It's just about bedtime, and I am somewhere around ten years old, maybe a year or two older. We are living in the old Victorian house in Oak Park, and I am lying in my bed in my octagonal room. The lights are out, Mom and Dad are downstairs, and on the desk or table to the right of the door to my room is an elongated plastic periwinkle radio/cassette player that I adored to death. If I stretch my arm as much as I can, I don't even need to set a single foot down on the hardwood floor, therefore risking a tell-tale creak right above the living room where my parents believe me to be sleeping.
The radio's on. It's tuned to Z95, I think. I still have a lot of the Top 40 charts from that station sitting in a box somewhere. But it also might be B96. At any rate, the radio's on, and it's playing, softly, The Top 5 At 9. 9PM! And I was in bed already! Ah, so young.
Most of the countdown, I'm humming along to the music, or wrinkling my nose in embarrassment. But at #2, I pay more attention. My ears are tuned not only to the radio, but down the hall about ten feet to my brother's bedroom door.
He's listening to the radio, too.
The #2 tune finishes, and the radio teases with a station identification and some sort of sound cue that mixes synthesized sound with explosions and maybe electricity, as if the entire radio station had become sentient and aware and just as excited about #1 for that night, expressing anticipation through the wires and signals, shorting out the talk radio studio down the hall.
And then, the opening vamp of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" come through the pastel lavender speaker vents on my little player. Down the hall ten feet to the right, and then left into my little brother's bedroom, I hear either a "Woo hoo!" or a "Yesss!" or "Alright!"
It's like our favorite sports team has just won - "Thriller" is #1 ... again. I hiss something congratulatory back, hoping that the TV downstairs is just loud enough to cover our minor violation of bedtime, and we settle in to listen to our favorite song, the #1 song, the sound of that time in my life.
Once Vincent Price is done talking, once the last chorus fades out to commercial, I stretch my arm as far as it possibly can go without having to touch foot to hardwood floor, and I click the radio off, happy to have been a small part of that victory for another day.
So, I paid attention. Took my vitamins, drank lots of water, and paid attention to how I was sitting. Sat up as straight as I could, tried not to lean out of the way of the pain, remembered to breathe. I also got out the Amol (this infusion of several different essential oils that is not only a good muscle rub, but apparently can also be made into a tea!) and worked as much of it as I could into my neck and upper back. A long(ish) hot shower, heating pad, more breathing. I was in pain until I went to bed, but today I feel pretty damned good. I managed to do a lot of healing yesterday, I think. I am now trying to be more aware and do more stretching upon waking and stuff.
The Amol smells sort of awesome, too: all herbal-y and very very minty - my hands felt ultra-cooled as I splashed more onto my fingers to work into my neck muscles. The scent itself was relaxing.
Three of the cassettes are in their original plastic casing all together, but there are two others, loose, a different brand. Hm.
I got some batteries, popped them into the player, and popped one tape in. No rewind, no forward. Is the player broken, or what? I pop the other loose tape in, and out comes the voice of my friend Raina, who I have known since junior high school, and who sounds impossibly young. It's near the end of the side, though, and right as I hear the voice of Loathsome Roommate Katie, I hit rewind.
This is a tape I used to have in my answering machine in college. These messages are now nearly 15 years old. No, wait, actually, more like 17, since this is now Chris talking about us rooming together in the dorms, which we didn't do until my second year (I was off-campus the first year through a comedy of errors and beneficent procrastination), and there's oh my gooooooooooood, that's JASON, that silly boy I dated confusingly for a few weeks, who used to serenade me at the drop of a hat and wore Hypercolor T shirts all the time and had the most delicious cologne ever.
In many ways, it's not surprising at all that I hung onto this, but it's also amazing that the voices are still as clear as day, and are providing instant recall of that time in my life and how amazing it was.
I really liked high school - I had started to feel the groove of learning, and it carried over into college, where I was all about the homework and the working hard and the absorption of things that interested me.
It's funny to me that my friends were all pretty much notorious for leaving super-long, rambly, hilarious messages on my machine. Times have changed. It's now rare that my phone even rings.
Aw, it looks like some of the older stuff got re-recorded by some 'newer' stuff (circa 2000?)
Oh man, here's Jason again, leaving a long rambly message, inserting as many Elton John lyrics as possible, telling terrible jokes, and generally just carrying on a conversation with me even though I am not there. He was an interesting fellow, definitely. Oh, the stories.
Hahahaha, oh nostalgia. My heart hurts with the bittersweet joy of these memories and these people.
this one makes me laugh and laugh:
As you may or may not know, Bob, I've been assisting David Malki ! out with some random tasks for the Wondermark webcomic and related materials (like his 521 Letters project), and last night was a big launch party in Beverly Hills for his latest book, Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death. At Maxfuncon, he was chatting with photographer Noé Montes, and asked him just a few days ago if he'd like to run a Beard Portrait Booth for the event.
Needless to say, it was super-fun! Oh my gah, people were having such a great time, putting together outfits from the scarves and parasols and beards and moustaches and hats available. I was busy over at the merch table with Mr. Malki ! most of the night, but then I got the chance to share the upper lip sweat of several unknown people as I taped moustaches to my face and made silly faces for the camera.
It was grand. Woody showed up with his awesome girlfriend Kay (for an event featuring beards, it was clearly something he should attend), and it was just a lovely time all around.
Go look at those portraits. Aren't they fantastic? It was one of the most brilliantly-fun things I have ever seen at an event. The cameraderie was palpable, and it was so great to hear people yelling out tips to each other across the Crescent Hotel's lobby: "Try the parasol with the war medal and the big curly moustache!" "The scarf goes best with the goggles!" "Here, you need more moustache tape? I'll snip you some!"
Good. Times.
They served delicious lemon drops, of which I had several one night after seeing Soul Coughing with my friend Pete. We had chummed up with a couple there, one of whom was a phlebotomist and had nothing but nice things to say about the state of Pete's veins. Somewhere I have Mike Doughty's autograph from that night, I think on a wrist strap or something like.
I miss seeing live music regularly. Once I get my shit together and get back on my feet again, I will be once again seeking that out. I've only been to see The Cure and Depeche Mode since I've moved to California, and while I don't mind the nostalgia kick of seeing bands I've loved for over twenty years now, it's not enough.
New A-Ha video!!
Here's a photo from the road, a quintessential piece of Midwestern flatness and wintery blah that I haven't seen in person since early 2007.
That's weird.
A particularly nice shot I got of Linford and Karen (during an Over the Rhine show, natch) at some show I went to back in 2001. I don't think this is Schuba's, but was it Park West? I don't even know anymore. Oh, maybe it was Double Door? Hrm. I've seen them so many times. They were actually here over the holidays in L.A., but they were performing the same night as Michael Borys' puzzle party. I am ultimately glad I went to the puzzle party, as my team took first place and all, but I am still sad that I missed a taste of 'sweet home Chicago,' even though Over the Rhine is from Cincy.
Anyway, I've been organizing and archiving photos, and thought I'd post a couple that caught my eye.
There were maybe 20 or 30 of us in the audience, tops, which was kinda neat as we were on the Attack of the Show set with a huge green screen set up for the clips (just like Talk Soup, really!). It was kinda weird to be there with the cellphones hanging from the ceiling, and the robots pushed over in one corner, and the poster montages on the wall of Kevin and Olivia. Too familiar, you know? -- all of this was previously only on my teevee. Being there in person was educational, too: that set is a lot smaller in person than it seems on the show, that's for sure.
Ah, the magic of television.
The taping seemed to go really well - Chris Hardwick is a super-funny and friendly guy, and was down-to-earth and great about chatting with people during and after the show. It was easy to laugh a lot during the show - his high energy and incisive wit was inspiring to me.
See, I love telling stories, and I love taking the long road on anecdotes as well. I may not be a comedian like Hardwick, but I like it when people think I am funny. However, it's super-easy to feel insecure about that, and to worry huge amounts that my stories are over-long, or way too detailed to be interesting to anyone but me. I forget that sometimes it's enthusiasm and joy alone that can carry a moment, and that good material is sometimes a distant second to that. Ya gotta have the 'it' before you can Once Upon A Time, I think. If you don't care about what you're saying, why would anyone else?
Anyway.
If you can, catch Web Soup on Sunday (as in, like, today, I guess) on G4 at 9PM ET - maybe you can hear me laughing in the audience! There were a few super-loud unique laughers, so I am honestly not sure at all you'd hear me, so it would be a super-special challenge if you actually did. Muahaha. I was e-mailing Kristen during the show, and she was all, "OMG I CAN HEAR YOU," but I am pretty sure she wasn't anywhere near the control room, heh.
Now that I've been down there once for a taping, I hope I can get into the audience again for a future taping - it was super-fun, and was something unique and not too overwhelming to do with my day. The only annoyance I had was telling the valet guys in the parking garage that I would only be two hours (did I irritate them by parking my own car - there was no signage indicating this was against the rules? did I offend them by driving a car more than a decade old? I suppose I shall never know, but that is something about L.A. I will NOT miss ever: snooty control-freak parking attendants).
The avatar for this entry is because I was hanging out in KristenLand, even though I didn't get a chance to see her at all. Maybe next time! I did get lost in the back hallways of the studios for a bit afterwards, which was sort of humorous. I basically kept walking like I belonged there, and no one seemed to mind. And then I ran into a gaming blogger who was at the taping who said she was lost, at which point a very nice woman showed us how to get back out to the main lobby. As I passed by the dressing rooms, I smelled some of the most amazing fruity hair product ever in the air - it was seriously delicious, and it reminded me of when I emailed Kristen months and months ago and said something like, "omg olivia's hair is so shiny" and then she replied that it wasn't the shiny that got her, it was the yummy scent, and that she found some sort of Japanese passion-fruit hair perfume in makeup, and so I guess that's what it was. Strange, yeah, to have that come around as a tiny detail from so long ago. But it was totally the first thing I thought on my way past the dressing rooms!
And that's the thing: for all that L.A. has disappointed me, there have been a significant number of things like this where stuff I know and see on TV and in movies is stuff that I can touch and have an effect on right now, and have had an effect on - or in the case of olfactory hair stuff, feeling a connection to something that was previously totally ephemeral and distant. I can see exactly why this is heady and alluring for people, and why it's so important to stay connected in 'the biz.' I just don't know that I fit into it at all. I am a forgettable component. I am too dorky and sincere. I am not hell-bent on meaningful conversation and art that is only grounded in truth, but a woman like me would have to go full-on plastic and bright and buzz-wordy to get anywhere, here. I'd rather stick to the sincere and meaningful, yep.
I am not sure I have that kind of energy, strength, or persona for L.A.. I am not sure I would be me at all, anymore, actually. Kudos to those who can do this and survive.
But, yeah, watch Web Soup! And then tell me if you could hear me laughing!
It was nice to be out of my apartment and not doing some senseless errand or something involving driving in the hellish traffic of Los Angeles. It was nice to be in a quiet apartment, reading a book, writing a little in my paper journal, and completing quite a lot of story in one of my DS games (Rocket Slime, if you must know, which I've already played, but when I lost a bunch of my games during the last flight before moving here, it was one of the casualties. I re-bought a copy months and months ago, but never really started playing it again until recently).
Once the cable guy came by to extend the cable around the room to the other wall, I moved furniture into place and vacuumed up the various little styrofoam bits still hanging about from the entertainment center packing materials the night before. I cozied up into a short nap on their couch, and then Shawn came by to say hello and see how things were going. As we began to re-design other sections of Tom and Jon's place, Jon came home from an audition, bearing an iced latte for me, which tasted heavenly, to tell the truth. I got through the last of my last bag of coffee at home sometime last week, and made a deal with myself to hold off on purchasing more coffee in an effort to save money, but also get through some of the huge backlog of tea I have crowding up space in my pantry. I like drinking tea a lot, but it doesn't quite have the oomph that coffee does. Mild strawberry tea pales in comparison to the strong, bitter shock of espresso tempered with milk and ice and vanilla syrup, I tell you what. Anyway.
As soon as Jon showed up, we shared our design ideas, and then the TV delivery guys showed up. And man, were they awesome. They were Geek Squad from Best Buy, and they not only bracketed the new television, but ran all of the cords and tied them off with plastic ties, neatly trimming them down so that they weren't visible at all behind the stand. It was, dare I say, approaching sexy how awesomely they put everything together. They even went through and changed all of the settings for the Wii and the DVD player and such. Tom joked later that they were jerks for not also doing the Rock Band calibrations, as they're such a pain in the ass to do.
Tom picked up food from Zankou Chicken for all of us, and I was so ravenously hungry that I was even putting the slices of pickled beet into the hummus/chicken wraps. We watched parts of Wall-E, and I discovered that Zankou apparently makes some sort of garlic spread stuff that is totally amazing and I was spreading that stuff all over the chicken and the bread and mixing it in with the hummus and good gravy it's a good thing I am single because I was turning into a garlic bulb all on my own after that meal.
That was a nice day, that Thursday. There was some sunshine, a lot of quiet, and a break from staring at my own walls, or fighting the craziness of L.A. just to get somewhere to do something (paying a million dollars in parking fees just for the pleasure of getting out somewhere).
I really liked it! I was not entirely expecting to, for a few reasons. Mostly, I hadn't heard all that much about the second film in the series to make me want to see it immediately. Also, while I liked the first film just fine, I thought the action sequences were sort of a mish-mosh (except when the White Queen was in there, busting stuff up in totally bad-ass ways), and I worried that I would become sort of bored with the battles in this second film.
However, the battle scenes in Caspian were really well-paced and engaging, including an expanded plot point where they plan and execute an assault on the Telmarine castle before heading onwards to the duel with Miraz and the resulting battle at Aslan's How. It was interesting how they played with the reveal that Miraz had actually killed Caspian IX, and that Caspian X nearly ruined the battle by confronting Miraz while Narnians perished in the courtyard below. I am not sure it was the most in-character choice for both Prince Caspian and High King Peter, as the defeat not only weakens my trust in their judgment, but also gives a rather annoying moral of, "Sons of Adam generally fuck up everything until
Talk about deus ex machina - this is the epitome. Two thumbs down for that crap, I tell you.
Ben Barnes is incredibly photogenic and pulls off the many struggles Prince Caspian faces - siding against the Telmarine people, siding with the Narnians who immediately put all their trust in him, seeing his own people attempt to murder him in his bed (interesting choice to have him watch this from a wardrobe with a secret door built into the back, too), adjusting to having Peter share the authority without losing his own dignity, and accepting with appropriate humility his new role as King of all Narnia.
I liked Aslan's How - it was very much as I imagined it in my head, and I liked the additional underground passages that were used in the final battle. It was much bigger in the movie than it ever was in my imagination, which I guess only made sense, seeing as how it needed not only to cover the entire Stone Table plateau, but also act as a stronghold. I liked that they flew in the Stone Table from the first movie for this one, too. I also very much liked that Tilda Swinton makes an appearance here - in the book she is never actually summoned like they do in the movie, but you do get the feeling from the Hag that she is just a few incantations from being there, so I did not mind this at all. While I love that Edmund is the one to break the icy summoning, I disliked the further recriminations against Peter in the scene. It only makes his conversation later with Aslan more judgy and like punishment: you're too old to come back to Narnia, because you messed up a couple times here, and you're acting like an adult. Come back when you're dead*. Ugh.
The little sideplot with Susan and Caspian having an attraction and their kiss at the end was surprisingly sweet, even though it made me furrow my brow for the same reason Peter's battle mistakes did: the Pevensie kids still love Narnia and want the best for it, and want to continue on being noble and adventurous and full of love, but no, thou shalt not make mistakes nor kiss boys. (I get very cranky when the storyline reminds me of The Problem With Susan, so yeah, take my furrowed brow with a grain of salt).
Reepicheep was wonderful, and I actually forgot it was Eddie Izzard's voice until the end, when he had a bunch of lines all in a row and I recognized him. Reepicheep is one of the best characters, ever. I used to find him annoying as a kid, but he's hilarious to me now.
There is a considerable amount of plot-squishing and moving around, but for the most part, it really works just fine. I do wish at least a few more seconds were spent establishing the reveal at Cair Paravel, much like the gorgeous Lantern Waste moments in the first movie, but I do give credit that the pacing did not flag.
The effects were pretty seamless, and the creature CGI was once again understated enough to not draw attention to itself too much, but still be very impressive. Reepicheep was very shiny and silky, and the centaurs and fauns were believable. I also liked the trees: dryads, nyads, etc.
The Narnia books were a huge part of my childhood. I re-read them all the time, and have this awesome vintage '80's set (this style, here) that has the correct order of stories. As in, Magician's Nephew is #6, thank you very much. Anyway, both movies have brought tears to my eyes, as there are so many little things I love about the books, even though I tend to disregard any of the bigger religious overtones, since they are not applicable to my life. Good stuff.
So yeah, I enjoyed it.
*oh, uh, spoiler alert?
Night before last: Stuck in a compound where we were about to be invaded by this huge army of Aztecs. I mean, we called them Aztecs, but they didn't have any of the armor/fatigues/weapons. They were generic sci-fi rebel faction soldiers, but with weapons made out of brightly-colored plastic. Some had spears made out of straws that were inserted end-to-end to make them long. I managed to escape and make my way to a library of some sort, where I found a crystal ball that I needed to over-charge and then explode with magic, so that whoever was controlling the Aztecs would lose power. I think the dream was co-written by Joss Whedon. No, seriously: I think I actually thought that in the dream, or saw it title card-style like opening credits.
Last night the dream was in a recurring place - a large, sprawling high school that has some vague resemblance to my actual high school. I was spending a lot of time rooting through lockers, trying to find one that had a strongbox I could gank for my locker, since it was supposed to have one, but didn't. Later on in the dream, my art instructor, looking disturbingly much like John Tesh, propositioned me, offering to pay for a hotel if we wanted to leave right in the middle of a review of my portfolio pieces.
I woke up with a terrible headache and neck ache, which I am now nursing with oatmeal and coffee.
Gragh.
I recently touched up the color of the portions of my hair that are not funky cotton candy/crayon colors, as the silver strands were becoming a bit too prevalent again. But it's more than just covering up the grey for me - the Wells side of my hair makes it become sort of unruly and wiry, meaning that in a heavy humidity or rain it frizzes right up and won't lay right on my head. When I dye it, the chemicals tame the strands into something that's much less irritating. I am pretty no-fuss when it comes to hair - long-gone are the days when I'd spray my hair with product and curl it, or try to train it a particular way. Unless we're talking about standing up in a wedding or going on stage in character for a play, I just don't use anything on my hair. So, every couple of months or so, I put the glop on my head, wait twenty minutes, and then go on not caring. It's nice not to have frizzies flying into my face, or escaping out of barrettes or whatever.
Fascinating, yes.
I think I am going to continue the purging of Things and Stuff from my apartment, and take this old printer and scanner to get recycled. Both work alright, except that one has proprietary and ridiculously expensive replacement cartridges for ink, and both have obsolete drivers that cannot be resolved with Windows Vista. Thus, they must go. I am going to try and tuck in some old power supplies and cables and phone extensions, too, so I can be rid of them as well.
Today turned out to be pretty okay, though. I watched a Netflix movie I've had sitting in my apartment for a couple weeks now - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which, while pretty, sort of left me cold. I enjoyed some of the deliberate corniness, and there was certainly some prettiness to look at, but overall it felt like it was an okay story with some missed opportunities.
Like, OK, there's this great bit where two characters meet secretly at the movies, and one camera shot has them in profile, facing each other, whispering anxiously about evil scientific plots, and the movie in the background is playing a scene most people are pretty familiar with. In fact, the lines that are spoken could have easily pointed to one character being shady, or hinting at some massive twist at the end. There was no twist, no true subterfuge. It was all rather milquetoast. Sigh.
The art style of the movie was certainly stunning and nice to look at for the most part, but after a while began to feel flat and limited, as if these characters were simply glowy romantic Maxfield Parrish paintings with inconsequential comic book lives. I felt as though I didn't have to care about them at all.
However, Jude Law is just so incredibly photogenic. It's as though he flips a switch and boom! He's dashing and charming and a little bit enigmatic.
Anyway, I finally watched it, immediately slipped the blu-ray disc back in its sleeve, and then drove to an unemployment assistance appointment in Glendale. I had to fill out a form with a job search record (causing me to pop a quick resume over to Square-Enix last night to round out the other listings I had), and then wait. I was expecting to be grilled and instructed in the ways of being unemployed and undeserving, but I guess it was just a quick checkup on my registration at the California jobs website (registered well before the deadline, woot) and various other bits and bobs that proved I was an eligible worker receiving the correct benefits.
All the worry I had been harboring over the last several days dissipated as the counselor told me that we were done as soon as he'd checked my records, and then told me that the center was free for use if I wanted to use the fax machine or copier to send out resumes or update my information on the job search website. Nifty! I may just take them up on that. It's nice to have resources and infrastructure like this. And everyone I've had to talk to regarding unemployment insurance has been nicer than nice so far. What a relief.
I dropped off a huge bag of bedsheets and pillowcases at the donation bin in the parking lot of the Ralph's grocery store near me. The pull-drawer was kind of busted, so I crammed a couple sheets in there with the other clothes already jammed in there (along with a home decor magazine??), and left the rest of the bag right next to the bin. It was a heavy bag, too. I was glad to winnow down the linens - some of the sheets were getting downright thin or worn at the seams from being washed so many times over the years.
I then mailed off the Netflix disc, and now I am home, hoping to maybe start on a couple small projects - one for David Malki !, and a couple other newish things.
It felt good to get those things done today. I needed some accomplishment in the face of how my life breeds stultification. Yeah, that's a big word there, stultification. But it describes where I am at - tasks and frustrations clinging to me like little calcified creatures, weighing me down, paralyzing me where once I was dynamic.
I scored a drama point today after deadpanning a particular line, and did some stuff in battle that was not completely fight-tastic, but did move things along in a way that made Jon really happy, so I felt pretty accomplished. Additionally, it's not every day that you get to fling a burning can of sterno at a blue-skinned Egyptian henchman demon and slam a hotel door in his face, whilst quipping, "Housekeeping!", you know?
It's a good little group of people, all a mix of characters and senses of humor that somehow seems to work pretty well. I traded in some XP for a skill point in Getting Medieval, because, well, sometimes you just need to Get Medieval when fighting all manner of mummies and demons and 'rabid lepers,' as Freya the accidental sorceress likes to call the vamps.
Yay nerdiness! It feels good to laugh, and to make people laugh.
So the story goes that Yakity Sax started playing at Kristin's and Dave's wedding, and we started exclaiming that it would be hilarious if a bunch of us started chasing Dave through the reception hall, a la Benny Hill.
About halfway through the song, someone called out to him with the idea, and he said something like, "That's a FANTASTIC idea!" and took off through the reception hall, followed in hot pursuit by a good handful of friends.
I barely got any of it on video because it happened so fast, but trust me, it was pretty damned funny.
At any rate, I've now uploaded the whole set of NC photos to Flickr, including some dumb shots I took when in Chapel Hill. You can find them here.
Here's a couple to whet your appetite:
I had a really great time, pretty much the entire weekend (except when I thought about my actual current real life, at which point I would begin to get cranky and not wanting to get on a plane to go 'home'). It was wonderful to see everyone that came, and meet a few new people as well. These are people that make me feel comfortable and real, from the oldest-known Beekeepers to my team lead from Epic. That weekend, with all of the things it accomplished for me (more on this in the coming months, probably) made me happier than I've been since before I got laid off.
Anyway, there you go. Pictures!
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