Playing Dress-up?

Faun Costume 2009

Halloween is definitely my favourite holiday. I love making costumes for myself, but I don't think I'm really going to be able to celebrate it this year. If you read my blog last week, you'll remember that I'm performing in The Rocky Horror Show, and we open tonight. Since we prolly won't get finished the midnight show until 2ish, AM,  it wouldn't make sense for me to try to party after that, unless it was with the cast. What is everyone else doing this year? I was invited to a couple of different parties on Saturday night, and I know Level 2 is having their costume party on Sunday with a prize for best costume. I may go to that if I'm not too tired.

I wonder if people more often make their own costumes, or buy them? I prefer to make them, but I know a lot of people don't have time, and end up grabbing something last minute from Value Village. I was at Patty's Party Palace the other day, and it was so busy, they had a security guard on duty!

I made my costume last year, and I'll probably end up wearing it again if I get a chance, because I don't really have time to do anything else. I wanted to be a faun, so I made a pair of pants out of brown Fun Fur, a pair of hooves out of plaster, and I bought a pair of horns (hmm all pairs). It looks pretty good, and I've been working to update it since then. The plaster hooves didn't last a night of dancing in Vancouver at the Dollhouse, but I've since had a seamstress friend of mine help me redesign them out of vinyl, so they will be much more durable. I've also bought a pair of long, pointed, latex ears, and some new horns, but here's a photo from last year.

I know it's on a weekend, this year, but I don't understand why we don't get an extra day off for Halloween. I've spoken to several students this week who told me that they didn't plan on going to their morning classes on Monday, and with midterms just finished or finishing up, now would be a perfect time for a little break.

I hope you all have a great weekend. Good luck with your costumes, and if you haven't found something to do yet, think about going to Rocky Horror. It's a party you won't soon forget!

Rocky Horror Show

I've been debating whether or not to put this on my blog, but I've just decided to go for it; not because I couldn't think of anything better to write, but because I think everyone should know that it's happening. Schmooze Productions is putting on Richard O'Brian's Rocky Horror Show in Nanaimo, and we open in less than two weeks! We? That's right, I will be returning to the stage; this time as The Horror, Rocky (yes, I will be dying my hair).

Rehearsals have been running smoothly, and it's going to be a riot. Some of you may have seen this photo in the paper a few weeks ago. It's from a rehearsal, and it shows myself and Xander, the actor playing Frank'N'Furter, with one of the Phantoms, played by Lorna, in the background.

It's been a while now since I was on stage. The last show I did was Urinetown: the Musical, with Schmooze Productions, and Bard to Broadway, in 2006; before that I hadn't done a stage show since high school. At Ballenas Secondary I did 14 shows in those 4 years, but I've been avoiding theatre lately because it's so hard to balance reherasals with university. We've been rehearsing the Rocky Horror Show three nights a week, and that's a lot for a fourth-year student to commit to, but I know I would have regretted it if I had passed on the opportunity to be in this show. While the film is still shown in theatres all over North America, the live production is not done very often. I also missed the theatre community. They're a crazy and loving bunch, and it brings me great joy to be around them.

One final note: tickets are on sale on Schmooze Productions' website, and if you want them, you'd better hurry because we're already %50 sold out. We've had a very positive reaction from Nanaimo for this show. It's a very interactive, so you can dress up, bring your props, and really immerse yourself in the experience! We open on the 29th of this month, and there will be 8:00 and midnight shows for three weekends. Hope to see some of you there!

Digital Footprint

I had a very difficult time finding something to write about last week, and thus I wrote nothing. For that I am sorry, but part of the reason is that my semestre has settled into a pattern, and there's not much happening that's new and interesting for me on a day-to-day basis.

The other reason is my digital footprint. This is something that I often struggle with, and in this era of **internets, and Facebook, and that creepy new app for the iPhone that tells everyone where you are at any given moment, everyone should be thinking a little bit about their public image. It's easy to forget about the things people say in their comments on your photos, or what you were doing in said photos, but what happens when a potential employer decides to 'creep' your page? The other thing we should try to remember is that what happens on the internet stays on the internet...maybe forever?

A couple of nights ago I saw the film Social Network. It was kind of entertaining, and a little thought provoking. I think it helped crystallized a lot of the thoughts I was having about my digital footprint.

I am a poet, and a blogger, and in a few years I will be teaching high school, which is a profession in which I'll have to keep an eye on my public image. I'm also part of a religious community, the local theatre community, a fixture in Nanaimo's club scene, and potentially a member of the Canadian writing community. While it's easy to keep all of these things separate in the real world, it is basically impossible to keep these things separate on the internet.

This all contributes to the difficulty I find in choosing topics to write about on this blog. I have members of each of these environments reading regularly. Now: I'm not saying that there are things I'm ashamed to write about, or that I am trying to keep things from particular people, but this position does require a dash of integrity, or at least I'm trying to hold myself to a certain level of it.

I guess time will tell. Maybe I'll reveal something disgustingly personal or scandalous, but I probably won't. I'm just here to tell you about the life of a student at VIU. I try to make it interesting, and Google Analytics tells me I'm doing just fine! This is where I shout out to my readers who represent 39 countries, and who have given me over 1100 hits in the last 3 months! Thank you, and thank you!

Before I go, I'm going to share with you what two of my friends said when I asked them if they think about their digital footprint:

Word After the Street

My dear readers, I hope you aren't getting too stressed out about assignments yet. I feel like I'm barely keeping my head out of the water already, and I can see the swells rolling in!

Last weekend I attended Word on the Street in Vancouver with the El Presidente (his official title) of the Creative Writing Club (VIUCREW), where we, with one other student and a prof, ran the booth for VIU. It was a big success! There was a crowd around us for most of the day. We realized that many people still don't know that our institution has had a name change. They said things like "Oh, I didn't realize that there was another university on Vancouver Island", but when we said we used to be Malaspina UC they, of course, were familiar with it. For reasons like this it's good for us to be represented at Word on the Street. Also, we sold twice as many copies of Portal (our literary journal) this year, than we did last year!

As for the videoblog, which I said I would try to produce regularly, I did get one done today. However, I'm finding that students don't really want to be on my blog. Maybe it's just because Friday is a day off for many students, and they didn't think they'd have to see anyone they knew on campus on a Friday, and didn't make themselves as pretty as they usually do. Haha I don't know.

I decided to ask students the question posed by Rick and Glen in my last video: "What are you doing here?" and this is the response I got from four students who felt comfortable being seen on the internet today.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Seattle with some friends to see MartyParty play at Neumos! Usually I just catch his Vancouver shows, but it's high time I went on a road trip! Have a great weekend everyone, and don't work too hard!