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8.27.99
eight.a
Adventures in Rome...New York
commentary by carl kaminski * illustration by kyle ramsey
"It was a surreal sight. Fires burned in every direction and the so-called Peace Patrol were the first to take off running."
Student finds lack of peace and love at Woodstock '99
It took a little more than five hours to get to Rome, from New York City, but it took another four to get on Griffiss Park, the old air force base that was to be the site of Woodstock '99: "Three more days of peace, love and music."
My former roommate Brent had offered me an $80 ticket to go to Woodstock, which was a good deal—about half the official ticket price.
We left Thursday evening after I returned from my iob in New York.
My first hint of what was to come occurred as we waited in a line of what seemed like a million other cars crawling along the last few miles of our journey to the concert.
A guy walking along the trail of halted vehicles came up to the side of my Jeep.
"You guys interested in some E?" he asked.
Brent looked at me.
"What's E?"
"Ecstasy," I told him.
"What's that?"
"I think it's kind of like speed. It's the drug everyone talks about at raves," I said.
I was about to tell the guy we weren't interested when Brent pulled out a bottle of Ritalin and asked him if he wanted to trade.
Then I noticed a police car coming down the road
"There's a cop up there," I said.
As the police car drove by, the guy pretended to sell us a T-shirt.
"I can't believe you just bought something you have never heard of," I said as Brent accepted several small white pills.
"It's Woodstock," he said.
Once we got there, we found a place to pitch our tents. I went to sleep. Brent decided it was a
decided it was good time to
good time to take his eastasy and
wander around the festival.
I woke up about an hour later; someone was puking about three feet in front of me. Yeah, it was Woodstock.
The next morning Brent was nowhere to be found, so I headed out on my own.
I could not believe how big the place was. About a mile and half of runway lay between the two main stages. A third stage, located halfway between the others, was a converted B-52 hanger and provided the only shade in the whole place. And it was hot.
I wandered for a while, sampling a $10 burrito and a $4 bottle of water. I planned to hang on to the bottle and fill it at one of the water fountains scattered throughout the grounds.
At the first one I got to, there were two naked guys scrubbing themselves over the jets of water.
At the next one there was a huge mud fight. Water had spilled from the fountain and nearby portable toilets. It smelled like there was more in the flying mud than just mud.
I didn't fill up my bottle.
The first group I saw was the Roots. They were one of the weekend's highlights, playing with an energy that many of Woodstock's performers lacked.
I decided to buy another water
Finally, I was having fun.
Following the Roots was the Insane Clown Posse. I had never heard of them, but George Clinton and P-Funk were next, so I tried to get as close to the stage as possible. Nobody told me that they were going to soak the crowd with cola. I ended up with a black eye after negotiating the mosh pit, and I was sticky all over from the soda.
P-Funk better be worth it. I thought.
They were. We want the Funk must have lasted at least 45 minutes.
After P-Funk, I checked out the rave and headed back to the campsite. After about a two-hour nap, I woke and saw Brent sitting. He looked confused. He said he had spent all of Friday at the Jimi Hendrix exhibit watching a repeating 15-minute video of Hendrix at the original Woodstock. Eventually the drugs he had taken made him feel sick. He had found his way back to the tent and passed out.
While he recovered, I decided to find the showers.
When I came back, Brent was gone. A few guys by the tent told me he had taken a bunch of acid and headed back to the Hendrix exhibit.
What I found was one of the longest lines I had ever seen. After a three-hour wait in the baking sun, I managed to rinse off the cola.
"Have you noticed that everyone here insists on getting naked?" one of them said. "Not that I mind, but I have never seen so much nakedness."
He was right. Everywhere you looked there were people with interesting sunburns and others with cameras photographing it all.
At one spot, a group had gathered on top of a trailer while their friends below surrounded whonever they pointed out, and they wouldn't let them go without seeing some skin. It looked like sexual assault to me, but the girl's never seemed to mind.
Sunday started on a mellow note. I found Brent passed out on top of his tent. I told him if he wandered off and I couldn't find him, that I was going to leave without him. He told me he didn't feel good and that he wasn't going to do any more drugs. He already had spent $300 and still had not had a thing to eat.
We saw Willie Nelson give a great show on the east stage, and then made our way to the west stage and saw another great show when Rusted Root took the stage.
Later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers came out and played a great, if abbreviated, show followed by a lame Jimi Hendrix light show tribute.
Small fires had been blazing the night before, but this time they got out of control.
Then things got crazy.
The promoters were right when they said a small group started the trouble, but at least a couple thousand got into the mix when things started rolling.
It was a surreal sight. Fires burned in every direction, and the so-called Peace Patrol were the first to take off running, being taunted as they went.
"Peace, love and music my ass!" cried a hysterical hipie as she ran after them.
The targets of the mayhem were the venders, those profiteers charging $55 and more for a T-Shirt and $10 for a burrito.
I sat and watched as the mob tore apart stands and threw anything they could find onto the nearest fire. In the distance you could see police trying to get through the melee.
After the first trailer exploded, I decided to head for the campsite.
brent, in his wisdom, took all the acid and cestasy he had, and left.
"I have to experience this," he said.
Back at the camp, rumors ran rampant. According to the guys next door, 10 people were dead, and the riot police were beating innocent bystanders.
As it turned out, seven
people were arrested and nobody died.
But we didn't know that.
Eventually the explosions stopped, the fires were out and Brent returned.
We left Monday morning. Rather than being a defining moment, Woodstock '99 simply had been a huge party that went out of control.
Antonio Banderas takes up the scimitar in The 13th Warrior
By Dan Curry
Associate features editor
It takes 12 Norsemen and Antonio Banderas to save a kingdom from bearskin-clad marauders motivated by a bankering for Scandinavian hunks, in *The Thirteenth Warrior*.
In the film, Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan (Banderas) is a banished citizen of Baghdad who joins up with a band of warriors who kill each other at the dinner table and drink each other's backwash. The warriors are summoned by a kingdom plagued by "Eaters of the Dead," mysterious beings that feed on the flesh of the deceased.
But nothing—not Robin Hood, not Braveheart—can save this movie from being quickly forgettable.
Ibn the Moor is more-or-less in the same position as Morgan Freeman's character in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Lightly repulsed with the culture he encounters, he nonetheless comes to appreciate the people in the north and manages to teach them a few things along the way. Banderas, pouting and silent through most of the movie, plays his part well, which is to be silent, scared and mildly critical. He gives him. The characters who
deceased. Although it may sound like a adaptation of 1954's The Seventh Samurai, It's not. It's more like a rip-off. And this is not the film's only offense.
His silence is what saves him. The characters who do speak—in a Norse tongue for the first half, English for the second—have lines that are unwaveringly
grave. The characters try to achieve an epic tone, but only succeed in sounding like Conan the Barbarian reciting Shakespeare.
Only one scenes stands out as being better than dispointing. Ibn sits around his comrade and listens to them speak in a language unintelligible to him and the audience. Slowly the words evolve into English as Ibn learns the language. Never mind that it takes Ibn one night to learn the whole tongue.
The rest of the movie is a poor reproduction of Braveheart's epic battles. Banderas and his golden-haired band do most of their swordplay at night, obscuring much of the physical entertainment of slaughtering monsters and men.
The only real tragic hero may be director John McTiernan (Die Hard). He furiously tries to keep the pace quick enough to keep people from seeing the movie for what it is: A bad Renaissance festival skit on steroids.
Film Facts
Rating: R
Grade: C.
Where: Southwind 12,3433
Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes.
Herger the Joyous (Dennis Storhiol) and Ahmed Ibn Fahdalan (Antonio Banders) anxiously await the return of the bad guys in bear skins. The Thirteenth Warrior is based on Michael Crichton's novel, *Eaters of the Dead*. Contributed Art