[fannish brain dump]

[hackthis_archive]

We all know I'm a fannish raccoon. If it's shiny to me, I will write about it until I find another piece of foil. Doesn't matter if it's brand-spanking (have I done a spanking fic? Wait, digression!) new or hanging out in the garbage. My current lust is the Olympics. Yeah, I know they over. In fact, let's have a brain dump about this:

1. So far we have i. The Golden Rule and ii. The One Chair Rule of Heterosexuality. I didn't think they were going to be connected, but now I think it's going to be a trilogy. Maybe I'll call it 'I'll Be on the Water' after the Akron and the Family song.

1a. I haz no more Olympics. This is causing me all kinds of withdrawl issues.

1b. This has not seemed to stop my desire to write Michael Phelps/Ryan Lochte. It's kind of scary. I would apologize to sparky77, serialkarma, antheia and alethialia for my nonstop babble, but, I don't see much hardship in 'Oh look, I haz pictures of (mostly) naked men! Let me show you them!'

1c. People, come and talk to me about Gainesville, Florida. (Stop doing the victory dance alethialia). Tell me what typical houses are like. One level or two? Layouts? Pools? Where do people skateboard? What's the weather like? Where's the best cheap food? What do you do at three a.m.? How far from the beach? Where would you go to hear live music and *not* be seen? How long does it take to get to Daytona if you're commuting to your swim club? What's the airport like? What are the town quirks? Random factoids? I'm assuming a lot of Ryan's life (including his home) is near the university. what's that neighborhood like? I'd rather you tell me more than less, so I have things to choose from.

1d. sparky77 loves me a lot.

1e. While we're on the subject of the Olympics. I've been trying not to get all fandom involved, BUT, I highly recommend reading the following three stories:

* four times ryan watched michael touch other swimmers by lifescript. a story about jealousy and observation and boys doing that crap they do.

* right at home by canarycreams, where Michael and Ryan go to Puerto Rico and swim. And smoke some weed. And have some sex. And you laugh your ass off the entire time.

* Scaly Dicks by thorne_scrach, which is a WIP (but really does work on its own) about Michael waking up with scales on his dick. No, I couldn't even make that one up. She also wrote about Michael's mom marrying Ian Thorpe. I kind of died.

1f. What the fuck is up with Ryan and lizards and snakes? Does he have a fear of them, because I've read at least two stories where he was woken up suddenly and was like 'no snakes!'


2. I have seen 'Bomb in the Garden' (1.07 Generation Kill), but I can't talk about it yet, because that would be admitting that there is no more coming and that makes the baby Ari really fucking depressed. FYI: There is a buy one get one 1/2 price sale happening at HBO.com, too, so, if you buy some stuff...

3. I've been given to undestand that the only three network shows I watch (Chuck, Gossip Girl and The Sarah Connor Chronicles) are going to be on a the same fucking time (Mon, 8p). Way to fail networks!

Comments

[alethialia.livejournal.com]

I think it's going to be a trilogy. Maybe I'll call it 'I'll Be on the Water' after the Akron and the Family song.

Fuck, yeah! (Also, that link ain't workin' for me. ::pokes it:: Nope. Getting a 404 error.)

I don't see much hardship in 'Oh look, I haz pictures of (mostly) naked men! Let me show you them!'

No, no apologies necessary. Though, porn...I wouldn't object to that.

People, come and talk to me about Gainesville, Florida. (Stop doing the victory dance [info]alethialia).

Please, you know you like it. ::does happy dance:: Also? LOVE the questions.

I have nothing to offer you except moral support. Also, I'm writing Australian GK porn, but that's not done yet.

Ooh, ooh, love those stories. I'd read the first two, but not the third...so I read that and promptly died.

Ryan complaining loudly about not seeing sharks for most of it, and making repeated references to flogging the dolphin when he wasn't.

::dies some more::

Oh, wait. I have something for you! Nathaniel Fick to speak at the DNC on Thursday in Primetime. Pet. Theory!!! I so win, is all.

[silentfire.livejournal.com]

The Gainesville Regional Airport is roughly the size of a postage stamp! It has only two runways, and only a small fraction of their daily flights are commercial airlines. I think there are three baggage claim carousels, and they're located right across the room from ticketing/check-in. They offer daily shuttle service to and from several cities, including Atlanta. There are no parking structures, just a parking lot. From the front, it looks like nothing so much as a branch of one's local library.

When I visited a few years ago, Gainesville seemed to be a very typical college town. Though I didn't see much of it, what I did see didn't make much of an impression. I'd wager, though, that there's been a fair amount of construction and change since I was last there, so hopefully someone else can give you more details on that.

[berreh.livejournal.com]

Hey, starfishchick pointed me in your direction as both a native of Gainesville and a lover of Michael. :D I'd be happy to fill you in on what I can, but it's hard to get specific b/c I don't know much about Lochte. The Gainesville experience is very different depending on if you're a preppy/frat type, scene kid, hippy, geek, student, non-student, or that rarest of minorities, middle-class families who have nothing to do with the university. Now that I've been out of college for 5 years, the UF student ghetto is a different world. It doesn't help that they're building something new every 30 seconds.

Tell me what typical houses are like.
We have everything from trailer parks to student ghetto shacks to suburbia to mansions. I don't know where Lochte lives, but lots of jock types live in the luxury condo places, or frathouses, or 10 guys crammed in a concrete block ranch house from the 50s.

Where do people skateboard?
Everywhere. >_<

What's the weather like?
Hot and muggy as hell. The reason Gainesville is nicknamed The Swamp is because that's literally what it is, a huge paved-over marsh. No cross-breeze, no sea air, lots of bugs, damp and jungle-y all the time. It does freeze in the winter, but mostly it's wet and gray. We do have lots of trees, though - it's not like SoFla at all.

Where's the best cheap food?
There are a million hole-in-the-wall places, and new ones spring up every day. Name a genre!

What do you do at three a.m.?
I sleep. Everyone else drinks. All bars here close at 2am, releasing the masses to drive home all at once. Hooray!

How far from the beach?
At least an hour, depending on which coast you want. Gville is smack-dab in the middle.

Where would you go to hear live music and *not* be seen?
I have no idea, as I am old and uncool. But Gville has a big indie scene and a lot of booty-type dance clubs. The places I used to go to that are still in existence today are Common Grounds (indie), Market Street (dance), and Durty Nelly's (pub). The thing is, Gainesville is a huge amount of people crammed into a not-very-huge town. You can't really go anywhere public and not be seen. If I wanted to sneak out with, say, my adorably goofy teammate, I'd go out to Payne's Prairie and look at the stars, or walk around the dark corners of campus in the middle of the night, or make out in the UF observatory telescope room. Or go skinny-dipping in someone's pool. (But not any natural body of water because you'd get eaten by alligators.)

How long does it take to get to Daytona if you're commuting to your swim club?
I think Daytona is about 2 hours away, but I rarely go there. I prefer St. Augustine. Maybe Google map?

What's the airport like?
Tiny. Connector flights only. Most people go to Jax or Orlando.

I'd be happy to answer any questions!

[thisisbone.livejournal.com]

If it helps, wpadmirer lives there and has forever. I'll give her a heads-up that you're looking for a G'ville local and send her this way.

I visited there once, and it was, hands-down, honest-to-God, the hottest I've ever been in my entire life, and I've lived in both Orlando and Memphis. Like the previous poster said, nothing moves, there's no breeze, and the air comes in thick and sits on you. Mosquitoes the size of Big Macs don't help, either. The light is white in the summer because there's too much moisture in the air for blue sky -- summer skies in Florida tend to be white and gray, then black mid-afternoon when torrential rain sheets down for twenty minutes or so. Then the streets literally steam as the moisture tries to evaporate. Gainesville's very Southern, especially compared to, say, Orlando or anywhere farther south. In Florida, the souther you go, the norther you get. Gainesville is still considered "north" Florida.

My most vivid memory of Gainesville is that a gator had found its way up a drainage ditch and was terrorizing local pets. If that helps. ;)

[lifeinwords.livejournal.com]

Another Gville resident chiming in with other factoids: Nothing delivers past 10 PM but like, 5 Star Pizza, which is not great but suffices. On game days (football), you can't get through the traffic surrounding campus, and it's seriously insane--honking, screaming, banners everywhere, very Southern (think FNL).

From Wednesday night to Sunday night if you want to take University (the street spanning the top of campus and the most central one as well) you'll see drunk kids wandering around until 3 AM--the sorority girls toddling in high heels, the frat boys running through traffic. Tons of skateboards, people on bikes, and scooters--all without helmets, usually. Scooters are
very big here. You can't really find parking on or around the campus most of the time unless you're willing to pay for it, but it's easy to live within walking or biking distance. The city buses are okay, and the campus has its own eight or so bus lines, one just going around campus from the commuter lots.

St. Augustine is a close beach/town with weird history (fountain of youth! living history museum!) and has good music, too--about 1.5 hours away. One of the things that I didn't really think about when I came in as a grad student is how huge UF is. We're talking 60,000 students, staff, and faculty. Summers are almost like living in a ghost town, because all of a sudden there's no traffic, no masses of undergrads spilling out of the 4sq. mile campus. At 5 PM on a Friday, it can take half an hour to go ten miles--and this is a small town! I went to a private liberal arts school, man, and I was not prepared for UF to have a building just for Agricultural and Biological Engineering. And horses. And small patches of farmland. And a bat house/sanctuary. Very diverse campus, lots of frat and sorority activity. Tons of events.

Oh, there's a small bar called Tim & Terry's about two blocks from campus that's small and a bit private-a fenced in back patio, a big front porch where people sit and smoke, dollar draft beers, and you can pick up condoms, rolling papers, or guitar strings at the counter. They share the house with a music studio upstairs. They have live music sometimes, too. Mostly if you're there, you're either a grad student or a townie, and no one gives a fuck what you do.

There are plenty of nice streets, playgrounds, and parks to wander around while smoking or drinking, if you want something more private, but the downtown scene is full of undergrads and, as a previous commenter said, totally not private. Oh, and they have drag (and occasionally drag king!) shows at the UC sometimes, so more of the gay community comes out then. There's also a lesbian bar that I've never checked out, that's apparently very Western. Wild Angels, I think it was called, and you can play pool there.

The university has an indoor and an outdoor pool, and some people have their own, but I haven't seen many. A lot of the older houses are cracker style or old South style, with turrets and all that. The streets are really narrow--I swear half of them should be one way, especially with the trees that grow out into the street and have just been paved around. Tons of lizards in the summer, just everywhere. They'll sit on your windshield wipers and ride around town with you.

Hope these details help!

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

thisisbone said you're looking for someone who lives in Gainesville, FL to give you info on the place. I live there, and graduated from UF, so I can probably help.

Just drop me a note, you can write me at WPAdmirer@gmail.com.

WP

[nebt-het.livejournal.com]

And because you are off messing around with Olympic people- Ari is falling down on the job so George has relapsed and spent the night partying with Brad in Venice!!!