Cheese. Love. Sauce. Hulaween ’21

Thatcher Owen Mullins arrived at Spirit of Suwannee Music Park Tuesday, with the Hulaween party already well in gear. The Poncho Tree had been overtaken by thugs with unmatched gumption. No worries. Don’t throw me into that brier patch. With a mandate to hold the extreme right of the Farm Field along with the Iceman and Miss Listorine, they would all slide in together for Hulaween ’21, a music and art festival that in recent years has become one of the favorites of both the Spirit of Suwannee Music Park and the entire country. They came to bask in the beauty of Florida in October with a collective bent on passion, effort and all the good feelz. It comes with an element of responsibility but for the vintage, the yoke is no longer heavy. The ancient recipe of billowing unfurled freak flags and constant waves of booming sound and color included more cheese than is healthy for an adolescent child. More Cheese than an Italian wedding. All the cheese. That’s it. Three stringy days of the Incident, Umph Love, Skrillex, Leon Bridges and so much more including an afternoon Floozies show at the amphitheater stage that stirred the very milk of the Flooziest. It’s the petri dish of love. It’s both raw and exposed and at the same time Boca fancy. Even if there was somewhere to hide, you wouldn’t want to. It’s the top of the world ma and the gravitational pull of the pocket has a grip on your pocket. This is what you’ve been waiting for. Yea bro, I get it. You’re production. What are you doing in my VIP Entrance? Don’t worry, I”m just kidding. Maybe. Welcome to Cheese. Love. Sauce. Hulaween ’21.

It was Hulaween and same as it ever was. The way it was celebrated for thousands of years by the Apalachee and Potano Indians. A big ball of bouncing bubbly crazy. It’s a sacrifice of the ego and a return to lost the innocence of yore. With a group making no effort to stand on ceremony they celebrated in the old ways. The ways of the ancients. The Roanokians. Hillbillies were still falling off the the tops of their vans. The mostly comatose night beasts emerged from their lairs to crush any tent in between them and the “shees-shees” sound of the whippets. Golf carts slammed into perfectly stopped automobiles. The warm Florida weather allowed for costumes to include semi-nudity and eventual cool weather that let everyone show off their fancy red chinchilla coats. Kamp Happiness broke out the Frick Frack ribbon groundscored at Backwoods because one man’s trash is another man’s flapping bullshit. It was to be a weekend of firsts. Puberty was just around the corner and for many, it would be time to take the adult step.

You Are the Sauce.

Early: Tuesday and Wednesday. Make me a pallet on the floor of your pallet village.

The dust was in the air. Cheese Love looked like Puerto Rico after a long weekend and no, it wasn’t built by aliens in the forest. It’s just Lil-d, Justin, Cheese Toes, Amir, and that crazy broad Martha. A fun group in small doses. It’s not a pallet village nor an homage to any one grand idea or manifestation. It’s a gated community so watch yosef. All you need is the proper lanyard. Maybe it’s for hobos like Sarah and Sarah. Or superstars like Cat who proposes over barbecued ribs, only to drug him and drag him to Hula only to drug and drag him again again to Billy Strings Sunday night in Asheville. The Birdman was probably there. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. Tough titty said the kitty but the milk taste good. Does anyone really get what they deserve?

This is the double cheese, double sauce, double dumpster fire. Lil-d said, “It doesn’t matter if you call it layered cheese cakes. In the end you never see a hearse with a trailer hitch.”

And it really is all part of the sauce.

Hulacool.

She had beautiful honest eyes that told the whole story and wore her heart on her sleeve. A masseuse from Jax Beach she’d never missed a Hula. She fancied Listerene as her perfume. A little dilute of course. Behind each ear, the wrists and her unmentionables. Her name was spelled Listorene with the original O from the Danish rather than the bastardized E from the Swedes. She’d made it clear from the beginning that she’d come for four days of serious retox. Within five minutes the grease she sucked out of a groundscored nectar collector exploded, blackening her teeth like a wicked witch with meth mouth. She lost her phone and her Nicole at least twice a day but yet managed to manage the Kamp Happiness Spa. Message much? And not a typo. English teacher. Who’s going to believe you? For future festivals serious inquiries only. Please preregister for festival message. VIP packages available. And we mean V.I.P.

Welcome to the Locker.

The Hurt was a beast and a human land mine, ceptin’ when you stepped on her she exploded not into shards of molten metal but butterflies offering slobbery kisses all over the face and neck. Anyone who maintains a solar powered CPAP machine is involved in professional wookery of the fourth level. She thrived on the throngs of people and the insane work. The crazier it got, the better she got. Classier. Friendlier. You know what I mean. Her bedazzled police hat added an element of respect and credibility as she directed the motor coaches hither and yon. Yes, she’d gotten Covid from motor boating a stripper in Key West. Would she do it again? Would she liked to have been informed? Important questions for important people. She said you could tell how “big” a band was by how many air conditioners they had on the roof of their tour bus. As she crushed gummies and shrooms with Thatcher they pontificated on how they were serving as human traffic cones. Thatcher considered how they might one day be replaced by robots. She submitted that they would likely be replaced by actual traffic cones.

“Girls on gators. Golf carts for haters.”

Thatcher and the Hurt couldn’t get golf cart rides to save their lives and they had they been “selling” sad hand jobs all day. For folks staying out at staff catering or eighty acres the steps were adding up quickly. Finally, Marcus the Alabama fan took them to see Emma at Mi Kulture where she was giving away absinthe drops to anyone who would put them in their eyes. She was the dungeon master with her gourmet earplugs. She’d hitched a ride with one of the Witches VIP shuttles. Rumor had it they had the best stuff. At some point she used a spare EZ-Go key and stole the golf cart. Someone had forgotten to put the bike lock on the steering wheel. Maybe it was the quartermaster, but it wouldn’t matter. She knew exactly what she was doing when she rounded the corner near the rear entrance and pulled into a Panamaninan power slide.

With Hulaween there’s just so much to see. Toomuch? She was there when it happened. Sure she had a head full of prescription cheese but that wasn’t anything new. And she could handle her cheese. She watched in stunned amazement as a golf cart full of security guards slammed into the back of a patron’s car and doubled down with “stopped short”. They had just left the Future Joy secret set with a fire “Thriller” that just went on forever in a good way. It was still Wednesday with the vintage. Oma goodness. Getting good just as they got shut down like a bad daycare and although it was early things were already beginning to slip out of hand.

Iceman the Tree Sitter

Iceman was the worst drug buyer ever but a good sharer. His coke turned out to be K and his K turned out to be meth. His pickup line was, “Hey baby, are you 18? Want some meth?” Will work for music? Will take a drunken nap for music? Is it impossible to get fired from WET.

He’d obviously been raped as a child and he still had the scared eyes. He had a cowpoke toughness as he sipped on his Toasted Marshmallow Bud Light Spritzer. Everything pointed to his wagon catching on fire and rolling down the mountain ablaze but still there was something about that wagon that made Thatcher want to tether to it. And it wasn’t just his morbid fascination with the clinically insane. It was better. The Iceman was what Hafiz would define as a Vintage Man.

The
Difference
Between a good artist
And a great one

Is:

The novice
Will often lay down his tool
Or brush

Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind’s table

And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.

Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone

And keeps on
Sculpting
Light.

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master Hafiz

The Vexation Integration Protocols had definitely been put in place. Martha’s problem, if a woman needed one was that she sometimes ran with trash. When she slept on the hard ground, she would continually trip people up with her face. “Quit slapping my foot with your head.” Sleeping on the floor at Summer Camp? Ye fucking gods, Glitter Kitty would agree that math does not check out. Take shelter.

We Are the Love.

Middle: Thursday to Sunday

The wooks always “know”  that its going to rain. They checked the phones and got dopplered up to the minute. Thatcher had been on a serious stretch of great weather to the point he was convinced it was his influence. Maybe? Question mark? But play outside long enough and eventually the well runs dry. FloydFest was the last serious deluge but it was going to rain Thursday morning. He went down late and heard the rain somewhere during the morning hours banging on his tent. He’d had the foreskin to cover his tent with a massive tarp (good job earlier you) but somewhere around six he realized the pooling was occurring beneath him and soaking his great grandmothers quilts. Not long after he poured himself out to the drizzling rain and walked his hush puppies all the way to the front gate. It was raining hard and he was soaked by the time he got to his post. He asked a lady who’d been working all night if she had a light. “There’s no smoking here.” He unclenched his fists and responded, “That’s not what I asked.”

This line is only for Vehemently Impudent People. It’s pretty obvious you are not production. You roll your cords like an air conditioner repairman. Kick rocks and while you’re at it, find a fucking black t-shirt.

It would almost seem impossible to get fired from WET in that situation… but wait.  The Iceman commeth. That “meth” ended up costing $500. There will no reimbursement today my son.

“Forest Crazy”

Like the butterfly, even when she was lost The Hurt knew her way around a festival. She might show up at nine the next morning, but she knew every step. Her first site-ops position had been at Skogstokig Festival in Sweden and in two more years the statute of limitations would expire and she would be allowed to revisit the country. It was a swingers festival but also managed to work in some music and drugs. At Hula, she blew so much glitter in Thatcher’s face his cornea got micro-sliced by the tiny fragments of shiny metal. Actions sure do have consequences you stupid bitch.

The Hurt thought it was cute to send folks to fetch their credentials at the building with the green roof. She would fail to mention that if they went too far they’d come to the Sheriff’s anex. Sorry. Not sorry. It’s not my fault if you smell like bath salts and baby laxative.

Thatcher could remember a time when he cared about music. Recollections of entire days spent at stages with family watching the acts as they twirled by. These days it was different. He had become a lurker and a loiterer. Also his time was spent as a ranger. The only job the butterfly ever wanted. And she never wanted to work during a festival. She felt she was an ambassador, nothing like Steve Little at Lockn’. Jesus. I just asked where the bathroom was. But Saturday night String Cheese at Hulaween had always been kind of a nonnegotiable. And the ladies over at A Bazzar Universe appeared to lose all control as the Cheese show exploded into the now famous “Dance Set” and with their spot right on the corner, nobody has a better space for barefoot dancing. Sorry for the baby bird version of my gyro.                  Bullwhips anyone? And you know who I’m talking to.

Straight from the mouth of babes. Everyone’s been there. You’re driving onto the grounds and you don’t have the proper credentials. You just need to get your car in and then it will be invisible in the sea of vehicles. Steve Little is just sitting there in his wicker hat and his dark sunglasses and if he looks like he knows a sliver about what’s actually going on. Don’t believe the hype. How does one slide by the unsuspecting traffic security officer? Now, there will be another checkpoint down the line so we’re going to have to revisit this shorty and there are no guarantees that you’ll make it any further. Take care dear reader, all hope is not lost.

Ways to get through a traffic security checkpoint

• Keep driving with zero acknowledgment.
• Don’t roll down the window
• “I’m following that guy”
• “going to the store”
• “going to play frisbee golf”
• “going to launch my kayak”
• wear a doctor’s coat and carry a human heart in a one-way cooler
• give the security guard three cigarettes
• pull a 50 ft coach behind

By the time Festy Westy showed up in his golf cart, he had that far away look in his left eye. The right one had been popped the night before by a flaming marshmallow skewer. The burnt sugary residue still formed a crusty pinkish discharge; characteristic of cervical bleeding or irritation in the vagina. As of this publication he had not been “convicted” of any wrong doings.Thatcher was reminded of recent Rooster Reunion (alliteration much?) when Festy and Mr. Beautiful drove their EZ-Go into the lake at Pop’s Farm to extinguish the flames before the fuselage exploded, killing hundreds. It’s hard work being beautiful. Artist transpo all day and night? It would take until Sunday midday before Kamp Happiness got any of the Mr. Beautiful mando stylings. And here’s a pro tip. That building is not going to build itself. You know the one I’m talking about. The building. Work on it yo.

Frick Frack Blackjack, Gambling for souls pt. 2.

Dammit. Phoenix was the dealer again. They hadn’t seen each other since Backwoods when Thatcher, through some slight of hand, lost his birthday celebration to the blonde bastard. Just in the nick of time, Sarah showed up with a tiny glass bottle inside of which was a tiny scroll apparently connected to a living soul. Just another night Frick Frack Blackjack and gambling for souls. Another nineteen squashed by a twenty At the point they foolishly wouldn’t take his Shakespeare reel as a bet, he produced the fireworks and mortars he’d smuggled through security. There was no way they would be able to turn down incendiaries. Don’t forget to tip your dealer.

Thatcher’s cigarette was cracked and hanging and his reading glasses had no arms. Dima and Sara stood at the end of the bar, likely selling prints and trading cigarettes for gel tabs. Fair trade. Phoenix pulled out the suitcase heavy with contracts and there was something sinister about the he casually flipped through the parchment of souls with apathetic disdain. Was it really possible that he could remember all the souls he’d collected. Some had the mark writ on ancient goatskin while others bore the emboss of royal families long forgotten. How long had he been harvesting lives and souls? A millennia? More? It wasn’t for Thatcher to know. Through some spectral power he seemed to recall each and every one. He even managed to locate the contract for the fiftieth birthday party he’d lost at Backwoods. Gambling for souls is an addiction.

He had been told it was a soul for a soul but he could see here that was another bag of lies and certainly not the case at this table. One indigent was put up a baby Yoda for a soul and another degenerate tabled one of his uncle’s pornography mags from the early seventies. One specialized on specifically flaccid penises. Thatcher had no idea that concept had ever existed and it raised some interesting questions.

Everything Is Cheesy.

Later: Monday to Friday

Monday night found Big Betty at the Dr. Bacon Blue Lava Dance Jam featuring Steve Little on harpsichord and flugelhorn. Already three days into their ayahuasca “experiment” they were out to groundscore all the pashminas they could find.

Martha had already gone knuckles deep into a bag of molly and was trying to sell a whole groundscored pizza she found by the garbage pile near the bat house. “Monday prices, no deals!” she bellowed. Thatcher considered how episodes such as this were why the Baker Act had been created. See you in seventy-two hours crazy person. Later reports had her selling pet ticks near the Bird Sanctuary.

Falling asleep around the wrong fire.

It was over. Thatcher was falling fast and why not. He’d earned it and was out of the kinds of drugs that would stay that condition. He laid horizontally on the church pew next to the fire and attempted to drift off into blissful slumber.

Woke hippies use ear cones to remove unwanted waxy build up. Camp Cheese Love uses hot popcorn kernels deep down in the ear hole. While impossible to retrieve, the sizzling oil disinfects the bacterium in the inner ear and cauterizes the delicate channel.

Martha shoved peanut butter deep in the mouth and then covered him up with the filthiest of rugs. His pew would occasionally flip forward spilling him in the dirt. She was Christian enough to lay some dirty couch cushions under his landing zone for future falls. Iceman wasn’t leaving the park for a week. He planned to pull this off by way of “tree sitting”. He ended up braking the window on the shower house and stomping his poop down between the bed of river rock. Florida is not for tree sitters.

Jenny was hanging out with Dr. Bacon. Her once beautiful hair now hung in clumps littered with mulch and oak leaves. Her tears smelled like regretomine and she had been selling her new hand job titled the “Olde Fashion” featuring the patented butter churn. By Monday morning everyone in the band wold have the same red sore. The ladies from the Bird Sanctuary said it on their way out. “Y’all better use a condom.” but mountain people don’t always listen.

You are the sauce. We are the love. Everything is cheesy.

Great job security. Considering how cute some of the guards were Thatchers was looking for the “aggressive frisking” line but when it was all said and done, other Hulaweens have involved much higher levels of hassle. This years awesome security squad facilitated a festival without fear or angst and at the utmost serious level, created a space where people were comfortable moving around clean and staying out of Suwannee County Sheriff’s Annex.

Iceman got to stay a few days with Cheese Love to help finish the paint on the installation. They remained with impunity as the deputies would drive by searching for hippies to toss. Not Cheese Love. Not this time. Boys are working.The heady trade award of the day was the tampon for the donkey onesie. Well played.

Bye Felicia.

Cheese Love Presents New Luxury Homes in the Farm Field

Find room-to-breathe in the Farm Field. Make your escape – to a fresh new community in North Florida over-flowing with old Florida Key West charm with a money-saving twist. Pallet homes. Wide front porches and Bahama shutters set the stage for a relaxed, undisturbed morning – just you, your ketomine and the sunrise. Turkey Oak tree lined dirt roads connect you a bevy of community amenities and home sites sized up to five square feet giving you room to breathe. Discover a new, simple, smart way to live at Cheese Love.

SOLAR POWERED LIVING
Not really. Our homes are run on good old-fashioned juice, straight from the grid. You’re never more than a step away from a speed bump over a dirt road. Curl up in your favorite chair with a good book and know the lamp light is costing you nothing because you piggy-backed off your neighbor’s spider box.

OUTDOOR RECREATION
Take Rover for a walk to the Bat House or over to the Bird Sanctuary. Renaissance is just over the ridge and God only knows what they’re getting into. Cheese Love has several options to help you live a healthy life.

COMMUNITY GARDEN
Green Thumbs wanted! Our community garden offers a bounty of seasonal, home-grown marijuana and organic psychotropics. From Datura to poppies our garden is a common space for everyone to enjoy. Join Mushroom Monday and learn how to properly cultivate and harvest everything from penis envy to purple ringers. Yowza.

Lil-d and his postfest completion provided a perfect haven. The Iceman wasn’t forced to leave the park as anticipated. He’d already constructed a primitive landing in the middle boughs of Turkey Oak Quercus laevis. The crew nailed and painted with laborious fervor as the deputies  continued rolling out slow-moving hippies. Thanks cop, can you help me find my pashmina?

It was a perfectly wonderous Hulaween. It’s repretation is well-deserved. In spite of what we like to say, it’s high-bar. Safe, harmless fun with family and friends. They would be eating groundscored goldfish and animal crackers for weeks to come. Life is good.

Follow the wranglers as we introduce the Fallout Shelter Art and Music Experience and join The LunatikSol at CornucopiaFest. Find us at Maddox Ranch and see what happens. This is the very spirit of adventure. Namaste y’all.

There is no yoke.