mellicious | Entries tagged with college

During Holidailies in December, I talked a couple of times about the October Daye books by Seanan McGuire. I have gotten to be more-than-just-mildly obsessed with these books. I talked about it with at least one other person who is a fan here, and I poked around the edges of the October Daye fandom - there's a wiki, for one thing. But I had already started making fairly extensive notes that were a combination of plot summaries and commentary before I even looked at that. These are books about fairies, pretty heavily based in folklore, but mostly my notes are more about the lore within the books. I am just starting to dip a toe into the actual folk-history related to this.

I've decided that since I have all this stuff, I really should put some of it up online. I should also make it very clear that I'm no expert about folklore in general - I was an English major once upon a time, and I'm sure they had folklore-related classes which I could have taken, but I didn't dip into that area. (My degree is in Liberal Arts, which I'm aware is completely out of fashion these days. I took the most classes in English Lit and also in Government but lots of other things as well.) Anyway, if I don't lose momentum I'm going to start typing this stuff up and putting it up here. It's mostly my own take on all this although as I said, I have looked a little at what other fan-made sites are around. (On the whole what I read didn't make me feel like I was wildly off-track with other people's takes.)

So this is just a little intro for if you see this stuff popping up and wonder what I'm up to. There will definitely be spoilers.

Somebody was talking about New Year traditions, and the only one my family really had was black-eyed peas on New Year's Day, and I never remember in time. We went out to an early dinner at Cheddar's and they might have had them if I had thought to ask, but I didn't.

And I completely forgot about football until we got home. It's almost 8:00 (Central time) and Michigan just beat Alabama, we got to see the end of that, and so either Texas or Washington - whose game is just starting - will play them (in Houston!) next Monday. I had one smallish Longhorn sticker (I'm sure most people know vaguely what I mean, but like this) and I did remember to go put that on the new car. That's sort of a superstition, really, too, right? I feel like I would be being a bad Longhorn if I forgot that!

I almost decided to do a meme, but nah, I'll stop here. See y'all next year, Holidailies!

I said before that I didn't think Texas would get in the College Football Playoffs, and as I'm sure anybody who pays attention to college football knows already, I was entirely wrong. I didn't think a last minute jump from #7 to number #4 (much less 3) was possible, even though UT won pretty decisively. If I were a Florida State alum, I would be very pissed off. (In fact I saw Joe Scarborough, who is a Florida State alum, go off about it early this morning.) Apparently that's how the rules are set up - I guess the idea is that having a good bowl-game is more important than rewarding being undefeated? which is kind of weird but practical, if you're the person who's in charge of the ratings. (Florida State's quarterback got hurt badly enough that he won't be playing again this year, if you're wondering what I'm talking about. I guess they didn't think it'd be the same caliber of team without him.)

So we did in fact jump from #7 to #3, and we (Texas, that is, University of) are going to the Sugar Bowl. I got an e-mail from the Co-op trying to sell me Sugar Bowl t-shirts before I knew we were in the Sugar Bowl, too, so that's two days in a row I got spoiled. (The Co-op is a marketing juggernaut, let me tell you.)

Here's something that's not about The Mandalorian! (Still Star Wars, but hey, I gotta write about something!)

I watched the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, and it was pretty funny. I've never seen the old one.

I don't know if younger people understand this, but in 1978 you couldn't just tape things off the TV - I think that technology was probably in its infancy then, but normal people didn't start having VCRs and cable and stuff til the 80s. Something would be on at 8:00, say, on one of the maybe five channels we had at the time -- and if you didn't watch it then you were out of luck. You might not see it again for years. In fact, did they ever repeat the Star Wars Holiday Special at all? I just heard rumors about how terrible it was, later on.

Anyway, I had the vague idea that it had something to do with Life Day and Chewie's family, but that's about all I know about the original. I just looked on Wikipedia and it actually had Harvey Korman and Bea Arthur (I had no idea, but that is so very 70s, Harvey Korman was in everything).

There is some stuff about Life Day and Chewie's family in the new one, but there's also Rey attempting to train Finn, followed by a highly unlikely plot about Rey and BB8 jumping around in time to see various jedis and their padawans. Clearly that's not based on anything in the old one, since there was nothing but the original movie to jump to, at the time. It was silly, but it's Lego Star Wars, that's what you expect. Anyway, I enjoyed it. I've actually seen it twice, because Rob expressed a desire to watch something Christmassy, and I said, "Oh, I know something!" He liked it too.

(And Wikipedia also said that in fact, no, they did NOT ever repeat the show on broadcast TV or anywhere else, for many years. I think you can get hold of it these days, now that it's nostalgia and not quite such an embarrassment.)

(And it also said that it aired in November 1978, not December, so I would have been in my dorm room in Austin, and we didn't have a TV there. You had to go downstairs to watch TV. I bet if I'd gone down there it would have been on, because Star Wars was pretty much a religion at the time I was in college - at least for the geeks - but I don't think I was even aware that the show was airing at the time.)

HOLIDAILIES

Somebody in my apartment complex has a bumper sticker that says "An Aggie's Girl" - which just makes me want to barf. (The same person also has a license plate with her first name on it; I think between those two things, I know all I need to know about her.) You used to see those "Aggie Mom" and "Aggie Dad" stickers a lot, but they're not as popular as they used to be. Of course, I suppose they're a concept that's at least a couple of decades old, because they started turning up when I was in college. (At one point after my sister started at A&M, my dad had "An Aggie's Dad" on his pickup and my mom had "I'm a Longhorn Mom" on her car. I know that's fairly barf-worthy, too, but we thought it was funny at the time, mostly because of the UT/A&M rivalry aspects of the thing.)

That reminds me that I added my high school to my user info page earlier this week, and for some reason the dates on that really make me blanch. (Pause while everybody runs to look.) I've had the college dates up there for a couple of months and it never bothered me a bit, but somehow the high school ones - jesus, the mid-seventies ?? That was an eternity ago.

Sign in the restaurant where we had dinner: "We believe you only get what you pay for, but at Kelley's you get more than you pay for." Does that make any sense at all?

We had planned to stay on the island - and on this end of the island, to boot - all day today, but there weren't any movies showing that we wanted to see, and it rained all afternoon so we decided it was probably safe to go to the mainland. Good Night and Good Luck was the movie we actually wanted to see, and it's apparently not showing anywhere on this side of Houston any more. We toyed with the idea of going to see Match Point instead but couldn't really work up any enthusiasm for it, either one of us. So we just went to Kelley's to eat - I had a truly enormous breakfast, even though it was the middle of the afternoon - and went to the big HEB in Dickinson to buy groceries. I like to go there once in a while because they carry a lot of things the other stores don't, especially Wal-Mart. (Yes, we buy most of our groceries at Wal-Mart. Yes, I know it's of the devil and all that, but it's cheaper. Not to mention being right across the street. If HEB would get off their collective asses and put a decent store in here, I would switch like a shot.)

Anyway, we were right about it being safe to go off the island. The issue was that the Momus parade was supposed to be tonight, and the traffic is normally horrendous. But it was nothing. It stopped raining, finally, so I'm assuming the parade went off as scheduled, but I don't think there was much of anybody there. Not many people are going to drive down from Houston to see a Mardi Gras parade when it's cold and raining.

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Entries tagged with college

October Daye again

Football and black-eyed peas

Sugar Bowl bound

The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special

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