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Arts & Entertainment

Video: Dramatic Readings Of Burning Man Missed Connections

burning-man-outfit-2.jpg
A Burning Man outfit (Photo by Robert Scales via the Creative Commons on Flickr)

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One of the guilty pleasures we have is reading the Missed Connections listings from Craigslist. Even better than that is reading Burning Man Missed Connections.

Furry boots and apocalyptic Mad Max gear surround this yearly rager in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. (Although it's not happening until August, registration for individual tickets starts on Feb. 20.) Christopher Guerrero, a graduate student at USC, and his co-producer Caitlyn Durkin decided to immortalize these Missed Connections in the playa by having their friends do dramatic readings of the listings.

In one of the videos, a man reads: "You, beautiful person in the tail-end of a Snuffleupagus outfit on the playa. Me, stilted hobo clown next to 'Camp Mad Max 2046.' We met in a sandstorm. You poked your head out of a costume and it looked like the miracle of birth."

"I've been wanting to do something with Burning Man ever since I was student at UC Santa Cruz," Guerrero, who directed and produced the videos for the web series, tells LAist. "I lived in Santa Cruz for many years and all of my friends went to Burning Man and always had the most amazing and ridiculous stories. For people living in Santa Cruz it was like every holiday rolled into one, so when I started seeing all of this Burning Man Missed Connections, I started to collect my favorites and finally I was able to get a whole bunch of actor friends to read them."

A new reading debuts every Tuesday on the YouTube channel. This will tide you Burners over until you get your own chance for a Missed Connection out in the dust.

You can check out all of the videos here, but below are a couple of gems for your viewing pleasure:

Related:
Photos: A Taste Of Burning Man In Los Angeles (NSFW)

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