This year’s theme for the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada is the “American Dream”. Wow, the American Dream – what in the Hell is it and is it still alive? Is the American Dream an illusion? Did it ever really exist? Should we be chasing it?

I think the American Dream is alive. But you can’t find or buy the American Dream. You can only dream it up. We can all have our own vision of the American Dream. At this year’s Burning Man Festival (August 25th to September 1st) 50,000 freaks will assemble in the desert to share their individual visions of the “American Dream”.

For me, if I had only one word to describe the American Dream, the word would be “Freedom”. The freedom to be who I really am and to roam free rather than be like a chicken in a cage laying eggs for a farmer.

This year will be my first time as a “Burner” and I will be sharing my vision of the American Dream by projecting 1,000 images from the past year’s Great American Road Trip on the side of my motor home “Destiny“. I call this showing “Visions of My American Dream”.

My travel mentor/guru Ed Buryn, author of Vagabonding in America, will be collaborating with me in promoting and presenting this show. We will also be showing movies related to this year’s American Dream theme, including “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“.

In 1971 Hunter S. Thompson went through the desert and into the crass heart of Las Vegas looking for the “American Dream”, driving a Cadillac with a trunk full of psychedelic drugs. What he found or fabricated became the book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream“.

In his book, the American Dream was hijacked by the privileged few sometime around Nixon’s reign. Judging from the current regime, they never gave it back. Hunter S. Thompson once said that his journalism beat was “the death of the American Dream”. By the time Thompson shot himself in 2005 he had largely pronounced the American Dream dead.

Perhaps his American Dream was dead. For others it has turned into the American Ream. But for those of us still living and dreaming it remains alive, even if endangered.

The pure canvas of the Black Rock Desert seems like a far more fitting place to dream the American Dream than the crass fabrication knows as Las Vegas. I will be painting my vision of this dream onto of this vast desert canvas by projecting 1,000 images onto the side of my motor home. Long live the American Dream and the freedom to create it!

Feel free to share your personal vision of the “American Dream” by posting your reply below.

A final thought from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson that is fitting for the Festival -

“When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.”

I expect to be very professional.

Addendum/Update - I had an amazing and moving experience during the seven days I participated in the Burning Man Festival. View highlights and photos from the 2008 Burning Man Festival.

Trip to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands with my long time friend and comrade Jim.

Creative expression can surface anywhere, including in a back alley littered with dumpsters, power lines and stoops. I’ve stumbled through my share of alleyways, including the medieval alleys of old town Barcelona. But for true alleyway aficionados, Art Alley in Rapid City, South Dakota is the ultimate place to curl up in a doorway and swig booze out of a crumpled paper bag, while absorbing all the colorful and inspired chaos.

Art Alley is open to all who can wield a spray can, brush or broom. There are no art snobs, gallery owners or posers running the show and no fees. But like the open volunteer resource – Wikipedia – something inspired and useful emerges from all this chaotic and uncensored creativity.

The alley is continually changing as new inspiration overwrites the old. To view and uncover the previous art that now lays buried beneath layers of new art, visit http://artalley.awardspace.com/

A short history of Art Alley – A few years ago Art Alley was a typical grungy alley like thousands of others. Its transformation began around 2002 when, as legend has it, a man named Todd Rigione move to Rapid City from California with his girl friend, Judy Looyenga (a native of Rapid City). The back stairway of their apartment looked out over the alley.

They decided to change their view beginning with painting pictures over graffiti on power poles. Soon others joined in and populist artwork spread up and down the alley.

Next Stop – the infamous annual “Sturgis Bike Rally”

Most low lives can scratch together enough cash to buy a motorcycle and many do. Once a year in August over 500,000 of them converge on Sturgis, South Dakota for “Bike Week”. The rally is littered with tattoo shops, cheap food stands, bars and T shirt shops. It’s lowbrow and cheap, including most of the women.

But I like how every one, including the women, let it all hang out, especially their guts. There’s plenty of macho, but most everyone was cool and far more interested in making good times than causing trouble. There were plenty of cops around for any one who preferred to cause trouble. The rally has been held since 1938 and is the biggest motorcycle rally in the USA.

Sturgis is just north of the Black Hills and West of the Badlands. It’s an oasis of beauty surrounded by prairies and the great plains for hundreds of miles. The bikers roam free through the badlands and wooded hills like wild roaring beasts. It’s their week to escape the straight jacket known as the “normal life”.

I owned a couple of motorcycles in my day. But I never considered myself a “biker”. They’re not my tribe. But we share a love of roaming free. Roll on!

Next Stop - Peaking over the ridge at Middle Age Mountain

The long drive across South Dakota on I-90 is dotted with campy roadside attractions, old time car museums, missile silos, Wall Drug, and a recreated old Western town called “1880 Town“. With thirty restored old time buildings and artifacts, a gallery of Indian chief portraits and the story of the making of the movie “Dance with Wolfs”, it’s one worth stopping for.

Next Stop – the Stoned Presidents of Mount Rushmore

People fascinate me far more than nature, objects or the expanding Universe. Some of them suck. But some of them suck in interesting ways. Others are gems in the rough who I treasure.

Below are a few oddballs I feel privileged to have known while in my native Minnesota.

Note – this is by no means a complete list.

Tom Mischke was the kid from the other block who did strange things like put Barbie doll heads on GI Joe’s body. I actually worried about him as a young kid. But when he grew up he turned his zany antics into a local offbeat talk radio show on KSTP AM 1500. We collaborated on creating plenty of goofy improv videos, including a “Chicken’s Story”. For this video Tom dressed up in a chicken mascot costume and strutted around Northern Minnesota harassing farmers, a security guard at the Golden Plump chicken processing plant and people eating chicken at a KFC. I really should get those videos online.

To learn more about Tom and his antics visit:

* Mischke’s Wikipedia Page
* Article featuring Mischke in The Atlantic Monthly
* Rake Magazine article on Mischke
* The Madness of Mischke – an online collection of audio clips

Some of my other schoolboy chums remain characters. But they go unrecognized and unpaid for their antics. Some of them still live in the same old 55105 zip code. Their kids now go to grade school together and no doubt continue to unravel the nuns.

Rich Kronfeld was one of my favorite local oddball talents. He created an excruciatingly anal character known as “Dr. Sphincter”, who hosted a very uptight TV talk show called “Tightline”. It was brilliantly tense with the guests fidgeting uncomfortably under the harsh lights. The interviews were like cross examinations conducted by the Gestapo. Fortunately, Rich and his groupies had the good sense to put these classics, including Dr. Sphincter’s tour of Minnesota rest stops, online at http://www.drsphincter.com

I think Rich drew a good deal of inspiration for his uptight Dr. Sphincter from the often emotionally stoic and repressed Scandinavians and Germans who weathered the cold to settle and tame Minnesota with far too many sensible laws. I loved his Dr. Sphincter character. He did a cameo as an uptight scheduling dean in a movie I wrote and co-directed called “Free Fall”.

To learn more about Dr. Sphincter and his uptight art visit:

Videos on Google
Videos on YouTube
www.drsphincter.com

Crazy Cabbie – Everyone who parties late and hard should have a “personal cabbie”. Ideally this cabbie will be crazy and full of ridiculous stories and antics. A personal cabbie picks you up when you’re drunk, high or incapacitated and takes you home or to the next party across town.

My personal cabbie, “Crazy Cabbie”, was more performance artist on wheels than driver. He was loud, hilarious and abusive. I loved him and so did my buddy Tim. We enjoyed returning the abuse and fueling Cabbie’s insanity as we squealed through town.

All too often our cab rides with him were the best part of the night. God bless the “Crazy Cabbie” and have mercy on his passengers.

Captain Mike – I met the Captain years ago when he was a restless student at the uptight University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. I had endured four plus years of intellectually dishonest Catholic education at this institution and co produced a movie called “Free Fall” that lampooned it. During a student screening at St. Thomas, I offered a “Roads’ Scholarship” to the student who wrote the most compelling essay on why they wanted to leave St. Thomas and hit the road. As the runner up, Mike didn’t win the VW camper bus. But he did win a copy of Ed Buryn’s 1974 classic book “Vagabonding in America”. Mike hit the road for a few months with Ed’s book in his glove compartment.

Mike and I became good friends over time. Mike bought an old 1968 (Summer of Love) houseboat and took his vagabonding spirit on to the Mississippi River. I joined him on dozens of weekend cruises over the years. My ability to stock the bar and kitchen and recruit characters for these cruises earned me the title of “Cruise Director”. We had many “Good Times” on the mighty Mississippi.

Thom Caya – is one of the most outrageous oddballs I’ve ever known. I never really could tell when he was on acid or not. He was the same outrageous, obnoxious and hilarious person with or without the drugs and booze. I’ve never been thrown out of more bars and never invited back to more parties than when I was with Thom. But it was dam well worth it.

Thom was brutally honest in the face of repressed polite Scandinavians. They considered his behavior cruel and insensitive. I considered it fucking hilarious. I find it frightening that as I get older he makes more and more sense.

I could and should some day share the dozens of insanely funny stories we lived and survived together. But for now, enjoy some photos of this odd bird. Thom is “still a photographer”. To view his portfolio visit Thom Caya Still Photography.

Colleen Kruse – Funny Lady Extraordinaire – Colleen was the funniest woman I ever dated. So funny that she turned pro and did stand up comedy, including a few HBO and Comedy Central appearances. I once brought her to a company holiday party as my date. While I was out of sight she told my co-workers that she was actually a paid escort. Now that’s pretty dam funny.

I met her at a 1930′s vintage diner car, Mickey’s Diner, in downtown St. Paul. She was worked there as a waitress but she was really doing comedy. The crowd of late night drunks and misfits was her audience. Mickey’s Diner provided Colleen with a great stage and lots of inspired material for her later standup routines.

Colleen still does comedy, on and off stage, and hosts a local radio show called “Living Life Out Loud“.

“They” say you can’t go home again. But I say it’s worth a try.

I defected from Minnesota and its frozen tundra a few years ago and bounced around in Costa Rica, the USA and Europe, while living largely out of two suitcases with a brief case for an office. I don’t believe in doing anything by default. That includes living where you grew up.

Traveling not only teaches you about the places you visit but the places you left behind. To know a place inside and out you need to see it from the outside. I now feel like I know Minnesota inside and out.

I returned to the Twin Cities in July after a long drive across the vast outdoor food factory known as Nebraska and Iowa. To drive up along lush Mississippi River bluffs into the quaint tree lined streets and lakes of the Twin Cities was like finding an oasis in a vast desert of corn. I was home and my home was as beautiful as any place I’d visited in the world.

Revisiting my old haunts brought back rich memories and thoughts of the many incredible people I knew. To meet some of my favorites Minnesota characters visit “Minnesota Originals“.

God bless the farmers in the Great Plains of the USA. They not only feed America and much of the world but also hold down the topsoil between the coasts, while tolerating long winters, bad restaurants, social isolation and boredom.

Driving through Nebraska felt like going back in time twenty years. Some of the women still wear their high school hairdos from the eighties, while men wear caps and drive pickup trucks like cowboys riding horses.

The Great Plains, known as the “world’s breadbasket”, spreads east from the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Texas and spills over the Mississippi River and into the Midwest. It’s a giant outdoor food factory, with water from the rivers irrigating the crops, which feed people and cattle. The land is populated by patriotic people who work hard and still believe in God and conservative values. They hold down the topsoil and then some.

Having become a temporary motor home resident of Aspen, I now understand why former resident Hunter S. Thompson occasionally felt the need to fire his weapons at the neighbors. The ultra rich and their trust fund babies, who travel in and out of remote Aspen largely by private jets, can provoke righteous gunfire. I chose to simply get along and have a great time.

Aspen does a pretty good job of discouraging motor home types like me from feeling at home. Its remote location beyond narrow mountain passes, its two hour street parking limits and its elimination of camping facilities has made the motor home camper all but extinct.

During the few days that I hung out in Aspen the only motor home/vans I saw were mine, Dave’s (of LivesinaVan.com fame) and an old camper van owned by an itinerant photographer named Brett. We were so rare that we actually took a photo of our three camper vans side by side, like a group photo for the members of the not yet formed “Aspen Mobile Residents Union”.

During the 4th of July weekend the Aspen airport was jammed packed with private jets and clubs were crawling with trust fund kids getting their kicks. This was the true “Jet Set”.

Dave (who LivesinaVan.com) and I felt a bit like wedding crashers who some how managed to infiltrate this exclusive world by sneaking over a mountain pass and into their town in our vans.

Wendy, a bright and beautiful woman we met while camping, joined us in Aspen for the 4th of July. We watched the fireworks over the mountain hills in Aspen, while singing the Star Spangled Banner. Can it really get any more all American than that?

After the 4th we all went our separate ways. Dave continued his journey West to Utah, while Wendy returned to her home in Denver. I ventured North through the mountains and then East through the Great Plains on my way to Minneapolis/St. Paul. I expect to rendezvous with Dave at the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert in Northwest Nevada at the end of August.

Next Stop – the Great Plains of the USA

Finding a precious yet relatively undiscovered place can feel like finding a gem in a pile of rocks. Salida in Southern Colorado is such a rare gem.

Mountains surround it and the Arkansas river runs right through town with kayakers and rafters flowing by. It has a real and beautiful mix of people and nature. It feels real, unlike some places where their popularity has turned them into virtual amusement parks.

But Salida has been discovered by the artists and is fast being revitalized. It won’t be long before the yuppies move in on their heels and buy it up.

A friend of mine who’s been living in Costa Rica for several years, Rick, caught up with me in Salida. He was visiting the USA and hungering for a dose of real America. He loved Salida and the area and so did I.

Next Stop – Twin Lakes to meet Dave who “Lives in a Van.com”