the girly who shall end all girls

since 2021 SIFF has had festival films available for streaming. it's typically a small subset of the fest, but enough to help with schedule conflicts. i don't enjoy the experience as much as going to the theater - while it's nice to eat real food and pause for the bathroom, it reminds me of a really low point for me during pandemic lockdown. anyway...

first thing was to rewatch Porcelain War with C, who has been tracking the war in Ukraine obsessively since it started. i already thought the film was great, but on rewatch i appreciated the editing and soundtrack more. really great film, won the audience award for documentary, deserves industry recognition.

399: Queen of the Tetons
this one will be on PBS. perfectly cromulent story about a grizzly bear who has figured out the safest place to raise her cubs is near the road (males who are likely to kill cubs don't like it). this is a great adaptation inside a national park, wandering outside it, not so great. full of beautiful scenery and sweet bears. also full of not-great human-bear encounters and the ick of national park traffic jams.

Fish War
the story of the Northwest Treaty Tribes' fight for their fishing rights before, during, and after the Boldt decision. this was produced by the tribes and has a strong POV but also amazing access and interviews - lots of great stories from the elders who were there. whatever your thoughts on the reach of Boldt, there's no question that Washington royally fucked up. glad i arrived here after Slade Gorton lost his senate seat, what a tool.

Grandpa Guru
doc about Srđan Gino Jevđević, the leader of Seattle band Kultur Shock on his 60th birthday. it's not really made for the US audience - it's mostly in Croatian. he was a pop star in Yugoslavia before he became a war refugee. really interesting backstory; he ended up in the US because he was part of a wartime production of Hair and a Hollywood director was trying to have them perform it here. lots of fun Seattle and NW recent history interspersed with more usual Behind the Music kind of stuff

My Sextortion Diary
mostly phone camera, about the experience of having a laptop stolen that had some semi-nudes on it. the thieves were trying to extort money, and they were ramping up their harassment by sending these photos to her professional and personal contacts. it's intimate, and scary, and weird. definitely one that was fine on the tv since it was mostly vertical phone cam, screenshares, and text messages.

The Primevals
a midnighter I skipped for streaming (and because I knew C would want to talk over it). this is a film that had a bunch of stuff go wrong during production, including its director dying before it could be finished. there's a yeti, a secret temperate valley in the Himalayas, and lizard people. there are also randomly cast and un-researched sherpas and a young female lead who is completely vacuous. the yeti and the lizard people are done with incredibly charming and expressive stop motion. there was an arena scene with an entire crowd animated! it was absolutely MST3K fodder (C started riffing almost as soon as it started) but it was also weirdly good for what it was? it would have been nice to see on a big screen, but i had a really good time listening to C go off.

Sono Lino
a local glass legend who is not Dale Chihuly. i didn't know the name but i totally recognize his signature pieces. unfortunately i was dozing on and off for this one so i don't know a lot beyond that he was very talented and well-loved, pretty sure i used to walk by his studio all the time, and i really need to get to Tacoma Museum of Glass (they have a glassblowing demonstration auditorium) which is a thing we have never done for some reason

Subterranean
i think this will be on public tv in Canada. i love crazy rock climber and mountain climber documentaries. like i think what they do is terrifying and kind of foolhardy but i can't look away from the trainwreck, which is also generally breathtakingly beautiful, and i love the anthropological view of the subculture and the grit of the subjects.
so this film is kind of Dirtbag meets Free Solo/Dawn Wall but they're going down instead of up. which i think is even scarier and crazier than the climbers, although they also have to be climbers for these caves (and sometimes scuba divers). the film is following two cave exploration groups, one trying to beat the record for the longest cave in Canada, and the other for the deepest (they're both in BC, although the deep exploration group is folks from Alberta). this film is not for the claustrophobic, or if you're squicked by mud that looks like liquid shit, or have any kind of nightmares about being trapped, or my personal terror of being underwater and unable to surface to breathe. but it is interesting and there are some cool rock formations to see; i grew up in a region with limestone cave tourist attractions so it was both familiar and strange. i did wonder where all the money comes from - the deepest cave entrance was up a mountain in the Canadian Rockies and they got there via helicopter and didn't seem to have sponsors like the climbers do

Ultimate Citizens
sweet doc about Jamshid Khajavi, a school counselor in a Seattle K-8 school who coaches Ultimate Frisbee. he's a real character - chicken rescuer, endurance racer, former high-powered business guy, Iranian immigrant. he goes the extra mile to make sure that his students can participate in the sport and succeed in school. we see a slice of his life, and a bit of a sports doc about the team prepping for and participating in an open tournament. they don't have the money or time to do traveling league, so they come into the tournament as an unfamiliar element. it includes interviews with some of the parents, and it was shocking to me - two they spoke to were working two full-time jobs and running on almost no sleep. so he does a lot of extra work to make sure that those kids get to do extracurriculars, giving them rides home from practice, helping them get to appointments for glasses, etc. he seems genuinely lovely and the kids are learning to be better people together. it's nice

and that's a wrap on the film festival. the last time it felt right was 2019, i'm glad to have it back. next year i'll take a week off for it again.

when I was a kid I was enchanted with the Harry and David catalog, and the boxes of fruit and nuts that my uncle used to send to my grandparents. i toyed with the idea of buying myself a subscription to fruit and cheese of the month boxes for this year, but decided it would be more fun* to make it a date instead.

starting in December i set up a recurring "Fruit and Cheese of the Month" event on our calendar. we walk down to Pike Place Market, buy whatever fruit is seasonal and good that day, and then go to the cheese counter at DeLaurenti's and ask for a cheese pairing recommendation. (Last month was pomegranate, and a hard goat cheese from Spain.)

the extreme-for-Seattle cold this morning (14°F) meant that the market was pretty empty. we try to arrive as close to opening time as possible so that C can get a GF cinnamon roll before they sell out. they were still hot but most of the heat had gone by the time we took a few steps away. a lot of vendors didn't even open, so our produce selection was limited to Sosio's. we rarely shop there, mostly because it's in the heart of the busiest part of the main arcade and on a weekend there are too many people to linger long enough to shop. today we got to talk with the owner, get fed so many samples, and have our fruit chosen for us based on when we plan to eat it 💖. how cold was it? their damp cleanup towel was frozen stiff.

we took our local Comice (creamy texture, notes of white wine) pear and local Lucy Glow apples (a honeycrisp/red-flesh apple cross, golden orange skin and firm flesh marbled with red, sweet-tart) off to get cheese. also quiet, where normally one is constantly being banged into by milling people while at the counter. since we got two fruits we got two cheeses, a firmish assertive gorgonzola for the pear and a creamy soft-ripened goat (looks like brie) for the apple.

tomorrow we'll eat them









*and economical, and environmentally sound, by a long shot. plus C doesn't like pineapple and mango which would make two of the projected months less fun.

picked this up on Tumblr, where I think you're supposed to have people pick the questions but meh. I like this list better than the classic questionnaire I've used before

End of the year Asks

1. Song of the year? I Don’t Wanna Dance with Nobody by Sub-Radio
2. Album of the year? I don’t think I listened to a full album that was new-to-me this year. I feel like singles are bigger than ever, and between that and my not being particularly connected to drivers of new music (other than Spotify) I just don’t discover or listen to albums end-to-end.
3. Favorite musical artist / group you started listening to this year? I think I technically discovered Sub-Radio last year, so it would have to be Kishi Bashi. I went to his film Omoiyari at SIFF Docs Fest, kind of on a whim, and it was quite good.
4. Movie of the year? Recency bias, but god damn Godzilla Minus One is amazing. Crying at a monster movie over a dude with PTSD was definitely not on my bingo card for 2023.
5. TV show of the year? Oof. There were all the queer love stories - Our Flag Means Death, Good Omens, Interview with the Vampire. The one-two punch of Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks (and the crossover!). There was my indoctrination into dropout.tv. I think, in spite of being uneven overall (no, the musical episode wasn’t good) it would have to be Strange New Worlds.
6. Episode of tv or webisode that defined the year for you? Probably the one that’s been quoted constantly in my house since it first aired: Lower Decks “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee”. Moopsy!
7. Favorite actor of the year? While not technically a 2023 joint, I watched it in 2023 - Eric Bogosian in Interview with the Vampire was a favorite performance.
8. Game of the year? Jedi Survivor. It’s always good to be a Jedi, and the storytelling in this one was top-notch.
9. Best month for you this year? This year was complicated. It might have been January, when I went to Disneyland with mimerki.
10. Something that made you cry this year? Well, my best friend died and that generated a lot of tears both before and after. My runner-up for “movie of the year” is Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. I encourage folks to watch it, it’s sweet and funny. But if you have seen it: I saw it after mimerki had started palliative care, and the end absolutely wrecked me. (I do not recommend ugly crying in an n95 mask, it gets hard to breathe.) And she died the next day, so yeah
11. Something you want to do again next year? If I can find the time and money, I’d love to do a quick trip to Disneyland and get C to Galaxy’s Edge. It’s really not hard to do from here and I love how walkable it is inside and out.
12. Talk about a new friend you made this year Not something I managed: first I was being very covid-cautious, then I was very sad (and busy), then I was just busy.
13. How was your birthday this year? Dismal. I had covid and lost my sense of taste for a couple weeks.
14. Favorite book you read this year? The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard. On the one hand, it’s a fantasy novel about implementing UBI, and burnout, and friendship. It’s also about someone who leaves home and is successful in ways that aren’t meaningful to their family of origin. (While I think it could have used a ruthless edit, I also think that might have stripped out most of what is good about it. It’s just a long warm bath of a book.)
15. What’s a bad habit you picked up this year? Buying coffee and a pastry way too often (because neither of us could manage to consistently plan for breakfast).
16. Post a picture from the beginning of the year [the Millennium Falcon in a spaceport setting with rock spires in the background]
17. Post a picture from the end of the year
    [the view from Kerry Park in Seattle, featuring the Space Needle and Mt Rainier]
18. A memorable meal this year? Our anniversary was a significant one and we kind of forgot about it, then managed to snag a last-minute reservation at The Herbfarm a few days after. They were absolutely brilliant with C’s dietary needs. It’s totally worth the money.
19. What’re you excited about for next year? I remembered our anniversary earlier this time, and we finally snagged a reservation for a cabin at a resort on the Pacific Coast that’s well-known for being dog friendly. Looking forward to walking the beach and/or watching the waves roll in by the fire.
20. What’s something you learned this year? When you die in the US, you become a business for tax purposes. The SSN is retired, and the estate gets an EIN just like a business.
21. What’s something new about your place of residence (room, home, or general location) now vs the start of the year? My whole place of residence is new! I am sitting in front of my fireplace right now, looking at the lights of the cityscape out my window. It’s awesome
22. Favorite place you visited this year? Galaxy’s Edge. If you love Star Wars, it's a delight. (yes, I really liked Disneyland)
23. If you could send a message to yourself back on the first day of the year, what would it be? You always feel better after you get some exercise, don’t skip it.
24. Did you keep any New Year’s Resolutions? I don’t think I made any
25. Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one Currently playing Worlds Without Number with the Friday group. Our party is all from a somewhat isolated coastal island and we’re slowly exploring the wider world. I rolled randomly for pretty much everything and then crafted a character based on the stats. So he’s Buck, the butcher’s apprentice; he’s strong and kind but not very bright. I found a picture of a rugby player that I really like for him - square-headed and plain with a great smile.

[xkcd about how the free cellular data of ye olde kindle got you wikipedia and wikitravel access anywhere*] this is why my kindle had a sticker on the back that said "Don't Panic" in large friendly letters.

i adore reading on an e-ink reader. the older i get, the more i appreciate the light weight and the ability to adjust the text size and illumination depending on how my eyes feel. (it has to be e-ink, backlit screens hurt my eyes when i'm tired and i always respond to them as blue light no matter what color shift is engaged.) more importantly, it protects me from running out of book. i say this as someone who used to find an English-language bookstore in each city i visited in Europe in order to trade in the book i had just finished for a new one. i don't actually buy many books from Amazon (mostly library, Project Gutenberg, and Ao3) but i like their hardware.

Friday night i stepped on Dawn Treader (my beloved kindle voyage). i was bummed - it had tactile (if not clicky) buttons and could fit in a large pocket, and while the battery did lose a step it wasn't so much that i ever got around to installing the replacement i had ordered after reading too much while camping in 2021. it was from 2015, so a pretty good run for electronics these days. after being cronched it still woke up and slept and you could turn pages with the buttons and read on it, but the touchscreen was broken so there was no way to get to the library or settings. (wish my first one had lived longer, it didn't need no stinking touchscreen.) ifixit was out of screen replacements (and the instructions kind of sucked), so i went ahead and did a trade-in.

they make it cheaper to buy a new one with trade-in than to buy a refurb (my first choice with most electronics). a new Oasis (clicky buttons) - comes with same day delivery here in the mothership, so i was reading on it before the day was over on Saturday.

i'm still getting used to the form factor - the reading area is off-center so that you have a grip with clicky buttons; the screen part is ridiculously thin with all the guts in the thicker grip. the page turn buttons are swapped from how i had them on Dawn Treader; i still occasionally click the wrong one to turn the page. i could change this in settings but the default is a more natural spot for my thumb to rest, i'll get used to it. the screen rotates, so you can hold in either hand, but the sleep button is on the top of the grip side if you're holding it in your right hand. its location when you read from the left (on the bottom) makes locking the screen one-handed awkward. not optimal for, say, standing on the bus. apparently i hold with my off hand much more than i realized. Desert Rose** is waterproof, optimal for reading in the bath, which i do a lot. no more ziploc bags*** for me!

today i ran down to Whole Foods to drop off Dawn Treader to complete the trade-in. i hadn't done that before - there's a little room with returns and pickup, you bring in the thing and a barcode and they take care of everything. the person behind the counter was deaf - he had a sign with instructions on how to signal him what you were there for, and then we did a combination of pointing at options on the computer screen and pantomime. worked great, it was kind of fun.

now i just need my new "Don't Panic" sticker to arrive.





*while the days of "free" data are gone, the Kindle does remain the web-enabled device I own with the longest battery life, so still an excellent emergency resource
**C discouraged me from calling it Wonderwall
***not entirely true, i still prefer the iPad for comics, but now i only need to keep a gallon bag in the bathroom instead of a gallon and a quart

I've been watching the local housing market for a while; the plan has been that we would start shopping in 2023... well, we'll see if that pans out. prices in the area are definitely dropping, but not enough to counter the rising interest rates. (it's really creepy to see your buying power disappear that way.)

looked at pictures tonight of a place that had clearly been flipped. it had a good enough location, a very attractive layout, lots of features we like, and thank goodness hadn't been painted gray inside. (this was some interior decoration trend? whoever thought that was a good idea in the northwest, i want to try their drugs or routine or whatever because the last thing i can take in the dark of the winter is gray.)

but it didn't have any appliances. and i was like oh, that's actually kind of okay, pick out the ones you want! then i realized a few things on the 3D walkthrough: there are gaps for two appliances in the kitchen, but only one power outlet? no water hookup for a dishwasher. there is a spot sort of across from the main kitchen with water and power that could be for the fridge or a washer-dryer. definitely needs work for a dishwasher in the kitchen, if you put it into that slot with no power access and no water. same for the fridge - I don't need an ice maker but the power is definitely required. but still that would mean you could have a stove, a dishwasher, and a washing machine OR a refrigerator, not both. i have no idea what the thinking was there. (there is no home without the dishwasher. we spent wedding present money on getting a portable back in the day. the longevity of my marriage has a foundation built on a machine doing the dishes. i'm also not buying a place without my own clothes washer.)

THEN we saw what looked like a hole in the ceiling, maybe where a vent used to be? while zooming in on that we saw the very long crack running on a jagged angle above the nearby door, where the garage joins to the house.

yeah no.

I have a lot to unpack from today. I spent almost my whole day in the Main Stage - Our Flag Means Death cast, then Twisted Toonz, then the (unmissable, most important) Chris Eccleston.

someone's twitter thread of clips from the OFMD panel. there's SO MUCH there about being queer, surviving at different ages, being yourself, fanfic and fanart. also, they took a group photo of the dozens of people wearing The Shirt.

Twisted Toonz this year was The Breakfast Club, wherein the performances were great as always but the material was meh for me. and it got me thinking about my relationship with John Hughes films... probably the only one that I truly like is Ferris Bueller's Day Off and that's about the adventure and not about the feels (if I think too hard I HATE Ferris).

seeing Chris Eccleston, though, that was all feels. i wasn't prepared for how moved i would be to see him, to hear him talking about his life in a raw way, to know that his explosive performance in Dalek was fueled by his rage and pain after seeing his father with dementia in the hospital. his absolute joy at being part of the history that led to Jodie Whittaker taking the role, how thrilled he is to see Ncuti Gatwa, the way he credited writers over and over as being the source of the quality of his work, how it took all this time for him to appreciate that he had influenced a generation of children who are now in their twenties. (fuck i'm old.) anyway, writing about it hours later is making me cry again, i was wrecked by the time the panel was over and had to spend a while pulling myself together before i could get a bus home. (crying in a filter mask sucks shitstained donkey balls, but i wouldn't have gone at all without the mask so there it is.)

i've been thinking about who else would set me off like that. Tom Baker for sure, maybe Carrie Fisher if she had survived long enough for me to see her. Mark Hamill? i often cry at concerts (because music) but i think this is the first time i was shaken by Q&A with an actor. curious about other people who have had surprisingly big emotions around actors and other creatives.

C: i voted for the indian
me: which one?

we (and many others) are camped out in our building's lounge, which has air conditioning. Leela the dog is off at daycare being in their air conditioning for as long as possible.

i opened my laptop and saw an email from 25 minutes ago from the daycare saying that Leela had been checked out. one panicked phone call later and she's definitely there. *whew* they're trying to track down what happened with the computer system.

there are four other dogs in here with us; they're doing okay but i know Leela would be on high alert and miserable with all the strangers coming and going. i feel bad that we're not together but sure that she's having a nicer time at dog camp. i'm really looking forward to the lower temps tomorrow and getting to have her around. i've missed her terribly; she won't sleep outside with us so it's felt like three days entirely without her.

oh lawd it's hot, we're sitting in the dark as still as possible. (no air conditioning, it's 98F right now and it will be hotter tomorrow and Monday. the last time it got this hot here was in 2009.) the dog is at daycare in the ac until later in the evening - they're not doing any afternoon walks today because they're worried about burning pupper feet on the hot sidewalk. i got a haircut this afternoon, and impulse-bought gelato for C and me on the way home. it was a race against time - with a cup of gelato in each hand, both melting and dripping like mad, me licking up what drips i could while walking home as fast as i could and trying not to get chocolate on my clothes.

fortunately there was someone in the elevator to punch buttons and C had the door propped open to the hall so it wasn't TOO hard to get home and shove the cups into the freezer before i washed my hands. i suspect there's gelato all over my keys and in my purse, but it was worth it. C had Theo chocolate and Hawaiian macadamia hazelnut, and i had lemon meringue pie and bourbon vanilla.

***
i haven't written for a while because i didn't want to write about my dead parent feelings. i was able to talk about a nice memory of Dad without getting upset while i was getting my hair cut today, so that was good and getting better, i think. (C tells me that he got surprise grief every so often for a few years, so i will just need to roll with that.) the memory was that before i was in school full time i used to go along with Dad when he got his hair cut - old school barbershop where you walk in and then hang out and shoot the shit until a chair is open for you. they always had comic books, and those are my first memories of reading comics.* all this spurred by my stylist's Barbicide jar which appears to be completely unchanged in the intervening years.
* * *

i spun a self-striping true three-ply yarn from two space dyed braids of BFL wool, which i was not really skilled enough to do and will probably not attempt again for a long time. it involves a lot of weighing and being extremely consistent...and ultimately being willing to break the plies and edit when things just aren't lining up. but it's done now and in the ball it is very much what i hoped, the kind of gradual transition between the color bands that you get in Noro but a three-ply. i probably should feature it in a sweater since it will wear hard, but i'm looking at some sideways shawls that i'm more likely to wear.




*and the ubiquitous Hostess ads which apparently dates me pretty exactly

on a clear day i have a view of Mt Rainier peeking over top of Queen Anne hill from my balcony. today i can't see Queen Anne hill or anything that is more than a couple blocks away due to smoke.

our AQI has now improved to 229, after a peak earlier today of 242. we have air filters on order for our planned redneck air purifier - box fan, merv 13 filter, duct tape - but they won't arrive until Sunday (local stores were sold out). they'll still be useful then, but tomorrow is going to be miserable. the dog does not understand why we won't open the door for her.

that said, today is our Seattleversary and i remain happy to be here, smoke or no. the cascade of events following 9/11 brought us here - i have no idea who we would be (or where) if budgets hadn't frozen in 2001, cancelling academic programs that were starting in 2002. i am especially relieved that i'm not working in theatre anymore this year; it's a tough profession always but 2020 is going to be a devastating ending point for nonprofits.