Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

The Sunday morning before last, I accompanied my sister to Berkeley, where she – along with a group of other students at her university – had designed outfits (seven, in her case) for a fundraising fashion show being held at the campus later that day, once at 3pm and again at 7pm. The sister had put a lot of time and effort and super rockstar-ish creativity into her designs, and I went along ostensibly to hang out with the designers – because even rockstars can be groupies – but mainly to cheer her on and help out with the headwraps on the girls who were modeling her funkycool fusion outfits.

Out of the seven students who were modeling for my sister, all but two were nonMuslim, and everyone took the whole headwrap thing in stride. I was impressed by their patience and overall sweetness, and if there was anything that made all the standing on my feet all day and the trying to be creative under time constraints while not knowing exactly what I was doing absolutely worth it, it was: one- the lovely girls I got to know all the while trying not to stab them with pins, and two- seeing my sister’s creativity and her imaginative designs in action.

As I mentioned in the Flickr photos linked above, DAMN, is it difficult to:
1. Be creative in thinking of headwrap styles for other people,
2. DO headwraps for other people [especially when not in a style I wear myself], and
3. Not (accidentally) stab people in the head while pinning their headwraps.

I think I basically alternated between two phrases all day long: “Tell me if it’s too tight!” and “I’m sorry if I stab you in the head with the pin!”

Not only did we get everything done and arranged and everyone looking rocking in record time for the 3pm show, we had to do it all over again for the 7pm show (by which time we actually knew what we were doing, so everything seemed to go amazingly quickly).

During our quick lunch break for about half an hour in the afternoon, we stopped by Julie’s Cafe, where I was highly depressed to learn that their so-called “home fries” were only on the breakfast menu, and the breakfast grill was closed for the day. I made enough sad faces – and the rest of the sympathetic girls asked the guy enough times, “Can we order home fries?”, even though no one really seemed to know what home fries were – that the nice guy gave in quite graciously and fired up the breakfast grill all over again and made me some home fries, which were damn good, and that is what good customer service is all about (as he reminded me when I thanked him profusely for the trouble).

While I was waiting for my fries, my lovely friend SP (she of the ice cream voicemessages) whipped a tall can out of the fridge and presented it to me with a gleeful, “Look, Yaz! This is for you!” I laughed to see it was the ROCKSTAR energy drink, and felt super special and honored simply because SP has never seen me use the word “rockstar” before (I know you Blogistan kids are so used to it, but not everyone reads my weblog, you know).

We returned to the campus and the crazychaotic second floor of MLK, where preparations for the 7pm fashion show were already underway. I laughed at the male model guy who asked to have his face powdered because it was too shiny. I also laughed (derisively, I admit it) throughout the day at the theme for (the scandalously issue-prone) American Apparel, who were also showcasing some of their clothing during the Berkeley fashion show. Their theme went something like this: I think I’ll step out of my house wearing nothing but a t-shirt and knee-length socks today. Damn, do I look HOT! –

– whereas my sister’s designs were more along the lines of (as I laughed and pointed out on the way home), Imagine that! Who knew you could wear CLOTHES and still look hella good! What a concept!