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Five Things That Make Me Happy (part 14)

A Bride’s Story by Kaoru Mori
I utterly missed out on Japanese comics creator’s last series to be translated into English, Emma (the story of a Victorian era maid) but it’s nice to not be too far behind the times with her new series A Bride’s Story. It’s set in the 19th century and details a woman in the Silk Road area (near the Caspian Sea) who is the new bride to a young man in a neighboring tribe. It’s half relationship drama (and in a good, non-melodramatic way) and half anthropological study of that time and place. I just finished the first volume and was completely and utterly sucked into it. Also, it’s gorgeously drawn, an immense amount of detail packed into each page and on even what might otherwise feel like small, trivial details. I’m dying to pick up the next two that’ve been published in English to see what happens next. Absolutely charming.

Fra’ Mani Salametto
I picked up this dry salame for when guests were coming over, at Arrowine in Arlington, and I am so glad that I’ve had some leftover because it is divine. Soft, delicious flavor that just explodes in my mouth with each bite. Right now I’m slowly rationing out what I have left, but it’s good enough that I will definitely buy more. One of those slightly expensive foods that’s worth every penny you pay for it.

Home Improvements
In the past month or so, we’ve bought new blinds for the bedrooms (that better block light, a job the old ones did not quite handle properly), ordered new carpet for the stairs, and today a magnetic knife rack arrived. They’re all little changes, but it’s a real pleasure to get these things taken care of and have our home feel that much more… well… homey.

Back to Exercise
After a month off of exercising post-marathon (thanks to the delightful stress fracture in my right tibia), last week I finally got back to the gym… for five days in a row, no less. The things I’m limited to are a little boring, but I have caught up a great deal on my podcasts. And I keep vowing I’ll make it to the pool (for both lap swimming and pool running!) soon, honest, no really. It has felt good to do so. This week might be a little less energetic but there will be more exercise on the horizon, too. Time to use the non-busted parts and have them earn their keep. And speaking of stress fractures…

Being Halfway Done With My Air Cast
As of today it’s been three full weeks in the air cast! I find that hard to believe myself. I’d mentioned it already on Facebook and the like, but in short I developed a stress fracture in my right leg sometime in February, didn’t realize I had one, ran a marathon on it, then realized that the pain I was having was not a pulled muscle and went to a specialist to figure out the problem. I’ve been told that I’ll be in “das boot” (as I’ve named it) for six weeks. So, halfway done! Once I’m out of it I’ll get to go to PT to slowly ramp up returning to running, but that’ll be a slow process (in more ways than one) for a while. But it’s nice to be about to tip into the realm of over 50% complete with the truly annoying part of this little adventure.

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Awful Songs We Love

Everyone has at least one song that they both love, and yet know is truly awful. While half the internet is posting April Fool’s Jokes that aren’t that funny, I’m going to instead take this opportunity to admit to mine. Yeah. It’s bad. But I admit it. Anyone else brave enough to admit to the song they love that they know is just bad?

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Five Things That Make Me Happy (part 13)

Here’s the Thing
If you’d  told me even a year or two ago that Alec Baldwin would decide to start his own bi-weekly podcast in which he interviews other people, I’d have laughed in your face. But courtesy WNYC, that’s exactly what we get with Here’s the Thing, a 20-30 minute dose of him talking from people ranging from Chris Rock to Erica Jong. I’ve listened to three episodes now, and I’m in love with the show. Part of it has been the comfort level that both Baldwin and his subjects have had with one another, but I think it also helps that because Baldwin has been on the other side of the table, he’s got a slightly different perspective on the matter. There are only a handful of episodes right now, but I’m hoping this continues for a long, long time.

Spring
I know, it doesn’t start for another two weeks. But in the DC area at least, I think (fingers crossed) that I’ve had my last below-freezing run on Tuesday, when it was 29 degrees according to my car. Sure, the temperature is going to jump up and down for the rest of March, and into April as well, and that wind can be a killer. But I wore a long-sleeve t-shirt and shorts for today’s run, and it was so nice to be able to ditch the running pants.

Chad Sell’s RuPaul’s Drag Race Portraits
Last  season, Chad Sell began posting portraits of the RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants on his website, as well as commentary on the episodes. And while I like Sell’s commentaries, it’s the portraits that floor me week after week. He’s an amazingly talented artist, and he’s got a sly sense of humor to boot. Every time he updates with new drawings, it makes me excited for the show all over again. (Speaking of which, RuPaul’s Drag Race is turning out another top-notch season this year. You should all be watching it, too.)

Great Neighbors
No, seriously, I think my neighbors are great. At the old apartment I had one amazingly awesome neighbor, but I also already knew Karon before I’d moved there. (In fact, she’s in part why I’d moved there.) And yeah, I had a couple of friends in walking distance. But it’s nice to have multiple people up and down the hall that I think are great. Feels a little odd to know and like lots of people in the building, but I’m not complaining.

Sinead O’Connor’s How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?
All right, I’ll admit that I’m only two tracks into Sinead O’Connor’s new album How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? but so far I’m happy. Her last three studio albums consisted of traditional Irish songs (Sean-Nós Nua), classic reggae songs (Throw Down Your Arms), and a religious album (Theology) so O’Connor creating an album of original, non-themed music is a big deal for me. (The last album of hers that falls into that category was 2000’s Faith and Courage, so it’s been quite a while.) Right now I’m enjoying just letting the new songs wash over me and listening to her beautiful voice. And with a new Amy Ray solo album also out, and a new Regina Spektor album on the way, 2012’s already looking like a good year for music that I like…

(Lucky 13!)

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HBO in April

There was a time when I was watching a lot of shows on HBO (Oz, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under), but since then it’s felt like there’s always one or two shows I’ve been interested in (most notably The Wire, but also ones like Carnivale, In Treatment, and Flight of the Conchords), but never much more than that. This April, though? I’m thinking it might finally be the return of there being three shows on HBO that I’m watching simultaneously. Phew!

The obvious one is, of course, Game of Thrones Season 2. I’ve been a fan of the book series since the very beginning (no, you may not have my original hardcover of the first volume), and it’s been a rare pitch-perfect adaptation in the shift from book to screen.


Game of Thrones Season 2 Trailer

There are two other shows that debut a little later in April, though. Veep is starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the Vice President of the United States who’s quickly learning her job is not all it’s cracked up to be. I adore Louis-Dreyfus; ever since the positively weak show Day by Day (where she was the bitchy next door neighbor) I’ve realized that she’s someone who is funny even when the show gives her little to work with, and in a show where she’s given good scripts she’s dynamite.


Veep Season 1 Trailer

The other is Girls, from the creator/star of the indy film Tiny Furniture. I’ll admit I have not seen Tiny Furniture, and I only heard of Girls because of Michael Penn providing the score for the show. But you know what? I like this trailer. I like the voice it’s using. I think it’s got potential. I’m in.


Girls Season 1 Trailer

I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up, but after 2011 being a rather uninspired year for films, I’m down with the idea that 2012 can deliver some good quality television. Don’t prove me wrong, HBO.

Posted in TV
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Welcome Back, Locus

It is not a secret that I am a huge science-fiction/fantasy geek, or that I love books. So for those who are into that particular niche as well, they might not be surprised to know that I also used to read and love the magazine Locus.

If you’ve never heard of Locus, it’s probably because you are not a science-fiction or fantasy geek. It’s a publication that mixed a lot of book reviews with interviews, event coverage, and a quarterly listing of upcoming books. I used to be enraptured by that last feature; back before Amazon and such, it was the best way to find out what books by your favorite author were scheduled. I liked the other parts of Locus, too; I learned about a lot of new books and authors through Locus, and after years of reading about events and seeing the photos, it was a minor “whoa!” moment to have my own picture appear in a gallery from the 1999 Nebula Awards.

I’d started reading Locus in the early ’90s, but after about a decade I let my subscription lapse. It was an expensive subscription for me at the time, I had a lot less free time, and I’d set aside “for the time being” writing fiction. (Something which has slowly started to inch forward again, but that’s a story for another day, since there’s not much to show for it right now.) And I will freely admit that as someone who as A Lot Of Stuff, I’ve been a big fan of having less clutter come in if it’s something that I’m not going to read promptly.

Imagine my pleasant surprise today to discover that Weightless Books is now offering electronic editions of Locus now, along with subscriptions. I just went and bought the first issue, and had it instantly sent to the Kindle app on my iPad. And so far? It feels like finding an old friend and discovering that aside from some slightly grayer (or perhaps less) hair, they’re exactly the same. We’ll see once I’ve read some more of the issue if the rest of it still holds up, but for now, I’m delighted. (Although I fear that this is just going to get me to buy more books that I will not get around to reading. At least now they just take up disk space instead of bookshelves.)

Technology, sometimes, is pretty darn fantastic. Welcome back, Locus.

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Five Things That Make Me Happy (part 12)

Cleaning and Reorganizing My Office
I know, this sounds distinctly non-fun. But I’ve had a lot of clutter in my office over the past six months, and last week I stayed for an hour or so after officially checking out for the day, and got rid of a lot of the stuff that needed to be pitched. I also finally hung two pieces of art; Stan Sakai’s painting for the A Fall of Stardust portfolio (which used to belong to my friend Jeff), and a Charles Vess painting from Rose. I’m still not done with the office—it’ll take one or two more sessions to get everything done—but it’s a big enough change already that I find myself surprised by how much nicer everything already feels.

Bar Scrawl: A Cartoon Guide to New York’s Drinking Establishments
I don’t live in New York. And I don’t drink very often. But I adore these comics of Bill Roundy’s, in which he reviews New York bars for The Brooklyn Paper, then posts them online a week later. Seriously, these are tremendously fun. He’s got a strong sense of how in just a few panels to make a bar come to life. I want to go to all of these bars, and considering the first two points in this paragraph, that’s impressive.

Less Than Six Weeks From Race Day
My running group somehow talked me into signing up for the Rock ‘N Roll USA Marathon (replacing the National Marathon here in DC), which is on March 17th. We just had our 20-mile training run on Saturday, and while the run itself did not make me terribly happy in parts (it was a rough final five miles), I am happy to know that the race is almost here. Then I can focus on some triathlons I’m signed up for, and get my poor neglected bike out of storage. The race being done will equal a big road marker for switching gears in terms of exercise, and that makes me excited.

Whammy!
I still remember when my older sister introduced me and my other sister to Whammy!, the fourth album by the B-52’s. Songs like “Butterbean” and “Song for a Future Generation” were particular favorites (especially since we never got the “Butterbean” lyrics quite right, singing, “Pick em, scratch em, put on the steam…” In retrospect, no, you do not scratch butterbeans in order to eat them…), but we loved the whole album. Years later I bought it on CD, but due to a legal dispute with Yoko Ono, one of the tracks (“Don’t Worry”) wasn’t included. Now that Charlie has a record player, I ended up taking a little trip to eBay for my own copy of Whammy!. And holding that big ol’ record sleeve, it makes me feel ten years old all over again.

60 Degree Days in February
All right, this is probably a harbinger of the planet’s inevitable fiery heat death. And they appear to be gone for now. But when it’s 60 degrees in February in Washington DC? Well, it was awfully nice to actually wear running shorts when outside and running in the middle of the winter.

(Yikes, it’s been almost two years since the last one of these posts. I promise I’ve been happy since then.)

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Snow Snow Snow

Every time it snows now, I get a little wistful at the idea of a snow day. Laptops have, sadly, destroyed that once fun idea.

(Also, to be fair, the snow isn’t sticking here. So it’s really serving to just be pretty and perhaps slow down my commute home.)

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Helping a Little Old Lady Across the Street

On most Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I have a fairly set routine. Drive down to the National Mall and start running around 5:50am. A mile in, I meet two or three other friends and we run four additional miles. We all head our separate ways there, and I usually run another mile and a quarter before heading off to the gym.

For some reason today, I changed the route of my last, solo mile, and ended up passing by the National Museum of the American Indian right as I hit the 6-mile point. In other words, I was almost done. And as I was heading by, I saw an older woman waving a cane at me. It took a couple of seconds for it to fully register, but then I slowed down to see what was going on. (My immediate thought was that she was lost and needed directions.)

“Excuse me,” she said, “but this cane isn’t enough today. Can you help me across the street?”

I blinked for a second or so and then, “Sure, of course.” How often do little old ladies actually ask you to help them across the street, right?

So, she took my arm and we started heading slowly across the slate sidewalk in front of the museum, and then crossing Jefferson Avenue. “My son normally drives me to work,” she said, “but he had to go in early this morning.”

“Oh, ok,” I said. “And this can be a little slick with the cold weather.”

“My legs aren’t very good,” she confided to me. “I have sickle cell and it makes it hard to walk. My doctor told me I should retire because I’m turning 70 this year but if I just sit around the house then my legs will get stiffer and then I won’t be able to walk at all.” (Later, I realized that she might have said something different than “sickle cell” but it’s what I heard then.) A minute later she said, “I’m so sorry if I ruined your run, but I’m glad you stopped. Several people just walked right past me.”

By this point we’d crossed the street and were still going strong. In the back of my head it hit me that she had wanted help for a little further than just across the street. And so we kept going, up 4th Street and all the way to Constitution Ave. She paused and said, “I’m almost there,” as if to let me go, but at that point I was in it for the long haul. I said that Constitution wasn’t an easy street to cross under the best of circumstances, and she agreed and we went a little further until she insisted that she was good and had no more streets to cross and was on her block. By this point we were just around the corner from the DC Courthouse, a third of a mile from where we’d started.

The whole time we walked there, we talked about the weather, she told me about her son’s job, and even pointed out a building he’d helped construct. She mentioned that sometimes she took the bus all the way in from Anacostia but it was too cold to wait for the line that would have taken her all the way and she’d thought she could walk the rest. And all I could think about was if it was my mother or grandmother (she reminded me so much of Grammy that it brought some tears to my eyes) and everyone had walked past either of them, how horrible I would have felt.

It made me think, how often do all of us (myself included) just hurry past someone who needs help, assuming that someone else will step in? And if she’d said, “Could you walk me to the DC Courthouse” would I have done so or would I have been more worried about the last quarter-mile of my run, or the fact that at 7am the parking meters would click on and I’d be skirting the edge of getting a ticket? I can pretend that I would have not worried about all of that. But you never know. There’s a good chance I might have kept going.

(I also like to think that if I’d initially realized how far it was, I would’ve had the good sense to just say, “Let me get my car” and run over to it and picked her up. By the time we were at Constitution I was kicking myself for not driving her over so that she wasn’t on her feet the whole way. Hindsight is 20/20.)

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I think there’s something particularly arbitrary about them and they’re just not for me. But I might make an almost-exception here. I am going to try and remember this down the line, and be more observant for those in need that I can assist. A couple minutes out of my morning is ultimately not that big a deal for me, but it can be huge for someone else.

I might not know this woman’s name, but I am going to remember her for a very long time. I’m sharing this story because hopefully, I won’t be the only one to do so.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering: I got back to my car at 7:10am, and there was not a parking ticket on the windshield. Thank you, universe.)

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Books and Movies: 2011

Once again, I went and tracked how many movies, books, and graphic novels I saw/read over the course of the year. Last year’s tally had me at at 31 movies, 21 books, 1 fiction magazine, and 124 graphic novels. This year? 31 movies, 24 books, 13 fiction magazines, and 110 graphic novels. Two increases, one decrease, and one exactly the same. Not bad overall… And now, let the counting start all over again!

Movies:

  1. True Grit
  2. Rabbit Hole
  3. Another Year
  4. The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011: Live Action
  5. The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011: Animated
  6. The Illusionist
  7. All About Eve
  8. Cedar Rapids
  9. Source Code
  10. Scream 4
  11. POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
  12. Bridesmaids
  13. Potiche
  14. Meek’s Cutoff
  15. Midnight in Paris
  16. Super 8
  17. X-Men: First Class
  18. The Future
  19. The Prestige
  20. The Help
  21. Griff the Invisible
  22. The Debt
  23. Weekend
  24. The Skin I Live In
  25. Martha Marcy May Marlene
  26. Le Gamin au Velo
  27. The Deep Blue Sea
  28. The Descendants
  29. Shame
  30. Hugo
  31. Young Adult

Books:

  1. Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder
  2. The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan
  3. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
  4. Last Summer by Michael Thomas Ford
  5. Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson
  6. Shopgirl by Steve Martin
  7. The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa
  8. This Is NPR: The First Forty Years by NPR
  9. The Diary of a Dr Who Addict by Paul Magrs
  10. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
  11. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
  12. Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia by Samuel R. Delany
  13. The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee
  14. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  15. Going Bovine by Libba Bray
  16. Twinkle Twinkle by Kaori Ekuni
  17. D.C. Noir edited by George Pelecanos
  18. Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Make Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Chutneys & More by Ashley English
  19. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  20. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee
  21. The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
  22. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  23. Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow
  24. Bob the Book by David Pratt

Fiction Magazines, Chapbooks, and Zines:

  1. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #23
  2. Lightspeed Magazine, January 2011
  3. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #24
  4. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #26
  5. Lightspeed Magazine, February 2011
  6. Fantasy Magazine, March 2011
  7. Fantasy Magazine, April 2011
  8. Lightspeed Magazine, March 2011
  9. Lightspeed Magazine, April 2011
  10. Fantasy Magazine, May 2011
  11. Lightspeed Magazine, May 2011
  12. Fantasy Magazine, June 2011
  13. Lightspeed Magazine, June 2011

Continue reading Books and Movies: 2011→

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Seven Christmas Songs I Love (part 7)

The best for last. I know I’d said earlier that “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is my favorite Christmas song, and in terms of songs actually about Christmas, that’s true. But there’s a song out there which trumps it, even though I’m sure for some people it wouldn’t count.

It was awfully hard to pick just one song from the Vince Guaraldi’s famous soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. I almost went with “O Tannenbaum” (another favorite) but in the end, I had to pick the iconic “Linus and Lucy.” When you think about it, the song itself has nothing really to do with Christmas. But this song to me—and millions of other people—just screams Christmas. It’s pretty-near perfect.

In fact, I’m going to listen to the entire album all over again once I’m done writing this. So wonderful.