The PDX Experience

I don’t care what you call it – two thousand ten, twenty ten, or oh ten – this year has gotten off to one craaaaaazy start!  I thought I ought to share.  Because this is interesting stuff.  My life is interesting!  Or at least there’s interesting people in it.  Right?  Considering I’m spending the next few weeks watching all of Farscape from season one again, I might be exaggerating.  A little.

Anyway, here’s the rundown of the past couple weeks, which were WAY more crazy then the next two are shaping up to be.

11/29/09: My birthday!  I have a birthday party.  There’s a theme.  It’s Xanadu!  I inflict this movie on all my friends.  Mercilessly.

12/16/09: I receive numerous emails from several friends and acquaintances that the Broadway musical Xanadu was coming to Portland in January.  And the tickets went on sale on my birthday, which just SMACKS of destiny, doesn’t it?  Seriously, like 3 people all emailed me THE SAME DAY.  I guess the word kinda got out that I like Xanadu.  But for the record, I just LIKE it.  It’s not like it’s my favorite movie of all time or anything.  It’s not, you know.

12/31/09: I start working with the wonderful folks at the Portland Opera to come up with some ideas on how to drum up interest for the show via the OurPDX blog.  We come up with some AWESOME ideas…

01/03/10: I post the first blog post on OurPDX.com.  It was brilliant, of course.  Inspired, you might say.  Because I am an artiste.  Or perhaps the Muses graced my keyboard?  Whatever.

01/04/10: The first of five days of Xanadu quiz questions on the Twitters.  It was (mostly) all tagged with the hashtag #pdxanadu. Strangely, for only having 5 days of quiz questions, we had EIGHT finalists!  Because I only use the minute hand when I check who answered first.  And Friday, there were a whole gaggle of people who answered within the same minute.  Lucky!

01/07/10: I get to interview Annie Golden, who plays Calliope.  The only person I’d ever interviewed for OurPDX before this was @mediachick.  That was great, of COURSE, but I mean…she’s my friend, and we hang out, and SHE MADE ME A PIE FOR MY BIRTHDAY.  This interview was someone famous, who I never met, over the phone.  So I was a touch nervous.  But it was FABULOUS! I spend all night and part of the next day writing up the blog post.  It seemed like something I ought to get up asap, you know?

01/09/10: @camikaos and I make OurPDX blogging history!  We co-blog a hilarious post as we announce the winner of the Xanadu tickets giveaway. (Grats, @blabbey!)

01/12/09: Cami and I head out to our big night at the Keller Auditorium.  We were sparkly.  Cami wore really big earrings.  I wore a lot of glitter.  We saw all sorts of friends, like @dieselboi and @anna_v and @mizd and @chefchopper!  The show was fabulous, the company was great, and of course we went for pie afterwards.  I think.  Did we go for pie?  Maybe I don’t remember exactly.  No, I’m pretty sure there was pie.

01/13/10: Since I was super smart and took half the day off the next day, it allowed Cami and I to write our second blog post where we regale the OurPDX readers with our wild tales of glitter and glam.  Plus I was hung over.

01/15/09: I head out to my second viewing of Xanadu.  I know, you’d think once was enough, but not for me, apparently.  Truth is, I sort of told some friends I’d go see it with them before this whole OurPDX thing started.  So you know, I had to keep my commitments.  This caused several cool things to happen:  I became Mayor of the Keller Auditorium on foursquare, and I got a second chance to get a backstage tour thanks to Annie!  We weren’t on the stage for 2 minutes however, before the company manager kicked us off the stage in the most polite way I’ve ever heard, and then complemented me on my blogging.  It seems she kept the cast apprised of my online Xanadu musings.  I LOVE NEW FANS.  We ended up standing outside in the rain, chatting, my friends and Annie and I.  With an umbrella.  Dang foreigners and their umbrellas.

So there it is.  My Xanadu exploits, compiled and presented to you, dear readers.  As for me, I think I’ve had my fill of Xanadu for a while.  Or until someone wants to watch it with me.  Anyone?

Anyone?

::crickets::

OMG Internets. O. M. G.

I just watched the absolutest worstest movie I have ever seen. And I have seen my share of crappy movies. Like Krull. And Amazon Jail. (Yeah, look that one up.)

But this one, this took the cake. Even as far as bad lesbian movies go, which are already bad, this was bad. And that is BAD.

It was called Maggie and Annie. Or annie and maggie. Or you know, two girls’ names.

First, it was a softball movie. Or at least it claimed to be a softball love story. Like as if the writers were having lunch:

Writer 1: “Hey, let’s make a lesbian romance!”

Writer 2: “Yeah, those are always easy fun! Don’t they like softball? Let’s make it a softball movie!”

Writer 1: “yeah, but we don’t know any actresses who can play softball”

Writer 2: “No problem. We’ll just film them standing out in the field and smacking gloves.”

So. Not one of the main characters was ever seen actually PLAYING softball. Standing in a softball field, yes. Yelling out encouragement, sure. But not one of them was ever seen catching, fielding or batting. There was some team of softball players playing, viewed from a great distance, like say beyond the fence at center field, but that’s about it.

Next, one of the main characters is married to a guy. A very nice, understanding guy, who didn’t freak when he finds out his wife is screwing her best friend. He even calls up the best friend, who had moved away to ‘let the flames die’, and suggested that they share his wife.

Uh huh.

Wait, it gets better!

The sex scenes were OH SO VERY LAME. They looked like two kindergarten girls playing dress up, except they were playing ‘two girls kissing’. There was lots of giggling and dreamy-eyed staring, and CRYING (omg who cries the first time they sleep with someone? Ugh). If I’d been one of those girls, I would’ve been all like “BITCH QUIT YER GIGGLING AND LET’S GET NASTY!” or something. Ok actually I don’t talk like that. Really not ever. But I’d be thinking it REALLY REALLY HARD.

And then. AND THEN.

So poor lesbian girl runs away to San Francisco (of course) to get away from the insane passion that she so (un) obviously shares with the married chick, to no avail. Married chick goes on and on to her husband about how depressed she is and how much she misses lesbian chick. And he just nods sadly until he finally calls lesbian chick and works out an arrangement to ’share her’ (like a nice car or something, right?). And lesbian chick is all happy and drives home, and gets hit by a drunk driver and dies.

OMG HOW STUPID RIGHT??! RIGHT!!!

So married chick is all like ‘I’d have been so mad at you if you died without me saying goodbye…”

Ok I hate her. What a selfish little bitch! She has this great guy, a little girl, and all she can do is go on and on about how depressed she is, when the poor lesbian chick at least has the decency to try to move on, and she didn’t have a family to turn to at night.

Bitch, please.

I’m gonna watch me some Underworld, Rise of the Lycans. I need to cleanse my palate.

I have this friend.  We’ll call him…Jim.

He and I, we went through stuff together.  Lots n lots of stuff.  Some cool.  Some weird.  Some awesome.  Some of which I should most likely blog about someday.  All memorable.  And out of all that stuff, we have this huge, massive, totally-something-I-treasure-even-tho-I-only-see-him-every-couple-years cache of inside jokes.

I mean it’s kinda freaky sometimes.  I don’t see him for years, and the moment we get together, it’s like the time apart never happened.  It’s awesome.

So just for the heck of it, in honour of this friendship that I should totally cultivate way more than I have been, I offer this selection of THE BEST AND MOST FAVORITEST MONTY PYTHON VIDS EVAR.  Oh how I’ve missed these!

And if…uh…Jim sees this….

JIM.  No more butter scones for me Mater, I’m off to play the grand piano! Pardon me while I fly my aeroplane!

I’ve been fooling you, interwebs.  Oh yes, I’m afraid so.  I’ve been weaving a sordid little web, and you didn’t even realize you were slowly being wrapped up like neat little packages.  While you’ve been innocently reading my lovely blog, I’ve been planting subtle, subconscious suggestions into your unsuspecting little cerebella.  You had absolutely no idea that I was capable of such duplicity, did you?  But I am, I’m afraid.  An offhand comment here, a casual reference there, and now you’re hooked.  Now you’re MINE.

Don’t panic though.  It’ll be ok.  Really, it will.  I think, once you get accustomed to the idea, you might even like it.  At first, you’ll scoff and say you haven’t been affected, that my insidious scheme has not planted a seed in your mind, but as the days and weeks progress you’ll think of it more and more, and become more and more curious, until finally you’ll google it.  You’ll IMDB it.  You’ll Netflix it.  And then you’ll realize I was right, it is too late; you have to watch it.  First, the original 1963 movie adaptation.  Then the 1981 miniseries.  Perhaps you’ll even listen to the numerous old radio recordings. Perhaps you’ll read the John Wyndham book that this is all based upon, which has been called one of the best science fiction horror novels of all time, and ‘an immortal story’ by none other than Arthur C. Clarke.  And then, you’ll anxiously await the 2009 version, with Vanessa Redgrave (who I do dearly love) and Jason Priestley and Eddie Izzard.  All of this glorious cinematic wonderfulness, brought to us by our friends across the pond at the BBC.

Resistance is futile, interwebs.  The Day of the Triffids is coming.

Triffid Illustration by John Wyndham

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

For some reason, even though that first line from A Tale of Two Cities resonated in my young brain so loudly, I just couldn’t get into that book.  Never did.  I’m sure I read that first page at least a dozen times.  Maybe I should try again.  But this, dear interwebs, is A Tale of Three Bamboo.  Or is it Bamboos?  Whatever.  Our story opens…

The Triff...er I mean Bamboo

Despite numerous warnings that I was insane to even contemplate the idea, I planted bamboo in my backyard.  And not even the relatively safe kind, i.e. ‘clumping’ bamboo.  No, I planted the ravenous, crawl into your house in the middle of the night and kill your pets kind of bamboo.  The Day of the Triffids bamboo: timber bamboo.

(Side note: OMG!  The BBC is going to film a new version of Day of the Triffids! W00t, I say.  Wewt even.)

But on the other hand, this is the same kind of bamboo they make floors out of.  And utensils.  Gorgeous ones!  Or at least that was the counter argument in my head when I was rationalizing this step in my Eternal Project.  Seriously, everyone I talked to thought I was insane:

“And then, I’m gonna plant some bamboo along the fence here…”

“You’re going to plant bamboo?”

“Yeah.  The big kind.  Timber.  Black, and Tiger.  They’re so pretty!”

“You’re going to…plant.  Bamboo.  Willingly.  In your backyard.”

“Um, yeah.  Pretty much.”

“Do you KNOW what bamboo does??”

“Yes…I’ve taken precautionary steps.”

“Yes but…it’s crazy!  It gets into EVERYTHING!”

“Yes, I know.  Like I said, I’ve taken steps.  Two sides are going to be surrounded in concrete, for starters!”

“Well…I still think you’re crazy for even considering it.”

“Thanks.  Your concern is duly noted.”

That’s how most of my conversations went.

But I did it.  It’s done.  And so far, all my pets are still here.  Or, well, they didn’t die of bamboo related injuries, at least.

I can’t say the same for my poor bamboo though.

I did my research, you know.  Like I said, I surrounded the planting area on two sides with concrete.  The other two sides, a foot and a half deep bamboo barrier, especially made for the task.  I planted them in little mounds, so the runners would be easy to spot.  I fertilized only the top six inches of soil or so, so the runners would stay close to the surface and be easy to maintain.  I check all the runners twice a year, and trim the ones that are heading in the wrong directions.

I did not, however, protect them from my dog.

I started with 3 bamboo.  Two black and one tiger, just like I wanted.  (Interestingly, both are classified as  Phyllostachys nigra.) Jessie and I drove waaaay out to Hillsboro to the Bamboo Garden Nursery (Yes, Jessie and I did meet Oggie the Bamboo Dog).  We were driven around the woods in a golf cart by the nice and helpful bamboo guy, who helped us pick out two black bamboo and one tiger bamboo. We carefully drove them home, planted according to directions, watered and carefully watched over my new charges.  Well, watched them except while I was at work.

I guess Jessie was still in her destructive stage, because it wasn’t long before one of the black bamboo was ripped out of the ground.  And replanted.  And ripped out again.  And replanted again.  And ripped out AGAIN.  And replanted, but by this time, it was becoming clear that the poor thing had met its match.  Eventually I had to admit that the plant was dead, and had now become a doggy chew toy.

Now, I have a fence around my bamboo.  They’re probably safe at this point, but I’m not taking any chances.  I have since replaced the unfortunate black bamboo with some free golden timber bamboo that I found on craigslist.  One of my favorite things to do around this time is to look for all the new little bamboo shoots popping out of the ground, letting me know that my mission of creating a privacy screen between me and my neighbors is coming to fruition.

So far….nothing.

Sigh.

Grow faster, bamboo!  FASTER!

Apparently my endless reserves of patience do not extend to plants.  Or actually, weather.  Because you know once the weather warms up for a couple weeks, those bamboo are going to be all crazy in yo face growing fiends.  Unkillable.  Unstoppable.  With poisonous whip-like stingers.

Hmm…perhaps I should get a really big machete.  You know, just in case.  Plus, it gives me an excuse to go to Andy and Bax!

Stay tuned for the next chapter, wherein my bamboo start growing at a rate of 2.65 feet a minute for the entire summer, and I next complain that they’re growing too damn fast.  Yay, gardening!

My fellow bloggers have truly been outdoing themselves lately.  So I thought I’d just give a shout out to some great stuff they’ve been writing lately.  Hey, Valentine’s Day is coming, right?  What better way to spread some blogger on blogger love then to …ahem…expose each other

@caseorganic, aka Amber Case, wrote a great post with five dating tips for nerds.  Very useful!  Plus, she quotes me, so you know it must be really good info. 

@melissalion, aka um, well Melissa Lion, has tasked us with crawling up from the muck that is our paltry existence, raise ourselves up and try to be her!  Oh happy day!  If you think you’re up to the task, my pretties, take a shot at The Melissa Lion International* Superiority Smugacity Self-Improvement Challenge.  I’m making chai.  From Starbucks. 

The Recovering Straight Girl has some food for thought on the idea that being gay is a choice.  I must say, I agree…whether or not it’s a choice, I wouldn’t want to be any other way.

Seems my love affair with PDX is rubbing off on people.  @jarvitron aka zenboy wrote this blog post about how much he loves Portland, too.  We should have a PDX love-in or something.

As far as work-type blogs go, one of my favorites is Web Worker Daily.  Although they tend to cater to gig workers, there’s still lots of great info.  And now, I have a go-to article to send all my friends to when I find myself at a loss to explain the coolness of Twitter, complete with some of its drawbacks.

And not the least, @cecivirtue posted some AMAZING phone pix of the opening night party of Coraline.  They had the actual sets on display at the party!  Wow.  Cherry blossoms done with spray painted popcorn?  Very, very cool.  Makes me miss my old movie construction days, when I built breakaway doors, installed fake plastic Japanese roof tiles, and got to play with gas torches to distress wood beams.  Ahh, movie magic.

Spread the blog love, and take a peek at some of my favorite bloggers.  Or check my new blogroll over there on the right.  Yeah over there.  Under my recent flickr pictures.  Read their stuff, and comment often.  They and I will appreciate it!

My netflix queue has about 482 movies in it.

Yes, that is a lot.

Many of the movies are ones I always wanted to see, but never got around to it, or missed it, or whatever. On the list it goes.

I’ve been kinda slacking on my netflix queue, but I remedied that today, and knocked out two of ‘em in a single night.

Movie #1: A Fish Called Wanda.
I’m a HUGE Monty Python fan. My friends and I used to watch the shows, record the shows, quote the shows, and generally act with Monty Python tomfoolery on a daily basis. I used to know the entire “Flying Lessons” skit by heart.  (One of my personal favorites) So I remember when this movie came out, and everyone saying how absolutely funny and hilarious is was, and it had John Cleese and Michael Palin, so, win, right?  It even was nominated for a couple Oscars.

Meh. It had some funny moments, to be sure, but it just didn’t catch me. Wasn’t funny enough to hold my attention.  Perhaps my taste in comedies runs a little to the east or west of this one.  I certainly have busted a gut laughing at Monty Python, both the show and the movies.  Not that I’m claiming that every movie associated with Cleese et al is copied out of the Monty Python joke book, but chances are that if they were involved, I’d like it. 

Movie #2: Benny and Joon
I knew I’d like this movie the second it started with the Proclaimers song “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”. That song always makes me smile. Plus hello, Johnny Depp AND Julianne Moore? I can’t help myself, I love movies like this. It’s the romantic in me, what can I say.  So, great music:  ”Can’t Find My Way Home” is one of my all time faves, although I prefer the Swans version to Joe Cocker.  He always kinda freaked me out, frankly.  Classic boy meets girl, must overcome obstacles to be together story with a mental illness twist.  I especially like the fact that the person with the mental illness is never someone you think of as ‘disabled’. 

I can totally relate to Sam. In more ways than I care to admit.

I think I want to take up painting. Seriously. And hey, maybe I’ll watch a couple of old Buster Keaton films while I’m at it.

Hiro in NYC

One bonus to the last week and a half or so of SNOWPOCALYPSE 2008!!! is that I’ve finally had the time to grind through the entire first, second and nearly third season of Heroes.   Here are a couple thoughts I have on the show:

1. The first season was awesome.  Totally sucked me in.  The sucking noises could be heard halfway down the street, I’m sure.
2. My favorite hero?  Hiro.  Except seriously, he needs to learn to block that nose punch to the face!  How many times has he gotten hit, 5 times? 6? 
3. Season three was starting to lose me, until the main characters really started to polarize as good/bad (or misguided).   It was just starting to feel like the storyline was starting to fracture and lose focus, so the clear polarization really helped. 
4. Quit messing with my head about Sylar!  Bad guy?   Good guy?   Bad guy?   Bad guy with reform potential?   Misled good guy?  Bad guy again?  Or just really really really really confused guy with waaaaay too much power and a hunger he can’t control?  Keeps me guessing, I suppose. 
5. If I Were a Hero – If I had to pick an ability, I’d probably go with Daphne’s speedster abilities.  Straightforward and useful.  I’d never have to be stuck in traffic again, could go anywhere in the world in moments…think of the gas savings alone!  And the moral dilemmas of an ability like that would be minimal and straightforward as well.  Unlike unraveling time and space – too complicated.  And being able to absorb other abilities…how confusing and overwhelming would that get after a while?  Yikes.  The whole not-dying ala Claire thing though, that would be very cool too.
6. One thing I want to ask @greggrunberg:  omg did you really have to wake up with a live scorpion on your head?  Dude!  That would have me in a state of panic unsurmountable. 

I’m hoping my streaming allotment from Netflix is enough to get me through the rest of season 3.  Then it’s off to catch up on the last season of Battlestar Galactica just in time for the final episodes… <insert crazed speculation re: last Cylon here>

Went to see Borat this weekend, and I just have one thing to say:

Ouch.

This movie takes you places you never, ever, ever, EVER EVER EVER wanted to go, and then goes one step further.  And then another.  And ANOTHER.  It’s like watching a 10 car pileup on the freeway…you really don’t want to see anything, but you keep watching because you can’t stop yourself.

Words that pop to mind when I think back on that psyche-burning experience:

motel room

stop stop oh no they didn’t

they’re gonna kill him

what did he say??

omg he didn’t just say that

but he’s jewish!!

I would’ve killed him!

I think the fact that the way they filmed it, you’re not sure if the people he’s talking to are actors or not.  I’m leaning towards not.  I think they actually are filming people who have no idea that they’re being filmed for a movie.  And that’s what makes those scary impending death scenes that much more scary…because I really think they would’ve ganged up and killed him if he’d taken another step.  The dinner at the magnolia house was priceless though.

By the way…I laughed so hard it hurt.  I just watched the trailer (I’d never seen it) and it made me laugh so hard I cried.  But then I know what they DON’T show.

I’d have to say that you need to see this movie, but be prepared for anything.  ANYTHING.  Be warned.

If I had to pick my most favorite books of all time, The Count of Monte Cristo would be up near the top. Granted, Alexandre Dumas was equivelent to a rennaisance-era Grisham. Good writing, great story but not a lot of depth, compared to the authors that would share the top of my list – Hermann Hesse, Ayn Rand, James Joyce. But the emotional impact of the book when I first read it in my teens was just as powerful.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see that a proper retelling of the story was done in the new movie V for Vendetta. The parallels are fairly obvious to someone who has read the book, but for those that haven’t, the black and white version of the movie gets a plug. However, it is a new retelling of the story; the same emotions, the same rage and agony are perfectly presented, and yet in an entirely new context. The fact that I found the movie disturbingly relevant to events happening today made this all the more compelling. I give this movie a big thumbs up.