BYRNT: The Most Amazing Cookie Party that Never Happened
By Constantine Hiroyuki Cacao-Nib (Matt)
I first heard about Byrnt during an experimental silent rave hosted by famous/anonymous Cookiemaster DJ Mellomar (most known for combining avante garde postmodern EDM with a penchant for coating his face in marshmallow paste and melted chocolate to obscure his identity). This particular soiree was being held at a retired Klaxon factory, which had allowed the event planners to save on some of the decoration, as had the mandate that partygoers don analog ear muffs that truly produced no sound; instead, revelers were asked to imaginate their own beats. I had snuck backstage in an effort to snatch a glimpse of Mellomar’s true identity. However, he spotted me from afar.
“Nice ascot,” he said.
“Thanks –it’s made from recycled Bangladeshi menstrual pads. I can’t believe I’m talking to DJ Mellomar!” I exclaimed
“Please, we’re all friends here, call me Dr. Mellomar,” he replied (he had actually obtained two honorary PhDs, one in experimental astromusicology and the other, oddly enough, in dendrochronology). He continued on to invite me to an exclusive after-party orgy at the Feather Grotto. Although I was embarrassed to have left my Dominican sex paste at home, I nonetheless couldn’t pass up such an opportunity.
It was only a few hours later that we found ourselves buzzing across the cityscape in Dr. Mellomar’s cookie-copter, staring out at the full moon (or as astromusicologists call it, a ‘space coda’). We arrived at the Feather Grotto just as Anastasia Azure was arriving by ornate, ox-drawn sarcophagus. The aspiring social influencer recognized Dr. Mellomar immediately, and graciously noting me as his companion, ushered both of us off to a cozy nest set deep within the grotto. As she busily began undressing us with her eyes (this nest came equipped with eye-tracking cameras and robotic garment servos) she began whirring on about a new venture she had just heard about- a cookie party to end all cookie parties.
“Bigger than Foodstock! All the best talent!” She spoke in such a way that even her exclamations seemed to come out as a whisper.
The event promised icons like Mrs. Fields, Cookie Monster, and Otis Spunkmeyer (this was of course before the allegations surfaced regarding Spunkmeyer spiking over a dozen women’s drinks with high fructose corn syrup and forcing them to perform the ‘Nutter Butter’ on him). Azure claimed that an up-and-coming entrepreneur, Slade Schminkelstein, was planning this festival, which he called Byrnt, and that anyone who was anyone should get in on the ground floor. And who could resist those Azure eyes. We all agreed to fly down to Isla Guadalupe the next week, where Shminkelstein was reportedly working on a dramatic terraforming project for the venue, making a ‘chocolate chip cookie island’ out of sand and coconuts.
Our first night on Cookie Island, we were brought to a beautiful dock overlooking the Pacific at sunset. Gathered around a large teak table were myself, Azure, Dr. Mellomar, Thomas Linzer (the renowned cookie historian) and a group of about five or six people I didn’t recognize. Three tween girls stood at the corners of the dock, silently and still, dressed in the recognizable berets and green sashes of that most notorious cookie mercenary band, the Scouts. Standing at the head of the dinner table was Schminkelstein, dressed in a designer bath robe, his pet Tarsier perched on his shoulder. His eyes sparkled as he cracked open a 2004 Arnott’s Tim-Tam Tia Maria (‘the last in the Western Hemisphere’, he offhanded). As we Tim-Tam Slammed Dom Perignon, he began to extol his vision for what he had named Byrnt: The Most Amazing Cookie Party That Ever Happened. In addition to top-shelf artists, it would feature luxurious sails on a yacht designed to look like a cookie sheet (perfect for cookie dancing). Guests would mingle with attractive baking celebrities by day, and refresh themselves in opulent gingerbread villas, each equipped with a tray kept heaped with tea bicuits and a selection of fine toiletries from the Eau de Macaron collection. A servant to Schminkelstein’s right rose from his seat and began making rounds, offering us a spritz of Canoli number 9, a specially commissioned scent for the occasion.
The marketing for the event was to be spectacular. Schminkelstein turned to his left, introducing his second in command, a Luxembourgian advertising guru, Loutfi Lghyphzy (pronounced ‘loafy’). Lghyphzy had already begun shooting a commercial featuring nubile tuiles gyrating on the beach, partyers gulping cookie milk straight from an ice flume, and a computer-generated mockup of the piece-de-resistance, a cookie cannon that would shoot both Schminkelstein and a spray of cookie-dough buckshot into the crowd.
Glancing around the table, I could see Schminkelstein’s charm working. Azure had cozied up with whom I later found out was her on-and-off boyfriend, Afrofuturist/InstaGrahamer, Maverik. He was wearing a pair of exclusive sunglasses he had designed, which completely blocked all light, and using small cameras in the frames and micro-LEDs, projected a version of the world that was more congenial and accommodating onto the inside of the lenses. As we were being served the main course of Coque a Cookí, He asked Schminkelstein if there could be a social justice component woven into the festival, which would appeal to many of his followers.
“What do you have in mind, Maverik?” he asked.
“ I’d like to integrate our Selfie-Sticks for Sudan project,” Maverik replied.
“That’s a fantastic idea!” Schminkelstein answered.
Suddenly, Dr. Mellomar interjected, “Will there be adequate climate control?” I noticed a bit of his confectionary visage had plopped onto the table, the remainder looking a bit saggy.
“Of course, of course…” chimed in Lghphzy. Schminkelstein’s tarsier scuttled to the opposite shoulder.
“Have you heard what this blogger, @CookzTheBookz, has been saying about the festival?” A new voice to my right asked. “…’there’s no way Schminkelstein could pull off this scale of event in just 3 months. That’s barely enough time to proof the batter for the dough pit.’” Lghyphzy shot a furtive glance to one of the Scouts, who briskly walked off the dock. Schminkelstein shrugged with an insouciance that seemed woven into his DNA. “That’s just fake cookie news, don’t worry about it. Now how much would you like to invest?”
Over the next few months, a social media blitz ensued, inviting one and all to the Bacchanalia of Byrnt, all except @CookzTheBookz, of course, who had mysteriously disappeared from the Cookie Scene. Maverik started posting about the event to all of his InstaGraham followers. FaceCook was abuzz. Young men and women were quitting their jobs and paying thousands of dollars for more and more exotic packages. For $500,000, one could book Cookie Castle, a VIP experience including a private knitting circle with Martha Stewart, a personal sitar quartet, and an organic saffron-marzipan facial. We all wanted to believe the hype- who wouldn’t. So it wasn’t until the festival was underway that most of us realized what we should have from the very beginning – Byrnt wasn’t the biggest Cookie Party of all time, it was the biggest Cookie con.
The first problem was Cookie Island itself. As the albeit insufficient preparations began, cookie runoff began to spill into the local bay, drawing great white sharks and Humboldt squid. By the time the festival began, the water had become dense with the creatures, who had acquired a taste for cookie-meat. The gingerbread villas were cracked and under-iced. The talent had all pulled out when they realized their wire-transfer payments were forged, and all the cookie-dough melted and clogged the cannon. Needless to say, Dr. Mellomar quite literally lost face in the insufficiently cooled DJ booth, revealing him as one of the spurned Keebler elves. There was no potable water or savory food, only 2 tons of artisanal cookies that had been imported from Austria. But having failed to receive any duties, the local Guadalupan authorities were marching belligerently toward the festival. Joyseekers and staff alike were furious, but Schminkelstein could have still have survived the ordeal had it not been for what was supposed to be his personal security, the Scouts, who had not been paid either. Turning on Schminkelstein, they chased him to the docks where he had sealed his fate those few months earlier. Lghphzy raced over to try and appease the militia. But they demanded to be paid, either in cookies or blood. It was Lghphzy’s choice: turn over his friend and partner to certain execution, or a freighter full of hand-baked Milanos, brandy snaps, and pizzelles.
“You can have Shminkelstein,” he said. “I’ll keep the cookies.”
Seeing the writing on the wall, Schminkelstein made a play and tossed his tarsier at the Scouts, giving him a head start as he careened off the dock and onto the cookie-sheet yacht. But as he reached the middle of the bay, the woeful design flaws of the vehicle became apparent. In the tropical sun, the bright metal sheet not only provided a glare that was easy to spot from the vengeful cookie-copter above, but also quite literally would bake whatever was on it. The temperature soon became intolerable, and Schminkelstein was forced to jump into the water. Even then, he might have been alright if it hadn’t been for the Canoli number 9 sunscreen he had so liberally applied – about the only promised amenity that had actually materialized. Unfortunately for Shminkelstein, the aromas of cocoa, mascarpone, vanilla, and fried dough threw the squid and sharks into a frenzy. At the time, I was on the beach, standing near Azure and Maverik. A day or so into the festival, he had generously gifted sets of his sunglasses to festival-goers in an attempt to placate them. And while they did nothing to parch the crowd’s thirst, the spectacles made the commotion appear to be a pleasant dip in the ocean, and a dozen or so shortbread-drunk sun worshipers were lost to the sea denizens that day as a consequence.
It’s easy in retrospect to say we should have known. But the border between fact and fiction felt so permeable then. Aspiration and optimism seemed like all we needed. Azure, taking a drag from her Pirouette cookie-vaper by my side, suddenly seemed so vulnerable. This was before I knew she had been pretending as well, her real name Anastasia Cerulean, a penniless Bucknell dropout from Kearney, Nebraska. A few weeks later, she would be sharing a jail cell with Florence Florentine (of the famous cookieball.com fiasco), facing a litany of criminal charges and unpaid bills for oxen, monkweed cleanses, and life-coach sessions among other things. As for myself, I make no excuses. Just please know that it wasn’t until that moment on the beach that I became acutely aware of my errors. I must have been staring at Azure for a while. She looked back at me, smiled, and asked, “So when is Byrnt 2 happening?”
annualcookieparty.com 