Tuesday, October 19, 20042:51 PM - as of May 2005, this isn't true any more. damn popularity of cosplay among high school children...Whoa! I always wondered why I get so many hits to my costumes directory. It turns out that if you Google "Iori Yagami" and "costume" together, my page is number one. Hooray! *impressed with self*1:15 PM - I guess, given the name of the event, I should have expected rainSunday night's performance was really fun. Some of my really great friends came out to show their support, and I am really thankful for that. The other performers were really wonderful and talented... I felt honored to share an evening with some of those people. Special thanks to Jett, Samira, Timothy Daniel, Sambao Para o Povo, and Fire Pixie. Such an amazing group. Also a super special thank you to Princess Kennedy, who really made the evening special. I was a little bit disappointed in the overall turnout in terms of the audience, and because we didn't meet our quota of getting people in the door, most of the money we raised actually ended up going toward paying for the space. In doing the event, though, I've learned a lot about hosting an event, promoting, working with other people, and just the difficulties in trying to make something like this come together. I think that overall the night was successful as my first comeback performance, and successful as a learning experience, but not very successful as a fundraiser. Shame on those of you who stayed home because of the rain, by the way, especially because those of us who -were- there had a great time. ;-D We really need to get cracking on the fundraising, though. I have only raised $700 out of my pledged $3000, and the run is only about two months away. I know that I am preaching to the choir at this point, because many of the people who read my journal have already contributed their money or their time in beautiful and sometimes unexpected ways. I am really grateful for that. But if you are looking for another way to help, maybe pass along a link to my journal or my donation site to some of your friends. I'm thinking about composing a new fundraising e-mail in the next couple of days, and hopefully that will start helping, too. In other news, I got great video of my performance on the trapeze. I can't post the full-length video on here, but I think there are 1 or 2 clips that are definitely worth going into the permanent collection over in the "circus" section. I'll update that soon :-D Sunday, October 17, 20041:32 AM - us vs. themI'm up late, nervous and doing some work for tomorrow's performance. Actually, I am getting ready for bed now, but I was wandering a path on the Web and found this little treasure of a quote, which emphasizes a lot of the misunderstanding we are seeing on both sides:
Thursday, October 14, 200411:46 AM - so I am posting in my journal instead of sleepingI had my final rehearsal yesterday and my trapeze piece is finally ready for performance. I'm satisfied. I am still a bit nervous, because... well... I think it would be bad if I was not nervous. I've heard a story that Barbra Streisand gets so nervous that she pukes before every performance, but I can't find any confirmation of that on the internet (because everything you read on the internet is true, obviously), so I'm just going to say that being nervous is natural. I'm going to spend the next few days tying up loose ends and doing administrative stuff. In the meantime:  PS. I don't really think that "break a leg" is an appropriate thing to say to a trapeze artist... Tuesday, October 05, 20049:05 PM - I bet unicorn politics is -nothing- like this.In listening to tonight's debate, it was interesting to see how many minutes would go by before one of the two would return to a fear-mongering concept. "The world changed after 9/11..." or, "We have to fight this war abroad so we don't have to fight it at home," or even, "Terrorists with a nuclear device in our cities." Is there credible evidence to suggest that terrorists have a plan and a method to detonate nuclear devices in our cities, or is this new fear just from our imaginations after the first debate, when Kerry talked about nuclear proliferation and Bush did his best to warp that into, "terrorists with nuclear devices," so that it fit into his platform, too? I feel like we are constantly being bombarded by messages that say, "War is the only way," and "We must defeat the terrorists," to be safe. The fact is, even with credible evidence and an August 2001 report that said that Osama Bin Laden was determined to fly planes into buildings in the U.S., and that report being briefed to the President, 9/11 still happened. Not one candidate is talking about the actual causes of terrorism or how we can solve that problem long-term. The "War on Terror" cannot be won by either Bush or Kerry because, frankly, killing terrorists only give rise to new terrorists. I think the real cause of terror is that people are angry about the United States and what we do. I feel like a lot of American citizens don't see this because they have never left our country. I watched it happening in China, though.... Economic imperialism. Our companies go into other countries, give them Coca-Cola or Michael Jordan or Colonel Sanders, and claim that we can "help" them. In extreme cases, our companies utterly destroy existing local ways of life, like the (I dunno which, forgive my ignorance) South American country where we replaced all of the indigenous crops with roses and started paying the local people a pittance to work in harvesting the roses, making them utterly dependent on the American dollar when they could have just grown their own food before. We call it modernization, but it's just a not-quite-as-violent type of colonization. I imagine that a certain percentage of impoverished people see themselves, economically colonized by someone from the other side of the planet, constantly bombarded with media and advertising that runs against their culture and beliefs, and get angry about it. I am angry too. I wonder if, to those people for whom America is simulatneously an unattainable land of milk and honey and also a cruel, soulless master in the ways of capitalism and colonization, I wonder if for some of them the idea of rebellion crystallizes in the form of plans and violence. I also wonder, since in my eyes many of the lower-income families in Oakland are oppressed and colonized by a similar system, I also wonder what would happen if all of those angry and confused and violent people stopped shooting each other and marched with their gangs and their weapons in a way that actually targetted the cause of the oppression. I recently decided that the real meaning of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, has less to do with an archaic militia system than with a contract. Back in the day, Democracy was a novel concept, so much so that after the American Revolution some people wanted George Washington to be king. I think the Second Amendment is a contract that says, "This new type of government is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We trust you, citizen, to have a weapon, not only to defend your home and our land, but also because if our government is working as it should, you should never have a reason to overthrow the government. We are -your- government because we are -you-. You don't just vote, you can get involved if you feel something isn't working. Your right to your weapon is a symbol of trust that we can work together. We are working with you and for you." Both Bush and Kerry say that we need to kill terrorists. And I don't really understand that, because we need to change minds, change hearts, and change our actions. I don't really understand what it takes to push a person so far that they want to become a terrorist, because I don't believe in killing and I don't believe that killing solves problems. But I do think that all of this arrogant talk about, "America leading the world," and building a coalition to hunt down people, especially people who do what they do because they are desperate and fundamentally oppressed, is only going to serve to alienate people and destabilize the world even further. I think the real way to reduce terrorism is to look at what the United States is doing that causes people to hate us. No candidates seem willing to do that. And I know the obvious blanket argument is that, "People hate us because we have money," but I think it's more likely that people hate us because of how we get the money and what we take from them, and our attitude about it. Ok, so in writing this Tony just prevented himself from getting a job on Wall Street ever. Darn. But I'm still going to vote in November, even if I don't think either of the two big parties comes even close to representing me. How many homes could have solar power and reduce our political dependence on foreign oil for the $20 billion we spent invading a country that could not have possibly attacked us? And don't even get me started on gay marriage again. Monday, October 04, 20041:20 PM - Most of you LiveJournal-ypeople have already made signifcant donations to this whole marathon thing.Before the Storm is heating up! The show is in less than two weeks. I spent Sunday handing out flyers to people and businesses at the Castro Street Fair, which (I hope) brings in a wider audience. Tickets are $10-$20 sliding scale, and everything is donated to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. We have some wonderful performers lined up for the evening... Also, Before the Storm will be my first trapeze performance in the Bay Area since I hurt my shoulder two years ago, so this is a really big deal for me. There's not a lot of other exciting news, since I am mostly busy choreographing, training, fundraising, working, and trying to find time to buy groceries. One incredible thing is that Judy and AJ of Obsidian Pearl Designs are going to donate my costume for the event, which from preliminary sketches and fabrics looks super-rad (ok I am biased). I am contributing a -ton- of time to this, and there is still a lot of fundraising to do, so if you are interested in donating to the cause, you can always click on that little logo over to the left.... tax deductible! |
