(no subject)
Feb. 2nd, 2006 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rusty_haloDude! George RR Martin rocks!
From his latest not-a-blog entry, about the Hugo awards:
He's a South Park fan!
I suppose I should post about last weekend's convention. I'm still sort of in recovery (lack of sleep, plane delays), but here goes.
I took the subway to JFK airport, flew to Boston, took a bus and subway to Harvard Square, and wandered around with a map until I found my hotel, the aptly-named Harvard Square Hotel. I left home about 8am and arrived about 2pm; not bad.
The con was actually in some Harvard buildings, so I wandered around the Harvard campus for a while until I found the right one (Sever Hall, which looks like a gigantic red castle). The con was run by lots of very smart Harvard nerds, many of whom were wearing anime or ASOIAF costumes. (Watching them, I felt so old.) It's largely a gaming and costuming con; this year it had around 600 people, which is twice what they've had in the past.
I actually, quite randomly, ended up following George RR Martin to the building, and I held the door as he entered. I picked up my registration at 5pm (yay for preregistering and not having to wait in line) and killed time people watching as I waited for his first panel to start.
The first panel was at 5:30 and was about "Magical Realism"--more or less, how one should or shouldn't write magic in fiction. Nothing too interesting, and Martin didn't really talk much about his own work, just cited historical precedent and other authors who have done well or poorly. There were a couple of very strange and babbly women on the panel who I found endlessly irritating. Although Martin did call one of them out on her inanity. Someone wrote it up here on the asoiaf board, which I'll quote:
Heheheh.
So that panel went until 7pm, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
10zlaine, who was driving from Maine, showed up shortly before it ended. She made it! Yay!
At 7:30, Martin read a chapter from the upcoming book A Dance with Dragons (which the kid introducing him incorrectly called Dances with Dragons, giving me hideous visions of Kevin Costner as Ned Stark....). It was a Davos chapter, and I find Davos to be one of the most painfully dull characters in the series, so I haven't much to say about it. Hearing George read it the way he means it was cool though--you pick up more from having the author himself read it, I think.
Afterward,10zlaine and I stuck around for a talk by Henry Jenkins called "Just Men in Tights: What Superhero Comics Can Teach Us About Genre," which was fascinating. I've quoted him in various papers defending fanfiction, so it was cool to actually hear him speak. (And, dude, he's such a fanboy!)
We skipped the Q&A afterward, though, because we were starving, and headed over to an Indian place my coworker recommended called the Bombay Club. I had "baingan barta" (roasted eggplant) and onion kulcha (bread) and we shared an appetizer platter. Oh, and I had a peach daiquiri, which was great. Excellent food and they were pretty accommodating about the vegan thing.
We actually went to bed around midnight, because traveling is exhausting, and stuff.
Next morning we were up for a quick bagel and coffee breakfast (there are approximately 700 million coffee places in the Harvard Square area, and I wanted to try as many as possible) and a panel called "All You Need Is Love", about love and sex in fiction. It was okay, though it's not like Martin is a master of romance fiction, y'know? He did say he prefers tragic love stories (a la Romeo and Juliet) which gave me even less hope for Jaime and Brienne. He also ridiculed the concept of "gratuitous" and defended his inclusion of sex scenes (as he is trying to create an immersive experience, and sex is a huge part of peoples' lives and is necessary for his development of characters).
Afterward we got some books signed at the nearby bookstore. I asked Martin "Did you intend for Jaime Lannister to be such a complex character from the beginning, or is that one of the things that grew in the telling?" He said that he likes exploring grey characters and always intended for Jaime to be complex, but some details grew in the telling.10zlaine told him she likes his blog.
Then we went and got vegan pizza at a place called Veggie Planet, which is located in a folk club called Club Passim (Common Rotation is playing there soon). My pizza had tofu-cheese, tomatoes, garlic, the normal stuff.10zlaine's was peanut curry tofu pizza--strange but wonderful. And our drinks were good too--they had fresh lemonade and herbal berry tea and regular tea.
After lunch we headed over to Martin's 5pm guest of honor speech, which was in another fascinating Harvard building. Fascinating and complex, as no one in the crowd or on the concomm could figure out how to turn on the lights, so Martin gave the speech in the dark (with a small light behind him lighting his notes).
The speech was quite good, and was about why we read fiction. He suggested a variety of answers, some of which rang more true than others, and finally settled upon "vicarious experience." Then he went into a fascinating sort of existential thing about the nature of memory, how we live only in the present moment and how we are defined and created by our memories, and so if we remember, say, Lord of the Rings more vividly than we remember the street we grew up on, isn't Lord of the Rings at least as big a part of who we are?
It was really interesting, and got me to thinking about how that applies to other forms of art, and whether the music I love means so much because it evokes the memory of who I was when I loved it most, or because it's a form of vicarious emotional experience, or whether love of music is more closely related to one of the other reasons he suggested which is the beauty of the words themselves (you could also apply that to the sound and rhythm of music).
I hope he posts the speech somewhere; I haven't really done it justice in summary.
He also answered some questions, and had some interesting things to say. He repeatedly emphasized that he prefers to write grey characters, because in real life people are complex; no one is pure evil or pure good. Fiction tends to divide people into heroes who do no wrong and villains who go home and kick their dogs and beat their wives, but that reality is much different. He cited a soldier who heroically saves his friends' lives, but then goes home and beats his wife. Which is he, hero or villain? Martin said both and that neither act cancels out the other.
He also said that he's suspicious of creators who try to answer questions with their work, and emphasized that he prefers to ask questions. He explained that those who try to answer usually end up with the wrong answers (and cited L. Ron Hubbard as an example) but that those who ask are getting people to think and figure things out for themselves. (Oh, Joss Whedon and Rob Thomas, if only you were as wise as George R. R. Martin!!!!)
He didn't offer much in the way of spoilers, but did say that we'd see Arya and Asha in this book, that there would be one new POV but hopefully no more after that (and that they'll continue to keep dropping off), that the timeline of the new book may continue past AFFC but that it depends on the length, and that we'll definitely see Casterly Rock and may see Highgarden.
Someone asked why he writes so much about outcasts and misfits, and he said on one level he relates to that, and that on another level everyone is weird or a misfit in some way. He said aside from the obvious (Brienne, Tyrion), Davos is a misfit because of his low birth (he always feels uncomfortable with his high status) and Ned is a misfit because he feels like he's living his brother's life (marrying Cat, being Lord of Winterfell) which isn't necessarily what he wanted or would have chosen.
I kept trying to formulate a question, but all I really came up with was "Why are the Lannisters the only people in Westeros who have a sense of humor (aside from the QoT, of course)?" and something about the way he seems to be consciously creating as many diverse and interesting female characters as male characters, but I never even formulated that as a proper question. I suppose it's a good thing that I get pretty much everything I need from his books, understand most of what he's doing, and really have no burning questions or things I don't "get." This may be different once the series is actually over, however.
After that, we wandered around--didn't eat, because we were still stuffed from lunch, but we had some yummy bubble tea and bought some used CDs (I got an original release of Chemlab's "Burn Out at the Hydrogen Bar" and two KMFDM CDs, plus I made10zlaine buy for herself Nirvana's "Unplugged" and "In Utero" and Pearl Jam's "Ten"). We returned at 9pm to yet another Harvard building for "Once More, With Dragons," which was kind of musical/comedy collection of ASOIAF-related sketches. Mr. Martin was in the front row, 10zlaine and I in the second. It was very funny. You can read a summary here.
It was amusing to see, for example, Jaime Lannister as Darth Vader, announcing to Joffrey that he's his father (Joffrey's reaction--horrific disgust, of course).
The best part was the Westeros version of celebrity jeopardy, with Robert Baratheon, Hodor, and Arya Stark as contestants. And there was a "Lannister and Stark" song sung to the "Beauty and the Beast" tune with the characters fighting in the background.
You really should go read the summary over atgrnarmadillo's journal.
After that we sort of tried to get up the courage to talk to Mr. Martin, but failed and went to a nearby brewery to get drunk, instead. (Turns out he was at the same place, but we stayed in our corner.) I hate being so shy. The beer was pretty awful (we each got samplers), sad to say. We talked for a while, then got to bed around 1am or so.
The next morning we got up for brunch at Veggie Planet, which was super yummy. They had unlimited coffee and tea, plus great vegan menu items like coffee cake, scrambled tofu, waffles, potatoes, etc. We ended up totally stuffed with food, and took some to eat on the road.
At 1pm was Martin's final appearance, an "interview," in which he elaborated on his speech and answered more questions. It went a bit over time, because they didn't need the room yet and he agreed to keep answering as long as we kept asking. I was getting so sick of questions about like, gaming and RPGs and other such boring stuff, so I finally forced myself to raise my hand and ask a question (you have no idea how hard this was), which was something like "Jaime Lannister is one of the most complex characters I've read, and the growth he goes through is so interesting. Can you talk more about that or what inspired that?" (Yeah, I know, as far as I'm concerned it's "the Jaime Lannister series.")
So he said that he likes to paint characters in shades of grey (recurring theme of the weekend, yay! so refreshing from these damn didactic TV show runners... anyway....). And that even what seem like the most horrific people have other sides, aren't pure caricatures of evil, that even Hitler had his nice moments. And he wanted to explore what might cause that kind of villainy, because no one just wakes up and says "I want to be evil today," and that Jaime didn't start out evil--that he actually was a very idealistic young man who was disillusioned by life, and that there was always much more to his killing of Arys than just "evil."
Since he was going on so much about Jaime as "exploration of evil" (and I certainly don't think Jaime is evil anymore!) I kind of tried to ask "Do you think he's changed?" to get him to talk about Jaime's redemption arc, so he said something like he wanted to explore the concept of forgiveness and whether it's ever possible to be forgiven for doing such horrible things, and that his goal was to ask the question, not give an answer.
Um, so that was neat. (Well, except for the fact that Hitler came to his mind when talking about Jaime!) Then it was over and the giggly little con leader gave her goodbye speech, and we headed out for our final exploration of Cambridge (toystore, bookstore, Aveda store, more bubble tea), drove around Boston and got lost in the rain, but finally managed to get me to the airport.
Strange airport experience, actually. My plane was delayed by over two hours, and I'd gotten there early, so I was just sitting silently watching everything for several hours. Watching all the people go up to the counter begging to be put on earlier flights, watching the people wandering around stressed, groups arguing over who should go on standby if only one could get on an earlier flight, etc.
My flight was for 8:50 originally, and it got moved ahead of the 7:55 flight that preceded it. Very strange. So all the 7:55 people were trying to get on the 8:50 flight so that they could leave earlier.
Then the workers disappeared, and a new group appeared. They were the flight crew, and seemed just as confused as the rest of us. They kept telling people who asked questions "We're the flight crew, we're as confused as you are" and answering the phone "We're the flight crew, we have no clue how to do what you're asking."
Some woman was freaking out because the delay meant she'd miss her bus to Manhattan and she didn't want to take a cab. One of the guys tried to talk her into taking the subway, and they had this whole argument about whether it's safe or not. (I think they were both right from their own perspectives; it's much safer for a single man riding alone at night than for a single woman!)
Then one of the flight crew guys pulled out his acoustic guitar and sat in the corner playing, which was immensely soothing. All delayed flights should have guitar-playing flight crew to entertain the frustrated passengers.
Finally they managed to drag some actual workers back over--by then it was nearly 10pm and our plane still hadn't taken off from JFK. They were holding off on posting a departure time until that plane could take off, then some belligerent guy came over and started bitching at them for having 10pm listed as the departure time. "I just talked to the pilot and it's obviously not going to depart at 10pm and why are you all a bunch of idiots and how come I'm the only competent person in the world," typical belligerent asshole. He kept parading around on his cell phone bitching about how stupid the workers were, putting on a show for those of us sitting. Dude, you're not winning any friends, and you're not going to make the plane arrive faster, so just shut the fuck up.
Anyway, the plane eventually got there, and I watched 80s goth videos on VH1 classics (Daniel Ash really is hot, isn't he? I suppose I should've paid more attention when I saw Love and Rockets and Bauhaus) and got into NYC around midnight. It took forever to get my luggage, then I had to go take the air train to the subway, which was nearly abandoned and took forever to arrive, and then I had to transfer from the A to the 6 because the L wasn't running, so I didn't get home until 2am. But I got home, and damn, it was wonderful to hold my cats and sleep in my own bed!
And in other news--WriterCon scholarship applications are open! You can apply from now until Feb 14, so if you planning to apply please do so soon. You can also help support the scholarship program by donating here.
Oh yeah... Veronica Mars. Watch me drift completely away from this fandom. I'm sorry, but it's a kids' show. If you're not interested in predictable high school morality plays, the show is not for you.
And wow, my Veronica hate is actually approaching my Buffy hate! If they were to make the Logan/Weevil spinoff, I'd watch that. Otherwise, consider me "over it."
ETA: Okay, this is still bothering me. Logan is trying to clear his name of MURDER, for which he could lose everything and spend his life in jail, and Weevil is trying to discover who murdered his best friend (exactly as Veronica was trying to do last year). Both of them have every justification to be pursuing this issue, both of them are clearly deserving of sympathy, and both of them have plenty of reasons to consider Veronica--well, if not a close friend, at least "someone who may perhaps care enough about them to help out in such a major life-changing situation."
So what possible justification does she have for behaving like such a raving, vicious, self-righteous bitch, as if she's scolding children for immaturity? Losing your best friend, facing prison for a crime you didn't commit--these are not trivial or childish issues.
I'm just lost. WHY is she so horrible and acting so superior? They're taking the initiative and actually trying to solve a real mystery on their own, and meanwhile "Miss Teen Detective" is the one who can't even freaking figure out that a drive through worker might remember who was driving a car!?
It's just like Buffy--self-righteous bitchery as a substitute for actual wit or insight. And God forbid we show a female character displaying empathy or kindness--that would be anti-feminist! or something.
ETA 2: AND THE FUCKING KARAOKE STUNT-CASTING!!! *TEARS HAIR OUT*
From his latest not-a-blog entry, about the Hugo awards:
No doubt the Best Dramatic Presentation/ Short Form category will be dominated by episodes of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, STARGATE, and the other ongoing SF dramas. That's cool, but sometimes SF shows up in places where you don't expect it. On SOUTH PARK, for example. I am going to nominate the hilarious episode called TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET, all about the evil alien overlord Xamu and L. Ron Hubbard. Join me. If we get SOUTH PARK on the ballot, maybe Matt and Trey will show up at the con...
He's a South Park fan!
I suppose I should post about last weekend's convention. I'm still sort of in recovery (lack of sleep, plane delays), but here goes.
I took the subway to JFK airport, flew to Boston, took a bus and subway to Harvard Square, and wandered around with a map until I found my hotel, the aptly-named Harvard Square Hotel. I left home about 8am and arrived about 2pm; not bad.
The con was actually in some Harvard buildings, so I wandered around the Harvard campus for a while until I found the right one (Sever Hall, which looks like a gigantic red castle). The con was run by lots of very smart Harvard nerds, many of whom were wearing anime or ASOIAF costumes. (Watching them, I felt so old.) It's largely a gaming and costuming con; this year it had around 600 people, which is twice what they've had in the past.
I actually, quite randomly, ended up following George RR Martin to the building, and I held the door as he entered. I picked up my registration at 5pm (yay for preregistering and not having to wait in line) and killed time people watching as I waited for his first panel to start.
The first panel was at 5:30 and was about "Magical Realism"--more or less, how one should or shouldn't write magic in fiction. Nothing too interesting, and Martin didn't really talk much about his own work, just cited historical precedent and other authors who have done well or poorly. There were a couple of very strange and babbly women on the panel who I found endlessly irritating. Although Martin did call one of them out on her inanity. Someone wrote it up here on the asoiaf board, which I'll quote:
Ms Gilman was asked some sort of question about inherent mythology in her world, and she stated that her world's inhabitants know that if they do not perform certain rites, then the sun wil not come up.
George then said, and I am paraphrasing, "Well, they don't know that for sure, do they? They've never tested it."
Greer: "They just know. If certain things aren't done, the sun will not come up."
George: "Has the sun ever not come up before?"
Greer: "No."
George: "So how do they know? They only suspect."
A flustered Greer: "They know, just as they know that if they drop a pot it will shatter."
A jovial George: "They know that because they've dropped pots before."
Sarah Smith: "Well in my books, the magic is very subtle."
Heheheh.
So that panel went until 7pm, and
10zlaine, who was driving from Maine, showed up shortly before it ended. She made it! Yay!At 7:30, Martin read a chapter from the upcoming book A Dance with Dragons (which the kid introducing him incorrectly called Dances with Dragons, giving me hideous visions of Kevin Costner as Ned Stark....). It was a Davos chapter, and I find Davos to be one of the most painfully dull characters in the series, so I haven't much to say about it. Hearing George read it the way he means it was cool though--you pick up more from having the author himself read it, I think.
Afterward,
10zlaine and I stuck around for a talk by Henry Jenkins called "Just Men in Tights: What Superhero Comics Can Teach Us About Genre," which was fascinating. I've quoted him in various papers defending fanfiction, so it was cool to actually hear him speak. (And, dude, he's such a fanboy!)We skipped the Q&A afterward, though, because we were starving, and headed over to an Indian place my coworker recommended called the Bombay Club. I had "baingan barta" (roasted eggplant) and onion kulcha (bread) and we shared an appetizer platter. Oh, and I had a peach daiquiri, which was great. Excellent food and they were pretty accommodating about the vegan thing.
We actually went to bed around midnight, because traveling is exhausting, and stuff.
Next morning we were up for a quick bagel and coffee breakfast (there are approximately 700 million coffee places in the Harvard Square area, and I wanted to try as many as possible) and a panel called "All You Need Is Love", about love and sex in fiction. It was okay, though it's not like Martin is a master of romance fiction, y'know? He did say he prefers tragic love stories (a la Romeo and Juliet) which gave me even less hope for Jaime and Brienne. He also ridiculed the concept of "gratuitous" and defended his inclusion of sex scenes (as he is trying to create an immersive experience, and sex is a huge part of peoples' lives and is necessary for his development of characters).
Afterward we got some books signed at the nearby bookstore. I asked Martin "Did you intend for Jaime Lannister to be such a complex character from the beginning, or is that one of the things that grew in the telling?" He said that he likes exploring grey characters and always intended for Jaime to be complex, but some details grew in the telling.
10zlaine told him she likes his blog.Then we went and got vegan pizza at a place called Veggie Planet, which is located in a folk club called Club Passim (Common Rotation is playing there soon). My pizza had tofu-cheese, tomatoes, garlic, the normal stuff.
10zlaine's was peanut curry tofu pizza--strange but wonderful. And our drinks were good too--they had fresh lemonade and herbal berry tea and regular tea.After lunch we headed over to Martin's 5pm guest of honor speech, which was in another fascinating Harvard building. Fascinating and complex, as no one in the crowd or on the concomm could figure out how to turn on the lights, so Martin gave the speech in the dark (with a small light behind him lighting his notes).
The speech was quite good, and was about why we read fiction. He suggested a variety of answers, some of which rang more true than others, and finally settled upon "vicarious experience." Then he went into a fascinating sort of existential thing about the nature of memory, how we live only in the present moment and how we are defined and created by our memories, and so if we remember, say, Lord of the Rings more vividly than we remember the street we grew up on, isn't Lord of the Rings at least as big a part of who we are?
It was really interesting, and got me to thinking about how that applies to other forms of art, and whether the music I love means so much because it evokes the memory of who I was when I loved it most, or because it's a form of vicarious emotional experience, or whether love of music is more closely related to one of the other reasons he suggested which is the beauty of the words themselves (you could also apply that to the sound and rhythm of music).
I hope he posts the speech somewhere; I haven't really done it justice in summary.
He also answered some questions, and had some interesting things to say. He repeatedly emphasized that he prefers to write grey characters, because in real life people are complex; no one is pure evil or pure good. Fiction tends to divide people into heroes who do no wrong and villains who go home and kick their dogs and beat their wives, but that reality is much different. He cited a soldier who heroically saves his friends' lives, but then goes home and beats his wife. Which is he, hero or villain? Martin said both and that neither act cancels out the other.
He also said that he's suspicious of creators who try to answer questions with their work, and emphasized that he prefers to ask questions. He explained that those who try to answer usually end up with the wrong answers (and cited L. Ron Hubbard as an example) but that those who ask are getting people to think and figure things out for themselves. (Oh, Joss Whedon and Rob Thomas, if only you were as wise as George R. R. Martin!!!!)
He didn't offer much in the way of spoilers, but did say that we'd see Arya and Asha in this book, that there would be one new POV but hopefully no more after that (and that they'll continue to keep dropping off), that the timeline of the new book may continue past AFFC but that it depends on the length, and that we'll definitely see Casterly Rock and may see Highgarden.
Someone asked why he writes so much about outcasts and misfits, and he said on one level he relates to that, and that on another level everyone is weird or a misfit in some way. He said aside from the obvious (Brienne, Tyrion), Davos is a misfit because of his low birth (he always feels uncomfortable with his high status) and Ned is a misfit because he feels like he's living his brother's life (marrying Cat, being Lord of Winterfell) which isn't necessarily what he wanted or would have chosen.
I kept trying to formulate a question, but all I really came up with was "Why are the Lannisters the only people in Westeros who have a sense of humor (aside from the QoT, of course)?" and something about the way he seems to be consciously creating as many diverse and interesting female characters as male characters, but I never even formulated that as a proper question. I suppose it's a good thing that I get pretty much everything I need from his books, understand most of what he's doing, and really have no burning questions or things I don't "get." This may be different once the series is actually over, however.
After that, we wandered around--didn't eat, because we were still stuffed from lunch, but we had some yummy bubble tea and bought some used CDs (I got an original release of Chemlab's "Burn Out at the Hydrogen Bar" and two KMFDM CDs, plus I made
10zlaine buy for herself Nirvana's "Unplugged" and "In Utero" and Pearl Jam's "Ten"). We returned at 9pm to yet another Harvard building for "Once More, With Dragons," which was kind of musical/comedy collection of ASOIAF-related sketches. Mr. Martin was in the front row, 10zlaine and I in the second. It was very funny. You can read a summary here.It was amusing to see, for example, Jaime Lannister as Darth Vader, announcing to Joffrey that he's his father (Joffrey's reaction--horrific disgust, of course).
The best part was the Westeros version of celebrity jeopardy, with Robert Baratheon, Hodor, and Arya Stark as contestants. And there was a "Lannister and Stark" song sung to the "Beauty and the Beast" tune with the characters fighting in the background.
You really should go read the summary over at
grnarmadillo's journal.After that we sort of tried to get up the courage to talk to Mr. Martin, but failed and went to a nearby brewery to get drunk, instead. (Turns out he was at the same place, but we stayed in our corner.) I hate being so shy. The beer was pretty awful (we each got samplers), sad to say. We talked for a while, then got to bed around 1am or so.
The next morning we got up for brunch at Veggie Planet, which was super yummy. They had unlimited coffee and tea, plus great vegan menu items like coffee cake, scrambled tofu, waffles, potatoes, etc. We ended up totally stuffed with food, and took some to eat on the road.
At 1pm was Martin's final appearance, an "interview," in which he elaborated on his speech and answered more questions. It went a bit over time, because they didn't need the room yet and he agreed to keep answering as long as we kept asking. I was getting so sick of questions about like, gaming and RPGs and other such boring stuff, so I finally forced myself to raise my hand and ask a question (you have no idea how hard this was), which was something like "Jaime Lannister is one of the most complex characters I've read, and the growth he goes through is so interesting. Can you talk more about that or what inspired that?" (Yeah, I know, as far as I'm concerned it's "the Jaime Lannister series.")
So he said that he likes to paint characters in shades of grey (recurring theme of the weekend, yay! so refreshing from these damn didactic TV show runners... anyway....). And that even what seem like the most horrific people have other sides, aren't pure caricatures of evil, that even Hitler had his nice moments. And he wanted to explore what might cause that kind of villainy, because no one just wakes up and says "I want to be evil today," and that Jaime didn't start out evil--that he actually was a very idealistic young man who was disillusioned by life, and that there was always much more to his killing of Arys than just "evil."
Since he was going on so much about Jaime as "exploration of evil" (and I certainly don't think Jaime is evil anymore!) I kind of tried to ask "Do you think he's changed?" to get him to talk about Jaime's redemption arc, so he said something like he wanted to explore the concept of forgiveness and whether it's ever possible to be forgiven for doing such horrible things, and that his goal was to ask the question, not give an answer.
Um, so that was neat. (Well, except for the fact that Hitler came to his mind when talking about Jaime!) Then it was over and the giggly little con leader gave her goodbye speech, and we headed out for our final exploration of Cambridge (toystore, bookstore, Aveda store, more bubble tea), drove around Boston and got lost in the rain, but finally managed to get me to the airport.
Strange airport experience, actually. My plane was delayed by over two hours, and I'd gotten there early, so I was just sitting silently watching everything for several hours. Watching all the people go up to the counter begging to be put on earlier flights, watching the people wandering around stressed, groups arguing over who should go on standby if only one could get on an earlier flight, etc.
My flight was for 8:50 originally, and it got moved ahead of the 7:55 flight that preceded it. Very strange. So all the 7:55 people were trying to get on the 8:50 flight so that they could leave earlier.
Then the workers disappeared, and a new group appeared. They were the flight crew, and seemed just as confused as the rest of us. They kept telling people who asked questions "We're the flight crew, we're as confused as you are" and answering the phone "We're the flight crew, we have no clue how to do what you're asking."
Some woman was freaking out because the delay meant she'd miss her bus to Manhattan and she didn't want to take a cab. One of the guys tried to talk her into taking the subway, and they had this whole argument about whether it's safe or not. (I think they were both right from their own perspectives; it's much safer for a single man riding alone at night than for a single woman!)
Then one of the flight crew guys pulled out his acoustic guitar and sat in the corner playing, which was immensely soothing. All delayed flights should have guitar-playing flight crew to entertain the frustrated passengers.
Finally they managed to drag some actual workers back over--by then it was nearly 10pm and our plane still hadn't taken off from JFK. They were holding off on posting a departure time until that plane could take off, then some belligerent guy came over and started bitching at them for having 10pm listed as the departure time. "I just talked to the pilot and it's obviously not going to depart at 10pm and why are you all a bunch of idiots and how come I'm the only competent person in the world," typical belligerent asshole. He kept parading around on his cell phone bitching about how stupid the workers were, putting on a show for those of us sitting. Dude, you're not winning any friends, and you're not going to make the plane arrive faster, so just shut the fuck up.
Anyway, the plane eventually got there, and I watched 80s goth videos on VH1 classics (Daniel Ash really is hot, isn't he? I suppose I should've paid more attention when I saw Love and Rockets and Bauhaus) and got into NYC around midnight. It took forever to get my luggage, then I had to go take the air train to the subway, which was nearly abandoned and took forever to arrive, and then I had to transfer from the A to the 6 because the L wasn't running, so I didn't get home until 2am. But I got home, and damn, it was wonderful to hold my cats and sleep in my own bed!
And in other news--WriterCon scholarship applications are open! You can apply from now until Feb 14, so if you planning to apply please do so soon. You can also help support the scholarship program by donating here.
Oh yeah... Veronica Mars. Watch me drift completely away from this fandom. I'm sorry, but it's a kids' show. If you're not interested in predictable high school morality plays, the show is not for you.
And wow, my Veronica hate is actually approaching my Buffy hate! If they were to make the Logan/Weevil spinoff, I'd watch that. Otherwise, consider me "over it."
ETA: Okay, this is still bothering me. Logan is trying to clear his name of MURDER, for which he could lose everything and spend his life in jail, and Weevil is trying to discover who murdered his best friend (exactly as Veronica was trying to do last year). Both of them have every justification to be pursuing this issue, both of them are clearly deserving of sympathy, and both of them have plenty of reasons to consider Veronica--well, if not a close friend, at least "someone who may perhaps care enough about them to help out in such a major life-changing situation."
So what possible justification does she have for behaving like such a raving, vicious, self-righteous bitch, as if she's scolding children for immaturity? Losing your best friend, facing prison for a crime you didn't commit--these are not trivial or childish issues.
I'm just lost. WHY is she so horrible and acting so superior? They're taking the initiative and actually trying to solve a real mystery on their own, and meanwhile "Miss Teen Detective" is the one who can't even freaking figure out that a drive through worker might remember who was driving a car!?
It's just like Buffy--self-righteous bitchery as a substitute for actual wit or insight. And God forbid we show a female character displaying empathy or kindness--that would be anti-feminist! or something.
ETA 2: AND THE FUCKING KARAOKE STUNT-CASTING!!! *TEARS HAIR OUT*
