Preview
Green presents
A Kurt Haegeman report
Made for the Belgian Scene Report and the Overflow FTP Site
Saturne '97 (in full ASCII)
Starring:
- Kurt / poor lonesome Green member
* You might have seen me at parties like X, Wired & Bizarre *
- Klix, Deiy, The Ripper & Akira / Itsari
* High if they try *
- Cyclops / Quad & Triloxy
* More groups than glory *
- The Spanish Inquisition
* No one expects the Spanish Inquisition *
Also starring:
- "Vrolijke Vriend" Uncle Bob & our Sleeping Dog / the Natives
- a lot of Ketchup Killers, an awful lot of them (hmmm... well, 5 or 6)
Starting to sound scary, he? *rofl*
Well, here's the report about the most dreadful party I have ever even
heard of. I hope some party organisers learn something of it, especially
those from Saturne itself.
As I am living in the region of Brussels, it's strange to hear that I was
expected in Antwerp at 4pm to drive to Paris. But the members of Itsari
were going too, with four people, and they had only one little purple car,
so I volunteered to drive 80kms to there and take a passenger (The
Ripper). The plan was to go to Ypres from there, Zyser would take some of
the luggage in his car and accompany us.
Later that week I received an e-mail from Cyclops. No member from Quad
or Triloxy was going to Saturne, and he asked if he could drive with me. He
too would wait at Antwerp to be picked up.
When I arrived at Deiy's place, I found Klix, Akira and Cyclops, waiting
for Deiy himself, as he was still at work. Immediately after my arrival, I
was confronted with the first set-back: the French truckers were going to
strike and put up blockades (again). Zyser wouldn't drive to Saturne to avoid
problems. Did we have enough place to take 6 persons in two cars? No one
had saved on his luggage. Wasn't it better to go to LowRes? It was closer
and there were no striking truckers in the Netherlands.
The Ripper and Deiy arrived, and we decided to go to Saturne anyway. We
would leave the party sooner if we had to avoid those damned French
trucks. So we left at 5.30pm, after stowing everything in that little
purple car and my Old Green Wreck (tm) (and yes, he's green too). The
Ripper and Cyclops were my passengers.
After departure, I succeeded in losing track of Deiy's car after 10 meters
of driving. A true record, even for me. I almost ran over an old Bag on a
Bike (c). Real close call, that one. She was practically sitting on the
hood of my car :) After 1km, I got stuck in a traffic jam which lasted one
hour. It was somewhat amusing to get a phonecall in my car on Ripper's
GSM. Deiy called from his place, to which he had returned seeing I did not
follow him, to ask where I was. We decided to go to the party separately,
or our departure had to be postponed until I got out of that traffic jam.
At last we were on the road to France. The Old Green Wreck (tm) had real
troubles with slopes. It sure isn't fun, slowing down from 140 km/h to
100 km/h while trying to pass a truck or two. And listening to the
endless chatter from Ripper and Cyclops was bad for my nerves :)
So I was glad that we finally made it to Chelles, after 5 hours of
driving and only one or two wrong ways. It turned out that Deiy only
arrived minutes before us. Maybe the Old Green Wreck (tm) isn't that bad.
Must be the Ones (tm) that were driving it, right guys?
When we entered the party hall, we witnessed a power failure. We
desperately tried to find a place to put up our PCs. No place could be
found. Alex, the nice guy who did the SoftImage presentation at Bizarre,
arranged places for us. Thanks man! We were able to connect our PCs to his
power supply lines, because apparantly that power failure in the main hall
was not fixed yet. Didn't take long, however, before his lines shut down
too, to great despair of Cyclops, who wanted to finish his pixel graphic
to enter the compo. His best graphic ever. According to him, that is.
Katana / Ketchup Killers told me that there had been power failures
constantly, since 4pm. The little hall had no troubles, but there was no
place left there. And even at 11pm, with no place nor electricity, the
organisers let people enter the party place. The chaos was kept under
control by a team of scary looking goons with a "Securite" band around the
arm.
We soon found out that there would be no electricity in the main hall
until at least 11 hours. No, saturday 11am, not friday 11pm! 24 hours
without electricity... Cigarettes and alcohol were forbidden in the halls,
so friday night was the most quiet and boring demo party night I have ever
attended to. Very strange not to hear even the slightest happy hardcore
or gabber tune. Watching some old films dubbed in French, isn't my idea of
fun.
At least the company I was in and spoke with, was fine. By these,
greetings to the long-hair crew Itsari (except for Ms. Popular, she has
shorter hair and longer greetings), that Quad & Triloxy-dude (sponge-
brains, you and Ripper, both of you!), the Natives (collectors items) and
the murderous Ketchup Killers (Oui, je sais, mon francais est terrible,
but so is yours :).
To get back to the story, ever so exciting: there was no place and no
electricity. There was no apparent sleeping place. There was no light in
the toilets (so sorry if your walls took a hit, guys :). It was incredibly
cold outside, the only place where we could go to smoke. It was getting
incredibly cold inside, especially if you're trying to sleep through that
boring night.
Saturday at 9.30am, our computers suddenly came to live, happily blinking
and beeping. Yes, party-time! Cyclops immediately started drawing, but
after drawing 20 lines in DpII, BAMM! Power failure. "We're sorry!"
Nevertheless, it had been approx 8 hours since we had our last
electricity, so hopes were high.
At 10 o'clock, the party organisers decided to cancel all competitions.
Those who wanted to leave Saturne could get 100 French francs back of the
150 they payed to enter. But you had to leave before 2pm. In the mean
time, electricity would be supplied, but not enough for the whole place,
so power failures would probably continue to happen. At 1pm it became
clear that working was almost impossible, so we decided to leave. We
packed our bags, got our 100FF back and after a quick visit to the Quick
fastfood chain, we were off to Belgium, 30 hours sooner as planned. I
drove to Antwerp (again) to return the Ripper in the protective custody of
his parents, and then to Mechelen to do the same with Cyclops.
When I came home, it was 8pm on a cold Saturday, the 1st of November. I
had driven 900kms. I had lost about 3000Bfr. But I hadn't seen one single
little new demo. (This is the tearjerker part of the report :)
Well, I'll probably never attend another Saturne compo. Maybe if we were
there earlier and had found a place in the little hall, where electricity
was still something taken for granted and where a, so it seemed, fairly
good demo party was taking place...
From now on, we'll use grades to judge parties. This was a compo of the
Saturne level.
See U at X'98!
.o0 Kurt / Green 0o.