Mason Murer, Black and White affair

America has this fascinating little tradition where all of the Junior and Senior students of a high school get all dressed up, go out to dinner, and then attend a dance. This tradition is called prom. I have a hunch that prom has changed a LOT from the time it was instituted to the present day. For one thing, people probably danced much more, er... formally than they do now. :P Still and all, it's an interesting event.
I attended prom last night, with a group of several friends. Some had dates, some did not. Kerry, Keri and I formed the "Old Maids' Committee" as I like to call it- people who's dates got sick, canceled, or never realized that they were supposed to take these three amazingly beautiful and witty girls to prom. Oh well, tough luck for them I suppose. ;)
First Anna and I went over to the house of a good friend of mine. Her best friend is a sort of make-up, stylist person, and the two of them really enjoy making people beautiful and fashion designing. They had offered to do my makeup (thank goodness, because I would have made a royal mess, never having worn makeup before in my life... :P) and hair. So after a session of intense pampering, laughter, good music, and some rather painful plucking of the eyebrows,
we took a few pictures, said goodbye and thank you, and headed off for the place that our prom group had arranged to meet. Where the parents indulged in more pictures. A LOT more pictures, lol.
Then we all piled into the cars and went off to the little mall, home to a nice-ish restaurant that serves delicious Thai food. That bit was the most fun. We ordered our food, feeling all spiffy and proper; we talked, we laughed. The people who didn't know eachother got to know each other. :) It was a lot of fun. Then at 8:15, realizing we were fashionably late, we paid our bills, left the restaurant, and went outside to... take more pictures. :P Once again we all piled into cars and finally drove off to the actual dance. On the drive there, my two seatmates kept talking about America's Next Top Model- all seasons (ahem, cycles) included. They discussed the comparative merits of each contestant, made bets on who would win, who would be voted out this week, etc. I tried to join in as best I could, but couldn't help wondering why they cared. They were gossiping about these girls their own age, saying things they'd never dare to say to anyone's face. Maybe that's what draws people to these shows. They can say just exactly what they think without fear of reprisal. At any rate, we drove into the city until we arrived at this neighborhood that seemed to be made entirely up of warehouses. Turns out our location itself was actually a warehouse that had been turned into a museum.
It had some really fun art. The statues in particular were fascinating. There was one that was the giant head of a man with ram's antlers; another was the sparse outline of a horse made with wire as thick as a person's forearm; another (my favorite) was a giant foot. It had wings set at the ankle and covering the foot, pressed against it, were ridges as of cloth that was being pressed against the foot by wind... but they were almost ridges set into the foot's skin, too. It was amazing. I had to just stand and look at it for a bit. Then there were black-and-white photographs that had been made purposefully blurry. They were mostly of things like chairs and tables. My other favorite piece was a picture of the city with the highway in the foreground. It was done in sepia colors, but the really cool thing about it was that it had been painted onto a huge square of tiles. :) Ok, last piece, I promise! There were these two little ponies, maybe 3/4 of a meter high and a meter long. They were brown, covered in sack-cloth and with bridles and everything. Very cute.
So we got into the dance, and we registered. The rest of our time there consisted mostly of standing around talking or walking around greeting people and looking for others that we'd somehow lost. That and asking eachother if we were having fun yet. Which, despite the lack of actual things happening, I did. It was a very cool atmosphere. There were a lot of people dancing in a huge clump in the middle of the museum and the DJ was throwing glow-sticks. And of course, everyone was absolutely beautiful. There were some of the most amazing and funny and beautiful dresses there that I have ever seen all together in one spot outside of a movie. =) After standing around for about an hour, I came to my senses and realized that the funnest part of being there were going to be the memories of having been there. So what else could I do but go and get my trusty camera and get snapshots of as many glamorous, beautiful and bizarre scenes I could find! :D
About 15 minutes after I had discovered the Purpose of Prom, we had to leave. We drove home and for an after-party watched this bizarre movie called The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On top of the fact that we were all practically falling asleep (two people actually were asleep), it was a surreal movie about a man who's memories of his girlfriend are being erased while he sleeps. Can you say recipe for confusion? For a while there I had absolutely NO idea what was going on in that movie. Then we found a couple of centipedes, that was interesting. At any rate, after that I got a ride home, did my durndest to get all the makeup off my face (hah. Waterproof mascara is one stubborn bit of makeup!)
So yeah. It was a great experience. Congratulations if you got through all of that. :)
Hope you had a wonderful weekend!
over'n'out.