December 24th, 9 PM

From here on in, I shoot without a script...

's no snow day

I don't want to seem ungrateful for an actual official Snow Day at work. Really, I don't. They're rare enough.

I was up way early to battle my way in, then got the 6:57 AM phone call that this morning's 10:00 performance was cancelled — no schools — so I relaxed and decided I could take the time to have breakfast and a nice hot cup of tea before I set out, and it was a good thing I did, too, because I'd barely left when I got another call informing me that PLTC was, in fact, closing for the snow. So — no performances today, meetings all postponed, an actual "day off" because of the snow.

The thing is, there's stuff I need to get done at work. This would have been my first day back after having been away at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park for the past week. (We got a Snow Day during tech rehearsals there, or a Snow Half-Day, rather, but only because we were wholly on schedule and had no serious need for the time.) I'd figured on getting myself back into the swing of things at PLTC and getting caught up on the things I was able to back-burner for the past week. Some of that I can do or sort-of-do at home, so I guess I'll work on what I can. This is not a blessed-white-absolution Snow Day but rather a work-at-home Snow Day.

Plus, this means I now have no excuse for not shoveling my sidewalks.

< sigh >

Funnier than the average bear

Nothing — I mean nothing — about the Yogi Bear movie can possibly be better than this.

Don't F#@% with Comicbook Nerds

"Let those who worship evil's might

Beware my power..."

The Westboro Baptist Church makes me sad (and mad), but this just makes me happy...

Three -- count 'em, three -- protestors from Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist "Church" group showed up at Comic-con; I expect they were unprepared for what they met --

As Mark Twain put it, "Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

And amidst the mockery, some truths:

But seriously...

The never-ending battle continues.

All glory to the hypno-toad.

Cut short mid-

I knew what I was getting into. I can't say I didn't.

Last night I watched the last episode of Defying Gravity, the sci-fi series ABC pulled the plug on last year. I can't say I watched the final episode, because there was nothing "final" about it. I was watching on on DVD from Netflix, so at least I got to see all 13 existing episodes; ABC didn't even air them all. For a show with a long-form story -- which creator James Parriott says was plotted for at least three seasons -- such abrupt cancellation is the risk you take if you begin watching it (unless, of course, you don't begin watching it until the whole story has been told as was intended). I've watched other shows where I knew at the beginning that the planned story was not given the chance to reach its conclusion -- or, in some cases, any conclusion -- so I knew what to expect when the supply of episodes runs out.

I can see where Defying Gravity had a difficult job building an audience. It has a large cast of characters, a plot filled with mysteries and revelations, and it told its story with exactly the sort of serialized progression I enjoy, which is also a serial progression that makes it difficult for casual viewers to get into the show. I think we're nearing the close of a window of time within which shows like this were easier to pitch. The atmosphere must have been particularly receptive at ABC, where two shows with ongoing plotlines -- Lost and Heroes -- performed well right out of the gate. DG evidently did not, and was never given a chance to build an audience.

Which is a bit of a shame. There's so little sci-fi on television in general, and little of what there is rises far above the re-boot of V. Defying Gravity had characters I found engaging, if a bit too stock, and a story I found interesting. But it was, as I said, a large cast of characters, so everyone wasn't featured in every episode, which can make it hard for a viewer watching intermittently to get a handle on things. And the show lifted its narrative form from Lost; I'm talking about the "dramatic backstory" structure ( my term) that takes the conventional A-story / B-story / C-story approach common to shows juggling multiple plotlines and folds it in upon itself by interweaving backstory as an essential element of the narrative progression; I'm know other shows have used the structure, at least for isolated episodes, but I can't think of a predecessor show that relied upon it so totally as Lost did from the outset.

Defying Gravity was built with this structure at its core: every episode intercuts into the "now" action scenes from "5 Years Ago," following the early days of the crew's training and providing revelations about their that inform the ongoing story at -- naturally -- appropriate moments. It's really a classic structure, a variation on the tradition of beginning a tale in medias res. With DG's being cut short by cancellation, it results in a greater number of unanswered questions, perpetual cliffhangers in the past as well as the present.

Damned frustrating. But I can't say I didn't know what I was getting into.

So why is the next series I'm starting also a show cancelled before its time? Well, in this case I at least know that the creators had a chance to tie things up.

If The Shoe Fits...

This past weekend I bought my first pair of genuine Birkenstocks. (I've owned sandals of a similar design in the past, but never the Thing Itself.) I can't say that this officially makes me a genuine granola-eating, NPR-listening Liberal -- I think that's been more or less a given for quite some time now -- but it certainly contributes to my looking the part.

And, yes, they're very comfortable.

Clarity

Over the weekend, NPR interviewed some of the "Tea Partiers" in D.C. while they were protesting healthcare. Yes, I know exactly what I just wrote. They were protesting against more than this specific legislation; they -- or at least some of those interviewed -- were protesting a moral position. I quote: "Healthcare is not a right."

And they wonder why I think they're evil.