L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

How can one series hold such a wealth of happiness for one little geekling that just watching this video makes me all teary with nerd joy?

Watched this last night OnDemand and it’s been stuck in my mental theater ever since. I think this is one of the most wonderfully weird music videos ever made. All thanks to Christopher Walken.

Yes, dear denizens, it’s time once again to play “Where In the World Is Was Loba San Diego?”

(Thank you to those two Carmen San Diego fans who still laugh whenever I pull that one out of my hat.)

Snow wears you down, denizens. Wears you down and wears you out. If I have to haul another shovel-full of sludge, I might snap. So I packed up a ditty bag and rolled out for “The Happiest Place on Earth.”

North Platte, Nebraska.

I keed! I keed! I’m not even allowed in the state of Nebraska ever since that horrible corn husking accident back in ’87.

…

Where was I? Oh, yeah…Orlando! No, not Bloom. Florida. Home of Disney World, which ironically I completely circumnavigated the entire time I was there. Any place that allows the congregation of that much “little people” energy is as scary to me as a crib notes-free palm is to Sarah Palin.

POKE THE BEAR!!!

I was a work stowaway, sneaking in under the watchful eye of others who had to work while Loba was there to play. It wasn’t quite as warm as I had hoped it would be, but anything above the freezing mark is going to be a marked improvement. Plus…I saw grass! And sunshine!! And I now randomly emphasize my words to sound more like William Shatner!!!

There’s something so comforting about Florida. It’s home to so many childhood vacation memories. All I have to do is get a whiff of that sulfur-scented water and I’m right back at 10 years old, brushing my teeth at the latest Days Inn we’ve stopped at for the night (because at Days Inn, Kids Eat Free!), getting ready for bed but too wired to sleep because I know in the morning, we’re going to ___________________ (insert any random Florida attraction name in blank)!!

For this trip, I went back to one of those attractions that my dad took us to that I don’t think I truly appreciated at the time: the Ringling Museum. Yes, the Ringling of Ringling Brothers circus fame. John Ringling, to be precise, and his lovely wife Mable. It’s a strange destination, I know, but my family has a special relationship with the circus (anyone cracks a bearded lady joke here and your ass is grass). Plus, in addition to circus museums, there’s a huge art museum, beautiful gardens, and the Ringlings’ house, Cà d’ Zan, which translates as “House of John” in Venetian. This house is gorgeous. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.

So bright and early on Tuesday, I packed up the rental (nowhere near as cool as Sammy, but it sufficed), and headed off to Sarasota. I love long drives, so I was definitely up for the 2-hour trek from Orlando. Besides, how can you not love a drive that takes you past Dinosaur Land? I wish I’d had my camera out to snap some shots for you of the giant imposing dinosaurs posed along the highway. It’s that kind of kitsch that lets you know without a doubt that you are indeed in the Sunshine State.

I started my tour of the Ringling grounds around 10ish and didn’t leave until around 3ish. And I still didn’t see everything. I don’t think it’s actually possible to see everything there in one visit though. Of course, I am also the person who has yet to see everything at the British Museum, yet I’ve been there three times.

This was also the first snow-free time I’ve had a chance to try out my new “Big Girl” camera. I used it mostly to take an architectural study of the house itself. But I took some photos around the grounds as well as around the outside of the art museum. I’ll refrain from boring you to tears and simply post my absolute favorites from the day:

Isn’t that horse head shot awesomely disturbing? Or disturbingly awesome? Whichever, I absolutely loved it. Oh, and the second image? That’s using the telephoto lens to get a shot of the design that goes around the top of the Belvedere Room, which is the very tip-top room of the mansion. Not a bad lens. I took about 70 shots in total throughout the day. So choosing was a difficult task. I have several others that almost made the cut. Maybe I’ll set up a Flickr account for the overflow…

After my three-ring circus afternoon, I headed back up the interstate, swinging by to visit with my ImagiFriends^TM at Castle Marius. Lightsabers and phasers may have been involved. As were cats. And possibly blood wine. I’m not allowed to say anything further by orders of the Admiral. Needless to say, it was the perfect ending to an awesome non-snow day.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end (so sayeth the final episode of TNG). So away we went yesterday afternoon, leaving on a jet plane that brought us back. To snow. I was strangely surprised to see so much still on the ground. I guess I was hoping/wishing it would all just melt away like the Wicked Witch. Instead, I’ve heard rumors that more is on its way next week.

Think I can get a flight out to somewhere else warm before then?

I’m foregoing Flashback Friday this week, denizens. Today was hella busy at work (it was the first day back in the actual office since last Friday), and the more I thought about writing a flashback, the more irrationally irascible I became. So instead I’m posting my latest Gates McFadden/Beverly Crusher-inspired PhotoShop trickery.

Do I really need to say how much this poster delights me? If only this had been the movie Cameron made…

Oh, and you can see ZomBeverly here, in case you missed her the first time around.

Uh…so I have a lot of spare time on my hands lately. First, it was Puppy Bowl on Sunday. Why did no one tell me about Puppy Bowl before? I now randomly yell “Puppy Touchdown” for no apparent reason and now have something to make Toilet Super Bowl Sunday more palatable.

And today, while scrubbing listservs and updating code, I streamed this:

Streaming live video by Ustream

Could there be a cuter Webcam? I’m sure it’s got quite the short shelf life, but I’m enjoying it while it’s here. You should, too!

PUPPY TOUCHDOWN!

Remember all the times that I’ve talked about the English singing sensation known as Craig Bevan?

No?! Why not? What, do you think I type things here for my own personal amusement?

Okay, don’t answer that. Just go here and here so you can catch up with the conversation.

Finished? May I continue now? Okay, good. So this is what’s happening now with the Fabulosity Known As Bevan:

Local talent shines in the UK’s biggest original music competition.

Craig Bevan from Leeds has wowed the judging panel and sailed through the audition stage of Live and Unsigned. Craig will now be competing against the other most talented bands and artists in the country at the live shows of Live and Unsigned 2010 – all in a bid to be signed!

Craig battled against hundreds of auditionees to secure a spot in the live shows and now has the opportunity to prove that he is the best in the region. Acts that have made it through auditions will now take part in a live head to head battle in front of thousands of spectators and a professional judging panel to progress to the Live and Unsigned Festival at the 02 in London.

Live and Unsigned is the biggest original music competition in the UK for unsigned bands and artists. Attracting over 30, 000 entries in the past three years, it has set itself apart from its predecessors by offering and promoting originality. It’s now established as the definitive music competition for original acts and is open to all genres of music from Heavy Rock to Rap.

Chris Grayston, Events Director of Live & Unsigned explains “This competition really is worlds apart from X Factor and other TV talent contests – we’re all about originality, Live ability and credibility. We don’t accept demos or submissions and everyone auditions live. We’ve got some fantastic prizes up for grabs this year in a £60, 000 prize pool so there’s a lot of opportunity for everyone entering and not just the winners – that, along with the Festival means 2010 will be the biggest competition yet!”

All the acts that audition in the competition are battling it out for the chance to play at the Live and Unsigned Festival at the 02 in London! Which gives acts the chance to perform at the ultimate live music venue in the country. The overall winner of the competition is offered a recording and management contract with Future Music with an investment of up to £30, 000 to release their single. The winners will be crowned the UK’s best unsigned act in front of a capacity crowd on the main stage of the festival. A&R and celebrity judges last year include former Sex Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren, pop RnB star Dane Bowers and Radio 1’s Annie Nightingale. Radio 1 DJ Greg James has already confirmed for 2010.

Acts will of course be competing for two main prizes, which include a management contract with Future Music and the opportunity to design and develop their own clothing range with Extreme State. On route the competition offers a comprehensive winners prize pool and acts will have the opportunity to win some fantastic prizes including Marshall state of the art amps, development through recording studio time in some of the UK’s finest studios and seminars and courses with ICMP. Other goodies up for grabs include an Extreme Element experience day, a year’s worth of Extreme State clothing and MUZU.TV will be contributing an all expenses paid trip to Dublin to film a music video and play at a festival.

Previous winners of the competition include Kiddo 360 who went on to pick up a Vodafone Live Award, B-Kay and Kazz who broke into the top 30 charts and last year’s winners from Glasgow The Detours who have just signed an exclusive clothing deal with Extreme.

The winners of 2010 will be thrust into the media spotlight through television, radio and the press and will have the opportunity to tour the UK. The tour involves as many as 100 gigs across the UK including the chance to perform live at some well-known festivals. One contestant who has caught the judge’s eye this year is local talent Craig Bevan, now competing in the Regional Final. Craig made it through the auditions at The Willows in Salford, Manchester amongst hundreds that queued for their turn in front of the judges. Craig is now preparing for the live show on the 7th of March at The Willows for the opportunity to progress towards the Live and Unsigned festival at the O2 in London.

For more information go to the website www.LiveandUnsigned.UK.com. Or better still come down and support local talent; you can purchase tickets on the door or from Craig personally.

See? I told you that Craig was destined for wonderful things. I have unwavering faith that he is going to rock this contest like it has never been rocked before. His voice is pure wonder and his soul is pure gold. He’s going to give incontrovertible proof that nice guys can and will finish first.

So what can you do, dear denizens? If you’re across the pond where all this excitement is going down…well, first off, the white wolf is an unflattering shade of green right now. Since I can’t be there to support Craig, I’m putting it to you: Go, get your tickets, and watch him perform. Scream for him like the groupies you know you are. And if anyone tells you to pipe down, you tell ‘em LobaBlanca sent you. That and a 20£ note will hopefully get the bouncers off your back (I’ll pay you back later, I promise).

Seriously, though, if you can support Craig when he performs on March 7, please do. He is all-around amazing in everything he does, but especially when he sings. And he is one of the kindest, funniest, sweetest guys out there. If anyone deserves this, it’s Craig.

So sayeth Loba. And you know Loba would never lie to you when it comes to Bevan.

While looking for something else in my photo archives, I came across this. I’d give you a setup, but I really think this speaks quite well on its own.

And then this morning, my alarm went off while I was in the middle of a dream in which I was interviewing Nana Visitor for a talk show that I was auditioning to take over, I think from Conan O’Brien.

I’ve really gotta lay off the Trek.

With all my griping about special effects taking the originality and complexity out of movies, even I know that sometimes it’s all about the lightsabers. Especially when it’s geeky fanboys in an empty parking garage, dorking out with a wickedly choreographed lightsaber duel.

Epic make-believe geekery, FTW.

I’m so glad that Hollywood is finally leaving behind all those sad, disturbing portrayals of Multiple Personality Disorder. You know, like Sally Field’s Sybil or Joanne Woodward’s Eve White…er Eve Black…Jane? Stop this crazy thing?

Anyway, now we’ve got a far funnier, far lighter take on this disease, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. You know, because a lot of the classic mental illnesses needed a bit of pizazz to liven them up a bit. It’s not manic depression! It’s bipolar disorder! Now, what can we call schizophrenia? How about “Can You Hear Us Now?” Syndrome?

Am I sounding a bit flippant? I do apologize. I think, however, that anyone who has lived with a severe mental illness in their life, whether their own or that of someone they love, develops a bit of a gallows humor when it comes to discussing such things. It’s been a part of my life since I was 10, and I have a wicked sense of humor about it, as does my family. It’s a coping mechanism, a way to process the fact that sometimes horrible things happen and there’s no real way to “fix” any of it. Just tame it with pills, temper it with therapy, and accept that it is what it is.

Besides, it makes for a great ice breaker when you can tell the story about how you spent part of your 16th birthday in a locked ward, sharing cake with schizophrenics.

Anywho. So this show, United States of Tara, is all about Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. The titular Tara, played by Toni Collette, houses several distinct personalities within her: Alice, the hyper-happy housewife who’s like Donna Reed on Speed; Buck, the grizzly beer-bonged Vietnam vet; and T, the 16-year-old nympho-minx who gets away with a hella lot just because she happens to “look mature for her age.”

Here’s the happy “family” all together: Buck, Alice, Tara, and T.

Buck is Tara’s protector, the Alter meant to keep her safe from the memories of whatever trauma she survived in her adolescence that left her fractured into all these different personalities. He also keeps safe those Tara loves; he surfaces when there’s trouble in Tara’s life that she is simply ill-equipped to handle. He’s a lefty with a mean right hook, gruff and offensive, but secretly kind and caring. Alice is the Ladies Home Journal ideal of femininity and motherhood. She surfaces whenever Tara is unable to deal with her children or her marriage. She’ll bake you some muffins, mix you a martini, and wash your mouth out with public restroom liquid soap if you’re not careful. T, probably the most obnoxious of the Alters so far, is a foul-mouthed sex-crazed teen, possibly Tara’s exaggerated way of reclaiming her right to express herself freely, unshackled by the chains of whatever repressed trauma left her this way.

Just for the record, Buck is undeniably my favorite of the Alters.

It’s a delicate dance, this show, dealing with unfunny truths in a wickedly funny style. When I first heard about it, I was über-wary. I knew that it was from Diablo Cody, who was quite the “IT” craze for a while because of her screenplay for Juno. I didn’t really like Juno all that much. I didn’t care about that titular character at all and didn’t really give a shit about the story. Plus, I was so sick and tired of hearing about Stripper Pole Diablo that I wanted to wretch. Needless to say, hearing her name associated with this show was quite the turn-off.

I’m so glad I got over that hurdle. This might possibly be one of the best shows I have ever seen. The writing is exquisite, the casting is perfection, the stories are an amazingly adept balance of wit, humor, irreverence, and sincerity. Plus, there’s a vein of matter-of-factness that snakes all throughout, helping to keep us all anchored in the wake of the tsunami of crazy we’re just getting to know. It’s not new to her family. She’s been like this for years…ever since her husband met her, ever since her children were born.

I think that’s one of the greatest, boldest, most realistic aspects of this show: the way Tara’s family copes with their situation. And that’s just it…they cope. As best as they can. Her husband, played by John Corbett, is the coolest cat in the world. He doesn’t fight the tide, just treads water as he averts the flirtatious affections of Alice or the machismo threats of Buck. He loves his wife, Alters and all. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t get pissed or want to fix what’s wrong. It just means that he’s in it for better or worse. Period. Max is Tara’s greatest champion. Without ever beating this point into our brains with preachy dialogue, we understand that Max is the reason that Tara isn’t wearing Hefty bags and pushing a shopping cart down alleys while fighting back her Alters alone. How many people living on the streets are there because they have no Max? No champion to help them? Or, more accurately, no Max with insurance to cover the cost of their treatment?

Tara’s children, Kate and Marshall, both have a special place in my heart. Played respectively and wonderfully by Brie Larson and Kier Gilchrist, they are testaments to the resiliency of youth. This is the life they’ve always known and these are the parents (and Alters) they’ve got, like it or not. They’re acerbic, angry, resigned, embarrassed, coping with the peaks and nadirs of adolescence while contending with the ridiculousness of what they’ve come to view as mundane. Or at least par for the crazy course. Of course they’re rebellious and belligerent and desperate to have a normal life. But they also know that this is the hand they’ve got and, blow-ups and tantrums aside, they love their mother, fractures and all.

Another wonder of this show is, again, the subtle commentary that strikes deep without offputting preachiness. The show kicks off with us learning that Tara’s Alters are starting to resurface now that she’s decided to go off her medications because of how they leave her feeling non-functional. These anti-psychotic medications that doctors dole out to their patients are unmerciful Catch-22s in pill-form. If you take them, you’re lethargic, you’re unfocused, you’re antsy, you’re hungry, you’re all variety of side effects printed in super-tiny font for three pages of medi-babble. If you don’t take them…you’re catatonic, you’re talking to god, you’re telling ‘Nam war stories while lighting your farts of fire. So what do you choose? Crazy? Or a medicated fugue that passes as “normal” while it ravages your liver in ways worse than a constant IV drip of grain alcohol?

And now we get to the best part of this show: Toni Collette. I adore Toni Collette. I think she’s one of the most marvelous Australian exports EVAR. Definitely way better than Vegemite. In fact, I don’t ever think I’ve seen her give anything less than a stellar performance, no matter what she’s in. She kills as Tara. And all the others. This is the keystone. This premise could have gone completely shazbot if the wrong person had been cast to play Tara. Collette slam-dunks this role with fierceness and compassion. You believe her as all of her Alters. Even more importantly, you believe her as Tara. She is wonderful, and most definitely deserving of the Emmy she won last year for this role.

So there you go. If you haven’t seen United States of Tara yet, the first season is now on DVD. Check it out. I’ve already added it to my wish list, and I can’t wait to see the second season. If it’s anything like the first, it’s going to be more wonder than one person(ality) can stand.