aamcnamara | Reading

This is a really interesting song to me, not so much the song itself (which sounds kind of like something Erasure might have produced in the late 80s/early 90s[1]) but the choices surrounding it. You see, IZ*ONE was one of the hot new groups that debuted last year. Their debut song, "La Vie en Rose," was recently featured as SOTD here. Given the success of "La Vie en Rose," I think it's an interesting and somewhat risky choice that their second single is a Japanese release, as are their third and fourth music videos (which weren't released as singles). If it pays off, it will have been good for them to get into the Japanese market early in their career, but it has the potential to backfire. Korean fans can be very sensitive about the international markets, and they're quick to turn on an artist that they perceive as devoting too much attention to international markets at the expense of the Korean market. I hope that doesn't happen to IZ*ONE. I think the best thing they can do to prevent it happening would be to have a Korean comeback soon, preferably with an original song, not a Korean version of "Suki to Iwasetai." [2]

"IZ*ONE (아이즈원) - '好きと言わせたい (Suki to Iwasetai)' MV" (Watch on YouTube)

[1] Which I mean as a compliment.
[2] "Suki no Iwasetai" doesn't even necessarily have to have a Korean language release - Twice and Red Velvet have each released any number of Japanese songs that were never released in a Korean version, and it doesn't seem to have hurt they're career. Korean fans understand the necessity of foreign markets, and they don't insist on having everything. They just think they should have the most and the best things. (I imagine Canadian fans feel much the same way about Canadian artists promoting in the US.)

okrablossom

Books I've read recently that I've really really enjoyed: Django Wexler's Ship of Smoke and Steel [kinda creepy fantasy with intriguing magic and some nice relationships], Jim Hines' Terminal Uprising [made me laugh out loud but also touched some genuine deep emotions], Louise Penny's Bury Your Dead [for the reasons I love most of her books: language, love, the hard work of doing right], Yoon Ha Lee's Dragon Pearl [for an old story through new (to me) lenses]. Oh! And Terrance Hayes' American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin for seriousness and beauty and Huda Fahmy's Yes, I'm Hot in This for the puns and the perspective.

And thank goodness I've got more library books stacked up, as there's snow on the way!

brithistorian

New Orleans' Krewe of Zulu[1] has issued a statement declaring that their black makeup isn't blackface.

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I respect their right to try to reclaim symbols that have been used against them and to continue with Zulu's traditions. On the other hand, intent doesn't trump effect[2], and would not be surprised to find clueless white people running around saying "the members of Zulu wear blackface, so why can't I?"[3][4]. On the other hand, the members of Zulu are (rightfully) proud of their traditions, and if their chairman of their board has gone on record as saying "That would somehow indicate that we were complicit of the disrespect of black people for 115 years. That's no way going to happen," I'm not going to be the one to tell them they can't wear their traditional makeup.

[1] Technically the "Zulu Social Aid and Please Club," but I've never heard anyone outside the organization and a few journalists use the proper name. It's certainly not in common use in New Orleans, where people refer to "Krewe of Zulu" or just "Zulu"
[2] I think I first heard this from Kat Tanaka Okopnik, but I have no idea if it originated with her or not.
[3] Just like we still haven't heard the last person saying "Black people use the N-word. Why can't I?"
[4] Also deliberately overlooking that the members of Zulu wear black makeup in a particular context, related to an event that happens one morning of the year.

sartorias

The clumps are significant on leaves and branches, and details of the topography have all been smoothed to pure white softness. Tiny icicles, even, like crystal ear drops. Freshly fallen snow is stunning in its beauty, but I can see how trying to function in it would get toilsome and wearing.

Many thanks to those who answered my question yesterday. I expected a division, but what I got was another division among those who are okay with subscribing to serials--but save the whole until it's complete.

So! Time to get to work, but first, have a couple shots out window panes at the front side of the house:

Crossposts: https://sartorias.livejournal.com/771842.html

brithistorian

Ceci n'est pas une vidéo de musique.

Well, OK, it is, but I couldn't resist a little bit of art history humor there. I'm just amused (probably more than I should be) by a video for a song called "Clock" that contains no clocks but dozens of telephones. At any rate, it's a good song, it's a good video; I hope you enjoy.

"인피니트(INFINITE) “CLOCK” Official MV" (Watch on YouTube)

rosefox

Tonight a book on my shelf caught my eye, so I read it.

The book was Double Trouble by Carol Morse, a 1964 teen comedy that I inherited from my mother—though she was in her 20s when it came out, so I'm not sure how she ended up owning it or passing it along to me. At some point I misplaced her copy or gave it away, thinking I wouldn't miss it, and then I missed it; after years of searching—do you know how many books are called Double Trouble?—I finally found it on AbeBooks a couple of months ago and gladly snatched it up. It's about boy-crazy twin girls learning how to be their own people and have their own feelings and interests instead of doing everything together. They live in a generic small American town that out-Pleasantvilles Pleasantville, and their lives are wholly unlike anything I have ever known. I first read it with absolute fascination in the 1980s, feeling as though I were doing research on a foreign country. It seems even more alien now. (Though this time around I spotted the lesbian, English teacher Miss Winifred Lawrence, who never felt like herself until she went to an all-girls school where people started calling her Larry. She's also tough as a teacher but nice once you get to know her, and the narrative goes out of its way to establish her as an outdoorsy, sturdy world traveler. Mm-hmm. She felt familiar, an un-strange person in their strange self-contained land.)

There was no purpose to me reading it, except that I was glad to own it again and wanted to see whether it still gave me that feeling of fascinated curiosity, which it does.

I hadn't realized how much the notion of a to-read pile/shelf/list was pinning me down. I feel free.

Current Mood: happy

asakiyume

In 2012, I was briefly a skateboarder. I loved the speed and grace and daring of it--I wanted to touch that and live that.

That time was brought back to me so vividly tonight watching Skate Kitchen (2018), which I requested from Netflix DVD because of

osprey_archer's excellent review) of it. The film coveys the feel of skateboarding beautifully (and also the dangers of it--part of why I quit: I loved the daring but wasn't up for the injuries), and I loved the posse of girls--real-life members of the Skate Kitchen, an all-girl skate collective in New York City. The director apparently met members of the collective while riding the subway, and she used Rachelle Vinberg, who plays the main character in Skate Kitchen, in a 2016 short film, That One Day.

The scenes of New York City's skating haunts are ones I remember from a video of skateboarding I found and posted back in 2012--it made the movie feel extra real to me.

The trailer pretty accurately captures the feel of the film:

"Skate Kitchen Official Trailer - Starring The Skate Kitchen and Jaden Smith" (Watch on YouTube)

And

osprey_archer, the quote you were trying to find is the voiceover at the start of the trailer (and the scene with the little girl is in the trailer too). You're right: it's beautiful.

Crossposts: https://asakiyume.livejournal.com/918704.html

sartorias

A small subset of readers here read my stuff. I have a question for you. Bookview Cafe (currently in the midst of a move to a new and more reliable host service) is talking about experimenting with subscriptions.

I'm in the process of finishing up a very long project, and I'm thinking how best to put it out there. Would any of you be up for something like that?

If so, how often should bits be posted, if, say, it was put up at 99c cents a segment? I'm thinking segments ought to be novelette to novella length.

Crossposts: https://sartorias.livejournal.com/771622.html

sartorias

So we have been snowed into very pleasant surroundings. Each morning I make tea and fill the gigantic bathtub, drop some essential oils in it, and soak and sip tea. These past two mornings, this is what I look out at:

I relish every moment, with a deep gratitude for how lucky I am. Though I'm aware of a residual guilt, though I have done nothing wrong. It's the sheer selfishness of my enjoyment--because of early conditioning, the very word 'selfish' connoted imminent fire and destruction, well deserved. Because I am not the fastest with a clue, it took me over fifty years to comprehend the difference between the selfishness that robs others, or glories in others' hurt, and the selfishness that does no harm.

Our first day here, the snow all melted in a crashing thunderstorm. We stayed in the cabin below the main house for the duration, playing with the cats as a fire leaped in the fireplace. I did some yoga while thunder and rain poured all around.

Yesterday I woke to snow. As well as today. We walked out yesterday, trying to get the feel for walking in it. Here I am in the winter coat I've owned for a number of years, but till now it's lived in my closet, only coming out when I travel back east:

I took a video of today's snow, which I won't put up as Dreamwidth has a truly awful media platform--it's awkward and time consuming to upload photos, and one is limited to a small amount of bandwidth to store them. I think a single vid would max me out--and of course snowfall would be no delight and wonder to most of North America, save my corner.

So I'll put up a picture instead:

Everything, everything is made beautiful by a lacy coating of pure white shading subtly to blue here and gold there. The landscape transforms, familiar landmarks changing or vanishing entirely. I can't tell where the road bends. The snow makes a subtle squidgy sound underfoot, not wet and mushy as it did yesterday.

Leading to another observation: it is always changing. There is no still like the photos: clumps drop continually out of trees, or shower down. The temperature rises and the snow changes shape, or turns to water, creating myriad little streams. Or, during the night, it turns to ice--which is why we haven't gone anywhere. None of us want to attempt mountain roads if there is ice.

So . . . back to writing projects, reading, and slowly watching, and loving the endgame of The Story of Minglan, which is simply phenomenal.

Crossposts: https://sartorias.livejournal.com/771337.html

brithistorian

I swear I didn't plan this - just a fortuitous coincidence: The first Saturday since I decided to do SOTDs on weekends too, and the song is by Saturday!

Lyrically, "WiFi" is basically the same concept as Twice's "Signal" - trying to get across to a clueless guy that you like him. The music reminds me of a sped-up version of Momoland's "Bboom Bboom." Still, while I don't really think there's anything really groundbreaking in the song, it's a bop, and it totally gets me moving.

"[MV] SATURDAY(세러데이) _ WiFi(와이파이)" (Watch on YouTube)

rosefox

(I'm not saying that Squirrel Nut Zippers' "Meant to Be" is intended to be about decluttering and finding that one perfect object you absolutely have to keep, but it's very fun to listen to it that way.)

Tonight I showed X the cute gay couple episode of Tidying Up ("I feel like I was just punched in the face by niceness," they said), and then we turned around and considered the bookcase behind us.

( The right-now book )

( Categories of maybe-keep-maybe-not books )

Categorizing the books in this fashion made it easy to pull down a dozen or so and send them on their merry way. X reminded me not to do too much tonight—I have a cold (again) and have been sleeping very badly (again) and that's not ideal for this sort of emotional task—so I channeled my tidying urges into trimming the extremely large mattress-type tags off our new dining chair cushions and agreeing with X and J that we should get rid of our coat tree, which is huge and space-occupying in a non-useful way.

And now I'm going to to take a long hot bath and read High Stakes, because it said "Read me now!" and there is no better reason to read a book.

EDIT: It was just as good as I remember, and I had forgotten enough of the plot to get very tense in a few places and appreciate how it all went down. Absolutely an A+ keeper—I may have to wait another 20 years to forget the plot again, but when I want to read it I will be very glad to have it to hand.

Current Mood: peaceful

jenett

Good morning!

Topic of the week
Stuff you're enjoying right now, whatever that is.

What I've been up to
Doing all sorts of catchup stuff at home, whee! (And a few enjoyable social outings.)

( Reminders and tips for making this post flow better )
( House rules )

brithistorian

Warning:

calimac , don't look - I'm about to do weird fanfic-y things with Lord of the Rings.

( I warned you... )

[*] Yes, for the first time. And yes, started - it's very, very rare that I have both time and inclination to watch an entire movie in one sitting.

ETA: Please let me know if you see a functioning cut in this post. The editor swears it put one in, and I see the tags in the html, but I don't see a cut when I view the post.

brithistorian

From what I can tell, the Koreans love them some ballads. Otherwise, there wouldn't be room in the Korean music world for both Hwang Chiyeul and K.Will. I mean, look at the similarities: Both in 1982[*], debuted in 2007, makes frequent appearances on drama soundtracks - it's uncanny.

Anyway, this is a beautiful song with a very sad video.

"[M/V] CHIYEUL HWANG(황치열) - A Walk To Goodbye(이별을 걷다)" (Watch on YouTube)

[*] OK, technically K.Will was born in 1981, but it was on December 30, so that's close enough.

brithistorian

I just discovered Weki Meki doing this performance of "Butterfly" where they're doing the whole song in Korean sign language at the same time that they're singing it.

"Weki Meki(위키미키) 'Butterfly' Showcase Stage…수화로 무대 꾸며 (쇼케이스, La La La, 라 라 라, 최유정, 김도연)" (Watch on YouTube)

brithistorian

A slideshow of Valentine's cards featuring members of the US Olympic team

brithistorian

Thanks to

toujours_nigel :

Your rainbow is intensely shaded green, red, and indigo.

What is says about you: You are a proud person. You feel strong ties to nature and your mood changes with its cycles. Those around you admire your fresh outlook and vitality. You get bored easily and want friends who will keep up with you.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

mrissa

Recently I was a guest on the Breaking the Glass Slipper podcast. BtGS is a feminist SFF podcast that wanted to do more episodes on intersectional issues, so we talked about disability representation in SFF. You can give it a listen here!

(I will confess that I am terrible at listening to podcasts myself, but it can be so much fun to be on them--one gets into good conversations. So we'll see if I can't get better at this.)

brithistorian

A pretty song, with lots of great concert footage.

"빅스(VIXX) - '걷고있다 (WALKING)' Official M/V" (Watch on YouTube)

thewrongkindofpc

by which I mean that at the beginning of this week, I could hardly breathe for refreshing my inbox to see if I've heard from grad schools (so far I've got two rejections and one wait list out of nine possible, but who's counting, eyyyyyyyyy) but on this lofty distance of Wednesday evening, I almost don't care because I'm too busy running the same series of google searches eight times a day to see if American Vandal got picked up by another outlet and uncancelled.

Are any of you guys watching that thing? American Vandal is that netflix TRU CRIME mockumentary with all the dick jokes and poop jokes that maybe the bro-ier people on your feed are into, and I put it on one night on a whim and became HOOKED. I couldn't quite put my finger on what I liked about it, and then I read this interview with the creators where they described the trick of the show as setting up this completely ridiculous scenario, and then proceeding to take it as seriously as possible. And once he said it, I GOT it, because is there anything I like more in fic than crack premises written deadly seriously and with total emotional honesty? NO THERE IS NOT.

As one of the characters described it to a true crime podcast host in an in-character interview they did to promo the second season, "A lot of people felt that way, thinking 'it's a show about dicks,' but it's NOT a show about dicks! It's about JUSTICE."

So yeah, I started watching it knowing it was cancelled, and as I watched it, I realized that the literal only thing I want or have ever wanted in the world is for some other network to pick it up so it gets a third season where our intrepid reporters in hot pursuit of justice get to take on the mystery behind a college vandalism or crime, and also maybe kiss each other?

(also fun/weird/uncomfortable fact: one of the plucky kid documentarians' actors appears to be real-life friends with the Shameless kiddos. a) this means he is LITTLE but also b) that means those child star fictional siblings are real-life tight, which does ~things to my heart. So. You win some, you lose some.)

The fandom appears to be really embracing the meta aspect of the show (a minor plot point of second season is that the first season got so big on vimeo that they got picked up by netflix and so season two has actual camera people) which is rad.

Editing to remove pics at the end because they were HUGE and I'm bad at DW so I don't know how to fix that.