible train and you're the
only one who's heard the whistle and it's your job to get all of your
people out...
"But we still have all these drinks..."
"No...we have to go. We have to go now..."
Who knows what time it was when we pulled out. Possibly 8, maybe 9.
I felt like the soldier in the last scene of the film shambling off
the field...but in a good way.
As I finally zipped my tent up to collapse I knew that we made the right
choice as down on the field an invisible train blew through. I realized
that this morning was, without any hyperbole, the unparalleled weirdest
morning of my life and that I'll never have another one like it ever
again.
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We
eventually found our way onto the stage.