Tetsuuuoooooo!

Went to see Akira at the BFI this evening. Faaabulous.

Learning To Love You More

If you’re based Oop North, around Middlesbrough, today is a good day to go see some art… The lovely Nicky P is curating a Learning To Love You More exhib, of which yours truly is a part. I wish I could get up there to see it, but it’s just a tiny bit too far away for a daytrip.

currently rocking my world

1. Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Have I mentioned before how much I love Joss Whedon? I have? Frequently? Oh. Well, here's just another example of why. Musical webisodes about a supervillian (Dr Horrible), his arch nemesis (Captain Hammer), and the girl of his dreams...

'Joss Whedon set out on the low-budget project during the writers' strike as a lark and a labor of love — and to show the industry an out-of-the-box project could find an audience. But the overwhelming response has caught him by surprise.

"We had this home-baked idea that we love and we're proud of," Whedon says. "We made this on the understanding that we'd never make a dime. But it's blown up beyond our expectations." '

The first Act made me giggle with absolute glee. Who else - seriously, who on earth else? - could have come up with something like this, and made such a site-crashing success? Because that's what happened - the blog was so popular the servers crashed. If that's not a show of love, I don't know what is. Joss Whedon, I salute you. And can't wait for Dollhouse.

Here's the trailer - then go watch the full episodes.

2. Y The Last Man
So on my lunchbreak today I made a trip to the comic store to pick up the most recent Buffy series 8 issues (see above for the Whedon love), and discovered the last collected volume of YTLM, Book 10 - Whys & Wherefores (which is only available for pre-order on Amazon, so was perhaps an American import?). I was reading it on the tube home this evening, after a couple of cocktails in Soho, and about halfway through really wished I wasn't reading it in public. So. Gutting. Augh.

As with all good things, I was worried about how it was going to end, and wasn't sure about the epilogue, until the last couple of pages, which just made me laugh with relief. Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra, I salute you too.

3. Everything else:

a dream upon waking...

I awoke this morning promptly at 7am (which was strange enough in itself, as these past few days I've been setting up to six [!] alarms to ensure I get up in time - and have still managed most days to turn them all off and fall back asleep), convinced I had the winning idea for the Red Planet Prize. There was mystery and intrigue and great characters... I dragged myself out of bed, and while washing my face and brushing my teeth I tried to form some logic from the tangled web of the idea.

Teeth clean, I stumbled back to my room and sat down on the bed. There were some pretty gaping holes in what I'd worked out, and, worse, the idea was slowly, slowly drifting and slipping away from me... those characters who I knew so well before I woke were becoming misty and half-formed, the plot premise was murky and indistinct...

And I came to the realisation that it had all been but a dream, never anything more coherent than subconscious rumblings. Defeated, I crawled back into bed - after all, if I wasn't going to do any writing that second, I could steal an extra ten minutes before I really had to get up. But as I re-set my alarm, I could at least feel that even though my conscious brain has hit a brick wall when it comes to this project, my subconscious is constantly mulling it over...

And with that I dozed back off, and ten minutes later slept through my alarm...

Red Planet Prize blog

heathens

For some reason people seem to trust me with their kids, and so it is I have two pretty fabulous (aside from the tantrums and screaming and crying and throwing up) godchildren, courtesy of best friend from high school and best friend from university. I say godchildren, but perhaps they're more fairy godchildren, as neither have been actually baptised in the church; both friends wanted people to fill godparent-type roles for their kids though neither wanted an actual baptism (not so much with the churchgoing), so for lack of a better non-religious word, godmother it has become. Or "non-godmother", as I was asked to be for Margot.

Today was the kind of non-christening, hey this is our baby kind of party: a big picnic in Wimbledon Park - picnic rugs and sausage rolls and fairy cakes and homemade party hats and cricket and rounders and bottles of Strongbow (just to add that touch of class). My non-godmother request came with a clause to educate Junior about Joss Whedon when she's old enough to understand; I already expanded this brief to include some rock'n'roll basics, so pushed the boundaries a little further to include Doctor Who, a series her mum and I have both been loving recently. And so it was I spent Saturday afternoon making Dalek shaped cookies and decorating them with silver balls, in the name of godmotherly duty...