Sparrow Girl

In case anyone else is as irritated by those pop-up link previews as I am, try this post on how to remove them.

I'd also like to recommend The Hunger Site, and its sisters: the Breast Cancer Site, the Child Health Site, the Literacy Site, the Rainforest Site, and the Animal Rescue Site, all of which are run by the same organization. The deal is that you click once a day, go to a page with a bunch of ads, and the site uses the ad money to fund their cause. Clicking through all six sites takes less than a minute with a good connection, and people who are on the internet as often as us LiveJournal addicts are prime candidates for clicking daily.

If you like a slightly more fun way to fund a good cause, try FreeRice.com and work on your vocabulary while donating rice to the UN World Food Program. The definitions are a little wonky, but it's a nerdy good time.

So, I just got back from a midnight screening of The Exorcist, which I had never seen.

That... might have been a mistake. Y'know, timing-wise. *twitches*

When I saw Transformers on Friday, I think one of the things that made me happiest was when the secret section government agent was played by Ron Butterfield from West Wing.

Soon, I will post pictures of drunken "Pin the Kiss on Michael Bay" from my roommate's birthday party. It's covered in lipstick and snarky Sharpie sketches and awesomeness.

Why am I up so late when I have to summarize the influence of melodrama on the action genre for study group tomorrow? Other than swing dancing and playing Apples to Apples for two hours....

inmyriadbits posted a great bit of meta about the influences of the Western genre on Supernatural. I helped out with some of the background, but she did all the hard thinky stuff herself. Go read! (no spoilers for S3)

Oh, dear. I made the mistake of reading the first few pages of Luck in the Shadows on Amazon, and ended up ordering the whole Nightrunner trilogy by Lynn Flewelling. Considering the number of recommendations I've had for it and my own appreciation of the opening, I suspect that I'm safe, but I wish I hadn't already ordered Empire of Ivory - it would have saved extra trips to the mail. As it was, I was forced to add Martha Wells' Entanglement to get free shipping: such a sad fate is mine.

Now the question is: when the hell am I gonna find the time to read them? Last weekend was literally the first time since school started that I haven't had to a) shoot a film or b) drive to New Haven to buy apartment crap at IKEA (also an excuse to visit my roommate's adorable brother at Yale, with whom I always end up arguing the merits of film vs theatre).

I'm having a fantastic semester: three film classes and West African dance. Heaven! So I've watched over 20 movies since school started, and that's not including all the one-reel silent films from my Action and Adventure class. Higgins does love his silents, but he provides hilarious commentary, so we love them, too.

A lot of them are for my Race and Film class, though, and therefore heavy on the offensive/bad end of the spectrum. I watched Birth of a Nation on fast-forward (the benefit of it being silent and me being fast at reading intertitles).

Additional trivia:
--Isabella Rossellini donated money and some of her mother's collection to our film center, a fact learned while snacking outside the editing room.
--My production prof used to teach at UT/work in Austin, so we bonded over missing Tex-Mex the first day of class. Also, he make ninja filmmaker jokes.
--I have three radically different types of dance this semester: West African, rapper sword dancing, and swing.
--I haven't watched a single TV premiere or pilot :(
--All my classes are within 100 feet of each other.
--Rudy Valentino was a damn attractive man, but don't watch The Sheik. Skip straight to the sequel, Son of the Sheik, in which Rudy has some great scenes with himself.

( More spoilers )

The day did not dawn auspiciously - I lost my fangirl badge for thinking the midnight release was Saturday night rather than Friday night, then we tarried too long at my uncle's dinner and I had to resort to driving to a 24-hour HEB at 11 PM, where I finally secured their second-to-last copy. I returned home triumphant and finished reading about half an hour ago, in the same chair where I read the first book - a chance pickup by my father at the library when I was 12, thinking I would like it. I certainly did - I couldn't put the damn thing down until I finished, and then made Lindsey read it rightawayOMG.

( Spoilers for Deathly Hallows )

Oh GOD I love this show SO MUCH. Thank you, CW, for recognizing the awesome and giving us a chance at more.

( Spoilers for SPN 2x22 )

Meme from trollprincess and taraljc:

Name a character and I'll tell you three (or more) facts about them from my own personal pseudo-canon.

Indulge me. I just spent 10 hours straight editing my documentary, fueled only by peanut butter crackers and a thunderstorm. I can't tell if I have a crush on Final Cut Pro or Stockholm Syndrome. The doc turned out well, but I'm too tense-tired to fall asleep. I remember the last time I was this tired: I started making fun of myself for not going to bed, only to stop halfway through and go, "Wait, what?"

inmyriadbits wrote a wonderful Sports Night fic about Esther and Isaac for the new Sports Night flashfic community sn_playbook: OTR

It's rare enough to find fic about Isaac, much less about Esther, but as Lindsey said, they're the one undisputed OTP on the show. *g* Really adorable premise, with that SN-y sense of family and passion.

I read this article about possible plots and arcs for Supernatural (nothing spoilery past Hollywood Babylon), and started thinking about stories I'd love to see on the show. Ones that are, y'know, remotely plausible.

( 1. Haunted Train )

( 2. Cage Match )

( 3. New Blood )

( 4. Curses )

( 5. War Stories )

I just gave myself a bunch of plot bunnies, didn't I? *sigh*

ETA: I can't believe I forgot bodyswapping and Bruce Campbell as a guest star.

Something else I wish for: the second half of mistful's one-shot from this morning. I'm deeply addicted to her Drop Dead Gorgeous universe, because she takes a crack!fic plot (Harry is part Veela! No, *really*) and writes very believable characters, reactions, and dynamics in a post-war world. Maya has this unique mixture of insanity and pathos in her writing that really gets to me - I'll cackle one second and feel like I got punched in the heart the next, and there's fantastic running UST that doesn't let up. It's been a while since I haven't been impatient/annoyed by an unrequited crush plotline, but that feeling dragged me into fandom six years ago and I'd forgotten how much I love it.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

I'm up early, reading through the SPN newsletter, and my radio alarm just went off. Guess what was playing? Hot Blooded, by Foreigner. It's a song that gets double nerd points for being on both Supernatural AND Bones.

*chortles*

I am over the moon about Doctor Who's third season. I tried to love the Tenth Doctor last year, and I did love the way Tennant played him at odd moments, but he and Rose were driving me nuts with the smugness and the superiority and the way they were hardly ever serious, even when they should've been.

But this season has been totally awesome, I'm head over heels all over again. New New New Doctor, as it were. ( general spoilers for season three )

( spoilers for Gridlock )

I have been amiss in my fannish duties: I must fangirl about Abigail Washburn, an amazing banjo player and singer/songwriter who recently visited Wesleyan. She's fluent in Mandarin and incorporates Chinese with bluegrass music in some of her songs.

( About the concert )

As a temptation, I've zipped up three songs from her solo album, Song of the Traveling Daughter. The title song is an interpretation of an old Mandarin poem, with Abigail's Appalachian twist (lyrics and translation). "Coffee's Cold" makes me tap my feet, while "Sometimes" is just lovely and joyful. I should have included one of her traditional recordings (I adore "Nobody's Fault But Mine"), but I cut myself off at three. You can check her out on iTunes, or listen to clips at her homepage. Even her website is gorgeous.

Except for crack_impala, because that's how I found out about sevenfists's Firefly/Supernatural crossovers: Weight and Motion, Wild and Unwise, and Core and Rind, in that order. Holy shit, it's awesome. All the character voices are wonderful, which is damn hard with Firefly, and Dean is perfect from word one. I love the way she writes Mal, who hides from even himself. Dean's struggle to adjust is heartbreaking, subtle, and something that isn't shown enough in crossovers with such disparate worlds.

Seriously, I could write an essay about this damn fic. Wow. When did it get to be so late? Maybe I should start that Spanish essay....

Benefit of being a college student? I can buy Gushers at the campus store and eat as many as I want for the first time. And then my tongue turns funny colors. Isn't being a pseudo-grownup fun?

This may make me a bad person, but I've been watching Eddie Izzard videos on YouTube for a *cough* extended period of time, and then I ended up at thefourthvine's LiveJournal, and her posts make so much more sense when read in Eddie Izzard's voice. I love the rambling and the hysterical tangents and her taste, but it's ten times better this way. *Awesome*.

The other aftereffect of so much Eddie Izzard is an inexplicable urge to go shopping. I am Not A Shopper. This is an UNUSUAL URGE. I blame Canada Britain.

So, just finished watching...

( Show FTW! Except for the whole hiatus thing, argh )

I saw Dog Day Afternoon at the film series tonight (er, last night? five hours ago, whatever), and there were SO MANY Chevy Impalas. It was like Christmas!

I actually think about things more deeply than this, honestly. I could talk about the sound design or Pacino's acting or the overwhelming presence and role of women, but it's 3 AM, so Impala coveting is the way to go. *g*

Dean & Sam = Calvin & Hobbes: Y/N?

( Supporting evidence )

Dude, now I want fic where Dean eats Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs and drives John up the wall....