I’ve never been to Bonnaroo. Hell, I’ve never even been to Tennessee! But oh what I wouldn’t give to go to Bonnaroo this year. Today they announced an incredible lineup. Tickets go on sale Saturday, February 11th at 10:00 AM Eastern Time. Here is the 411 from the horse’s mouth:

Superfly Productions and A.C. Entertainment are proud to announce the initial lineup for the 2006 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. The fifth annual three-day camping and music festival will be held on June 16-18, 2006, on the same 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles south of Nashville. A list of confirmed acts follows, with more to be announced in the weeks ahead to round out the festival’s 80-plus acts.

Radiohead
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Phil Lesh & Friends
Beck
Elvis Costello & the Imposters
Bonnie Raitt
Death Cab for Cutie
moe.
Bright Eyes
The Neville Brothers
Bela Fleck & the Flecktones
Buddy Guy
Damian Marley
Ben Folds
Robert Randolph & the Family Band
Dr. John
Matisyahu
G. Love & Special Sauce
My Morning Jacket
Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder
Steel Pulse
Mike Gordon and Ramble Dove
Cat Power
Medeski Martin & Wood
Nickel Creek
Gomez
Atmosphere
Steve Earle
Blues Traveler
Amadou & Mariam
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
Dresden Dolls
Son Volt
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Jerry Douglas
Soulive
Rusted Root
Devendra Banhart Band
Donavon Frankenreiter
Mike Doughty
Sasha
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
The Magic Numbers
Bill Frisell
Seu Jorge
Bettye LaVette
Dungen
Shooter Jennings
Rebirth Brass Band
Robinella
Andrew Bird
Steel Train
Jackie Greene
Devotchka
The Wood Brothers
dios (malos)
Toubab Krewe
The Motet
Marah
I-Nine
Balkan Beat Box
The Cat Empire

It was recently brought to my attention that Scientologists have been creating gigantic landscape markings visible only from the sky (think crop circles) near Las Vegas New Mexico where they also have a huge elaborate ungerground compound designed to preserve the writings of scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

This hits close to home for me because New Mexico is my home state and I’m proud to live in such a beautiful place. In addition to attracting negative media to New Mexico, I know that when aliens finally do get around to conquering the human race, New Mexico will be their first target because they will associate us with the lowest level of the human race, Scientologists!

I know I’m being extra hard on Scientology but I’m sick of all these idiots like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Brandy, Rob Thomas, Edgar Winter, Juliet Lewis, Priscilla Presley, Kirstie Alley and all of you other trendy shmendy wanna be cult followers (you know who you are) going on on Oprah (and other public forums) and acting like self righteous idiots. First of all, if your religion is really that great then you would have no need to look down on the rest of the rationally thinking world. Secondly, your religion is based on science FICTION. And finally, nobody is going to give a hoot about scientology in 10 years after all you hollywood freaks move on to the next trendy thing.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, members of the Las Vegas Police Department were invited to take a tour of the Scientology underground compound. Inside it they found state of the art vaults to preserve their religous artifacts made from teflon which are designed to last for thousands of years. What a waste of money. I wonder how many third world children they could’ve saved with the millions of dollars they’ve invested in their compound.

To be fair, there are some very talented scientologists whose professional work I really like. Beck, Jason Lee, Chick Corea and many other incredibly talented people follow scientology. And you don’t generally hear of these people getting on a high horse about their beliefs. Its the bad apples that give the whole group a bad name. I will end my rant by saying this: Scientologists, you are more than welcome to believe anything that you want, but please stop going out in public and going on all these egotistical rampages about how you are so much more enlightened than the rest of us because (a) you are not , (b) you look like fools when you do this, and (c) nobody cares. And please stop littering the beautiful New Mexico landscape with your silly little wanna be alien crop circle landmarks!