Thursday, April 27, 2006
You're not supposed to come, and sit and watch
Funny how the last few days before leaving are always the busiest. Have I already said that? I can't remember. If I have, it wasn't this week, so I can say it again. Tomorrow, I've got a "short" day, since I pick Lourenzo up at 2:50 instead of 5:00, so I'm not in the office at all. I've still got a ton of stuff to pick up before I leave, so tomorrow's going to be a major (major) shopping day. I seriously can't believe how much I have to bring with me--I went to a card store the other day to pick up some birthday cards and so on, and left with about 10 cards! It's insanity, I tell you!
Anyways... Saturday during the day is my usual Lourenzo stuff, and then Saturday evening, Naomi and I are going to do something for her birthday (well, kind of both combined, since we didn't do anything for mine), because hers is on May 3. Sunday, I've got church, and I'm in the nursery, and then I'm going to Jersey for the afternoon/evening to hang out with Adina. Monday is a normal Lourenzo/office day, and then Tuesday morning, I fly out at 8, which means leaving for the airport really early. How early depends on whether I want to spring for a car or take the subway.
You know, for all the wonderful things about NYC's public transport, getting to the airport isn't the easiest. Not to JFK, anyways.
Somewhere in there, I've got to do laundry, pack, clean the bathroom and my bedroom, and make sure all the little stuff is in order, too. Ah, but it's fun. I complain about the minutae, but I love travelling.
Two things to post about, but I think I'll only get to one tonight--it's late, and I need sleep.
It's amazing how much the internet and technology has changed entertainment, and, in some ways, made it much more difficult for show creators.
I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I was on the Gilmore Girls chat boards, analyzing an episode to death, talking about the very specific details of the characters, their personalities, the continuity of tiny details that are mentioned in the show, the things that don't jive with a throwaway comment from 5 years ago... and I realized that this is a relatively new issue for show creators to have to deal with. Before the advent of VCR's, even, when people could watch a show over and over, it was a "watch it once, enjoy it (or don't), and wait for a re-run". That's it. People didn't know episode titles, couldn't really cross-reference the show with previous episodes, and certainly didn't have the same forums for discussion.
Contrast that to now, when we have every episode on dvd, we can access transcripts online, there are screencaps to analyze very specific details, and we have hundreds of people, from all over the world, dissecting these characters and this show. Nothing--and I mean nothing--happens without someone having a say in it. A character has a specific intonation of a line? It's picked apart. There's a new outfit? It means something. They mention something that contradicts a fact we were given in season 1? Everyone notices.
In many ways, the experience of being slightly fanatical about a TV show is a cumulative experience, much more than it ever has been before. We don't watch the episode and move on to the next one; we watch it and it builds onto a base of what we know and have in front of us all the time. It's constantly in the "now," and it differs from real life in that we're able to watch the present alongside the past, and see the vivid examples of change, in ways that are impossible to do in real life, where time goes on, and we don't have the ability to see it all side-by-side like that.
I think it makes it harder on show creators--I think that it means that the expectations are much higher now than they've ever been. It's expected that the universe they create will always be consistent with itself and consistent with the world around it, and when they slip up, it's not shaken off or forgotten. Ever. It may be overlooked; it may be "unimportant," but it's noticed.
And as for the community... the "watercooler" to discuss shows around has become so much larger than the few people at the office who watch the same things. It's worldwide; it includes people who are watching for the first time, and people who have been following since day one. It has every opinion under the sun, and every love or hate of any given character.
And yet, when you find the right one, it provides intelligent discussion, the opportunity to examine human nature and relationships more deeply, and a true community that becomes supportive of so much more than just a TV show.
It's just interesting, that's all. Sure, I watch more shows than I dissect that thoroughly, but the ones I enjoy the most are the ones I'm most invested in. The ones I watch with an eye for more than being entertained are the ones that tend to really touch me and make me think--and it's a symbiotic relationship. I get invested because they touch me on some level; and because I'm invested and devote more time to it, it continues to touch me on a deeper level and I always get more out of it... which will lead nicely into the second thing I wanted to talk about, but that's for tomorrow.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Until the cows come home
Can I just tell you how hilarious I think it is that footless tights under skirts are back? Especially the lace-trimmed ones. I was taken crashing back to my childhood when I saw a display in a store today.
Ladies and gentlemen, The 80's.
(Are they back in style anywhere but NYC yet? Just out of curiousity...)
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Of course he isn't
Poor gecko. Lourenzo is back, and he's trying to make up for lost time.
Birthday present was a hit--I decided that the BBC "Narnia" movies are too much of a travesty, so I bought the Disney version on dvd for Lourenzo. Much better. I'll watch that one over and over and over with him.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
We're no exception
Wanna know something funny?
On Wednesday night, at Phantom, I was sitting next to a mother and son--he looked like he was about 18 or so--who had a very interesting and intellient discussion about the show, critiquing the acting and (moreso) the singing of individual actors, as well as the production in general. And, it was actually really cool to hear what they were talking about during the intermission and before and after the show... Afterwards, I commented on it to them, and they apologized for talking; I said that it was nice (especially since they weren't actually talking during the show); they said that they'd seen it several times. Interesting little conversation, and a nice way to enjoy the show.
Yesterday afternoon/evening, we went to the Empire State Building, and at the end of the day, Mom and I were heading back down, and we were in line for the elevator back to the bottom, when I saw someone who looked very familiar, and Mom noticed someone looking at me like they knew me.
It was my "Phantom" buddies, in line, heading back down from the top, too! Turns out they're in town from Houston until Sunday, and we just happened to be at the ESB at the same time. And of the thousands of people who go up in a day, and the millions of people in the city, we managed to be in the same place at the same time, and we actually recognized each other. How utterly bizarre.
Apparently, it even happens with strangers.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Next door, there's an old man, lived to his nineties
So, apparently, my parents come to town, and I cease to communicate with the outside world.
My excuse is that we've been out of the house all day, and I've only been at work for a couple of hours, so, for the most part, I've been away from a computer until way too late at night, and trust me--you don't really want to hear that.
Ah, it's beautiful. Hot, sunny today. It's supposed to rain on the weekend, but the days that I've been outside have been fantastic.
Anyways, I feel like a tourist. Thank Mom for that--she's the one who likes to plan everything about the trip.
We saw Phantom last night. It's a better play than it is movie, but it couldn't be done justice in a smaller venue with a smaller budget. It needs the big bucks. I liked Patrick Wilson as Raoul (in the movie) better than Michael Shawn Lewis. I liked Emmy Rossum (movie)'s singing better than Rebecca Pitcher (stage), but Emmy can't act her way out of a paper bag, so I liked Rebecca's character development and acting much better. I liked Howard McGillin (stage) as the Phantom better than Gerard Butler (movie), but Michael Crawford's soundtrack beat them both.
That's the review in a nutshell.
And now I've updated.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
With a mighty triumph o'er his foes
He is Risen!
He is Risen, indeed!
It's been a good--great--Easter Sunday, starting with the weather (warm, sunny, balmy, green). I just... it's my favorite.
Easter Sunday at church was fun and fantastic... Ryan, Allison, and I spent second service (since we'd all gone to the first) standing in the foyer, talking about the old hymns that we used to sang, and we even did our own little rendition of "Up from the grave he arose (he arose)..." and "Wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus, deeper than the mighty rolling sea (the rolling sea)..." Such fun. I enjoy being around people who appreciate old hymns, and who can poke fun at them with just the right combination of reverence and playfulness and mockery.
(That's an important combination to have in any mockery of the past--it's not about making fun; it's about knowing your subject matter well enough to be allowed to make fun of it.)
Anyways. Tonight, we had a big orphan potluck--about 20 of us piled into Faith's apartment, Nate made a ham, and the rest of us brought potluck-y dishes, and we all sat around on the floor and ate lots and lots of food. Good times.
The mentality of getting a new Easter dress still holds true, even when you're a transplanted New Yorker in your 20's. No, there were no frilly dresses, flower-covered hats, or white gloves, but a significantly higher percentage of the girls at church were wearing skirts this morning than usual. Something about Easter Sunday...
I booked my tickets home for Laura and Ed's wedding! I'll get into Calgary at 11:10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 2 (which is only 2 weeks away--I hadn't realized it was that soon!), and I leave at 1:50 p.m. on Sunday the 7th, which means that I get to go to first service at Foothills before I have to go to the airport!
Laura gets dibs on me from Tuesday through Friday, but once I know my schedule with her, I can start planning the rest of the week. I know that I've already got a birthday dinner with Kat and Laurel, a birthday dinner for my mom, and some individual hang-out time with Kat and Kim, but other than that... if you want to do something, email me now, because I have a feeling I'm going to book a lot of the week before I leave (as opposed to Christmas, where I had no solid plans, and everything was very fluid).
It's going to be a fun five days... :o)
Friday, April 14, 2006
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
Okay, this time the review really is up at the Gilmore blog. And, as promised, it's a doozy. Go slog your way through it, and then please give me some discussion! Because I just can't get enough.
Anyways. Let's pretend that I didn't just reveal the extent of my investment in that show.
Faith, Rosa, Tamara, Nicole, and I went to a Good Friday service this evening at The 411, a church that seems quite similar to Forefront. It was very cool--an experiential service, they called it. Basically, some worship, then stations, then communion and more worship.
Instead of the 12 Stations of the Cross, though, they had set up 7 stations, one for each of the Sayings of the Cross. A different way to do it, and the stations had each been thought up and set up by a small group, so that was also pretty cool. Each saying had some station relating to it, and then there was a block of wood, a hammer, and a bowl of nails at each one, and as you finished a station, the idea was to hammer a nail, so that the sound of hammering would be nearly constant, and also as a way of recognizing each station, and the ways it could relate to day-to-day life.
It's funny how something like that impacts everyone differently--afterwards, we all (except Nicole) went out for coffee, and on our way, we were discussing the various parts of the evening that had been most significant. For me... At one point, I got a little distracted from the actual stations, and I started journalling instead. I was sitting on the floor, writing, and I could constantly feel vibrations from the hammers. It struck me as very profound--this idea that the vibrations of the nails being hammered should be felt through every piece of life, constantly. That life should be lived in the vibrations from the hammer and the shaking of the earthquake of angels rolling away the stone. It shouldn't be still; it shouldn't be calm. This should shake up everything, all the time.
Just a thought.
It was so good to get to that service, though, and so good to hang out with friends outside of something "planned" for church. I miss out on so much of that kind of thing, and I was so glad that I was able to work it out.
Other than that... Kat, I got Jakes' Christmas present today! Thanks!! Mom, I called Kim about Easter dinner, and she was supposed to phone you. Kim, if you haven't called my mom, do so! Or, you know, just talk to each other through the comments on this thing. Um... any other personal messages that I'm too lazy to email right now? I don't think so--not at the moment, anyways.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
After twenty-five years, it's nice to know
Milestone today? I drove. In New York.
Brooklyn, not Manhattan, but still. It was the first time I'd been behind the wheel of a car since moving here.
And, it was gorgeous out. Beautiful!
And. I hang out on the TWoP boards a lot, and today, another girl from the boards and I were in Times Square at the same time, within probably a block of each other. If I knew what she looked like, I would have tried to pick her out, but as it was, I thought it might be a little strange to run through TS shouting her screen name. As fun as that would be, probably no one would notice. Except for the tourists, who would get scared.
Warm weather brings them out like flies. Tourists, that is. Wow. There's a reason I don't really like walking through there. Every once in a while is okay, but on an almost-daily basis? Not so much. The crowds are different than crowds in non-tourist areas. More sluggish and harder to push through. They just don't move!
I wrote a fic last night/this morning that was in a very fragmented style (one of those "you've first got to know the rules to be able to break them" kinds of things), and I'm still thinking in that sort of sentence structure, but it doesn't make sense for a post that's supposed to be semi-coherent, intelligent, and informative. I've got to shake my brain out of the incredibly stylized feel and back to normal grammar.
Oh yeah, and Lourenzo got a gecko. Guess who's going to be spending all day tomorrow planted in front of the cage, watching it? I'll give you a hint--it won't be me! He's already planning to spend the whole day, except for eating and practicing piano, watching the gecko. We'll see how long that lasts, but right now, that's the plan.
I had something else of significance to say, but I have no idea what it was now.
I think I've listened to "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds at least 50 times in the past four days. It was the closing song on Monday night's episode of "Everwood," and I fell in love with it immediately, and I've had it on repeat for much of the week. It's amazing. Go listen to it now. Totally worth it.
I'm hoping to go to a Good Friday service tomorrow evening with Faith, but I haven't heard back from her, so I'm not sure what's up with that, and I don't know what the day with Lourenzo will look like, either, so we'll see if that happens.
Anyways, I've got about five more things that I want to type up tonight, including a review over here (and if you saw Tuesday's episode, you know it's going to be a doozy!), so I've gotta get to that...
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
One of these things
I had a green birthday. That's the way April 9 is supposed to be.
It's 6:30 a.m., and I'm up and mostly coherent. That's not the way mornings are supposed to be. Especially when I accidentally slept in my contacts, so my eyes are dry and feel like they should be permanently glued shut.
Two things happened to me last week, and I just haven't gotten around to posting about them yet. 1) I talked to Dave B. for a good while on Friday. I seriously haven't talked to him since... a few months after grad, I think. It's been a very long time. 2) I found Christian Pub in NYC. Walking back from an errand for work, I passed it.
More later.
Friday, April 07, 2006
I have nice, humble turnips
Great. Now I've got the "I Dream of Jeannie" theme song in my head. At least it's not the Bunny Hop. That's been the soundtrack for the past few days.
So... I should be doing something more productive, but I just don't have the motivation. Someone come kick my butt into gear, please. Please? I'm still going to try and get something done tonight, but all my good intentions continually go out the window.
Ack. My nose hurts. I've got one of those under-the-surface zits that has yet to erupt, and it freakin' hurts. I thought I was supposed to be over this by now, but no... 4 days out of every month, my face decides that it's not 24, it's 14, and I'm fighting breakouts all over the place.
This entry has been open and unfinished for three hours, and I have nothing more to add. I thought I might get inspired, but... no.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Sing this lullaby to yourself
So, I was at the church office today, and Ryan and I were talking about the missions teams that are coming to Forefront over the summer--apparently, they've got teams coming in for almost the entire summer. They'll be doing Servant Evangelism--handing out water bottles and gum and candy and stuff on the streets, along with little cards that have the church's name on them. That's something that the church does once a month, and it's actually a way that a lot of people have heard about the church and started coming, especially in the beginning. Anyways, that, plus a lot of prayer walks, is mostly what these teams will be doing, which is so cool.
I hadn't thought of the fact that Forefront is in an ideal position to bring in missions teams before, but they really are, and it's a great way to help out the church, as well as (more significantly) impact the people in the city. Ryan was estimating that the teams that are coming in have the potential to touch 40,000 people over the course of the summer. Pretty amazing.
Anyways, he told me that, once I move back, I'd better be bringing Foothills missions teams in every summer, and I thought... wouldn't that be so cool? I mean, that would just be the coolest thing I could think of! It would be an ideal youth missions trip, hey? Plus, it would give me an excuse to come back and see everyone here again. Selfish? Me? No, my motives are completely altruistic!
Seriously, though, how much fun would that be?
My Life Group was cancelled tonight--Allison's kids are sick, her house is germy, and half the group couldn't make it anyways, so I'm home to watch Gilmore Girls when it actually airs! What a concept! And before it starts, I'm going to run over to the Gilmore blog for some pre-show thoughts. Join me?
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Hello! Oppressed one, class of '85!
I love the first day of Daylight Savings. It's like spring truly comes overnight--all of a sudden, it's light until 7 or 7:30, and it just appears out of nowhere. And I know that I've been watching it get dark a little later each week, so that by last week, it was just barely still light out when we'd get off the subway at 6:30, but now, it feels like it jumps from getting dark at 5:00 to getting dark at 8:00, in one day. And I know that's not quite the case, but that hour jump makes a huge difference.
It's been a good weekend. The other week, I had a long week, in the sense that my Tuesday felt like Wednesday, and so on. This week, I had a long week in the sense that Thursday felt like Saturday, but then I actually got Saturday on Saturday, so it was like an extra day, in the good way.
Last night, I went to see Keen Company's production of Children of a Lesser God, which was beautiful. I love watching ASL, and it was amazing to see a show that was almost completely simultaneously signed and spoken. Gorgeous.
Then, this afternoon, Naomi and I went to see her friend Rosalie perform in a selection of scenes/one-acts... a few performed, and a staged reading. It was fun, cute--done through Henry Street, a community arts center, so it was a much more community-based, volunteer-based show than most of what I've seen while I've been here. Most of what I've seen has been professional, although varying degrees of budget, etc, and it was kind of cool to see something that was a back-to-the-roots kind of thing.
We had lunch at a great Vietnamese place just off Union Square... there are so many places that I walk past all the time, but I never go to when I'm on my own--usually, I'll grab lunch at Wendy's or a deli or something. When I'm with people, though, the choices for a meal are never fast food. It's always "do we feel like Thai? Vietnamese? Chinese? Pizza? Venezuelan?" rather than "let's go to Wendy's? McDonald's? Quiznos?"
It's the kind of thing that's definitely more fun to do with someone else--I can find little places that I like on my own, but it's a lot easier to do it with someone else.