Chained To My Desk...

...pulling what could turn out to be my first true all-nighter of Grad school, an obliging roommate ran me down to grocery store at 11:30 for supplies. You need a variety of bite-sized snack foods to sustain you over long periods of time as well as a few "break time" foods. I got:


Baby Carrots (large bag)
Ranch flavored veggie dip
Sourdough Bread
Tillamook Extra Sharp Cheddar
Haagen Dazs Mango and Strawberry Sorbet
Annie's Organic Macaroni & Cheese
3 boxes of Everlasting Gobstoppers

Wish me luck, I need to be done by bedtime tomorrow night, and I have to work 6 hours somewhere in there as well.

The "Prince Charming" Scarf For:

Name: Richard Morrison

Occupation: Transitioning from Stage Manager to Musician

Locale: About to move from NYC to San Diego

Childhood Dream Job: Gemologist

My Favorite Lunch: Anything on a patio

I Always Say Yes to: Lunch

Something I'd Like to do by the End of this Year: Find a place to live in San Diego

When it Comes to Singing in the Car, I Need: To focus more on the driving

The Oscar Should Have Gone to: "Babe"

Here's Something I'd Like to Say: Vote NO on California Prop 8

Kj and I: Never seem to tire of each other

The Making of: Richard's scarf was the last I knit before my summer hiatus and also my first long distance scarfing. But though we were states apart, I wasn't lacking in info or inspiration for Richard, since we've been acting like childish adults together since we were 11. However, the key to this one was a comment my NYC roommate Kiko made about Richard (he magicly moved to NYC while I was there too) when she said he reminded her of Snow White's Prince. We all concurred. Hence my yarn reinterpretation of Disney's primary-coloured Prince for one of my most dashing (and simulatneously absurd) friends. As a San Diegan, its hard to know when Richard will ever get to where this, but I loved the chance to make it for him. What better way to show your love for someone who's let you call them Spmulragus (Sugar Lumps spelled backwards) for the last eighteen years?

Yarn Season...

is back- which means not only are my fingers ready to knit again, they're actually a bit frosty from the October weather. This led to my Saturday decision to knit myself some handwarmers. And voila! toasty little mits!

I used a favorite pattern from Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Knitted Gifts (feauting designs and modelling by this best friend of mine).

Joelle is an amzing artist, entrepreneur, human being and owner of Purl Soho where I spent many an hour sitting and knitting at the big table in the coziest spot on Sullivan Street.

Not only am I gearing up for some PeopleProfileKjScarves, but I'm gonna experiment with being some outsourced knitting labor for KIM in New York. Wish me luck.

Textual Poaching, Intertextuality and the Action Figures They Produce

So I'm enjoying my full immersion into the Joss Whedon Universe (or more properly, Whedonverse) as I do research for a paper on Firefly (in collboration with This Guy) and work my way through Whedon's original Buffy and its spin-off/parrallel show Angel. Spending time in all three 'verses at once really brings Whedon's core themes to the surface, and he just keeps blowing my mind.

Most recently I watched the Angel episode "Are You Now or Have you Ever Been..." (nodding to the Mcarthyism themes throughout the episode) which is a largely a flashback to the 1950's wherein Angel, (the vampire with a soul) is keeping a low profile in LA. When a scene opened on the LA Observatory, I immediately said "Okay- how are they going to reference "Rebel Without A Cause"? You really can't shoot anything involoving the Griffith Observatory without evoking the climactic scenes from the James Dean classic.

Well, the camera pulls back to reveal David Boreanaz as Angel wearing the iconic red windbreaker, white T-shirt and dark jeans of James Dean's Rebel character Jim. Going further, we hear the female character introduce herself as Judy- also the name of Natalie Wood's character in Rebel. Judy (who looks strikingly like Natalie Wood as well) goes on to talk about the planetarium show about the end of the world, which is also the show the students in Rebel watch at the beginning of the film. So no question about it- Whedon is unabashedly underlining Rebel Without a Cause.

But the intertextual detective in me started wondering why? If one text references another, then the intertext must have some significance of shared or contrasted meaning. But other than both stories having to do with people rejected by or rejecting society, the intertext just didn't make sense to me, not to the extent of its prominence. That's when I had to reflect on the idea of textual poaching, which Ian introduced to me in his paper on Fandom and the works of Joss Whedon. With textual poaching, it's not so much about drawing parallels between the two texts, but in sparking recognition for the viewer. Therefore, using the imagery, costumes and names from Rebel Without A Cause is really just paying honor to the iconic film and James Dean, and inviting the viewer to do the same.

It's an opportunity for the viewer to recongize something and feel included in the storytelling, moreso than adding to the story being told. It's kind of post-modern intertextuality I guess. For me, seeing the observatory and anticipating James Dean references then having them ready and waiting for me, was the best part of watching the episode. Yeah, it was a smart and moving story, but the moment where I recognized "James Dean" and "Judy" made me feel like I was on the same page with Joss Whedon- like I was in on the inside joke, or at least the inside homage to great filmmaking. It didn't have to mean anything more than that.

What I'm not-so-on-the-same-page with is the action figures Fandom can lead to- this is the Angel figure made specifically from this episode. He's got the James Dean jacket on and comes with an ax, a noose and a liter of blood. You can make your toy Angel textually poach your GI Joes I guess.

Best Conversation of the Week

(In the fourth floor cubicles at Mars Hill Graduate School)

Me: Yeah, I'm really excited about moving down into the basement and setting up a whole studio living room/bedroom thing.
Cathy: You don't need a TV do you?
Me: Uh yeah I totally do. I was gonna buy one.
Cathy: I have a TV literally sitting in my hall waiting to be taken away by someone. I've been begging peolpe to take it off my hands.
Me: That's amazing. I don't have a car to pick it up though.
Cathy: I can drop it off. This Sunday okay?
Me: Yeah, noon?
Cathy: Perfect, see you then.


And voila! I have a TV now.
I love Cathy Loerzel.

Music to Fall By

Last Friday night I felt it for the first time this year: Fall. The first familiar gust of wind beckoned me to my ITunes to get busy making a new Autumn-themed study Playlist. (True, this Wednesday October 1st I will probably move right into my Christmas playlist, but I first had to answer the call of Fall).

Autumn needs warm music: music that evokes browns, reds, trees, fireside, scarves, corduroy, cinnamon-flavored baked goods, pumpkins- you know the list. Well, from my ITunes library, that pretty much means some upbeat Baroque music, George Winston's "Autumn" album (duh), the soundtrack to "Everything is Illuminated" and just a touch of Counting Crows here and there. (I like to toss in a few pop songs to my study lists- provides little four minute mental breaks when they come up in randomization).

And of course, I wanted to add Vivaldi's Four Seasons to the Mix. It may be the "Four" Seasons, but everyone knows it just makes you feel like taking a road trip to an apple orchard.

But to my shock and disbelief, I found that I did not own a recording of the Four Seasons. How did this happen? Doesn't EVERYONE own the Four Seasons? Well, thank you ITunes store, where I could just click over and peruse some thirty different recordings and price ranges. I settled on celebrity: Joshua Bell with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (which unbeknownst to me had just been released a week earlier). This was also my first ITunes purchase that came not only with a digital booklet, but a video of Bell playing/conducting the Summer "Presto" movement.

It's an outstanding recording: crisp and energized but full of surprising nuances. It's a great new interpretation of the classic Baroque musicalization of what it feels like to dive into a pile of leaves!

Oh, and if you didn't already know: Joshua Bell = hot

Sewing a-la Frankenstein

I cannot sew. The only needle I have is a tapestry needle for knitting projects. Therefore, a rip in any of my clothing is a near tragedy, especially since no matter how many shirts, pants, sweaters etc I have, I tend to rotate around only 5 options at a time. I guess that's as much decision making as my brain can handle compared to everything else in my life. So to lose one of the 5 in the rotation is pretty crippeling.

I was super-peeved this spring when my almost cashmere Mossimo sweater from Target formed a huge rip along a back seam only about 6 weeks after purchase. Waking up the other day to discover Fall had officially arrived, I yearned for that ripped sweater which I hadn't been able to bring to myself to throw away. What to do? I figured, if I can't mend it with a perfectly blended seam, I'll just make my clunky sewing effort super obvious. So here's my first attempt at both sweater mending and embroidery. I almost went lime green...

Things That Make Me Smile

On June 5, my housemate Johny and I borrowed our other housemate's car to drop off the rent check at the landlord's (we have till the 5th of the month at midnight). We used the car time as an opportunity to pick up some house supplies, ie: toilet paper. Now, we all know there are two kinds of people in the world: those who like teeny tiny rolls of super fluffy toilet paper, and those who prefer endless, budget-friendly rolls of simple 2-ply. Johny and I are both big fans of the latter, Scott Brand to be specific. Well, since we had the car, we thought, why just buy 1 pack of 12 rolls when we could buy two packs? So we purchased 24 rolls of Scott basic 2-ply and decided to track how long it lasted (and thus prove our point that even when using copious amounts of 2-ply, it lasts so much longer than stupid quilted brands.

Well, as of yesterday's roll replacement, we found ourselves about a week shy of going 4 months without having to purchase toilet paper. For anyone living in NYC or any car-less apartment dweller anywhere, you know what amazing news this is. We're thinking of throwing a party for the fact that as long as we buy 24 rolls at a time, we will only be purchasing toilet paper 3 times a year. That is truly reason to celebrate.

Woody Allen Goes to Spain

4 Stars (out of 5)
Outstanding performances by Hall, Bardem and Cruz (and actually this is the first movie that truly won me over to Javier Bardem). Woody Allen's dialogue transfers unbelievably well into Spanish and as a result, this is a surprisingly warm and colorful (though as conflicted as one would expect) offering from our beloved neurotic New Yorker. There's wonderful ambiguity in whether this is a satire of the typical "2 american girls are transformed by European vacation" or using the form to say something quite different. Either way, it was a wonderful hour and a half of my life.

Postings Elsewhere

I loved my friend Joshua's blog mini-interview format "100 Words" so much that I wanted to steal it with his permission. Rightly so, he's keeping it to himself, but I got to be one of the interviewees. Good trade.

Check out 100 words on thelongbrake.com

Also, here's 100 Words on Food by another friend, David Rice. For more inspiring words from D.Rice, here's an old post of mine.