Amanuensis's Journal

I watched two of the Amazon Prime Pilot Season pilots this weekend; Amy Sherman-Palladino should have a helluva hit with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, about a 1950s Jewish Manhattanite who finds her talent for stand-up comedy. I'm not saying it will be the next Gilmore Girls, but the concept is fresh and the dialogue deliciously funny. Please, everyone vote for it! It would be a tragedy if that one didn't get at least a season.

Oasis looked like the sort of SF series I would love, but I'm telling you, I can't take one more series that pretends to be hard SF and turns out to be "We traveled to a faraway place and all started seeing hallucinations of our loved ones" bizarro creepshow. No. No more of that ever, please! *goes back to waiting for the next season of Westworld instead*

I have to say, I loved Michelle Obama's fashion choice for the inauguration. It did everything it should--attractive but fashionably conservative: deep neutral colors, weather-appropriate, and in absolutely no way attempting to compete with the incoming first lady. A total "I am not in a contest, there is NO contest going on," right down to the hairstyle. I long to always show that degree of class.

At first I just wanted to type "GodfuckingDAMMIT 2016!" because I didn't think I could bear to compose anything else. But Carrie Fisher deserves better. Of course she was important to me because of Leia, how could I pretend otherwise? Carrie Fisher was stunningly funny and clever, she was dedicated to her art, and she was a survivor of so many unfair demons too...all those things, but above all she was my formative childhood fictional heroine, and no one else would have given us the same Leia, who taught me that you didn't have to be passive, you didn't have to take a backseat when you had better ideas that everyone else, and you didn't have to take shit from evil people just because it would keep you from being seen as sweet--I'm still trying to learn that one, but I remember her and she helps, oh yes she does.

We will all be weeping basket cases for Star Wars Episode VIII. It's fitting.

Those of you needing some kind of uplift for this heavy week: I highly, highly recommend going to see Arrival to remember that there is still amazing creativity and beauty in this world.


(*and jeremy renner's perfect dorky grin)

My region-free DVD player is one of the best purchases I ever made.



My (region 2) DVD of La Legende Du Roi Arthur arrived today! I've waited for this since I heard the littlest sample of the cast recording; I freakin' love the music so much. I'm watching it and singing along with every French lyric I can sort of catch, my French recognition being much worse than my speaking French, which is no longer up to much either. (For most of this show, though, you can just shout "MORGANNE!" every twenty seconds and you'll be right most of the time.)

I'm embarrassed because it's been nearly a year since I made a post. A year! No excuses for it, really. I've been in a consuming mode, not a creative one, but you think I could have at least had some MCU opinions or something. I still read my flist and scroll through tumblr, but I even managed to fall behind on those this month. I figure one "I aten't dead" post is excusable. (Also, I am wrestling with ImageShack to restore my photos that make up most of my image links here on the journal. Haven't abandoned anything!)

Cleaning my house and getting rid of things I don't need has become the thing that gets me closest to the feeling of creative satisfaction. Where are you, fiction thunderbolt?

I saw Matilda: The Musical onstage and loved it. Until I saw it I didn't know that a male actor played Miss Trunchbull, nor that s/he would look and sound like the love child of the Red Skull and Arnim Zola, which I can honestly say is an MCU slash mpreg pairing I never once imagined.

I decided to watch a more-obscure Kurosawa flick that I got from Netflix, The Bad Sleep Well. Ten minutes into it I'm going, "Holy crap, that's Phil Moscowitz!" I had no idea the guy had an actual career!

So I stood in front of the checkout guy at Barnes & Noble and presented the July/August Playboy magazine (with the Jeremy Renner interview, of course) for purchase and said, "I really am buying this for the interview, I know everyone says that but I had the compulsion to tell you anyway even though I know it doesn't matter to you in the least," and happily he had a good sense of humor and giggled with me.

I got podficced again, oh wow! This one lent itself well to audio, and the readers are GREAT, and it's got music and cover art!


Go listen!