Hollis: in the bleak midwinter

<3 pure sonic <3

I bookmarked this NPR Radiohead concert podcast a while back when I first stumbled onto it, and just got around to having a space of time to listen to it tonight. WOWOWOW The sound quality is awesome (at least on my headphones).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94315732&sc=nl&cc=mn-20080910

The concert took place at the Santa Barbara Bowl, an amazing steep little concert space cut into the sandstone hills in a neighborhood just a few blocks from the ocean. It was built originally for the Fiesta horse shows that were started gosh, back in the 1920's I think. At some point (late 90's?) it was restored and rebuilt into a great smaller scale stage. I saw a regge concert there as well as a BB King show. Some of the million dollar homes at the top of the hill surrounding the stage have a view of the concerts and throw parties on concert days.

Here's the description from the NPR music guy of the concert:

NPR.org, September 5, 2008 - When I think of the best concerts I've seen, I always flash back to Pink Floyd in early 1972. Almost two years before the band released what would become Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd performed the entire suite of songs to the amazement of us all. We'd never heard any of the songs (then titled Eclipse: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics), and with its quadrophonic sound, it remains the most massive musical surprise I've experienced.

Radiohead's show at the Santa Barbara Bowl came as close for musicianship and creativity as any show I've seen in 37 years. I've seen a lot of shows.

These guys write great songs, and sometimes you can even sing along to them, but what they do better than any band is create a sonic adventure — a soundscape which, at its best, stretches time and allows the mind to wander and rejuvenate. I think of it as resetting the synapses. Creativity breeds creativity. When the music was over, I felt unboxed and changed and pretty darn happy. Drugs are overrated; music is underrated.

ETA: Hahahah! my cat thinks something must be really wrong with me when I sing along with Thom Yorke, as she's kneeding my chest and nuzzling my face meowing loudly all of sudden.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2008/07/21/080721crci_cinema_denby

The new Batman movie makes me really sad. I haven't seen it yet, and I'm not sure I want to. The Joker made me feel ill when I saw the 1990's Tim Burton film with the same villan. It makes me feel sick to my stomach that playing this role may have and probably did contribute to the stress that led to Heath Ledger taking too many medications at once.

(Many actors have told stories of dealing with getting too caught up in the emotions of acting and not being able to leave the job behind when they leave the set. David Thewlis has a story of going home after a day filming the nihilistic "Naked" and pulling up the linolium in his kitchen and scrawing poetry on the walls. After that he had to learn to distinguish the difference between his job and his life.)

As Ron Weasley says "He's not worth it."

I'm assuming that a lot of the attention the film is getting though is based on rave reviews of Ledger's performance as The Joker. Dave Denby at The New Yorker even compares him to Marlon Brando:

He’s part freaky clown, part Alice Cooper the morning after, and all actor. He’s mesmerizing in every scene. His voice is not sludgy and slow, as it was in “Brokeback Mountain.” It’s a little higher and faster, but with odd, devastating pauses and saturnine shades of mockery. At times, I was reminded of Marlon Brando at his most feline and insinuating.

The best paragraph of the review though, and a good giggle to end this post on is:

...there are many fights that employ the devastating martial-arts system known as the Keysi Fighting Method. Christian Bale, who plays Bruce Wayne (and Batman), spent months training under the masters of the ferocious and delicate K.F.M. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you a thing about it, because the combat is photographed close up, in semidarkness, and cut at the speed of a fifteen-second commercial. Instead of enjoying the formalized beauty of a fighting discipline, we see a lot of flailing movement and bodies hitting the floor like grain sacks. All this ruckus is accompanied by pounding thuds on the soundtrack, with two veteran Hollywood composers (Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard) providing additional bass-heavy stomps in every scene, even when nothing is going on. At times, the movie sounds like two excited mattresses making love in an echo chamber.

<3

Bonus material: http://www.newyorker.com/online/covers/slideshow_blittcovers?slide=1&run=true#showHeader
The controversial New Yorker cover about Obama, and some past satirical covers about politics.

Whoooooah, this is cool shit:

http://steampunkworkshop.com/daveveloz.shtml

I could see Mal from Firefly typing on one of these.

Updated my knitting blog. I post more detail there about the movie, but I feel so sorry for Alan Rickman for having to be invovled with a movie like "Perfume, the Story of a Murderer". I hope they paid him a shitload of money for that role. Watched this movie on DVD at a friend's house. The women gave up taking it seriously about 10 minutes into the film, while the guys tried to just watch it. By the end we were all just shredding it to pieces. Yes, it's that bad. I refuse to consider that the book is any better if your whole point is ( cut for huge spoilers ). Highly NOT recommended.

phew, okay.

Sarah Monette, truepenny's new book, The Mirador is just wonderful. If you like plot driven action action action! Robert Jordan style fantasy books, this ain't for you. If you like character driven books in which the characters are let loose in a twisty turny fantasy city setting (full of delicious details-- theives, necromancers, cabalists, magic with a real logic behind it, politics, spies, catacombs, ghosts, prostitutes, libraries, thespian drama) and by acting how they naturally would create the drama and excitement of the novel and solve a mystery then it'll be the book for you.

I love the Harry Potter books, but after all the confused teenage emotion expressed by Harry, it's a relief to delve into the pure fucked-up-ness of the characters in Sarah Monette's books. I love them for being so completely lost in their fucked-up state of being. It makes the process of self-understanding so revelatory when one of them manages to find some prespective.

* quote from The Mirador that is hugely appropriate since we had a freaky fantastic thunder/lightning storm last night to break the heat temporarily

I've been reading The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. I've learned more about Afganistan and the people there from this book than any newspaper article or news analysis. It's remarkable how his simple straightforward descriptions (he's trained as an archaologist I think) tease out the character and motivations of the people he meets along the way.

The book is an account of his walk across the mountains of Afganistan very shortly after the US started the war there in 2001. Stewart is one of those people obsessed with walking across regions of the planet unknown to most people. He's done walks across Nepal, Pakistan and Iran prior to this trek. His knowledge of the customs and languages of the region and his humility in trying to get a feeling for the villages and personalities and history allow him more access than most journalists.

It's quite humorous in parts. The description of the ICRC (Red Cross) trying to bring in food to the "hunger belt" hits a nerve. The villagers wonders why the British UN peacekeepers hook their feet onto the bumper of their car and push themselves up and down 200 times, but at the same time admire the breadth of their chests. The hundreds of kilometers of walking through snow wet and cold with diarreha give one a feeling for the actual physical pain of the trek.

---> If you like throughtful travel writing and are interested at all in Afganistan, definitely a good book. It sold out numerous times at the publisher when it first came out, the reviews in the NY Times, LA Times and Wall Street Journal were so glowing.



* how a British relief worker with a cockney accent described the author -- the author was cheered up by this affection

One of the pleasures of reading The New Yorker is the "Shouts and Murmers" humor essay in each issue. Steve Martin, Woody Allen, Andy Borowitz and other more famous comedic writers contribute, but the better ones are by authors I'm not as familiar with. Often the writer will riff off of a quote from a news article. This week's is a winner with my sense of humour and so very appropriate for National Poetry Month:

Yorkshire cabby enthuses about W.H. Auden's poetry

In preparation for an expected onslaught of visitors to York, England, W. H. Auden’s birth city, cab drivers have been memorizing some of his poetry.…When tourists arrive to celebrate the centenary of Mr. Auden’s birth this year, their cabbies will recite his verse.
—The Times.

’Ewas me Norf, me Souf, me East and West,
Me working week and me Sund’y rest,
Me noon, me midnight, me talk, me song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

’E ’ad a gentleman friend, Mr. Auden did, dinnee? Bit of a trouser man, orroight? That seems to be the way nowadays, innit, wif actors and M.P.s and clergy and wot ’ave you. In my day, there weren’t a need to fling yer spanky knackers into other folks’ faces all jumble-wumble and ’ere’s-mine-guv’nor. Though the missus did drag me to see Mr. Rudolf Nureyev at the ballet once. That man packed a full bag of groceries, dinnee? ...

It goes on for another 4 verses. *glee*

Jeff Tweedy and his band, Wilco have been very open about letting fans download their music, and have offered a new song, What Light, for download (after all the tour info). Wilco falls under the "alt pop music" label, but it's got so much country, real country music as a base that it feels more real than most of the stuff on the alt rock station.

It's a good song for a gloomy day in which you're not feeling too hot.

*I hate to speculate, but I wonder how much therapy literature Jeff Tweedy has been reading in the last year or so.

OMFG! why have I not heard about this movie before! Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory...

...plays a former Olympic ice skater who, banned from competition with a fellow competitor (played by John Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame), discovers a loophole allowing the men to compete as a pair. (as summarized by NPR) opening next Friday.

DUDE, I'm there. Figure skating is just so fricking cool (says the girl who competed in a purple paisley skating dress in the early '80s). The costume designers must have been giggling the entire time. (check out the TRON costume reference).

Bwhahah-- check out A.O. Scott's movie review of "300" for the NY Times: The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers — including ninjas, dervishes, elephants, a charging rhino and an angry bald giant — but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities.

Seriously hilarious, though obviously a lot of you won't agree with his comments since I've seen that most of you out in lj land seem to have really liked this movie.

I feel smarter by reading truepenny's lj. Not that I understand all the English major and theater language, but!
I really adore both her books and her journal and general thinking about things.

• Go check this out! Scarleteen.com sex education for the real world, aimed at teens but useful to us all.


• for those of you with cats: Aubade (scored for four cats and two bipeds): A Play in One Act


• and a satisfying interview at Writer Unboxed: I lost a weekend to Monette’s intricately plotted and multilayered story, woven together with delicious prose.

HA! truepenny posted a very illuminating bit about the difference between slash stories and stories about queer relationships, and WHY that is important. To sum it up very briefly:

...Slash is subversion....Now, why am I so adamant that slash is not the same as homosexual relationships?

Because I insist that homosexual relationships ought not to be categorized as subversive...

Go read the whole thing now.

PS thank you! raven_feathers for the card ♥
and yes, all my cards to you all will be a bit late this year

I just have to post that this is the first time in 6-8 years that I've felt rather hopeful when I think about our government in general. What a great feeling. I know that there won't be miracles, and as some people have posted, many of the Dems are pretty conservative Dems. But still!

We all squeed aloud at work yesterday when one of the managers came scurrying out from the office to say that Rummy had resigned.

My other happy feeling is that I finally get to go back to knitting group tonight. I've had the late shift at work during the past few.

ETA omg, check out regala_electra account of her night at The Colbert Report's Midtacular-- live "I can't hear you over the liberty"

ha! what a great idea: ladyjaida has started a queer themed fantasy book reading club at themollyhouse, "Molly" being a term used in Sarah Monette's books instead of gay. And yay! they are reading "Swordspoint" this month, which makes me happy.

I've been od'ing on truepenny's lj. While there's something odd about having such access to a favorite author's mind, it's also really gratifying to find bits of it unpacked and laid out. Her post on what makes a scene work for you should interest any of the writers strolling by here.

Whew, I finally met Ms. Melanie Rawn. Something I've wanted to do for oh, 15 years now, since I first read her books as a fifteen year old. Though, at that point I'd no concept of meeting someone I admired so much. Ok, bear with me here, my brain isn't up to full speed yet, the caffine still dribbling in. I was much too elated to go to sleep at a reasonable hour last night.

Before work, I found a bouquet of yellow roses (found a great bunch of homey looking ones at the pumpkin patch/flower stall across the street from work for cheap as they were opened all the way). I added some seeded eucalyptus for the California-like smell (at least to me) and added two black ribbons wrapped around the vase. Melanie really liked the flowers, mentioning that yellow roses are her favorite (yay!) and I did mention that a several of her happy readers had contributed the idea. Kate's husband sent a beautiful fruit basket -- apparantly when she often forgets to eat during the day according to Melanie.

(  cut for long chatty paraphrasing of how the evening went )

I appologized for having a big pile of books to sign, but both authors were happy to. So, I got my hardback of Skybowl (original first printing!) when I was reading the series I got Skybowl when it first came out in hardcover signed to me, but the rest I just asked her to sign her name, both Exiles, and my hardcovers of Stronghold and Dragon Token. We have a big stack of books signed for stock, and the posters of each book cover as well.

I bought an extra copy of Spellbinder to be signed. Ara, did you still want it mailed? If you want a personalized copy, contact one of the San Diego group, and I'll keep the extra for someone else.

I did get a couple of good photos (they were nice about that too). And will post when I can upload to the computer.

Soooo, what are you all planning to dress up as for Halloween? All Hallows Eve, Hallow'een or however you call it?

I work that day, so am thinking of finally polishing up my Eowyn dress, the blue underdress with brown linen overshift. It's all ragged edges that I have to line. I sewed the edged under, but because of the way it gapes at the edges it still shows. It's literary and will be good to get a 2nd use out of it.

The most e-mailed article today at NY Times... that I'm inclined to take with a grain of salt. A fair amount rings true though more for adult costumes than littler kids.NY Times article on sexy Halloween costumes for girls:

“It’s a night when even a nice girl can dress like a dominatrix and still hold her head up the next morning,” said Linda M. Scott, the author of “Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism” (Palgrave Macmillan) and a professor of marketing at the University of Oxford in England.

The trend is so pervasive it has been written about by college students in campus newspapers, and Carlos Mencia, the comedian, jokes that Halloween should now be called Dress-Like-a-Whore Day.....

.....Dr. Tolman added that it is possible some women are using Halloween as a “safe space,” a time to play with sexuality. By taking it over the top, she said, they “make fun of this bill of goods that’s being sold to them.”

“Hey, if we can claim Halloween as a safe space to question these images being sold to us, I think that’s a great idea,” Dr. Tolman said

[and my favorite bit:] Still, women may be buying racy outfits because that is all that is available. Ms. Getz said she wished there were more sexy men’s costumes on the market and that the lack of them is but further evidence of the gender double standard. “It’s just not as socially acceptable,” she said, adding that men feel comfortable expressing themselves with Halloween costumes that are “either crude or outrageous or obnoxious.”

because I haven't done a meme for a long time:

from grrliz and ter369

- Pick your birth month.
- Strike out anything that doesn't apply to you.
- Bold the five-ten that best apply to you.
- Copy to your own journal, with all twelve months under a lj-cut

NOVEMBER:
Has a lot of ideas. Difficult to fathom. Thinks forward. Unique and brilliant. Extraordinary ideas. Sharp thinking. Fine and strong clairvoyance. Can become good doctors. Dynamic in personality. Secretive. Inquisitive. Knows how to dig secrets. Always thinking. Less talkative but amiable. Brave and generous.¹ Patient. Stubborn and hard-hearted.² If there is a will, there is a way. Determined. Never give up. Hardly becomes angry unless provoked. Loves to be alone. Thinks differently from others. Sharp-minded. Motivates oneself.³ Does not appreciate praises. High-spirited. Well-built and tough. Deep love and emotions. Romantic. Uncertain in relationships. Homely. Hardworking. High abilities. Trustworthy. Honest and keeps secrets. Not able to control emotions. Unpredictable.

¹I don't think of myself as brave, maybe I used to be at one point.
² I didn't cry when my favorite pet cat died. My mom thinks I don't care sometimes, but I just don't express emotions like that or I'd be a wreck.
³ Something I'm always trying to working on.

( all the months found here )

Finished watching Black's Books season 1 DVD. Very very silly(the whole Midnight Cowboy thing), but definitely makes me laugh. thanks aldenmacrae ;-)

Am back to knitting the blanket while watching 2nd season House DVD. It's a project I don't have to really look at to work. "Clueless" was one of the better episodes so far. The mystery with the illness was trickier, and of course I love the interaction of House and Wilson. House stealing Wilson's gourmet lunches and the Al Green song over the coda. haha!

Reading ---> Found a book in the sociology section of the bookstore about fandom, blogging and gamers. Chapter called, "Normal Female Interest in Male Bonking" all about slash fandom. Some pretty interesting quotes from blogs and fandom zines. I'll have to work up a post all about this. It's mostly in reference to 'Star Trek' and 'The Professionals' fandom. (is this a British spy show or something?)

ohmygosh, I'm so behind once again on you all's doings and postings... How ya been?

4th of July and fireworks and too much good food and then lots of working and oh yeah, I got stuck in a wonderful book!

Sarah Monette is my favorite new author. I admit that I picked up her book, Mélusine, because the cover was attractive (clicky for gorgeous man with tattoos... so ok, their photoshop artiste did a crappy job, but the male model sure ain't hard on the eyes).

However, 1/3 of the way into the book, I've ordered the hardcover of the next book in the trilogy, The Virtu.

--> ETA: this is a terrible review if you were to read it that way, but it's a list of the things that make me go "OOH fun! Now this is a well researched fantasy world"

Why? I'm always looking for a fantasy full of interesting twisty characters and magic and moral complexity. She throws tortured violent male/male sex into the first 40 pages, hidden pasts, a tarot deck reading diviner, dominant females, etc....mad wizards and thieves sneaking through a Victorian London-ish/Parisian setting mix in with hints at necromancy and a huge epic past for the city. My only complaint is that I kept thinking I'd walked into the 2nd book in a series, only to find that things would get mostly explained as the story progressed. Her style of writing is quite the equivalent of Jacqueline Cary and remind me a lot of what I like about fleshdress's fiction. Plus, plenty of snark and bits of wry humor. I'm really enjoying how she uses similies. Really highly recommended overall.

ter369 for some reason I think of you first as liking this type of writing and setting.

She even has an LJ! truepenny.

quintos I think her article on ' how to write strong female characters' might appeal to you

...is gearing up for tomorrow, obviously, with the release of PotC II, Dead Man's Chest. There were HUGE big building-side size posters of Johnny Depp's piratey visage up in LA when we went through there this past holiday weekend.

The kid's book series of "Wizardology", "Dragonology" and "Egyptology" is realeasing "Pirateology" this month. We have a big almost life-size cardboard pirate promoting this book in the kid's book room. ;-) Then we have Jack, the Pirate, as a regular customer complete with real authentic black leather eye-patch and big gold hoop earings.

It's hardly a recent phenomenon, as Adam Gopnik describes Benjamin Disraeli (British politician and prime minister during the mid-1800's) in the July 3, 2006 New Yorker-- (this if for you both, bawdy_letters and wildestranger by the way)

This self-image [Lord Byron's "Child Herold" idea] hardly suited Disraeli's temperament, and he did what would-be Byronic heroes without the means to swim the Hellespont or fight for Greece have always done: he became a dandy. Dandyism is domesticated Byronism: the adventure begins at the waistcoat and ends at the spats. Descriptions of the young Disraeli make him sound like a cross between Cecil Beaton and a member of the Village People; on a holiday in Malta, he dressed in full pirate regalia, complete with pistols and daggers. Later, on the political make in London, he wore according to an affectionate observer, "a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles...white gloves, with several brilliant gold rings outside them." His gold chain, worn many at a time, were a wonder, his lacquered black curls an event.

---

I'm just paging through dreaminoflorien's massive fic rec project: do go and rec and vote

Sorry for so many listy entries lately, just disparate things to throw all into one post.

1. First things first. darth_cabal, do look for a manilla package in the mail in about 6 days time. There's a letter that's meant to be passed along with the book, and a bookmark for you. (Don't pass that along as you can figure out a few things about me that you already know from the info on it).


2. So many wonderful books on my to-read stack. But I'm determined to finish G.R.R. Martin's Feast for Crows and liking it better than a lot of people's general reviews did. His characters are so round and honest to themselves. I'm only 1/2 way through so far, so shhh...


3. Lynn Flewelling's final book The Oracle's Queen is out! wheee! earlier than expected too. I've reread The Bone Doll's Twin and The Hidden Warrior 2-3 times in the past couple years waiting for this final volume. *happy sigh* If you like gender bending fic, try her books. But start with Luck in Shadows first for the yummy Alec and Seragil. mmmmm


4. Speaking of yummy male characters, I've been having such fun following dassgrrl's quest for Robert Sean Leonard movies. It's still weird to think of the wry messed up Wilson of "House" and the beautiful drama queen boy in "Dead Poet's Society" as being the same guy.


5. I had a customer ask me what a "viewpoint" was yesterday, when I was trying to explain what Gregory Maguire's Wicked (you know, the book from the viewpoint of the wicked witch of the west) was about. o_O


6. Lastly, the LA Times has an article about coffee, especially decaff, being useful in preventing adult onset diabetes.