Jane's World & Girlyman, An Amazing Event!!!

For those of you who were unable to attend Paige Braddock’s Jane’s World Volume 8 release party, I thought I would give a little recap of the evening, and throw in some pictures as well.

The party was held at the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa and the approximately 200+ guests, most of whom were lesbians, just happened to be the biggest group the museum has ever had at one time for an event. The evening started around 7:00pm with lots of mingling, nibbling of munchies, and sipping of wine. At about 7:30, everyone headed into the theatre for Paige’s talk. Since there were so many attendees, the museum set up a second room upstairs with a live simulcast of the talk, so no one missed a thing.

Stephen Pastis, the guy that plays "Shallow Breast Guy" in Paige’s Books and author of Pearls before swine, opened the evening with a comedic and witty introduction of Paige. Stephen, a coworker and friend of Paige’s, repeatedly made mention, or maybe I should say warning, that anything you say or do around Paige is fair game for her to use in her books. In fact, I belive his exact words were “... underhanded, shameless little line-stealing profiteer squirl, ” but of course it was said with love. And you have to give the guy some credit, I mean it takes balls to stand on stage in front of a large group of people (mostly lesbians) wearing a shirt that reads “Shallow Breast Guy,” which, by the way, is going to be signed by both Stephan and Paige and auctioned off to a local charity on eBay later this week.

Following Stephan onto the stage was Paige Braddock, still wiping away the tears and laughing from her "roast," which she obviously found quite entertaining. Once she pulled herself together, she spent about 15-20 minutes taking about her new book, reading a few excerpts, and showing a slide show of images from her book. The audience roared with laughter throughout the talk, and eagerly followed her outside the theatre afterwards to get their Jane’s World books signed.

Around 8:30, Girlyman, one of Paige’s favorite bands, started their one hour music set. The band, which could be described as a cross between folk, pop & bluegrass, is made up of 2 girls (Doris & Ty) and 1 guy (Nate), all of whom are not only incredible musicians, but also have a great connection with each other and the audience.

After the show I was able to gather together Paige and the band to take couple of pictures. All in all, I would have to say the party was a great success.

One last note, I would like to send out a huge THANK YOU to Jeannie Schulz for allowing Paige to have this event at the museum, as well as all the volunteer’s (Jackie , Jessica, Becci, Renee, Paul, Mark, Devon, Gretchen, Tamara, Jane, Kitty, Stephanie and gina) who not only helped plan this event, but also took care of the set-up, clean-up and general smoothness of the entire evening, they were amazing.