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Avengers:

* How come no one told me Shane Black is directing Iron Man 3!? I am now looking forward to IM3 approximately a billion times more than I was. :)

* Amanda’s Avengers review at The Mary Sue is hilarious

* Black Widow Spins Webs Around THE AVENGERS — Great article comparing the reactions of male and female reviewers to Black Widow. Talk about the women men don’t see…

* Great meta from cluegirl on the “sentiment” theme in The Avengers

* Fic rec: Shatter by [personal profile] aria. What if Loki fell instead of Thor?

I love this so much. She makes Loki sympathetic and interesting but does not gloss over what a psycho mess he is. (Also for some reason I thought it was gen and was very confused when Loki and Thor started making out halfway through.)

I was thinking it’s weird how much I like Loki, since he’s so awful, then I remembered that I am a fan of Jaime Lannister, Spike, Simm!Master, Scorpius, and Methos. It’s not weird for me at all.

Now admittedly most of those characters have redemption arcs, but you could easily fanwank that Loki is just in the pre-redemption state. Although I don’t really have to, because I don’t care about the redemption story. I just like fucked-up characters. Even the characters I’ve liked who are clearly heroes within their universes (Dean Winchester, John Crichton, the Tenth Doctor, Sirius Black, Brian Kinney, Benton Fraser) I haven’t liked because they are heroes, but because they are made of ~issues~. The moral state of the character is really irrelevant.

I’m thinking I’m going to gravitate to Loki/Thor, because it’s got that same “best enemies” dynamic I loved in Doctor/Master and Spike/Angel.

Game of Thones

* Abigail Nussbaum points out the extra-textual misogyny in Game of Thrones:

just as dead horses are the cost of doing business in the racing industry, traumatized and humiliated actresses are the cost of doing business in cable television.

I think I’m going to stop watching GoT. It has some great stuff (Tyrion! Cersei!) but the misogyny of the writing and directing makes me literally sick. Instead of looking forward to watching a new episode, I find myself actually bracing myself against whatever horrific, exploitative abomination they’re going to inflict this week. This is not an enjoyable fannish experience.

* SNL Explains the Nudity in Game of Thones – aka the funny version of the above meta.

Doctor Who

* The Project Manager’s Guide to Doctor Who — This is a series of analyses of the Master’s project management skills. As I am currently working as a project manager, this is pretty much the funniest thing ever. It’s all true!

Music

* I have been listening to this band The Pretty Reckless, who were amazing opening for Marilyn Manson a couple weeks ago. (Only redeeming thing about an otherwise embarrasingly bad experience.) Their lead singer has amazing stage presence and a fabulous voice. Then I googled them and found that she is 18 (holy crap I am old!) and used to be on Gossip Girl. Um. But since the band really is impressive, here is a link.

I just hope she figures out soon that, with a voice like hers, she really does not have to dress like a stripper to get attention. :(

* Aside from that, I am still on a nonstop Nick Cave kick. “Oh My Lord” is an amazing song.

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TV Meme

Jul. 4th, 2011 08:13 pm
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TV meme snagged from [personal profile] scrollgirl to prove I’m actually still in fandom, I swear!

Pick your five favourite TV shows (in no particular order) and answer the following questions about them. Don’t cheat!

1. Supernatural

2. Farscape

3. Doctor Who (RTD years)

4. Highlander

5. White Collar

Read more... )

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Like everyone else posting today, I’m so terribly sad that Elisabeth Sladen passed away. She was so lovely and vibrant as Sarah Jane Smith, and was a fabulous role model as a woman over 60 starring in her own sci-fi adventure show.

:(

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The other day I was so upset by this example of misogyny in Supernatural fandom that I thought I might quit watching the show. Not really in protest, because my watching or not makes no difference whatsoever, but because things like this make me feel so sick that it kills my ability to enjoy the aspects of the show that I do love. (Link via cofax7; more discussion in comments.)

Then today I saw the raging cesspit of homophobia in many of the comments to this doctorwho entry and was reminded that it’s not just SPN fandom that has problems. *sigh* (How can people say “they erased the queer because it’s a family show” and not realize how grotesquely homophobic that statement is?)

I’m almost tempted to watch when Torchwood returns, even though I freaking hate that show. They’re bringing Gwen back and not catering to their fandom misogynists–see SPN? It can be done!

(I want Russell T Davies to run every show ever. *misses him*)

confused ramble about problematic media and whether to watch it )

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So, um, I kind of seem to have started watching Supernatural.

I’m afraid that [info]jaydk is going to disown me as a friend.

We went to Ford Lauderdale for the weekend, which was fun. We got a cheap vacation deal–flew direct, stayed in a hotel on the beach with a decent pool and a pool bar, and basically just relaxed for three days. The weather was lovely. We got around via the water taxi, which stopped right near our hotel and took us downtown for only $7 after 7pm (where I managed to survive via that old desperate vegan standby, veggie sushi). The water taxi itself was quite fun, as it involved a narrated tour past the absurd, ostentatious, and often quite lovely mansions of the rich and famous which perch over the waterways. Aside from that, the public transportation was so terrible–every time I leave New York it hits me how absurdly car centric the city planning of most of the USA is. It didn’t have to be this way, and it’s sad, and thank god I live in NYC.

and I started watching Supernatural (please don't read this if you don't want to read criticism of SPN or if you're going to lose all respect for me for watching it) )

Other stuff:

* I began a re-read of Dorothy Dunnett's Checkmate (the last book in the Lymond series) during vacation, since it's the one that takes place mostly in Paris and I'm headed to Paris in October for the Lymond fan gathering, LeSpit. (Talk about high and low art--going from Checkmate to Supernatural I literally felt my brain melting out of my ears.) Checkmate's never been my favorite--I think I've usually got Dunnett fatigue every time I've gotten to it before. Jumping into it with fresh eyes was a revelation--it really works much better if you treat it as a standalone, with the previous novels as background but with its own locations and characters and plot points. Instead of being frustrated with having to get to know new characters AGAIN when I really just want to know what's going to happen to the characters I already care about, I found myself enjoying this one in its own right for the first time.

* My cats were so happy to have me back. Angel sat on my lap for all eight Supernatural episodes, and Lucifer's been sleeping on my pillow with his arms wrapped around my head.

* I saw Hole at Terminal 5 last night. It was terrible--they played for less than an hour and seemed to put in very little effort. It was nice to hear a snippet of "Pretty on the Inside," but aside from that, they only played three songs from Live Through This (all singles) and nothing else from the olden days. Man, I'd kill to hear "Drown Soda." None of their new stuff was particularly impressive, and Courtney mostly seemed bored. (On a shallow level, her plastic surgery just bothers me. Her old nose was fine! I thought she was so hot when I was a kid. *sad sigh*)

It was also exhausting--to be in the front I'd had to stand for 2.5 hours through two opening bands (the first terrible, the second decent) and then put up with a batshit mosh pit (people kicking and hair pulling to get to the front, big guys trying to bodysurf over small women--to the dude who tried to use my head and neck as a springboard during "Doll Parts" [seriously, during "Doll Parts"?!], I hope you die in a fire, and also OWWWWW).

Oddly enough I was at the same venue, standing in the same position, for Alice in Chains a few months ago, and their moshpit was nowhere near as life-threatening. Since when are Hole crowds nastier than Alice in Chains crowds?

* Just bought tickets to the midnight opening night showing of Iron Man 2 in IMAX. OMG CAN'T WAIT.

* This fantastic Doctor Who vid has been all over my flist: Tenth Doctor: The Musical by [personal profile] di_br. Awww, I miss Ten. (Thus far I haven't read anything about Moffat's Who that's made me want to watch.)

* This post about protagonist privilege by [personal profile] londonkds is fascinating. I can see in it an explanation for a lot of my frustrations with BtVS (as someone who loved Anya and Spike and was incessantly frustrated by them being distorted and deprioritized in order to "teach lessons" to the "real heroes") and I can also sooo see this as one of the major flaws of the Lymond Chronicles, even though I love it to pieces anyway. (It's much more pleasant when your favorite character is the hero, which is a big part of why I don't allow myself to get fannish anymore about anything in which my favorite character is not the lead--it's just maddening to realize that your favorite can be ruined at whim in service of the lead character's "growth.")

* My favorite clip of Jon and Stephen on The Daily Show (the one with Prince Charles and the banana). I dug this up the other day for a friend who hadn't seen it and am posting the link in case anyone missed it--it's awesome.

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.

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I’m having some sort of values dissonance with parts of White Collar fandom. I keep reading these critiques that are like “Neal Caffrey is a thief, he’s selfish, he’s messed up, he has serious ethical and emotional problems!” and I’m like… yeah, and? Why is that bad?

Perfect characters are boring. Flawed characters are interesting. Why do people want flawed characters to be “fixed”? Presumably its those flaws that draw people to the characters in the first place. Real people are flawed and complicated, and they may grow up and deal with their problems in better ways, but people don’t become perfect. They keep most of their core issues throughout their lives, and the people who love them love them anyway. And of course, plenty of “flaws” are just personality traits that can be expressed in both positive and negative ways–take away the personality trait because you dislike its negative expression, and you lose the positive aspects of it, too.

I mean, yes, Neal Caffrey is a con artist. The Tenth Doctor was an arrogant know-it-all, Logan Echolls was a bully, Brian Kinney was an asshole, Sirius Black had the emotional maturity of a sixteen-year-old, Spike used to kill people and drink their blood, Jaime Lannister fucked his sister and threw a seven-year-old out a window, and Methos was a Horseman of the Apocalypse (hahaha, oh, Highlander, I miss you). I probably wouldn’t want to know any of these people in real life, but this is fiction–the more complicated and fucked-up they are, the more interesting they are to play with as characters.

This seems to come up in every fandom I’m in, to the point where I start wondering if there’s something wrong with me, like am I missing some core ethical understanding that comes naturally to other people? But, um, no, it’s just that fiction =/= reality, and I wouldn’t want it to.

Anyway, in other news:

I went to see the Runaways and Kristin Stewart was awesome as Joan Jett )

then I went to see Strange Days and it was fantastic on a big screen )

and I saw Alice in Wonderland, which makes three films that pass the Bechdel test in a row! )

then I got nostalgic for Doctor Who and watched Boomtown and missed the Jack Harkness I actually liked )

and watched some Farscape which I've grown increasingly convinced actually was the best sci fi show ever )

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I can’t bring myself to click “Play” on the Doctor Who download.

Instead I am reading Sherlock Holmes wank. This write-up is a thing of beauty.

I’ve already seen the movie twice. It’s not very good, but Robert Downey, Jr and Jude Law are so fantastic together that it doesn’t need to be. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and the sequel will have a decent plot to go along with the gorgeous actors and their delightful chemistry. In the meantime, anyone have Holmes/Watson 2009-movie fic recs?

It’s funny, I was reading through my old posts about Robert Downey, Jr, and in 2006, I complained that “Robert Downey, Jr. films generally suffer from a dearth of explosions.” My, how times have changed!

Oh, and happy new year, everyone. :)

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♥♥♥Doctor Who♥♥♥

spoilers )
Current Mood: impressed emoticon impressed & drunk emoticon drunk

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random

May. 19th, 2009 07:09 pm
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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2845

* Hey, I’ve got two Dreamwidth invite codes. Nifty. Who wants one?

* a feminist complaint about the new Star Trek movie, with mild spoilers )

* Lots of Writercon stuff happening!



Are you coming to Writercon? Yes, I'm asking YOU. If you're involved in fanfic in any way--reader, writer, feedbacker, beta, comm mod, ficathon organizer--Writercon is for you. Think about attending--you can find out more info at Writercon.com or [livejournal.com profile] writercon or just ask me and I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have.

* Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is awesome. It reminds me of the 80s music I listened to in high school. Which makes sense as it was released in ... 1980. Wow, man, it's like everything in my life is running in one big circle! *is a dork*

* I've been spending a lot of time reading Twitter. YEAH I DON'T KNOW, OKAY. It's addictive, though: behind the scenes snippets from Rachel Maddow, extra jokes from Stephen Colbert, a daily stream of adorkable geekery from Bowie's son Duncan Jones, fan wank from Trent Reznor, and of course all the latest NYC vegan news from SuperVegan... plus little life updates from various friends, past and present, RL and fannish. And I can read it all on my phone!

* Doctor Who finale SPOILERS )

* Picked up The Disorderly Knights to continue my re-read. I think what stopped me for a couple months there was that it was coming up on what is, to me, the most traumatizing character death of the series. But I got past it. (*sniffle*)

And, wow, glad I'm continuing, because I just hit a couple of my favorite lines of the entire series:

"I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with."
(p. 331, and I don't want to spoil which character says it)


and a longer scene, with mild spoilers for The Disorderly Knights )

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Bowie’s persona-switching finds its most obvious counterpart in the central role of the Doctor in Doctor Who, an alien Time Lord who is permitted thirteen regenerations throughout the entirety of his lifespan. As the swish Jon Pertwee was morphing into bog-eyed Scouser Tom Baker, Bowie himself was morphing from glam-rock androgene into dandified soulster, a new version of the same character. It’s of little surprise that many Bowie fans are also fascinated by all things Gallifreyan. By one of those little twists of fate that are totally inconsequential yet somehow so appropriate, David Bowie shares his birthday with the actor who played the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell, born in 1908.
Strange Fascination: David Bowie by David Buckley, pages 128-129

Current Mood: nerdy emoticon nerdy

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It is the same Nicholas Pegg. The dude who wrote the excellent David Bowie encyclopedia I’ve been marveling over is the same dude who operates the Daleks on Doctor Who. I think my brain just melted.

(See: Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf promo, Wikipedia explanation, Complete David Bowie interview.)

If it wasn’t for Doctor Who I wouldn’t even be into Bowie. To further the endless circles of “every British thing I like is connected,” here’s an excerpt from the Bowie encyclopedia that I was meaning to type up anyway. From the entry on the song “Starman”:

During an interview for Rolling Stone in November 1973, Bowie launched into a disquisition on the song’s place in his planned Ziggy Stardust stage production: “The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I’ve made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage … Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman, so he writes ‘Starman,’ which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately. The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village.” Bowie’s affinity with home-grown science-fiction permeates much of his work, and he has always enjoyed this Quatermass-style juxtaposition of the fantastic with the banal, of the mystical with the homely, of black holes with Greenwich Village. Remarkably, this account of “black-hole jumping” and of Ziggy’s ultimate fate (”When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make themselves real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world”) is identical to the storyline of the BBC’s tenth anniversary Doctor Who special The Three Doctors, a high-profile reunion of the show’s lead actors which had been broadcast a few months earlier, while Bowie was in London recording Aladdin Sane.

[cut a bunch more about the song’s success and places it’s shown up in pop culture, then in conclusion:]

Bowie’s original recording cropped up as an appropriate background number following the crash-landing of an extraterrestrial spaceship in Aliens Of London, a 2005 episode of our old favorite Doctor Who.

And, Pegg thanks (among others) Gary Russell, Paul Cornell, and Gareth Roberts at the back of the book.

This icon could not possibly be more appropriate!

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I’m so out of it today. I was up until 3am last night watching The Man Who Fell to Earth, and before that I was at my friend Eva’s birthday party at V-Spot, where they had unlimited mimosas for $10. Me and my friend Anne’s boyfriend Nemo were competing who could get their per-mimosa cost lowest; I got to $2.50 (four drinks), he got to $1.66 (six drinks), but he cheated because he was sneakily sharing his with Anne. Then we went back to Anne and Nemo’s place to hang out in the back yard and eat cake and drink more mimosas. Basically there was a lot of drinking. And cake!

SuperVegan got linked from the NY Times City Blog. It’s always cool when that happens.

On Saturday I cooked enough to last (hopefully) the whole week: rice and beans, maple-cinnamon cream of wheat, scrambled tofu, vegetable uppama (an Indian dish from that weird Vegan Cooking for One book). I was going to make this really good Asian noodle dish with coconut milk, but I forgot to buy fresh ginger.

We had a long Writercon phone meeting on Saturday night, and then around 11pm I remembered that there was a new Doctor Who episode. Oh yeah, that.

spoilers for this episode and spec for the future )

My mom has started Checkmate. I'm skimming along so that I can answer her questions as she goes. I'm really glad I got her the book of translations--I think Checkmate is the hardest to understand without them. I'm really excited that she's nearing the end and that we'll be able to discuss the entire series soon. I like Checkmate a lot better in retrospect, based on how excited I am to get to talk about all the passages that she's reading. Really the only book in the series that doesn't inspire joy is The Ringed Castle--it's definitely my least favorite overall. Although even it is growing on me over time, as they all seem to.

Oh yeah, and I watched The Man Who Fell to Earth last night. I liked it! Which is weird because I didn't expect to like it at all. It's strange and surreal and definitely has a lot of annoying aspects (the awful female characters for one) but it's also eerie and atmospheric and very interesting. And, okay, David Bowie is just so pretty to look at throughout. So, so, so pretty.

embarrassing fangirlishness about David Bowie )
Current Mood: weird emoticon weird

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So… yeah. I went to Gallifrey One. The fact that I came home and spent three hours writing a post about a Lymond book probably says all you need to know. I’m just not that into Doctor Who anymore. It’s always sad to leave a fandom, and while I’ve had kind of a miserable experience in this one, I’m also just starting to get to know a lot of interesting people, and I’m sad to drift away so soon. But you can’t force yourself to be interested when you’re just… not.

Which is really too bad because Gallifrey is a great convention. I was so impressed by how well it was run. They had several tracks of programming, with a good mix of topics, and a great array of guests. They were the polar opposite of DragonCon in terms of being welcoming to New Who fans–I never felt out of place for being a fan of the Tenth Doctor, Simm!Master, Rose, slash fic, etc. They really did a great job providing programming for everyone, regardless of whether you’re into the old series, the new series, or both.

Read more... )

([livejournal.com profile] who_daily, please don't link.)
Current Mood: blah emoticon blah

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So, um, who’s going to Gallifrey One?

I’m arriving tonight and leaving Monday morning. Hope to see some of you!

Current Mood: cheerful emoticon cheerful

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These responses are totally dripping with SPOILERS so please click carefully!

Highlander )

Doctor Who )

Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

The Lymond Chronicles )

A Song of Ice and Fire )
Current Mood: bored emoticon bored

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Wow. Apparently lots of stuff happens in the world when you spend two weeks devouring the Lymond Chronicles and ignoring everything else.

My boss told me that they’d announced the new Doctor as I walked into work today. My immediate thought was “I can’t wait to read Fandom Wank.” It’s not disappointing.

(I’m surprised, actually. I expected to have to grudgingly give Moffat his due for choosing Patterson Joseph. Instead I’m LOLing at him for choosing some random kid who looks like the mutated offspring of David Tennant and Robert Pattinson.)

I owe email and comment responses to people. I’m sorry. I really haven’t been at my computer for two weeks–I updated the last two times from Indiana via my magical phone.

Oh! And I have to say–THANK YOU [info]kita0610 FOR THE LOVELY CARD AND DAVID TENNANT CALENDAR! And thank you [info]netweight for the incredibly sweet card! My internet friends are the best. :)

Now I’m going to ramble more about the Lymond Chronicles, because that’s all I spent my winter vacation thinking about. I finished Pawn in Frankincense and The Ringed Castle and am now partway into Checkmate.

spoilers for the Lymond Chronicles )
Current Mood: thoughtful emoticon thoughtful

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Spoilers )

One more day and then I'm back to civilization! *can't wait to get home*

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I’m halfway through Pawn in Frankincense and thinking….

spoilers for Dorothy Dunnett's Pawn in Frankincense and a spoilery reference to the Doctor Who episode Journey's End )
Current Mood: thoughtful emoticon thoughtful

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* This just made me choke on my coffee. I think I enjoy The Meathead Perspective far more than I enjoy the actual band Nine Inch Nails.

* I’m not an Avatar fan, but I’m still upset by the blatantly racist movie casting. Just… what the hell? I’m glad to see that the fandom has already launched a letter writing campaign.

* This xkcd comic is awesome and totally nails the “nice guy” phenomenon. The wank it’s generated is severely depressing, though. “Women have nearly exclusive control over the nation’s sex supply, and that will never, ever change“???? *headdesk*

* [info]jaydk and [info]kalichan came over to my place on Saturday night for a very fun evening of wine and television. We watched the first episode of The Devil’s Whore, after which [info]jaydk declared that she couldn’t stand to continue watching history be raped in such a blatant manner, so we switched to the first episode of Life on Mars (which [info]kalichan had never seen!) to get the bad taste out of our mouths.

To be honest, I didn’t mind The Devil’s Whore–probably because I’m woefully ignorant about that period of English history, and because I was only watching for John Simm. He had his shirt off for a whole scene, so I got what I wanted out of the deal. :P

* This panel description has me dreading Gallifrey One. I think it might be best if I spend this convention drinking and chatting and avoiding most of the actual programming. >:( Still looking forward to seeing Phil Collinson, though. And hopefully to hearing interesting insights from the various new series writers who are attending.

* I’ve kind of reluctantly gotten into Spooks–I actually went out of my way to watch the season finale as soon as possible. I don’t love the show by any means. It’s pure genre, which makes it incredibly predictable; it never does anything that a spy drama wouldn’t do. But it’s quite a good example of a spy show, which makes it entertaining for what it is. Well, okay, mainly the entertaining thing is the lovely contrasts between Richard Armitage’s pale skin, black hair, and blue eyes. But occasionally he even gets to do some actual acting! And I kind of love the character of Ros–her competence and snark make her one of the more appealing female characters I’ve seen in quite a while.

* I’m re-reading Pawn in Frankincense despite myself. I forgot how funny this one is as it starts off! In fact, I think I forgot almost everything that happens except for the ending, which kind of blew the rest of it out of the water. It’s a totally different experience to read this series for a second time; everything makes so much more sense when you already know what’s going to happen. Dunnett’s style of keeping the reader completely in the dark for 90% of each book (and the series as a whole) is incredibly frustrating, but definitely rewarding if you’re able to put up with it. It also makes re-reading a whole new experience–you can actually appreciate the subtleties instead of just wondering what the hell is going on. It also helps that I’ve got a book of translations with me this time around, so I can figure out what the hell they’re saying when the characters suddenly switch to French or Latin.

* I’m resisting the urge to write a long song-by-song analysis of “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” I know that no one cares about my interpretation of a 35-year-old classic album that I’ve only been listening to for two weeks. Still. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. I haven’t even turned it off at night, because it’ll play in my head if I don’t have it actually playing from my speakers.

* 5years.com is an incredibly helpful website if you suddenly decide to get obsessed with “Ziggy Stardust” 35 years too late. Plus I’m learning all this stuff about glam rock–now I totally get that scene in Life on Mars where Sam meets Marc Bolan!

* I bought this Best of Bowie DVD. It’s all so totally totally awesome for about the first 50 minutes, and then… 1974 happens. Good god. I think maybe I’m a fan of Ziggy Stardust, not of David Bowie?

* I wish I’d gone to the Bowie Ball last weekend. I totally want to go see this all-female Ziggy Stardust cover band in January. And I want to go see this thing at MOMA even though I doubt 1) I can get tickets, 2) that it’s anything I haven’t already seen on the Best of Bowie DVD.

* I finally figured out how to connect my computer to my TV wirelessly. It’s a combination of this and this and it totally works! My TV is a second monitor and I can just drag video files over to it and play them. Now I should probably cancel my cable TV, but I’ve gotten addicted to The Rachel Maddow Show and now I kind of don’t want to give it up. I suppose I could just watch that online too. And I might actually continue catching up on more of those old Doctor/Master episodes now that I don’t have to waste CDs on burning them.

Although I might just watch lots of YouTube clips of young David Bowie instead.

Current Mood: bored emoticon bored

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I blog about fannish things. Busy with work so don't update often. Mirrored at rusty-halo.com.

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