And the guy in the rear . . . burned his driver's license

[sovay]

This weekend. Right. I really liked most of it!

Honestly, I was not intending to see all three performances of the Spring Sci-Fi Spectacular, but I had already promised taiganwolf that I would hear him in the matinée and then I had my stuff stashed in the balcony of Urban Promise and then I was invited for dinner between shows with derspatchel and some of the Spetacosians ("a race of acid-spitting backbiters . . . known far and wide for hating that which they love," although off-mike they also do a nice line in WWII dick jokes) and therefore with one thing and another, there was a lot of radio theater on Saturday. What I didn't realize this would give me was the chance to watch the show evolve in performance as the actors tried out different line-readings or bits of business on their varying audiences, culminating in the case of Havoc Over Holowood! in Rob taking a rather nice pratfall for a bit of blocking that had previously been indicated only by some toppling tin-can noises on the foley. (Dr. Alberts is standing in for the robot sidekick of Jetpack Jones, the hero of the wildly popular holo-serial whose latest episode the regular cast are feverishly working to reframe and retcon in a sort of Be Kind Rewind attempt to satisfy a legion jihad junta mob of angry, magna-pitchfork-and-laser-torch-wielding fans. Doc is many things, but one of Nature's thespians is not among them.) Aside from the cast changes between matinée and evenings, I saw less variation in The Day the Earth Stood Still, but I did think their Klaatu improved with performance. My parents loved him on the first night; I found him occasionally, jarringly close to superior in his delivery, which made his closing ultimatum more of an interstellar rap on the knuckles than a cool choice of evolutionary consequences. By the last night, even if he never achieved for me that slight, intrinsic otherness that I want out of my alien characters (and which Michael Rennie conveys, which surprised me when I rewatched the film), I did not have that problem. It didn't hurt that the actor himself looked straight out of the '50's—silvery hair in a neat businessman's cut, brow-line glasses, wearing a grey pinstripe suit and suspenders like he put them on every morning; the accent of the time, too, which seems to be more or less his own. Oh, yes, and he turned out to be a friend of one of my mother's two closest friends in Boston. Playing opposite agoodshinkickin, the aforementioned last-seen at darthrami and strange_selkie's baby shower. This is just getting silly.

There was an enthusiastic afterparty. I almost did not go to it, for reasons that were partly Tiny Wittgenstein and partly finding out there are places in my head that have not yet healed as much as I hoped they had; I walked to Orchard Street out of a teeth-gritted fuck-you-brain and a deep conviction that I would have nothing to do except stand around reading the spines of my host's library and then I got to the driveway and the actor who had played Professor Barnhardt in The Day the Earth Stood Still (who does a hell of a German accent, although what we traced in conversation Friday night at Saloon were our respective origins in the Pale) spotted me, sang out my name, and tried to give me his margarita. So I went in. I sat on the stairs with ladymondegreen and talked about souls and significant others and music we needed to exchange. I discovered further interconnections between various spheres of my life. I seem to have wound up with invitations to two different people's houses. I am hoping my brain takes the point.

And then on Sunday I woke up with something that was either a transient bug or a touch of norovirus or food poisoning—I would really prefer it not to be the latter, because the only culprit would be the conch burger from Boston Burger and it had mango salsa and jerk mayonnaise, but either way I did not meet my family for a matinée of The Avengers (2012), which my mother has been wanting to see ever since Thor (2011); I spent most of the daylight hours curled up in bed trying to convince myself that even drinking water was a good idea. Dinner was a bowl of macaroni and a lot of tea. I counted it a success. And eventually I felt well enough to return home and watch "The Hounds of Baskerville" on Mystery! with my mother for Mother's Day (I seem to be averaging about two episodes per season of Sherlock, but I've enjoyed all the ones I've seen), but it was not exactly how I'd planned to wind up the weekend.

(The title of this post comes from one of the things Rob showed me to distract me in the meantime: Noel Harrison and the Smothers Brothers, "The One on the Left Is the One on the Right." It did its job. Also, it's catchy.)

Yesterday made up for it. Rob and I went to see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. My parents were also in the audience, which caused some drama around picking up the tickets, but also made my mother feel a lot better about missing The Avengers. Despite silliness with rain and buses, we made it in time for the introductory lecture by an extremely entertaining marine biologist who showed both footage of data-tagging whales with suction cups and really neat models of the data obtained thereby. The crowd was probably some combination of Trekkies and hipsters—the applause was always appreciative, but I think it was sometimes appreciating different things—and the print quality was awful, which was rather distressing on a film-preservation level, but it remains a delightful movie and I was strangely pleased I was not the only person who very nearly lip-synched, "Well, double dumbass on you!" And then there was dinner, which kind of turned into the Anabasis. In a sensible universe, we would probably have just walked into the likeliest-looking restaurant in Coolidge Corner, since one of us hadn't eaten all day and the other had cautiously essayed some rice cakes around eleven in the morning. Instead, Rob knew a barbecue place in Brookline, so we walked up to the Village Smokehouse only to discover it had closed just as we got there. Catching the D line from Brookline Village became an instantly less appealing prospect as soon as we realized that it was a Fenway night: a game had just gotten out and the subways were going to be chaos. We kept walking. And in one of those disorienting clicks where the streets look like déjà vu until you get them from the right angle, we came up past a garage and I realized I knew exactly where we were, just facing the other direction. It was the route I take with lesser_celery whenever we walk back from lunch to his car, sometimes from the Back Bay. And so we walked up Huntington, keeping an eye out for plausible restaurants, avoiding Penguin Pizza because it was full of students, and just at the point where our blood sugar was about to desert us entirely, we reached The Squealing Pig (which is not to be confused with The Salty Pig, even though I ate for the first time at both places with lesser_celery) and not only were they still open and serving food, they weren't even very crowded. Rob had the fish and chips and curry fries; I had the lobster toastie and the Tuscan fries. He ordered a lot of imaginatively named beers, one of which I would have totally mooched from him if it hadn't contained coffee. For dessert, we decided we didn't need our arteries and got the toasted sandwich made out of Belgian waffles, bananas, and Irish Mars Bar. The stereo played Division of Laura Lee's "Dirty Love," which is one of the songs I wrote "Little Fix of Friction" to. We may have closed them out and I still caught the last bus from Somerville, which I consider another victory of timing over planning.

And today I have no plans at all except a lot of work and recharge. TCM claims to be showing something called Remember the Night (1940) later this evening, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray and written by Preston Sturges, which I suspect I will collapse in front of. That is fine.

Comments

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I do not have a proper appreciation of Tiny Wittgenstein other than the contextual use, given my lack of education in German. That said, *big woolfhugs*.

You're welcome. I should have timed it with Penny elbowing Doc awake, but the ambient levels of metafiction were already toxically high.

Well, it only would have been truly toxic, I think, if after you woke me up we found out that we were extras on the set of Jetpack Jones. Or if not toxic, at least potentially lethal. Still, Rob may have told you just how fearsome we Earthers are.

Works for me. I have no idea what you read, either, when it's not radio scripts.

Reading, well... right now I am still keeping on with my academic reading, which mostly centers on politics. I like good humor, which is in relatively short supply despite the booming market in humor books. I read some SF and fantasy, but I've been reading less of it the more I realize just how the stated politics cannot naturally flow from the society. The better books either keep out the politics or manage to keep it a natural growth.

As for music, I just jumped on a bandwagon *blush* I have listened to a lot less of it than I like over the past few years, though I admit I liked Yo Yo Ma's recent collaborative project The Goat Rodeo Show.
I am so far behind on movies that I think my should-watch-sometime list goes back to the 90s in terms of new ones. I adore the patter in some of the old black-and-whites, with The Thin Man and sequels being particular favorites. The first movie bears only a minor resemblance to the book, though -- I'd love to see it get turned into movie that's true to the original. It would be tawdry, and it could be glorious.

[sovay]

I do not have a proper appreciation of Tiny Wittgenstein other than the contextual use, given my lack of education in German.

Tiny Wittgenstein is properly speaking ratatosk's coinage, although I laid the groundwork. He abbreviates to T. Witt. and derspatchel is very good at getting him off my shoulder, a favor which I am never sorry to return. The little bastard is quick on the wing.

Historical Wittgenstein I am extremely fond of, not strictly because he was played by Karl Johnson in Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993), but as an introduction it certainly didn't hurt.

Still, Rob may have told you just how fearsome we Earthers are.

It's a strange planet you people live on, I must admit. Got some nice art, though.

I read some SF and fantasy, but I've been reading less of it the more I realize just how the stated politics cannot naturally flow from the society. The better books either keep out the politics or manage to keep it a natural growth.

I take it politics is something you read for?

It would be tawdry, and it could be glorious.

That's a nice sentence.

Would you adapt it for radio?