Introducing...A Thursday

Happy Thursday! So many people died today, like Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett. Craziness. Moving on.

The AX is next week! I got the time off! I'm half way done with my costume! My wig shipped today (urrr I hope I get it in time)!

This year has been the year of painting costumes. I don't remember what the first item was, but Carolyn was faced with the need to affix a different color onto a large portion of an existing shirt or whatever. She was going to cut and sew it on! I said "what if you just painted it?" And now she's painted part or all of pretty much everything. Ties, shirts, boots, jackets, skirts, hats, canes. No purses this year.

In my dream last night, there was a part where Jacqi came over "just in time to paint ties."

Mine doesn't have any paint, but then, I'm making most of it myself. The shoes might have paint. My gloves are 99% done, my pants are 90% done, I just need to construct arm-weights, and sew a bowl onto my shirt collar. And style the wig. I hope that works out.

This is also the first year I've used the sewing machine for anything substantial. I used to insist on hand sewing things, which took forever. I didn't really ever use the machine until pillows, so I'm still sorta new at it. Practice practice practice.

Yesterday we went thrifting one last time and I bought the most beautiful chair. 14 dollars, comfortable, light-weight, and straight out of someone's drug trip. I forgot to take a picture to show you. I could do it now but I don't want to. Next week. Remind me.

Me and my mom watched RASHOMON today for the first time. Pretty good. A little different than what I thought I'd been told what it was. Makes me really want to finish SEVEN SAMURAI. I liked that one a lot.

I'm trying to remember the rest of the week, but it's not really working. Oh I guess Tuesday was a really good day. I sold 8 passes at work, which is a personal best and also one less than the store total today. Larry was really happy with me, which is good, since he wasn't so happy about me not letting him know about the AX sooner. But it's alright now. Yeah, Tuesday was just all around a good day. It was like a Thursday in spirit.

Oh ahah, we watched THE SPIRIT. Sucks sucks sucks. Also OUTLANDER, but it sucked a good deal less. VALKYRIE was fine, but not very engaging. I think I may have mentioned Valkyrie last week? I don't know when any of this happened.

For Father's Day we took a very long excursion down the beach and back. I got a tar foot! We were only going to go as far as to where the river lets out, but it was sanded across so we just kept going and going and going probably twice as far as that. It was a nice day AND we saw dolphins. But going back took twice as long because I was dying. :< I thought I was in better shape than that?

Ah alright, I'm a-sleepy, so I'll let you go for now.

For Now.

-Steph

A 1940s Moon Base

Happy Thursday! How are you all? Fine, I hope? Excellent, perhaps? Effervescent? Wonderful!

Jacqi's home for a bit, so me and her and Carolyn have been hanging out and doing ridiculous stuff all week. Pan after pan of Rice Crispy treats (if I ever made a fake brand for a show, it would be called Ricey Crispoes), movie after movie, etc. We rented all sorts of things but so far we've only made it through TRANSFORMERS. And we also saw 17 AGAIN, which was good.

Speaking of TRANSFORMERS, I invented a new game. It's the connect X Hollywood person to Joss Whedon game. Like Tom Cruise. He's in TROPIC THUNDER with RDJ, who's in KISS KISS BANG BANG with Megan whoever, who's in EAGLE EYE with Shia, who's in TRANSFORMERS which was written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who wrote STAR TREK which had John Cho, who is in HAROLD AND KUMAR with Neil Patrick Harris, who's in DR. HORRIBLE, written and directed by Joss Whedon.

I think there might be a quicker one, but that was just the first route I thought up the other day.

Between hanging out with my buddies and sifting through film star trivia, I started reading WATCHMEN. I don't know if I should recommend it, because parts are a little rough for a conservative reader, but it really is all it's cracked up to be. Definitely finishing it tonight.

My favorite part is between the chapters (which were separate issues when it was first published) are various texts from within their world. At first I thought they were cute and colorful, but it's getting to the point where I'm realizing that they're actually part of the story in the sense that they contain hidden pockets of information that are key to the development of the plot overall. I mean, I thought the chapters taken from one vigilante's memoirs were just for flavor, but these last few pages from another's scrapbook put a whole new spin on an old assumption.

It's pretty fine writing.

Something I've been tossing around for a while is the idea of a sci-fi story framed by 1940s sensibilities. Not just any sci-fi will do; no, I must have a moon base AND fighting Nazis. Have you ever been to Legends? It's this sweet vintage style diner and ice cream bar, and when I'm in there all I can think about is if the memorabilia covering the walls were still current icons, and if one of WWII's battlefronts were on the moon.

One of these days, I'm gonna write it. Just you watch.

Reminds me a bit of SKY CAPTAIN, in the way that they had zeppelins docking at the top of the Empire State building and watching THE WIZARD OF OZ new in theaters at the same time. Like steam punk, but for the war era. Digging up that steam punk link linked me to retro-futurism, which is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking about. Way to pioneer a trend, Steph.

Oh, and the other thing I will attempt is a noir space western. Yes. I can do it. In fact, I just may be able to dove-tail it into my WWII moon base universe. It's gonna be awesome. It will be noir because it will be a detective story. It will be a western because the detective will be in some outpost's one-room jailhouse. It will be in space because a straight noir western would be ridiculous.

Now I just have to invent stories to fit into my settings, and I'll be good to go. Wish me luck.

-Steph

Milestone

Happy Thursday! Want to see something ridiculous and ancient? Here:

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephanie Anderson [mailto:stepherson@apu.edu]
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 3:00 PM
Subject: Happy Thursday!
Importance: High

Just starting things off right. It's really weird not seeing groups of
people to say Happy Thursday to! Well, I hope that you all had a great
last day of school, minus those in this eclectic list who have already
finished. Speaking of, if you know anybody who wanted to be in this
list but isn't, have 'em drop me a line. Y'all know my addy now. And,
of course, if you absolutely hate Thursdays, write me and I'll take you
off.
But yeah, I hope you all HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!

-The Graduate
Steph

Guess what that is? I'll tell you. It's the very first Thursday e-mail I sent out, the afternoon I graduated from high school. Not quite for years ago "today," but since the high schools just let out today, I'm counting it as the four-year anniversary.

Four years worth of Thursdays (minus this last Thanks--Thursgiving Day) I've touched a computer. Ohh the modern world, how I love you.

Also did you know that before I even left high school I'd said enough "Happy Thursdays" on Thursdays to count for every Thursday I'd ever lived? It's probably a multiple of that by now.

So anyway, congrats to all my friends who graduated today! Like Steven! (Who also sang the graduation song with his little band--great job, guys!) And Daniel, whose house has parties; and Ben, who has a Batman sticker on his car; and Austin, who has a shirt very similar to Carolyn's; and Heidi, who writes cool poetry; and Staci and Diana and Karen and John and Tommy and Maddie and Nash and everyone else who's going to the AX with us this summer.

And congrats to Brianna and Jason, who got married over the weekend! I hope that where ever you are now, it's awesome. I also hope that the video turned out okay and I'm sorry for missing the middle of the Best Man's toast. -_-

Yep, I drove all the way to a little town in the mountains called Angels Camp, about an hour due east of Stockton. AND I made it back, alive. That's the first time I've driven so far/on freeways for so long/alone/to a place I've never been to. Getting gas twice in a day sucks a lot. But it was a lot of fun, and a beautiful wedding and hahaha Brianna just signed onto AIM.

I don't think I'll bug her just yet. ^^

And my sister went home to Seattle. Or Oregon, I'm not sure.

I've only done two other things this week: Sam sent me this link which is a collection of all the "literal" music videos, like the one for a-ha's Take On Me I must have advertised some time ago. This video put me on to Billy Idol and since then I've downloaded every one of his songs and listened to them.

The other thing was catch up in this manga Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. We cosplayed from that a couple years ago, the one when we also did Bleach, I imagine. (Because Evan was Sakura and Isane, so yes) It comes out in 15 page chapters every...so often, but I'd bought the American translated and licenced books when they came out, which have like probably 20 chapters in them. And then I'd stopped, and hadn't read any for like maybe a year and a half. But now I'm caught up, and I'm reading the other one from the same creators which sorta overlaps sometimes. So I'm all comicced out.

ESPECIALLY BECAUSE the library told me Watchmen was finally in, so I have that waiting downstairs with a Superman collection "Emperor Joker." (I also tried playing the Iron Man game this week and we watched SUPERMAN DOOMSDAY at Carolyn's, so it was also a fairly superheroy week)

Oh yeah, we also watched BOLT today. Cute. Hilarious in a Disney way (ie, suitable for all ages, unlike the comedy in a Dreamworks animated feature). John Travolta didn't irk me the way I expected him to, but Miley Cyrus sure did! Good thing she wasn't in it very much.

Yokay, back to reading, I suppose! Happy Thursday!

-Steph

Thursday, Briefly

Happy Thursday! Today it was actually warm for a period, despite every day previous opening in cold cold wintertimes. Yesterday, for instance, it could have rained. Do not want. Maybe things will be nicer when I get back.

Saturday Brianna's getting marrrrrried! So tomorrow I'm driving up to Murphys, CA which is sorta around where the wedding will be. The roadtrip of the summer. I hope I don't die, and, if I don't, I hope the wedding will be fantastic (but I know it will be). I'm sorta the videographer, too, so we'll see how that goes.

Congrats, BranBran!

The other day (maybe Friday?) we went to my mom's school for lunch and then crashed her class after so the kids could ask hilarous questions. Our favorite was Drew, who was wearing a sweater vest and also red Converse with black laces.

So today we drove out to Santa Paula to have lunch with our dad. We went to an Irish pub a couple doors down that his office had redesigned. I had corned beef! And an eighth of a boiled cabbage. It was quite good.

Then I ended up at Carolyn's, renting them so many games. We played "Speed Racer: The Videogame" until my thumb bones hurt. It's just a psychedelic as the movie, and maybe half as fun. You get to drive the cars and flip them into other cars, so that's GREAT.

I cannot remember a single other detail from this week. Super tired. Gotta get up early, tomorrow, too. =[ Still have to finish packing. Grar.

I guess what I did this week that's different from most weeks was that I did a lot of reading. Remember how we went to the library? Turns out two of the books I got were not very good or informative, so I finished with them very quickly. Then Nero Wolfe! And when that was done, I felt that I missed having something to read. Luckily, my mom had gone to the library the day after and picked up "Batman & Me," Bob Kane's autobiography. Bob Kane being the guy who invented Batman.

His book is kinda like listening to your favorite grandpa tell stories about his childhood. Like, he was in a street gang in the 30s and rumbled with other gangs and got his arm broken. It's very interesting to see all the experiences of his life melting together as inspirations for his comics. I hope one day my story will be half as interesting.

Also, his old Batman comics? RIDICULOUS. Old timey things are just so bizarre. Audiences now are just too sophisticated. No more "he hid the pay inside the snowmen--INGENIOUS" type of stuff.

I guess I also hung out with my family and went to work and stuff. Seems that's all, then.

I'll let you know how the wedding was~

-Steph