William Shatner WoW commercial

Prop 8 The Musical

Disclaimer: This video is an example of shamelessly Liberal humor. As a brazen Liberal, I enjoyed it. YMMV

A star studded mini-musical about California's Proposition 8. My Mister pointed me in its direction and I've since seen it in a few places on the interwebs. Neil Patrick Harris steals the show, IMHO.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

musing on the inauguration

I'm hoping Maya Angelou is chosen to speak on January 20th, like she did for Clinton's inauguration.

I looked up her poem for that day on the googles yesterday. My friend and I were discussing our memories of where we were when Clinton was inaugurated, and I remembered how moved I was by listening to Angelou as her words bloomed into that cold, bright Washington DC morning. I was in my little studio apartment in San Diego, sitting on my bed, watching that event on the TV, with it's rabbit ear antenna pointing toward the ceiling. I remember where I was sitting, and the quality of the light in the room, like it was yesterday.

We mulled over the realization that - since we both remembered where we were during Clinton's first inauguration so clearly - Obama's would be one of those impossible to forget, tattooed-onto-your-memory kind of events that we looked forward to with hearts trembling with joy.

Re-reading "On The Pulse of Morning" again yesterday, with a mind to our newly minted President Elect with his hand raised and speaking the oath of office, made me tear up.

* * *

ON THE PULSE OF MORNING
Maya Angelou

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning

I'd pay to see that

Excerpt from Peter Woodward: Straight from the Shoulder, text of a 2002 interview by Alex von Thorn.

You have such a diverse body of work that during my research, I had trouble getting a handle on it all. If we could imagine a definitive Peter Woodward magnum opus, what would it look like?

I would be stark naked. I would be carrying a very large sword, on a stage, being filmed, and with a History Channel executive fretting in the background.

Snippets of Woodwardian Goodness

My sincerest thanks to a good friend in Australia, who pointed me in the direction of this video on au.youtube.com.

It took a LONG time to finish buffering the video (I guess the interwebs were slow from Australia tonight). But for a Peter Woodward junkie like m'self, it was well worth the wait, since it includes a few snippets of his work that I hadn't seen before.

GleeeEEeeEEeEEEeeee!!!

Pssst... There's a very little tiny bit of swearing in one of the clips. Just so you know.

Michael Palin for President

Well... how about VP? No offense, Biden.

Palin

Palin

This shirt is made of awesome!
Click on the photo to read more about it.

And yes, that is Mr. Michael Palin. I haven't gone over to the dark side.

in a world without cheezburgers

That's my Mister and our rattie, Talia. Click on the photo if you want to see it (and vote on it) on icanhascheezburger.com. Or don't. I'm just sayin' it, just in case :)

* * *

In to some sad news, I just heard that Don laFontaine has passed away. The quintessential voice of modern movie trailers, laFontaine's name might not be familiar to all, but anyone in the US who watches TV, listens to commercial radio, or watches movies has heard his voice.

From Wikipedia:

He also appeared on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on May 14, 2005, where he played "Not my job" (a game in which famous people have to accurately answer questions totally unrelated to their chosen professions). The prize (for a listener, not the contestant) is "Carl Kassel's voice on your home answering machine". LaFontaine did not win the game, and offered to do the answering machine message himself instead.

I remember hearing that episode of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! I think it was the first time I had a name to go with the voice of the "In A World" guy. With that show, laFontaine was no longer just an amazing voice actor, but a human being with a great sense of humor. I've been a fan ever since.

Rest in peace, In A World Guy.

Image care of Wikimedia Commons

Joss Whedon strikes again

I'm a little late in tuning in to Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Act 3 was released today, so I saw the full series in one shot. I gather it will be on the web for just a short time, and then will be distributed via a web download for a small fee*. The Mister and I both loved it - no surprise given some of the blog posts I'd already seen floating around about it. We couldn't stop laughing, the cast were all delightful in their roles, and the songs are now stuck firmly in my brainpan. So, since it's not going to be viewable on the web indefinitely, we bought all three acts through iTunes for very few shiny gold rocks.

If you hold your geekhood dear, don't miss seeing this super musical miniseries.

J!NX is currently out of stock on all of the women's Dr. Horrible t-shirts**. I hope that means they've just not received them yet, and not that they've already sold out.

In other news, I received a copy of Photoshop CS3 for my birthday so I will probably spend a big chunk of the weekend pushing buttons and exploring new options and features that I've only drooled over until now (I have been using Photoshop 7 for ages, which is many revisions out of date). And we've got our tickets already to see The Dark Knight in Imax tomorrow.


edit 20080731:
*It's available on the web again for free. Go see it!!!
** Jinx got more shirts in. Ours are on their way.

dvd eve

I spent the evening watching The Patriot on DVD. I guess it was the whole Mel Gibson film, caricature of good and pure heroes vs. sadists and buffoons impression I got of the story that put me off since it's in a pseudo-historical context. I dislike historical fiction that wanders so far off into the "fiction" department that it comes off like a skewed propaganda film. So I'd avoided it until now.

That said, I decided it was time to watch it since it's a film with Peter Woodward in it that I hadn't seen yet. And to my surprise, I quite liked it, despite it's living up to my initial pessimistic impressions of the plot. I had to decide going into it that I was going to watch it as a "fantasy" film, rooted in no way in actual history, which helped.

Of course I enjoyed Peter Woodward's performance as General O'Hara. That's a no-brainer. But how is it I'd never heard before that along with Mr. Woodward, it also has Jason Isaacs in it? Or Adam Baldwin, Rene Auberjonois and Heath Ledger? That's what I get for ignoring it based on it being a Mel Gibson flick.

And as for Jason Isaacs... his performance as the vile and dastardly Colonel Tavington was yummy... er I mean very well done. Can't really root for Tavington... he's too good at being dag nasty evil for that, but he makes you love to hate him.

I would have liked to see where the heck the film was trying to go with Adam Baldwin's character, Captain Wilkins. Wilkins seemed to be rolling along on a trajectory toward a climax of character development of some sort, but it felt to me like that ride never quite made it to its destination.

So for the film in general, how to rate it? Out of 5 points I'd say it gets negative 3 for historical accuracy. The plot is predictable and disappointing, so no points there. But for yummy villains it gets a 5. So if my math is right that ends up with a final score of 2.

brains, bandages and robin hood

Did I mention that the only thing my brain MRI found was a brain? Happy news, that, even if it does mean we still can't explain my wacky test results and symptoms.

I'm lying on the couch with my leg elevated right now and wrapped like a mummy because my lymphedema has gone nuts. I got a crash course today on lymphedema wound care when what should have been a tiny scratch became an big nuisance. Not infected, and I won't go into the gritty details here [edit: click the photo of the first aid kit if you want details], but suffice it to say I've got more layers of bandages on that little scratch now than I had for my laprascopic port incisions after my surgery.



I've been watching an episode of Robin Hood on BBC America - via my DVR - while my leg is elevated. The episode I have right now is "Get Carter" and I must say it's one of the better episodes in this series so far, IMHO.

The series has it's pros and cons. Notably, on the pro side, is Richard Armitage as Guy of Gisborne. Hubba hubba. (Wait, did I say that out loud?) Also, the Sheriff of Nottingham is ridiculously, selfishly, snivelingly evil (in a good way), and is well played by Keith Allen. The story lines for each show are entertaining and sometimes pretty creative.

On the down side, Marian's makeup, hair and costumes are often so modern as to make her fit in like a shoe vendor at a snake convention. Other random characters periodically wander through wearing equally out of place clothes. I mean, I'm not particular about the costumes being historically accurate for the period. It's a fantasy story, after all. But Marian frequently looks like she didn't get the memo about the theme of the party.

Lucy Griffiths as Marian, however, seems well suited to her role. I quite like Griffiths, and the rest of the cast, though I don't find Jonas Armstrong as Robin very compelling. He's growing on me in the role in the latest season, but he's still the weakest link in the cast for me. Maybe I'm being to hard on him? I think Michael Praed cemented himself in my brain as Robin of Loxley in the 1980's Robin of Sherwood series.

Suggested listening for this post: Re Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton and/or Oo-De-Lally by Roger Miller (as Alan-a-Dale in Disney's animated version of Robin Hood).

ups and downs

Peter Murphy
in Minneapolis - 2008

Let him shout a rage so strong
A rage that knows no right or wrong
And take a little piece of you

~Peter Murphy, "A Strange Kind of Love", Deep

* * *

My friend and I went for a fabulous dinner at Nami before the Peter Murphy show on Monday at the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis.

I don't get out much lately. I got lucky and had a better than average day, health-speakingly-wise, and Peter Murphy is hands-down my favorite musician, so the evening had a celebratory feeling to it. And dinner was, in a word, splendid.

Even though I took it easy, I was a wreck the next day. But this was one of those events that was well worth it.

The audience was small but enthusiastic. The intimate setting allowed a lot of folks to be close to the stage without being squashed. There were people there from 18 to late middle age, in all sorts of modes of dress from goth to "just got off work at a 9-to-5", jeans & t-shirt, to miniskirt and combat boots. There were tables and chairs, dinner, cheesecake and drinks being served before the opening performer, Ali Eskandarian, started his set. Everyone watched from their tables or the bar while Eskandarian played, but abandoned their seats just before Peter took the stage.

When Peter performed "A Strange Kind of Love", there was nothing strange about the rapt expressions in the crowd.

The volume of the music overwhelmed Peter's voice just a bit from where I was standing, but it was wonderful being so close. And what a lovely voice he still has after all these years! We could easily see the blue of his eyes and his expressions as he sang.

The acoustics may have been better further back, but there's something more human about the experience up close. That said, I'm not one of those people who thinks celebrities owe it to everyone to be touchy-feely, probably because I'd hate being constantly grasped at by strangers. I know, price of fame, blah blah blah. IMHO, shaking hands upon being introduced is one thing, but just grabbing at a person who doesn't know you would be uncomfortable for me. And Peter Murphy is fairly well known by his long-time fans for being a private person. So I was impressed by how few people in the audience tried to take advantage of the lack of a barrier between us and Peter. One tall fellow pushed his way up in front of me, jumped up and down (squishing my toes - not my puffy foot, thankfully - a few times) spent some time trying to get Peter to touch his outstretched hand, and then drifted off to another spot after Peter finally did so. The few others who tried reaching for him were more willing to take the hint when Peter looked at them but did not reach back.

My favorite songs of the night: Huuvola, Crystal Wrists, and She's in Parties.

* * *

In other news I am scheduled for an MRI tomorrow evening. Results should be back from that on Friday afternoon or Monday.

U.S. RDA of Iron Man

Colbert / Iron Man 2008
Presidential Ticket

Just got back from the theater where I met my U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance of Iron Man.

I have too many hobbies. One of the things I've always thought was cool, but never had much room in my free time and/or budget for was comic books. So I'm not hip to the Iron Man scene like a proper comic book geek would be.

That said, even without a proper foundation in Tony Stark History 101, the movie Iron Man was awesome. The special effects, while critical to the movie, didn't overwhelm the rest of the film, which had plenty of substance, humor, tension, plot (!) and good acting to carry itself respectably as more than a special effects flick. The script didn't pander to the lowest common denominator in the audience, either, IMHO, which was a bonus. I got the feeling that the creators of the Iron Man movie gave us more credit for functioning brain cells than most summer films tend to do. Not that it was highbrow. They just didn't dumb things down and drive plot points in with a piledriver when an artificially intelligent sledgehammer sized fist would do.

The humor appealed to both my funny bone, and my Mister's, which isn't a given. And it had the rest of the theater laughing at all the appropriate moments, too, which also isn't always a given.

I agree with some critics I've read who've said that the score was uninspiring. My Mister disagreed on that point. He did take it well, however, when I said I thought Iron Man was a better film than Transformers, which for the record, I also enjoyed. Maybe it's because Iron Man was more of a "grown up" film -- all things being relative. I can't help but make the comparison, though, because of the nature of the special effects.

I did find a few of the product placements in Iron Man a bit on the obvious side, which is just a bit distracting for me. Only because my brain starts involuntarily playing "spot the product placement" as soon as one leaps off the screen at me, and I can't stop noticing them after that. But promotion of consumer goods is a part of the whole entertainment package now, even more than ever. And if they were too subtle, they wouldn't work as product placements. So I don't have any illusions that they're going to go away any time soon.

No spoilers here. Just stay put for the whole rolling of the credits.

Oh, and one more thing. Some folks have noticed this already, I guess, but apparently I wasn't paying attention. Has Robert Downey Jr. always been dead sexy? Or is that the Tony Stark mystique?

My mister meets A B

Alton Brown at the Mall of America
Originally uploaded by Zwierdo

My Mister met one of his culinary role models two days ago. Alton Brown came to the Mall of America for a book signing, and Z got to attend, book to be signed and camera in hand. He came home an even more enthusiastic fan than he had been.

I'd've gone, too, but my lymphedema has been so puffy lately that I really didn't think it was wise to stand around in line all evening. Z said the line was so long, and so slow, that even though we'd both have liked me to be there, I made the right choice.

Not that my Mister was complaining. He loved the talk A.B. gave before the signing, and a slow line in this case was just indicative of Alton giving each person in line his individual attention. Certainly can't complain about that. But my leg would have been pretty unhappy by the end of a long evening standing around if I had gone.

At least I got to enjoy Z's photos.

Random pondering on names

Just found out Peter Murphy is going to be in Minneapolis on June 16th, so my coworker and I are going to go see that show. I haven't seen him in concert since the Bauhaus reunion tour. I get to see my two favorite (living) people named Peter in two months. Peter Murphy in June, and Peter Woodward in July. How lucky is that?!?

How is it I'm so often fascinated by men named Peter? Peter Woodward. Peter Murphy. Peter Cushing. Peter Lorre. I have a few photos of each of these men in my celeb folder on my computer, and framed photos of P. Lorre and P. Murphy on my walls (the latter is autographed).

I can't think of any other celebrities who interest me enough to have saved a photo or two here and there who have names that repeat. A quick inventory turns up:

• Adam Baldwin
• Alan Rickman
• Boris Karloff
• Christian Bale
• Christopher Lee
• Derek Jakobi
• Frank Langella
• Gary Oldman
• George Takei (primarily a voice fixation)
• Hugo Weaving
• Ian McKellen
• James Callis
• Jeremy Irons
• Johnny Depp
• Ken Watanabe
• Liam Neeson
• Nigel Bennett
• Richard Armitage (the actor, not the former US Deputy Secretary of State)
• Rutger Hauer
  
• Yul Brynner

Add a couple of random photos of Milo Ventimiglia, Sendhil Ramamurthy, David Bowie, and Anthony Bourdain, and one single shot of Jason Isaacs. That list covers all of the male faces of interest in my photo files... No name repeats except for Peter.

Note: Of all the above mentioned photos, the only ones I took myself are the shots of Tony Bourdain. I'm no paparazzo. I just click and save the occasional photo off the intertubes.

FAIR DINKUM AUSSIE YARNS...

FAIR DINKUM AUSSIE YARNS FROM
DOWNUNDER: "PEGGY, THE AMAZING
SPIDER- WASHERWOMAN"
Originally uploaded by zero g

I love this photo by Zero G beyond all reason. No idea why. Maybe it's something subliminal related to it having the word "yarn" in it's title? Anyway, something about the fuzzy little spider butt in the clothes pin just tickles me. Add to it Z.G.'s comments on "Peggy, The Amazing Spider-Washerwoman" and it just makes me smile. After visiting the photo about 10 times it demanded to be blogged.

Dinner is cooking in the rice cooker, it's snowing again, and my DVR just finished recording episode two of The Great Pharaohs of Egypt (aka The Greatest Pharaohs). I was planning on recording it to watch it this evening anyway, and also have episode one waiting for me to watch while I knit after dinner, but I was delighted to find out today that it was narrated by Frank Langella.

Langella is one of those men who's voice is so appealing I could happily listen to him read copyright law. So how did I not know he'd done the narration for a four-part documentary on ancient Egypt? Glee!

Match It For Pratchett

People ask me why I announced that I had Alzheimer’s. My
response was: why shouldn’t I? I remember when people died "of
a long illness" now we call cancer by its name, and as every
wizard knows, once you have a thing's real name you have the first
step to its taming. We are at war with cancer, and we use that
vocabulary. We battle, we are brave, we survive. And we have a
large armaments industry.
-- Terry Pratchett, in his speech to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust
Network conference, March 13, 2008

Read the rest of his speech.

Visit Match It For Pratchett.org for more information about Pratchett's $1 million (£500,000) donation to Alzheimer's research, and his fans' commitment to matching that donation.

Match It For Pratchett is a grass roots campaign raising money for the Alzheimer's Research Trust in the UK and other Alzheimer's charities around the world. --Chris Tregenza of MI4P

As the granddaughter of a man who died in the grips of Alzheimer's disease, I ask you to donate something, if not to MI4P, then directly to the Alzheimer's fund of your choice. If everyone gave just a little, it would add up to an awful lot very quickly.

Back from NC

Wedded
Originally uploaded by Pockafwye

I'm back from North Carolina, and back at work.

My cousin and his lovely bride survived the three-ring-circus that wedding planning so often becomes, and the ceremony itself was beautiful.

I got a chance to meet up with some old friends of the family I hadn't seen since childhood, and got to finally meet a close friend of my cousin's about whom I'd heard many good things. I'm slowly sorting through all the photos I took, and will be posting them to flickr in small batches.

The cake, by the way, was truly the yummiest cake I've ever had at a wedding, and was made by the groom himself.

I caught a sinus cold while I was there, but fortunately it didn't hit until after the wedding.

Ever since my surgery last year, I'm prone to nightmares when I'm under stress. There was an event during my trip--unrelated to the wedding itself, thank goodness--that really shook me up, and that's all I'm going to say about it here, except that now I'm having nightmares again.

Last night's dream was an epic-length affair about being hunted through Southern California chaparral and steep, dry hills, occasionally broken up by various suburban settings. In the dream I was captured by, escaped from, and then spent the rest of the dream fleeing from a group of terrorists, who had apparently hired David Carradine (à la his Kill Bill period) as their hit man. I woke up several times, but dropped right back into the dream where it left off each time. There was someone with me who had also escaped, and we were helping each other avoid recapture.

I usually associate David Carradine with the Kung Fu TV series, having grown up watching and re-watching it in re-runs, and Kwai Chang Caine is as un-menacing a character as I can imagine. So when I woke I was a bit surprised by my sleeping brain's choice of casting Carradine as my pursuer. I was able to see Carradine's face, incidentally. Third time in as many weeks that I've seen someone's face in my dreams, so I think faces are going to become a semi-regular feature.

At any rate, I'm going to do my best to get my sleep patterns back under control before the nightmares snowball again.

Lunch break is over. Time to get back to work.

Faces

I never see faces in my dreams.

I see people's hair, their clothes, bodies, etc. and I know just who they are, if applicable to the dream. It never seems odd to me in the dream that I can't see faces. But I can count on one hand the number of times I can remember seeing someone's face in a dream.

One was yesterday. One was this morning. Odd.

Yesterday, just before my alarm went off, a character wandered into my dream who had ice-blue eyes with white pupils, and who's face seemed to have bits of latex glued to it. His eyes were hard to look at (maybe because I'm not used to being able to see eyes at all in a dream?) My Mister was there (no face) and the three of us had a fairly mundane conversation (on the deck of a schooner) that was interrupted when I woke up.

This morning was one of those epic length dreams with an unusual level of continuity for a dream. It involved attending a dog show, then going to a theatrical performance that was over-rated so we left early, and ended up with us watching something on a TV in a swanky bar. My company was, of all people, Geraint Wyn Davies and a wealthy 50-something lady friend of his. There were lots of details in the dream that stand out for having been clearer than usual, like the screen and buttons on my cell phone when I turned it off at the theater. And I could very clearly see Mr. Davies' face through the whole dream.

Geraint Wyn Davies? I haven't even seen anything with him in it for ages. Most of the TV he's in is either not shown in the US, or is on the Sundance channel, which we don't have as part of our cable package.

Yes, I used to watch Forever Knight. I'm a fan of vampire fiction, film, and tv shows, and I've seen every episode of F.K. more than once. He's nice to look at. Has a nice voice. But I was always more of a Nigel Bennett fan (he played the quirky, antagonist vampire to Davies' protagonist role.) And I'm sure I haven't seen an F.K. episode in several years.

So why, of all the people who could show up in a dream actually sporting a face (his own, even) would my brain pick Geraint Wyn Davies?

Dreams. Go figure.

Zero G on Triple R FM

I'm logged in to the website for Triple R FM to listen to this week's Zero G program. I have it on good authority (i.e. a post by Rob Jan on the Peter Woodward Photo Collective) that there will be a two part interview with Peter Woodward aired this week and next. Lucky for me, Monday afternoon there is a reasonable hour Sunday night here, so I get to listen to it via the magical tubes of the interweb.

Ack! It's starting! Gotta go.