If life were fair I'd be in deep sh*t

I sometimes get to missing Knox Dupree and The Heartbroke Daily.  It was a project I worked on with writers Henry Goldman and Shane Kavanaugh when I first moved to San Francisco, three and a half years ago.  

It was an ambitious project; writing a story of lost love, whiskey and failure every weekday for about a year.  Not that I had to imagine that hard to come up with something, but it was an excellent writing exercise, and the three of us pushed each other enough to write well and write often.  We wrote in shifts that alternated each week.  We featured music and (bad) love advice, too.  And a guy who didn’t even exist, this Knox Dupree character, started getting groupies from all over the country, despite what a maniac and loser he was.  I found it encouraging for my own state of affairs.   Henry and I would often say a sort of silly mantra, “Knox Dupree lives.”  

And there was some truth to that.  At one point, in New York City, he was supposed to do a reading in front of 300 people.  Being that he’s a made up character and we were trying to protect that illusion, this was problematic.  We decided to stage it so Shane would get up on stage as his personal assistant and say, “Sorry, Knox couldn’t make it.  He got too wasted last night and missed his flight out of Baltimore.”  Some friends in the audience booed and yelled things like, “Knox owes me money!”  Then, Shane read a handful of our favorite posts and, being a hell of a showman, he brought the house down.  Jumping off the stage and heading straight for the bar, strangers, primarily young women, clamored to get a piece of Shane, thinking he was Knox.  And of course he was.  By a third, anyway.

As we plugged away, it became more and more popular and we received unsolicited links from high-traffic websites.  Some days we would have over 4,000 unique hits, out of nowhere.  It was fulfilling to be read and recognized, even if it was under a pen name.  

But toward the end, we realized something: we were running out of archetypes.  We had fleshed out the character of Knox pretty well throughout the narrative arc - sometimes without planning.  Something would come up in a story and we’d ask, “Is this something that Knox would have done?”  Or, “Is this something that happened to him?”  His mom left when he was young.  He was a military brat with an alcoholic father.  He had been struck by lightning.  He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor just before being dishonorably discharged.  He didn’t know when his birthday was.  He spoke several languages and had a number of remarkable talents and achievements, but he couldn’t keep a job or hold down a relationship.  He was perhaps the most remarkable loser alive.  We could keep going on with a character like that, as if he was the James Bond franchise, if we wanted to.  And we kind of did.

However, each post (usually) featured a woman that passed through his life, and as far as character archetypes go, it started to feel as though we were on track to just repeating ourselves, merely changing locations or names or whatever.  Furthermore, Hank started a business and Shane was going to grad school, and I started working really late nights at a bar.  So it was a mixture between seeing the writing on the wall and just getting too busy and/or lazy to continue with the project.  

But it was a lot of fun while it lasted.  And I sometimes read through the old posts late at night, feeling like I’m sitting down with old friends.  I suppose that’s something.  

Anyway, Knox may be in hiding for now, but I have this creeping suspicion that he may one day reemerge.  The crazy fuck is just plain incapable of dying.  And if you’re driving up or down the I-5 corridor between LA and SF, you may just find some words scrawled in a rest stop bathroom next to the dirty limericks and “for a good time call…” notes.

“Knox Dupree lives.”

Lovesick for life,

David Larson

By Sailor Boy

I feel the need to say something that may surprise some people: I don’t actually hate dubstep.  

Certainly I don’t like it, but if someone were to ask me if this world would be better off without dubstep, my answer would be, “Hell no.”  I support the arts and I create plenty of things that no one else wants to listen to, read or look at (see: “Stop the Dubstep Already!”).  

So if it’s your thing, rock on.  Or womp womp on.  Or whatever.  Really, I want you to be happy.  

But … here’s the thing. Well, two things.

Thing one: Context.  

This will be my 13th year at Burning Man.  It’s a big part of my life. But, year by year, BM is more and more overrun by large sound systems playing music I don’t like. It’s to the point where the event is enacting rules regulating sound.  

I don’t like rules. They tend to gain traction, though, when someone goes off and acts like a total dick, like when an art car with a stadium sound system pulls up next to The Temple while someone is trying to have a moment with their own pain and loss, free from alarmingly loud, shit music.

It’s not that I think people shouldn’t listen to their music. It’s that I don’t want to listen to it, and I’m unable to avoid it.  In the default world, I have absolutely no problem with dubstep because it doesn’t come into my house and sit on my face like some vindictive feline trying to smother a newborn.  At BM, this is not the case.   

And yes my critique of dubstep was over the top. I’ll readily admit to that.  That was the point.

Remember context, dubstep devotees.

BRC Weekly is basically a continuation of the celebrated, snarky, rebel-rousing Piss Clear (edited by Adrian Roberts) that graced and mocked the playa for 13 years.  It’s an intentionally scathing and sarcastic publication, a counterpoint to the hippie-dippie, peace-and-love-bullshit stereotypes that some Burners subscribe to.  We are a kind of devil’s/burner’s advocate, if you will.  We conscientiously get rude and nasty to prevent people from drinking their own Koolaid.  There’s an avuncular sort of theatricality to what we do, and most Burners get the joke and even appreciate it.  And if they don’t, well, they’re probably taking themselves a little too seriously.

Thing two: Hateful speech diminishes us all.

I found it entertaining (thanks for making it go viral, guys) yet unsettling to receive personal attacks on my point of view.  Some people just said that I was an asshole, which is fine, I suppose. People who claim to like me have called me far worse. Besides, I could see myself teasing someone for writing a rant about how much they hate Tom Waits being played at their Rainbow Gathering or whatever. 

However, when people start throwing the word “fag” around - or anything else relating to homosexuality - to invalidate someone else’s argument, I take offense, not just for my gay friends, but for everyone.  

At first, I kind of chuckled, imagining some stupid frat boy saying, “Whoa, bro, he doesn’t like dubstep - he must be a fag!”  But then I found myself genuinely offended, which is incredibly rare of for me.  I’m not sure if I’d be more pissed off if I were gay, but that’s beside the point, as there are so many gays who are near and dear to me. 

They have the best parties and style and drugs, the most compelling women in tow, and they always encourage me to go ahead and have just one more beer, shot, whatever. They’ve always been the best at telling me to shut the fuck up when I deserved it, and they’re always awake and a friend for a late night phone call.  I’m not generalizing all gays here, just my gays, bless their homo friggin’ hearts.  

My immediate supposition about one guy’s bigoted comment was, what - is this kid in the sixth grade? Oh, wait, I’m sorry. My mistake. You’re actually a grown man - with a shit-filled-fucking-retarded-homophobic skull. 

I would like to take this moment to publicly shame anyone who made such comments that diminish the struggles of homosexuals worldwide, indirectly or otherwise.

Think before you write that kind of hateful garbage.

I especially invite dubstep fans, Burners or not, to speak up regarding this, as it is a small though toxic contingent of your flock who opened this unsavory discourse.  You know who you are, and you ought to be paraded through The Castro in a wheelbarrow, as the locals shake their heads in disappointment.  Eat shit.

Ahem.  Well, it’s late and I’m in need of some bourbon.  It’s a beautiful night here in New Orleans and I think I’m going to listen to some Tom Waits. But I promise not to play it so loud that my neighbors are bothered.

At Burning Man they know me as Sailor Boy. Here, my name is David Larson.  And in regards to the aforementioned, I reiterate: your radical self-expression still sucks.  

Just sayin’.

(As an aside, I would like to give a shout out to Liquid Stranger for having the sense of humor to post something I wrote that pokes fun on his wall. That shows a lot of class and balls, Sir.  I only regret that some people on your page didn’t get the joke.)

This is another Henry Goldman called project called “Yr an adult.” It’s “a critical inquiry into the nature of modern adulthood (for North American Millennials).”   I contribute here and there.