Category Archives: news

BookCrossing Convention, April 15-17, 2011

Posted by melydia on May 27, 2010 None comments

You may have noticed that I’m a member of BookCrossing. (How you would have missed it I’m not sure.) BookCrossing has an International Anniversary Convention every year on the weekend nearest its birthday (April 17) and in 2011 it’s going to be here in Washington, DC.

It’s going to be awesome.

First off, you really have to check out the BC in DC website because it’s gorgeous. Kate’s done such an amazing job.

Second, we’re holding an auction to help raise funds for the convention in order to keep registration fees down.

There are eight themed boxes in all, with bidding open for two weeks each. I’m sure some of my friends would be interested in the Harry Potter box, the Books to Movies box, or the Cooking box. There are a few I’m thinking of bidding on as gifts for other people. You don’t have to be a BookCrosser to win. And if you’re local or I’ll be seeing you in person, you don’t even have to pay shipping – I’ll bring it to you.

In related news, we are collecting Choose Your Own Adventure-type books. They don’t have to be that specific brand and they don’t even have to be children’s books – just the CYOA style. If you come across any at thrift stores or yard sales, please send them our way:

BCinDC c/o Kate McDevitt
P.O. Box 343
Fairfax Station, VA 22039
USA

(Or you can send them to me if you’d prefer. Either way is fine.)

I am so excited about this convention, I can’t even tell you. Even if you can’t attend or donate or bid in the auction, I’d really appreciate it if you helped spread the word. Link, Digg, Stumble, Tweet, or whatever – just please tell your friends. It’s going to be so much fun.

Brief Hiatus II

Posted by melydia on April 12, 2010 None comments

I’m off to Amsterdam to attend the 2010 BookCrossing Convention. I’ll probably have at least intermittent email access, but I won’t be doing any blogging while I’m there.

And before you ask: no, I’m not concerned about robbers seeing this because (1) you don’t know where I live, (2) my dear husband will be home the whole time, and (3) I don’t own anything worth stealing. Well, unless you count all the tons of books I give away for free. :P

Brief Hiatus

Posted by melydia on March 18, 2010 None comments

I’m off to Japan for vacation. I’ll probably have at least intermittent email access, but I won’t be doing any blogging while I’m there.

And before you ask: no, I’m not concerned about robbers seeing this because (1) you don’t know where I live, (2) I’ve duped my friends into house-sitting, and (3) I don’t own anything worth stealing. Well, unless you count all the tons of books I give away for free. :P

In honor of my trip, here are some terribly trippy (and somewhat nauseating) animated stereograms of old Japan. Enjoy.

A Call to Arms

Posted by melydia on March 12, 2010 None comments

A quick post to let you know that you should support Shaggy in the Webcomic Planetâ€™s War 2010. He’s the artist behind Binary Souls / Other Dimensions, one of my favorite webcomics. Read all about it here. Thanks!

Sweeney Todd at Signature Theatre

Posted by melydia on February 13, 2010 None comments

Sweeney Todd
Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, VA
February 9 â€“ April 4, 2010
Buy Tickets

My husband and I saw this show on Thursday night, the 11th, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We’d decided to go because we’d enjoyed the movie and knew the play would be longer, fuller, and better. And indeed, it was. Staged in a black box-style setting with sparse but deliciously detailed sets, we were absorbed in the ambiance of the show even before the lights went out: smoke machines, blood dripping into buckets, randomly dimming light fixtures, and assorted noises set the mood. The play started all at once, and instantly we were pulled into the action of this crazy musical horror-comedy.

The cast, over all, was just great. The ensemble was very tight, though sometimes they were singing so quickly I couldn’t understand them. Sweeney Todd himself (Edward Gero) had some of the best facial expressions, adding humor and depth to character. This was when I was especially glad for the intimate setting, because I was able to actually see his face more often than not. Mrs. Lovett (Sherri L. Edelen) was simply a delight. I was introduced to this character via Helena Bonham Carter, whose singing voice in that role, er, leaves a bit to be desired. Edelen was able to balance the ridiculous accent, the droll inflection, and the crude mannerisms with a striking voice that was both funny and pleasant to hear.

Now, while I feel Tobias Ragg (Sam Ludwig) did a marvelous job and has a beautiful voice, he was simply too old to play the character. Toby is supposed to be, at the very most, a teenager, but the fellow playing him was clearly well into his 20s. This is no fault of the actor’s, to be sure, but it did distract from the realism a little bit. The other youngish male lead, Anthony (Gregory Maheu), looked distractingly like Jude Law. This says nothing about his performance, which was fine, but it’s all I really have to say about him.

The villains were fun: I actually preferred Chris Van Cleave’s Judge Turpin over Alan Rickman’s (and I love me some Rickman, so that’s saying something), and Beadle (Chris Sizemore) repeatedly cracked me up with his falsetto shenanigans. Saving the best for last, Johanna (Erin Driscoll) was absolutely lovely. Many of the notes she had to sing were incredibly high, but she nailed every one solidly and beautifully.

All in all, a wonderful show. Go see it if you can!

Thing-a-Day

Posted by melydia on February 3, 2010 None comments

I totally slacked on this and forgot to post this in time for people to actually sign up, and for that I apologize, but I suppose I might as well let y’all know what I’m up to this month: Thing-a-Day. Based on an idea by the incomparable Ze Frank (whose videoblog The Show was simply excellent and I miss it), the challenge is to create something new every day for the entire month of February and post it publicly on the community blog. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – I plan on doing a small drawing each day in a new sketch book I got for free – but it does have to be something and it has to be completed. (At least, I assume it does. You can’t really claim to have created something until it’s finished, right?)

Anyway, I’m participating. This year’s blog format is on posterous, so everything’s going there. I’m uploading them to my gallery as well, because I am just that kind of exhibitionist. The scans aren’t very good but that’s not really the point. The only really irritating part of all this is that I appear to be in a much later (earlier?) timezone than posterous, meaning that my 3am post on February 1st was timestamped the 31st. What do folks in Europe do? Oh well.

If I remember, I might post a month-end wrap-up about the experience, but if this post’s slackitude is any indication, you can expect that it to actually happen sometime around mid-April.

The Trouble with Vampires

Posted by melydia on January 12, 2010 4 comments

So after yesterday’s discussion of romance novels it occurs to me that maybe I really am a generic trend-follower and the real draw for me, regardless of genre, is vampires. Case in point:

Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: These ate my brain* for a while during college. Interview with the Vampire (and the associated movie) remains my favorite, perhaps because of an affinity for Louis that Rice herself obviously did not share. (In an intro to the IwtV DVD, Rice referred to Lestat as her “dark lover.” Um.) The books declined in quality as time went on, and eventually I gave up without reading Memnoch the Devil and only bothered with a few of the spin-offs (The Vampire Armand, Violin, and Pandora, if I recall correctly).
Bram Stoker’s Dracula: I actually rather enjoyed the book (to which the movie was reasonably true), but it didn’t have a whole lot of Dracula in it. (More detail at my post on the Dueling Monsters Read-a-long.)
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The film was fairly forgettable, but I really liked the series, to the point where I was perfectly happy watching back-to-back-to-back episodes during much of graduate school.
Van Helsing: Silliness to the extreme and felt more like fanfic than homage, but I loved it for what it was.
Twilight: Oh god, don’t get me started. Short version: this horribly-written series totally ate my brain* for several months in 2009.
Count Duckula: Probably my favorite recurring guest star on Dangermouse, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with him being a vampire.

So I guess this means I would probably enjoy The Lost Boys, Underworld, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Hellsing, Cirque du Freak, and Vampire Hunter D. The question is: where to start?

*ate my brain: overwhelmed my psyche, to the point where I was thinking about it practically nonstop and could not get enough of it. See also: short-term obsession. (To be fair, this also happened when I read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. So there’s that.)

MAGFest 2010

Posted by melydia on December 28, 2009 None comments

Ring in the new year with video games, music, and general geekery at MAGFest in Alexandria, Virginia. I’ll be there with my dear husband and a bunch of folks from OverClocked Remix. Should be good times.

Anime USA 2009

Posted by melydia on November 16, 2009 None comments

If you’re going to be at Anime USA this weekend in Arlington, Virginia, please stop by the Binary Souls / Other Dimensions table in Artist Alley. We’ll be there selling all kinds of nifty stuff like comics, buttons, CDs, and more. Come by and say hello!

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer

Posted by melydia on October 22, 2009 None comments

On the morning of Halloween this year, I will be participating in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk in Washington, DC. I am walking in honor of my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt, all of whom survived breast cancer. I’ve never done one of these charity walks before, but I think it’ll be good.

If you would like to make a donation or learn more, please visit my participant page.

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