If You’re A Human, Read This

Reblogged from Squeeze Work In

It’s interesting how some things don’t change. The incessant need for women to define themselves by their relationship status hasn’t changed much — women’s liberation, no women’s liberation, it still seems to be a big part of a woman’s identity. But there’s hope. Some do not define themselves by this, and it’s refreshing to know:

I’m over relationship statuses. After reading that first sentence my friend who is a journalist will say something snarky like, “Laura, you can’t be over relationship statuses because a relationship status is a state-of-being not a very small puppy you are watching pee on a tree, so, technically you can’t be ‘over relationship statuses.’”

So, I’ll rephrase, I’m sick and tired of reading about relationship statuses, particularly females’ relationship statuses. I’m not talking about seeing somebody update their relationship status on Facebook from engaged to I-hate-this-guy-get-ready-to-decipher-hidden-meanings-in-all-my-fire-breathing-comments, nor am I referring to the status found in the three-component theory of stratification, philosopher Max Weber created to describe people’s economic/social worth.

Read the rest here

January 20, 2014
Categories: Tangents . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 2 Comments

The Content of Their Character

unnamedMartin Luther King certainly had a worthy dream. The dream borne of embracing the plan God has for mankind. Freedom to be loving and at peace. In my lifetime, I doubt I’m ever going to witness this as the norm, but there is always hope, and that’s built on the assurance that one day it will be seen.

For now I take it where I can find it, and one notable place is online where most of you have no skin color or any other physical attributes. Part of me does love it when you reveal who you are or where you come from. But another part of me loves not knowing your age, your weight, your race, blah, blah, blah, because it allows me to focus solely on your words. And your words usually reveal more about who you are than your outer shell, and it’s who you really are and what your character may be that is most important to me.

note: I noticed as I was posting this piece that Perry has a post linking to a video of the speech.

Graphic by Ray Ferrer at UrbanWallArt

January 20, 2014
Categories: Timeout . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 3 Comments

A Little More About the Pinter/Proust Reading

I’ve been talking to Armitage Besotted about the Pinter/Proust reading (which I will henceforth call “the reading”). But first a little background. I’ve gotten to know Armitage Besotted well enough over the last several months that I think we can damn near finish each other’s sentences. But mostly we laugh a lot. I love that! I hope we can keep it up for a long, long time.

So about “the reading,” I was talking to Armitage Besotted about what went down and knowing what I now know of her chutzpah and humor, I believe this account, which I’ve sprinkled with my commentary:

Me: Did you at least get to meet Richard Armitage and talk to him?

Besotted: Hell, yes — I’m the one who got him to come out and greet us! Well, I’m not sure I’m solely responsible, but I’m taking full credit.

Me: ROFLOL!! What?!

Besotted: We were waiting in the lobby afterwards, because someone saw on Twitter (apparently, the source of all authoritative info now) that there was going to be a “reception.” Not quite. The “reception” was an invitation-only thing in a closed-off room for people who put up the money for the play.

Many of the fangirls were ready to give up and go home at that point. Geez, people, you need me to show you how to grow New York balls. I accept this self-appointed role for the fandom going forward, by the way.

Me: Teach me! Teach me! LOL!

Besotted: Let me finish! So I craned my neck to look in the reception room and saw a cocktail-party-like setup. Knowing Armitage hates that kind of crap, I thought to myself, I bet he would rather come out in the lobby and talk to fans if he knew we were here.

So I went back into the theater to see if there was anyone who might have backstage access. I chatted up a woman who was hanging around. I asked her if she would deliver a message to Richard Armitage, and she smiled and said “Yes,” so I said “Would you tell him that there are some fans out front who would love to meet him? 5 minutes. That’s all it will take, and we will not behave like assholes.” She laughed, and I said, “Please repeat that verbatim.”

10 minutes later, he came out!

I had positioned myself right at the door to the party room, so I had first shot at him. He had a bit of an I’m-ready-to-be-assaulted-now flustered look on his face, so I figured “he wants someone to take charge” (everyone does, this is the first lesson in assigning yourself the I’m-in-charge job), so I called out “Mr. Armitage, we would like to meet you over here.” He came over to me and my group.

I shook his hand and said, “Thank you for everything,” and I can’t even tell you what he said. He was in “rope line” mode — eyes darting around, murmuring niceties on auto pilot (“Awww, thank you,” “Oh this is nice,” or whatever), right hand hovering with pen. I wasn’t shoving a camera at him or following the formula, and I swear he was thinking, “Where’s your poster? Where’s your book?” Ha ha ha!

He stayed for 30 or 40 minutes, talked to everyone there and posed for pictures. He was very gracious. (And gorgeous. So gorgeous to look at for 30 minutes. Sigh.)

Notallwhowanderarelost2 reminded me of the best part in her post — there were no paid autograph seekers pushing posters over other peoples’ heads, no professional photographers, no people yelling “Richard! Richard! Look over here!”

Have you seen that 3-minute clip from the LA premiere where he just stands there posing, cycling through his various smiles, while photographers shout, SHOUT directions at him? It makes me cringe. I don’t know how performers resist rolling their eyes at that nonsense, but they have to or there would be pictures out there of them rolling their eyes. (Now that’s a performance.)

There was excited hubub, naturally, but it wasn’t overly loud and everyone behaved nicely. The fans helped each other with moving to the front of the line, taking photos, etc.

I’m proud of us New Yorkers. As promised, we did not behave like assholes, and a good time was had by all.

I wonder how quickly Richard Armitage will become a New Yawker? :D

January 19, 2014
Categories: Fandom, Stage Productions . Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 23 Comments

Playing Catch Up!

I missed some #RAflash posts and thankfully people have sent me notes to ensure I get them posted. If I have not acknowledged your note, please know that I have not seen it or somehow it didn’t get to me. But if you want, send me another one. If you haven’t sent a note, doing so will help me!

In the meantime, I will be looking on tumblr more diligently and in my email on both RAFrenzy and RAflash. If you do decide to send a note about having a post placed on RAflash, it’s better if you send it to that site’s email: raflasheventATgmailDOTcom.

Maybe sometime in all of this I will get my own post done for the event. For now, it’s just a joy to read yours!

Take care, and I look forward to your notes.

January 19, 2014
Categories: Fandom . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: Leave a comment

You All Are Great!

There have been so many lovely notes about the RAflash event. Thank you for that, and thank you to all who are participating! People are finding it very gratifying to write out their stories. Good! I hope that is a wonderful exercise for everyone. Who knows, we may get a blog or two out of this. :D

In the last few days I’ve received quite a few notes from people wanting to participate but unable to make the deadline. They have also sensed it would be gratifying. So here’s my response to them, screw the deadline. If you want to submit your Richard Armitage story, do it! Submission information is here.

And for those on the fence about it, you can publish anonymously to the RAFlash site, or you can publish to the RAflash site and link your blog. Some blogs are not a good fit for these pieces, so just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you have to publish there. You’re welcome to publish directly to RAflash. Also, if you have already written your story elsewhere, it can be linked from the RAflash site, or you can put an update on it and link the previous article or just republish. It doesn’t matter. It’s your choice. Just remember the point is for us to share our stories of what we’ve seen that’s moved us with some particular emphasis on what moved us initially.

There will be many more posts coming today and probably tomorrow and more thank yous on Monday to those who have helped pull this off, but for now I wanted to acknowledge readers and writers and possible writers.

And if someone slips in a post or two about the Pinter/Proust reading, I’ll probably give that priority. But the order of these posts for the most part doesn’t really matter. They are timely thoughts others can read and feel a good about what they see as well no matter when they read.

Speaking of feeling good, I would have loved to have seen this live!

Richard Armitage - Swann
[click to enlarge]

January 19, 2014
Categories: Fandom, Stage Productions . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 7 Comments

The Flash Fan Event

SomethingFine

I see that some bloggers are already starting to post for the Flash Fan Event: I See Something Fine. Hopefully, most of you reading this will be aware of those posts because you are a regular reader. You may also find the posts via the #RAflash hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, tumblr, and wherever else someone wants to use the tag.

But never fear if you missed something. I will be putting up the website RAflash.com at 10:00am my time (UTC+7 or 12:00pm EST) which will aggregate the posts, or attempt to aggregate the posts. LOL!

Yes, I’m doing all of this by the seat of my pants as usual, but do you care? I didn’t think so. The point is for all of us to have fun and bask in what it is we find so ethralling, and my part in it is to provide an easy way for you to do that! This first day might be a little rocky, but trust me things will get easier as we go along.

Business end of this thing coming next, so if you’re just a reader and don’t care how we’re going to get these posts to you, stop reading now! :D

If you want to put a post on the wall of the raflash site, send me a link to your post via rafrenzyATgmailDOTcom and put FINE POST in the subject line. I get a lot of mail, so please put that in the subject line, so I can easily query and do not miss any requests. If your post includes an image, I will use the first one shown as a thumbnail for the wall of posts I’m preparing. If you’ve seen the site, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you’ll quickly understand after you see it.

If you do not have an image in your post, then you can send an image along with your post link, or send a link to an image you like, or I’ll decide for you. It would help me a lot if I didn’t have to decide for you, so pick an image you love and send it to me! For the most part, it doesn’t matter what size. Just don’t send anything that’s less than 250 x 250, and no, it does not have to be square!

For now I’m manually putting up links to your posts and committing to do that at least once per day from the 13th through the 20th. I will try to put up links I receive more than once per day, but once is all I can commit to doing. If I can get my plug-in to work, I’ll get this thing going dynamically. Okay, I promise not to throw any more tech jargon on you if I can help it. Just send me your link!

If you have any questions, please send an email to that same address with the same subject line as above.

Thank you for your participation!
Frenz

January 13, 2014
Categories: Fandom . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 8 Comments

I Saw Something Fine — Flash Fan Event

DOS2-11

Beginning Monday, several bloggers (and maybe some guest bloggers) are participating in a Flash Fan Event (running January 13 to 19) in which they will highlight in a post (or maybe two) what they see in Richard Armitage that is so compelling. The point of this exercise is to exhibit our enthusiasm as fans by refocusing our attention on what is fine. Obviously, it cannot be covered comprehensively for some of us. Again, it should just be covering an aspect or two. Also, if you want to highlight a previously published piece which covers the topic, do it.

Please note if this becomes something that drags you down to prepare, you’re missing the point. It’s not about having the perfect words. It’s about exhibiting your enthusiasm as a fan.

Badges with the tagline: I Saw Something Fine will be provided, or you can make your own, but in a show of solidarity as a fandom, it would be helpful to include those words in any banner or badge you make. Also, I’ll assist anyone who needs help with positioning badges on your site and making them clickable if you desire, i.e., making them link to another page.

Unless someone comes up with something better, I’m floating the hashtag #RAflash. Also, please note Facebook, Tumbler and Pinterest use hashtags. It’s not just a Twitter thing.

I will try to aggregate the posts somewhere. Perhaps on the Fanstra.com site. I’ll figure that out as I go, and just so you know, yes, this is spontaneous, so all aspects are not nailed down other than time, subject and there will be graphics.

If you want to read more about the thinking on all of this, you can see my original post with edits as well as my follow-on post, and this includes the comments on both posts.

Hope to see your thoughts about what is fine!

January 11, 2014
Categories: Fandom . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 11 Comments

Further Thoughts on FanstRAvaganza 2014

[edit: we are not calling this FanstRAvaganza but rather a Flash Fan event. Details here, and no worries, it’s simple.]

This is a follow-on to my last post with a proposal for a spontaneous FanstRAvaganza to begin on Monday with a theme of “I Saw Something Fine.” My thinking was to have a literal tide of posts that are conveying in cyber world what it is that made so many of us ardent fans. I’m going to further suggest we make this really easy, and that there are no rules other than to focus on something you think is fine in relation to Richard Armitage.

Here’s what I’m going to do and hopefully can get some others to help:

1) Aggregate (aka curate) the posts by categories on Fanstra.com. Hopefully, it will be a magazine style. I’m working on that now. As to tags, I or someone(s) can come up with the tag names. I hope someone will take this up, but I’ll do it if no one wants to. If you want your site included in the aggregation, then let me know via email if possible. That way I won’t miss a request. If you would, put Fanstra in the subject line.

2) Provide badges for people to place on their sites. They can be housed on a page on the Fanstra site for a blogger to save and load to their site. Given this, I’m making a call to all of the wonderful artists out there to provide both badges and/or banners (whatever you want to do) for people to use. The badges should be square or a vertical strip. Banners should be large enough that they can go across the entire top of a page without being blurry. If you want to submit for placement on the Fanstra site, send it to me. If you don’t, no biggie. Just do one and pass it around. Whatever is done, it would be great to have badges and banners of some sort, but we do not have to have the same graphic on every site. However, to show solidarity, it would be helpful if we had the same verbiage. Hopefully they would all have FanstRAvaganza 2014 or Fanstra 2014 and perhaps a tagline about “Something Fine,” “I Saw Something Fine.” I leave that to your discretion.

3) If you don’t have all of this together by Monday, don’t sweat it. This is supposed to be fun and a celebration of Richard Armitage, his artistry and what that inspires. So just do a post and/or a badge or whatever sometime in the next several days if possible. Which brings me to a point I meant to make in the first post. Can we run this thing longer than a week? I think we could, ’cause I think it can gain some legs. Should it go on and on? I’m not thinking it’s perpetual, but it depends on who gets on board and then pushes it. If some of you feel strongly that it should have a definite end, then say so. Say whatever about it ’cause I’m really hard to offend.

cbeebies2_018

All I ask is that you speak up about what you want to see, and I’m thinking about the Fanstra site when I say that. Other than that, everyone is free to do what they want!

That’s all I’ve got for now. Off to get with Traxy to figure out about the FanstRA site.

Screencap courtesy of RichardArmitageNet.com

January 10, 2014
Categories: Fandom . Tags: , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 19 Comments

I Saw Something Fine

[Please see updates below which reflect input to this suggestion]

ns2-012

I’ve asked myself many times why I entered Richard Armitage Fandom, Armitage World, or RA Universe as I think of it. And the answer is always the same. I saw a man convey thoughts and feelings in a manner that captured my attention so well that it resonated with me for almost a year before I actually began to put my foot in the waters of fandom.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the last year, and I was thinking about FanstRAvaganza yesterday and the essence of it — a celebration of Richard Armitage, and I’m going to propose something.

a) That we spontaneously hold a FanstRAvaganza Flash Fan Event starting Monday. This gives us a chance to pull thoughts together but not so long that it won’t stay organic and fresh.

b) That we use this as a way to show our solidarity as a group. Does that mean we all have to be in lock step? No, that would be dull. But to have some basis for unity, I’m suggesting we rally around this theme: I Saw Something Fine.

c) In keeping with the subject, that we answer at least two questions: 1) What did I see? 2) How did it move me? Of course people can go on as long as they like. Some of us have even devoted an entire blog to answering those questions. But I think we can boil it down to a post or two. Also, if anyone wants to start a blog (doesn’t have to be devoted to Richard Armitage) to participate, I’ll help you, or I can find someone to help you. If you don’t want to start a blog and want to just post your thoughts in the blogosphere, I’m willing to run guest posts, and I’m sure other bloggers will be as well.

d) That we aggregate the posts on the Fanstra site. And let me say this about the process, CDoart has done a wonderful job with that in the past. We all owe her a great thank you for keeping track of everything. Thank you! Thank you! CDoart! But to keep her from pulling her hair out on such short notice, I’m suggesting we do it on the Fanstra site. Several of us are very conversant in the fine points of the technical aspects of WordPress, and I believe we can hit the ground running. This could be a campaign to promote participation in FanstRAvaganza in March.

So if you’re interested, let me know! Comment, catch me on Twitter or Facebook, or email: rafrenzyATgmailDOTcom.

edit:

Based on comments, messages and email, I understand there is a healthy interest in doing FanstRAvaganza in March, and a significant number believe doing something now will kill that. I hear that, so we’re making this something different. A Flash Fan Event seems to be the favorite, and I think a post that strictly covers the topic, I Saw Something Fine with the two questions being answered, would be enough to refocus us on why we’re here and encourage us as well. Since my initial thought was to encourage, I think that’s all this should be. Given that this is a refocus, I think it’s entirely appropriate to highlight previously published posts as well.

With regard to the badges, people have contacted me about making them, so they’re coming, and they will include the words I Saw Something Fine. I’ll post them as soon as I get them. As for how I’m using them on my blog, I’ll be placing at least one at a time with an embed to the post or posts which I’ve written or hosted that are especially good at reminding me what I saw that is so enthralling. This is what some others were thinking in making this something more than a week, but the initial posts should be during one week in order to make it a flash event. If anyone needs some help with manipulating the sidebars of their blog (whether on WordPress or Blogger), I’ll be glad to help you.

So bottom line: strike the word FanstRAvaganza from this and make it a Flash Fan Event which refocuses on the topic and using badges to direct people to posts if they do not read it at the time it’s first published.

January 10, 2014
Categories: Fandom . Tags: , , , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 18 Comments

From the real…to the so not real…and back again

Reblogged from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Country Life, and I assume there are spoilers because I haven’t actually read it and won’t until I see the movie myself!

In the midst of all the busyness of the season, Big Boss took me to see The Desolation of Smaug. In The Big City. At the IMAX. In the middle of the afternoon.

image65

The only thing that would’ve made the situation more surreal would have been for us to buy a Big Bucket of popcorn. We’re not that weird. Or stupid. Can you imagine? $7.50 for popcorn. Give me a break.

Read the rest here

Queen, do you know how hard it is to cut and paste with my eyes unfocused? Don’t try it, Marcel, or you might go blind. Signed, Jerry

P.S. How uncouth of you to mention money. ;-) That’s all I read. Promise. :D

December 28, 2013
Categories: Movies, Spoilers, The Hobbit . Tags: , , , . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 2 Comments

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