Jim Beam. We're talking mood swings so abrupt, my head damn near came off. Check it out: one minute I'm lasciviously drinking the blood from someone's gecko tattoo and hopping on my bike to ride Evil Kneivel style over an explosive log. The next I'm sobbing hysterically, confused and despondent in between episodes of pyromania and destruction.

But then, the pendulum swinging once more, I suddenly pulled it together just in time for Dante's Inferno: The Extended Mix.

Nearly the entire encampment of 10,000 had arrived, it seemed, to watch the torching of Castle Dis, a castle built of wood and playa dust. The previous year, said the b-man veterans, this phallic construction had been even more fun than watching The Man himself, so everyone was pretty psyched to see this thing go up.

But first, we were to be treated to about half an hour of Satan bellowing, chortling, hollering and otherwise making his presence felt. This performance was so unbelievably overwrought that Jim and I joined in the clamor, mimicking the foolishness between bouts of uncontrollable laughter. "I love your laugh!" exclaimed the girl next to me, and she too joined the very loud and repetitive tribute to The Dark One.

Now it was time for more of the minions dancing and cavorting about, with a new loud and repetitive song: "Fire Tonight, Satan's Delight!" At this point, several members of the audience began to grow weary of this spectacle, commanding that the silliness end and the damned castle be burnt to the ground directly, forthwith, and without delay. These pleas were not to be satisfied for at least another hour, at which point the castle did at last burn and smoke, and its playa dust walls glowed red-hot, and it was good.

The jaded crew with whom I was traveling were Not Amused, however. They, as well as the whole neighborhood of artfags camped nearby, made it clear the next day that they had been thoroughly annoyed and unimpressed.

OK, granted, it was pretty damn silly and monotonous. But I mean, these guys have sat through Eraserhead like fifteen times, for chrissakes. You're telling me they can't get into a little anticipatory fire and brimstone? Give me a break.

On the other hand, the scene had the opposite effect on one of my more sharp-tongued friends, transforming her into tolerance-woman. Her comment on the Bowels of Satan extravaganza was, "Wow, they really put a lot of work into that."

Anyway, in keeping with the theme of willful destruction, I too gleefully mutilated everything in my path. After the castle burned and we were rambling somewhere near center camp, the girl who had apparently been stationed near me during the satanlicious brouhaha yelled out, "hey you're that girl with the laugh!" I ran up to my new disciple, placing my welcoming hand upon her forehead, but it wasn't her head at all, it was her elaborately decorated feather headdress which now lay flat, crushed against her head by my clumsy paw. She screamed at me, and I stumbled off to wreck more lives.

That was the first of two nights which were to make up the weekend's thrilling conclusion. This was it, folks: yes, it was at last time to Blow Things Up.

Naturally, on the last night The Man burned. Our wooden figure, landmark, conversation piece, rebellious work of engineering, icon, and imminent ash-heap, was about to meet his destiny.

This was carried out in stark contrast to the previous night's lengthy production. All of a sudden two people lit the man, fireworks shot off, it burned, and they immediately wrestled it to the ground with ropes. Following this anticlimactic moment, the crowd leapt to its feet, circling the flaming rubble, running and dancing, drinking in some innate need for ritual.

The baton of vandalism had clearly been passed from the pros to us amateurs. Now, everyone that had anything even remotely flammable torched it. A few revelers lit their car and one them boasted, "it wouldn't start, so I set it on fire!" Bystanders like myself were very alarmed and began to back away fearfully, putting as many human shields between themselves and the danger as possible. I later heard that this site did finally explode, flinging shrapnel everywhere. Surely, this event was hardly a safety-first after school special. The rest of the night, everywhere you looked was someone else's belongings aflame, surrounded by the glorious culprits with shit-eating grins on their faces.

All this gratuitous pyromania was a good thing because it provided another activity for those of us who had eventually tired of watching half a dozen chicks with strap-ons gang-rape a blowup dolly in the mud pit.