Tag Archives: furries

My son is performing tonight–need your prayers and positive energy!

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mexnyman
My son as “Mex” in the center of the group.

My son performs tonight in the dance competition at Furry Weekend Atlanta (FWA) in Atlanta, GA. He found out two weeks ago he was put in charge of doing the choreography for a group of five dancers, including himself.

He didn’t want the responsibility but wasn’t given a choice (the original choreographer quit and put him in charge), and he’s been really stressing about it. His group competes tonight–the competition will begin at 9 PM and runs for about 2 hours until the winners are announced.

I don’t know the name of his group or what order they’re performing in, but he is “Mex” and will be most likely wearing red plaid shorts and a black T-shirt that says, “I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL.” He always wears that uniform, lol.

mex_nyman
Commissioned portrait of “Mex.”

If anyone is interested in watching the competition (it’s a LOT of fun), you can see it live-streaming on furryweekend.TV — I watched yesterday and the video quality is excellent.

Whether you watch or not, please extend your prayers, well wishes, and send positive energy that everything comes together for my son and his group tonight. He’s a little disappointed right now because this time around, he didn’t make the finals for the solo dance competition.

4 music videos my son made

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Time for a little shameless bragging.

My 23 year old son is an aspiring filmmaker (he also has a music review channel, Radio Recall) and has quite a few music videos on his channel, iBolt07 at Youtube.com. I meant to post these earlier, but never got around to it.

In the first one (his most recent, made in December) there’s footage of his 2nd place (novice) performance in the fursuit dance competition at Midwest Furfest in Chicago, Illinois. (Here is my post about that). He says it’s much easier to dance without a fursuit. I wonder why that doesn’t surprise me. Since his second place finish, he’s been asked to join a dance troupe that travels in the Florida area, and they dance out of costume.

There was also a gas leak at the Hyatt where they were staying outside Chicago that forced attendees to evacuate for hours and 17 people were hospitalized. It may have been a hate crime. Fortunately there were no casualties.

I don’t have any problems with my son being a furry. I’ve done a lot of research on this, and there are a lot of unfortunate misunderstandings surrounding the fur fandom. It’s really more akin to someone who attends Star Trek conventions than a sexual perversion and there are more geeks at these things than at a science fair. A lot of furries seem to have professions in one of the sciences or are computer nerds. There are also lots of female furries, which surprised me. I wrote an article back in September (which is still one of my most popular) about why it doesn’t bother me that my son is a furry.

I just Googled “my son is furry,” and that article is so popular it’s now at the top of Page 1 on Google! That wasn’t always the case. When I wrote it it was on page 8 or 9, and a month ago it was at the top of the 3rd page or bottom of the second. It’s continuing to get a lot of views so it’s moved to the top. (For some reason my Merrimints article is picking up some momentum too. I think a food site found it. It’s also getting a lot of shares on Pinterest.)

Here are two of his fur convention music videos.

He can be seen dancing out of costume at 2:20 and part of his performance is at about 2:40.

He also makes non-furry music videos. Here are two of them:

He acts in this video too, and does the lipsynching. This is a few years old, from 2010 or 2011.

I love this!

My son’s dance competition performance

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If anyone is interested, here’s my son’s dance competition entry at Midwest Furfest, held in Chicago, where he placed second in his division (out of 51). He is dressed as “Mex,” the hipster weasel.

Here’s a better video that includes the judges’ comments at the end but they’re hard to hear.

Here is he video where the winners are announced (1st – 3rd place in 3 categories, Novice, Veteran and Group). He said he’s glad he didn’t win because if he had he wouldn’t be allowed to compete in novice anymore and the competition in the veteran category is much stiffer.

OMFG. My son won 2nd place in the dance competition!

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I can’t believe it. I’m in tears right now. Ethan wanted to make the Top 3 so badly, and he did one better than that (this was out of a group of 50 dancers–he made it to the final ten of the Novice category last night).

He’s been dancing for 3 years and this is the first time he placed in the Top 3.

Here is the tweet he just sent:

2ndplacetweet

I’ll post the video of his dance performance as soon as it’s up on Youtube. In the meantime, here is his performance at another convention he attended in Orlando, Florida in August, where he was a finalist but did not place. The convention he is at in Illinois has more attendees and making the finals in this competition is more difficult and competitive than the one he attended in Florida.

All that practice has really paid off!

Ethan’s performance at Megaplex 2014 in August.

ETA: Someone on Twitter just posted this photo of him competing today.
mwff2014

Hate crime on furries? My son is at the hotel that had a gas leak!!!

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chemicalleak
Evacuees standing outside the Hyatt hotel in Rosemont, IL last night.

Last night there was a serious chemical leak at the Hyatt Hotel in Rosemont, IL, outside Chicago, hospitalizing 19 people and causing the entire hotel to be evacuated. Here is the news story:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-19-hospitalized-thousands-evacuated-in-gas-leak-at-rosemont-hotel-20141207-story.html

The article contains a video of the evacuation and news commentary.

At the time this happened, Midwest Fur Fest is having its annual 4-day convention there. My son, who is a furry, attended and is staying at this hotel, but he was lucky and did not have to be hospitalized.

Authorities are looking into the matter, and they do believe there’s foul play involved.

Personally I think it was a deliberate act of hate against furries, who are tragically misunderstood by the media and ignorant people who really haven’t researched what the furry fandom is really all about (hint: they are not sexual perverts.)

I wrote this article about furries a couple of months back, and am linking to it if anyone wants more in depth information about furries and the reasons why I don’t mind that my son is one. This article is still one of my most popular and most shared, and it and still appears in my list of Top Posts (though lately it has been eclipsed by my Sam Vaknin articles, LOL).

Anyway, I am just so grateful my son is okay! 🙂 It could have been bad…

mexnyman
My son in his fursuit “Mex,” the hipster weasel, with some friends. He will be dancing in this suit today.

On a more positive note, my son was one of ten dancers out of 50 who made it to the finals of the dance competition they are holding today. He is going to perform any moment now (he tweeted me that he’s a bag of nerves). The Top 3 dancers win a prize and a trophy (plus it’s a huge honor!). I think he’s good enough to win third place, at least, but even if he doesn’t place in the Top 3, making the Top 10 is awesome and he should be so proud! I’ll post the Youtube video of his performance when it’s up.

Taylor Swift seems obsessed with furries. Hmmmm.

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catears

From Twitter today:

Taylor Swift @taylorswiftfnf 13h
You can’t turn around on Twitter without running into furries. And they’re so technical, too! I know I talk about them constantly, but damn.

Taylor Swift @taylorswiftfnf 5h
Maybe furry programmers are just the beginning. Machines are going to turn us all into furries. That’s how they end humanity. Oh god.

Watch for the dancers in fursuits.

I want cheekdots!

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One of my favorite digital drawings my son did. This is his other “fursona.” (He has two).

applycheekdots

Click to enlarge.

A little validation goes a long way

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I was checking my stats, and under the “referrers” section, I found a new referrer: League of Geeks. I clicked it on, and it took me to a forum topic about furries. I scrolled down and found the post that mentioned my most popular article.

It’s a very long post, so I’ll just excerpt from it.

My husband and I like to joke that the only true common thread with furries is with how we are screwed up socially in some way. It is not something to be upset or afraid about, though. Most furries find it liberating to behave contrary to the status quo as an escape. Others find the courage to do things behind the mask of a suit they never could have done otherwise (this article is an outstanding read, and could give you some inspiration: https://otterlover58.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/my-son-is-furry-got-a-problem-with-that/).

This was a very little thing, but it still made me feel like a million dollars after having had such an otherwise crappy day. I know most of you bloggers can relate. This sort of validation is one of the things that keeps us motivated. At least it is for me.

Happy Furloween!

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My son drew this today. I thought it was quite good, so I’m sharing it. Happy Halloween!

furryhalloween

Click to enlarge.

Interlude: Orestes pursued by the furries

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I couldn’t stop laughing.

orestes_pursued_by_the_furries

Click on for larger image.