she dissed me at the espys!
saturday night
the parents and cousin m. and i went out to downtown hollywood for an "art walk," which in principle is a nice way for some of the galleries and shops to showcase their work and get people in the door, and in practice is actually like a pub crawl, but with art and tchotchkes and finger food in place of, you know, ale. some of the art was quite striking and beautiful; some of it was easily surpassed by the shows my high school ap art class put on. it was september in south florida, so it was warm and muggy even well after sunset, but in the course of our walk i downed a glass of champagne and a glass of wine, and then finished it all off with two scoops of the most amazing gelato, so i was feeling no pain.
after we got home i planted myself in front of the computer and chatted with silentfire while i read my way through the harlequin challenge stories at sga_flashfic and laughed myself into a wheezing fit. seriously, these authors need to write harlequins for a living. were they born awesome, or did they have to go to awesome school and take advanced degrees? i kept sending erika links and summaries and back-cover blurbs and choice quotes, followed by my reactions, e.g. *dies* and *DIES* and *dies and dies and is reanimated and DIES AGAIN*. that last was to hyperfocused's TEASER that ended with An all-knowing Mountie, a know-it-all Canadian Physicist, and two American men with experimental hair fight against the odds to brave the wilds of the Yukon in Overdue South.
i was up and rolling around in the crack until after seven in the morning. at that point i had a dozen stories still unread in open tabs, but it was, you know, after seven a.m., and the parents tend to get tetchy when they hear me heading to bed just as they're waking up.
sunday
i had myself a great workout, and, and. i can't really remember much of sunday. my mom and i visited my grandmother, who was pretty perky and very chatty; we had a huge vegetarian taco salad for dinner and finished off season one of sports night. i'd just like to take this moment to state right now, for the record, that i love dan rydell, and i love josh charles for being dan rydell, and i really wish we saw more of his mouth him around these days. i love him and casey together, even when i'm not picturing them comfortably in love and rejoindering happily ever after, because they're such good *friends* first.
earlier my mother had been watching season three gilmore girls, particularly a scene where rory comes downstairs to find lorelai going through stacks and stacks of all the catalogues they receive, with the good intentions of calling the companies to cancel the duplicates, but she bails mid-project, as rory had predicted; in despair, rory calls after her, "these catalogues are gonna be here forever!" to which lorelai replies, "no they won'tthey're biodegradable." that scene, plus watching josh charles, et al. give life to aaron sorkin's dialogue, led me to an epiphany regarding interpretations of characterization and fanfic, especially concerning the recent kerfuffle over rageprufrock's hindsight, and the epiphany was delivery.
one of the criticisms of hindsight that i remember most clearly was that rodney's characterization was off, specifically that he shouted all the time. i had to admit that he did do a lot of yelling, that it made him come off as shrill, and i had a little trouble reconciling that with the rodney i saw, until i realized it was more a problem of translation and transcription than characterization. because on the show rodney does do a lot of shoutingexcept that's not quite the right word for it. the prototype in my mind for "yell" isn't what necessarily comes out of his mouth onscreen, though it might be the best word to describe it.
it's easier to go from the written word to the spoken one: there are layers and layers of nuance to add to a single line-reading, incorporating tone and speed and emphasis, facial expressions and body language; you could perform any given line a hundred different ways, but when the time comes to transcribe that performance, the hundred different readings are compressed back into a single line of dialogueplus descriptions of body language and facial expressions, the context clues of the entire scene, and adverbs (use sparingly). but one of the best tools that a fanfic writer has is that we know the characters: we know what they look like, sound like, how they move; if i can hear a character in a story i'm reading, that is it, that's the best thing. i think what i do too often is read the story and try to let the words give rise to the action, instead of giving the characters a chance to act out the words. so the text says rodney yells, and that strikes me as not quite right; but david hewlett could pull it off, and suddenly rodney's speaking snappily and unhappily, exasperatedly and maybe even angrily, but it's rodney, it's not all-caps anymore. i loved hindsight pretty unequivocally the moment i laid eyes on it, but i take my epiphanies where i find them.
on an unrelated sga fanfictional note, i am a suckera SUCKERfor that moment when john is smarter than rodney expects. i LIVE for that. and as silentfire said, rodney's always surprised! every time! he is nothing if not predictable.
monday
my father woke me up today, but it was almost one p.m. at the time, and it was because he needed help putting up the hurricane shutters, so resentment was given no opportunity to build. we're only expecting tropical-storm-force winds in broward county, but my parents regretted not putting up the shutters a couple of weeks ago when katrina came through, so up they went today. no harm in it, better safe than sorry, etc., etc., and it's more comforting to hear things slamming into the metal than into the windows. between the two of us it only took a little over an hour and a half, under hot hot sunny skies with the occasional darker cloud passing overhead bearing a drizzle, and a stiff breeze that waxed and waned. when we were all done and i went inside, dripping sweat and dirty from climbing in all our shrubbery, the dog came bounding up to me, freaked out by the noise we'd been making and the way it had gotten steadily darker in the house at three in the afternoon.
it's a weird feeling, artificial nighttime inside when the sun's high in the sky, and it's weird to look at from the outside too. a house with hurricane shutters up looks suddenly blind. a boarded-up house is a signal of abandonment, but this is a matter of protection: we seal up the walls and ourselves inside. i walk down the hallway and glance out the back doors, but my line of sight is abruptly shortened to the metal panels a couple of inches beyond the glass. it's the constant visual equivalent of feeling for the landing at the top of the stairs when there's really one more step. the dog seems to have gotten over it; these days the cat only moves back and forth between my pile of dirty laundry and his food bowl and litterbox.
and then we threw an impromptu hurricane party, like you do. my mom and i picked up wine (frank at the liquor store is a super-nice guy who knows his stuff and is thrilled to recommend things we might like), fish and chicken at delaware chicken farm, and a prescription for my grandmother at target. (we delivered it to her too, as she had a new caretaker start today and that kind of transition confuses her terribly. sometimes she falls asleep, and when she wakes up can't differentiate between dreams and memories.) cousin m. came over after she'd put up her own shutters, for wine and fish in this incredible sauce that my mother whipped up from the tomato sauce that had been languishing in the refrigerator, garlic, onions, red peppers, and i know not what. we watched how i met your mother; i forgot about the premier of kitchen confidential, but i'm hearing very good things about it.
i've been working through the rest of the harlequin stories and the latest recs from ship_recs all night. at one point i solved the sudoku in three minutes, forty-six seconds, and i wanted a COOKIE, or like, sirens to go off and quarters to start flying out of the cd-rom drive.
we have hurricane days like other people have snow days, and there's no school tomorrow, though i think cousin m. is still obliged to show up at work. i'll be sleeping in, just as usual; in case of power outage we're in good shape for bottled water and peanut butter, my ipod is fully charged, and i've got a stack of unread books that just won't quit. house and NCIS are on tomorrow though, so hopefully it won't come to that.
the parents and cousin m. and i went out to downtown hollywood for an "art walk," which in principle is a nice way for some of the galleries and shops to showcase their work and get people in the door, and in practice is actually like a pub crawl, but with art and tchotchkes and finger food in place of, you know, ale. some of the art was quite striking and beautiful; some of it was easily surpassed by the shows my high school ap art class put on. it was september in south florida, so it was warm and muggy even well after sunset, but in the course of our walk i downed a glass of champagne and a glass of wine, and then finished it all off with two scoops of the most amazing gelato, so i was feeling no pain.
after we got home i planted myself in front of the computer and chatted with silentfire while i read my way through the harlequin challenge stories at sga_flashfic and laughed myself into a wheezing fit. seriously, these authors need to write harlequins for a living. were they born awesome, or did they have to go to awesome school and take advanced degrees? i kept sending erika links and summaries and back-cover blurbs and choice quotes, followed by my reactions, e.g. *dies* and *DIES* and *dies and dies and is reanimated and DIES AGAIN*. that last was to hyperfocused's TEASER that ended with An all-knowing Mountie, a know-it-all Canadian Physicist, and two American men with experimental hair fight against the odds to brave the wilds of the Yukon in Overdue South.
i was up and rolling around in the crack until after seven in the morning. at that point i had a dozen stories still unread in open tabs, but it was, you know, after seven a.m., and the parents tend to get tetchy when they hear me heading to bed just as they're waking up.
sunday
i had myself a great workout, and, and. i can't really remember much of sunday. my mom and i visited my grandmother, who was pretty perky and very chatty; we had a huge vegetarian taco salad for dinner and finished off season one of sports night. i'd just like to take this moment to state right now, for the record, that i love dan rydell, and i love josh charles for being dan rydell, and i really wish we saw more of his mouth him around these days. i love him and casey together, even when i'm not picturing them comfortably in love and rejoindering happily ever after, because they're such good *friends* first.
earlier my mother had been watching season three gilmore girls, particularly a scene where rory comes downstairs to find lorelai going through stacks and stacks of all the catalogues they receive, with the good intentions of calling the companies to cancel the duplicates, but she bails mid-project, as rory had predicted; in despair, rory calls after her, "these catalogues are gonna be here forever!" to which lorelai replies, "no they won'tthey're biodegradable." that scene, plus watching josh charles, et al. give life to aaron sorkin's dialogue, led me to an epiphany regarding interpretations of characterization and fanfic, especially concerning the recent kerfuffle over rageprufrock's hindsight, and the epiphany was delivery.
one of the criticisms of hindsight that i remember most clearly was that rodney's characterization was off, specifically that he shouted all the time. i had to admit that he did do a lot of yelling, that it made him come off as shrill, and i had a little trouble reconciling that with the rodney i saw, until i realized it was more a problem of translation and transcription than characterization. because on the show rodney does do a lot of shoutingexcept that's not quite the right word for it. the prototype in my mind for "yell" isn't what necessarily comes out of his mouth onscreen, though it might be the best word to describe it.
it's easier to go from the written word to the spoken one: there are layers and layers of nuance to add to a single line-reading, incorporating tone and speed and emphasis, facial expressions and body language; you could perform any given line a hundred different ways, but when the time comes to transcribe that performance, the hundred different readings are compressed back into a single line of dialogueplus descriptions of body language and facial expressions, the context clues of the entire scene, and adverbs (use sparingly). but one of the best tools that a fanfic writer has is that we know the characters: we know what they look like, sound like, how they move; if i can hear a character in a story i'm reading, that is it, that's the best thing. i think what i do too often is read the story and try to let the words give rise to the action, instead of giving the characters a chance to act out the words. so the text says rodney yells, and that strikes me as not quite right; but david hewlett could pull it off, and suddenly rodney's speaking snappily and unhappily, exasperatedly and maybe even angrily, but it's rodney, it's not all-caps anymore. i loved hindsight pretty unequivocally the moment i laid eyes on it, but i take my epiphanies where i find them.
on an unrelated sga fanfictional note, i am a suckera SUCKERfor that moment when john is smarter than rodney expects. i LIVE for that. and as silentfire said, rodney's always surprised! every time! he is nothing if not predictable.
monday
my father woke me up today, but it was almost one p.m. at the time, and it was because he needed help putting up the hurricane shutters, so resentment was given no opportunity to build. we're only expecting tropical-storm-force winds in broward county, but my parents regretted not putting up the shutters a couple of weeks ago when katrina came through, so up they went today. no harm in it, better safe than sorry, etc., etc., and it's more comforting to hear things slamming into the metal than into the windows. between the two of us it only took a little over an hour and a half, under hot hot sunny skies with the occasional darker cloud passing overhead bearing a drizzle, and a stiff breeze that waxed and waned. when we were all done and i went inside, dripping sweat and dirty from climbing in all our shrubbery, the dog came bounding up to me, freaked out by the noise we'd been making and the way it had gotten steadily darker in the house at three in the afternoon.
it's a weird feeling, artificial nighttime inside when the sun's high in the sky, and it's weird to look at from the outside too. a house with hurricane shutters up looks suddenly blind. a boarded-up house is a signal of abandonment, but this is a matter of protection: we seal up the walls and ourselves inside. i walk down the hallway and glance out the back doors, but my line of sight is abruptly shortened to the metal panels a couple of inches beyond the glass. it's the constant visual equivalent of feeling for the landing at the top of the stairs when there's really one more step. the dog seems to have gotten over it; these days the cat only moves back and forth between my pile of dirty laundry and his food bowl and litterbox.
and then we threw an impromptu hurricane party, like you do. my mom and i picked up wine (frank at the liquor store is a super-nice guy who knows his stuff and is thrilled to recommend things we might like), fish and chicken at delaware chicken farm, and a prescription for my grandmother at target. (we delivered it to her too, as she had a new caretaker start today and that kind of transition confuses her terribly. sometimes she falls asleep, and when she wakes up can't differentiate between dreams and memories.) cousin m. came over after she'd put up her own shutters, for wine and fish in this incredible sauce that my mother whipped up from the tomato sauce that had been languishing in the refrigerator, garlic, onions, red peppers, and i know not what. we watched how i met your mother; i forgot about the premier of kitchen confidential, but i'm hearing very good things about it.
i've been working through the rest of the harlequin stories and the latest recs from ship_recs all night. at one point i solved the sudoku in three minutes, forty-six seconds, and i wanted a COOKIE, or like, sirens to go off and quarters to start flying out of the cd-rom drive.
we have hurricane days like other people have snow days, and there's no school tomorrow, though i think cousin m. is still obliged to show up at work. i'll be sleeping in, just as usual; in case of power outage we're in good shape for bottled water and peanut butter, my ipod is fully charged, and i've got a stack of unread books that just won't quit. house and NCIS are on tomorrow though, so hopefully it won't come to that.