Profound thought

I hate straight plays. They don't have any songs in them. The characters have to actually talk about their feelings and shit, when a dance break would get the job done perfectly well while being much less embarrassing for all involved. Grumble.

Back to work.

Sober Train

I spend a lot of time on the Long Island Rail Road and, as such, I am constantly running for trains and dodging random high school acquaintances who somehow always seem to remember significant details of my biography. Sample conversation:

Person I've Never Seen Before In My Life: Oh my god Liz [Surname]! How was Harvard? Do you still play the cello? I heard you went to South Africa awhile back, how was that?
Me: Hey... you.

I appear to have been inexplicably famous. Or just really, really recognizable (the hair's usually a giveaway).

Anyway, there is a benefit to my LIRR dependency - namely, the Saturday night 1:42 am train out of Penn Station. Because it is hilarious. Much funnier than the 3:07, by which point everyone's sobered up in an hour of waiting around the train station, the 1:42 provides endless amusement in the form of underage intoxicated persons sharing their wisdom with those fortunate enough to share their train car.

I present you with a rough transcription of the highlight of a recent ride home:

A young man, probably 18, is standing at the head of the car. A half dozen of his friends, representing various levels of consciousness, lie in the surrounding seats. Our hero is singing.

YOUNG MAN
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Eeeven thooough I'm a Jeeeew!

I shall spare you the remainder of his song, for it would be impossible to fairly transcribe his truly impressive feats of "making six words fit in the the space of one". Suffice to say, after several minutes, he ran out of the song, and began extemporizing instead. I wasn't ever quite able to hear the responses from his more lungpower-deficient companions - our hero, however, never failed to maintain a more than satisfactory volume.

YOUNG MAN
You didn't know I was Jewish? Oh man I am so Jewish. I don't believe any of that shit though, like the God stuff.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yeah, that's right, I'm an atheist. Total atheist. Ayyyyyyyyyyyy...theist. I like being neutral, you know? I don't just pick a side to be controversial or whatever, I look at both sides of an issue. I don't wanna say I'm a Republican or a Democrat, I'm neutral, i'm an Independent. And I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, cuz I'm fucking neutral.
My religion has a first name, it's A - T - I - E - "Est"!

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
What? Oh yeah, of course I believe in God. Whatever. I just don't care about that religion shit, because it's shit! I don't like picking sides, you know? I don't, like, think there's no god or anything, I just don't want to be part of any religion, so I'm an atheist.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yes that is what it means! What, is there another word for it?

HELPFUL GENTLEMAN DOWN THE TRAIN
Yes, "agnostic."

YOUNG MAN
That's it! Thanks man! I love you! I'm totally agnostic!

ME
::facepalm::

Resistance is Futile

My sister watched The Next Doctor with me last night [verdict: best thing ever, as long as you don't think about it too much], and was totally floored by the dreaminess of David Tennant, so this afternoon I gave her my dvds so she could give the whole shebang a try.

I walk into her bedroom just now, and she's sitting there with tears streaming down her face.

Me: Jeez, up to Father's Day already?
Sister: No, I just... I can't...
Me: What is it?
Sister: He told Dickens his books are gonna last forever! It's like "and his music just left the solar system"* all over again! Did the real Dickens know?? He knew, right? Tell me Dickens knew!! Oh god the Doctor is amazing. [::cries more::]

Conversion complete. Heehee.


*West Wing, re Blind Willie Johnson

Errata

I just noticed that in a post a few weeks ago, I wrote the following:

Excerpted from a letter I wrote to Quentin this evening (so, Quentin, don't read this or I'll have wasted 32 cents.)

32 cents? Really? What decade am I living in?

The answer is "1995-1998." Seems appropriate, actually. And the price of stamps has gone up a dime in a decade? Well, that explains why y'all aren't getting Christmas cards this year. You know, that and other reasons.

And if I actually did put a 32 cent stamp on that letter to Quentin... well, he should probably pop into his DeLorean to pick it up in 1996 then. And maybe go to a Spice Girls concert while he's there.


[re the stamp in the picture: "Perry! I'm married now!" "Mary Ellen! I'm gay now!" Good times]

Hello, strangers.

I seem to have accumulated a rather significant amount of google traffic, thanks almost entirely to the "ate a violin" post and everyone's internet crush Randall Munroe. I made that post not actually to draw people to my blog - seriously, if that were the intent, I'd have more consistent content round these parts - but because I was curious how many people would read the XKCD blog, search the first term in that post, and then follow through to the resulting links.

The answer: a lot.

Hullo, xkcd fans! ::waves::

And while I'm getting all this random international traffic...

Can anyone recommend a graduate-level dramatic writing program in the U.K.?

I'd like to consider studying in the U.K., but my anglophilia does not extend to the university system and have absolutely no idea how to go about finding good programs. I'm talking to you, random Welsh stranger reading this - if you're thinking "well obviously she knows about the blahdiblah program, but I don't know of anything other than that", then you should leave a comment telling me about the blahdiblah program, because I in fact do not know about it.

In other news, the Doctor Who Christmas special airs in six days. (which is to say, there are six days till Christmas). This is excellent because:
1) new Doctor Who to reward me in the middle of my awful never-ending application slog!
2) spoilers, real actually spoiling-y spoilers, now abound on the internet, which means I have to avoid the internet, which means I am forced to focus on my awful never-ending application slog. Yay?

I am writing an awful lot at the moment. This is because grad school apps are due in two weeks. Cue panic.

The first fluff piece I write when I emerge will be a sketch about the Christmas substitute for a minister who has taken the holidays off. The sub will be a Jew. Because Jews always work on Christmas.

Ate a violin

The xkcd blog yesterday featured a list of phrases with no google hits, like "aww, a baby hooker!" and "unlike normal furries." At the top of the list was "ate a violin." How could there be no google hits for violin-eating?!

I sorta feel... jipped? In a way. That radio play I wrote senior year, it featured a space monster that ate a violin. It was a decent little gag. But if only there were a proper description of the radio play on the Pops website (and perhaps then they'd remember to sell it at concerts?), then I could have ever so briefly gotten Randall Munroe's attention! Which would be like winning the internet.

Follow-up: Hello, strangers!

I have no pictures of our violin-eating monster, since it was radio, but here's our man-eating viola:

Another io9 post! Hot Flashes: Ten Uses For Lightning That Ben Franklin Never Guessed

Writing these things is so very bad for me. The instant gratification is like crack! I cannot stop myself from obsessively monitoring the progress of my articles. Thankfully, they've been doing quite well, so it's happy crack, but still crack.

"Do you think you could find a Godzilla menorah for me?" - my editor

The Second Shooter

This is a random little sketch I wrote awhile back, upon learning a new vocabulary word and determining that Aaron Sorkin could probably milk that moment for a solid minute of airtime. I decided to do the job for him. I'm pretty sure I'll never have reason to use this sketch in anything, so I'll share it here.

ONE: So I was reading this book about the genealogy of pygmies in the Pacific Northwest –

TWO: You were reading a book about the genealogy of pygmies in the Pacific Northwest?

ONE: Yes.

THREE: There are pygmies in the Pacific Northwest?

TWO: Genealogically.

THREE: Ah.

ONE: Don’t you want to ask me why I was reading about pygmies in the Pacific Northwest?

THREE: I rather assumed you were attending a midget convention in Seattle.

TWO: They prefer “little people.”

THREE: I prefer supermodels, but we can’t have everything.

ONE: Well the library sent me the wrong book from the thing.

TWO: You meant to read about the genealogy of slightly larger people, then?

ONE: No, I wanted the biography of the man who invented paperclips.

THREE: I can see the confusion.

TWO: Why does the library even have books about the genealogy of pygmy paperclip inventors? Who reads that?

THREE: He does.

ONE: No one does, that’s why they’re in the book thing.

TWO: The book thing.

ONE: The book depository.

TWO: Are they all planning to assassinate John Kennedy?

THREE: That’s repository.

ONE: What?

THREE: Texas Book Repository. The word’s repository, not depository.

ONE: No, I think it’s depository.

THREE: No.

ONE: No, it’s depository. It’s where you deposit books.

THREE: No, it’s where you reposit… Well okay that doesn’t make sense, but that’s still the word.

TWO: Actually, it’s both.

ONE: What?

TWO: I just looked it up. Depository and repository are synonyms.

THREE: Who thought that was a good idea?

TWO: Probably somebody got it wrong once and was too embarrassed to correct it.

THREE: So he declared the other word a synonym?

TWO: Yup.

THREE: I didn’t know you can do that.

TWO: You can’t. This guy had enough books that he needed a freaking deposit-reposit-thing, though, so he was probably pretty important.

THREE: You know what I’d like?

TWO: What?

THREE: A book suppository.

ONE: …ew.

TWO: Well, you could more literally tell someone to shove a book up their ass.

THREE: And it would certainly make it easier to cram for a literature exam.

ONE: Frankly I prefer the old-fashioned method.

TWO: Studying?

ONE: Osmosis. Now excuse me – I need to go take a nap on top of my copy of Pygmies Of The Pacific Northwest.

THREE: Okay, but if you try my way? Don’t return it to the library.

To thy jubilee throng

Excerpted from a letter I wrote to Quentin this evening (so, Quentin, don't read this or I'll have wasted 32 cents. everyone else, go ahead):

As you probably gathered from the date line, it is the Sunday of Harvard-Yale weekend. I shall spare you the gory details of the concert and the Game, as by the time you read this you will probably have been filled in on the Wookie, the 703rd rendition of "If You Could Only See," and the thorough if wholly uninteresting trouncing of the sons of Eli by the Glee Club.

That sentence's syntax got away from me a bit there - the intent was that you had been updated by members of the Glee Club, not that the sons of Eli had been drubbed by the same. But if you would prefer to imagine the combined forces of the Glee Club storming the gridiron with crimson in triumph flashing, then I won't hold it against you.

Suffice it to say, at this weekend's tailgate I learned that contrary to popular wisdom, you will not become magically warm if you try to combat the freezing cold by getting drunk - you will just be freezing cold, and drunk. As both involve compromising the ability to feel your feet, it should come as no surprise that combining these states makes a most admirable and praiseworthy accomplishment out of the normally mundane task of remaining perpendicular to the ground. I am pleased to report that my tailgate was a success in this regard, barring an unfortunate twenty minutes spent in Gordon Track trying to make my toes wiggle through sheer force of will.

The weekend also served as a reminder of what exactly I enjoyed about college life. Not the crowded and sweaty parties that I no longer feel remotely obligated to pretend to like; nor the social events filled with old friends who I would love to talk to for hours but who, when in a parade of obligatory five-minute catchups, inspire attacks of my usually latent social anxiety; nor, shock of shocks, the football.

Rather, I was happiest this weekend sitting in a Leverett common room with a pair of RCSers and their blockmates, watching a movie, and each of us on a laptop or knitting or otherwise going about our business in each other's company. It's that sort of background socialization - having friends in the same room to comment at occasionally without necessarily having a full blown conversation - that was a constant element of my college days, and that is almost entirely absent from my life in New York.

In short - I miss my roommates.

Follow up: Errata

Thoughts on 45 years in Time and Space

Had my second piece in io9 today - a news story on the recently released BBC documents detailing the creation of Doctor Who, 45 years ago. You can check it out here: The BBC Tried To Ruin Doctor Who - Before It Even Began.

45 years ago this Sunday, the first episode of Doctor Who was transmitted in Great Britain. This was the day after the Kennedy assassination - which is to say, by some measures, the first day of modernity. The beginning of The Present Day. Death of innocence and all that jazz - and no doubt the tendency of public school editions of history textbooks to cut off right around the Kennedy assassination has something to do with this as well.

For me, though, the dividing line is not about the socio-political implications of 1963. It's just the dividing line, that's how it is. Before 1963 is the past. After 1963 is the real world. And Doctor Who, fittingly enough, straddles that hazy line between yesterday and today.

Watching "An Unearthly Child" for the first time as strictly a 2005 revival fan, it's not immediately apparent that this is the same show we love and obsess over now. Sure, there's a police box in a junkyard, and a young girl is calling an older white dude "Doctor." But the control room is unrecognizably groovy, and William Hartnell bears little resemblance to our modern Doctors in both appearance and performance.

And more importantly, it just feels different - the pacing, the direction, the slightly horrifying moment when you realize that this Doctor prefers to kidnap his companions, rather than politely ask them aboard. It's old and creaky and dreadfully British. It is, essentially, alien.

But then this man called the Doctor hits the dematerialization circuit. And the moment you hear that unmistakable, unchanged groan of ancient engines - the familiar and fantastic thrill of the TARDIS, our TARDIS, in this program broadcast half a century ago - it feels just a little bit like time travel.

5 Things I Learned About Women From James Bond

My first post on IO9 ran this afternoon! I am rather happy with it. Do check it out!

5 Things I Learned About Women From James Bond

Ceci n'est pas une blog

This is not a blog.

Well, technically it is. But not really.

Due to popular demand (okay, scattered but persistent demand), I will now be providing reading material of the online variety with some regularity.

I have resisted traditional blogging my entire internet-life, for the simple reason that I know myself - I'll get way too into it. (cf: my away messages, in general) Also:

me: here's what my blog would end up being:1) stuff about bbc shows
2) transcripts of our gchat conversations3) whining about my under-employment

Jenny: ...you say all this like it's a bad thing

So this is not a blog. This is digital, public storage space for stuff that I write. And by stuff that I write, I mean anything that I think is a bit clever and want to share, ranging from essays and sketches to emails and drinking games. What there won't be is a play-by-play of my life. Because who the hell wants to read that?

Enjoy! And just because this isn't a blog doesn't mean you shouldn't leave comments. :)

The Doctor, The Middleman, and Sarah Connor Walk Into a Voting Booth

I'm interning for io9, Gawker Media's science and science fiction blog. After a new-hire probationary period of a month, I was finally assigned my own story. But after three complete re-writes, everyone came to the conclusion that the assigned premise didn't work, and my piece was cut. I'm not devastated, because I agree that it was a silly premise, but I still put a lot of hours into trying to make it work, so I'll share the final draft here.

If published, it would have included embedded polls after each entry.

The Doctor, The Middleman, and Sarah Connor Walk Into A Voting Booth…

We learned last week that Doctor Who is the favorite program of the Republican party, but which party is the favorite of Doctor Who? If Dr. Horrible whipped up an anthropomorphism device that transformed Life on Mars and The Middleman into registered voters, would Obama or McCain become the president of Scifi Land? We've broken down the politics of nine of your favorite shows to help you decide how each program would cast their ballots on Tuesday. Vote – it's your civic duty.

Doctor Who

When you look at the Doctor, do you see an anti-gun, bleeding-hearts gay icon with a massive guilt complex and a meddlesome need to make people better? Or do you see an old white man in a suit, who uses his power and privilege to cavort with young girls and topple governments that annoy him? It gets even more complicated if you try to compare individual regenerations. The Doctor of "Genesis of the Daleks" refuses to make a pre-emptive strike, but the Doctor of "The Christmas Invasion" will bring down a regime as punishment for the same - "Do I have the right?" vs. "I can take down your government with a single word."

Firefly

What do you get when you put the veterans of the losing side of the Civil War into space? You get Firefly, the show that mixed left-wing social values and right-wing economics with a heavy dose of frontier libertarianism. True mavericks Mal and Zoe fought against the ultimate big-government of the Alliance, and now try to live under its radar, stealing from the rich and selling to the poor. Individual freedoms are paramount to the crew of the Serenity, of both the traditionally liberal and traditionally conservative variety; all that matters is that they be left alone by the government. You can't take the sky from Mal – you'll have to pry it out of his cold, dead hands.

Middleman

The Middleman fights evil so you don't have to – big government hand-outs in the extreme. His apprentice Wendy is a struggling artist and her roommate Lacey is a tree-hugging animal rights activist who would be less likely to vote in a polling booth than to turn it into a vampire-puppet theater. But a conservative could easily latch on to the Middleman's Eisenhower-era stylin's and emphasis on modesty and propriety. The Middleman is constantly ribbed for his old-fashioned ways, and yet these ways are shown to be pretty darn effective at saving the world. Are the Middleman's values a parody or sincere?

Torchwood

Let's just get the obvious point out of the way. They're bisexual. Everyone, the entire cast. Nay, the entire city of Cardiff. All bisexual. It's good times. But there are also a lot of big honking guns that get waved around willy-nilly – none of the firearms skittishness of the Doctor's liberal side here - and Captain Jack and his crew have a tendency towards conspiracy and cover-up. Did I say Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11? Silly me – here, have some Retcon. And Ianto truly embodies the spirit of the Republican DIY bootstraps work ethic, working his way up from the mail room (and into the boss's bedroom).

Life on Mars

The progressive reading is pretty clear here. Sam Tyler, 21^st century liberal, wakes up in 1973 and rails against the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the Nixon era (as well as his colleagues' ignorance of computers). But although the viewer is supposed to agree with Sam that these retro ideals and heavy-hitting police tactics are best left in the past, a conservative viewer might note that Sam's weak-handed, suspect-friendly techniques are often shown to be less effective than Gene Hunt's tough-on-crime approach. Additionally, if Sam is in fact in a coma in 2008, then the series makes a pretty compelling argument for not taking people off life support.

Dr. Horrible

Dr. Horrible thinks the world is a mess, and he just needs to rule it. He scoffs at Penny's community-organizing on behalf of the homeless, and his solutions include a Freeze Ray that will stop the world – conservatism taken to a literal extreme - and good, old-fashioned world domination. The antagonist superhero, Captain Hammer, is a handsome meathead who uses his muscle to bully people – sound like any nation you might be a citizen of? But in the end Hammer's bullying and posturing are intended to root out horribleness and evil. A League of evil, in fact. You might even go so far as to call it an Axis. Think of Captain Hammer as George W. Bush, taking down the bad guys while remaining someone you'd like to have a beer with, and Dr. Horrible as Al Gore, kind of dorky and trying to save the world through inconveniently extreme methods.

The X-Files

The X-Files placed a huge emphasis on first amendment rights and freedom of information – secrecy and conspiracy are huge no-nos. Scully was a devout Catholic, but religious issues were drawn with the same brush as supernatural phenomena. Plus, Mulder really liked porn – big plus one for the right to privacy. But the show also featured a deeply ingrained suspicion of big government, and of course our heroes were all strongly against alien immigration. And come on: the guy's name is Fox.

Sarah Connor Chronicles

SCC is all about the guns and the militia training – second amendment rights are pretty strongly supported by all involved, and pre-emptive strikes against threats to the Connor clan are sometimes warranted. On the other hand, Sarah Connor herself is a single mother – a demographic catered by the Democrats. But the future U.S. Military created Skynet, a massive defense system that would eventually gain sentience and destroy mankind, all in the name of homeland defense - Sarah certainly does not welcome these new robot overlords. And let's not forget the franchise's connection to the state of California and its Republican Governator.

Star Trek: The Original Series

So you had your interracial, interspecies cast, complete with interracial, interspecies canoodling – daringly liberal for its time. And that Prime Directive thing is basically the antithesis of the Bush Doctrine. But then again, Captain Kirk did have a tendency to ignore the Prime Directive when necessary. And since Kirk never trusted a Klingon and never will, he also retained some of that Cold War paranoia into the post-Alliance era. It must also be mentioned that, depending who you ask, a couple members of that romantically liberal crew may have been just a wee bit closeted.

Feel free to rail against io9's political agenda in the comments while you predict the vote of other fine citizen-series. And remember, if you're not happy with the results of the real election tomorrow – you can always move to Scifi Land.

google manipulation

This is a bald-faced attempt to increase the standing of my NY Times letters when people google my name, because right now the first page is all io9 stuff and that's less shiny.

Why Big Bird Matters
The Girls Next Door
Aiming for College, or for Life?
The Regents Exam That Failed
and, what continues to be my most controversial contribution to the internets:
The X-Files; A Botched Romance
(srsly, the vitriol that followed that letter... it was awesome)

I learned stuff in college

From: Con

Date: Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 1:26 PM
Subject: Foucault and me.
To: Elizabeth

Dear Liz,

WHAT THE HELL?! Books are hard:

"In the era of post-aboutness in which 'I' is at the same time both dead and resurrected; it is here that we find society begins to question who or what is doing the 'talking'. Of course, what *is* doing the talking: that is, 'what' (or should I say watt?) the pancultural unit of the questioner's power over the questioned; for it is in asking 'What am I talking about?' that the questioner at once accuses himself of madness and compels the prostration of 'am' before the towering phallus of 'I'; thus he inverts the socially prescribed order with the syntactical seduction of questioning."
(Foucault 1980)

--


From: Elizabeth
Date: Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 1:52 PM

Subject: Re: Foucault and me.
To: Con

Here, let me parse it for you. Please read the following in the voice of the Movie Trailer Guy.


In the era of post-aboutness...

When 'I' is both dead and resurrected....

Society begins to ask: 'who is doing the 'talking'?

But is the question who... or WHAT.

[a light bulb sputters and dies]
[quick flash of a brightly lit interrogation room]
[close up of suspect's face, bruised and battered]

One man's question...

[the Questioner leaning over the suspect]
QUESTIONER: What am I talking about?!

One man's quest...

[the Questioner slumped against a wall, exhausted, with a female hand slinking over his shoulder]

Will lead him to the brink of madness...

[the Questioner locking himself into a straight jacket]
[in a padded room, the Questioner throws himself at the walls]
[the Suspect, manically, grins at the camera]

And through the seduction of questioning...

[against a cement wall, the Questioner violently kisses a woman in a red dress]

Begins the inversion of the socially prescribed order...

[dozens of identical prisoners march in step through a normal suburban street]
[close up on one of the prisoners - it is the Questioner]

To the compelling prostration....

[the rows of prisoners fall to their knees]
[the Questioner lies prostrate, but lifts his head]
[he sees before him an enormous, shining, dominating Letter I ]

[music: Also Sprach Zarathustra]

At the towering phallus of I.

[close-up on an eyeball. it blinks. when the lid re-opens, the eye is bloodied]

Text on screen:
THE TOWERING PHALLUS OF I
June 2009

Brought to you by the letter I and the number i.

Vice Presidential Debate drinking game!

“I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.”
- Daniel Webster, turning down the Vice Presidency

Everyone and their teenage daughter's baby-daddy is writing a drinking game for tonight's debate. Here is mine.

Modulate size of drinks inversely with the size of the Dow.

Palin

Take one drink every time she says:

Soccer mom
Pitbull
Maverick
Reformer
“community organizer”
Small-town values
When Palin claims she said "Thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere: Demand a new drink from your hosts, say "thanks but no thanks," and then when no one's looking, take it anyway, then claim you never wanted it.
1 drink for a relevant reference to 9/11
2 drinks for an irrelevant reference to 9/11
1 drink for each of her children she references by name
When she makes a cute little hand gesture
Or flashes a winning smile
Or gets away with having no answer by being completely adorable
And and
Ah ah
That that
Let me tell ya
Let me get back to ya
I don’t know about that
As soon as you realize she has begun a run-on sentence, chug until she finds a period.
1 drink if she mentions Tina Fey
If she turns out to be Tina Fey in a wig, drink till it’s Saturday night

Biden

Take one drink every time he:

Talks about taking the train
Refers to himself in the third person
Refers to himself by his full name
Name-drops a famous friend
1 drink if he chuckles condescendingly at Palin
2 drinks if he chuckles condescendingly at the moderator
Drink every time you realize that you know 50 times as much about Palin as you do about him

General

Drink every time we hear:

Russia
USSR, two drinks
The Bering Strait, three drinks
Lipstick
Wall Street and Main Street in the same sentence
A pronunciation fumble on Ahmadinejad
Two drinks if he is referred to only by title to avoid pronouncing his name
Henry Kissinger
If Henry Kissinger actually responds, drink till it’s a war crime

1 drink for a relevant reference to 9/11
2 drinks for an irrelevant reference to 9/11
For a completely left-field reference to the Holocaust, invoke Godwin's Law and immediately end the debate. And then drink. A lot.

1 drink every time Biden or the moderator tries very hard to keep a straight face
2 drinks when they fail

If Biden seems condescending, stuffy, or elite, or if he outright laughs at Palin, or if Palin manages to get through the entire debate without seeming like a retarded chipmunk, it’s all over. Move to Canada.

RENT - A Tribute

Yesterday marked the last performance of the original production of RENT.

Cue a plethora of headlines – 948,600 minutes of RENT; twelve seasons of love; the RENT is past due, taking out a new lease on the Nederlander; RENT can't pay the… well you know.

Like many of you, I adored RENT. And then I couldn't stand it. And then I learned to love it again. I memorized the La Vie Boheme litany when I had no idea who Sontag and Sondheim were, let alone Antonioni, Bertolluci, Kurosawa. (Bertolluci is the one with the free salad and breadsticks at lunch, right?) I haven't even listened to the soundtrack in years – don't need to, it's all still in my head, permanently imprinted with other unnecessary but irremovable information like X-Files episode titles and the first 50 places of pi.

There were other generation-defining rock musicals before RENT, and have been others since, but this one is ours. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to say our goodbyes.

For people of a certain age and inclination, the original Broadway cast album of RENT is indelibly wound up in the memories of middle school (or, if living more than an hour from Manhattan, high school). You knew every word of the score – five miso soup, four seaweed salad, three soy burger, two tofu dog platter, and a partridge in a pear tree. You filled bus trips with obnoxiously loud RENT shout-a-longs. The lyrics of No Day But Today adorned your agenda book, your cargo bag, your invitation to that one kid's Bar Mitzvah, and your profile for your first AOL screenname (MiMiLuv98 or ~RENT525600~). You probably didn't stand in line overnight to snag $20 front row seats on a biweekly basis, but that one girl from your high school did, and you would have joined her if you were cool enough and your parents allowed it.

And in the manner of adolescent fads, about a year after you discovered RENT you moved on, to Les Miz and Phantom and whatever show your school was doing that year, or perhaps to Aerosmith and 98 Degrees and the other favorites of the Z100 Morning Zoo, leaving RENT behind for the next class of 8th graders to discover.

Why did we love RENT so much? Surely we didn't identify with the characters. We were middle class white kids from the suburbs. They were, variably, HIV-positive queer minority druggies – but let's not forget that our p.o.v. character, Mark, was a straight Jewish boy from Scarsdale. They fought back against the encroaching front lines of East Village gentrification – we were just barely old enough to remember the death throes of old Times Square, to remember navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of 42nd street, the beggars and the garbage heaps.

The show itself was an instant period piece, dated the minute Larson set down his pen. The characters are hastily drawn – a stripper with a heart of gold, a drag queen with a heart of gold, a filmmaker with a heart of ice. The tacked-on happy ending is inauthentic and maudlin. A cynic could even trace the hype to the bottled lightning that accompanies a sudden and tragic death right before opening (see The Dark Knight, broken box office records of).

But it was also the first mainstream musical with queer principals that wasn't about queerness. Everyone wanted to do Take Me or Leave Me in the talent show with their best friend, and was surprised when the school objected because it's about lesbians. The characters may have been drag queens and coke fiends and performance artists, but all that meant was that they were outcasts, just like we were (what 8th grader isn't an outcast in some way?). And RENT is above all about outcasts building their own communities. About being an us, for once, instead of a them.

I don't think 7th graders are listening to RENT any more, not the way we did, but there are a number of other shows competing for their attention – courting those repeat audiences with rock songs and themes of social stigma and acceptance. Certainly Wicked, highly enjoyable if rather bloated, occupies the old RENT niche these days, particularly among sullen-faced adolescent girls who are not especially populer(lar). Spring Awakening draws fans with its excellent score and attractive production, though I shudder at the Very Special Episode book and the lyrics resembling the emo poetry of a Wicked fan. High School Musical likely belongs here as well, but because I still haven't seen it (I know, I know), you'll have to insert your own snarky dismissal here. Other current contenders include Legally Blonde, whose composer might get it right on his next try, and the upcoming Thirteen, about bar mitzvahs and indulging Jason Robert Brown's semi-pedophilia.

But I can judge these shows only as shows, and not as the catalysts of future middle school nostalgia – for me, that role was filled years ago.

The memory of RENT belongs to all of us former RENTheads, diverged as our paths and tastes may now be. We share the ghosts of lyrics half-remembered from another life, the astonishment at recit spoken as dialogue in the movie, the bond of singalongs and basement productions past. This family tree's got deep roots, and a little thing like a closing production can't touch them. We don't rent emotion – we own it.

Viva la vie boheme.

Don't mind the traffic...

Well, I just doubled the number of posts I've written here in the last two months! Sorry to clog your rss feeds or whatever, just posting some audition pieces for a blogging gig. Will let you know results, obviously. (and feedback welcome on the posts!)

Flying Houses = best sub-genre ever?

Pixar’s “Up” leave you hanging for more flying house action? Then you’re in luck!

Check out this 1921 short “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend,” by the self-proclaimed “inventor of animated drawing” Winsor McCay. In fifteen minutes, it tells the story of a debt-plagued man who decides to solve his problems by… outfitting his house with a propeller and flying it to the moon. What could possibly go wrong?

For early animation it is really surprisingly beautiful and entertaining. Check out the flying house zipping through an astronomically accurate view of the solar system around eleven minutes in. Of course, the astronomical accuracy is tossed aside when it’s time for the Man in the Moon to chase down our heroes with a giant fly-swatter…

Monster Safari

Kermit the Frog, meet Trogdor the Burninator.

The good folks and muppets at the Jim Henson Co. just announced a new stop-motion animated feature called “Monster Safari,” based on a short from the studio Screen Novelties. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the story concerns “what happens when the Earth’s monsters come out of hiding and a pair of bumbling crypto-zoologists spring into action to save them from a ruthless big-game hunter.”

And if that weren’t awesome enough… the feature is being scripted by Craig Zobel and Matt Chapman, creators of Homestar Runner.

Please say this means the “bumbling crypto-zoologists” will search for a particular dragon-like creature with a beefy arm and consummate V’s. Because the only way to deal with a “ruthless big-game hunter”? Is to burninate it with fire.

Check out a great gallery of images from the original short here: http://www.screen-novelties.com/news/2006/10/monster-safari-short-completed.html

And, what the heck. Trogdor!!!

Hello, WALL*E

...in which we learn of the unlikely immortality of the b-tracks from “Hello, Dolly,” thanks to animated robots...

Eagle-eyed viewers of last night’s Tony Awards (all three of them) caught a surprising nod to animation during the Broadway community’s annual celebration of cheesy tourist-fare.

A lifetime achievement award was presented to Jerry Herman - composer of “Mame,” “La Cage Aux Folles,” and that musical the high school drama club did in 10th grade - while slides showed the titles of his big numbers. And in an unlikely twist, the tune “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” was credited as being “from Hello, Dolly! and WALL*E.” Really?

Must be Broadway trying to ride some Pixar coattails. Of course, the fifty-year-old tune isn’t originally from WALL*E. But the film’s adorable robo-Casanova did learn his moves from an old VHS of “Hello, Dolly!” It seems the trash compactor himself was originally supposed to present Jerry Herman’s award, as part of Disney's Living Character Initiative, but Wall*E was mysteriously cut from the broadcast. He was probably getting drunk backstage with Liza Minelli.

Additional fun fact! Jerry Herman knew last year that he’d licensed some of his songs to Pixar. But he had no idea the extent to which they were being used. Until he sat down and watched WALL*E. [HuffPo]

Can you imagine? Not only you have the surprise of your fifty-year-old songs - and not the most widely-remembered in your songbook - turning out to be a major plot point in this fantastic little robot movie, but also? That this fantastic little robot movie says your fifty-year-old songs are going to OUT-LAST CIVILIZATION.

Re-visit the world outside of Yonkers:

All you need to know about Shrek The Musical

Amazingly, there is yet more animation news out of last night’s Tony Awards. The broadcast featured a production number from the stage musical version of “Shrek”... Which looks every bit as awful as you probably already guessed.

Somehow they’ve managed to suck all the charm and individuality out of the original Shrek by turning him into a guy in a green rubber fat suit. Although you gotta give Lord Farquat credit for dancing on his knees.

But between this clunker and last year’s damp “Little Mermaid,” it seems this is the age of Painful Musicals Based On Excellent Cartoons That Shoulda Been Left Well Enough Alone. Stay home and watch the South Park musical instead. Steven Sondheim said it was the best musical of the decade. True story.

Back to The Futurama

Step out of that Suicide Booth – “Futurama” is back!

Comedy Central has ordered 13 new episodes of the best cartoon scifi sitcom since Jane Jetson finally stopped that crazy thing, reports Collider. The original series ran on Fox from 1999 till 2003, before going into the cryogenic freezer until four direct-to-dvd specials in 2007.

Here’s the great thing about being an animation fan: our canceled masterpieces can actually be revived. First Family Guy, and now Futurama – and of course The Simpsons has been the walking undead for about a decade. No amount of boycotting and dvd-sales will ever get Firefly back on the small screen (sigh), but all animated shows need is a butt-load of cash and they're good to go - actual actors get old and busy and stuff, but Fry and Bender are just where we left them.

Read it and weep, Browncoats! (Dear Santa: Firefly The Animated Series maybe pls?)

In celebration, here is a completely arbitrary list of some fantastic Futurama clips. Starting with, appropriately enough, Futurama's explanation of why actors are so darn pesky for staging revivals...

Al Gore meets Bender

Futurama Discovers Sexuality

You've Got To Be Insincere

The Devil Went Down To Bender

JK Rowling's 2008 Harvard Commencement speech - The Drinking Game

[repost from Facebook, back-dated accordingly]

JK Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Address
DRINKING GAME
June 6, 2008

By the 2008 Commencement Choir


Single drink for each mention, unless otherwise noted:

About herself
- being a single mother
- writing on napkins in coffeeshops
- if she wrote her speech on a napkin
- if she claims to have still been thinking about what to say in the speech last night
- if she got the idea in Drew Faust’s bed last night
- Talks about what inspired her
- Talks about her kids
- Quotes directly from her own writing
- Denigrates herself in comparison to the other people on stage
- Talks about her own college days
- Talks about her shiny new Hahvahd degree
- People lining up at midnight for books
- How long it took to get the books published
- Number of books sold
- Richest woman in the world
- Her earnings vs Harvard endowment
- If she stutters, Liz gives Harker a dollar
- If she drinks, waterfall

Harry Potter
- If she reads us an original story
- If that story is in the Harry Potter universe, squeal happily
- Actual new info about Potterverse, two drinks
- Uses phrase “Potterverse,” three drinks

Harvard vs. Hogwarts (drink in general, and one for each specific)
- Annenberg
- Houses
- Academic regalia
- Compares Faust to McGonagall
- Compares Voldemort to George Bush
- Compares Yale to Durmstrang
- Whomping willow
- Quidditch
- Sorting hat as metaphor for college admissions/life


General
- ___ is the real magic
- Drink at every pun
- Imagination
- Creativity
- getting kids to read
- God, or the lack thereof
- Puritans, witch-burning, Salem
- Following your dreams
- Luck (felix felicis, two drinks)
- Women speaking at commencement
- Mentions that Drew Faust is, in fact, a girl
- if she talks about homosexuality
- if she talks about gay marriage
- If she outs any new characters
- If she outs Drew Faust
- If she outs herself
- If she has sex with Drew Faust on stage, drink till blind
- If she mentions Ted Kennedy, drink till your liver cries

British
- pronounces something funny
- attempts Boston accent
- Criticizes American politics
- Tony Blair
- British vs American education
- Other Cambridge
- The Queen
- Btdubs, Dumbledore is a Queen

Graduation speech cliches
- provides a dictionary definition
- asks a rhetorical question
- forgets to answer rhetorical question
- mentions The Facebook
- consulting sucks, Econ majors drink
- references Faust’s speech
- references what she did with Faust last night

Unlikely stuff (drink as much as you want)
- Potter Puppet Pals
- If it becomes Naked Time!!!
- Harry and the Potters back her up
- If the Happy Brigade are aurors
- Fan fiction, one drink. Slash fan fiction, three drinks
- If Larry Summers appears
- If Larry Summers appears in conjunction with the Avada Kedavra curse

Magic
- If she is wearing any Harry Potter paraphernalia
- If she utters any spells
- If she uses an Unforgivable Curse
- If she uses any fake Latin, sing the first verse of 10,000 Men
- If she performs a magic trick, finish your drink
- If she performs real magic, finish the bottle
- If she bursts into flames and rises from the ashes, pour drink on flames
- If the steps of Memorial Hall open up and a basilisk emerges, run like hell
- If the graduates have crossbows under their academic regalia, steal one from the nearest CS major

Music
- References the choir
- References the band
- If she says Glee Club needs women, RCS drinks
- Any editorial comment or look from Jim
- If the band plays the Harry Potter theme
- If she sings at all
- if she announces the release of her upcoming solo pop album, chug
- If she compares Fair Harvard to the Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts, sing a round of “Weasley is Our King”
- If she says “baller,” finish all drinks on campus


If she never mentions Harry Potter, chug until tour