While it’s not quite the middle of the night for me, I have such an odd assortment of notes from the front this week and a very convoluted day tomorrow, that it seemed best to churn this out now.
First of all, Trade School was completely awesome (P.S. – confidential to attendee who donated to The Trevor Project, I passed that along from the cash you gave me tonight, transaction confirmation number: 120951424 — thank you!), even if the thing where I had to write my name in chalk on the blackboard was super weird. I think it was useful to everyone, including me, even if I just ranted and was bitter ex-journalist and told inappropriate stories for a bit. But then I was really not feeling tethered to the world. And it wasn’t a good sort of ethereal. Nothing quite like getting a vicious summer cold and having a celiac moment all at once. That said, I’m glad to get it out of the way before Patty comes home.
Patty comes home on April 8. Do you know what that means? That means one more week. We are so ready. I need to clean house. We also need to logisticize all sorts of things, including her birthday (public gathering will be later than actual birthday, because the 10th is just too soon), my father’s birthday (the following day), and our anniversary. I have a meeting at the UN and a trip to Boston thrown in there too, and we have theater tickets and the previously mentioned wedding shower. Among probably a hundred other things I’m forgetting. And that’s just for April.
Meanwhile, in a bizarre twist of the universe, four different writers I know to varying degrees (including two people I’ve shared a hotel room with (one of whom is a very close friend), someone who has cat sat for me, and a major collaborator of mine) are the four authors in Candlemark & Gleam’s first (re)Visions anthology, which in this case is centered around Alice in Wonderland. This is so ridiculous. One person told me they had a secret project they couldn’t tell me about, another person told me what they were working on (which is such a brilliant idea I’m sort of in agony I didn’t think of it), I sort of knew the third person was working on something, and I had no idea about the fourth person — and I really had no idea it was all for the same book. I know 100% of the book! At random! So you should all buy it. Because they are just brilliant and coincidences like this don’t happen for no reason.
In a totally different type of bizarre, the FBI needs help from amateur Internet code breakers in order to help solve a murder from 1999.
Also, because I care even if you don’t care, the Bronz Zoo cobra has been found alive and apprehended. The FREE THE COBRA chants going around Twitter in response are disturbingly hilarious.
If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know I have a thing for the backstage story. And if I have a thing for anything more than I have a thing for the backstage story (wow, way to go with specific nouns there, Rach), I have a thing for backstage stories about narratives that play with the backstage story trope. Huh? What I mean is, I really dig Moulin Rouge, which is a backstage story, but what I really, really dig is stories about the making of Moulin Rouge. The same goes for anything similar. Hell, most of my best high school stories involve working on a production of Kiss Me Kate — it’s the same sort of doubling of the intradiegetic/extradigetic problem.
That very complicated explanation of something that turns my crank is why I must link you to the guys who play the Warblers on Glee jamming at a party the other night. No Katy Perry song (“Teenage Dream”) should sound so melancholy, lovely and strange. Especially sung in such a messy, unrehearsed, all-over-the-place way, in this grainy, sideways video featuring mostly relatively minor ensemble performers in a backstage-narrative TV show mucking about on their own time with a song the show actually used in a metatextual way to talk about the phenomenon surrounding their part of the narrative. I said metatextual. Now this entire rant is justified. Oh yes, oh yes.
Also speaking of Glee, because it turns out I know the person responsible for the Keep Calm and Warble On shirts (people, I know everyone; it’s a rule of the universe), I am linking to her “how to make your own” tutorial just because it will tickle her. Is there an arts and crafts accident waiting to happen in my house involving red fabric paint and excessively curious cats? I’m not telling. Here, anyway.
Finally, look at that, it’s April Fool’s. I don’t play, and I really don’t play in the middle of Mercury Retrograde. If the universe would like to present me with luscious and unlikely events, I do keep a wish list in my head. But, as a rule, I spend today being very skeptical. It annoys me that I have to do that, that I have to take a day and say, “this is a day on which I refuse to acknowledge magic in the universe because you might be screwing with me.” It’s not cool! But so it goes. Maybe I’ll make the annual “pack of wild chihuahuas” post tomorrow, although that incident was not an April Fool’s event.
Have an excellent Friday, and don’t believe anything I wouldn’t believe.
Letters from Titan 
The only question is, would you believe six impossible things before breakfast?(Someone had to say it.)
Somewhat entertainingly, I am getting my several feet of hair cut later today to several inches. All my friends think I’m pranking them. *facepalm*
My Friday shall consist of driving up to Portland to try on a variety of quasi-Victorian clothing at the vendor’s studio. Because I have cons to go to, people, and with a 2 year old 75 pound Golden in the house complicated sewing projects are SO not on.
I hope to return with finery for me and for Mike. I intend to make it to Rose’s Deli and eat a pastrami sandwich the size of my head in celebration or consolation, whichever is appropriate.
I wanted to mention I totally get the apart thing- we spent the first 4 years of our relationship living 1200 miles apart. Neither of us had the money to be able to make frequent visits and this was (yes, I AM old) before the Internet. And it was difficult like a very difficult thing. We’ve done being apart for work or family or such since then but there is part of me that cannot watch him pack, even now.
I’m glad she’ll be home soon.
as one of the Tradeschoolers in your class, have to say that summer cold or not, your class rocked! good & concise info and plenty of inspiring food for thought. absolutely worth the trek in the rain
I’m so glad. Thank you for coming!
That book looks amazing, and I want a copy right now. Mostly, however, I write to thank you for the title of your post showing up in my feed and reminding me that today is actually trash day. 🙂
I never get tired of that pack of wild chihuahuas story. It’s always funny.
Re: backstage stories — I think one of the reasons the TRON fandom has been eating my brain for the past few months is that I made the mistake of buying the DVD on eBay and watching the making-of documentary. I’m totally charmed by the image of twenty-something Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, in their skintight spandex, between scenes, playing the arcade games that the writer/director had installed on the all-black soundstage.
Wow, thanks for the Warblers vid. Sweet, sweet, sweet. Those guys own my soul, and I am going to sob like a child when they go back to their off-screen Glee doo-wopping. Also, your comment about backstage stories reminded me of the movie Stage Beauty, with Billy Crudup, which has been on my mind since somebody at kurt_blaine titled a story so. I really need to get that on DVD. A man teaching a woman how to perform like a man performing like a woman, and a woman teaching a man to perform like a woman. Probably unpopular in circles that actually know something about the subject, but I did love it.
It’s actually one of my favorite films and I have several friends with expertise in at least one of the relevant areas of the film that also love it. I hadn’t thought of it in terms of Kurt/Blaine, but it’s sort of a lovely interesting thought.