Loss Prevention at Electric Forest

Welcome back to the loop of ill repute in the land of lost souls. Soul gambling can be an addiction. If so, please get help. In a world of shattered expectations, half-assery and undiscovered potential, the wranglers are abnormally proud to have raised the dusty bar and joined the media team at Electric Forest. In a move characterized by industry experts as “festival suicide” and one that will surely confound scholars for years, Lucienda and the Caballero Blanco were invited to be party to the ridiculous fun in Rothbury, Michigan. Some things are best left unfigured. Loose lips sink ships. Welcome to Loss Prevention at Electric Forest. Sometimes mama didn’t try.

Stardate June 23-26, 2020: Rothbury, Michigan. For her first trip to Electric Forest Lucy found the festival to be overstuffed with a fantastic lineup of jam bands, house music, trance, dubstep, electro and more. With mind-blowing production, vendors, artists and stages such as Ranch Arena, Sherwood Court, Tripolee, Jubilee and The Observatory, there was something for everyone and hardly enough hours in the day to see it all. Or rather, another way to look at it was there literally was no time to sleep. The String Cheese Incident’s Saturday night explosion to GriZ’s massive Ranch Arena performance proved the trip to Rothbury was worth the wait.

They’d just left the dirty heat of Bonarroo where Lucienda forgot her computer, plugged into a power source in the stagehand tent #3. It was a serious oversight and cruel defeat for an interweb magazine trying to stay on the road through a thick haze of limited capital, pitiless companions and irresponsible behavior. She hoped this festival run would raise the funds for a new van, but instead it was funneling money straight into the coffers of the Michigan drywall guys.

They arrived onsite Wednesday afternoon and pulled into staff parking B to survey the general condition of things. Once again they were camped on another dusty, hot hill, pinned between the thugs from Mi Kulture, Slumberjack and some sketchy bartender stocked with LPGA  booze. They’d planned on moving to general admission once things elevated but the party surrounding these Virginia degenerates was too good to pass up. A rare treat indeed. And staff camping is where the professionals lurk. These are the hard-core trained experts that keep every facet of the party moving in the right direction. Every night when Lucy got home around 4:30am she’d find the same circle of filthy, wizened sages sitting around recapping the mysteries and adventures of the day.

Mikey Sterno got his name from his propensity to cook supper over the leftover sterno cans from the ladies golf event he’d been recently bartending. Keep an eye out for his new e book, “The Sterno Kitchen Almanac”. He also had a full hatchback of leftover booze and was eager to share all hours of the day or night. Bloody Marys in the morning, rum drinks at sunset and Jaimos at sunrise. It was an ongoing spectacle, to be sure. El Caballero Blanco discovered a previously unused painting medium as he used his urine to skillfully create beautiful, original pieces on the dirty passenger door of Lucy’s Oldsmowagon. Art is pain.

Sherwood Forest and Beyond.  The Michigan Hulaween wooks had long spoken of the high level of professional production at Forest but until she laid eyes on it she couldn’t really wrap her brain hole around the thing. The lights, the people and the interactive art installations seemed to go on forever in every direction. Somewhere near the madcap Zoe and the Dima Yastronaut tent, Lucy found Emma and got her first taste of general admission camping which appeared to stretch to the horizon. It was going to take years to get to all of this tomfoolery but she reckoned this would be her first of many trips to this part of the forest. The truth shall set you free.

Lost Prevention. After losing the Summer Camp groundscored octopus tapestry at the Cornucopia Fallout Shelter the wrangler management team (the guys on the eleventh floor) decided to intervene with an implementation of loss prevention strategies. These refer to the steps taken to reduce profit loss and involve theft, fraud, and human errors. Along with schitzophrenia, vertigo and poverty, they can all be problems for online festival magazines.

While searching for Cheyenne and Uncle Lumpy, Baitbucket had become completely lost and was eventually forced into the sanctuary of a portal john. It smelled like DMT and ozone and while he couldn’t be sure he thought the walls might be covered in blood. What type of blood, man or beast, he couldn’t assertain but he managed to avoid contact with it. He hadn’t slept much during the first two days and was already running on vapor, occasionally catching glimpses of spirit walkers. So far, the red haired gypsy woman had been right about everything. This was turning into one delicous hell of a party.

Stolen Souls? The White Knight came up with the plan late Friday while shoving ground glitter into his face. The broad strokes of it was to steal the briefcase full of souls, behind the card table at the Frick Frack Blackjack tent. It had been determined that the briefcase of souls was simply too much power and responsibility for one entity. They had fallen victim to hubris and needed to be checked by Loss Prevention. Lucy wasn’t worried about getting her birthday back. It was already over and had likely been won by some wook at Backwoods. She was still interested in getting a soul for her own but had little faith in winning it back against Phoenix and his bag of twenties and blackjacks. Theft was the only real option. Everything was in place but sometime a little after Clozee the bath salts kicked in and team organization began to deteriorate. Baitbucket ended up lost in the back forty, stumbling most of the night back to camp only to find it perched directly under Venus. Shit, birds. The White Knight found himself in a hammock on third base and stealing for home and Lucy purposely lost everyone and climbed into someone else’s vehicle to escape the dust for a little while. All in all, the operation had been a complete failure but the dye had been cast and there would be other opportunities down the road. Beware the keeper of the souls.

A Red Headed Witch. Tarot Cards at Gunpoint. A Fools Lament? Somewhere around Saturday before String Cheese the Red Witch arrived wearing a blue velvet coat. Somewhere near the Cherry Blossom stop she began throwing tarot cards in people’s faces and demanding to read their future. “It would be a mistake to say no,” she would cackle. Deep in the back forty the game had run its course and all of them were invited to exit the bus. They eventually found another shuttle but the driver refused to stop as they sped by staff parking B. Lucy tried unsuccessfully to get the driver’s attention. “Are you talking to me?” he muttered. “I’m screaming at you! Let me off this fucking bus or I’m going to shoot!” The driver glanced into the rearview mirror and looked down the barrel of a groundscored bubble gun. Lucy silenty prayed he wouldn’t notice that it was out of ammunition.

Zane, the world’s worst dishwasher, was covered in dust as he found his way into the kamp happiness think tank around sunrise Sunday morning. He was subsequently accosted and forced to continue on to Scranton for Billy Strings the following weekend at Peach. At some point Zach, the sergeant at arms forcibly removed a rambling wook from Big Betty after he tried unsuccessfully to break the strings off of every working instrument. “The word is given. Wookie go sleepy time.” Read the room bro. Who gets kicked out of the festival on his way out. Question mark? Lucy heard this and thought it to be the silliest thing ever. “So they cut your bracelet off as you were leaving?” Curious indeed. Some mysteries are best left unsolved.

Then came the sunrise tranquilizer tea party that knocked Lucy somewhere back into a primordial soup hole. Between the dust, face syrup and the nearly constant screaming and singing, recent days had begun taking their toll. Her breathing had become labored and she could feel a light wook flu coming on, but with Peach and 4848 in the wings, there was little time for that. This was the long road and they were out to get their absolute money’s worth. It wasn’t always easy but it wasn’t supposed to be. There would surely be a season for the road and a time to rest. It was just their turn at the wheel.

Lucienda and El Caballero Blanco had been traveling together since Mountain Music Festival and getting to know each other on the road. They worked different shifts at Bonarroo which seriously got in the way of their budding relationship. Lucy was missing out on the “us” time and was planning on bringing it up in counseling. El Caballero had picked up the habit of “pretending” to be gay and from where Lucy sat, she figured he deserved an Academy Award.

Lucy had been slated to bartend at the festival but by the time she was done waiting in the sun all day, there were no more spots left. This was all fine and dandy with her because she’d been waiting for exactly this party and she knew she didn’t need to be hustlin’ drinks. Seeing just what the helliconia was blossoming around her, she opted out of her bartending gig and committed herself fully to the media team. This allowed her all the time she needed to slowly visit everyone she knew and take in the entire slanted spectacle. Occasionally she would find herself walking a little too quickly down some dusty trail and have to remind herself that this was exactly where she wanted to be. She’d been waiting for this festival since the beginning and there was no reason to rush through anything. She had found her way back into what Thatcher Owen Mullens would call “the pocket”.

Das Boom. Sometime during The War on Drugs set, Loss Prevention brought the hammer down on Frito for drinking on the job. The boys with the scissors did their duty and were poised to give her a free golf cart ride to the highway before they noticed she was also wearing a media bracelet and had the backup she needed to remain in the funnel of the fun. Always good to have a plan A. She considered how helpful that would have been at LOCKN’ before they attempted to incarcerate their entire fan base. It’s all fun and games till you’re surrounded by fat guys in Nelson County golf shirts.

Sunday morning brought Slumberjack aka the Swamp Monster and his acoustic stylings to the kamp happiness family jam. After days of electrified music, his Grateful Dead pickin’ was just what all the doctors ordered. Even The Operator was relaxed enough to muse the day he tried to operate a forklift while full tilt on serious animal tranquilizers. Maybe you don’t look like every other hippy.

T.H.C (The Tiny Hand Club). At some point Baitbucket got separated from the group on his way to the hot air balloons and ended up professing his eternal love to the lady at A Baazare Universe. He eventually found his way into the pit for Big Gigantic and ended up trading his red wig for a tiny plastic hand. Where he came from this kind of thing served as legitimate currency.

Mattt with three Ts came around the Hobo Kamp a few times before finding a pillow case full of drugs in the middle of the living room. They all shelved the idea of the Scotty Smiles exit strategy and Monday ended up wrapped in a ridiculous afternoon burrito of blessed savagery. Welcome to the slow exit strategy.

Serotonin Monday? The sexy lesbians next door had been practicing with the kangaroo whip all day and were getting the hand of it. Once they heard the nearby altercation and witnesses the tiny hippy tossing his girlfriend’s speaker and clothes everywhere, they grabbed the White Knight and went in for the assist. Over the crack of the whip you cook barely hear the White Knight ask was if it was too soon to grab the speaker groundscore out of the dirt. Absolutely not. Read the room bro.

(Ed. note: Please remember gentle reader, when we use words like thug or freak, it’s a compliment.) 

Before it was all said and done the team had seen a vast array of curious and spectacular wonders and came out the other side generally unscathed. They were psychologically ravaged but also invigorated with a spiritual transcendence that comes with exceptional festivals. A feeling of growth and change with big fun that would not be soon forgotten. Thanks to Electric Forest and Madison House Presents for letting the wranglers slip through the gate and rage with the animals. Visit their website and like their social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok. Science is real.

Keep up with the wranglers as they head back up the mountain for FloydFest and the rest of the Virginia mountain summer. Listen for Big Betty singing in the wook nook down by the VIPness. Stay tuned for wrap-ups from the rest of the summer tour. Scamp, Bonarroo, Peach, and 4848 are still headed your way. Thanks for tuning in.

All wooks welcome.