This and That

A new year with a lot of old goals.

Let me say up front that I am not into "New Year's Resolutions." I was as a child, since we had write ours in grade school. I then somehow saw them for what they are for most people-empty promises that people make because they feel they are supposed to, but don't accomplish because they don't want to. I don't like making promises I can't keep.

I will re-evaluate what I have done and look into making it better or look out over a year and figure out what I need to accomplish. I don't need January 1st to start me on that and I think that others should consider that.

Blogging is near the top of the list. Today has been taken up with updating the Blogger Meetup site and with thinking up topics for the new year.

I've been to BlogHer, which has had some interesting conferences coming up:
http://www.blogher.com/blogher_conference/conf/

I also found a blog post about the upcoming political shennanigans in the US that echoes a lot of my sentiments about how women voters are reached:
http://www.blogher.com/women-bloggers-presidential-candidates-stop-ignoring-us-and-dont-pander-if-you-want-our-votes

I did some more writing and 'mourned' the passing of Georgie Jones (General Hospital) in the past few days.

I also completed the volunteer coordinator gig at the Resolution Ball, which was tiring, but rewarding. Event plannin' and coordinatin' iz tough-don't let anyone think or say different. I learned a lot this time out, if nothing else, how to be even more vocal and forward about things even if it's "not my party."

Day 365

Here we are. Day 365. On the cusp of the new year and saying goodbye to the old.

On the whole for me, 2007 wasn't the worst year, though it was not a great year.

There are still times where I haven't figured it all out yet and I don't want to be an adult.

I said goodbye to some activities (like chorus and participating in Showa Boston) and picked up new ones.

I am learning more about myself through the relationships I have and how I need to be a better everything.

Science has called me back and I am working on pursuing that.

I wish I could say that I have next year all mapped out but I don't. I just have January, complete with its milestone birthday and great volunteer projects.

Tonight, the Resolution Ball which supports the Ellie Fund and the laughter and the drunkeness and tears.

Goodbye 2007 with you Iraq and Faluja, your Obama and Oprah and TomKat and Benifergela and war and shotgun health insurance. Welcome 2008 with more of the same.

What work of art (film, book, record, whatever) changed your life?

What work of art (film, book, record, whatever) changed your life?
The Question of the Day Submitted by bodhibound at VOX.


Films


-Film: Say Anything
It was the first film that I can truly say that I fell in love with John Cusack

-Film: (TV)
I don't Like it here Anymore
A film that starred Talia Shire and Burt (Adrian and Paulie from the Rocky movies) that introduced me to the concept of death and that kids can die if they run out in front of a car...

-Film: (Holiday-TV)
Dark Night of the Scarecrow
The first tv-film that truly gave me nightmares. I still find it creepy today as desensitized to gore as I am these days.

-Film: (Holiday)
The Amityville Horror
The first film that truly gave me nightmares. I still remember my mother being upset with my aunt for taking us wee ones to it. I also remember finding out that Siskel and Ebert of then "Sneak Previews" said that this was not a film for children and so being a long love affair with the reviews of these two gentlemen, who sadly have been hit by cancer-Gene Siskel succumbing to it and Roger Ebert battling back to it.

I also have to mention Scrooge, starring Albert Finney. The songs in this are plain fun but they also speak to Dickens' themes more than any other production I have seen.

-Animated Film (US): The Rats of Nimh
Don Bluth hit it out of the park with this film that introduced me to the voice at least of John Carradine, David, Keith and Robert's dad. A story simply told with a mom (albeit a mouse) as the hero and not shown nearly enough. It does justice to the book, which is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. When I look back at the animated movies put out by the US that were and are good, this one comes to mind immediately.

-Animated Film (US): The Last Unicorn
I saw this recently and it still holds up (though I can see how the soundtrack by the group 'America' could get on your nerves if you are not a fan of folk/filk/soft rock). Peter Beagle, the author of the story the movie is based on, did the script and it works well alongside of the compelling imagery. This was one of if not the best of Rankin-Bass's fantasy output (those guys who were responsible for the holiday cartoons that we skewer every year along with things like the Thundercats, which a work like The Last Unicorn foreshadows a bit as a signal for the direction this company takes in the stories it decides to tell-less holiday and music groups and more fantasy and action). This is the other film I hold up when I say that there were some good animation of the 80s from the US. I always remembered one of the themes of this movie, which is that people see what they want to see and not what is really there. I've been better about seeing what is there.


-Animated Film (Japan): The Wings of Honnemaise
I saw this as a young adult. It was made in the 80s and had a lot to say about faith and science. People generally cite "Akira" as the great Japanese animated film of the 80s, but I think that people should look at this one too.

I also have to mention here the Robotech series as it is known in the US. There had been other Japanese imports before and since but if there was ever one that could play with the big dogs in terms of sweeping tv miniseries epics, it's this one. More mature than anything shown on broadcast tv at the time and somewhat since, this series focused not just on the battle and good vs evil but on all the thorny issues that foreshadowed the writing on series like Firefly, some episodes of Star Trek: DS9, and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica.

One of the biggest strengths of the writing in this series are the little moments. To this day, one of my favorite scenes is when soldier Scott Bernard blushes as he zips up the dress of the beautiful and quiet Marlena 2.0 (she was given the name Marlena after his dead fiancee when she was found. She later turns out to be an alien and one of the enemy and her name is Ariel-aren't they all named Ariel?) in a sequence that leads up to what becomes a romantic outing for two of the last people that you'd suspect would be attracted to each other.

Soap Opera Musings

I suppose I could take time to talk about what I have listened to of late-waking up with the Everett fire and going to bed to the Omaha massacre, listening to ON POINT archives and noting that Tom Ashbrook foreshadowed his current health situation. Immediate on my mind though are soaps.

Anyone who really knows me is familar with the fact that for all that I am quite the intellect and at home at dry knowledge and that I cut my teeth on soaps. My mother watched them when I was young and well, I watched them on and off during school and then never looked back once I hit college.

The first soaps I cut my teeth on were All My Children and Another World (I thought my mother had something of a love for the "A's" until I saw that we also watched Days of Ours Lives, The Edge of Night, Ryan's Hope and Love of Life.)

My "first run memories" (meaning that I watched it when it was on and not as a rerun or as a part of the increasingly lame retrospective/compilation shows that networks have resorted to since 2000 to fill programming needs) are definitely of All My Children. Erica Kane and I go back. I remember when she was married to Tom Cudahy and I did at the age of 2.75 see the infamous episode when he finds out that Erica was taking birth control pills and that's why they weren't having babies and he kicked her out of the house. I remember most from that two things:

A) The dialogue:
(with admitted paraphrasing-c'mon I was almost 3)
Erica: where do I go?
Tom: I don't give damn where you go!

When I first saw "Gone With the Wind" on tv, I couldn't remember why the ending dialogue of Scarlett and Rhett seemed so familiar. When I was a teen, I put it all together.

B) Up to that moment, I had never seen a person be that furious on tv or real life. I think I may have asked if he was going to hit her.

Yeah, back in the days when it was okay to play with wooden toys that had wire parts and to eat peanut butter in everything.

I was with Erica for the most part through marriages 3-present (although she and Jack are divorced for now), through the drug addiction, the loss of mother Mona (not too long before the loss of my own), the jail term, Bianca's coming out, the roller coaster marriages to Adam and Dmitri, the arrival of Kendall (the Sarah Michelle Gellar version), the bear incident, Charlie 1.0 where Ruth Martin in Stephanie Forrester style asks Erica how many generations of the men in her family was she going to go through and her last wedding (so far) with Jack where all of her children were present.

Now I have a hard time watching the show simply because everyone looks a like on the show. I can make out Erica's daughters, Kendall and Bianca and sometimes I pick up Josh Madden (Erica's son by her first ever husband Jeff Martin who was conceived apparently in a manner that led me to call such things the soapdish rewrite.
Info dump: "Soapdish" was a movie in the 90s that starred Sally Field, Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Kline, Elisabeth Shue and Robert Downey, Jr. that spoofed the soaps. The scene that was played forever in the movie trailer was of Whoopi as Rose the head writer and Robert as the producer having a difference of opinion about how to reintroduce Kevin Kline's character, since he was killed off in an accident that decapitated him. Robert apparently felt that saying that a groundbreaking surgery where they reattached the head would take care of it while Whoopi, speaking for all of those who have common sense kept saying, "but he doesn't have a head" in frustration to get him to see that this doesn't make sense. She did the rewrite per Robert's suggestion because he was the producer but I imagine that there are discussions that take place like that in the real world considering some of the ways retcons and aging and exits and returns are explained.)

I can't say that I can tell any of the blondes a part. This was once true for me of As The World Turns but I can tell Katie from Carly and now that they killed of Rose (though personally I felt they killed the wrong sister and yes, I know I incurred the wrath of all the 'Lilden' fans out there) and some recasts have alleviated the problem with the men although Carly and Jack's sons Parker and AJ (?) are still a problem with me.

Guiding Light is proof of what happens when you runs a show into a ditch. I don't listen to it so much anymore. I thought that it did a great thing by writing the storyline with Daisy choosing abortion and exploring the aftermath although that started getting a bit heavy handed. I got sick of the Marina-Cyrus-etc. storylines. The Marina/Cyrus relationship is the type that I wish soaps would stop doing. I never think that it's romantic to be kidnapped, shot and to place your family in danger-even if the perpetrator is handsome, has a "heart of gold" and "mends his ways" because of the love of a good woman. This is a fantasy and a stupid one.

More egregious is the "if I wait long enough, he'll mature and we'll be together..." General Hospital did this with the one character I thought was above that-Robin Scorpio. Robin and I go back to the 80s. She has the dubious distinction of being one of the few characters who has not been aged as well as being played by the same actress that originated the role-Kimberley McCullough. I rather liked Robin and her precociousness and her fearlessness and I was all for her and mobster Jason. Their breakup I thought was one of thse stupid soapdish moves and I am continually irritated that they will not put them back together. Robin came back to Port Charles in '05 to work in GH and then the writers decided that it would be fun to pair her with Patrick Drake, Noah Drake's arrogant son. He treated her like crap for months and then they became close-one of the main drivers of this was Patrick's exposure to HIV and the uncertainty. Then of course he would display behaviour that would remind you why this strategy never works-the "love of a good mature woman to make a man be better". They finally broke up over the fact that Robin wanted a baby and could with the means today have one as an HIV positive person. He did not want a child.
Then they have Robin go off the deep end in trying to find a donor for her father in a way that really make her character look pitiful. (Again running characters and stories into a ditch.).

The Young and The Restless is my "drug of choice" these days. I have always says that it is the best plotted-best written of the soaps with some of the best written characters.
Notice I said "some of" for characters because there are some good ones that are languishing on poorly written shows. Robin for the most part, Jason, Sonny and Spinelli on General Hospital for one.

Well, I think I will muse more about soaps later-it's time for The Young and The Restless.

Day 30

Well, here we are at day 30 of the "noble experiment. I can't believe a whole month has passed and that soon a whole year has passed.

As Forrest Gump once said (or would have said): " Bloggin' evr'y day is TOUGH."

I tried to do the every day thing and fell down definitely over the weekends when I just wanted to sleep or had other things to do.

Content. I don't think that I had a total shortage of things to blog about but I ran into time crunches, which made it dificult to expand on things the way I would have liked.

It was good to see some of the other blogs and to read them. I did think it was cool when I created a Massachusetts group at NaBloPoMo that people joined. I wished I could have been more involved there too.

I think that I did accomplish one of my goals for this thing. I will blog more at least once a week if not daily. I did miss it when I stopped doing it more religiously. I also took a step towards next year's goal of blogging every day. If I can blog 15 days out of the month, then I can blog next year for more than 15 days.

That's all for me and NaBloPoMo. See you next year!



BTW-for NaNoWriMO I got to over 32,000 words, which is short of the 50,000 goal but lightyears better than last year's 2611 and 2005's 500.

Second to last day

Today is the second to last day of the 'noble experiment'-to blog every day for a month. I fell short as I am sure many had. November is a funny month-sometimes it seems like nothing happens and then everything happens-especially since people feel the pressure to wrap up everything for the year.

Thanksgiving was solemn, casual, restful and work. While I did not participate in the 'Black Friday' madness, I did make a few small purchases on that Sunday.

Still coasting through the 'On Point' Archives. I surprise myself at how much economic analysis I like to hear...

24 HOURS TO THANKSGIVING

Well, here we are. 24 HOURS to Thanksgiving. Thankfully I am not travelling anywhere. To listen to news coverage, you would think that this was more important than anything else-traveling on Thanksgiving and shopping the day after. I will be making dinner this year. Unlike most people that I have been reading about, I have no worries. While I am not Betty Crocker, I was drafted into kitchen duty at a young age and can make some basic things. Thanksgiving and Christmas dishes were a required part of the curriculum. I did tell the person that will be joining me that he will not be sitting on the couch and watching tv or writing. While I was in bed sick yesterday, I automatically started mapping out his chores which will include dicing and chopping and mixing and table setting. We will be making more than two people should have for Thanksgiving. I don't expect us to eat it all. In addition to celebrating the bounty that we are able to have, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners also serve a way of providing easy to fix meals for at least two weeks. A harkening back to the days when people ate the same day in and day out-the days when you were just lucky to get fed, rather than fuss over what you got.

In addition to hearing on [insert the name of any morning show] about how to avoid taking in too many calories at Thanksgiving, Jasmyne sent out a bulletin on MySpace that covered her feelings about Thanksgiving and "Black Friday."

I agreed with a lot of the sentiments of her bulletin. One of my favorite animated avatars is an Indian clocking a Pilgrim upside the head. However, I see celebrating Thanksgiving as celebrating the idea that we have something to be thankful for, particularly the bounty that we have no matter how big or small and not the landing of those who would wreak genocide upon most of the Native tribes of Northeast America.

As we are on the topic of being thankful for bounty, I really can't take the annual segments on the morning shows where person acting as expert gives hints on new ways not to indulge at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I understand if you have something really wrong with you and you need help on how to cope with whatever illness (e.g. diabetes, lupus, etc), but that is not who these segments are aimed at. They are aimed at many of the women that are already insane with calorie counting and dessert denying to meet that mythical weight, while the menfolks shrug their shoulders and wash it all down. I don't know how many ways it can be said that these are two days of out of a year of eating more than a tablespoon full of food each will not kill you. If you have something wrong with you or if you are in training, sure, plan accordingly. Otherwise, be thankful that you have the opportunity to have what you have and when you have it because many don't. I always find it curious that for the most part, those who both preach the calorie counting and do the interviewing are women.


It is true that Thanksgiving has become a way station on the road to Christmas Shopping land. It used to be that attaching the word "Black" to any day of the week meant that said day was doomed. Now "Black Friday" means "last chance for retailers to get back in the black." Artificially lowered prices, tele and cyber bullying by retailers to get you into the store and spend your money.


I can tell you how my Thanksgiving will play out:
-Cooking (after shower and travel to the Thanksgiving location) to the tune of whatever is on-They Might Be Giants, New Order, REM, Stylistics, 80s and 90s stuff, Holday cartoons

-Calls to family

-Changing into "nice clothes"

-Saying a specially crafted prayer

-Eating-a lot

-Sleeping

-Some walking

-Some sports watching (football and figure skatin')

-Going online to see if anyone has signed up for next week's volunteer projects.

-NaNoWriMo writing

-No "Black Friday" mall trips. Period.