INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE

If you've never been to a three-day outdoor rave in the middle of Illinois — never lain at 7 a.m. in a tent, wired, with the thumpthumpthump of trance still beating in the distance as your addled brain attempts to make sense of the previous evenings' festivities — well, you have still lived a full life. And though you, along with everyone else, may be getting old, rest assured that you don't feel nearly as old as you would had you attended this past weekend's Interstellar Dreamfest, outside Nashville, Ill. Herewith, a few statistics from the Dreamfest, billed as a "Labor Day Weekend Gathering of Tribes":

Number of DJs during the three-day festivities: 44

Acres of land the festival occupied: 100

Acres of gravel dust collected in this reporter's lungs after it was over: 100

Drugs offered to this reporter over the course of 10 hours (9 p.m.-7 a.m.): Ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, cocaine, Valium, crystal meth

Drugs a Grecian named Chati ingested over the course of 36 hours, in his estimation: Ecstasy, LSD, crystal meth, cocaine, Valium

Size of Chati's pupils: Half-dollar

Estimated average age of attendees: 21

Imagined age of this reporter: 50

Number of times this reporter was mistaken for a narc: One

Size of the spider web this reporter walked into, face-first: Large beach towel

Size of the spider: Large pancake (it latched onto this reporter's nose and sucked all the life out of him)

Jolly Ranchers ingested: Four

Intended duration of reporter's stay at Interstellar Dreamfest: 36 hours

Actual duration of stay: 16 hours

Duration of reporter's sigh of relief on returning home: 12 minutes