Bumbershoot 2009

I attended Bumbershoot only the once, back in 1983, when I
mistakenly assumed it was some sort of a traveling discount-umbrella
sale—”Never let a Gypsy caravan of bargains pass you by,” my
beloved Auntie Clytemnestra used to say, and that advice has saved me a
fortune in wallets, neckties, and manservants. What I saw in that
godforsaken five minutes was far, far more than enough—the smell
of narcotics rendered the air unbreathable, and herds of immense
families wandered to and fro, gnawing at their fistfuls of
still-bubbling-hot balls of deep-fat-fried flour, all to the sloppy
drumbeating of un-American hippies and the flailings of unitard-wearing
performance artists. I vowed never to return.

And I urge you, gentle reader, not to attend this year’s Bumbershoot
goings-on, either. You will find no deeply discounted weather
accoutrements here. Instead, you will see a “Literary Festival” that
considers a mawkish scienti-fictionary television show to be the height
of Shakespearean drama; a series of awful, caterwauling musicians who
would be unable to locate a chord on a guitar even with the assistance
of a miraculously revived Franz Xaver Gruber; and enough carcinogenic
“food” to fatally clog the arteries of a prizewinning high-school
football team.

But if you must go, I urge you at the very least not to bother
reading The Stranger‘s Bumbershoot guide.

After all, consider the horrors that those homosexual atheist drug
addicts at The Stranger have decided to highlight: DAVE SEGAL
waxes nostalgic about a musical group with an unprintable name (if you
are curious, it is something like Holy [Procreation], only even more
low-minded); a cub reporter by the name of CHRIS ESTEY—probably
lured into The Stranger‘s web with false promises of
journalistic glory—extols a musical group by the name of the
[Prostitute] Moans; JEN GRAVES puts her mealy mouth to the service of
faint praise for some sort of artistic commune named “Dada Economics,”
and though I have read the piece and I still do not understand what
Dada Economics is actually about, I can assure you that it is not about
either financial matters or fatherhood; and professional race-baiter
CHARLES MUDEDE profiles the author of some immoral electronic web-net
page entitled Stuff White People Like (speaking as a Caucasian, Mr.
Mudede: We are not especially fond of you).

Further, if the enclosed map of the artistic abattoir that Seattle
Center will become over Labor Day weekend was designed by AARON HUFFMAN
and the other artistic “geniuses” behind The Stranger‘s usual
shoddy, confusing layout, I urge you to ignore it; the damned thing
will purposefully mislead you into dark alleys where fingersmiths and
rapists will have their way with you before slitting your throat from
ear to ear. Need I say more? This “Bumbershoot,” like The
Stranger, can only provide solace to the artless and ignorant.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.