Be A Work of Art and Buy a Work of Art: Relay Wizards Plan an Event

By DrFran Babcock

The slogan of the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life is: Celebrate, Fight Back, Remember. Each year the residents of Second Life™ expend time, love and energy to do just those things, in an effort to conquer the many diseases that make up cancer.

 The Relay Wizards for Spunky are together again as a team for the seventh time. Their core membership is solid under the leadership of Team Captain Shawna Montgomery, and co-captains Anhayla Lycia, HALEY Salomon and SpUnKy Young (our survivor), but they are always ready to welcome new members as they did for me and Catboy Qunhua last year, and for Blue Myanamotu, Taralyn Gravois, and Explorer Dastardly this year. The team has been meeting regularly to plan their camp and the events that they hold every year, such as the Dunk the Emperor, in which Tiny Empires creator, Ultralite Soliel, valiantly goes into the drink with good spirits, and lots of laughs.

At one of our planning meetings Explorer suggested that we do an art auction, and we thought that would be a solid idea, as long as Explorer was willing to organize it, and organize it she did.

It is my fervent belief that when something is meant to happen, it happens. That is exactly how the pieces of the auction came together. Taralyn Gravois, probably one of the largest art collectors in the metaverse, offered up her Art Castle as a venue for the event. Over the last few months Explorer has assertively approached SL artists, asking for art donations, canvassed all the members of the Relay Wizards to see if they knew any artists, and continued to meet with us to give us updates. She even held mini-meetings with many of us while we enjoyed our weekly dose of comedy at Lauren’s Place on Tuesday nights.

Little by little the pieces fell together, the event got bigger and bigger, and we all got really excited, because of plans for the opening day. The opening will be a huge costume ball, and you are being asked to come as your favorite work of art, or favorite artist. Veteran Relay Wizards for SpUnKy team member Thickbrick Sleaford has constructed a super-secret dance floor and party area for the opening event.

I have my costume all ready for the big day, and I can hardly wait to see what other people will do. All of this is very, very secret…you just have to come and see. We will have works of art for auction from some of the coolest names in the SL art world including:  Alcibides Zemenis, Bobbi LaSalle (bobbilaval), Bryn Oh, Crap Mariner, Explorer Dastardly, Feathers Boa, Graye Ashbourne, my friend and creative idol: Kake Broek, Lisa Figeuroa, Littleone Arles, Sweet Susanowa, and Van Caerndow (Phil Strang).

Come to the opening for fun, dancing, costumes, famous names in art. Come to gape in wonder at the amazing build for the dance floor. Come to look around Taralyn’s Art Castle to see one of the most varied and inclusive collections of avatar art in the virtual world. Most of all come to support the Relay for Life in combatting the scourge of cancer.

Here are the details for the Relay Wizards for SpUnKy Art Auction:

                                                                        Date- June 21, 2014

                                                                        Time- @ 1:00 – 3:00 PM SLT

                                                                        Place- The Art Castle

                                                                        Theme- Dress as Art or as an Artist

                                                                        Slurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cor%20unum/199/181/3764

Bidding will run for a week and then close on June 28, 2014

(names for pic of team meeting LtoR): Thickbrick Sleaford, Catboy Qunhua, DrFran Babcock, Explorer Dastardly, Anhayla Lycoia, and HALEY Sal 

DrFran Babcock

Bard on the Beach

By DrFran Babcock

On Sunday August 25, 2013 the Annual Bard on the Beach was held on the Nowhereville sim. Over 40 audience members watched in delight as several avatars read pieces, comic and tragic, from the works of William Shakespeare.

Many of the performers were from the Avatar Repertory Theater (ART) group who have provided years of Shakespeare productions in Second Life™. The event itself was part of Storyfests SL and Stories Unlimited. The offerings were diverse, and even included a scene from The Merchant of Venice performed in Spanish.

Crap Mariner, who owns the Nowhereville sim, provided a Stratford-on-Avon based stage, and the seating was arranged by Mr. Mariner and Cale (Caledonia Skytower). The audience had been told to silence all noisy gestures, to sit, and to remove HUDS, etc. The amazing thing was how well-behaved and respectful the crowd was. I have been to hundreds of SL events, and there is always someone who disturbs the calm, but not at Bard on the Beach.

A lot of the credit for this goes to the organizer and Emcee Cale, for setting the tone, appearing in a lovely gown, and role modeling the reverence towards the players. Her leadership had us all sitting on the edge of our pillows, listening and learning.

Freda Frostbite provided a Sonnet Break twice, with selections of some of the more well known poems, and some more obscure. Of course, she recited Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” in honor of it being August.

Crap was the finale, with a serious and superb reading of Prospero’s soliloquy from The Tempest. He then suggested a Sonnet Challenge in which the audience called out numbers of sonnets to perform. Members of the company did their readings of the requested sonnets. The “Sonnet Smackdown” was excellent fun. Cale suggested that it be a weekly event, and be entitled: The Challenge of the Hams. The crowd was unable to pick a winner, because they all were so good, but finally settled on the honey-voiced Corwyn Allen after a sudden-death reading of Sonnet 151 against the other finalist, Crap Mariner.

Speaking of Crap: He read his Prospero monologue like the pro he is, but couldn’t help bringing the Angel of Death and Elvis on stage while he performed in the Sonnet Challenge.

Good, wholesome culture, and great fun.

Here is what was on the menu I hope you can make it next year:

Scenes from The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act II, Scene 1) and King John (Act II, Scene 1):  with Ada Radius and Avajean Westland

 Sonnet Break!:  with Freda Frostbite

 "The Duke of Bridgewater presents his interpretation of Hamlet's Soliloquy" from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn:  with BigRed Coyote

 A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act II, Scene 1):  with Ada Radius and Avajean Westland

 The Merchant of Venice (Act I, Scene 2):  with Ada Radius and Avajean Westland

 The Merchant of Venice (Act I, Scene 3): with Yunus Nyn (In Spanish, English translation provided)

 Sonnet Break!:  with Freda Frostbite

 Titus Andronicus (Act III, Scene 1): with Kayden Oconnell

 Hamlet (Act III, Scene 3): with Caledonia Skytower and Em Jannings
 As You Like It (Act 3, Scene 2): with Bhelanna Blaze and Roderic Unplugged

MacBeth (Act I, Scene 7): with Gyro Muggins

 Scenes from Much Ado About Nothing "How Two Wayward Wits Fall in Love":  with Caledonia Skytower and Kayden Oconnell

 Selection from The Tempest Prospero’s sililoquy: with Crap Mariner

 StoryFest: http://storyfest2011.blogspot.com/

Children of War: http://www.warchild.ca The charity for the event.

DrFran Babcock

Book Island “Literary Explosion”

On September 25th at 12 Noon SL time, Book Island departed somewhat from their usual schedule. Instead of their usual Happy Hour, they held something different.


Hundreds of meters above Book Island, let us rejoice in the magic of the spoken word. Twelve SL writers, representing events and sims across the world, will unite in a literary explosion. Don't miss this event full of Stories, Sparkle, Song and Dance :-)


The proided teleport led to a door to the interior of a hot air balloon’s cabin, with everyone on the top floor of the three floor place. A few sat outside, but most sat on the inside. Among them were the dozen writers mentioned in the bulitem, including the noted Crap Mariner, and Sarah Glenn, whom Netera Landar had interviewed for Second Life Newser.

The writers read over voice a variety of poems and story segments. By touching a square on the ceiling, one would get notecards of the next writers’ work to better keep up. Klannex Northmead’s work included a poem inspired by the creature from “Alien,” and a story of “prim torture” named, “Interesting Build.”


she danced as she rezzed and she rezzed as she danced she added fader scripts textures rotations spin and in an instant I could see her beautiful beating heart I could see her beautiful art I could see her soul I could hear her smile I asked her for a word and she whispered se-ren-dip-it-y and images of long pink fingernails ran through my mind


ToryLynn Writer, a neko wearing a “Mad Hatter” outfit, did a short story of a boy meeting a girl in addition to a poem inspired by Lewis Carol’s “Jabberwocky.” After her, it was Crap Mariner’s turn, whom jumped onto the trapeeze in the room, "Hey, if there's a gun in a Hitchcock film, it's going to go off !” Crap’s writings were kept at 100 words or less. Among them, “Charity Begins Somewhere Else,” and an amusing peice “Share Eclair” :

Judith and Claire
A curious pair
When told to share
A single eclair
One rose from her chair
The other did stare "
What would be most fair
To share this eclair?"
Said Judith to Claire.
"Cut the thing there?"
"No, Judith," said Claire. "
If you'd compare
The halves cut from there,
One's sizeable fare
While this one is spare."
She pointed with flair.
"Let's cut the thing there!"
"We can't cut it there!
That cut is not square."
Harsh words filled the air.
There was pulling of hair.
Such an awful loud scare.
They never did share.
That single eclair.


After he was done, Crap told the audience, "stick around, it's a smorgasbord of literature." And more writers followed. Last, but certainly not least was Sarah Glenn, who did a story about a vampire out to kill another vampire. But it turned out not to be so easy.

At 2PM, Brendan Shoreland sung for the audience with a few of the songs from poems written by Seren Bechir and Morgue McMillan, the latter whom attended the event. He was followed at 3PM by DJ Izzy Upsilon.

Bixyl Shuftan

The LEA Avatar Games

Recently, I decided to take a look at an event I heard about through some group chatter, as well as the Destination Guide: The LEA Avatar Games, also known as the “Art Games.”

Join the fun as the LEA Avatar Games (a.k.a. Art Games), held each Monday at 4:00 p.m. (Pacific). Watch as participants run through the obstacle course and the audience tries to to slow them down! Check out the sign-up sheet on Thursdays for contestants and audience participants. More info at: http://bit.ly/l30NvC.

LEA standing for “Linden Endowment for the Arts, I was expecting something conventional. Getting there, however, it was soon obvious the event was anything but conventional.Right away, I heard a familiar voice. It was Crap Mariner. He was moderating the games, along with Honour McMillian, describing what was going on from his slightly twisted point of view. Indeed the whole place could be called a bit twisted. The obstacle course that made up the maze looked like a surreal piece of art. There was something familiar about it. Then I recognized how the audience seating looked like that from a broken-down building, plus the metallic sculptures in a couple places, and then the “Daughter of Gears” and the “Rabbicorn.” Bryn Oh had made the obstacle course, whom stood on a platform over it as the “Platform Bastard.” No wonder these were sometimes called the “Art Games.”

Contestants were in a small skybox until called to materialize at the start of the course, which was littered with giant bones and the first half having a checkered surface. Then when the timer started, they would have to run a gauntlet of fire from the audience from guns provided by a dispenser, known as “The Grand Walloper.” While doing so, they had to get over a ditch of water, “The Cesspool. Then they had to get past a couple sets of whirling posts on sticks, “The Pefrackembacker.” And that’s just the first quarter of the course.

Turning the corner to get up the hill, they were now out of effective range of the whalloper guns, but had to dodge an avalanche of huge marbles that rolled down. Getting past those, the checkered surface turned rocky, and was half over. Then came another obstacle - a large wall of which the only way over was to wait for a set of blocks to arrange themselves into a staircase. Around the next bend was the final quarter of the course, which had cages of barcodes dropping onto the runners. Hopping over a couple bones, the last thing to do was to run under the lamp, and the course was over. The runners got two chances to run the course by themselves, then at the end all of them would race at once, free to use walloper guns on one another.

The course was a bit difficult to run, most of the contestants needing about four minutes to do so. Two runners just barely did a run in less than two. Crap Mariner changed to his Grim Reaper outfit early on, and yours truly didn’t escape his notice, commenting as press I was a non-combatant, and not shooting at the runners. Of the obstacles, the wall on the third quarter was the most difficult, a few runners kept stumbling as they tried to jump from a halfway completed brick ramp. A couple tried to climb up the cliff, which would get them both around it and skip the barcode cage obstacle. Only one made it through that way.

The fastest run on the day I was there was done by Theblackcloud Oh, who took one minute, 55 seconds. Afterwards, Crap Mariner and Bryn Oh were available for anyone who wanted to ask them anything about the race. At the end of the season, the best runners will appear in that show and compete for a prize.

Whether you like sports or art, this is an event worth seeing at least once.

The LEA games are every Monday at 4PM SL time at LEA3 (224, 127, 30)


Bixyl Shuftan