sab

LJ user equals me will be in Mexico through Dec. 29th. My physical house is being sat by samdonne, and my virtual house will be sat by runpunkrun. Obey them as you would me! Or, you know, whatever. See you on the flipside!

And if anything amazing happens in yuletide, e-mail me? I've got big plans to check e-mail at the promised internet cafe in Mazatlan.

So, about Facebook. Yes, it's a whole new site that you have to register for, and yes, it certainly has its share of problems regarding policies, but no more than any other internet giant. Here's the thing:

> It's surprisingly easy to set up. Seriously, it's like a fully furnished apartment, and the furniture's, like, basic Ikea stock but perfectly serviceable for a sublet.

> It's also surprisingly easy to customize. It has these little external apps that plug in like widgets, and they're seriously drag-and-drop. And, strangely, turn out to be apps you want to use.

> But, mostly? Remember that kid in third grade, who was kind of a dork but you always secretly thought he was interesting, and that he'd probably grow up to be an architect or something cool? He could totally BE an architect now! He's on Facebook. And you could reconnect, with all that stupid school social grace gone, like grownups, and make new old friends. It's crazypants, I swear. Remember that incredibly hot camp counselor? She is also totally on Facebook, and you can send her a message and within days be playing Scrabble with her on one of your Facebook widget thingies. I'm telling you, crazypants. The possibilities are limitless.

Anyway, I'm not being, like, a commercial for Facebook, despite my current appreciation for the fact that it's a remarkably easy, friendly place, without obtrusive ads or spam, that can be used for a variety of purposes from tracking down college buddies to hooking up with fannish people in a real-name space (awesome!) to meeting random people to bite and turn into zombies.

The vague corporate entity control is still definitely present in some places, with their drop-down boxes for things like religion and sexuality and political affiliation, where I can't type in "Progressive" and am forced to present as "Liberal." And as a poly person it's potentially annoying that, for Facebook values of "relationship," you can't list more than one person as a partner.

There's also the low-lingering talk of privacy violations, some of which are probably true including the one where Facebook's been posting people's online purchases (from off-site vendors, like Amazon) on their Facebook pages. That's not buddies.

But for now, I'm grooving on it.

> Time Crash: the ULTIMATE fannish wet dream, or simply the most adorkably beautiful? I mean OMG. David Tennant, you gangly bespectacled fanboy, I love absolutely everything about you.

> We have a new feline companion! She is a stripey Bengal cat called Major Margaret Hulahoop, and she is absolutely brilliant and can do things like air backflips and chair-scratching and silent openmouthed meowing. She is projectjulie's furry touchstone.

> And we spent the day at the BSG con in Burbank! Even though somedaybitch couldn't make it (le sniff!) a good time was had by all, though lemme tell you, SURREAL to be at that Burbank hotel and not see our Farscapers around. Ah, the days. We had a time, I'll tell you. Still, Tahmoh Penniket hung out in the Daily Grill and watched sports on TV, so.

> I'm in the middle of a rebellion in my WBC class, where five of my classmates elected me defacto leader and spokeswoman for our sub-class cabal, and sent me to parley with the instructor about how the class dynamics are fucked up and how the stupid people are wasting all of our time. Instead, I got poached from that class by the instructor, and was put into the (supposedly) better and more advanced class. "But just you," the instructor said. "Not the rest of your group." So now it's all about writing a diplomatic e-mail to my cabal members and explaining to them how to get the most out of the class, without mentioning that *I*, ahem, won't be there.

> furies, call Lizzie. I'll e-mail you her number. She does mindfulness with her 4th graders every day, and I think you two could have a good powwow/teacher swap. I spoke to her today and she's expecting yer call, little sister.

> So who's on this Facebook thingy? Me, I am, that's who. Is it possible I joined just so I could see nevers's trapeze videos? Yes, yes it is.

So.

I got the paperwork via e-mail with all the (nice, big) dollar figures in. BUT, the producer moved the meeting to Monday. With a little "and bring the paperwork in so we can get it signed" at the end. He also mentioned that a "new show at the network" was keeping him busy today, which, okay, maybe it's reality or a panel show or whatever, but still, suspicious, no?

Anyway, so I e-mailed back, told him I'd be happy to meet him for coffee Monday and talk about the project, but that I wasn't prepared to sign anything until the strike's over.

And that brings us to the mo.

Thank y'all for your comments and advice, really. This is just a horrible sticky wicket and it means a lot to me to have troops advising me and supporting me. The strike is serious business, and since I'm not that many years or months away from wanting to reap my own percentage of back-end profit on digital distribution, we have to stick this one out.

I spoke to my lawyer this morning and we talked about various potential workarounds, but unless something uncannily deus ex machina happens before or during my meeting Monday, it doesn't seem likely.

I am hoping he holds out till after the strike's over, because I genuinely have a ton of good ideas for this project and am positively itching to get to work on them. But, in the end, whatever, dude.

Back to the salt mines!

So what I'm doing is working on this mafia script and listening to my Zune on Shuffle All over here at Ground Work (hi Liz! I totally thought yesterday was Friday and that TODAY was Saturday, and, anyway, I'm a mess over here) and as a little treat to myself I'm jotting down a lyric from each song the Zune spits (unless I'm not paying attention or, somehow, working too hard to notice, in which case I might skip a song or two), and then we can all play that game that walkingshadow resurrected today.

Will continue listing lyrics here till I get bored, cold, or hungry, or until I finish these script notes -- whichever comes first. Um, heh.

( click here )

fig. 1, fleshverse:

> Draft #2 of my Bones spec script is due Tuesday to my WBC instructors, and then another script conference and then, whatever, fixing/shopping.

> I'm doing a pitch for a rewrite of this mafia feature film for a production company, also due next week. If the producer likes my rewrite concepts, it's contract and money FTW!

> They shut my power off.

> The sky is white-orange, the air is hot and dry, coughs and nosebleeds, chapped lips and hot nights with no breeze. I had to use the air conditioner a couple days this week. MAN it's a shame they shut my power off. The fires continue to burn, and while I'm not actually in any direct threat (it would take some doing for a fire to make it to the center of Hollywood, considering the only fuel we've got besides asphalt and concrete are emaciated palm trees and people in cars) we are all definitely aware that our city's on fire. Still, I can cure what ails me with a bottle of water and some moisturizer; salute to the folks who lost their homes.

fig. 2, tvverse:

> With the cancellation of Viva Laughlin and my inability to find any more episodes of Dirty Sexy Money, it turns out that Sarah Jane Adventures might be the only new show that sticks for me this year. I had big hopes for Pushing Daisies, because the cast is phenom (srsly! Kristen Chenoweth breaking into song! Swoosie Kurtz and that chick who was in Little Shop of Horrors, with eye patches and cheese!), but the conceits (to use a WBC term) are exhausting me. I mean, how stylized can a person be before collapsing into a pile of cliche? In related news, a conversation:

ME: I think Pushing Daisies is going to regret having such a stylized narrator. I don't see how they can sustain it.

SR: They should bring him into the story and then kill him!

ME: Like in Into The Woods!

SR: See? There's precedent!

Dear LJ friends, I defy you to tell me that's not the greatest idea EVER.

> As far as continuing shows, SGA is pleasing me (hooray, Jewel Staite!), NCIS is pleasing me (though, new girl? New girl with OCD? Really, this is the shark we're jumping? She better be an evil mole like wossname, the lab assistant with the mustache) and seems to be setting up Torri Higginson for a relationship with Ducky, which would be the best use of Torri since, um, something that wasn't SGA. On the other hand, this Ziva-pining-for-Tony thing better payoff, preferably with a wrestling match, sooner rather than later. Bones is pleasing me greatly and my love for Cam deepens with every episode, and House is doing a REALITY SHOW. Seriously, this voting-off-the-island storyline House is using to find new team members is possibly the best device I've seen on television for a long while. God, I hope it whittles down to three (two? now that Foreman's back?) in true reality style, without any surprise disqualifications or non-Survivorish exiles. I mean, Anne Dudek vs. Thirteen in a fire-making tie in front of tribal council? I'd pay money. And if they bring back the rejects for tribal council? Even BETTER.

> Stacie from Hustle was on Dexter! And what's more they seem to be setting her up for an arc! Now, which one of you was supposed to be responsible for telling me these things? *looks around suspiciously* I mean, seriously? When she turned around in the AA meeting and looked at him over her shoulder, who among us didn't think, "is she roping him for a con???" And I tell ya, if she IS, I'll pay even MORE money than I would for the House thing. Man, I'm gonna need some money.

> HIMYM? Need I say more? I got the DVDs and watched all the bonus footage from seasons 1 and 2. Commentaries! Blooper reels! Totally worth it! And here's a little Neil Patrick Harris bedtime story:

So, in the commentary for the ep where Wayne Brady plays NPH's (gay, black) brother, NPH remarks that during the shooting of this ep he also happened to be going through his own "personal badness," when the tabloids were outing him and so on. NPH is careful to use nonspecific terms for his media confrontation, and never actually suggests any gayness in the commentary track except to note that the "irony wasn't lost" when it came down to shooting this big gay ep. And seasons come and go, people marry and die, and at the end of the commentary, whoever the chick was in the commentary (the writer of the ep) comments that she, like many women, always finds herself falling in love with great guys who turn out to be gay. "Sorry," says NPH, the one hint of self-outing in the DVD. Who do you think noticed? Do you think he's stressing about it at home?

> The Office, so far so good! Angela, Dwight, Andy = masters of the awesomeverse. Jim/Pam = so far used very effectively! In conclusion = let's see how it plays out.

> Reaper, Life, Chuck, Private Practice, etc etc = I am not watching any of these shows. I am not watching any new shows other than the ones mentioned above. But if you are, you should feel free to try and pimp me; I trust you. But I'll tell you right now that there's probably not a chance in hell I'll watch that Addison show.

In an unshocking surprise to no one, the show previously celebrated here at EHCA, Viva Laughlin, has been axed.

O, America.

Viva Laughlin ( spoiler, etc )

Dear Sarah Jane Adventures,

If every episode is half of a two parter, what you've got here is not, in fact, a half-hour show, but rather an hour show spread across two weeks.

Hmm? Hm? Yeah.

And let's not forget that back in the great early 90s, Doogie Howser, MD was a half-hour DRAMA. Yay for groundbreaking gays! Nay for British shows (and, I mean, seriously, it's not like the Beeb or the CBeeb has, like, TIME BLOCKS to worry about, y'all could have an hour-and-ten-minute show if you wanted, or a forty-minute, seriously, let's not pretend you're trying to cram into NBC primetime or summat) that won't gimme all their content in one go!

Love,
ME

> Doogie Howser, M.D. was a half-hour drama.

And Neil Patrick Harris is AMAZING. I've only been watching seasons 3 and 4, as he's grown up into a man. I have a definite kink he hits, the sandy-haired deservedly arrogant genius, like Peter Krause, or Peter Stebbings, or to a greater degree, David Tennant. Where he overacts, just a little, with that kind of confident intelligence that makes my knees weak. At the end of the day it's a privilege to have Neil Patrick Harris with us on the gay team, ijs.