(no subject)

Oh my God.

In Charitable Getting, at the end, and I think we're spoiler-safe at this point, my id-character receives a promotion. Right when I started all this job madness I was thinking "huh, life imitates art" but I adjusted and moved on from the fact that by coincidence I was getting a new job within a year of having written a book, basically, about my job.

Then iamshadow reminded me that he didn't just get a new job. He got a job in research and new client services. Which is about the closest thing you can get, in that fictional universe, to the job I start on October third. Which I did not know would be open, much less my choice, when I wrote the book.

I'm going to have to assume that I'm slightly prescient in a completely useless way. But I can now call oh snap vindicated on my own life, and that's just weird.

Also now I'm looking very, very warily at Trace. Seriously, after researching that book, my desire to avoid prison has reached an active, conscious level. I am willing to be proactive about not ever going to prison...

(no subject)

Preparing to see The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari on the big screen. Fuck yeah live organ music...

(no subject)

I feel like when the Music Box concessions staff asks you "Butter on your popcorn?" and you reply "Lots, please," they really comprehend what you are saying.

The film was great -- really cool to finally see Dr. Caligari on the big screen. The live organ was a fantastic bonus, though not as good as the Elsinore's massive pipe organ in Salem (OR, not MA) for sheer OMG ORGAN, but then the Elsinore would spoil anyone. I'm not actually much of a cinema fan (see icon) but I have a special place in my heart for classic film and German expressionism in particular; I actually own a copy of Dr. Caligari on DVD. And this afternoon I'm going to break out Dr. Mabuse as a companion piece, and maybe M this evening. MAD GERMANS! I should have fantastic dreams.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is essentially the granddaddy of the horror genre, generally agreed upon to be the first ever made, with amazing surreal-deco sets and overall fantastic art direction given the infancy of the medium at the time. Watching it is a little like watching the art of cinema be born: you can see in it the techniques that we take for granted in modern video media, like flashbacks and integrated visual metaphor, the use of shadow and light, of physicality and deliberate focus. At times it's unintentionally funny, but you get sucked in, and the suspense is tremendous.

I always seem to make friends when I go to the Music Box, which is kind of strange. I got to talking with the couple sitting next to me before the film and found myself thinking why are you talking to me? not in my usual fuck off and die sense but more...curious, like what were they getting out of it, what was motivating them to hold this conversation with a stranger. Then I realised two things:

1. Interesting stuff was coming out of my mouth, because I'm intimately familiar with Caligari and the art movements behind it;
2. They were Canadian.

So that was nice. Also, a couple of people came in costume, which was brilliant if startling.

Chicagawans, take note: the next Second Saturday Silent Cinema Show at the Music Box is in November, but starting in January they're showing them the second Saturday of every single month. The organist was taking suggestions for films they should show, and he also happens to be the head of the BUSTER KEATON SOCIETY (it satisfies something deep in me that such a thing exists) so we'll definitely be getting some Buster Keaton. And, it sounds like, some freaky silent noir.