EATING HARD CANDY ALONE

the x-files is a show/with music by mark snow

iamsab — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:46:41 GMT

LJ PEOPLE. HI GUYS HI! I miss you like CRAZY. Also, I'm not back, really. I have been blogging in exile, and if you want a piece of me, come visit Apocalypse Weather and say hi and snuggle up beside me and remind me what it's like to live inside the internet.

But I'm here for a reason, and that reason is fic, and that fic has a reason, and that reason is runpunkrun, and the X-Files. Here's a mirror of the blog post I wrote, and the fic link:

So I've been doing an X-Files rewatch, trying to be more charitable to that Public Enemy Number One, Chris Carter. The torture he put us through, the hamhanded way he mangled Mulder and Scully's relationship in the later seasons, the terrible tale of Scully's baby, all of it a series of windmilled slaps in the face to the legions of devoted fans who gave seven years to that relationship and expected just the tiniest bit of payoff. (And the less said about I Want To Believe, the better.)

While I was being charitable, though, I watched season 7 as if I weren't a shipper, as if the only details about Mulder and Scully's relationships I got were the ones actually telegraphed in text, not off-camera. And I tell you what -- before it's all unspooled in season 8 -- the romance is there, it's real, it's text.

Say what you will about their relationship in the previous season; the shippers will believe there's romance there and the noromos never will, but the truth, that Truth with a capital T, is in there in season 7 and can't be denied.

Mulder and Scully kiss at the end of "Millennium." It's right there. "The world didn't end," says Mulder. "No, it didn't," says Scully. And they leave arm in arm.

They sleep together in "all things." Scully wakes up, gets dressed, and the camera pans to take in Mulder's sleeping form, sprawled out across her bed. And if that weren't enough, when Scully goes to talk to her old lover Daniel, and he tells her he moved to DC for her, she confesses, "you've come at such a strange time." And when he suggests she has a life, she sighs, "I don't know what I have." There's almost no way to read that -- unless you really do some mental gymnastics -- that doesn't suggest that Mulder and Scully have moved their relationship into new territory, and I want to believe that they kept up this sexual relationship throughout season 7. The text would seem to support it, too.

Later, somewhere in fucking season 9, or something, a mysterious figure who's been stalking Scully says something to the tune of, "one lonely night, you invited Mulder into your bed." Which does seem to suggest that they only had sex that one time, but the timing of the birth is all wrong if we're really to believe that baby came from sex, so I defend my previous allegation that they sleep together for the balance of the second half of season 7. Also, everything that happens in season 9 is stupid and not worth considering.

In my early X-Files days, I was so obsessed with Scully that I assumed Mulder was the one in love with her, and that she was the one who was cool, aloof, too good for him. In this rewatch it really seems to be the other way around; Scully is unquestionably in love with that man, and Mulder's just too set in his ways to even be open to a relationship.

With that in mind, I wrote some fanfic. Punk helped, held my hand through the hard parts and reminded me why I got into this business in the first place. And I wrote something new, for me, something tender and shippy and not at all callous (which has been my go-to for XF fic in the past).

I flipped randomly through books for the title: it ended up being called As Real As Soap. And strangely, though it builds to the sex, there's no sex in the story, which you might think is a cop out on my part and I would totally agree. I said to Punk, "I just don't think I can write sex that's as good as the sex Mulder and Scully would have." So I cheated. Sue me.

Now that I'm off Livejournal I'm out of the social circle that promises me lots of feedback, so if you do get around to reading this, leave me a comment, eh? It's been a long time since I've been on this particular horse, and I'd love to know if I made the jump or fell off somewhere in the ravine.

Go on, now: As Real As Soap, Mulder/Scully, rated T for Teen, 2309 words.

Remix '09!

iamsab — Sun, 08 May 2011 16:42:24 GMT

Ah, remix reveal season, where young writers' fancies turn to thoughts of going back and reading the originals of stuff! (That's what I'm doing this morning).

Still, in light of the grandissimo unveiling AND all the hard work of Victoria P and her crew AND the challenge-supporting power of AO3, here's what happened to ME this week.

First, Astrogirl wrote Falling Down To Midnight (The Drum Duet Remix) of my Ten & Master missing-year story Give Up The Ghost. Astrogirl manages creepy language, the frustration and ego of both the Doctor and the Master, and she writes a very believable and fascinating relationship between the Doctor and the Valiant's archangel network. Everybody who misses Ten/Simm!Master should read this. So should everybody else. Thank you SO HARD for adding this spice and backstory and texture and to what I laid out there for you. Astrogirl totally wins at remix.

Then, I done wrote two remices myself! Wanna read them? You DO? AWESOME.

First, for Sangerin, my assignee, I was lucky enough to find a the cache of Into the Woods fiction ripe for the remixing.

I wrote To Get The Thing That Makes It Worth The Journeying (Festival Remix), remixing Sangerin's original Baker's Wife/Cinderella femslash into a slightly bigger story about the Baker's Wife and where she fits into all these stories. It was a thrill and a half to write this story and I definitely won the assignment lottery.

(In other amusing news, Sangerin and I have remixed each other before. Several years ago I wrote a Buffy remix of one of Sangerin's stories, a Cordelia/alt!Cordelia femslash sort of thing. And, perhaps that same year, Sangerin wrote a remix of a ST:VOY story I had written. Go poke around our AO3 accounts iffen you wanna see them. Anyway, Sangerin is a great remixer and remixee, though in this case she has apparently not read my remix yet so I'm holding out to see what she thinks of my Into the Woods remix of her beautiful femslash.)

Plus, also, I wrote a Madness thing, because it was OZ and it was THERE. I've never written anything in the Baum Oz-verse (I don't think?) despite it being a childhood obsession of mine. I remixed Gray_Cardinal's absolutely AMAZING The Solitary Sorceress of Oz, a pitch-perfect moment of magic between Trot and Ozma and I turned it into a little more of an Ozian quest story in The Magic of Us (The Wooden Leg Remix) and it was so much fun I felt like I was being given a gift for the opportunity to remix in Oz. I got to write the Sawhorse! And Cap'n Bill! Who gets lucky like that? Lucky people, that's who.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for some dark and awesome Ten/Master, read Falling Down To Midnight (The Drum Duet Remix) by the one and only Sangerin.

If you're one of those people like me who can't get enough Into the Woods, go read my remix To Get The Thing That Makes It Worth The Journeying (Festival Remix) and then the story it was based on and then the rest of the ITW fic on AO3. One of 'em in there's an old present for me!

And then if you're among the rare and precious out of print fans who swear by the original Baum Fourteen Oz novels, please go read my remix, The Magic of Us (The Wooden Leg Remix), then everything else in the Oz index on AO3, particularly anything written by my amazing remixee, Gray_Cardinal.

And then leave comments? Kudos are nice, but comments have PROTEIN and FIBER and provide a SHINY MANE AND TAIL!

PS. What's the code to add the little AO3 favicon to usernames? Also apparently I've been gone so long lj user equals no longer works. What about the DW favicon? Thanks!

remix 9 ♥

iamsab — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 23:39:14 GMT

It's me! If you've been looking, I'm a twitterer now (though I still try to read my lj flist) but, more importantly, I finished my REMIX! (12 hours late because of all that time-consuming TENSE-SWITCHING)

Still! May 1st! Cannot WAIT!

in the "why didn't I think of that?" category of money making

iamsab — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:02:08 GMT

Courtesy of an e-mail from my dad. Apocryphal? Maybe, but funny:

From yesterdays Bristol Evening Post:

Outside Bristol Zoo is the car park, with spaces for 150 cars and 8 coaches. It has been manned 6 days a week for 23 years by the same charming and very polite car park attendant with the ticket machine. The charges are £1. per car and £5. per coach.

On Monday 1 June, he did not turn up for work. Bristol Zoo management phoned Bristol City Council to ask them to send a replacement parking attendant.

The Council said "That car park is your responsibility." The Zoo said "The attendant was employed by the City Council... wasn't he?" The Council said "What attendant?"

Gone missing from his home is a man who has been taking daily the car park fees amounting to about £400. per day for the last 23 years...!

.

more Star Trek! what could possibly be the downside???

iamsab — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:04 GMT

So I no longer feel oppressed by the JJ Star Trek movie, in case you were worried. I've been watching various TNG eps this week, not in any particular order, just browsing around for episodes I haven't seen in a while or for ones I especially jonesed for. And so at the end of the day I realize I'm just blissed out now because there IS a new Star Trek movie, and what's more I haven't SEEN it yet, which means NEW STAR TREK for ME!

How long has it been?! Years, I say. And the last thing we got was Nemesis anyway, which, okay, some of you may have enjoyed but I personally found painfully stupid.

Anyway, NEW STAR TREK! By all accounts, AWESOME new Star Trek, by the ultimate fanboy JJ.

Now it's just about getting my everlovin' arse to the theater.

trekkies -> trekkers -> just about everybody

iamsab — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:03:59 GMT

I am the old school sort of -- started in 1987 with the first season of TNG -- Trekkie who grew up on the shows, entered fandom through Trek fandom, entered sci-fi through Trek sci-fi, and so on and so forth, I've seen every episode of every series (except "Enterprise") about four point four zillion times and am in fact one of those people who knows why the Justman was named for Justman and why the Jeffries tubes were named for Jeffries...

So why have I not seen the JJ movie yet? I even BOUGHT tickets for it at the Arclight, then couldn't make the show and now have free vouchers sitting around in my wallet just waiting for me.

I have so much Trek in my blood it runs Vulcan green some times. So why haven't I seen this movie yet?

I can tell you the name of Kirk's fiance, Picard's nephew, Sisko's father, Janeway's dog.

So, what? Is it because movies are dead to me? Is it because I love teevee so much and Trek teevee so much (yes, yes, the orig. even-numbered movies are still acceptable, TOS: The Voyage Home and TNG: First Contact are the best of the batch) that I'm not ready to translate it to a 21st century big screen? Am I just afraid of Karl Urban as Bones? Do I just lack the attention span to sit through a movie? Am I afraid of tumbling fully formed and wiser with experience into the new bounding Trek fandom? Are we ALL going to collapse under its weight? Is the new spate of Kirk/Spock fics making me defensive for the old Greywolf the Wanderer ouvre? Am I just being a BOFQ?

*holds head*

Seriously, what's wrong with me???

spring is for ficathons

iamsab — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:10:44 GMT

My remixthedrabble drabbles are off to that great drabble inbox in the sky (sophinisba) and waiting for the reveal.

I may or may not be bailing on my first multiverse5000 prompt in the favor of doing a better job on the second one. Punk's on board to help me decide.

I signed up for the Remix/Redux, my favorite time of year. And if I do kink-bingo it'll just be the last two from LAST year's bingo. I bet thingswithwings will let me sneak it in.

*

Because the thing is, it's not really about word length. I mean, the Multiverse stories have no minimum length, and the drabbles were exactly 100 words, but a COMPLETE fic is not necessarily a GOOD fic.

When I remix -- like many others, I can only imagine -- I need to give my remix a little kick, a little narrative twist or secret punchline or perspective shift from the original. So this year's round of remixthedrabble was particularly interesting. Rather than being about remixing a drabble, or even redrabbling a drabble, this could have more aptly been called "drabble the story" -- with a hard and fast 100 word limit on everything to come out of this round, we were tasked to remix stories into 100 word drabbles.

I gave myself a bit of a challenge, picking stories that had a little bit of plot to them and a bit of length and heft to then pare down to 100 words. But it wasn't just about paring down; this isn't "summarize the drabble," I mean.

When I remix, I read through and try to isolate what the original author hung the story on, the punchline or the key elements or the perspective or whatever, and then have to make the decision as to whether my remix is going to keep that nucleus or not. Picture it like the flying spaghetti monster, where if I go grab the crux of their story, the noodly appendages that built toward it will come too, and I've got a spaghetti monster to cram into 100 words.

SO, I usually find their crux/nucleus/punchline/spaghetti monster and then instead grab something sort of to the left of it to hang my story on. And extract that little... plot nub from the story and draw out all of ITS noodly appendages, the hints and dialogue and whatnot that describe a story in which the new left-sided small nug is the point.

I did four drabble remixes for this latest round, which, I believe, goes live June 10th (yes, Soph?), and (with the exception of one, which was stylized for another purpose entirely) all of them grabbed the one element of the original story that spoke to me the most and then reframed a drabble around that punch line.

This has gotten me in trouble before, when the original writer comes to read the remix and expects it to have the same general emotional drive of the original story and is dismayed to see that I've written something else entirely. Then again, I'm of the belief that the original writers have no claim on whatever the remixers decide to do, so, you know, frack 'em if they can't take a joke.

Point being, this last exercise, remixing down four reasonably long stories into four drabbles that (with luck! and a little bit of skillz?) hang on moments or commentary that occurred in the original story, without necessarily being the focus of the original.

But THEN. The mark of a good remix to me, beyond all this, is a story that maintains a relationship to the original; that adds to it or refracts/reflects it in a unique and broadening way. The best example of this that I've got are the two awesome remixes of my DW fic Savile Row that came out of RTD (remixthedrabble, not Russell T. Davies, but enjoy the icon anyhow) and regular Remix last year. Fuck, I can't find links. I'll come back and edit with links. But you get the drift. If the remix maintains NO connection to the original, it doesn't, in my mind, meet the intellectual challenge of the process either.

This is all why I love Remix season so much (ask musesfool; I probably nag her once a month year round to make sure it's a-comin' - y/y, Vic?) and why even in years that were otherwise fic-free I always participate.

It's like a tour of meaning, of signifiers. You wander through an original story, pick up pebbles, threads, figures and feelings, break them apart, reassemble them, and put them back into a world. I try to make sure all my remixes link to the original fic that inspired them (and encourage anyone who ever reads a remix to read the original story first), and am in the process of adding links to REMIXED versions of my story to my archive at AOOO, because I think originals and remixes should live together, like cousins, or D/s, or mirror universes.

ANYWAY.

When I write something that lacks meaning -- if/when I craft something that doesn't have an "aha!" moment somewhere in there, that doesn't have a feint or something unexpected or, at the very least, an emo punchline, I feel empty. I have entire stories, PWPs and long rambling plotty things and medium-sized slices of life that are complete and will never see the light of day because in my mind they're not ABOUT anything, not about what they should be about; they don't have that nucleus, that spaghetti monster and his noodly appendages weaving throughout the story.

So I nabbed two Multiverse prompts. And while I have an idea for the crux, the twist, the commentary for the first one, the story is cranking out like a chore, lacking heart, lacking meaning. And sure I could wrap it up in 500 words, and sure I could post it, and sure Multiverse doesn't have a minimum word count, but in my mind, a flat, un-noodly story is worse than no story at all.

Which is why Punk is here, to tell me if I should dump this story, the one that's due June 8th, entirely and instead focus on my other Multiverse prompt, the one that's due June 30th, the one that has a nucleus and noodly appendages.

A lot of thinky thoughts here, no real enlightening observations other than the fact that I spend a lot of time squinting at my writing looking for the noodly appendages, and that the playground of the remix provides a great arena for that exercise.

In conclusion: what do you think? Is a lame 500 word story in response to a prompt for a ficathon better than no story at all?

I tried to remove my name from one of my Yuletide stories last year. It was for a recipient, so I had to post it, but it didn't meet my standards for hooks and nucleii and so on. It was a gift, so up it went, but had it not been, it wouldn't have seen the light of day, despite being fine story with a plot, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Here I am, same deal. Only in this case it's not a gift exchange. So whattaya say?

I love Earth!

iamsab — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:19:25 GMT

Facebook asked me to assemble a team of five people to save the world. I picked Ten, of course, and also Greg House (in case there's a crazy brain worm epidemic), Martha Jones (she did it once before pretty well), Captain Kathryn Janeway (who also saved the world a couple times before, and is quite fond of Earth), and Rodney McKay, for obvious reasons.

I did point out that until House and Rodney shut their traps and let the Doctor be in charge (BECAUSE HE'S A TIME LORD, WHAT) we'd mostly just be left to languish in an apocalypse, but I figure Janeway's the one with the military background who'll snap them to attention pretty quick, and she's smart enough about aliens to know to trust the Doctor.

And then, seriously? Ten, House, Rodney, Martha, and Janeway saving the world? I PITY the apocalypse that tries to take their asses down.

Now, will someone write me that XO?

in a race around the world

iamsab — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:44:22 GMT

In reality TV news:

OH KISHA AND JEN! I would have traded Cara and Jamie for Kisha and Jen in an instant. But it also showcased the difference betw me and my sister and Kisha and Jen: Lizzie or I would have totally peed ourselves right there in the cab. *g*

Meanwhile I continue to love Tammy and Victor and to those who doubted them initially, SUCK IT! Though of course I wish they'd U-Turned EITHER of the other teams. In other I told you so news, is Luke not such jerk?

So basically it's Tammy and Victor or bust. I want to leave those other two teams in the dust. Sadly we're about to lose our Chinese-language advantage, I suspect.

Carry on, Jalapao alliance. If you're really doing your thing with Erinn, and if you really bring Taj and JT to the three, you deserve a million dollars, Stephen. MAKE IT HAPPEN.

And you know, Debbie's a good competitor, but she backed the wrong horse, plus she was always so mean to Sierra, so it's not going to hurt too much to see her go. Just PLEASE, COACH FIRST! COACH NEXT! COACH NOW!

AGAIN, Debbie and Coach could try to bring Erinn in to a last-ditch Timbira alliance to draw Stephen's idol and/or get rid of JT, but I will punch Erinn in her pretty Prada glasses if she does it. NEVER AGAIN, she promised! But then, I said last week that Coach/Debbie would try to recruit Sierra for a Timbira alliance, and it TOTES HAPPENED. Yeesh. Thank god for Sierra's neurotic honesty.

But in the words of every Survivor ever, once you think you've got it in the bag, it turns on you. So I remain skeptical and scared.

It LOOKS like it's going to go Coach, Debbie, Erinn, Taj, JT and Stephen. If it goes any other way (unless the girls [Erinn and Taj] pull a potentially cool maneuver I don't think they're savvy enough to pull), I PITY THE FOOL.

And if it means anything to anyone: GO PAULA, in that atrocity that is Hell's Kitchen.

AND DANCE BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON!

iamsab — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:43:13 GMT

Holy crap, kids! It's the thirtysomething DVDs! At long, loooooooong last!

Thanks to silsbee329 for the head's up -- I wrote her a thirtysomething Yuletide story two years ago and she sought me out to give me the good news.

And such good news it is!

dth and that

iamsab — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:35:16 GMT

1. Don't have a Dreamwidth acct yet but plan on buying one in May, just for namesquatting slash exit strategy. But I ain't leaving LJ. I like it here. Also Dreamwidth is Dth in my head, not DW, which is and will always be Doctor Who. Any chance of starting a trend? So... who's got a Dth invite? *g* Use it learn it love it! Use it three times and it's yours! Woo!

2. Though I do a lot of my brain-spewing over on Twitter... I was suspicious of folks who ship their twitters to LJ until I realized it's for archival purposes, not just noise, and then it made lots of sense. Twitter isn't searchable and doesn't have any useful archive properties. Which is to say I'll probably be shippin' my tweets here but will keep 'em behind a cut once I figure out how. So, people, what's your favorite tweet-shipper?

3. I forgot what 3 was for.

4. In re: mini XF renaissance, and without getting into a whole to-do... canonically it's safest to assume Mulder and Scully started sleeping together somewhere between "Orison" and "all things", yes? I mean, it was pretty blindingly obvious this time through, much as my fannish brain can of course put it anywhere -- around "Anasazi" is good, as is, of course, before "Never Again." But in canon, this time through, I don't even think it was subtext. Or maybe I'm giving them too much credit, or maybe David and Gillian just took over, but I think it's pretty clear there is some commencing-of-sexual-relationship just after Orison and from there through Requiem. My guess is that David and Gillian consciously played it that way. Does anyone (frey_at_last) have any interview material, etc, to back this up?

5. Speaking of post-Orison, do what I did, and go back and read Anyone with a Gun, the Orison post-ep runpunkrun and I wrote as our combined cool-headed alter ego, V. Salmone (a professional and well-educated woman from Corpus Christi, TX, in case you were wondering; she has a backstory and everything... and a desk). Not to toot our horns, but when Punk and I put our heads together, sometimes good stuff comes out, and in this case, somehow, it was just right. At least in terms of my most current XF rewatch. Felt good, is what. High fives all around.

6. I fell asleep outside in the sun and my retinas have not yet forgiven me.

7. Who watches "Hell's Kitchen"? What a car crash of a show. But yet I can't look away.

commodities brokering, or, the best shows you're not watching

iamsab — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:26:27 GMT

Here are some shows I'm watching that you're not (and some I'm watching because, earlier, when I was looking for shows YOU were watching that I was not, certain shows expectedly crossed consciousnesses and are MINE NOW) and maybe want to be, or maybe want to catch up on when all our regular season shows wrap themselves up two or three eps from now.

1. The Unit
This is not a new show, it's just a GOOD show that's somehow slipped under the radar because it looks sort of exhausting and oppressive and hard to get into. It is NOT, and the likes of the other two Unit fans (that's svilleficrecs and _oceana, if I counted right) will confirm. [ETA: the inimitable _oceana posted a picspam and pimp post for the Unit a while back, and you should all go, if for no other reason than to look at the pretty boys. And then remember Sab doesn't WATCH shows just for pretty boys! And then think, hey, maybe there's more to this Unit business after all! Thanks, Oceana! ♥]

First realize it's a David Mamet show, so the dialogue is appropriately Mamet-ish, and Rebecca Pidgeon (for one) shows up from time to time to make it even more Mametian. Plus David's sister Lynn Mamet, who inherited the Mamet style of choppy and quick dialogue (think Sorkin combined with Alanis Morissette's weird word choices), is a producer and lead writer as well.

The Unit is an above-top-secret elite black ops group, tasked to do things the government needs deniability on. Led by the awesome Dennis Haysbert, aka Top, aka Snake Doc, aka Jonas Blane, and his crew rounded out with the likes of Scott Foley in a great and appropriate role, the sexy, freckled, Max Martini.

And then we have the wives on the base, keeping their husbands' secrets, keeping their own secrets, and all the Mamet-type twists and intrigue you can get away with on CBS. The wives are led by Molly Blane, played brilliantly by Regina Taylor, who keeps the other Unit wives in line while also orchestrating maneuvers of her own. Plus there's also Robert Patrick, in my favorite role of his, and some actors who are unknown enough that they allow you to suspend disbelief because they really might BE a secret black-ops troop.

If you like smart and clever and the sort of show where the characters know more than you do and things are satisfyingly untangled by cool and classy heroes against a background of conspiracy -- The Unit, dude! We're already on S4; you can start here or go back to season 1 and treat the show right.

2. Better Off Ted
It's not your fault if you haven't caught this yet as there have only been five episodes and they're on ABC which -- well, I guess you folks watch Lost or Desperate Housewives, but I don't, so I'm not around ABC much, ahem.

Better Off Ted is Kitchen Confidential meets jPod, and if you haven't seen either of those shows you really oughta. It's set at the megatechcorp Viridian Dynamics, where Ted Crisp leads a group of scientists on ridiculous high-cost R&D projects, like trying to weaponize a pumpkin or make a substance that can both be a meat substitute and aircraft paneling. Ted's foil is his boss Veronica, smartly played by the inimitable Portia di Rossi, who is all we loved her for in Arrested Development and MORE.

Like Kitchen Confidential, it has the main character's VO and similar moc-doc workplace feel, and like jPod, it's about a bunch of geeks inventing cool and frequently useless shit with a budget of nine zillion dollars.

Watch what they've got streaming on ABC.com. First off, ABC's hi-def player is SO BEAUTIFUL you can see every one of Portia di Rossi's GORGEOUS PORES. It's like that.

3. Breaking Bad
Though my love for Bryan Cranston is VERY VERY REAL, I still never caught this show, despite being aware of it vaguely from bus-bench ads. It's not my fault either -- the show is on AMC (yes, the movie channel), and who the hell goes looking there for original drama? Well, the nice people who share things at comms in which things are shared, that's who.

Breaking Bad is what would happen if Dexter Morgan ATE Nancy Botwin. Or, really, it's just Weeds collided with Dexter but with all the power of BRYAN CRANSTON in his dorky glasses and tightie-whities.

Like so: he's a chemistry teacher. He gets diagnosed with terminal cancer. His family is broke. He learns from his DEA-officer brother-in-law that those wacky meth labs make lots of money. Two and two are put together, and now Mr. White, chemist extraordinaire, is cooking up the best crystal meth the West has ever seen. But there's also his wife and his DEA brother in law and his son with Cerebral Palsy (played marvelously by RJ Mitte; this show to my mind has broken some ground with disabled characters; Walter Jr [or Flynn as he likes to be called now] is a regular and complicated 16 year old who just happens to have a disability) and his klepto sister-in-law and, mostly, Jesse Pinkman, the dude he cooks meth with; a strung-out former student who actually straightens up in the effort to perform the role of small business/meth lab owner.

Oh, plus there's drug wars and people get shot and there's gangs, but mostly there's Bryan Cranston, in his goggles, stripped to his skivvies so he doesn't get meth-stank on his clothes, cooking beautiful four-inch crystals in a cheap RV.

If you like Weeds or Dexter you unquestionably need to find this show; if you like Bryan Cranston, it's a no-brainer.

ETA!! Totally forgot the kicker; it was created by Vince Gilligan. Remember him? And how much we love his writing? Yeah. Him.

4. The United States of Tara
You guys told me to watch this one and you were right. My expectations were way off; I was expecting a Tracey Ullman type sketch show, and instead it's a scripted half-hour family dramedy with a killer cast and some great writing by Diablo Cody.

Mostly, Toni Collette is Tara, who recently went off her meds in an attempt to figure out what traumatic event led to her breakdown at boarding school, after which her personality splintered into four "alters."

Now Tara shifts from being Tara, to T, the punk-ass teenager, Buck, the hunter-trucker-womanizer, Alice, the Stepford Wife, and now Gimme, a freaky animalistic personality that comes out at night.

Her long-suffering husband is played by John Corbett, and her two kids are also great characters in their own right, including a fourteen year old matter-of-factly gay son trying to seduce the son of a preacher man -- and all the while Tara's personalities keep shifting and getting her family into trouble. So far, no amount of therapy (with the one and only Valerie Mahaffey, one of my all-time favorites ever) has gotten to the bottom of Tara's crisis, but then, this was just season 1.

And while I'm at it, the latest flailing from the reality-show sector (spoilers through latest eps as always):

Survivor: Tocantins
furies texted me two weeks ago to warn me about the horribleness, and I'm glad she did. After Brendan and JT bonded on the retreat, after Brendan said in confessional what a mensch JT was, after JT went along with the psychopathic "warrior alliance" I would not have been able to watch Brendan get voted off without going into apoplexy. So, thanks for the warning, Step.

THIS week things are turning around. I said a couple weeks ago that Erinn could turn this thing around, and she CAN, and it was a JOY, a pleasure, and a complete PRIVILEGE to watch Tyson go.

So, predictions and fears. The one fear I have is for a repentant Sierra, running back to Coach to try and get his support/allegiance again. At this point Sierra is about the ONLY person Coach has around his finger (JT notwithstanding; that's gonna play out this week poss with a fistfight!) and that's the only thing that could derail Stephen's plans.

OH STEPHEN, how we love and hate you! He is a GOOD PLAYER, dudes. He is playing like nobody's business, and nobody but JT and Taj really know how hard Stephen OWNS PWNS this game. So if he takes Taj and JT to the final I will be happy. Debbie is a great competitor and deserves to stick around, but her alliance to Coach/Tyson has marked her forever with the pox of the crazy person.

So, next week we lose Sierra. Then, if they're smart, Coach. If Erinn works it she can stick till the final four, else it's Debbie plus Stephen/Taj/JT in the final. I was SO SO SO afraid for a Coach/Tyson/Debbie final three I nearly quit the show, but, as always, furies got me through it.

Erinn, I'm saying, it's your game now. You can shift the alliance and be Erinn/Sierra/Coach/Debbie if you want to and turn the game on its ass -- but please please don't?

TAR
Tammy and Victor, dudes. I told you so. Did I not? Did I not from ep one say I LOVE TAMMY AND VICTOR? Did I not also say I LOVE KISHA AND JEN? And how right was I? Yes, yep. I was just exactly that right. IN YOUR FACE, PEOPLE.

From day one I said, I want Victor and Tammy to win, but Kisha and Jen remind me SO much of me and my sister that I couldn't help but feel connected to them. And though I am no where NEAR as hot as Jen, Lizzie is Kisha to the letter. And then furies told me Kisha's out and gay, and I was like, DID I NOT TELL YOU PEOPLE SHE REMINDED ME OF MY SISTER?

I did, people.

BTW, meet Kisha and Jen just so you can see how hot Jen is. And how Kisha is the black version of Lizzie. And how frickin' hot Jen is. And how Kisha's queer and basketbally and awesome!

In conclusion, TAR is quite soothing, being down to the final four and really loving two of the teams left. Much easier to watch than Survivor, with its snakes and rats and goddamned martial arts dragon warrior chair-building bean-burning crying and whatnot.

GO TEAM Victor and Tammy!

I'm watching some other things, so, as always, keep your antennas tuned to EHCA... oh, wait. We're digital now. Please to be buying new electronics, America.

because Punk won't listen to me whine about it anymore

iamsab — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:24:49 GMT

I'm going through a minor league XF renaissance, which mostly means I'm watching it very quietly for the first time in years, for the first time since I started hating Chris Carter and how he totally fucked us like cheap whores. But recently I watched all of Supernatural by accident, and somehow just enjoyed it as a show about paranormal stuff, without really caring about the boys or the emotional arc or the drama. And I thought, wouldn't it be great to have a show with paranormal stuff, but starring a hot heterosexual couple who fight hard with each other but love each other till the very end?

So you see what happened there. Out of respect for an earlier time, when I loved the X-Files with a fiery passion, and in honor of this current rewatching where I'm not only enjoying the simple pleasures of Mulder and Scully and the show but I'm also remembering a simpler time (there's seriously a line in 1998's "Triangle" where Mulder insists to the WWII era officers that the should come to '98, the world's at peace, the only drama is Monica Lewinsky! and I experienced pre-syncope just remembering what that felt like [yes, now in a more enlightened time I realize we were all managing to ignore atrocities in Africa and elsewhere in the early 90s]).

Enjoy, if you're interested, the newly archived, found via the wayback machine, very first X-Files story I ever wrote. I wasn't even in the fandom, I just sat down and wrote an X-Files story and then went to the internet to find where people were posting those things. As I said, a simpler time.

(Rain, and the Mistaken Messiah [MSR, 10k words, rated R, old-school to the nth degree])

I'm going to stop watching at the beginning of season 7 so as not to harsh my renewed squee. I mean, right?

i sleep with the windows open; it's like Guatemala up in here

iamsab — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:38:33 GMT

Spider vs. Moth, as seen last night on @Sab on Twitter:

1:28 AM the spider that lives on my ceiling is in the process of capturing a horrible five-inch moth. CRAP! It escaped!

1:28 AM cat #1 in hot giant moth pursuit.

1:30 AM the loud vibrato of giant moth wings against the floor, pinned under a cat's paw. And then they're free! Daring escape! Chase! SAB TERRIFIED

1:46 AM plot twist! Moth gets re-entangled in spider web! Flapping madly! Cat atop headboard watching!

1:47 AM OMG the spider's gone! Oh, this is not going to end well. For me.

1:48 AM um, anybody got an extra spider?

1:51 AM I'm sorry but this moth literally has a five-inch wingspan and a body like a roll of quarters. It's hanging cockily from the web, having evicted the spider. What do I do?

2:00 AM ....aaaand, the spider scurries back into the game. GO TEAM SPIDER!

2:02 AMh the spider inches closer to the giant moth, weaving with its wavy front legs. Millimeter by millimeter closer to the moth's loca, creeping.

2:03 AM moth and spider eye to eye now. Bug staredown. No idea how a spider this size is going to take down that giant flying thing but all for it.

2:05 AM spider's backing off. I'm not sure of its strategy. The moth seems undisturbed but maybe the spider's got another plan. C'mon spider, pls!

2:05 AM I'm not going to be able to sleep until I see that moth knitted into a silk straitjacket.

2:09 AM the spider is cleverly reapproaching the moth, weaving as it goes. But one flap of those big awful wings might undo all its hard work.

2:13 AM wings flapping! one wing stuck! spider closer! moth, incidentally, STILL HUGE!

2:14 AM MOTH GOT FREE FUCK

2:15 AM poor spider, licking its wounds up there on the ceiling. I want to give it a medal and hazard pay.

2:17 AM the moth is somewhere, but the brave cat's gone out and Hawkeye and I are hardly one spider's worth of offense between us. SLEEP W EYES OPEN

2:19 AM to all those who, like me, are afeared of and/or hate moths: always keep a spider around.

2:32 AM it caught a tiny fruit fly just now, the spider did. Sort of a consolation prize. Busy day on my ceiling, too.

[to be continued...]

oh god, sparkles, sparkles!

iamsab — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:00:46 GMT

There is only one person I would bust out the sparkly text for (a friendly LJ community gave me the code), and that one person is stickykeys633 and with that:
Happy Birthday Stix!

still, it was way past its time to go

iamsab — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:30:35 GMT

Would liveblog the ER finale but it would look like:

What? John Stamos is on this show? And oh RIGHT, Malarkey's here! And holy crap Angela Bassett? And OMG Abraham Benrubi got old!

And the intrepid nurses, as in all hospitals, far outlived the doctors. We've got our set of original nurses still! Chuny! Haleh!

I'm having horrible trouble seeing John Stamos as a doctor. On the other hand, Scott Grimes is good on this show! Go Malarkey go!

Okay, I almost want to go back and see what's up with Scott Grimes. He really is so very good!

Meanwhile, John Stamos is totally pastede on yay and he pulls me out of the story every time.

Noah Wyle! The Carter Center? What's this now?

Laura Innes without her cane? Did she get a hip replacement? She has the same congenital hip dysplasia I have.

Rory Gilmore is on this show? Oh, I am so lost already. While I'm at it, who's the Australian dude?

Now we have patients called Jesus and Gandhi. Subtle.

Rachel Greene, that's nice. I stopped watching right around when Mark Greene had a brain tumor and was dating Alex Kingston. I remember Rachel; it's cool to see the same actress older. I mean, after she switched from being Madeleine Zima.

Oh, I saw this external uterus procedure on "Bodies." Now I wish I had more Bodies to watch.

This guy who survived his AIDS diagnosis since 1986 is amazing, in this wonderful And the Band Played On, Angels in America sort of way.

Wow, have I missed so much of this show that Prahtiva Parminder has both come and gone?

WAIT WHAT CARTER WAS MARRIED AND HAD A DEAD SON? Who was this wife? Thandie Newton? Really? Wait, and now they're divorced? What the-

I love this finale for the single reason that they called back Kerry Weaver's time in Africa. "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills..."

OMG that's SAM, my neighbor, my friend, being the guy with the needy bride and mom! Yay Sam! And he just bummed 3 cigarettes from me yesterday.

Did I mention that Abraham Benrubi has aged into a giant furry pyramid?

I forgot to stop to check if anything has happened in this episode. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Oh, that chick got a Mustang; that was cool.

Still, as finales go, I'd say worth the watching.

who will be voted out..... tonight!?

iamsab — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:09:06 GMT

Some flaily reality TV advice and predictions for :

Okay, this whole bringing in JT was done totes bass-akward. First Taj only has herself to blame for giving the idol to Stephen AGAIN. Second, TAJ should have explained the merge w/Timbira to JT to explain that they have a solid final 5.

Of course at this point, EVERYONE on Jalapao thinks they have an immunity idol. Obv I'd love to see Joe try to use his, and obv if Stephen/JT/Taj are smart he'll go next. If Stephen manages to talk them into voting out Taj, I will smack that fucker upside the head.

What MUST happen now is for JT and Brendan to end up at exile together.

Which requires Taj to tell JT. Or at least tell Brendan she told JT. Which requires her either going to exile next wk or simply not getting voted off. TIME TO GO, JOE.

Meanwhile at Timbira, Sierra and Brendan are a strange minority, but everyone and their brother can piggyback on Coach's "Erinn's a cancer" rally and get through another tribal council that way.

What what WHAT is going to happen with Debbie? Does anyone even notice her? When is it her time to go? Or will she coast to the final like whatsherface last season? I think with so many idols around that's unlikely, UNLESS Coach and Tyson and Debbie team up against Brendan and Sierra after voting out Erinn; they could get rid of the idol before the merge and have to go over and deal with Jalapao's stupid idol issues instead.

So Timbira REALLY needs to keep the idol till the merge.

So Joe goes, Erinn goes, either Coach or Debbie goes. And then hopefully at the first merged tribal, Tyson goes. I feel both tribes could get behind that, "strong competitor" combined with "doesn't have one of the zillion idols" combined with Coach being gone.

Unless Timbira wins immunity again in which case TAJ goes an I am not, NOT okay with that. Then Brendan would bring JT in on the cross-tribe alliance and they'd still be four strong w/two idols in the merge. It actually makes sense, but DON'T LOSE TAJ! She spearheaded this whole damn upset! SHE brought Brendan in on the clues at exile, and SHE found the idol (and then gave it to Stephen twice, poor trusting gift-certificate wanting rich lady in the jungle..).

In other words -

Final Four EITHER:
Stephen, JT, Brendan, Sierra and both idols (I am okay with this)
Stephen, Taj, Brendan and Sierra with only Timbira's idol (this is okay too)

Brendan, Taj, Stephen, and some sort of horrible upset with Coach, Brendan doesn't use the idol and Sierra's gone, go to merge w/both idols

Point is that Stephen is now the KING of this game.

And something really must be done to fix that, except that I don't hink Taj or JT would ever blindside Stephen. IOW, we're fucked.

Hopefully they'll be smart enough to lose him before the final three.

Then Brendan, Sierra or Taj, and JT can battle it out for final 3.

In which case my money is on Taj, unless Sierra makes it past Taj, and then my money's on JT.

So they did bring JT in, as I'd been hoping, but, as I said, in the bass-ackwardest way.

This is my message to you-hoo-hoo, Survivors: LOSE STEPHEN BEFORE THE FINAL FOUR

Love,
Hopeful in Hollywood

pressing rewind on Scrubs is as easily as finding this folder here called "scrubs s8"

iamsab — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:45:47 GMT

I'm in the process of doing a blog post about Scrubs S8, its wrapup and upcoming series finale, and all the political, personal, and character weirdness that contributed to this weirdest of seasons. Anyone wanna pay me for it? *g*

Orrrr, get me an interview w/Bill Lawrence? Randall Winston would do, too.

MORE IMPORTANTLY: musesfool, I can has remix time nao????

TAR

iamsab — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:53:08 GMT

Mel and Mike noooo! ♥! I will miss these fellows so much, but they were great sports all the way through and I think they genuinely had a really good time on the race.

And despite Margie being a super trooper, at this point, I need Kisha and Jen and Tammy and Victor at the end or I'll be cranky. Go Tammy and Victor! Go Kisha and Jen! Why do we have to wait two weeks? And when is Survivor coming back?

That is all.

what at night seems oh so scenic may be cynic by and by

iamsab — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:51:21 GMT

I stole a meme from gamesiplay; her version is longer and has some very interesting questions, but I was too lazy and just adapted the meme for my own me devices. That said:

I'll just do the answers I wanna:

Ten Favorite Broadway* MUSICALS (not necessarily in order of preference, just random):

1. Into the Woods
2. South Pacific
3. The Music Man
4. The Fantasticks (*off Broadway, but if I love it twice, can it count?)
5. The Fantasticks
6. Jesus Christ Superstar
7. Evita
8. Falsettos
9. Les Miserables
10. The Fantasticks again; I saw it 15 times on Sullivan St including its final week before closure.

I have seen all these live; Falsettos and Into the Woods on Broadway several times apiece.

My favorite song from each?

1, Into the Woods: At first I thought Moments in the Woods, most certainly, though It Takes Two. I was lucky enough to see this with Joanna Gleason and she rocks my socks. And I can do the whole It's Your Fault while drinking a glass of water, but in the end, my favorite is No More, when the Baker and the Mysterious Father get squared away.
2, South Pacific: I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of my Hair, and of course Bali Hai is gorgeous.
3, The Music Man: The Sadder But Wiser Girl for Me, probably... or is it Marian the Librarian. No, it's Minuet in G.
4, The Fantasticks: Round and Round is the eeriest.
5, The Fantasticks: Metaphor is just a work of genius.
6, Jesus Christ Superstar: Heaven on Their Minds, probably, though the song the disciples sing the night of the Last Supper (I've forgotten its name) is also marvelous
7, Evita: Oh, I know, but these two are the only ALWs that made the list, okay? And they're GOOD, dammit. Evita I adore Waltz for Eva and Che like a madwoman, but The Rainbow Tour and even sadder, Rainbow High hold a special place in my heart. And while the rest are Madonna version, the best ever is probably Patti LuPone's Another Suitcase, Another Hall.
8, Falsettos: oy. It's gotta be the various riffs on Everything Will Be All Right. The sad struggle of denial and acceptance.
9, Les Miserables: not ALW, people! No judgments! Easily One Day More. One of the great anthems of musical theater.
10, The Fantasticks: it's too hard. I love this play with everything I've got. I mean, who can beat Plant a Radish? Or of course Never Say No? And it's almost an insult not to worship Try to Remember. In conclusion, my favorite song from The Fantasticks is This Plum is too Ripe.

Dammit. Now I miss 181 Sullivan St. I saw it with all the good casts, and Bill Tost never missed a performance; he was Matt's father every time. I even saw Jerry Orbach as El Gallo twice. The box office people knew me. Tix were $10 with a student ID. The gallery upstairs was gorgeous and the stage itself, a little black box, so intimate -- maybe 85 seats -- so intense with Matt screaming I Can See It and poor Louisa in the rose-colored glasses going Round and Round...

yes I like my coffee black; hey look we're bombing iraq

iamsab — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:34:21 GMT

For cincodemaygirl who asked for it, and tzikeh who also and separately asked for it - the official Nellie McKay pimp post. You can check out her wikipedia entry, but the nuts and bolts are: here's a classically trained voice/opera singer/theater brat who at age 19, living as a hippie vegetarian with her mom in Brooklyn, decided to become a hard-core satirical rapper/artist.

She's been described as a cross between Doris Day and Eminem; I'd throw a little Jean Grae and a little Fiona Apple in there too. She's been in movies and starred on Broadway in the Threepenny Opera and her songs tell the story of a geeky, feminist, big-stage performer in her early 20s trying to figure out where the money is and how to make the world a better place.

Her first (and best) two-disc album, Get Away From Me won all sorts of awards, despite its giant PARENTAL GUIDANCE label, and is far and away one of my all-time favorite records. Her third album, Obligatory Villagers is less hip-hop and more big-band, but with Nellie's famed rapidfire lyrics and satire. For reasons unknown, her second album, Pretty Little Head somehow vanished from my computer, but I still have a couple tracks from it I'll throw in.

And so!

All DL links are Megaupload. Let me know if you want a zip of all the songs.

Get Away From Me (Selections from both disc 1 & 2)
Inner Peace: effectively a rap song performed by a vocalist; heavy honest satire about growing up a geek.
Change the World: Because it's so seriously exhausting trying to fend off the apocalypse (this was written during the Bush admin, natch)
Respectable: I'm a respectable member of society... see a trend here?
Clonie: Seriously, a mock pop song about dopplecest. No, really.
Toto Dies: This is the black parody underside of the Wicked Witch of the West. Oh-wee-oh, yoh-ho!
*Sari: is missing from my computer! If you've seen it, put up a sign?

Pretty Little Head and Obligatory Villagers (Selections from both records)
Columbia is Bleeding (Pretty Little Head): Is where you remember that Nellie's a PETA-style activist. I don't know if she's quite the type to rebrand fish as "sea kittens," but this is nothing other than an animal rights protest song. Except it's Nellie so it's AWESOME.
Mother of Pearl (OV): And this is where you remember that Nellie's an outspoken feminist. Fortunately she can mock herself or else this song would be insufferable. It is, however, not.
Zombie (OV): Good old-fashioned gulf coast voodoo with great backup musicians.
Galleon (OV): Wrapping up the end of a theater run, at the point where the men's ensemble players are sick of each others' attitudes and breath and sweat and fidgety matinee audiences. This one reads like a show tune, and co-stars Bob Dorough being theatrically awesome.
*Identity Theft: (thanks enormously to gem225) Prob the catchiest song on this album and just packed with tricky lyrics and edge.

I tried to provide a range of types, from hip-hop sounds to Broadway sounds to singer-songwriter sounds to 40's pop sounds... sample a few and see how you feel.

I ♥ Nellie hardcore and am happy to answer any questions and provide any info or squeeing that might be needed here. Squee!

(P.S. Feel free to look through my "foods that begin with q" [pimp posts] or "music" [music] tags, and if there's anything you want that's expired I'll be happy to reup. Most of my uploads from the last two years at least are on MU and should still be there, now and forever. THANKS MU!)

(*asterisk) This post is incomplete without the missing tracks "Sari" and "Identity Theft;" two of my favorite Nellie songs. If a kind passerby donates them I'll slap 'em up for completion's sake. If you find them on your own, enjoy!

iamsab — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:31:11 GMT

I am glued to the keyboard today, so it's a good thing I got this lovely icon meme from calapine:

1. How do you feel right now?

2. What's your favourite pastime?

3. Do you consider yourself a strange person?

4. What's your favourite fandom?

Look, ma, a visual pun!

5. OTP?

6. How do you describe yourself?

7. How do others describe you?

8. Do you have an icon of your future husband/wife?

9. Do you have an LOLWHUT icon?

I told you there were fewer than ten.

I gotta step away from the keyboard machine now for a breather to shower and eat.

"if she asks just tell her that we opened for the Stones; her favorite band except for the Ramones"

iamsab — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:18:59 GMT

Is there a thing where you can list all the artists and bands whose tour schedules you want to see, or when they are in town?

I don't mean signing up for individual artists' mailings (done that), or for signing up with a ticket service that lists everything in the area from sports events to comedy shows to concerts (got that too) -- I'm wondering if there's something like http://on-my.tv/ where you can select a set of artists or locations or whatever, and they e-mail you monthly updates or you check a site or something?

At least one of you, including probably filmg33k and ropo, knows the answer to this, yes?

a race around the world, or, YES it's cold in Siberia, you nitwits

iamsab — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:25:14 GMT

General predictions for the final seven on The Amazing Race:

The flight attendants, esp with their upcoming Speed Bump, had BETTER get sent off this next ep. I think the only way they could screw up is if Mark and Mike (short stuntmen) get really really lost somewhere. I don't like the flight attendants one bit, so I'd rather keep the stuntmen.

After the stewardesses, the stunt men will probably go next, unless Gay Dad/Son encounter some hernia-related issue that Gay Dad can't do. I like both the stuntmen and the Gay Dad & Son, so this is a toss-up for me. Just not Tammy and Victor! They better not get lost or screw up again.

Now, as I said, I am not wild about Margie and Luke because Luke strikes me as a spoiled jerk and I suspect he only seems meeker because of his deafness. But when they lose he's a really bad sport, and I'd like to see them go next.

I LOVE Jen and Kisha, especially because Jen stripped to her skivvies and was SO HOT; between her an Tammy I was absolutely thrilled with the hot nakedness of the last ep. STILL, Jen and Kisha do have taxi and driving problems, so they're a risky bet, but I want them to stick around because I LOVE them.

Jamie and Cara are also such sweethearts and good sports and I'm very fond of them. But up against Tammy and Victor, or the stuntmen, or Gay Dad & Son, they could get outraced.

I want to see Tammy and Victor, Jen and Kisha, and either the stuntmen or Gay Dad & Son in the final three. And at that point, may the best team win (Tammy and Victor! I always tend to side with the smart nerdy team, and they are our nerdiest and smartest and they strategize... somewhat. Esp. when Victor listens to Tammy).

If we lose any of these teams and I'm forced to watch a face-off between, like, Margie and Luke, Cara and Jamie, and the flight attendants, I am all for Cara and Jamie. Sure, I would love to see a deaf kid win TAR, and yes, his mom Margie is awesome, but Luke really grates on me for some reason.

ETA: Here's what I think it is. Luke and Margie don't seem to be having any fun. I mean, the stuntmen? Mel and Mike? Having the TIME of their LIVES. Even Tammy and Victor are managing to find fun. But Luke just sulks and doesn't even seem to enjoy the challenges. The TAR champion should be someone who loves the race, is what.

My ideal/likely countdown, from next voted-off through first place:

7. Flight attendants. Bye-bye.
6. Stuntmen. Sorry! Try slightly harder to not get lost!
5. Kisha and Jen, probably. I hope not.
4. Gay Dad & Son, because of the hernia.
3. Margie and Luke
2. Cara and Jamie
1. Tammy and Victor YAY!

We've already knocked out all the really tough young men! The stuntmen and Kisha and JEn are probably the physically strongest, though Tammy and Victor are fast too (I guess VIctor DOES count as a strapping lad). Everybody else better hope for challenges that suit them.)

And if it can't be Tammy and Victor, as I said, I want the stuntmen or Gay Dad & Son, or wildcard Cara/Jamie.

Survivor happens also to be a CBS reality show that I follow to the point of total geekitude.

Loook, look. The Sierra/Brendan and Taj/Stephen alliance is GOOD, esp with both idols found, but Stephen is a WEAK LINK and I think they'll only have the strength and numbers if they bring in JT. Stephen has a big-boy crush on JT; he's a HUGE physical asset, and truthfully I don't believe Stephen would use the idol to save Taj (even though she entrusted him with it) without a sure thing: JT.

ALLIANCE! BRING IN JT!

People who MUST GO AWAY SOON include Coach, and Tyson from Timbira and Erinn (is she gone yet?) and Sydney and a couple more miscellaneous white guys from Jalapao whose names I've forgotten.

So, furies? Other watchers? Let's hear your thoughts and favorites and predictions?

Spoilers (through the aired eps, not the kind from oddsmakers and tabloids) are as always to be expected, and welcomed, in comments.

Survivors ready? GO!

midsized icon gallery

iamsab — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:31:59 GMT

Hey, can anyone explain why I have 131 userpic slots? My thingy went up to 131 when we got that thingy where they went up, but I've had this LJ since June 2001 and I've seen numerous people with newer LJs than mine having way more slots, up in the 180s and 190s. Are they/you paying more?

I'm paying for the 100 slots or the premium membership or whatever, plus 31 for loyalty I think?

Meanwhile please admire my awesome userpics and compliment me profusely on their scope and elegance, yes?

ETA:furies made me aware that 26 of these icons are from space shows. I am not ashamed! Nor am I ashamed that 14 of them are from Doctor Who.

While I'm tallying, I have two icons featuring lions, and two icons slashing Brian/Stewie. And since we're on the race question, I have 15 icons featuring PoC, 14 1/2 really because I've only got half of Tuvok's head. I combined Angela Montenegro and Cote de Pablo into one (because I am unclear on either of their races and didn't want to make assumptions; fill me in?) and included Maggie and Hopey, because though in the b&w animation they are white, in the... real world, Maggie is Mexican and Hopey's Colombian. The PoC most frequently represented on my flist are Turk and Martha, followed closely by Cam Saroyan and President Obama (I counted the ones with his face in them, not the one that just said OBAMA on a building. Because while it's nice and blue, I decided that was not the color I meant.) Boomer/Athena/Grace Park also represent in all their sexyositude, and so does Toshiko and Nina Sosanya, doubly awesome as dressed as the eunuch Bellino.

Still, 15 icons of PoC out of 131 total. That's a lot of white people, even if you ignore the landscapes or things or text or lions or dog/baby (incidentally, both white). I say it's either a sorry state of my tendency to seek out people who look like me and a sorry state of television and the way it features characters of color. Probably both.

I also noticed that all of my 14 1/2 icons of PoC are of really smokin' hot people. Is that coincidence, or TV, or offensive and shallow of me? And since lately I've been hyper-aware of my ability to talk about racial issues, I'm afraid it feels like I'm exercising privilege in some way and that concerns me.