128: JJ Goodman's show opens at Holtwaye Gallery

This afternoon was the opening of a show of excellent portraiture by well-known photographer JJ Goodman -- everyone was there. And when I say everyone ... well, my private rule of thumb is, if there are enough people on the sim to crash my system, it's a good party. If I crash more than once, it's a great party. Judging by that, this was the party of the decade: I crashed eight times. I think part of that was that my system was overloaded by the fantastic voice of Samm Qendra, who gave an awesome and very personal performance. But part of it might have been just an amazing number of great-looking avs. It's my new standard for

The amazing vocal talent of Samm Qendra opened the show

most crashes in a single hour.
   Eight crashes means I have to apologize, because I didn't even come near to documenting everyone who was there. I couldn't manage to get Samm in performance mode, sorry to say, but I did catch a snap after she finished. There are a couple of personal friends for whom I'm going to have to do the SL equivalent of buying

JJ Goodman, the artist

them an apologetic drink, because I just couldn't manage to snap them looking so good ...
   I know the exhibit will be up for some time and you should definitely see it. JJ specializes in portraiture and he's taken a few amazing pictures of me over time at various events; he knows how to capture personality in a casual way and make the av seem very immediate. I

WayneNZ, half of the team that runs Holtwaye Gallery

loved looking at it and you should see it. You can find Holtwaye Gallery here; thanks, as always, to my friends WayneNZ and Holter Rez for hosting the great opening party, and Holter for his curation skills.

Holter Rez, who curated the show

Sebas [yonsan]

Xavier Beaumont-Zettau

Astanias Jayaram

SLebrity DJ Hottie B. Lockjaw

Ohiomike Lockjaw

Two great DJs, Cupric Router (foreground and on the wall)
and Hottie Lockjaw, twerking

Duncan Armundsen

Bart Boon

Beckham Brunswick (L), Divos Titanium (R)

Rusty Redfield

Brick Fallen

(L to R) PuPi [Pupila Abeyante], Talu [Taluna.ishtari],
Stephano [stephano76]

Mintxu Denimore

Stephano [stephano76]

Alloson Sands (L), WayneNZ (R)

Well-known SL blogger Ziki Questi

Julia Umarov

Nikolai Warden

Tiffani Celestialis

Garrett Smith

Fordis Flores

PuPi [Pupila Abeyante]

Rusty Bloom-Bayard (L) dancing with
Cathy Ghost-Gale (R)

JP Damien

Talu [taluna.ishtari] in his own design; the Guernica jacket
isn't on the market yet

Palix Beaumont-Zettau

079: The Re-opening party for Zeus Gay Club

Over the years I'm sure I've dropped into Zeus Gay Club in Gay City Cologne a bunch of times. As I understand it, the sim's directors have been working hard on a complete reboot and today was the party at which the re-opening was celebrated.
     If sheer numbers are any indication, this is going to be a very successful club starting as of today. The place was

packed to the rafters the whole time I was there, and I actually crashed a couple of times just because. I wanted to hear the set by my friend DJ Cupric Router and apparently a whole lot of other people did too. This was quite the celebration: from 11 AM SLT to 6 PM SLT, with five DJs in seven hours. And I bet the party is still going LOL.

     Very much present was the Villota family who seem to be the movers and shakers of all the recent work. Michelangelo Villota had the Owner tag, Fannie Villota was the host, and Mark Villota worked on the dance pole. I'm betting there was a lot of organization that it took to bring off a seven-hour party -- it was all seamless, folks, so well done there.

     They kept moving the dancing from place to place around the sim, showing off their new work. I didn't quite catch the name of the area in which we were dancing during my time there -- Amphitheatre? -- but it seems to be just one of the many areas of the sim that have been revamped, as near as my memory tells me.

     I'm thinking, though, that this place is going to be popular for more than its nice visual design; I saw groups of people there speaking various language groups and I'd only seen about a third of the people ever before. Any place that can attract three or four separate groups from different time zones is going to be a very busy place for quite a while, I imagine.  I did see quite a few friends

there: newlyweds Larry Querrien-Mactavish and Ronan Mactavish-Querrien, Stallion Pizarro, well-known DJ Hottie Lockjaw, photographer (and a whole lot better photographer than me!) JJ Goodman, Garrett Smith, the Swedish contingent headed by Bock McMillan, with Guyke Lundquist, Tomais Ashdene ... and Pook Cypher, Marly Moon, Kahvy Sands and twice as

many more people speaking three or four languages whose names I didn't manage to capture. Yeah, it was THAT crowded. For that cute Italian guy with no English, I sure hope you were wondering who made my jacket because that's what I gathered you were asking. My Italian is terrible.  You're cute though <wink>.
     I understand the Zeus people are going back into full swing almost

immediately so you can check out the new build for yourself. I have a SLURL here that will get you to the place where I was dancing -- you might want to look for a proper landing point, I think they have one. So thanks to the Villota group for bringing back this club and sim and I think I'll be spending more time with you in the future.