SL Concert and NPIRL

Hoo, what a day. I had my first SL concert today. My friend Cat invited me to see Kyle Beltran with friends, Marion, Therese, Suzanne and herself. I had been looking forward to meeting these ladies but had thus far never had the opportunity until now.

The show was lovely. Kyle is very funny and the experience of watching a performer in SL is much different than in RL in that, he is much more on the level of the  audience, as opposed to elevated and isolated. The strange part to me is that  the audience feedback part is very quiet. i did not hear a lot  of clapping and hooting between songs but that is just the mechanism of SL, I suppose.

Earlier in the day, I had been revisiting the NMC Arts Sim with my friend Peter. We decided to drive off the edge of the welcome area platform and land in the desert below. Unfortunately, I also had my second car accident in two days in the same place.

I won't be driving this desert again anytime soon, although it can be productive in meeting new people providing they are as forgiving as the two in either of these cases. 

As it happened, today my victim was Jasono Novi who is a brilliant photographer who had snapped me at Dreamland North a few weeks ago. He was in the middle of a photoshoot but appreciated the randomness of being blindsided by a Porsche convertible speeding out of nowhere.

This SIM is amazing in so many ways. I was there last night with my friends Chaos and Null and enjoyed it immensely. I have the Not Possible in Real Life blog to thank for this discovery. It seems everywhere I go nowadays, I'm meeting people from this new community.

Midnight City with New Friends

I met two wonderful new friends last night at Midnight City. It happened this way: while flying around the sushi bar, I smacked straight into Nullradius' small but fascinating avatar. He was very forgiving about it and we struck up a conversation. Chaos had been dining at the bar and presently joined us. 

Null is a builder and a scripter and has built many an impressive avatar, which he was kind enough to display. I showed off my Robosapien, a freebie I found somewhere and my new favorite, Peter Stindberg's Plywood Man.

Null then set up an outdoor table and we had wine, pizza, popcorn, cookies and ice cream. It all went straight to my hips but fortunately, I was able to work it off. Astoundingly, we were still able to manage a pogo around the city after this.

After wearing ourselves out sufficiently, we retired to the rooftop of the rooftop lounge. Null lit up the sky for us with another psychedelic avatar (pictured above. Yes, the glowing ball in the sky) of his while Chaos and I had a snowball fight and then went Dalek hunting with popguns and slapping.

It's not everyday one meets such lovely people and has a night of wining, dining and sport but when it happens, it makes keeping a clean inventory and all the novelty freebie collecting worthwhile.

Spontaneously Arty

SL sometimes gets to be like watching television in the way that it can be a pointless time sink. I have found myself logging in with no destination in mind and doing nothing but freebie shopping or taking pictures I will never look at again. I have anxiety about running into friends, knowing they will acknowledge my addiction problem. Fortunately for me, they share my addiction although no one can match my level of sloth. I have discovered my disinterest in working for Lindens in SL. I expect my time in SL to be a break from that, to be leisure. However,  I want to give something back, not just be a spectator... to be an active participant.

So, I was on a very late night shopping spree and falling asleep when my friend Peter logged in. He had asked me if I would like a hug goodnight and I of course said yes. We met at spaceport alpha in our Nicky Ree spacesuits, an impressive sight if I do say so. As we hugged goodnight, I instantly saw the artistic value of this image and started snapping away.

This is one of my favorite things about SL: the tendency towards spontaneous creativity (if one is a bit loose with the definition of creativity). reminds me of the time I saw hundreds of Santa Clauses at  Washington Square Park in San Francisco. They were having fun and it was a more than average day in a more than average city.

I have spent hours dancing by myself taking snapshots at places like Sintetika's Immersivity exhibit (seen below) or at the Collective, for instance. So many amazing AVs and photogenic SIMs in which to share our experiences. Experiencing and documenting this surreality is my current function in SL and no one does it quite like me.