Good Things

It was so delightful having a quiet weekend with nothing going on. That may give me stamina for the next few weekends, which are going to be busy and social. There are festivals, parties and conventions pretty much until Thanksgiving, though I do have one November weekend whose calendar squares are currently blank. It didn't rain as much as I hoped on Saturday, and it was hot and muggy, but that was balanced out by an excellent (and quite unexpected) outcome for the Texas vs. Oklahoma football game. (Hook 'em!)

I did finish that scene on Friday. Yay! It turned out that my problem was that I'd written the wrong scene in the first place. It was a good scene, but it didn't fit the story. Rewriting it meant negating the good scene I'd already written. Thus, the resistance. I needed enough distance from what I'd written to start over. It probably still needs some tweaking, but the bones are there. I'm now at the point of moving on into the future rather than rewriting what was there, and today is delightfully cool and rainy, so it should be a good writing day. I have to do some thinking and brainstorming first, but then I hope to plunge forward.

I forgot to mention on Friday that I watched the premiere of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. I think the jury's still out on that one. There's the potential for lots of stuff that I might love, but there's also the potential for lots of stuff that I could hate. I do like the grown-up Alice we see in this. Apparently, the actress is trained as a dancer/gymnast/acrobat, and it shows in the action scenes, where she's quite good at throwing herself around. It's the Summer Glau effect of someone who really does have a well-trained body doing things like that, so you can believe that she really can prevail. The more I learn about dance, the more I know that you do not want to mess with a ballerina. The thing that worries me is the potential romantic triangle. Basically, the story is that when no one believed her about her adventures in Wonderland, Alice kept going back to try to find something she could use as proof. She was still a regular visitor as a teen/young woman, and that's when she met (and apparently freed) a genie. She and the genie fell in love, but then the evil red queen killed him. Back home, Alice's father had her locked up in Bedlam Asylum, and they're on the verge of giving her a lobotomy to stop her from believing that all this Wonderland stuff is real (and she's kind of hoping to forget her broken heart). But then the white rabbit sends the Knave of Hearts to get her because her genie has been seen alive. Now she's back in Wonderland on a quest for her true love.

Unlike most of the Internet, I actually like her genie love. He seems to be the "good boy" in this potential triangle. However, they haven't really developed him or the relationship yet. In the parent show, they have a bad habit of telling us a relationship is "true love" and expecting us to just accept that, so I don't know that we'll get more than that. Then there's the Knave, who's a classic TV "bad boy," complete with black leather jacket and British football hooligan attitude. Because I have watched TV before, I can already see the triangle developing, with Alice falling for him while on her quest for her true love (something most of the Internet seems in favor of). Then again, the whole True Love thing is big on these shows, so maybe not. If they bother telling us why the True Love is the True Love and dare have her not distracted by the charming bad boy, then this could be fun for me. Then again, the villains are pretty awful (and not in a good way) and the level of CGI is distracting. It's basically entirely greenscreen, probably because Wonderland is too weird to be played by any real place on earth. Basically, at this point I'm watching, but if it dies of low ratings (a distinct possibility), I won't be engaging in any "save our show" campaigns.

In other geeky TV news, it's nice to have my love for something validated, and this weekend the cast of Haven did possibly one of the craziest things done during a convention panel. They performed a wedding for two of their fans at New York ComicCon. One cast member performed the ceremony (which probably was more symbolic than legal), another provided the music on guitar, and the third played matron of honor. On paper, this is a dark and spooky show, but it has this fun undercurrent of lunacy and humor that probably comes from the cast members. Judging from the documentary on the making of an episode that was on the last DVD set, I might even be willing to watch a reality show about the making of this series because everyone involved in the show is insane in a good way, seems to like each other, and seems to be having a blast. They apparently amuse themselves in their free time while shooting in a small Nova Scotia town by having singalongs/jam sessions, and that turned into an actual band.

So, if anyone wants to get married during one of my convention panels, I can sing "Ave Maria" pretty well. I've never been a bridesmaid, so I'd be honored to do that, too. But no ugly dresses, please.

Oh, speaking of music, I got a huge "aw" moment at church Sunday. They were talking about the importance of children's programs and showed a video that included clips of kids at church and little interview segments from the kids. I remember when they were shooting the interviews back in the spring because they were pulling kids out of my choir. They were asking the kids what they like most about church, and one of them very confidently, with no hesitation, said children's choir. She was in my choir at the time and had been in my choir for two years. So I must be doing something right.