cupcakes!

mmmm.... i made these last night and they are yummy! vanilla cake with super-creamy white frosting and toppings: rainbow sprinkles, rainbow dots, cinnamon dots, skittles, & butterscotch chips. dee-lish! yay for cupcakes!

New Fire Dancing Classes in Campbell & San Francisco!

Fire Arts Academy is now taking registration for 3-hour workshops, taking place this summer in Campbell and San Francisco.

Workshops this summer include: Intro to Poi, Intro to Staff, Intermediate Poi, Fans & Fingers, and Performance Skills. The next workshop is July 1. Campbell classes will take place at Ariel Dance Studios, Winchester @ Budd, Campbell. Plenty of parking is available. The San Francisco workshops will take place in the Glen Park area, super-close to the Glen Park BART station.

It's only $89 for a 3-hour workshop! A syllabus / study guide will be provided at the beginning of class for the students to take home and use to practice with. The class space is limited and spaces are filling up quickly, so register soon.

The Intro classes include many simple drills to get you started spinning and to improve your skills quickly. Students will learn a variety of moves for each toy, and techniques to put it all together. Students are welcome to join us in San Francisco for a follow-up class on fire safety and how to apply what they have learned to actual fire spinning, if the students feel they are ready. Everything is done according to personal comfort level. Fuel, safety, and fire poi provided for the on-fire lesson, as needed.

Intro to Poi covers the basic moves: Butterfly (in most forms), Weave, and many others.

Intro to Staff covers the basics: Butterfly (in most forms), Weave, some behind the back, and more.

Fans & Fingers teaches students a variety of moves and poses so they can feel comfortable performing with these exotic toys.

Intermediate Poi covers: complex transitions changing directions, Push-Through (threading the needle), body movement with poi, wraps, and more.

Performance Skills covers the basics of looking good and, most importantly, feeling confident while performing!


Price options for students:

* One 3-hour workshop in Campbell or San Francisco: $89
* Private Poi or Staff Lesson: $50/hour
* Fire Poi (folded style wicks on ball chain): $40
* Practice Poi: $15
* Fire Staff (four inch or two inch wicks): $30 or $35


The next workshops start Sunday, July 1.

SAN FRANCISCO workshops:

* Intro to Poi - SUNDAY, July 1, 1:00-4:00pm (three spots left)
* Performance Skills - July 7, 1:00-4:00pm (two spots left)


CAMPBELL workshops:
* Intro to Poi - July 14, 2:00-5:00pm (two spots left)
* Intro to Staff - SUNDAY, July 15, 2:00-5:00pm (two spots left)
* Fans & Fingers - July 28, 2:00-5:00pm (three spots left)
* Intermediate Poi - August 4, 2:00-5:00pm (two spots left)
* Intro to Poi - August 11, 2:00-5:00pm (three spots left)
* Performance Skills - August 18, 2:00-5:00pm (three spots left)


Register soon as classes are filling up quickly. Private lessons can be arranged between student and any teacher. More classes and times might be available depending on interest. Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Poi and Staff classes are available in Oakland.

If you want to register for class, like to know of what the classes cover and/or have any questions please contact us.

Warmly,
~Andrea, a.k.a. Spacegirl, Fire Arts Collective / Fire Arts Academy
spacegirl@fireartscollective.com
http://www.fireartscollective.com/ ~ http://www.fireartsacademy.com/

Here is what some past and present students are saying about Fire Arts Academy:

"Much funnier than yoga, but with the same sort of rewarding head space! I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to spin Zuni's, and ultimately FIRE, with Jon from Fire Arts Collective. Always known as the graceless wonder in my family, I was finally able to awe my folks, though they are surely afraid I've run off and joined the circus! Jon's teaching method is adept and kind and encourages quick
advancement, and we laughed our heads off while actually getting better -- learning + fun -- you can't beat that!" --- Kelly DeMartini

"I had no idea spinning fire would be so fun and become such a part of me. Jon is patient, insightful and encouraging, accepting my tangled fumblings with easy humor and working with me until I mastered each step. I look forward to taking many other classes with the Collective. Thank you, Jon!" --- Joe

A Dirty Job / Man of My Dreams

Two great books I've just read: A Dirty Job and the unbelievably-horribly-titled The Man of My Dreams.

Ahhhhhhh..... Christopher Moore is my hero! A Dirty Job was fucking fantastic - and I mean fantastic in every sense of the word! A true fantasy novel set in reality. Great, great, GREAT! I loved it to pieces, every last morsel of it.

I loved Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel, but The Man of My Dreams was even better. Much tighter writing, stronger characters. If only the title didn't suck so much. I had almost decided not to buy the book, period, because of the title, but I'm really, really happy I did. I read the whole thing yesterday because I couldn't put it down. What real and engaging characters!

Though I really must say ~ there is nothing more painful *and* inspiring as reading a book that you wish you wrote. Geek Love, Memoirs of a Survivor, and The California Book of the Dead ~ you are all on that list, too!

It makes me both incredibly driven to finish & polish up this final draft of my novel, at the same time that it makes me want to hide under the covers and go to sleep for the next twenty years because I will never be able to write a novel that good.

Now, tell me, dear readers: is that bullshit thinking or what?? Good grief, I can write! I can write a killer fucking novel! I have written one and it's on its way to being even better. I am just so much of a romantic and a melancholic, besides having a truly screwed-up sense of my own writing, that I think everyone else in the world (well, not everyone else, but certainly writers like Christopher Moore and Curtis Sittenfeld) writes "better" than me. And so what if they do?? All the more pleasure for me to read, then! And all the more inspiration and drive for me to push myself to polish what exists!

I am lucky, I guess, that I can be so affected by the written word, without feeling the need to hyper-critique its form or its art. I just love reading good books and I wanna write them, too!

Heh. I guess it's good, then, that I can do both :-)

good lord, i am lost

... lost in the snarky snarcosus of miss snark's advice to writers seeking agents ... it's all i've been doing - reading her blog. i can't say "i'm getting nothing done!" because i'm learning so much, but still ... it has taken over my world for the past two days ... i need to get back to editing! i need to work on my novel! but i can't ... i'll just read one more blog post, then i'll edit ... just one more ...

agents and query letters and rewrites, oh my!

alls i gots to say is, dude, i've gotta work this shit from the inside, you know what i mean?

(some of you do know what i mean - that is, shmoozing the crap out of every last possible contact i have to get this novel published! hahaha. heh. yep. you, too. just wait. it will start as an innocent invitation to lunch and before you know it, i am eating your brains!)

for a hugely and highly enlightening (and entertaining) read, check out the recently blog-deceased miss snark: literary agent. good thing she kept the blog online, even though she stopped posting. yep, good thing. i've been reading her for hours now and it's past my bedtime but i'm enamored and i just. can't. stop. so tired. can't stop. must. keep. reading.

it's fascinating, digging your hands into the mud.

super fire trouper

musically, i was raised on ABBA. literally. ABBA and john denver, with a little bit of linda rondstadt and kenny rogers thrown in for good measure, until i was old enough to afford my own music (david bowie in gigantic measures) in my pre-teen years. until then, though, i was at the mercy of my parents' (well, my mother's, mostly) musical whims, which were summed up in a neat little package of a few, very accessible folk-disco-country artists, whose popularity seemed to stem from ski bunnies and ski-bunny-wannabes wearing stretch pants and furry boots in the late-'70s.

one of my favorite (though hard to accept) memories is of my gorgeous mother, with long, platinum blonde hair, dressed in her apres-ski outfit, drinking a beer at the fireplace: black turtleneck, skin-tight, black ski pants, and huge, ostentatious, real-fur boots. she looked like a james bond girl, but dammit - she was my mom! these are the things you bring to therapy, i suppose.

now i'm old and i've come to (almost) fully accept the joy and wonder of having this scandanavian-folk hipness ground into my cellular memory as much as breakfast of cheerios with white sugar sprinkled on top.

we went to aspen every year (i learned to ski when i was four) and the memories are overwhelmingly amazing. if you could ask me to sum up my childhood years, i'd have to do it in seasons: spring and fall (school); summer (tennis camp); and winter (ski school).

aspen, john denver, and ABBA ~ they were like my childhood nannies.

i've always had a soft spot in my heart for the sweet, swedish melodies of frida, agnetha, benny, and bjorn. one winter in aspen, i fried my eyelids with sunburn (wasn't wearing goggles, ouch!) and had to spend the entire week on the couch with a wet washcloth over my face. for the entire time, i listened to ABBA's "super trouper" on my mom's walkman cassette player - and believe me, i learned to love that album intimately. i believe even to this day that my subconsciousness was imbued with deep appreciation and understanding for ABBA in a way that few people or fans ever get to experience.

the song "super trouper" became a kind of motto for me to heal, to believe and have faith that things could get better - it became a symbol for me to remember my own priorities in life and to always live a life that i believed in, no matter what the circumstances. (pretty big stuff for a 7-year-old, yes, but i was precocious.)

so, what a sweet and totally unexpected surprise when i decided last night to youtube the song itself - "super trouper" - only to discover that the video for the song is filled with fire dancers and stiltwalkers! it's almost as if i ran across this video when i was 7 and remembered the wonderful message within but only *subconsciously* remembered the ways that i could make the dream come true.

yes, that may be over-dramaticizing it all, but in sum: it's a song that changed my life and my perspective on life when i was 7 years old... 26 years later, at a real crossroads/juncture/interesting time in my life where i'm dealing with a lot of existential and practical, what-the-fuck-type questions, i run across the song again, and it's featuring, well, ME in various forms!

i don't really know what to make of it, so i'm deciding not to trip out... but just to enjoy the funny factor and maybe the deeper answers will come later. for now, enjoy the video!

first round of editing - DONE!

yee-ha! i have actually, finally made it through the first round of editing my novel. and i can tell you in all honesty, it sucked.

the editing sucked! not the novel! :-)

the novel is really good, actually. quite entertaining! i read through it once before, after i'd finished, but i really used my discriminating eye for this round. to get technical, this was the "mark-up" round. meaning, i took a red pen to the print version and made official editorial marks and notes throughout the whole thing. it's a bit damp with red ink right now.

the next round will hopefully be the final one, before i start seriously digging in to the agent/publisher research.

i'm off now for a celebratory seafood dinner on the coast with dave - well-deserved, if i do say so myself! no editing this weekend - i need a couple of days away from the thing - but i'll be back at it in full force next week.

sunnnny thurssssdayyyy

yay! the weather in san francisco has been so spectacular the past couple of days - my god, it actually feels like summer here!

i spent the past couple of days in d.c., where it was definitely summer, with everything from heat and humidity to fireflies. having grown up in chicago, i have very fond memories of the magical fireflies lighting up the back yard, immediately after dusk. they only come out for a short while, then disappear - just like their own lighted butts. my niece and i stood on the porch and counted as many as we could. at one point, she ran inside, overwhelmingly excited, yelling, "mom! mom! there are more than a hundred!" :-)

my niece was the reason i went out there in the first place. her 6th birthday was on sunday, and my sister & mom flew me out there to spin fire at her birthday party luau. what an amazing treat! i dressed in my standard luau attire and wowed the girls (and some of their parents) for two sets of fire poi in the back yard.

afterwards, my sister & i helped the girls tie ribbons to glowsticks, and then gave each girl a pair of her own "poi" to spin in the backyard. they loved it! it was so cool to be the "entertainment," but then to let the girls into that world, too. they were surprisingly really good at spinning, but kept giving me glowing, wide-eyed looks of awe. "i really liked your fire dancing," they all said in their little 6-year-old voices, making me absolutely melt.

dave & i took advantage of this burst of summertime wonderful weather and went surfing yesterday... i couldn't make it today, but hopefully will tomorrow!

off to enjoy the last bits of sun on the deck before it disappears into the garden...

Fairyland gigs are super-fun

Yesterday's performance was for Fairyland's big gala fundraiser. It was great to see everyone show up dressed like characters from fairy tales! My troupe & I, however, went for more of a carnival/circus theme. Great fun on stilts and hooping while it was still light out, then we rocked it with fire for the big finale. More pics soon.

oh, books - so many books...

... and so much time to read them now, too ;-)

heh.

the advantage of the unemployed.

that said, i am finding myself ridiculously busy these days! i have to actually schedule time into my day to make sure i remember to read. but, still. i just found myself with a "free" hour and decided to update my amazon wish list. so, if you're feeling generous and want to buy me something from it, i won't stop ya!

in the meantime, though, i'm off to continue reading the current pile:

* A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore - set in SF, yay! kooky and perfect so far.
* Yoga Beyond Belief by Ganga White - my favorite yogi chatting in a totally normal, down-to-earth way about ways to deepen your yoga practice. Sting wrote the intro, ha!
* The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris - I listened to the audiobook and really liked it, but I *hated* having to sit through him spelling out every single web address - especially when i was driving and couldn't write anything down! so i bought the book, and i plan on fine-tooth-combing it through this week.

REEEALLLY???!? you looked at my list and now you want to buy me a book????!? WOW! I love you forever and ever!!!!

ok, then just click here to see my wish list - and THANKS!! ;-)

Beginning Staff Workshop in Campbell *this Saturday, June 9!*

tell your friends! this saturday, june 9th!

Fire Arts Academy is offering a specialty Intro to Staff class in Campbell, taught by none other than yours truly.

the workshop runs from 2-5pm and is only $89!

the studio is wonderful, with high ceilings, a sound system, fan, and a wall of mirrors.

for more info on the classes, go here: http://www.fireartsacademy.com/

so, spread the word if you've got South Bay friends who can't make it to Oakland or San Francisco for our other classes! i'd love to teach 'em if i can :-)