Some more gratitude

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

 
- Scrabble with Ann on Sunday was great, and she really helped me think through some difficult in-laws stuff

- Since I've been craving another gay Christmas movie, I heard about The Christmas Setup. It was cute and sweet! And the lead actor also played Arrow's son (and both the actor and Arrow's son are also gay)

- Lunch with Chris a few days ago. I decided to be more 'green' and to take the bus instead of drive. It was actually 2 busses and I am proud of myself for navigating it all well enough. (I've never been to his place on public transport before so it was new for me. There were also 2 times it got dicey and I had to act. Once the driver blew passed my stop even though I'd hit the 'request stop' lever. And once the bus stopped showing which stops were coming up, so I kinda had to guess when my stop was approaching, which was hard to do when I wasn't familiar with the route and the bus was crowded. But I did it.)

- Doris got home from work early yesterday due to winter storms. So we binged the last 4 episodes of Interview with a Vampire. OMG it was amazing and that ending and all those twists....wow! (And for the record, I am not big into vampires at all and in fact I was kinda grossed by the blood, but I managed. Though I had to cover my eyes a few times.)

- Smaller items: when our block did the luminaria a few days ago, our neighbors set ours up for us (yes!); Ghosts had a great Christmas episode; and I am still sleeping like a baby

- Fan stuff! MST3K just released a movie that stars 2 of my favorite actors from The Outpost. They did a hilarious job riffing on it! I loved it. But...downside? With MST3K's new platform, unless I am not reading this right....it looks like I paid $7 and I get to see it once? I can't even rewatch it? wtf. That's worse than Amazon's prices and at least Amazon lets you stream it as many times as you want. I need to get back in there and confirm that; I'm just kinda pissed about the whole thing now so I haven't logged back in

- And more fan stuff - Sachin! He confirmed that yes, let's do coffee when I'm in Vancouver in February!!! Yay! (Although funny note: when he first suggested this, it was dinner. Over the months, it has been downgraded to coffee) :) On a less-cool note, he said that he has COVID....for the 4th time now! Yikes

Comments

[megan_moonlight]

It's been so long since I've played Scrabble. Wow. I don't even remember it, now that I think about it.

Public transport can be tricky sometimes, but since I don't have a driver's licence, I always go for public transport. Sometimes it can be very tricky, but I love the occasinal element of surprise 🤣

The holiday movie I re-watch every year is Breakfast with Scot. I'm watching it on Monday 😊 I haven't heard about The Christmas Setup before, so I'll add it to mu to-watch list.

Happy Holidays to you and Doris 💖 I hope your celebrations are full of lots of fun and great gifts!

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

How is the public transportation where you live, is it decent? It's usually ok here.

I'll check out Breakfast with Scot! Happy Holidays to you!!

[megan_moonlight]

Public transport is usually great in big cities. I have lots of direct buses and trams to a lot of parts of the city, but things get tricky sometimes, for example during winter when there's a lot of snow, or during big gatherings, like sports games and parades (when the routs have to be changed). But other than that, I can't really complain. I actually enjoy public transport most of the time.

Breakfast with Scot is so much fun! I love it to pieces. I'm currently writing a fic for it for Small Fandom Fest.

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

PS - I realize now that I did indeed see Breakfast with Scot years ago. Loved it!

[rhoda_rants]

Yay Scrabble! It's always good to have a family buffer when you need one.

Public transport is terrible where I live. You have to cross water to get anywhere for one thing--it's mostly swampland, and what isn't swamp is rivers, and what isn't rivers is the literal ocean--and the roads are constantly a mess. We have school buses, but the city buses only run like twice a day. I checked once, when I was between cars, and I would've had to get up like two hours early to get the bus that would take me to work to get there on time.

I'm so glad you've been enjoying Interview With the Vampire!! I'm . . . still very behind. I binged some comfort rewatches, but I'm still only one episode 4. I think it's because of how different it is from the books. I think they used the books as a jumping off point to tell a very different story, with some similar but also very different characters, and I'm in the process of wrapping my brain around that. (And trying not to resent the fact that I barely recognize one of my favorite fictional characters of all time, but that only bugs me a little.) It's great, but it's a terrible adaptation, if that makes sense.

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

I wish every community had good public transportation - it would make such a difference! (Years ago I read something about how the auto industry spent a ton of money to kill public transport) :(

I never read the books but I did check out Wikipedia and I def see what you see - a ton is different. But I love it. Is it Louie who you refer to, as one of your fav characters of all time? And yes, I understand...a great show but not much of an adaptation. (I know it was the same with my favorite show The 100. It is based on a book, but only the basic premise and a few character names are the same; everything else is different)

[rhoda_rants]

Yeah, I read that too--something about killing the trains? I have been on trains, and I think they're great--much cheaper and less of a hassle than planes, if you don't mind it taking longer to get places. That's how I got to my MCR show this year!

Oh no--Louis is great! He is the best Louis ever and I love what they did with this character. I mean Lestat. He's a much less nuanced villain in this version. I'm trying to keep in mind we're still getting all this information filtered through either Louis or Claudia, both of whom haaaaate Lestat for various reasons, but they keep throwing out little details that make him worse. Like, that thought Louis had about only killing evil-doers: that was Lestat's idea, and it's been part of his code of vampire conduct for centuries. And bringing in Claudia as part of the family: it was Lestat who saved her after Louis drained her almost dry. It was also a ploy to keep their "marriage" from falling apart, which again did not work, but changing it so that Louis essentially begs him to turn her COMPLETELY undoes a big chunk of Lestat's character. His guilt over turning someone so young she would never be able to fend for herself, and what happens to her later, haunts him throughout the entire series. This Lestat appears incapable of guilt. (Although keep in mind I still haven't seen the finale yet, so I'm curious about these "plot twists" you're referring to.)

Side-bar: I *LOVE* Claudia. Again, completely different from the books--making her a Black girl growing up in New Orleans in the early 20th century drastically changes her character arc--but in this case that's a GOOD thing, and I'm glad they didn't feel so tied to the source material they couldn't explore that.

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

Okay, good to know! Yes, TV-Lestat is, as you said, very un-nuanced. He's just flat out bad - full of charisma but really wicked. I'm sorry they didn't stick with the more nuanced character from the source material. I enjoyed Louie and Claudia a lot, and I am glad that they casted actors of color for their roles since so much of TV is still SO white.

[rhoda_rants]

He's still a fun character, he's just not MY Lestat. Honestly, there's so much else that's great about the series, it doesn't bother me as much as it could. Just needed to reset my fandom expectations, know what I mean?

I enjoyed Louie and Claudia a lot, and I am glad that they casted actors of color for their roles since so much of TV is still SO white.
Oh, totally! Back when they were still in production, I remember doing a whole fancast and saying that Louis should be Black. I didn't know how they would make that work, but I felt like it was important, and I'm glad someone else who's in charge agreed!

By the way: I got your email, thank you so much! I have never heard of this company, so I'm excited to check it out!

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

Totally understand what you mean about having to reset your fandom expectations. It was like that for me with the X-men movies. I like what they did most of the time though several of the characters are quite different.

Glad you got it - yes Serrv has some lovely stuff and I saw that they got candles!

[nytshd3]

How is Chris doing? I actually feel really bad that I didn't even think to invite him and Heather to our wedding! Congrats on navigating the bus system! I remember when I was in college in Des Moines and I once had to take a bus to a meeting (I was a 'peer mentor' my second year there) and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. I got on the right bus but going in the wrong direction, there were no announcements for where you were, I asked someone on the bus and they just laughed at me, etc. I eventually got better at it there and at my next college but it was never intuitive to me, plus I suck with north/south/east/west so that doesn't help. I admire you for doing it!

Glad to hear interview with the vampire was good! I haven't watched it yet but I plan to at least check it out.

Some of those platforms are so strange in the way they do things. So many times I want to say 'but WHY?' Also I am very bitter that we have cable and SO MANY streaming things are SEPARATE! Ugh. Could you download the movie from MST3K? I remember at one point they were selling like a soundtrack and you had to cue it up to match the movie.

I hope coffee turns into dinner or whatever when you visit Sachin! I mean, the nice thing about coffee is that if you're meeting somewhere, you can probably hang out for a while. Or hell, if things are going great, maybe you could go from coffee to dinner? Who knows! Sorry to hear he's on his 4th bout of covid?! omg!

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

Hindsight is 20/20....beforehand it seemed there wouldn't be room for Chris and Heather, but now we know there was. But I say it's their own fault for never going to game night!!! :) In any case, they are doing well.

I think MST3k isn't doing that anymore (where you get the movie and you download their soundtrack over it), and honestly it was a pain.

Fingers crossed about February with Sachin! I have no idea what will happen so we'll just play it by ear, but it would be nice if coffee turns into dinner. I wonder if I should treat myself to a new outfit for it. Hmmm

[nytshd3]

tbh, Chris and Heather never even crossed my mind when I was making my list. THough you do raise a good point - how many years has it been since they've been to game night? I feel like the last time we saw them was for my birthday one year? 2017? I do wish we had not invited so many of Rollin's family members (or that they had just, ya know, RSVP'd). But I had like 10 other people I really wanted to invite. They might not have been able to make it but had I known how things would have gone, I would have just gone ahead and invited them (and chris and heather!).

Hopefully you get to keep the MST3k movie! I did always think the downloading the soundtrack sounded like it would be a huge pain to line up correctly.

Also forgot to say - I don't think I knew that you liked Ghosts! I think it's so fun! I tried to get my mom to watch it because I try to come up with things she can do other than go down the conspiracy theory rabbit holes but she said she didn't get it (I think partially because her hearing is not so good and she refuses to wear her hearing aids). Anyway I was super happy that Nigel and Isaac were able to work it out!

[stormkeeper_lovesall]

Yeah it just sucks how bad people are at RSVPing. And I really wish Chris and Heather would come back to game night but I've given up on even asking anymore.

I LOVE Ghosts. It's so funny and so well done. And of course i love Issac and Nigel. I really like that they gave them something of a storyline (while also not making me worry - it seems like the writers will keep them together). I love Nigel especially his over the top voice and accent.