movies « the thing itself and not the myth

[Worth Getting Up For: The Autumn]

* Labor Day weekend of MST3K Gamera & an introduction to Homicide. Not at the same time.

* Dan Mangan & Rhett Miller at the Triple Door. Thank heavens for advance tickets, or I might have talked myself out of going to this at the last minute, and that would have been tragic. Dan played his last song out in the audience, standing on a table in the first row of booths, something I’ve never seen there before. Rhett wound up doing two songs off mic & acoustic thanks to technical difficulties. They were both fantastic.

* The Puyallup Fair for the first time in *years*. The more things change, the more the Puyallup stays the same. Fair food! Rides (including my favorite, the classic wooden roller coaster)! Handcrafts! Random, purely American ridiculousness! And this year, much needed purchases of a grey fedora & a plaid belt for my Cocky buckle.

* Seeing Drive with Joy, & then having to explain the plot on the car ride home because she spent half of the movie with her coat over her head. (I thought it was a great movie. But it is a little bit on the blood-soaked side.)

* Erin‘s reading at Elliott Bay, & finishing the rêveur scarf just in time to show it off. Next goal: writing up the pattern. And I suppose taking photos would also be a good idea.

* My first year attending MIFFF (the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival), which was a total treat. Click through for my post on that.

* A week in NYC, mostly helping Kat pack up her entire life & move across the world. The only picture I took was of a gluten free cookie label so I could remember the brand. Oops! But in addition to the packing and cleaning and moving we did a bunch of awesome stuff, including eating All of the Tacos and the Gluten Free Cupcakes, checking out Pig: A Restaurant at the UCB theater, attending the Peter Mulvey concert at ChurchKorner (which would be pretty fantastic on its own, but especially because it turned into a mini-Fruhead reunion), the obligatory trip to the Strand, an adventure to New Jersey, finally seeing Times Square, hanging out with yogis, and most of all, forking over the extra dough for the priority admission to Sleep No More. Ask either of us about it some time and we will rave about it forever.

* Then we came back to Seattle & headed to a lovely weekend up in BC, even though everyone was sick. Julie’s house is the best place to be sick at. She takes very good care of us! Kat & I had some Seattle adventures, and now she is off around the world, which will be her Worth Getting Up For for the entire next year or more.

* The new National Theatre Live season, kicking off with One Man, Two Guvnors, then The Kitchen. I’m so glad that SIFF booked the series again this year. The member pass is $75 for… 5 plays? Cheaper than going to London, for sure.

* The Cinerama‘s 70mm festival, with Lawrence of Arabia on the gigantic curved screen. It was the third time I’ve seen it, the third time I’ve seen it *there*, and I can’t imagine seeing it anywhere else. I also finally saw Playtime & Tron, which was great. Playtime I had tried to watch on DVD once and could not do it. If you ever have the chance to see a Tati film in the theater, you must take it. It is the only way to see them.

* Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where I kicked it up a notch & was volunteer staff, which meant I spent a more time selling tickets than seeing films. Which was fine! I actually quite like working box office & will call at festivals. People tend to be super nice, both the film goers and the other volunteers.

* The reopening of the Uptown Cinema by SIFF. I promptly moved in, as you can all see on Twitter. No really. I am the mayor & everything.

* Halloween awesomeness, including my witch-playing-electric-guitar pumpkin.

* Peter Mulvey again, this time on my coast at the Fremont Abbey, a lovely small concert space. I’ll have to pay better attention to their calendar; sadly I missed Jeffrey Foucault there.

* Muppets! Three weekends of them at SIFF, then midnight at the Cinerama. My crush on Jason Segel is nearly unmanageable.

* Another non-traditional Thanksgiving, with a Friendsgiving on Wednesday night, brunch on Thursday, and Black Friday starting Thursday night. No, really. Judge away — everyone else has — but now I have a Wii. So bite me.

* Cinderella at the Fifth Avenue, mostly because my office got tickets to the final dress rehearsal, and so we got to see many children have their first live theater experience. Super cute!

…and that’s it for now! Stay tuned for Worth Getting Up For: The Winter which will likely include Twilight, the holidays, my birthday, and probably a movie or seventeen.

02Mar

[Worth Getting Up For: The Winter]

Filed in life | movies | quarterly update | seattle | travel 4 Comments

* Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition (as an observer, not a participant, never fear).

* Christmas with family in Quincy (a lovely weekend and a beautiful bus trip across Stevens Pass), New Year’s with friends in Abbotsford BC (finally meeting their new family!).

* Hamlet, Fela!, & King Lear (National Theatre Live at SIFF Cinema is the greatest thing)

* Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Cymbeline (thanks, Seattle Comp Tickets!)

* Cinerama reopening as in independent cinema. So far I’ve enjoyed Harry Potter, the Sci Fi & Fantasy Short Film Festival, Black Swan, and their delicious chocolate popcorn.

* Finally discovering Central Cinema. Die Hard! Earth Girls Are Easy! And cinnamon sugar popcorn! (I detect a theme.)

* EMP|SFM on Free First Thursday for the Battlestar Galactica exhibit. Not, I feel, worth the admission if that’s all you’re going for, as it’s quite small. This Thursday is your last free chance! However, I cannot lie. I may have made a quite embarrassing noise when I saw Callum Keith Rennie’s Leoben Conoy costume. Once a fangirl, always a fangirl. Also, I got a free Adama poster. Win!

* The fifth year of Noir City, a week of hard-boiled detectives, femme fatales, and regular Joes caught up in the inevitable seedy underbelly.

* Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, even though as usual I took no classes. Also, knitting group starting up again!

…and most of all, visiting Kat in New York for my birthday. Gluten free deliciousness everywhere! Snow & Skype & knitting! The Transit Museum of Awesome! The Strand! My third tattoo! Sadly, the snow failed to cancel my flight & I had to come home. Woe.

24Nov

[Worth Getting Up For: The Autumn]

* Breaking the Code, a play about Alan Turing at the Strawberry Theatre Workshop. Fantastic play, fantastic production.

* Smash Putt, the miniature golf apocalypse of AWESOME. This year it was held in the old INS Building in the International District, and the weekend we went was also the opening of that building as an art space, so after we kicked some miniature golf ass we got to go check out all the exhibits. The most powerful, obviously, were the ones that dealt with the history of the building. Interesting stuff.

* Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and volunteering for the first time. Why it takes me so long to get involved, I do not know. Better late than never, I suppose, and of course I only started volunteering for SIFF in 2009, so clearly I am running behind.

* Metropolis, the newest, most complete cut to date, with a live score by the Alloy Orchestra. I had never seen it before, and I think this trend of the theater experience being the first experience is an excellent one.

* Harry Potter: the Exhibition at the Pacific Science Center. Costumes! Props! Sets! My favorite was probably seeing so many of the wands. They’re fantastic, each one beautiful in its own way and perfectly suited to the wizard in question. Things I wish the gift shop had sold: posters of the Proclamations (or at least postcards of more of them), the pennant from the Quidditch World Cup, and autographed 8×10 glossies of Gilderoy Lockhart. On the other hand, I spent $18 on magnets and postcards, so perhaps they sold enough things as it was.

* The Rally to Restore Sanity, Seattle satellite edition. Some inevitable snags: rain, trouble with the live feed from DC, but a lot of cool people with clever signs, and just a nice thing to be a part of. Someday I may even upload photos from it. I was the obligatory Seattle xkcd protester, carrying a [citation needed] sign. Yup. I am awesome.

* All Souls at St James Cathedral. Every year they do Mozart’s Requiem Mass, and it’s standing room only. I stood for a while, but then went out and took a seat in the lobby, where I could listen without feeling claustrophobic (and also free of incense!) I was particularly glad to go this year because I saw in the program one of the remembered for the past year was my high school & college opera appreciation teacher, Perry Lorenzo. You are missed, good sir.

* Erin McKeown at the Triple Door for her Distillation 10th anniversary tour. The year of that album was a life-changer for me, no lie. She did the album in reverse order, then a mostly-request show, including “James!” & “Vera” at the piano. And “Single Ladies”! Hee.

* Daniel Handler at Benaroya, with a follow-up Q&A by my boyfriend Sherman Alexie. Valuable information regarding Mr Handler’s tastes gleaned from this show: he is a total fanboy of The Egypt Game, when the Giants won the World Series he was watching Red Riding, and he has a working knowledge of the band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities. I approve of all of these things.

* The Seattle Rock Orchestra performing the Pet Sounds album in full, as well as a bunch of Wall of Sound numbers. The vocals were provided by local artists, which introduced me to a bunch of new bands. Win!

* National Theatre Live began at SIFF Cinema with A Disappearing Number. I apparently love plays about math. Who knew? I bought a series pass, which is exciting, because it’ll give me entertainment through til July. Also exciting because I heart laminated passes. Sad but true. I know that there are a lot of Opinions regarding these sorts of live theatre programs, but for me, I’m still seeing theater in Seattle (thanks, Goldstar!) and this is just more, and productions I wouldn’t be able to otherwise see. Since I’m not in London, more’s the pity.

* #snOMG, Mother Nature’s first volley against Seattle, which enabled me and my death cold to have a half-day work week with much less guilt. Hooray! (Yeah, you read that correctly. One half of one day.)

17Feb

[In the last month and a half I...]

…went up to Canada for New Year’s. (This is a bit of a tradition now, and this year was particularly great because I wound up having a five day weekend, and thus a nice long visit. It also snowed every single day I was there, which was pretty ace so far as the puppy was concerned.)

…got a new camera and had to test it out. Much more after the jump. Continue Reading

08Aug

[I think adults are just children who owe money]

Filed in knitting | movies 5 Comments

Yesterday I got my sock yarn from Pixie Riot’s Yarn Oddities. So pretty! Plus, it came with magnets & a stitch marker. Sweet!

Then today, because apparently I need something to watch while I do all this knitting, I stopped by a local video store that’s going out of business. Dangerous. Though it was only $35 for the stack, which is pretty sweet.

On VHS:

All I Wanna Do
Beautiful Girls
Party Girl
Peter’s Friends
Tapeheads

On DVD

Before Sunset
Hero
Imagine Me & You
Invasion
Limbo

Oops. It could have been worse, though. I didn’t look through the boxes of $25 out-of-print DVDs at all. I have a few brains. Just not many.

(As always, click through to Flickr for larger versions.)

04Aug

[I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude!]

Filed in knitting | movies 3 Comments

I’ve started enough online journals in my time, that you’d think I’d have the first post thing down to a fine art. This is not true.

Right now, I can tell you these things. As I am writing this post, I am watching The Big Lebowski, and every single time I watch it, it gets better. It is entirely possible, by the way, that I own a “Little Lebowski Urban Achiever” tshirt. I am unwilling to confess at this time.

If I wasn’t messing around with code, I’d be knitting. I have two different pairs of socks in progress right now. This is a carefully-considered plan. I was in England for two weeks last month, and I wanted to have a) small projects, b) a project I didn’t have to think about, and c) a project that would challenge me a bit more when I was in the mood. Obviously the solution to this is two different pairs of socks. What? It was obvious to me!

Socks in question: Monkey Socks in Socks That Rock and Toe-up Jaywalkers in Knitpicks Sock Memories.

And why am I getting myself organized over here again? I’ve gotten fed up with Six Apart/Livejournal, where I used to spend most of time. However, recently they’ve started banning users with no warning, no recourse, and little relevance to their Terms of Service in general. I feel like this is no longer a venture I want to be involved in, so I’m back over here.

This aggression will not stand, man!

I live in Seattle. I have a BA in English & an MLIS, but instead of using either of those degrees in an obvious way, I work in human services. My top three addictions are coffee, film, and knitting. Sometimes I like to pretend I am interesting. Generally I fail.