every martyr in this jungle

I have a VividCon recap in me. At the very least, I have half a Moleskine notebook's worth of amazing panels that tried very hard to shellack a veneer of technical competence onto my raw enthusiasm. But writing it all down would feel like letting it go, sort of? At least that's how getting words out of my head and onto a page works for me. But it will happen! Just as soon as I'm not constantly refreshing Twitter for Sherlock filming photos, half-storyboarding a vid idea before being seized by another one, and trying very hard to hold back the tide of SGA feels from out of nowhere. It's been a busy couple weeks.

One of the few perks of journalism is the occasional free samples distributed around the office. This week, I discovered Salt of the Earth chocolate chip cookies, which besides featuring sea salt use chocolate sheets instead of chips, creating a more predictable taste experience. Recommend!

Speaking of work-related perks, I got to do a cool thing last Friday! Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, unjustly headlined by Robin Thicke (who is a 20-year veteran of lounge singing who suddenly has a massive pop hit on his hands - and nothing else to play for the rest of a 45-minute show) played a small concert in Manhattan before the VMAs. In no small part because of bradcpu's Thrift Shop vid and several fun remakes of Blurred Lines mean that I jumped at the chance to go. Macklemore is, for lack of a better word, adorable (as much as a rapper can be) and literally stepped onto the hands of the crowd during Can't Hold Us (it's all in my official review.)

Yes, I watched the *NSYNC reunion at the VMAs, and just want to say that if you're receiving a lifetime achievement award, and acknowledge that half the accolades of your career were a group effort, then your group should get half the spotlight during your acceptance performance. Otherwise, looking good, boys.

But the REAL news this week was finally finding competent Chinese food - and it's literally around the corner. Pic Up Stix was recently upgraded from a restaurant grade of C to A, and we decided to reward good behavior by getting lunch. Not at all bad, with the impressive feat of a sweet&sour sauce that was neither noxiously sweet nor electric orange.

And then we spoiled our meal with a string of terrible James Spader '80s movies (don't watch Tuff Turf, it's not worth it even for barely legal RDJ.) Though it's a blessing for all other men in the '80s that Spader didn't cultivate his charm until sometime after he chopped off his foofy blond hair, otherwise none of them would've gotten laid the whole decade.

Would Iron Man and Batman count as superheroes? (Thanks, par_avion, it's your fault that I've been thinking about this all day.)

Oh god you guys, I need to be eased back into the real world after five days of conventioneering, because my boss came in today and this was our word-for-word greeting:

Boss: "Hey, welcome back! We missed you!"
Me: "I didn't miss anyone here."

In non-feral English that was actually, "This weekend was so intense and immersive that there was no awareness of the world outside SpringHill Suites, so I couldn't miss what didn't exist." AND THEN:

Boss: "Do you think you'll write about [VividCon]?"
Me: "I don't think norms would understand it."

FFS YOU DON'T SAY 'NORM' TO A NORM. In my defense, I was caffeine-deficient and spent 15 hours in a car yesterday on top of five days of being able to say exactly what I was thinking as soon as I thought it. But seriously, it felt as heinously embarrassing as my nightmare of walking around high school without pants.

Fortunately, my boss is both sympathetic to post-vacation funk and generally cool, so she waylaid the conversation into theorizing about whether one of her ovaries was possibly "exploding" and suggested we become the kind of co-workers "who say inappropriate things to one another at 9 a.m." My husband has been displaced as the person I love the most today.

Some links:

It's only a matter of time before Google can answer personal questions.

"The royal couple playing at 'normal' parenthood is no more authentic than Marie Antoinette dressed as a shepherdess."

Another reason not to ride a bike in New York: Cops will crash you to write a ticket.

I have gushing and even coherent things to say about many VividCon-related things, like sisabet's lighthearted stress panel, and all the many things absolutedestiny taught us about song choice and how not to waste our time and motivation on a project that's doomed from the start. There was the catharsis of Failed Experiments in Video Editing and a clever analysis of Tumblr as a source of new art techniques and inspiration for vidders through GIFsets. Yesterday, I wouldn't have blinked at its demise, but for the first time since joining it seems to serve a purpose beyond an easy, mindless way to kill a few hours.

But all of that will come later, because it's after 1 a.m. and I just spent three hours dancing my ass off (this despite having had a real dinner so it took three drinks to properly loosen up) at Club Vivid, which was truly a thing of excellence top to bottom. Highlights were the opening vid, Raise Your Glass (Community), a triumphant salute to the human spirit; the entire roomful of people screaming and jumping along during Smells Like Westeros Spirit (Game of Thrones); having to choke back tears for the SECOND TIME TODAY over Doctor Who (FFS I'm not even in that fandom) over Scream; and Leia not taking any guff in Don't Call Me Baby (Star Wars). Somewhere in there, between the adrenaline of dancing and the liquor, I got to thank svmadelyn for her and seperis almost causing me to fail my college freshman year finals by discovering Smallville three weeks prior.

The only question is why we don't throw another party just like it tomorrow night.

Actually, it all came together while I was pleasantly drunk at Fan Thursday earlier this month. I asked par_avion if she was going and oh-so-casually invited myself along on her road trip. We just finished the 15-hour journey from NYC to Chicago with geekturnedvamp, talking VividCon history, the Doctor's sexuality, whether the con is for vidders or watchers, the pitfalls of musical theater songs and approximately a million other things, while managing to break free of a possible recursive timeloop between two eerily identical rest stops in Indiana. I can only vouch for the coffee at one of them though.

I was awake for about 28 hours yesterday/today (up all night packing, still managed to forget my Kindle and toothbrush - expect nothing less). So I should be asleep, instead of clutching a mug of Earl Grey to ward off assorted anxieties about what's to come. The vid-loving part of me is dying to be sitting in a panel already to sponge up alllll the technical knowledge. The socially anxious part, meanwhile, is terrified because talking to strangers is one thing, but talking to famous strangers whose work gives you as many feels as the source material? I know a few of the attendees face to face, but have never been to a small fan-run convention. But I hear that sometimes, people go places to meet new people instead of bringing people they already know there? Let's hope that's not just a rumor.

Mostly though, I'm so psyched. Goal for the weekend: become more technically proficient at the nuts and bolts of what makes a good vid. Optional: get a vidder's assessment of a super sekrit Sherlock project I've been fiddling with for more than a year(!) so khaleesian will stop casting disappointed looks my way. That show made me revisit my vidding career, cut short eight years ago, when I crashed and burned with Windows Movie Maker (three seconds of footage in three hours was not the ROI I'd expected.) But Adobe Premiere has made things infinitely more pleasant, and it looks more or less how I'd imagined, and despite having watched it a hundred times still makes me smile, so that's gotta count for something?

In conclusion: wildly last-minute road trip! Premieres! How to establish a vid's point of view! Club Vivid! THE AUCTION!