Serenity

Kay. Y'all probably figure by now that where Whedon's concerned, I'm jes' a fanboy, not to be trusted. 'Course I'm gonna like his stuff.

So it's pretty much just de rigueur that I'm gonna say I saw Serenity last weekend, and thought it was a damned fine piece of filmmaking, great, snappy dialogue... taut, compelling storytelling... all 'round a beautiful thing destined to prove to a skeptical world that Whedon can too weave his magic on 35mm stock and in the two-hour feature film format...

Yadda yadda. You knew I was gonna say this, right? So you're not listening. You're just gonna go watch some damn, wincingly predictable, beautifully shot and intellectually vapid made-ta-please-da-jury Oscar fodder with strings drenched in reverb leaning on every moment you and the rest of the sheep in the theatre are expected to weep, forget yet again that the sharpest, smartest, all 'round most inventive guy doing scripts this century has his first really totally his-own thing happening in the theatres this month... Yeah, I know your game. Ten bucks yer gonna dump on it, just so you can tell the neighbours yer all, like, mature or somethin'.

So here's the deal. Fine. Don't see Serenity just 'cause I said you should, and I have, now and then, demonstrated to you something that looks a bit like taste. Don't see it just 'cos you know this guy writes interesting characters you might actually give a damn about. Don't see it just 'cause he's proving before our very eyes that great film can still be great fun.

See it 'cos if you don't, I'm gonna find out. And I know where you live.

Live the cliché. Dare to dream.

So I've genuinely spent a few hours this week writing in a coffee shop.

Yeah, live the cliché, dare to dream. I'll stop if any annoying, self-absorbed middle-aged angst creeps into the thing, honest. And when you've got a nice house full of lovely, sunlit places to perch with the laptop, crawling off to the cave-like local Bridgehead isn't just a bad novel in itself. It's almost perverse.

Thing is, there was a reason. Little guy's turned out to be as light a sleeper as is his daddy, so even running the grinder in the basement kitchenette is running a risk of waking him from his very critical morning snooze. And Daddy needs his espresso in the morning. And he's going to be back at full-time work in about another week, which means he's probably not going to have the opportunity to experience this particular scene again any time soon. So never mind the probably quite valid warnings that nothing worth reading ever gets written in a coffee shop anymore, here we are, let's see what we can get done in an hour or two...

Discovery: quite a bit, actually. Always been one of those guys who can get into his trance just about anywhere, if he really has to. And I'm kinda driven, these days. Got this thing I want done already, a million ideas for doing it, and never quite enough time to make it happen, most days. So I'm in the zone, pounding away, never mind what they're babbling about two or three feet away at the next table; I'm in my own world.

And, as it turns out, kinda rude. Usually, I'm one of those really entirely formal guys, in public—heaven forbid I should ever present anything less than state-to-state level diplomatic protocols even to a wino I'm handing a quarter, normally—but these aren't normal times.

So the surly guy in the corner of the Bridgehead at Bank and Third, who, when you asked if this seat was taken, snapped/grunted something that sounded like 'whatever' and went on typing? That was me.

Hardship

Opened a few rather large bottles of wine for a dinner party this Friday past. But somehow, even with better than a dozen adult guests, they remained largely unconsumed. My wife's friends are so very... restrained.

Hardship. Several days of working on a decent Chianti, a none-too embarrassing Ontario Pinot Grigio, to get 'em all down before they got too toxic. Gotta invite those folks again.