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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2858

I don’t normally talk about current events here–I try to keep this blog as my shiny escapism place. But the world seems extra insane right now, so here’s an attempt to exorcise some of the thoughts that have been disturbing my sleep lately.

( First, something good: is evolutionary psychology finally getting discredited? )

( I feel just a bit sorry for Mark Sanford )

( Michael Jackson WTF )

( I'm really worried that effective health care legislation won't get passed )

( Probably stupid, but my thoughts on yaoi (aka the latest iteration of the warnings debate) )

( Neda Agha Soltan's death )

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2857

I finished The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope. I’m not sure how this ended up on my reading list, but it must’ve been recommended by a Lymond fan–I feel fairly certain that the author must’ve been one as well. It reads like the Lymond Chronicles remixed with the Scottish ballad the Tam Lin.

The main characters are too similar to Philippa and Lymond for it to be coincidence, but it’s done very well and I didn’t feel that it was derivate in a bad way. It was written well and incorporated its various influences into a compelling and imaginative whole.

( spoilers for The Perilous Gard and the Lymond Chronicles )

This is technically a childrens' book, but it was complex and interesting enough that I'd say it works just as well for adults. I definitely recommend it, and I think it would make a great gift for a kid as well.

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Yay! I got it working!

I’m now crossposting this journal to Dreamwidth in addition to InsaneJournal, JournalFen, and LiveJournal.

(I have to say, Dreamwidth’s customization innovations are awesome. It was so much simpler to make my journal pretty there than at the other journaling sites!)

Comments are still centralized at my own site. As before, my real journal is at rusty-halo.com. If you want to get to know each other, add me at whichever journaling site you prefer and register at my site so you can comment on locked entries (anyone can comment on public entries). If you just want to read my public posts, you can subscribe to my journal by RSS or just read it at rusty-halo.com.

I’m trying to keep up with my reading lists at all four sites, but the ones I’ll read most are Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. I’m trying to find all my LJ/IJ/JF friends on DW; if I’ve missed you, please let me know so I can add you.

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2853

I swear to god, you’d think I’m trying to choose the most random and obscure things to obsess over.

*goes back to sitting in the corner babbling to myself about David Bowie and Francis Crawford of Lymond*

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Last night I finished reading Bowie: The Pitt Report by Kenneth Pitt. I think this was the most interesting of the Bowie books I’ve read so far. Not the most informative–it only covers a couple of years in the late 60s before Bowie became famous–but fascinating because of the personalities involved and because the author knew Bowie so intimately.

In later years Pitt was criticized for being an ineffectual manager and for trying to turn Bowie into an “all-around light entertainer,” so much of the book is taken up with his attempts to refute that. He chronicles the work he did to promote Bowie in meticulous detail–industry people he contacted, letters and promos he sent, performances he organized. After reading this it’s impossible to deny that Pitt worked his ass off for Bowie–perhaps Pitt was looking in the wrong places, or perhaps Bowie’s work just wasn’t quite star-quality material yet. But what makes the story interesting is not so much the long lists of performance dates and industry contacts as the fact that Kenneth Pitt was clearly head over heels in love with David Bowie.

( The Pitt Report )

Here is a quick round-up of the other Bowie books I've read so far:

( Alias David Bowie )

( Strange Fascination )

( The Complete David Bowie )

( Moonage Daydream: The Life & Times of Ziggy Stardust )

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2851

I finished His Majesty’s Dragon and was very disappointed by it.

( Read more... )

Meanwhile I am also reading The Pitt Report, an odd and kind of fascinating look at David Bowie through the eyes of his early manager (fascinating mainly for how much goes unsaid and how much Pitt [apparently unconsciously] reveals of his own biases), and Bruce Campell's autobiography If Chins Could Kill, which isn't as interesting as I thought it would be.

Waiting on the shelf: C. S. Forester's Ship of the Line (the next Hornblower book), Dorothy L. Sayers' Whose Body, Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana, and Elizabeth Pope's The Perilous Gard. Canceling my cable TV was a good idea! Any recommendations for which I should read first?

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2850

I made some revisions and updates to my Ziggy Stardust essay. If anyone out there reads it, I would love to get feedback.

I checked in at the Song of Ice and Fire forum yesterday and was excited to see that casting sides and a pilot script for the HBO series have already leaked. And apparently they’re … decent. I am cautiously optimistic. I know a lot will have to be cut in order to turn such epic novels into a television series, but I’m pleased that they seem to be remaining faithful to the spirit of the text. (Of course anything could happen between now and the final airing, if it even airs…!) *crosses fingers*

Last weekend was busy. Friday night I went to the Feministing fifth anniversary party with my friend Anne. It was cool to be in a room full of feminists, but the location was so disappointing. It was the middle of nowhere (46th between 11th and 12th, surrounded by warehouses and cheesy clubs with lines to get in), the drinks were obscenely expensive, and the sound was atrocious. I can’t imagine why they didn’t have it in the LES or the Village.

Saturday I dragged myself out of bed with enough time to go to the Guggenheim, basically because 1) I’ve lived in NYC for nine years and have never been there and 2) if I can’t afford to travel, the least I can do is take advantage of the fact that I live in New York City. The building is gorgeous, of course, and the main exhibition on Frank Lloyd Wright was interesting. Some of his buildings are amazing, but I’m annoyed that he didn’t like cities and thought everyone should have cars. My favorite thing was the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the Thannhauser Collection. The museum is small enough that you can listen to every segment on the audio guide with time to spare, so I took full advantage of that.

Then I met up with jaydk and we headed back to my place (after a nightmare on the subway thanks to the stupid L shutdown on weekends) where I made her finish The Man Who Fell to Earth (she hated it, *sigh*) and she made me watch part of an anime series and then um a fan-subbed video of a live-action musical based on an anime about middle schoolers playing tennis. And she thinks I have weird taste? ;) Of course there was a lot of alcohol and food and it was fun even if our fannish interests are not quite converging at the moment. Oh! And we had a lot of fun watching Robin Hood episode nine hit cliche after cliche. It’s like that show is built for MST3K. And Richard Armitage is always there to look hot and provide a bit of actual entertainment value.

Then Sunday I went to see Moon followed by the Q&A by director Duncan Jones. I want to see it again before it goes out of theaters; it’s really such a good film.

Now I have to answer emails. I know, I’m horribly slow. Working on it now.

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2849

I’m about as atheist you can get. The only thing that’s ever moved me in the same way that I hear other people talk about religion is music.

So it’s no wonder that David Bowie’s album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars grabbed me completely. Ziggy Stardust is rock ‘n’ roll as modern myth: rock ‘n’ roll as the religion of now.

Now that I’ve listened to Bowie’s entire 1970s oeuvre, I was going to write a post summarizing my thoughts on each album. But I realized I need to devote an entire post to Ziggy Stardust first, because there’s just so much to say about it.

( Read more... )

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2847

I’ve been hibernating. Sick for two weeks, tired, depressed. I canceled my cable TV to save money, which is actually good because it means I’m getting stuff done for SuperVegan and am reading books instead of watching Futurama reruns. And I can get Colbert, Stewart, and Rachel Maddow online for free, so there’s no reason to pay $70/month for cable. But it’s kind of depressing, anyway.

We’re going to be adding more cities to SuperVegan’s restaurant guide (right now it’s just NYC). So I’ve been very busy working on the programming for that. Of course, once the programming’s done we have to actually enter the data… um, any vegans out there want to volunteer? I guess the ideal is to get local people on the ground in each city to keep the information accurate and up-to-date, but I don’t know how feasible that’ll be. We’re having enough trouble keeping NYC up-to-date, and we all live here!

I read a couple of books. I finished Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander after leaving it half-read on a shelf for a year. I didn’t like it. Like Dunnett, it’s full of historically accurate jargon that’s difficult for a modern reader to parse; unlike Dunnett, the story and characters were just not compelling enough for me to want to put in the effort. I basically just finished it to get it out of the way. I bought more books in Forester’s Hornblower series instead; I found that one much more readable and the main character so much funnier (inadvertently) and more interesting.

I also read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book because I got a free copy at BEA. It was cute, although typical of Gaiman in that none of it really made sense. He tells stories on the level of metaphor, which is nice, but he doesn’t have the plots or logic to back them up. I always want to know hows and whys that he never provides. This isn’t really a criticism, because it’s a perfectly legitimate way of writing, it’s just not one that appeals to me personally. (I have the same problem with most Stephen King.)

I’m currently reading Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, but it’s slow going. I’m only 50 pages in, but I just… so don’t care about dragons. I find them creepy and silly and unpleasant to read about, actually; it’s a credit to grrm that I love A Song of Ice and Fire despite the dragons. (It probably helps that I was already totally into the story by the very late point that he finally introduced the dragons, and he slipped them in very slowly.) But I’ll try to finish this book; I want to give it a fair shot since I think the author is doing awesome things for fandom via her involvement with the OTW.

Oh yeah, and Writercon is still happening. Come hang out and talk about fanfic for a few days. It’ll be great.

Update on my continuing Bowie obsession: I skipped ahead 15 years after Scary Monsters and am now listening to 1. Outside. I’m just not quite ready to face 80s Bowie yet. Or Tin Machine. (I finished two Bowie bios and most of the encyclopedia and none of them had anything nice to say about Tin Machine.)

( Thoughts on Bowie's Outside )

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2846

One of the benefits of jumping back into a book after a break of a couple months is that while diving back in you notice juxtapositions that you might have skimmed over before.

These three in particular just struck me:

( spoilers for The Disorderly Knights )

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* Hey, I’ve got two Dreamwidth invite codes. Nifty. Who wants one?

( * a feminist complaint about the new Star Trek movie, with mild spoilers )

* Lots of Writercon stuff happening!

• Our official t-shirts (awesomely designed by contest winner Savannah Teague) are now on sale.


• We're going to open workshop sign-ups on Thursday at noon EST--watch the website and LJ comm for details.


• If you're attending the con, we want you to sign up to run a fan led event!


• If you're interested in selling something in our dealer room you can sign up as a vendor.


• We've posted interviews so that you can learn all about our fantastic guests.


• And more news is coming soon!

Are you coming to Writercon? Yes, I'm asking YOU. If you're involved in fanfic in any way--reader, writer, feedbacker, beta, comm mod, ficathon organizer--Writercon is for you. Think about attending--you can find out more info at Writercon.com or writercon or just ask me and I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have.

* Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is awesome. It reminds me of the 80s music I listened to in high school. Which makes sense as it was released in ... 1980. Wow, man, it's like everything in my life is running in one big circle! *is a dork*

* I've been spending a lot of time reading Twitter. YEAH I DON'T KNOW, OKAY. It's addictive, though: behind the scenes snippets from Rachel Maddow, extra jokes from Stephen Colbert, a daily stream of adorkable geekery from Bowie's son Duncan Jones, fan wank from Trent Reznor, and of course all the latest NYC vegan news from SuperVegan... plus little life updates from various friends, past and present, RL and fannish. And I can read it all on my phone!

( * Doctor Who finale SPOILERS )

* Picked up The Disorderly Knights to continue my re-read. I think what stopped me for a couple months there was that it was coming up on what is, to me, the most traumatizing character death of the series. But I got past it. (*sniffle*)

And, wow, glad I'm continuing, because I just hit a couple of my favorite lines of the entire series:

"I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with."
(p. 331, and I don't want to spoil which character says it)

( and a longer scene, with mild spoilers for The Disorderly Knights )

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2844

The comments here contain a debate about who’s hotter, Barack Obama or David Bowie.

I love the Internet, you guys, seriously.

(It’s Bowie, of course. I’ll fight anyone who disagrees!)

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2841

* Come to SuperVegan’s 3rd birthday party! It’s tomorrow (Thursday) at ’sNice Brooklyn, with an afterparty at Lucky 13 bar. We will have free cake and beer. Details here.

* Apparently there’s going to be a Lymond-focused Dorothy Dunnett fan gathering in France in autumn 2010. Um, that sounds awesome. I need more details, obviously, but there’s plenty of time to save money and make plans. Maybe I can get my mom to go with me and split the costs now that I’ve hooked her on Dunnett. *hopes* (Also, 10zlaine, you seriously need to read the Lymond Chronicles so that we can do some Dunnett-related traveling someday! Look, audio books!)

* Marilyn Manson has an absinthe called “Mansinthe.” I tried to say “Mansinthe” aloud and couldn’t get it out without choking on laughter.

* A David Bowie/Mick Ronson picspam. I’ll be in my bunk.

( I'm reading a creepy sensationalist Bowie bio and feeling annoyed at it )

* Album-wise, I've gotten up to Lodger. It's okay; I like "Look Back in Anger." Nothing after Station to Station has grabbed my interest the way the Ziggy-era stuff immediately did, though. I like Low intellectually and I think "Heroes" is a great song. But Station to Station is the last album that enthralled me on an emotional level. (The first is Hunky Dory, although bits of The Man Who Sold the World are amazing, and I like "Cygnet Committee" and "Space Oddity" from his 1969 album).

* I like how my interest in Bowie has led to a deeper understanding of the culture of rock music--the way concepts I always took for granted like "authenticity" and "selling out" grow from a particular ideology. Rock music was always an avenue for me to question the world around me, but I think it's also important for me to question it--many of its underpinnings are far more conservative than I'd considered.

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I always figured that if I were to be a character in a story I’d be one of the random ones that gets killed off early without anyone noticing.

Your results:
You are An Expendable Character (Redshirt)

An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 75% Jean-Luc Picard 65% Spock 52% Deanna Troi 50% Geordi LaForge 45% Will Riker 40% Data 27% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 25% James T. Kirk (Captain) 20% Uhura 20% Worf 20% Mr. Scott 5% Chekov 5% Beverly Crusher 5% Mr. Sulu 0%

Since your accomplishments are seldom noticed, and you are rarely thought of, you are expendable. That doesn’t mean your job isn’t important but if you were in Star Trek you would be killed off in the first episode you appeared in.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test

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Puerto Rico is wonderful. :)

I’m posting updates and photos (like instant postcards!) via Twitter. If you want to follow along:
http://twitter.com/drinkthepoison

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The other night I stayed up late again watching the wonderful and fascinating Man Who Fell to Earth commentary.

Then I went to bed, and I dreamed…

That I was watching the latest episode of Robin Hood, and that Guy’s hair looked better.

Fuck you, subconscious.

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2837

I was thinking how weird it is that I went from obsession with Dorothy Dunnett’s historical fiction series The Lymond Chronicles to obsession with the music of David Bowie. They seem so different. Then I thought:

They both come from Britain around the 60s/70s and concern a central figure who is charismatic, frequently androgynous, (questionably) bisexual, a social “outsider,” and whose core concerns center around identity, worldly success, and the struggle for human connection.

Both works are dripping with ambiguity and complexity; both make frequent use of allusion; both focus often on the dark side of human nature (suicide and insanity); both are concerned with music, art, and decadence; both revolve around the construction of identity and the question of “true” self (construction of differing identities to appeal to a particular audience and achieve a particular goal, the difficulty distinguishing between performance and reality, whether what you do changes who you are).

I think the biggest difference is that Bowie (I’m thinking particularly Ziggy) is postmodern, ironic, self-aware, very much of the 1970s, whereas the Lymond Chronicles are pretty rooted in the philosophy and style of the historical era they describe.

Must think further on this. Possibly completely insane.

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http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2836

Bowie’s persona-switching finds its most obvious counterpart in the central role of the Doctor in Doctor Who, an alien Time Lord who is permitted thirteen regenerations throughout the entirety of his lifespan. As the swish Jon Pertwee was morphing into bog-eyed Scouser Tom Baker, Bowie himself was morphing from glam-rock androgene into dandified soulster, a new version of the same character. It’s of little surprise that many Bowie fans are also fascinated by all things Gallifreyan. By one of those little twists of fate that are totally inconsequential yet somehow so appropriate, David Bowie shares his birthday with the actor who played the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell, born in 1908.
Strange Fascination: David Bowie by David Buckley, pages 128-129

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Suddenly I’m seeing Bowie references everywhere. Magazine covers, movie titles, on and on. It’s like when you learn a new word and suddenly you start noticing it at every turn.

The commentary on The Man Who Fell to Earth is awesome. I think this is the only time in my life I’ve wanted to listen to a DVD commentary again. It’s all really thoughtful–art as an attempt to connect with other human beings, the imperfect nature of it, the final product as a result of the interaction of the creative piece with the person interpreting it and bringing all of their opinions and experiences. Plus Bowie manages to predict Twitter… in 1992. It’s really quite nifty!

I’ve been thinking about how the music I’ve been listening to over the past few years has led to my ability to appreciate Bowie’s work, which I doubt I’d have gotten into at any earlier point in my life*. As my initial WTF reaction to Station to Station reveals, my musical horizons still have a lot of expanding to do, but at the same time I can directly trace my ability to appreciate various Bowie elements to the bands I’ve been into most recently.

* It’s also because Bowie is dark and complex but less outright angry than most of what I’ve been into in the past. I find I have increasingly less patience with white/masculine/teenage rage as time goes by. Oh, god, I’m getting old.

( Common Rotation and Bowie's early folk music )

( sidetrack: Saviour Machine )

( PIG and generic experimentation )

( the usual weird personal babble )

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