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I really wish that the vocals of TV on the Radio did not remind me so much of Phil Collins, because the music is rather nice.  Vocals wreck it for me, though.

Brain is all twisty trying to figure out where to hold the gothic workshops/hafli.  I'm giving me a deadline of the end of next week, so I can start ticket-selling and real publicity.  I don't want to jinx myself by mentioning what I'm thinking of at this point.  The final dilemma really is whether is it better to have an excellent venue with wretched dinner options or to have an eh venue with good food options.  T-accessibility is still an issue as well, though at this point I'm prepared to say screw all the people like me, they can take cabs or find carpool buddies, if they want to come they'll find a way, as I know from my own experience.  I do have one last good venue option for food and T that even has some ambiance, but again, don't want to jinx myself.

I really want to dance when I get home but I don't know if the weather will cooperate.  Last night I just holed up in the bedroom with the weasels, enjoying the A/C.  The poor noodles are getting serious cabin fever, but it's just way too hot out for them.  To while away the time, I watched the bonus DVD that came with Rachid Taha's album Teketoi--what a good little film!  I thought it was just going to be concert footage, but in addition to that, the film also featured Taha and his band members talking about being French-Algerians, French-Israelis, French-Moroccans, etc, the experience of being pigeon-holed into the category of world music just because you or your parents were born in the Third World when what you really do is rock ("File U2 under world music in your country, they're from Ireland!" Taha told a Mexican interviewer), and many other interesting topics.  I am all the more sorry that I missed his show here several months back.

My grandmother continues to "rest" in a hospice.  She is not expected to regain consciousness and is full of painkillers.  We wait.  It is a strange feeling with her so far away, but she didn't want any visitors under these conditions anyway, so I suppose it would be the same if she were closer.

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I just got an email from macys.com advertising the outfit of the winning designer on last night's Project Runway--$257?  I guess that's cheap in designer terms, but no, I don't think so...

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I posted a video of my May Meleya Leff performance on YouTube, should anyone care to see it.  A meleya leff is a character dance depicting a good Egyptian girl on her way to the market or wherever, wrapped up in her meleya (the big black veil thing), but along the way she flirts and dances, because she's just so full of the joy of life.  There are two different styles of meleya leff; the one I'm doing is Cairo style, a little more classy and grounded than the sort of saucier and jaunty Alexandrian style.  The costuming for the two styles is different too; in the Alexandrian style, the dancer usually wears a gaudy short dress, while the Cairo style dancer usually wears more traditional dress (though it's still stagewear, of course--a real meleya wouldn't be sheer and have silver pailettes on it, for example).  I'm still working on developing this as a stage piece, but I'm pretty happy with how it's going.  You all might not be stunned to hear that the reserved yet flirty classy character seems to suit me well ;-)