Ordinary Day

Y'all remember MST3K, right? Well, the fine folks who are the core of the MST3K Funny, now doing Cinematic Titanic, are bringing their Funny live to Seattle in March! They're doing a movie on March 13th and 14th at the King Cat Theater.

Pre-sale tickets for the show go on sale TODAY and can be bought here!

Meanwhile, for giggles and grins, check this out. It's a fake fan trailer for a Thundercats movie--and it's surprisingly well done! I'd actually think about going to see this movie if it really existed.

This is made of 100% WIN for anybody who loves Star Wars and most other famous movies with music by John Williams. <3



ETA 11/7/08 11:10pm: I am corrected by spazzkat! The dude in this video is only lip synching, the music's by a group called Moosebutter. That said, this does not in any way diminish the unmitigated AWESOME that is this entire creation. <3

"Captain Kidd" is to date the one GBS song I've been able to play off of the mighty, mighty The Hard and the Easy. It's been favorably received in Jam as well, as I've posted. So it's joined the "Anna's Set" playlist of songs on the iPod that I can play along with.

This afternoon I was cheerfully banging away on Rags, in time with the aforementioned recording, when I suddenly felt something shift in my grip on the pick. I sputtered to a halt and discovered that the force of my playing had ripped the pick almost all the way through. Oops. *^_^*;;

For the guitar geeks out there, it's an Alice brand pick, .46mm. It's the same type of pick that solarbird has also ripped through, only mine was blue. I'm really rather amazed that I ripped through one, though! Dara plays with way more force than I do, usually. Plus, Summer has metal strings to Rags' nylon.

But apparently whipping through "Captain Kidd" along with the GBS recording is enough for even me to take out one of these picks. Note to Self: when in the Alternate Fantasy Universe where I tour with Great Big Sea, be sure to whip out a pick of greater substance! (And in the meantime, use better picks in this universe, too.)


Too Much Thumb

A bit belated, this--but as requested, here's my report on the Eddie Izzard show this past Friday, the 11th! In attendance: spazzkat, solarbird, mamishka, and me. We also bumped into tiggymalvern and spoomeister while we were there, too--and in the case of the latter, this was the first time we'd actually met in person, so yay!

Eddie had a fairly casual and butch look going by his standards, but he still looked pretty fabulous with some eyeliner and a very dashing tailed black jacket on over a red striped shirt. And in casual contrast to that, jeans. It was amusing too that he got a standing ovation just by walking out onto the stage (Seattle being pretty easy that way, hee), which took him distinctly aback and prompted him to make a crack about whether he should actually be there.

More importantly, he most definitely brought the Funny. And he was very aware of the nature of the audience he was playing to here in Seattle. There are I suspect few other places in the country where he could have opened the act with ten minutes of looking up Chief Sealth on his iPhone on Wikipedia, and making it work. Complete with side cracks about the iPhone (and asking if anyone in the audience had one of the new ones), being text-messaged by audience members, and the history of Wikipedia ("Founded by Mr. and Mrs. Wikipedia...").

Once he got into the main act, though, it was all about some territory he's covered before in previous shows: the history of Everything, pretty much. He made lots of commentary about the rise of civilization, about religion, and the development of language, all stuff he's milked for fodder before, though for me it was no less funny this time around.

My favorite bits:

Miming his way through a bunch of Neolithic hunters boxing bison, until one of them finally says 'fuck it', picks up a stone, and hits his prey with it.

Vehement insistence that the Romans could not possibly have conquered the known world as successfully as they did with a language like Latin. Included a comparison between the Latin version of a conversation between a messenger and a centurion about the imminent attack of Hannibal (complete with ad-libbed pseudo-German, pseudo-French, and pseudo-Latin), and the much shorter English version.

The entire sequence involving the noises that animals make, and hypothesizing how this must affect how giraffes warn other giraffes about imminent attack: "*coughcough* tiger *cough*". And, how they manage to hide on the plains of Africa: behind other giraffes. Insert obligatory mental image of Eddie miming a hundred giraffes in a line here. ;)

Announcing himself as part of the "Cult of Mac", then proceeding to lament how he has to agree to the License Agreement every time he re-installs iTunes. And how nobody reads these things anyway: "We'll set your grandmother on fire!" "I AGREE! I AGREE!"

Jokes about Galadriel being the mother of Jesus, and how she'd buggered off to the Grey Havens before Jesus went down to Earth. Also, how he noticed that only a few of us in the audience actually got that joke, including Dara and me, over there in our side-section seats laughing hysterically.

Getting in one shameless plug for The Riches, complete with noting that it's streaming on hulu.com. (And yeah, heh, this is me perpetuating the plug.)

ETA 10:07pm: OH YEAH forgot this bit: the bit where Eddie is extremely dubious about frogs as one of the Plagues of Egypt. Locusts, he could buy. Flies, oh yes. But frogs? Not so much. "AAAH! We have MORE FROGS THAN USUAL!"

So, yeah. Mostly familiar stuff to any Eddie fan who's seen his previous performances, particularly Glorious and Dress to Kill. But still highly, highly enjoyable. Worth the ticket price as well as the T-shirt from the swag table!

I was just waiting for this: the fine folks at GreatBigSea.com have overhauled the site again in honor of the forthcoming Fortune's Favor. It is gorgeous. Very nice figures of Fortune herself here and there all over the place, and plus, there seems to be some new stuff to look at as well--there's a new journal that's apparently going to be all about Séan's dog.

Best of all though is that they have a page up now for the album, including a complete track list, though I don't see cover art up yet or any lyrics. The liner notes however are HY-LARIOUS and remind me yet again exactly why I love my B'ys:

We honestly can't remember who played each track on each song. Somebody played the strumstick on "Banks of Newfoundland". We suspect it was Bob, but we can't find it to dust for prints. Hawksley and Kris played the drums, but Alan swears some his can be found on "Oh Yeah". Sean figures he played guitar on several tracks but couldn't, for the life of him, discern which ones. Hawksley insists that Sean played banjo on "Heart of Stone". Sean insists he does not know how. There are no bag pipes in the studio, but there are some on "Heart of Stone". We suspect Bob is responsible. Alan is a terrible piano player, yet he may very well have played the piano on "Walk on the Moon". Murray has a vague recollection that Kris hit one of the bouzoukis like a hammered dulcimer on "England". There is a cheap Casio keyboard part on "Long Lost Love" that no one will own up to. It would be impossible to count the number of passersby that sang the gang vocal on "Oh Yeah". We do know for certain that the lovely gal you hear sweetly singing in "Dance Dance" and "Hard Case" is Jeen O’Brien. She's an awesome writer and singer.

Looking forward to this album more and more. And to the TOUR that should be coming shortly thereafter!

First up: someone does a LOLCutter on elfquest, and lo, it is the Win.

Second: the 2008 Hugo nominations are out! I haven't actually read any of the contenders for Best Novel this year, though I am eying the Scalzi and the Stross, to be sure. And I must also admit that I looked at the blurb on Rollback in the store, and the concept sounded interesting. I may well indeed have to check out the reviews going around on these books.

However, I'd like to call your all's attention to the delightful list of contenders for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:

Battlestar Galactica "Razor" Written by Michael Taylor Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá and Wayne Rose (Sci Fi Channel) (televised version, not DVD)

Doctor Who "Blink" Written by Stephen Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)

Doctor Who "Human Nature" / "Family of Blood" Written by Paul Cornell Directed by Charles Palmer (BBC)

Star Trek New Voyages "World Enough and Time" Written by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree Directed by Marc Scott Zicree (Cawley Entertainment Co. and The Magic Time Co.)

Torchwood "Captain Jack Harkness" Written by Catherine Tregenna Directed by Ashley Way (BBC Wales)

I am particularly delighted by the Doctor Who squareoff, and am hopeful that paulcornell2 will score the win despite the excellent competition from Mr. Moffat--just because a) Mr. Cornell is awesome, and b) as I gushed before, David Tennant's performance in that two-parter was incredible.

However, I am genuinely unsure whether either of these will pull ahead of the competition!

And last but not least, Juno says no on Faerie Blood, but this was another favorable rejection, purely a "not to my taste" thing. I can deal with that. Now I'll just have to figure out where else I have left to send this one while I'm querying Lament of the Dove; DAW's most likely. We'll see.

Spotted tonight over on JournalFen: Eddie Izzard US Tour this summer!

Local folks, please to note the Seattle date for July! Who's up for an outing? Tickets are on sale NOW!

I realized to my chagrin that I completely skipped three of my character icons when I built my list. As a result, rather than re-order the entire list to account for those I left out, I bring you this special bonus matchup!

Harry Dresden (The Dresden Files, TV edition) / James Bond (Daniel Craig edition) / Martha Jones (Doctor Who)

007 liked his cases simple: find target, eliminate target, God save the Queen and the sanctity of Britain. Why the bloody hell M assigned him to a stakeout of robe-wearing Druid cultists in Stonehenge he could not begin to fathom--and about what the hell an American detective was doing there, also staking out the cultists, he could not begin to give a damn. On any other case, in any other country, he might almost have liked him; the man did have a certain refreshing honesty about him. But in Britain, he was out of his jurisdiction and far out of his league, and James wasn't about to let Dresden waltz off with his mission. Or the feisty, dusky beauty who'd pulled him out of the ruin that the cult leader had made of his latest Aston Martin, and then patched him back together with skilled and efficient hands.

He didn't know what strange new tech the cult had armed themselved with, that they'd flung his car a hundred feet into a ravine without any trace of an explosive device. Or for that matter, why Dresden seemed to know more than he was telling about their activities...

Or why lovely, clever young Martha, confronted with the danger at hand, did not seem the slightest bit surprised.

And now, from the same fine artist who brought you Doctor's Girls and omg DOCTORZ , we have Doctor's Boys. I love it. I love it so. :D

Someone has also apparently generated icons! Look for the extra special bonus "Young One" icon in that post.

ETA 9:01am: solarbird gave me this link, too, which made me laugh and laugh and laugh.