I was tall, and I was slim, and I had a leg for every limb

That title is meant to tie into the "Cannonball" theme of this post but it probably makes no sense to anyone who isn't a fan of Texas-based celtic band Clandestine. (Which, I guess, is everyone but me.)

Anyway! I'm doing the Pajiba Cannonball Read. 52 books. I'm not entirely sure if it's 52 books in 52 weeks, or 52 books as fast as my little eyes can read them. It's entirely possible that every single one of these books will be Nora Roberts or Stephanie Laurens titles that I'll have to cover in brown paper to read on the subway, just to maintain my street cred.

Anyway. I never update, duh, but things are going really, really well. Perhaps two "reallys" are an overstatement- things are going well, I'm pretty happy, and The Great Foolishness has come to a merciful end. It actually came to an end back in July, but I've been too busy to take note.

I was just about to write "anyway" again but then decided that three paragraphs beginning with the same word is re-dun-tarded. So I ain't doin it. Instead, here's a picture of Raptor Jesus:

GRS (thanks, Elizabeth Bear!)

I'm sitting in the Thirsty Mind, working on the GRS (or the Giant Ridiculous Screenplay, inspired by Elizabeth Bear's Giant Ridiculous Dog.) It's coming along nicely, thanks to my installation of Freedom on my computer, which enables me to avoid temptations like writing this blog post and checking twitter every five minutes.

This has been such a nice weekend. We drove out with Miz Taylor on Friday night and I spent yesterday in a state of heavenly bliss. I took long walks, I drank my favoritest coffee in the world (Rao's!), I had lunch at Tailgate, I walked some more, I wrote some, I read some, I fell asleep in an adirondack chair. We wrapped up the night in true Mount Holyoke style, huddled under blankets watching a movie on Sarah's laptop.

Even though I've been feeling Super Nostalgic all weekend, the great thing about this visit is the nice nudge it has given me in the direction of actually moving forward with things. It's not a Grand Revelation, per se, but it is nice to know that this place will always be here, that I will have had my time in it. And that whatever I do in the future, I need to do it wholeheartedly, because though the alma mater doesn't care what I do, it does care that I am doing it with all of myself.

Oh goodness. Someone's been breaking into the self-help section again. /ridiculousness

Anyway. We drive back tonight, and tomorrow night Coraline opens for the world to see. CRAZY. It should be a fun evening!

How Sadly this weekend...

This weekend I'm driving out to South Hadley to visit campus & hang out. I am very excited about this. I am also excited about the Coraline musical which officially opens on Monday. It's apparently changed a lot since I saw it way back at the dress rehearsal... who knows. I am so ready for the opening to be over.

Fingers crossed for a friend at an interview

My friend Katherine is at an interview right now, just down the street. As soon as she gets out we're going to get lunch. (On an unrelated, food-centric note, Ian gave me a brownie earlier. I haven't touched it yet, mostly because I can smell the sugar through the cellophane and it's giving me a headache.)

Went and watched Fat Couples (Biggest Loser!!) with J1 last night. My ability to predict with confidence the winner of eliminations is quickly failing me. I think I've guessed wrong the last two weeks: last week I thought they'd send Ron the Jolly Brown Godfather packing, and this week I thought Laura (who wielded Ultimate Supreme Godlike Power) would kick Helen to the curb. Instead, she sent Tongan Seth Rogen home and we all cried a little bit and then got happy because his daughter wears cute little glasses.

I am looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend. Steph & I are going to watch Supernatural tonight. We are both totally addicted to that show, thankyouverymuch, because of this guy:



We have totes only seen him in two episodes so far (not counting the annoying recaps that play before every ep) but we're finally caught up on DVD to John Winchester's Tortured Yet Hot Return! It's going to be a great evening.

If you hate something, do something about it. If you hate something, change it.

So it's 10:00. I'm watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall and drinking a mimosa I made with a bottle of DKNY champagne stolen from the rtbp opening night party. I am on my little red couch, in this apartment that I probably should have vetted a little before committing to it, thinking that I should clean my room.

I have spent more nights like this in this apartment since I moved in than doing anything else. Tonight it's a movie. For the past month I've been alternating between NCIS and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Last week I discovered the joy that is Supernatural. I haven't written a word of anything that wasn't twitter or this fucking blog post in weeks.

I have absolutely no excuses. The gala is over, and even with The Great Foolishness at work I still have plenty of extra time. I hate that I've been talking about being a writer for fucking ever, I've been talking about losing weight for fucking longer than that, and have done no work towards either. If the Malcolm Gladwell theory of genius is that you need 10,000 hours to be good at something I am a failure at just about everything.

I don't know what the point of this self-indulgent ass post is, but I thought I'd make my triumphant return to blogging a good one. After all, what's the internet for?

H.P. Lovecraft + Michael Phelps: The Same Person?

While watching the Olympics last night I noticed an uncanny resemblance between ...

H.P. Lovecraft, writer of awesome stories involving horrifying tentacled monsters

and...



Michael Phelps, Olympic gold medalist and possible superhuman.

Coincidence? I think not. My friend Raygan thinks that "Clearly, he attained immortality and superhuman physical prowess though his congress with Nyarlathotep." To which my friend Shane replied, "Swimmer, Raygan! Clearly it was the Deep Ones, not Nyarlathotep!"

Anyway you slice it, the resemblance is uncanny.

All Aboard the Failboat! (Or, a Rope of Sand)

In its ongoing effort to destroy the last great good thing on television, the Weinstein Company has made the following ridiculous changes to the format of Project Runway:

1. Selling it to Lifetime TV, where all challenges will probably revolve around what one should wear when escaping from one's psychotic ex-husband/lover/father/stalker, preferably with one or more frightened children in tow

2. Moving it from New York, a legitimate capitol of fashion, to Los Angeles, where people like that vacant girl from the Hills worked at Teen Vogue and has a "career" in "fashion"

3. Today announced that the show was being taken over by Bunim-Murray production company.

Don't know who Bunim-Murray is, and don't want to read the article? Well, here are some of their past reality show highlights!

For E: Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Living Lohan
For Oxygen: Bad Girl's Club
For Lifetime: America's Psychic Challenge (!!)

And, my favorite:

21 seasons of The Real World. Yes, ladies and gentleman, the company that steered the ship of the Real World from the calm seas of docudrama to the retarded ocean of famewhoring is going to be handling the delicate flower that is Project Runway.

Why did the Weinstein Company feel like they had to mess with a good thing? In the slew of ridiculous competition shows out there (like America's Best Dog, which I didn't even know I needed in my life) PR is– was– the best. The contestants, for the most part, were legit designers who had either experience or talent. The show's drama didn't derive from picking Homophobic Redneck A and making him live, eat, and work with Flamboyantly GayGay Homogay B. The drama unfolded when real people got tired, when they'd been working for a million hours straight to make a dress made of toilet paper and dammit, they probably just all wanted coffee and a few moments of sleep. Drama emerged from personalities clashing– over design vision, over sharing space, over working together.

That kind of drama is the kid we all experience in our daily lives. For instance, if there were a reality show like PR about "World's Best Barista" at my old work, we'd have cast of "characters" and a psychotic "boss." But fights always came from personalities fighting in context, personalities clashing in the middle of working towards something else.

The Benim-Murray brand of drama is none of those things. The Bunim-Murray brand is about Drama!!!1!1!, about picking bland caricatures and pitting them against one another to ensure for the most scandalous footage. The Bunim-Murray brand is about TV. Project Runway was about fashion and TV, about collecting a bunch of people together who all loved doing the same thing and making them work their skinny-denim covered ases off to get the prize. Unlike Bunim-Murray's past efforts, the fame that came with Project Runway has felt like a happy addition, a means to an end. You don't hear Christian Siriano say "Oh yeah, I totally want to present at crappy reality TV awards shows for the rest of my life, and walk red carpets for events I've been paid to attend." You hear him say "I want to be the next Alexander McQueen."

It's infinitely frustrating to see the Project Runway transition drama go from terrible to shitstorm in such a short time. In the months since the Weinstein Company has announced PR's move, so many people are now saying that it's going to blow that when it does move to Lifetime, I'm betting that the first season will have high ratings, but not as high as in the past. Every season the ratings will go down. Dollars to donuts Tim Gunn will leave. And Bunim-Murray, instead of looking at how great the show used to be, will only look at the stereotypes. They'll cast ever more flamboyant gays, and ever more idiotic bigots, and then make them sew a dress while suspended over a lake of flame or something. Viewership for PR will decline, and decline, and decline, and soon it'll be like The Real World. I'll hear about a new season of it and think "Wow, that used to be good back in the day. I wonder if I should tune in now." But I won't.