anno_superstar asked nicely, I've done a meme!Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your LJ (or just add a reply back at me). Other people (including me) can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.
OK, Anno, here we go:
Midnight Movies
Until I broke the streak last May, I'd attended every single Cort and Fatboy Midnight Movie since October 2007. Forty-one in a row, starting with GoodFellas. Restarted the streak last weekend with the Richard Donner cut of Superman II. I don't have to be obsessive about the series; I just have to enjoy it.
Cort and Bobby, they're capable curators, and gleefully profane hosts. I like the crowd they attract now; I missed the very early, overly rowdy, sometimes douche-filled screenings like the bad Aliens show (June 2006) and the infamous flipped-reel-of-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas show (don't yet know which month that was). I tend to hang around the Bagdad Theater and Pub for a few hours before each show, treating myself to dinner while first reading, then visiting neat people. The pre-show entertainment -- usually video clips, occasionally (like with the annual Big Lebowski show) live bands -- makes me roar repeatedly; good show, Bobby.
I quickly became kind of protective of the shows, and of the people going to them. I certainly told war stories about some of the more colorful events that happened at the earlier ones I went to, but around June 2008 I cut that down. In fact, it was exactly June 2008, which was Top Gun. Someone I know now who I had just started to get to know then told some of us stories both hilarious and harrowing about her dating life. Those weren't and aren't my stories to tell, and I realized that, and sort of said so. Good thing she's a good storyteller on her own, and doesn't need me broadcasting them farther. (Notice I'm so protective that I'm not even saying who she was, but Anno, you may be able to guess.) I've written more carefully about the series since then. And am still gladdened by the turnout.
Geek Trivia
Why did it take me so long to start going to trivia nights? (Similar question: why wasn't it until Friday, May 27th, 2011 that I ever did karaoke?) The garbage can of knowledge that is my mind has been sculpted for this glorious nonsense.
I started going to Geek Trivia early in 2010, then missed several of them because it conflicted with the final season of Lost, then started going again, and over that time I watched it grow and grow and grow. Different hosts, different levels of difficulty with the questions, and a chance for me to be louder and more demonstrative in public. (Like this time.) Course, it was in a bar, we had to be loud (now it's a little easier to talk in the new venue, the McMenamin's Kennedy School theater), but it helps keep me from getting too wrapped up in my shell.
San Diego Comic Con
An amazing, overwhelming, exhausting time -- and probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience unless I get productive and actually create a reason for me to attend in the future. *grins* I'm lucky so many people I know are Shawshank Redemption fans, because "I met Frank Darabont!" is my go-to anecdote from it. (And I'm lucky he's a good, mild, amused guy.) Having Guillermo Del Toro try to hold an elevator for me is less go-to, but it happened. (At least I think it was Del Toro.) As did the wide eyes of Keith R.A. DeCandido (
kradical) when I demonstrated -- NOT above the comics, mind you -- that my water bottle was watertight.It made me want to go to more conventions, though not ones as humungous as San Diego.
Want to see my (sometimes stage-bloody) pictures from the con? Here they are!
Portland
Strange place. My kind of strange, mind you. I've now lived here for 10 years. I've walked, bussed, Max'd and driven a lot of it, and am still concertedly exploring the town. And it is a town: more a big small town than a small city, as it's been described. I want to show it off more; helps that I'm posting more pictures now, and that the town's really photogenic. I should write more about Portland as Portland (writer moment! I almost wrote "Portland qua Portland"), and why it inspires things like Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen's Portlandia. I'm still trying to understand the town, for one thing: what's good about it, what's not, what its issues are, and why I'm glad I live here. Honestly, there are really only two other major metropolitan areas I'd imagine otherwise living in, and those are Boston and Seattle. I think I've found a good place with Portland. I want it to be better.
LiveJournal
A site that's been good to me, in terms of getting me to actually write consistently in a way I hadn't since being a writer-reporter-movie reviewer back in the Nineties. I believe in blogging; it's helped me process stuff, think about things, and be better connected to a lot of people. I've been through drama here, yes, but I've also been able to deal with drama by being here. It remains a crazy, cranky, hilarious place; I want to contribute in my own ways to that.
To misquote Morrissey of The Smiths, "I logged myself in at the site -- the website called L-J -- I said I like it here, can I stay -- I like it here, can I stay..."