On a Sunday morning sidewalk, I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned
This past Sunday was the first ever L.A. Halloween Meet. I don't really care that there was one last year, that one sucked. I did not go to it and there was no costume contest, ergo it doesn't count.
This meet was a disaster in the making. There was bad blood between organizers, a schism, a terrible location, all the fixings for a mess. Add to that, consecutive meets on the same day ("daytime"/"outdoor" meet and a "nighttime"/"indoor" one), forty miles apart and the "organizing" taking place on two forums, at least three Flickr threads and plenty of emails. The daytime one was going to have a costume contest with different categories and several people had already donated prizes including, drumroll please, a custom faceup by Irene. Be still my foolish heart. Irene does not like me as a customer and has refused to do any more work for me, although she has been nice about it. However, if I won, she could not refuse me, ha HA!
I started trying to think of costumes a month ahead of time and really devoting a lot of time to the thinkening. Then the date of the daytime meet changed from the 23rd to the 17th. Well, damn it all, I was already booked for the 17th and couldn't make it! I decided that I would drag my ass there, no matter what which is what I ended up doing. Meanwhile the indoor nighttime meet (touted as a grown up nighttime party with drinking and "you can wear a costume!") was generating negative interest because the organizers were behaving like weenies.
Blah, blah, blah, the outdoor daytime meet had been moved to Descanso Gardens. It was raining and there was an $8 admission charge. Things started looking up though. The fellow at the gate charged me only $6 and let me know where the meet had moved to (from the original location to a covered one in the Rose Pavilion). One of the guys in the ticket booth later came by and took pics of the dolls on his cameraphone. Since we were in the only covered shelter, lots of people kept stopping by to get out of the rain and were a little shocked to walk into some kind of weird doll party. I had brought the big camera but I had failed to realize that I had an inappropriate filter on that was screwing up the CMOS sensor and as a result, most of my pics were out of focus and doody.
This is how most of my photos came out. Huuuuuuummmmmmmmmm.
These were the only ones that came out. I'm going to go through other people's photostreams and lift their pics.
These are what my costumes were supposed to look like, from a dress rehearsal for the benefit of and opinions from the Austin Family Singers :
Plague Doctor. The mask was made from paper clay, painted dark grey with a light grey coat, a watery black wash and burnt umber aging, sealed with MSC and attached with a suede lace from my Twiggy Yumi's aviator pants from Anotherspace. The hat I made, the coat is 2 of 3 pieces by Azone, the shoes are maybe by Momoko and the trousers are from who the hell knows where. They have no snap or fastening and were held up with a hair elastic. Blouse by Momolita.
Siamese Twins. Regular Cousin Olivia and vampire Cousin Olivia. I switched their shoes to black Barbie mjs on the regular and red Barbie mjs on the vampire.
Calavera. I ended up dyeing this Melacacia dress black with Bohemian Beats skirt underneath as a petticoat, Mormon underwear from Coolcat and an off-white lace under collar so no part of the dyed dress touched her face. The crown was a Christmas ornament. I changed the body to a Pure Neemo body with Flection arms. No shoes.
Dinosaur! This I made. I changed the doll to my Primadolly Ginger but it's otherwise the same.
Mirror Twins. I changed the black clown's collar to a black tulle collar and gave each of them a dog and a hoop. Black Momoko mjs on the black one, white Momoko mjs on the white one. I'd found an antique round mirror that I sanded the fuck out of so the middle was clear and radiated out, that was supposed to go between the dolls, but I could not get the fucker to stay upright without toppling over.
In any event, I came home with two silver trophies and a smaller gold one, which meant I won first place in two categories and one second place in some other category. The Calavera won second place for "Scariest", losing out to some heathen's recycled and stolen costume. I think the Calavera also won Best Overall but it might have been the Plague Doctor. The Plague Doctor won a first place trophy but I have no idea for what. I asked the organizers to post the list of winners but they haven't so far and I think they've all forgotten.
In summary, I fucking won, hells yes I did, and I got my pick of the raffle prizes. One of the raffle prizes was Irene's so I made a beeline for it and it's mine, all mine.
Other events: I received poison cupcakes and two of the women there were afraid of me showing up because they thought I was going to kick their asses. I did no ass kicking, I made with the nicey-nice and a good time was had by most. Doonese the Blyh, the Imp of Destruction, was especially popular and several people went home and ordered one of their own. I thought that was funny.
This meet was a disaster in the making. There was bad blood between organizers, a schism, a terrible location, all the fixings for a mess. Add to that, consecutive meets on the same day ("daytime"/"outdoor" meet and a "nighttime"/"indoor" one), forty miles apart and the "organizing" taking place on two forums, at least three Flickr threads and plenty of emails. The daytime one was going to have a costume contest with different categories and several people had already donated prizes including, drumroll please, a custom faceup by Irene. Be still my foolish heart. Irene does not like me as a customer and has refused to do any more work for me, although she has been nice about it. However, if I won, she could not refuse me, ha HA!
I started trying to think of costumes a month ahead of time and really devoting a lot of time to the thinkening. Then the date of the daytime meet changed from the 23rd to the 17th. Well, damn it all, I was already booked for the 17th and couldn't make it! I decided that I would drag my ass there, no matter what which is what I ended up doing. Meanwhile the indoor nighttime meet (touted as a grown up nighttime party with drinking and "you can wear a costume!") was generating negative interest because the organizers were behaving like weenies.
Blah, blah, blah, the outdoor daytime meet had been moved to Descanso Gardens. It was raining and there was an $8 admission charge. Things started looking up though. The fellow at the gate charged me only $6 and let me know where the meet had moved to (from the original location to a covered one in the Rose Pavilion). One of the guys in the ticket booth later came by and took pics of the dolls on his cameraphone. Since we were in the only covered shelter, lots of people kept stopping by to get out of the rain and were a little shocked to walk into some kind of weird doll party. I had brought the big camera but I had failed to realize that I had an inappropriate filter on that was screwing up the CMOS sensor and as a result, most of my pics were out of focus and doody.
This is how most of my photos came out. Huuuuuuummmmmmmmmm.
These were the only ones that came out. I'm going to go through other people's photostreams and lift their pics.
These are what my costumes were supposed to look like, from a dress rehearsal for the benefit of and opinions from the Austin Family Singers :
Plague Doctor. The mask was made from paper clay, painted dark grey with a light grey coat, a watery black wash and burnt umber aging, sealed with MSC and attached with a suede lace from my Twiggy Yumi's aviator pants from Anotherspace. The hat I made, the coat is 2 of 3 pieces by Azone, the shoes are maybe by Momoko and the trousers are from who the hell knows where. They have no snap or fastening and were held up with a hair elastic. Blouse by Momolita.
Siamese Twins. Regular Cousin Olivia and vampire Cousin Olivia. I switched their shoes to black Barbie mjs on the regular and red Barbie mjs on the vampire.
Calavera. I ended up dyeing this Melacacia dress black with Bohemian Beats skirt underneath as a petticoat, Mormon underwear from Coolcat and an off-white lace under collar so no part of the dyed dress touched her face. The crown was a Christmas ornament. I changed the body to a Pure Neemo body with Flection arms. No shoes.
Dinosaur! This I made. I changed the doll to my Primadolly Ginger but it's otherwise the same.
Mirror Twins. I changed the black clown's collar to a black tulle collar and gave each of them a dog and a hoop. Black Momoko mjs on the black one, white Momoko mjs on the white one. I'd found an antique round mirror that I sanded the fuck out of so the middle was clear and radiated out, that was supposed to go between the dolls, but I could not get the fucker to stay upright without toppling over.
In any event, I came home with two silver trophies and a smaller gold one, which meant I won first place in two categories and one second place in some other category. The Calavera won second place for "Scariest", losing out to some heathen's recycled and stolen costume. I think the Calavera also won Best Overall but it might have been the Plague Doctor. The Plague Doctor won a first place trophy but I have no idea for what. I asked the organizers to post the list of winners but they haven't so far and I think they've all forgotten.
In summary, I fucking won, hells yes I did, and I got my pick of the raffle prizes. One of the raffle prizes was Irene's so I made a beeline for it and it's mine, all mine.
Other events: I received poison cupcakes and two of the women there were afraid of me showing up because they thought I was going to kick their asses. I did no ass kicking, I made with the nicey-nice and a good time was had by most. Doonese the Blyh, the Imp of Destruction, was especially popular and several people went home and ordered one of their own. I thought that was funny.
Labels: Blythe, Gatherings
posted by CMURB at 11:25 PM
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