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Saturday, October 5, 2002

A few Firefly thoughts, containing no spoilers ('cause I don't want Te to hurt me <g>)

I'm continuing to like the show a lot, even though the plots for the most part don't make a lick of sense. I dig the evolving vibe of the ensemble more than I ever have the Buffy ensemble, which I think is largely because they're all adults, we're coming in on the middle of their life stories, and have the promise of much potentially intriguing personal backstory to be revealed.

Re: the whole Western-in-space thing -- I really wish this could be handled with a bit more subtlety, to be sure, but there's something about the deliberate anachronism that appeals to me. I read an interview with Whedon, which I can't now locate, in which he talked about reacting against the sort of naive-traditional SF vision of the future as All New! All Shiny! All Gleaming and Different! (I have a friend who's an architect, who as a student, back around 1970, was assigned to design a single-family house for the year 2000 [you cannot imagine now how incredibly remote 2000 seemed, thirty years ago]. She produced a plan for a house that incorporated some conservative technological advances but was essentially a "normal" home, and got a big fat F-bomb from the prof, who was vehement in his assertion that by 2000 domestic architecture would be utterly different! Completely revolutionized! Heh. Drive out today to any developing residential community and view the revolutionary architecture. The only really new thing about current housing seems to be its fierce nostalgia, its clumsy pasting-on of design motifs from decades or centuries past. To quote that great philosopher and left-handed relief pitcher Dan Quisenberry, "I have seen the future, and it is much like the present, only longer.")

Anyway. I really like the idea that the physical milieu of life in the future, especially in outlying frontier/provincial planets, would be gritty and low-tech and hardscrabble. There are moments in the show, especially in the Train Job episode, that make me flash on Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, which depicts a moon-colony world cut off from its home planet, whose citizens live with hard physical labor, dirt, disease, poverty, making do with low-tech adaptations to a brutal climate.

I would like it better if, instead of simply cutting and pasting Western canon, the show depicted more of a melange of past cultural traditions. But then, I understand that this is television, and "Western in space" is an easier sell than "Even in the future, the past is always with us, albeit in complex and mixed-up and oddly-reinterpreted ways." Anyway, I'll keep watching, with fingers crossed that the show doesn't get cut off at the knees.

Posted @ 08:47 AM CST [Link]3 comments

Thursday, October 3, 2002

Home again. Conference was OK, though boring; our presentation went well, even though the PowerPoint slideshow wouldn't load. (It wasn't my idea--I dislike PPt, and we managed to get all the material across just fine with, you know, talking, plus illustrative hand gestures.) Random notes:

--Experience I least expected to have in Salt Lake City: I staggered into the hotel upon arrival, after a ghastly bumpy wailing-infant-infested plane ride, yearning for a drink but unsure of how to get one (a friend had loaded me up with horror stories about how getting alcohol in SLC requires some sort of joining-a-club manouevre, etc. etc.). The desk clerk said, "We have the Manager's Special every day from 5:30-7:30, free drinks in the lounge." I headed loungewards, expecting to find iced tea and lemonade, but, by god, they had an open bar pouring free drinks--however much you wanted of whatever you wanted. I told the bartender I'd like a glass of wine, making my illustrative hand gestures conveying Much wine! Much wine! and he pulled down a beer glass and said, "Do you want me to just fill this up for you, and you could take it to your room?" I thought he was joking, but no, he wasn't. I composed myself and got an ordinary respectable wineglass full of cabernet and took that up to my room, where I discovered The Matrix was on TV, and so had a most pleasant evening.

--Most fun moment of the conference: Standing at one of the half-dozen computers provided for attendees' use, jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with earnest academic advisors dutifully checking their work e-mail, I did a little furtive blog-surfing and discovered to my delight that various people seemed to be enjoying and passing around the "romantic taxonomy" thing, and I let out a little "Eeeeee!" of happiness, greatly disconcerting my aforementioned earnest colleagues.

--You Know You've Been In Slash Fandom Too Long: When you subject every hotel you stay at to scrutiny as to its fitness for hosting a slash con. Just for the record, the Embasssy Suites in Salt Lake City would be marvelous. Not just because of the aforementioned free drinks, but also--free breakfast! Real breakfast, with eggs and sausage and pancakes and everything! And a really nice jacuzzi hot tub! I spent some time Tuesday morning wandering around the hotel, studying the floor plan, and thinking, OK, you could put panels in here, and the art show here, and the vid show would work great in here, and--oh yeah, this'd make a bitchin' con suite!

--Funniest sight: The conference was being held at two hotels that are separated by a rather busy street ("busy" by SLC standards), and of course there was a clearly-marked crosswalk between them, but also, at each side of the crosswalk, little bins containing bright hazmat-orange flags, and a sign saying "To increase your visibility, please carry a flag when you cross." I refrained, trusting my urban streetcraft and native cunning to get me across without mishap, but had fun watching other attendees marching back and forth, some holding their little orange flags high, others sticking them out in front in the manner of school-crossing guards. Heeeee.

Off to work, where tons o' crap await. Tonight, viewing of this week's Buffy and Smallville, from tape. And then I can finally read through e-mail and blogs/LJs without spoiler-dodging.

Posted @ 08:09 AM CST [Link]2 comments

Sunday, September 29, 2002

Yesterday I watched my tape of this week's Firefly, and enjoyed it, in a relaxed way, and then this morning I woke up at five, in a cheerful mood, and found myself thinking that fandoms are like romances, and that it's fun to have a show that I'm just casually dating.

Then I started constructing my own romantic taxonomy, of fandoms past and present:

The one who seduced you and fucked you over and broke your heart in a million pieces and laughed about it: X-Files

The old flame you don't see very often any more but whom you still really enjoy getting together with for a few drinks and maybe a pleasant nostalgic romp in the sheets: Highlander

The mysterious dark gothy one whom you used to sit up with talking until 3 a.m. at weird coffeehouses and with whom you were quite smitten until you realized he really was fucking crazy: Millennium

The one you spent a whole weekend in bed with and who drank up all your liquor, and whom you'd still really like to fuck again although you're relieved he doesn't actually live in town: Hard Core Logo

The steady: Due South

The alluring strangers whom you've flirted with at parties but have never gotten really serious with: Homicide, La Femme Nikita

The one you hang out with and have vague fantasies about maybe having a thing with but ultimately you're just good buddies 'cause the friendship is there but the chemistry ain't: Buffy

The one your friends keep introducing you to and who seems like a hell of a cool guy except it's never really gone anywhere: Sports Night

The one who's slept with all your friends, and you keep looking at him and thinking Him? How the hell did he land all these cool babes?: Sentinel

The one your friend has fallen for like a ton of bricks and whom she keeps babbling to you about on the phone for hours, and you'd be happy for her except you just know it's going to end badly: Smallville

And so now I have Firefly, and we've gone out a couple of times, and are still in that nice relaxed state of exchanging small talk, getting to know each other a little better, and maybe it'll go somewhere, maybe it won't, and it's fun either way. As much as I might yearn sometimes for the sturm und drang of a hot new romance, there's something to be said for low-key dating.

And now I must go and start doing laundry--I'm flying off this afternoon to Salt Lake City for a professional conference, and won't be back on-line until Wednesday or Thursday. Be well, everyone.

Posted @ 07:13 AM CST [Link]18 comments