Tiny Cities Made of Ashes

20 July 2013

Song by Modest Mouse (here)

"And as we're headed down the road 

    towards tiny cities made of ashes

I'm gonna get dressed up in plastic 

    gonna shake hands with the masses. 

Oh no!"

Modest Mouse is a homeboy.  He grew up a few miles from where I live and I have worked with his brother. So inevitably a song would make it to the list.  Originally, I had more of a devil woman on a car driving fast down an endless road towards a city running in my head the whole time.  

When it came time to build I just could not get it to work, fresh inspiration came in the form of a poster Ender* found of the 50's B movie classic The 50 Foot Woman. He is always teasing me about being super tall so he hung the poster in my skybox.  Synchronicity, for the win.  For the look I went all Daryl Hannah and the 80's movie version since I could not quite find what I wanted in the retro style.

So from there I just had to make a tiny city. Aly's Freebies is a blessing in so many ways, has saved me L$ on builds.  I had a lot of fun making this one, but I will tell you it was tedious shrinking 759prims.  Definitely my biggest set ever, but the smallest at the same time.

Fifty foot tall women must have a good stash of...

• Five foot wide bandages
• Twelve inch wide duct tape

I loved doing the choreo for this one, the energy in the music just kept me going.

I had some post-act fun with the set.

Picking up Noobs and getting them to the subway 

Helping trucks get to the loading docks

*Ender used to be a real man/dear RL friend of mine, and long story short, I took his account over before his boyfriend destroyed it.  Now he is just my minion.

Spice Of God

22 June 2013

Songs: Spice of God - Don Falcone (full song here) & To Tame A Land - Iron Maiden (full song here)

"The spice expands consciousness"

"Bodywater is your life

And without in you would die

On the desert the planet Dune."

So this act had been on my mind since before I started dancing. I love the Duniverse and it is a frequent topic of conversation around my house. I found a sandworm at MadPeas a long time ago and the basic set had been sitting in my inventory waiting for the right moment. The song was eluding me for a while though. 

I heard "Spice of God" on SOMA FM early on, and tracked down the CD it was from, but it was way too mellow and long for an act. So I did some research and found that Iron Maiden had done "To Tame A Land" and it is a much livelier tune, though it is also too long. No, I was never an Iron Maiden fan per se, like them, just never got into them. So I got Chewie to shorten and splice the two songs together since I did not know how to use music editing programs. (I have since learned some basics.)

The act starts in a seitch, all robed and spiced out.

Then we go to the open desert with a stillsuit for protection. I built my first animated object in the form of a giant thumper, which I could pole dance on. It is crude, but I am still proud of it, it is an enormous thumper after all.  I even found an ornithopter, that could I crashed in the sand.

A young Shai Halud (by sandworm standards) makes an appearance and eats the orthithopter.

With the help of a Maker's Hook, I was able to run over the sandworm and finish the dance in its mouth. That was always the sketchiest part of the act. 

"Bless The Maker and His water. Bless the conming and going of him. May his passage cleanse the world." - Fremen saying

When I learn machima and have the patience to fix the mover problems with the set I definitely want to film this one. It definitely pushed me and I think it turned out pretty epic, much like the saga it honors.

Central Reservation

7 June 2013

Song by Beth Orton (here)

"Running down a central reservation in last night's red dress,

And I can still smell you on my fingers and taste you on my breath; 

Stepping through brilliant shades,

All the color you bring,

This time, this time, this time,

Is whatever I want it to mean."

Gardening on a beautiful late spring day, dealing with drama in rl, and just trying to get away from it with some hard work and good tunes.  This version of the song is so lively and fun, so when it came up on my mp3, I knew that this had to be done. The act had planned was a bit indulgent of the difficult place I was in and I really did not want to go there.  It also had a space theme, and there had been a lot of space acts in the run, so I lost enthusiasm.

So I took off with Beth Orton, and it made me happy. In order to figure out this act I learned that a central reservation is actually what we Americans call a median strip.  For all the time that I have known and loved this song, I thought she was singing about an Indian reservation, silly me.

I had gone through many concepts for the song, before I decided to just go back to the source of the inspiration. Gardening on a brilliant late spring/early summer day. *smiles while playing in the sprinkler wearing my underwear* (Insert your own childhood flashback here.)  

30 Minute Love Affair

25 May 2013


Song by Paloma Faith (here)

"All in the blink of an eye, 
There you were standing there"

Paloma Faith came into my life recently and I love her! I had a hard time picking which of her songs I wanted to do, many of them have a certain"je ne sais F U" to them that really do not go with my personality.  



"Thirty Minute Love Affair" won out, and once I committed, it became obvious this was a time traveling song.  Having read Orlando, again, not too long ago, I felt my time travel should also include some gender swapping.  Being a big fan of Tilda, my costume choice was influenced as much as possible by Swinton's Orlando, going for the Romantic poet. OK, that was before I took it off.

I recruited Renae, Belle, and Ender to do pics with me for the three monitors on my time machine console. I wanted past, present and future selves to illustrate short 3 picture stories.  So based on their personalities and inclinations, I put Renae in the past, Belle in the "present" and Ender in the future. Now keep in mind the present time for this act was the Victorian Era, with a steampunk twist.

For each time period I had 3 pics, for 3 time periods, and 3 diff "lovers." So, yeah, Belle got 4, but she is special. 

Renae is my fairy princess, so the "past" with a fae world & medieval themes were easy. 

She pulled out this cool post-apocalyptic-ish outfit and skybox that made me think of the "future's past" on another planet.  

Belle's "present," the Age of Steam, took us to the Steamlands.  These were most fun since it involved hanging out on my favorite sims.

We started at our sim on her airship with The Time Machine a la H.G. Well's, courtesy of The Steam Hunt.

The second stop was The Joy of Steampunk. The Nemo build was a requirement. She makes a cute sailor boy.

 Onward to Port Babbage....




Next we came ashore in Port Steelhead, at the exotic El Casbah....




Then it was Ender's time and we started in the "future," a retro 50's sim....

I pulled out a 21st century skybox, and put on my male avi again in honor of my fave fag to hag.

Finally we went all cyberpunk at a truly futuristic sim....

Overall, this act was a super blast! I do not know if the full concept got through, you do what you can in this biz.  I did my best to have the monitors pre-rezzed, thanks to a Chewie-tutoring lesson.  There were 40 pics on the monitors, changing every 10 seconds, to fill up the length of the song with just a little left over.  

Lily

5/11/13

Song by Kate Bush (here)

"Lily, Oh Lily I don't feel safe,   
I feel that life has blown a great big hole,   
Through me"   
And she said,  
"Child, you must protect yourself   
You can protect yourself  
I'll show you how with fire"  

Kate Bush is one of my heroes.  I love her voice (though I am not usually a fan of sopranos), I love her poetry, her stories, and I love her craziness.  And I have gone through all her albums looking for the song multiple times. I know that I am prone to binge on her at some point, but trying to not do too many of her songs at the Friday night shows.

I was feeling a bit raw and unprotected when I was reminded of this song. It was also perfect since I just got to know one of the new Idle Boys, who has an Angel persona and I knew it was time to do this act.  This is also my first act that I choreographed anyone besides my self.

It is about calling up the archangels to protect oneself. Yes with fire, fire is always good. Considering my name is Blaze, I really had not used much fire in my acts to date.

Thanks to Rahpture Seraphim, Shippy Creations, Maxamum Panache, & Jag for being my sexy Archangels. Certainly they could protect any soul. (Though in the picture above it is a bunch of my alts standing in for them during the long hours of rehearsing.)

Pic by Aelva Alvemin

I only got a picture with Max and Jag, on the night of, thanks to Aelva.  Trust me, Damn they were sexy! And HOT!

Union of the Snake

3/16/13

Song by DuranDuran

St. Patrick's Day is a love/hate for me.  I do not like green beer. I do like leprechauns, 4 leaf clovers, rainbows and pots of gold.  I believe that the Irish deserve their day, particularly after the racial prejudices lobbed at them in the US upon settlement here.  But I have studied pre-Christian European religions and cultures and I know about what St. Patrick was all about.  The driving the snakes out of Ireland was really just a metaphor for killing or converting all the pagans to Christianity.  My friends and I used to have a "Bring Back the Snakes" celebration on the holiday.  

In the actual performance, Rahpture was wearing a "Traditional" Irish outfit and was tied to the rocks behind the altar,  I did not get any pix, because I was too stressed about my set at the time. 

Both at rehearsal and in the show I forgot to turn on my snakes.  Made me irritated that I forgot them, but for some reason they were really high around my ankles.

The song was my second choice, I thought Reptile by The Church would have been perfect but Chewie had done it and had it listed under Church, The.  So actually I liked this one just fine, and it took me back to my old Duranie days, screaming and singing a long with all my middle school girlfriends. 

So I never watch videos when working on songs, I try to keep my creative input to my own brain.  But I did re-watch the original one for this song after I did the act, and I was giggling at the way in which it had slipped into my subconscious.  I could have easily been cast to be in that video.  I have not watched any Duran Duran videos in at least 20+ years.  (I was allergic to them for years after my early adolescent overdose.)

The Sheep were my faves.  If you hovered over them you could learn their names:  Ovine Overlord, The Watcher on the Wall, I Speak Parcel Tongue, and Lady Ovinia.

The Parcel Tongue speaker is the one between the two cobras, having a pleasant chat.

At the end I got to ride out on my prehistoric Water Moccasin, though I think the curtain went down early.

The sign on the rock says "Welcome to Ireland, the land of a Thousand Welcomes"

I really want to change this one to use the song "Long Snake Moan" by PJ Harvey, and do it as a "repeat" sometime, with the boy still tied to the altar but wearing a sexy kilt, Celtic accoutrements, and no shirt. Yeah!

Criminal V.2

3/9/13

Song by FionaApple

Happy Women's History Month!

I had originally planned this song to be a courthouse drama back in the days (last summer) when I thought I would be cutting my chops in another venue.  I had started the set, had the costume and did the choreo, actually the first dance I ever did on my HUD.

Then I found this pirate courthouse, months later, and the moment I stepped in it I knew that this had to be "Criminal" and I would be a Salem Witch.  I was giddy the moment I saw the Judge's bench.

Now finding a Puritan Woman's Outfit was harder than being a Yeti.  Thanks to Sexy, Chewie, Saphy, and Kiriam and many others who scoured MP and through LMs at me.  Sometimes all it takes is many eyes and different search terms.  Saphy and I found this one at the exact same time.  I made the bonnet by modding one from a different outfit.

Not too bad...

...but of course it is always better when it is a pile on the floor. ;-}

When I went to set this to the theater, I was thrilled that since it was all full perm, I could link it into one big set.  Oh but NO!  When I set it down, it was just a bunch of blobs.  Low prim wonders turn into their original shapes when linked.  Now I know, but it took many more hours of trying to figure out what went wrong and if even it was a problem in other people's viewer or just mine.

At least the mover works…

I did learn something that I was suspecting but no one had dared to tell me except Cherry, when you add a pose to the Spot On Mover, it will take over in between every dance change.  I suspected it because so many of the crowd pictures from "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" were of me in different parts of the stage and disrobing in my starting pose.

The challenge for this one was to finally get to use the reveal object script which in this case was the flames to burn the courthouse down...

...while I disappeared in a puff of blue flame (which I could not get a good picture of).