Ponderings...
Nov. 26th, 2004 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[Oh before I forget. A Happy very Belated Birthday to Masq, wasn't really online until Nov. 23rd unfortunately, so missed it. And A Happy Birthday to LondonKDS.]
Hmmm. Don't usually do these quiz meme things. Why? I have a dial-up and the download time for the graphics to appear annoys me. Usually as it is slowly downloading to the screen, my connection clicks me off, and I have to sign on again. Yes, I know...I need to get myself DSL or a cable modem stat. Working up to it. First DVD. Then maybe DSL. Then maybe cell phone. By the time I fully join the new tech age, we'll be in the next one.
Don't know why I did one today? Busy, busy, busy (everytime I think that, I feel as if I have the voice of the villainous cartoon magician from Frosty The Snowman in my head.)
Enjoyed Thanksgiving with Bear in the Big Blue House (The Puppeteer) and his lovely wife, Schrodiner's Cat (yes, I literally had it with the performer who does the children's show *Bear in the Big Blue House* (which I've never seen because, don't have kids and on too early in the morning for me)...fantastic cook by the way.) Truly the moistest turkey I've had in my life and the best pumpkin pie. Not normally a fan of pumpkin pie - it usually sinks, seems a little too custardy or something. Here? Nice and spicy and creamy. Fantastic. We also watched a clip of the host's performance as Zoey (the girl puppet next to Big Bird) on the Sesame Street float at the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade. In case you were wondering - yes, they are lip-synching and their voices are piped in. Sort of obvious really. And it was very warm this year. Oh and the recipe for pumpkin pie martini's is really simple : apparently you can infuse vodka with pumpkin pie spices, pumpkin pie mix. So you take that. Mix it with vanilla infused vodka, half n'half and some nutmeg. It tastes like a mix between egg nog/pumpkin pie with a twist. One of the best martini's I've had.
Amazing cooks. May go down as the best Thanksgiving food I've had. (Which is saying a lot since my mother is an excellent cook.)
Interesting responses to my post about being influenced by others. There was one response, that I'd seen several times before, but for the first time hit me in a different way.
"Sometimes I'll read posts on the board or online and wonder if we're even watching the same show."
And it occurred to me. We're not. Oh technically the show we are watching is the same. Same actors, same directors, etc. But through our filter it is not.
Just as it isn't the same through their's. Read a couple of the interviews with Whedon, Greenwalt, Marsters, SMG, Boreanze, Noxon, etc - compare them.
Note how many times these people contradict each other. Almost as if they were working on different series or shows. They were in a way. Each brought and focused on different aspects. Was playing this DVD trivia game called Scene IT yesterday - and was struck by the different things people picked up on each time a movie clip was played. (The game is like trivia pursuit, except focuses on movies, and you can play video clips with questions attached. We sort of ditched the game and just played with the clips.) At any rate - one person focues on the dialogue, one on who the actors were, one on the set details, one on the name of the film. So when the question popped up - the person focusing on the correct thing, got it right. We were also discussing theater,
three of the people had seen the Broadway Musical - The Scarlett Pimpernel.
One loved it. The other two - hated it. And I bet they say different musicals.
Oh they could have been sitting in the theater at the same time, but what they viewed was different - becuase of what they brought to it.
If your favorite character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Xander, I bet you weren't that fond of any season after S4. May have even despised the last two seasons. But if your favorite character was Spike, you may be ambivalent about Season 3 and 1. At the Baby Shower I was at, a woman I was speaking to, told me that she had no real interest in S3, because Spike was only in one episode and adored 4. While I know people who pretty much stopped watching Buffy after Angel left, and just watched Angel the Series. There are others, who watched because they loved the high school storyline and lost interest the moment it ended. I wonder sometimes if we realize how much of ourselves we bring to watching or experiencing a piece of art work? That our appreciation of it may change, the art doesn't change, but how we see it and experience it will as we do. Something we hated two years ago, may be something we love. It's the same, but we've changed. Like a cartoon you adored as a child and as an adult find inane. The cartoon didn't change. You did. But you aren't seeing the same one,
your perspective has alterred it in your head. Kidbro told me long ago that art, whatever art it is, is an interactive experience. I didn't quite understand what he meant, I think I do now.
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Hmmm. Don't usually do these quiz meme things. Why? I have a dial-up and the download time for the graphics to appear annoys me. Usually as it is slowly downloading to the screen, my connection clicks me off, and I have to sign on again. Yes, I know...I need to get myself DSL or a cable modem stat. Working up to it. First DVD. Then maybe DSL. Then maybe cell phone. By the time I fully join the new tech age, we'll be in the next one.
Don't know why I did one today? Busy, busy, busy (everytime I think that, I feel as if I have the voice of the villainous cartoon magician from Frosty The Snowman in my head.)
Enjoyed Thanksgiving with Bear in the Big Blue House (The Puppeteer) and his lovely wife, Schrodiner's Cat (yes, I literally had it with the performer who does the children's show *Bear in the Big Blue House* (which I've never seen because, don't have kids and on too early in the morning for me)...fantastic cook by the way.) Truly the moistest turkey I've had in my life and the best pumpkin pie. Not normally a fan of pumpkin pie - it usually sinks, seems a little too custardy or something. Here? Nice and spicy and creamy. Fantastic. We also watched a clip of the host's performance as Zoey (the girl puppet next to Big Bird) on the Sesame Street float at the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade. In case you were wondering - yes, they are lip-synching and their voices are piped in. Sort of obvious really. And it was very warm this year. Oh and the recipe for pumpkin pie martini's is really simple : apparently you can infuse vodka with pumpkin pie spices, pumpkin pie mix. So you take that. Mix it with vanilla infused vodka, half n'half and some nutmeg. It tastes like a mix between egg nog/pumpkin pie with a twist. One of the best martini's I've had.
Amazing cooks. May go down as the best Thanksgiving food I've had. (Which is saying a lot since my mother is an excellent cook.)
Interesting responses to my post about being influenced by others. There was one response, that I'd seen several times before, but for the first time hit me in a different way.
"Sometimes I'll read posts on the board or online and wonder if we're even watching the same show."
And it occurred to me. We're not. Oh technically the show we are watching is the same. Same actors, same directors, etc. But through our filter it is not.
Just as it isn't the same through their's. Read a couple of the interviews with Whedon, Greenwalt, Marsters, SMG, Boreanze, Noxon, etc - compare them.
Note how many times these people contradict each other. Almost as if they were working on different series or shows. They were in a way. Each brought and focused on different aspects. Was playing this DVD trivia game called Scene IT yesterday - and was struck by the different things people picked up on each time a movie clip was played. (The game is like trivia pursuit, except focuses on movies, and you can play video clips with questions attached. We sort of ditched the game and just played with the clips.) At any rate - one person focues on the dialogue, one on who the actors were, one on the set details, one on the name of the film. So when the question popped up - the person focusing on the correct thing, got it right. We were also discussing theater,
three of the people had seen the Broadway Musical - The Scarlett Pimpernel.
One loved it. The other two - hated it. And I bet they say different musicals.
Oh they could have been sitting in the theater at the same time, but what they viewed was different - becuase of what they brought to it.
If your favorite character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Xander, I bet you weren't that fond of any season after S4. May have even despised the last two seasons. But if your favorite character was Spike, you may be ambivalent about Season 3 and 1. At the Baby Shower I was at, a woman I was speaking to, told me that she had no real interest in S3, because Spike was only in one episode and adored 4. While I know people who pretty much stopped watching Buffy after Angel left, and just watched Angel the Series. There are others, who watched because they loved the high school storyline and lost interest the moment it ended. I wonder sometimes if we realize how much of ourselves we bring to watching or experiencing a piece of art work? That our appreciation of it may change, the art doesn't change, but how we see it and experience it will as we do. Something we hated two years ago, may be something we love. It's the same, but we've changed. Like a cartoon you adored as a child and as an adult find inane. The cartoon didn't change. You did. But you aren't seeing the same one,
your perspective has alterred it in your head. Kidbro told me long ago that art, whatever art it is, is an interactive experience. I didn't quite understand what he meant, I think I do now.
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Date: 2004-11-28 08:26 am (UTC)Spike? Spike as a character didn't start intriguing me until mid-way through S5, I liked him, I thought he was fascinating, but up until S5 he felt like the scene chewing bad-ass who occassionally poppped up to either give the main character info (against his will) or mess up her plans. Predictable. Then suddenly in S5 I realized I had no idea what the writers were going to do with him. The other characters I sort of could figure out. But Spike? No clue. His unpredictablity interested me. I also enjoyed the idea that they might actually do something I'd never seen done on tv before, which is break the rules of their own genre, make their heroes less sympathetic. Whoa. People just don't do that on TV. Supporting characters - sure. But leads? Never. I was curious - would they actually do it? Causing both Angel and Buffy to become just a tad less the "straight forward hero" and more the "tragic hero, deeply flawed," and therefore more human and easier for me to identify with. Which is exactly what happened. Spike made both Angel and Buffy less black and white heroes, and gave both characters an edge, made them more interesting, more real to me as a viewer. I liked Buffy in some ways, better, when she was shown to be less than heroic. It's what I was looking for in my hero. Because at that point in my life, I did not believe in a hero that wasn't flawed, I found such a thing to be offensive - due to what I was going through personally at the time. So the fact that the show, in my mind at least, echoed my own feelings and thoughts surprised and intrigued me. It's why it may be the only show I've ever written extensively about or felt as strongly about - because it hit that inner emotional core.
Was it one character that did it? No, looking back I don't think so. My favorites kept changing. And re-watching the episodes from the beginning on DVD? Yep - I'd have to say not so much a character as maybe a storyline or what the writers were doing with the character and what was going through me or going in my life at the same time.