A few things. First, our poster for Outdoor Trek, drawn by our Uhura and colored/design by Mr. Daroga.

( The Naked Time! (SFW) )

There are also a few new blog posts at our Captain's Blog.

Next, this rose bush. When I moved in, there were several very old, very tall bushes. I know nothing about gardening or roses, but I have attempted to keep up with them. However, everything I've read suggests cutting away old wood--but nearly all the growth on these bushes is on old growth. So I've never been able to cut them back very much, and they end up just HUGE and with DOZENS of (small) roses all over them. I really like it.

Evidence:

He drew me fanart for my birthday.



( pick out the references! )

Lately, I've seen The Price of the Phoenix by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath recommended about. Recommended in the sense that it's UTTER CRACK in published form, which, to be fair, a lot of TOS is already.

What I hadn't seen was this cover. Which would have demanded my purchase even if I hadn't heard of it.

Preview:


( large image )

On Wednesday last, lettered and I saw 5th Avenue Theater's production of Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim (with Hugh Panaro, for all you Phantom fans). This was the version revived last year on Broadway (and I think before that in London) which utilized an entirely different mechanism for recreating "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" on stage.

For those of you who don't know (and are still reading), Sunday is a musical about art, legacy, relationships, and family with the painting—and the painter--at its center. Georges Seurat (in this work—I know nothing of his real life) is really only alive in his work, driving away his lover, Dot, and existing in his own little world of dots. Georges' obsession with his work, his theories of color and light and the way our eyes participate in its perception, make him a perfect vehicle for Sondheim's statement about art, critics, reputation, experimentation, creativity, and the modern art world. It also offers the staging gimmick that everyone in the play is a character from the painting, and the entire thing is realized finally in a stagewide tableau; a concept that in the second act gets another novel twist. I could go on at length about various aspects of this play, but I want to hit on a few points.
( staging )
( emotional impact )
Above all else, if you get a chance, I definitely recommend it.

In something of a thematic reversal from my previous post, here's something I completed a few days ago: the dog Sirius from Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody. I discovered this book in my school library in 7th grade, having no idea who Jones was, and devoured it. Little did I know that years later, I'd realize she was one of my favorite authors.

The book concerns a star-being, Sirius, who is framed for murder and sentenced to life on Earth as, appropriately, a dog. Given a dog's short lifespan, this more or less dooms him unless he can find a mysterious object that will prove his innocence. What gives this story the life it has and makes this premise not all that silly is that Sirius must do this with the mental capacity of a dog and also that he is rescued by an Irish girl who is living with her racist English family while her father is in prison for IRA-related activities. It's charming and one of my favorite dog stories. The model here is my Mr. Darcy, who is also part-lab but probably not a reborn heavenly body. Sorry, buddy.



I'm thinking of sending it to Jones, once I decide to take that black line out. It's actually surrounding all of him, and his ears, to give a sort of stained-glass effect but as you can only see it on the leg, it looks rather out of place.

My brother and sis-in-law's Christmas present:


Dylan by ~my-daroga on deviantART

Now that it's arrived at its intended destination, I can post this publicly:


Darmoth by ~my-daroga on deviantART

Made for darmoth's mommies; he's a good, happy boy who was hit by a car as a puppy and lost the use of his hind legs. But M&M have given him an awesome life.

Oedipus by ~my-daroga on deviantART

Last night in bed, I spent several minutes staring at one panel of the graphic novel Blankets by Craig Thompson. For the purposes of my story, it doesn't really matter which panel it was--but if you're interested, it was the one which depicts the main character/narrator masturbating to a letter his would-be girlfriend from church camp sent. It is disturbing and sexual without being graphic, thematically due to the guilt he experiences after/during the act.

But that's not the point.

What had me staring was my inability to figure out what had me staring at it. The image was of a doubled-over, nude body, his left leg curving down slightly to complement the angry ink-stains which curved over the next image (likewise, a nude, but not explicit, male body). The book is upsetting all by itself, with intimations of abuse, difficult first love, and religious guilt. But this one image confused me somehow; it was rife with contradiction. I tried to explain it to Mr. Daroga, who had urged me to read it because it upset him so much he needed someone to share it.

What I tried to explain was that this image arrested me because I "couldn't understand how he had drawn it so perfectly." This, obviously, makes no sense, since anything he drew in this instance would be the right thing; but it was as if I saw the image as a constant element Thompson had teased out of the blank paper. It was not so much that he'd drawn it as he'd hewn the finished image from the ink. I couldn't see it as a collection of lines but rather an organic whole, and therefore I couldn't imagine how one would ever make all the little decisions that went into drawing it.

Even the next morning, I'm not making sense. I'm not sure it'd help to show you the picture, either, because I'm not sure it's about that particular image. What I'm trying to talk about is our experience of the "perfect" thing, the thing that hits you so hard that you can't accept that it was constructed from disparate elements. Maybe it's a song, or a painting, or a novel (or even a sentence). Maybe it's even a movie, though that's an especially difficult one since there are so many hands at work.

But have you ever encountered this perfect thing, whose existence seems impossible? What was it?

sacha by ~my-daroga on deviantART

Piece done "on commission" from her lovely owner. More photos of Sacha, and her boyfriend Mr. Darcy, can be found here.

I am thinking of making a little business out of this; what say you?