Pay No Attention to That Avatar Behind the Green Curtain!

Places to shop are everywhere in SL, but it is a rare thing to stumble upon a shopping venue that is so well designed and full of fun activities to make you want to stay merely for the exploration and aesthetics value. The Magic of Oz SIM is just such a place and I highly encourage you take some time to experience this refreshing and visually stunning space! Kudos to creators and designers Jenne Dibou and Candy Cerveau for such a beautiful addition to SL!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Magic%20of%20Oz/130/152/0

Upon arrival at the central landing point you have the choice to follow the yellow brick road to various places full of fun adventure and wonderful products. Up the hill to the Emerald City.

How many SIMs allow you to play the wizard in the Emerald City?

Hanging out in the Emerald City where you will find mostly jewelry for sale.

Munchkin Land is a place that really shows off the textural quality of the Magic of Oz and includes many various shops.

Hanging around with the scarecrows just outside Munchkin Land.

Across the SIM to the witches castle full of various products and creepy activities. Flying monkeys anyone?

Ok, so I admit it, the flying monkeys were really creepy, but just walk by them slowly with no sudden movements and you should be fine, I think!

See you in Oz!

Sif

Spooky Nights & Halloween Frights!

If you can't tell already, Halloween is a HUGE deal in SL. Not only are there cute Halloween freebies everywhere, but the decorations, dance parties, costume contests and haunted houses can quickly fill up your calendar! Don't forget to visit your favorite stores for freebies and discounted costume accessories. RFyre has some gorgeous witch hats and gowns with orange, red and black colors. Sparkle Skye just released a beautiful harvest ball gown at a discounted L$500 price for members. By mixing and matching some of your finds, you can create a unique look. This ensemble is from the two deals mentioned above. By taking off the fairy wings that originally came with the ball gown, adding the witch hat and some jewelry from Alienbear Castle, I created a fancy witch ready to waltz.

Before October 31st passes into ages past, take a group of friends around to a few of the haunted themed Sims. This activity is fun alone, but even more fun with friends. The Sim featured in the following pictures is the Halloween Horror Village in Antiqua Paradise. The place is huge and includes various areas dedicated to horror movies and tales of fright. Many different pose balls can be found to make the adventure even more rewarding. The various death scripts are quite comical, including the guillotine, coffins and being eaten by a giant spider. Rumor has it that Freddie Kruger even lurks in a hidden chamber.

Another great place for a hauntingly good time is the House of Horror at Paradise City. Wandering through the house will allow you to encounter a haunted dance lounge and trap doors to various places hard to get out of....fun place to lose your friends! From there you should try to catch a ride on the Love Bugg Pumpkin on Lovers Lagoon which seats four people and sends you through a haunted house ala amusement park ride complete with scary clowns. This one is unique, but on Saturday night, the place was crowded and the extreme lag made the ride slow down until it crashed. If you go on a week night, I'm sure the ride would be better.

Speaking of tales of fright, don't forget libraries...seriously! Most of them are hosting scary storytelling sessions that feature classic literature, like this recent reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula held at the West of Ireland Library and Cultural Center. These sessions are held in voice by some very talented people, many with RL theatre backgrounds....so it's well worth the visit!

My advice.....there are so many events, you should invest in more than one costume...you'll need them!

Happy Haunting!

Sif

Searching for Fashion Fun and Other Events

Boredom should never be a word used in SL. There are way too many things going on to keep your SL social calendar crammed full. My first advice is to join your full (or near full) capacity of groups. Search for things you like to do, places you like to go, hobbies near and dear to you in the groups section to find other people and events that share your interests. Once you join these groups their events will be sent to you in the form of notices that offer details and teleports to the social event planned. For instance, I wanted to check out the Holiday action taking place on the 4th of July....so I entered "4th" in the events search tab and pulled up loads of events taking place, from treasure hunts to parades, to dance parties....the amount of fun going on was vast! I checked out a couple of places, but my favorite spot to party this fourth was an impromtu dance party held on the back porch of the White House at the Land of Lincoln Sim. No period dress was required for this event and the music and company were high quality. The attendees were even treated to a fireworks display at the end of the dance...great fun! (BTW - If you can find a nice Civil War era ballgown to wear, there is a historic Ball event planned for Land of Lincoln on Friday night July 11th!)

For the regular event seeker, and to get a glimpse at the newest fashions making their debut in SL, I recommend searching for the word "fashion" in the events tab to locate fashion shows going on. Your best results will be on the weekends of course, but some of the fashion shows involve charity fundraisers with auctions and other great coordinating activities. And don't forget the "notify" function at the bottom of the event description to have reminders sent to you before the event begins!
Just last weekend I searched for "fashion" and came across a fashion show that I missed, but when I teleported the event location anyway, there were still models hanging around and I was able to learn about a neat new period gown designer...definitely worth the teleport! My second fashion show listing described a show that was in progress on the S.S. Galaxy cruise ship! What an experience! The ship is huge with several decks of mall shops and a very nice fashion runway on the upper level. You can even rent rooms and take a cruise - honeymoon suites available :-)

The people and models can make you lag a bit, but take a seat and relax...the models make several trips up and down the runway to allow for the rezzing drag.
What a great way to see the new designs on actual avatars! And as they stand around after their run, you can zoom your camera in to get close-up views of the clothing quality. Definitely a fun and informative way to spend some weekend time in SL!
Enjoy!

Sifriya

A Summer's Evening with the Bard

One of the greatest additions to the SL event scene has to be the full size re-creation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Having the opportunity to attend a live action play is truly memorable and should not be missed. Many of the plays performed by the SL Shakespeare Company are pay for attendance, but for the next month they are performing a free staged reading performance of the Twelfth Night. Don't be fooled by the "voice" aspect of this performance as there is much to see and experience just through stopping by.

There is more than one Globe Theatre in SL and I hope to profile the other one on Renaissance Island at a later date, but this segment will profile the sights of the largest Globe Theatre in SL on the sLiterary sim. I have had the opportunity to attend events on Renaissance Island which require visitors to dress in period style, so for the opening night of the Twelfth Night this past Friday, I arrived in a complete Elizabethan costume, ready to enjoy the show. Ironically, besides the actors in the play, I was the only one in costume since sLiterary is not a period dress sim. I arrived a half hour early simply because I'm still not great about SL time as I am on the East Coast in RL. By arriving early I had the advantage of looking around and hearing the actors practice their lines.

WARNING ABOUT THE SL GLOBE THEATRE: when the Globe opened a while back, I attempted to attend the performance in a flexi costume on an older computer: MISTAKE. The attendance for these performances is usually very high and lag becomes almost catastrophic. For the first performance several weeks ago, people were tp-ing in only to be trapped in walls with cries of "How do I get out of here?" It was a horrible experience and after a few computer crashes I managed to escape back home. I was very disappointed, but I will warn you that they do not impose prim limits on attendees so people show up in all kinds of formal or casual wear regardless of drag on the sim. This is the reason they have had to move to a pay for attendance format with their live action plays. So my advice is (and can apply to many group events) get there early and get your seat incase the program freezes, you might still get to listen to the voice and at least be in a rezed position to tp out if things get hairy. I would also make sure you only attend if your processor is up to snuff and limit the amount of prims you wear in. One other recent discovery, if you search "globe" in places, there are three options for this theatre, each with different tp arrival points to ease the tp traffic...very handy!

This performance was well attended, but not overly so and the experience was a very enjoyable one. Here are some of the highlights to entice you to attend one of the next weekend showings through July 20th.
The complex surrounding the Globe Theatre is quite lovely and includes a literary center and gift shop. For the opening night there was a nice table complete with refreshments. Plays appear to go on each month under the pay admission system, and the ticket booth gives upcoming show times and prices. Each showing usually runs L$350 per person which is a fairly reasonable price for the veteran, but a bit cost prohibitive for the newbie. It would be nice to see them offer a discounted or free seat to those under 30 days old. A nice opportunity to promote the SL art scene.

View from the air...note the full size ship behind the theatre....just waiting to be explored!

From the inside, you can see the spacious seating and stage area. Very unique space and fairly easy to move around in. Sometimes, your avatar may slip through the floor, but you don't get stuck and end up in the location you originally intended.
It may appear by the coloring of the stage actors, that my pc had not finished rezing by the time I snapped the photo, but au contraire, this was a unique effect intended for this production. Each stage avatar was specifically designed in black and white tones to visually represent the lack of motion. The speaking avatars did get up when it was their turn to deliver a line, but in general, the physical action was minimal, hoping to bring the speaking parts into prominence.


Overall, I really found this new presentation to be quite intriguing! The minimalist color, devoid of any flesh tones gave everything a very ancient, ethereal quality. You truly felt as though you were listening to the ghostly voices of actors past. It was announced at the beginning of the production that if you download the newest release viewer prior to attending, you could take advantage of a new feature that allows you to see lips moving in conjunction with the lines spoken. I was not aware of this beforehand and did not have time to download the newest release which would obviously put this production in an even greater realm of performance virtue!
On a comical side note, my costume faux pas did permit me to claim the most coveted seat in the house: the Queen's throne! It is open for anyone to sit there, on the second level, centrally located across from the players, although, in this instance, I think my appearance was a much younger Bess than would have attended the play 400+ years ago. And once again, don't worry about what to wear, just go as yourself, no special costume required as you can see from the downstairs group. (Note the odd script that went along with a few of the seats....I'm not sure what the arms floating in the air was supposed to signify, but from personal experience, the animation also made your eyes shift into a slightly possessed look....was it designed to be a rapture of some sort? Not sure, but be on the look-out for that weird animation, might increase your lag a bit.)

Well that's all for this report on the Twelfth Night production....get out there this summer and try to absorb a bit of culture, SL style!


And..

"May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" Sorry, got a bit carried away....until next time...Queen Bess a.k.a. Sifriya.