Now We Are Living

PSA for USians

2010-11-02T14:47:02Z

Today is voting day! There are some really unqualified people running in this election, so if your district is one of those at risk, please consider doing your civic duty and keeping them faaaaaaar away from public office.

Moving Camps

2010-05-04T17:37:37Z

There's no good way to say this, so I'll just say it: I've decided to change bases to Dreamwidth. Too many big, moving, interstitial ads on Livejournal - it's not really that I hate ads, but that they make the site look cheap. I know it's not as annoying when you're logged in (if you are a paid, permanent, or basic account holder). But that doesn't mean that the badness is NOT THERE, just that you can't see it.

I've decided not to crosspost because the content would still be here, looking bad... and crossposting is messy and disorganized, and I'm disorganized enough in real life, anyway. ^^; It's hard to move, though, because it took many years of spending way too much time online to build up the relationships I have on this site, and, frankly, I don't really have the time or the drive to do it all again. XD; But at the same time, I can't really ask anyone to change their blog-reading habits just to follow me.

(But if you happen to already be at Dreamwidth, please subscribe to my posts over there so I can subscribe to yours back! I plan to actually read all the journals I am subscribed to there, something I haven't been able to do here for a long time.)

My location at Dreamwidth is:

http://sub-divided.dreamwidth.org/

Also, I thought everyone knew this, but ayalesca didn't, so maybe other people didn't as well: I have a Wordpress blog. It's where I put livejournal entries after I've had the chance to clean them up a bit. Here's the address:

http://sd.magatsu.net/blog/

To keep reading me without joining Dreamwidth, there are three things you can do:

1) Add my Dreamwidth feed to your RSS reader.
2) Bookmark my Wordpress blog and check in on the first week of every month (when I archive content).
3) Friend subdee_rss.

EDIT: And to leave comments on my Dreamwidth, you can sign in with OpenID on this page, or else leave them without signing in.

Thanks, and sorry to exit so dramatically, if this counts as dramatic. Switching from one blogging service to another shouldn't feel like saying goodbye, and yet somehow.... it does. ^^;;; Though just as a note, there are still quite a few individual journals and communities I follow via RSS, and will continue to follow after I leave. And this journal will stay, of course. But I haven't really been here for a while... so it won't matter as much when I leave, right?

Runaways Movie

2010-04-06T20:41:46Z

The film about the short-lived band. I apologized beforehand to R that this movie might be upsetting - I'd read about the Runaways in a book on the history of women in punk rock - but actually it wasn't so bad. It did seem like there was another, much more disturbing story lurking in the wings, though. Not to play up the twin-horror thing too much, but after leaving home twin Cherie Curie (lead singer played by Dakota Fanning) leans heavily on non-twin Joan Jett (guitarist played by Kristin Stewart), whom she also sleeps with, while addicted to date rape drugs.[1] Meanwhile, there's a kinky, abusive, exploitative record producer/authority figure lurking in the background. It's like a recipe for dysfunction.

I dunno whether the reason for the lighter touch was that director wasn't deft enough to evoke a deep emotional response, whether she didn't have band permission to go there, or whether it just wasn't that kind of movie. ^^; Based on Cherie Curie's book, executive-produced by Joan Jett, mainly focused on the two of them and opportunistic record producer Kim Fowley. The rest of the band don't even get where-are-they-now blurbs before the ending credits. R and I were discussing how the movie could have fit in more about the other members: I said make it longer (it's just 1hr45min), she said cut out some of the "high" scenes, which after the first couple are all basically the same.[2]

The beginning of this movie is really good: Joan buying the leather jacket and kissing her best friend; Curie dressed up like Bowie for the school talent show; the two of them trading quips and bonding over stories of alcoholic parents. It has a kind of specificity of time, place, and personality to it. There's a strong feminist message in just how much grief they are given for wanting to imitate their idols and play rock music. After the drugs come in, the plot becomes a lot more generic...though their concert in Japan, immortalized on television, is faithfully reproduced down the the stage antics. Maybe they just can't remember anything else that happened during that time?

The acting is good, especially Kristin Stewart's. She's really grounded and honorable as Joan, and manages to convey some of the musician's charisma. There was an ad for Eclipse before the movie; I could and still can imagine hordes of 15 year old Twilight fans coming to see Runaways for Kristin, and then developing huge crushes on her-as-Joan-Jett. ^^ That is, if they can manage to sneak into the theater (the movie is rated R). Honestly you forget that she is Kristin Stewart.[3]

While I was watching, I kept going over what-ifs. What if Cherie's sister had come with them on the first tour? Or cut her hair to match Cherie's the first time she came home between tours, so that there wasn't that obvious visual cue marking them as different? What if she'd come along on the second tour? Would Cherie have stayed grounded and stayed in the band? But then she was saving her sister from that life, wasn't she... especially from the attentions of Fowley, who doesn't treat any of the other members the way he treats Cherie. With the rest of the band it's insults that could pass as tough love, but Cherie is belittled, objectified, leered at, made to pose provocatively, etc etc etc. She has a special place in his heart - or some other place - it seems.

Speaking of posing, there's a sudden break in Cherie's character after she's covertly featured in a softcore porn spread. It's like she's been violated by more than just the camera. Before she's defiant, confident, she has attitude. After she's deflated and passive. R said, "It's funny, it's like they chose her for her style and attitude and then proceeded to beat all that out of her." It's obvious enough that you wonder what happened to her offstage between Acts One and Two. Was it the Press? The Fans? Their tour manager? Unsubtle acting?

Overall, an interesting film. Its major weakness, which I see most of the reviewers mention, is that it really needed to decide which of the two of them to follow, Joan or Cherie, after the split; which is like saying that it needed to decide which narrative arc to follow, the bottoming-out-then-finding-your-center arc (Cherie) or the picking-yourself-up-and-kicking-the-slackers-off-the-couch arc (Joan). They're positioned as opposites - Cherie's dependence vs Joan's dependability - but at some point, you have to make a choice.

I have some other thoughts, but this is disjointed enough as it is. XD; Comments welcome!

[1]Though her relationship with Joan is written as the one positive, non-exploitative relationship in her band life, which makes a really nice change from the EVIL LESBIANS you see in so many films.

[2] Except for the one where Dakota channels washed-up Hollywood starlet to play Cherie doped up on her father's painkillers at the grocery store. That was priceless.

[3] The only time you're reminded that she's not Joan Jett is her "rebirth" scene in a bathtub near the end, when the director takes away the clothing, makeup, hair, and body language, and just leaves a wet Kristin Stewart. Wryyyy!

On this year's Oscar winner

2010-03-10T22:55:28Z

The Hurt Locker - about a U.S. Army demolitions team posted in Iraq - is such a male movie, it could only have been directed by a woman. Sort of like how it took a German director to make the most American movie of all time, Independence Day.

R: The Hurt Locker explores behaviors, like the fine line between violence and respect, and the need to establish who's in charge, that girls don't do and that boys take for granted. Women who watched the movie probably thought, "This is an incredibly male movie" -- men who watched it probably thought, "This movie touches something deep inside of me that I am incapable of articulating."

S: So you don't think that it was women who voted it Picture of the Year?

R: No, I don't think it was women who were like, "This is a great movie" XD.

I thought the movie's most effective parts were the wrestling match (the sudden switch from clowning around to deadly seriousness was weird), the "new" DVD boy who replaced the old one after [spoiler] (did his handlers think the soldier and audience wouldn't notice???), and the sniper scene (even I can recognize a good comradely moment when I see one).

I also really liked the scene where Sargent James returns to the base after his poorly-thought-out vigilante moment, and is cuffed and searched by panicked soldiers who can't tell he's one of theirs.

Many of the movie's other points either weren't commented on (including the weirdness of male socialization - this is allllll in the direction, the script takes it for granted), or were over commented on (people who are good at war are often psychopaths who can't live in the real world - boy was this hammered in). In short, whathisface probably didn't deserve to win "Best Script", the script was kind of generic XD.

What else. The film's soundtrack was interesting: it's used to create tension, whether or not the danger "pans out." I thought this was a pretty good rebuttal to films whose soundtracks completely clue in the audience re what's going to happen next, even when the characters themselves have no idea. And then unlike the other kind of movie that uses music to create tension not "justified" by events (horror movies), there's no musical release written in for the moment when the characters realize there's no danger after all, phew. Instead there's just a gradual fading away of the music (tension), until it is gone - but there's been no explicit release, so you can still can't relax. Very nice effect, AND it saves money 'cos you don't have to pay the composer to write for more than one mood XD.

The other side of this is that there's a lot of silence in the movie, which makes it a "boring" movie if its themes don't happen to personally speak to you, because there is no music to create emotional engagement. In other words, why did this movie receive two "best sound" awards! "Star Trek" should have won the sound mixing award and "Sherlock Holmes" should have won the sound editing award. At least Academy members can still tell the difference between visuals they were moved by and technically skilled visuals, and gave the "cinematography" award to Avatar.

Speaking of the Oscars, it was cute when Jeremy Renner, the film's lead, stopped Kathryn Bigelow on her way to the stage to accept "Best Director". And then when he went offstage to retrieve her between "Best Director" and "Best Movie" -- while everyone else expected Hurt Locker to win, she apparently didn't. He looked kind of like a schoolkid going to get his favorite teacher. ^^ She's tall! Taller than all three of the actors who played soldiers.

I also thought the actor group hug during the team acceptance speech was cute. The three of them looked super excited to be there, and super chummy (as maybe they would be, after such an intense shooting schedule). (And it's a noticeable thing that as the movie goes on, the cast seems to shrink to just them, as if filmmakers had used up their extras budget by the end of the second scene.)

On whole I think it's a nice accomplishment, but the only awards I agree with are Best Director (definitely), and Best Movie (maybe).

Storm

2010-02-10T23:59:38Z

I went to work today because I called the wrong partner - if I'd asked E, she'd have told me to avoid the weather and stay home, and she was the only one who was even in the office! But the City wasn't a bad place to be today. It was warm, there was no wind, the snow fell lightly (though constantly), and EVERYONE who was out was in a good mood.

When I left the office early, also in a euphoric mood, I tried to work out whether that was because of the semi-holiday, or because everyone who didn't want to be out had stayed home, or whether it's true that happiness in the US correlates to low population density. It was nice to go straight to the front of the line at the grocery store on the way home...

Or it could have been that I beat Beldr on the train in to work today, or that I was going to see R, or that I was finally getting over the killer cold I caught last week. But I don't think it was just me; everyone was happy; and that never happens.

In short: ^_______^.

Bakuman

2010-01-09T04:16:49Z

AKA The manga by the Death Note writer-artist team about... a writer-artist team trying to conquer the world of shounen manga. XD; Shujin (writer) and Mashiro (artist) decide to team up in middle school. They share the same goal, of getting published in Jump, coming in #1 in the popularity polls, and having their work made into a anime so that Mashiro's childhood sweetheart (a would-be voice actress) can play the title role. And then (the plan goes), she and Mashiro can get married and live happily ever after, notwithstanding the fact that they are both too shy to actually speak to one another and can only communicate through email.

Yes, the writer shares even this goal with the artist. It's less like they're friends and more like they're two halves of the same brain, playing off each other and coming up with ideas together and supporting each other. It's kind of sweet, actually -- who doesn't want a BFF friend like that?

In the first plot arc, Shuji convinces Mashiro ("Saiko") to team up with him, and in the next, they enter a speculative fiction story in a Jump contest. Their editor thinks they should try for a cult hit because the writing is strong - Shuji's got more range than most mangaka who only know videogames and other manga - but they want to knock the competition out of the park with a mainstream hit, which means trying to work in more Jump formulas. There's a lot of actually very good analysis of Jump manga from a business point of view, as well as behind-the-scenes-in-the-editors-room kind of stuff.

There is NO fantasy wish-fulfillment angle, apart from the setup which blesses the artist with permissive parents and his own manga studio, inherited from an uncle. Like, Shuji and Masahiro really do spend all their time writing manga, drawing manga, discussing manga, and learning the business of manga. And Ohba really does come up with a separate believable (often sci-fi-ish and vaguely familiar) premise for every manga they dream up, and for all of the plots dreamt up by secondary characters (also mangaka). Like, I would be interested in reading those stories.

Oh, and it's a good showpiece for Obata as well, since the art changes depending on the flavor of manga currently under discussion - Graffiti for the scenes with the mangaka who does funny violence, Wistful for the former Margaret author, Heavy for the surrealist gag manga author, Loose for the One Piece-ish author, etc. The art is most "Obata-like" when he is focusing on the main pair's own story. (Spoiler: it's about entrapment schemes.)

All in all Bakuman is a pretty good how-to guide for submitting to Jump. I was saying to Sabina that maybe this will be to Shounen Jump submissions as Hikaru no Go was to Japanese Go school enrollment.

Negatives: well, there was the plot line that promoted overwork to the point of hospitalization. (And here I thought a Jump manga that added "talent, intelligence, luck" to the "friendship, hardwork, loyalty" Jump formula could avoid that trap! Silly me!)

Also, of course, since this is Ohba, there is HARDCORE sexism. I thought maybe the editors were going to keep him from driving away every potential female fan - not that he cares, but they, being business people, do - by enforcing drastic measures, eg, a karate-loving girlfriend who beats up the writer every time he says or does something stupid. (Subtle, no! But effective, yes!) But they must have gotten careless, or something, because after driving the level of sexism way down around chapter 10, it has been allowed to slowly creep back up again.

I mean seriously, Ohba has issues! He never skips a chance to bash on shoujo manga or dismiss the opinions of female readers (30% of Jump's readership). He doesn't trust pretty girls but doesn't bother with any girls who are NOT pretty. He allows that girls can be smart but maintains that smart girls have warped and overly assertive personalities. Etc etc. You know you have a problem when you decide to do storylines centered around training shoujo authors to do panty shots... to be fair, really bottom of the barrel guys have their characters dragged through the mud too. But that's just it, there's such a disparity between the basic decency and grooming required of men and the sainthood and flawless beauty required of women, it's ridiculous.

Bah. Anyway, sexism aside, this is actually a good manga. Is anyone else reading this? Please comment or direct me to another post where I can comment, so we can discuss!

Up in the Air

2009-12-30T16:24:27Z

I saw this movie with my family over break. It's the one where George Clooney flies around the country firing people, with scenes based on actual interviews with people who lost their jobs to corporate downsizing. Clooney's character is a simple (not stupid - he's smart - but not complicated) man who likes the perks that come with his job - the hotel stays, the frequent flyer miles, the exclusive gold club membership cards. He can pack a perfect bag in ten minutes and has a special key card that clues hotel concierge to always greet him the same way (“Welcome back, Mr. _________” / “Pleasure to see you again, Mr. _______”).

At a hotel bar in one of many Hiltons, he meets a woman (played by Mia Farmigiana, sorry I can't remember character names when I know actor names) who is like him "but with a vagina" (her words); in the next scene his boss makes him take along a new recruit to the company, Natalie. The three of them play house (with Mia and Clooney playing Mother and Father) when they crash a convention at the hotel they are staying at after Natalie's boyfriend breaks her heart.

Relevant links (via R): Don't move 3000 miles to be with your boyfriend! and Text Message Breakup

The rest of this post is spoilers.

The movie is out to teach George Clooney, who is perfectly happy with his Hertz-club-card lifestyle, that he doesn’t know what he’s missing by not pairing up in a long-term monogamous equal partnership. But not in a movie way: in the way life often seems to be out to teach happy loners like George Clooney this exact same lesson. Being in a serious relationship clouds your mind, you no longer always act out of perfect enlightened self-interest, you find yourself thinking in or expressing emotional clichés. Sometimes you find yourself staying at hotels where you don’t have a gold membership club card. But it’s very, very important in emotionally trying times, the interviews at the end of the movie suggest.

In other words, Clooney’s lifestyle is fine for Clooney because he has no emotional needs that can't be filled up by status symbols and pleasure at efficiency. XD; If he was in trouble, if he needed the support of another person, he’d be lonely. When he’s seen how nice it can be to have someone else with you – when he is convinced by Natalie to fall for Mia Farmigiana – then he can’t go through with his regular anti-commitment speaking engagement (called "the Backpack" - your life should fit in one backpack); he might be shallow, but what you see is what you get.

George Clooney becomes fond of Natalie, and writes her a letter of recommendation after she and the company part ways -- full of marketing-speak that doesn't mean anything, like his "Anyone who's ever built an empire sat where you're sitting right now" speech, but let's put that side for the moment. He likes her because she had her own ideas and stood up to his, while at the same time not dismissing him or his dream, of accumulating 10,000,000 frequent flyer miles (“everyone needs a hobby”). More to the point, Natalie was the first person to share Clooney’s REAL life, in the airports and the hotel rooms. There may have been other smart nice genuine young women, but Clooney’s boss didn’t make him take any of THEM on the road with him. Like in every James Bonds movie before Casino Royale, those women never had a chance with George Clooney because he was never emotionally available to them.

Mia Farmigniana is the other first person to share George Clooney’s life, but their arrangement turns out to be good to be true. ^^; She’s non-committal not because she embraces a travel-light philosophy like he does, but because she’s already committed elsewhere... Actually I suspected as much in the scene where she and Natalie are talking about their perfect guys, and Mia’s Perfect Guy is one who “wants kids” and “is physically able to play with his kids” – you know right there that she’s not talking about Clooney.

(“I’m a grown-up,” Mia Farmigiana says. Grown-ups have affairs? Or grown-ups don’t look for emotional support in semi-strangers? But that’s not true, witness all the people who have lost their jobs and break down in front of Clooney, a perfect stranger...)

(So in other words, Natalie is wrong about everything. XD But in a less cynical atmosphere, perhaps her instincts will be right.)

Truth in Television: This is another movie about how guys never think they want to get married, but once they get a taste of domesticity, they kind of like it, isn't it. Except not quite.

Eeeee Eee Eeee: An Attempt at a Review

2009-12-25T09:01:51Z

I've been getting a lot of mileage out of talking about this book in person, so I guess I will do the same here. Eeeee Eee Eeee is an avant-garde novel about depression: not Depression with a capital D, but different manifestations of major clinical depression which are represented in the novel by different animals. For instance, people who often worry about contributing to the sum total of evil in the Universe - who don't eat at MacDonalds because they know the money will go towards opening more MacDonalds franchises in Japan where formerly healthy middle school students will get fat and die - are Dolphins.

The authorial stand-in(?), Andrew, is a Bear... I was reading some reviews of Tao Lin's work that said it's about the Major Problem of modern life in the Web age, which is that we can do anything but end up doing nothing. I don't really agree - more on this later - but I could see it in a scene where a Bear rips the roof off Andrew's car, then promises "$100 and a free laptop computer" if he'll follow down a trapdoor.

I read this and I thought, Oh my God! That's the pop-up ad bear!! You know, the "hit the bear and win a free laptop computer" bear. And then I could see the author struggling late one night with his writing, in a dark room, lit only by "the soft blue light of Internet Explorer" (that's a quote from another book by Tao Lin). And then the bear pops up, and there is Tao Lin's inspiration and a device for moving the action along.

It's like this: each Bear gets three wishes, and they all wish for Teleport, first. So Bears can go anywhere they want to. They can see interesting and amazing things, whenever they want to. And they can probably do anything they want to as well, because who's going to stop a 500 pound bear from doing what it wants? And yet, Bears are lonely and bored all the time. This is kind of like being on the Internet, with the ability to read amazing and interesting things every second of every day... and yet finding yourself clicking on the stupid pop-up bear over and over in a trance, feeling bored.

It's kind of like that, but it's not really like that. Because that feeling eventually passes. For lots of people, it passes as soon as they get up from their computers and walk outside in the fresh air and sunshine. This is why I don't agree with reviewers who say that Tao Lin is trying to write about Modern Life. If I had to guess, I'd say that Tao Lin is trying to communicate a mental state. But communication is tiring, especially when people misunderstand you and you have to repeat yourself. Therefore, Tao Lin strives to never be misunderstood, by writing only in the simplest and most direct terms and eschewing all metaphor and metaphorical language.

(But he's also self-protective, in that 90s indie way, where you mask an underlying and painful sincerity in "irony" and dumb in-jokes. Tao Lin's totem animal is probably not the bear, but the turtle. Anyway, end tangent.)

The result is that his writing is always simple and concrete, even when he's summarizing complex ideas gleaned from many many hundreds of hours reading great works of classic literature - see the author's blog, "Reader of Depressing Books," for proof. XD; Anyway, Tao Lin's writing requires much less effort to process than the authors he is relating would require, and I believe this to be the source of his Power. (She says with fake-authority.)

Back to Eeeee Eee Eeee. Dolphins care intensely about everything. Bears don't let themselves feel much of anything. All their non-shallow thoughts are cut short. It gives the prose in sections from Andrew's POV a brutal, jumpy, ADD style -- which reminds me that ADD might have roots in anxiety, not following through on thoughts because you've been trained that the results will be bad.

The two other kinds of depressives in the book are Moose and Aliens: Moose have given up hope (they'll only be disappointed) and thought (their thoughts will only be negative). They live robotically. You wonder why they bother at all. ~~You wonder why anyone bothers at all~~ Woah, woah, let's not go there. Even Tao Lin doesn't go there. (Re-reading, I think Moose might be obese. They're all about not taking up space and not being noticed.)

There's a scene at the end of the book involving Aliens which is a highlight, so I won't spoil it for you, except to note that while Eeeee Eee Eeee has Dolphins and Bears and Moose and Aliens, what it does not have is: any character who is not depressed. XD; There's a very funny joke about this revolving around the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa.

What else. Sabina and I talked about the resemblance between Tao Lin' writing style and the Hipster Runoff writing style, and whether it was a coincidence or whether one inspired the other. Her take was that "the argument against the hipster thing is that they're faking it because they're afraid of committing emotionally. but if you can't commit emotionally because you're super depressed, it might sound the same but it comes from somewhere different. and anyway, I'm sure lots of hipsters are depressed."

R's take on all this is that she's disgusted with the author, who has obviously given up on ever not being depressed. She says that if you make something like depression a core part of your personality, you're never going to be able to put it aside.

Jony's take is that she's sick of hearing about Tao Lin just because he went to NYU (she's a student there).

My final thoughts on Eeeee Eee Eeee are that it's short, interesting... and infectious. It's idea-rich and it made me want to write - the way idea-rich novels always make me want to write. So I wrote - fifteen hundred words that I threw away because they sounded too much like Tao Lin. ~~omg I've been infected~~.

If there's a "flaw" in the book it's that it takes you to a sad lonely place, and doesn't tell you where to go from there. This might be a cult book but it's not the kind of cult book you can use as a recipe book. There are no solutions - except maybe to open a new tab in Internet Explorer and start writing.

****

What a post for Christmas Eve. ^^; But I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands. Merry Christmas, everyone! PS I reserve the right to edit this post sometime that's not 4am.

The Princess and the Frog

2009-12-14T16:46:21Z

Have Disney movies always pushed the heterosexual agenda this hard?

TIANA'S DAD (in the flashback scene): It's important to have dreams, baby, but remember that the most important thing is LOVE -- for instance the love between myself and YOUR MOM.

TIANA'S MOM (interrupting Tiana's "I can make my dreams come true if I just I work really really hard" song): Yes yes, dreams are good, but when are you going to have time for LOVE? (I want grandkids!)

WISE OLD SWAMP LADY: You know what you want, dearie, but have you thought about what you NEED?**

On the other hand R and I decided that Prince Naveen's parents -- the ones who cut him off for being an irresponsible good-for-nothing layabout -- must loooooooooove her. Pretty girl got our son to stop sleeping around? And spending our money? And throwing wild parties? And disgracing our names? And he even went out and got a job? Yes please!

**Hint: A Man.

Some links I have enjoyed this week

2009-10-15T03:28:44Z

http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/jnitrous.html
______the effects of nitrous oxide on the dialectical method

http://bravecows.dreamwidth.org/7595.html
______ASEANs, in Space!

http://ayalesca.livejournal.com/83279.html
______The Little Vulcan. With pictures! ♥

http://gordongartrelle.blogspot.com/2009/10/visit-from-dap-kufi-slapping-out.html
______Chasidic Man Mugged On Yom Tov For His Shtreimel

http://www.lamebook.com/daddys-girl
______The best/worst of Facebook: file with Texts from Last Night and Overheard in New York

EDIT One more:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/
_____Naomi Wolf's The Porn Myth

***

I think I need to keep better track of my blog reading. Wait. Is this what tumblr and diigo are for?!

Did I mention that the police found my car? Yeah. It was parked 10 blocks away. Nothing important was stolen or damaged: the thieves cleaned out the glove compartment (no money); took all my CDs (but not my mother's); and left the car smelling like booze, sweat, and weed. But the smell's faded in the last week and the rest is inconsequential. Lucky me!

Whip It (movie)

2009-10-15T00:15:39Z

Or, Drew Barrymore's directorial debut is a film about the Roller Derby. In case you never heard of this, here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cA2ngjW0YQ

Since it's a movie about the Roller Derby you expect tons of camp excess, but the movie is actually played straight... in both senses, XD. Outright lesbianism is confined to one girl-girl hot tub scene, blink and you'll miss it (I did). There are however lots of girl-girl bonding moments and lots of tough women. Who are cool, because they're tough. If you watch this movie you'll learn lots of important moral lessons -- about friends, family, boyfriends, and being true to yourself -- and also, the rules of the Austin Roller Derby.

In other words, Drew Barrymore doesn't just act earnest; she is earnest. XD

(As a matter of fact, Barrymore's character in the movie is The Psychotic Team Mate -- e.g. in a surprise move, her coach invents a play that calls for her to not beat up a member of the other team, and instead score some points. Surprise!!! I told R, "Awww, she's just violent because she likes skin-on-skin contact, give her a hug!" and "LOL Drew Barrymore can only escape typecasting as the sweet demure one when she casts herself".)

Whip It is part sports movie (the team that always loses tries to make it to the championship), part coming of age movie (Ellen Page learns about herself and the world), and part scene movie (Austin Roller Derby!!!) It is set in the present day, although no one has a cellphone or a home computer, which is why they have to go all the way to Austin to escape their small Texan hometowns. On the one hand, it feels a lot more like Drew Barrymore's childhood than mine; on the other hand, the heroine's family is working-class -- her father delivers furniture and her mother delivers mail -- so it makes sense that they are less well connected, maybe. At least, the Derby has a website, and the school computer has Wikipedia.

Plot: Ellen Page plays a 17 year old high school student who decides that she'd rather play sports (roller derby) than dress up (for beauty pageants). You get to watch her slow transformation from shy awkward outcast to confident baddass athlete, by degrees. R and I were both very impressed by Page's graduated acting. There's no one moment where she stops being awkward and becomes cool, instead there's a moment about 2/3 of the way through the movie when you suddenly realize that she's changed completely, and wonder when it happened.

(Actually, because I'm attuned to awkward body language, I did notice the gradual change -- but it's very subtle, great acting.)

Along the way, Page learns many important lessons, like that you shouldn't forget about your smart and sassy best friend just because you've met a cute guy in a band, and that you should be nice to your Mom because she loves you even if she IS wrong about what's best for you. Plus some other lessons, which I won't spoil for you. Honestly, the lessons are predictable... but Barrymore means them. XD It's cute, affirming, and genuine. I especially liked the scene where Page is being dropped off at school by a teammate who's also a single mother: the single Mom decides to give the teenager Page a short talk, but it's not like one of those movie talks, where the music swells and the camera zooms in on an actress trying very hard to look sincere. It's a normal talk like something a real person might give, with little jokes to deflect the tension because the lecturer is not sure how well the lecturee is going to receive her advice.

R, on the other hand, really liked the scene where Page body-checks the mean girl at school over the stairway railing. She liked it because, "That's exactly how it works! When you learn to hit the bullies, they learn leave you alone! Violence DOES solve problems!"

...Maybe the moral lessons aren't so predictable, after all. *g*

In conclusion, this is a rec: please support Whip It while it's still in theaters, and send a message to Hollywood that mainstream movies by, for, and about girls can succeed financially.

More on Stella D'Oro v. Hedge Fund

2009-10-01T16:10:39Z

Brief history: Stella D'Oro, the Bronx-based biscuit company, was bought out by Brynwood Partners, the Connecticut-based private equity fund, which demanded that all workers take an immediate $5 an hour pay cut, later "reduced" to a $1 an hour pay cut each year for the next five years. The (unionized) workers refused and went on strike for 11 months, at which point the court found that Brynwood had engaged in unfair labor practices and ordered it to pay back wages and reinstate the workers. Yay! But Brynwood responded by announcing that they were closing the factory in the Bronx.

All this is going to be in an upcoming HBO documentary (still filming). Anyway, the latest news is that someone asked Hugo Chavez at a rally if CITGO, the Venezualen oil company, could buy Stella D'Oro and turn it into a worker's cooperative. And Chavez did show some interest (as he always does when a good story comes along). Nice plot twist for the documentarians eh? Too bad the company was already sold to Lance, Inc., who plan to relocate and cost-cut: essentially they are just buying the name, not the product.

Incidentally, when I told R this story the thing that most offended her was not the ev0lness of Hendrik J. Hartong III, Brynwood's managing partner in this case, but his incompetence. He couldn't just buy a factory that makes (a little) money and runs itself, he had to go in with ideas about typical wages and benefits, and try for a 30% return for the investors, and then pitch a fit and just dismantle the whole thing when the Union wouldn't accept his unilaterally imposed terms and conditions... and America loses a brand and 130 workers lose their jobs, just like that. I can't imagine Brynwood Partners are too pleased with him, either.

Decembrists and a request

2009-09-22T03:38:08Z

The Decembrists at Terminal 5 in Chelsea, NY 9/19/09

First time showing up at a sold-out concert hoping to buy a ticket at the door! I was in the City on Saturday and decided around noon to meet Yin for this. There were fans with spare tickets waiting in line so getting in was no problem.

The show was a lot of fun. The band picked the songs randomly out of a big lottery wheel and then creatively conveyed the used balls into the audience, to show they hadn't cheated. Amazingly the pace was not destroyed, though there was one point where they tinkered with the song order a little and another where the MC announced that the band was NOT going to play the next few songs that came up, a transparent excuse to keep pulling balls until A Perfect Crime or some other big hit could be located before the show ended.

The only real pacing mistake happened when The Tain was picked second to last. A lotto show is a gimmick and 20-minute song cycle, from a band whose real strength is (short!) Eng Lit Geek folk songs, is a statement. Gimmick + statement = can't we just have a regular concert, please? (Yin doesn't agree with me on this.) Most of the audience's energy heading into the home stretch had dissipated by the time The Tain wound to a close; after a failed-singalong version of A Perfect Crime The Decembrists had to do an ELO song to get some of it it back.

But at least Laura got to sing again on The Tain -- she hadn't had a vocal part since the first song of the night. Also most of the audience - me included - took the opportunity to relax and check twitter and text our friends about the show, which must count for something. :p (I, personally, think they should have played The Tain, but only the first thirty seconds of each song.)

Yin has the setlist. My favorites were:
Raincoat Song
From My Own True Love

And the song about New York Colin Meloy made up on the spot, with the lyrics: New York, Home of the Brave / And the well-dressed people / The Intrepid rests nearby on the river / Which I think might be the Hudson / Where someone crashed their plane / I think his name was Scully / But everyone survived / And they called it the Miracle on the Hudson.

In short, a fun concert. Terminal 5 is a very annoying venue, though. It's huge and the floor and balconies aren't tilted, so unless you are very tall or standing very close the front you ain't seeing nuthin'. The view from the left balcony, where we were, is almost totally blocked by the VIP seats - unless you stand on chairs, as Yin and I did.

Secondly, my phone was stolen a week ago - this just hasn't been my month - but I bought a new phone on ebay and it came last Friday so could those of you whose numbers I used to have please text me your names? Again? I promise to actually back up my contacts this time - would hate to turn into the New Yorker parody.

District 9

2009-08-16T15:18:19Z

More international-release movies should be set in South Africa cos the accent is really cool.

If you consider the aliens to be a metaphor for black South Africans, then you have to ask questions like: "If the leadership died before they landed, why didn't they appoint new leadership, are the aliens/black people really all not-too-bright laborers with ONE exception, who is unfailingly polite to the white main character despite how he's treated?". I'm not going to pretend that this interpretation doesn't exist or that it's not insulting. But looked at as a speculative movie - what if aliens landed in Johannesburg? Wouldn't they be treated the way black South Africans were treated under Apartheid? - this really works.

I liked that District 9 wasn't a "look how much research we've done on the sociopolitical problems of this exotic land!" movie, it was a movie with a Hollywood budget (c/o Peter Jackson) but South African actors and a South African writer/director: Neil Blomkamp, who also wrote/directed the original short "documentary" from which this movie was remade. While it's nice when Americans or Europeans do their research, a much better solution is to hand the money over to someone who KNOWS.

One thing I really liked was that MNU (the Evil Corporation) was able to confiscate nice things and abort alien babies because it is illegal for the aliens to have nice things or babies. Who do you think wrote those laws into existence in the first place, huh?? When the laws are unjust, upholding the laws is also unjust.

Is there going to be a District 10??? This is my number one concern as a moviegoer. (And, I suspect, the number one concern of most moviegoers. Worst Cliffhanger Ever, etc.)

I have written fanfiction. *poses* It's RPF and off for rewrites now. It's so nice to have a rewriter/cohwriter, you don't have to obsess so much over exact phrasing and the motivation to draft is much higher. I never drafted before either, it was always first take up on the internet and then minor revisions ex post facto. I can see why real authors do it this way.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-16T05:17:45Z

...is at least 70% romantic comedy. David Yates (the director) has excellent comic timing!

Overall impressions:

1. Hermione is still the hottest thing on screen. Ginny really can't compete, poor thing.
2. Rupert Grint is actually a really good actor! I hadn't realized because the scriptwriter never gives Ron enough to do.
3. Dan Radcliff is still the weakest link, but he was fun to watch in the good-luck-potions-make-Harry-feel-invincible scenes (and he obviously had fun performing them, too).
4. Jim Broadbent was PERFECT as Professor Slughorn, whoever made that casting call deserves a medal.

Slughorn's Christmas Party (where Hermione is like: I'll date this guy because it will annoy Ron the most) and the multiple love triangles were deftly handled. As in, they weren't painful... You don't even feel too badly when Ron ditches Lavender, Hermione ditches whathisface, and Ginny ditches Dean. Maybe because the the director doesn't show any of the ditched parties looking specifically hurt - only Lavender gets a reaction shot and she's more humiliated and angry than hurt.

Harry has something to DO in this movie!! Not just in the last half hour!!! I've complained before about the way that Rowling's books cram in so much stuff, whether or not it's necessary, that the reader becomes distracted and fails to notice that important events happen to Harry Potter, not because of Harry Potter. Which was always a major problem with the movies, right: strip away the extra stuff and the problems with the plotting + passivity of the main character become apparent.

But in this book he's given a mission by Dumbledore - find out what Slugworth knows - and he goes about in a fairly competent, or at least fairly active, way - though still with a large helping of luck, literal in this case XD. Still, Harry having a concrete goal to accomplish made me happy. It gave the movie a sense of direction and lessened the - sudden climax from nowhere! - pacing of the earlier books/movies.

My favorite thing about this movie, though, is the way the trio's scenes - even when they're discussing something serious they do it together in front of a fireplace, surrounded by warmth, light, color, and cozy Oriental rugs - are contrasted with scenes of Draco striding, ALONE, through cold, dark, gray, uncarpeted hallways. Even before the Infamous Bathroom Scene I felt sorry for him, a lot more than I did when I was reading the books.

In conclusion Rotten Tomatoes was right to score this movie so highly.

Eurotrip II '09

2009-07-09T01:48:46Z

Back from Europe and moved into the apartment! Suppose I'll just repost from twitter again, to save time:

1. In London! At the hostel. Ready to kill my brother for booking something five stops away from anything to save two pounds. (6:42 AM Jun 13th)

2. On the flight over I had the ENTIRE CENTER AISLE to myself!! Sleep >> windows. So far today: Borough Market and 20 of Chekov's 40 Stories. (6:48 AM Jun 13th)

3. Finished up Friday with Portobello Road/Notting Hill/crosstown bus to Bond Street where all the stores played american music EXCEPT Top Shop, which played Lily Allen (2:52 PM Jun 14th)

4. Then I collapsed from jetlag. XD But met some very strange/cool people at the hostel... (l2:58 PM Jun 14th)

5. like the guy who's lived in a different hostel every week for the past year. He has an apt in Camden but it's cheaper to rent it out... (3:00 PM Jun 14th)

6. ..for money against the mortgage. Only 16 more years until he owns it free and clear! (Think he'd be bored living in one place full time) (3:05 PM Jun 14th)

7. For the record, his favorite London hostels are the Clink and the Generator off King's Cross (3:07 PM Jun 14th)

8. God bless my brother. I was pushing for us to go out and he was agreeing but with an air of obvious reluctance/matyrdom... (5:38 PM Jun 14th)

9. ...until I said, what about a gay bar? (actually a gay club) and he perked up. "I love gay people!" (5:40 PM Jun 14th)

10. Otherwise today was two picnics and lots of walking. And yes i did bring water. (5:55 PM Jun 14th)

11. Camden Town on Sunday (or every day?) is like a carnival with the music or attractions (5:57 PM Jun 14th)

12. Brick Lane is Bengali restaurants with scattered hipsters for half a mile, then HIPSTER GROUND ZERO at Vibe 1001 and Rough Trade (6:00 PM Jun 14th)

13. Then another 1/2 mile at lower hipster density to Bethnal G. Recognized a street musician from Carnaby--much more appreciative audience @ BL (6:08 PM Jun 14th)

14. a few tweets back should have read: withOUT the music or attractions (6:13 PM Jun 14th)

15. Met up with one of my brother's friends. Did you know that "scone" has a short o? like "on"? I didn't. (11:04 PM Jun 16th)

16. No web access in the UK since I forgot to bring the right kind of plug adapter, but should have it in Rome. (I'm on the bus to the airport.) (11:07 PM Jun 16th)

17. BTW, we didn't go clubbing. Went to a show instead. The tube stops running at 12:30 so if you go out you have to COMMIT: (12:08 AM Jun 17th)

18. either learn the night bus schedule or stay out until morning. (12:09 AM Jun 17th)

19. Got up early to see art instead. British Museum and Tate Modern. Coming out of the summer exhibition at the Royal Gallery I overheard: (12:14 AM Jun 17th)

20. "Just looking is soooo exhausting." (To understand the humor, imagine a posh accent.) (12:18 AM Jun 17th)

21. In covent garden, the menswear is on the first floor and the womenswear is hidden away in the basement. (12:22 AM Jun 17th)

22. In westminster abbey, notable poets who died before c. 1900 are "honorarily" interred, UNLESS they happened to be nobles (12:25 AM Jun 17th)

23. My brother says that the french are more restrained: there are only ever about 60 people buried at the Pantheon (12:28 AM Jun 17th)

24. Every time a writer goes in, a "friend of the revolution" comes out (12:29 AM Jun 17th)

25. So far in rome: Vatican, Colliseum, Spanish Steps, AT LEAST A DOZEN CHURCHES where you can choose to pray to crucified jesus or baby jesus (3:22 AM Jun 20th)

26. Even the metro is in the shape of a cross (3:25 AM June 20th)

27. In Trastaveri we saw an orchestra playing "opening theme from the godfather" in a church. great acoustics. they are also really cool... (3:24 AM Jun 20th)

28. ...as in, cool when it is 33 degrees C outside. saw more than one local duck inside to text or check phone messages. (3:26 AM Jun 20th)

29. also saw: a procession, and a free concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. garage rock band played Under the Sea (3:29 AM Jun 20th)

30. because it's Caribbean, see? (3:31 AM Jun 20th)

31. The Vatican Museum also has modern art. I feel a little sorry for the artists, sandwiched between Raphael and Michelangelo. (3:33 AM Jun 20th)

32. in pain yesterday but at least knew better than to drink cold things thanks to R. today's a beach day - might see some ruins later on. (3:41 AM Jun 20th)

33. there are lots of Americans in Rome but there are also lots of Australians on "winter" holiday. I met a carpenter who is on day 6 of 72... (3:45 AM Jun 20th)

34. ...everyone at the hostel is Eurocrawling and Rome is just one stop (3:47 AM June 20th)

35. You should wear sunscreen to the beach. You should especially wear sunscreen to the beach when you are not wearing sunscreening makeup. Ow. (12:57 PM Jun 20th)

36. In the airport en route to Belfast but thought I'd note that Roman women wear really, really, really cute shoes. (3:31 AM Jun 21st)

37. Cold medicine for 60p. Drugs are so cheap in the UK. (10:30 AM Jun 22nd)

37a. @yinh There was a really cool exhibit in the British museum: tapestries of all the drugs an Englishperson will take in his/her lifetime. (10:38 AM Jun 22nd)

37b. @yinh They were made out of netting with pockets for the capsules, five feet wide and fifty feet long. (10:40 AM Jun 22nd)

38. Don't worry, we took it easy today: rented a car and drove along the coast from Belfast to L'derry. (10:33 AM Jun 22nd)

39. The hardest part of driving on the other side of the road isn't the reversed turns or transmission, it's remembering to stay inside the lane. (10:35 AM Jun 22nd)

40. Tourist stuff in Belfast is extremely well-marked. Dunno if I believe the city is turning around but... (10:42 AM Jun 22nd)

41. I believe that Belfast wants me to believe that the city is turning around. (10:43 AM Jun 22nd)

42. BTW the coast of Northern Ireland is very pretty. If you come here just follow the route marked on the tourist map, you can't go wrong. (10:48 AM Jun 22nd)

43. There's a Seaman's Church in Belfast, with anchors in the stained glass window. My theory is: (10:52 AM Jun 22nd)

44. It's some reformer's attempt at getting those lewd, licentious, morally deficient sailors into church. (10:55 AM Jun 22nd)

45. In Dublin's fair city... there are a lot of internet cafés. (9:14 AM Jun 23rd)

46. Getting sicker rather than better so I'm taking the day off. But it's Pride Week in Dublin! Hope to recover in time for gay karaoke finals. (9:20 AM Jun 23rd)

47. 10pm at the corner pub - be there or be square. (9:22 AM Jun 23rd)

47. At the archaeological museum. Something really feminine about these ancient Irish kings... (8:21 AM Jun 24th)

48. ...in the way they are tied to fertility cyles, and in the way that subjugated rivals are made to suck their nipples (8:23 AM June 24th)

49. Also: there was a shrine to Brigit's shoe! Looked like a size 6. (8:26 AM Jun 24th)

50. Eating Irish stew in an Irish sports bar. Team USA just knocked Team Spain out of the Confederation Cup! Go USA! (1:59 PM Jun 24th)

51. This (=club night in London) was canceled but I was picked up by these sort of sleazy upper management types and somehow managed to have a pretty good time anyway. http://blip.fm/~93g49 (12:36 PM Jun 29th from Blip.fm)

52. Sometimes you can get in cabs with strangers and it will totally work out! Only downside is the story is less fun to tell than I imagined it would be. http://blip.fm/~93ggh (12:40 PM Jun 29th from Blip.fm)

[NEWCASTLE->EDINBURGH GOES HERE]

53. Home! Seatmate on the plane told me the best way to get ahead in corporate America is to be a Yes Man. (8:26 AM Jun 29th)

54. He then proceeded to "that's a good point" everything I said for the next four hours... (8:27 AM Jun 29th)

55. We watched In the Know which is Brit-Am relations done as The Office, and Burn Notice which is domestic spying done as Dumb and Dumber. (8:30 AM Jun 29th)

56. There is a full-sized train conductor's car on the Industrial Scotland floor of the National Museum in Edinburgh. (8:36 AM Jun 29th)

57. Also saw the Writer's Museum. W Scott, RL Stevenson, and R Burns all published their first books at 27-28: readers who are writers take note (8:38 AM Jun 29th)

55. I want to move to Edinburgh! Cold damp weather made up for by fantastic architecture. (8:42 AM Jun 29th)

I realize that some of these tweets are kind of... mysterious... but there are some things I'd rather not write down where my parents might read about them, XD. But some other highlights were:

a. At the Royal Gallery, there was a collage of, on one side, American/Japanese celebrities making the V sign, and on the other, British celebrities showing two fingers. The piece was called: War and Peace. XD There was also a Victorian dress made out of wire in two pieces, which opened up on hinges to reveal a small space lined with mirrors. I thought, wow, a way to literally hide under mother's skirts.

b. The show we went to see at Victoria was The Mousetrap, and we got balcony seats, something that apparently only out-of-towners do. Because my brother only had a pair of shorts on, and because we'd gotten to the theater early, we decided to go buy him a pair of pants. What followed was an EPIC search across the length, breadth, and height of Covent Garden for any pair of jeans for under 30 pounds.

c. The guy at our hostel in Rome more-or-less wrote us four-day plan, and we more-or-less did it in three and a half days and got to spend the last half-day at the beach. Where I was badly sunburned, and then I got sick. XD; But was more-or-less better two days later! Another way we pushed our luck was through compromise: my brother is basically an old man, so if it was up to him we would have been up every day at 6am and in bed by 10pm. And I'm basically a bum, so if it was up to me we would have been in bed every day at 4am and up at noon. So we compromised: asleep by 2am, up by 8am. Which was fine by me, I usually only sleep 6 hours a night anyway. *g*

d. There is not much on Rome here but that is because it was completely overwhelming. I'd heard that Italy has a two major works of art per one person ratio, and after coming here, I can believe it.

e. Coming from Rome, Belfast was actually a lot of fun, because we were able to do and see everything in the one day we were there. This appealed to my brother's (no so inner) completionist.

f. Besides some nice parks and museums, everything fun to do in downtown Dublin costs money: you can go shopping, or you can go out to eat. Food at restaurants is expensive due to, I was told, the high cost of keeping a liquor license. Kind of funny in a town with that many distilleries. Dublin is nice though - even if we were warned not to go there by an Irishman, since Dublin is an international city and not "the real Ireland". (International in the sense of, next to the Indian restaurant is a Chinese restaurant, a French restaurant, and an Italian restaurant.) Alex saw more of the old/industrial town on the other side of the river; I slept to recover from my sunburn-induced cold.

g. Alex and I split up at Dublin - I went to Newcastle (after a short side-trip to London) where I had plans to meet up with a friend from college. Newcastle was amazing. XD It's on the North Sea, you can take the metro straight to the coast. The town itself is like, half 18th century architecture and half shopping malls. Everyone is incredibly friendly and there is a "famous" club scene. Basically what amazed me about this was the HUGE MALL, in the CENTER OF TOWN, filled with NOTHING but bars and clubs. So if you don't like the club you're at, you can just get on the escalator and find another one. Think about the economics of this! Peak club hours are 12am-4am, or only four hours a day, so for clubs to support a shopping mall in the center of town (as opposed to some abandoned warehouse on the edges) the draw must be seriously high, or the rent must be seriously low, or both. Sabina said it sounded like the (Eastern European?) mega-clubs, five floors of nonstop dance music. Except that in Newcastle it's like Halloween all night, every night. XD The main dress is florescent tank tops with pink tutus, but we also saw goths, cats, a policewoman, and a hello nurse. Anyway, I was... impressed? Yeah, impressed.

h. National Museum in Scotland was seriously nice, wish I'd had more time there. Did you know that Scotch whisky is the UK's fifth most important export?

Hmmm, I suppose that's everything. My brother has pictures up to Belfast on his facebook - same last name, and first name is Alex, for those of you who know me over there.

update

2009-06-12T00:30:28Z

Long time no post, huh? I've been doing some paralegal-ish things for my father, eating out in NYC more nights than not and catching the midnight train home or not coming home at all. Or in other words, spending too much money, a trend that is going to continue until July - have plans to meet my brother in Europe! The flight leaves, um, tomorrow. Here's the itinerary:

June 13 (AM): London
June 17 (AM): Rome
June 21 (AM): Belfast (via London Standstead airport. Currently considering changing the connecting flight to London to the 20th for band-obsession-related reasons, but that's another story)
June 22 (PM): Dublin
June 25 (AM): Newcastle

And my flight back to NJ leaves on Sunday, June 28th. This is short notice, but anyone lives in or around the aforementioned cities and wants to meet up, just drop a line.

As for the REAL reason I haven't been around much... I'm seeing someone. ^_____^ One of Aki's friends. It's sort of funny, of the three people at dinner I'd never met before, J and R became friends, A tried to pick me up, and I picked R up. Either Aki has very good taste in friends, or we all really needed to expand our social circles. :p

(Okay so that's a lie, I didn't actually pick R up. What ACTUALLY happened was, I took a hint for the first time in my life. Body language reading skills, level up!)

[There was some analysis-of-appeal type stuff on R here, but on reflection, probably better to keep the details to myself or at least not share them with the whole wide web. But yeah: R's a girl. *g*]

festival notes

2009-05-03T17:21:21Z

I'd never been to a music festival before, wasn't sure what to expect, but Bamboozle was totally worth the price! Saw:

1. Sing it Loud - looks like grunge but sounds like bandom - Pat Brown used to be Cobra Starship's merch guy. Before anyone says anything, yes I know that "bandom" does not have a sound. I guess I mean that it's pop-punk with absolutely no R&B groove elements. All members of Sing it Loud are very attractive and (except for the keyboardist) VERY THIN. Though as we see from this video, maintaining such thinness without pharmacological aid is a lot of work. XD; Definitely mixed messages... it's straightforward pop-punk music well performed by good looking guys with enormous levels of energy, I had fun. HIGHEST CROWD SURFER PER MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE RATIO.

2. Bobby Ray a.k.a. "B.o.B." (Which is not an easy name to google, although he is the first hit). Hands down the best actual music of the day... but such a small crowd. XD; Some kind of crossover friendly hip hop/reggae/country fusion. With lyrics about destructive relationships and being oppressed by the System. Have a video. Festival would have been worth it for this alone, due to surprise discovery factor.

3. Forever the Sickest Kids/Metro Station/We the Kings - soooooooo many people, we pushed our way to the front, the press was enormous, a girl standing behind me passed out and had to be crowd-surfed over the barrier. Everyone in the audience knew all the words to all the songs. Candice observed that even if she'd seen a hundred dollar bill on the ground she wouldn't have been able to pick it up. Personally I think the guys a few rows back who were clearing space and vaulting over each other had the right idea. Yin and Candice stayed at the front through Boys Like Girls, partially to have a spot for Cobra Starship, but I escaped. Twice!

4. Some bands I don't remember. XD; And Kid Cudi, the "Day and Night" DJ. Hard to sell rapping over a mixtape to a daytime audience that just wanted to stand around and drink beer and get stoned... the only thing that really got a reaction was when the actual studio cut of Day and Night was played, with Kid Cudi coaching all the time: "Put your hands up. Now keep them up. Keep them up. Keep keeping them up. DON'T PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN JESUS CHRIST DO I HAVE TO HOLD THEM FOR YOU."

5. Cobra Starship. I actually worked my way back to the front for this. IF YOU HAD BEEN THERE YOU WOULD KNOW HOW MUCH OF AN ACHIEVEMENT THIS IS. Gabe Sapporta's crowd management people are true professionals. They had a second barrier erected, straight down the middle. Yin informs me that part of the problem is that the girl/guy ratio for all of these bands skews towards girls, who tend to presssssss together - whereas guys tend to elbow their neighbors and open up space. Anyway it was a really great performance. Of course. I have this vision of Gabe Sapporta staying up half the night, mainlining Red Bull, pouring over the day's news looking for material to incorporate into the next day's show patter. Sort of like a Jon Stewart or a Steven Colbert. XD And Cobra Starship HAS GROOVE - the two best musicians in the band are the drummer and the bass player. In short: Gabe Sapporta: on a mission to get white kids to dance.

6. MOTHERFUCKING JOURNEY. Also Third Eye Blind, who the tweenies don't care about, but nice for ancient twenty-somethings like the three of us.

7. Fall Out Boy. This was sort of... I don't know... a let down in some ways but very interesting in others. Yin is going to tell me I'm reading too much into it, XD, but here's my take. The band dynamics are strange because Pete Wentz is the "frontman" but not the lead singer or lead guitarist. In person, the band is stiff, except for Wentz. But Pete Wentz' style isn't to engage with the audience, instead it's to thrash around in his own world, or sometimes prowl around the stage, or sometimes gaze with intent stillness out into the crowd, as if he's looking for something. He also tried a few times to get something going with Patrick, Fall Out Boy's singer/songwriter, but Patrick only looked back, he refused to be drawn in, he's a rock against the tide. It's possibly how the band stays together but it might also have had a dampening effect on the audience. I found myself tuning out - not that I need much excuse to do this, XD, but generally it doesn't happen at rock shows where the performers work to keep you there.

Or maybe I was only disengaged because they played the three or four Fall Out Boy songs I really like, a bunch of others I can't remember at all, and two covers. If the band hadn't been the headliners it would probably have been fine, much easier to keep interest up for 3-4 hits than for a 90 minute set FOLLOWING MOTHERFUCKING JOURNEY.

Pete Wentz was also under the impression that he was playing in New York, even though Fall Out Boy has done Bamboozle before. If he was trying to alienate the audience, he couldn't have done better. (The Meadowlands are in New Jersey. New Jersey!)

Korean BBQ in NYC tonight, followed by karaoke late into the night. absenceofmind is ♥

Back from France

2009-04-30T21:22:51Z

As of yesterday! Harumi, I didn't forget about you. Just didn't have computer access most of the time. Look for an email by noon tomorrow, Japan time.

Suppose I'll repost from twitter, just to have a halfway readable record. I borrowed my brother's BlackBerry for most of these.

65. On the streets in Rouen it's about 30% long blouses under short cotton jackets, 30% trench coats with tights and ballet flats. (11:30 AM Apr 17th)

64. The winner at 40% is jeans + scarves + black leather jackets. (11:32 AM Apr 17th)

63. Also no wonder everyone is thin and tan here, it's FIVE EUROS for 45 minutes of wifi! (11:33 AM Apr 17th)

62. French keyboards swap the "a" and the "q", also the "m" and the ";". And you have to hit shift to put in a period. It's driving me crazy. (11:36 AM Apr 17th)

61. Wish I'd dieted before coming here like I'd planned... (11:38 AM Apr 17th)

60. How did Bernt Capra get rid of all the tourists at Mont Saint Michel to film his movie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindwalk)? (11:42 AM Apr 17th)

58. itinerary: san malo tonight, more coast tomorrow, paris sunday, lille monday - parents splitting off. dad has wanted to see brughes... (4:13 PM Apr 17th)

57. ...since we watched that comedy with colin ferrel as the hitman IN EXILE in brughes, a shitty tourist town. go figure (4:15 PM Apr 17th)

56. st malo specialties are seafood and crepes. i had mussels, fries, and a crepe for dessert. (4:04 PM Apr 18th)

55. la boule: like the riviera only colder (4:05 PM Apr 18th)

54. Time spent eating / walking / driving yesterday: 3 hrs / 3 hrs / 8 hrs. NO MORE. JE REFUSE. (9:22 AM Apr 19th)

53. in paris, paid respects to mme curie, m hugo. wonder if studying in huge marble building engraved with philosopher's names would be more inspiring... (5:07 PM Apr 19th)

52. ...or intimidating. also saw the building where pasteurization was invented! (5:09 PM Apr 19th)

51. in lille~ the hotel here is AWESOME. free web on TV and the bath/shower room looks like a sweedish sauna. (5:11 PM Apr 19th)

50. whole family to brughes tomorrow, it looks like, since the 20th is dad's bday and he unexpectedly wants to spend it together (5:13 PM Apr 19th)

49. funny pair of lions above the gate to the jardin des plants. [in paris.] mean-looking one on the right gazes hungrily at a bowl with a human foot in it... (5:16 PM Apr 19th)

48. ...healthy-looking one the left cradles a lamb b/t its paws. actually i thought, of course that one is abstaining, it's had enough to eat already! (5:18 PM Apr 19th)

47. they looked like scar and mufasa, a little (5:20 PM Apr 19th)

45. Brother has joined us. Of course i am making him come along to see a certain "solo" artist tonight (upon return from Belgian daytrip). (1:39 AM Apr 20th)

44. He's been to Belium, Switzerland, Scotland, Spain and Basque country already. (1:44 AM Apr 20th)

43. Says Madrid is nice, but subway is not convenient for tourism as major sights are all 20 minutes' walk away. (1:45 AM Apr 20th)

42. We are spending more per night at this hotel than he spent in 3 weeks staying at youth hostels. (1:46 AM Apr 20th)

41. Brughes was full of british tourists. Chicken curry sandwich for lunch was hilariously just chicken salad + curry powder. (9:02 AM Apr 21st)

40. Speaking of Brits, P Doherty solo in Lille was excellent. Approximated setlist for Sabina, will blog when opportunity arises. (9:07 AM Apr 21st)

[EDIT - posted here.]

39. Loudest cheers of the night came when PD lit a cigarette on stage - about a dozen French college students in the audience followed suit. (9:12 AM Apr 21st)

38. My brother saw it as bad role modeling and didn't approve, Sabina called it French people being French. (9:14 AM Apr 21st)

37. There are statues of babies with bat wings and tails in Lille. One rides a dinosaur. They're about 30 feet high. It's very strange. (9:17 AM Apr 21st)

36. But everything is big in Lille. The town center by the train station has Parisian looking buildings but they're ten stories high. (9:21 AM Apr 21st)

29. One more hour on the train to Lyon. Halfway through Petals of Blood which is very very good. (3:01 PM Apr 21st)

28. Philip Pullman could learn a few things about anti-Christian fiction writing from Ngugi wa Thiong'o. (3:02 PM Apr 21st)

26. J'aime Lyon. Beaucoup des etudients et beaucoup des parcs. Les temps sont toujours beaux et tout le monde est genial. (6:07 AM Apr 23rd)

22. Lyon zoological garden. Sand cats would be the perfect compact ADORABLE cats for zoos if they didn't spend the whole day burrowed underground (8:23 AM Apr 23rd)

20. So glad I read I, Claudius before coming to Lyon. In the archaeological museum reading epitaphs to members of prominent Lyonaise families... (9:27 AM Apr 24th)

19. ...who happen to share names with members of the Imperial family. (9:28 AM Apr 24th)

18. Seriously the girls are all named Claudia or Julia. (9:29 AM Apr 24th)

17. Imperial and other cults gave way to Christianity "the purest and most generous of the mystery-based universalist religions" (9:37 AM Apr 24th)

16. French museums use the word "treasure" for coins and precious metals. "This treasure found 1992 during construction around Croix-Rousse." (10:00 AM Apr 24st)

14. Annacy is lobbying for the 2018 Olympics. It looks like an Olympic village already. (7:56 AM Apr 26th)

13. From above, the town looks empty. Then you go into an alley and come out where all the stalls are up for Sunday market. (8:00 AM Apr 26th)

12. Took a paddle boat out onto the lake at Annacy. Very pretty. But the boat kept tilting to one side alarmingly. (8:03 AM Apr 26th)

11. Tried foie gras last night. In Peruge. With a fruit reduction. It was delicious in a sickening way. (8:05 AM Apr 26th)

10. In the Forez mountians - Bike Country between St Etienne and Clermont-Ferrand. Damp and cold, SPECTACULAR views. Love Ambert train sta ... (7:29 AM Apr 27th)

9. ...Gare du Ambert which has dandelion fields, an empty skate park, and the cleanest portable toilet I've ever seen. (7:32 AM Apr 27th)

8. According to the guide book young people leave this region to cook traditional French food in Parisian restaurants. (7:46 AM Apr 27th)

7. No wonder they put a temple on top of Puy de Dome, by the time supplicants hiked up, in the thin air, they were probably light headed and... (10:48 AM Apr 27th)

6. ...seeing visions! (Just kidding. It was so the peasants at the foot of the volcano could tremble before the might of the Roman Empire.) (10:50 AM Apr 27th)

5. From mefi: "How did that pig get on the roof? The swine flew!" (6:26 AM Apr 28th)

4. Speaking of flying we are flying back to the US tomorrow against advice of the EU. And I'm filing for unemployment first thing. Sigh. (6:28 AM Apr 28th)

3. Also a massive radio hit in France ♫ http://blip.fm/~59siw (about 4 hours ago from Blip.fm)

2. And this ♫ http://blip.fm/~59u9d (about 3 hours ago from Blip.fm)

1. Home! East->West jetlag so much nicer than the other kind.

I try to be funny on twitter - which sometimes means being negative - but really I had a great, great time. Trips to Europe are eye-opening - so many things start to make sense. Like seeing a Gothic cathedral with flying monkey gargoyles and thinking about L. Frank Baum, or learning that the youth hostels where you can stay for almost nothing don't provide towels so that must have been what Douglas Adams was talking about. Or driving through Burgundy and thinking "oh so this is where the Suikoden III designers got Chisa village," XD. (The French countryside is amazing. I don't think I will ever get tired of gazing at fields on hills. In the US, we have fields, and we have hills, but we don't have fields on hills, let alone on the sides of mountains. Also, BRIGHT yellow mustard fields under cloudy gray skies. So pretty.)

Looks like this weekend is going to be a grrrrrrreat time - music festival at the Meadowlands and absenceofmind flying in from the west coast! Plus dinner on Sunday with, like, nine people. All hail summertea queen of planning.

Dreamwidth

2009-04-15T03:51:14Z

I have one. Thank you, Tari~

No invites to hand out, but drop a line if you're interested. The site opens to the public April 30th, but those without invite codes will have to pay. (Same as early days on LJ, though I wasn't around for that.) The moderators are also randomly giving out invite codes to people who sign up with OpenID, I'm told, so that is another thing to try.

Dreamwidth is a non-profit social networking site based on LJ code and fronted by synecdochic (denise on DW). She and a few other people have been working on the code since Strikethrough 07, trying to give LJers a viable place to move to in case our corporate overlords (once SixApart, now SUP) become too unbearable.

The appeal of DW is that you can leave without really leaving, since DW allows crossposting and - in theory - the use of authenticated feeds. (Meaning the ability to read your LJ friendslist remotely. Though I'll believe that when I see it.) I'm a little bit torn, actually, since I know from experience that I am BAD at juggling multiple site identities. Will have to choose one or the other and don't have it in me to leave behind certain people and places here. Currently adopting a "wait and see" approach. I do think that LJ will shut down eventually, but that day may not come tomorrow, or even in the next few years.

Here's some other Why Dreamwidth stuff. As much as I don't really want to leave LJ, I am psyched to try DW out, partly because I hate seeing ads on my LJ (and don't want to pay SUP to make them go away), partly because I've never been in on the ground floor of a "new" networking scene before and am looking forward to having input into the design/coding/policy-making process, partly because it's new and exciting, and partly because I'm suffering from (a real or imagined sense of) overshare on this journal and on some level wouldn't mind starting over.

Though as we learn from this metafilter thread, YOU REMAIN YOU NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE. XD; So I am trying not to make "new start!" my primary motivation.

Definitely not going to make any moves in one direction or the other for a while, at any rate. For one thing, I will be in on vacation in France! My flight leaves tomorrow. :)

#amazonfail

2009-04-12T20:45:09Z

Via summertea:

Amazon.com removes sales rankings from print books tagged GLBT. Also books with BDSM themes and (explicit) heterosexual erotica.

This matters not just because it distorts figures to make already marginalized groups look even smaller, but because unranked books won't show up on front-page search results.

List of affected books.

Affected works of classic literature include: Tipping the Velvet, Maurice, The Well of Loneliness, The Charioteer.

Affected works of nonfiction include: The Dictionary of Homophobia, Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America.

Affected self-help books include: My Husband is Gay, The Way Out, Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws.

Though really it shouldn't matter whether a book is classic or not, nonfiction or not, explicit or not, A SUICIDE PREVENTION MANUAL or not. Suppression is suppression; manipulating sales data for political reasons is manipulating sales data for political reasons.

Three scenarios
1. This is a mistake, in which case it's dumb one Amazon deserves to lose business over;
2. Or it's the result of someone's moral crusade, in which case Amazon is sending a toxic message that it deserves to lose business and goodwill (long-term business) over;
3. Or (wacky conspiracy theory alert!) it's a business move designed to squeeze even more money from people who are already buying books online from Amazon because they are afraid to buy them in physical bookstores - hoping that desperation will force these people to shell out 3-4,000 dollars for Amazon's proprietary ebook reader, the Kindle. Which if true would be just despicable.

In the case of scenario #2:
I already hated buying from Amazon but this isn't something I ever expected them to do - am now determined to buy all my books/CDs/DVDs at physical stores, whenever I can. If Amazon thought that the business they'd lose from concerned parents who conclude that the site is a hotbed of degeneracy after seeing a gay historical romance at #10 on the "historical fiction" list, was more than the business they'll lose from outraged "degenerates" (and allies), I hope they'll think again.

EDIT: ALTERNATE THEORY: trolls are responsible.

EDIT2: Statement from Amazon.

Saiunkoku Monotagari Translation Post Updated

2009-04-08T17:05:34Z

Updated post @ saiunkoku with links to translations of the novels:

http://community.livejournal.com/saiunkoku/265940.html

Next update should be in May, when the fourth gaiden comes out. I want to thank this blogger for her work since she isn't a member of the community, but as Charmian reminded me, LJ is BANNED in mainland China, so she wouldn't be able to see what I was thanking her for. ^^; Previously considered adding the links to my website (or WP blog) but was lazy and couldn't be bothered. Maybe I will do that now. Html-izing is tedious but it seems a shame for E-fandom to be almost totally cut off from C-fandom.

Orrrrr I could just (continue to) be lazy, and wait for someone else to add links to the wiki. ^^;

quick, spend the money before it runs out!

2009-04-03T04:17:54Z

Note to self: DEMAND BACKPAY before applying for unemployment in two weeks. =_= Yeah, that's right, I'm out of a job. All it really means is that I now have a hard-and-fast reason to step up the job hunt, which I'd kind of let slide. In any other economic climate this would be a blessing in disguise. No, really. ^^ Decided not to do the low self esteem thing anymore so I am trying to convince myself that I am a blameless victim of the recession economy - they are eliminating my position - although the truth is that I haven't exactly been a model employee, either. More work, less procrastination...

Ah well, that's all in the past! Today I went to the Borders in Upper Saddle River and bought:

1. Peter Doherty - Grace/Wastelands
2. Graham Parsons - Grievous Angel
3. Yuki Urushibara - Mushishi vol. 6
4. Matsuri Hino - Vampire Knight vol. 6
5. Fuyumi Ono - The Twelve Kingdoms: The Vast Spread of the Seas

Flist fail! Why did no one tell me this was out?

book and music reviews

2009-03-31T18:36:58Z

Post on last weekend's mini-vacation at the other livejournal. Includes a review of Glasvegas, who weren't really worth coming back into town for, but at least now I know that. *g*

Finished a book on the train from Boston to NY - The Myth of the Paperless Office by Abigail J. Sellen (an anthropologist specializing office cultures - very cool!) and Richard H. R. Harper (an economist). This was groundbreaking when it came out...in 2003, which is probably why it was only $3 at MIT bookstore. ^^; Interestingly many things the authors claim paper does better have since been implemented electronically - like this desktop application which tries to imitate physical workspaces, or this site which supports annotation of webpages. Reminded that close reading is best accomplished with lots of highlighting and notetaking, I signed up for an account there. We'll see if this will help me to read online material less superficially.

Also finished Pattern Recognition. Hadn't realized that all of William Gibson's books are set in the same universe. See what petronia meant about a single narrator being hard to work with - I don't think everything that happened while the protagonist was in Tokyo was in-character. Wonder if more knowledge of systema - the Russian maritial art practiced by the KGB - would make the least interesting of the three protagonists in Spook Country more interesting. Speaking of Spook Country, diigo's web-annotating function really reminded me of the "geospatial" digital art in that book: an invisible world that intersects with ours in ways that only the properly-equipped are able to detect. Pattern Recognition also has that alternate-world thing going on, only this time the world is marketing. The protagonist, a coolhunter who is the daughter of a security expert, resists being drawn any world she won't be able to discuss over dinner. (I know how she feels.) She's investigating the source of a cult movie on the web. I really liked the footagehead angle, it felt familiar. XD; Lots of people in fandom who also have day jobs!

Biiiiig post on blip.fm and music fandom coming up. In fact it is so long that I've decided to put some reviews of bands here first:

The Whigs at Bowery Ballroom March 7: The Whigs are a garage-rock band from Atlanta with a drummer, a bass player, and a singer/rhythm guitarist. This was an excellent show - there is nothing like the bassist also doubling as the lead guitarist to really get the crowd moving. XD; And pretty colored lights! I went alone and met a few people I really liked, including Ryan, a corporate lawyer - his advice, don't go to law school - whose friend had gone to their previous show, where an amp fell on the bassist (!!). The was nothing like that this time - no one was bouncing around the stage, they were just kind of vibrating in place.

Almost better than the leads, though, was opener Dead Confederate. This is a band that takes its name very seriously. XD; As in, everyone had Southern facial hair - the guitarist had a Ted Kaczynski beard - except for the lead singer, who was whip thin and slouched across the stage like something just risen from the grave. HUGE voice, all out of proportion to his appearance. The stage totally dark except for a single spotlight, organist sustaining long tones, keening vocals, it was like being in a crypt. (A haunted one.) Yay goths!

Should mention that the lead singer of the first opening band (Trance Arc?) was Asian American. Talked to him at the merch stand. Nice guy. His guitarist and the Whigs drummer are related.

Mark Olson and Gary Louris CD came in the mail. Thoughts after listening to the whole thing:

1. With lyrics like "Our black eyes go out into the world" and "Slip or trip you'll never walk away," this is not the reunion CD Jayhawks fans have been waiting for. (Or maybe it is.)
2. This was practiced for 7 days and recorded in 4. Some songs are 15 years old. The album is one third bluegrass, where upbeat songs about troubled relationships are traditional (and live recordings, without headphones, with mistakes left in, are also traditional).
3. The remaining 2/3 are either quiet intense songs (sung like trauma survivors...) or a mixture of other folk styles.
4. Too much emoting! ...wait, what am I saying, there can never be too much emoting! But if there was ever any chance of this finding a wider audience, the emoting definitely has killed it, I think.
5. Channeling Bob Dylan on Bicycle, tracklisted #2, which I like. It is FULL OF METAPHOR XD.
6. Channeling Neil Young on My Gospel Song for You. This is my favorite song because, I think, it sounds like something from Rainy Day Music, only it's got Mark Olson singing harmony (the one thing that was missing from that album).
7. I also like Bloody Hands. In an alternate reality where Gary Louris and Mark Olson wrote songs on topics other than each other...XD. (This is a traditional murder ballad. Those interested in such things are advised to check it out. Though perhaps if you were interested, you'd say that's it's typical of the genre. I'm no murder-ballad expert.)

EDIT: Wacky conspiracy theories: let's go!

eight months later... the return of the Alexandria Quartet!

2009-03-23T22:22:41Z

I decided to finish Clea (final book in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet) instead of Anathem. Hard to discuss this series without giving away key plot points but I will try.

Justine: See previous post.

Balthazar: The author of Justine is living in self-exile on a small Greek island. One day he's visited by a friend from Alexandria who brings the manuscript of his first book - that is, Justine - only the friend has made notes in the margins correcting misinterpretations and (partially) clarifying events. Also critiquing style - most of all he complains that the author (whose name is Darley) has been taking himself too seriously! He has overlooked the basic absurdity of the human condition! So Darley sets out to rewrite Justine in light of this new information. The resulting book, Balthazar, is easier to read mainly because Darley, humbled, develops a sense of humor.

Or as I told bell:

Balthazar is much funnier than Justine. With Justine it's like, THIS IS A SERIOUS NOVEL AND IT WILL ALL END IN TRAGEDY, whereas in Balthazar there were some sections that had me literally rolling on the floor. (Crossdressing is always funny!!!) It's almost like the author's friends read the manuscript of his first book and told him that he needed to lighten up, XD.

What else. Clea's story had the most emotional resonance for me. Nessim becomes more interesting the more you learn about him. Charmian knows my thoughts on Pursewarden, which are spoilery, besides.

Mountolive: The only book in the series written in third-person. It's with this book that you realize, if you hadn't before, that Lawrence Durrell can write very precisely when he wants to - the literary allusions, dense metaphors, and ~~pretension~~ atmospheric lyricism of the first two books were an aesthetic choice. Most of it is from the point of view of David Mountolive, a British diplomat who's likable, good-looking, intelligent, correct and...that's about it. XD; He does his job faultlessly but doesn't seem to have any outside interests or hobbies. Which probably explains why he falls for two women (first one, then the other) with extraordinarily rich inner lives...but I'll step away from the spoilers, XD.

Because the series shifts to focus on characters with actual power in the colonial administration, this is the book where you finally learn everyone's day jobs. It's also the book where you finally learn the exact nature of the glue that binds Justine and Nessim together. The truth is stranger, and more powerful, than anything I'd imagined. Gave me goosebumps. This was probably my favorite book because I really love political intrigue. (And mysticism.)

Darley's complaints about Alexandria (that its inhabitants are dirty, poor, venal, and frequently insane) morph into "impartial" observations on the corruption and depravity of Egyptian governmental officials. But at least there's a little bit more context this time! orz.

Clea: This is set after the first three books, and during the Second World War. All of the characters have come into their own, more or less, and Darley and Clea decide that they have "outgrown" Justine. (Which made me feel a bit sorry for her.) A long discussion of writing followed by a romantic interlude followed by a series of shocking events. The ending points to future adventures for the characters that are fun to imagine. Beautiful writing. I don't want to analyze this book, I want to sit here and quote from it. XD; WHICH IS PROBABLY THE CORRECT RESPONSE TO THESE BOOKS ANYWAY. Bell got some good ones in her posts a few months ago.

Other commentary:
Charmian (no spoilers), Charmian (spoilers)

Someone who's read these books and remembers them, please come discuss the characters with me! Darley, Justine, Clea, Melissa, Nessim, Narouz, Scobie, Balthazar, Pursewarden, Liza, Mountolive, Leila, Da Capo and Pombal are the ones I really remember, though Telford and Maskelyne made an impression as well.

EDIT: spoilers in comments. terrible ones! don't look.