bironic

I got to hang out for most of the day in a video production studio, and felt no hesitation in asking the guys questions relevant to vidding. And work. But also vidding.

That was a great change of pace. But since the rest of my tasks had to be squeezed in afterwards, I got home almost three hours late. I'm doomed to miss fangirl Fridays forever.

Speaking of vidding, with two free weekends and Veterans Day on the horizon, my fannish goals are to work on either the SGA flashfic or the House WIP from like three years ago that has been late for as many Halloweens, or to work on the SGA vid-in-progress that has a Statement to Make. All gen.

It's been strange and wonderful and a little angsty lately as I slowly open myself up again to a wider variety of interests than I've let myself focus on the last couple of years because of work and school and new career. For example, poetry podcasts at Slate. There is Robert Pinsky -- once upon a time I could do a killer Pinsky impression -- reading an old favorite of mine, "Jubilate Agno," a poem so wonderfully weird that I'm breaking my "no cats on LJ" rule to recommend it to you now if you don't know it. I miss poetry so much.

ETA: And nobody told me that was the wrong link! Fixed now. It had linked to another neat article at Slate, about the Levi's commercials that've been using Whitman poems.

And I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, finally. Beautiful and horrific, and messes with your head with its unresolved arguments about storytelling and truth and war and writing. Is what he wrote true? What is "true"? Does it matter? Why? Just don't read before bed, alone, in the dark, like I kept doing. The ghosts feel closer that way. Or actually, maybe that's the perfect way to do it.

Starting to watch movies again, too. TV has lately been good for stuff like New York City Serenade (Sebastian!) (dir. Frank Whaley, RSL's old buddy), Ordinary People, a documentary about Bon Jovi, and an Alien marathon. Now the nearby American Film Institute is having a European film festival, and I think I'll pick up some tickets. Any recommendations from the AFI calendar? (Euro are in blue.) I am thinking some combination of Piggies, Dragon, Parnassus, John Rabe, Infer, Disco, maybe Bluebeard or Ander.

Music, only a little. There aren't many radio stations in the area. At least at this new job you can stream radio, so I've been putting the classical station on quietly in the background. (Once upon a time, I thought of comparing fanfiction to radio, where gen was classical -- people keep thinking they don't think like it, but when they start listening to it, it's hard to go back to the other stuff -- darkfic was the heavy metal/alt rock stations, fluff was easy listening, meta was NPR or talk radio, and the everyday forgettable sort of average stories were the pop stations. And of course a ton of them are love songs.)

Anyway, took a walk down memory lane this week when Richard Shindell rolled into town(ish) on his annual fall tour. Fellow folk singer Antje Duvekot opened. I hadn't heard of her, nor had I heard of last year's opener, Caroline Herring, but from now on I'm trusting his taste because I enjoyed them both and loved at least one song from each ("Sex Bandaid" from Antje, which I sadly can't find on YouTube, and "Paper Gown" by Caroline).

Richard's show was maybe my least favorite of the times I've seen him, front-loaded on the new album and heavy with the more repetitive, blander stuff. Blander to me, anyway; those songs always get requested when he takes requests. He forgot lyrics more than usual, too. Still, he's always a pleasure to listen to. He did do "Mavis," and a punchy minor-chord rendition of the usually bluegrass "Waiting for the Storm" made the whole show worth it. If he'd recorded it that way, the song would be in my top ten. I wish I could find a recording of that version.

I know I've pushed his stuff on you before, but here is some more. Or rather, here is a lot of it again. hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=W082KLK6 (change the x's)

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ETA: Oh, Dee, duh, I was going to include "Fishing," one of the great extended metaphors of modern folk. Says me.

Wow, this post took much longer to write than it should have.

I was going to write tonight. Instead, here is some music for you by one of my favorite folk/rock/country singer-songwriters, Richard Shindell. This is the kind of stuff you're most likely to find in my CD/media player on any given day. His voice may not be to everyone's liking, being somewhat nasal along the lines of Gordon Lightfoot, but he's a damn clever songwriter, an excellent guitar player, and a sweet, humble, funny guy. Seriously, if you like any of this, go buy some of his albums; he's releasing them by himself these days, and could surely use the support.

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And plenty more where these came from, if this post goes over well.

Note: These files all came out as .wma instead of .mp3 (except "Fishing") because I wasn't paying attention and am too lazy to redo them. Let me know if you want to listen and can't open them in that format.

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Randomly, here's a pair of songs by a rock band called The Exit off their CD "Home for an Island." If I were making a John Sheppard fanmix, these would be on the playlist. I'm not making a fanmix, though, because these would be the only songs on the playlist.

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ETA: Re-uploaded as mp3's with somewhat higher quality. These don't sound as good in my computer headphones as they do in my car, where I've been listening to them. *shrug*

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You don't have to comment if you're downloading, but I'd very much like to know what you think of anything you listen to.



P.S. At long last, this journal now has the design I like in "front" and the plain Verdana-font layout on the "inside." That was on purpose, in case you're wondering. I've been getting itchy with the way the text got squished and crowded, especially for stories and poems. When you're reading your own journal in ?format=light, it's time to do something. :)