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shadowkatFeeling very accomplished.
1. I managed to get up early and do my laundry at 6 AM. (Only to dose off after I completed the laundry, to the Bear on Hulu.)
2. Finished "X-Men Red" - which is kind of a Game of Thrones with mutant super powered beings and aliens. It had good art for most part, and an interesting character driven plot, with a complicated bad guy in Abigail Brand.
Downside - the writers are a little too enamored of Sinister as a villain.
But Moira X and Abigail Brand are complicated and smart villains, also they took two characters that had previously been non-powered heroines and turned them into villains with the best of the best of intentions.
Also good use of all of the characters.
Digital comics via comixcology are great - you get them at a discount, and don't have to store them anywhere.
3. Finished Moonlighting : An Oral History - which is a good take on the creative process behind putting a television show on the air, and how it can fall apart. The book details the in's and out's of the production, writing, etc through all five seasons. I didn't realize it made it through five seasons. Why they expected it to last long is beyond me - it's very hard to push past five seasons. Considering Moonlighting had troubles getting more than fourteen episodes in the can each season - I'm amazed it made it to five.
The narrator/author ends the audio tape with a plea that people be kind. He is right, we do need to be kinder to each other, and more patient.
The book for the most part is well put together, although it is a bit too sound-bity for my taste - feels a wee bit too much like listening to commentary, and it was hard to tell listening to the audio book who was talking when. I kept getting confused - mainly because they all sounded the same. It's better when professional actors and voice actors read these books aloud, everyone else sounds the same.
What went wrong with Moonlighting? The show-runner bit off more than he could chew from the get-go, and not everyone was on board with his vision.
If you remember the series at all? Or even watched it? It was a bit like Buffy in how it liked to do experimental outside the box episodes, which took weeks to film, and were costly.
Moonlighting decided to do Taming of the Shrew - except with it's own script and with songs. It also did a Black and White noir episode, that had Maddy singing various songs and playing a femme fatale lounge singer. An episode with claymation. An episode with a lengthy song and dance number. An episode that was a retelling of Casablanca. It did an episode where Bruce Willis played Maddie and David's unborn child, who Maddie miscarries - and the miscarriage is told from the male child's point of view (evidence that the women writers had left the show by then, and Shepard didn't have a say). Think about that for a minute - they were talking about miscarriage from a "male" perspective. It wasn't about abortion - but it was from a male perspective. The audience didn't watch and walked. I remember that episode vaguely, and giving up myself. It was offensive and should have been nixed.
All of these episodes were really hard to film, and took weeks to write and days to film. They weren't your run of the mill detective show adventure romantic comedy.
During all of this, Shepard has twins and a difficult pregnancy, which ends up with her leaving the show for an extended period of time. Her "maternity leave" breeds contempt with the cast and crew. Alice Beasely was able to have a child and work at the same time - but she didn't have twins nor did she have a difficult pregnancy, and she wasn't the lead. Or expected to be beautiful. They eventually had to write Shepard's pregnancy into the show, but did it in such a way that makes her unattractive and unsympathetic to the audience, and builds up Willis' character. While all of that is going on, Willis gets Die Hard, and goes off and does it, he also breaks his collar bone in a skiing incident.
Was Cybil a diva? Well, she has a reputation for being one in other projects, so most likely. But I also think she had legitimate issues with the all male crew and writing staff, and the show-runner, who favored Bruce and was mainly interested in Bruce's character, and saw her character as kind of Bruce's object of desire. There was a similar problem on both Remington Steele (those actors hated each other too) and Castle (they hated each other too.).
Actually Remington Steel, Moonlighting, and Castle - all are similar set-ups, with a male lead who ends up stealing the show, and has the movie career and the power - and the respect of the producers and show-runners, and a female co-lead who doesn't. In each situation - the two leads refused to be on set together for any length of time, and one or the other left the show at a certain point. Also in Remington Steel and Moonlighting - the male lead wanted out early for a movie career. Moonlighting and Remington Steel had the same show-runner, writer.
My take - is it is surprising they lasted that long. Now? They probably wouldn't.
Is it worth reading the book? Yes, and no. It's engaging. I'd read it over listening to it - like I did. The narrator has a very annoying nasal voice.
Also, if you've never watched Moonlighting - you probably won't be able to follow it at all. I remember Moonlighting almost well enough to do so - but there were sections that I got lost. Also, it's clearly a fan's take on the show - but considering it is, there's a lot of stuff he tells us and those he interviews convey that were surprising.
Now, I'm listening to Dying Politely by Geena Davis or her autobiography. So far, I'm enjoying it more. Davis is a better narrator. Also, I kind of identify with her - she's tall like I am, and like myself - highly imaginative. She also imagined a multitude of monsters that she had to fight off nightly. There was the monster under the bed. The monster at the foot of the bed. The monster in the closet. The monster behind the door. And the monster in my head. And it was exhausting fighting them all off. As a result? I didn't sleep well as a kid and spent a lot of time in my parents bed. I even slept on the floor next to their bed - if my brother got there first. My brother apparently had similar issues - because he went there too - we'd compete. Good news, they had space, it was King Size bed. If Dad was out of town, we were both in there with mother.
Poltergiest and Jaws, resulted in us sharing mother's bed.
Being imaginative is not always a lovely thing. It's why I avoid horror films. I have a visual memory and I'm imaginative. The Haunting of Hill House plagued me for weeks. So did, Bly House.
4. Finished cleaning out my refrigerator. I decided to do it one shelf at a time. It was hard work. Took two hours. I had to prop the refrigerator door open, and pull out shelves to clean them. Also throw out a lot of stuff. I hate cleaning out the fridge. Anything is better than that. Anything.
But hey, it's done.
5. Also created two vision boards, or whatever they are called. Don't laugh. It's an exercise in the Artist Way Book that I'd been avoiding. You cut up an old magazine and put together a vision board with the pictures of the places you want to go to, houses or places you want to live, things you wish for, etc.
Considering how hard it is to find magazines nowadays, the fact I could put it together at all is kind of amazing. Also I hate doing collages - I kind of suck at it. Always have. Cutting and pasting and arranging is not my thing.
But I was able to find a National Geographic magazine on Destinations, and two mags on houses, and furnishings. One had a lot of nice sayings about patience.
Here's a few of them:
* "Instead of letting that time between teach and shape me, I pushed and shoved the sand through the hourglass, forgetting that so much gets work out during the journey. Isn't that where the endless choices exist? I'm learning that we can have all sorts of endings, but we also arrive there as a different version of ourselves based on how we hold the middle."
* "The slow tick of patience isn't easy in a fast-paced world. Success, we're shown, is earned on adrenaline. It's momentum we can't afford to lose for a shot at getting our ending. Maybe you've felt this way. If you could just get the answers you need, then you wouldn't feel so behind. If you could just get a couple of things sorted out, you could catch up to the life you pictured."
* "We believe everyone deserves a seat at the table and everyone has a story worth telling. We believe in human kindness, knowing we are made better when we all work together. We believe in courage, in cartwheeling past our comfort zones and trying something a little bit scary every day. We believe that failure needn't be a negative thing, rather we learn from our mistakes and fail smarter next time. We believe in doing good work that matters and in choosing that, nudging others toward the same. We believe that newer isn't always better and it's time for the pendulum to swing back towards the basics. We believe in unearthing beauty, however hidden or subtle it might be. We believe that each day is a gift and that everyday miracles are scattered about if only we have eyes to see. And of all heroic pursuits large or small, we believe there may be none greater than life well loved."
* "Patience is not defined as waiting politely. It's sweat-stained practice of making peace with what is while putting our weight behind what we believe can be. Holding tension because we know it's more than unavoidable; it's necessary. Proof that we're alive. So we keep our hand to the plow even when we can't see the long for outcome on the horizon. What we're waiting for and working toward is worth it."
* "It is here, in the mundane and in the not yet and in the unknown
as we patiently wait for what's to come
when things begin shifting
the stories we'll someday tell are being written
life is unfolding and lessons are being learned
and I bet you more times than not, when we look back
It'll be this space - this moment in time - we waited for all along."
* "But by then I had already begun to learn that my life was richer when I did things that weren't my strengths, being open to exploration even if it meant faltering along the way. And I didn't want to live with the regret of not doing what I felt in my gut to be the next step."
"If patience is hard, you can just walk away. Be by yourself and just think about it awhile." So I try to do that.
My vision boards contained pictures of castles, mountains, Macchu Pichue, Egyptian Statues built into rock, kitches, bookshelves, two lovely houses with outdoor pools, a garden, trees, water and sunset. And two loving couples.
I found the exercise oddly helpful in an unexpected way (it surprised me, I'd been rather resistant and snarky about it). It helped focus myself or rather my energy in a more positive direction and past a kind of mundane ambivalence. I felt excited. Hopeful.
I've kind of shut down what I want or dream for fear of never finding or obtaining it. I fear I've sunk into cynicism over the past few years as a result of varied disappointments, and it doesn't suit me, it's itchy and uncomfortable and kind of isolating. And dreaming is part of living. Wishing upon a star. Hoping for better tomorrows. Optimism. Without these things - we spend far too much time in the shadows, in the parts in-between, floating, trying not to drown.
1. I managed to get up early and do my laundry at 6 AM. (Only to dose off after I completed the laundry, to the Bear on Hulu.)
2. Finished "X-Men Red" - which is kind of a Game of Thrones with mutant super powered beings and aliens. It had good art for most part, and an interesting character driven plot, with a complicated bad guy in Abigail Brand.
Downside - the writers are a little too enamored of Sinister as a villain.
But Moira X and Abigail Brand are complicated and smart villains, also they took two characters that had previously been non-powered heroines and turned them into villains with the best of the best of intentions.
Also good use of all of the characters.
Digital comics via comixcology are great - you get them at a discount, and don't have to store them anywhere.
3. Finished Moonlighting : An Oral History - which is a good take on the creative process behind putting a television show on the air, and how it can fall apart. The book details the in's and out's of the production, writing, etc through all five seasons. I didn't realize it made it through five seasons. Why they expected it to last long is beyond me - it's very hard to push past five seasons. Considering Moonlighting had troubles getting more than fourteen episodes in the can each season - I'm amazed it made it to five.
The narrator/author ends the audio tape with a plea that people be kind. He is right, we do need to be kinder to each other, and more patient.
The book for the most part is well put together, although it is a bit too sound-bity for my taste - feels a wee bit too much like listening to commentary, and it was hard to tell listening to the audio book who was talking when. I kept getting confused - mainly because they all sounded the same. It's better when professional actors and voice actors read these books aloud, everyone else sounds the same.
What went wrong with Moonlighting? The show-runner bit off more than he could chew from the get-go, and not everyone was on board with his vision.
If you remember the series at all? Or even watched it? It was a bit like Buffy in how it liked to do experimental outside the box episodes, which took weeks to film, and were costly.
Moonlighting decided to do Taming of the Shrew - except with it's own script and with songs. It also did a Black and White noir episode, that had Maddy singing various songs and playing a femme fatale lounge singer. An episode with claymation. An episode with a lengthy song and dance number. An episode that was a retelling of Casablanca. It did an episode where Bruce Willis played Maddie and David's unborn child, who Maddie miscarries - and the miscarriage is told from the male child's point of view (evidence that the women writers had left the show by then, and Shepard didn't have a say). Think about that for a minute - they were talking about miscarriage from a "male" perspective. It wasn't about abortion - but it was from a male perspective. The audience didn't watch and walked. I remember that episode vaguely, and giving up myself. It was offensive and should have been nixed.
All of these episodes were really hard to film, and took weeks to write and days to film. They weren't your run of the mill detective show adventure romantic comedy.
During all of this, Shepard has twins and a difficult pregnancy, which ends up with her leaving the show for an extended period of time. Her "maternity leave" breeds contempt with the cast and crew. Alice Beasely was able to have a child and work at the same time - but she didn't have twins nor did she have a difficult pregnancy, and she wasn't the lead. Or expected to be beautiful. They eventually had to write Shepard's pregnancy into the show, but did it in such a way that makes her unattractive and unsympathetic to the audience, and builds up Willis' character. While all of that is going on, Willis gets Die Hard, and goes off and does it, he also breaks his collar bone in a skiing incident.
Was Cybil a diva? Well, she has a reputation for being one in other projects, so most likely. But I also think she had legitimate issues with the all male crew and writing staff, and the show-runner, who favored Bruce and was mainly interested in Bruce's character, and saw her character as kind of Bruce's object of desire. There was a similar problem on both Remington Steele (those actors hated each other too) and Castle (they hated each other too.).
Actually Remington Steel, Moonlighting, and Castle - all are similar set-ups, with a male lead who ends up stealing the show, and has the movie career and the power - and the respect of the producers and show-runners, and a female co-lead who doesn't. In each situation - the two leads refused to be on set together for any length of time, and one or the other left the show at a certain point. Also in Remington Steel and Moonlighting - the male lead wanted out early for a movie career. Moonlighting and Remington Steel had the same show-runner, writer.
My take - is it is surprising they lasted that long. Now? They probably wouldn't.
Is it worth reading the book? Yes, and no. It's engaging. I'd read it over listening to it - like I did. The narrator has a very annoying nasal voice.
Also, if you've never watched Moonlighting - you probably won't be able to follow it at all. I remember Moonlighting almost well enough to do so - but there were sections that I got lost. Also, it's clearly a fan's take on the show - but considering it is, there's a lot of stuff he tells us and those he interviews convey that were surprising.
Now, I'm listening to Dying Politely by Geena Davis or her autobiography. So far, I'm enjoying it more. Davis is a better narrator. Also, I kind of identify with her - she's tall like I am, and like myself - highly imaginative. She also imagined a multitude of monsters that she had to fight off nightly. There was the monster under the bed. The monster at the foot of the bed. The monster in the closet. The monster behind the door. And the monster in my head. And it was exhausting fighting them all off. As a result? I didn't sleep well as a kid and spent a lot of time in my parents bed. I even slept on the floor next to their bed - if my brother got there first. My brother apparently had similar issues - because he went there too - we'd compete. Good news, they had space, it was King Size bed. If Dad was out of town, we were both in there with mother.
Poltergiest and Jaws, resulted in us sharing mother's bed.
Being imaginative is not always a lovely thing. It's why I avoid horror films. I have a visual memory and I'm imaginative. The Haunting of Hill House plagued me for weeks. So did, Bly House.
4. Finished cleaning out my refrigerator. I decided to do it one shelf at a time. It was hard work. Took two hours. I had to prop the refrigerator door open, and pull out shelves to clean them. Also throw out a lot of stuff. I hate cleaning out the fridge. Anything is better than that. Anything.
But hey, it's done.
5. Also created two vision boards, or whatever they are called. Don't laugh. It's an exercise in the Artist Way Book that I'd been avoiding. You cut up an old magazine and put together a vision board with the pictures of the places you want to go to, houses or places you want to live, things you wish for, etc.
Considering how hard it is to find magazines nowadays, the fact I could put it together at all is kind of amazing. Also I hate doing collages - I kind of suck at it. Always have. Cutting and pasting and arranging is not my thing.
But I was able to find a National Geographic magazine on Destinations, and two mags on houses, and furnishings. One had a lot of nice sayings about patience.
Here's a few of them:
* "Instead of letting that time between teach and shape me, I pushed and shoved the sand through the hourglass, forgetting that so much gets work out during the journey. Isn't that where the endless choices exist? I'm learning that we can have all sorts of endings, but we also arrive there as a different version of ourselves based on how we hold the middle."
* "The slow tick of patience isn't easy in a fast-paced world. Success, we're shown, is earned on adrenaline. It's momentum we can't afford to lose for a shot at getting our ending. Maybe you've felt this way. If you could just get the answers you need, then you wouldn't feel so behind. If you could just get a couple of things sorted out, you could catch up to the life you pictured."
* "We believe everyone deserves a seat at the table and everyone has a story worth telling. We believe in human kindness, knowing we are made better when we all work together. We believe in courage, in cartwheeling past our comfort zones and trying something a little bit scary every day. We believe that failure needn't be a negative thing, rather we learn from our mistakes and fail smarter next time. We believe in doing good work that matters and in choosing that, nudging others toward the same. We believe that newer isn't always better and it's time for the pendulum to swing back towards the basics. We believe in unearthing beauty, however hidden or subtle it might be. We believe that each day is a gift and that everyday miracles are scattered about if only we have eyes to see. And of all heroic pursuits large or small, we believe there may be none greater than life well loved."
* "Patience is not defined as waiting politely. It's sweat-stained practice of making peace with what is while putting our weight behind what we believe can be. Holding tension because we know it's more than unavoidable; it's necessary. Proof that we're alive. So we keep our hand to the plow even when we can't see the long for outcome on the horizon. What we're waiting for and working toward is worth it."
* "It is here, in the mundane and in the not yet and in the unknown
as we patiently wait for what's to come
when things begin shifting
the stories we'll someday tell are being written
life is unfolding and lessons are being learned
and I bet you more times than not, when we look back
It'll be this space - this moment in time - we waited for all along."
* "But by then I had already begun to learn that my life was richer when I did things that weren't my strengths, being open to exploration even if it meant faltering along the way. And I didn't want to live with the regret of not doing what I felt in my gut to be the next step."
"If patience is hard, you can just walk away. Be by yourself and just think about it awhile." So I try to do that.
My vision boards contained pictures of castles, mountains, Macchu Pichue, Egyptian Statues built into rock, kitches, bookshelves, two lovely houses with outdoor pools, a garden, trees, water and sunset. And two loving couples.
I found the exercise oddly helpful in an unexpected way (it surprised me, I'd been rather resistant and snarky about it). It helped focus myself or rather my energy in a more positive direction and past a kind of mundane ambivalence. I felt excited. Hopeful.
I've kind of shut down what I want or dream for fear of never finding or obtaining it. I fear I've sunk into cynicism over the past few years as a result of varied disappointments, and it doesn't suit me, it's itchy and uncomfortable and kind of isolating. And dreaming is part of living. Wishing upon a star. Hoping for better tomorrows. Optimism. Without these things - we spend far too much time in the shadows, in the parts in-between, floating, trying not to drown.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-04 10:22 am (UTC)I had friends who watched Moonlighting but I never did, was still young enough that my parents were deciding most viewing on the one communal television. Though, having watched Castle, I can sure believe what you mention about the dynamic there. As for variety in episodes, early Community (back when it was good) was pretty good at that, helped make it worthwhile.
As a little kid, I usually went to sleep scared and under the covers, being still and quiet, fearful that some monster had entered the room. I don't remember this but my parents told me that, previously, they'd had to change the carpet in my bedroom, the previous had a tear in it, out of which I believed that monsters were emerging at night.