Some Roswell Goodness...

Through the course of going through my regular day, I had the delight of speaking with someone who turned out to live in Covina, CA. So what, you say? That's only where they filmed Roswell, my favorite show of all time!

 

I know there are lots of fans out there who've made trips out there to Covina, both when the show was filming and afterward, but I, alas, in Illinois, do not have the funds for such travel. At least, I can't convince my husband that it's necessary or better than a trip to, say, Hawaii.

 

So, it was very cool to speak to this woman and live vicarously through her memories of the show. The bank was the UFO museum. The Christmas episode was filmed in Covina park. A couple of the stars, she didn't say which, walked in the Covina parade one year.

 

I told her of my HUGE Roswell poster, three sets of DVDs, and my framed Life magazine cover--two out of three are hanging on the walls of my home office. She seemed suitably impressed and a little surprised by my devotion to a show that was cancelled over five years ago. I told her, though, that there are lots of us still out here, as devoted as ever. : )

 

Just thought I'd share...It's as close to a brush with Roswell fame that I'm going to get, I'm guessing! : )

 

 

BSG--2009, really? Random thoughts and exclamations on the half-season finale.

I finally got around to watching the half-season finale of Battlestar Galactica on Monday night. I put it off because I knew it would be the last new one for a LONG time. It just about killed me, though, because that meant I had to skip all the online reviews and discussions (of which there were many) of said episode until I could watch it. I knew, though, from the sheer number of discussions that it was either really good or really bad.

 

Okay, so here's your warning...stop reading now if you don't want to know what happens. Also, this entry is really long. : )

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So...wow. Holy crap. They made it to Earth. And we still have TEN episodes (in 2009--thanks a lot, Sci Fi Channel) left. I'm so glad the writers/producers did not do the thing where it's the last two minutes of the final, final episode and we see Earth gleaming in the distance. Ugh. That would have been sucky. Instead, the last, what, ten minutes of this episode blew my mind. 

 

The end.

When the entire fleet jumped into orbit around Earth, I got chills. Though, a little voice in the back of my head whispered, "If we were there, we'd be firing on them already." I mean, seriously, thirty or forty alien ships suddenly appear in orbit? Um, yeah, talk about reaching for the panic button.

 

It was not, then, such a great shock that Earth, or what might be Earth or what might be Earth but not our Earth, was destroyed and seemingly abandoned. Have I mentioned that the scene at the end of Planet of the Apes with the Statue of Liberty is one of my favorites? This scene in BSG did not just ring a familiar bell, it shook the entire freaking bell tower. I LOVED that. Of course, as you know, I do enjoy the post-apocolyptic stuff. I also think it was interesting in that it drew us, the viewers in deeper. We are now part of the mystery. What happened to "us"? Assuming that is our Earth.

 

Some people had a beef with them going to the planet's surface when they clearly could have seen the devastation (and taken readings of the radiation) from their ships.

But here's the thing:

 

You've been on the run for three long years, on the trail of the perhaps mythical thirteenth colony and their planet Earth, and, more importantly, being manipulated into reaching said destination by some unknown Force(s)...hell, yes, I'm going down there and getting out of my Raptor to find out what HAPPENED. Some clue as to why this empty and now lifeless planet is so important. Some reason why we've been so horribly mislead and deceived by a thousand different clues and a few prophetic leaders. And...maybe a giant sign with an arrow pointing toward Mars and the Earth colony there? Just kidding...I think.

 

I would imagine they would begin to wonder if they were following old clues. Things put in place thousands of years before when people still lived there. There are some who believe Starbuck is somehow responsible for the destruction of Earth given that she saw it as it was supposed to be back when she disappeared for, oh, four months. She even claimed to have been on the planet's surface, I believe. 

 

But she wouldn't have destroyed Earth intentionally--at least not the Starbuck we know. Which means either an accident or some other party involved. Or, as some people have mentioned, time travel. 

 

I don't actually care to speculate. I know it will be explained. That is one thing that BSG does fairly well is answer the questions they bring up or at least acknowledge that they haven't answered them. Which brings me to another favorite moment in this episode...

 

Tigh "comes out" as a Cylon to Adama.

The whole time this was happening, I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for them to pull back, to fake us out, but nope. I loved it. It was as perfect for the situation (the plot) as it was for the character. Tigh is okay with being killed for being a Cylon. He probably thinks he deserves it even though he's never done anything (as far as I can remember) to ally himself with that side of things. Other than sleeping with Caprica-6, obviously.

 

The best part, though, was Adama asking the questions we've been asking ourselves. Tigh has aged. Cylons don't age. Adama remembers him from years before skinjobs even existed. How is that even possible?

 

I'd like to know these things too. Did they make a copy of the real Tigh and replace him? That's the only logical explanation I can think of. (Which surely means that is not the right answer). They've persisted in the theme of the final five Cylons being special, revered. That, plus the numbering system they have going on implies that the five were created at the same time as the other seven. Or at least, not much earlier. So, Tigh the Cylon couldn't have existed forty some years ago during the original Cylon war...right?

 

The writers/producers brought up the right questions, which I think help renews faith and the willingness to follow them just a bit further, even if they didn't answer the questions. This technique, I learned, is called hanging a lantern on it. "You address the plausibility problem by highlighting it" is how John August explains it in his blog.

In this case, though, I'm assuming, they're actually going to come through with an answer at some point rather than just shrug it off to "Who knows? You never know how those crazy Cylons work."

 

Making it worse.

There's an axiom about writing as it pertains to story--"Always make it worse." Back the character into a corner, take away all of his options, and then make it even worse. The BSG writers/producers do that, but they've refined the concept.

 

Because it's not always JUST about making it worse. It's a fine and delicate art of give and take. You can't keep taking and taking and taking or else people stop caring. They know it's never going to get better. They give up. Readers and viewers alike, in real life and fiction. But this...this is exquisite torture. Hope makes you vulnerable, makes you care what's going to happen. And they give you hope for a solution on one problem (Earth dangling out there like the proverbial oasis in the desert and the tentative Cylon/human truce) right before they yank it away on another front (the prize you've all been killing for is one big burned out wasteland, ha, ha, still want to fight over it?).

 

That balance between hope and despair, that's what I want to study and learn from.

 

Random Stuff.

Much has been made about Chief Tyrol not having a lot to do after going crazy with finding out he's a Cylon and Callie dying. And he didn't even have many lines in this episode, but you know what, the expressions on his face when they came to get him and Sam and on the planet's surface...they said it all. The man, Aaron Douglas, can communicate more with a look than others could with ten pages of dialogue. In particular, his face while they're on the planet...that sort of "of course, it's a dead planet, a dead end, after all of this" grim amusement, gallows humor. I think he actually laughs, though you don't hear it. Fan-freaking-tastic.

 

Actually, for that matter, all of them on the planet's surface deserve Emmys for those ten minutes, if nothing else. You could watch just that part of this episode and be impressed and moved, for that matter.

 

And finally...much as I hate myself for it and know that I'll regret it, I'm starting to believe in Baltar's transformation. I know he'll revert. I know it. And yet, I can't help but think he's sincere on some of this even if he doesn't completely understand it.

 

Anyway...anybody else have any thoughts on this?

 

Ask and ye shall receive--this is so cool!

Laurie Viera Rigler, author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, a book that I absolutely LOVED, read my post last week about Regency bathroom etiquette and emailed me some answers. How cool! : )

Here's what she had to say:

"I do know that dining rooms often had chamberpots concealed in sideboards or, as in One Royal Crescent, Bath, which is a fascinating house-museum open to the public and furnished as it would have been in Georgian times, there is a chamberpot concealed behind a folding screen. One imagines that when the ladies withdrew to the drawing room after dinner, the men would take that opportunity to relieve themselves. Perhaps the drawing room had similar accomodations for the ladies. Or perhaps the ladies might also have had access to the dressing closet (dressing room) belonging to the mistress of the house. There was also a house-museum from that era that I visited in London, which had a ground-floor water closet. Although an early form of water closet existed then, the chamberpot was still very much in use."

Chamberpots in the dining room! How fascinating...and kind of icky!!! But I love that the decorum of the era is preserved in that men most likely waited until women left the room to use the "facilities." : ) Very hard to be charmed by someone at dinner if all that is going on while you're still in the room, I would imagine.

Thank you, Laurie, for sending me the info and letting me share it here! You rock!!! : )

If you haven't read Laurie's book yet, you're missing out on a rare treat. (Beck, I know you'll love it, my fellow Jane Austen addict). You can read what I wrote about it here.

Antiques Roadshow and Regency Bathroom Etiquette

The other day I flipped on the television (actually, I pressed a button, "flipping" is an anachronism, isn't that sad?) and found myself drawn to Antiques Roadshow. I love that show, especially when it's furniture, books, creepy dolls, etc. I usually place things in history using two factors: Is it before or after the Civil War and/or was Jane Austen alive when said item was in use?

This particular episode contained what one of the curator-type guys said was the top of the line in bathrooms in about 1815 or 1820. Jane died in 1817, so I paid attention. It was basically a cabinet with a marble top for the washing basin and then two spaces beneath: one for the chamberpot and one for the bidet. Ew and eeeew. He also mentioned something that I already knew, thanks to historical romance novels, but never really thought much about: they didn't have a separate room for bathrooms back in those days. They just had chamberpots, and whatever else was needed, in the bedrooms.

So, then I started thinking about it...what did you do when you were over at someone else's house and the need arose? I mean, in Jane Austen's books, they are forever going somewhere for tea or to balls that seem to last most of the night. Surely, owners don't have people tramping up to the bedrooms to use the chamberpots, right? Are there guest chamberpots? Is it like china--do you bring out the good ones for company? And I'm fascinated by this whole question, mainly because that era seems so decorous and civilized. Asking for a chamberpot as a day guest (not someone spending the night because then, presumably, you'd have your own room and all its accommodations), that seems so...uncouth.

Believe it or not, I just googled "bathroom etiquette regency period." Didn't find out anything. Does anyone know how this would have worked? Just morbidly curious, not planning on writing a historical novel of any kind.

No A/C

We're now at Day 4 of no air conditioning and for those keeping score at home, it was a blistering 90 degrees today. Fun. I just finished a very intense debate with myself about which sleeping outfit would keep me the coolest without scandalizing the neighbors who are sure to glimpse me through an open window (all of them are open now) at some point tonight. Ugh. I hate trying to sleep when it's hot.

When I lived in Hillsboro, Illinois, grades 4-8, I had the coolest room. It was in the attic, all the walls were slanted at sharp angles and there essentially was no ceiling, just a peak. It was like living in the center of a bunch of triangles. Anyway, in addition to having to walk very carefully over part of the floor--it wasn't reinforced and I was basically striding on the dining room ceiling--there was no air conditioning. You'd think that just one room without a/c in a whole house with a/c wouldn't be that bad. Trust me. It was bad.

However, after years of living air conditioned refinery, I've found I forgotten how nice it is to hear the crickets and frogs chirping outside, feel a slightly cooler breeze bringing welcome relief...and to wake up with a completely stuffy nose and sinus headache, thanks to allergies. Well, okay, the last part is not so great. : )

The a/c repair person is coming tomorrow. At 7:00 a.m. Seriously. Talk about adding insult to injury. Right about that time, it will finally be getting cool enough to start sleeping.

Miss you, Snowy. Every day.

Bitter Pill and Printers Row

I should have copies of Bitter Pill this weekend. I'm so excited! For those of you in the Chicago area, I will be at Printers Row this weekend, signing copies of Eye of the Beholder and Bitter Pill. Printers Row is the big book festival held in the city at Dearborn and Polk on Saturday, June 7 and Sunday, June 8. Come and see me! Please? : )

Thank you!

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who posted on Barbara's blog about The Silver Spoon!

 

You are awesome!!! : )