Back to space nerdiness

I'm starting to think that Valentina Tereshkova doesn't age.

1963

2002

2011

IN GLORIOUS RUSSIA, WE HIDE SECRET OF IMMORTALITY FROM PITIFUL USA.

(She will always be one of my heroes.)

YPF Roundup.

Guys? Reposting my photos with proper credit is fine, but please stop editing them. I'm uncomfortable with it.

Well, back in Florida! Those four words are kind of anti-climactic, aren't they? I remember on the last day of the 2010 festival, I killed time at the theater for like an hour after the show before leaving, on the idea that I didn't know if I'd ever come back. I was fifteen pages into an idea that didn't really feel very new or exciting and although I had begun trying to think of something else, nothing was really sticking yet.

I had a trip to the Museum of Jurassic Technology fresh in my mind, a google history full of searches about Russian Space Dogs, and a five hour plane ride in front of me. At 30,000 feet I popped open my MacBook and wrote down the basic idea for Like a Dog in Space: What happens to ideas when they are forgotten, and what do the ideas themselves do to avoid being lost? I had Ivan. I had the prototypes for Innovation. I had a frame story about a schizophrenic Astrophysicist and his little sister which will have to wait for another play to get used. I had Milena and Gennady.

I had no idea what I was doing. I took the idea in as a set of two for my Playwriting I class, and we decided it was the one I ought to pursue. And suddenly, with deadlines set and a professor waiting for me, things came together. The play got written. I had a complete first draft to show my family when I visited at Thanksgiving.

Four months later, I took a hacksaw to the play and in the course of four days cut four characters and thirty pages. A month after that, on the 50th anniversary of Vostok I, I got a call that I was heading to Blank YPF. You cannot make these things up. That's the timing.

So it's a play all about ideas, and about space and exploration and it's all very meta but it's also Pinocchio in Space and every time someone describes it to me as such, I get kind of happy because really, really, when you strip the meta stuff away it's about trying to discover, looking outside-in, what it is to be human. What about our experiences makes us so unique? And I think what the conclusion the play draws is that being human is a constant re-evaluation of what things are important to you, and what your goals are, and what's going to make you happy, and sometimes the things you think will make you happy are completely out of your reach and sometimes the things that would have made you happy... by the time you realize what you should have said, the moment is past. Ivan and Valeri meet once as bright young scientists on the dawn of one of the most explosive decades of human advancement.* They meet again, decades later, and it's no longer the right moment. They can't pick up where they left off, because they've become two entirely different people. And in that moment, Ivan wishes that he had stayed.

*[The timeline for this stuff is really, really amazing.

Sputnik is 1957. Vostok I is 1961. Apollo 11 is 1969. That's a beepy satellite to a man on the moon in twelve years. What's a little healthy competition between nuclear superpowers if it helps you step foot on another celestial body?]

So on Sunday, I hung around after the show for about an hour because, the fact was, once I left... I really wasn't going to be back. And some of these people had known me for four years now, had watched me go from Awkward Sixteen-Year-Old to Slightly Less Awkward Nineteen-Year-Old. I thought I was going to cry.

And then I didn't. Instead I, in no particular order:

• Talked to a couple from "Gale Harold's Chinese Fan Club," who said they'd come all the way from China to see him in the play? And they actually talked to me and took a picture with me and told me how much they enjoyed it, which is... more than can be said for more of the people who mobbed him every night. So, shoutout to Alex and [I am really sorry but your name escapes me] for being cool and world travel-y, and there is probably a picture of me on one of the fanboards, in Chinese.
• Enthused to the production costume designer about "Where the heck did you get ISS Mission Patches I mean seriously where are those from." Apparently army surplus. What. But apparently he's sending me some.
• Was serenaded that "you're nobody until somebody loves you." The song choice makes more sense in context but it was still in front of my parents.
• Was given a plush dog, who was promptly named Laika.
• Took lots of pictures. Most of them wound up blurry, because my mother bought her camera in a vending machine in the miami airport last fall. Here are a few that are okay.

There are a lot more relevant pictures on the official festival website, which I have to request that people DO NOT steal and claim as their own because the photographer is a really nice guy and you'd have to be a jerk to steal his work I mean really who does that. :|

And I'm back in Florida. Still a depressing statement. But it was a good week and I have my work cut out for me tackling the rewrite. Tomorrow I'm driving up to Savannah with my aunt to help clean out my cousin's apartment while she's in the hospital, and hopefully I will find at least /some/ time to think on the car ride. I've also been advised to bite the bullet and get a new phone because the iPhone 5s are looking as distant as ever. So that might happen soon.

Anddddd... we now return you to your regularly scheduled youtube link spam. On that note, here is a group playing the Doctor Who theme song on a set that includes a Didgeridoo. Only in Australia.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and good night.

"Right now, there are people watching this blizzard from 350 kilometers above the Earth's surface. Isn't that amazing?"

I was going to make this some long and philosophical post about today being the 50th anniversary of Vostok 1, but instead I'm just going to scream incoherently:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And some more:

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDDDDD!

Because I just got off the most magical phone call ever. I am sad because it is the last of these magical phone calls I will ever get because every time I've gotten one for the last four years it's been like getting a letter from Hogwarts.

In case you aren't following,

I just got a magical phone call from Blank Young Playwrights that Like a Dog in Space is in the festival!

OHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!

PERFECT TIMING, I COULD KISS YOU. OH MY GOD.

SINCE I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY, WATCH THIS.

Because the world always needs more memes.

I think "Smug Gagarin" needs to be a thing. Sort of like Fuck Yeah Anthropology Major Fox. (Which, by the way, posted my submission!!!)

Anyway, this is inspired by my friend S. trying to argue space history with me. He lost the argument, btw. ;)

I've been typing my facebook statuses in memespeak lately... they seem to be a hit. ;) Frantically rewriting Like a Dog in Space from 78 pages to 45-ish. It's hard but should be rewarding!!

Meanwhile, listening to a lot of Chameleon Circuit. They call themselves Trock, which is like Wrock, but substitute Wizard for Time lord. anyways it's hilarious. Here's the website with everything else on it.

WE HAVE LIFTOFF

Decided to go back and edit Like a Dog in Space some today. I'd been holding off because it was in the semi-finals for a contest here at school, but I got beat by a bunch of grad students (which I was expecting). I'd been meaning to rewrite most of Milena and Gennady's arc since they just don't match up to the crazy dramatic tension Ivan and Valeri get up to in act two, and I had this mental image of them talking about watching videos of the Challenger explosion.

Which, I of course had to watch. For research, you know? God damn it, that is a painful tape to watch. Because you know how it ends, but the people in the recording just sound so optimistic! But It gave Milena and Gennady a lot to talk about and some decent dramatic conflict besides "Dude I think your roommate is an alien and also I am a quirky American pop culture obsessed young Muscovite?"

And then David linked me to the shuttle launch livestream, which was more nervewracking to watch than usual because I'd just watched that Challenger footage like three times. AS RESEARCH, GDI.

But I got some good lines and an awesome monologue out of it so we're all good!

MILENA

This is how I look at it. You could fly a rocket and die. You could drive a car, and die. You could get bit by your grandmother’s poodle, get gangrene, and die. You could die of an aneurism in your sleep. You could die from eating bad sushi. You could spend your entire life trying not to die, but the thing is, Gennady - Everyone dies. So if death is this big, inevitable, all-consuming black hole, you might as well do something awesome before it happens to you. Like follow Gagarin’s path to the stars, or die trying.

(Beat.)

But, if it’s any consolation, there’s no one I’d rather have backing me up at ground control than you.

I KNOW THIS HAS BEEN SAID A MILLION TIMES. IT'S CLICHE... I wonder if it's a trope?

And it was all groovy anyway because Discovery was like "Woosh, c u l8tr, Earth!"

(Rant about how fail NASA is for not having a new launch vehicle ready to replace the shuttles is PFAD.)

Dreams from Last Night

I have a tendency to have very vivid dreams about my teeth falling out. These are really unsettling because they're generally accompanied by realistic sensations of my mouth sans tooth (or teeth). Usually it's molars or incisors - for whatever reason, I don't usually lose my canines in my dreams. According to the internet, dreams about teeth are usually concerned with your appearance. But last night I dreamt about knocking out a canine tooth which, just based on anthropology last semester I sort of think that canine falling out dreams might be more about a sense of powerlessness. But enough about that.

So in my dream I knocked out a canine tooth and obsessed about that for a while, until my obsessing about my tooth was interrupted by the fact that I apparently worked on a bar at a space station, and I was expected to serve 4loko to weary space travelers. Or, actually, Jack Harkness and the Ninth Doctor.

Um, what?

Yeah, these guys.

Apparently I was out of 4Loko, so I mixed blue power-aide and vodka. According to my subconscious, this is the exact same thing. (In my subconscious's defense, I've never actually drank 4Loko.)

And then the Doctor waved his sonic screwdriver at me and told me I had a piece of the void between universes stuck in my head, and asked "How long has this been going on for, huh?"

So now my subconscious writes self-insert fanfic. This proclamation was about as far as the adventure (which would have probably been awesome) got before I woke up to the sound of rain and the realization that it was ten AM. I was kind of bummed, I was really looking forward to galavanting around the universe with two handsome rogues! Never mind that, though. Oh well.

Maybe I should watch weird british sci-fi before bed every night, because it seems to do good things to my dreams

So today was interesting.

Today, I:

1) Went to an AUSA (Anthropology Undergraduate Student Association) movie night and watched a documentary about the Amish.

2) Made new friends.

3) Played old school Super Smash Brothers

4) Went to a fucking awesome poetry smash.

5) Finally saw my amazing friend Chris perform (he's a hip-hop/rap artist and poetry slammer)

6) Was told by a random person in an elevator that they loved me.

7) Came home and finally watched the movie Moon.

8) Which is a fucking amazing movie. HERE'S A TRAILER, ADD IT TO YOUR NETFLIX QUEUE, IT IS AWESOME. Seriously, I think it's the only movie I've seen that actually manages to match the mood and style of 2001: A Space Odyssey and do a good job of it. I'm easily fascinated by speculative/realistic Sci Fi, but this was seriously amazing. Also I really like the theme music and I need it for my writing playlist.

They're dogs! They're dogs in space!

So my friend Lydia and I have decided that we are going to find ourselves a Yuri's Night party to go to, come hell or high water, and if we don't then we'll throw our own, eat pizza and astronaut ice cream and mocktails, and watch space-themed movies and TV shows. There's a long-established Yuri's Night party in NYC, but it's 21-and-up, and we happen to be... nineteen. So yeah, that's unlikely.

But what I would really like to get ahold of is a copy of this cute little kids movie that will probably never see an american release. They're dogs! In space! Based on a true story! What more can you say about it?

Anyway, April 12th 2011 is the 55th anniversary of Vostok 1, and we are going to celebrate it one way or another.

IT'S DONE.

Well, first draft, at any rate. Weighing in at 75 pages, two acts and twenty scenes, let it be known that Like a Dog in Space has made it to the point that I'll be going over it ferociously with a ballpoint pen tomorrow morning furiously revising every last detail.

Also,

Let it be known that I do, in fact, understand the difference between Korolyov and Star City. Korolyov is mission control and manufacturing, and Star City is training. One is a suburb of Moscow and a city in its own right, the other is a military base that's slowly been evolving into a town since the 1960s. However, Korolyov was called Kaliningrad in the 1960s, which is incidentally also the name of a different, more major city further west, and it shares its current name with Sergey Korolyov (though in the play I've chosen to go with the alternate spelling Sergei Korolev, since this is the spelling I've seen used by actual cosmonauts). So, even though most of the action of act one more properly takes place in Korolyov/Kaliningrad, I've consolidated it into Star City for the sake of clarity, and also because... come on, Star City is a totally boss name.

(Incidentally, there are no less than four towns called "Star City" in the United States, in Arkansas, Michigan, Indiana, and West Virginia.)

Anyway, the point of that was that I really did do the research, and then chose to ignore it and exercise a thing called "artistic license." I was discussing this with a friend earlier and we came to the conclusion that the battle between factual accuracy and artistic license is one of the big dilemmas that comes with dramatic writing as a field. You want to do enough research to respect your subject matter, but don't want to include too much information that you sacrifice clarity. If you don't do enough research and just make shit up, then your name is Dan Brown and the Catholic Church puts you on their blacklist.

That and this is subject matter I'm really, really passionate about and I'd hate to do it any less than what it deserves. My geekiness must be shared!

Alright. Big day of revisions tomorrow. I'm off to bed.

Astronautically yours,

Leez.

PS - Did anyone notice I rewrote my bio in the sidebar? c:

I see what you did there.

NASA logo (USA)

RKA logo (Russia)

Starfleet logo (Star Trek)

Numbering I do not understand

Why do

Korabl-Sputnik 5

Корабль-Спутник 3

Ship-Satellite 3

Vostok-3KA No.2

And

Sputnik 10

All refer to the same space mission?

SOVIET RUSSIAN RKA, I LOVE YOU BUT YOU CONFUSE ME SO MUCH WITH YOUR REDUNDANT/CONTRADICTORY NUMBERING SCHEMES.