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edenfalling1. Every year around the start of June Ithaca throws a four-day (okay, three-day plus a parade) town festival called, unimaginatively, the Ithaca Festival. And every year it rains.
Last year was deeply unusual in that rain did not fall on the parade -- which was ironic, since the organizers had accepted the inevitability of rain and made rain the theme.
This year the parade also escaped precipitation, and the weather forecasts were for clear skies Friday through Sunday. I was beginning to doubt the foundations of the universe.
But it rained on Saturday. All is well once again. :-)
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2. The Joseph Gordon-Levitt project continues! I have now watched four episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun. It's been a strange experience, since I have not regularly watched sitcoms since the days my sister was addicted to Full House. (My television habits were largely driven by the habits of the people I lived with, since even when I had a TV, I almost never turned it on of my own volition after I outgrew PBS kids' shows and the few cartoon shows I really liked got cancelled.) Also, I have a sympathetic embarrassment squick. So a lot of comedy is difficult for me to watch.
The thing is, I am discovering it's massively less painful to watch people make hideous fools of themselves in a comedy than it is to watch people make hideous fools of themselves in a drama, or even in a dramedy.
It's about expectations, I think. I go into a comedy expecting people to be exaggeratedly stupid and embarrass themselves, so I am not caught by surprise the way I am when funny and/or embarrassing scenes appear in more serious shows. Also, I am not usually according the characters the same level of belief -- I don't grant them the same depth of interior life -- so I am not as deeply hurt/embarrassed on their behalf. If I know what's coming, and what level of realism applies, I can react appropriately instead of cringing away in almost physical pain. (In other words, I can keep from getting too attached. Even in a comedy, if I start getting attached to characters -- if I start believing in their emotional reality -- the sympathetic embarrassment squick kicks right back in. -_-)
Despite this comedy buffer effect, I have needed to hit the pause button several times each episode, and so far I've had to watch at least one scene per episode in short 1- to 5-second bursts, but that is still much better than I usually do.
(I may discuss the actual show some other time. For now, I will simply say that it is deeply stupid but in a genuinely funny way, that it's very much a product of the 90s, and that I find all the cast members likeable even when their characters are, well, dicks. *wry*)
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3. Vicky is back in NJ and has acquired a temporary cell phone. She has about seventeen other things she needs to get done -- it is apparently rather tricky to reconstruct a life after being out of the country for a year -- but I think once she has a few more days to breathe, things will start falling into place. And I can text her whenever I want, which is nice. Email and Skype are all very well and good, but they lack a certain immediacy that a phone can create.
Last year was deeply unusual in that rain did not fall on the parade -- which was ironic, since the organizers had accepted the inevitability of rain and made rain the theme.
This year the parade also escaped precipitation, and the weather forecasts were for clear skies Friday through Sunday. I was beginning to doubt the foundations of the universe.
But it rained on Saturday. All is well once again. :-)
-----
2. The Joseph Gordon-Levitt project continues! I have now watched four episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun. It's been a strange experience, since I have not regularly watched sitcoms since the days my sister was addicted to Full House. (My television habits were largely driven by the habits of the people I lived with, since even when I had a TV, I almost never turned it on of my own volition after I outgrew PBS kids' shows and the few cartoon shows I really liked got cancelled.) Also, I have a sympathetic embarrassment squick. So a lot of comedy is difficult for me to watch.
The thing is, I am discovering it's massively less painful to watch people make hideous fools of themselves in a comedy than it is to watch people make hideous fools of themselves in a drama, or even in a dramedy.
It's about expectations, I think. I go into a comedy expecting people to be exaggeratedly stupid and embarrass themselves, so I am not caught by surprise the way I am when funny and/or embarrassing scenes appear in more serious shows. Also, I am not usually according the characters the same level of belief -- I don't grant them the same depth of interior life -- so I am not as deeply hurt/embarrassed on their behalf. If I know what's coming, and what level of realism applies, I can react appropriately instead of cringing away in almost physical pain. (In other words, I can keep from getting too attached. Even in a comedy, if I start getting attached to characters -- if I start believing in their emotional reality -- the sympathetic embarrassment squick kicks right back in. -_-)
Despite this comedy buffer effect, I have needed to hit the pause button several times each episode, and so far I've had to watch at least one scene per episode in short 1- to 5-second bursts, but that is still much better than I usually do.
(I may discuss the actual show some other time. For now, I will simply say that it is deeply stupid but in a genuinely funny way, that it's very much a product of the 90s, and that I find all the cast members likeable even when their characters are, well, dicks. *wry*)
-----
3. Vicky is back in NJ and has acquired a temporary cell phone. She has about seventeen other things she needs to get done -- it is apparently rather tricky to reconstruct a life after being out of the country for a year -- but I think once she has a few more days to breathe, things will start falling into place. And I can text her whenever I want, which is nice. Email and Skype are all very well and good, but they lack a certain immediacy that a phone can create.
