via: vimeo
‘Ello, friends!
It’s the second day into the New Year and I’m quite excited to see what 2015 has in store for me and my blog. And while I’m slowly lining up the next steps I’ll need to take in order to get closer to my goals (whatever they may be at the moment) and further myself in this world, I have to say that 2014 was filled with quite a few golden nuggets: Continue reading
‘Alo there, friends!
I know. I’m a terrible person who hasn’t written on this blog for months — after making a solemn oath to be better. Sigh. Well, at least I’m writing today! That should count for something, right?
Things have been really busy — both in real life and in my head, but that’s still no excuse for being inconsistent. So what if my bed seems like the best thing in the world to dive into after a day at the office?! I should still make time to write! Especially if it’s what I want to do. But for the record, there is an upside to being busy (and unabashedly wrapped up in my comforter) and I shall tell you all about it.
So remember last time when I talked about how Twitter got me a chance to video chat with Silas Weir Mitchell of Grimm (SQUEALS – highlight of my life) and score some sweet goods from Da Vinci’s Demons? Yeah, so I’ve basically become a bit more vocal on Twitter. OK, A LOT more vocal on Twitter. In part because started watching a lot more TV (which can be attributed to my new job), mostly because there a lot of good shows out this year. ANYWAY, I say all of that to say that I’ve been live tweeting and my tweets are actually being heard… well, read. I got me a few more shining moments that I can’t help but be proud of, even if they’re pretty small.
First, I got a shout out from the digital mag, Vibe Vixen, for one of my tweets during the Scandal Season 3 premiere.
Yup, that happened. But that wasn’t all.
Next up, my tweets with fellow Sleepy Hollow fans about Ichabod Crane’s fashion sense landed on the web edition of the South African magazine You.
Yeah, the highlighted portion right? That’s me. If you can’t make out what I said, then I suggest you go read the article. It’s a pretty fun read and well, I’m mentioned in it.
And of course with the return of Grimm, my fangirl live tweeting returned. That being said, I did land a couple re-tweets from the Grimm Twitter handle (score!) and a couple of my tweets have been featured in the awesome gif-infused Grimm recaps at the blog, Random Musings from the Kristen Head.
I mean, I got mentioned two weeks in a row! I don’t know how all the other people who were being mentioned felt, but I know that I literally felt like this:
Of course, there are other perks to having my tweets being read, including gaining more followers. While my follower count hasn’t necessarily spiked to extremes, I’ve come to meet a few new people… which leads me to what I mentioned earlier.
So in addition to being vocal on Twitter for the purposes of TV, I’m also on Twitter more thanks to finding the mothership in the website, Black Girl Nerds.
Yes. You read that correctly. There I learned that the word “blerd” (aka black nerd) was actually a thing (like seriously, why didn’t people tell me about that when I was growing up?!) and that it was OK to be one.
*side note*: I have to admit, after the last podcast about ‘blerds’ I don’t know if I’m a full-blooded “blerd” or just skating on the surface, but I digress.
Anywho, it opened up my eyes to a gamut of nerdom I didn’t know exist and the scores of people who share the same intense feelings I have towards numerous things that I will omit for now because… well, I want to. Essentially, what I’m saying is that I’ve found a vast group of like-minded people and it’s AWESOME. Quite honestly, they make my day go by with random Twitter conversations on everything from Hall & Oates to cartoon theme songs. Happy sigh.
It’s AMAZING!
Before, when I live tweeted a show, I thought I was alone. Now, I can have full-on conversations with other individuals who are going through the motion with me and when they like what I say, they re-tweet, and it’s amplified in the Twittersphere. Lovely!
Not only am I building some sort of an awareness of myself online, but I’ve found a group of (should I dare say it?) friends. Tear.
*cue Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone”*
Yikes, I forgot how pasty he was in that video… but you get the point.
Yes, so now that I’ve got you guys all up to speed and what not, expect some more posts — some poetic, some about music you’re afraid to listen to, and some other stuff that you’re probably going to be like “WTF is she talking about?!”
Oh, and if I don’t write something new, feel free to like hit me up on Twitter and get in my face about it because sometimes I really do need a swift kick.
Con Amor
So I recently wrote a post for BlackGirlNerds.com about my love affair with Gargoyles and well, I decided that I should post it here as well … just in case some of you guys are hardcore fans.
I can’t deny it. I am a girl who is hopelessly in love with the cartoons of the ‘90s. These shows probably sculpted quite a bit of the geekiness that I’ve come to embrace in my life, but no show has possibly affected me more than Disney’s Gargoyles. When the show debuted in 1994, the opening score immediately drew me in (and to this day I still hum it). It was dark, scary, and (as I continued to watch) more than what met the eye.
If you’re not familiar with this amazingly awesome show, then you should be ashamed of yourself. But just to bring you up to speed, Gargoyles followed a clan of nocturnal creatures aka gargoyles that turned to stone by day and were warriors by night. After being betrayed by the humans they swore to protect, the clan was placed under a magical spell that turned them entirely to stone. A millennia later, billionaire David Xanatos (voiced by Jonathan Frakes) purchased their Scotland home and implanted them on his New York City skyscraper, where the spell was broken and they’re brought back to life. Tell me that doesn’t sound like a hot ass show to you?
The gargoyles, led by Goliath (voiced by actor Keith David), must now adapt to their new surroundings and they make a new friend in the process — police detective Elisa Maza (voiced by Salli Richardson) who in turn becomes their human guardian. Initially the show starts off with billionaire Xanatos trying to “befriend” the gargoyles for his own schemes of world domination, but later the show gets layered with the ever growing yet low-key attraction between Goliath and Elisa. It was obvious these two loved each other, but couldn’t be together because they were two different species. I mean, who didn’t hear Keith’s voice and melt instantly, right? But it gets better when Demona, Goliath’s former lover, came on the scene. Not only was she one hell of a villainess with her plot for human genocide, she was especially hateful towards Elisa for being the new object of Goliath’s affection. This ultimately made her hate towards humans richer. Oh — Demona was also Goliath’s baby mama. Yeah.
Much later we learned that some of the gargoyle eggs were saved before the horrifying betrayal (seen in the opening credits) and one of them is Goliath and Demona’s daughter, Angela. She joined the clan (which up until this point was strictly male), and tensions rose almost instantly between Broadway and Brooklyn. Broadway ultimately won Angela’s heart, but that led Brooklyn down a dark path for a while and boy wasn’t it one hell of plot line.
The show would weave Celtic lore and Norse mythology with characters from Shakespearean plays and — no lie — prepared me for college lit and history classes. As a child, I wasn’t attune to everything that was going on, but there were some things that I could truly appreciate. For instance, Elisa Maza was probably the first bi-racial cartoon character I had seen on TV. Being the daughter of an Amerindian father & African-American mother meant the world to me because we were finally seeing a real representation of the people who reside in NYC — multi-ethnic. We saw that Elisa had a brother and a sister and they were all different colors: her brother was a dark-skinned, while her sister was a little lighter with curly hair. And as for the police chief? She was a Latina named Chavez. Realism was on this show, whether you liked it or not.
Gargoyles exposed its viewers to different cultures; in one episode we learned of Anansi the Spider in Nigeria, and the legend of the black panther (or jaguar — I don’t know my felines that well) while on another episode we met Coyote the Trickster and understood his role in Native-American mythology. We saw King Arthur in his tomb on Avalon and the purported “aliens” that came to Easter Island. I learned the Oden was missing an eye before I watched Thor and met Macbeth before reading the play in high school. To sum it all up, this show had everything for me. There was action, history, magic, myth, love, and it was wrapped up so beautifully, that it effortlessly caused me to want to know all these “nerdy” things. This show was the beginning of my “blerdy” journey, if you will. I will admit, I didn’t keep up with the show during its final run in 1997. By then, the show moved from weekday afternoons to Saturday mornings which was a major bummer. It was only showing once a week AND on the day I was allowed to sleep late.
Trying to catch up with it was a task and I couldn’t keep up. When I heard it was cancelled, I was so upset, but the show lives on in me forever … obviously. I intend to find the Gargoyles DVD on Amazon, buy them, and have my own children watch them (when I have children, that is). Now excuse me, while I hum the theme song to sleep and imagine Goliath roaring into the night’s sky.
– See more at: http://blackgirlnerdy.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-undying-unflinching-love-for-disneys.html#sthash.c55PTPqz.dpuf
I am currently contemplating my next post … which will more than likely be cartoon related, as I really do miss the cartoons of my childhood.
AljaTheWriter 