the shark has pretty teeth dear
Sep. 21st, 2011 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mockturle06Life on the back porch. I'll just take out my cup of tea in my new vintage floral tea cup and my girly pink netbook and type very bad fan fic amongst the abundant jasmine and magnolia blossoms, what could be finer?
I wish. Aside from the usual heavy cottage industry going on (aka car rebirthing), one neighbour decided to noisily tear down his metal fence, with accompanying bangs, shouts and crashes, and all of this after an all night party of extreme wildness and drunken shoutiness (have hangovers, damn you, lord knows I have) and on the other side, one of the brats has been given a recorder to practice on. Of all the tortures devised by man, I swear, a recorder in the hands of a primary school child, it is the worst.
So, not as genteel or as romantic a morning as I might have hoped. It was also hitting the thirties (celsius), so when the sun started to climb the steps it became really uncomfortable, which is a pain because the back porch is also the only place I can get a decent interwebs connection (Himself calls the house a Faraday cage but I think it's just the weird 70s insulation which insulates only phone signals, it seems).
So I scurried into the meager shade to watch Mr Cumberbatch on the pvr. Or so I'd hoped. Cumberbatch the pvr killer. Well, it wasn't his fault, as the poor thing has been wheezing along for a while, it's the industrial dust in its innards plus use and abuse but there's nowt I can do about either, but still.
So it was back out into the back garden. You know you're in trouble when you watch the Seeds of Doom (still brilliant fun, btw) and think yes, I must tackle the back garden. Sadder still when it proves to be merely a pale dramatisation by comparison as one hacks and slashes one's way through the Lost Valley (beware of dinosaurs, giant insects and the like). Oh, you think I'm kidding. You wouldn't believe what a couple of week's neglect and warm, humid weather can wreak.
Oh, loving the Tom and Liz episodes they're playing at the moment. I wouldn't have saiid it at the time, only having childish memories of the show, but watching it back now I really really see where a lot of Matt's Doctor and Amy comes from. I really, really can. Sarah Jane was brilliant, she really was. It's no surprise she's remained beloved of many.
Tuesday: Oh man, I'm so tired, like my brain feels like a sandbag tired (and just as functional), but it was worth it. I went off to see the Threepenny Opera. I'd not read good reviews and I heard mutterings during the interval, which I assume were from Brecht purists. Me, I'm completely clueless, and so my heathen heart loved it to bits. It had been slapped together for local audiences, and so it was more Priscilla than Caberet, but I liked that, too. I liked the sets, which evoked the art stuff over at the Mad Square exhibition at the art gallery that I went to last week, which was a happy accident because the two were apparently complimentary, so well done me managing my integrated entertainments, because you sure wouldn't know they were tied in from the display copy (the AGNSW is coy about such things, apparently having been badly burnt in decades past).
Anyhoo, what a hoot. The cast were amazing, totally banging it out there to the back seats. I was up the front so I was almost pinned to my seat with the verve and energy blowing off the stage. Such a cast, bravo. I kind of like the Malthouse productions now, even though it's always rather like being plunged in the middle of an early Split Enz video:
Which can be disconcerting but is never a bad thing. But yes, love, love love, especially Eddie Perfect (Macheath) and Paul Capsis (Jenny), omg they were so good. I was humming Mack the Knife all the way home, in fact I had to make myself stop humming it as I was in real danger of suddenly belting it out and waking the household. It was that good, because I rarely get home still singing.
I also liked the extreme and almost comical bolshiness of the production. Recent events made them brave in their direct commentary on modern poverty, corruption and violence (explicitly underlined with a slideshow of current figures at one point) and the struggle in the gutter, the dog eat dog world, the rants against the politicians and greed, it reminded me very much of the demonstration in the park the other week, so I guess I'd really done my homework for this, even if I wouldn't know Brecht from a turnip.
As this was my first introduction to the play, and I don't know what was canon and what was invention, I can only speak to my impressions. And so yes, Macheath's speeches about being an honest criminal, for what is robbing a bank to running a bank, struck home, both to real events and fictional characters, everyone from the undeserving Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion to, yes, Neal Caffrey, all shrugging and stating the obvious, that there are worse criminals out there, usually the ones who sit in judgement.
There were a lot of points well made on man's savagery, and I was really sitting up listening, mainly because of Arkady (more on that blighter later, he's a sadist, he's a rapist...). Yes, Macheath is going to stay with me for a while (and if you'd seen Mr Perfect, you'd know why, no wonder there were crowds waiting at the stage door, mass hybristophilia in action (why yes, I was watching an old QI the other day). Quite a man, that Macheath. Oh you had to be there, you had to see.
That. Was. Fun.
Better than that, it was actor's night, which meant the cast came out for a Q&A afterwards. I've been to a couple of these in the UK but this one was one, as the cast had strong opinions and weren't afraid to share them. They very very funny, and interesting and I think I learnt more about the play from them than the programme, so that was most excellent.
So, Tuesday at work, shittiness from start to finish, writing Caffrey porn in the park, then I hopped a bus to see Fright Night. Yes, I had to commute to find a 2D version, but so had the rest of the audience, a bunch of curmudgeons who all looked like they'd set the pvr for that night's Tom Baker episodes - snork. Still, we all laughed in the right places.
It was cute and cheesy fun. I'm kind of glad I was with an older crowd because yes, I was the target demographic for the first film, and, well, that's gotta burn. It was, and remains, one of the few films I saw in the 80s that I actually liked. (As an aside, I do like to lay some of the blame for my embittered spinsterhood at the feet of the films of the 80s and 90s, because, seriously, if a guy takes you to see Beverly Hills Cop II, are you ever going to want a second date? Would you want a man who enjoys the comedy stylings of Eddie Murphy as the father of your children? No. Well, then, QED).
So, aside from the pointless non 3D establishing shots (I don't do 3D) I was charmed by the essential Buffyness of it all, and I can't for the life of me tell you whether that was because Marti Noxon wrote it or that the original fillum was clearly an obvious Buffy template (so much so that I tend to conflate the orginal Fright Night with the original Buffy film, and so does the Peanut Gallery). Nevertheless, as I'm on a serious Buffy kick right now (thank you SciFi), I found this pleasing.
Then Colin the naughty vampire shows up. Oh, Colin (pause for ten minutes of serious swooning). He played it perfectly, sexy, menancing, dangerous, a stone cold predator, completely reptilian. I loved it. Every minute.
And then there was the Tennant. How much do I love him (and missing out on seeing in him my favourite Shakespeare role for which I had a ticket burns worse than a vampire in the sun). He brought all his Shakespearian clowning to the part, a touch OTT but that was exactly right for the role, and I forgot all about the part originally played by my forever beloved Roddy McDowell (the reason I went to see the film in the first place).
Yes, it was silly and slight and big cheesy drive in movie fun, but for the chance to see two of my very favourite boys face off as vampire and vampire hunter: happiness!
And I can see why this Peter Vincent didn't cop it. Why on earth would you kill off a flamboyantly wonderful DT? That way madness lies. If they ever make a sequel I would very much like to see DT strutting his leather stuff again.
I was supposed to be taking three buses to get home but when I walked out I saw taxi after taxi and so I just stamped down on the throat of my inner calvinist masochist. Three buses? not bloody likely, I'm catching a taxi. So, it was, and well worth it, as the driver gave me kind and gentle advice for dealing with utter arseholes (both at work and on the bus) and I got home in time to switch on the telly and cop the opening credits of a DT episode of Doctor Who. More David? Yes please.
I was supposed to be getting online and doing my bloggy duty at this point but sod it, the whole night was meant to be my consolation night, so a cup of tea and Tennant on telly it was. It was Silence in the Library, so it wasn't a bad episode, either.
Taxi fare: cough cough. Getting home for more DT? Priceless.
This living well is the best revenge thing is okay, full of fun experiences to Tweet about, but, man, it's hell on this old frame. Sleep, sleep, I want sleep. Miles to go though because I'm a fortnight behind in my blog postings. Oh dear, etc. That's what I get for being such a wilting flower on the weekend because I was too tired, it was too hot, I'd half killed myself hacking my way through the jungle down to the back fence (I didn't even make it either, which is the shameful thing, more weeds than the council can cope with, a metre or so shy of the actual back fence).
Still, I'm glad I went to that cinema because it used to be my cinema, when I worked and studied down that end of town, work work work, study study study, enlivened by the occassional flick. It's a good cinema, small, neat and nice, and popular with the afterwork crowd of decent office folk, not seething with deadly and scary ethnic gangs like the other cinemas nearest work and home, which tells you so much about work and home, I guess). So I was comfy, and pleased it was still there, but people were just pouring in, so hopefully it will stay there. It must make it my cinema of first choice again.
Better yet, I found a newsagent which stocks some of the more boutiqe magazines I can no longer get in the city (to my great distress). It makes sense, as the shop is bound by two unis and a TAFE, but I'm still happy to find it. Not that it had any of the issues I was after but at least now I have somewhere I can at least try when there's an issue I'm really after, you know, the ones where they convince some actor I fancy to do some tastefully arty black and white bdsm shoot. You know, those arty high fashion mags. I demand the right to tastefully arty photoshoots. That I can only get the cardigan wearing Women's Weekly in the city these days, it burns. I miss Borders so bad.
Hey, that's my completely crappy Fassbender scan, made on the piece of old biscuit scanner with the crack in the glass - my very own watermark. Hey, it's nice that someone felt my uber crappy scan was worth posting (I miss my old Cannon hardcore), but did any of these cunts bother to thank me, the stupid fuck who bought the magazine ($40 if I remember rightly) and gave up her breakfast and sleep to sneak in early and sweat over a scanner probably seriously older than half the people who commented and thanked the re-poster? I don't mean to be a feedback whore, but just one little acknowledgement for my time, effort and expense, every now and then, wouldn't go astray. /end rant.
Any Google search that returns Alexei Volkov as the first result, well, I'm giggling. Okay, I really should stop the silly but damn, I was looking for a couple aliases and damn me if Chuck didn't get in there first. Well, yes, I dare say there's a lot of Volkov in the current story line, and clearly Google agrees with me. Oh, it used to be a White Collar story, now it'd just daft.
Damn, the next result when looking for a suitable character name came back Karyakin. I am so not having any luck here.
Anyhoo, the unsurnamed as yet Arkady, aka the bastard wot took over the story. If I'd posted what I had a week ago it would have been a completely different story. A bit bleak at the end, but still recogniseably White Collar. Now it's just insane. And it's all Arkady's fault. At first he was just a name mention, in a whisper, by Neal, once, in the same sort of hushed tones one would have once referenced the Black Douglas.
The he gets a short paragraph. Then the backstory the cameos, suddenly he's getting lines and now it's all about Arkady. He's a mad, bad bastard, and a bit magnificent. He's Macheath, Bill and Eric, the brothers MacManus, the Krays, Clint Eastwood and anything played by Michael Fassbender, all rolled into one sexy, violent, swaggering, slightly crazy package. And he's taken over the story. Completely. And, to be honest, I'm kind of keen to see where he's taking it. I can always roll it back if it gets too silly (that's too silly by my standards, not yours, although even the True Blood writers might consider some scenes having gone a touch too far already - grin).
Small wonder Neal's so smitten. He's like a dark, really dark, version of Peter, in every way, well, in ways that tend to be glossed over on the show but Arkady has decided to ride hard for all he's worth (the whole Neal collared thing, if you're curious, and I did say he was the sort of merrily twisted bastard who'd make Eric Northman blanch).
So that's Arkady, kinky story killer. But I kinda love him. He's the violent psychopath with a heart of gold, and stunningly handsome devil at that.
Meanwhile, much tamer fare on telly last night with the art forgery show on the ABC (Fake or Fortune). This was tying in with the National Gallery show last year on fakes and the art world, which I really wanted to see but didn't (but I have the catalogue, it lives on the bedside table as reference material). So in the last episode they were dealing with a possibly fake Rembrandt that popped up for auction in South Africa. Turned out to be not by the master but by a student, but more interesting were the labels on the back that indicated it had been stored by a fascist governemt at some stage. Yes, Nazi loot, with footage of Nazis plundering the galleries of Europe and loading them into trucks. Fascists are meticulous, though, and so the painting was easily identified on a manifest and also identified by the Jewish family who had once owned it, and also the bank who claimed it had been holding the painting as collateral before the Nazis took it and prized it, according to the manifest notes, so it's all very complicated but the BBC seemed to think that the Nazis plundering, keeping, storing and selling off other people's property was a bad thing, quite morally wrong, and that re-selling such stolen art was still morally queasy.
Unlike White Collar, which still thinks Nazi plunder is clever, fun and cool. It is not. Shame, white Collar, shame.
Anyway, with the counter claims the painting is stuck in limbo, but it was a very interesting episode on Nazi looting, the surving familes and galleries, mostly owned by Jewish families, who had lost the works (ditto art historians and civilsation in general), masterpieces that are known only by a short typed listing or a black and white photo. The Beeb tried to be neutral, but it really was quite angry making, too see all those treasures loaded onto a truck (mercifully they spared us images of the owners also being loaded onto trucks, something White Collar refuses to acknowledge. I wish White Collar would quit with the holocaust denial crap, because it really bothers me. Somebody needs to remind young Mr Bomer that the Nazis were exterminating those of the pink triangle as well as the yellow star, just to give it perspective).
I was taking notes, I can tell you. Not that I ever mention Neal's Nazi plunder in the fic. That really does make me sick and so S3 never happens (well, not on the pages, anyway) and it's all strictly AU from that moment on (conveniently allows me to ignore stick firgure Barbie, too). And who cares about canon when I have Arkady on a tear.
Oh, the fic, yes, there's a lot of Neal whumping and it majes me happy. Wipe that smug little smile off his face. I hate these people who whine that Peter is like so mean to him. I want to slap them. I mean, seriously, with all the shit Neal has pulled, which includes endagering the lives and livlihoods of the Burkes on numerous occassions now? I can't help but watch it as the eldest, and know the pain of Peter being responsible for every single stupid thing the little idiot gets up to, all the while running ragged covering up for him and then he's all carrying on like an infant when he doesn't get his way and it's all you're so mean and you don't understand me and me, me, me. (btw, I heart Dean Winchester, too, oh, our crosses to bear).
So if Peter is far too tenderhearted to put Neal over his knee for that well deserved spanking, I'm more than happy to let Arkady to the job. Hee.
I know, but life is shitty and at least I'm just kicking a fictional cat, as it were.
Still don't know if I still have a job or not, still being bullied daily, at work and on the bus, though I managed to almost struggle back into my 'I don't see you/hear you/feel you' re the daily physical and verbal abuse on the bus. It's just a certain level of stress and rawness of nerves that make it far more upsetting than usual. Thank you nice taxi driver who gave me some advice on dealing with cretins, basically: ignore, ignore, ignore. Kinda hard when they're sticking gum in yor hair, but, you know, I gotta try.
Anyone would think I was fourteen but I'm not. So not. And this sort of shit has veen going on since I was four. I am so over it, so tired of it. That's what is really upsetting. It does not get better. It does not stop. If one bully goes, another springs up in their place, like the skelton men on that old Harryhausen film. I'm just so tired. I wish I could rip my face off, since it offends so much. The world is so mean. I wish I could run away to the circus. Then, at least, I'd get paid for being a sideshow freak (and drool over Jonesy from afar, the dust and grease smeared over his sweat stained skin as he strains under the sun...um, where was I?).
PS. Holy Hannah. It looks like an Australia Post van just back up into our yard. Seriously, I have like six months worth of mail here. It's like Christmas, only with cool stuff. Everything I've ever ordered off ebay, dvds (thank you, you know who, and your ever faithful tivo, hugs to both), Amazon, the British museum, it's all here. At last. Wallow. And you should have seen the size of the box my tea pot came in. I thought no way, but there it was, three times bigger than I thought, and so suave. I told myself no more ordering stuff that I'd walk past at Rozelle markets, but I tell ya, if I'd seen this seet baby on a stall I'd have been elbowing people out of the way like a rugby forward. Nice. Oh and my latest modernist brooch, so silly, so Trek I can't but hum the theme. Seriously, Kirk once boinked a blonde alien chick who was wearig this brooch, it is so Trek. Yes, yes, photos when I'm not so stupid tired I dare not let myself loose with camera and valuable china.
PPS. Matt, darling, you know I love you, but for the love of fuck can you please take off my Dad's glasses. Now. You are seriously creeping me out here, honey bunny.
Has Doctor Who got too complicated?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/sep/20/doctor-who-too-complicated
DangerOz
http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/DangerOz
HUSBANDS 1: Waking Up in Vegas
http://youtu.be/cMskTDjtx2U
http://youtu.be/BWB86eY5dXw
http://youtu.be/IFGex2I8jeA
Matt Bomer On Why Marriage Equality Matters To Him
http://www.advocate.com//Arts_and_Entertainment/Theater/Matt_Bomer_On_Why_Prop_8_Matters_To_Him/
"8" Broadway Opening Night - After Party
http://www.wireimage.com/ItemListings.aspx?cbi=6435&igi=523452&nbc1=1
"8" Broadway Opening Night - After Party
http://www.wireimage.com/GalleryListing.asp?navtyp=GLS====523453&c4nvi=3&str=6435&styp=clbi&nbc1=1
I wish. Aside from the usual heavy cottage industry going on (aka car rebirthing), one neighbour decided to noisily tear down his metal fence, with accompanying bangs, shouts and crashes, and all of this after an all night party of extreme wildness and drunken shoutiness (have hangovers, damn you, lord knows I have) and on the other side, one of the brats has been given a recorder to practice on. Of all the tortures devised by man, I swear, a recorder in the hands of a primary school child, it is the worst.
So, not as genteel or as romantic a morning as I might have hoped. It was also hitting the thirties (celsius), so when the sun started to climb the steps it became really uncomfortable, which is a pain because the back porch is also the only place I can get a decent interwebs connection (Himself calls the house a Faraday cage but I think it's just the weird 70s insulation which insulates only phone signals, it seems).
So I scurried into the meager shade to watch Mr Cumberbatch on the pvr. Or so I'd hoped. Cumberbatch the pvr killer. Well, it wasn't his fault, as the poor thing has been wheezing along for a while, it's the industrial dust in its innards plus use and abuse but there's nowt I can do about either, but still.
So it was back out into the back garden. You know you're in trouble when you watch the Seeds of Doom (still brilliant fun, btw) and think yes, I must tackle the back garden. Sadder still when it proves to be merely a pale dramatisation by comparison as one hacks and slashes one's way through the Lost Valley (beware of dinosaurs, giant insects and the like). Oh, you think I'm kidding. You wouldn't believe what a couple of week's neglect and warm, humid weather can wreak.
Oh, loving the Tom and Liz episodes they're playing at the moment. I wouldn't have saiid it at the time, only having childish memories of the show, but watching it back now I really really see where a lot of Matt's Doctor and Amy comes from. I really, really can. Sarah Jane was brilliant, she really was. It's no surprise she's remained beloved of many.
Tuesday: Oh man, I'm so tired, like my brain feels like a sandbag tired (and just as functional), but it was worth it. I went off to see the Threepenny Opera. I'd not read good reviews and I heard mutterings during the interval, which I assume were from Brecht purists. Me, I'm completely clueless, and so my heathen heart loved it to bits. It had been slapped together for local audiences, and so it was more Priscilla than Caberet, but I liked that, too. I liked the sets, which evoked the art stuff over at the Mad Square exhibition at the art gallery that I went to last week, which was a happy accident because the two were apparently complimentary, so well done me managing my integrated entertainments, because you sure wouldn't know they were tied in from the display copy (the AGNSW is coy about such things, apparently having been badly burnt in decades past).
Anyhoo, what a hoot. The cast were amazing, totally banging it out there to the back seats. I was up the front so I was almost pinned to my seat with the verve and energy blowing off the stage. Such a cast, bravo. I kind of like the Malthouse productions now, even though it's always rather like being plunged in the middle of an early Split Enz video:
Which can be disconcerting but is never a bad thing. But yes, love, love love, especially Eddie Perfect (Macheath) and Paul Capsis (Jenny), omg they were so good. I was humming Mack the Knife all the way home, in fact I had to make myself stop humming it as I was in real danger of suddenly belting it out and waking the household. It was that good, because I rarely get home still singing.
I also liked the extreme and almost comical bolshiness of the production. Recent events made them brave in their direct commentary on modern poverty, corruption and violence (explicitly underlined with a slideshow of current figures at one point) and the struggle in the gutter, the dog eat dog world, the rants against the politicians and greed, it reminded me very much of the demonstration in the park the other week, so I guess I'd really done my homework for this, even if I wouldn't know Brecht from a turnip.
As this was my first introduction to the play, and I don't know what was canon and what was invention, I can only speak to my impressions. And so yes, Macheath's speeches about being an honest criminal, for what is robbing a bank to running a bank, struck home, both to real events and fictional characters, everyone from the undeserving Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion to, yes, Neal Caffrey, all shrugging and stating the obvious, that there are worse criminals out there, usually the ones who sit in judgement.
There were a lot of points well made on man's savagery, and I was really sitting up listening, mainly because of Arkady (more on that blighter later, he's a sadist, he's a rapist...). Yes, Macheath is going to stay with me for a while (and if you'd seen Mr Perfect, you'd know why, no wonder there were crowds waiting at the stage door, mass hybristophilia in action (why yes, I was watching an old QI the other day). Quite a man, that Macheath. Oh you had to be there, you had to see.
That. Was. Fun.
Better than that, it was actor's night, which meant the cast came out for a Q&A afterwards. I've been to a couple of these in the UK but this one was one, as the cast had strong opinions and weren't afraid to share them. They very very funny, and interesting and I think I learnt more about the play from them than the programme, so that was most excellent.
So, Tuesday at work, shittiness from start to finish, writing Caffrey porn in the park, then I hopped a bus to see Fright Night. Yes, I had to commute to find a 2D version, but so had the rest of the audience, a bunch of curmudgeons who all looked like they'd set the pvr for that night's Tom Baker episodes - snork. Still, we all laughed in the right places.
It was cute and cheesy fun. I'm kind of glad I was with an older crowd because yes, I was the target demographic for the first film, and, well, that's gotta burn. It was, and remains, one of the few films I saw in the 80s that I actually liked. (As an aside, I do like to lay some of the blame for my embittered spinsterhood at the feet of the films of the 80s and 90s, because, seriously, if a guy takes you to see Beverly Hills Cop II, are you ever going to want a second date? Would you want a man who enjoys the comedy stylings of Eddie Murphy as the father of your children? No. Well, then, QED).
So, aside from the pointless non 3D establishing shots (I don't do 3D) I was charmed by the essential Buffyness of it all, and I can't for the life of me tell you whether that was because Marti Noxon wrote it or that the original fillum was clearly an obvious Buffy template (so much so that I tend to conflate the orginal Fright Night with the original Buffy film, and so does the Peanut Gallery). Nevertheless, as I'm on a serious Buffy kick right now (thank you SciFi), I found this pleasing.
Then Colin the naughty vampire shows up. Oh, Colin (pause for ten minutes of serious swooning). He played it perfectly, sexy, menancing, dangerous, a stone cold predator, completely reptilian. I loved it. Every minute.
And then there was the Tennant. How much do I love him (and missing out on seeing in him my favourite Shakespeare role for which I had a ticket burns worse than a vampire in the sun). He brought all his Shakespearian clowning to the part, a touch OTT but that was exactly right for the role, and I forgot all about the part originally played by my forever beloved Roddy McDowell (the reason I went to see the film in the first place).
Yes, it was silly and slight and big cheesy drive in movie fun, but for the chance to see two of my very favourite boys face off as vampire and vampire hunter: happiness!
And I can see why this Peter Vincent didn't cop it. Why on earth would you kill off a flamboyantly wonderful DT? That way madness lies. If they ever make a sequel I would very much like to see DT strutting his leather stuff again.
I was supposed to be taking three buses to get home but when I walked out I saw taxi after taxi and so I just stamped down on the throat of my inner calvinist masochist. Three buses? not bloody likely, I'm catching a taxi. So, it was, and well worth it, as the driver gave me kind and gentle advice for dealing with utter arseholes (both at work and on the bus) and I got home in time to switch on the telly and cop the opening credits of a DT episode of Doctor Who. More David? Yes please.
I was supposed to be getting online and doing my bloggy duty at this point but sod it, the whole night was meant to be my consolation night, so a cup of tea and Tennant on telly it was. It was Silence in the Library, so it wasn't a bad episode, either.
Taxi fare: cough cough. Getting home for more DT? Priceless.
This living well is the best revenge thing is okay, full of fun experiences to Tweet about, but, man, it's hell on this old frame. Sleep, sleep, I want sleep. Miles to go though because I'm a fortnight behind in my blog postings. Oh dear, etc. That's what I get for being such a wilting flower on the weekend because I was too tired, it was too hot, I'd half killed myself hacking my way through the jungle down to the back fence (I didn't even make it either, which is the shameful thing, more weeds than the council can cope with, a metre or so shy of the actual back fence).
Still, I'm glad I went to that cinema because it used to be my cinema, when I worked and studied down that end of town, work work work, study study study, enlivened by the occassional flick. It's a good cinema, small, neat and nice, and popular with the afterwork crowd of decent office folk, not seething with deadly and scary ethnic gangs like the other cinemas nearest work and home, which tells you so much about work and home, I guess). So I was comfy, and pleased it was still there, but people were just pouring in, so hopefully it will stay there. It must make it my cinema of first choice again.
Better yet, I found a newsagent which stocks some of the more boutiqe magazines I can no longer get in the city (to my great distress). It makes sense, as the shop is bound by two unis and a TAFE, but I'm still happy to find it. Not that it had any of the issues I was after but at least now I have somewhere I can at least try when there's an issue I'm really after, you know, the ones where they convince some actor I fancy to do some tastefully arty black and white bdsm shoot. You know, those arty high fashion mags. I demand the right to tastefully arty photoshoots. That I can only get the cardigan wearing Women's Weekly in the city these days, it burns. I miss Borders so bad.
Hey, that's my completely crappy Fassbender scan, made on the piece of old biscuit scanner with the crack in the glass - my very own watermark. Hey, it's nice that someone felt my uber crappy scan was worth posting (I miss my old Cannon hardcore), but did any of these cunts bother to thank me, the stupid fuck who bought the magazine ($40 if I remember rightly) and gave up her breakfast and sleep to sneak in early and sweat over a scanner probably seriously older than half the people who commented and thanked the re-poster? I don't mean to be a feedback whore, but just one little acknowledgement for my time, effort and expense, every now and then, wouldn't go astray. /end rant.
Any Google search that returns Alexei Volkov as the first result, well, I'm giggling. Okay, I really should stop the silly but damn, I was looking for a couple aliases and damn me if Chuck didn't get in there first. Well, yes, I dare say there's a lot of Volkov in the current story line, and clearly Google agrees with me. Oh, it used to be a White Collar story, now it'd just daft.
Damn, the next result when looking for a suitable character name came back Karyakin. I am so not having any luck here.
Anyhoo, the unsurnamed as yet Arkady, aka the bastard wot took over the story. If I'd posted what I had a week ago it would have been a completely different story. A bit bleak at the end, but still recogniseably White Collar. Now it's just insane. And it's all Arkady's fault. At first he was just a name mention, in a whisper, by Neal, once, in the same sort of hushed tones one would have once referenced the Black Douglas.
The he gets a short paragraph. Then the backstory the cameos, suddenly he's getting lines and now it's all about Arkady. He's a mad, bad bastard, and a bit magnificent. He's Macheath, Bill and Eric, the brothers MacManus, the Krays, Clint Eastwood and anything played by Michael Fassbender, all rolled into one sexy, violent, swaggering, slightly crazy package. And he's taken over the story. Completely. And, to be honest, I'm kind of keen to see where he's taking it. I can always roll it back if it gets too silly (that's too silly by my standards, not yours, although even the True Blood writers might consider some scenes having gone a touch too far already - grin).
Small wonder Neal's so smitten. He's like a dark, really dark, version of Peter, in every way, well, in ways that tend to be glossed over on the show but Arkady has decided to ride hard for all he's worth (the whole Neal collared thing, if you're curious, and I did say he was the sort of merrily twisted bastard who'd make Eric Northman blanch).
So that's Arkady, kinky story killer. But I kinda love him. He's the violent psychopath with a heart of gold, and stunningly handsome devil at that.
Meanwhile, much tamer fare on telly last night with the art forgery show on the ABC (Fake or Fortune). This was tying in with the National Gallery show last year on fakes and the art world, which I really wanted to see but didn't (but I have the catalogue, it lives on the bedside table as reference material). So in the last episode they were dealing with a possibly fake Rembrandt that popped up for auction in South Africa. Turned out to be not by the master but by a student, but more interesting were the labels on the back that indicated it had been stored by a fascist governemt at some stage. Yes, Nazi loot, with footage of Nazis plundering the galleries of Europe and loading them into trucks. Fascists are meticulous, though, and so the painting was easily identified on a manifest and also identified by the Jewish family who had once owned it, and also the bank who claimed it had been holding the painting as collateral before the Nazis took it and prized it, according to the manifest notes, so it's all very complicated but the BBC seemed to think that the Nazis plundering, keeping, storing and selling off other people's property was a bad thing, quite morally wrong, and that re-selling such stolen art was still morally queasy.
Unlike White Collar, which still thinks Nazi plunder is clever, fun and cool. It is not. Shame, white Collar, shame.
Anyway, with the counter claims the painting is stuck in limbo, but it was a very interesting episode on Nazi looting, the surving familes and galleries, mostly owned by Jewish families, who had lost the works (ditto art historians and civilsation in general), masterpieces that are known only by a short typed listing or a black and white photo. The Beeb tried to be neutral, but it really was quite angry making, too see all those treasures loaded onto a truck (mercifully they spared us images of the owners also being loaded onto trucks, something White Collar refuses to acknowledge. I wish White Collar would quit with the holocaust denial crap, because it really bothers me. Somebody needs to remind young Mr Bomer that the Nazis were exterminating those of the pink triangle as well as the yellow star, just to give it perspective).
I was taking notes, I can tell you. Not that I ever mention Neal's Nazi plunder in the fic. That really does make me sick and so S3 never happens (well, not on the pages, anyway) and it's all strictly AU from that moment on (conveniently allows me to ignore stick firgure Barbie, too). And who cares about canon when I have Arkady on a tear.
Oh, the fic, yes, there's a lot of Neal whumping and it majes me happy. Wipe that smug little smile off his face. I hate these people who whine that Peter is like so mean to him. I want to slap them. I mean, seriously, with all the shit Neal has pulled, which includes endagering the lives and livlihoods of the Burkes on numerous occassions now? I can't help but watch it as the eldest, and know the pain of Peter being responsible for every single stupid thing the little idiot gets up to, all the while running ragged covering up for him and then he's all carrying on like an infant when he doesn't get his way and it's all you're so mean and you don't understand me and me, me, me. (btw, I heart Dean Winchester, too, oh, our crosses to bear).
So if Peter is far too tenderhearted to put Neal over his knee for that well deserved spanking, I'm more than happy to let Arkady to the job. Hee.
I know, but life is shitty and at least I'm just kicking a fictional cat, as it were.
Still don't know if I still have a job or not, still being bullied daily, at work and on the bus, though I managed to almost struggle back into my 'I don't see you/hear you/feel you' re the daily physical and verbal abuse on the bus. It's just a certain level of stress and rawness of nerves that make it far more upsetting than usual. Thank you nice taxi driver who gave me some advice on dealing with cretins, basically: ignore, ignore, ignore. Kinda hard when they're sticking gum in yor hair, but, you know, I gotta try.
Anyone would think I was fourteen but I'm not. So not. And this sort of shit has veen going on since I was four. I am so over it, so tired of it. That's what is really upsetting. It does not get better. It does not stop. If one bully goes, another springs up in their place, like the skelton men on that old Harryhausen film. I'm just so tired. I wish I could rip my face off, since it offends so much. The world is so mean. I wish I could run away to the circus. Then, at least, I'd get paid for being a sideshow freak (and drool over Jonesy from afar, the dust and grease smeared over his sweat stained skin as he strains under the sun...um, where was I?).
PS. Holy Hannah. It looks like an Australia Post van just back up into our yard. Seriously, I have like six months worth of mail here. It's like Christmas, only with cool stuff. Everything I've ever ordered off ebay, dvds (thank you, you know who, and your ever faithful tivo, hugs to both), Amazon, the British museum, it's all here. At last. Wallow. And you should have seen the size of the box my tea pot came in. I thought no way, but there it was, three times bigger than I thought, and so suave. I told myself no more ordering stuff that I'd walk past at Rozelle markets, but I tell ya, if I'd seen this seet baby on a stall I'd have been elbowing people out of the way like a rugby forward. Nice. Oh and my latest modernist brooch, so silly, so Trek I can't but hum the theme. Seriously, Kirk once boinked a blonde alien chick who was wearig this brooch, it is so Trek. Yes, yes, photos when I'm not so stupid tired I dare not let myself loose with camera and valuable china.
PPS. Matt, darling, you know I love you, but for the love of fuck can you please take off my Dad's glasses. Now. You are seriously creeping me out here, honey bunny.
Has Doctor Who got too complicated?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/sep/20/doctor-who-too-complicated
DangerOz
http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/DangerOz
HUSBANDS 1: Waking Up in Vegas
http://youtu.be/cMskTDjtx2U
http://youtu.be/BWB86eY5dXw
http://youtu.be/IFGex2I8jeA
Matt Bomer On Why Marriage Equality Matters To Him
http://www.advocate.com//Arts_and_Entertainment/Theater/Matt_Bomer_On_Why_Prop_8_Matters_To_Him/
"8" Broadway Opening Night - After Party
http://www.wireimage.com/ItemListings.aspx?cbi=6435&igi=523452&nbc1=1
"8" Broadway Opening Night - After Party
http://www.wireimage.com/GalleryListing.asp?navtyp=GLS====523453&c4nvi=3&str=6435&styp=clbi&nbc1=1