As we got ominously closer to Bicentennial Park, in Downtown Miami, the furious frantic roar of electronic music reached decibel volumes unbearable to the common man. The sweltering mass of people vibrated underneath the causeway with their hands extended toward the DJ as if welcoming a long-awaited Messiah.

“Good and sweet Lord” I muttered, petrified at the inconceivable turnout at Ultra Music Festival on this, its eleventh year. Little did I know that after almost two hours of scavenging for parking (even with a forged disability sticker) and around forty-five minutes of profuse sweating in a larger-than-life line, I would gain entry to an alternate reality so decadent, reckless, grandiose, and obscene that none of us would ever be the same.

It is true what parents and preachers fear: this festival is nothing but a celebration of the terminally decadent and obscene. There are, within this park, enough drugs to send Tim Leary running for the hills, enough sonic boom to silence a Challenger take-off and sufficient debauchery to make even a drunken Caligula blush like a Lolita.

Our chances of survival were slim at best, I determined, as the mothership-like Main Stage covered almost every piece of blue sky in the horizon. After all this was, indeed, the day that all the freaks crawled out of the woodwork, the day that even the seemingly decent and All-American morphed into wild eyed creatures, covered themselves in fluorescent paint, and ran amok in a bare-chested orgasmic frenzy with dangerous epileptic overtones.

“Hello, Miami” a robotized vocoder voice hollered from far away in the imposing stage, over the half-naked mass of freaks, creeps, and not-so-innocent by-standers, all of them fighting, copulating, dancing, desecrating, and medicating. The weird and the dangerous had found their perfect utopia in this piece of land, a haven unlike anything else I’d ever seen.

After the first couple of hours my head was spinning viciously from the distorted drum-beats. Every attempt at note-taking had been savagely disrupted by one calamity or another and the physical strain that the proper coverage of the story entailed was about to turn me into one more of the Ultra-casualties at the first-aid tent. At first I was leaning towards characterizing the whole thing as a celebration of the man-made, the digital and the high-tech. Sort of what would happen if the Star Trek series rudely copulated with Louie XVI’s court, spawned a bastard child, and named it Ultra. Far-fetched? Maybe. Nonetheless a good decimal approximation to what the festival really is like.

“It’s all about like the love, that intense feeling of like bliss… You know?” asserted an anonymous source by the kebab stand, but his eyes were far too wild and glazed to be taken seriously. Like every other time I had approached anyone for interviews and quotes the process had turned unfruitful. All I could get out of these freaks were garbled oral oddities and manic spontaneous laughter.

It was  about 10.30 pm, one and a half hours before closing, just when I was about to dismiss of this whole festival and sub-culture as a non-sensical excuse for brainless brutes to shove down their raspy throats unholy quantities of multicolored pills with funny names, that I came to understand the common sentiment that validated all this depraved craziness.

Under the epochal, primitive roar of Carl Cox’s music, a strange thing happened. An outlandish zenith took place, a weird peak under the incessant and vital drumbeats when every individual seemed to merge, to melt, into one giant collective entity pulsating in unison with the ever-increasing energy into a staggering absolute climax. A communion of joy that can’t be fully explained by words or brought back was found a beautiful myriad of people then and there.

A good time was had by all, except maybe the trampled, overdosed, dehydrated, knocked-up, knocked-down and terminally exhausted. Nonetheless they’d all assent to the notion it was all worth it, a strange feeling of universal love and understanding had prevailed if only for those two days. From March 28 to March 29 a striking utopia had been created and peaked, in a perverse and dysfunctional way we had prevailed.

As we got ominously closer to Bicentennial Park, in Downtown Miami, the furious frantic roar of electronic music reached decibel volumes unbearable to the common man. The sweltering mass of people vibrated underneath the causeway with their hand extended towards the DJ as if welcoming a long-awaited Messiah.

“Good and sweet Lord” I muttered, petrified at the inconceivable turnout at Ultra Music Festival on this, its eleventh year. Little did I know that after almost two hours of scavenging for parking (even with a forged disability sticker) and around forty-five minutes of profuse sweating in a larger-than-life line I would gain entry to an alternate reality so decadent, reckless, grandiose and obscene that none of us would ever be the same.

It is true what parents and preachers fear, this festival is nothing but a celebration of the terminally decadent and obscene, there are, within this park, enough drugs to send Tim Leary running for the hills, enough sonic boom to silence a Challenger take-off and sufficient decadence to make even a drunken Caligula blush like a Lolita.

Our chances of survival were slim at best, I determined as the mothers ship-like Main Stage covered almost every piece of blue sky in the horizon. After all this was, indeed, the day that all the freaks crawled out of the debauched woodwork, the day that even the seemingly decent and All-American morphed into wild eyed creatures, covered themselves in fluorescent paint and ran amok in a bare-chested orgasmic frenzy with dangerous epileptic overtones.

“Hello, Miami” a robotized vocoder voice hollered from far away in the herculean stage, over the half-naked mass of freaks, creeps and not-so-innocent by-standers. All of them fighting, copulating, dancing, desecrating and medicating. The weird and the dangerous had found their perfect utopia in this piece of land, a haven unlike anything else I’d ever seen.

After the first couple of hours my head was spinning viciously from the distorted drum-beats, every attempt at note-taking had been savagely disrupted by one calamity or another and the physical strain that the proper coverage of the story entailed was about to turn me into on more of the Ultra-casualties at the first-aid tent. At first I was leaning towards making sense of the whole thing as a celebration of the man-made, the digital and the high-tech. Sort of what would happen if the Star Trek series rudely copulated with Caligula’s court, spawning a bastard child and named it Ultra. Far-fetched? Maybe. Nonetheless a good decimal approximation to what the festival is like.

“It’s all about like the love, that intense feeling of like bliss… You know?” asserted an anonymous source by the kebab stand, but his eyes were far too wild and glazed to be taken seriously. Like everyone else I had approached for interviews, quotes or mere background the process had turned unfruitful. All I could get out of this freaks were garbled oral oddities and manic spontaneous laughter.

It was  about 10.30 pm, one and a half hours before closing, just when I was about to dismiss of this whole festival and sub-culture as a non-sensical excuse for brainless brutes to shove down their raspy throats unholy quantities of multicolored funny-named pills, that I came to understand the common sentiment that validated all this depraved craziness.

Under the epochal, primitive roar of Carl Cox’s music, a strange thing happened. An outlandish zeitgeist took place, a weird peak under the incessant and vital drumbeats when every individual seemed to merge, to melt, into one giant collective entity pulsating unite with ever increasing energy into a staggering climax. A bliss that can’t be fully explained by words or brought back, a beautiful myriad of people found it then and there.

A good time was had by all, except maybe the trampled, overdosed, dehydrated, knocked-up, knocked-down and terminally exhausted. Nonetheless they’d all assert to the notion it was all worth it, a strange feeling of universal love and understanding had prevailed if only for those two days. From March 28 to March 29 a striking utopia had been created and peaked, in a perverse and dysfunctional way we had prevailed.   

Who: Security Officers

What: Are often rude and tend to favorite certain aspects of the student population over others.

Where: MBSH

When: Ongoing

Why:

The point I am trying to make:

Sometimes there is some favoritism and general ineffectiveness within the school securities.

Why would a reader find this interesting?

Because it affects everyone

List sub-points I would like to make:

1. They are here to protect us, are they doing it?

2. Code Compliance vs. Student Protection

3. Marching into a classroom like it was a blitzkrieg may not be the most adequate way

4. Some of the securities are unfulfilled by their job, hence their often rude demeanor

5. Their conduct is known by Administrators, but ignored.

Where can I find information about these points?

Teachers, Administrators, Students, Security officers.

Possible metaphors / allusions / references:

Compare them to the Mussolini army, although maybe for this article there should be no allusions given the incendiary nature of the topic.

Humorous ways of framing the topic?

None so far.

People who have unique points of view on this topic:

Some teachers, administrators and definitely students

Relevant quotes:

Relevant statistics:

Possible ledes:

None, so far.

As you walk into any of the locations of Miami Beach Boat & Sail Show it’s easy to forget the current fatidic state of our nation. Walking into the Convention Center expo is pretty much equivalent to stepping into a rotting shrine of sheer and brutal consumerism, where the attendants float around like ghouls in khaki shorts and Acapulco shirts, mingling with each other and the eager salesmen, carefully inspection the hefty priced giant fiberglass phallic symbols, but you see, the boats are just the background to a much darker and atavistic reality, where deep pockets and unrelenting spending become the norm, even in this doom stricken year of economic turmoil.

Never would I have envisioned such a wasteful and self righteous display of economic power to go on now, a wicked time of unemployment rates climbing morbid and slobbering past 7.8% (Bureau Of Labor Statistics/), consumer spending falling and winds of Apocalypse blowing fiercely through the stock market… You would expect these type of event would be out of the question in the midst of such a fiercely vicious recession, because even if these type of event creates a few jobs for a weekend or provide field for PTSA fundraisers it, or stimulates the local business market, in essence, it is rotten and depraved, because for crying out loud, what does it say about us as a nation if while many lose their jobs and states go onto the red (California, for example, is expected to have a $41.8 billion deficit by 2010, according to MSNBC, and our dear and crippled Sunshine State’s deficit is expected to reach the $6 billion mark, according to Sen. J.D. Alexander.) there is a small privileged section of the population going around nearly melting their credit cards buying unnecessary goods of extravagant prices, and I can assure you if there is a God in Heaven he is about as repulsed as I am, and profiteering from such an abomination is coming in contact with poisoned blood money.

After all, the boat show itself is just one more exponent of all that’s wrong with the national character, while some get rich and prosper, some eat swine and die, just a sad reaffirmation of the capitalist culture killing our nation.

Reflection.

In all due sincerity I have progressively lost all hopes and endearment I had for this article that seemed to me so genius upon its completion late one night. Now, after mixed peer reviews and unholy loads of angst it is completed, for better or worse.

If there is one inherently positive thing that remains is the fact of how much fun writing this article was, from hustling around the different locations of the boat show trying, to gain free admission with my failed press pass, to binge-writing it last minute, the whole process was an extreme amount of fun.

Even though one of my main concerns when writing the ill-fated article was to not sound like one more pathetic Thompson spin-off or some sort of a sickening obsessive fan reproducing the man’s genius… Now, with the proper perspective, I am appalled at how the article turned out to be everything that I meant for it not to be, but in all fairness it did drive the point across and (at least in my view of things, as biased as it may be…) it wasn’t a complete failure, although deadly close.

Despite how abstract and disjointed the first couple drafts were I believe I stayed close to my convictions on the subject and did my very best to hammer down the point, with due fury.

All my hopes are set on doing a better job for the next article, and to do so I will put a little more work in and find a way to drive the point across without sounding too much like the Good Doctor, but in my defense, if I did it was totally involuntary.

I’m sorry if I sound too apologetic.

Sebastian A. Hoyos

Never would I have envisioned such a wasteful and self righteous display of economic power to go on now, a wicked time of unemployment rates near reaching the high 7%s (http://www.bls.gov/cps/) and consumer spending falling and winds of Apocalypse blowing fiercely through the stock market… You would expect these type of event would be out of the question in the midst of such a fiercely vicious recession, because even if these type of event creates a few jobs for a weekend or provide field for PTSA fundraisers it, in essence, is rotten and depraved, because for crying out loud, what does it say about us as a nation if while many lose their jobs and states go onto the red (California, for example, is expected to have a $41.8 billion deficit by 2010, according to MSNBC, and our dear and crippled Sunshine State’s deficit is expected to reach the $6 billion mark, according to Sen. J.D. Alexander.) there is a small priviledged section of the population going around nearly melting their credit cards buying innecesary goods of extravagant prices, and I can assure you if there is a God in Heaven he is about as repulsed as I am, and profeteering from such an abomination is coming in contact with blood money.

Afterall, the boat show itself is just one more exponent of all that’s wrong with the national character, while some get rich and prosper, some eat … and die, just a reafirmation of the capitalist culture of swine killing our nation.

Never would I have envisioned such a wasteful and self righteous display of economic power to go on now, a wicked time of unemployment rates near reaching 7.5% and consumer spending falling and winds of Apocalypse blowing fiercely through the stock market… You would expect these type of event would be out of the question in the midst of a recession, because even if these type of event creates a few jobs for a weekend it, in essence, is rotten and depraved, because for crying out loud, what does it say about us as a nation if while many lose their jobs and states go onto the red numbers (California, for example) there is a small priviledged section of the population going around nearly melting their credit cards buying innecesary goods of extravagant prices.

Afterall, the boat show itself is just one more exponent of all that’s wrong with the national character, while some get rich and prosper, some eat … and die, just a reafirmation of the capitalist culture killing our nation.