DragonCon 2012 pictures!

So, upon request, I will post some of the better DragonCon photos of my group. There are a couple of Picasa albums that I can share the links to:

• Album 1
• Album 2
• Album 3

Some of the biggest highlights of the Con this year... the RIOT panel, bombass costumes, celebrity encounters, late night parties, and oh yes, I got engaged! Oppa Gangnam style!

Our group

Extended Group!

DragonCon 2012 in T-5 days!

It's about time for DragonCon again! My friends and I have picked out characters and are *supposedly* putting finishing touches on our costumes during this final week, (and it's going to be a super busy week).
This year there has been A TON of preparation and hype for our annual trip to Atlanta. Our party has grown from about 5 people to about 15. It will remain to be seen just how sane our group can stay throughout the whole weekend. We have a lot of friends joining us, some new friends, lots of siblings, and some parents. To say the least, we we probably be wondering around in more than a few groups.

This year is going to be special, because we will break our League of Legends costume record once again.We had a lot of fun in 2010 bringing LOL to Dragoncon, and being some of the first (I remember hearing that there were a couple of others representing, but we did not run into them), and in 2011 when LOL gained more momentum with the D*Con crowd and we met quite a few LOL cosplayers. This year we're ready to bring it again! We will have a classic Morgana (me!), classic Kennen, classic Veigar, classic Garen, Emo Amumu, Renegade Talon, Geisha Karma, Zilean, Brolaf, and a Tribal Ryze (upcycling my Ryze costume from 2010), and possibly a Sivir.

I had taken on making my own costume and Kennen's, as well as most of Veigar's. It. has. been. intense. As of right now I still have to put the feathers on my wings, seal some stuff with more glue, and finish sowing some patterns. There was a time this summer when I spent an entire week only watching The X-Files and designing/sowing/crafting. I was in a daze. (Those of you who will go to DragonCon will understand my X-Files marathon... Gillian Anderson will be there!) I got a lot fancier with my costuming techniques, and that means sowing. Most of what you will see has been sown together by my 15$ sowing machine I got from CVS. This is the first time I have ever used a sowing machine and I think I did pretty well with my designs considering it's all freestyled. I can't help but think WTF did I do before my sowing machine?! Did I really just  glue the hell out of everything? I've also discovered the wonders of foam sheets. Seriously these things are SO versatile. I used them to make ears, armor, cloth bases, giant buckles, spikes... wtf did I do before foam?

Ok, ok, if you've made it this far you deserve a sneak peek!

Creative Commons License

I would just like to make a quick announcement that since switching YouTube accounts, I have made a few changes. All of the music videos have are under the Creative Commons Attribution license. What this means is basically that I am allowing these videos to be re-used. Maybe someone wants to make a fanvid and use one of my clips? (It's happened once that I know of!) Usually what will happen is that if one of my videos is remixed or reused the source video will be displayed along with the new video. But, just in case, I'll ask is that people let me know whenever they use the material so I can link it and +fav it! Sound good? 

Link to sexyDEATHparty's YouTube

Gogol Bordello at Fillmore Charlotte

Ok, I have a serious impairment in updating in a timely fashion. Mostly because I wait weeks and weeks after a show to write about it. Usually that doesn't work out because by now I've forgotten most of my impressions on the night-in-question. I really need to start utilizing my "voice memos" function on my Iphone more after leaving a show; that's when I'm most blabbery. The drinks help too.

The night in question, 5.21.12, Gogol Bordello lit up the Fillmore Charlotte with the Kopecky Family Band. This was... my 3rd? 4th time seeing GB? I've lost track (at least the site archives know for sure!). Well my plan was to forget about taking photos and videos and just enjoy and fully experience the dance manifesto. Did I? Apparently I didn't, I came out with quite a lot of photos (out of which, oh, only a few were decent [scroll and see below]) and a few videos. I didn't even notice until I went back to analyze the camera evidence. But I really kept the documenting as a secondary after-thought to dancing. These were some of my best GB photos, as I was able to get closer than ever before. I really need a nicer camera. Anyone want to make any donations? Anyone? 

The place was packed, the people on the general floor were in a bouncy/dancy frenzy, and I'm pretty sure I left the Fillmore soaked with multiple samples of people's sweat. There was someone that was waving around one of those super nice Romanian flags, and I'm talking the thick kind with tassely bits. I gave the guy a shout-out and wrote his name on something that is long lost. My bad, guy. The flag made it to Eugene and he grabbed it with his bony, powerful hand. Caressing it with his fingers he threw it dramatically over his shoulder. He grabbed it and held it up above his head, elongating and showing off his tricepts... As he bend his arm backwards, the flag gently wiped beads of sweat from naked torso... as he threw it back into the crowd... then... oh, ahem... this is going in a separate direction now. Back to the original topic...

Maybe one of these days I'll start keeping track of setlists. Hmmm, but that sounds too clinical for my taste. On one hand, each person will be moved by the songs that they favor (whether that be the 'old stuff' or the 'new stuff') but on the other hand the electricity of the crowd/show as a whole is a completely separate entity. Here's a question for discussion: 

How important is the setlist to the general experience of a concert/show?

Videos under the cut!

Bob Log III at Snug Harbor

The brave ladies that sat on Bob Log's lap

So this post is about a month over due since it happened on May 5th. But whatever, I've been busy maintaining my perfect GPA and killin' it in grad skewl, so I think that's a pretty legit excuse. 

Bob Log III is super slick, and I was very surprised by the delivery of this one-man-band show and his showmanship! So, he wears a motorcycle helmet with an old phone receiver hooked up to it for aesthetics and fingerpicks the hell out of his guitars, and his feet play with some pedals. The crowd was loving the performance, but it felt like they were a little wary of participating on stage. At least in the beginning. After people boozed up some more the time was ripe to have some ladies join Bob Log's knees, as can be seen in the photo. I think it's kind of good that it came out a bit blurry and the ladies' faces are not easily distinguishable, because really... I wouldn't want a well-defined picture of me doing that on the internets. But then again, maybe they're those kinds of people. After all, they went up there willingly! I sound like I'm judging but I'm not. Bob Log played well into the night/morning, and kept on even as the majority (and by that I mean probably 4/5) of the crowd left.

Mr. Free and The Satellite Freakout put on a kind of interactive show, with the frontman's vanishing act of disappearing from the stage, and even the room. At other times he would gyrate on unsuspecting and suspecting people in the crowd. The music was good, the vocals were spastic yet melodic. I chatted with the frontman (Demitri was his name? [all-American, not non-American]) who was very nice and linked me to where I could hear more of their music which I have been enjoying since. Apparently them and Bob Log are from the same hometown and have been traveling across America together for this tour. This was something like the 60th show together, and among one of the final few. Nice.

Hear music here: Bob Log III, Mr. Free and The Satellite Freakout and Kill Your Mules (which were playing when I arrived, so I don't have anything to say about them; MY BAD!)

Go under the cut for videos!

On the Simulacra of Cosplaying

My favorite spot of interacting, experiencing, and being simulacra and the hyperreal has been, for the past two years, at DragonCon. Several hotels host events in which any kind of fictional character can come to life, and to be in that midst is mesmerizing. One finds oneself interacting with other people as if they are the incarnation of whoever they are cosplaying as. DragonCon is itself a simulacra, just as Baudrillard describes it: “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes.” Imitation in the form of cosplay is probably one of the ‘rites of passage’ of DragonCon, and if you haven’t cosplayed you have not had a proper experience. The cosplay experience, is in itself what I would consider the purest form of experiencing a simulacra, since you get to be a live embodiment (or empty copy) of a fictional character. This is where it crosses into the hyper-real and into that infinite simulation of signs being exchanged for other signs, where the point of reference is non-existent. Of course, the source (the RTS game League of Legends) exists as a setting, but it does not exist as something more than a fictional world. This is just like Eco’s description of the recreation of original environments (the example about the Alice In Wonderland environment).

There are two levels of simulacra: the environment and the embodiment. The two together would create the *authentic* feel of the world of Runterra. Nerdy summoners (the name for people who play LOL) can wish for a recreation of a simulacra environment of the Fields of Justice, but until someone creates this simulacra, they will be left with experiencing it only partially – via the embodiment aspect. However, cosplaying has its own limitations, and that when it gets into some weird places. The cosplayer does not at any time become the character, but can only act in ways they perceive the character would act or not act at all. Beyond a visual embodiment of the simulacra, there is no real substance beyond it. It then attains Baudrillard’s 4th phase of the simulacra image: “It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.” And, “ultimately there has never been any” character; “that only simulacra exist; indeed that” the character “has only ever been his own simulacrum.” Still, the illusion is attractive, which is why thousands people attend DragonCon, and become an interactive part of that illusion: "I just shook hands with Captain Adama!" or "I just shared my rum with Captain Jack Sparrow!" or the more awkward "I think R2D2 was hitting on me..."