ed_rex

A New Year's post-mortem

Image from the cover of Self-Loathing Comics #1, by R. Crumb. Published by Fantagraphics Books. Click image for full cover.

It's a sobering fact that Neil Young manages to make records faster than I can absorb them, and that Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes books faster than I can fucking read them.

As John Lennon put it, "And so happy Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over ..."

Am I going to manage to do something with the new year just begun?

( A look at what Young Geoffrey has left undone. If you're not interested, just skip to the video below. Emmy the Great is exactly what Emma-Lee Moss wrote on the tin when she was young and un-selfconscious. )

"You say you love me like a sister
Then you walk me to the cafe
where the drinks cost more than music ..."

Watch on YouTube

Crossposts: http://ed-rex.livejournal.com/577884.html

silverflight8 gave me the letter M.

Something I hate: Mortality. See "Someone I know", below.

Something I love: That's easier. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, a series of novels that puts the E back int eh word epic. And more, a story that is forever noting a reader's expectations, then giving them something very different. Robinson kills three of his most charismatic players in the first volume and has the heir apparent simply ignore his "destiny" in the subsequent two. And what's not to like about a series that features middle-aged (and then old women among its prime movers, as well as not one, but two, constitutional conventions as part of its action?

Somewhere I've been: Montebello. A very small town on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River/Rivière des Outaouais, about halfway between Ottawa and Montreal. It features a hotel that is (I think) the world's largest log cabin, and is a 10 or 15 minute drive from Parc Omega, a drive-through animal "safari" in which moose demand carrots at your window, wolves loll about only metres away and wild boar engage in public sex acts without so much as a by-your-leave. Great snow-showing, too.

Somewhere I'd like to go: Manzanillo, Cuba. Why? Because it starts with the letter M and 9 days was not nearly long enough a visit to that country.

Someone I know: Maria. Well, I don't know her well, but we went out once for a pint, to talk books and publishing two or three years ago. She's a Serious Christian and it turned out we didn't share much in common philosophically or aesthetically, but what made it memorable for me was that (a) she was an attractive woman who was (b) roughly my age and (c) a fucking grandmother. See "Something I Hate", above.

A film I like: My Own Private Idaho, which is in part a really ideosyncratic modern-dress re-telling of Shakespeare's Henry IV diptych, with Prince Hal as a narcoleptic rent-boy. I showed it to an ex-girlfriend whose response — "That's the dumbest movie I ever saw!" — probably set the stage for that relationship's demise.

A book I like: The Motion of Light In Water, Samuel R. Delany's 1980s memoir of "sex and science fiction writing in the East Village, 1957-1965." Part literary memoir, part social history, part personal recollections of a sexual life that, by now (according to the author himself) includes sexual encounters with something on the order of 50,000 (yes, 50K) different (almost all) men. Fascinating on all kinds of levels and, of course, brilliantly-written.

A (actress in a) television show I like: Tatiana Maslany. Because she plays something like 8 different characters on Orphan Black, and Orphan Black's 4th series starts tomorrow night, and she's brilliant and I am hoping against hope that the writers know where they're going with what is so far a brilliant show. Another Battlestar Galactica will break my heart.

Comment if you want to get a letter too! (You can cheat too, if you want to.)

ETA: I am shocked, appalled, and kind of disgusted that, given the letter M, I was unable to remember just how much (a lot) I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. *Young Geoffrey hangs his head in shame*

Crossposts: http://ed-rex.livejournal.com/524102.html

Nobody suggested that I do the fandom meme, but I took note of it on (guess who!) Sabotabby's Livejournal some time ago and thought it might be fun. And maybe, again, a way to kickstart this blog. (And nobody wants to hear about how I-can't-power-off-my-mobile-and-I-think-it's-broken-and-I-haven't-even-finished-paying-for-it-yet do they?)

So fandoms.

Shit. First of all, I deny that I even have a fandom (singular), let alone more than one. Sure, I tend to write about Doctor Who a little more than most people, but I'm engaging in a critical dialogue with pop culture itself, damn it!

Or maybe not. Onwards.

( To meme or not to meme? Your click will kill the cat - or not )

Your favourite film watched this year?

( Short version: I hardly watched any full-length movies in 2013, and none of them were really good. )

Your favourite book read this year?

( Think you can't be shocked? Think again! )

Your favourite album or song to listen to this year?

( Old white guy and young Oriental woman, oh yeah! )

Your favourite TV show of the year?

( The good, the bad and Jane Austen's revenge. )

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

( Do you really have to ask? )