Second Life Shameless Gossip

The Blue Note has always been very special to Hans and me (the BF is a bit miffed I haven’t been mentioning him by name), so I was moved to RL tears when I received a notice it was closing January 1. Naydee McGettigan put her soul, time and money into making The Blue Note a friendly, romantic destination that was all about the music. The Blue Note has always meant class. I think I may even have fallen in love with Hans there; see my inworld profile for a little story about that.

So despite our busy holidays, Hans and I knew we had to get to the Blue Note before it closed. I had no idea where to find the perfect dress for the occasion of all the beautiful gowns from all the talented designers in SL. But as soon as I received the notice from Simone of her Christmas Glam gown, I knew I had found it. On Friday I ran over to Simone’s to pick up the gown, and I was so relieved she had not yet put it back into mothballs for the season.

Yesterday (Saturday), I was out doing some RL post-Christmas shopping with friends, arriving home past the time Hans (in Europe) is usually asleep. So I was surprised to find him still awake and ready to go to the Blue Note for the holiday bash.

I quickly changed into my dress, which I have to say I love more than any gown I have bought in quite some time! The silk! The detailed embroidery! The delicate red fur tickling my shoulders! (Of course it’s fake fur, ’cause I don’t wear real.) Fortunately, I had just had my hair done at Sirena in the new Juliette style. Hans was quite dashing in his tux, of course. (Well, that boy can be dashing in a pair of overalls.)

It took some doing to get into the sim, but we both eventually made it, and we were soon dancing in each others’ arms, warm and happy despite the ice beneath our feet. As you can see from the photos, the holiday party was held out on the ice rink. And yet our joy was bittersweet, because we thought it would be the last time we would be together at The Blue Note. Naydee was lying atop the piano, but she was not DJing. The DJ ended a song and made an announcement. What’s this? The DJ requesting support to help keep The Blue Note open? I IM’d Naydee who told me The Blue Note was not closing after all!

I dug through my notices and found one from the day before saying the community had rallied around to offer support. One benefactor in particular had paid tier for a year! Naydee’s RL is changing, so she will not have as much time to devote to The Blue Note. Of course we all know it’s also a financial challenge keeping a club afloat when it’s not being supported by exotic dancers and such. So now Naydee is looking within the community for those who might want to take some of the burden of labor from her shoulders - greeters, hostesses, security - anyone who can help with the myriad tasks of running a club. This is a labor of love, and I’m sure the community will step up.

I’m so relieved that Hans and I will still be able to go ice skating and dancing at our favorite club come January. I’m not at The Blue Note that much, but it would be such a loss to SL were it to close. I take its rebirth as a good omen for the New Year.

At the end of our evening, happy with the good news, we were also happy to return home to our favorite place in SL - the hammock on our little island.

I had been planning to write a long dissertation this week about the future impact of the 3D Web on business. This is in no small part due to the fact that Sapphire has been nagging me relentlessly to start doing my part as the business correspondent. Of course, Sapphire and Shameless both always fall asleep whenever I discuss business. They’re such light weights!

But it’s two days before Christmas, and business will have to wait. I am filled with the holiday spirit, and I’m off to buy party supplies and gifts! Happy Holidays everyone! And, hey, Sapphire, your mother wears army boots!

As a follow-up to our report on the real life plans of Thomas Divisadero and Ariana Petrova, our research dept. has found a photo from a few weeks ago when our own Sapphire Jetaime (left) and Ariana Petrova were caught dancing at a Second Life club where Ariana was DJing. Sapphire is wearing a flip-up flexi leather trench coat by dp Fashions.

A reliable source has informed Second Life Shameless Gossip that enigmatic DJ Ariana Petrova and SL rocker Thomas Divisadero are planning to meet for real. Apparently the popular Second Life jet set couple will ring in the New Year together - and not in Second Life.

Shhhhh! You didn’t hear it here!

The Limits to Supporting a Second Life Shoe Addiction

Dear Shameless,

I have made my virtual living working in Second Life nightclubs as a Second Life exotic dancer for over a year. I’ve worked in many clubs in SL, from Arsheba and Elements at Goddess of Love to smaller ones. As you can imagine, this is a hard row to hoe (so to speak). But I do my best, and smile and chat up the customers. I’m good at what I do, and I make the club owners much more money than most. I will confess to you that I’m a Second Life shoe addict, and I need to support my shameful habit.

But here is my problem. Every time I log into SL, I get a stage call to come in and work! I mean it is unrelenting! One small club owner used to even IM me directly, not through the group channel, demanding I come in to work, when I had only logged on to check my mail! If I do not go in, I am still expected to answer. Now that in itself is intrusive. What if every time you were cuddling up to your honey or at a movie, your work called you and you had to take the call and talk to them? I mean EVERY #%@$!#!&*! TIME!

I’m also worn down by the demands that I not only host events but that I provide the prizes! I should pay to work? They don’t seem to care about my seasonally heavy RL work demands and threaten to suspend me if I can’t host events AND work at least an hour a day taking off my virtual clothes!

Now I don’t know how YOU pay your RL mortgage, but I can’t sink that kind of time into SL to make a few linden and lose thousands in RL income.

What to do? Must I give up my SL lifestyle?

Seething Second Life Stripper

Dear Seething,

Hahahaha! Are you kidding me? Honey, you need to get out of there!

Although if a club hires you, they do expect to see you now and again, please remember that there are some Second Life club owners who have no lives and are living in trailer parks on welfare. (I didn’t say all, so don’t send me letters or start handing torches out to the villagers.) To them, their Second Life club is the “be all, end all” of their lives! If I was on call 24/7, I’d be charging one hell of a retainer, and it sure wouldn’t be paid in linden! So if you have real life work to do, get to it and leave SL for play.

You may want to consider leaving your virtual life of sin to design Second Life clothes or shapes or pogo sticks. At least you can do it when it’s convenient for you. Or open your own club, then you be the one who treats people like slaves!

As for your Second Life shoe habit, it’s not shameful! Be shameless like me! Flaunt your love of pixelated shoes!

That’s all the Second Life Shameless Gossip advice for today!

Best of luck to you!

Shameless Gossipgirl

As you know, yesterday I was searching around for Second Life locations relevant to the U.S. presidential elections. I found one I hadn’t seen before, and when I TP’d in, I found myself on the White House lawn, with virtual French President Nicolas Sarkozy dancing half-naked in front of me on a bed.

Apparently it was some kind of demonstration that had to do with the French president stepping out with his current girlfriend. I’m not particularly political, so I frankly missed the whole point. Real life gossip meets Second Life gossip?

I walked around to the front of the White House, cause you know in RL the current administration probably wouldn’t let me near the place, and posed on the steps.

Emboldened, I snuck inside and crept up to the Oval Office, where I began writing this blog post.

I decided to explore a bit more, walked out past the still gyrating French President and out of the White House grounds. I turned around to see this sign. If you can’t read it, it says, “U.S.A. Do not expect any intelligent design beyond this point.”

Well, this was a lot of negativity before I had even had coffee, so I turned to head over to neighboring France (this is SL, anything can be next to anything). The sign upon entering France was even worse!

I wandered around France for a bit. I tripped over a guillotine (I’m serious!), but fortunately did not lose any vital parts.

I then apparently made a wrong turn and ended up in China.

Finally I made my way back to the White House lawn to try to get some answers from the dancing French President as to what exactly was going on here! I noticed his actual avatar’s name (under the name “Sarkozy”) was Chrisophe Hugo, the same as the land owner’s.

Sapphire Jetaime: …Can tell me more about this sim?
Christophe Hugo: hi saphirre - let’s just keep the magic intact (do you prefer to see old Melies movies, or to hear about how penniless Melies ened his life selling toys in front of a train station?)
Christophe Hugo: i saw you take a couple of pictures, but I know from experience that Mr. Sarkozy’s eye expression is not easy to capture. So here are a couple of pictures for ya. Take care and happy Holidays
Sapphire Jetaime: I just want to know if you are sellling anything or if this is strictly for satirical purpose? Do you sell avis?
Christophe Hugo: more to come in 2008…
Christophe Hugo: watch the media
Sapphire Jetaime: oh, yes, I’ll do that with baited breath. *rolls eyes*
Sapphire Jetaime: have a good day

Needless to say, I didn’t use any of the close-up photos with which Mr. Hugo provided me. And your interpretation of this little bit of SL gossip is as good as mine.

As the U.S. primaries draw near, I revisited some of the Second Life presidential candidate headquarters that the BF and I checked out in April. The BF is European, but hey, what the heck, he’s a good sport. Despite his innate style sense, he agreed to model a political t-shirt, even though it was not quite up to his usual sartorial standards. Here he is at John Edwards HQ.

We then headed over to Second Life Obama headquarters, where we watched Barack Obama trade quips with Jay Leno on video.

Next we stopped over to buy some more candidate t-shirts and choose a presidential flag for the beach house. Here you see me wearing a Hillary t-shirt. You may not be able to read it, but trust me on this.

At the presidential flag/t-shirt location, they update who is leading in sales. I flew over this morning to photograph the latest tally. The figures you see here are from Dec. 14, as they do not update every day.

We could not find a headquarters for Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Rudi Giuliani in SL back in April, and I couldn’t today either. You should know, though, that when I searched Places to find the headquarters of more candidates than those pictured here, I discovered that someone in Port Victoria has listed the headquarters of many candidates (both Democratic and Republican) as being on that sim. But when you TP over, you are in an empty plot near some shops. An attempt to drive traffic? We are not amused.

Though we did not find an official Giuliani HQ in SL, in April we visited a send-up called Disco Rudi’s unofficial HQ. Though still listed in Search, I could not find it when I TP’d over today. But this is what we found in April… Hey, I just report the Second Life gossip, I don’t create it!

Now we all know that Leezu Baxter can be a bit pricey, so only the wealthiest among us have several items from her collection. Well today she announced that she is giving away seven free outfits under her Christmas tree! It’s actually more, because KimNo and KimNo 1 come in three different pattern choices each! I’m not showing every one of them, but here is a selection of what you will get! So run over to Leezu Baxter’s and pick up yours, ’cause they’re gone in January. Below, I’m modeling some of the fashions, and I’ve drafted Shameless to model others.

I popped into SL this morning to pick up the daily holiday freebies, and the Hey Girlfriend! group was buzzing about a hunt over at Nicky Ree’s… 25 little gifts and only one of each. Now you know I am pretty much a freebie girl myself, and the ONLY thing I have ever bought myself (after much angst) was a marked down Nicky Ree gown for $100L. Sapphire may throw her linden around on the designer wear, but I’m just a working girl. (And no, I don’t mean THAT kind of working girl!) So you can bet I zipped over there as fast as my comped designer shoes could carry me. To hell with my real life work! This was a chance for another Nicky Ree hanging in my inventory!

After searching the store I flew back to the beach where I heard people chatting including Nicky, but I couldn’t see her! Anita Cassini assured me she was there, and Nicky said,”Oh, I just take time to rez!” But they all seemed to be giggling a lot. Convinced I had taken too many drugs at all the SL nightclub openings, I was really beginning to doubt my sanity.

Nicky offered me a drink at the bar to calm me down (of course it could not have been to get me away from her proximity), so I gladly headed for the margaritas. As I was staring morosely past the salted rim, there it was! A little, bitty, red package! Well, you can imagine my shock! I’ve never been lucky. I’ve never won a thing in my life. But here you see me in my stunning prize, the Divine Sisi Svelte Gown in pink. A mouthful of a name, but a drop dead, gorgeously detailed gown. Anita and Alicia Cyr, observing on the log behind me, assured me it was just perfect for my coloring!

Invisible Nicky (honestly! she’s lying on one of the sun chairs behind me!) said she was heading for the store, so I grabbed my photographer and followed hard on the heels of the flying name tag. (Honey, I always travel with a photographer!) We ran up and down the aisles, and finally we cornered the harried designer who had hoped to escape the ever-persistent paparazzi. She graciously posed with me (well, I guess my burly photographer was blocking the aisle!)

If you hurry on over, there may still be a few gifts that are as yet unfound. And if not, Nicky is having two concerts today, one at 12:30 pm SLT - 1:00 SLT with musician harpo Jedburgh and one at 5:00 pm SLT with Takamura Keiko. Head for the concert stage behind her house on the other end of the island from her Tropical Orchid store. Her last concert was packed, so get there early!

1. It’s becoming really, really annoying that TPing just doesn’t work in Real Life.

2. ALL of your dreams are about Second Life.

3. Your friends call an intervention because you haven’t emerged from your house in three months, and they can see your computer light glowing through the window at all hours.

4. You cry for days and go on a drinking spree when your Second Life boyfriend/girlfriend dumps you.

5. You turn down a date with that hot new guy at the office, because it’s your turn to host an event in the Second Life nightclub where you work as (pick one) security officer/hostess/DJ/pole dancer.

6. You are spending more on Second Life fashion than you would ever consider spending on Real Life fashion.

7. When asked what his mommy does for a living, your six-year-old tells his teacher that his mommy/daddy’s job is to play Second Life.

8. You call in sick to work because you forgot to sleep - you were too busy (pick one) exploring/role playing/dancing/shopping at that great new sim that just opened.

9. You’re late to a client meeting to pitch a project worth thousands because you had to pick up all the Second Life holiday fashion freebies, which are worth a total of about $4.00.

10. You tell your significant other you really don’t have time to loll around in bed with him/her in the morning, because you really must check Second Life for IMs.