So about six months ago I posted about the first indicator that It's Really Spring, which is to say, when you start seeing ladybugs.

Tonight I got the first indication that It's Really Autumn In Portland, which is when you're walking home and not really thinking about anything as you start to cross the street, and you walk out into the street and then realize you cannot proceed, because of the BOTTOMLESS PUDDLE. Yes, it is really autumn, because tonight I encountered the first puddle too big to (a) walk through or (b) leap over! (And believe me, living here you get some practice in estimating, "yeah, I could leap that puddle...") But no! This was the puddle that makes you detour at least ten feet around it before you can get back on the sidewalk again. THE UNCONQUERABLE PUDDLE.

First of many.

Welcome back, puddles.

Totally coincidentally, today was also the first day I took my brown scarf out of storage and wore it out. My sister knitted me this scarf and it will probably not leave my neck for the next six months, even though it makes me look like a crunchy Fourth Doctor, because it is awesome and warm.

So how do you guys know it's really autumn?

If anyone is watching the Palin/Biden debates & wants to chat online, there's an AIM chatroom right now called ONTDP3 -- if you can't figure out how to join it, IM me at thinkyface01 and I'll invite you.

So I was at the grocery store today and stopped for a second to look at the front page of the Oregonian-- which was featuring a huge spread, GIANT headline and pic, like 4/5 of the page, about one of our hometown basketball players turning his ankle, OH NOES, guess what, nobody cares.

The last 1/5 of the page, which looked a little more interesting, concerned a local mailman who has apparently been selling pot out of his mail truck for the past few years. To minors. ("MOM! MOM! THROW DOWN SOME MONEY! IT'S THE ICE CREAM MAN MAILMAN. .... AND HE HAS WEED.")

It turns out they get a little upset when you sell pot while wearing your uniform, you know, as a federal employee. Who knew.

So I'm looking at this story about the mailman, thinking "What? What?" and this older guy standing next to me goes "Heh, only in Portland, right?!"

me: "Yeah, I guess so!"

him: "When I stub MY toe it doesn't go on the front page, I'll tell you that!"

me: ".... Yeah! ... Sports, man."

So in my last post about District B13 I just used a bunch of pictures off the web. These were not that great in showing the characters at their most attractive. In an effort to get more of you guys interested in this movie, here are some better pictures.

(  8 pics behind the cut  )

OK, so I am procrastinating on writing. *G*

What's the completely random crossover idea that nobody's ever written that makes SO MUCH SENSE that you totally think someone should write?

Two that I've mentioned here before are (1) the Peter Wimsey/Inara Serra amalgam-universe espionage adventure, and (2) the one where Dorian Red Gloria is Blair Sandburg's dad (it was the seventies!) To this I would add (3) Napoleon Solo/Donna Noble time travel hijinks, with Napoleon actually totally failing to score with Donna, because she's totally into Illya, who sadly only has eyes for Ten. Oh, and (4) the one where Dick Grayson, Roy Harper and Grace Choi take a field trip to France and meet Damien, Leito and Lola (of District B13) who are involved in some kind of random anti-crime caper, and everybody's undercover and playing both sides against the middle, and nearly every possible pairing ensues.

How about you guys?

Over on yuletide, people are brainstorming ideas for fandoms; shusu has asked for potential-Yuletide-fandom book recs. I'm probably not the only one who's going to keep an eye on this list...

(My potential fandoms are here, although certainly subject to change.)

Since it's been a while since I've done this:

1) make a list of fifteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment. (that way you're not leading the questions asked to fit the characters.)

2) ask your flist to post questions in the comments.

for example: 'one, nine and fifteen are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from four. do they succeed?'
'under what circumstances might five and seven fall in love?'
'which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?'
'write a drabble in which three and five fight crime.' (...possibly not technically a question.)

3) after your flist has asked enough questions, round them up and answer them using the fifteen characters you selected beforehand, then post them.

So... questions? :)

ETA: OK, I got enough questions now. :)

Answered so far:

1a. Ronon Dex, Steph Brown, Selina Kyle, Delenn and Bruce Wayne form a superhero team.

1b. Dean Winchester has to teach Teyla something.

1c. Donna Noble/Napoleon Solo shotgun wedding!

2. Ronon gets turned into a shark.

3. Illya Kuryakin, Donna Noble and Selina Kyle invent a Rube Goldberg machine.

4. How Ronon and Dean met.

5. Bruce Wayne, Martha Jones and Dean Winchester get abducted by aliens.

6a. Delenn and Teyla defend humanity at an alien tribunal.

6b. Barbara Gordon takes charge of Hell.

6c. Selina, Ray Vecchio and Dean are lost in the frozen North.

7. Five Man Band led by Napoleon Solo.

8. Ronon Dex, Bruce Wayne and Martha Jones get attacked by ninjas.

Honey West picspam!

For starters, here's Honey with a gun, just for teenygozer. :D



(  A bunch more pics behind the cut  )

Oh, btw, if anyone wants a Honey West icon, let me know-- I probably won't go to all the trouble of actually making/posting a set over on livia100x100, since I doubt there's all that much of a demand. But since I have all these screencaps... if you want one, just ask! :)

HI THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH 1960s MEDIA. Okay then. :)

So y'all know my roommate Aris-- she and a friend of hers, Brad, have been working for a couple of months now on putting together an independent publishing project. It's basically going to be a magazine of gay male erotica on the model of "original slash." Although this isn't a purely fannish project, they are definitely hoping to find an audience in fandom.

What makes this project different than what's already out there is that it's going to be photo-illustrated, with Aris as the photographer. Each story featured in the magazine will have at least several photos. It won't be NC-17 explicit-- you get into a whole sticky area there, no pun intended-- but the pictures will hopefully be hot. *G* The magazine will be published in both PDF and hard copy format.

Anyway, like I said, they've been working on this for a while, and they're to the point where they want to open the doors for authors to submit stories. Which brings me to the *other* thing that makes this different than the usual "peeps come into fandom and try to make money selling you stuff" project-- they don't just want to make a profit, they're looking for authors who want to write and get *paid* for it. Not paid a whole lot, because they're financing this whole magazine themselves, but paid. :)

Aris and Brad have given me permission to post the fiction submission guidelines here in my LJ. Eventually the magazine will have its own site where these will be posted & where you can get further details, send submissions, etc., but I'm posting them here so that I can also post a poll to gauge interest.

(The thing about these guidelines, also, is that Brad wrote them up for a not-specifically-fannish audience, and then I made him edit it slightly from the fannish perspective. So there are some things there that might seem kinda obvious/weird to a fannish audience; just keep that in mind.)

(  Fiction Submission Guidelines for Syzygy Magazine  )

Poll #1264314 Original fiction writers...
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

With the understanding that further details are still to be announced and all that-- as it stands, would you be interested in writing for this magazine?

If you're interested in writing, would you submit...

If you could ask Aris and Brad a question to be answered in the Syzygy faq, what would you ask?

eta: And to answer one question that was already posted, yes, genre fiction is TOTALLY OKAY. Aris and Brad have been bugging me for weeks to write something for the magazine about either vampires, superheroes or spies. :D

old school media #3: Honey West

So Aris had to take the MFU dvds back to the video store (sad!) and the ones I ordered won't get here till the end of October (woe!) ... so I was at the used-cd-and-video store the other day and got the full series of Honey West for $24.00 (sidebar: I see that Amazon has it for about $20.00. I always hate it when I think I found a good deal and then it's on Amazon for cheaper, but $4 is a small enough difference that (1) it's worth it for having it NOW and not a week from now, and (2) supporting small/local businesses is worthwhile as well.) Anyway, if I can't have Napoleon and Illya, at least I can have some form of stylish mid-sixties crime-fighting shenanigans!

So anyway, Honey West. I had heard of it a while back when I was asking about pre-Buffy action heroine shows, and then was reading a random blog post on it, and so I picked it up. I have watched about 5-6 episodes so far, and it's pretty good!

Honey West's claim to fame is that she was the first female action lead (who was clearly the star of her own series, and not a co-star or supporting character.) She was also apparently the first character, male *or* female, to use judo for self-defense. Napoleon and Illya do the 'judo chop' thing occasionally, but that's just a Vulcan neck pinch under another name. Well, or the Vulcan neck pinch is the MFU judo chop under another name, because technically MFU came first, but you know what I mean... anyway, my point is, Honey actually does throws and falls-- like, ACTUAL judo moves, or at least a convincing approximation-- not just the "judo CHOP!" which is not even a real move in judo. ^_^

The show was cancelled after one season-- apparently to make room for The Avengers, because network guys couldn't imagine that there would be enough of an audience for *two* female action leads.

It's not *the most* brilliant show in the world. Probably its biggest weakness is that it's only a half-hour long, as opposed to similar (but hour-long) old-school shows like MFU, The Professionals, Persuaders or even Star Trek. And it does suffer a little because of this-- most episodes come out to about 24 minutes, so you don't get a lot of red herrings, subplots, plot twists, etc. (Heck, in most episodes you can deduce who the killer is right away, because there's only ROOM in 24 minutes for Honey, Sam, their client, and the killer, so the instant the second new character is introduced with their full name, you know they must be the bad guy.)

But apart from that, it's just-- energetic, stylish, fast-paced, sexy fun.

The characters: (  Honey, Sam, Meg and Bruce  )

The other thing about Honey West is that it's an Aaron Spelling show, which means Honey (kind of randomly) has a huge house, and tons of fancy clothes and fur coats and a convertible and a PET OCELOT and so on. Also, whenever she and Sam go out and fight crime, they have even more fancy high-tech gadgets than Napoleon and Illya do-- earring-bombs and a necklace-mike and spy-cams and walkie-talkie-sunglasses and eavesdropping-mikes and even a phone in Honey's car... so she clearly must either be independently wealthy, or doing REALLY WELL at this private eye thing. (Which makes it kind of random when she's like, "But, Sam, I had to take the job from the client, because he offered $500!" ... Honey, you're RICH. Like, you're not Cordelia at Angel Investigations, or anything. Seriously, I don't get this.)

But it's an Aaron Spelling show, so what are you gonna do. :)

Honey West would have aired concurrently with season 2 of "Man from Uncle" and I've already spotted a couple of the same actors-- Vincent Lockridge from the Neptune Affair and the evil headmaster from the Children's Day Affair specifically, and a few others that look kinda familiar. And I haven't even seen all of MFU yet!

(Another thing about HW is that, much like MFU, all the scenes were rather obviously filmed in southern California... but unlike MFU, Honey West actually *takes place* in southern California. So that's a win for Honey. *G*)