Last night I saw Page France in concert, which was super awesome - even the openers were good (and surprisingly hot, so yay eye candy?), but the concert didn't start until 9, there were three opening bands, and I had to get up early today, so I have come out of the experience thinking a few unconnected things, for instance, a) I am getting way too old to stay out that late on school nights, and b) why are all indie boys so short? GOD. There was a point where me and moireach, who (weirdly) are both 5'9 1/2", were standing in the back and could basically see over everyone's heads. Um. WHAT. Also, there was a group of guys who were WAY into Page France, which was cute, except for how at the end of the concert they tragically misjudged the kind of concert we were at and started a moshpit - like, dude, this is a freaking wistful indie folk show, I don't want some 19 year old who looks like George Michael Bluth jumping into me and spilling my beer, OKAY. I am an old lady, have some respect.
Speaking of George Michael Bluth, he's in a movie coming out this summer and it looks freaking awesome: Super Bad. How that kid was a comic genius at 16 is just beyond me.
So hey, nothing_hip is in its second week, and it is fun to play! You guys should all join it - it's the bad songs prompting good fic game. It's totally been overly Office heavy, too, so we need more fandom variety. (Speaking of which, yesterday kyrafic texted me and was like, "We are in a FANDOM RACE - I am totally going to write more fandoms than you total." Because she's written in 23 fandoms and so have I, which is, uh, odd. So now we have a scoreboard. Because, you know, we are pretty super wretched as it is, but we're always asking ourselves, how could we be MORE wretched? And we always find a way.)
Speaking of Office fic, I have read so much Michael/Jan lately that would be totally fine and/or good, but contains Jan, in her own internal narration, calling her ex-husband "Gould". Which - oh, dear. Were these fics all written by Michael Scott? Did Jan and her ex-husband have a Mulder/Scully kind of relationship? (And uh, even Mulder, on the show, called her "Dearest Dana" canonically once they hooked up - which makes me want to vomit, but what're you gonna do) Oh, fandom, if you don't know Gould's first name (according to a deleted scene, it is "Art"), please, please, please make one up.
I'm also having a little bit of a weird Office fanvid renaissance - I've been totally over Jim/Pam as a ship lately, but these vids have been bringing it back, I don't even know. In general, I feel like I'm a very unsophisticated viewer of vids, as I have no objective sense as to why they're good and instead only understand when they give me funny shippy feelings, like when I used to climb the rope in gym class, so, uh, take these recs for what they're worth. But regardless!
*Suddenly I See - man, this vid makes me miss season two Jim so much. It really is too bad that dude moved to Stamford and never came back. *Popular by semby - this one's ensemble, and it's fast! So there's that. *Apologize by _megzy_ - this one makes me really sad about Jim/Pam. As though the show weren't doing enough of that for me.
Good grief, looks like it's cut-tag for length time. I hope you have enjoyed my novella.
Tags: fandom, fanfic recs, music Current Mood: hungry Current Music: some pretentious crap
It's a good thing that at least one show is actually showing new episodes, because this 6 week hiatus of The Office is driving me crazy. Plus, I had to do the fandom newsletter (scranton_times) all last week by myself, because kyrafic was out of town, and man, I don't know how she did it alone for so long. I kind of wanted to shoot myself in the face. Though doing the newsletter DOES mean that you get an intriguing look at fandom trends -- which The Office is actually small enough to have on an all-fandom scale. I mean, back in BtVS, I had no idea what half the fandom was doing at any given time, because there were so many enclaves (I mean, the Buffy/Angel people? I have noooo idea what went on in those circles, except every once in awhile when a rumor would get out, or there'd be a war with the Spuffy contingent or whatever). But it's interesting to watch how strongly canon drives fic (only surprising in its degree, but still. The hiatus ended on a Michael/Jan note, and sure enough, there has been a FLOOD of schmoopy Michael/Jan fic -- which is pretty beautiful, and also weird. Michael Scott, perfect boyfriend y/n?), and how challenges drive fandom (you know, I LOVE Five Things fic as a genre, but apparently that is in moderation, because it's at the point right now where if I could declare a 6 month moritorium on them, I would). Fun times.
So in the last two weeks, like five members of my flist who I don't think even know each other have all seriously gotten into bandslash. What is going on? Is there something in the water? And one of these is imogenics, and Saturday night she and throughadoor fandom booty-called me at like 12:30 via lj comment to be all, "You're still awake? COME OVER. WE'LL MAKE PANCAKES." So in the course of the, I don't know, pancake eating, I accidentally let slip that I really like blink-182, to the point where I own like 5 of their albums. Which - I don't know, it was very late, Jim. For, uh, those three years. Which was like blood in the water for them, so they played me a bunch of Fall Out Boy, and you guys, SERIOUSLY. I can't think of anything more embarrassing than getting into bandslash, except maybe getting into bandslash BECAUSE YOU KIND OF LIKE THE MUSIC. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp.
Speaking of my bad taste in music, have you guys seen Avril's new video for "Girlfriend"? I still don't know how I feel about it. I feel like the old Avril maybe wouldn't like the new Avril? Also, she is weirdly Kristin Bell-esque in it. Also, weirdly Hermione-esque, if Hermione were a pop-punk singer. (I think it's the knee socks that make me think this - I don't even know, you guys. I have a problem. Many of them.) Also, I feel like the song actually sounds younger than her earlier stuff, which is weird, and sounds vaguely like something Josie and the Pussycats would sing. (Not to say that I don't like it, because oh, I do. Repeat one, my old friend. Also, how good is that movie? I haven't watched it in forever, either.)
Also, I rewatched the SVU episode where Olivia comes back the other day, and now I really miss SVU fic. LOTS.
Tags: avril, fandom, how i met your mother Current Mood: why don't I have any Avril icons anymore? Current Music: Avril - Girlfriend
So this was random: BJ Novak's dad, William Novak, edited "The Big Book of Jewish Humor", and was giving a book reading tonight at the book store down the street from my apartment. I don't know about you, but "I saw BJ Novak's dad read from The Big Book of Jewish Humor" is not a sentence I'm willing to pass up, so kirbybits and I went to hear him. There were maaaaybe 20 people there, tops, and let me tell you, BJ looks JUST like his dad. It was kind of creepy, actually, like I'd taken a time machine 30 years into the future, when Ryan Howard will still be working at Dunder-Mifflin, married to Kelly with five kids he didn't exactly plan on, but mostly likes in spite of himself. Hee. Anyway, BJ's dad seemed really nice and funny and adorable, and has ghost-written books for a buttload of celebrities, and it was really interesting. Plus, right before he started, the ladies sitting in front of me, whom he seemed to know, were talking about how one of their sons, Ben, used to read from The Big Book of Jewish Humor all the time as a kid, and BJ's dad came up at the end of the story and was like, "Wait, Ben? My Ben?" Which I think would be BJ. <3 <3 <3 My heart, you guys.
moireach is in California, so missed the whole experience. When she heard that BJ's dad was going to be reading, she got all outraged and said, "You get to see everyone good!" Hahaha, what? Apparently "everyone good" meant "Amy Sedaris" and "BJ Novak's dad" - which, you do have to admit that I live a star-studded life. (This is my sarcastic voice.)
This is the first time I've been here while she's been out of town since we got this apartment, so it's been weird and quiet. I spent the first weekend while she was gone being all, I WILL NOT PICK UP ANY OF MY BELONGINGS WOOHOO, but that got old fast, and then I kind of just cleaned a lot? And vacuumed? It doesn't really make sense to me either.
(As an aside on the subject of fanvids, which also got taken off youtube, why do corporations want to get rid of fanvids? It doesn't make sense. This was brought home to me even more clearly lately, because NBC has started making Office promos that look exactly like fanvids, and putting them up on Youtube themselves. Which is pretty bright of them - but for real, with vids, you basically have fans making promos for TV shows FOR FREE, and other fans watching them BECAUSE THEY ENJOY THEM, and recruiting people to the shows through them. Corporations should WISH they had commercials that good - why would they want to put a stop to that? [These questions are rhetorical.])
Ugh, also, TWoP got bought by NBC - which. Well. The Office is on NBC. And the fic thread on TWoP, for better or for worse, is a major center of the fandom -- and, incidentally, like the second or third most popular thread in the forum overall. How is NBC going to deal with that? Isn't it hard to benignly neglect its existence when you own the site that it's all over? Auuuugh.
There's been massive wank in Office fandom today, and people are making oblique accusations without explaining what happened, so I thought since I am unfortunately involved, I would lay out the facts here. Sorry to clog up your friends lists with this nonsense.
So I'm still kind of doing the Stephen Colbert RPF thing (and by "kind of" I mean "half my waking moments", obvs - like, I made myself wallpaper, you guys. I am not even kidding. Send help), which has somehow led me down the merry path of shipping Stephen Colbert/Paul Dinello/Amy Sedaris, which I guess would be Strangers with Candy RPF (yeah, yeah, I judge you too, go back to watching SGA). And I'm reminded of all the things I find vaguely hilarious and awesome about RPF fandoms, which are that your canon comes not in entertaining half hour segments every Thursday night during sweeps, but instead through random LJ posts such as this, and you inevitably find yourself reading a lot of posts describing book signings/panel discussions/conventions/what have you, that all seem to begin with an extremely detailed description of how the person writing the post arrived at the location ("and THEN I took the red line to the green line" - dude, I am bored when I TAKE public transportation, how would I not be bored READING about YOU taking public transportation?), and then disproportionately seem to end with, "And then I called my mom to come pick us up."
Speaking of which, it's really interesting to me that RPF fandoms skew so young compared to other fandoms - I mean, it kind of makes sense with something like popslash, but when you're talking SWC, which was on the air when *I* was a teenager, I'm not sure why it would. Except that older fans appear to have questions like, Is writing RPF morally wrong? Whereas the kids seem to have questions like, How many times do you think Stephen and Paul banged last night? Which, fair enough. But I've been reading a lot of fic that's fine, but you can tell that in about five years when the writer, you know, graduates college it'll be AMAZING, and I start to fantasize about living in the future not for the flying cars, but because the Colbert/Dinello fic will be FANTASTIC. This is honestly what I thought about all last night while attempting to read a 90 page article on Old Babylonian economics, true story.
Anyway, on the subject, I actually did end up going to see Amy Sedaris give a book reading last week, which was pretty awesome. Except that I had already read fan reports of other readings on this same book tour, which meant that I knew pretty much everything she was going to say and do. That's right, basically what I'm saying is that the internet spoiled me FOR MY OWN LIFE. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. BUT, she took questions, and so I asked her what her favorite thing was that she'd done with Paul and Stephen. ( stories Amy Sedaris told ME PERSONALLY about Stephen ColbertCollapse )
Wow. You know what is sad about ending this entry? I'm going to have to go do work now. THERE IS A MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS POST.
1. We moved! There is nothing non-awesome* about this apartment. moireach and I have both been so excited about 1) the sheer voluminousness of the kitchen, and 2) the dishwasher, that everything is always clean. The washer/dryer in apartment means that all my clothes and sheets and towels were clean AT ONCE for the first time in, like, 8 years. Every time I walk up the stairs I get all happy at how pretty it is, and how much I love everything about it, and I work in the STUDY (A WHOLE ROOM JUST FOR STUDYING - weirdly, I get more done here than on the couch of my old place. WHAT?), and we spent Sunday afternoon sitting out on our porch in the sunshine, and it's so big that if one of us yells something to the other from one end, we can't even hear each other. And there is nothing not-awesome about living with M, though sometimes we do seem to be succeeding in our quest to be the lamest apartment ever. Let's just say that there are a lot of Buffy DVDs and Star Trek tapes in this apartment and leave it at that.
3. I think our landlord's getting hotter, seriously. He let us move in early, while he was still fixing things up, and so he would be, like, working with power tools, while all stubbly, and barefoot, and listening to WILCO. Like, honestly, is this some kind of joke? WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE TRYING TO DO TO ME? However, the gay watch continues apace: one time, T-shirt tucked into jeans. HMM.
4. The Office season 2 DVDs are out! Things that are awesome include: EVERYTHING. I had already seen all the deleted scenes, so am working through the commentaries, and they are awes.
5. Speaking of the Office, I have read a lot of bad fic this summer, guys. And you know what is the grossest term ever? LOVEMAKING. I want to take a shower every time I read it, which is A LOT. I've never been into a fandom enough that I read terrible fic - my normal system is that I only read things if they're recced to me, and then if I'm not interested in two paragraphs, I'm out, but THIS. The things I've seen, man. The things I've seen. Being pan-fandom is way better for my state of mind.
*From my perspective. But Moireach has, apparently, gotten trapped in her room several times due to a faulty doorknob, which she pretends is a big hassle, but I'm pretty sure it's actually an excuse to call our hot landlord. I SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU, M.
moireach, who (weirdly) are both 5'9 1/2", were standing in the back and could basically see over everyone's heads. Um. WHAT. Also, there was a group of guys who were WAY into Page France, which was cute, except for how at the end of the concert they tragically misjudged the kind of concert we were at and started a moshpit - like, dude, this is a freaking wistful indie folk show, I don't want some 19 year old who looks like George Michael Bluth jumping into me and spilling my beer, OKAY. I am an old lady, have some respect.
nothing_hip is in its second week, and it is fun to play! You guys should all join it - it's the bad songs prompting good fic game. It's totally been overly Office heavy, too, so we need more fandom variety. (Speaking of which, yesterday 
hungry
why don't I have any Avril icons anymore?
tired
busy