Chippewa Valley Ren Fest

Sunday i was feeling 'off', had messed up dreams, got up early, and was feeling the urge to get out of the house. I tossed around going to the Chippewa Valley Ren fest, did my usual 'nah, yeah, maybe' anxiety dance, but in the end decided to just go for it. They predicted nice weather, warm but no storms, which seems a rarity lately. Having also recently gotten my car worked on, i felt better about that, so that's something. Here are my highlights of the day.


I was surprised it was so formal, i half expected a smaller set up, but didn't know how long it's been going on before this year and it's history. I got into a little chat with one of the security guards about cameras, didn't know much about Minolta ones though, so i wasn't as helpful i guess.


It was the last weekend Puke & Snot were going to be there, so i got to get a good laugh in, they were funny and interacted with the audience. When i tipped them at the end, one told me he liked my tattoo, but i'm not sure which. If it was the spider web one, i sometimes get people confused why i have it, thinking it symbolizes something else that it doesn't. Long story, but it's my daughter that it symbolizes, sometimes i'm not in the mood to go into it though and just say "Spiderman". ;)


The Jousting was fun, here the "bad guy" is chasing his squire after she tossed a hoop where he couldn't get it. Drew a good crowd, and was fun.


Aisha & Ivy belly dancing (i believe this is Ivy), and i was shocked i seemed to be the only one watching. There was a drink/food area next to the stage, and it had shade, so there could have been people watching from there. They were both awesome, and i loved Ivy's tattoos, what i could make out.


There was a parade (at noon? i forget) and i *loved* these people. The queen (maybe? Not sure) was hilarious all day, and these horse riders were too funny. Very Alice in Wonderland.


Fire breather in a Utilikilt. (side note, sad to recently find out mine don't fit anymore, ugh, i need to get in shape). Love shots like this, the fire looks so cool, with so much texture. Got two good shots of him doing his thing.


Loved this couple, but my timing sucked, every time i could get a shot, she had her eyes closed or someone walked in front and they then moved away. Why do i like them so much? I can't say. Just do.


Loved this guy too, he was interacting with the patrons, being silly and very funny.


I adore ren fest fairies, sadly no Twig Oaklyn Flewinia Thistlebottom, but these ones were fun and lovely. They waved and smiled a lot to me, and i think i got some good shots of them, would have liked more of the one in green, loved her wings.


Again, how awesome? Heh, loved the shoes/socks. This was during a thing where different groups presented to the king and queen, but this character was hamming it up the whole time. ;)


Awesome costume and character. That is all.


Loved their music.


Goofy 'marriage' of Maid Marrian (played by a guy and hamming it up) and the Sheriff of Nottingham.


This guy also rocked, was totally in character and his costume rocked. It was also at this point that i started feeling 'wrong'. I don't know if it was the heat (near 90F), being out of shape and walking up and down a lot of hills, but i was standing there and started to feel like i was about to pass out. So i decided to call it a day and head back home. I was hot, sweaty, and probably very stinky at this point, and as i found later, sunburnt on my forearms.

Headed home, decided to take a more leisurely pace home, and stayed off the interstate taking Hwy 29 back instead. Nice drive, little traffic, and saw a hobbit house (not really, but it was a lot like one), sadly had someone on my tailgate so i didn't feel safe stopping. I'll have to head back that way and try and get a shot of it someday. Speaking of heading back, i am actually thinking of going back to the ren fest again, it is supposed to be a good 20 degrees cooler, but still nice, so i would be able to handle it better. Plus it's only about an hour away, so not too bad a drive. I'll have to think about that.

Sid and Nancy

I recently picked up and read "And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder", which is the story of Nancy Spungen from her mother's perspective. If you don't know who Nancy is, she is the Nancy part of "Sid and Nancy", with Sid being Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. I also watched a documentary called Who Killed Nancy, which put a different angle on the whole affair. Having seen the movie Sid and Nancy several times over the years, and knowing it was a lot of fiction based on real events, it kind of surprised me that it took me this long to get around to reading the book and seeing the movie. So while their relationship was portrayed in various ways over the years, it is mostly looked upon as a romantic and tragic thing, like Romeo and Juliet. There seemed to be certain parts there, but also not so much, but i'll get to that.

First off is how different the perspectives are, and how they looked at things. Her mom related stories of her troubled birth, undiagnosed until late teens paranoid schizophrenia, how the doctors just gave her drugs to make her "less trouble", and high intelligence. While the movie and documentaries, mostly interviews just portrayed her as loud, obnoxious and 'crazy'. Seems they didn't see or know her underlying issues, and why she was that way. Sid meanwhile is mostly viewed as misunderstood, but his friends tend to gloss over things they even say, like when he killed a cat in front of his roommate, just "because". Nancy's mom also talks about how she told her that he hurt her a lot, but that's not the "real him". I have to admit i haven't really read a biography of Sid yet, but reading about Nancy really put a lot into perspective that i hadn't known before. Side note, it also makes me think more when i see rowdy kids in public, instead of thinking "why don't they do something", i now wonder if there is a lot i don't know, like does the child have serious issues and the parents can't really do anything. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, especially if the person is seeing demon sharks wanting to eat them. Thankfully we have better (although not perfect) psychiatric care now, and some meds that can help some of the time.

Anyway, the book got me thinking a lot about my friend J. who Nancy really reminded me of, with some similar life experiences, drug troubles, and almost constant talk about wanting to die and expecting to die young. The similarities made it hard to read at times, reminding me of her, but also seeing how nothing i could have really done would have helped or changed anything. So again she is on my mind a lot lately. Not sure why i felt the need to mention that part, but there you go.

I guess out of all of these, i'd recommend reading her mom's book the most, it's the deepest with the most sincere point of view. The movie Sid and Nancy is a decent movie, but not really attached to reality of who the people were or what happened, although interesting to read things in the book that happen in the movie, although from a different perspective (calls home, their visit home, nancy describing things to her mom, etc). The documentary that i mentioned though, raises the question that Sid may have not killed Nancy, and one of the arguments was that she had a couple thousand dollars that would be reason. The police seemed to ask her mom about this though, and informed them that Nancy called her not long before asking for money, while the movie just keeps asking why cops didn't look into that. Seems like they didn't read her book, which they probably should have, or talked to her, which she probably wouldn't have done anyway.

The point of all this? Not sure really, other than it seems people always assume that everyone is or should be like them. If they aren't, then they are worthy of derision and mocking, without even trying to understand other points of view or life experiences. Just tired of people who have never been out of their little comfort zone insulting people who do or believe different things, but then get offended when people call them on it.

I'd also like to point out, i've never done illegal drugs, and it's a frigging miracle somehow. I mean, everyone seemed to think i did, teachers, parents, etc, an ex even thought i was a dealer before she knew me better (although that was more "how does he afford the car and house?" thing). Basically i was and still am in the groups they always say do them, (emotional troubles and things like that), had what the groups show as examples of doing them (I mean, look at this list, that's also sings of what i went through and severe depression, /sigh), and have been offered them. Don't know how many people i've told this to, if anyone, but here goes. Once when J. was visiting me, we drove into the cities to go to Barnes and Nobles, and she said she had to see someone quick. Turns out she had me drive to her and her boyfriends dealer and bought heroin. We did go to look at books, and when we got back she kept getting me to use some with her. I didn't, even though i could really never say no to her, and would do anything for her (this includes driving hours to get her in the middle of a blizzard where cars are constantly going off the roads), but i didn't do that. I know this doesn't mean much to anyone else, but i take pride in that, that i didn't. Not sure what kept me from doing them (don't really drink much, once every few months if that, and never to puking, more a social drinker, and don't smoke, although that could be allergies, very allergic to that), and i guess if i could bottle it, i'd make a mint. Probably a good part of it is having awesome parents who were (are still) very patient and loving to me, even with all i went through and did.

Eh, that got off track pretty quickly, sorry about that.

Culture Fest and other stuff

Tuesday i decided to go to culture fest, after many hours of pacing around, changing my mind back and forth, etc. Part of why i was so undecided was that i only heard about this from the online calendar that UW-RF has on their site, and that they also listed the rehearsals but didn't make it clear which one was the "real" event. Sadly, it also showed i seemed to miss another drag show the week before. They really need to advertise things better, but who knows, maybe they have tons of info at the university talking about it, but off campus, even the local newspaper site, had nothing at all that i could find. Another part of tossing around if i should go was that it was at the North Hall Auditorium, which i've only been in a couple times at most, and many years ago. So i did't know if there would be a good spot to photograph from without bothering too many people.

Eventually, i did decide to just go. Fought the anxiety and just went. Also forgot my extra memory cards. D'oh! If i had the 5D with me that would be less of a problem, as with the 16GB cards it can hold around 800 photos, but i had the 7D and with the same card it holds about 500 or so. Sounds like a lot, but with still being not so used to low light, performance shooting, i set it on high speed capture, and try to get some good shots of motion. So sadly i had to set the capture to medium sized RAW, i'm not a fan of shooting in JPEG, as RAW saves so much more information, and allows more recovery of borderline shots post shoot.

So i get there, walk in the auditorium, and see it's got a balcony. I ask a lady working if it's okay to go up there, and she says it should be. I was mostly worried the doors would be locked, as there were lights up there, but once i got up one door was unlocked. I grab a decent seat, and get ready. Side note, have i mentioned how much i hate stairs? I really need to get in better shape, ugh. Before the event starts, three more people end up sitting up there, but after intermission aren't there anymore. I hope my camera wasn't too noisy, especially during the quieter moments, but that's part of why i sat where i did, to not be such a disturbance.

The event itself was pretty awesome, very similar to the Unity in the Community events that had people perform. A couple things of note that stood out to me the most (and i'll probably be talking about these on my daily photo site, but i wanted to post like this here, yeah, yeah, i know).

It started with a fashion show, various countries, here is the Japan group. All pretty neat, and well done, but the Japan ones were just adorable, they had fans they held up, even the guy.

The belly dancer, i believe her name is Dalal (i heard her last name, but no clue if i'd mangle it), and if i 'm not mistaken, the same woman who preformed the belly dances at the Unity in the Community events i've been to the years before. She's pretty damn awesome, i don't know much about belly dancing, but she did a great job. It was funny though, that when she was ready, they kept having problems with the music. They got it going right though, and off she went. Personally, i prefer her hair like this to the very curly she had before. This outfit is neat too, the layers of the white and red really played off each other well.

The swing dancers were pretty amazing too, doing moves like flipping around, tossing each other around and up, all that. Not what i was expecting at all, that's for sure. Just sad that at the shutter speed i had to use, a lot of them had a lot of motion blur and didn't look as good as i would hope.

I forget this guy's name, (i really wish they had programs for these, lots of hard to remember names) but he started out with a ukulele and moved on to a guitar and singing a medley of  songs that one wouldn't think of as fit for acoustic guitar. Pretty awesome really.

The guy on the right was the main performer for this bit. Started out with telling a joke, then asked for someone from the audience, who he asked to help him take his clothes off, joked about her being his wife, and revealed a tattoo (fake?) of the falcon and UWRF. Then said it was because it was because of all the great people he has met here. (awww) Then the guy on the left came out, and they did a fight routine, with different music and such, that worked it's way into music from Mortal Kombat theme song and them fighting in slow motion. It was hilarious, they even had fake blood and were amusing. Some of the moves were very impressive too, so hard to describe really. One of the best of the night for sure.

Ha Family Lion Dance Troupe. I've always loved these, not sure why, but it was pretty cute how the tail wagged as it moved too. At one point it lost one of those balls on it's nose.

The singer, who's feet you can see on the stage, told people to sing along and dance if they wanted, so people did. It's was pretty fun, at first people started waving arms around, then a couple held up lighters, then several started dancing, more than you see here.

There were more pictures, and performers, but this is what i felt like elaborating on for now. Good times, good performers, but bad advertising.

I was going to talk about some other stuff, but this is getting long, and i'm sure people don't really want to hear about that. More just weird dreams, feelings, all that emo stuff. ;)