a sleepless wonder
sovay) and Greer (
ninweaving) for a day at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. But, on Monday, I postponed the trip, knowing what lousy company I would have made, being sleepless and zombified and all.2. Today, the sky is grey again and spitting snow. I suppose that's to make up for our having gotten a sunny day yesterday, one in a week. But, we did take advantage of yesterday. If I couldn't have Harvard, I could at least have Benefit Street. Spooky made me get dressed and shooed me out the door into the faint warmth of the early March sunshine. We parked near the John Brown House and walked to the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Museum. I'd never been, and Spooky had not visited the museum in many years. The collection is small, but exquisite. Just inside the entrance I was greeted with the work of some of my favorite painters, including Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. There was an amazing Art Nouveau fireplace surround by Hugnet Frères (1900), and two galleries of impressionist paintings and sculpture, including work by Monet, Degas, Manet, Gaugin, Renoir, and Pissarro. There was a fabulous chandelier by Dale Chihuly, that looked like something dredged up from the bottom of the Mariana Trench. And so much more. After the museum, we spent some time across the street at the Providence Athenaeum, just reading and Not Being in the House. It wasn't the Tuesday Out that I'd hoped for, but it was a good day, regardless. I'll post photos in two sets, one today and one tomorrow. Today's are of Benefit Street, and tomorrow's will be photos I took inside the museum:
One of my favorite houses in Providence, view to the northwest.
Looking towards downtown Providence from Benefit Street, view to the west.
All Photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac.
3. Sunday and Monday, too weary to read or be read to, I watched stuff. There was a charming little film about demons, Travis Betz' Lo (2009), which was sort of like discovering a lost or forgotten stand-alone episode of Angel. I recommend it highly.
Also, we watched the first six episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Now, as most know, I am a longtime admirer of good and/or entertaining pornography. Which is pretty much what Spartacus: Blood and Sand amounts to, a moderately entertaining pornography of sex, blood, and violence. Sure, its look is an uneven fusion of 300 and Gladiator (I found entire lines of dialogue lifted from the latter). Someone commenting about the show at Netflix wrote, "Fantastically terrible, but somehow I can't stop watching it...full of horrible dialogue and gimmicky effects, but if you embrace and accept the cheese-factor, it's kind of rad." Which just about says it all. Well, except for the pornography part, but I already said that. Do people actually still say "rad"?
Late last night, we watched Andrew Leman's 2005 "silent film" adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu again. I still say that this is, by far, the best film adaptation of any of Lovecraft's fiction to date.
4. I've pretty much been away from WoW for the better part of two months. Night before last, I went back in as my blood-elf warlock, Shaharrazad, and did the retaking of Undercity thing with Thrall and Sylvanus. It was fun, though not nearly as cool as I'd hoped it would be. Last night, Shah made Level 76. I'd like to get her to 80 before the release of Catacylsm, and before the events leading up to it begin this coming summer.
5. Okay. I need to try to wake up enough to get some work done. I can at least tend to email and deal with the signature sheets for The Ammonite Violin and Others, which I need to sign and get back into mail to Subterranean Press.