Between the good and bad, that's where you'll find me, Reaching for Heaven

[Error: unknown template qotd]

I ran across a list on Wikipedia of what are known as The Northanger Abbey Horrid Novels, the list of crazy-titled books which Isabella recommends to Catherine Morland, and that phrase "The Northanger Abbey Horrid Novels" just struck me as A Good Name For a Band. (Come to find out that the Horrid Novels are real books, thanks to the efforts of an enterprising British librarian who dug around for them, but I digress). They'd be a sort of tongue in cheek geek rock/goth rock band, something between Emillie Autumn and Oingo Boingo (when the lead singer isn't being an idiot between numbers and doing random bad impersonations of Tom Waits, or Till Lindemann of Rammstein). Their first album? "Mysteries of Udolpho". Cuts would include "Rats in the Basement, Bats in the Belfry", "Regency Twihard", "It's 1799, Do You Know What Your Daughter is Reading?", "Murk 'N Peek", and "Murdering Ye Oldie English" as well as covers of The Strawbs' "Lady Fuschia", Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party", Titus Groan's "In the Hall of Bright Carvings", and Emillie Autumn's "I Know Where You Sleep".

So! Finally discovered a site which has the 1967 version of "The Prisoner" and started watching it last night: It's fun and weird, but I'm not sure that I like it as much as the new version. For one thing, I can't make jokes about Jesus (Jim Caviezel), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and Gellert Grindelwald from the Harry Potter series (Jamie Campbell Bower) all being in the same series. For another thing, it seems more linear in its storytelling/plotting. I guess it's a case of apples and oranges and comparisons thereof.

Here's where the irony starts to creep in: I got up this morning to check the news headlines online, and come to find out, film-score composer John Barry has passed away. Probably the most famous thing he wrote is the "James Bond" theme. The irony being that Patrick McGoohan, the star of the 1967 version of "The Prisoner", famously turned down the role of James Bond because he wasn't comfortable with the character's morals.

[Error: unknown template qotd]
"God Bless the U.S.A" gives me chills in a good way, and brings tears to my eyes: it got a lot of radio playage after 9/11; and I have a heart-breaking yet fond memory of singing it with my dad and several thousand other people on our town's village green at a candle-light vigil ten days later.

"For I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me."

The whole thing of "This Little Babe" from Benjamin Britten's "Ceremony of Carols"

"This little babe
So few days old
Is come to rifle
Satan's fold
All hell doth at
His presence quake
Though He Himself
For cold doth shake
For in this weak,
Unarmed guise
The gates of hell
He will surprise"

[Error: unknown template qotd]

Hm... Laundry list here, but I'll keep it down to three:

--The castrato Farinelli, who in some ways could be described as the Michael Jackson of the late 1700's and was a good friend of Mozart (enough that they called each other brothers);

--Mozart as a kid playing for the nobility;

--Antonio Vivaldi and the orchestra of the girls' school he was the music master for.

A bit of news I meant to post a day or two ago: the grower my dad works for supplies plants to decorate the stage at Symphon Hall in Boston... so the company head got several free tickets to one of the Boston Pops concerts, namely to their "Pops at the Beach" concert in Hyannis. As he was telling my dad about this, dad started to ask if there were any spare tickets, but his boss cut him off at the pass: "Hardly anyone uses them... would you want them?" Of course my dad, whose favorite price is "free", jumped at the chance.

Turns out, they were VIP seating tickets worth at least $150 a piece. Which meant we not only had a great view of the stage, but we also had complimentary soda, chips, a cheese platter, and a goodie bag with all kinds of nick-nacks (pens, playing cards, a corkscrew, pads of paper, and doodads like that).

Keith Lockhart conducted a program of Broadway and Hollywood music, including several of my favorites: the overture to "Ben Hur" and the main title theme for "Lawrence of Arabia". My dad was trying to find some way for me to meet the maestro, but that didn't pan out. There's always next year!

The weather couldn't have been more delightful either: sunny with a lovely breeze off the ocean...

The only fly in the ointment today: I just suspended my MxO account, so now there's some sadness creeping into my heart as I finish this entry. For all the trouble people caused me on there, I miss them all, already. But... I found one of my all time favorite Disney clips, via GAFF:



Night on Bald Mountain, from "Fantasia" (unfortunately, two of the more gleefully dangerous headspace-dwellers are getting more of a kick out of it than I'd really like to be privy to...). Now, If I could just find the "Ave Maria" sequence that immediately follows it in the movie, I'll be a happy oddball.

Work and errands... though I did splurge a little and buy the Johnny Cash CD I'd been eyeing for some weeks at the indie record store here in town. Can't beat the Man in Black, and it has one of my two all time favorite songs of his on it, "The Man Comes Around" (though it didn't have "Your Own Personal Jesus").

Trying to work on some writing, but it seems right now the best I can come up with is stuff that ties in with RP-ness on the MxO. I'm wondering if I've lost my nack for original writing, or it's just a lull.

Re-reading the Dresden Files books, as I wait for the release date for the DVD box set of the TV series to be announced. I know what I want for my birthday... and I'm turning 30 this June. Yikes. I don't feel it, and people are very shocked when I tell them, since I look way younger than that.

Said icon being a slight-ly early Easter surprise from the purveyor of Lambert Wilson eyecandy. Yum... It also matches the mental image I had, thanks to some mild mischief in the Houseparty, aka. Exile Central this afternoon.

( Easter preparations among the headspace dwellers )

Miserable night at work. It was probably the Old Scratch getting back at me for burying the hatchet today with a dear friend I'd had a major falling-out with.

Other news: Two small packages I was expecting showed up, containing CDs I'd ordered (used) off Amazon.com:

--"The John Michael Talbot Collection" A lovely two-disk set with 35 of the greatest songs by the only Contemporary Christian Musician I like. He's an incredibly talented and holy man, who gave up a career as a rock composer/singer/guitarist to become a semi-hermitic Franciscan monk in Arkansas. My favorite of his work is the oratorio "Light Eternal" -- classical and folk-ish and charismatic all at the same time -- and his Mass setting "The Lord's Supper": I love singing the 'Creed' from that one; you can really feel the Spirit in that one!

Interesting note: the person selling that album was in Louisiana, and they'd put a label on the back of the package, reading: "This item survived Hurricanes Katrina and Rita". And it still plays good, too!

--the soundtrack to "V for Vendetta", which I haven't been able to find anywhere around here (what, retailers, is that movie too subversive for you?!).

I bought the soundtrack album to it (the original score, that is), and it's now happily stuck in my CD player. Favorite tracks, in ascending order:

--"The Blitz, 1940" (very dramatic. I'm putting together a soundtrack album of sorts for Sieges, and this is a great battle theme: very dark quality)

--"A Narnia Lullaby" (I love the double-flute in this. So sweet a sound...)

(Tie) --"The Stone Table" and "The Battle" (The former reminds me wierdly of part of the demonic motif from "Constantine", while the latter reminds me a *LOT* of similar battle music from LOTR and "Timeline")

And my most favorite cut: "Wunderkind" by Alanis Morrisette. The words sum me up well, and I'm also including it on Sieges's soundtrack.

Hideous day at work. Tomorrow will be better, since I'll be working the morning shift instead of the late afternoon, hence: no teenagers.

And I've been pecking away rapidly at "This Shouldn't Be Happening...". I had an idea for a scene come to me during the MxO faction meeting last night (I think it popped into my head as I was waiting for a Certain Advocate to finish pontificating...), and I've been working on that: I can't wait to share it with the world, since there's a lot of cameo appearances of members from a Certain Faction. I might just post that scene on the faction forum and see if people recognize themselves and old faces...

Work and the Selina nonsense scrambled my head up. I haven't posted anything decent since then, so I'd better post a catch-up entry.

Thursday/Friday: Besides going to Lowell to get one last day of free print-outs at the Computer Lab and going to the Vokes Theatre with my folks (We may be going back next season when they do Peter Shafter's "Amadeus"; we saw the movie years ago... ironically on the 200th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's death. I read the play when I was in between high school and college.), I also nipped into the "record" store around the corner from us: I found the soundtrack to "A Clockwork Orange" among the used CDs and snapped it up. Classical music reworked as electronica is really horrorshow. ...And I don't know if this means I'm turning into a fanbrat goth (ie. a kindergothen, a baby bat), but I found Evanescence's "Fallen" album in with the used CDs as well, so I got that. I listened to it at least three or four times on Friday night, and I ended up having to borrow some of Constantine's Holy Hand Grenades to exorcise the songfic killer plotbunnies that started hopping around. It's terrifying how well half the songs on that album fit into the "Constantine" fandom. If I ever did a soundtrack album for some of my fanfics (mostly in progress), I'd probably end up using a bunch of them, though that would irritate the Demon Hunter as I know him...

Saturday: That time of the month is looming up, and considering recent upsets, I crashed emotionally while I was at work. I was literally running on emotional fumes while I was trying to deal with three different customers bugging me about prices on a slew of items, *while* I was trying to straighten out the bread aisle. I had to let Flood front for several minutes while I sought the answers: Since he technically has no emotions, he can handle a whole lot of stimuli at once without snapping. That and he's very polite, albeit in a stiff manner. Finally, I managed to drag myself to the ladies room where I let myself cry for several long minutes. I was a mess: I started having suicidal ideations again. I mean, it would be so easy to off myself in a place like that... But Constantine stepped in -- or out, rather, and started giving me a verbal drubbing. Now, that might seem harsh, but it's how he works. He's *not* a cuddly guy, though he's a good guy when no one's looking. And I have to admit, his methods are effective; you might think it would be enough to break me, but it actually succeeds in beating the self-pitying snot out of me and making me mad enough to get up and keep going. He's like a guardian angel that way.

As I mentioned, I got let out early, which I took as a mental health day. When I came home, my mom had one of the PBS stations on the TV: they showed a couple concerts by the flamboyant light-classical violinist Andre Rieu and his little orchestra. This guy does *not* do your typical stiff classical concerts: You'll see people of all ages in the audience, some of them getting up and dancing in the aisles, or singing along with the pretty girls in the small chorus that's part of the group. And the orchestra itself doesn't stick to the black and white dress code that you find on most orchestras: the guys all wear these interesting 19th century formal suits and the ladies wear 19th century ball gowns: lots of character and lots of characters in that group! At one point, when they were playing a Spanish dance, someone (or a couple of someones) dressed in a cutesy bull costume came prancing down one of the aisles and started sniffing at the carnations in boxes along the front rim of the stage, just like H.H. Munro's "Ferdinand the Bull" (anyone here remember that cute old-fashioned kid's book?); then this chubby lady in a baggy red tent dress got spooked and ran up one of the aisles, whereupon the bull started prancing after her! I laughed so hard my sides were aching, which is just what I needed.

Sunday: Wound up *not* going to Mass since my poor father had a panic attack on his way home from work. Other than that, I spent the day recharging my batteries.

Today/Monday: Short shift today, and I've been poking at a few fics. I've also taken care of some much-needed housework on this LJ, sealing up some cracks against drafts... And come to find out that a certain fanbrat rated a thread on "fandom_wank" over on journalfen.com. To my understanding, it ain't the first time.

((This refers to my latest trip to the Tewksbury library, on Tuesday))

My buddy Twink from the "A.I." RP has had only good things to say about Sarah Brightman's "Harem" CD, plus she's been raving about the "Harem" concert, so when I spotted this disk at the library, I picked it up.

Wow! Okay, so it *does* have some Arabian Nights cliches to it, but I love the Arabian Nights, so it quickly got past whatever mild inhibitions (inhibitions like "Real harems aren't really lovers' paradises") I may have had! Plus, the arrangements sound oddly like Enigma ("It's a Beautiful Day" reminded me of Enigma's "Callas Went Away", only better; "What a Wonderful World" has the same bass line as "Return to Innocence"; the title track reminds me of a somewhat louder version of "I Love You, I'll Kill You" -- not the lyrics, but the... ambience). I remember Twink telling me that Sarah Brightman's boyfriend, who produces her albums, had worked with Enigma, so this might be a cross-influence. But it's a cross-influence I love!!