I use www.ravelinks.com to decide what parties the Rave On Crew is going to cover. I do not collect rave fliers or posters. I do not accept fliers or posters, no matter how much a promoter wants me to "just take it." I have no use for them whatsoever. However, I was shocked when I saw the Heartbeatz poster at Super Raver.

On a limited budget, the 2 Life crew had created the best poster of any party to date. It is not just dope, or even doper, but dopest. I have over 20 of them, and plan use them all to decorate the bedroom of my new apartment. I admit that I wanted to go to this party because the poster was so much better than anything the big budget production companies could come up with. (Just to save us both time, let's pretend that I wrote about how great the poster was for the next 3 pages...)

So, now that I have talked about how great the Hearbeatz poster is for 3 pages, maybe I should tell you how the party went...

As is usual at the Masterdome, inside was Trance all night. Glowsticks, Lasers, E-puddles, Asian kids doing that dance, all standard Inside the Dome Stuff.

That is all I am going to say about inside, because what happened outside was much more interesting.

The outside area was divided in half, with Hardcore on the left, and Jungle on the right. Surpringly enough, you could hear each uniquely, depending on where you were standing, and the two did not interfere with each other. I knew that Marcus (#24) would be in the Jungle area all night, and I wanted to give Hardcore a chance, since I had not sampled it lately. To my surprise, after chillin there for a while, I actually liked it! I do not know if it was because the DJ's were better than usual, or because it was something fresh and new, but I found myself enjoying it. Also a surprise, the Hardcore people were not mean, and the vibe here was actually pretty friendly (for now). Yet another surprise, I could dance to it. Great fun to dance to, Hardcore let me snap off moves hard and fast. Dancing to Hardcore, I got to burn energy very quickly, and got to feel like a badass doing so. Pretty cool. Many of the people in this area were dancing to it as well, and I had always thought that all you can do with Hardcore is bob your head really fast. I was wrong. Thanks to Zuzu for recommending I try new things.

hey Zuzu - Jungle is still better =* ]

Later, the happy nice dancing vibe was replaced by the stereotypical Hardcore vibe that we all know and fear, when a nasty mosh pit broke out. It was rather large. I was scared.

The night before, I went to a No Doubt & Lit Concert (if you do not know who those bands are, then this is the right magazine for you) at the Cox Arena in San Diego, and there was a mosh pit. I am 6'3" and 212 lbs., and have done my far share of moshing, so I practically danced through the pit, spinning around, making contact with cute little girls, and some medium sized guys. It was like bumper cars.

The one at the Heartbeatz was more like destruction derby. I was simply not going in there. I could hear bodies compressing, and saw some rather ugly collisions. Mad Props for the security at the Dome, who made sure than no one got killed, but let everyone do their thing. Why that would be anyone's thing is beyond me.

This was turning out to be a really great party, with Jungle and Hardcore outside, balancing out the standard Inside the Dome stuff.

Then everything changed.

A serious sound problem in then Jungle area caused the sound to be one quarter as loud as it had been, and this ruined the balance of the party. We could no longer hear Jungle. This was very sad. Trance is not really a choice for Junglists, so the Junglists were divided into those who would listed Jungle on the broken sound system, and those who would go to the Hardcore area. **

Heartbeatz was turning out to be "Hardcore Appreciation Night at the Dome."

The moshing had subsided, and I felt like I could dance without fear for my life again, so, I started busting out to Hardcore. Crack, Snap, Pop, Snap, Pow, I would switch from one tough looking pose (well, that is how I hope I looked) to another, thrice a second, until I needed to take a break. Which was every 45 seconds. This lasted until the Hardcore Area was shut down at about 4am.

I went inside, warmed up a little, jumped into a circle, and danced for a minute. I was still snapping off moves, but now to much softer Trance. A cute girl in an orange "Reeses Peanut Butter Cups" shirt who I had been talking to on and off all night saw me and waved me over. We cuddled up on the bleachers and told each other things we would not remember later, like each other's names.

You know, standard Inside the Dome Stuff.

** I do not blame 2 Life productions for the sound problems in the Jungle area, since there were also sound problems at EDC, Cyberfest, and Nation. With the growth of Jungle, sicker and sicker Jungle records coming out every day, and the fact that Jungle is so hard on any sound system, production companies need to make much better accommodations for the sound in their Jungle Rooms. )