Updates on”Shell,” Life and 70s Fashion

Yesterday, I got an email from Screencraft letting me know that “Shell” was now a finalist in their Cinematic Short Story Competition. Looks like that means the top 50. Not bad! We’ll see what happens in March.

Also in “Shell” news. I opened “the Twitter” and saw I was mentioned in a tweet from Kandisha Press. Turns out that I’m today’s featured writer from the On That Got Away anthology. I told myself that this year I was not going to shy away from any offers of promotion, so when they asked for a three-minute clip of me reading from the story a little while back, I did it. I’m hoping it’s one of those things that is embarrassing now, but in ten or fifteen years I’ll run across it and think — awwww, that’s sweet! Look how young I look! I might or might not be a little squished in this video, as I don’t think my face is quite this oblong — we probably gave them a rectangle and this is the side effect of making it a social-media friendly square — but I don’t mind that, and Paul did a nice job of finding some sunny but slightly spooking lighting…

As is so often the case these days — announcements of this type seem pale in the face of LIFE — specifically OTHER people’s lives — as a cold snap around the country took hold this week, and a number of friends (along with thousands of strangers) in Texas have been left without power to their homes at the same time that pipes are freezing and bursting, leaving them without water as well. I feel bad for them!

I was reading an essay this past week about how social media contributes to stress because it’s become so much easier to know more about the troubles of people who are far away, but our ability to help is essentially the same. One thing that has changed is we have more ability to create opportunities to donate and more awareness of opportunities to donate… but these, like troubles, begin to seem unending and out of reach, which becomes an additional source guilt and stress. I have a lot of well intentioned folks on my feeds, and for every cause I donate to, there are ten or twenty that I have to pass by… 😕

Ummmm… other random updates:

This last weekend was a grab-bag of uneventful “smaller” holidays. Chinese New Year (obviously NOT small in other places, but not widely observed here) was Friday, February 12. Saturday was Gal-entines Day — a Parks and Rec invention which every year seems to be a real-er thing. Valentines Day was Sunday and Presidents Day was Monday. We didn’t do much for any of these at our house. Paul tried to order Chinese Food on Friday, but his efforts were thwarted, so we ended up eating spaghetti. I threw my back out on Saturday morning and spent most of the day “on ice” – literally lying on ice-packs – but recovered enough to attend a nice “Zoom tea” with a women’s group I belong to. On Sunday, by mutual agreement, we had a normal day Valentine’s-wise (though made special by the fact that I wasn’t lying on ice-packs.) On Monday, my standing client meeting was cancelled so I enjoyed having some time to catch up.

The other very-small event from the weekend is that we finished watching THE CROWN — at least to the end of Season 4. Our third housemate lives with us part time, having a job where she sleeps away Tuesday through Thursday and is at our place Friday through Monday. On the nights she’s home, we’ve established a pandemic routine of watching an episode of a show together each evening. SCHITT’S CREEK was a highlight of 2020, and it was hard to think of what to follow it up with, but we settled on The Crown — which is obviously very different, but also rewarding. This weekend we’re beginning THE WEST WING.

In addition to this very civilized episode per evening activity, I’m watching on my own I MAY DESTROY YOU and a classic CW show, THE 4400. Paul and I are watching some newer shows, like WANDAVISION, MR. MAYOR, and (help us) CALL ME KAT and … in wake of the recent movie, Paul has decided to rediscover the WONDER WOMAN from the 70s with Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner.

We’ve discovered that Steve Trevor and Diana Prince had some rockin’ outfits* and have decided that if we ever get rich, in addition to donating to everyone’s Go Fund Me’s, we’re going to hire someone to recreate some of our favorite outfits from the show. None of these show up in a Google search, so here are some snaps of our TV screen:

I especially like Diana’s long red vest with the stitching. Paul is oddly fond of Steve’s yellow jacket!

*Note — this post has been edited from the original, wherein I expressed surprise that Wonder Woman had such cool clothes in the 80s. It turns out that I was misinformed — these episodes were shot circa 1977, when fashion was AWESOME — and thus I am now much less surprised!