The Poignant Funnyness of Love, and Other Phrases Kat Comes Up with at 11:57 PM After a Long Day at Rehearsal

I was listening to Harry Nilsson on my mom's iPod when all of a sudden my brain goes:

Brain: Hey! Kat! Listen up!

Kat: Five more minutes, mom.

Brain: No, damnit, wake up.

Kat: Okay, whatsup?

Brain: Your play - that's the genre it is!

Kat: My play is a Harry Nilsson song?

Brain: Yes!

Kat: I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you mean.

Brain: Okay, work with me here - you know how he does his whole crazy loony scat solo in the middle of Don't Leave Me?

Kat: I'm with you.

Brain: That's kind of like the comedy in your play!

Kat: Okay, I'm hearing that. Well, that's what I like about Nilsson - his songs possess the poignant funnyness of love.

Brain: Then again, if my remarks make you talk like that, I should shut up more often.

Kat: No! No! That's actually a good idea! It's more accurate than calling the play a tragicomedy.

Brain: Oh, is that what we were calling it before? I obviously wasn't involved in that decision. Now, I am going to turn off before you finally write that fight scene that you can't get right.

Kat: No! Come back! NO PRODUCER IS GOING TO ACCEPT A PLAY ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES ON THE GROUNDS THAT IT IS A HARRY NILSSON SONG!

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So basically, aside from coming to the conclusion that my play is a Harry Nilsson song, I am making no headway whatsoever. (Thanks to SP, by the way, for Harry Nilsson in general. I feel stupid because of how much I love his stuff, especially seeing as how people ask me how I know of him and I'll be like, "Well, my ex's mother. . ." at which point they leave.) But seriously folks, that one song - Don't Leave Me - is basically my play in a nutshell. Except my play takes place in Victorian England. At Eton. With crossdressing and Shakespeare involved. And Sherlock Holmes.

Okay, so only I get this connection. But it's there, I swear to God. The story of our play is really a universal one. It's like, "Boy meets girl, boy wants girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy. . .um. . .becomes world's only cocaine addled private consulting detective."

Okay, maybe not.

I SWEAR TO GOD THE PLAY IS GOOD. (And my writing partner's pretty. Does that count for anything?)

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Certain things must be adressed. LIKE JOHNNY DEPP IN SWEENEY TODD.

ZOMG.

Okay, so Stephen Sondheim himself (drool, worship, etc.) apparently auditioned him, and I trust Stephen, but then again. Johnny Depp?!? You better be sure, Stevie, because if this movie is bad I WILL HAVE VEANGANCE, I WILL HAVE SALVATION, ETC..

I will seriously set up shop as a barber and start slitting throats if the movie's bad. Who's up for meat pies?

No one?

Oh well.

It's Depp! Have a little Depp!

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You know what, it's time for a new La Vie Boheme song parody. Hang on a tic.

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Nevermind, I'm too lazy and too busy writing Holmes/Watson. (Go on, come read my efforts, you know you want to.)

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Link to proof that fanfic can be good.

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Thought I'd repost this thing. . .Ben posted it in the comments way back when, I was going though old comments, and it just made me laugh how much of this has actually happened to me.

Lifecycle of Bloggers

Having blogged in one form or fashion for the last 6 years or so (not including personal journals that I’ve written in, on paper even, with crayon even, since I was six years old), allow me to personally provide you with a rundown on the lifecycle that I’ve observed from personal bloggers.

#1. Start reading blogs.
You start out as a lurker and by either having met a blogger or run accross an intriguing and challenging post from someone else’s blog, you start mulling about in your head for either a forum for response, challenge, or agreement. You *could* start by commenting on other folks blogs first, but you start having a gradually increased desire for a space of your own. Like when you’re living in your parent’s basement and the rest of your friends are making weekly trips to Home Depot and using words like “mulching”. You begin to wonder if you want to belong.

#2. You start a blog.
Maybe at first it’s on blogspot or livejournal. You start writing about cheese sandwhiches. You use your full name and the full names of your friends that are involved in your occasionally mischievous exploits. These things satisfy you. Hubris starts taking a more significant part of your site as you develop your tiny homestead online. The notion of fleshing out your online personality becomes important.

#3. You become a stats whore.
Daily stats/referrals and meme participation for webrings, quizlists, personality profiles, and the occasional sepia toned webcam photo to make you look all “emo” and “sultry” and “sensitive” or at least a little bit thinner. And definitley like a Kpop music video still image. You voraciouslly groom your links list as you build a posse. The wishlist makes it’s initial appearance and creepy strangers start sending you gifts when your birthday comes around. You consider this slightly weird, but hey, then again, you *did* get that Star Wars Box set that you always wanted. You *start* memes just for the additional traffic. Perhaps you even start a webgame of sorts.

#4. You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.
As you recognize the possibility of being an opinion leader in your personal circle, people flame you. You occasionally flame back. You cry about comments that certain people make to provoke you. You bitch about these things as well. Then you take into consideration that comments were made by pimply 14 year olds who post jpegs of their warcraft characters online and realize that these lOZeRs aren’t worth your time. This gives you an sense of superiority. Haha! you say to yourself. I have a posse and a blog and you don’t. So fuck off, you lame twat. Hazzah!

#5. You faux “retire” from blogging.
Having temporarily exhausted the emotional reservoir from which your personal blog has released, you post about retiring. Or a vacation. Or a hiatus. Or a sabbattacal. You say this will be permanent. Or last a month.

#6. You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.
You candy pants blogging crack addict.

#7. You decide to “get serious” about blogging.
You seek out “The A-List” of bloggers and start reading more of them, and news about them, and news about blogging in general. You come to the conclusion that if you ever hope to join their rank, then you need to atleast register your own domain. Afterall, http://candypantsnewbiebloggeraboutcheesesandwhiches.blogspot.com will not get you linked by Kottke.

#8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.
This will likely end badly. Very badly.

#9. You decide that you must meet other bloggers.
SXSW seems like a good way to go about it. Or attendance at Fray Day. Or finding any excuse possible to move to San Francisco. At least a trip, after all. With a visit to SF, meeting other “celebrity” bloggers is just as tasty a tourist destination as going to Fisherman’s Wharf. Or more so. Definitley more so. Your blogroll grows threefold.

#10. You take a step back and metablog about blogging and what blogging has done about your blogging.
You become pedantically navelgazingly annoying. For some reason, your blogger readership eats this shit up. This does not convince you, however, that you want to do something silly like smoke weed with Marc Canter. Because even *you* know that’s a bad idea.

#11. See step 5. Shampoo, rinse, repeat.

#12. You decide that as a result of step 10 and having repeated step 5 more than 3 times in the course of your lifecycle as a blogger, that you need to sanitize or reinvent your blog. You purge or hide archive entries and take more note to remove full names of your friends/crushes/accidentaldrunkenfondels from your site and links list. Your blog goes back to cheese sandwhiches. But this time your site validates.

#13. You either lose your job because of blogging, are afraid of losing your job for blogging, or join a company that builds blogging tools. Either way, your blog either dies a horrible painful death, or becomes significantly less personal to the degree of trite and uninteresting compartmentalization or subject matter discretion.

#14. You decide to start an anonymous livejournal blog. Here is where you still talk about your crushes, the he said/she said crap, and that you really really really really really really really like Maroon 5. And it’s on your wishlist.

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A Few Things One Notices When Writing a Play About Sherlock Holmes

1. Why is Holmes always in a dressing gown whenever anything mildly important to the plot is discussed?

2. What is with the dressing gown, anyway? It's girly.

3. Why is Holmes constantly perched on the arms of people's chairs, sitting on the floor by Watson's armchair, around armchairs, etc., etc., but never actually seems to sit in one?

4. Why is the hardest part of writing this play getting Holmes out of a functional romantic relationship, and not getting him into one?

5. What's with Watson?

6. In the same vein, why hasn't Watson decked Holmes by now? Christ knows he deserves it.

7. Where the hell is Watson's war wound anyway, Mr. Conan Doyle?

8. What does the H. in John H. Watson stand for?

9. Please don't say it's Hamish.

10. WHAT THE HELL WAS WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES'S FAMILY DYNAMIC?

11. The way that my writing partner writes Watson as contradicting himself all the time is so adorable that it makes me fall in love with her all over again.

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Quote of the Day

"Take that, you thing from another world, you!"

- Porky Pig, Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century

Comment at once if convenient, if inconvenient, comment all the same,

K.H.