Mixed media

Threw on several albums' worth of gravel-voiced McGill-alumni-ojiisan and read Endless Nights, by that nice fellow on my lj-friends who's been travelling a lot lately and seems as exhausted as, well, everyone else on my lj-friends. (A make-up-the-free-shipping-limit purchase, on Amazon; I'd very much like to "support my local comics shop" if there were any possibility of me getting there before their closing hours, and believe me I've tried. Besides which it's the Indigo and the Archambault on St. Catherine that suffer my tachiyomi depredations, and to which I feel a sense of pecuniary obligation.) Try it this way, I recommend it. It doesn't so much matter what song comes up, but their respective vocabularies overlap enough to set off echoes, somewhere subterranean and familiarly dark.

Lots of pages lately. Was feeling quiet at the Angstgiving party, so intentionally lost an hour or three to Transmetropolitan vol.7-8 and Sandman: Season of Mists, which I didn't remember as well as I thought I did. Thanksgiving proper ditto, except then it was Nabokov's True Story of Sebastian Knight and a few pages of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Yeah, the unheralded return of English-language reading matter, complete with the full extent of my English-language vocabulary. Though that very last is sororial unit's; she's also got The Rum Diaries somewhere. Methinks she figures if it's good enough for the Deppster - albeit likely a bald Deppster once again - it's good enough for her.

If you've seen Once Upon A Time In Mexico, you'll know what I mean when I say Johnny Depp would make a good A. J. Crowley. If you've seen Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, you'll know what I mean when I say he'd make a good Spider Jerusalem. Possibly he would also make a good version of your mom. My thesis is that the man is scary, j0.

In all this you've been hearing mostly my nezumi squeaking re the Halloween fic, which is good too. I had T read the 2000 words I have, and she thinks it in character - Mythos or not, GxB or not - so I suppose throwing myself off Champlain Bridge is unnecessary I'm still on track as a writer.

Meanwhile, Kill Bill is a brilliant stylistic exercise, which is a class of endeavour for which I have perpetual sympathy. It's easily enjoyed by anyone who likes gore and/or swordplay, methinks, but requiring a real education to be appreciated. And by that I mean a better education than I have in the field. ^^; Shaw Scope! Tajima Shou! Music cues gacked from the Lily Chou-Chou album, of all things, thus proving Quentin Tarentino really does watch the same films I do! (Well, we knew that.) He plays synthesist here, QT, not what I think of as innovator - but there's place for both in the world, and he pulls it off damn well. How in the name of wonder did he dredge up those particular enka songs, one wonders? Or did he commission them? Either way, genius.

...It makes me feel like writing the reviews I never got around to for this summer's FantAsia festival. Specifically, for Ainu - "Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan" - and come on, with an English title like that? It's 70's Shaw Brothers lesbian wuxia female revenge drama, with whippings and the occasional naked b00b and no wire-fu, because it was made before Hong Kong invented wire-fu, so no one jumps more than a foot and a half in the air under their own steam. I defy you to find an inherently more meritorious formula in the history of cinema.

Working on GB translations

There used to be witticisms here regarding the fact that Shido used「袂を分かつ」to describe the falling-out between the Kiryudo and the Maryudo. But on second thought, it's really only funny to people who're into ancient Chinese m/m, isn't it?

Still - unless the expression is a lot more commonly used in Japanese than in Chinese - it's oddly poetic for something that fell out of Shido's mouth. Maybe I can have him mangle Shakespeare at Ginji ominously in-fic: O beware, my lord, of Midou Ban! He is the blue-eyed bastard that mocks poor souls who trust him. And so forth.