look to the pasta

A couple quick things:

topazera made a fanmix for Les Cousins Dangereux, the Dawn/Connor Jossverse sort-of-incest fic (haha, hoo boy) I wrote way back when, which was just super, super cool of her. It's a really awesome mix with some great songs and fanart, so you should definitely check it out! Mix is here, fic it's based on is here.

Thanksgiving's over, which means my playlist has turned to Christmas songs, heavy on Sufjan Steven's Christmas albums, as that is the wretch I am. (Also, number of versions of "All I Want for Christmas Is You" on said playlist: five.) Here are some of the songs I'm hitting the hardest right now:

Christmas In The Room by Sufjan
Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming by Feist
The Friendly Beasts by Sufjan

Annnnd just so this post has a little more to it, I'll do that fic meme that was going around, if anyone wants to play:

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic is here.

Junior Year, Winter, part two (8,337 words) and Junior Year, Winter, part three (15,687 words)
easy_academy, Winters POV, NC-17 (underage, teacher/student, Nick Jonas/Dick Winters)

Here are two songs I have been obsessing over lately, because when it's been raining for weeks and you're writing depressing fic, things happen.

Rescued by Jack's Mannequin (because you might be too old for pop-punk piano ballads, but they're not too old for you)
My Backwards Walk, by Frightened Rabbit

Man, so on Friday night moireach and I had this incredibly bourgetarded evening, wherein we went and saw Brian Dennehy and Dame Eileen Atkins read a bunch of T.S. Eliot poems. And I thought, hey, this'll be pretty cool, I guess, and beforehand, M, as a T.S. Eliot EXPERT, was like, "They better not read it too fast. I have had to delete recordings where they read them too fast." So our expectations weren't too super high but oh my God, you guys, it was like, the best thing I have ever experienced. Like, I can't even describe how good they were, reading everything completely, mind-bogglingly perfectly, so that even though I've read The Wasteland a thousand times, they totally brought out new layers of meaning. They did the VOICES. AUGH I WANT TO GO SEE IT AGAIN. WHY CAN I NOT GO SEE IT AGAIN?

Haha, it was funny, though, because in the program it had a list of past actors who had done poetry readings put on by the same woman doing this one, and Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory were on the list, and I was like, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME IF THEY WERE HERE READING ELIOT WHILE I HAVE LIVED IN TOWN I WILL KILL SOMEONE." Haha, which is exactly how I feel about Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello doing a Wigfield performance in the Somerville Theatre while I totally lived two seconds away here. (God, I still get so mad at my past self when I think about that. WHY DIDN'T YOU CARE SOONER?) Um, but anyway, luckily it turned out DLew's reading was at the British Library, so I can rest easy.

Then we ran straight from that poetry reading to see Germaine Greer, who totally hilariously bitched out the Harvard professor we had just seen introducing the Eliot thing, so that was super weird and kind of awesome. Also she was v. funny and interesting and she called M "that stripey person in the back" during the Q&A which kind of made my life.

And finally, speaking of feminism, the weekend before that, me and M went and saw Sarah Haskins of "Target: Women" at MIT (AWESOME), and so that day we were talking about what shows currently airing on TV consistently pass the Bechdel test (which is, if you are unfamiliar, that there are two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man). And we honestly came up with almost none.

( sitcom specifics )

Anyway, we actually got out a list of all the shows currently airing, but I really could not find very many that have actual female relationships consistently portrayed. But I don't watch that much TV these days, so does anyone know of any? Because it was SUPER DEPRESSING to actually tally it up, guys.

So hey, you guys remember nothing_hip? The summer fic challenge where guilty pleasure songs are the inspiration? Yeah, I'm bringing it back for 2008. The first challenge song will be posted this Sunday, so go join the community and get ready to write stories based on Miley Cyrus songs. All fandoms and people welcome! Further details are in the community info.

So, I did the meme where someone gives you a letter and you upload 5 songs that start with that letter. moireach gave me D! Comment if you want your own letter.

* Dream Awake by The Frames
* Dreaming of You by The Coral
* Dear Mr. Supercomputer by Sufjan Stevens
* Downtown Seoul by The Mountain Goats (and okay, this is a BJ/Hawkeye song if I've ever heard one)
* Don't Think Twice, It's Alright by Nick Drake

In other news, I am probably going to die of heat stroke any minute now. What up, summer! Nothing like being covered in sweat literally five minutes after getting out of a cold shower.

P.S. Did you guys know Damian Lewis plays soccer? ( Not that this kind of thing is all I ever think about anymore. )

Last night I saw Page France in concert, which was super awesome - even the openers were good (and surprisingly hot, so yay eye candy?), but the concert didn't start until 9, there were three opening bands, and I had to get up early today, so I have come out of the experience thinking a few unconnected things, for instance, a) I am getting way too old to stay out that late on school nights, and b) why are all indie boys so short? GOD. There was a point where me and moireach, who (weirdly) are both 5'9 1/2", were standing in the back and could basically see over everyone's heads. Um. WHAT. Also, there was a group of guys who were WAY into Page France, which was cute, except for how at the end of the concert they tragically misjudged the kind of concert we were at and started a moshpit - like, dude, this is a freaking wistful indie folk show, I don't want some 19 year old who looks like George Michael Bluth jumping into me and spilling my beer, OKAY. I am an old lady, have some respect.

Speaking of George Michael Bluth, he's in a movie coming out this summer and it looks freaking awesome: Super Bad. How that kid was a comic genius at 16 is just beyond me.

So hey, nothing_hip is in its second week, and it is fun to play! You guys should all join it - it's the bad songs prompting good fic game. It's totally been overly Office heavy, too, so we need more fandom variety. (Speaking of which, yesterday kyrafic texted me and was like, "We are in a FANDOM RACE - I am totally going to write more fandoms than you total." Because she's written in 23 fandoms and so have I, which is, uh, odd. So now we have a scoreboard. Because, you know, we are pretty super wretched as it is, but we're always asking ourselves, how could we be MORE wretched? And we always find a way.)

There has been a hell of a lot of good fic posted lately, and gosh, wouldn't it be fun to code that up for you? It would.
( Fic recs: the Office and How I Met Your Mother )

Speaking of Office fic, I have read so much Michael/Jan lately that would be totally fine and/or good, but contains Jan, in her own internal narration, calling her ex-husband "Gould". Which - oh, dear. Were these fics all written by Michael Scott? Did Jan and her ex-husband have a Mulder/Scully kind of relationship? (And uh, even Mulder, on the show, called her "Dearest Dana" canonically once they hooked up - which makes me want to vomit, but what're you gonna do) Oh, fandom, if you don't know Gould's first name (according to a deleted scene, it is "Art"), please, please, please make one up.

I'm also having a little bit of a weird Office fanvid renaissance - I've been totally over Jim/Pam as a ship lately, but these vids have been bringing it back, I don't even know. In general, I feel like I'm a very unsophisticated viewer of vids, as I have no objective sense as to why they're good and instead only understand when they give me funny shippy feelings, like when I used to climb the rope in gym class, so, uh, take these recs for what they're worth. But regardless!

* Suddenly I See - man, this vid makes me miss season two Jim so much. It really is too bad that dude moved to Stamford and never came back.
* Popular by semby - this one's ensemble, and it's fast! So there's that.
* Apologize by _megzy_ - this one makes me really sad about Jim/Pam. As though the show weren't doing enough of that for me.

Good grief, looks like it's cut-tag for length time. I hope you have enjoyed my novella.