Come and see the show!

Spreading the word a bit, since I think this has been flying under a lot of peoples' radar:

This coming weekend, The Baron's Players (that is, a bunch of folks in the local SCA) will be putting on a performance of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. This is a serious production, and a bit of an experiment: it's taking a "difficult" Shakespeare play and interpreting it as a straight comedy, using some of the lessons we've learned over the years about period comedy. (Yes, I Sebastiani is educational! We really need to list that on the IRS 401(c)3 forms, somehow.)

There are going to be two performances; I recommend seeing one of them, but which depends on whether you're in the SCA or not. The first show will be Friday evening, and will be open to the general public -- no period costumes required or anything like that. I'm running the house for the Friday show, so pause and say hi!

Then, on Saturday we'll have the full SCA event. That will include several talks in the afternoon, to lay some of the groundwork for why we're doing the play the way we are. (Including a class on nuns behaving badly, which promises to be entertaining in and of itself.) After the event, I'll be hosting an informal post-revel at my house (which is a mile or two from the site).

The show promises to be excellent, so if you have a few hours in your busy schedule, come join us this weekend...

Come and see the show!

Spreading the word a bit, since I think this has been flying under a lot of peoples' radar:

This coming weekend, The Baron's Players (that is, a bunch of folks in the local SCA) will be putting on a performance of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. This is a serious production, and a bit of an experiment: it's taking a "difficult" Shakespeare play and interpreting it as a straight comedy, using some of the lessons we've learned over the years about period comedy. (Yes, I Sebastiani is educational! We really need to list that on the IRS 401(c)3 forms, somehow.)

There are going to be two performances; I recommend seeing one of them, but which depends on whether you're in the SCA or not. The first show will be Friday evening, and will be open to the general public -- no period costumes required or anything like that. I'm running the house for the Friday show, so pause and say hi!

Then, on Saturday we'll have the full SCA event. That will include several talks in the afternoon, to lay some of the groundwork for why we're doing the play the way we are. (Including a class on nuns behaving badly, which promises to be entertaining in and of itself.) After the event, I'll be hosting an informal post-revel at my house (which is a mile or two from the site).

The show promises to be excellent, so if you have a few hours in your busy schedule, come join us this weekend...

The Adjustment Bureau

Friday evening's excursion this week was going out to the movies with outlander and ladymacgregor, to see The Adjustment Bureau. The following is spoiler-light, but does talk about what's going on thematically in the film, so stop here if you want to go in completely cold.

I expect this movie to inspire pretty divided opinions. It wasn't quite what I was expecting -- I'd been figuring on weird science fiction, but the film's style is really more mystical than SF. If I had to give it a genre, I'd probably put it in the "magical realism" bucket. The story is something of a meditation on the subject of free will, with enough depth that Susan and I took away very different messages from it at the end.

Frankly, the tone and style made a lot more sense when I realized (at the end of the film) that it is, like all strange and thought-provoking science fiction movies, very loosely adapted from a Philip K. Dick story. That's an oddity unto itself: how is it that so many good movies came out of Dick's work? I mean, the *worst* of the bunch that I've seen is Total Recall, which is still fun and a tad mind-bending. Most of them spin off in very different directions than the original stories, yet that grain of inspiration consistently produces results far more imaginative than the norm. Granted, you have to like Weird Dammit to like many of these movies, but I very much do.

The thing that *really* surprised me (I simply didn't pick up on it from the ads at all) is that it's an out-and-out romance. Not a goopy tear-jerker, but the love story is far more than the usual action-movie side show -- indeed, it's the soul of the tale. The story is much more a romance than an actioner. This probably has something to do with why I liked the movie so much: I'm a romantic to my core to begin with, and a serious love story can sometimes hook me deep.

Overall: I quite liked it, and it spoke to me on more levels than I can really describe. I'm riding the synchronicity train right now, taking my divination where it comes, and this one resonates in a lot of ways I'm not prepared to talk about publicly. I don't expect everyone to agree, but it's going onto my long-term favorites list, and I expect I'll show it at Crossert Movie Night one of these days...

The Adjustment Bureau

Friday evening's excursion this week was going out to the movies with outlander and ladymacgregor, to see The Adjustment Bureau. The following is spoiler-light, but does talk about what's going on thematically in the film, so stop here if you want to go in completely cold.

I expect this movie to inspire pretty divided opinions. It wasn't quite what I was expecting -- I'd been figuring on weird science fiction, but the film's style is really more mystical than SF. If I had to give it a genre, I'd probably put it in the "magical realism" bucket. The story is something of a meditation on the subject of free will, with enough depth that Susan and I took away very different messages from it at the end.

Frankly, the tone and style made a lot more sense when I realized (at the end of the film) that it is, like all strange and thought-provoking science fiction movies, very loosely adapted from a Philip K. Dick story. That's an oddity unto itself: how is it that so many good movies came out of Dick's work? I mean, the *worst* of the bunch that I've seen is Total Recall, which is still fun and a tad mind-bending. Most of them spin off in very different directions than the original stories, yet that grain of inspiration consistently produces results far more imaginative than the norm. Granted, you have to like Weird Dammit to like many of these movies, but I very much do.

The thing that *really* surprised me (I simply didn't pick up on it from the ads at all) is that it's an out-and-out romance. Not a goopy tear-jerker, but the love story is far more than the usual action-movie side show -- indeed, it's the soul of the tale. The story is much more a romance than an actioner. This probably has something to do with why I liked the movie so much: I'm a romantic to my core to begin with, and a serious love story can sometimes hook me deep.

Overall: I quite liked it, and it spoke to me on more levels than I can really describe. I'm riding the synchronicity train right now, taking my divination where it comes, and this one resonates in a lot of ways I'm not prepared to talk about publicly. I don't expect everyone to agree, but it's going onto my long-term favorites list, and I expect I'll show it at Crossert Movie Night one of these days...

Young

Today was unplanned -- a rarity in my life nowadays. I slept over at Camelot last night, having had enough to drink at hfcougar's birthday party that driving home seemed ill-advised. So I got woken up at 9ish when everyone arrived for the Measure for Measure rehearsal, and moseyed out when the rehearsal proper started at 10ish.

And then I realized that the day was wide open. I had no plans, and was damned if I was going to spend such a beautiful day inside doing chores. So after a fair amount of wandering, I wound up in Cambridge, drifting through and idly shopping. Nothing terribly specific, although I did wind up buying a lot:

• I spent half an hour choosing a bunch of books from the guy who sells out of boxes in the middle of Central Square (who turns out to run a surprisingly good used book store out of those boxes).


• There was a small pile of CDs from the aptly-named Weirdo Records, which I don't think I'd ever been in before: I don't think I knew a single title in the store, so it was sort of like shopping in an alternate universe of alternative music.


• There was hearing music from a street busker, deciding to give him a buck; realizing that he was playing hurdy-gurdy and doing so quite well, so upping that buck; and then realizing that he was selling CDs of him and his wife doing Baroque hurdy-gurdy duets, and chatting with him for a few minutes about that.


• There were the assorted strange-but-neat foodstuffs at Cardullo's, including Bacon Salt, Taste #5 (essentially umami in a tube), Aztec Chocolate Bitters for cocktails, a Ramen Noodle Chocolate bar, and a precious little sampler of Vosges chocolates.


• And there was the almost painfully apt t-shirt from Million Year Picnic, which just reads, "I HAVE SURVIVED MY PAST".

And through all of this, I people-watched. This has always been one of Jane's and my favorite pastimes: just paying attention to the swirl of people around us, trying to tease out their stories from their faces and manner. I don't think I've ever been so conscious before of how *rushed* everybody is. On a day like today, all I wanted was to mosey and saunter, so I almost felt like the world around me was moving in fast-forward -- the desire to stop people and say, "Slow down: it'll be okay", was surprisingly strong.

I will admit one disconcerting thing, though: realizing just how young college girls are. I am rarely all that conscious of age, and heaven knows there are some 20-somethings that I find very cute. But I do seem to have gotten to the point where the Harvard students just feel a bit unfinished to me.

But that did put me in mind of Star Trek -- specifically, the end of Wrath of Khan. Most of you have seen it, and know the moment I'm talking about: Spock has died and been shot into space, and when Kirk is asked how he feels, his response is "Young. I feel *young*." I never understood that moment; indeed, I always found it bizarre. He's just lost his life-long best friend, and is bereft -- how can that *possibly* be the right answer?

And yet, that's where I am now. I've been realizing it in recent days, and especially yesterday at Coronation, when I ran into several people for the first time in months, and got the usual heartfelt, "How are you feeling?" The subtext there is always clear, an expectation that I am of course miserable and need to be comforted. But I've been realizing that I can't say that any more, because it's not true: the honest answer that I've started giving is, "I feel good". Mind, the hugs are still more than welcome: one of my biggest real problems now is that I'm horribly touch-deprived. But the truth of the matter is, I *do* feel young.

I don't think I ever really grokked the notion of catharsis before, but I've intellectually known what I was going to need. I've spent the past few months mourning hard and completely -- not wallowing, but not fighting it at all either. And the result is, I seem to have mostly pushed through. The truth is, for the past week I've felt more energized than I have in *years*. The castle of my life has been shaken utterly to rubble by an earthquake, enough so that there isn't a lot of point trying to rebuild the same edifice. Instead, I'm setting out on the road and seeing where it takes me. Initially that was purely reactive; gradually, I'm starting to choose among the forks in the path, but I'm still deliberately avoiding too many preconceptions of the waystations to come.

The simplest truth is, I'm smiling again, and youthfully drinking in the world. The bad days are mostly giving way to bad moments, the grief to occasional melancholy. But the more I'm out in the world, making new friends and learning new things, the more the badness recedes. It's a young man's attitude, and it is *fun*...

Young

Today was unplanned -- a rarity in my life nowadays. I slept over at Camelot last night, having had enough to drink at hfcougar's birthday party that driving home seemed ill-advised. So I got woken up at 9ish when everyone arrived for the Measure for Measure rehearsal, and moseyed out when the rehearsal proper started at 10ish.

And then I realized that the day was wide open. I had no plans, and was damned if I was going to spend such a beautiful day inside doing chores. So after a fair amount of wandering, I wound up in Cambridge, drifting through and idly shopping. Nothing terribly specific, although I did wind up buying a lot:

• I spent half an hour choosing a bunch of books from the guy who sells out of boxes in the middle of Central Square (who turns out to run a surprisingly good used book store out of those boxes).


• There was a small pile of CDs from the aptly-named Weirdo Records, which I don't think I'd ever been in before: I don't think I knew a single title in the store, so it was sort of like shopping in an alternate universe of alternative music.


• There was hearing music from a street busker, deciding to give him a buck; realizing that he was playing hurdy-gurdy and doing so quite well, so upping that buck; and then realizing that he was selling CDs of him and his wife doing Baroque hurdy-gurdy duets, and chatting with him for a few minutes about that.


• There were the assorted strange-but-neat foodstuffs at Cardullo's, including Bacon Salt, Taste #5 (essentially umami in a tube), Aztec Chocolate Bitters for cocktails, a Ramen Noodle Chocolate bar, and a precious little sampler of Vosges chocolates.


• And there was the almost painfully apt t-shirt from Million Year Picnic, which just reads, "I HAVE SURVIVED MY PAST".

And through all of this, I people-watched. This has always been one of Jane's and my favorite pastimes: just paying attention to the swirl of people around us, trying to tease out their stories from their faces and manner. I don't think I've ever been so conscious before of how *rushed* everybody is. On a day like today, all I wanted was to mosey and saunter, so I almost felt like the world around me was moving in fast-forward -- the desire to stop people and say, "Slow down: it'll be okay", was surprisingly strong.

I will admit one disconcerting thing, though: realizing just how young college girls are. I am rarely all that conscious of age, and heaven knows there are some 20-somethings that I find very cute. But I do seem to have gotten to the point where the Harvard students just feel a bit unfinished to me.

But that did put me in mind of Star Trek -- specifically, the end of Wrath of Khan. Most of you have seen it, and know the moment I'm talking about: Spock has died and been shot into space, and when Kirk is asked how he feels, his response is "Young. I feel *young*." I never understood that moment; indeed, I always found it bizarre. He's just lost his life-long best friend, and is bereft -- how can that *possibly* be the right answer?

And yet, that's where I am now. I've been realizing it in recent days, and especially yesterday at Coronation, when I ran into several people for the first time in months, and got the usual heartfelt, "How are you feeling?" The subtext there is always clear, an expectation that I am of course miserable and need to be comforted. But I've been realizing that I can't say that any more, because it's not true: the honest answer that I've started giving is, "I feel good". Mind, the hugs are still more than welcome: one of my biggest real problems now is that I'm horribly touch-deprived. But the truth of the matter is, I *do* feel young.

I don't think I ever really grokked the notion of catharsis before, but I've intellectually known what I was going to need. I've spent the past few months mourning hard and completely -- not wallowing, but not fighting it at all either. And the result is, I seem to have mostly pushed through. The truth is, for the past week I've felt more energized than I have in *years*. The castle of my life has been shaken utterly to rubble by an earthquake, enough so that there isn't a lot of point trying to rebuild the same edifice. Instead, I'm setting out on the road and seeing where it takes me. Initially that was purely reactive; gradually, I'm starting to choose among the forks in the path, but I'm still deliberately avoiding too many preconceptions of the waystations to come.

The simplest truth is, I'm smiling again, and youthfully drinking in the world. The bad days are mostly giving way to bad moments, the grief to occasional melancholy. But the more I'm out in the world, making new friends and learning new things, the more the badness recedes. It's a young man's attitude, and it is *fun*...

Learning the Lentil

I'm slowly starting to add more vegetarian dishes to my repertoire: while I'm not a principled vegetarian, I'm increasingly conscious of the ecological impact of modern meat processing, not to mention the health side of things. So I'm experimenting.

Today's dish was basically based on what I happened to find in my shoppings, but was an easy win: a powerful Mushroom Lentil Soup.

1/2 cup small lentils
2 cups water
1 package of random gourmet mushrooms from Whole Foods
1 tsp Better Than Boullion Mushroom concentrate

Bring the lentils, water and stock concentrate to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes. In the meantime, saute the mushrooms in olive oil for 10 minutes or so, until nicely browned. When the lentils are decently softened, toss in the mushrooms and stir thoughly; don't drain or rinse the lentils, because the stock's lovely. Serve with a slice of sourdough as sops.

Good, simple and adequately healthy -- probably a bit high in sodium from the stock, but otherwise relatively good for me. The soup is rich and thick: only for mushroom lovers, but mighty fine for us...

Learning the Lentil

I'm slowly starting to add more vegetarian dishes to my repertoire: while I'm not a principled vegetarian, I'm increasingly conscious of the ecological impact of modern meat processing, not to mention the health side of things. So I'm experimenting.

Today's dish was basically based on what I happened to find in my shoppings, but was an easy win: a powerful Mushroom Lentil Soup.

1/2 cup small lentils
2 cups water
1 package of random gourmet mushrooms from Whole Foods
1 tsp Better Than Boullion Mushroom concentrate

Bring the lentils, water and stock concentrate to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes. In the meantime, saute the mushrooms in olive oil for 10 minutes or so, until nicely browned. When the lentils are decently softened, toss in the mushrooms and stir thoughly; don't drain or rinse the lentils, because the stock's lovely. Serve with a slice of sourdough as sops.

Good, simple and adequately healthy -- probably a bit high in sodium from the stock, but otherwise relatively good for me. The soup is rich and thick: only for mushroom lovers, but mighty fine for us...