Fun Fact: Late last night, right before I fell asleep, I thought "maybe I shouldn't go to Pridefest Sunday."

HAHAHA!!! …whew! Pridefest is the only holiday I really celebrate, and yes, I consider it a holiday.

But also, I have awesome low-key plans for today’s Pridefest: I need to do some landscapes and still lifes for my portfolio, and it’s gonna be (at least fairly) nice out, so I’m bringing supplies.

Also, Project Q is having essentially a micro-ball - IIRC, it’s voguing, catwalk, something-something (god, I can’t remember - there are WAY too many ball categories… which I love!) at 3pm in the Youth Area - after you enter the main gate, it is as far right as you can go in the entire festival grounds. The competition/show is for participants from ages 14-24, but all ages are HIGHLY encouraged to attend. Seriously, those youth are obscenely talented - I’m so blessed that I get to help facilitate the HIV Prevention Institute in July, because a lot of those youth will be there. And we always have a dance one of the nights, and they always pull some FULLY CHOREOGRAPHED routine all up on the dance floor! Guuurl! …but I digress, lol.

I’m also interested in Chicago’s Furrlesque (at 2pm) - I like bears, but even I can concede that this could be really awesome or really… less-than-awesome. But I still want to check it out at least. A friend of mine is doing a presentation about Q-BLOK (at 4pm) - I actually didn’t totally understand what it was when it was first explained to me, but it’s basically a segment of Pathfinders that caters specifically to homeless LGBTQ youth. The more recent thing I found out was, apparently it’s not just ages birth to 18 years, because I guess they’re doing healthy living work with the youth. Also, there’s a ridiculous, cruel, and way too widespread phenomenon of [not just queer] youth who age out of the foster system and then BAM! - you’re on your own, we don’t have to give a shit anymore! …great. That’s very useful for us as a society. Brew City Bombshells Burlesque is going on at 9pm, and I do love burlesque, don’t get me wrong - and, now that I think about it, if I’m sketching, I might at least do some gestures or something. Anyway, but my sexuality is very gay right now, so the appreciation is dampened just ever-so-slightly. At 3pm the Windy City Beauties are doing their last (and fourth) show of the weekend, and they are fantastic! I caught them on Friday, and one of them had a sickennnning Beyonce megamix! And 7pm starts the headline show, and I have SUCH MIXED FEELINGS! I’m delighted to see that Pridefest got its first major country acts, but I’m not very big into contemporary country. LeAnn Rimes… eh. I mean, if she just performed the Coyote Ugly soundtrack songs, I’d be there, but I think she’s put out like dozens of albums since then, lol. Also, Chely Wright (the first national country star to come out - remember when that happened?!) will be performing! HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?! I’m still angry that a lot of queer folk were like, “oh, well, she’s not super-popular and she’s just a country artist, so big deal.” Uh? Do you realise that one of the few bastions where it’s still okay to be openly homophobic contains a lot of country music? We may not see it as a big deal, but it means that a lot of people who never knew a gay person and didn’t want to know a gay person… suddenly knows a gay person. And, I imagine in at least some cases, owns her albums! That’s going to change things, very seriously. Again, I digress: so, I’m thrilled that they’re here, but the only thing I’d be really interested in about their shows would be people-watching for the die-hard country fans who might even be kind of ambivalent about queer people but are going to see LeAnn Rimes live if they have to murder ten litters of really cute fluffy puppies, and it’s completely possible to pay general admission ($18) at Pridefest and still get excellent seats for the headline show… and if you don’t, they have two projection screens and excellent sound. Aaaalso, and this is the huge draw (and issue, kind of) for me: PANDORA BOXX IS HOSTING! I LOVE Pandora Boxx!!! But also… she’s just hosting. And I’m sure she’ll have little interludes and have to kill time because shit goes wrong, but… couldn’t she be FEATURED?! Because that’s what I want!