I Got Carded at a Rave: A Cautionary Tale on Growing Old Gracefully

I had kind of an amazing weekend so I thought I would share it with you all.

I went to a rave.

This is the first rave I've been to in many, many years. I attended a couple (back in the day when the venue had to be secret) when I was a belly dancer. I remember one in particular that we performed at. I was dancing on top of a platform behind the DJ and at one point I looked down to see a couple having sex behind the stage.  At least they were behind the stage, right? As I was looking at all the young people this weekend it occurred to me that one of them might be the offspring of that coupling. It could happen.

The rave I was at this weekend was called Beyond Wonderland. There were similarities and differences from the raves of my youth. Similar: Everyone is on their drug of choice and tripping HARD. Difference: This rave had a full bar (glorious). And lots of vending. I don't remember either of those back in my day. Also, I don't remember them having names, but that could be because it was 1000 years ago and I'm old.

I went because my dear friend (and frequent Blogguest) Lisa really wanted to go for her birthday. Never one to deny a friend a birthday wish or turn down an adventure, I packed some old belly dance costuming and my weight in glitter and flew down to San Bernardino. I will admit, in hindsight, that I was a bit unprepared for what I found.

When all was said and done, Lisa and I ended up naming our adventure Beyond Shackleton. We felt as if we'd ventured into unchartered (for us) territory and came back the richer for it. I researched Ernest Shackleton and found this quote that I believe is pretty apt: "For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton." True dat.  

Here is some insight into our own personal frozen ship.

• Aren't old people cute?
• I arrived Friday night, costumed up and headed to the event to meet Lisa.  At the entrance there were signs about presenting tickets and ID. Seriously? But I didn't want to be the asshole who has to rummage in her bag because I thought they wouldn't check. These people have jobs to do and I didn't want to get in their way. So I get up to the front and take one look at the infant who's taking my ticket. I lift my ticket and ID with a big grin and she looks at me, grins back and says "I'm gonna check your ID!" so I responded "And I'm gonna give you a hug!"  (I also got carded at the bar. The excuse was that my license could be expired. Quick thinking, Puppy!) While this "look at the old person at the rave" is charming the first time, it lost its luster almost immediately. And trust me, we got a lot of it. Girls touching our faces - I'm sure it's amazing to feel wrinkles - and boys hugging us. They were just so happy to see people our age out and about (and they were tripping their asses off). One youngster said "Oh! I love seeing old ravers." We knew she meant it from the heart, but honestly. Lisa and I started joking about how they must be thinking "I wonder who took them out of the convalescent home and brought them here? Where did they store their walkers? So sweet!!"
• Um, what are you wearing?
• While I saw the requisite animal costumes and shiny Betabrand stuff, what really surprised me was what a majority of the young girls were wearing. Or were NOT wearing. I have never seen so many bare ass cheeks in my life since I was at that hamam in Istanbul. They were all essentially wearing thong underwear with some strips of fabric wrapped around their legs (I'm not sure if these were attached to anything, actually). I admit to saying some very Mom-like things about this along the lines of "Those aren't clothes!!"  And while everyone wasn't dressing to enhance their actual body type, I applaud the self confidence of all the girls who were running around in bras, thong panties and glitter. Honestly, Lisa and I looked like nuns in comparison because we were wearing *actual* clothes.

"Actual clothes" include hats!

• Adventures in transportation
• I took Lyft primarily from my arrival in San Bernardino to my departure. Unlike San Francisco, the Lyft drivers seemed much less interested in picking up late night partiers. Additionally, Uber had some sort of monopoly on the event; there was an Uber pick up area that no other cars could enter. I call foul on that. On Saturday night, Lisa and I left the venue around 12:30am. The venue had closed off most of the nearby streets so we decided to walk away from the melee and call our Lyft. We stopped on the steps of a suspect looking community center to connect. And I couldn't. My app wouldn't work. Neither would Uber - I kept getting a "weak signal" notification but really NOTHING was happening - and a cab would have been at least 45 minutes. The whole neighborhood was deserted and creepy as fuck, so we decided to walk back to the venue and get a ride at the Uber monopoly. As we walked we saw a Lyft driver just sitting in his car. We ran up to him (well, I hobbled actually.  My feet were killing me) and he said he could take us. As soon as we got in his car (my app still wasn't working so I couldn't book him) he got a call and had to take it or it looks bad on his Lyft rating. So, after a LOT of back and forth to find the herd of children he was picking up, we ended up being escorted 30 minutes out of our way to their destination and then back to our hotel. We were safe, but halfway there we were SO ready to be home, comforting each other by muttering "jammies and pie, jammies and pie!" (we had wisely purchased the pie earlier). When it was actually our turn, our driver turned into an absolute chatterbox. As we were nearing our exit he said "okay, I'll take Tennessee St." then marveled at how "all the streets have state names!". He marveled so hard about it he passed our exit. For. Fucks. Sake. 
• Thwarted by technology
• After dancing for hours over the course of two days, my feet were trashed (I went for form over function, which was my fatal flaw) and we were both exhausted so all we wanted to do was eat that damn pie and watch some TV. After the debacle with the Lyft app, we got back to the hotel and the TV showed a screen saying "Weak signal". This was Lisa's final straw. She started yelling at the TV, asking if we were suddenly in a war or a major technological meltdown. It was EPIC. Thankfully, the TV did eventually work and we were able to get our fill of Law and Order: SVU.

So, being the intrepid explorers we are, we journeyed into parts unknown, metaphorically froze our asses off in a sea of infants and came out the other end realizing that one can be cool and have a great time no matter what number is attached to your age.  In other words, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

My takeaways:

#1 - When one walks 30,000 steps (15-ish miles) in a 24 hour period, one should not be surprised that pie at 2am doesn't blow your diet.

#2 - Electronic music isn't my favorite, it's a bit repetitive for my taste but considering probably 99.9% of the people there were tripping on something, it's the perfect music for this kind of event. The venue was decorated beautifully (again, perfect for tripping) and both nights were lovely and temperate. I had a great time.

#3 - Corn nuts smell like ass. On an airplane, they smell like ass at 45,000 ft.

xoxo...hashtagSueslife

Trippy trees!

Stage light shenanigans

Jellyfish!  No one got stung!  

Lions and Tigers and Bears? Not so much.

For the past couple weeks, I've gotten sucked into watching Emerald City, which is a new (possibly short lived) series on NBC. I mention that it's on NBC because it's all sorts of dark and gritty, which is refreshing for network TV. I've come to expect that kind of original content from Netflix or Amazon so I'm glad the networks are getting back in the game. It's only 10 episodes and as far as I can tell it hasn't been renewed, so I'm thinking maybe I'm the "Series Kiss of Death". Same thing happened with Travelers, a Netflix series I really liked. Not a peep if it's coming back either. (footnote: just saw that is IS renewed! I'm not the Kiss of Death after all!!)

Emerald City is basically a loose retelling of The Wizard of Oz. But super Game of Thrones-y. In fact, I read one review that called it The Wizard of Westeroz. Heh. Sometimes I love people. Not always, but sometimes.  I enjoyed it all the way through but it did become a bit muddied of story and vague of character, so they need to up their game a bit if they are coming back.

the cast

Dorothy - via tornado - gets stranded in a bleak, washed out landscape. Not the merry old land of Oz that Judy Garland ended up in. She is transported in a police car (with a K9 officer in back) and hits the East Witch with the car. She ends up in some kind of fucked up Munchkin Land which is more like a Mad Max Land (costume and attitude). No one is nice, there is no charmingly scruffy Lollipop Guild welcoming Dorothy. No Glinda coming to help. Instead, she gets tortured by these Mad Max-y looking folks and run out of town. WTF? They do manage to name the dog - Toto - which means Dog in their language. Clearly they aren't an animal loving bunch. Nor are they creative.

She doesn't kill the East Witch immediately but eventually shoots her and gains a pair of beautiful ruby and gold gloves which meld with her skin and come out when she needs some big-guns-magic. I was kind of hoping she would just have had to clap her hands three times to get home, but again - not the movie we know. It's MUCH more involved. In fact, this Dorothy decidedly does NOT have the power to get home all along. FU Glinda.

On the yellow brick road, which is only yellow because this land has a huge problem with poppy pollen, she sees a dude crucified on a pole. Well. Hello Scarecrow!  They are attracted to each other, which is truly the adult version of the original. We all know that, if she was old enough and had a choice, Dorothy would have hooked up with the Scarecrow. And this one is definitely shag-worthy.

They travel together and peripherally meet a kid who later becomes the TinMan in an interesting, steampunk way. He ends up in the Kingdom of Ev with more steampunky, robotic folk. The Princess of Ev (who in the books is a niece of the king) constantly wears a mask for reasons that come out later and they are some truly beautiful pieces of costume art. 

amirite?

He also initially hangs out with a young boy...who is actually a girl but had some powerful magic put on her when she was young. She is Ozma, who is in later books. This is actually a really interesting element of the show. Ozma identifies as a boy because that is how she grew up. So, discovering that she is actually a girl when she's a teenager is a huge mind fuck for her. I'm enjoying how the show is having her deal with this incongruity. Additionally, in episode 9 of 10 we finally see who the Lion is. I had guessed who he would be and I'm not sure I like that he doesn't show up until late. An interesting element to him is why he identifies as cowardly. He is a soldier for the Wizard who has made some suspect decisions in the past, which influences how he now sees the world.

The remaining witches, Glinda and West, have some absolutely gorgeous costumes.  They are also not what you remember from the old movie. Glinda is actually a calculating, hard woman (always dressed in white, to keep the illusion of goodness).  She is in a sort of cold war with the Wizard, who banned magic from the land when he arrived. West is a drug addicted madam of a brothel (always dressed in black) who is all sorts of crazy. They talk a lot about their mother, South. She has birthed all the witches, apparently, so I keep thinking of her as the mother in Alien plopping down a ton of eggs. Dorothy is trying to get one of the young witches out of Glinda's grasp and I want a reenactment of the Aliens scene: "Get away from her, you bitch!"

L - R:  East, Glinda of the North, West

Glinda is played by Joely Richardson and she is truly lovely. She's 52 years old and I appreciate that the show is not trying to make her look super young. She's gorgeous anyway and they aren't using soft focus or any other device to mask her age. Yay them.  Vincent D'Onofrio plays the Wizard. I usually love his absolute quirkiness and he's got it in spades in this show. Instead of hiding behind a curtain, he wears a big, ugly wig and lots of facial hair. He isn't fancy because nothing is as opulent as the movie version of the Emerald City, so he wears kind of drab robes and lives in a monotone castle. He is a tyrannical leader and is constantly on the verge of a war with the witches. D'Onofrio has affected this weird, flat accent, which sort of comes and goes. I haven't figured out if he means to do that or if he's just being lazy. Either way, this isn't my favorite of his roles (really, nothing surpasses Goren from Law and Order: Criminal Intent for me).

So I liked this series, but I fell that executive producer/writer Shaun Cassidy (yes, THE Sean Cassidy of Hardy Boy fame) and team bit off more than they could chew in 10 episodes. I have only read the first Oz book so I'm certainly no expert, but they introduced characters (like Ozma) and kingdoms (like Ev) that definitely need more fleshing out for folks like me who only know the one book. The acting is generally good but nothing note-worthy. For me, it's really about the production design. It's really, really cool. I read that they opted for very little cgi in the world (saving it for the magic) so they scouted some really amazing locations all around the world, including parks in Croatia and castles in Hungary.

Finally, the politics in this show are likely equal to that of the books. The books were never just a simple fairy tale; they were suffused with political undercurrents (I don't know why I didn't know this but L. Frank Baum's mother was a suffragette). And like Wicked, this show puts the politics of the land right up front. The unfit ruler (hmmm...who does that sound like?), witches (women) being oppressed, a world on the verge of war. Art imitates life, eh?

(Because I binged a series, I think this is less about drink pairing (because I don't want you all to think I'm a complete lush) and more about binge-y food. I discovered some delicious dark chocolate coconut "bites" at my local store that paired nicely with this series. Oh, and they are complimented by a glass of red wine, if you're so inclined.)

My takeaways (only one):

#1 - When I was in China many years ago at a work event, I met a group of Australian guys that I hung out with. By the end of my trip, I realized that we were exactly the cast of The Wizard of Oz. Obviously I was Dorothy. My favorite guy, who I connected with the most, was the Scarecrow and one goofy guy who had a huge issue with shark fin soup (for good reason, but still...when in Rome.) was the Cowardly Lion. I even had a TinMan who was just a nice, reliable guy.  I even had a Wizard replacement in a lovely older gentleman who ran an animation company. I am a total dork.

xoxo...hashtagSueslife

And the award goes to...

I'm not actually a person who is an avid fan of award season. I don't watch the Grammys, Golden Globes, whatever. Which is odd, because I grew up with a brother who produced an awards show, which I attended for many years. The Bay Area Music Awards (the Bammies!) were like a family holiday.

Normally I wouldn't have written anything about the Academy Awards, which is the only one I consistently watch, because I feel that their productions are a bit redundant, but this year! Wow! And if we're honest, nothing was really different than any other year up until the end. Let's explore anyway, wanna?

Dude is kind of creepy, right?

• First things first. HUGE congratulations to Zootopia (and my friends who worked on it). It is not only beautiful animation but has a timely story. I was pretty sure Kubo was going to get the award because of how the Academy normally seem to do things, so I was extra pleased. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. 
• It was really touching to see Jennifer Aniston tear up mentioning Bill Paxton at the head of the In Memoriam. It was lovely that she paid respect to his passing. This year the In Memoriam was a tough one anyway, so I get it. I even teared up. PLUS, apparently, they added someone who's alive? I'm sure that poor woman is channeling Monty Python and the Holy Grail right now. "I'm not dead yet!!"
• While I was pleasantly surprised by Jimmy Kimmel (I'm not a huge fan of his in general although I do love Mean Tweets), I thought he went too far with his Matt Damon thing. A couple times would have been plenty (playing the music over his presenting was funny). A comedian should know when to pull back on a joke, right? Or am I just being oversensitive on Matt's behalf?
• Two things I enjoy about watching the Oscars with my posse are 1) the whole Red Carpet extravaganza. Beth and I turn into brutal (but fair, I think) fashion critics. Some of the women and men on that red carpet seriously need to look in a mirror before they leave the house (I'm not naming names, Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson).  And 2) Oscar Bingo. Beth always prints out Oscar Bingo where you have to "spy" certain things they call out like "Leonardo DeCaprio presents an award" for instance. Todd won this year, but if only ONE STINKIN' PERSON had thanked God directly (many skirted around it) and someone wore some fucking reading glasses I would have been IN! (Remind me some day to tell you all about the Paris Bingo we created when we were there. Naturally it included seeing someone walking with a baguette.)
• This year was also all about racial equality. It's nice to see the Academy recognizing and correcting their glaring oversights. Everyone can grow, right?
• So. The elephant in the room. The elephant that stampeded through the room. There we were, finally at the end of a typical award show. I thought I had actually correctly guessed another Oscar winner (Best Picture) when, lo and behold, everyone behind the La La Land producer, who was in the middle of his acceptance speech, started looking extremely uncomfortable and that one poor PA was running from person to person showing them the envelope. GAH. What a massive fuck up. The first thing I thought of was one of the Bay Area Music Awards when Faith No More were kind of being dicks, throwing things around the stage and being just generally stupid while accepting an award. My brother was pissed, but man, Faith No More has NOTHING on PriceWaterhouse. The La La Land group were gracious in the extreme and the poor Moonlight folks got absolutely robbed of their time in the spotlight. To add to the mayhem, Warren Beatty (who had kind of sold out Faye Dunaway by making her read the winner to begin with. He clearly knew something was wrong!) felt the need to redeem himself and explain. Sure, we all needed an explanation, but it felt a bit like "Not my fault! They did it!!" Without a doubt, someone is going to get fired for this. I guess Warren just wanted to make sure it wasn't him.
• **I was watching something just last night that pointed out that the above debacle is NOT unprecedented!  In 1964, Sammy Davis Jr was handed the wrong envelope for either Music Adaptation or Music Score (I'm not clear on which one). He handled it really well, actually, saying "Wait 'til the NAACP hears about this!"  Heh.

If there is any kind of silver lining on this, my thought would be that people will probably remember for a long time who won the Best Picture of 2016.

(My drink and snack pairing are as follows: a couple bottles of pink bubbly and these cookies (beware, you will eat more than just one because they are delicious but you probably shouldn't because they are rich!):  http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/03/01/salted-caramel-dark-chocolate-cookies/)

My takeaways:

#1 - I can say from experience that award shows in general are much more fun if you are attending vs watching on TV.

#2 - I did like the opening of this year's Academy Awards - Justin Timberlake coming in singing. Beth and I noticed that many of the moves were steps we do in Zumba and were a bit miffed that no one called us to perform. Hmph.

#3 - Those cookies in the recipe above are even better the next day. Just sayin'.

xoxo...hashtagSueslife

Seriously. Creepy.