The Weekend

[bethlakshmi]

On the whole, not quite as packed with productivity, as it perhaps should have been. I believe I really OUGHT to be panicing about Pennsic right about now... but seem to have the strangest inability to work up to it. Perhaps I've just done so much panicing over my time in the world, that I'm all panicked out. OTOH - I have enough clothes, I have lots of gear, I have a credit card with a nice high limit, I have a pack of friends I trust that I'm camping with, and I have a little family-of-choice that I know has my back if really bad stuff happens. So... what's to panic about?

For once, maybe everything is in perspective? Weird. This "in perspective" thing is a strange feeling. Oh well, in a week and a half I'll be menstrual, so I shouldn't plan on being sane.

As a result of my complete lack of panic, the weekend WAS really fun. I took plenty of fun time - mostly with new_man and mermaidlady - so I didn't feel like I was nose to the grindstone all weekend.


For those from far away "ManRay" is the only major Boston alternative night club. They cater to goths, fetishists, gay/lesbian, and such - each on a different night. They've dominated the scene for about 20 years. And they just announced a temporary closing - they are leaving their building, it's going to be demolished. This weekend was their last weekend. Once upon a time, I was a goth and a active and pretty public fetishist.

So... new_man and I DID go to ManRay. Being clever, we got ready and out the door so as to be there at 10:30. The line was already the longest I'd ever seen. And the club was pretty packed. It was at "busy night" stage - just shy of fetish ball. We lounged about, talked to Mistress Mimi, and a few others. Saw a performance, danced to one song. And then it hit. The crowd had started to develop a manic "I.Must.Party.One.Last.Time" sort of vibe that was fairly manic. new_man had just had enough of crowds, and was starting to do the Frenzied Gorilla thing, and I had realized that dancing was No Fun, because I spent more time defining my space than dancing.

So... we ran. We'd been there about 1/2 an hour.

And went to Avaland - the big Fenway blob of clubs I wrote about last week.


I would like to say, as an aside, that I had a very cool outfit. Maybe having a fashion designer roomate (really - she designs and creates custom wedding attire for goths), has made me rise to the challenge. I wore my gynormous mums (red), a red brocade corset, red boots, a black stretch lace flamenco style top with red surging on the edges, nipple tape (in Boston, topless ladies are illegal), black skirt with an interesting shape, and stockings that are lace on fishnet. Now... flat footed, I'm 5'11" and some. Add ~6" of shoe - heel + platform - 4" of gynormous hair mum, and 2" of corset swishage - and I'm now nearly 7 feet tall!! Yes, I was an enormous red and black Glamazon. Now at ManRay, that's not actually so weird, because nearly everyone else has massive shoes + big hair, + corsets too. Now... at normal people clubs... well, that's just a wee bit striking.


Just as new_man was activitating his Nightclub Glamour SuperPower, three little goth chicks pop out of the ether. They, recognized us by our slamming clothes, and came to see what club we might be going to. new_man activitated Club Power and got all 5 of us in for free. The night was generally lovely. Our little friends were also into dancing, so we spent a lot of our time on the dance floor. There was some frustration in loosing one, and then a Commedia like experience of finding one, while loosing another. But in the end we traipsed from Avalon to Axis and the up to Embassy. The leader - Jocelyn - was quite neat, if low self-esteem. It turns out she and one of the others are Math Majors - one undergrad, one just started PhD work. Her jaw dropped when I said "cool! Computational Mathematics, RIT, class of 98!" he, he.

Finished up the night at the Id club post-party. Generally, in all night clubs, near as I can tell, the end of night process is get rid of customers, turn on lights, survey damage, count money and take a chance to hang out with actual friends who you couldn't see, because you were too busy working. This may also involve more drinking - for free. It was rather lovely - I ended up talking to one lady about belly dance, and to one lady about corseting. And realized she'd never got a serious boning corset before, and gave the standard safety info about slow lacing and such. Haven't done that in years - the friends that tight lace are more active than me, these days.

So... all told, got home very late and rather drunk. But, managed to be up and active by 11:00AM, in time to get brunch pre-class.



Had our last group dance class on Saturday. Will probably get in one more with all the ladies - but due to war departure days, I will do "last class" in two different states - MA and PA, with 1 and then 2 ladies.

All I can say is "wow". The motivation to do this in performance has brought a whole new level of clean to their work. Apparently the "people might see me" panic is really effective. :) That wasn't the intent (really, no evil Machiavellian ploy intended), but I'm glad they are so eager that they have done this work. Better, cleaner, more practiced dance performance is ALWAYS good. And I have gone from "I hope that I'm right about the time this needs to marinate" to "Yep, this will be ready by Pennsic!".

We are now ironing out tweaks, and I need to be ready to plan out anything that can't work - the Really Hard Part is still looking Really Hard - which means it may need to be cropped. The bonus of being my own percussion and vocals, is that musical direction is REALLY easy.

The big dance challenge ahead of me - cleaning up my OWN peices. The devadasettes are well in hand, I should manage to look worthy of teaching them. :) Last week's dance class was really rocky. So I ran a hardcore practice Sunday to try to beat out the suckiness.



Then meandered over to mermaidlady's house, and commenced the production frenzy. We broke for dinner, and went back to it. All fabric is now washed and dried. One more of my cholis is done.

One problem - my first round of pictures was Suck-Y - my camera didn't have highest quality set, and as a result some of the details are unacceptably blurry. Admittedly, it's a media challenge to photograph (or video) dance moves that are:
- full body - I need head to toe.
- detail dependant - eyes and pinkie positions matter
- intricate - 5 seconds can involve three different poses, and I want a picture of each.

So I want a far away camera, but good details, and many, many, many pictures.

Found some that were OK, and put them in, but needed to rephotograph 75% of my work, with a new camera battery, and better resolution. Thankfully new_man used his spiffier new camera to snap a set of head/eye shots I needed, so I didn't have to figure out an up-close camera setup at home. And the roomate helped me take some glamour shots for CD covers and cover pages. We used the spiffy new umbrella.

Spent the better part of Sunday, post Blue Room Brunch (yum), getting most of the pictures shot, and then cropped and inserted into the documents. Note to self - need to move to doing work on new PC. Laptop is getting painfully slow. Current state of Crazy White Woman Media:
- CD's - done - 50 copies in dance room.
- movie - still working the tech.
- handouts:
- intro - add lyrics, ?pictures?
- samamundi section - pictures inserted
- aramundi start/first mutaiya - pictures inserted - add aramundi basic pic
- aramundi main - pictures inserted
- second mutaiya - pictures inserted
- puramundi - pictures not yet inserted **
- third mutaiya - pictures inserte

And then everything needs a serious read & edit. I cleaned up my understanding of lyrics in singing the song for recording, I want to make sure that cleanliness goes in the handouts. And just read for sanity. I've noticed some places where I got pretty goofy. Goofy is OK, to a point, but these handouts will go way beyond people who know and love me.

To do:
- get ribbon for cholis
- finish Eleanor's choli (cut, but not sewn)
- finish my dupioni choli (no ribbon, that's all)
- finish handouts
- make CD/movie covers for media
- practice, practice, practice
- get sword from Morwenna
- last laundry load
- documentation for A&S entries
- pack, pack, pack
- ?new air mattress?
- develop a pharmacy list - batteries, toiletries, etc.
- more cholis for me?
- figure out what to do about not getting info from Lucan on time for ceremony with Padme. About ready to set date at Monday, do it at Moomba, and say "screw VDK - if they can come, they can come."

Time to do it in:
- Monday - Council
- Tuesday - Aparna class
- Wednesday - DO STUFF
- Thursday - M.E. class
- Friday/Saturday/Sunday - DO STUFF
- Monday @ 10:00 AM - Aparna class
- Monday @ 1:00 or earlier (post shower, post pack things I forgot) - hit the road!

Whee!