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I drift off dreaming that you might appear
Apparently, this post is a linkdump.
I was not at Boskone this weekend. But I spent yesterday afternoon with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks and B. (and presently gaudior) and today at the MFA with Eric, so I can't call it a failure. I now own a kind of novel by E.E. Cummings. The capitalization keeps confusing me.
I agree very much with the last sentence of this review; I am on the wrong side of the Atlantic for Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem and I resent it, because the play sounds fascinating. Also, Mark Rylance. Anyone on my friendlist seen it?
Moment of Marblehead a few nights ago in the shower: while I had been thinking that some of Elsa Lanchester's songs reminded me of Gilbert and Sullivan, the chances are much better that some of Gilbert and Sullivan is reminiscent of music-hall. Many of the songs I like best—and not even the patter ones; see "When Fred'ric was a little lad," "When a felon's not engaged in his employment," "The law is the true embodiment," "Said I to myself, said I," "If you give me your attention"—are character-sketch monologues of a style that would not have been out of place at the Canterbury or the London Pavilion. Even some of the duets fit this pattern: "I once was a very abandoned person" and "Miya sama, miya sama" do not really advance the plot so much as they synopsize their narrators. They are self-contained; they don't end on cliffhangers. "My eyes are fully open" ends in metafiction, so you might as well perform it anywhere you like. (The Pirates of Penzance does). Anyway, I'm sure there are reams of literature on the interaction between G & S and popular song, but it took running out of hot water to make me think of it. I'm now curious about the half-life of these songs as standalone performances pieces. I would imagine it's fairly high.
(I was on a bus, not in the shower, when I figured out why the recent tendency to talk about crappy behavior in terms of the "monkey brain" annoys me. It's the old language of souls and bodies, merely transplanted into an evolutionary context: instead of pure spirit vs. sinful flesh, it's ape instincts and human reason. Can we just lose the dualism at the door, please? I think this is why I prefer terms like "wiring," which can mean anything from a neatly clicking binary switch to a spectacular kludge.1 There's no assumption of morality in the machine.)
Dick Francis! And last month Robert Parker. Thank God for Felony & Mayhem, because this year is really doing a number on future birthday presents for my mother.
Ave atque vale, all, goodnight.
1. Not to be confused with the cludgie. Although there are days when one's brain feels like that, too.
I was not at Boskone this weekend. But I spent yesterday afternoon with
rushthatspeaks and B. (and presently gaudior) and today at the MFA with Eric, so I can't call it a failure. I now own a kind of novel by E.E. Cummings. The capitalization keeps confusing me.I agree very much with the last sentence of this review; I am on the wrong side of the Atlantic for Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem and I resent it, because the play sounds fascinating. Also, Mark Rylance. Anyone on my friendlist seen it?
Moment of Marblehead a few nights ago in the shower: while I had been thinking that some of Elsa Lanchester's songs reminded me of Gilbert and Sullivan, the chances are much better that some of Gilbert and Sullivan is reminiscent of music-hall. Many of the songs I like best—and not even the patter ones; see "When Fred'ric was a little lad," "When a felon's not engaged in his employment," "The law is the true embodiment," "Said I to myself, said I," "If you give me your attention"—are character-sketch monologues of a style that would not have been out of place at the Canterbury or the London Pavilion. Even some of the duets fit this pattern: "I once was a very abandoned person" and "Miya sama, miya sama" do not really advance the plot so much as they synopsize their narrators. They are self-contained; they don't end on cliffhangers. "My eyes are fully open" ends in metafiction, so you might as well perform it anywhere you like. (The Pirates of Penzance does). Anyway, I'm sure there are reams of literature on the interaction between G & S and popular song, but it took running out of hot water to make me think of it. I'm now curious about the half-life of these songs as standalone performances pieces. I would imagine it's fairly high.
(I was on a bus, not in the shower, when I figured out why the recent tendency to talk about crappy behavior in terms of the "monkey brain" annoys me. It's the old language of souls and bodies, merely transplanted into an evolutionary context: instead of pure spirit vs. sinful flesh, it's ape instincts and human reason. Can we just lose the dualism at the door, please? I think this is why I prefer terms like "wiring," which can mean anything from a neatly clicking binary switch to a spectacular kludge.1 There's no assumption of morality in the machine.)
Dick Francis! And last month Robert Parker. Thank God for Felony & Mayhem, because this year is really doing a number on future birthday presents for my mother.
Ave atque vale, all, goodnight.
1. Not to be confused with the cludgie. Although there are days when one's brain feels like that, too.
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But I'm confused. I guess I assumed you were at Boskone. (I was not at Boskone, yet I assumed other people were...) You weren't there?
Little Springtime and the tall one were in Boston and environs on Saturday (and they visited Porter Exchange and did NOT bring me back a burdock and dandelion drink, but I forgive them, I guess), and on the T they saw some people in cosplay from Axis Powers Hitalia. "It was so weird," Little Springtime said. "There they were, just chilling, in cosplay." I pointed out that Boskone was on. "Ohhhh... that explains it, then," she said. But I'm not sure. Does it? Do people go to Boskone dressed in cosplay from anime-manga?
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No. I was not invited this year.
Does it? Do people go to Boskone dressed in cosplay from anime-manga?
They might? I tend to associate cosplay more with Arisia, but I think there are a handful of people every year who go to Boskone as someone else.
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re: cosplay, seems like maybe they were heading elsewhere, then....but who knows?
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I would like to have been at Boskone; I had been on the programming for the last two years and, I think, given satisfaction as a panelist. But, yeah. I can't afford to go as a fan.
....but who knows?
Well, whatever their origin, I like that your children saw them.
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...OK, probably more realistic than that, then.
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It's not impossible. Jo Walton held a launch party for one of her books a few years ago that has turned into a small con right around New Year's. If you organized something like that, I'd absolutely show up.
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Yay!!
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(Will actually read this post in more detail when I'm NOT procrastinating from the Persian Wars)
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(Let me know if I can help.)
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But the Japanese mall inside Porter Exchange has become an unofficial cosplayer hangout, and Tokyo Kid in the Garage in Harvard Square is an official one and has events pretty frequently.
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