Rick Astley will let you borrow any movie from his Pixar collection, except one.
He’s never gonna give you Up.
Something for Thursday
Actor Nigel Terry, who played King Arthur in the 1981 film Excalibur, died last week. Excalibur is the only thing I ever saw him in, to my knowledge, but he was very good in it. King Arthur is a very difficult part, I would imagine, not just to play but to write. Excalibur is a major event in fantasy film history, but it’s also quite an odd film, often times tonally at odds with itself. I chalk that up to the nature of the source material, to be honest. The reason there’s never been a truly great Arthurian film is at least partly that the Arthurian ‘story’ is really a collection of tales, loosely related, that spring from an odd amalgamation of Christian allegory and Welsh myth. Any film of the Arthur story has to do a lot of picking and choosing, and Excalibur is no different. It is, for me, a great film, but it’s also a flawed one. Terry, however, did very well at capturing both a human side of Arthur and the ‘divinely inspired’ side of the Once and Future King.
The film’s music was a combination of classical works and original score by Trevor Jones. Here is the music from the film’s finale, when Bedevere must throw Excalibur back to the Lady of the Lake and then witness as the Three Queens take Arthur to Avalon. It’s actually Wagner’s Siegfried’s Funeral Music.
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May the Fourth Be With You! (some music)
Bad Joke Friday
Respecting the Streak
“A player on a streak has to respect the streak. You know why? Because they don’t happen very often. If you believe you’re playing well because your getting laid or because you’re not getting laid or because you’re wearing women’s underwear, then you are!”
–Crash Davis, Bull Durham
Sorry for the lack of content, folks, but at least the reason isn’t bad! It is, though, the usual one: I am concentrating on the book. PRINC3SSES IN SPAC3 (not the actual title) is really cooking along now, and like Crash says in the movie, I have to respect the streak. The book is almost done — another couple weeks oughta do it — and the momentum is real. This past weekend I took four days off from work and cranked out nearly 8000 words in the book’s big action set-piece.
I’m not doing a hiatus or anything, but content will be sparse ’round here until this draft is DONE and I can let out a sigh of relief. Thanks for hanging in, and we’ll catch you on the flip side!
Onward and upward! Zap! Pow!
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A few things
Just a couple of items about progress and whatnot!
1. I’m nearing the final stretch of PRINCESSES III.
I’m not sure how my writing pace will keep up, because I have a couple of complex set pieces to write still, and Big Set Pieces always challenge me. Lots of stop-and-start, some doodling of the setting, back-and-forth, writing-and-deleting, and that sort of thing goes on before I eventually get it right. And then, inevitably, when I work through the manuscript later in the year, I’ll think the whole thing stinks anyway. But I really hope to get this draft done by May 15. (May 11 would be better, because that’s the 6-month anniversary of the STARDANCER release!)
2. My daughter (henceforth referred here, as in other places, as The Daughter) has been reading STARDANCER, and she has opinions on the direction of the series. Which she texts me. At length.
Her opinion has received some backing from other readers! Well, I like teen romance more than she does, apparently, but still, the point is well taken, and without getting too spoilery for my own books, for the most part she needn’t worry. The romance is a part of the overall story, but at no point will it take over and become the main focus. I will offer this much: there is a bit of teen love angst in STARDANCER II: MORE STARS, MORE DANCING (not the actual title), but not a whole lot. It is, though, front-loaded in the book’s first few chapters before other things start happening. I do hope and plan to avoid the trap of allowing love and romance to counteract a character’s agency, because it really does suck when that happens. But more on that this November!
3. I’ve decided that on May 12, I will reveal the Actual Title of PRINCESSES IN SPACE II: TARIANA AND MARGETH’S BOGUS JOURNEY (not the actual title). Stay tuned!
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Bad Joke Friday
Something for Thursday
That is NOT a pie!
Getting hit in the face with a pie will always be funny
But then they show this video of a kid playing a game called “Pie Face” with his grandfather. It’s a game of chance where, if you lose, a dollop of whipped cream about two inches in diameter gets plopped onto your nose.
That is about as much getting hit in the face with a pie as those post-game baseball celebrations where the “pie” is a towel shmeared with shaving cream.
This is a pie. Get it right, America!
Thank you.
In other news, it’s entirely possible that I have issues, and all the writing I’ve been doing is getting to my brain….
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“Wanna go to Joe’s?” “Ummm…I’m not sure I can get in there.”
A video about a bar called Joe’s Knight Hawk, in Waverly, IA:
This bar is located on a streetcorner very near the campus of Wartburg College. I spent a few nights there while attending that very school. I remember being there and trying to scramble out of the way of a fight that had just broken out; I remember the fine art of sneaking in when I was underage. You had to be 19 to get in, but if you timed it well, you could get in by just glomming onto a large group of people entering. They couldn’t card ’em all, right? I remember playing a few performances with the jazz band in that bar, during which as an underage kid I learned the usefulness of the phrase, “I’m with the band.” And I remember celebrating my roommate’s 19th birthday — or maybe it was his 20th? — and at one point realizing that the girl I was sitting next to was kinda cute. That observation served me well, as six years and some change later I’d marry her.
Long live Joe’s! (I wonder if they ever stopped serving wings with the tips still on? Always bugged me, as a right proper Buffalonian.)