Weekend entertainment

Does anyone know when-abouts vividcon is going to post the themes for this year's vid shows? Seems late, no? I'm having trouble focusing on what my next project should be from about six options in various stages of (non-)completion, and knowing that one could fit a vid show theme would help.

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Went to see two enjoyable things this weekend:

1.

Masters of Tradition, a touring concert with some of Ireland's best musicians and my favorite male Irish singer from back in the Afro Celt Sound System days, Iarla O'Lionaird. This being about the roots of Irish music rather than contemporary world fusion, he did stripped-down sean nos pieces and a beautiful rendition of "Siuil a Ruin." I like him best when he lets his voice open up.

Other favorites included a haunting performance of "Gol na mBan san Ar" (The Lament of the Women at the Slaughter) by David Power on an antique set of uilleann pipes. (This is the melody, but imagine it five times smoother.) (daasgrrl, cover your ears.) Also the entire pre-intermission set with brilliant fiddler Martin Hayes and accompanying guitarist Dennis Cahill, but particularly the sea shanty-ish slip jig from 14:30-16:25 and the really fast stuff in the last two minutes. Last, a fun Celtic interpretation of George Frederick "Patrick" Handel's "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from the Mairtin O'Connor trio.

O'Connor offered a music joke while Hayes tuned up later: "If you have the right key, you can get into any flat." Retort from bandmate Seamie O'Dowd: "If you're sharp, you can also get into any flat."

The other funny thing was I'd been sitting there thinking about how yet another benefit of living in the Boston area again is the rich Irish arts culture, and how if I'd still been in DC I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to hear Iarla et al. But then O'Dowd related an anecdote about how, just the night before, they'd played in Silver Spring and cheered at the sight of Sligo Avenue.

2.

Muppets Most Wanted. They had me at the Swedish Chef's Seventh Seal reference. Also, so many cameos, in keeping with the Muppet Show of yore. (Me: Who's that guy in the gulag who looks like Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords? IMDB: Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.) It was funny, and I enjoyed the Have you seen this chicken?-style gag. Only major complaint is that it did better at those cameos and genre spoofs and international relations jokes and meta references than it did at having a heart-driven plot or consistently good songs. (Compare the excellent interrogation number to the "I'm #1/You're #2" duet or Tina Fey's intro.) Also, same as the last movie, the sound balance was off so it was often hard to hear the lyrics. But it did come back around to the heart in the end.

Also also, Muppet CGI = NO. Part of the charm of the Muppets is practically being able to feel the texture of the puppets -- Kermit's fuzz, Rolf's ears, Fozzie's fur, Scooter's plastic eyes, Piggy's hair -- and seeing the wires when they do whole-body shots. The bit with Constantine the ninja worked because it was supposed to be ridiculous, but doing Kermit in CGI so he could tap dance on a bannister not only looked bad, it took some of the fun out of it.

Vids indexed & links updated

Fannish accomplishment of the day: All my vids are indexed at the AO3! Until the archive lets you sort a user's works by media type, I created a series for them.

This involved (1) excavating my first five vids (from House/Wilson to The Professional to SGA tentacles), which were made with the wrong aspect ratios and terrible codecs and sometimes interlacing, and which were also gone from the internet after blip.tv deleted everyone's stuff a few months ago. Remastering the clips would have been too much work, but I was at least able to (2) fix the aspect ratios on the divx files (mostly) and (3) re-save as mp4s. Those got uploaded to the Vimeo collection, so (4) that index is now complete too. It's just too bad Vimeo doesn't let you backdate; the oldest, worst-looking stuff comes up first now, and later it'll be all mixed up in the middle of an otherwise chronological list. [/OCD] Anyway, last but not least, (5) all the download links on the AO3 and LJ pages should be functional from Mediafire in place of poor broken Megaupload. Well, no, last but not least will be (6) filling in caption files.

Everything remains indexed under the "vid" tag here too, of course.

If you notice something's broken, do let me know and I will fix!

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Now back to this work thing while in the background Sisko tries to teach everyone how to play baseball.

P.S. Finished A Game of Thrones and started A Clash of Kings. Starting to feel that itch of impatience, but at the same time it's hard to put down.