- Gotten my head knocked into a doorframe by my landlord. (Accidentally! He was checking a smoke alarm, I ducked under him, it was a bad scene.) The lump is just about gone now.
- Sold my first story (!) — a short-short, to the wonderful people at Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
- Discovered that the dryer attached to my new apartment will function with a maximum load of two (2) pairs of wet pants. Total.
- Read most of Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess. It’s spectacular — particularly the scene in which the two main characters fall in lust over the deathbed of the female character’s father — but it still hasn’t topped the MONKEY FIGHT at the end of Evelina for absurdity. (MONKEY FIGHT. And people say c18 fiction is dull.) Then again, I haven’t quite finished it yet.
- Saw Final Fantasy at the Parish, downtown. Final Fantasy is Owen Pallett, recently described in the Times as “the world’s most popular gay postmodern harpsichord nerd.” If you ever have a chance to see him, do. He does all his looping from his violin live onstage, including crazy percussive sounds made with bow and strings, and shouts into the violin’s belly; he has a strange lovely voice and a great little dorky Ralph Fiennes laugh; he wore a red headband that made him look like an anime character; and he ended the concert with a cover of Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy.” (His cover of “Peach, Plum, Pear” was excellent, too.) Definitely one of the best shows I’ve seen.
I have access to borrowed wireless in the apartment now, intermittently. We’re still counting down the days to our very own reliable connection, though.
Ha! You are correct – I howled, howled I say, at the monkey scene in Evelina. That book can be so mischievous – that whole part with … who is it, the captain maybe, is just ludicrous in all the best ways.
Love in Excess is really good as well. I gave a conference paper on it a couple of years ago, wherein I addressed the problems of love and the law. Howard Weinbrot shouted me down during the q&a, and I went home feeling like a complete twit.
The captain is such a weird Fielding-esque character in the middle of all the proto-Austen romantic/social comedy. Bizarre!
I’m really enjoying Love in Excess — and I’m working on a Haywood paper of my own, though it’s not conference-length. I might send my first proposal to ASECS this year for something else, though, so I’m sure it’ll be my turn to be shouted down one of these days. Yay?