sundries

[rm]

I have heard from Patty. She was in Paddington Station stealing Internet and should be hitting Cardiff any minute now. Cardiff. That is so weird. (Also, I really miss her).

On Oct 1, not only do I have a Friends of the Text meeting, I have my first rehearsal for the demo of a musical spoof of Inception created by mithrigil. I'm playing Arthur (and I totally have the best song) and there's a Bollywood number (not mine, but it's existence must be noted). It's amazing how all the disparate parts of my life tend to eventually relate to each other, so much so that I'm now sort of absently thinking to myself, "Should Dogboy & Justine be a musical?"

In light of that, I recorded myself singing on my Mac this morning a bit, because I'm weird about my singing voice, and I need to reassure myself often, that, actually, despite all the mean people in girl's school I can motherfucking sing. I can motherfucking sing! So that was nice.

supertailz: Thing I promised you on Twitter. Everyone else: old story you probably know, but I did write it a couple of years ago now, so I suppose if you're new here this year, you maybe haven't seen it yet. Possibly way more than you want to know about me, but relevant to recent topics. (In fact, this piece feels about a billion times stranger considering recent changes to Craigslist and my social calendar for the week -- I'm not really ashamed of it; mostly, I'm just slightly chagrined at an over-employment (no matter how effective) of the "my mother never loved me" strategy of writing, and how tortured some of the sentences are).

There's a bit of a contretemps going on in my office building about the Unbeleivably Fucking Broken Elevators. People are making noises about rent strikes and violence at this point. I'm suitably entertained.

Tomorrow is the Butch Voices conference in New York. I was planning on going, but have almost come to my final decision not to -- I'm just too busy -- Dances of Vice tonight, the opening of the New York Musical Theater Festival on Monday, the Paley Center thing on Thursday, meetings and rehearsal on Friday, and I should really plan my birthday party too. So I'm skipping it and am going to use tomorrow to buy shoes and do work.

Speaking of Dances of Vice: nothing like getting up with a wardrobe plan and then not being able to find the item in question. So, serious plan B is going on here. Better today than Monday.

The new Harry Potter trailer is that good. Finally, someone realized that Harry's story is, ultimately, a tragedy most of the time for every single person in it. I'm jumping up and down about it. This, this is the world that made me fannish.

Tensions between Native Americans and the rodeos that want them there, sort of.

Irish President Mary McAleese turned down an invitation to be the Grand Marshall of New York City's St. Patrick's Day parade, because parade organizers still will not allow a gay Irish group to march.

As you may know Wiscon 35 did not disinvite Elizabeth Moon as Guest of Honor after her offensive and ignorant remarks about Islam, Muslims, immigrants and more. While Wiscon is presenting the matter as a teachable moment, and the situation is admittedly challenging on a number of levels for the concomm, it places a high burden on those who were the targets of Moon's speech and general consensus seems to be this was the wrong choice (a consensus I am largely inclined to agree with, although I have never attended Wiscon and so don't have any insight or stake in some aspects of this situation).

Regardless, Elizabeth Moon was never the only guest of honor for the con. The other is Nisi Shawl who has been speaking to Moon, and who has this to say about the con. For people considering going or not going or having an opinion, I think Shawl's words are a must-have data point.

Hey, laughingirl does this thing where she gets celebrities to autograph little teddy bears and then auctions them off to raise money to fight breast cancer. She always manages to get amazing people, and there are some auctions that start ending tonight that involve people like the cast of White Collar, James Marsters, Amber Benson, a bunch of awesome authors and a whole lot more.

Comments

[supertailz.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That was lovely to read. It's entirely interesting and at some point I will tell you my things about it! :) But mostly oh!. I kind of was hoping that it would have remained on in the background:)

Still, must have a watching party!

[rm.livejournal.com]

You are the first person to have said that about the background noise. Yay reading for narrative!

And yes, watching party! I own the box set, but haven't watched that one in ages.

[supertailz.livejournal.com]

I think it would strengthen the story and increase the feelings of disconnect and...naivete? perhaps? ...Alas often life is not the perfect narrative, which in and of itself is sometimes a more interesting narrative. ...Now I'm just getting overly involved here; too tangled. :)

Now I want to watch it NOW. Perhaps I'll put it on one of my comps while I work today:) (Not that that would preclude also having a watching party. I could watch it everyday!...at least for a bit:)

Also, while I'm at it, do you like Great Big Sea?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Also, while I'm at it, do you like Great Big Sea?

Oh yes. I'm a true child of the 70s in terms of British Isles folk revival stuff seeming really cool as opposed to super nerdy, when, of course, it's both.

[supertailz.livejournal.com]

Whereas, I'm just British:)

But! They are playing tonight! At Webster Hall! We (Lindsay, Megan, the other person in the "watching party", a dear friend of mine who's a stage manager and our friend from DAW) are going! http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/000044CE1B36E7FF?artistid=1457850&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=60 You should come! (I realise you are probably not free, but it's GREAT BIG SEA. You should totally come.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I am totally not free. This is the most overscheduled week I've had in MONTHS. Fall in New York, always like this.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

*sob*

I'm missing GBS too?!?!

*cues up "Big Yellow Taxi" and misses NYC a lot*

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Great Big Sea is not British, and I'm surprised how much more offended I am than I ought to be.

[rm.livejournal.com]

My apologies.

But my understanding is that, that is the style of music, unless there's something identifiably out of the related Canadian folks traditions in it, which there may well be -- I just can't here it.

Talamh an Éisc agus Labradar.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

It's distinctly Newfoundlander(not-ever-'Newfie'.) Newfoundlanders will just barely grudging accept being Canadian, from 1949 on. Most of GBS's traditional material is older than that, and is indigenous to this side of the Atlantic.

"The Island of Newfoundland has its own dialects of the English, French, and Irish languages. The English dialect in Labrador shares much with that of Newfoundland. Labrador also has its own dialects of Innu-aimun and Inuktitut."-Wikipedia

I know it sounds the same to your untutored Hillbilly ears, but it's not even mistakable for Nova Scotian to mine, and I'm as far west as the battle of Little Big Horn, and can legitimately claim to have started out as an East Texan.

I have no idea why I jumped on you for it, Irish people call them an Irish band all the time. I'm gooned out of my mind on cough medicine and decongestants, and plead ill heath and unfit temper.


That your apology is accepted was never in doubt.
Peace and Love.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

It really wasn't that big a deal, you know?
I made far more of it than I should have.

[ckd]

The rodeo story: They give the Native Americans blankets? Nobody thought of Lord Amherst when they came up with that idea?

[spreadsothin.livejournal.com]

this is exactly what I thought!

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the HP trailer--I might never have known that BILL NIGHY is in the DH films. See my latest entry for my feelings on the matter. *g*

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he's pretty much the last British actor of that orbit not in the damn things.

I love watching Love, Actually and pretending Snape and Trelawny are having some bizarre alternate dimension life.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I love watching Love, Actually and pretending Snape and Trelawny are having some bizarre alternate dimension life.

A+

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

*grin*

I thought you'd like that one.

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he's pretty much the last British actor of that orbit not in the damn things.

Very true. I suppose I've been waiting for him to get on board so I could get excited.

I love watching Love, Actually and pretending Snape and Trelawny are having some bizarre alternate dimension life.


Hahaha, that might make that storyline bearable next time I watch it. I love that movie and hate Rickman's character so fucking much. You're going to cheat on Emma Thompson with some skanky ho???

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

I feel particularly thick for this, but I never grasped the conclusion of their storyline. Did they divorce? The scene at the end, while a little frosty, didn't include "Her."

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

I had the impression that they remained together, but that the wounds hadn't quite healed yet. There was no indication why Harry had flown somewhere and come back.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Eloise!

And yeah, that makes sense. I figured he'd been away for business. I imagine it happens now and again with magazine editing. ;)

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, business trip is the most logical explanation.

Eloise: My secret alter ego! Although I have two parrots named Rembrandt and Sandro instead of Weenie and Skipperdee.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

I <3 Eloise.

May I ask where you're from originally? I realized a few years ago that Eloise might be a totally NY or northeast-centric thing.

I also so rarely see her quoted or referenced anymore. :(

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

I'm from Baltimore. My Eloise books belonged originally to my sister, who was born in 1955; I'm eleven years younger.

I seem to remember reading a couple of years ago that Eloise was very popular and heavily marketed when the books were first published, but that Thompson rather mysteriously nixed the marketing and let the books go out of print. There was a flurry of new interest back in the '90s; I have a tiny Eloise doll, a DVD of an Eloise movie, and a posthumously published new book, plus an omnibus of the original books.

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area and my mother grew up in LA. I had Eloise books when I was growing up (1980s) and I think at least one of them was my mom's from her childhood.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I adore Eloise and imprinted on the first book when I was six. That was in the early 1970s, in California.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Oh, I so miss Dances of Vice... ::wist::

I know something like that has to exist here, I just haven't found it yet.

NY fed my costume and glam nerd, and this place feeds my comics and general geekery nerd. SURELY THE TWAIN MUST MEET SOMEWHERE.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

They've started some themed dance parties at the Highball (which is owned by the Alamo Drafthouse). But there is nothing like DoV here in Austin.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Over on Facebook there's an Austin Steam punk Society. Maybe they will be doing something to feed the glammy costume urge.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

Okay. Now I am allowing myself to be a little excited about the next HP film. That's a damn good trailer.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I know.

Apropos to nothing, I am sitting here listening to Lady Gaga, thinking about DoV tonight and feeling sad that there's not an event where I can dress like it's for DoV and dance to awesome pop music. We had that here in the 90s, but I think it's lost to New York now. I am sad.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

maybe you should pitch something like that to the DoV people: Non-Halloween dress-up dance party.

[rm.livejournal.com]

That may be what they do with that other party they have, I've forgotten the name. I see the fliers sometimes, but I never have time.

I don't know. I'm in a funny moody. I'm feeling like tonight is either going to be 150% awesome or kinda boring.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

Marilyn has officially bowed out as she's been sick for the past three days and doesn't want to relapse.

I'm still on and in a good mood. Isengart always does a great peformance so I feel pretty confident about a good night.

[rm.livejournal.com]

That's true. That should bring the awesome. I'm all hating my hair (but I'm getting it cut tomorrow), so I suppose I'll live.

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, thank you for the link to the HP trailer. Now I am SO EXCITED.

[grendel.livejournal.com]

I am REALLY looking forward to HP7. I am glad they spent the time to tell the whole story, by splitting it in twain for the movies.

I actually miss the anticipation of waiting for a book.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Oh, splendid Mary McAleese - she's the only President whose hand I have shaken - she's also the only President who's had me in tears (at least, in the "That's so true and moving" sense rather than "I can't believe he just did that" sense). She came to Manchester about five years after the big IRA bomb and I went to a reception at the Town Hall in which she gave an absolutely cracking speech about how communities in a city whose population includes an Irish community equivalent to that the fourth or fifth biggest city in Ireland could and should respond to a terrorist act carried out in the name of a perverted version of Irishness which she utterly and fundamentally rejected.

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

I like reading your blog. It's like reading a puzzle. I take in bits and pieces and hold them and then you reveal more and a small bit of the picture forms. I say this in a good way. I'm enjoying the experience and the revealed bits are like seeing parts of a beautiful and interesting mosaic.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Today's accumulation of facts was particularly bizarre, wasn't it?

I'm glad it manages to be entertaining, even if it's technically "Omg, I totally just ate a salad for lunch."

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

But it's not "Omg, I totally just ate a salad for lunch." to me. Which is the fun of blogs.

Stephen Colbert did testify in character

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

Here's a link to the video on the Crooks and Liars website.

[kill.livejournal.com]

I have not yet gotten to read Nisi Shawl's work, but I have met her a few times because she is a close friend of close friends of mine. She has this . . . aura. I have always quite liked her. I like what she says in that post about wanting to be with the people who thought Moon's post was bunk, that she wants to dance and sing with them.

Apropos of nothing

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

When I told my daughter that Patty was going to Cardiff, she said, "Tell her to watch out for the rift."

In other Geekish news, I found Mad Men Barbies. It might be old but I thought I'd pass it along anyways.