W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

I think they said this is on Lake Harriet, a big park and lake near Minneapolis. Somebody covertly made and installed a statue of the Loch Ness Monster. Supposedly an artist who does this type of creature work just moved there from NYC, so that's the best guest. For some reason, somebody (the same somebody?) has created a Website for the statue.

I won't publsh the photo since I don't have rights, but a guy I know from my Fortean list took a series of photos. That's his (c)-- D.R. Shoop. Go see, go see!

http://www.darkwatercreativegroup.com/nessieC.jpg

It's timely because we've been seeing this particular video played and replayed lately, RIP MJ, so her imitations of it are recognizable -- and priceless!

If you're a mutha, happy day to you. My mom and the rest of my family will be over around lunchtime to celebrate the day, and my birthday. I got to choose the lunch venue, so I chose (heh heh heh) Bone Daddy's. I can guarantee there will be no twee roses and ruffles there! Plus, in an example of family mind-melding, my brother had just sighed to my mom, "oh that BBQ on TV looks good" just before I called. I also got Mom flowers and chocolates, since at this late stage in her life she has two of everything an old lady could want... But she loves flowers, so woo hoo.

Childless spinsters like me are right out of luck on this holiday. I've got the requisite two cats of a writer too, so I'm really working the stereotype. And my cats, the lazy parasites, have never yet given me even a card on this day! Well, maybe if I started giving them an allowance...?

Naw, they'd just spend it on catnip.

Then I read about the powerful effect of these high-dollar, very creepy baby dolls. Really! They're individually airbrushed to have sweet little cheeks. They have human hair and are modeled on real children. But man, I find homunculi of all types so weirdly off-putting. Women are collecting these things, big-time. True, unless you have the homuncuphobia, holding a real baby or a fake baby can trigger hormones that bathe you in contentment and well-being. I do get that with real babies, plus I'm almost always able to get them to talk to me (really, even the parents crowd around and say "I've never heard her/him do that before!"). But these fake babies? eewwwwhhhh

But if I was to get one, here's a blonde, new baby girl. ( I'll hide the big photo behind the cut... )

Yes, I had nosebleed seats, so cramped even my short legs were pinched. Yes, I paid $175 to an evil scalper for those horrible seats, way up on the left in the 2nd balcony. Luckily I brought my mini-binoculars because Jemaine and Brett were cute and wonderful! What a fun Flight of the Conchorts Concert on Wednesday!

Full house, lots of enthusiastic people. We all roared at their songs and their patter. They are indeed just like their personas on TV, and they do fun things in messing with the audience. Also, Brett looks less scrawny in person, which is surprising. Jemaine is obviously the louder and quicker thinking, but he is subservient to Brett. Brett is the alpha conchord, you can tell.

Eugene Mirman, who plays their sloppy, odd landlord in the series, did a little of his stand-up routine. He had a funny story about how much he hates Delta Airlines, and then he passed out postcards for people to fill in and send to Delta to reinforce that they made a bad move when they screwed around someone who's clever and plays in venues with thousands of people. Ha, and he used his claims refund for the baggage of his they lost to print up the postcards!

Jemaine and Brett have been to Austin to play SxSW in their lesser-known days. This time they did a lot of songs from Season II, which I don't know. But they played many of the top hits I loved: It's Business Time, Hip-Hop-aPotamus, I'm Not Crying, and ... The Humans Are Dead!

The humans are dead
The humans are de-ad
We used posionous gases
And we poisoned their asses!

Binary solo!
0000001000011100000010000001

They sold colorful men's briefs at their swag table. Not sure what that was about... I never got through the huge crowd to see details. But anyway, it was one of the NIghts of Wendy's Birthday. In this case, it was the gift I got myself two months ago. So glad I did!

They talked about this on KGSR this morning, and someone posted about her on Herdomain too, so I found the YouTube clip of frumpy, spunky, 47-year-old Susan Boyle killing with a Les Miz song in a recent Britain's Got Talent (their version of American Idol). She's an overnight sensation, millions of YouTube hits, etc. Now the comments all seem to be how watching the clip makes everybody cry. I did. It's kinda amazing and a good human lesson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame.

And still
I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather...

I had a dream my life would be
So different form this hell I'm living
so different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

Update: Conversations about this woman and her unlikely success... That she challenged the youthful contestants on this show, for one. That she took the snickers and eye-rolls and made people reverse their opinions. A good comment was that the event was manipulated; the goofy music, the quick clips of her admitting cheerily to classic spinster details, the patronizing "How old are you Susan" from Simon in a tone more appropriate to a five-year-old. But even knowing and seeing that (it's one of the most manipulative of the reality shows, both in the US and England), you still get a lump in your throat and tears in your eyes from her voice and her phrasing. She's also not untutored; there's a clip on YouTube of Susan Boyle's song in a charity performance from 10 years ago, and she's great on that too: Cry Me a River.

But the discussions brought up for me why I don't like American Idol or America's Got Talent or those other shows. That part of the show where deluded contestants stand there, full of arrogance, and perform crappy auditions*, that's just mean. It's people laughing at the weakest parts of human nature as demonstrated by real humans, versus laughing at highly paid actors mouthing scripts by highly paid writers.

Those actors get to put off the deluded characters at the end of the day, but the foolish souls mocked on the reality shows go home with L-O-S-E-R tattooed across their foreheads. It makes me mad that there are such high TV audiences for that. It makes me furious that Simon Caldwell is making tens of millions of $$ from it.


*I find I can have some interest in watching the finalists perform in challenges; they're all acknowledged as good singers by that point, and loserdom is not part of the theme.

Clever lyrics! Visit :
Uncle Jay Explains.

It's me singing (not great, not awful) with help from the SlugTribe. Lyrics and music by me. Now posted on Space Squid and RevolutionSF.com!

"A Genre Take on the Miracle of Christmas" -- access the podcast!

It was so funny tonight at the SlugTribe meeting. The last SF/F/H critique group meeting of 2008, btw. We had about 17 folks and 11 people were there with manuscripts to read. But even with the crowded agenda, I took the floor for 10 minutes and made everyone sing along on my profane Christmas carol. They were great!

Matthew was there with three recording devices so he could capture it for a streaming Podcast on www.spacesquid.com. I'd submitted the song to him as a poem, of seasonal + genre import. He insisted he had to have a Podcast of it for the magazine's online offering. I said it was actually set to music (lyrics and music by me) and I needed a group to sing it with.

We did it a capella, which is how I always sing it, and the SlugTribers were GREAT! Plus Matt is giving anybody who was there and wants it credit on his Website. Plus I got paid my contributor's fee.

Very eccentric and fun town, Austin.

Friday evening, Mariusz was being celebrated at the Polish Film Festival, with his Pola Negri documentary the first showing of the three nights. Held in the Harry Ransome Center theater (did you know there was a theater there? I didn't before!), the Austin Polish Society even had a catered spread with coffee, wine and sparkling water. I wasn't hungry but some Polish-American folks I chatted with insisted I go try the Polish delacacies. Like herring in sour cream (fishy and milky together) and what was simply congealed bacon grease with bacon bits still in it which you spread on the many breads they had. It was both greasy and bacony, and every Polish person I accosted about "why is this a Polish treat?!" was embarrassed, telling me that "the old peoples eat that one." Ha!

I'd seen the film about the amazing polyglot uber-glamorous silent film actress Pola Negri on my home mac when I was editing Mariusz's biography on her. (He's taking that bio to New York editors soon, he says, and my name stays on credited as editor--!) It was impressive to see it on the big screen, plus people gasped and laughed at the right places. Mariusz also did a very heartfelt and well-spoken intro about why Pola Negri (she's so famous that everyplace she ever lived in Poland has a plaque up about her) and how honored he was they chose his film. Jacek Bromski, another Polish director, came from Warsaw to be feted for the week; his movie was shown Saturday. He came from Wroclaw! If I'd realized it at the time I would've told him about Russ & Anna.

Plus I was surprised to learn a friend from screenwriters group, Peter Peter Pumpkin, uh, blues dancer, got some writing work from Mariusz. Which was cool since I'd pointed out several things Peter & Mariusz had in common during a TV script read-through at Bright Shining City studios a few weeks ago.

A wonderful, celebratory lunch Saturday with my progressive politics friends. We've been crying and whining for 8 years, so it was teh AWESOME to have jubilation! And we did it at the new dim sum in the Asian Center in N.Austin near my house, Kim Son. A dozen of us, with a big lazy susan in the middle of the table, and fun, odd, delicious, disgusting (sometimes all 4 qualities at once!) dishes were forever revolving past your plate...

Saturday night, it was the low-brow humor of Dame Edna, at the Paramount, but I got the ticket a year ago for $25. And you just gotta love a guy who's been doing the one satirical character for 50 years. Barry Humphries is something like 86 years old -- which you can see as Dame Edna sort of totters around the stage. Sitting in the cheap seats (we were her "paupers" also called "paupies" also called "Les Miserables") way up high in the balcony, one could see his prompts written in chalk in big words on the stage floor!

Sunday, the SlugTribe came here for a long afternoon of SF/F critique. Ten folks on a Sunday at my big dropleaf table! And we got through 5 stories, one being my comedy script in progress. Plus I had leftover Halloween candy and made up a big pot of posole.

Tonight, more writing is due so I'll have a late night of it.

Austin just broke a record for number of people participating in a Michael Jackson's THRILLER dance. It was promptly then beaten by Monroeville, PA, then that one by Nottingham, England... But as someone pointed out on a list I'm on, who's beaten the one made by the Phillipino prison camp at 1,500+? It appears: nobody yet!

So here's the one performed by the Cebu Detention Center. They didn't have all the zombie makeup and tattered clothes -- everybody (except one!) is in an orange tshirt and pants with flip-flops. The one who "plays" Michael Jackson isn't the best dancer, but he looks like the meanest face, so wonder how he won that, hmmmm.... And then there's the "girlfriend." I love how from a distance you think there's a woman there, but close up..... Also, my brother who loves Vincent Price talks about how little VP liked Michael Jackson, who got him to do his part for a flat fee and so Price never shared in any of the millions this song and video made...