Playing ketchup
Mar. 21st, 2008 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicReason #142 why my f-list is cool: One day last week, one person posted that the temperature with wind chill was -83.9 C/-119 F, and another person posted that it was 40 C/104 F.
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After receiving some good news last Friday that I can't talk about yet except under friends-lock lest people at work see it, I had a nice weekend. The weather on Saturday was pitch-perfect spring, warm in the sun with a crisp breeze, so when my dad and I turned over the garden and planted peas, we didn't even need the jackets we'd worn outside. We had lemonade (mm; 1.5 c fresh-squeezed lemon juice to 5 c water to 1 c sugar = lip-smacking heaven in a pitcher) and barbequed burgers that night.
(On the official first day of spring yesterday, it sun-sleeted on us on the way home, and the wind blew in heavy gusts all night.)
Sunday morning I made some carrot ginger soup, which is a vivid orange and quite tasty, even if our hand puréer didn't quite purée all the bits of ginger and carrot. It's made of carrots, onion or leek, ginger, chicken broth and orange juice, all blended together, and good hot or cold. Yum.
Then it was off to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to see Patrick Stewart in Macbeth with ten of the NYC fangirls crew. What a strange staging. It seemed like they tried to do with Macbeth on stage what Ian McKellen did with Richard III on film, only McKellen's was much better. The play took place in a dingy cement-and-stainless-steel bunker-like room in the ... '40s? with an elevator in the back on stage right and a television on a refrigerator on stage left. The characters dressed alternately in battle gear (olive trench coats and rifles) and formalwear (lovely gowns for Lady Macbeth and dress uniforms and tuxes for the men-folk). The set, costumes, special effects (e.g. video projections of Fascist and Communist parades), interpretations (e.g. a torture-interrogation to find out where the princes fled, and the filthy/disgusting rather than drunk/funny porter ended up serving at the king and queen's side to show how far they'd sunk) and mood effectively portrayed how easily a government can fall into corruption and depravity with murder, fear and madness ruling the day, where even the most elaborate feasts and festivities hung heavy with nervousness, and there were some truly creepy and gory scenes (e.g. the Weird Sisters, who were nurses, pronouncing Macbeth's fate as they let a wounded soldier die or reanimated corpses in body bags, and a flash of the screaming Macduff children being murdered), but some of the choices were just bizarre, and they didn't always cohere. For instance, in the transition from Banquo's murder—which took place on a train in front of a carload of civilians—to dinner at the castle, the company sang a solemn/forceful Russian political song redolent of DOOM and then took their seats. And the Weird Sisters were ... well, weird. I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to be snickering when they gave Macbeth his second three predictions while rapping and zapping dead people. (It was almost effective. Almost. They needed to tone it down.)
It wasn't awful; it just wasn't that great, either. Without Patrick Stewart, I don't think they'd have gotten this far or garnered as good reviews as they have. He performed excellently, though with excessive groping of the wife. He absolutely captured the essential tragedy in the character, the moments where he decided to take fate into his own hands and push forward no matter how much blood it entailed contrasting with the moments where he balked at his actions/plans and let his wife bully him into continuing; shifting from surprise and hope to plotting to corruption to guilt to egomania to being quite conscious of the irony in his defeat. At times, he delivered soliloquies while performing complicated tasks such as tying a bow-tie and making a sandwich (which he and the two Banquo-murderers-to-be promptly ate). The other actors were good, although I know some people weren't happy with Lady Macbeth's over-the-top performance or the way she started out manly and angry so that she didn't undergo much of the transition to a murderess that would explain her eventual breakdown. She did enjoy most of the play's funny lines, though, such as a deadpan "You've displaced the mirth," and a scene where she was arguing with her husband and plotting to kill the king and then brought out a cheerful chocolate cake from the fridge and walked arm-in-arm with him into the dining room.
My favorite scene was when Banquo's ghost appeared. As the elevator descended with the ghost inside, the lights flickered and blood like food dye in water undulated across the walls in a video projection. Then the bloodied, pale Banquo leapt onto the table and strode forward until he stood before Macbeth. Macbeth stood and shouted in shock, knocking his chair over. Intermission.
(It would have been even more powerful an image if they hadn't rewound and replayed the entire scene in Act II without the ghost. The second go-round did highlight the silence and discomfort the dinner guests felt while Macbeth was off to the side with the Banquo-murderer, but there was really no reason they couldn't have achieved the same effect by only going back a few lines.)
Well, they got a standing ovation, and they're headed to Broadway next. Good luck to them.
Afterwards, we had quick drinks around the corner, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
barely_bean, krisdia and I stuck around for a lovely dinner in which we trashed discussed several SGA fics and compared multidisciplinary/integrated/honors programs from our college days, among other things.
.
I did finally watch the SGA season finale and liked it. I'm sure I'll have something to say about it eventually.
.
This week, A Helping Hand became my first fic to reach three pages of comments. Yay!
Then someone was looking for Substitute (a.k.a. the SGA PWP with the golf club) on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sgastoryfinders. jadesfire2808 fortuitously linked to my website when she answered the call, so I was able to track page hits. Check out these statistics:
- Three people followed the link back to my LJ and commented.*
- There were 260 hits on that page on the website that day.**
- Five to ten people went on to read my other two SGA fics. No comments on either of those.
I'm not complaining, not at all; those are thrilling numbers. I just think it's interesting to see another instance of the low comment-to-hit ratio, and wish again that LJ offered a unique-visitors counter.
*One of them asked, "Are you for real?" but I'm choosing to take that as a compliment, since it also said the story was hotter than it should've been.
**Actually, I'm surprised it got that many after the way the story sounded from the request.
.
Oh—and—very important question. Johnny Cash & John Denver singing "Country Roads": slashiest '70s country duet ever? I saw this recently on a John Denver PBS special and couldn't stop grinning at the way they were looking at each other while they sang. I did find it on YouTube for you (go to about 5:55 for the pre-song chat), but the picture quality's terrible; you can hardly make out their faces.
.
A happy Purim or Good Friday/early Easter to those of you who celebrate, happy spring break to those who are on them, happy long weekend to those who have one, happy birthday tokassrachel, and a very happy Friday to the rest.
.
After receiving some good news last Friday that I can't talk about yet except under friends-lock lest people at work see it, I had a nice weekend. The weather on Saturday was pitch-perfect spring, warm in the sun with a crisp breeze, so when my dad and I turned over the garden and planted peas, we didn't even need the jackets we'd worn outside. We had lemonade (mm; 1.5 c fresh-squeezed lemon juice to 5 c water to 1 c sugar = lip-smacking heaven in a pitcher) and barbequed burgers that night.
(On the official first day of spring yesterday, it sun-sleeted on us on the way home, and the wind blew in heavy gusts all night.)
Sunday morning I made some carrot ginger soup, which is a vivid orange and quite tasty, even if our hand puréer didn't quite purée all the bits of ginger and carrot. It's made of carrots, onion or leek, ginger, chicken broth and orange juice, all blended together, and good hot or cold. Yum.
Then it was off to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to see Patrick Stewart in Macbeth with ten of the NYC fangirls crew. What a strange staging. It seemed like they tried to do with Macbeth on stage what Ian McKellen did with Richard III on film, only McKellen's was much better. The play took place in a dingy cement-and-stainless-steel bunker-like room in the ... '40s? with an elevator in the back on stage right and a television on a refrigerator on stage left. The characters dressed alternately in battle gear (olive trench coats and rifles) and formalwear (lovely gowns for Lady Macbeth and dress uniforms and tuxes for the men-folk). The set, costumes, special effects (e.g. video projections of Fascist and Communist parades), interpretations (e.g. a torture-interrogation to find out where the princes fled, and the filthy/disgusting rather than drunk/funny porter ended up serving at the king and queen's side to show how far they'd sunk) and mood effectively portrayed how easily a government can fall into corruption and depravity with murder, fear and madness ruling the day, where even the most elaborate feasts and festivities hung heavy with nervousness, and there were some truly creepy and gory scenes (e.g. the Weird Sisters, who were nurses, pronouncing Macbeth's fate as they let a wounded soldier die or reanimated corpses in body bags, and a flash of the screaming Macduff children being murdered), but some of the choices were just bizarre, and they didn't always cohere. For instance, in the transition from Banquo's murder—which took place on a train in front of a carload of civilians—to dinner at the castle, the company sang a solemn/forceful Russian political song redolent of DOOM and then took their seats. And the Weird Sisters were ... well, weird. I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to be snickering when they gave Macbeth his second three predictions while rapping and zapping dead people. (It was almost effective. Almost. They needed to tone it down.)
It wasn't awful; it just wasn't that great, either. Without Patrick Stewart, I don't think they'd have gotten this far or garnered as good reviews as they have. He performed excellently, though with excessive groping of the wife. He absolutely captured the essential tragedy in the character, the moments where he decided to take fate into his own hands and push forward no matter how much blood it entailed contrasting with the moments where he balked at his actions/plans and let his wife bully him into continuing; shifting from surprise and hope to plotting to corruption to guilt to egomania to being quite conscious of the irony in his defeat. At times, he delivered soliloquies while performing complicated tasks such as tying a bow-tie and making a sandwich (which he and the two Banquo-murderers-to-be promptly ate). The other actors were good, although I know some people weren't happy with Lady Macbeth's over-the-top performance or the way she started out manly and angry so that she didn't undergo much of the transition to a murderess that would explain her eventual breakdown. She did enjoy most of the play's funny lines, though, such as a deadpan "You've displaced the mirth," and a scene where she was arguing with her husband and plotting to kill the king and then brought out a cheerful chocolate cake from the fridge and walked arm-in-arm with him into the dining room.
My favorite scene was when Banquo's ghost appeared. As the elevator descended with the ghost inside, the lights flickered and blood like food dye in water undulated across the walls in a video projection. Then the bloodied, pale Banquo leapt onto the table and strode forward until he stood before Macbeth. Macbeth stood and shouted in shock, knocking his chair over. Intermission.
(It would have been even more powerful an image if they hadn't rewound and replayed the entire scene in Act II without the ghost. The second go-round did highlight the silence and discomfort the dinner guests felt while Macbeth was off to the side with the Banquo-murderer, but there was really no reason they couldn't have achieved the same effect by only going back a few lines.)
Well, they got a standing ovation, and they're headed to Broadway next. Good luck to them.
Afterwards, we had quick drinks around the corner, and
barely_bean, krisdia and I stuck around for a lovely dinner in which we .
I did finally watch the SGA season finale and liked it. I'm sure I'll have something to say about it eventually.
.
This week, A Helping Hand became my first fic to reach three pages of comments. Yay!
Then someone was looking for Substitute (a.k.a. the SGA PWP with the golf club) on
sgastoryfinders. jadesfire2808 fortuitously linked to my website when she answered the call, so I was able to track page hits. Check out these statistics: - Three people followed the link back to my LJ and commented.*
- There were 260 hits on that page on the website that day.**
- Five to ten people went on to read my other two SGA fics. No comments on either of those.
I'm not complaining, not at all; those are thrilling numbers. I just think it's interesting to see another instance of the low comment-to-hit ratio, and wish again that LJ offered a unique-visitors counter.
*One of them asked, "Are you for real?" but I'm choosing to take that as a compliment, since it also said the story was hotter than it should've been.
**Actually, I'm surprised it got that many after the way the story sounded from the request.
.
Oh—and—very important question. Johnny Cash & John Denver singing "Country Roads": slashiest '70s country duet ever? I saw this recently on a John Denver PBS special and couldn't stop grinning at the way they were looking at each other while they sang. I did find it on YouTube for you (go to about 5:55 for the pre-song chat), but the picture quality's terrible; you can hardly make out their faces.
.
A happy Purim or Good Friday/early Easter to those of you who celebrate, happy spring break to those who are on them, happy long weekend to those who have one, happy birthday to
kassrachel, and a very happy Friday to the rest.
no subject
Date: Mar. 21st, 2008 04:46 pm (UTC)No Royal Shakespeare Company alumni, but last weekend I went to see the university's production of The Importance of Being Earnest, and it was charming :D
... and a happy Friday to you too!
Edited because the LJ spellchecker missed something the first time
no subject
Date: Mar. 21st, 2008 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 01:41 am (UTC)...though I had no idea comment ratios were that bad. O.o I mean, I know sometimes I'm bad, but not at a ratio of 1:28. *boggles*
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 01:48 am (UTC)But even if it's half as much... that's a lot more readers than commenters. (She said, clearly defining herself as a non-statistician.)
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 01:59 am (UTC)I don't mind the nature of a (re)interpretation so long as it works, you know? Modern or period or in another country, it just has to (a) have a reason it's been moved, and (b) be effective in whatever it's trying to do.
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 02:07 am (UTC)I think a lot of us fandomers are guilty of re-re-re-watching, and a lot of ficcers and vidders love reinterpretations, yes?
last weekend I went to see the university's production of The Importance of Being Earnest, and it was charming :D
That sounds lovely. Coincidentally, my manager's ... something-or-other, church maybe? is putting that on this weekend. The only time I saw that play was also a college production, in a tiny basement theater on campus. Hm -- actually, with the exception of Stephen Fry's Wilde, all of my Wilde experience happened in college.
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 02:13 am (UTC)Yes, agreed. I've had this discussion elsewhere before, and I think it's that I don't automatically give points just for 'trying something different' (as some people do) unless it actually works.
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 02:22 am (UTC)p.s. That's happy Saturday to you; I almost put that in the last paragraph, but ... didn't. :)
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 03:33 am (UTC)So, even if your counter doesn't distinguish IPs and 130 people refreshed the page twice, and 20 of them were folks who had already commented previously (because one of them wasn't me ^_^), that's 107/110 who didn't comment. Even though they loaded the page twice (we're assuming).
That's something on the order of ridiculous.
I have always assumed that fewer people comment on webhosted stories than on lj-posted ones. Maybe because they perceive more steps (even though it's the same number of clicks), maybe because they don't have other feedback right below the end of the story reminding them "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to comment now," or maybe because they don't know how long ago the story was posted and fear being out of date. (Though seriously, when's the last time any author/artist/vidder laughed at someone for commenting on their work weeks/months/years after it was posted? Time doesn't negate the warm and fuzzy feeling of being loved.)
Now I am desperate for more raw data. Moar!
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 12:52 pm (UTC)I believe these stats also vary on the kind of fic; the age of the fic (why do ppl not comment on old fic? why? =_=;;); the length of the fic; the way they found it; how much they've eaten that day; the pairing; etcetcetc. XD
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2008 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 23rd, 2008 07:16 am (UTC)Most fics are behind a cut, so that shouldn't be a problem. I think I should test this out.... not tonight. *stares at clock, willing it to move backward* God, I'm such a h0r for hard numbers.
no subject
Date: Mar. 27th, 2008 02:09 am (UTC)