It was a busy weekend here. Friday night was the monthly Club Fantasy party and I had a nice time hanging out with some of the regulars and also met a few new people. Then Saturday my friend Kim and I went to the most recent Syren! event held at a nice club in the San Fernando Valley called C. Frenz. I’ve never been there before, though it’s right across the street from Mistress Cyan’s dungeon, called Sanctuary, where I’ve been many times.

C. Frenz turned out to be a really nice club with quite a bit of space. During the week it’s a gay bar but Syren! took over for their event and there was a very mixed crowd there, with quite a few trans girls. I saw a lot of familiar faces and met a few new people and had a really nice time.

There was a photographer named Ryan Beyer also, who’s very talented and does some fabulous work. He was running around with this big scoop on the front of his camera and I figured it had to be a ring flash, so I went over and talked to him. He set up a photo area in the back and showed me how the flash works. By being circular, with the lens poking out through the middle of it, it takes pictures with absolutely no shadows, for a very unique look, sort of flat but with this weird “heightened” quality to the image. Once you recognize what it does, you’ll see ring flash pictures everywhere, as it’s a very popular look in fashion photography. Here’s a sample shot that he took. He also had some side lighting going on to give those highlights on either side of the subject. Well, I love to geek out on this sort of thing and had a nice time chatting with him. All in all, a fun weekend.

This is a totally non-kinky post today. Lately I’ve checked out a few of the episodes of Hoarders on A&E, about people who compulsively fill their houses with junk and never throw anything away. I have a good friend who’s had this problem for years and it only seems to get worse as the years pass. If you’ve ever dealt with a family member or friend with this condition you know how frustrating and bewildering it can be. You want to just talk reason with them. It seems like such an obvious problem and so easy to fix if they’d just throw things out. But they won’t and no amount of reasoning will budge them. You can help them clean out the house and in two months it’s back to where it was. The house is just a symptom of a deeper underlying mental disorder, a form of obsessive compulsive disorder that plugs into issues such as loss and abandonment, and which can be incredibly hard to treat. Anyway, it’s a very good series and they have some preview clips and episodes online at the link above.

I just got back from Atlanta for a few days, visiting my parents, and flew back to L.A. on Delta airlines. They have this really fabulous red dress that some of their stewardesses wear. By the way, I just looked up how to spell “stewardesses” and learned that it’s the longest word that you can type with only the left hand (I guess there’s a bad joke somewhere in there about that right hand.) ;-)

Anyway, the stewardessses on this flight didn’t look exactly like these fashion models, but they were still pretty easy on the eyes. I wish you could buy this dress online. It would be wonderful for a photo shoot!