Notes From All Over Alien designer

dispatches NOTES FROM ALL OVER NOTES FROMALL OVER

Gruyères, Switzerland Party JUST UP THE HILL from the idyllic train station in Monster this tidy Swiss village is a collection of the most ghastly creatures ever seen. To fi nd them, one walks 1.2 miles through placid green pastures and past A town throws a fête for its aromatic cheese dairies churning out the town’s most famous son, surrealist HR Giger. (Aliens welcome.) namesake product. And then there it is, looming over the postcard-perfect burg like a sentinel, the ILLUSTRATIONS BY GRAHAM ROUMIEU stately Chateau St. Germain, now home to a museum dedicated to a local artist. While the area might seem better suited to soothing pastoral watercolors, the artwork spread over the stone walls and through the shadowy corridors of the chateau is a mite darker: the world’s biggest collection of paintings, sculptures and set designs by Swiss surrealist HR Giger, the creator of the toothy, slime-dripping star of the Alien trilogy and other terrorinducing beasts. Not only was it 30 years ago in April that Giger received the Academy Award for his Alien monster (which, having burst out of John Hurt’s chest during dinner, instantly became the global symbol of indigestion), but it also happens that the artist turns 70 this month. So the town of Gruyères decided to celebrate with a yearlong party at the chateau’s HR Giger Bar, around the corner from the museum. Beneath a low ceiling made from interlinked skeletons, a line of patrons waits by the dark bar. Then, drinks in hand, they sit in bone-themed chairs that Giger built for a never-produced version of Dune and study the Giger ghouls affi xed to the walls. “Sometimes Mr. Giger will visit to pay respects to his people,” a bartender says. Not tonight, alas. Director Oliver Stone is in the house, though. Sipping a club soda, he admires a particularly ghastly demon. “A few decades from now, when they talk about the twentieth century,” he muses, “they will think of Giger.”—SHARON MCDONNELL

Oahu, Hawaii DOING THE WAVE At 6 a.m. on December 8, dawn breaks on the north shore of Oahu to the steady cadence of 50-foot waves pounding the beach. Boom... boom... As a salty mist hangs in the air over Waimea Bay like cotton candy, practically every big-wave surfer alive is lugging his or her long board across the sand to compete in one of the sport’s most esteemed and infrequent events: The Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau, or “The Eddie.”

One prominent invitee is three-time world champion Andy Irons. Having just emerged from the water after a 45-minute session, his eyes are aglow with adrenaline. “There are way more world champions than there are winners of the Eddie,” he says. “They don’t hold it very often, so I’m just happy to get the invite.”

Named after late Hawaiian surfi ng legend Eddie Aikau, the Eddie has taken place just eight times since its debut 25 years ago. The rules stipulate that waves must reach a minimum of 30 feet for organizers to even consider making the call. This year, the extraordinary swell sent 40-foot-high walls of terror hurtling from the Bering Sea to Waimea. Big-wave cowboys studying satellite photos knew the Eddie was on days before the swell hit.

The world’s most fearless surfer may be Greg Long, a skinny, soft-spoken 24-yearold from San Clemente, California. Today, with the surf hitting 60 feet with regularity, Long rides waves that could easily swallow him whole. In the end, he bests his hero, Kelly Slater. His win is based on the size of the wave, his position at “takeoff ” and the potential consequences if he’d wiped out (best not to contemplate). The prize: a gnarly $55,000 check.

“I’m humbled,” Long says from the dais.

Irons, standing nearby, nods in agreement. “Thanks, Eddie,” he says. —JEFF MULL

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St. Johnsbury, Vermont Becky Hoyt’s path to Dog Dog’s Day Mountain began when her copy of Dog Fancy magazine fell to the fl oor, opening to an ad for a dog party. “I had just been thinking, ‘Darn, I want to take a vacation with just my dog!’” Hoyt says.

Which is how she happens to fi nd herself on a mountainside farm in St. Johnsbury with her retriever, Sway, and hundreds of other revelers—Scotties, bulldogs, and a 165-pound Great Dane named Max among them—who’ve gathered for artist Stephen Huneck’s twice-yearly celebration of man’s best friend.

The forest around the mountain is lit with blazing autumn colors. Dozens of dogs splash in the pond and chase sticks, tennis balls and one another around the farm in wild packs. They burst through the door of the gallery where Huneck sits.

Gwen, his wife, edges past a Bernese mountain dog. “There’s delicious cake, everyone!” she calls out.

Huneck signs books of his dog-oriented woodcuts for attendees. He points to a small wooden building nearby. “I built a dog chapel for people to go and remember their dogs that have passed,” he says.

Later in the day, there are contests: Best Dancer, Best Kisser. Huneck crowns Sway and Hoyt, both strawberry blondes, Most Lookalike Couple.

A black lab noses a garbage can behind the barbecue pit and tips it over. He plunges into a pile of hot dog scraps. A permissive crowd watches until the pit master shoos the dog—though not too fast. It is, after all,

Rome STRANGE MAGIC Late one night in Rome, Marijn Lybaert is fi ghting for his life. Down two games to one, he is low on mana and fending off a blistering attack from Great Sable Stags and Goblin Ruinblasters. At stake: a prize of $45,000 and the title of World Champion of Magic: The Gathering, a role-playing card game that might be described as baseball card collecting meets Lord of the Rings. Camera crews eddy around his table—the game is being broadcast live to a packed convention hall mere steps away from the Roman Colosseum—as a pair of hushed announcers speculate as to Lybaert’s next move. His opponent plays a card (a Bloodbraid Elf!), strategy at every tournament I go to,” he says. At this gathering, though, it wasn’t any particular strategy that beat him. “When it comes down to it,” Lybaert says, “the other guy was just lucky with his card draws.”

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and Lybaert blinks, stunned. After months of rigorous preparation, three harrowing days and 18 competitive matches in which the original 409 contenders were winnowed down to an elite eight, he’s out. For many people, Magic cards are—along with Sailor Moon, EverQuest and Jolt Cola—part of a pantheon of departed 1990s adolescent geekery. But for an exclusive set of diehard fans around the world like Lybaert, they are central to a still vital subculture.

“I’ve made a lot of friends playing in Magic tournaments,” says the 24-year-old Belgian architecture student, who looks like a cross between Harry Potter and the Jonas Brothers. “People from Japan, Belgium, even the United States.” And though he concedes that he was too depressed to hang out with any of them after his loss, he’s philosophical about the experience. “I learn bits of

—MATT THOMPSON

Kamikatsu, Japan When it comes to trash, Japan is famously fastidious. Every household divides its Waste Not waste into three categories: burnable, nonburnable and recyclable. However, the art of taking out the trash is elevated to a sublime level in the village of Kamikatsu, where townspeople divide their refuse into no fewer than 34 categories, ranging from the plastic caps of soy sauce bottles to ballpoint pens, green tea containers and wooden chopsticks. This tiny hamlet on the mountainous island of Shikoku in southwest Japan is expected to become the fi rst in the country—and indeed the world—to achieve what it calls Zero Waste. Currently, every single item of garbage is either recycled or incinerated. The 2,000 residents of Kamikatsu, who started the program six years ago, have progressed enough that they expect to eliminate the use of incinerators and reach Zero by 2020.

Kamikatsu’s rubbish revolution is organized at Zero Waste Academy, on the outskirts of town, where trash is separated by type. Each item has been painstakingly washed and delivered here by the residents (the program is voluntary), at which point seven academy staff members sort it into perfect piles. Last year, 135 tons of garbage were incinerated and 192 tons recycled.

“I came up with this as an obvious way to tackle an environmental issue,” says Sonoe Fujii, the founding director, pointing to his Zero Waste Chart. “I never expected such a perfect system. And yes, everyone

cooperates.”—DANIELLE DEMETRIOU