(Puterman)
I used to read party reports in disk mags, about people I had never heard of. How come there was so much talk about people that I'd never heard of? - People who had never coded any demos. German sceners I had never heard were of no interest to me. But shit happens, and you understand shit that you haven't understood before. When I started writing party reports for disk mags myself, I started getting what it's all about. It's not about reporting on what HCL or Graham were up to at the moment (lda sta), but what happened to you, and why were you enjoying it all so much. (We could go into a discussion here on general relevance of party reports, but I digress.)

I realized that when I was talking about people like Frantic, Jucke, Macx, Qdor, Buzzie, Eleric, Moh, Buzzie, Magervalp, DCMP, Sasq, Spot, Dino, Twosheds, Fortytwo, Morphfrog (I could go on, but I won't), it's not going to be of interest to people who haven't met them. But that's the way of the road, the fucking way of the road.

It's about the people who just happen to be there, who make the party experience. My party experience. It doesn't matter if they haven't coded any kickass demos. You meet them at every party, and they sort of make up the whole party experience. At the particular party we're talking about now, I have to salute a few people that you don't see a lot of in the charts, for making this party a killer event. They're not there for the fame and glory of winning the demo compo, although they just might actually win it, like at least one of them did this time... Magervalp, nice one!

The first people I met up with at the party place were Jackasser, l'Organixxer of this fab party, and Sasq, teh oldsie sthlm mega-c0der. I got there pretty early, as I live in Malmo these days, which is just 20 minutes away. Sasq filled me in on what's going on in the world of online mobile gaming ass-wiping, and Jackasser tried to get me started drinking. Well, you know what it's like, we started drinking and stuff just started getting farked up, teh old party-style. When Pernod showed up, it was already too late.

For some reason, not everything that happened is completely clear to me, but I know I spent a lot of the time at the party discussing the concept of barbequing bananas with Qdor. Qdor! It's not every day you see this ragger motherfucker at a C-64 party...



(Macx)
Sankt Lars Hospital is the name of an old mental institution, which lies in a park in the St.Lars area in southern Lund. Up until 1910 the area of St.Lars also housed Lunds Asylum for patients considered incurable. In order to make a long story short, the psychiatric care in Sweden has gone through a number of reforms and these days patients are seen differently upon and thus handed accordingly. In 2007 the ones that stand no chance of maintaining the slightest remainders of what could be recognised as human life have to organise meetings by themselves in an old pigsty located between the Centre for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (Kemicentrum) and a barn for horses, and the horses' human girls. It's luckily not too far away from the leading university hospital in southern Sweden. It is a fantastic chance to witness the most primitive and rudimentary forms of carbon clustering and biological metabolism and it was made available in late March and early April this year. I had the chance to attend, and this is my story.



(ZZAP69)
Why am I here?
Who are these people?
I can't be drunk.
Is it the sun?
How did I get here?

I have just had one beer and it's 3 in the afternoon.
I need a cigarette and some fresh air.
I got to get out of here.



(Puterman)
If you feel the need to get out of here, fine; get out of here! The rest of us are just enjoying it, and you're ruining the party for everybody else. And you're smoking? What the fjonk did your mother say about smoking? Get in line boy, its military school for you!



(ZZAP69)
Sun meets my eyes and time seems to pass.
There are some lads I do not know.
Perhaps we can make friends.
Perhaps they can put me on track, again.

I don't have a lighter, but that's an advantage. It's what I use to call an ice breaker. Just go with the flow, ask them if they can borrow you their lighter. Good, they can. I put my beer can on the ground and take out my torn package of my pocket. I give back the lighter without thinking clearly. I forgot to light. I get the lighter back to light my cigarette as my brain starts to work again. Now I must compensate for being so scatterbrained. I'll make a joke; I'll make an impression to make impression. Who will I make an impression of? Ernst Hugo Jaeregaard, Jan Guillou, Lars Leijonborg? Funnier with a scener perhaps? Making an impression of Puterman? No, they sound stockholmish/uppsalish themselves and wouldn't appreciate it, or maybe not even understand it. Perhaps I need some more beer as well to lighten up. I open my can and it explodes of the carbon acid inside. Shaken, not stirred, I say, by making an impression of Sean Connery. Damn, impression card is played too soon. And the quote may seem as some kind of defense for my stirred behaviour. But perhaps it wasn't so bad after all. This guy seems to know why Mr Bond wants his Vodka Dry Martini shaken, but not stirred. Apparently, the ice is better portioned when the vodka is shaken, but not stirred. This was the ice breaker I was looking for. My brain, frozen by the sun, melts in the shade. And I know where I am. I am no longer afraid.



(Puterman)
I think I should just make a hostile take-over of this motherfruuking party report to tell you a bit about the Swedish party scene. As you all know, LCP, Floppy, BFP, St. Lars and all that kind of shit rulez big time, but there's a Swedish boozing scene that has a life of its own. We don't sit around for 6 months, waiting for the next cool party. We go to local Swedish data-parties, like Deadline, Vodkas datakallaren, Black Birdie and Backslash. We meet up with people we like to party with, and we drink. We drink, drink, drink and have a pretty sweet time, with the party scene.

For some reason the C-64 wankers haven't quite caught up with what's happening in the party scene, so it's always the same crowd at all the less known parties. The C-64 representatives are mostly me, Hollowman, Vodka, Maktone, Zabutom, Oxidy etc. (well, basically FLT, plus the people mentioned above), and the "serious" scene ignore everything that isn't organized by C-64 people. That's funked up, because you don't have to be a C-64 scener to understand what a fn0rking party is. But well, that's just the way it is.

Come on you people, start acknowledging the fact that there is a such a thing as going to a non-C64 party and not having to pay the entrance fee because the organizers are already sleeping in their own puke, when you arrive at six on a Friday afternoon. This is the kind of shit we should support! There's a spirit of data enthusiasm among some of the kids that we should go for. Welcome the new kids in the scene, instead of pushing them away, because you can't accept people just because they haven't been "on the boards".

And well, this is the spirit you meet among most of the people who visit parties like St. Lars. Awesome people, who should be proud of their contributions to the scene, even if those contributions mostly consist of getting us an Arboga 10.2% when we're getting dried out.

Friday night is usually the best part of the party, and this party was no exception. When Zabutom arrived, along with Rusty46, things started getting surreal, and sometime later I passed out (without puking, sorry to disappoint you pukaholists), happily knowing that whatever happened was good.



(ZZAP69)
Memories float to the surface as I swim in cold water starting to recall how I got here and why. See! I know that guy, it's Macx. I put on my smiling mask, not trying to look too puzzled. I put out my cigarette and take out my camera instead asking Macx what he has done today, documenting but hoping to recall faster. As he starts to talk, I realise I have only been here for 20 minutes.



(Macx)
Well... g'day ZZAP69. Good to see you! I see you also have taken an interest in studying the conditions of this event. Isn't it fantastic, the way these people have furnished this old pigsty? I don't know if it is by chance, but the whole building has taken the physiological shape of a primitive few-celled animal. The mouth is the same as the cloaca, as you can understand from the horrible stench when approaching the entrance. To us it can seem quite repulsive, all the excrement odours, but to these organisms these kind of pheromones are most certainly pleasing. It may even be a way to welcome and making the guest prepare for what is inside. ZZAP69!? Are you feeling alright? You look a bit pale!



(ZZAP69)
I don't understand one word of what he is saying. But I'm seeing pretty clear in my memory now. Pigsty? I don't know. But this is a C64 party in Lund. They had replaced Folk a Rock with a Hemtex store that was bad! We had a dATA lunch with Morphfrog at Burger King, which was good. Macx doesn't eat meat, is that why he is babbling about animals, pigs and pigsties? I reckon that he and Moffe had a discussion about whiskey. They are both true whiskey lovers it seems. I'm not. Macx told me that real men drink whiskey. I told Macx that real men eat meat. End of discussion. He didn't bring that disk drive he was supposed to. I brought my tiny TV set and was supposed to buy a computer. Where is that one now? Ah... Mogwai is repairing it. It was broken. Good guys in Instinct. They brought a lot of extra hardware, so I could borrow a disk drive and C64 trafo of them. Macx goes on babbling. Pigsties, excrement. I feel dizzy and sick again. Did I bring my medication here? No I can't drink and take medication. That would make me totally weird. Pigsties, ah... I think I get it. This is a pigsty rebuilt as a pub for the technology students of the university. I don't think the rebuilding was needed to fit those bastards, HOHO! Oh no, I was laughing for myself. I hope Macx didn't notice. Perhaps I should just sit in front of a computer the rest of the night, not trying to talk too much. If I only had a working computer. Well, see just as I thought that Mogwai walks out of the entrance with my new computer. I hope it works. Perhaps there are such things as telepathy? Telepathy, such nonsense. Macx keeps on babbling. Is he a proper scener or just a ghost of my imagination? Am I just a ghost of imagination in HIS mind? Do I need some Risperdal... Or Clozapine maybe?



(Puterman)
You'd better watch out now, because Zzaplo is about to start quoting Pulp...



(ZZAP69)
Oh Deborah do you recall, your house was very small with wood ships on the wall, when I came round to call you didn't notice me at all. Your name is Deborah, it never suited you... tralala! Hmm, I think I should only call her DCMP instead. She doesn't recognise the song, but I can make some impressions of different English accents. She catches on, she makes some impression of Indian accent and I do the Goran Persson. Morphfrog, Macx and Pernod join us. Look there is 42 also. Perhaps we all know some funny accents? It gets boring and I'm off to sneak upon others, to see what they are talking about. NOT ABOUT ME I HOPE!?! I'm slightly paranoid now... HCL is talking about fractals, imaginary and real fractals. What is that? I only studied Math course C in school, and I have never heard about this before.



(Puterman)
The beauty of this sort of happening is that you'll meet completely fucked up people, like fractal-HCL, I-came-all-the-way-from-Holland-DCMP, I-wear-a-hat-MagerValp, I-feel-like-a-goat-in-my-underwear-Dane etc. It just happens, and you'll never know who's going to fjortis up in advance. It's the vibe, it's the air, and it's the music. But it's there, that special atmosphere that you seldom encounter in real life.



(Macx)
It is obvious that some of these people, in some places, would be seen as such in need of some heavy professional help. But the method I am studying here is more of some sort of laissez faire. Take this guy for example, with a rough form of long-lasting tourretes or something. He surely can handle his way around his fellow friends, and he is learning by doing. I am sure in some way he also found it rewarding and in the long run it surely will evolve him in a way. It is important to be humble here. A dog has an olfactory world which goes beyond mine by the thousand, and I may not grasp much of it. Equally there may be a lot of things I do not understand here. As I said before, there may even be something to the olfactory senses and the smell from the cloaca/mouth of this pigsty that I miss.

Or take this man discussing politics in a totally incoherent way for instance. Anthropologists would adore this specimen as he actually argues with a kind of rationality. There is for sure a logic behind it, but it is lost to the majority of us brought up in a narrow western context. At least we have to believe in it like that I guess. Could it be a long lost language? In any way it is different.



(ZZAP69)
Oh, they are babbling... bla bla bla. Macx and Oxidy talking with the guy who lend me the lighter earlier today. I think it was him, I'm not quite sure. He has a strange way of thinking. An ideology based on giving people all the same opportunities from birth, but then totally ignores them. They are not reaching anywhere. I'll get some liquor before the demo compo starts. Too bad I didn't finish off that demo part I was coding on. Same bug as when I went to see Macx in Denmark. Have spent too much time in front of the computer. I should be here to socialize, but I guess the atmosphere gives me the belief of being a mental patient. Rave Guru tells me that the S:T Lars hospital is on the other side of the town. I'm not at a mental hospital. It's not even near! I need to get on my feet to get more liquor. Fast! Demo compo is good. I like the demo by Magervalp. It's gonna win. Someone else answers your phone calls. Hmm! That reminds me of when I tried to reach Rave Guru, to ask if the party place had a micro wave oven and if the compo deadline was at 11 pm. Some other dude had answered and didn't know a jack shit of what I was talking about. Someone else had got RG:S old phone number only a couple of months after it had been closed. When I lived in this town I once called a taxi dialling the SOS-Alarm code 112 instead of the taxi company's number 12 12 12. Imagine my surprise! I try to run some demos on the big screen but the disk drive is fucked up! I don't have the motivation. Perhaps that Amiga dude can show me some of his work before I go to bed, it will probably make me sleep well after a long disoriented day when I thought I was insane.



(Puterman)
And all the magic happens when you happen to look away. Look! There's a dude you've never seen before convincing an ace coder that he has no clue. Look! There's Zabutom composing a tune that makes no sense. Look! There's Zzap69 doing something completely unexpected. I have to say it's hard to write any kind of party report with people like Zzaplo and MacXulon, because they know everything. They watch it, extract it and spit it out in a perfectly organized and analysed form. I'm just in it for the experience. It works for me, but there's so much I'm going to miss. Oh well, who cares, as long as I have a good time...

Greetings to Jazzcat and Vengeance for keeping the scene with some real productions, while I just drink and drive...






S:T Lars Meeting III aka Sankt Lars 2007
30 March - 1 April 2007 at Lophtet in Lund, Sweden
http://retrohackers.org/meeting/

Organizers: JackAsser and RaveGuru


Demo Compo:
1 Disappear by M&M
2 Too Little Too Late by Triad
3 CP Demo 2K by Defiers
4 S:T Lars by Puterman & Cadaver
5 Polka Demo by Panda Design
6 Memoires by Triad
7 It Makes me Shake by Spice Boys (Atari)

Music Compo:
1 Crankshaft 3003 by RaveGuru
2 XXXCopy by Durex (Amiga)
3 No Cute Dogs by Dino
4 Y? by Zabutom
5 Tear a Piece of Pussy Out by Spot (Amiga)
6 High Mood by Linde (Amiga)
7 Beam Down by Rusty46
8 A Bunch of Notes by Qdor & Fegolhuzz

Graphic Compo:
1 Pandan by Jucke
2 Pudeln by Dino
3 I am Spott Ingalls by Spot (Amiga)


Photos by Sasq: http://www.nightmode.org/stlars/
Photos by Macx: http://www.jonatanforsberg.net/krams/stlars07.zip
Videopr0n: http://bubblare.se/st_lars_c64_meeting_iii/