Experienced another classic Mike Moment last night. He’d brought out a water glass and a small snifter of cognac; the snifter was inside the glass. I was following him out to the hot tub (two inches of snow on the path) and he skidded, fell on his ass/back, and sproinged back up in the air in a fashion that left me gaping. I was the only witness; Tori had popped back inside for shoes and Paul and Keith joined us a couple of minutes later.
All those years of Kung Fu! He did not spill a drop, was uninjured, except for his dignity, and what really amazed me was how fast he recovered. I’ve taken bad falls without dropping what I was carrying so that part didn’t astound me. However, when I fall I generally lie there for a while going hunh? and don’t LEVITATE back into bipedalism. It didn’t look real! It was like a movie!!! (See earlier comments by Lexi (who’s moving this weekend) about how she hates it when people say “It was like a movie”. But that’s the frame of reference. Really what it was like was a guy with a shipload of Martial Arts training, but I’m still shaking my head this morning. Mike said, upon getting up, in an oh so sophisticated tone, Well, at least I still know how to fall.
So we sat in the tub for a good while – Keith bailed early to go in and read Japanese books Tori had; the rest of the time we did the Buffy and Angel spoiler game, and described our favourite scenes so far. I am thinking the role reversal in I Only Have Eyes for You was my fave long scene so far; the Judge saying “What’s that do?” was the funniest one liner; and my favourite facial expression is Seth Green looking quizzical.
If you don’t read Dunnett, skip this paragraph. Dunnett fans will of course wonder where the hell my head has been for the last ten years, as there is an intense amount of Buffy/Lymond/Niccolo cross over in terms of fandom, and now all the times people have moaned that James Marsters could do Lymond if he wasn’t so bleeding tall (Lymond is not tiny, but he ain’t immense, either, not like Niccolo, who’s bloody massive) actually make sense to me. Personally the only person I’ve ever seen on screen that makes any sense to me as Lymond is a very young Peter O’Toole; except OF COURSE that Peter O’Toole is too tall for the role as well. I have never seen, and possibly never will see, an actor who can do Niccolo. He’s big, and ugly from some angles and impossibly gorgeous from others, and is physically graceful, and has a beautiful singing voice (as in, better than the professionals) and for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that he really really likes women, he’s dead sexy. I think that the biggest reason that there is Buffy / Dunnettfandom crossover is because the quality of the friendships in the Dunnett/Whedon oeuvre is a major part of their appeal (and the love interests OF COURSE – think Buffy and Angel’s tragic love, or Jerrott and Marthe’s starcrossed, bizarre marriage, or Tobie and Clemence’s completely stage managed courtship and marriage, or Phemie and Anselme’s ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ relationship after his first wife dies.) Phillippa’s sacrifice for Lymond (no spoilers on this one, brrr) is a major achievement in fiction. If I read you off ‘what happened’ you’d go, “Oh, she was just frikkin nuts, eh?” but Dunnett writes it so the whole horrible slide into martyrdom makes sense; at that point in the books (like an inch from the end of it all) you are as passionately in love with Lymond as she is, even if you know that he’s one of the biggest jerks in history. But sexy. And hardworking. And self-disciplined. And meaner than a junk yard dog. My kinda guy.
Okay, back to real life, where two inches of snow fell last night and Paul is doing sound for a memorial service today and the kids are still asleep and there’s a massive flea invasion and I found out that I can’t actually loan Rob of Nine the Michael Moschen DVD because Keith took it into school for another juggler. Some noises were made yesterday at lunch about the idea that a juggling club could be started at work. I’d join, but I am kinaesthetically challenged (the left side of my body is notoriously snobbish about cooperating with the dominant and right side) and now that I’m in two separate writers’ groups I think I’d be somewhat pressed for time.
Peggy is plugging away at transcribing my hymn “Not Afraid to Believe” and says it’s a challenge. I don’t read music – another of my many lapses in good taste and judgement, not to mention energy. I am grateful she’s spending some time on it. I was hoping once she gets it transcribed to have the privilege of listening to Tori try to sight read it; that would be great if it happens.
Katie went through the family photo albums last night, and started describing how she wanted to go through them with the Non BF. I want to type his name SO BADLY, mostly because it’s great having somebody in my life whose name is weirder than mine. And he is cute. Katie has finally brought somebody home that I can stand looking at. You will understand it all when the Cone of Silence flies back up into the ceiling.
Note to Jeff: Blasted through Eleanor Rigby right after Christmas and enjoyed it, but Coupland mismatched the character and the way she talks; since he does it consistently it’s easy to deal with. Really, it’s a Harlequin romance with Buffyverse sized coincidences, but I enjoyed it. Adam’s Curse by Ryan Sykes is proving to be a bit harder slog. I’m going to have to find the Eurekalert reference to the Y Chromosome stuff that challenges some of what Sykes has to say. However he says one thing at the beginning of the book which made me want to buss him soundly, and it goes like this, from Page 4.
“On a very practical note, sex and the reasons for it are fundamental to this book, and I use the word in several different contexts. Sometimes it refers to reproduction, sometimes to gender and sometimes to intercourse. I adopt this general usage to avoid, among other things, the angst of defining *exactly* what I mean by gender and to sidestop such literary absurdities as describing the shedding of pollen as any sort of intercourse. I hope the context will make my meaning clear.”
When I write my masterpiece on the Trader’s Peace I think I’ll post that over my desk.
The Trader’s Peace is a concept I have about the reconciliation of the long running battle between men and women which is based on an extreme shift in how relationships between men and women are viewed and transacted (with appropriate and concurrent rules for lesbian, gay, trans, intersex, neuter and asexual people). I’ve been thinking about it my entire adult life and I keep reading books that help refine my conceptions about it. Maybe instead of a book I should just do a manifesto. Manifestos are shorter, and you don’t need bloody footnotes. Just what I need, another project. Hit delete, delete, hit delete, delete.
Well that’s a whole bunch of verbiage, and for what? Catch y’all later.
View from 2019 – OH GOD there’s so much to unpack here, but let’s just say I got virtually all of it wrong.
