6 minute read
The Zack Budryk Files: Rape/Cannibalism + Mickey Mouse = Box Office Gold!
MANCHESTER, Tenn. - We arrived
at Bonnaroo in the late evening,
and, after a 15 hour journey, I was exhausted, sweaty and totally ready to spend the next four days of my life roughin it with 80,000 awesome people. After unpacking, taking a few photos,
and indulging in some good 01 Heineken, I was ready.
The first bands I saw were Vampire Weekend, Battles and MGMT - and yeah, I danced like an idiot With the alcohol in my
bloodstream, I was invincible to exhaustion and embarrassment
and the night carried on. My
posse and I wandered around for
the rest of the night, returning to
camp only when we needed to renew our buzz.
We explored 400 acres of camping areas, a jungle of yarn (obviously a playground for people on acid), met lots of new people and eventually passed out I don't
really remember what time it was
when we finally went to sleep,
but the sun was already coming up. The music continued to pump from the festival area, and we were only out for about four hours.
That was the most sleep I got there. The sun, hippies, loud
music and the irresistible charm of a good wake and bake session
kept me up for the next three days
with only an hour-or-two of sleep in between.
Day two's highlight bands were Tegan and Sara, M.IA, Willie Nelson and Stephen Marley. Zach
Galifanakis, one of my favorite comedians, took the stage over at
the comedy tent as well. Waiting
for his show to start is one of my favorite memories from Bonnaroo.
A few friends and I relaxed in the grass listening to Rilo Kiley perform. We smoked a few joints and
just laid there in the sun. It was
straight-up magical.
It was on this day that I discovered
Bonnaroo's most convenient attraction: a ridiculously large fountain that just spurts water into
the air while everyone stands/sits/
dances/makes out underneath.
Catherine Leth photos
Bonnaroo took place in the threshold of summertime, so having this was exactly what everyone
needed. I think I even took a few gulps at some point when the cottonmouth began to take hold ... fucking gross, now that I think
about it.
I'd have to say the second night
was my favorite. DJ Tiesto went on at 1 :30 a.m. and a huge rave
immediately ensued. I danced
barefoot for four hours straight,
glowsticks and all. It even started
to rain, and no one cared. The jams
didn't stop until the sky was getting light again.
Day three was just a blur of the
same insanity. I saw Iron and Wine,
B.B. King and Jack Johnson, just to
name a few. This was also when
Kanye West decided to reschedule
his show to 2 a.m., and then perform two hours late. People
stuck around, but the booing was
immense. He put on a great show, but the morning sun began roasting us around 5 a.m. and that put a damper on the overall atmosphere. The next day everyone was wearing
handmade ''Fuck Kanye" t-shirts. It
was pretty hilarious.
Death Cab for Cutie was the last band I saw, and it was the perfect closing. It was cooler on the fourth day, and I just laid in the grass and enjoyed the breeze, listening to Ben
Gibbard's voice.
We spent the end of Bonnaroo
coming down off of various illegal
substances, finishing off the beer, and checking out all the vendors. It's safe to say that if you go to
Bonnaroo, you'll come back with at least one awesome smoking device. I've never seen so many bowls,
bongs and pipes in my entire life. It
was awesome. Bonnaroo was awesome.
I'd give the experience an A+.
When the whole thing was over, no one wanted to go home. People
are already counting the days until next June, and the internet world is abuzz with rumors of who will
be on the lineup for 2009. And hey - even if it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, give it a go(oogle},
because it's really amazing.
Columnist + Illustrator
Disney's animated films seem to be the ideal way to entertain your
child when you don't feel like it. They have simple stories, they're
appropriate for kids and they move fast. But in accordance with the law of conservation of mass, you can't make something from
nothing, and so a lot of Disney flicks borrowed therr plots and titles
from folklore and fairy tales. I say 'borrowed' because there's a LOT of stuff in Disney's source material that wouldn't wash. More
specifically, there's a lot of stuff of the kind that is usually found in shoeboxes under a serial killer's bed. With that in mind, I present some classic animated Disney films, and the freakish fat that had
to be trimmed.
The Little Mermaid
Disney's take: Little mermaid of the title falls in love with human
prince, and, proving littleness doesn't equal jgnorance of the birds and the bees, makes a Faustian bargain with an evil sea-witch for more compatible anatomy in exchange for her voice. Said witch
defeats the whole purpose of the deal by showing up and using
the voice to seduce the prince. Mermaid gets her voice back and marries the prince, which according to some sources gives the minister a boner.
The original: The original was written by Hans Christian Andersen,
who fans will know is kind of the Eugene O'Neill of fairy tales in terms
of how much Zoloft one requires after reading his stuff. Andersen's story lines up pretty closely, except in this case the mermaid will die if she doesn't get the prince to fall in love with her. Since he's a fairy-tale love interest, the prince stays with her for a while before
falling in love with a different woman, who he can sleep AND have
meaningless post-coital small talk with. The mermaid is now given
the choice of dying and ending up in limbo or murdering the prince.
Despite his lack of concern over abandoning the woman who loves him, our heroine decides to spare him, and subsequently dies and ascends to heaven instead. Um, yay? Disney's whitewashing and unfaithfulness may get grating occasionally, but we must give
them credit for concluding that the protagonist getting to go to the afterlife is not a happy enough ending.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
he meets Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy who stands up for him when he's mobbed by the crowd. With the assistance of her soldier lover and Paris' gypsy community, Quasimodo discovers his own self-worth and helps save the city from his genocidal
maniac/foster father.
The original: Victor Hugo's novel ranks somewhere between
"Lolita" and "A Rose for Emily" on the list of literature most ill-suited for Disney adaptations, but Disney still decided to give it a try. The result is probably the darkest animated film Disney has ever done, what with the villain's big musical number about wanting to rape Esmerelda and all, but the original book still makes it look like, well, a Disney movie. The villain, frollo, isn't
as completely irredeemable as the movie version; while he's still
the antagonist, in the book he actually adopted Quasimodo, who had been abandoned. A character excised from the film entirely was frail a's no-good brother Jehan, probably because
drunken libertines aren't exactly stock Disney characters, and also because Quasimodo crushing his head against the wall of
Notre Dame is lovingly described. The most dramatically altered character is probably Captain Phoebus, the dashing soldier who captures Esmerelda's heart; while he's a good guy in the film,
in the book he rivals Simon Legree in the "fictional characters
you'd love to kick in the face" category, seducing Esmerelda
with no intent of staying with her. He allows for her to be
executed for his attempted murder (actually Frollo's work, of
