Cleolinda everywhere

So! Today is the 10th anniversary of this LJ! And even though I am about to link you to a ton of stuff not actually on this LJ, I still consider it the mothership.

My second piece is up on The Toast! If you read it before, a Significant Correction has been made. It changes EVERYTHING. RUN, JULIE.

(The Toast is on fire generally today, btw.)

Over on my tumblr: a gorgeous new illustrated Hunger Games: Catching Fire poster, the Sleepy Hollow gang playing baseball (the follow-up), a few new Hannibal things (OMG), Old Maps of Paris, Kate Beaton's Halloween quiz, and Martha Stewart Halloween photography shut up.

Over on my new side tumblr: the lesser-known jacket of Anna Valerious, wonderful Dracula illustrations by Anne Yvonne Gilbert, and that POOF! gif I wanted.

And, in case you missed it, I finished the recap for the first episode of NBC's Dracula a couple of days ago (I need to go back and answer a lot of comments. ). I am SUPER, SUPER HOPING to make this November 1st deadline for my Black Ribbon story before the next episode that night, just in time to start the process all over again. Wish me luck!

So. Emily (foresthouse) came to visit for a few days and we ate our way through the restaurants of Homewood (the new Which Wich was hands down our favorite, although Dave's Pizza was also excellent) (although my favorite Chinese restaurant, the Dragon, CLOSED FOREVER the day after we had lunch there), and then we watched The Hunger Games while she sewed on her DragonCon costumes and OMG PROMETHEUS ON THE HOTEL TV BECAUSE THAT IS A THING THEY ACTUALLY DO

( YEAH IT IS )

I was mostly clappy-hands because now she can read Prometheus in Fifteen Minutes (I refrained from doing a live recitation of it) AND THEN THEY EVEN COMPED OUR RIDICULOUSLY PRICED MOVIES BECAUSE HOTEL ROOMS ARE THE BEST and we also saw The Bourne Legacy in an actual movie theater and slept a lot and also she taught me how to play pool. And then I went home, promptly came down with a terrible sore throat in the middle of last night which turned into a chest cold and a twisted knee because... somehow. However, I interrupt my death blarg because there is something you need to see.

@Tonnerdoll: The Fall Holiday Release is NOW LIVE!! Place your pre orders now and get FREE SHIPPING!!






( YOU GUYS. YOUUUU GUYYYYYS )


Then that thing happened where you are kind of run-on-sentence giddy and recovering from fun but then something serious happens and you are somewhat at sea with the record-needle-scratch suddenness of the tone change. My stepfather had had some health issues that I didn't mention, and spent a few days in the hospital several weeks ago. It's worse now, and he's going to have to have a fairly major surgery next week--stomach issues, not cancer or anything, but still a little scary. People usually give me the side-eye when they realize I don't live on my own, but at least I'll be here to help take care of him when he gets home. He's also just been laid off from work ("displaced" is the term they use nowadays) so... taking time off isn't an issue, at least...? I guess. I'm in "clinging to fun that was had in order to ward off anxiety" mode at this point. Things are not great, but we will be okay. I've had a lot of health and money issues to deal with for... well, a long time now. Several months, maybe a year or longer, honestly. Hence the infrequency of LJ entries, and why some of the ongoing series-type posts just... stopped. I'm going to try to post more, maybe start with more Varney the Vampire for the tip jar, put up an e-book of the Twilight book entries, annotate some more Fifteen Minutes(es), I don't know. We'll see. Also, I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to have to turn on ads here on LJ. It is what it is, I guess. You do what you can, and try to keep your chin up as you do it.


ETA: Ah, my stepfather's come back from the doctor; it looks like he'll have to have a CAT scan to be sure, but not surgery now. So we've got that going for us.

1) Bella Swan: vampiring better than you since *checks watch* 2008. This is the same teaser that ran in front of The Hunger Games, so you may have already seen it (stop poaching Katniss's deer, BELLA). ( Read more... )

2) Meanwhile, shit got real: The Hunger Games' box office crushes the Twilight movies. All of them.

3) I seem to have hit a hypomanic upswing; mine, as I've explained before, are pretty mild. The only thing someone would really notice from the outside is that I'm a bit more upbeat, enthusiastic, and talkative--but when a movie I've really been looking forward to comes out, that doesn't seem out of place. (Honestly, I've started wondering--as I've said before--if you can trigger manic moods. If nothing else, I think it suddenly being SUMMER IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH gave me an overdose of natural light, and that may have caused it as well. As I recall, my most pronounced upswings are almost always in the spring and summer.) Otherwise, I'm outwardly calm, but as I've gotten older, I've been edging further and further into mild mania, and the happy creative bursts have been "evolving" into something less comfortable. The upside at the lower hypomanic end is that I feel happy and creative (verging on hypergraphic); at the high, verging-on-manic end, I feel overcaffeinated, impatient, and irritable, I have all these ideas but I can't concentrate or focus, I have a hard time sleeping, and I don't want to eat. I have a sample of BPAL's Safari blend, and a dab on the back of each hand (so I can smell it while I'm typing) seems to have centered me a bit. Once I was able to actually focus, I got 1600 words written in a couple of hours last night (there's your hypergraphia), but it took me all day to be able to concentrate that long.

On the other hand, you get wackadoo flights of fancy like the mandatory Panem TV schedule, and like this:

@cleolinda: WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING RT @NikkiFinke: Hugh Dancy To Star In NBC Series ‘Hannibal’

@cleolinda: Look, save some time. Modern-day Sherlock Holmes hunts Hannibal Lecter. In a dystopia. With a vampire. An alien vampire.

@cleolinda: The alien vampire is on the run from a beauty pageant to the death. Also, Sherlock is a werewolf. His brother is a steampunk faerie.

@writingfreak88: No alien ninja turtles?

( Read more... )

Numbered thoughts are organized thoughts!

( Spoiler discussion )

I probably need to say some things. I am still very tired from a persistent fevery death blarg, however. NONETHELESS the Dark Shadows trailer is out and it is not what any of us expected and I kind of love Eva Green it.

( Read more... )



ALSO IN OTHER NEWS they keep putting out Prometheus trailers--twenty seconds! A FULL MINUTE! Two and a half minutes sometime later today!--and for real, Christopher Nolan needs to step up his trailer game because The Dark Knight is one of my favorite movies but I would pretty much chew my own arm off and hit Batman in the face with it if he were standing between me and this movie.

( Read more... )

Also-also, all the reviews and Twitter comments from people who saw The Hunger Games at its premiere last week indicate that all persons involved have knocked it out of the park. My understanding is that Tonner will preview their Katniss doll (!!!!) the week the movie comes out. I am working on many things to post, like Secret Life and Varney and what-all, but: fevery death blarg. My health has not been good for a long while now. However, I obviously have to hang on until I see The Hobbit, so we ought to be good for a while. IT IS A GREAT TIME TO BE ALIVE.


ETA: ahhhhhhhh I just watched the full trailer when it went live, go to go.amctheatres.com/prometheus and it'll be at the end of the Q&A replay, omg some movie site post it nowwwww

I should probably say something interesting, but I was having some blood pressure problems on Oscar weekend (stress-related), and then once I got through that, I caught my mother's cold, and then I got over it but she gave it to my stepfather and apparently I caught a completely separate iteration of it from him, because I spontaneously came down with a chest cold, including sore throat and hacking cough, at about 6:38 last night (the friend I was on the phone with can confirm this. "HACK! I think I just swallowed something wrong...? What is thACKHACKHACKHACKHARRRRRFFFFFFF"). My point is: Cinna (who I can't get to embed for the life of me).

Also, Katniss takes on Mugatu, to the shock of Wes Bentley's beard. ( Read more... )


So. In conclusion, not doing too well at the moment, but keep on keepin' on. Also, Cinna.

@Tonnerdoll: The Hunger Games Concept Sketches...Check it! What do you think, you all? We can totally do this justice!

@cleolinda: WAIT DOES THAT MEAN THERE WILL BE A KATNISS DOLL? please Santa I have been ever so good

@Tonnerdoll: Cleo, we definitely have The Hunger Games license, so one would hope that Katniss is in the works! ^kv #dollchat


("kv" is Kevin--Tonner Kevin, if you will--who's also @mediasres on Twitter and usually runs the @Tonnerdoll feed. They're pretty dedicated to the whole #dollchat thing--actually, I think the next one is tonight--and talking with collectors, so don't get too impressed with my ~connections.~)


I don't really have anything interesting to say, I just thought this was Relevant to Our Interests.

I have a ton of catching up to do, but I slipped into a research/rewrite/productivity rabbit hole and didn't want to come out for a few days. So, here is several days' worth of linkspam, although I tried to stick to the essentials: ( Read more... )

I cut several news items for time (space?), but I'll see if I can't work them into the next spam, assuming one happens in a timely fashion.

@LiveJournal: Currently experiencing a DDoS attack for the past two days -- status.livejournal.org

@gildedbat: @LiveJournal pity they're going to have to set that "days without a DDoS attack" sign back to 0. They got all the way over 100.

@LJmysticowl: Russian news confirms, also says that paid accounts will be credited the time they lost due to downtime.

@chez_amanda: There's also this Time article about the attacks that I just read.

ETA: @LiveJournal: Please to say we are up and running again! Thank you, U.S. and Moscow teams, who have worked tirelessly to get things restored! Happy LJing!

So... that's what's up with that, then. I want to stay on LiveJournal, but in order to do that, I'm gonna have to have a LiveJournal to stay on. (This entry is posted on both LJ and DW. As long as I can crosspost, I will.)


As a reminder in case you didn't see it: the Made of Fail podcast with Kevin, sometimes Dayna, Mark, Rinna and me, "Mischief Managed"! If the LJ link doesn't work, this is the direct download (or you can subscribe in iTunes; it's free). You may also want to listen to the first Deathly Hallows review show ("In Conclusion, Alan Rickman" [download] ), which had just Kevin, Mark and me. Or even the Half-Blood Prince show further back that I was on! We have many wizard-based options for your aural entertainment.

Movie links! They are exceptionally organized tonight, in no small part because I have three days' worth, and this isn't even all of them. ( Read more... )

So last night I was tired and also there was a pretty bad thunderstorm, and now I've got yesterday's linkspam and today's Comic-Con movie news to deal with. And deal with it we shall, in the most orderly way I can manage.

( DEEP BREATH )