Rixosous

West Side Story (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/10/09)

Wow.

Where do I start?

West Side Story is another show I have a long history with, starting with the summer stock production I worked in the costume shop for when I was a teenager.  I will never forget sweating over a sewing machine churning out circle skirts for the dance in the gym.  I've seen it a couple of other times, including at Stratford in 1999, when it was staged at the Avon Theatre, which has a typical proscenium stage.  This time it was staged on the thrust stage at the Festival Theatre.  I went to see it mostly to fill a hole in my schedule and because I figured it was a pretty idiot-proof classic that really can't get much worse than pretty good.  If nothing else, I'd get to see that fabulous Jerome Robbins choreography danced by a high-quality cast. 

I was blown away. 

Ever Yours, Oscar (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/9/09)

(posted from an island in the middle of the Avon while ducks and swans float by)

I wound up Thursday with a short (less than ninety minutes) one-man performance that isn't actually a play: Brian Bedford reading a selection of letters from Oscar Wilde, ranging in time from when he was a teenager at school through his intellectual triumphs as a speaker and writer and, sadly, his prison stint, brief continental exile, and death.  The letters were compiled by Peter Wylde (no relationship to Wilde).

Mr. Bedford is an experienced performer and has beautiful vocal control, so he can pull a great deal of emotion out of a simple reading, with no costumes or props required and only brief introductory remarks before a few of the letters.  This was in the Tom Patterson Theatre, which is quite small, with a relatively long "runway" stage with the seating in a U-shape around it.  No amplification is needed there.  The stage was mostly bare, with only a music stand for the letters and a small table for a glass of water.  A photograph of Wilde was projected against the back of the theater.  Mr. Bedford wore an elegant black suit with a pale gray-blue tie.  On-stage seating was offered, so a group of devotees was settled happily on cushions almost at his feet.  I was just as happy with regular seating, and I'd been warned that he directed all his readings straight forward, so I spent the money to get a good seat where I'd be able to see his face.

The letters were entertaining, and often more sentimental than I'd expected.  While some were arch and witty -- I particularly liked his description of lecturing to miners in California and putting them to sleep with his discussion of Florentine art before waking them up by mentioning Botticelli, whom they thought was a new drink --  many, especially the later ones, were quite poignant.  Who would have expected to find Wilde negotiating with a prison warden from his cell to arrange to pay the fine to have two poor children released from prison?

Also included was a letter offering a synopsis of The Importance of Being Earnest, with the basic plot recognizable even though most of the characters had different names.  This was a pitch for the (unwritten) play when he was desperate for money and needed the advance.  There was also a letter mentioning the card left by the Marquess of Queensbury at his club (the "posing somdomite" card) which inspired Wilde's lawsuit against the Marquess and triggered his own trial and imprisonment.

I was thrilled to be sitting in front of a whole row of neatly-dressed teenagers, on whom I eavesdropped shamelessly.  They were happy to be there and very pleased to be hearing Bedford read before seeing Earnest later in the week.  Hopefully they will become hooked on theater and turn into regulars; Stratford's audiences are still gray-haired enough to be alarming.  They were chattering happily about the performance when I left at the end.

Ever Yours, Oscar is running a limited number of performances through August 29th only, but they've added half a dozen to the schedule which have not been well-publicized, and those still have seats.  It's worth seeing for anyone within range of Stratford.

Cyrano de Bergerac (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/9/09)

Of course, I couldn't miss Cyrano de Bergerac.  It's one of my all-time favorite shows.  I first saw it as a young child in Dallas, probably at the Dallas Theater Center, where it made an indelible impression on me and helped shape my love for period drama and swashbuckling romance.  I saw it again in New York in the early 1980s, the magnificent Royal Shakespeare Company production with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack, which remains my ideal.  And fifteen years ago I saw it here at Stratford.  I can't offer any opinion on the one I saw as a child, when I pretty much loved everything I saw on a stage, but the RSC and 1994 Stratford versions were both superb; I count myself lucky to have seen two such productions.

(Photo: Colm Feore as Cyrano intimidates Robert Persichini as Montfleury; click to enlarge)

But this one was oddly dissatisfying. 

The Importance of Being Earnest (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/8/09)

"If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated."

Continuing my little comedy-binge, with the level of farce decreasing ever so slightly, I spent this afternoon at Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.  I've seen Earnest before, of course, including the excellent four-act Festival production directed by the late, lamented Richard Monette back in 2000.  But Wilde is Wilde, and always amusing, and this production has Brian Bedford double-dipping as both director and Lady Bracknell.  Bedford doing period comedy is a must-see for me.  As a bonus, the production was designed by the great Desmond Heeley.  (Left, Bedford in costume.  Click the image to zoom in.)

Overall, it was excellent.  First things first: Bedford makes a surprisingly convincing woman.  This was a not an obvious drag performance.  Over-the-top physical comedy isn't really necessary in such a role and Bedford is not one to overdo.  He simply played the part thoroughly and effectively.  His personal star power is well-suited to playing the sublimely self-centered Lady Bracknell, absolutely confident of her ability to dominate her family and the center of every scene she's in.  I'm not entirely sure I'd have read him had I not known beforehand.

Oh, Canada

I'm heading off to Canada on an extended vacation, or set of vacations: three days at an SCA event (Known World Dance Symposium), then about twenty-four hours in Toronto visiting a friend, followed by a week in Stratford seeing the usual cluster of shows.  I'm aiming for nine, but being spontaneous by not getting tickets in advance, so who knows what will happen.  I also have a brand-new tent which I've never put up.  Hopefully raising it won't be too interesting.

After last year's exciting experience at the border, I've made sure there is not so much as a stray twig anywhere in my car, and I plan to cross at Niagara rather than Lewiston.  It's going to be a rather interesting drive, since I'm getting started several hours later than plan and will be driving through most of the night.

I won't be totally offline, since there's net access everywhere I'm going, but I won't be around too often since it's, y'know, vacation.  Rixo is also likely to turn into all theater, all the time for awhile, though some back-posting may also occur as I finish up stuff I've had sitting around not-quite-finished for, um, a long time.

Everyone should take the opportunity to drink tea while I'm gone.  Try not to wreck the place.  And we're coming up fast on comment #6000, so if you talk up a storm while I'm gone it just might be you!

Have a happy holiday weekend, if you're celebrating Canada Day or Independence Day (U.S.A.)!

Anathem

Note to self: do not leave gigantic doorstopper Neal Stephenson novels for last in my Hugo reading when I'm under severe time pressure.  Anathem (HarperCollins 2008; no editor listed) is a solid 900-plus pages, not a single one of which could be described as easy reading, and took me three mornings, lunch hours, and sleep-deprived nights to make my way through, which is about twice as long as I'd expected.  This book just about killed me, and something more different from Little Brother would be hard to imagine.  This year's Hugo list is giving me some sort of literary whiplash.

Anathem is not for the intellectually timid or for anyone afraid of math, science, and philosophy.  I'm not well-versed in any of those three disciplines, and this book left me gasping for air much of the time.  Stephenson cuts his readers minimal slack.

The story starts fairly slowly, with the young "fraa" (monk) Erasmas moving through the daily routine of his "concent" (monastery): ritual observances with bells and song interspersed with manual labor and intellectual debate.  But this is not A Case of Conscience; the concent is not particularly religious in nature.  This is a community of scientist/philosopher-scholars with an entire descriptive hierarchy of terms for romantic/sexual liaisons between its denizens.  What appears at first to be a primitive, post-apocalyptic future Earth with familiar terms twisted by time rapidly turns out to be something else entirely.

Little Brother

Moving along through the Hugo nominees, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (Tor, 2008; editor: Patrick Nielsen Hayden) is absolutely top-notch very-near-future speculative fiction that should scare and anger everyone as much as it did me.

In a Bay Area high school only a few years in our future, post-9/11 security theater has gone crazy.  The students are subject to constant tracking via their school-issued laptops, their library books, and even their movement style, with "gait recognition" software.  Needless to say, many of the smarter teenagers are busy coming up with hacks and ways to evade this surveillance as fast as the authorities can implement it.  Cutting out of school means starting by frying the surveillance chip in a physics textbook so it won't set off alarms.

But when Marcus and his friends sneak out of school one day to engage in a sort of complex real-world scavenger hunt run as part of a massive online game, they have the bad luck to do so on the same day that a massive terrorist attack hits San Francisco and Department of Homeland Security troops round up anyone behaving suspiciously, which includes Marcus and his friends.  Imprisoned and interrogated, Marcus is eventually released only to find that restrictions on personal freedom and even on speech and thought are slowly being tightened in the name of "keeping people safe."  Sound familiar?  His idealistic defense of personal liberty via the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence does not go over well with either school authorities or his own father.

With few sympathetic adults to turn to, Marcus and his friends use simple tricks, social networks, cryptography, and their programming skills to technologically circumvent and undermine the crackdown while fighting to find a way to get their story heard and listened to.  Marcus' clear-eyed analysis of the uselessness of security theater and the price paid by innocent people due to the high failure rate of such precautions is familiar ground to anyone who's kept track of progressive political blogs over the past several years; Doctorow is clearly writing with utter personal passion.

Saturn's Children

I wanted to like this book.  Really.  I enjoyed Charles Stross' last two, Glasshouse and Halting State.  The latter was my #1 choice on the Hugo ballot last year; my thoughts on it are here.  I've enthusiastically recommended it to three different people in the last forty-eight hours.  But try as I might, I just could not care for Saturn's Children (Ace Books, 2008.  No editor listed.)

I was a little leery of the book from the start, since "lonely female sexbot" didn't sound to me like a character I was going to enjoy following.  Knowing it's a late-Heinlein pastiche, mostly of Friday, did not help, since I don't much like late Heinlein and particularly did not like Friday.  But Marilee liked it, and it turned up on the Hugo ballot, so I dutifully read it this week as part of my pre-voting marathon.

The Graveyard Book

I started off my June Hugo-novel-marathon for this year with Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins 2008; editors thanked in the acknowledgments are Isabel Ford, Elise Howard, Sarah Odedina, and Clarissa Hutton).  This is a Young Adult novel, but it's a good read for adults as well.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens, a boy raised in a graveyard by the resident ghosts after the mysterious murder of his parents.  Gaiman explicitly cites The Jungle Book as an influence, and I loved it for the same reasons I loved the Kipling: watching a normal child grow up as part of an alien culture, with occasional, confusing excursions into or incursions from the normal human world.  Nobody, known as Bod, picks up some ghostly tricks (Fading) and is tutored by long-dead ghosts in such useful topics as the Elements and Humours.  Gaiman adds in his own versions of ghouls (who struck me as a Twain homage, with adopted names like the Duke of Westminster and the Bishop of Bath and Wells), vampires, and werewolves as well as the mysterious Sleer, protectors of treasures buried deep beneath the graveyard, and gives Bod various episodic adventures before finally pulling the whole thing together to resolve the mystery of his family's murder.

2009 Hugos: Short Fiction Categories

Last year I read the short fiction nominees last.  This time I'm doing them first.  Most of the nominees are available online; Anticipation has a fairly complete set of links on its Hugo Awards page.  I can't say often enough how much I like this practice.  I subscribe to only one magazine and buy very few anthologies, so if it weren't for the online availability I'd probably never read these works and not vote at all in these categories.

I'm not going to include detailed reviews, but here are a few thoughts and my order-of-voting for each category.  I'm trying to be more aggressive in my use of "No Award" the last few years and place only the stories I truly feel are Hugo-worthy above it on the ballot.  That doesn't mean the others are bad, necessarily, just that they aren't as exciting to me.

Nothing's Gayer than the Lonely Goatherd

From the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS  2007 "Broadway Bares" show.  Donations to fight the scourge which has taken so much talent from the world of theater are accepted at their website.

The video is Not Safe For Work.

Happy Pride week!

Hat tip for the video and title to Dan Savage at Slog.

Edited to add:

The shapely male dancer is Nick Adams.

Naamah's Kiss

It feels unfair, somehow, to complain that Jacqueline Carey is recycling her characters when I really did enjoy the book.  But I've already read one book of hers involving an unbelievably beautiful young woman who is the specially chosen one of a deity; falls into bed with most of the other major characters; and is attracted to a tremendously skilled fighting man who disapproves of her morals but is nonetheless forced into her company, with predictable results.  That book was Kushiel's Dart, the first of Carey's novels set in an alternate-Europe in which France is Terre d'Ange, home of the d'Angelines: descendants of the gods, preternaturally beautiful, and living for uninhibited sex love.  This latest book, remarkably similar in setup, is Naamah's Kiss (Grand Central, June 2009), though that's a poor title, since the major god-relationship of the book is not with Naamah but with the eponymous bear-goddess of the Maghuin Dhonn, the mysterious original settlers of Alba (alternate-Britain) last seen sadly wreaking havoc in Kushiel's Justice.  I guess Maghuin Dhonn's Unspecified Destiny doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Mary Stuart (Broadway)

It's always interesting when theater immediately sends me off to do some historical research in order to figure out what parts of a play are based on fact.  This production of Mary Stuart, an 1800 play by Friedrich Schiller, was newly retranslated from the original German by Peter Oswald and revived in England (Donmar Warehouse and West End) before traveling on to Broadway with director Phyllida Lloyd and the two lead roles' casting intact in Janet McTeer (right) as Mary Stuart and Harriet Walter (left) as Elizabeth I, both of whom are on the ballot for the Tony Award for Best Actress tonight.  The play dramatizes an imaginary meeting between the two queens just prior to Mary's execution on charges of treason for her purported part in various assassination plots against Elizabeth.  It was extremely well-reviewed, and while I see more problems with the play than The New York Times' reviewer did, I found it utterly engrossing overall and was inspired to spend a couple of hours this morning refreshing my memory of 16th-century genealogy and political intrigue.

At the Corner

Seen from the edge of Bryant Park, 42nd & 6th, 1:23 PM, Saturday, June 6, 2009:

Women in dirndls carrying banners for a Chinese cultivation practice.*

Either a giant Elmo puppet or someone in an Elmo costume.  I did not get close enough to figure out which it was.**

Lolitas en masse.***  I don't know the official categories, but I'd have labeled them individually as a Gothic Lolita, a Fluffy Pink Lolita, several Punk Lolitas, an Elegant Lolita, and a Honey, Bright Red Polka Dots and Stripes Really Do Not Flatter Your Figure Lolita.

(Yes, I really need to get into the habit of carrying a camera everywhere.  If I'd been quick on the uptake, I could have framed all of the above in a single shot.)

*Falun Dafa (a.k.a. Falun Gong) in its own words.  It was a Falun Dafa parade.  There were people from everywhere, many in national costume, but the dirndls were the most delightfully incongruous.  They also had dragon and lion dancers and a marching band.  I approve of colorful parades so I settled in at the corner to watch for a bit.

**Not having watched Sesame Street since the early 1970s or The Muppet Show ever, I felt that merely identifying the large red muppet as Elmo showed such an admirable awareness of popular culture on my part that no further effort was necessary.

**Does anyone know the proper term for a group of Lolitas?  Should we make one up?

We're All Mad Here

Crazy-mad this time.

I went far away last night and back again in the wee hours of the morning via shuttle and trains and subway and taxis and feet in the rain to hear S.J. Tucker (Skinny White Chick) sing at a lovely little house concert hosted by my friends Merav and Jon.  This falls under the heading of "crazy, not smart" on a weeknight, but I rarely get to see Sooj and hear her sing, and I didn't feel like waiting 'til next January at Arisia to do so.

(picture: Sooj sings "Alligator in the House" -- click to enlarge)

It started out as Hogwarts

Poor Bonnie Tyler. Not only did the Amateur Transplants borrow the tune of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for their "Anaesthetists Hymn", now one of the makers of literal videos has piled on with a hilarious take on the song's rather mind-boggling early-1980s MTV video, supposedly storyboarded by Jim (Bat out of Hell) Steinman, who must have had a little help from a whole pharmacopeia of illicit substances.

I'm not a rabid fan of literal videos unless they're vocally very similar to the original and have consistently clever lyrics.  I don't like to watch three or four or seven minutes of video for only one or two good lines, and it ruins the joke if the vocal sound is too noticeably different.  It also helps if I know the original video and/or song.  I laughed myself sick last fall over this LV version of A-Ha's "Take on Me," the infamous "Sketchy Arm" and "Pipe Wrench Fight" video:

Take on Me: Literal Video Version

Joss Whedon at Wesleyan (May 30, 2009)

There aren't too many TV/film-related people that I'd make a special effort to see, but of the ten or twelve TV shows I've seen more than the odd episode of in my entire life, three are Joss Whedon's work, as is most of the dialogue from one of my favorite action movies, Speed.*  I think he's a brilliant writer and storyteller, and I'd never heard him speak.  So I made the time to trek thirty miles up the road on a Saturday evening and sit in a long line on the sidewalk outside Wesleyan's film studies building for ninety minutes in order to get a seat in the auditorium for his talk, titled "Defining American Culture: How Movies and TV Get Made."  The talk was the keynote speech for a larger conference.  I didn't feel like paying $250 to spend the weekend talking about breaking into Hollywood, so I was quite grateful that they opened the speech to the public for free.

As might be expected, Whedon is a witty and entertaining speaker, well worth the queue time.  Despite his geeky, aw-shucks veneer and claimed nervousness, he spoke fluently and  confidently, with a deep knowledge of and love for his field.  And if he was using notes, it wasn't obvious; the whole thing felt like a casual (if unusually amusing) conversation.  Not having spent much time watching his DVD commentaries, I was surprised that his voice was deeper than I expected and that he was sporting a distinctly red beard.

The rest of this extremely lengthy post is mostly a description of and excerpts from his remarks.  I thought when I started tapping away that I'd just get down a few good lines to quote, but it turned out to be such an interesting talk that I started taking very detailed notes and transcribing furiously.  He tosses off serial one-liners faster than I can type, but I believe anything in quotes below is word-for-word accurate.

Enjoy!

Over to Whedon:

"It is with great honor and extraordinary terror that I address you tonight..."

One Day More

Every year I am less and less fond of this system wherein I'm actually only one day older than I was yesterday but am officially labeled one year older.  It's entirely unfair for a matter of six hours' sleep to encompass three hundred and sixty-five symbolic days of aging.

Tonight I will dance, but in the meantime, tell me something amusing to distract me.  By preference, something without the word "happy" or any similar sentiments directed at me.

Let the Right One In

I've been reading and enjoying a series of Swedish crime novels over the last year (discussed here, here, and here), so why not a Swedish vampire movie, especially when it came well-reviewed and they were conveniently showing it at Balticon?  Let The Right One In turned out to be a great way to spend a couple of low-key hours late Saturday night.  I imagine this destroys my credibility as a party animal, that I'd blow off parties at 11:30 to go sit in the video room.  It was worth it.

The film is a romance, though the protagonist, a boy named Oskar, is a mere twelve years old.  Despite being so pale he looks almost albino, he's not the vampire.  That would be his new neighbor Eli, of unclear gender, who, as (s)he puts it (via dubbing -- I've no idea about the original dialogue) has "been twelve for a very long time."  Eli denies being a girl, though the character is played by an actress, and it was never clear to me during the film whether that denial was of gender or of humanity.  The one time Eli ends up wearing a dress, it looks tremendously odd, but is that because the character is of the wrong sex, the wrong gender expression, or just the wrong (apparent) age for an adult style?

Oskar and Eli form a curiously loving alliance with a definite edge of prepubescent sensuality to it, though it never progresses to anything graphic.  It's all done (and done well) with a charged atmosphere and confused sexual tension.  It's rumored there's going to be an American remake, which I suspect will up the characters' ages several years and possibly un-blur the gender question (since much of the U.S. is not going to deal well with an underage genderqueer love story), quadruple the gore, and generally ruin the entire thing.

TypePad Off Its Meds Again

2:42pm EDITED TO ADD: The problems seem to be fixed now.  Feel free to experiment with limited html in the comments here to test.

Yes, I've noticed that in-comment html is not functioning.

Yes, I've noticed that direct links to comments are broken again.

I didn't do it, I promise.  I don't mess around with the coding here.  I'm still on the Blogging For Dummies platform that doesn't let me.  So it's TypePad, not me.

I've sent in complaints to TypePad support.  One of the tech people apologizes; he was doing some stuff with the comments and seems to have broken things.  Three other people have replied that they are addressing things.  I have sent in more complaints.  I will keep complaining.  Feel free to post more complaints and sympathy here.

If it doesn't get fixed quickly, I'll post the CEO's email address for more efficient complaining.  I'm not waiting months for them to fix it again.  You may also address the company directly via GetSatisfaction (registration required); you may find my complaint thread here.

In the meantime, temporary links to the ends of long threads that have current commenting:

Iron Man
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Wolverine

I'll try to update these periodically.  Let me know if there are other threads you want end-linked.

And you know what's freaky?  Those are links to SPECIFIC COMMENTS.  And they're WORKING.  Hello, TypePad tech?  The entire system isn't broken, just whatever process codes the Recent Comments list.

Balticon 43 Program Schedule

I'm just getting ready for Balticon this weekend and as always would be happy to meet any lurking (or non-lurking) Rixo readers who want to say hi.  My program schedule consists of two costume panels and a Steampunk ball.  I haven't actually gotten a formal schedule, so I don't have full descriptions of the costume panels, but here are the bare bones of it.  I'll update if I get more info pre-con.

Dancing in the Gears (Steampunk Ball)
Friday, 10:00pm-???
Susan de Guardiola with Jeff Poretsky, Raven Stern, and Marc Hartstein
Attention all aeronauts, aethernauts, lady and gentleman adventurers, mad scientists, inventors, and other Steampunks and neo-Victorians! Join us at 10pm Friday night at for a time-traveling formal evening at the Steampunk Ball! Become part of the living clockwork of Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas. No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance mistress Susan de Guardiola. Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century. Steampunk, neo-Victorian, or Victorian costume encouraged and admired but not required. Airships and time machines should be parked outside the ballroom. No sabers, ray guns, or clanks permitted on the dance floor.

Playing with Others: Group Costumes
Saturday, 4:00-5:00pm
Susan de Guardiola, Sharon Landrum, Karen Dick, Deb Salisbury
I'm clearly on this one because of last year's worldcon insanity with the giant Interplanet Janet group.  Sharon was one of the movers behind Bucconneer's gigantic Aladdin group.  Karen has a track record dating back to the early 1980s as one of the talents behind such magnificent groups as "Turn of a Friendly Card," "Pyrogenesis," "Blood Rites," "The Court of the Crimson King," and way too many others to count.

The Next Big Thing: What is Steampunk
Sunday, 3:00-4:00pm
Susan de Guardiola, Raven Stern, Ron Robinson, Judy M.
I sincerely hope we're just talking about Steampunk in a costume sense, from the Victorian all the way to the punk (which also covers Goth and tribal, I imagine).

Since I'm never entirely confident about publicity for a Friday night event, I'd be delighted if anyone with a blog or an LJ (especially if you're a member of a Steampunk community) could help spread the word about Friday night's dance.

 Edited 5/23/09 to add:

Well, it's always great fun to find out when you get to a convention that you've been surprise-scheduled for another panel.  I will also be on this one:

Vampires: Why We Love Them
Sunday, 11:00pm-midnight
Susan de Guardiola, Tony Ruggiero, Patrick Thomas, Jonathan Maberry
I trust the title of this one is self-explanatory.  I did volunteer for it, I just didn't realize I'd been scheduled for it.  I do vampire panels because for many years I collected vampire novels extensively and still collect them in a somewhat less obsessive fashion.  I tend to be the person either representing the literature side (if it's all about Buffy and other TV/film stuff) or the non-trendy side (vampire fiction before/other than Anne Rice, Twilight, etc.)

The Mayor of Castro Street

I made a note after seeing the film Milk last winter to finally pick up Randy Shilts' first book, The Mayor of Castro Street, the biography of Harvey Milk upon which, I assume, the film was based.  It's been sitting around for a while, but I carried it with me on my travels this past weekend and finally managed to get around to reading it.  It's just as gripping as the movie, even knowing the tragic outcome, and goes into much more depth about Milk's earlier life and loves as well as the political and social aftermath of the Milk/Moscone assassinations.  As with Shilts' most famous work, And the Band Played On, the journalism is excellent (he lists his sources at the end) and the reconstructions of scenes and characters' thoughts are convincing.  And, of course, it's a compelling and well-told story.  Randy Shilts' death from AIDS in 1994 was a staggering loss to journalism and literature. 

Little (Grrl) LOST

Getting back to young adult fiction, I picked up a Charles de Lint novel, Little (Grrl) LOST (Firebird 2007, and yes, the title is formatted like that) at Lunacon and read it in various airports today.  I sometimes have trouble getting into a de Lint novel, but in this case I was very, very pleased from the first page all the way to the end.

The novel caught my eye because it seemed like a modern spin on the Borrowers books which I remember fondly from my childhood: miniature people who live within the walls of our houses, scavenging the necessities of life from us.  But in this case, the book pairs a Big (regular-sized) teenage girl with a Little teenager who happens to be a punk, blue-haired runaway full of attitude.

Around I Go

I'm going to be wandering around the country this weekend, with a trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan on Thursday & Friday for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, where I am presenting a paper, and then out to Los Angeles on Saturday and Sunday to see friends.  Yes, it was actually pretty cheap to combine those trips into one wacky set of flights.  Hopefully the actual execution of my travel plans will be slightly less wacky than last year's exciting experience.

If anyone who happens to be reading Rixo wants to meet up in person in either location, now is the time to say so.

I won't be offline much, since both places I'm staying and several of the airports have net access, so talk among yourselves but don't plan any wild, blog-wrecking parties in the comments.  Sedate tea-sipping and genteel conversation leavened with vague innuendo and the odd pun are quite acceptable, however.

A Dangerous Climate

Well, I feel like very, very slightly less of a fool this evening than I did the last few times I read one of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's vampire books.  This is damning with faint praise, but about all I can say for A Dangerous Climate (Tor, 10/08; editor: Melissa Singer) is that it's much better than Dark of the Sun (see my thoughts on that one here).  I'd say minor plot-spoilers follow, but I'm not sure you can spoil what doesn't entirely exist.

Wolverine

What a silly, silly movie.

Everyone gets that I don't really write reviews, right?  I just talk about things.  So this post has a few plot spoilers, though I've tried to keep them minimal.  And honestly, this is not a movie to go see for the plot.  It's also not a movie to see if you have a problem with nails on a blackboard, because Wolverine is all about the very similar claws on all sorts of things.

Wolverine was part of the X-Men when I was reading that book regularly, but he was never one of my favorite characters.  I also stopped reading X-Men right around the time they started doing a lot more background and spinoff stuff with the character, so I'm not particularly well-informed about his history and origin story.  All of this may have been a real advantage in seeing Wolverine.  Having the background on the mutant universe but having no emotional stake in them getting it right, I could just enjoy the explosions and the very scenic Hugh Jackman, whose Wolverine is much more of a sensitive New Age guy than I remember from the comic book version of the early 1980s.  He does smoke cigars, though; I guess those are exempt from the general make-tobacco-vanish Hollywood rules that seem to apply even to period pieces like Watchmen.

The plot is full of gaping holes, so let me skip that for now and talk about the fun stuff.

NEFFA 2009 Ramblings

I've been so tired lately that I tried to take it very easy at NEFFA this year.  I was only teaching one session, basic cross-step waltz with Amy Cann and her fellow musicians of Calliope.  It was scheduled first thing Saturday morning, which (not being a morning person), I hate, especially since I was staying a full hour away at my home-away-from-home in Medford.  Next year I need to try being slightly less flexible in my acceptable schedule times.  But the session went well, and once again I had people accosting me in the hallways and even, memorably, from a car in a dark parking lot late at night, to tell me how much they'd enjoyed it.  I could get a seriously swelled head from all the positive feedback I get at dance festivals.  Working with Calliope was great -- being able to pretty much just wave my hand and summon music of the proper style and tempo makes teaching much simpler.

After teaching, I had food and checked in the Spare Parts CDs I'm selling.  Since I wasn't teaching a session relevant to those CDs I'd only brought along a few each of The Regency Ballroom and The Polo.  I didn't expect to sell many, but one can always hope.

Along with attending a few dance sessions, about which more below, I did a little gentle shopping (two very cheap CDs of fiddle music for dancing and a small stuffed sheep), and hung out with various friends -- it was good to see Merav & Mike, Kat/Sor, JB, Joanne, David & Ottavia, Hobbit, David & Persis, Peter, Jeremy & Angela, Pat, Simone, Helen, Kristin, Liefe, Michael, Katy & Ben, Nicole & Brian, Terry, and more others than I can remember off the top of my head.  I even did a little negotiating and more-or-less settled two gigs for the fall.  October's weekends are now completely gone, with three out of four on the road and one at home with the EAS Regency Assembly and multiple houseguests.  Whee!

Hannibal Rising

(Warning: significant spoilers below!  The entire plot spoiled!  Really!  Read this and you can skip the book.  But I recommend doing that anyway.)

I picked up Hannibal Rising (2006), the fourth written but first chronologically of Thomas Harris' novels about or including the character of the murderous Hannibal Lecter, by chance at a friend's house.  I'm glad I didn't buy it myself.  Of the first three novels, I thought The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon were simply superb.  I've reread both many times.  But the third book, Hannibal, went in some directions I didn't much like (not including the notorious campy/horrific "eat your brains" scene), and overall I find Lecter more useful as a supporting character than as a protagonist.  Hannibal Rising makes him the center of the story and explains, per the cover, "the origin of Dr Lecter's evil."  And while the book isn't entirely bad, I think that the entire idea of explaining Lecter was a mistake, with Harris apparently pushed into writing it by the determination in Hollywood to make an "origins" film with or without his participation.  In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter states

Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling.  I happened.  You can't reduce me to a set of influences.

This book reduces Lecter to a set of influences: a bright (albeit creepy) young child turned to murder and cannibalism by traumatic experiences during World War II.  And giving his evil a reason takes all the interest out of it. 

Dead Until Dark

As a sometime collector of vampire novels, I've been hearing about Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series of "southern vampire" novels, meaning novels set in a small town in rural Louisiana (as opposed, presumably, to vampire novels set in the equally southern New Orleans, of which there is not exactly a shortage.)  After getting throughly sick of Laurell Hamilton's endless parade of sudsy Anita Blake novels, I was a little resistant to yet another vampires-become-legal-and-society-must-cope series, but a glimpse of the recent HBO television series adaptation, True Blood, last fall made me think perhaps I ought to at least try one.  So I picked up the first, Dead Until Dark (2001), at Lunacon.  I was pleasantly surprised.  While the basic elements of the vampire/human clash are not particularly original, the setting in a small rural town with a cast of mostly lower-class characters and a vampire who is not perfectly adjusted to human society and not reliably (and irritatingly) suave actually made the whole concept feel fresher than I'd expected.  And while the vampires are preternaturally good-looking and -- of course -- spectacular lovers, Harris doesn't dwell on either aspect as endlessly and tediously as Hamilton does.

Watchmen

Three days after finally seeing the film version of Watchmen I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it.  I'd done a little warmup for it by rereading the original again for the first time in a few years, visiting the "Art of Watchmen" exhibit at MoCCA (still up through May 2) to see the gorgeous portraits of the actors in character (collected in Clay Enos's Watchmen: Portraits), and listening to an interesting talk by Bob Greenberger on the history of the graphic novel.  I've always agreed with Alan Moore that the book is essentially unfilmable; there's just too much in it to translate easily to the screen except perhaps as a twelve-part miniseries.  Even leaving out all the added material and limiting it to the comic story (was ever "comic" a more completely inappropriate label for something?) would be a challenge. 

I loved the original book from the start (my trade paperback is a first edition) and have reread it at intervals, each time finding new layers of meaning in it, so I was very wary of seeing it on the screen.  But this was a much better adaptation than I'd expected.  I'm completely incapable of discussing the film apart from its source material, so I won't even try.

Deep Waters Don't Run Still

I wouldn't exactly say I'm into metal, musically.  My tastes are so eclectic I don't think I can describe them succinctly.  I like to experience music actively and viscerally, so anything I can dance or otherwise get physical to pleases me, from waltzes to hard, thumping metal.  I also like clever lyrics and interesting music videos.  By way of the latter, I've been watching/listening to a lot of Rammstein lately.  The lyrics are mostly wasted on me since they sing primarily in German, which isn't one of my languages beyond a half-dozen simple words (a few numbers and dance terms).  They generally sound angry, but German is a great language for rage, and as a friend of mine pointed out, for all I know they might just be aggressively reciting their grocery lists.  

(After that comment I went and looked up some lyrics.  Definitely not grocery lists.)

They've been classified as Neue Deutsche Härte ("new German hardness"), Tanz-Metal ("dance metal"), industrial rock, heavy metal, gothic rock, etc.  Whatever.  I've no clear idea what distinguishes those genres, but I know what I like.  I first heard a song of theirs when I danced to it at Stanford Waltz Week a few years ago, then was reminded of them last fall when I received a mix CD with one of their songs on it.  Since then I've been digging around for information and trawling for videos on YouTube.

Things You See in a City

BMW art cars from the 1970s by Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg.

Gold paper clips scattered all over the sidewalk.  I did not pick them up.

Gorgeous black and white portrait photographs of the actors from the Watchmen movie in their roles/costumes.  This is the second of three things I am doing to whet my appetite for seeing the film on Thursday.

The exquisitely corded (sleeves double-corded; remember this technique) "Red Death" costume from Phantom of the Opera as well as Christine's "Masquerade" costume, originally worn by Sarah Brightman, which I recognized on sight.  I had not realized Maria Bjornson had died.

Catherine Elliott pacing gracefully through the Lulu Fado in her butterfly-decorated gown and little gathered cap in 1916.  Where were you?  Who were you?  And what did you say at the end?

Black peppercorns carefully arranged in a triangular formation.  Also, green peas lurking in tomato soup in a steel bowl.

Mitzvah tanks on parade.

Eight dancers performing "La Trenise" as prescribed in the 1818 manuscript Contre Danses à Paris.

Starcrash

Sometimes a movie is just so awful that it transcends awfulness and becomes hugely entertaining.  I've just had the pleasure of seeing the deliciously, magnificently bad Starcrash with my friends Bob and Marianne, and I'm inspired by the experience to share it with all of the Rixo-reading world.  Click the pictures below to see larger versions.

Starcrash is an Italian Star Wars ripoff from 1978 directed by one Luigi Cozzi operating under the name "Lewis Coates" and starring Caroline Munro as the noted space smuggler Stella Star.  Ms. Munro does not seem to have been hired for her acting talents, but she ably delivers witty observations like this:

"What in the UNIVERSE is that???"
[gasp]
"It's a SPACESHIP!"

I'm not aware of any official audience calls for Starcrash, but at this point one feels impelled to scream "DUH!!!!"

Lunacon 2009 Ramblings

Friday
I arrived much later than scheduled due to my day job dragging itself out longer than planned.  Check-in was a nightmare; it took more than half an hour to manage the simple task of getting the room and paying in cash for half the room cost.  The guy could not figure out that amount, despite some math help from me (no, $63 is really not half the cost for the weekend, though if he'd give it to me in writing...)  And then he couldn't make change.  Midway through this my roommate Mary Alice Ladd wandered by and I found out that she'd been able to check in even though her name wasn't on the room.  Wonderful security problem there -- maybe I should have just tried to check into someone else's room?  I asked to speak to a manager but it took so long for one to appear that I finally gave up waiting.  The hotel sent me a survey a couple of days later asking about my experience, and I gave them quite a diatribe about the utter incompetence of their Friday front desk staff.  Not a good start to the con.  Fortunately, it got a lot better.

I am Carded

It always find it amusing when stuffy old Connecticut gets ahead of, say, San Francisco in matters progressive.  Usually we get little recognition for it; while California was busy making headlines last year, Connecticut quietly started legally marrying gay couples.  So I was amused to hear that San Francisco had also copied another program my adopted hometown started offering about eighteen months ago:

Last year, in an act of considerable political courage, New Haven began offering a municipal ID card to all residents, including illegal immigrants. The reaction from anti-immigrant forces was predictably ugly. Protesters disrupted hearings, heckled and threatened city officials and tried to intimidate businesses that supported the program, which is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. The city has held firm.
-- The New York Times (editorial), May 22, 2008.

When I say "oo..."

As usual, I'm about a year behind the curve on noticing silly things on the internet, like this video by Moog featuring British rapper MC Elemental, introduced as:

The quintessential English fellow, explorer, scientist, exotic dancer and some might say raving lunatic.  Banned from 13 of the colonies for 'unspeakable scientific experiments', yet heralded as something of a deity in a great many more.

I was filled with fear when I first saw the title, "Cup of Brown Joy," given the last time the word "cup" came up in the context of a video, but it has nothing to do with that other thing, I promise.  I think it could even be considered Steampunk.

Stomp (U.S. tour, New Haven, 3/18/09)

I was back at the Shubert last night to see the road version of Stomp, which has a lovely website running video from the show on the front page.  I felt like I must be the last theater person on earth to see this show; my own mother exclaimed on the phone "but I saw that ten years ago!"  Well, yes, mom, but you didn't invite me, did you?  I went with four local dance friends.

Stomp isn't standard theatrical fare.  It's an all-percussion performance with no spoken lines at all, though the ability of the cast to convey humorous little personal interactions purely by body language was impressive.  Likewise, the sheer range of stuff they used to make noises (banging, swishing, thumping, etc.)  This included everything from the push brooms of the opening number to the giant trash cans and can lids of the finale.  It wasn't the proverbial everything but the kitchen sink; one number actually used several kitchen sinks.  They were attached to harnesses so they could be carried around by the performers and filled partly with water, the draining of which became a comedy routine all by itself.  They even used sand to make noise by sliding their feet through it (reminding me of some social dancers...)  The cast also brought the audience into the show by starting up call-and-response clapping several times.

Lunacon: Steampunk and Repo!

I'm off to Lunacon this weekend at the Escher (Rye Town) Hilton in Westchester County, NY.  I have a light program schedule: just a Steampunk Ball running from 10pm-??? on Friday night.  The blurb for the ball is:

Attention all aeronauts, aethernauts, lady and gentleman adventurers, mad scientists, inventors, and other Steampunks and neo-Victorians!

Join us at 10:00 PM Friday night in the Grand Ballroom for a time-traveling formal evening at the Steampunk Ball! Become part of the living clockwork of Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas.

No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance mistress Susan de Guardiola.

Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century. Steampunk, neo-Victorian, or Victorian costume encouraged and admired, but not required.

Airships and time machines should be parked outside the ballroom. No sabers, ray guns, or clanks permitted on the dance floor.

I'll be there in my black 1880s ballgown with little Steampunk touches (goggles!) teaching and calling Victorian and Victorian-inspired dances to a mix of modern and 19th-century music.  I'm a little worried about attendance with it being on Friday night, so if anyone who's going to Lunacon would like to help spread the word, please feel free to do so.  Really, please, pretty please!

I thought about volunteering for more programming, but decided I was feeling lazy, so I'm going to do my ball and then relax for the rest of the weekend and spend some time with friends.

Part of this relaxation will include wandering around in my thrown-together Repo! The Genetic Opera "GeneCo Inventory Girl" hall costume (a copy of the one from the movie, shown here).  It will be interesting to see if anyone recognizes this extremely minor, non-speaking background character.  Repo is my latest favorite obsession, and this will probably be the first of several costumes from the movie that emerge from my sewing room over the next few months.  I haven't done re-creation costumes in years; it's interesting going back into the obsessive-copying mindset needed to do it well.  My lengthy do-list includes such weird tasks as "boil the fur" and "dissect pantyhose."

As usual, if you read Rixo and will be at Lunacon, please say hi!

Marilee Hospitalized

This seems the most efficient way to let folks here know.  Marilee Layman has been hospitalized with a stroke.  Marilee's health has been precarious for many years, so this is...bad, though not as bad as it could be.  This is after another inconclusive hospitalization earlier this week.

I spoke earlier this evening to one of her friends from her library book group, Steve, who has been to the hospital to visit and reports that she is in the non-critical Neurological ICU.  She is conscious and responsive and does not appear physically impaired, but is having difficulty finding words.  He was able to visit only for a few minutes before she started to get a headache.  He picked up her house key and reassured her that her cats would be cared for by a neighbor who has done so in the past, which was her major concern.  (And he visited the cats and told me they were fine, if annoyed at having dry food.)

I've never met Marilee in person, but she has been incredibly supportive of me as a blogger and a friend and has been one of the most regular commenters here and on my dance history blog.  Her absence leaves a noticeable hole in our conversation and a gaping hole in my heart.  Hopefully it will be temporary and brief.

Since no one has access to her LJ account to post updates there, Steve has set up a separate forum on which he can provide updates on Marilee's condition here.  The hospital will not reveal information to anyone outside the family, but Steve is in touch with Marilee's brother for medical updates.

The Inner Circle

Since they're very fast reads, I decided I would polish off the third Mari Jungstedt novel I had on hand, next in the series that started with Unseen and continued with Unspoken, as previously discussed (here and here).  It's generally a sign of stress when I start burning through mysteries in clumps or serial killer novels in any quantity.  But at least Jungstedt's are fairly high-quality, and written with sufficient distance that I am not compelled to dwell morbidly on horrific details.  Her third Gotland mystery, The Inner Circle (2005; English translation 2008, St. Martin's Minotaur), is set about six months after Unspoken and continues to follow Police Inspector Anders Knutas and television journalist Johan Berg, now stationed in Gotland near his beloved Emma.  Tiina Nunnally serves ably again as Jungstedt's translator from the Swedish original.

This time I was careful not to read the inside blurb beforehand, after the severe spoilers offered in that of the previous book.  But I was annoyed upon reading it afterwards to see at least one plot spoiler in it.  Who's writing the copy for these things at St. Martin's?

Unspoken

I read my first Mari Jungstedt novel, Unseen, last summer (my thoughts on it here), and immediately decided to pick up the next two in her series of crime novels set on the Swedish island of Gotland.  The second book, Unspoken (2004; English translation 2007, St. Martin's Minotaur) takes place a few months after Unseen and returns the major characters: Police Inspector Anders Knutas and television journalist Johan Berg, along with Johan's married lover, Emma.

I was somewhat annoyed that the inside front cover of the book blithely reveals a major plot development not given in the book until well past the halfway point and comes close to revealing the entire ending.  I wonder whose stupid idea that was?  If you pick up the book, be advised to avoid reading the cover copy.

Aetheric Mechanics

I fully meant to read Warren Ellis' graphic novella Aetheric Mechanics (Apparat, 2008; art credits Gianluca Pagliarini, Chris Dreier, Juanmar) before the Hugo nomination deadline so I could see whether I wanted to nominate it in the one-shot Graphic Story category.  I didn't quite manage it due to an oversupply of life the last month.  But I finally sat down with it today and enjoyed the story a great deal, though the art is a little bit busy for my tastes.  At a little under fifty pages, it's quite a fast read.  While it doesn't matter for the Graphic Story category, I wonder if it would even qualify as a [Hugo category] novella by word count alone.

The story begins in March, 1907, with one Captain Doctor Robert Watcham returning to London from the front lines of an unspecified war.  It's quickly clear that this is a Steampunk sort of alternate history: the war is being conducted in space as well as on Earth by the Royal Navy Outer Service, and the enemy is...not what I expected.

"Since Ruritania annexed Grand Fenwick, they've been trying to launch the odd picket overhead.  What with that and American privateers spotted around Mars, it's a busy time."

Weird @ Wicked

Overheard in an elevator yesterday: "You can't be a dragon -- you're my polyamorous sex slave!"  Sometimes it's better to just imagine the explanation.

I popped down to Wicked Faire in New Jersey for the day Saturday, which turned out to be a fairly odd experience as cons go and to set some sort of record for disorganization.  But it was fun anyway.  I hung out in the Steampunk room and talked to assorted old and new friends who conveniently dropped by.  I saw some really lovely Steampunk costumes but also way too many corsets-as-outerwear (I am tempted to unflatteringly abbreviate this as CaOWs.)  A new problem with that: unless the corset is cut to go over a bustle - and most purchased corsets are not - it makes a big dent in the back of the bustle, which looks kind of silly. 

I didn't take very many pictures overall, but I'll post a few here (click the images for larger versions.)  But I shopped!  I bought an overpriced black spaghetti-strap top with a suggestive statement embroidered on it.  Buying that sort of top is still novelty enough for me to accept the price.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

Movie.  Surgery.  Movie.  Surgery. 

Movie first, surgery at the end, to be precise.

Just so everyone knows: this is entirely Raven's fault.  She's been on my case for months about this movie, and then she went and put it in my Hugo suggestion post comments, so I felt honor-bound to watch it before the nomination deadline.

I see very few movies -- usually only two or three a year in the theater.  I don't like gore.  I avoid horror movies, and I cover my eyes when things get bloody.  I don't like opera.  I don't like Paris Hilton.  I don't like Sarah Brightman and those liquid-nitrogen high notes of hers.  I'm not goth.  And I thoroughly dislike being told that anything is going to be a cult classic.

So when I sat down to watch Repo! The Genetic Opera on my computer screen, I was expecting to hate it and was already working up a tactful apology for Raven explaining that I was about twenty years too old and just insufficiently cool to connect with it.  But since I'm going to Wicked Faire this weekend, where one of the actors from the movie is going to be, I figured it would be useful to take a look and see what all the fuss is about.

(Anyone who remembers my similarly resigned approach to Buffy in the runup to Buffycon is probably snickering right about now...)

Flurry Ramblings

Back from the Flurry with a few random thoughts.

The trip up was a mess.  The problem with leaving after work is that while New Haven's rush hour isn't a particular problem heading north, I hit Hartford just at its rush hour.   I spent well over an hour sitting in traffic between Hartford and Springfield (who would have thought that many people commuted across that border?) listening to disco music for my line dance session and doing little finger dances on my leg to train my brain.  Once I got to Springfield the traffic magically cleared up and the rest of the drive was uneventful.  I found my homestay without any problem, and after a few false starts managed to figure out how to get over to the festival site on foot.  This would have been more fun if it hadn't been dark and really cold.  Next time: print a map that shows both homestay site and festival site.

Saratoga was covered in snow, with snow-berms along the roads and sidewalks that were three to five feet tall, and in a few extreme cases taller than me.  I'm impressed with how very well-cleared their roads are.  The sidewalks were more of a mixed bag; most had clearly been well-shoveled, but icemelt had run back onto them later, leaving them extremely slippery in places.  The carousel I rode last June was closed for the season, but the park looked very pretty covered in snow.  I did not need an ATM at any point during the weekend, but if I had, Saratoga was all set to help me find one.

Forth to the Flurry

I'm off to Saratoga Springs (NY) tonight for the fabulous Dance Flurry, at which I'll be teaching a rather bizarrely mismatched set of four workshops: Waltz 101, Cross-step waltz, Chiaranzana (a 16th-century Italian dance), and 1970s disco line dances.  I've spent the last couple of weeks immersed in disco dance manuals and Saturday Night Fever video clips and lots of late 1970s music in preparation for the latter.  I just hope someone comes to that session!

In between, I'm going to try to squeeze in some purely-for-fun dancing of various sorts: ragtime, modern Scottish country dance, modern English country dance, waltz, contra, Lindy, etc.

I've no idea if there's any net access there, so I expect to be offline from tonight until Sunday evening, when I will arrive home pleasantly exhausted, possibly too much so to check email.  But I might trip over some WiFi and end up popping by, so don't plan to wreck the place while I'm gone.  And leave me some weird and wonderful comments to enjoy when I get back!

Trail of Indiscretion #9

I picked up Trail of Indiscretion #9 on a whim during a fast wander around the dealer's room at Darkovercon last November, but it only just surfaced in my to-read pile.  I'd never heard of most of the names in the table of contents, or even the publisher (Fortress Publishing), though it seems to have a small track record of comics and magazines published over the past two years.  But the table-minding editor was amusing and wrote me a haiku on the spot, which was a clever way to get me to hang around the table long enough to want something to read.  I picked up an issue at random and was intrigued by the artwork.  I've no idea how they make these smaller-than-small press things work financially, but it's so nice to see people trying to make a go of genre fiction periodicals that I figured I could spare the $5 (minus a five-cent credit for what I paid for the haiku) for 48 pages of content and a full-color cover.

Herpes-Proofing Mice

Well, this is pretty nifty: a researcher at Harvard has come up with a topical microbicide that prevents transmission of the herpes simplex virus (HSV-2) in mice.  I'm a little surprised this hasn't made bigger headlines, even though it's a long way from anything useful to humans.

I'm no biologist, but if I correctly understand the science, Dr. Judy Lieberman has come up with small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules which target both HSV-2's ability to replicate AND the cell surface receptor protein that makes the mice susceptible to infection.  The one-two whammy prevents transmission for a week, which would certainly make it more useful for humans who prefer things a little more spontaneous.  ("Honey, let me slather you with microbicidal siRNA goo" not being high on most people's list of sweet nothings to whisper during foreplay.)  It also apparently works if applied a few hours after exposure: a morning-after herpes prophylactic. 

Shawnee Mission East: Really Cool School

Civil rights progress tends to be two steps forward, one step back, and we certainly had that last fall with Prop 8.  But I'd never have expected Kansas, of all places, to generate any news stories that give me real hope for the future.  I think of Kansas as a pretty conservative place, a ruby-red state, despite Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and deeply religious in a way that often adds up to intolerance.  But there are people out there in Kansas who pay attention to the parts of Christianity that are about love rather than hate, and a lot of them seem to go to Shawnee Mission East high school, where a few hunded students rallied spontaneously to protest a hate-filled demonstration by anti-gay religious nutcase Fred Phelps and his followers, best known for picketing military funerals to condemn acceptance of gay people in the U.S.  The kids outnumbered the Phelps crowd about 400 to 12 and turned their counter-demonstration into an AIDS fundraiser.  The Kansas City Star has the story here.  Be sure to watch the slide show and see the kids' homemade signs:

Jesus Wouldn't Hate Why Should You?

Gay?  Fine By Me.

Intolerance Breeds Hatred

Open Eyes/Open Mind/Open Heart

I go to Boston soon

Me going to Boston for a weekend is not usually news, but me going to Boston and having a little free time here and there during which I might see people does qualify.  I'm driving up Saturday morning and back Sunday night.  I will be teaching both Saturday afternoon (cross-step waltz 1:30-4:00 in Medford) and Sunday afternoon (Regency tea dance 2:00-5:00 in West Newton), but this leaves me free to possibly have meals or other low-stress socialization with people before, after, or in between.  (I can only think of four people who read Rixo who live in Boston, two of whom I will see at the dances, but maybe some lurking person will surprise me.) 

My preferred method of meeting, given my utter inability to navigate in Boston, is that people come to where I am.

I go into this trip with mixed feelings because two years ago awfulness happened during this same weekend, and then last year I was overwhelmed by ghosts and memories.  I'm hoping that this year with a little more distance I can be more in the present and in better spirits