5 things of which a post are made
Jan. 7th, 2014 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny1. For anyone looking for verisimilitude, below about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit is too cold to ride. (Below zero is too cold for ANYTHING.)
2. Our Formerly Feral Ninja was well taught by her Feralista Mama. On Saturday I found her with a dead mouse (!) in our bedroom (ZOMG!!!11!1!). She hadn't eaten it yet, thank goodness (because the only thing worse than a dead mouse is a dead regurgitated mouse, don't ask me how I know), but she was definitely giving me the fix my toy, biped look. I did not oblige her.
3. My dear friend and frequent enabler,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heresluck, gave mirrorthaw and me Season One of Elementary this holiday season. It took us a little more than a week to watch the whole thing, plus the special features (this is why it's a good thing I don't like many TV shows, because I am the opposite of will-power). I liked it a bunch. I liked the games it was playing with the source material; I adored Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and Aidan Quinn (and Jon Michael Hall also!, although his character is not in the slightest canonical). In some ways I liked it more than Sherlock, in some less. I may make a longer post about it at some point, but the thing I actually wanted to note here is not directly related to the show; it's something I noticed in the special features, something I knew but that it's good to be reminded of. It is very difficult to give an interesting answer to a general question. The actors and writers were getting thrown these slow underhand lobs over and over (you could tell by the answers they were giving), and it just didn't give them anything interesting to say (especially because they had to avoid spoilers). There was nothing they could hit out of the park. The set designer and the prop guy and the editor and the composer, on the other hand, who could talk about very specific details, were awesome. The composer actually demonstrated the way he puts music to a scene, which was very cool, but the best bit for me was the prop guy, who said, "Every prop has a ghost." By which he meant that, once you've established a prop, an object with which an actor interacts, it's a visual cue that tells its own part of the story without anything needing to be said. It was a tiny interview, but it was brilliant.
But nobody asked Jonny Lee Miller, in these tiny special feature interviews, specific questions about the choices he was making as an actor. Nobody asked the writers to talk specifically about how they wrote a particular episode, or how they decided what they were going to do with the bits of canon they chose to interpolate. (And there are some very interesting and specific questions that could be asked.) And so they couldn't really get beyond platitudes, like the platitudes Crash makes Nuke rehearse in Bull Durham. And it's worth remembering as a rule of thumb: to get interesting answers, you have to ask specific questions.
4. Things are better with my little Cthulhu machine. We tied the tentacles to the headboard with twine, and I can now roll over without encoiling myself. I still hate the fucker, but that's a different problem.
5. The present given me by 2013, like a cold dead squirrel on my pillow, is migraines! I now get migraines as part of my PMS package. Did you know, there is nothing cool about migraines at all? Nothing works on them except specific drugs, and those specific drugs can cause heart attacks and strokes by the inherent nature of what they are. (The first one I tried also made me so light-headed and woozy that I was no better off than I'd been with the migraine and its wicked little nail gun.) And mine last for days.
They aren't bad migraines. Even without the drugs, I'm not incapacitated. I'm not nauseated. The pain is, comparatively, not as bad as my menstrual cramps even now (and not even in the same league as the menstrual cramps I had in college, which routinely hit too serious for numbers).
But dear freaking Jesus is it annoying.
2. Our Formerly Feral Ninja was well taught by her Feralista Mama. On Saturday I found her with a dead mouse (!) in our bedroom (ZOMG!!!11!1!). She hadn't eaten it yet, thank goodness (because the only thing worse than a dead mouse is a dead regurgitated mouse, don't ask me how I know), but she was definitely giving me the fix my toy, biped look. I did not oblige her.
3. My dear friend and frequent enabler,
heresluck, gave mirrorthaw and me Season One of Elementary this holiday season. It took us a little more than a week to watch the whole thing, plus the special features (this is why it's a good thing I don't like many TV shows, because I am the opposite of will-power). I liked it a bunch. I liked the games it was playing with the source material; I adored Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and Aidan Quinn (and Jon Michael Hall also!, although his character is not in the slightest canonical). In some ways I liked it more than Sherlock, in some less. I may make a longer post about it at some point, but the thing I actually wanted to note here is not directly related to the show; it's something I noticed in the special features, something I knew but that it's good to be reminded of. It is very difficult to give an interesting answer to a general question. The actors and writers were getting thrown these slow underhand lobs over and over (you could tell by the answers they were giving), and it just didn't give them anything interesting to say (especially because they had to avoid spoilers). There was nothing they could hit out of the park. The set designer and the prop guy and the editor and the composer, on the other hand, who could talk about very specific details, were awesome. The composer actually demonstrated the way he puts music to a scene, which was very cool, but the best bit for me was the prop guy, who said, "Every prop has a ghost." By which he meant that, once you've established a prop, an object with which an actor interacts, it's a visual cue that tells its own part of the story without anything needing to be said. It was a tiny interview, but it was brilliant.But nobody asked Jonny Lee Miller, in these tiny special feature interviews, specific questions about the choices he was making as an actor. Nobody asked the writers to talk specifically about how they wrote a particular episode, or how they decided what they were going to do with the bits of canon they chose to interpolate. (And there are some very interesting and specific questions that could be asked.) And so they couldn't really get beyond platitudes, like the platitudes Crash makes Nuke rehearse in Bull Durham. And it's worth remembering as a rule of thumb: to get interesting answers, you have to ask specific questions.
4. Things are better with my little Cthulhu machine. We tied the tentacles to the headboard with twine, and I can now roll over without encoiling myself. I still hate the fucker, but that's a different problem.
5. The present given me by 2013, like a cold dead squirrel on my pillow, is migraines! I now get migraines as part of my PMS package. Did you know, there is nothing cool about migraines at all? Nothing works on them except specific drugs, and those specific drugs can cause heart attacks and strokes by the inherent nature of what they are. (The first one I tried also made me so light-headed and woozy that I was no better off than I'd been with the migraine and its wicked little nail gun.) And mine last for days.
They aren't bad migraines. Even without the drugs, I'm not incapacitated. I'm not nauseated. The pain is, comparatively, not as bad as my menstrual cramps even now (and not even in the same league as the menstrual cramps I had in college, which routinely hit too serious for numbers).
But dear freaking Jesus is it annoying.
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 07:23 pm (UTC)3. One of the small things I love about Elementary is that the vast majority of Joan Watson's wardrobe is wash-and-wear femme. When she takes things to the cleaners, there's a reason it's all Sherlock's things: because she knows better than that shit. She was a surgeon, she is an addiction counselor: she does not have time to iron, and she does not have time to squirm in an itchy blouse. And the times when she wears something blatantly dry-clean only are very revealing of character.
So many wardrobes for leading women on TV default to "what would this character think was pretty or awesome," and do not bother to ask, "Would she actually own that?" You see women cops wearing slacks and button-downs because that's what professional women wear--but the button-downs are tailored in ways that the particular character would not have the time to do, nobody has to work around "hey, tailored button-downs don't really work on my body type, I will find other options" because there's a wardrobe department--which is visually great, it's just a kind of a null set when it comes to characterization. And Lucy Liu's Joan Watson, whether it's her choice or wardrobe's, does not do that. It makes me so happy.
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Date: 2014-01-07 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-12 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 10:15 pm (UTC)I made it six episodes of Elementary, which is pretty good for me with a TV show, and I wandered off due to inattention rather than annoyance. Which is a way of saying I liked it. More than Sherlock, because it didn't offend me. And it did wonderful easy things like treating same-sex and interracial couples as PART OF THE LANDSCAPE rather than freaks.
I went for a walk today with Scott. The only inch of skin showing was across my cheekbones, and it really hurt.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-08 06:21 pm (UTC)It's up to nine! whole! degrees! here in the Upper Midwest today. Which, ridiculously, feels practically comfortable.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-08 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 10:50 pm (UTC)I will hop on and hack in some pretty ridiculous temperatures, but ~15degF is my cut-off for serious work. I've ridden below that and we survived, but nobody's muscles really warm up properly -- it's just not worth it to me.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-08 04:24 am (UTC)I had A Thought about Elementary, prompted by something
no subject
Date: 2014-01-10 12:09 am (UTC)I loved Elementary very much, mostly because the kind of detective/assistant relationship it portrayed is so different from the old-style genius/dumber-than-normal. Looking forward to your thoughts if you ever get to write about it.
Can't wait to read the Goblin Emperor! Good luck in 2014!
no subject
Date: 2014-01-10 02:43 am (UTC)Walking home today... was rather nice, really. It's nice not to feel that the weather is trying to kill me.
Real reason I commented, though: back in the day when The Huz was getting a crapton of interviews for That Thing He Did, he found himself rather nonplussed when a TV newsperson admitted to having no idea what he'd done and could he please explain it before the interview started?
So yeah. Specific questions.