Rantings from the bonfire
BEHOLD
After the recovery from one of the worst weekends I've had in a very long time, definitely a serious life crisis, watching the Freaks come to the plate illustrating the Church they may or may not know, and watching the Church illustrate itself as an instrumentation of pain no iron maiden could duplicate (nor jam as heavily), and yes, getting out of the muck and mire of near-homelessness with ginormous cringe-inducing thankfulness first and foremost to the God even I had a hard time believing in at one point, to the Freaks, to the Freaks and to the Freaks..
I was able to take a break from Da Local Scene to explore another near-local scene in Richmond, in time for East Coast Goth/Industrial Festival 2008, with a very undeserved paid-for journey (hotel + tickets) courtesy of Bloodgod Dan, thus, off for a nice relaxing weekend, the one before the big and very well-anticipated move..
THURSDAY:
OK, now all is official.. the new landlord signed the updated lease and all is well, now I am only obligated to pay the first rent on April 1 instead of.. some time ago.. I celebrate by working long extended hours and having to come in Friday morning blisteringly early.. ugh..
FRIDAY:
I come up blisteringly early if only to be able to leave fairly early when Dan comes to pick me up.. of course as things work out, he got there later than I participated, so I'm stuck at work with little to do, nobody around and no motivation to stay awake, not to mention that I'm already ready to be a victim of Bryan the Zomboy, or rather, a compadre..
Off I go with Dan to Richmond for East Coast Goth/Industrial Festival 2008, as I slept the entire 2 hour trip down to Richmond.. we went to the nice hotel, a DoubleTree Hotel near downtown, got some rather nasty cookies courtesy of the hotel, and then we went out for dinner where we either found über-expensive downtown places or über-cheap sparse places elsewhere. Richmond is the strangest laid-out city I've ever seen in my life. Nothing is convenient located near anything else, furthermore, the city dies apparently at 8pm, even on a Friday night. This is not DC.
We managed to find this very expensive club/restaurant, The Tobacco Company, who of course did not let us in because of the way we dressed.. it's good to be a freak (thank you Tobacco Company for saving my credit card overcharging by your blatant discrimination).. my Asian radar found a fairly nice Chinese place nearby and had a nice dinner (something with lots of pork - mmmm)
Dan and I go back to the hotel room for me to go online to find out that my insurance check from the car accident is in the mail and will arrive next week, which is a very good thing indeed! Then I collapsed into my coffin and.. oh wait, it's 9:30PM.. geez something is wrong with me..
SATURDAY:
What on earth am I doing getting up at 8:30AM???? WRONG!! WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! Of course after 11 hours of sleep I guess I needed to get up.. No, it's still WRONG! This must stop at once! Ahem.. Dan and I went to find me breakfast as I get up at this ungodly hour, and surprise, the nearest affordable fast-food breakfast place is a Hardee's a good 30 min drive away! Ahhh.. Richmond.. erk..
We then went back to the hotel for me to change into my daywalker gothiness for the trip to the Poe Museum, one of the highlights of my trip down there next to the Fest.. what a fantastic experience to see Edgar Allan Poe's childhood furniture (his bed looked like my grandmother's), portraits of family, friends and female conquests, and early prose and poetry works by him, and a chance for photographic goofiness in "The Enchanted Garden", and then more history of this very tragic, very interesting and very very Goth individual (oh but could we all strive for his gothiness)
Then later on we went to Kinko's for me to print more flyers for The Black Orchid and Freak Mini-Golf (and yes, smartalecks, Poe probably would be coming out too!!), in spite of a whole lot of mechanical problems at the Kinko's (wow), and driving around trying to find Alley Katz (Google Maps have the wrong directions, beware!).. went back to the hotel for the inevitable "power nap" (don't all night freaks do this?) before changing into my night creature goth outfit, and off to Alley Katz we go for the Fest..
There were some local representation to my delight in seeing valdyr and Rob (Vamp), but lots of local and Tidewater folk all over the place, and many bands, and my very first time ever meeting a Juggalo (so they're not a myth after all), a child of Wiccan parents who just came back from Iraq, and many other interesting characters including an elderly Asatru Goth, a token preppie who stuck around for a while, and some weirdo with Mickey Mouse ears who hogged the mic after the festival was over..
I enjoyed seeing many of the bands there.. Morgueasm was definitely the most visual (very exotic looking band) while Dyksick was my personal favorite of the lot (fantastic stompy metal industrial, just very tight and very VERY interesting!), I also enjoyed Myotis' stage presence and singer rotational skills (well done), and Mpiredwn with a very visually dressed singer (Rave) with music that, while goth rock not being a favorite of mine, was enjoyable nonetheless..
I had a great time with a good long talk with Ging (DJ VonHeir) about everything from Iraq to juggaloes to Christianity to Wicca to not hearing ourselves talk anymore over the music, not to mention Fred, Rave, Kyle, Ging's girlfriend (didn't get her name, sorry), and Yancy and more.. it was just an overall awesome time for me and I believe for Dan as well..
We left, not without Dan going into Fallout for a bit to check the place out (fetish club in Richmond) and then we left to retire for the evening..
SUNDAY:
Dan gets a call early with some bad news from his wife about a problem at the house, so he needs to leave earlier than expected (back to Northern Ohio), while dropping me back off at home. We make it in very quick time while talking about our mutually bad modern western church experiences (which one was worse is up to interpretation).. now that's Easter to me! Get home, have my dad pick me up to take me to parents' house for Easter dinner..
And then I discover how radically different I am from my parents in ways that now make me quite uncomfortable. My mom makes a broccoli casserole; I remind her that I've always hated broccoli ever since she first fixed it for me, she suddenly says she had never fixed me broccoli (yes she has, otherwise, how did I grow to hate it from childhood?). Then later on my parents mention how they loved St. Louis ribs; I mention how I love Burmese and Malaysian food. My parents cringed and tell me how Asian food is nasty because "they scrape the plates and serve the food up again". Just.. shakes.. head.. and my bio brother, who is 10 years older than me, is rapidly deteriorating, he now acts like a 14-year old. Good dinner though, but I am becoming more of an alien there, and more at home with freaks.. oh dear..
I went home, and while blogging this had a very nice chat with Fabian (poor guy's been trying to reach me all weekend) and left a text reply to a confused parad0cz..
He is Risen.. and so have I (and Bull, if you're reading this.. PPFFTT)