From the same people who brought us the amazing “if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” video is this marvelous bit of music video:
It looks like they’re making this a regular thing. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), my inner science groupie? Is squeeing with glee.
BTW, this goes out to Janiece, who is in NerdLove with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then again, who isn’t?
…you must first invent the universe.
I am completely and totally in love with this.
The science groupie in me is squeeing all over the damned place.
H/T to Bad Astronomy and Thordr commenting on Stonekettle Station.
While I’m firmly on the heterosexual team, there have been some women for whom I’ve considered switch-hitting: Gillian Anderson, Queen Latifah, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Heather Graham (but only from Lenny Kravitz’s music video “American Woman” and Scrubs) and SarriahNeighbor (see point #3).
I think I may have added someone onto the list:
Day-um!
Even more amazing – she’ll be 60 next month. 60! I should look so good now!
I’ve got a little list–I’ve got a little list…
So, do y’all remember when I filmed an episode of Dominick Dunne: Power, Privilege & Justice in March? Well, it’s finally going to be broadcast on Friday, September 18th on truTV. Yay!
Funny thing is, I’ll be out of town, visiting my mother for her birthday (which is Friday), so I most likely won’t be seeing it (no, I don’t have Tivo or any other DVR – I don’t watch a lot of TV because I don’t have the time or patience for it). My sister and her family — with whom I’ll be staying — do have truTV, but I can’t see me watching myself kill a man and handling S&M paraphernalia in front of her devoutly Christian family. Actually, I think my mom, sister and brother-in-law would think it funny, but the possibility of my nieces being around would make it a little weird. I guess I’ll just have to find another way to record it!
Anywho, mark it on your calendars!
After too long away from reading on a regular basis, once again I find myself devouring books. It helps that most of what I’ve been reading has been pretty good, if not excellent.
Not surprisingly, Sherlock Holmes kickstarted my current reading jag. For Christmas CuteFilmNerd gave me the second volume of Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories (he couldn’t find the first volume; he also got me The Complete Granada Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett, who is my favorite Holmes – just edging out Basil Rathbone), which was great, since it helped to replace my volume of The Complete Sherlock Holmes which was lost in The Great Storage Unit Letting Go of Aught-Seven (stupid finances – that book was a present from my parents and had my senior prom corsage pressed in it – I still miss it). I found the first volume and off I was a-reading.
I hadn’t read the stories in ages and was pleased to rediscover such wonderful tales as “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet,” “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” and “The Adventure of the Red Circle,” amongst others.
Then onto Transparency by Frances Hwang, a lovely, lyrical collection of short stories about Chinese-Americans – both immigrants and native born – struggling to find a comfortable place between two worlds…and not always succeeding. My follow-up was Hot Toddy by Andy Edmonds, about the life and murder of Thelma Todd, a notable 1930s comedic actress. The story was fascinating. The writing? Not so much. The book starts out with Todd’s murder and the resulting Grand Jury hearing, then segues very clumsily into Todd’s life. Too many liberties with what the author assumed people were thinking at specific times, such as when on the witness stand. I kept reading because the story intrigued me, but I often wrestled with the urge to slap the writer.
Next I thought I would cleanse my palate with A Hole in Texas by Herman Wouk. I’d never read his stuff before, but since he was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, I figured it oughta be good. Plus the subject was one that appealed to me: an obscure NASA scientist thrust into the harsh media glare thanks to the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson by the Chinese. Turns out Wouk had the obscure NASA scientist working at my beloved space center – Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Even more amazing to me was that Wouk had the scientist working on the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which made its first appearance on page four and popped up here and there in the book. As I know a number of scientists and engineers who work on that project (I had even temped there for a couple of weeks in 2006) and I help out the secretary of the guy who heads up the program office under which the TPF is run (which she reciprocates – we share a cubicle, so it’s a good thing we get along so well), I found it rather trippy. The byproduct of working at a high-profile organization, I suppose. Hell, I’m still slightly freaked out from reading about my building’s destruction in Lucifer’s Hammer even though I love the book.
Unfortunately, as much as I loved all the science stuff in A Hole in Texas, I didn’t like the book much. It was a bit soapy and the dialogue didn’t ring true. By necessity the characters – especially the protagonist in regards to the Superconducting Super Collider – were forced to be Exposition People and it didn’t feel organic at all. In addition, the scientist at the center of everything felt like a bit of a male Mary Sue, with three different beautiful, intelligent women strongly attracted to and/or in love with him.
Wouk’s brother Victor was a Caltech alumni (and one of the pioneers of electric and hybrid cars), so it’s not surprising that JPL be the NASA space center involved. I do find that interesting.
Anywho, yesterday I finished The Insufficiency of Maps by Nora Piecre. Gorgeous and heart-breaking in its simplicity, Pierce tells the story of a small Native American girl living on the edges of society with her schizophrenic mother. In the process she employs the style of writing that I enjoy reading most: simple words and sentence construction that, when strung together, become gentle, searing poetry. Hwang’s writing in Transparency is much the same. Simply lovely. It took me one and a half days to read each of these books.
This morning I began Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin. It started out interesting enough. There is some changing of tense, which usually bugs the crap out of me, but Franklin does it well. Her prose is not as simple as Hwang’s or Pierce’s, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s still well written. Adelia (the protagonist – a female medical examiner during the 12th Century) is real and even admirable – her intelligence and straightfoward demeanor in a time when women were considered nothing more than chattel and accessories feels like a satisfying, “Fuck you,” to the superstitious England of the day.
As can be evidenced by this rather long post, my recent spate of reading has gotten the writing portion of my brain churning again. Let’s cross our fingers that the churning keeps on keeping on and that the ideas actually make their ways from my brain to my fingertips.
CuteFilmNerd and I spent the July 4th weekend away from the computer and earning a little extra money. Nothing exciting, but it did entail us not being within communication distance of each other, with our iPods keeping us sane and helping the time pass by.
I listened to a lot of Real Time with Bill Maher podcasts, but I also listened to a little music. And the music that really helped me out? Marian Call. A geek girl with a lovely voice, a wicked sense of wordplay and a typewriter as one of her musical instruments, her music makes me smile, laugh and cry, sometimes in rapid succession.
At the moment, the only album of hers that I have is Got to Fly, a tribute to geeks everywhere, though the songs are inspired by Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. You don’t have to be a fan of those shows to enjoy the songs, because they are immediately identifiable to anyone who has lived life.
The opening song is one that geeks the world over can relate to:
There are some lovely songs on the album, such as “Dark Dark Eyes” and “In the Black” (a fan video – approved by Marian Call – can be found here).
But the song that kills me every time – the one that I identify with the most – is “Good Old Girl”:
Wow.
If you’re a fan of gorgeous music that is simple yet complex, with a lovely voice and sense of whimsy, buy Marian Call’s music. You’ll be glad you did.
CuterFilmNerd and I also spent the evening of July 4th at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and watched Jaws in the cold night air with fireworks going off in the background at another location (I don’t know where). It was weird and kinda creepy and fun and I’m happy we did it – I’d never been to any of the Cinespia screenings before, though I’d certainly heard about them.
In many ways CuteFilmNerd and I are very well suited for each other, which is why we’re together and why, when a certain song popped up on my iTunes today, I felt moved to email it to him:
…I have “killed” my “lover.”
In other words, I filmed the TV show on Friday and it was great! The show is Dominick Dunne: Power, Privilege and Justice on truTV. I’m the main criminal in the bit, with two drugged out accomplices. The case that I filmed is based on this case (in fact, my character is the woman in the photo and the man in the photo is the person she murdered). I was in nearly every scene and, in the scene where there’s a struggle between me, the victim and the two accomplices, I sustained a huge bruise on my left knee where my leg kept hitting the side of the bed during the multiple takes. In addition, I got to take a bunch of S & M gear and spread it out over the crime scene, to make the murder look like an S & M scene gone horribly awry. As I told one of the crew members when he showed me the gear, “This’ll make my mama proud.”
We filmed in a gorgeous old house in Long Beach that I just wanted to take home with me. And everyone was a joy to work with. No one got in my eye line, so I didn’t have to curse them out. Very professional crew. And the director was a lovely Frenchman who never lost his cool, even when I almost accidentally killed a cameraman when I sat behind the wheel of car at the end of the long shoot.
I don’t know yet when it’ll be on TV. From what I can gather, I’m fairly sure the title of my episode is “Strange Bed Fellows” and it looks like the episodes for 2009 won’t start airing until October, which is a hell of a long wait. Still, I certainly wouldn’t mind doing this again!
Today? Is turning out to be a great day.
First, my federal tax refund showed up in my bank account. Badly needed funds in the nick of time are always welcome.
Second, Central Casting (yes, it really exists) called me from out of the blue, saying they had submitted my photo to a non-union TV show that is filming on my Friday off (which I get every other Friday) and the folks at the show decided I was the one for them (it’s a re-enactment show, so memorizing dialogue isn’t necessary). Of course I accepted, because I’m no dummy.
I’ve worked with Central Casting before – as an extra back in 2001 – and I loved it, working on Judging Amy a couple of times, as well as ER, NYPD Blue (where I almost ran over Dennis Franz with my car on the set – driving like a true New Yorker), Thieves, Spin City and a few others. When I started getting every other Friday off last year, I signed up again, because I thought it would be a fun thing to do. I never got around to actually calling Central, because my Fridays off turned out to be filled with doing things I couldn’t otherwise get done during the work week. Which is today’s call was such a pleasant surprise. Plus they’re going to pay me above the going rate for an extra.
I’ll have to dye my hair back to its previous reddish color (on Valentine’s Day I dyed it a dark brown – whoops!), but I have photos of me with that color (dating a photographer comes in handy!), so I should have no trouble matching it.
Yeah, I’d say today that I’m a happy girl.
Whee!
| Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) |
|
75% |
| Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) |
|
65% |
| Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) |
|
60% |
| Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) |
|
60% |
| River (Stowaway) |
|
60% |
| Inara Serra (Companion) |
|
50% |
| Wash (Ship Pilot) |
|
50% |
| Derrial Book (Shepherd) |
|
45% |
| Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) |
|
30% |
| Alliance |
|
25% |
| A Reaver (Cannibal) |
|
10% |
Click here to take the Serenity Personality Quiz
Know what’s cool? According to Nathan Fillion’s MySpace page, I’m more Malcom Reynolds than he is. Sweet.
(BTW, wanna see a cute ass? Check this out. It’s almost as cute as HSTeacher’s. And I’m not just saying that. I’m not an much of an ass-girl, but HSTeacher has a mighty fine ass.)
This morning I was reading an MSN TV piece about picking TV’s best campy classics, nodding my head at the selections, though many of them I’d barely seen. Dukes of Hazzard? Yep. MacGyver? You betcha. The double Hasslehoff whammy of Knight Rider and Baywatch? Oh, hell yes.
But then I came to the end of the “article” and my face fell, my eyebrows knitting over the bridge of my nose in consternation. Star Trek? Star Trek?! Are they out of their freaking minds?!!
But then I was forced to step back and view it objectively as William Shatner’s visage peered suavely yet pensively out at me and I read the words, “Then, of course, there was William Shatner, a man whose glorious overacting and inflated machismo pre-dated Hasselhoff by several decades.”
And I thought, “Damned fucking straight, and don’t you forget it, Hasselhoff!”
The I slowly closed the page, nodding again. Because, much as it pains me to admit this, and much as I adore Star Trek, its camp factor could be inordinately high at times. I mean, Spock’s Brain alone has enough camp for the entire Star Trek franchise.
I’m surprised TJ Hooker didn’t make the list. Damned punks.
