| Summer cold season |
[Jul. 12th, 2008|12:36 pm] |
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I have a summer cold that seems to have progressed to a sinus infection. This basically means that I have a constant toothache, am on antibiotics that could stand in for footballs, and at the worst moment of pain last night I ended up buying a neti syringe. (Don't ask.) So far things have progressed from three apparent icepicks in the face to one really deep icepick in the face. Oh, and because the only place the pain eases up is in a hot shower I'm probably the cleanest I've ever been in my life. And the most sleep deprived. So my apologies to everyone for my attitude ahead of time--it's the pain talking...
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| Mental floss needed. |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|05:30 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  awake | ] |
I just had a nightmare involving New Zealand Parliamentary politics, adoption, arson, corruption in office, and pork futures. While this may not be the strangest combination of elements I've ever had in a nightmare, it does have a certain "What the hell?" quality to it that deserves to be noted. |
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| The upcoming film season. |
[Apr. 6th, 2008|02:26 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
Looking ahead to summer, I need to make some movie-going plans which could affect this journal so I thought I'd give any of my theoretical readers a chance to give their opinions. There are a number of big-budget/high profile films coming up such as Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wall-e, and Iron Man, as well as some outstanding revivals such as The Cup (which I am going to see this time, damn it, even if I'm the only person in the theater).
I'm trying to decide which of these I'm going to see opening night and which I'm going to let slide for the discount shows. As you can imagine, the delay getting to a cheap show usually leads to "Why Bother" when it comes to reviews. (I have a review of Beowulf sitting around here that was never posted because of illness: by now, everyone that might be interested has already seen it.) Would anyone be interested enough that I should go to the extra effort and expense to catch first night shows for possible review? |
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| A pleasant musical interlude. |
[Aug. 19th, 2007|11:46 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  happy | ] |
While I'm not hostile to the artform I've had a mixed amount of luck attending to-be-Broadway musicals until now. To be precise I saw Diana Rigg in Colette when I was in college (opened in Seattle, closed in Denver--and Dame Rigg was not the problem), and Hairspray (successfully opened on Broadway). This evening I saw a third that's due for Broadway: Young Frankenstein. A ton of people I know attended opening night tonight (Hi ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) scarlettina!) and I think it's going to do well.
First the cast: all doing a good job, with Andrea Martin and Megan Mullally winning the prized Gumption award for taking parts originally performed by Cloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn and running away with them. (With one notable exception: for those of you that have seen the film you'll remember a moment when Kahn's character says "Woof." Mullally does a fine reading of the line, but Kahn managed what I swear was a two octave drop in her voice when she did it that converted a silly line into a hysterical one.)
The physical production was well done (or as well done as you can when you're not using Kenneth Strickfaden's original hardware in the lab--and wouldn't that give the fire marshal a heart attack--although the Tesla coil and the spark generator seem sort of lonely), the songs were well performed and funny, and the dancing first rate. One thing that kept driving me mildly nuts was that for some reason or other they're not using the original violin/french horn theme for Young Frankenstein (which I've always liked) but instead a vaguely similar tune that shouts "we couldn't afford the rights." This violates Durocher's Second Rule of Remakes (the First Rule is a steal from the unlikely duo of John Huston and Burt Reynolds, but never mind): if you can't use the original then go for something so different that it doesn't remind the audience of what was there in the original. (The worse example of this I've ever run into was a production of My Fair Lady where the costume designer decided that they weren't going to use the Edith Head racecourse gown design and managed to produce a dress that shouted "I should be the Edith Head dress but I'm not! I'm really not!") This musical omission is especially odd since they kept both the classic songs the original film used for two of its most outrageous jokes, which I'd suspect would have cost more to get the rights to use.
There was one opening-night moment where I found myself feeling sorry for the lead, Roger Bart: he delivers a line before a closed curtain which he probably could have gotten away with in any other city than Seattle. Unfortunately the Rocky Horror-trained audience here responded by first going "Oooh!" and then "Ahhh!" You could tell three things by the look on his face: he wasn't expecting it, he didn't have anything prepared in case it happened, and he didn't want to ad lib something in front of Mel Brooks. It was only about seven seconds long, but my heart went out to the poor slob. And I bet if I went to tomorrow's show that Mel will have written something in case this ever happens again.
At any rate I'd recommend it. You may now talk among yourselves. |
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| The price of fame. |
[Mar. 16th, 2007|06:42 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
One of the problems with writing in this LiveJournal is the realization that I seem unable to come up with topics that amuse or interest folks enough to post. Clearly I'm not Jon Singer or Ginmar and I've come to live with it. The annoying thing, however, is that over the last couple of weeks I've been getting repeated spam attempts against the one post I've done that has attracted any attention at all: the post about Underworld. (Well, there was the time I hit Metaquotes with the story about the naked 6' blonde woman doing a headstand in the shower and screaming, but that was posted on someone else's LJ and probably doesn't count.)
I set the site up to screen comments from the beginning, but that's just because I once spent two years suffering from a stalker/obscene caller: if you post I'll unscreen as soon as I see you've done so and aren't spewing hate or are an actual person. That last qualification is the problem. What I'm getting now are postings about the wonders of dental cleaners, one-liners in sketchy English that say I must have been involved in computers for a long time and keep up the good work, and so on. If these were attaching to all my posts I might shrug it off and unscreen 'em, but the only post they show up on is the one whose URL has made it to popular sites such as Making Light. I have to believe that someone's spam system is trying to use my Underworld review to bump their Google rankings.
I admit to some confusion here: if *I* were trying a trick like this I'd go for something a bit more popular. (This site is the Bates Motel of LiveJournal: off the freeway and forgotten. I'm going to have to try posting more to see if I can at least get to the monkey/typewriter/garbled Shakespeare level...) There's also a bit of annoyance as well: someone's trying to use the one thing I wrote here that's been of interest in a not-nice way that may annoy others--not good.
No grand point here: sometimes there just isn't one. |
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| Who re-cells Dustbusters? |
[Feb. 5th, 2007|03:35 pm] |
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I've got three different Dustbusters here that need new batteries, and each shop I visit says "Just throw them away and get a new model." Call me tight, but this is way beyond conspicuous consumption. Anyone know of a rebuild shop in the area? |
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| Not grasping the subject, really. |
[Dec. 21st, 2006|10:29 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | confused | ] |
There was a recent article on Children's Books in The New York Times that compared a number of classic children's books to new releases and which Urinated On Where's My Cow by Pratchett From A Great Height (sorry, I can't give a link--didn't read the article until a day later), basically because the story included--well, a couple of characters that Sam Vimes added in from his workday (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here) rather than wholesome characters like the ones in, say Good Night Moon.
I know that The Great Grey Lady is unlikely to do "The Times Regrets the Error" over this (Goddard didn't get his until July 20, 1969), but this seems more being uninformed that the book wasn't really a children's book rather than the slag job against Science Fiction and Comics that was bundled into a movie review the day that Eisner's obituary ran. (And boy, that reviewer must have hated it that a Comics Person made the front page instead of her wonderful attack on comics!) Does anyone know if there's been an attempt to get the word to the paper or the reviewer that they now appear totally clueless? |
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| A Clarion Call to Songwriters. |
[Dec. 21st, 2006|10:08 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  quixotic | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Holiday radio broadcasts | ] |
Because of a series of odd circumstances I've found myself spending a lot of time listening to music on the radio lately, which this time of year means you're listening to lots and lots of seasonal holiday music. The songs that are played range from the strongly religious to the avaricious (in the latter category I lean towards the younger-than-Madonna-when-it-was-recorded version of Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt, and am amazed by the amount of truly bad new covers of it that are out this year). There are a few clunkers of course: some that are just bad songs (if I get the guy that wrote The Little Drummer Boy in an alley he's not coming out intact), others are O.K. but written or performed by someone that, to put it kindly, hasn't mastered their tools yet (this week I was in a store that was playing an all-Hanukkah album by a folk-singer that had a dynamite first cut, but the rest of the album was so dull I found myself wishing for Adam Sandler and Eight Crazy Nights). Generally I enjoy them.
In my case I started thinking about the subcategories I was hearing, and I was brought up short when I realized that I was in a demographic that wasn't covered at all. I imagine H. L. Mencken had a similar sensation back in 1927 when he some truly awful burial ceremonies for late friends and wrote his essay "Clarion Call to Poets." In it he wrote "One of the crying needs of the time is for a suitable burial service for the admittedly damned," and offered a supply of "pre-war wet goods" for a team of poets to provide a solution. While I can't offer a similar inducement I hope that someone out there will take up the challenge, or let me know if I just managed to overlook the definitive song on the subject.
Basically, while there are religious songs, and romantic songs, and children's songs, and homesick songs and dragooned songs (Baby, It's Cold Outside, which gets bundled into holiday playlists primarily because it's a cold-weather song) and wonderful season songs, there is nothing that quite fits the moment I had a couple of weeks ago when ladyjestocost and I were looking at Christmas card displays (we've had medical adventures so they're not out yet: you haven't been forgotten) when I realized that everyone I used to send Christmas cards to is dead.
Trust me: this one will stop you cold for at least 30 seconds. It's not a matter of feeling disconnected or sudden despair, or at least it wasn't for me, it's more feeling sorry that you can't drop them a line or invite 'em over for dinner and share stories and opinions and argue over pet theories that mean nothing to anyone else, and hope you'll remember all the good stuff to tell them when you see them someday and somewhere to come.
Anyway, I thought about this off and on for a day or two and then mentioned it to a couple of people in passing. Now I run with a fun-loving but thoughtful crowd, willing to toss almost any conversational ball into the air and see how often they can bat it over the net, but I found out that bringing this up instantly got an Uck! and worried looks for the rest of the time I was there.
Clearly they were getting a very different image in their heads than I was, and based on the reactions I was getting if I wrote any of the songwriters I know (Hi, Kat! Hi, Felicia! Hi, John!) about this they'd call my lovely wife instantly and make sure I was kept away from anything sharper than soup.
So I throw it open to the universe. Mind you, we don't want hordes of Hungarian Christmas shoppers throwing themselves off of the tops of malls, so avoid the heavy hand. And you'll be judged to strict standards: I know one songwriter who could have handled it with understanding and charm based on his most quoted lyrics, and the one long conversation I ever had with him, and I'd turn to him in a second--but, damn, Mike, you quit taking commissions this year and it's going to be someday and somewhere before I get a chance to ask you about it! |
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| Dream interpretation |
[Dec. 2nd, 2006|07:12 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  worried | ] |
I am currently working for a company doing telephone tech support for high-end electronic devices.
Last weekend I dreamed I was doing telephone support for Gundam suits. You know the drill: your multi-ton giant robot suit develops a glitch while you're zipping around in outer space fighting other giant robot suits, so you call me for help in resolving the problem.
I think this means I may need a vacation. |
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| Anyone in the Seattle area need a sewing machine? |
[May. 1st, 2006|08:36 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | curious | ] |
I've got my mom's old Kenmore here: it works, but she went to something made from plastic instead of cast-iron that folds into and out of a table--I'd like to find it a good home. |
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| I dropped my laptop this morning. |
[Apr. 18th, 2006|03:44 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | annoyed | ] |
Screen is shattered diagonally, and the bottom third doesn't work. If anyone hears of a cheap replacement screen for a 667 Titanium Powerbook, let me know, O.K.? |
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| I'm just saying... |
[Feb. 20th, 2006|06:24 pm] |
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Any phone call that starts out with "First of all, I'm All Right!" is going to suck. |
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| Before we were so rudly interrupted... |
[Feb. 19th, 2006|03:51 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
As most of my friends (and my long-suffering wife) will tell you, I have a weakness for neat gadgets and toys. I try to keep it within control, mainly because I want to be able to walk through the house rather than fight my way through ever-increasing piles of junk. I'd like to talk about one I just got, one I've had for awhile, and one that I may get someday if I get lucky on e-Bay.
( The rest inside ) |
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| Software needed. |
[Jul. 10th, 2005|09:15 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | curious | ] |
If anyone knows of a Mac OS X version of the Encheferizer (Bork Bork Bork!) or PsYcHo ChIcKeN fIlTeRs, PlEaSe LeT mE kNoW...
(Later note: never mind: I found a Services tool that will Encheferize.) |
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| I've been tagged... |
[May. 21st, 2005|06:46 pm] |
...by amyirene_40. And it's taken me much too long to respond, but a new job will do that to you. Here, behind a cut, are my answers:
( Book Meme details. ) |
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| An omission. |
[Mar. 13th, 2005|07:11 am] |
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If you look up the website for Jay F. Rosenberg you'll find listings of almost all of his books and writings--at least the scholarly ones. Unfortunately there's no listing for The Impoverished Student's Guide to Cookery, Drinkery, and Housekeepery, a small cookbook that is worth more than it's weight in gold. This is disappointing, especially since I'm told the only place that sells it is Reed College and it's not in their online book store. Is anyone going to be visiting Portland soon? |
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| If you spend 40 minutes trapped in an Otis elevator in Seattle... |
[Feb. 28th, 2005|07:44 am] |
...(especially when it's just before the building's closing time) Otis may send you:
A nifty pen with the Otis logo on it and a LED inside.
A vintage nifty pen with the Otis logo and a little elevator that slides up and down when you tip the pen.
A box of three golf balls with the Otis logo on them.
A pound of See's Candies in nice generic gift paper.
Oh, and the people holding down the front desk in the building you're in will probably set aside a piece of birthday cake for when you emerge. |
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| Not to give anything away in "Sky Captain..." |
[Sep. 30th, 2004|07:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
I try not to be a film spoiler, but anyone who's walking into the theater must suspect from the title that there's a lot of traveling in this film--we'll leave quality and effectiveness of the film out of the discussion for the time being, as I'm trying to decide if I'll do a detailed post about it--so I think I can safely bring this up. Tas anyone else noticed (the clue is obvious and directly in front of the camera during one of the scenes--and no, it's not either of the two clues you might expect) that part of the film takes place on Skull Island? |
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