Last night at KGB Liz busted out her poll about underrated genre films and asked for everyone’s must-underrated genre movie.

Since this is like asking me which oxygen particle is my favorite, I tried to narrow things down. It went like this:

G: “What are other people saying?”
L: “I can’t tell you.”
G: “But my choices might not even be considered genre!”
L: “They’re fine. Just tell me.”
G: “Whale Rider.”
L: “…but that’s not really genre, is i?”
G: *sobs quietly*

Many people mentioned previous Questionable Taste Theatre movies, which makes me feel less alone in a cruel and empty world, etc. etc., even though I spent half the night reviewing my DVD collection in my mind trying to decide which ones I would consider underrated, since clearly some geek classics were well represented. I mean, underrated in the sci-fi community? At the Oscars? Box office? Enduring legacy? Forgotten influence? This question is going to drive me up a wall, is what I’m saying.

(No, seriously, she summons whales with the power of her mind! Come on!)

I like how I don’t even remember what happened on Monday or Tuesday. Sleep deprivaiton FTW!

Wednesday: KGB! It was a great reading, with Alaya Dawn Johnson and Christopher Barzak. I think. Turns out I couldn’t hear anything due to the play some dudes were rehearsing upstairs. It went, no joke, like this:

“HI EVERYONE! IT’S TIMMY, HOME FROM SCHOOL!”
*SOMETHING ELSE AT IMPOSSIBLE YET MUMBLY VOLUME*
“WOULD YOU LIKE TO INVITE SOME FRIENDS ALONG?”
“BOY, WOULD I?!”

Repeat that every two minutes for an hour and a half. Enjoy! I know I did.

Thursday: Went uptown to see Ellen Kushner’s The Klezmer Nutcracker. The costumes made me angry to the point of distraction, but some of the staging is really enjoyable, sly jokes are thrown in for the grown-ups, and even as a child-hater, it is adorable to watch kids just go NUTS for everything, especially the chance to answer riddles. (Thankfully by raising their hands, not by raising their little-monster voices. Yay politeness!)

Friday: Six inches of snow and sleet! My commute home from work will be awesome.

Saturday: A train ride! Formerly a bus ride, but I have images of a beautiful ice ballet of cars twirling slowly across the highway tomorrow.

Addendum to my report about KGB earlier this week. The ever-vigilant Ellen Datlow caught Nora giving me a masterful stinkeye:

It’s not as good as the one she threw Matt Kressel a while back, but it’s pretty good.

Two other favorites:

One of these men is a hostage of the other. You tell me which one.

Jeff VanderMeer, professional photobomber.

Last night’s KGB was great! Several short pieces were presented, a format I loved – it really showcased the range of things Weird Tales has been publishing recently. (ETA: Man, it’s nice when you can say that and it means “any time in the last decade”, since they’ve been around since, you know, 1780.)

The bar, however, was PACKED. I stood in my usual clautrophobic-friendly position in the vestibule, and then the VESTIBULE got packed. I ended up sitting on the stairs and trying to ignore the theatre people on the 3rd floor, who were practicing True Blood levels of Southern accents. Good luck relahin’ on the kaahndness of strayungurs, ladies!

A quick dinner, and then it was off to the Dessert Truck, a tradition Liz Gorinsky started by pointing out how awesome the Dessert Truck is. To this I say, “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.”

They’ve brought out their seasonal autumn desserts, namely their pumpkin custard and their baked apples and puff pastry. Those both had fruit in them, though, which means they were not a dessert, but rather nutrition in disguise. I AM ON TO YOU, DESSERT TRUCK.

I made a beeline for the molten chocolate cake.

Photo by Eugenio Garcia-Palacios

They are not joking about the molten part, you guys. It was halfway between a cake and a pudding, and between the olive oil and the dark chocolate, it wasn’t even sweet. It was like being punched in the face with a box of Dutch cocoa powder. Twice.

The cake also had salted pistachios on the top, which means that as soon as you finish the cake (and by “finish” I mean “desperately hand it over to someone when you feel your arteries turning into a molten-chocolate transportation device”) you are desperately thirsty. Unfortunately the chocolate in your veins is already hardening! You can’t move! Oh, cruel world!

Last night’s KGB was a ton of fun; so many people came that KGB overflowed, and I spent the reading in the vestibule. They were filming a movie upstairs, and a hipster PA sat on the steps to the third floor glaring at us for the duration. I’m not sure why; the film crew made twice the noise we made. People kept charging down the stairs and into the tiny hallway near the girls’ room to shove their arms in an economy-sized bag of Halloween candy and root around loudly for two minutes. Having gotten what they came for (invariably a Reese’s cup), they would charge back up the stairs – or, in one case, clunk open the hall window, climb onto the first floor overhanging roof, and smoke a joint as they talked loudly about the meaning of life. For half an hour. Seriously, just kill me.

The crowd shifted to dinner, where the restaurant ran out of room, and a few of us ran down the street to a diner instead. For me it was win/win; diners have food I can actually eat. (I love the company at the Chinese place, so I’m happy to go, but my vegetarianism, my allergies, and my palate mean I can eat the cold sesame noodles or the pumpkin cakes. That’s it. The diner was awesome. I had breakfast for dinner, which always makes me feel more grown-up than any other food. No one tells me when I can eat pancakes, dammit! I’m an ADULT.)

Then we hit the Dessert Truck, where Justin and I split a goat-cheese cheesecake with rosemary honey, blackberries, and a pistachio tuile. And by “split”, I mean “passed it around the crowd like a pusher in front of an elementary school”. After ten minutes, even people who had no intention of getting anything were chowing down on bread pudding, goat-cheese awesome, and molten chocolate cake.

It’s almost always worth it to trek down to the Lower East Side for KGB readings; I get the chance to catch up with all the people who live in the city and who are also so busy that I would never, ever see them otherwise.

Which reminds me: I signed up with Tor.com the week it opened, connected with a few people, and have not had time to go back and check it since then, which is sad, since I am missing a lot. (And by “a lot” I mean “Liz Gorinsky asking me what my favorite novel in high school was, and me having to publicly admit that I’ve had a favorite novel since I was seven years old.”) So, what have I missed? Link me to anything awesome; I’m up for it.