What Could Possibly Go Wrong At A Festival?

[dr_pretentious]

Okay, festival-going folks, I need to collect potential incidents for the Sebastian novella. What are the weirdest, most high-stakes, most improbable, most hilarious and/or most dangerous things you’ve seen happen at a festival? What interesting disasters have you seen averted, or had a hand in averting? Please don’t use names or identifying details, because I don’t want to be party to accidentally upsetting, embarrassing, or libeling anyone. I just need some ingredients to zizz together in the Cuisinart of my fictioneering brain so I can make some story pesto. If in doubt, please respond privately.

Comments

[karenjunker.livejournal.com]

The festival organizers provide 2 Sani-cans for the entire 4-day, 300 person event. By the end of day one, they are overflowing.

A 6 y.o. child gets bitten by a spider, has an allergic reaction and everyone is so stoned, no one can drive him to a hospital, so they give him Benadryl and hope for the best.

The next year, the same child uses the palm of his hand to push down the cover of a metal & glass candle lantern and the part he pushes is the top, where all the heat had risen from the flame -- again too stoned to drive, so ice and again hoping for the best.

A big windstorm, so all power to the site is cut off in the middle of cooking for the feast. Food served anyhow. Many cases of food poisoning.

Organizer's dad dies at the event, from natural causes. On her birthday.

Big Name Person decides that someone is sleeping with her husband behind her back -- organizes search parties that scour the snake-infested 1000 acres of the site all night and into the dawn.

I have many more.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Festival organizers' outside-of-festival lives do seem to wait to explode until the festival's up and running.

I have so many weather-related mishap tales... Lots of tents are designed now so they can be put up without being staked, and every year we see the occasional ambitious tent try to fulfill its dreams of becoming a kite.

Everybody was too stoned? Is my regular festival the tamest festival on the circuit, or is it that times have changed, or is it an East Coast/West Coast thing?

[karenjunker.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait - this one's good:

A HP, well-known in the community for being deathly allergic to onions, walks across a field--a hundred yards away from but downwind of the outdoor kitchen (where they are chopping onions for the feast) and falls immediately onto the ground, clutching her throat and thrashing her limbs.

Standing in line for the meal, the man in front of you asks if you've read the latest book by Big Name Person -- you say no, you think of that author as an oathbreaker and scam artist -- and the man turns out to be the author.

The entire population of the festival is in a series of underground tunnels (the festival is happening in an old WWII army base) and during the reinactment of the Persephone story, an elderly woman has a heart attack. You are a mile from the nearest vehicle and 40 miles from the nearest hospital. There are no phones. And the gate to the festival site is a big metal one, which is closed and locked for the night.

Everyone makes little boats out of driftwood and flowers and then they put a candle on them, light them and set them out to sea on the outgoing tide -- the entire flotilla drifts about a hundred yards upshore to a wooden dock, which is immediately ignited.

A young woman decides it would be fun to take her dad's new seaplane to the event (the dad is out of town) -- she ties it to a buoy next to the dock and then next morning when she goes to show it off to the festival-goers, another boat had been tied up to the same buoy and through the night the impact of its slamming up against the floats of the seaplane has caused the seaplane to sink. The seaplane was not yet insured and was worth 1.5 million dollars.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

The wooden dock thing is pretty hilarious to read about; probably less so if you were there.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Standing in line for the meal, the man in front of you asks if you've read the latest book by Big Name Person -- you say no, you think of that author as an oathbreaker and scam artist -- and the man turns out to be the author.
Ouch! I've said Uncharitable Things about a Certain New Age Press in the presence of people who had published with it, but then, they all agree that said press has a tendency violate contract terms about royalties, even more than most publishers do. (And I bet you know the one I mean.)

Persephone in underground tunnels! That's so...authentically Eleusinian! That sounds like it would have been an amazing ritual, but it's hard to imagine getting back into the groove after a participant's heart attack. So, Mrs. Lincoln, aside from that, how was the play?

Ah, fire and water. Once upon a time, there was a coven that put floating candles in a backyard swimming pool. When they went indoors for feast (because what could go wrong with fire that's floating in a swimming pool?), the filter pump kicked on. The pool liner was made of some petroleum-based thing that could burn underwater. For some time afterwards, the pool repair company's voicemail greeting ended with, "Remember, only you can prevent swimming pool fires."

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

21st birthday celebratory drunk leads to 21st birthday celebratory frak in a patch of poison ivy. (I was the medic who caught that one.)
Tiki torches are not meant to be carried when lit. Lit, super-heated lamp oil spill leads to 3rd degree burns over 30% body. (I was, thank the Gods, not the medic who caught that one.)
Dangerous: Rohypnol in drinks leads to several women awakening in places they don't remember going with signs of non-con sexual activity.
Ugly: Several cases of domestic violence escalating to point of state police being called. (I was the medic who caught that one.)
I don't think this is what you're looking for...

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. Not what I'm looking for, but important to have a clue about. The tiki torch problem would not be intuitively obvious to the more risk-happy people I know, so it's good to have a cautionary tale filed away in case I need one.

The fact that FSA's festivals have organized medics is the reason the kid-injury stories Karen tells above would have ended differently at FSG. Our kids are just as likely to get themselves hurt, and I'm certain there are plenty of discreetly stoned people (along with the handful of wacky cases that end up in the Healer's Hut), but there would have been many more sober people available to get the kid proper care.

Which is by way of saying thank you, to you and all the medical volunteers.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

A couple of these are things I was not physically present for but heard after the fact from reliable sources.

The culmination of the festival involves a wooden sculpture, which has fireworks inside, being burnt to the ground. Someone decides to bring a romantic partner into the sculpture, where the fireworks are stored, for some nooky. They fall asleep afterwards and wake up to find the trap door has been locked from the outside, and the burning is about to begin... (yes, they made it out OK.)

No one remembered to tie down the porta-potties. They're all knocked over in a windstorm. And yes, people are inside. (Also, tents being picked up by kites and flying off at 50MPH! The carports made with steel also flying off at 50MPH are potentially dangerous.)

A festivalgoer has created a big metal contraption that actually walks, at slow speeds (about 2 mph). They walk it about two miles away from the festival. And then it breaks down. It weighs three tons.

A wooden sculpture has a two-story wooden slide - people climb a ladder up one side to see the inside of the sculpture, and slide down the other. Unfortunately, no one has properly sanded the slide. And the first few people down were naked. EMTs had to deal with a lot of "anal splinters" that year.

There is a beautiful metal sculpture of a coyote, about two stories high. The head spins around. People sit on the head and spin it faster and faster for that Tilt-a-Whirl effect, forgetting the most important part of a Tilt-a-Whirl: centrifugal force exists! Several people break limbs after being flung off at high speed. (You'd think after it happened once people would learn their lesson, but noooooo...)

I have heard a MILLION stories about "we brought our tent but the tent poles are still at home!" It's worse when the tent poles are 3 states away.

Someone hangs themselves, committing suicide in the middle of the night, in the middle of an art exhibit. For several days people assume the corpse is a really well-done mannequin. (That one may be too grim - but it is an actual documented occurrence.)

The festival is known for temperatures that exceed 100 degrees. This year, there's a giant rainstorm just as the festival is opening...and temperatures drop down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit overnight (not "by" 40 degrees, but down to just above freezing). Festivalgoers wrap themselves in every piece of cloth they can find to stay warm!

Speaking of rain: it turns the festival surface to mud. Some bright young things decide that if they just spin the wheels of their cars hard enough they'll be able to get out of the mud. As you can imagine, this goes poorly. Once the wheels are in up to the center line they give it up as a bad job, figuring they'll get the car out of the mud tomorrow once it dries. Of course, once it dries it becomes...concrete, essentially. (This happened to pioneers crossing the Nevada desert in the 1800s, too, so it's not limited to modern machinery - a heavily loaded wagon will do.)

The quiet camp is sited directly next to the amplified-music camp. This goes about as well as you can expect.

Put all of the food in identical opaque unlabeled containers that can't be resealed after they're opened. Breakfast Roulette is an every-morning occurrence. Will it be oatmeal, or Beef Stroganoff?

Only bring one pair of shoes...and the sole falls off one shoe on the first day. Barefooting is not an option due to harsh conditions.

Someone decides to walk around naked. At noon. Without sunblock. I have never seen a penis that red and I cringed just looking at them.

At the end of the festival there's still one lonely tent set up in the middle of the festival grounds, with a car beside it and all the stuff still intact. People start worrying that someone died and it was unreported. A mass search ensues. Turns out the guy got drunk, couldn't find his tent and car, decided someone must have stolen it, and hitched a ride back to The World with someone he knew.

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

Wow, that first one sounds like The Wicker Man as a sitcom episode.

[(Anonymous)]

Now I wish I could see a highlights reel of that imaginary sitcom. It would bring new meaning to, for instance, "To the Moon, Alice!"

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I knew I'd get some good Burning Man stories! Of all the descriptions that could end with a sarcastic "what could go wrong," a giant burning sculpture with fireworks and an interior chamber is right at the top of the list.

We've seen some flying tents, but the steel carports sound kind of terrifying.

See below for more porta-potty hilarity.

I may never have the physical durability to go to Burning Man -- when people talk about the harsh desert environment, I listen -- but somebody needs to write a story in which the sculpture-vehicles have a car chase. For that matter, a video that consisted of nothing but a car chase, Burning Man style, would be an epic viral hit.

I had to google the hanging story. Wow.

Sunburn where the sun don't usually shine is a classic problem. The trick is coming up with something freshly comical to do with that.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

There are always interesting ways that people can break interesting body parts - scooters, golf carts, walking through fields or down hills, damage to ankles, legs, heads and penises.

I saw someone's tent tumbling around a field once - she wasn't in it. :-)

Mishaps with fire poi could easily happen if we had less responsible people running that program.

When I was pregnant with #1, we were tenting and it rained a LOT. The medics let us stay in the healer's hut. That was very nice of them and appreciated when our stuff got soaked!

A girl could get her first period at festival.

My tattoo session was delayed b/c the artist's SO was very sick. Like instead of 3pm it was after 10pm. But then I was under the needle at the same time a friend was in labor with her solstice babe.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Regarding the tent and the rain, there was the Burning Man where there was an immense deluge and many people's tents got flooded with mud...

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

So many of the answers I've received from other events could be annotated with could easily happen at FSG if we had less responsible people running that program. I'm beginning to think our community has been uncommonly lucky, or well-organized, or something. Anyhow, whatever/whoever watches out for us has my gratitude.

Spinning fire poi does seem like an exceptionally beautiful way of asking for trouble.

I'll file away the first-period idea in case of eventual YA novel.

[(Anonymous)]

Big bonfire in middle of festival, with smaller fires at the quarters. Much naked dancing. Someone decides to firewalk -- not on embers or coals, but on the fire itself. Medics -- while caring for burns and awaiting helicopter medevac -- send helpful bystanders to fetch clothes for patient & medics, so they will not need to meet medevac crew naked.
--
Hurricane strikes autumn lakeside festival. Fire warden canoes through fire circle site.
--
"Con crud" a familiar post-festival malady --- until the year the main rit is organized using separate cups for each participant, rather than having 80+ share common cup.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

"This looks like a job for emergency pants!" (Alas, the Sluggy Freelance webcomic site is having internal server issues, or there would be a link here.)

I think I've written my hurricane story for this series, but I have to say, the fire warden canoeing through the fire circle site is a lovely image. (Somewhere I have pictures of my sister-in-law sea-kayaking on a golf course.)

Ah, epidemiological clue! As much as I admire a great deal in paleopagan cultures, I am a big fan of germ theory.

[evilbunny.livejournal.com]

One year at PSG (back when it was in WI), some locals breached the property fence, actually damaging the fence in the process. The local police had to come into camp to see the damage, so people were going around to all the vendors advising them to hide anything illegal (raptor feathers, paraphernalia, etc), and to put on clothing. A bunch of us were at the Druid (Henge of Keltria) camp, I was judging the porter/stout homebrew category. Someone asked "What's the current status?" and Tony Taylor and I both replied at the same time, "We're at DefCon 3."

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The story seems to want an incursion of non-Pagan locals, with perhaps a nighttime car-chase-like scene involving a golf cart and a segway.

I need to scour the web for cowan-in-camp incidents. There's the famous one from decades ago in New England in which some locals saw a bit of ritual theater with a Seven Year King figure, and they believed the guy had actually been sacrificed. Seeing the performer alive and well afterward did nothing to persuade them. You probably know more of the people who were present than I do.

[karenjunker.livejournal.com]

The only year I attended Ancient Ways (might have been 85-87, can't remember) there was a bunch of young men from the nearby town who invaded the site -- I was for some reason the only volunteer on duty for security and someone handed me a broadsword and a lantern (it was around 10 PM) and I went after them. I may have been wearing clothes, too, but in any case they saw me and ran off in the direction of the entry road.

[evilbunny.livejournal.com]

Honey dipper truck drove off the road and got stuck upon first encounter with nekkid pagan women. That was fun.

There's a great story about "wolf boy" one year at Heartland. Dude was convinced he was a wolf, and was yapping and snapping. Medic/Security guard held a hot dog over dude's head and lead him away from the populated area until he calmed down.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The porta-potty truck story is a classic. So's the one about the workman who came to do emergency roof repairs on a cabin before a rainstorm hit, except that he saw shirtless women and was so distracted he walked right off the edge of the roof.

[citabria]

Oh my -- you should get in touch with Eve on this. Some of my favorites:

There was the first year a certain festival invoked the fae during main ritual; a couple's child (pre-teen) went missing for over a day. She was finally found, but not until much, much panicking had been had.

The next time the same festival invoked the fae during main ritual someone coded in the dining room, among other things (it was a very eventful festival, not in a good way).

Someone's already mentioned the words "scooter" and "penis" in the same sentence. Enough said.

I'm blanking on the details, but there was a group of hipsters (4 I think, all wearing very ... unique clothing) who crashed the festival, leading to several golf carts filled with security people patrolling camp and giving occasional radio updates about the search.

Someone retired from the Army being on security and taking part in that (and other searches), leading to radio communications such as, "subject located and closing at 100 yards."

I wish I could remember more -- there are so many!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

You have given me a lovely car-chase-like scene that's fleshing itself out in my head. I may need to test drive a segway to get that scene right.

What did the hipsters hope to accomplish? Ogling naked people? Why do the cowans even want to try? Naked people at festival look like actual, non-Photoshopped humans who don't work in Hollywood.

It must be terribly disappointing for them to sneak into a festival and see that a third of the population is in their normal street clothes, a third is wearing stuff that's eccentric but affords widespread protection from sunburn, and most of the remaining 33% that's naked is old enough to be the intruders' parents.

[citabria]

Honestly, I have no idea what they thought they were doing. The only thing I can think (and I don't know this for sure) is that they came for a concert the night before and didn't want to leave -- and didn't want to pay to be there. I'll try to remember to ask Teem if he has a better recollection of the whole episode.

[laradionne.livejournal.com]

Some of these comments make me very thankful that the worst things I can remember from various festivals/retreats/lodges/etc. are things like migraine headaches, air mattresses with holes in them, watching the collapse of a massage table because someone over the weight limit of the table insisted that they weren't too heavy (I felt sorry for the massage therapist who had to repair/replace a fancy portable table), heat exhaustion, sunburns, angst-filled lover's quarrels overheard after some married person found the instructor of the workshop swoon-worthy (the supposedly highly ethical/honorable instructor encouraged it).

My favorite was an entire yurt being blown across a field by a 50mph gust of wind as 10 women still a bit woozy from sweat lodge chased it down wearing nothing but towels and flip-flops. That one was actually hysterically funny! Thankfully we caught the yurt before it went into the ravine since it had our clothes in it!

Also, someone not having made their prayer-tie circle large enough and having to spend their entire 4-day vision quest sitting against a tree in order to fit inside of the space … luckily they had a tree to lean against!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

UNSECURED YURT ALERT! Okay, that is way better than the usual tent-kite.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have a LOT of these. Drawing from various real life events, or from the rumor mill surrounding real life events:

Faeries invoked for ritual and not appeased properly wreak havoc throughout the camp. (I will pay you money if you pick this one and work it in somehow. >:-)

Failure to put the usual ritual protections in place leads to a much higher than usual incidence of disasters of various sorts. (I know that sounds the same as the first one, but it was a different event.)

Intuition about an impending physical disaster doesn't come quickly enough to prevent it. (That was the maypole, this year. Let me know if you want details.)

People being unknowingly dosed with LSD from a horn of mead being passed around at the fire circle.

People under ill-advised invocation going running out into the darkness, and having to be fetched back and managed.

Memorial ritual for a beloved community figure who turned out not to be dead.

Giving inappropriate or inadequate answers to a deity's questions during a ritual leads to a pissed off deity, leading to a rainstorm that floods the camp and sends everyone home -- almost not making it out before the creek rose to cover the bridge.

Portajohn employee who comes in to suck the contents out of the toilets loses control of his truck while rubbernecking at naked tits and puts the whole poop truck into the ditch. Which led to the rule that everyone had to put their clothes back on when the portajohn company came to do the toilets.

While very talented weatherworkers very impressively deflect an impending tornado, festival participants skip through the street singing songs from The Wizard of Oz -- because, as one storyteller noted, in times of great stress, everyone reverts to the Old Religion. >:-)

Woman blissed out of her mind on how much fun she's had wishes aloud, on the last day, that she didn't have to leave; gets her wish when her car won't start, and has to be rescued. (This happened three times to the woman in question before she figured out to stop saying that out loud. I was there all three times. :-)

A ritual involving every participant having a candle, and then coming up and putting their candle with all the other candles, clustered into a metal tray with low sides. . . which soon became an overflowing well of molten, flaming wax, due to the candles all melting one another at high speed, which slopped over the edges and started to set the entire altar on fire. One priestess, alarmed and a bit desperate, did the only thing she could think of: she dumped the big bowl of water that had been used to bless the circle on the middle of the flaming, overflowing pool of wax. Yes, water on a wax fire. The resulting fireball shooting straight up about fifteen feet was impressive, and the fire did go out, and conveniently the whole thing timed excellently with the peak of the power raising, but the entire altar and everything on it was covered with a thin coat of wax, and cleanup was a stone bitch.

more below . . .

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

Continued . . .

One year at PSG the druids did a workshop about cattle raids and why they took place -- because the cattle were the primary wealth of their various communities, it was explained. Then they instituted a game involving stuffed cows being stolen back and forth between campsites, but at some point someone decided that the true wealth of any campsite at that site was whether it had a picnic table or not. So then people started stealing picnic tables from one campsite to another under cover of darkness, or sometimes in the middle of the day, and it got so bad the organizers had to put a stop to it.

And here's one that only makes sense with some extra detail: at Heartland in '93, the theme was "Carnival" (in the European Mardi Gras sense) and they were trying to give a carnival/voodoo vibe to the main ritual; they had drafted Janet and Stewart Farrar to represent the God and Goddess, symbolizing that by crowning them king and queen of Carnival. They also had elaborate arrangements in the quarters, with dancers and pyrotechnics, including fires (central and quarters) that were rigged to dramatically self-ignite by remote control. So of course, two of the four quarter fires fail entirely to light, and have to be lit by hand, and then the ignition on the central fire sent sparking pyrotechnics skittering across the ground, coming awfully close to setting Stewart on fire in the process. So by the next day, the rumor mill had turned all that into "and then they crowned Janet and Stewart king and queen of the witches and tried to set them on fire as a ritual sacrifice." >:-)

(One other Janet-specific story from the Heartland two years prior: they did a workshop where the participants were split into the four tribes of the Tuatha de Danaan [some of the history was a bit loose, here], guarding the four treasures in the four cities, and the goal was to get the treasures all in one place -- but the tribes weren't allowed to talk to each other. One woman was appointed as Danu, who was allowed to pass messages (true and useful messages) between the tribes, and then Janet acted as The Morrigan (in a kinda-Elvira outfit), moving among the tribes passing false and manipulative messages. For "special effect," she did some weatherworking beforehand [and Stewart kept it up during], which was the most obvious example of real weatherworking I've ever seen [wind literally whipped around her body on cue, swirling up the dust at her feet], so that the impending storm would create a sense of urgency. Trouble was, she'd never poked at a weather system the size of the ones in middle America before [Ireland's are much smaller], and the wind got rather badly out of control, and did a lot of damage in merchant row -- though the successful resolution to the workshop problem also shifted the storm away before it broke (no, I am not kidding, it was impressive as hell and I've never seen anything like it since). And then she spent the rest of the summer apologizing, telling the story to all her other venues, and telling people why they should never try to affect the weather anywhere they don't actually live full time. >:-)

If I think of more I'll send them on. . .

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I hope somebody wrote an epic poem about the picnic table raids. That's just so beautiful!

See above regarding true story about mistaking ritual theater for real attempted human sacrifice.

I may need to scour the internet for tales of festival weatherworking gone awry. I know there are several B* standards, but since I wasn't present for any of them, I'd love to hear them again.

And of course, the Asatruar always want to yell "Hail Thor!" just at the moment when we're hoping the thunderstorm will veer away from us. Hail Thor! Have some mead! You're really awesome! And please refrain from trashing the campsite again!

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

It is my understanding that it did, in fact, make it into the Henge of Keltria's book of modern myths and legends, cast in appropriate legendary language. (Steve Posch and the Babylon camp, one of the main players, ended up cast as invading Faeries from Underhill, if I recall correctly. >:-)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

How did you guess this story wants to be about invocation? I have collection of fire incidents, but more are always welcome. I hadn't planned on weatherworking, but a festival's temperament is so dictated by its weather, it will probably find a way in.

Memorial ritual for a beloved community figure who turned out not to be dead.

If I hadn't already written the funeral-comedy story for this series, I would totally use that. I would love to know who got to play the role of Tom Sawyer in this anecdote.

Portajohn employee who comes in to suck the contents out of the toilets loses control of his truck while rubbernecking at naked tits and puts the whole poop truck into the ditch. Which led to the rule that everyone had to put their clothes back on when the portajohn company came to do the toilets.

Ah, the classics never go out of style. Was it the same event that had the roof-repair guy distracted by naked people walk right off the roof? I seem to recall those stories traveled together by origin.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

The memorial was for Laughing Starheart, a radical faery type, artist and tattoo artist and singer, who used to be a staple at midwest gatherings back in the '90s. He had AIDS, and fell off the map at some point, and then a couple years later we heard he had died -- so we did a whole shrine for him at Samhain and people who only ever saw each other at festival showed up from three states away to toast his memory. And then later we found out he wasn't dead. Very weird, processing that one in reverse. I've no idea whether he is still alive, I haven't seen him nor heard tell of him for fifteen years or so at this point.

My portajohn story was from PSG, back when it was happening in Wisconsin. Apparently portajohn employees everywhere really like boobies. :-)

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

Oh, what's a festival without an out-of-control possession? (And with the Fey, it sometimes seems like there's rarely any other kind, doesn't it?) Sebastian would be all over that shit. >:-)

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

I worked a music festival, and heard, later, about the stark-naked, drugged-out dude who blissfully wandered up and hugged one of my female coworkers. She was rightly appalled.

And the police were nowhere to be found. They wanted nothing to do with anything that was going on short of actual murder, rape, arson, mayhem or catastrophe.

I had to pat down a half-naked, smelly, sweaty, dirty, fat dude to make sure he wasn't smuggling in alcohol... and he patted me down in return. I'm pretty sure that's where I caught the plague which has ailed me to some degree for the 9 months since.

There were stories of people having sex under the VIP platforms (simply platforms where VIPs could go up and hang out with a slightly better view of the stage than the non-VIP rabble... I think they may have had canopies. But people would sneak underneath and....

The drugs in the air meant that when I walked through the crowd, I could smell colors and see sound.

We had to inspect vehicles coming in and confiscate weapons, glass, drugs... with varying degrees of efficiency. One coworker confiscated a guy's rubber mallet... which he of course needed to pound tent pegs into the ground. Some of us didn't have the heart to confiscate jars of pickles, drinking glasses, and so on. Your mileage may vary.

I worked backstage at a country music festival and one of the bands, composed of younger dudes, literally collected cute girls like stray kittens and gave the girls their performer IDs to try and get them backstage to show it off. As if I'd A) know who the performers were without their credentials, and B) believe that these barely-dressed girls were musicians, given that only one woman was headlining and I'd seen her already.

Ah, fun times.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I had to pat down a half-naked, smelly, sweaty, dirty, fat dude to make sure he wasn't smuggling in alcohol... and he patted me down in return. I'm pretty sure that's where I caught the plague which has ailed me to some degree for the 9 months since.

Someone needs to give that a home in fiction. I don't know if it will go in this story -- at Pagan festivals there's not usually a reason for anyone to get patted down unless they really, really want to be -- but I'm so glad to have that incident to file away.

[castalusoria.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you'd like the more-accurate details of the Red Bull Man story. That one's priceless. Will try to cull together more of them.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Yes! More details! And any other festival-gone-sideways stories you think ought to go into the Cuisinart!

[amushink.livejournal.com]

Mine involves a drunken marine and a site in rural Mexico, an hour into the desert down an unpaved road. Marine making persistent unwanted advances upon a genteel young woman who seemed unequipped to repel his forceful advances. The group joined averted crisis that night but at the cost of listening to his odd hour-long monologue about his cunnilingus proficiency and preferences. The next night to avert a repeat performance, the young woman in question and a friend spiked the marine's multiple drinks with sedatives. Ten times. He was still the last one standing (and talking) long past when the rest of us had retired to our tents. Medically, he was a testament to the physical fitness and biochemical endurance of our armed forces.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Medically, he was a testament to the physical fitness and biochemical endurance of our armed forces.

To say nothing of his...

For just a moment, I tried to come up with a punchline about cunnilingus being somehow beneficial to our national defense, but the persistent unwanted advances part of the story makes that impossible.

[amushink.livejournal.com]

We couldn't expel him because there was no way out and couldn't/wouldn't call the cops because he was a boozy git but hadn't crossed physical lines. Also in Mexico, less interaction with police is better.