Various and Sundry, mostly about the Welcome to Night Vale live show.

[anagramofbrat]

Also known as Stuff and Nonsense, or Random Disjointed things from the Land of Andee.

Moonbeam seems to be at last, improving for real. I was pretty much at my wits end after UTI re-occurrence #3, but after a little more than a week of having switched him almost entirely to wet food, along with periodically bribing him to drink more water by swirling a little tuna into it, we seem to be doing okay for now. The only side effect of all of this is that he's adopted the bathtub as an emergency pee spot, but all things considered, I'd rather it be there than someplace carpeted or otherwise less easy to clean up. Also at some point in the last few weeks he's started to crawl into either my or cell23 laps more frequently and settle down entirely because he feels like it and not because one of us is upset, which is when he used to do it. I think he's finally cottoned on that we're not going to unceremoniously shoo him away when he attempts to cuddle. He is actually in my lap purring like a monster truck as I type. :) Anyway, less sick cat means less stressed me, so yay for that.



Last Saturday cell23 and I and a bunch of the Squire crew (funny how I still call it that even though less and less of us actually live in the Squire anymore) trooped down to Northampton for dinner and the Welcome to Night Vale live show. Filos, the new Greek place, is quite good (but go at any other time than dinner rush on Saturday). I also enjoyed the live show immensely though being in a theater full of college aged hipsters definitely made me feel all 35 of my years. :/ I wasn't the only one - my companions had rather less patience with the surrounding audience than I did, which admittedly dulled my enjoyment of the show a bit. Boo.

But the show itself! I was immediately enchanted with Cecil, whose delivery on-stage is just as hypnotically soothing and hilariously deadpan as in the podcast, and the fact that we could see his face, expressions and hand gestures enhanced it a lot for me. (Many of his mannerisms called to mind a more subdued Dean Pelton from Community.) I actually found myself enjoying their featured musician (Jason Webley), to my surprise - usually the type of music they feature on The Weather doesn't really appeal to me, and I definitely remember being quite meh about the song he had featured on the show. (Him being the other half of Amanda Palmer's severely problematic project Evelyn Evelyn doesn't help my opinion of him, but that particular connection didn't pop into my head until days later.) He is fun to watch on stage - his entire schtick with his accordion very much made me wonder if an indie college town was missing its busker. (In fact I'm rather sure I saw him performing in front of Thornes a couple hours before the show.) The song that stuck with me from his set was "A Letter to John Shriner" which is a delightfully silly song about wanting a giraffe.

That's the best video I can find of it, unfortunately, I don't think he's formally recorded it yet. Reminds me of the only song I actually liked from that whole Evelyn Evelyn mess, which was "Elephant Elephant" - has the same sort of spirit.

Anyway. Seeing as it was a sold out show there was no way I had the patience to fight my way through the physical manifestation of Tumblr into the merch room, but oh well, it's not like I don't know someone who works at Topataco, and I didn't really like the exclusive tour poster, so I don't think I missed anything there. Besides - after a couple of hours of screaming 20 year olds, the gang and I very much wanted to get the hell away from there lest we murder the next trilby wearing person we saw. Food and quiet were in order. On a hunch, I led the gang of grumbling misanthropes to Packards, where as luck would have had it, the back library where I used to play Dune with claxman was available. Thus 11 homicidal nerds got to decompress, eat things and drink undisturbed with the safety of a door between us and the world and its filthy people. I kinda win everything for remembering that space existed. :)



In other news, cell23 and are a little closer to being able to purchase the Accord from his ex father-in-law. It's been once-overed by the mechanic and the cracked windshield has been replaced, and a price agreed upon - pretty much all that's left is to negotiate terms of payment and get the process of transferring ownership going. Yay new (to us) car?



Yes I watched the Oscars last Sunday. I don't really have anything new to add to the Lupita Nyong'o squee or the WTF Bizarro universe where John Travolta introduces a completely different person and Idina Menzel then crashes and burns on stage. There are a few movies out there I clearly need to get off my duff and see though.

I should probably do a media post in general at some point. I have Things To Discuss concerning Almost Human and Rupaul's Drag Race.



Two bits of beads news (you knew it was coming, c'mon): 1) I finally got around to sewing some chartreuse cord to the top of Tetris Dance last Friday, and as of Sunday it is finally being framed. Crossing my fingers that Michaels doesn't fuck it up. If it comes out nice, I'll get the Castlevania one done and I'll put both of them up somewhere in the house until I either get sick of them or someone buys them on Etsy, though I haven't yet found a nerd sugar daddy with a crippling need for nostalgic Nintendo bead art yet so who know on that front, lol. Judging by how well a friend of mine is doing at Bronycons, maybe I should switch to MLP. (Decidedly not a fan of most bronies, but I have no moral problems with parting them from their money.)

Speaking of which Big Boo is about half done too. Here we are practicing our mean mugging:



Toying with making a companion piece afterward of Banzai Bill - same size and layout basically. Those were the only two oversized Super Mario villains worth the effort, really.

I'm also working on designing some non-fanart stuff as well - a little QR code based stuff and small pixel portraits (45 on a side, if you want to know how small.. This is necessitating me learning how to do pixel art/spriting, which is a lot harder than it looks or sounds (hand dithering is made of big sweaty balls, really), but so far I'm enjoying the challenge. Working on and off on a picture of cell23 from the wedding currently, if it comes out decent, I'll bead it up as an exercise and then, IDK, take commissions or something. How weird is it that a craft I only pulled out and worked with once in a blue moon throughout my life has completely risen up and taken over my existence right now?

Ha ha, speaking of crafts rising up and taking over your life, cell23 has apparently tripped and fallen deeeeeeeep into the Warhammer/game figure painting hole, and our kitchen table has been slowly overtaken by heavily armored little dudes in various states of prime and paint, tiny containers of said paint, cans of aforementioned primer, and castoff plastic bits. I am oddly charmed and excited by this. A lot of it is me being all "Yay, you too now have an exacting crafty hobby that is weirdly expensive and will in all likelihood make you go blind! Fistbump!" sense, but also in a hey we can sit together and do crafty crap together if we want to, though it being cold in the kitchen I generally prefer to bead at my desk right now. but, uh yeah. Nerds. We are them.


And finally, three little girls singing Japanese death metal, for reasons.

I should probably feed these cats before they murder each other. Brat out.

Comments

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

OMG, Idina Menzel did so poorly with that song. I was so surprised and wondered if she'd been sick or something. :(

Aw, top third of a Boo! I cannot wait to see what it looks like when you're done.

Glad to hear there's progress on the car front.

*hugs* if you want them