Firefly Friday, “Trash” 1.12
11 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in tv
“Trash” was never aired, which is unfortunate for a number of reasons: 
naked Mal, the return of YoSaffBridge, naked Mal, twisty capers, and naked Mal. He’s totally got Serenity tattooed on his hip, doesn’t he? Surely would love to hear the story behind that tattoo…
YoSaffBridge turns up married to one of Mal’s friends (“I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!” oh, Monte!) and is promptly tangled up in a caper with our beloved crew. No one wants much to do with her, but Mal wants in on the theft of a very rare gun. He just can’t resist.
The Shiny
This episode also builds on the fabulous ‘verse we find ourselves in. I mean, who doesn’t love the floating estates? I want a floating estate! I still wonder how that world works. Where did the flowers come from? Were they grown on a mainland somewhere?
I like that we see a collector who specializes in things from OUR time, but that it’s not totally in your face. You see an old phone booth and other bits, but the collection is mostly left to one’s imagination. There’s so much good in this episode: Zoe punching Saffron, Inara’s act, naked Mal, River knowing Jayne is afraid, naked Mal, “also, I can kill you with my brain,” the idea that Saffron was married to someone else (Durin) and might have cared for him, naked Mal…
Also: feminine wiles. You gotta watch out for those…
The Clever
I like the bait and switch in this episode a lot. I like that Inara is given something to do on one of the jobs, because it brings her more into the fold. It would have been easy to keep her as shiny decoration, but just as she does in “Shindig” and “The Train Job,” she proves there’s more beneath the glittery surface of her. She’s gorgeous, but she’s also smart. And smart when it comes to how other women operate.
Wish we could have learned more about Saffron and her potential Companion training. Inara suspected she’d had some–would have been an interesting story to untangle!
HP Lovecraft Film Festival and Cthulhu Con
09 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Me
So apparently it’s true and I shall be there, in Portland, Oregon, where all the weird folks reside and/or congregate (is there a hellmouth there, one must wonder). I can’t wait to meet everyone! Here’s my schedule!
May 10
10am – 2am: hi-jinx
May 11
6am-noon: Ponder thy novel in thy pajamas
noon-5pm: panels upon which I am not sitting
7pm – 11pm: MADNESS
May 12
midnight-2am: shenanigans
2am-6am: hootenanny
6am-noon: sleep? doughnuts? Sleep in doughnuts?
12:30pm-5pm: INSANITY
5pm-7pm: [undisclosed location - clarify setting to enhance story - what does it smell like?]
7pm-11pm: MADNESS resumes
11pm-2am: Dreaming of cupcakes
May 13
2am-6am: [needs to be edited for clarity]
6am-12:30pm: [cut this and call your mother and tell her Happy Mother's Day, for the love of Cthulhu! Pls remember the time difference.]
12:30-4pm: Panels upon which I do not sit!
4pm-5pm: I’m on a panel!
Editors of Crawling & Cosmic Horror: New Zines & Anthos
Editors share their experience and expertise about shaping collections of things both alike and yet not, the biz, and the slushpile. (Not a pitch session, bar is down the street.) With moderator Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ross Lockhart, Jeff Burk, E. Catherine Tobler, and James Beach.
5pm-7pm: Insanity with Innsmouth crew.
7pm-ongoing: let’s rerun that hootenanny!
Glamour in Glass
08 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Book Reviews
Minor spoilers.
Glamour in Glass is the sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey. If you enjoy Pride and Prejudice and Emma, and appreciate magic and romance, the odds are good you will love the alternate history world Mary Robinette Kowal has created.
We got to meet Jane and her family in the first book, and Jane got to meet Mr. Vincent, a glamourist who was much more than he seemed. Book two takes them on their honeymoon, which is also much more than it seems. What should be a lovely trip away turns into something else entirely when Napoleon escapes his exile on Elba.
In Jane’s world, beautiful illusions of sight, scent, and sound can be created by using glamour. If you would like to look out your window and see frolicking cakes instead of a dreary highway, Jane and Vincent could create such a thing for you. This is often used to decorate dinner parties and the like, and Jane, while quite talented with glamour herself, is feeling somewhat in her new husband’s shadow. Things get worse when Jane discovers she’s with child, for a pregnant woman is not supposed to do glamour, as it may jeopardize the child.
It’s hard to say what I love best about this book without spoiling the entire thing for you. I will say that Kowal goes all in, though. She has committed to a vision for her world and she doesn’t deviate from it. Rather than randomly torture her characters, the hardships and challenges arise from the world itself–as they should. Kowal’s world is real, it is bloody, and it is magical. That’s what I want from my fiction.
Shopping While Presumed Guilty
07 May 2012 Leave a Comment
I’m not sure I understand the motivation of a store that makes you feel like a thief the moment you step inside.
Here stands a security guard, well over six feet tall, and he doesn’t greet you with a smile, but a steady gaze. He wears 40mm plugs in his ears and his hair is cropped close against his scalp. He wears a black vest (bulletproof?) which says “Theft Prevention” on it in bright yellow. Despite your surprised “oh, hello,” he says nothing. Only gives you a nod.
Should you need a shopping cart, you can use one, but as the frazzled manager nearby explains, the five-foot long pole attached to it prevents you from taking the cart from the store and also allows employees to know at a glance where “customers” are in the store.
I found her use of the word “customers” curious, because after she explained the cart, she started to murmur into her walkie-talkie. She was talking about one “customer” who was waiting in line and kept rubbing her nose. The manager seemed to think it was a sign. I thought she had a cold nose, being that it’s very drizzly outside today.
You might think I was shopping for diamonds or high-priced electronic goods. But no, just looking at clothes. Clothes which may well deserve a post all their own, as everything appears to be either tangerine, lime, mustard, or gray in color. “Sorry plus-sized ladies, you cannot have that top in a normal color. Go look like puke, why don’t you.”
Ostensibly, the store wants to make money. And sure, they have a product to protect so that can happen. But I never once felt comfortable while browsing here and I certainly won’t return. There was no doubt I was being watched with suspicion, though no one had cause for such. Did I rub my cold nose? Did I touch my purse in a strange way? Roaming the aisles, I wondered how many people were watching. What did they think when I picked up an item and looked it over?
On the way out–without purchasing anything–the security guard sized me up and watched as I stepped into the doorway, where the tall security sensors stretch. No alarm. Did he look disappointed? Hard to say–that expression never wavered. It made me wonder if he likes his job. If he regularly has to grab people before they make a run for it. There are probably half a dozen people wishing they could steal those mustard-colored tees.
#
image by XhunterXgoddess on dA
Firefly Friday, “War Stories” 1.11
04 May 2012 1 Comment
in tv
It’s hard to pick a favorite episode, when all of them are shiny in their own way, but “War Stories” comes awfully close. Wash is at the end of his rope when it comes to Zoe following Mal around and calling him sir; he’s tired of being excluded from their war stories, and well, they do say be careful what you wish for, don’t they?
The Shiny
Niska returns, still fairly pissed off about “The Train Job,” and really you can’t blame him. Mal and crew mean to drop the drugs they stole in “Arial,” but Wash pitches a fit and goes in place of Zoe, and he and Mal are nabbed, taken to Niska’s space station where All Manner of Bad Things Occur. I love the apples…love that they cut them to look for explosives…Wash’s jealousy is absolutely seething, and the way Mal holds Wash upon the tether of that jealousy to save Wash amid Niska’s torture. Mal won’t let him go under, no matter the risk to himself. Mal loses an ear, which Zoe tucks into her bosom without missing a beat. “What are we going to do, clone him?” Kaylee’s reaction to the ear! “It’s the guy she never slept with thing”…do we think so? I never got that vibe from Zoe myself. She’s brilliant when she comes in to confront Niska, and brilliant too when she and the crew come back to finally get Mal. Kaylee and River and River shooting everyone to hell and back after Kaylee panics…Book taking out kneecaps…Mal dying and coming back…Wash smacking Zoe’s butt…free soup!
Bunks
Of course I can’t let this episode pass without noting that Inara entertains a female client this time around, much to the interest of everyone on board. The counselor wants a little privacy, but doesn’t get very much, as Book, Kaylee, and Jayne gape at her arrival. “I’ll be in my bunk” still stands as one of the best lines of all time. It’s an odd subplot to weave through this very intense episode.
Firefly Friday, “Arial,” 1.10
27 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in tv
The first time I saw “Arial,” I didn’t much care for it. Wedged between “Out of Gas” and “War Stories,” it seemed to suffer some in comparison, but ten years on, I like it just fine and think it’s amazing all on its own. In the episode, Simon hires the Serenity crew to do a job for him: smuggle he and River into an Alliance hospital so he can get a scan of her brain and figure out exactly what happened to her at the Academy.
The Shiny
River is getting worse, so bad that Simon is willing to risk everything (all over again) to reach an Alliance hospital so he can know more about what was done to her. River attacks Jayne (“he looks better in red”). The hospital is St. Lucy’s–St. Lucy had her eyes cut out and often carries them about on a plate, which calls to mind River and the unique way she sees the ‘verse. Horseshoes…Book goes to the abbey for a spell (wish we’d learned more about that)…Inara goes to renew her companion license…the drugs written on Mal’s arm..two by two, hands of blue–are those guys spooky or what? Delightful!
Jayne’s Double-cross
Jayne, Jayne, Jayne. We surely knew it would come to this, when the money was too good for him to resist. The idea that he (seemingly) doesn’t believe the Alliance will cross him back though still baffles me. He must think they want Simon and River just that much. Why would the Alliance ever honor any deal? Why does he believe he’ll get the money and go on his way?
River says to him at one point, “You have a treasure in the sand.” I love this line. It’s almost throw-away, you might miss it, but I think it says so much about Jayne. What he treasures, he hides away. The ‘verse has probably taught him to do just that. He’s afraid to show that treasure to anyone.Of course, that treasure may also be his betrayal of Simon and River–we know River knows, don’t we?
When he begs Mal to not tell the others what he did, you glimpse a vulnerable Jayne–or do you? Is this Jayne honestly shamed by what he did? He turned over crew, yet wants to stay and be part of that crew even so. Why does he think he can have it both ways, or does he know he can’t. River, of course, knows what he did (at least in part).
Why does Mal let Jayne stay? The viper is a danger, but less so when kept close?
Lemonade Cake
22 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
The May 2012 Better Homes & Gardens showed up and it had a violently pink cake on the cover. It was clear from the start that it was something I needed to make. The lemonade cake comes from the mind of Karen Tack, who has written a book about…cake. Imagine! The book also involves pie, but we won’t hold that against it.
The first thing you should know is: this cake is evil. I modified it to be a little less evil (emphasis on “little”), but you’re still going to wind up with something amazingly rich, dense, and sweet. I’ll be taking the cake to Bible study this week and will probably still end up freezing a bunch of it to eat later. Cake does freeze well–remember that!
Pink Lemonade Cake
1 cup butter
4 eggs
3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups sugar
Red and/or pink food coloring
1 1/3 cups milk
1/4 cup frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed
1 tsp. pure lemon extract
Allow butter and eggs to stand at room temp for 30 minutes. Grease two 8- or 9-inch cake pans. Line bottoms with parchment paper or wax paper, and grease the top of the paper. Flour the pans. This really will save you from anything sticking. I used 8-inch pans and the layers came out easy-peasy.
Stir together your dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 350!
I have a stand mixer (a Kitchen Aid named Ripley, since her top looks like a big alien head–one of the best things I’ve ever bought!), and that’s what I use for all baking doings. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can probably wrangle this with a hand mixer, but it’s going to get a work out!
So, in your mixing bowl, beat your butter until it’s smooth. Add your sugar a quarter cup at a time. Here’s one big change I made. I cut the sugar by half a cup. Two cups sounds like entirely too much sugar and even now, I’m wondering if I could have cut it back by a whole cup. I may try that next time. Knowing all the sugar that was yet to come (with the lemonade and the icing), two cups was just staggering.
Cream your butter and sugar, then add 1/4 tsp. of your food coloring. I use Wilton gel colors, so my measure was much less. You are aiming for a light pink here. Once done, add your eggs one by one, beating until fully blended.
Measure your lemonade in a liquid measuring cup. To this, add your lemon extract, or… I wasn’t willing to spend $6 on lemon extract, so bought one lemon and used its zest instead. This worked perfectly. I zested the lemon into the lemonade and oh the smell of it! The original recipe says to add your milk to the lemonade and extract, and that it will look curdled, but don’t panic. I just added the lemonade/lemon to the butter mix, and then alternately added the flour mix and milk, blending until all was smooth. This makes a thick batter.
At this point, you want half of your batter in one cake pan. This will be anywhere from 3 to 4 cups of the batter. With your remaining batter, you want to add another 1/4 tsp. of food coloring so it’s twice as pink as the one you just made.
Spread into your pan. I used 8-inch pans and they took about 40 minutes at 350. The recipe says 35 minutes for 9-inchers. When they come out, allow to cool for ten minutes, then remove from pans, peel off paper, and cool completely. To get the four layer effect, of course you’ll slice each layer in half (a serrated knife works best), and alternate your layers.
Ms. Tack included a lemonade buttercream recipe, but I didn’t use it as I’m opposed to marshmallow fluff. I used the Wilton icing recipe and added more of the thawed lemonade concentrate until I had a consistency I was happy with–which ended up being more lemonade than I expected. You may need a good amount of icing for this cake, considering you have So Many Layers.
This makes a lot of cake. This makes a lot of dense, rich cake. I think halving the recipe and making cupcakes would be ideal so I may try that. Once I’ve worked off the calories from this one.
Firefly Friday, “Out of Gas” 1.09
20 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in tv
“Out of Gas” feels like a two-part episode to me, even though it’s only one. It has a structure I love, and one I’ve used while writing myself, allowing one scene to bleed into another. The history of Serenity and her crew is a rich one, and while trouble once again befalls our heroes, this trouble is the perfect time to explore how they all came to be together.
The Shiny
If you’ve been paying attention, you know Kaylee’s been patching the engine together for a while now and this is the episode where it finally blows. Simon’s birthday is interrupted by the explosion which disables Serenity; the closing up of the ship feels genuine, like they won’t quite make it in time. I love how they vent the fire into space. Present-day Mal is washed in hues of blue, black, and gray, but in warmer flashbacks, downright golden at times, we see Mal showing Zoe Serenity, Wash and Kaylee being hired, Inara renting the shuttle, and Jayne being lured away from his current crime crew. We also get to see how Mal came to acquire Serenity herself.
There is a wonderful feeling to these flashbacks–Wash’s mustache, Jayne’s avarice, and Kaylee getting busy with Serenity’s first mechanic Dax. I love Kaylee in this episode so hard. Her floral dress, the way she’s likely there to see the ship and engine just as much as she is Dax, and the way she gets the job in the end.
Wash and Mal arguing while Zoe is injured is awesome–and great set up for the deeper conflict in “War Stories.” The commentary in this episode hints at things that were to come with Inara, and more hints are dropped in later episodes, too. Was she immortal? Would that help explain her reluctance to be involved with Mal, knowing she would someday lose him? We’ll ponder that more in “Heart of Gold.”
That Moment
…that ties things all together. Mal, collapsed and bleeding on the cargo grates. We see his blood dripping. This calls to mind “Objects in Space” for me, the labyrinthine guts of the ship. Mal’s blood seeping into Serenity, becoming part of her. His hand splayed over the grate, remembering all that has come to pass, and knowing all he has yet to do.
Snickerdoodles
16 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Cooking
Some days the brain just says “cookies!” and one must comply. These are an old-fashioned treat. If you’ve never had a snickerdoodle, I think you should try these. Beyond having a fantastic name, they’re unique among cookies (in my experience).
This recipe hails from Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cook Book (this copy circa 1961), which is pretty fantastic in its own right. It’s filled with amazing commentary and illustrations. Sometimes it feels like Recipes From Another Planet, which is all awesome.
The into to this recipe says: “Mrs. Ronald Anfinson (formerly Pat Roth of our staff) said, ‘These crunchy, crinkly-topped spicy rounds as one of my happy childhood memories.’” Bless her heart! I’ve modified this some…read on.
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp.+ of cinnamon and 2 tbsp.+ sugar for rolling
Heat oven to 400.
Cream butter and sugar together until smooth and fluffy. Butter is my first change to the recipe; the original calls for shortening. Use what makes you comfortable. Add eggs one by one, stir until well blended.
You can mix your dry ingredients together, or just toss them in with the wet right away; I’ve not had a problem either way. It’s the tartar that adds such a unique flavor to these cookies! When all mixed, you should have a pretty solid dough. Roll into small balls, about an inch in diameter.
Roll the dough balls into your mix of cinnamon and sugar. I use allspice instead of cinnamon, as cinnamon and I are on a break and can see other spices right now. Just tired of it. Since allspice has hints of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, it’s perfect for these.
Set the balls about 2″ apart on an ungreased baking sheet; these cookies will puff and then spread out a bit as they bake. Bake 8-10 minutes. These take 10 minutes here–but I’m at a high altitude. Your time may differ.
These are wonderful warm, but also good when cooled. Excellent with coffee or tea. Mine never come out crisp and I’m okay with that–they come out tender and stay that way for a handful of days. And then, well, they’re gone.
Firefly Friday, “Jaynestown” 1.08
13 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in tv
I’m certain you already know how spectacular Adam Baldwin is. His Jayne is one of the best characters to have ever graced the television screen (he was also great on Chuck, too, and very tall in person…).
In “Jaynestown,” as the title implies, we find a crappy town where Jayne’s a hero, based on some shady dealings he had there some years back. Mal and crew are there to pick up some goods and Jayne just wants to vanish into the ground, worried he’s wanted for crimes. Facts are opposite: they love Jayne and celebrate his return.
The Shiny
There’s really so much here: there’s a ton of Jayne development, from him bucking Mal’s rule about not taking guns, to him then buckling under, to the slow realization these Canton folk love him, to the discovery they love him enough to die for him. What does that do to a man like Jayne? Probably freaks him the hell out. Simon is surely freaked out and goes brilliantly mad. Book and River stay on the ship and River takes it upon herself to “fix” Book’s Bible. She tears the pages out of his symbol, they turn into paper–much like the cows only become cows when outside. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…early quantum state phenomenon… We are shown the extent of Book’s hair and River freaks out, and Zoe…well, Zoe is her usual self over it, isn’t she. Inara also gets a very nice story here, having been hired to make the magistrate’s son into a man. Inara taking control of that situation and her shuttle is fantastic to see.
Hints
We see the first glimmers of Simon’s interest in Kaylee here, I think, when she confronts him about being so proper all the time and he says that’s the only way he can show respect for her, and thus interest. We also get to see Simon getting his ass kicked for being part of Jayne’s crew. Makes one wonder exactly how many beatings he endured in his quest to find River.
Zoe: River, honey, he's putting the hair away now.
River: Doesn't matter. It'll still be there... waiting.
