in my life

I can't decide if I'm more dismayed or freaked out at today's news of a Palestinian minister being killed in a confrontation with the IDF. Sorry, dying in a confrontation, as per Ynet's headline, he just dropped dead, you know, terrible timing. The item's already been bumped from the headlines in favor of news about the economy, which feels like wishful thinking. If it's not on the front page, it'll just be a non-story. And I'm just - this feels like a catalyst. Of what, I don't know yet.

*

Worst juxtaposition ever, but if you're in the mood for a punch-in-the-feels holocaust short film, watch Nyosha. I went to a short film screening at the cinematheque Monday night, which promoted a really cool concept - a selection of Israeli short films (all around 10 mins or under) that will be aired in the upcoming year as the "first course" before feature films at the cinematheque. Watching assortments like this are always hit or miss, and there were a few misses, but Nyosha wasn't one of them; it's a stop motion claymation short, telling a single childhood story narrated by a survivor.

(Meanwhile, another film screened there told the story of a girl auditioning for her middle school's Holocaust Day ceremony play. To the dismay of the other girls in drama class, she gets the main part. "It isn't fair!" one of the girls finally cries out. "She's Moroccan! Her family wasn't even in the Holocaust!". The teacher silences the other girls, as the heroine quietly says, "I'm Greek." At home that day, she asks her mom if Greece was in the Holocaust. "Oh sure," her mother says. "Greece was one of the first countries conquered." "Did we have any family there?" the girl asks. "Oh, no," mom assures her, "our family's been here for eight generations." "Oh," the girl says, disappointed. The mom looks at her for a few moments, and finally sits down next to her and takes her hand. "But we have a large family," she says. "You never know, right? Anything could have happened." And on that hopeful note, the film ends. It was very... on the spot.)

*

Last night I got home from work starved and made the incredibly lazy and therefore expensive culinary decision of take out pad thai (58 shekels). I've recently started eating light lunches instead of fuller meals, which means I'm hungrier at dinner time - BAD NEWS for me, since with regards to the effort I want to put into cooking, I'd much rather order a big lunch at a restaurant near work, and put together a light dinner at home. Alas, today I once again had a sandwich for lunch. But dinner. I will - well, whatever I do, I will not spend 60 shekels on it today, how about that.

*

And meanwhile in hockey, the Blackhawks had a game last night, and for whatever reason this gifset happened. I'm not even asking questions, okay. If Jonathan Toews wants to take his shirt off in the middle of a game, may the gods shine upon him (and on ALL OF US). I'll just be here enjoying his, uh, flush. And pointing out that while in soccer a player taking his shirt off would be, well, shirtless, in hockey a player taking off his jersey to reveal layers and layers of clothing and pads is downright erotic.

Day 9, Day 10 recs:

I conveniently found a draft post with a few recs from two years ago which I apparently never posted, so let's go with all of them for today. Warnings listed on AO3.

Written All Over My Face by rsadelle (Explicit, 4678 words)
Short, hot and sweet. Kaner and Tazer hook up sometimes. Patrick likes wearing Tazer's jersey.

Your Daddy's Aim Is True by thefourthvine (Explicit, 14,986 words, kidfic)
Magic baby fic! Wherein Kaner and Tazer have a magic baby *___* HOW INCONVENIENT. Takes place post 2011-2012 season, with all of the tension the early playoff elimination that entailed. Everyone is confused by the magical baby's appearance, and Kaner and Tazer try to deal. I love stories with babies falling asleep on sleepy barechested men, and I love stories where Tazer underestimates Kaner (especially in all things emotional-maturity-related), and I love stories by TFV. You may be surprised to hear that I love this story ♥. Warning: reading about taking care of a day-old/week-old baby may make you feel utterly exhausted. (meep babies)

Once, Twice, Three Times a Broshie by queeniegalore (Explicit, 2437 words, Kaner/Tazer/Oshie)
I will let the official summary speak for this one: Kaner convinces Tazer that a threesome with TJ will be a totally awesome idea. Tazer ponders the choices in his life that have led him to this point. Except really it's just bro porn. Which among you did not want to read the fic where Kaner and Oshie double team Tazer? Ugh <3. Hot and funny and everyone being comfortable and slightly dickish (ha) to each other, it's great.

you're with a winner so, baby, you can't lose by zarathuse (PG-13, 9302 words)
Post-2012 season fic. Wherein Kaner freaks out about getting traded/Tazer going to play for Winnipeg, and makes the mistake of going on the message boards, not necessarily in that order. Zara knows how to write this perfect blend of ridiculous cracky humor and actually freaking touching honest communication between characters, and her Kaner POV (drunk and sober) remains one of my all time favorites.
Summary: The next thing Patrick knows, it’s 4 am and he’s spent the last three hours arguing with strangers online. He’s also polished off the rest of the bottle of wine and cracked open a few beers to get rid of the terrible aftertaste, so his comments at this point are mostly just shit like TAZER LOVS IT IN CHICAGO SHUTF YR STUPID FACE.

i'll keep an eye on you if you keep one on me by marycontraire (Mature, 32659 words)
In which Jonathan Toews grounds Patrick Kane for the summer. Kaner doesn't seem to mind much, is the thing.
Slow, long d/s-dynamics development fic, talking place post the 2012 season. Where Tazer's had enough of Kaner's behavior and "grounds" him for the summer. This fic has a long, slow build up of increasingly prominent d/s dynamics, which Tazer only starts putting a name to halfway through the fic, and once he does, (after freaking out for a bit, you know how it goes), he starts educating himself and treating the issue with more responsibility.

I really enjoyed this fic, but I'll warn in advance that the author chose not to put any AO3 warnings on this fic (which is warned for), and that some readers were triggered by/disliked the story mostly because they felt that Tazer's behavior was abusive.

in_the_beginning prompts are up and ready for claiming :D I will really try not to suck and actually write something this year. Somewhere inside me is a brilliant Bandom/Bible crossover dying to get out; I just need to find out where it is.

Sign ups are open for pod_together, which looks awesome and is something I've wanted to experiment with for a while. It's a collaboration challenge for authors and podficcers, where together they produce a story that is written specifically to be podficced. I've signed up as an author, and I hope some podficcer offers that as a fandom because I'm not sure I'm up to writing any other fandom at the moment. Sign ups are open until May 27.

Via jae, ruuger has written a short and cute quick intro to the glory that is the Eurovision Song Contest. The Eurovision may have passed, but I am keeping the link for posterity.

Yesterday the House cast returned to the US. Omar Epps tweeted that he had an amazing time and met some warm and hospitable people. Unfortunately, none of them were me D: It's okay though. I'm sure Jesse Spencer will return here OH WAIT, NEVER.

I did get to see the Joel and Ethan Coen today, who are, really, only a few steps removed. They were here to receive the Dan David award from the university, so the uni had a symposium in their honor, and I was reminded how much I hate Israelis sometimes (okay, lojavascript:void(0);ts of times), in particular the "one of ours" attitude, which was so thickly prevalent today in the questions they were asked and the rector's opening remarks; as an audience member, I found it tasteless and embarrassing. (By "one of ours", I mean that if someone in the world is Jewish and minorly successful, he is one of ours and we deserve credit for their success and we love them always and forever. Barf.)

Regardless of the stupid questions they were asked, the Coen brothers were not very interesting conversationalists... like many other creators (specifically filmmakers) I've met, they're much better at doing something than talking about it, making movies than explaining them. But it was a fun experience and I was glad to see friends there, even though I had no real time to talk and was kind of stressing about the hours at work I was missing because I am dumb.

This is a Panic clip that I have never seen and makes me just happy. Having missed the first three or four years of the fandom, there's a lot I obviously haven't seen, and idk, this is just them singing "Valerie" at a radio station and yay :D Spencer looks extremely hot and is all drummery and happy, Brendon and Ryan are terrible at interviews as always, Ryan is excited about his shaker that's bigger than his--HEAD, his head, minds out of the gutter, Brendon is literally bouncing in his seat and on his hands, and Jon takes his piano playing very seriously. I love finding old clips like this :-) It is not very special but very cute.

Tonight was the official premiere of the show I helped work on over the summer, and it was very much a corrective experience for the pre-screening I attended at the Rosh Pina Festival on Friday. To put it briefly, on Friday afternoon six people showed up other than us few crew members who were there; tonight it was about 200 people, and there were speeches, and the crowd actually laughed in all the right places (and so many more than I'd expected), and they applauded for real, and my family was there, and it was fun. And validating, because I spent quite a few hours on this project over the summer and the beginning of the semester, and I didn't care about not getting paid because that's how it goes, but I know my dad kind of minorly disapproved of the whole thing, and it was nice having him -- and everyone -- see the final product, see the recognition the project was getting. And my name is right there on the second title page of the credits, and it'll be on TV next week, so cheers :-)

I am in a good mood, and here is the promised photodump from over the weekend: (Very image heavy.)



( Sea of Galilee )

( Rosh Pina )

( Haifa shore )

( Central menorah lighting, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv )

( Jerusalem )

Okay, so that was easy, no RHPS tonight!

I just finished 24 hours on the set of an interview/documentary show that I took part in preparing for, and will actually be aired on TV. I spent half the time typing and the other half hanging out in the control room and 3 hours sleeping, but it was kind of awesome, and my name will, eventually be in the credits, yay. I'm not getting any money, but you know. Students. They're there to be taken advantage of.

Next step: post-production \o/ /o\.

(Icon relevance: I look about as suave right now as Chase does with a checkered sweater vest.)

Fact A: A few weeks ago I discovered I was temporarily (hopefully) anemic, which means I am now taking iron and B-12 supplements and have put myself on a mad eat-as-much-meat-as-I-can diet, because dude, I want my blood healthy and also, good excuse for eating meat.

Fact B: I agreed to be an extra in a student film that's being filmed around the area for a couple of days. I'm "playing" a medical intern which means I get to wear scrubs, dark green (like Turk's!), which is incredibly awesome -- they're so comfy and airy and I feel all professional and competent, and the House-Grey's-Scrubs-ER-etc-fan inside me, which is actually quite sizable (not to anyone's surprise), is having a blast. (I'm also having depressing "Why am I studying liberal arts when I could have been saving lives!" thoughts, but let's ignore those for the moment.

...both of which contributed towards my current predicament, which is C:

Yesterday I stayed up till 5AM and this morning I woke up at 6AM to catch a ride to the set. I returned early afternoon, dead tired, ate a box of chocolate and a can of corn as lunch, and was about to nap because a family dinner was planned for tonight. I was about to turn in when my roommate's boyfriend said he was ordering in a burger for lunch, and asked if I wanted on as well. And I was so tired (1 hour of sleep at night!) and already kind of full from unhealthy corn and chocolate, but REAL MEAT --> vitamins I need, so I said sure, and then for some inexplicable reason I agreed to fries as well.

By the time we finished eating I felt fuller than I do after a Passover seder, and dead tired, and went to nap before dinner. When my parents called saying they were here to pick me up 2 hours later, I was so tired I actually thought it was the alarm for going to school in the morning. So I brushed my teeth and went to dinner, still feeling like I'm about to explode from hamburger, vowing that I wouldn't eat anything there. Except for, well, salads, because I love salads. And then a cob of corn, because I haven't eaten corn from a cob for a while. And then MEAT, because there was SO MUCH MEAT there and, you know, I need to seize these opportunities, because I don't actually make meat dishes myself, just buy them usually, and this one was free! So chicken, and roast beef, and a breast steak thing. And tea to wash is down and calm my angry stomach, and then a little bit of cake to go with the tea.

So at this point I'm surprised my jeans haven't popped a button, and I'm still super tired, and then I arrive back at my apartment -- 11PM on a Friday night, expecting to be a lone -- to discover that both my roommates are there, with their respective boyfriends (the second of whom I'm dying to get to know because he's fresh), and the first thing they tell me is: "OMG, you're here! We're ordering sushi, what do you want?"

The only real answer to this is OMG I WANT SUSHI AND ALSO I REALLY WANT TO THROW UP. Help me.

...yeah, wow, I really need to sleep.

Random fannish moment: so apparently, Aaron Sorkin's opened a Facebook page as research for a movie he's going to write about the inventors of Facebook, which has been confirmed as real. He has a discussion board there, where apparently Joshua Molina has also commented (Jeremy from Sports Night/Will Bailey from TWW, for those who've... forgotten). ANYWAY, I clicked on Josh Molina's Facebook page just to see what it's like, and naturally it's locked, but his icon is possibly the most awesome thing going on right now in showbiz other than NPH:

It's a yarmulke that says Obamica '08.

You know, I'm staying out of US politics, but *hugs JM* just for that.

Meanwhile, I've been, you know, trying to study. And it really sucks that writing a paper about something would lessen my pretty darn extreme enthusiasm for it, but I guess it can't be helped. In this case, the western.

In order to recharge on some western yayness, I offer you three of the scenes that I totally loved discovering this year and now adore, from Rio Bravo and Once Upon a Time in the West.

( Embedded videos + explanations under cut. )

Test over! Whee :-)

And now, instead of sleep, I am going to be an extra through the night. So, that. Kinda bored now, but things should pick up in an hour or two.

Okay, this western class I'm taking? Hands down my favorite class this year. My familiarity with Westerns has been completely lacking up until now, and I love them so much more than I imagined. Watched The Searchers this morning for the first time - ♥. Talk about complex.

And now I'm wondering if any of you guys have recs of Western AUs. I'm guessing the most likely candidate is in SGA fandom, but I'm guessing a lot of it takes place in a Western setting, but without that bittersweet Western spirit. So I'm looking for, you know, the good recs. f you have any.

Surprisingly, I find that a Western House AU is something I can actually get behind - which is strange, because I'm against most House AUs. But House has a lot of Western hero in him. So, recs! Tell me if you have 'em.

Also, hey, two memes:
From perspi: 1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

( Five songs with a G: )

And from topaz_eyes: Find your 42nd entry ever. Yes, this may require some counting and basic math. Deal with it. Copy that entry in a new entry. This is the meaning of your life.

From March 25th, 2003: apparently the meaning of my life is an approaching apocalypse while my parents are at a Paul McCartney concert in Paris. That kind of sucks. ( Said entry under cut. )

So I went to the Tom Stoppard talk after all! Got a seat and everything. And he was interesting and had a very spiffy accent as Brits tend to have, and he basically could have been a jar of pickles and I would still worship him, for Shakespeare in Love if nothing more.

Then, today, I went to a fascinating lecture made by director Atom Egoyan, called "In Other Words: Poetic License and the Incarnation of History". ( He talked about... )

And then, guess what I watched?

( How I Met Your Mother 3x20: The Miracle )

( House 4x16: Wilson's Heart )

...and that is officially the most I've ever written about an episode before. Yikes.

Cool things:

1. I bought two gorgeous pairs of boots, one brown, one black, both almost knee-high.

2. thedeadparrot's Friday Night Lights vid, which is everything I love about the show.

3. marag's House/X-Men crossover, Death of the Heart, which I'm saving for tonight and can't wait to read and feel fairly confident in pre-reccing.

4. Hugh Laurie and Lisa Edelstein at the picket lines.

5. Quote from this week's Ugly Betty:

Betty White: I did lose a lot of blood, but it was my own fault. I stopped to sign a few autographs and... almost bled out on the sidewalk.
Wilhelmina: Well, that's why you're beloved. You're loyal to your fans.
Betty White: Oh, well, I adore 'em. *pause* Except for the few sickos who write lesbian fanfiction about me and Bea Arthur.

Not the most positive of references, but hey, it's a mention!

6. Apparently, every year on חנוכה Maccabi Tel Aviv (our most popular basketball team) schedule a Euroleague game against Panathinaikos, ie, the Maccabees against the Greeks. Which is just a nice idea in general; I don't actually care much that Maccabi won the game last night.

7. Last night I went to a screening of Raging Bull, followed by a Q&A session with the film's cinematographer Michael Chapman, who also shot Taxi Driver with "Marty and Bobby" and The Godfather with "Francis" and Jaws with "Steven", and many more.

( Quotes and anecdotes )

8. bironic made a חנוכה fic rec post (and recced me, yay!), and I added my own in a comment.

9. Two weird phrases uttered by Ziva David on NCIS:

( a) Ooooooly ez etzel. )