Omorka's Lair

I just went through and purged every journal I could clearly identify as a dead journal (in two cases, literally - yikes!) from my friendslist. My criteria were: if you haven't made a post in over two years, the journal's probably dead. If I unfriended you and you're still around reading and commenting, just not posting very much, feel free to ping me and I'll add you back.

Hey, not sure if anyone's still following this journal here or not. Most of the action happens over on DreamWidth these days, although I crosspost a few things (almost all friendslocked). A lot of it is pseudo-personal Pagan stuff. I'd love to do fannish discussion over there, but most of my fandoms are poorly represented on DW, more's the pity. If you're over there and we haven't followed each other, ping me.

If you've followed my fic journal over here, it's probably going to go away by the end of the summer. Its DW echo will remain active, but I'm unlikely ever to add anything more to it except possibly pointers to AO3, which is my permanent fic archive now and will remain so for the forseeable future, so if you need to keep bookmarks to individual fics, use either DW or AO3. My username is the same here, on DW, and on AO3 for my main fandoms (and yes, the Monkees/HP fusion will get finished, hopefully by August - I know where it's going, now).

Also, for those of you who know I live in Texas and might have been worried, we made it through the flooding okay (so far - it looks like this is going to be a very wet first summer [Texas has first summer, which is usually fairly rainy, and second summer, which usually isn't unless we have a tropical storm]). I posted some photos of the local bayou on Tumblr, which is good for photos and bad for the kind of fannish stuff I enjoy, but has more active fans on it, so it kind of evens out. Yes, same username there, too; if you're over there and haven't found me yet, feel free.

Anyway, you're unlikely to see much from me here that isn't crossposts from DW, but feel free to reply over there or DM me at either site. I still exist, or more accurately exist again after a very tough year at work where I kind of withdrew from social media for a while.

The dirge of summer, starting at 7:50 on August 18. A little late this year. (I'd heard a just-emerged one doing the warm-up buzz a few days ago, but not the actual dirge-drone.)

Wow, he's loud, too.

(Also, I started the song in the music tag for the line "Summer is over, I can count the cost," but I haven't listened to it for over a year, and I'd forgotten how good a song it is. Squeeze is just awesome, man.)

Proposed: One of the central themes of Pacific Rim is "If you go it alone, it will tear you up."

Not necessarily that you will fail, but that whether you fail or succeed, the cost will be much, much higher than if you do it together with at least one other person. It happens at multiple levels of the story, multiple times.

It's an odd (and interesting) message for a giant action movie. I think I like it.

And here we are at the end of the series. It's been a fun little ride.

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So, that's the series. Head riffs on the series but isn't canonical. 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee barely even does that. There is a 1997 special, written and directed by Nesmith with input from the others, that is their idea of what an episode would have looked like if the show had continued through the '90s, and which probably ought to be canonical, but which is impossible to find anywhere.

And now that I have their onscreen adventures well in my head, off to find what they've gotten up to in the wild, as it were.

Except, of course, when they aren't.

Behold: an article that argues that the Monkees - more specifically, their Monkeemen alter egos - exist in the DC universe, at least in the Kingdom Come future dystopia.

I made the spouse find our copy so I could look at the image in context. They're not just in that one image; they're standing behind Red Robin for that whole scene (clearly visible in about four frames), and the one you can't see in that image because he's too short is recognizably Davy in the one right before it.

I also have to say, Dolenz is infamously hard to draw (it's the combination of otherwise delicate features and that ridiculous chin and jaw, I think), and that Alex Ross got him perfectly recognizable there in the far background of a scene is damned impressive.

Closing on the end, now. Five episodes left, two of which I regard rather highly in memory, three not so much. Alas, those are the three for this installment.

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So, one out of continuity, one that's not great but certainly not bad, and a real stinker. Two more to go, both of which are examples of the wildest excesses of Season Two. And we may do Head for Movie Night, although obviously that's out of continuity.

I kind of stopped doing these for a few days because (a) Tumblr and a couple of fics ate my brain, and (b) I was sort of terrified of getting to Episode 52 and finding out I didn't like it as much as I remembered right before seeing the boys live. Going from the concert last night back to the show tonight was an interesting gear shift, although I was sort of amused to note that Tork's and Dolenz's body language has barely changed in 45 years.

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A good one, the best episode in the series, and a clunker. Next we have one I really didn't get on first watching, another 'shouldn't this have been in the first season?' goofy plot, and a Comedic Drag episode. Joy. (There are two more after that, both of them involving mind-controlled Peter, which means I'm looking forward to them even if they're not the best scripts.)

So Adam Ant played at Warehouse Live last night. I'm not a huge fan, but I always liked his hits, and the Spouse was interested in seeing the show (and is more familiar with the back catalog), so we went.

Getting there was interesting; I think this is the first time we've tried to go to Warehouse Live when there's been a soccer game at the stadium, and not only was parking difficult, so was just driving around. At one point, we passed what used to be the Meridian, and its parking lot was full of food trucks. We ended up parking about three blocks away, but paying far more than we'd intended.

The opening band was a group called Prima Donna that I knew nothing about. They were a five-piece, with a drummer, a bassist who sang backup vocals on a couple of songs, a guitarist, a keyboard player who also played saxophone on the first song and did some backup vocals, and a lead singer who also played second/rhythm guitar on most of the songs. The first thing the singer said was a compliment on the local beer. They played what I described as a combination of roots rock and hair metal; I couldn't understand any of the lyrics, but they were more than competent and had the right vibe for the crowd.

Adam Ant's current backing band is a bassist, a guitarist, and two drummers, each with a full kit. Everyone in the band was tight and had great timing, but the drummers were especially impressive; at one point they did a nearly-two-minute-long accelerando in perfect synch without looking at each other. They also had very different styles - the male drummer was of the "I'm gonna beat the crap outta these drums" persuasion, while the female drummer was more of a "These drums will never know what hit them" type. It made for good stage presentation. I do wish they'd had a keyboardist with them, if only to fill in the horn parts on some of the songs - "Goody Two Shoes" sounds strange without it.

Adam himself started out looking stiff, as if his back were hurting him, and a little disconnected. However, somewhere halfway through the second song of the evening, he started flirting with the whole first row at once, and he took a moment to stretch during the intro to the next song, and after that everything was fine. His voice seemed to be just as good as it ever was, and while there wasn't a lot of stage banter, what there was was fun. I never quite shook the feeling that he needed an aspirin, but

I'm not a huge fan of Warehouse Live as a venue, because every time I go there some dudebro spills beer on me and half the time I get shoved or groped or both; the only time none of that has happened was during the Polyphonic Spree show, and that's largely because Tim DeLaughter is the best dang High Priest I've ever seen work - that show was church/ritual and the audience treated it as such. Also, the sound system isn't great and their in-house sound guy tends to mix very flat, which on that system tends to mean muddy. This was better than average for the venue, and I hate to say it, but I suspect it was because this is the first time I've seen the crowd there at gender parity - most of the shows we've seen have been sausagefests (the worst offender was the Devo show there, which I'd guess at about 75% male or more). The worst I had to deal with was three drunk dudebros who were clearly fans, and having a great time - but one of them felt like he had to explain what a great time he was having to his friends, rather than actually experiencing the show, and the friend he usually had to explain it to was built like a brick workshed, so they kept forming a wall that completely blocked my view. The shed also managed to spill beer on me, but not much.

Overall, good show, with some minor frustrations. Mostly nostalgia value for me, but obviously there were some far more passionate fans in the crowd.

(OMG, it just started raining. Yay!)

We're now at a five-episode stretch that I remember as the really good part. These were all done during the part of the second season when the guys had felt their oats - they'd stared down Kirshner, done Headquarters all by their lonesomes, and drawn screaming crowds everywhere they'd gone - but before they'd started the process of making the movie and lost all interest in filming the show. Let's see if these hold up to my memories, shall we?

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So, one pleasant surprise, one that could use a better restoration job but is still very strong, and one mild disappointment. Up next, IIRC, we have a strong episode, the best episode of the series, and one that throws us back to the worst cheese of Season 1. (If Zero disappoints me, I'm going to be pissed.)