All dressed up but notwhere to go
Ran across this - it looks right up my alley, AND it's tonight...from the sound of it, they do steampower-esque mechanical feats, stunts, and illusion. And apparently have some bellydancers along for the ride...
However...the performance is at someplace called Bar Sinister ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - bar [or bend, or baton] sinister is a heraldic term that refers, if I remember my heraldry, to a diagonal bar on a crest, from upper left [sinister] to lower right, and usually signifies bastardry...unless they're riffing on Simon Bar Sinister, the heavy from Underdog...) in Hollywood and as stated, "dress code enforced". They offer a bonus to people attending in steampunk gear, but they don't really specify what the normal dress code is. Elsewhere on the site, on a BDSM night, there is reference to "Gothic-Gaultier-Chic, Alternative/Upscale Black, Fab~Fetish or Futuristic Attire " (sorry, but Gothic Gautier suggests Dick Gautier in a bad 70's vampire movie. Yes, I know who Gautier is, but still... brain cain't hep going a'whar it's gonna go). I seriously doubt I have any clothes that fit into any of those categories - anything even remotely fetish went the way of our D/s days, and I think the only thing I have left that might even possibly work is my dear black leather overcoat...I am learning to sew in hopes of making myself some waistcoats and a serviceable frock coat, but that's well in the future. So alas, this performance will go on without me.
As much as I enjoy the notion of steampunk, I do find many people's interpretations confusing. I enjoyed "the Difference Engine" and the original "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" because both writers knew a thing or thousand about the Victorian world. In the comic of "League", Moore makes Mina Murray essentially the chaperone for this team of wild boys - she's not a sexy vamp, but a slightly tarnished gentlewoman, whose brief experience with the unnatural had served to steel her for the job, even while it had nudged her out of proper society. All the same, she was a proper Victorian lady. That propriety served to cow the menfolk much more effectively than physical force - even the unruly Hyde had to back down when faced with such deeply ingrained rules of behavior, and eventually develops a sullen infatuation for her (in the second volume, he rapes and murders the Invisible Man for forcing himself on her). A brilliant read, if you have any background in actual Victorian fantastic literature (I was particularly keen on the reconciling of the anthropomorphic animal stories - like "the Wind in the Willows", the tales of Beatrix Potter, "the Jungle Book" and the like - with "the Island of Doctor Moreau")
There's this schizophrenic view people seem to take: on the one hand the white as milk puritanical propriety and repression, versus the romantic frilly Whitechapel floozy-of-adventure. Moore's Mina balances it perfectly - in public, she maintains, without any artifice, the proper lady, but behind closed doors, equally without any seeming discrepency, can give herself bodily over to her idolization of the decayed hero, Alan Quartermain. And that's the secret to convincing Victorian characterization: you can be as modern in your views and tastes as you want to (indeed the Victorians gave us most of the canon for modern BDSM) as long as you maintain public propriety. For instance - the steampunk cybernetic prostheses that are so popular in steampunk costuming. A Victorian would lovingly craft every gear and piston...and equally astudiously HIDE them from public view as much as possible. A gentleman could keep any number of mistresses, and even in such a way as it was publicly a given, just so long as a level discretion allowed everyone to deny it was happening. Someone sigg'd me on a forum in reference to Clinton lying about Monica - I said "You're SUPPOSED to lie about your mistress - it's what a gentleman does" (and as personal failings of a persident go, I think indulging in a little consensual slap and tickle is almost admirable compared to the more twisted cryptic sublimation failings of his predecessor and successor... "I may not be gettin any in the supply closet, but I can sure as hell blow the crap out of some other country!").
This is not to say there weren't colorful characters who made themselves notorious by standing out, but they were the exceptions rather than the rule (and there were people who lead completely amazing lives without needing to violate the rules). Why must every frontierswoman have to be able to ride and shoot and spit and wear britches? Why must every gentleman adventurer have to be studded with awkward brass-fitted apparatus? And why so many "air pirates" (met one some time ago proudly declaring himself as such, but had never heard of Robur!!)? It's fine to have created your own 'version" of steampunk (As stated before Gibson's "Difference Engine" and the addictive comic "Girl Genius" by Phil and Kaja Foglio) but after a point, it becomes difficult to find common ground to discuss the matter when people are building off someone else's vision who built off someone else's vision, etc. It's like trying to discuss vampires when your companion has only ever read an Anne Rice knockoff. I've had arguments where they were defending REAL vampires as being this and this and this, none of which are a part of the historical folklore of vampires but rather drawn from some fantasy game or novel. Mind you, I make no claims at being an authority on ..well, pretty much anything, but I have done at least the basic reading. And I suppose that's my basic gripe: I'm an illiterate bumpkin, so what's their excuse?
However...the performance is at someplace called Bar Sinister ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - bar [or bend, or baton] sinister is a heraldic term that refers, if I remember my heraldry, to a diagonal bar on a crest, from upper left [sinister] to lower right, and usually signifies bastardry...unless they're riffing on Simon Bar Sinister, the heavy from Underdog...) in Hollywood and as stated, "dress code enforced". They offer a bonus to people attending in steampunk gear, but they don't really specify what the normal dress code is. Elsewhere on the site, on a BDSM night, there is reference to "Gothic-Gaultier-Chic, Alternative/Upscale Black, Fab~Fetish or Futuristic Attire " (sorry, but Gothic Gautier suggests Dick Gautier in a bad 70's vampire movie. Yes, I know who Gautier is, but still... brain cain't hep going a'whar it's gonna go). I seriously doubt I have any clothes that fit into any of those categories - anything even remotely fetish went the way of our D/s days, and I think the only thing I have left that might even possibly work is my dear black leather overcoat...I am learning to sew in hopes of making myself some waistcoats and a serviceable frock coat, but that's well in the future. So alas, this performance will go on without me.
As much as I enjoy the notion of steampunk, I do find many people's interpretations confusing. I enjoyed "the Difference Engine" and the original "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" because both writers knew a thing or thousand about the Victorian world. In the comic of "League", Moore makes Mina Murray essentially the chaperone for this team of wild boys - she's not a sexy vamp, but a slightly tarnished gentlewoman, whose brief experience with the unnatural had served to steel her for the job, even while it had nudged her out of proper society. All the same, she was a proper Victorian lady. That propriety served to cow the menfolk much more effectively than physical force - even the unruly Hyde had to back down when faced with such deeply ingrained rules of behavior, and eventually develops a sullen infatuation for her (in the second volume, he rapes and murders the Invisible Man for forcing himself on her). A brilliant read, if you have any background in actual Victorian fantastic literature (I was particularly keen on the reconciling of the anthropomorphic animal stories - like "the Wind in the Willows", the tales of Beatrix Potter, "the Jungle Book" and the like - with "the Island of Doctor Moreau")
There's this schizophrenic view people seem to take: on the one hand the white as milk puritanical propriety and repression, versus the romantic frilly Whitechapel floozy-of-adventure. Moore's Mina balances it perfectly - in public, she maintains, without any artifice, the proper lady, but behind closed doors, equally without any seeming discrepency, can give herself bodily over to her idolization of the decayed hero, Alan Quartermain. And that's the secret to convincing Victorian characterization: you can be as modern in your views and tastes as you want to (indeed the Victorians gave us most of the canon for modern BDSM) as long as you maintain public propriety. For instance - the steampunk cybernetic prostheses that are so popular in steampunk costuming. A Victorian would lovingly craft every gear and piston...and equally astudiously HIDE them from public view as much as possible. A gentleman could keep any number of mistresses, and even in such a way as it was publicly a given, just so long as a level discretion allowed everyone to deny it was happening. Someone sigg'd me on a forum in reference to Clinton lying about Monica - I said "You're SUPPOSED to lie about your mistress - it's what a gentleman does" (and as personal failings of a persident go, I think indulging in a little consensual slap and tickle is almost admirable compared to the more twisted cryptic sublimation failings of his predecessor and successor... "I may not be gettin any in the supply closet, but I can sure as hell blow the crap out of some other country!").
This is not to say there weren't colorful characters who made themselves notorious by standing out, but they were the exceptions rather than the rule (and there were people who lead completely amazing lives without needing to violate the rules). Why must every frontierswoman have to be able to ride and shoot and spit and wear britches? Why must every gentleman adventurer have to be studded with awkward brass-fitted apparatus? And why so many "air pirates" (met one some time ago proudly declaring himself as such, but had never heard of Robur!!)? It's fine to have created your own 'version" of steampunk (As stated before Gibson's "Difference Engine" and the addictive comic "Girl Genius" by Phil and Kaja Foglio) but after a point, it becomes difficult to find common ground to discuss the matter when people are building off someone else's vision who built off someone else's vision, etc. It's like trying to discuss vampires when your companion has only ever read an Anne Rice knockoff. I've had arguments where they were defending REAL vampires as being this and this and this, none of which are a part of the historical folklore of vampires but rather drawn from some fantasy game or novel. Mind you, I make no claims at being an authority on ..well, pretty much anything, but I have done at least the basic reading. And I suppose that's my basic gripe: I'm an illiterate bumpkin, so what's their excuse?