Master cellist Msitslav Rostropovich died this morning in Moscow, and a part of me is thinking that the fact that I bought new strings for my own cello yesterday is some kind of precognitive tribute.

I’ve only ever heard him play in recordings – his version of the Bach unaccompanied suites is soul stirring – and I’ve seen recordings of him conducting as well. (Conductors, by the way, are hot. They just are. It’s intrinsic.) I’ve read some of his writings about the instrument, and I’ve seen video footage of his playing, his lithe fingers dancing over the strings, a merry gleam in his eye, as if he knows he’s the one in charge of the music, and we’re all just joining him on a journey.

He may not be quite as known among the masses as Yo-Yo Ma or Jacqueline DuPre (he taught the latter, by the way), but in classical music he’s the standard by which others are measured, the spiritual successor to Pablo Casals.

He was 80, when he died, which isn’t horribly young, but even so, it seems too soon.

I never knew him, only his music, but I’ll miss him.

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Appetizer
How fast can you type?
90 words-per-minute for error-free.
Faster with typos.

Soup
What is your favorite online game?
None. I only rarely play computer games at all, and when I do they’re not online. However, I used to be an ardent MUSHer, which is how I met not only Fuzzy but a good number of my present-day friends.

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 as highest), how intelligent do you think you are?
That’s kind of a loaded question, isn’t it? Going by IQ, I’m in the top 2% of the (measured) population (I’m not going to share the official number.), but I’m terrified of spiders, some horror movies give me nightmares even though I KNOW they’re fiction, and I cannot cook a hamburger to save my life. So, forgive, me, but I’m not going to rate myself.

Main Course
Name three of your best teachers from your school years
I’ve been blessed with many, many amazing teachers, all in public schools (until college). But the top three?

1. Ray Goodheart was my teacher at Palo Alto Pre-school in Golden, Colorado in 1975 & 76. He had us doing long division at the tender age of five, and made us spell multi-syllabic words with Alpha-bits before eating them. I last talked to him in 1988, when he told me his best San Francisco story just before I left for college.
2. Earl White was a teacher at Georgetown (CO) Elementary school when I was there in 1977 & 78. I was only in his class for an hour or so a day, as I was in 2nd grade and he was in charge of 4th-graders, mainly (who, by the way, seemed really grown up at the time). I remember him as being tough but fair, and I also remember that he pushed me, and never let me get away with being lazy. I caught up with him via email a couple years ago, but never maintained the connection.
3. Alison Warriner was the professor in charge of my expository writing seminar my freshman year at University of San Francisco, and she was amazing. She was a stickler for proper grammar, but then, her father wrote that hateful green textbook, Warriner’s Guide to English Grammar and Usage, so she came by it naturally. She was also warm, funny, and a little snarky, and I wish I’d had her for other classes. I did some of my best work in her seminar, and still have a copy of the first A I earned (and let me tell you, an A on an ALISON paper is only slightly less impressive than a Pulitzer prize).

Dessert
What are your plans for this upcoming weekend?
I play at ComedySportz on Friday and Saturday evenings, and on Sunday a bunch of us are (theoretically) meeting at Scarborough Ren Faire where our troupe-mate Jill is a member of the cast. Oh, and, I’m having my hair done on Saturday afternoon. Yay, pink!

Thirteen Things about MissMeliss 13 Things That Begin with D Dabbling: I suck at commitment, and I like many, many things, so I tend to dabble in them. It suits me. It would suit me better if I were independently wealthy, however. Daisies: Such cheery flowers, and I don’t care if they’re the traditional yellow, the glorious Gerberas or the chocolate-scented brown cosmos, I like them all. Darjeeling: Oh, don’t get me wrong, I like most tea – including chai, and Earl Grey (hot), but Darjeeling is a little bit different, and a little bit darker. And more fun to say. Darkness: I like rooms to be quietly lit, not over-bright, and I think the dark parts of an image, the negative space, are as important as the bright and the positive. But I also tend to be drawn to dark themes – vampires, ghosts, almost anything created by Tim Burton or Joss Whedon. Check out my book and movie collection – all will be made clear. Dancing: I’m pretty suckful at just dancing, but I’m okay at tap and I’ve had lessons in some classic ballroom dance. Eons ago I took ballet, slightly more recently (one less eon?) I also took jazz. But even when I suck, dancing makes me happy. Decorating: Whether it’s changing the flowers in my vases to reflect my mood, changing the house decor to be in tune with the season or holiday, or re-arranging the furniture just to have a sense of new space, I love decorating. Depp, Johnny: My first exposure to him was in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but my appreciation only grew from there. Now? Well, I joke that he’s on my freebie list, but it’s his work – his always making the unusual choice – that I really admire. Diving: There’s something completely magical about viewing the world from beneath the surface of water. I still dream of cage-diving with sharks. Ahhh, someday. Dogs I like cats, but they make me sneeze. I “get” dogs. They’re sweet, loyal, protective, funny, clever and love you unconditionally. I have two – Zorro’s a 10-year-old chihuahua/JRT mix, and MissCleo is a seven-year-old mutt. Dolphins: If you’ve ever been face-to-face with one, you understand the zen of dolphins. They have this way of looking right into your soul. Doo-Rap It’s one of my favorite CSz games, because I like rhyming, and I like music, and most of the time I don’t suck at it. Actually, not-sucking at it is kind of a problem. I don’t like to fail, and it really brings out my competitive streak. Dragons: I’m not sure if I just have a thing for mythical creatures, or if it’s something deeper, but I’ve been drawn to dragons ever since I can remember. Dresden, Harry: He’s a wizard, and a detective, and yes, he’s a fictional character, but whether I’m reading about his latest exploits in one of Jim Butcher’s excellent novels, or watching him banter with Bob the Ghost on the Sci-Fi channel series, Harry makes me smile. He’s a dark figure who still manages to be a comfort-figure.

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Because we really ARE that geeky – Fuzzy and I have purchased advanced tix to the 12:01 AM Thursday Night/Friday morning showing of Spiderman 3 at the IMAX theater on Webb Chapel road.

Sleep is for wusses.

So, I’ve got an appointment with the lovely and talented (and way pregnant) Miss Natalie at the Cedar Hill Aveda on Saturday afternoon, to refresh the funky streaks we added to my hair and then refreshed last time. Because my hair is naturally dark, and because funky colors show up better on light hair anyway, it’s a multi-step process that involves bleaching the strands out to nearly white, then doing my usual bittersweet chocolate all-over color, wash, rinse, dry, *then* the funky streaks go in, repeat wash, rinse, dry.

I have a lot of hair. It’s not particularly long – it has a natural set point of somewhere between the top and bottom of the back of my bra, and anyway, it’s so heavy, I couldn’t take it if it were longer. This process takes about three hours. I get a lot of reading done. Or napping. We’ve found that the best way to do the funky color is just to have me recline over the sink – and since Aveda’s rinse chairs fold out flat, I get to nap and/or groove on the music while it sinks into my hair. They even bring me a blanket from the massage room. Consider it a special form of multi-tasking.

Anyway, Aveda no longer makes funky colors because while they ARE animal-product free, they’re not 100% organic. So Miss Natalie and I cut a deal: I would bring in color from a brand she recommended, and she’ll discount her service. I’m cool with this.

The brand she recommended is “Special Effects” and I ordered mine from Amphigory, a one-stop shop for all your goth beauty needs. I’m not actually all that goth, except inside, but I just love the funky hair colors.

Here is the direct link to their hair dye page. If you click the names of the colors, below the swatches, you can see the effects of the colors on Real People. I couldn’t decide which red or pink I wanted, so I ordered Devilish, Cherry Bomb, and Atomic Pink. Bear in mind, I’m not doing my whole head with this stuff – just streaks.

And on that note, my coffee is ready, and it’s time for work.

Sleepy

I hadn’t slept more than three hours Thursday Night, but had so much to do yesterday, and my mind was spinning, that I had to force awakeness. I pushed water and protein all day, and it seemed to help. My left eye has a mild stye/infection and it’s bothersome but not painful. I think it’s partly a reaction to lack of sleep.

All day I was racing around, and feeling kind of giddy, and then I wanted to crash, but knew if I did I’d be comatose.

However, I found the energy to do a CSz show (not our best, but solid, if a little off-kilter) and do dinner after, and dinner was nice. Relaxed. I needed it as much as the show.

Came home, was going to post a blog but my website was broken.

Broken
Yes, broken. Terribly so. Of course, I immediately assumed it was WordPress that had gone wonky, backed up my sql tables, grabbed my template files, and purged WP. Then I realized I couldn’t get to the site at all. Could ping it, could traceroute it, couldn’t actually get to port 80. Fuzzy had me telnet into it (I haven’t used telnet in at least five years) and test that way, so I could give Dreamhost ALL the information. They never responded to my email, but it’s working now (obviously).

Note to self: mucking with webfoo at 2:00 AM when you’re already developing under-eye circles to rival any corpse in a Tim Burton movie – not the wisest of choices.

Also? Thank God for concealer.

BPAL
Got my order last night. Can’t remember right now what the imps were, but there were FIVE frimps in the box, including Hemlock, which is poison green. The bottles were Milk Moon and Poisson d’Avril.

Going back to sleep for a short while, then will start work on, well, work.

NOTE: If you’re looking for my Friday’s Feast responses, they’re in the next post down.

So I’m working on this novella, and I’ve spent the last week world building, and finding characters, and in a much-needed mind-candy break last weekend, I found myself on ff.net, reading, of all things, Beetlejuice fanfic. Most of it was based on the cartoon, which is kind of creepy because my anti-animation brain vaguely recalls that cartoon Beetlejuice was pretty gross, in a monsterish sort of way, while movie Betelgeuse (and I use the different spellings on purpose) was, after all Michael Keaton under a bunch of make-up and while the character was also gross, it was a completely different kind of gross.

Some of it, mainly shippy stuff in which grown-up Lydia and old Beej get together, was actually fun to read. I mean, really, it’s no worse than any other fanfic out there, and considerably better than some, if for no other reason that everyone and their little sister isn’t writing it.

And, hey, I never said I was sane.

But it made me realize three things:
1) The lead male character in my novella, who still hasn’t told me his damned NAME, is an amalgam of a bunch of Michael Keaton characters, and has the actor’s eyebrows.

2) I own no Michael Keaton movies on DVD, and yet I really enjoy his work. (Well, I do NOW because I ordered Beetlejuice from Amazon and used my spiffy prime privileges to get it really really fast.)

3) People you don’t know in real life, and have no prayer of meeting, can totally be your muses.

So I told myself, “Ok, if that’s who this character wants to be, and since he’s otherwise cooperating (except for the name thing), I will go with it.”

The thing is, I generally have tv or movies – mostly movies because there’s no distracting commercials – on while I’m writing. There’s something comforting in the conversational cadences, and every so often there’s something really compelling to watch, which is cool, because you’re supposed to look away from the computer screen and regular intervals to keep your eyes healthy and stuff.

I mean, I love music, but I can’t listen to it while I’m working because I either want to sing, or I feel guilty for ignoring my cello, or both. And I can’t deal with silence because it becomes heavy, oppressive, and almost tangible, like this thick curtain of NOTHING that saps your energy and sends your brain into sleep for self-defense. In my world, silence is NOT golden.

So, today, I tivo’d the 1989 Tim Burton Batman, which, yes, features Michael Keaton as the titular hero, but I hadn’t seen it in so long that I found it too compelling to not watch, well mostly, and as I’d watched Beetlejuice last night I was in a position to analyze performances. While there are really big moments in both films that everyone talks about, these two things pulled my focus:

1) Beetlejuice: The look right before he launches into the “qualifications” speech is priceless. I know half of it is the dead make-up, but no one has more expressive eyes than in that moment.

2) Batman: The bedroom scene where Bruce Wayne wakes up with Vicki Vale – he does this thing where he watches her sleep for a few breaths, then cradles her head against him, and the wordless tenderness and hint of vulnerability in that tiny moment caught my attention. (I also noticed that a bunch of the fanfic authors borrowed that move in their fic…I wonder if it was a conscious borrowing.)

And after all this, I still don’t know the stupid water rigger’s name. I know how he sounds and what his hands look like. I can hear his voice (a little gravelly, with casual speech that masks his education), and I know how striking his eyes are, and I know that my main female character, Rebecca, will ultimately pick him over the military dude and the scientist who are also vying for her attention, but I can’t find his NAME.

(And no, Jeremy, it is NOT Chelsea.)

But it’s after four in the morning, and I have a ton of work to do tomorrow, AND a CSz show to be in, so I guess I’ll have to curl up and sleep and figure out his name tomorrow. Maybe another showing each of Beetlejuice and Batman will help. If not, well, White Noise is in my Blockbuster queue and should come up in a week or two.

And sanity is overrated, really.

Appetizer
What is your favorite kind of bread?
It depends on the situation. For breakfast and most sandwiches I’m partial to multi-grain wheat, but I like raisin bread sometimes – especially with melted sharp cheddar on it. Then again, I like liverwurst and cream cheese on rye every so often, and there’s nothing like San Francisco sourdough.

Soup
When was the last time you bought a new pillow?
March, 2006. I bought five.

Salad
Approximately how many hours per week do you spend surfing the ‘net?
Considering that I’m paid to write web content, it would be easier to count the hours I’m NOT surfing the net in some fashion.

Main Course
What’s the highest you remember your temperature being?
104 when I had pneumonia at the age of eight. That’s a stretch of summer I’ll never get back.

Dessert
Fill in the blanks: When I ____________, I _____________.

When I write, I usually have movies on for background noise.

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