In the beginning there was NaNoWriMo, and then there were a bunch of half finished novels that I didn’t get around to writing. Now, there is a semi-similar production known as Script Frenzy, which starts on Friday and carries through the month of June. Like any good aspiring writer, I’m going to step to the plate and give it a shot. There are a few things to mention though:

First off: I have never written a script, either for the stage or the screen. I have no idea how and every time I’ve come up with an idea or two, I’ve spent more time thinking of how something would look than actually expounding on that idea.

Second off: My current idea basis is a bit fuzzy. I have a good starting point, using a small sample I wrote for a class last year, but I don’t know if it will look good in the long run. And once again, that’s the important thing - looking good.

Finally: I hate doing these things on my own. For NaNo I had people doing it with me. This time around, there are very few people willing to write a script (shoot, I’m barely willing to give it a shot). So, stepping up is a lonely job.

I’ll probably drop a few updates over the next five weeks, but I don’t know that I’d expect anything more fancy than an outline and a few half-way interesting lines of dialog. It’s a project, and it’s an experiment, and it’s a way to fill a few posts every week.

For those looking to get into the action, here’s a sample plotline from the Script Frenzy Plot Machine:

A hairstylist with a missing finger unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony in a remote jungle in Brazil…

Go.

Television these days is getting slightly more complicated than it used to, which to me is generally a good thing. By giving shows a slew of interesting characters and exciting new storylines with halfway decent writers, the television execs have finally started to drift from the reality television and brainless sitcom plague of the 90s and early 21^st century. It will never be “good” by any means, but at least it occasionally tries.

Which is why a show like Law and Order is so intriguing – with its familiar plotlines, static characters, and crimes ripped from the headlines. Law and Order is a demonstration of what so many shows do wrong these days, on both sides of the spectrum. Reality television is over saturating and ridiculous and character dramas become melodramatic and uninteresting after a couple of seasons. Law and Order lasted because it’s all about the crime.

I love Law and Order. Everyone loves Law and Order. They have to. Otherwise, why would it be on every channel for at least 6 of the 24 program hours each day? You cannot flip through your channel guide without running into Law and Order at least once. Last week, or maybe last month (more likely, it was both), TNT aired a 24 hour Law and Order marathon. I watched a couple of episodes, went to bed, woke up and my roommate was still watching it.

I retreated to my room for a few hours to work and came back out….and it was still on. And yet I sat and watched it each time. And by the grace of more than two dozen seasons and 500 episodes between all three shows, you’re going to stand a decent chance of catching a new one fairly often. New episodes aside though, Law and Order is the same show with different crimes. Why is it so compelling?

First off, they always take stuff from the news. Almost every episode is based on something that happened in the world and thus people are automatically invested. They throw in a couple of extra murders, and now we’re gossip mongers….”ooh, what if?”

Then they use the exact same formula for the show every time. You might think this would kill the suspense. But no, it’s a trick. It’s really their way of getting you to think that the show is predictable, that you can tag along with the detectives and help them out. For you to yell at the defense attorney, “Bail?! Your client doesn’t deserve no stinking bail!” in one of the least important but always present scenes in the show.

It’s Law and Order being very orderly and yet opening itself up to break rules and surprise everyone when it does. Most of all, it makes every episode about the crime. It’s not about the detectives, or the lawyers, the writers, or the director of the show. You could train a monkey to direct an episode of Law and Order. No, it’s about the crime and the solving of that crime.

If you go back to the pulp, crime mysteries of the 20s and on, that’s all you get. The literary tradition that grew from those simple slim volumes is intriguing to say the least, but the same formula worked for decades and people would read all 33 books written by a pulp writer because they knew that this particular pulp writer did his job very well. Law and Order’s writers are not very different from those early 20^th century scions of a new sort of popular fiction. They take stories that make people feel involved, throw in a couple of twists and turns and a familiar detective and let the crime play out.

When the show goes so far as to stray from the formula, people are shocked. It doesn’t happen very often, which gives the network something monumental to work with. If they announce ever five minutes in promos that the show will be a bit different for an episode, more people will watch right? Well, not so much anymore apparently. The plague of syndication has seeped its way into the collective Law and Order faithful and when a new episode airs, no one really cares anymore. They’re on all the time and there is little to no difference beWhcitween episodes, save the guest stars and crime, so why go out of our ways to watch a Friday night crime drama that will be on USA next week?

Law and Order is a staple of any good couch potato, TV dwelling 20-something. Even if it only lasts another year or so, I imagine I’ll spend the next ten years seeing episodes I hadn’t seen before on reruns. Which returns me to my original point. Television doesn’t need to be different or exciting to be engaging. It just needs to be entertaining. If I find a formula that works and makes me feel better about my hours on the couch, why change it? And NBC’s stuck with that credo for almost two decades now. Here’s to a few more years.

 

I saw this post over at Scarecrow yesterday, talking about how little money they make off of their obscure films that so obsessively collect. This is one of the reasons I spend so much of my time there and love the place so much. Granted, the employees can be a bit off at times, but they have almost 100,000 movies and hundreds of obscure random stuff if I’m ever in the mood to be particularly goofy on a movie night.  Check out below for a short review of Scarecrow I wrote for a local hotel blog a few weeks back.

Even if you’re just stopping by the city for a couple of days, one of the most interesting, diverse places you can visit is Scarecrow Video in the University District, on Roosevelt off of 52nd. The “world’s largest video store” is a testament to all things film lovers.

Upon first entering you’ll find the outside windows littered with posters and advertisements for the upcoming films and festivals in the area (of which there are many). The inside wall is lined with films for sale and if you turn around an entire alcove is devoted to old movies being sold. The counter is as long as the store and in glass cases you’ll find old rare films, Criterion DVDs and behind them all shelves full of imports and rarities.

Now it’s time to look at the collection. The bottom floor consists of three things. You’ve got a wall that wraps around the entire bottom floor filled with world cinema offerings separated alphabetically by country. From Algeria to Korea, Britain to South Africa, if a country’s made a film, it’s probably on that wall. On the other side of that wall is a zig zag labyrinth of director’s alphabetically separated and given their own space if they’ve become eponymous enough to deserve it. The greats of world cinema, shock cinema, and just plain Hollywood gold line these shelves with every offering a given director has ever made (if it’s possible to own it).

The corners are filled with new releases, thousands of new releases which include the actual new releases out hollywood as well as any new film they’ve just imported from another country, television shows fresh to DVD or an old film just now being released. The possibilities are endless and I’ve spent more than a couple hours just looking through the new releases, which are shuffled out and reset weekly as every week sees a huge chunk of new films coming in.

Upstairs is your genre rooms. Adventure, Action, Comedy - the usuals are there. But you’ll also find literary adaptations for all you Shakespeare buffs, an entire alcove of music on film, with rock operas, actual operas and video collections. There’s an animation room, mostly filled with anime, as well as some world wide offerings from other master animators. There’s a science fiction and horror section chock full of the old films you never thought you’d find on dvd, and in the far corner even a fairly well stocked adults only section.

Scarecrow boasts almost 100,000 titles in their catalog, and I wonder if it’s much bigger than that, though there’s absolutely no room left in that building to house any more movies. It’s literally bursting at the seams, and if you’re even a casual movie fan, you owe it to yourself to stop in and see a collection that world famous directors have stood in awe of.

I’ve been in the midst of the Summer Movie scene for the past three weeks or so now. Since the Spiderman 3 reality finally hit and we bought our tickets on Fandango and set aside a three hour chunk of a certain Friday night, it was underway. Let’s just say I’m not impressed thus far. Unlike last year’s disappointment with the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, everyone agrees with me this run through as well, so there’s no argument with the clan over what exactly is wrong with a film.

No, this year’s films are just plain bad thus far. Ironically, the only two good films I’ve seen this spring so far are from the UK (well, it’s not so ironic if you consider the quality of Hollywood fare these days). I’m not going to babble on at length on why Spiderman failed so miserably though or why Shrek 3 turned out to be everything that the first two Shrek films set out to satirize.

I’m actually stuck up on one of the good films I saw. In between Spiderman and Shrek there was yet another sequel that very few people watched hailing from the UK (one of those good films I mentioned). The second film in the once single shot series of 28 Days Later films was actually a fairly well made horror film, if a bit unbalanced.

I don’t go to watch a lot of horror films. The joke is old by now. Once you’ve seen one horror film skewering popular conventions of realistic violence, you’ve seen them all and there’s no purpose to wasting yet another $9 on more of them. However, 28 Days Later was the best modern horror film I’ve seen and so the sequel and its premise looked enticing to me.

It didn’t disappoint either. Though the second half of the film devolved into a bit of Hollywood thriller-esque, run and gun adrenaline junkie-ism, the film as a whole was quite entertaining and the intensity was welcome. What makes the 28 Days films good is that they don’t presuppose some ridiculous premise that is impossible to suspend disbelief over. Instead of zombies attacking, a genre I actually rather enjoy because of the thousands of different scenarios you can explore with it, undead creatures hell bent on eating your brain, the films assume there is a man made disease that reverts human cognition to animalistic rage turning human beings into blood thirsty cannibals.

The result is truly horrifying in the way only a film that you think “might” be feasible can be. Few horror movies are able to tap human fear in such a manner and I enjoy them for that very ability. However, the one thing horror films all do that I’ve long since grown tired of and honestly don’t believe is necessary anymore is the thirty second sequel pandering ending they’ll often ruin a film with.

You’ve seen it a hundred times and it’s the only reason they could make 10 Friday the 13^th films. Every time you think Jason is finally, frozen, dismembered, sent to hell, and dead – oh dear god let him be gone – dead, he raises a hand or the rubble rolls around. It’s as simple as that. There’s no need for explanation or context, just a quick shot of a hint of his virility and the film series continues.

What this does of course is kill any credibility the film has. Granted, most people don’t put much stock in the film itself. It’s mindless entertainment with a gratuitous plot and premise that doesn’t need to make sense for people to enjoy. But, when I see a film like 28 Weeks Later that actually tries and does a decent job of transcending typical slasher film antics, I expect the ending to be inclusive, or at least open ended to a degree of purpose.

The first film did just that. After a thoroughly terrifying premise in which the filmmaker actually managed to craft a ghost town out of London and send his protagonists across a wasteland of Rage-infected humanity to a military base and eventually a possible rescue by the river, the film merely ends. There are no infected running rampant through the trees or a helicopter smoking as it flies away. The film just ended. The glimmer of hope that a film like this can offer at the end is all that is left and it worked magnificently.

28 Weeks Later had that ending and then ruined it in the span of 30 seconds of unneeded footage. It took only one scene to ruin everything the film did and I’m absolutely disgusted that they gave in so easily. I don’t care if they make a new film in two years (which they will now) or that the entire world is likely infected. It’s the writers’ prerogative. However, the purpose of the film was a sort of inevitability corner-stoned by hope and human love. People are surely willing to believe that there is some sort of hope at the end of the tunnel. And in this film there quite literally was not hope beyond the tunnel.

No self-respecting novelist would end their book with the deaths of millions merely so they could have another book in which they talked about those deaths. I don’t want to attack this film too thoroughly. It had one of the best introductions and emotional attachments of any film I’ve seen this year (by far beyond the sequels Hollywood has thrown at me thus far) and it’s the only film other than Hot Fuzz and Pan’s Labyrinth that I’ve seen this year and been happy with. That’s a whole lot of American films failing me.

I just want to make sure to voice my opinion on the matter of commercializing the ending of a well made film for the sake of making more money later. It’s irresponsible and disrespectful to the movie goers. If I watch a thoroughly engrossing film, I want to be rocked back to reality by the light of the sun when I exit the theater, not the petty sequel peddling of a film executive before the credits even roll.

This applies to every film that’s been released this year, though it is more or less expected from the Hollywood slop. Despite the fact that Spiderman and Shrek gave me much more to be disappointed by, 28 Weeks Later was actually a good film until those final seconds. It’s a man made disease all its own, the spread of commercial minded art. Let us find a cure together.

I’ve been looking around here the last few days and it seems as though I’m just randomly posting things for the sake of posting things of late. I’m not intent on reorganizing the entire website or anything. That would be a bit unorthodox and probably a bit too much work when all is said and done, but I am thinking of trying to find a line at which I stop just regurgitating other posts from other sites and actually write fresh content. That’s all I suppose. Check back later for more similarly deep and profound posts from myself.

This day and age, the world of Epic Fantasy has lost a bit of the punch that it once had. Falling victim to one of two categories – either the Tolkien imitators or the Rowling imitators – it doesn’t do anything new or interesting anymore. It’s all the same tired clichés, medieval double speak, and shallow stories of intrigue and secrecy. It’s almost as bad as the cloud of DaVinci Code clones that hit the stores a few years back and are just now (finally) starting to subside. But, with Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, there is finally a somewhat new and different approach to the tired old formula.

Essentially, Rothfuss has a very organized approach to his epic. Instead of a drawn out, open ended debut that eventually leads to a dozen less and less interesting volumes in an epic storyline that should have been told in three books, he started out with a closed, simple story idea. His character, Kvothe is the center of everything. A very simple tale of revenge starts everything and it builds out from there. There is no universal calling to greatness or special powers bestowed from a long dead warrior in rebirth. The magic is simple and scientific and the other characters see him as human, no matter how impressive he might be.

The novel starts in a small village with Kvothe as the anonymous owner of a small inn with the assistance of his Fae-born assistant, Bast. When a villager arrives to the inn with a wound, a dead horse, and a small spider-like demon, the story begins and Kvothe takes matters into his own hands. While he is dealing with the spider-demons, Chronicler arrives, looking for the man who was once known as Kingkiller and asks for his story.

Kvothe’s story itself is where the actual narrative arrives. Despite more than 80 pages having passed, the actual narrative of the story is in the recollections of Kvothe. Starting with his youth and following him as he learns from a traveling Arcanist in his family’s troupe and his years in the streets of Tarbean and later his first year in the University, the novel is about the younger days of our future hero and the bits and pieces that make him who he is.

Without ever giving over to the details the reader surely wants (those big battles and epic nicknames he’s acquired) the novel is a pure character analysis, giving 650 pages of exposition and history told in a familiar, first person narrative. It rarely feels like a standard fantasy novel and the sheer detail and attention given to Kvothe’s childhood and experiences make it all the more intriguing.

Instead of those quick two chapter overviews of amazing feats and skills learned in youth, Rothfuss gives us a full novel of youthful experience and motivation, introducing dozens of characters, numerous settings and scenario specific motivation and a perfect character with just the right amount of innate ability to make sense, without a third person narrative making him the next messiah. As a reader of all genres, a good solid character driven novel makes me that much happier to read fantasy.

There are no outlandish scenarios or cookie cutter characters who I’ll forget in a few weeks. This is a character to truly love and stick with throughout the years. And when, in two years or so, when the new novel is released, I will be more than happy to continue the adventures of Kvothe. A splendidly unique debut fantasy novel that catapults him immediately to the pinnacle of today’s young fantasy writers and reminds everyone why some of yesterday’s big writers are just not that great anymore.

I’m a bit of computer nerd; I’ll admit it. It’s been a few years since I last got obsessed with or had the temarity to throw away my energy on so many hours of gaming, but Starcraft is one of those games that took up so much of my time that I can only think fondly on it in retrospect. Along with Diablo and Warcraft, Starcraft is one of the Blizzard big three. Yesterday, they announced the long….looooong awaited sequel in Starcraft 2. Their quasi-sequel shooter was finally cancelled last year, but the new release looks pretty damn good. I’m sure it’s still at least a year or two away from release, knowing the quality of Blizzard release schedules, but I’m still looking forward to it. PC and Mac only, it appears.

Many years ago, in a land long forgotten, or properly misplaced for those that choose not to remember, there worked a kitchen maid; the most beautiful, hard working kitchen maid in the entire kingdom, but a kitchen maid, no less. The daughter of a kitchen maid and a cook, granddaughter to yet another kitchen maid, our fair kitchen maid knew no other life, nor did she ever dream it possible for more. She woke each morning, stole no open glances out of her tiny space between the broth pots and the bread oven and scoured away to thoughts of a clean place to sleep and a man to love. She never faltered in her duties, never questioned her superiors, and never failed to be the first from her quarters each morning, stirring lard into a boiling pot.

In a flash, on a day like any other, the sun in the sky, the royals in their beds, our fair kitchen maid in the bowels of the castle toiling over her pots, a man appeared; a stunning, chiseled vision of a man in blue, the very image she saw in her dreams each night. The kindness of his eyes betrayed nothing of his courtesies, nor the demeanor of his character, but no more was needed for her to fall completely and utterly in love. She never thought to ask the mysterious stranger who he was, or where he was going. Instead she fluttered anxiously as he heaped beautiful words upon her and swept her from her from her feet.

For a week she faltered, failing at her duties, disappearing from meals, missing sometimes hours of her day in the arms of the rogue in blue.

At the twilight of the summer’s solstice, the two were married in a simple ceremony, overseen by the baker’s son and castle’s third ranking priest, of the three in residence. For weeks, the two were in perfect union, happier than any of the royal so and sos living above them.

Yet as quickly as he appeared, he disappeared. A simple declaration of his love and a token of their time, and he was gone. For days she cried, forgotten in the bowels of a home she had never left. In fact, leaving never crossed her mind; such was her isolation. She returned to her work, chastised and frowned upon for her delinquencies, but was soon ignored the same as before.

Her memories took on life of their own and in a few months there was a child. And for whatever reason, be it the swarm of visitors, or the torrent of rumors circulating, the Queen herself soon descended upon her with a proposition, a jealously twisted proposition that none so heartbroken as our fair kitchen maid could turn down.

And so it was that Catalina was born into a world of opposing ideals; of catcalls and sneers, of tea parties and ball dresses. Of ham hock stew and stale bread, goose liver and imported figs. Catalina arrived in Terrafloria both innocent of the divisions, of the night’s sky and the perfect orb of summer, but already jaded of it all. Her mother, a kitchen maid, her kidnapper a queen, her father a rogue, and her betrothed a prince. Catalina’s birth guaranteed her no freedoms, nor health, nor prosperity. Her mother’s beauty garnered her fame and the jealous love of a barren matriarch, who would love her as her own. For Catalina there was never a single answer to a problem, but a whole host of possibilities, of roads for her travel. Every one was open to her until the dawn of her sixteenth birthday, a dreary autumn day in the coast side room the same, dressed the same; greeted her maids, smiled to her cousins, and tripped over her mother’s family the same as she had every day since she was old enough to walk freely through the castle.

And yet, upon entering the queen’s royal chambers, her first and most important stop each day, so that her supposed mother might gaze upon her and see in her anew a purpose for the terrible crime committed so many years before, she felt that something was amiss. The air was not stale and heavy as most mornings. The rooms had been opened and aired, cleaned and flushed. Someone else had been here before her, and the absence of the queen from the sitting room only confirmed Catalina’s growing suspicions. And so she glided on, feather light feet picking their way lightly over the satiny carpets into the next room, and on again into the next. The queen’s receiving room was not empty, not in the least, for there in front of young Catalina were a host of beautiful people, many who rivaled her own golden hair and pearly white skin. One in particular, a young man, no more than two years her elder looked up and smiled so perfectly and so wonderfully that she had no choice but to smile back for him, but who was this stranger? His attire, simple in concept, was not so in its elegance. The cut of his tabard, obviously an avid horseman and the sharp, sure angles of his jaw above the green and blue layers of his shoulders drew her in immediately.

Her foster mother called to her and spoke as only a queen might in company, “My beautiful daughter, fair Catalina. I wish for you to sit and honor our guests; this is Prince Melhieu of Trepid.” The Queen gestured to the man already trapped by Catalina’s own beautiful blue eyes. He smiled and gestured courteously, waving for her to sit. And so she did, not taking those eyes from his.

The sheer blue dress she donned that morning, the waist length bouquet of flaxen hair, nestled gently above her shoulders, tied by fine silken threads, he stared through it all to her eyes, to the pools of blue and smiled just for her.

In this at least she agreed with the Queen, whose speech simply and adequately announced to the realm the betrothal of her dear “daughter”, Princess Catalina to Prince Melhieu of Trepid. The two beautiful youths would be wed on the morn of Princess Catalina’s seventeenth birthday in the Royal Palace of King Fergus in Trepid. Catalina’s smile never faltered, but a piece of her heart fell that morning as her fortune was told and she found it wanting.

And in that palace, on the banks of a river, far, far to the south, beyond the deepest woods and through the passes of a tremendous mountain range, an ex-kitchen maid passing from the fairest days of her youth into maturity, the mother of three, but the keeper of only two, wife to the world famous Thadeus Braxton, cocked her head in interest as she heard the news; the famed princess of Terrafloria would wed Trepid’s very own prince. Would that she could only dream that her daughter might return to her.

The forced remembrance of her daughter, a precious flower long lost to the will of royalty, brought her to tears, and so with the tortured heart of a mother separated from her child, she sent urgent notice to Thadeus in the east, on assignment for the king.

At the same time, as Braxton received notice from his wife in the east, Catalina packed for her trip in the North, and Melhieu returned to his Palace in the west, a certain young man, born free and forgotten by the world at large, driving his flocks by day, and dreaming thoughts pure and noble under starlight, woke and stared out over the crystal waters of the Mediterranean in the south. Something flickered in his heart, something heavy and important; the thud of a question asked of immense importance but never answered. The pull of something important woke him and so into the smooth, perfect waters of the north, young Horatio stared pondering what…or possibly why.

His family long since having left him to his own devices, Horatio was a young man of the world already at the age of eighteen. His flocks knew the best and the worst of Iberia’s grasslands, from Terrafloria to Trepid. Each night spent under the open skies, counting stars, arranging constellations and wondering, was a night of increasing freedom in the world. Horatio felt no responsibility except to his sheep, a nomadic Shepherd yet to truly discover what his lot in life would be.

As a boy, raised in the highlands of the south, he had enjoyed an array of privileges many shepherds might consider only in their dreams. His father, a merchant, had him educated as best as could be afforded by the missionaries, and so in that education Horatio had found two of his greatest friends and closest confidants – Father Bacchus and the written word.

On this particular sunny day, haven’t yet risen to round up his four legged children, nor even fed or cleaned himself completely, Horatio knew it was time to return to Bacchus, for the latter of the two no longer kept him content in the lonely nights. The question, the why he searched for over those perfect waters; try as he might, he could not decipher any clearer than he could wonder what it was or how to solve it. His scattered thoughts, musings, and ponderances lay strewn about his camp each night, folds of skins and papers he bartered for each year pulled from his packs.

As far as impetuous youths go though, Horatio had only recently discovered his thirst for discovery. But, to the chagrin of his father, and the pleadings of his mother, left with a flock no smaller than their own, and waving goodbye to a son only recently returned, his wanderings were aimless almost entirely. No one knew where the elderly monk had gone to, nor where Horatio might find him. He searched and questioned, yet found no answers, and increasingly he felt the anxiety of his plight; the abandonment of his flock, the stale emptiness of his writing. Soon, he was not sure that the monk was who he sought anymore, and yet still he searched. His only solace; the only time he found peace was at night staring into the sky, into the stars once more. During the day, his mind raged on and plagued him with questions, but at night, there were only the stars.

Some say the stars spoke to him, that they woke him up on a midsummer night and passed to him a dream of a woman in a far off city. Some say he read in the sky a message, the scattered thoughts of a magic older than civilization, that of true love. No one knows for sure what happened that night under the stars in a field so close to the sky, but I can tell you that magic descended upon Horatio, the kind from the stories told you by your mothers while you sat in their laps. Under the spell of a certain magnetism, of true love from afar, Horatio saw something in the stars and set out in search of it.

And so it was that at the time before Catalina’s wedding, a ragged stranger, alone on the back of a weathered grey mare, traipsed into the city of Trepid wide eyed and penniless.  He wandered that great city alone and for hours absorbing the beautiful things before him. The markets, vast and populated by denizens of every civilization one could imagine echoed and rang with the calls from merchants of papaya and mango, of silks and pastas, gems as brilliant as the sun and mirrors as vast and absorbing as the night. Wandering the streets and shaking off the stray hands of hungry children and hurried businessmen, Horatio didn’t realize until the last of the many foreign merchants began to pull stake and close their stalls for the night that he was without lodging and afire with hunger no less.

Hoping to quickly find and remedy the situation, he stopped the first kindly looking gentleman he could find to inquire of him. The man, dressed in loose clothing, and dark of skin, his face covered by hair, but neatly trimmed, smiled at Horatio at first. But, as though noticing the strips of dirty cloth he wore, slowly frowned and turned away. The empty streets, only half an hour before swarmed with people, looked less and less like the thriving metropolis Horatio had stumbled in upon and more a ghost town, and by the looks of this man, Horatio played the part of the lonely ghost. “Take your begging elsewhere young man. I’m a respectable man. No less.” And with that, he turned and left.

Horatio, at first struck by the man’s rudeness quickly advanced. For; despite his humiliation, his hunger and exhaustion spoke to him and told him to persist. And so he did, asking each stranger he could find in the streets for help in finding a place for the evening. Some called him a beggar, some a scoundrel; more still wailed of their own hunger. And so he persisted until he was incapable of going on. He panned the street once more in desperation but the hours had dwindled and the night settled in. He was alone under the stars he loved so well, but despite being surrounded by thousands of his fellow humanity, he felt more alone than he ever had with his flocks in the south.

Having given up his pursuit, he curled into a tight ball and decided to sleep in the awning of a particularly warm home in front of him. If any had seen or cared to inform him, they might have informed him that a beggar is easily arrested sleeping in the streets. And from the rooftops, many a young urchin watched and waited for the whistle of the guard to arrest poor young Horatio.

And so they as well as our young Shepherd were equally shocked when a strong, dark haired man dressed in blue, with piercing eyes and a kindly smile stopped and woke him, then invited him inside his home for a meal. For Horatio had collapsed at none other than the door of Thadeus Braxton and his wife, the mother of our fair Princess Catalina.

The door to the Braxton household was held wide open for the poor young man, for they saw in him a kindness and honesty that few if any in the vast city of Trepid possessed. Both Thadeus and his family fell in love with the young man’s intrepid manner and earnest desire to make good on their hospitality. And so they allowed for the young man to stay under their roof for a time and work at the chores that Thadeus found tedious to achieve despite his travels, and played with the couple’s two younger children Rachel and Mercado. Horatio found happiness in the Braxton household and soon the seeming urgency of his quest faded. The weeks before the great wedding passed and soon the announcement of Catalina’s imminent arrival became actuality.

Horatio noticed in the household an anxiety that surpassed the excitement in the rest of the city. The hurried whispers of Thadeus and his wife and the excited titters of Rachel and Mercado grew louder and louder until he accidentally (but not so much that he might have walked away) overheard a conversation.

“I must see her. We absolutely must gain entry.”

”I’ll do what I can my love. I’ve done as much as I dare. My influence in court is minimal. I work rarely with the king’s men anymore.”

”Call in every favor. Do what you must. I must see her.” She began to cry and Thadeus rose to hold her.

With that Horatio left the adjoining room and returned to his own, the loft above, almost the roof but not quite. He had taken to writing again in the recent weeks. The chores the Braxton’s offered him were minimal and one so accustomed to tending a flock of sheep from sunrise to sunfall became easily bored in the interim. His youth, under the care of his father a local vicar, was one of education and humility. And so he began to write. And write he did. Of the stars he witnessed, but more. The stars took on a life all their own. The Ancient Greeks put Orion in the sky, but young Horatio brought him back from it, the young hunter, lost to his one true love, hanging in eternity waiting. The backs of great monsters, roiling throughout the vast emptiness of night. Horatio took what he needed from the stillness he witnessed each night before he slept and crafted such beautiful verse. He yearned for a soul to share it with, for a purpose to writing of the wonders above.

Arriving in Trepid the next day was a beautiful princess, the kind fairy tales were written for, the kind princes and kings fought for in violent battle. The Braxton’s yearned to see her so badly they cried. What wonders must this young woman hold that she would incite such emotion. Horatio decided he must see her as well. He must see her and bestow upon her a verse of rivaling beauty to her own.

And so on the morrow, riding under the banners of a nation, surrounded by throngs that would be her subjects, Catalina rode through the streets of Trepid, showered with praises, gifts and adoration. And somewhere in that crowd, above the heads of shouting children, and behind the throngs of clamoring merchants, under the awnings of a rooftop garden, and behind the eager faces of the Braxton family, Horatio looked on in wonder, absolutely transfixed by the perfect face of a princess.

He spent the night pondering what he would say; how he would woo a princess betrothed to a man who would be king. At no time did he question that he would do so, that his words would strike to the heart of Catalina and leave her in wonder. He only questioned how it might happen.

He worried the question in his head for the night, and shortly before the sun rose, when his inspiration was within a moment’s grasp of disappearing for another day, he struck the perfect chord and penned his words for the future queen. These words he inked carefully and with precision to what he felt when he witnessed the majesty in the heavens above him each and every evening, of that vision in the markets, of her on her horse, on her way to the palace. A spark of inspiration born of the stars glittered across the page, his pen dancing with the magic of true love.

When Catalina’s mother, accompanied by Thadeus, her father, departed the next day on an errant attempt to behold a long lost daughter, Horatio, deprived of sleep as he was took to them a neatly folded parchment, addressed and inked carefully to be delivered to her Highness the Princess Catalina. eHe

 

The two failed in their attempt to enter the palace, let alone the parade grounds. Looking upon the princess was disallowed by all, such was Melhieu’s jealousy. She fell to the ground in tears wailing and throwing things beyond the gates. Among them, a handful of rocks, a piece of bread from the gutter, and a certain folded parchment left to her by a lovesick lodger from the south.

And so into the grounds flew his declaration of love, one crafted blindly, free of outside influence, a marker from the heavens, the very stirring reason with which he abandoned his flocks in the south to his brother, traveled north penniless and alone and wandered the streets. The reason he began to write, the manifestation of a special vision he had under the stars, of a beautiful princess, hair flowering in the sun, the vision of loveliness that he knew the moment he saw her in the stars would be his; must be his.

But, the Braxtons, they fled. Under the eyes of guards besieged by rocks and baked goods, they had no choice but to flee, and so the unsigned verse, thrown into the grounds, addressed to the young girl and soon to become the object of much speculation until it arrived in that very girl’s hands, read repeatedly, looked upon longingly and the very tool with which doubt first entered her mind.

Word soon spread throughout the city, throughout the land. The days passed, and her seventeenth birthday passed, and so it was said that she had wavered, and yet the prince kept her within. Secluded and waiting, our fairest of all princess Catalina read and reread Horatio’s brilliant words, breathless at each cycle through. Who wrote such gorgeous descriptions, of what, and for what reason? She knew at once it wasn’t her Melhieu. Looking upon him, she knew it wasn’t in him to be as such. And so it was no more the words written in that letter, so much as the vibrancy and life behind them. Everywhere around her, royals went through the motions of love, and of art and intellect, all in the pursuit of something more, something much more shallow than any of that. Melhieu was a beautiful man and never had she spent a poor moment with him, but the emotion she felt was unrequited; for him, she was a trophy, a signifier of rank, of power. And the longer she had spent since first meeting him, the more this had become apparent, and the more that Horatio’s natural brilliance, and untainted love shone through in the letter.

And yet the prince claimed he loved her still, and held her close, patiently waiting for her word to wed. She took that time and waited, and soon he grew less and less patient. And, so the letter invaded his thoughts. The poorly bleached parchment at her bedside, each time he visited, he must know from whence it came, and so he sent to the city a troop of servants, searching for the penmanship of a lovelorn poet. The words of a man who would interrupt the wedding of royals.

Horatio feared for his safety, and for the family with which he was staying. He didn’t want to bring upon them the wrath of a royal family beyond their means. Little did he know the standing of his caretakers, of their relation to the royals, of his courting the daughter of the very woman who cooked him gruel each morning. He didn’t know and so he didn’t understand when they begged for him to come forward, to announce himself and bring her to him.

The young shepherd, the artist in simple clothes was confused and unable to comply. And so it was that he packed and chose a night on which he would leave. For the trouble he had engendered in the city, the derision in the leaders of nations, and those that would feed him in his worst moments. Each night he had stared into the sky and each night the vision he wrote of that evening had grown more and more clear, vivid, and brilliant, the perfect manifestation of everything he knew he ever wanted. Yet it was destroying a world around him. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He feared what might happen if he were to receive that which he dreamed of.      

The Braxtons cared little for his reservations though and on the evening on which he had planned to leave, brought to him a servant, a simple man in green, born a servant to the prince and thus unwavering in his loyalty. The man was small and insignificant, but the three large men at his side, dressed in vests and leather were not so small and were much more significant.

The city, in an uproar at the discovery of the young man who would disrupt the prince’s wedding, pushed him along, waving it him, cursing him, throwing things to him, both rocks and roses as he approached the palace. The Princess awaited anxiously and the prince angrily. The time was coming that young Horatio must decide his destiny. And by his side, the parents of his stellar lover were of pure excitement.

The queen, that woman who stole and took Catalina from her mother so many years before had arrived to help her daughter decide. The queen, hearing of this young man whose words could sway a princess decided it was in her best interest to await him in style, in all of her royal anger.

And so she did, but the sight of the kitchen maid whose daughter she took, and the man she had sold to her in exchange for her daughter shocked her out of her demeanor. And so yet one more obstacle fell before Horatio, his steps more and more emboldened as he entered the palace, past the dumbstruck queen and into the chambers in which he would meet the girl he saw in the stars.

When they met, she was of a perfectly calm manner, her eyes brilliant and vivid cerulean orbs, shining out at him, waiting for him, perfectly in love with him. He, already in love with her, with her body, with the perfect image of her in the sky every night, was without breath.

Into those chambers, lined with silver and gold, alight with the fiery breath of nature, the reds and oranges of a Prince in love lavishing his future queen with the world. Into those chambers they strode confidently, quickly and unerringly. But; for all their confidence and strength, everything wavered at the sight of that vision of youthful beauty sitting calmly waiting. And so it was that she saw him – her Shepherd poet - and so it was that he beheld her perfection, sweet and innocent, born of two gentle souls, and the two were immediately in love.

A thousand and one words of the sweetest fragrance wafted through Horatio’s head in an instant; he yearned to write them down for her, to speak them into her ivory ears, swiping those golden locks from her neck and whispering as softly as possible everything he saw in her. And she yearned for her part as much to hear his words, to know this simple man before her whose silver pen could pierce and stall her heart.

Both youths, dumbstruck by the other sat in wonderment and waited; for what neither of them knew. And yet soon enough, the room erupted in activity, the flurried motions of a few too many jilted royals. A Queen regained of her composure, a prince brandishing a flurry of growing jealousy, and the combined forces of two country’s royal courts, descended upon the newly discovered lovers. And all the while, the Braxtons could only stand by and stare in wonderment at the whole situation, wanting more than anything to rush to their daughter, but seeing in the eyes of two nations how little they mattered.

And yet, to a Queen who did recognize them, they mattered immensely. The shock of their presence subsiding, anger overcame her and she immediately set upon them, “How dare you! You bring this boy here to interrupt my daughter’s wedding?! We had an arrangement, kitchen maid.”

That very kitchen maid looked shocked, unaware almost that she’d been spoken to. And all of a sudden the realization of her situation descended upon her. The deal she’d struck so many years ago with the Queen of Terrafloria. How she sold her first child for her freedom and the man who’d sired that child. How, should she breach the terms she would lose that freedom. How right then she was standing in front of that queen again and her daughter only a few feet from her. And so it was that she collapsed, feinting under the pressure of it all.

Into a hazy, fabric gauzed mess she awoke some two hours later, having been laid to rest in the princess’s own chambers. And the confusion of our fair kitchen maid at her surroundings could only hope to achieve the chaotic mess that was the marriage plans of young Princess Catalina. For; upon a certain long lost mother’s collapse many questions were asked – questions of birth, of nobility, and of morality. The first two were of prime concern for Prince Melhieu, whose “love” for the beautiful princess turned out to be no more than a mere amalgamation of lust for her beauty and greed for her position. The Princess’s “mother” was left to explain to her stolen daughter exactly how it was that they were of no relation, while Thadeus Braxton was left in a quiet room to tend to his unconscious wife.

And through it all, poor simple Horatio sat and pondered. He didn’t think much of royal politics, nor of who sired whom. Rather he wished he was under his stars, staring into an empty space full of life and energy and that he had with him a pen and parchment with which to escape. Rather, the lovestruck Shepherd sat and pondered what he might do next. What could he do next? She wasn’t a princess? Or was she? Would Melhieu still want her for his bride?

The answers to these questions arrived quickly and more or less clumped together. Called before the queen and her erstwhile daughter, Horatio stood and listened to a long list of explanations and excuses, words heaped upon words upon words; so many words that meant so little to him. His mind was stuck squarely on a woman in a white gown, whose golden hair hung loosely and frayed, the stress of her situation obvious on her face. He thought to himself right then that he would be alright if he didn’t travel any farther in the world. That if he stopped and stayed with this princess all would be well.

“Boy. Do you love my daughter?”

The bluntness of the Queen’s question struck him and forced from him his attention. “Y-yes, your highness.”

”How. You know her not. Is it true you wrote this poem she’s kept with her for so many nights. That you’ve never seen her before today.”

“Yes, your highness. I mean, no. I’ve always seen her, in the stars. I know it’s her. Such beauty is unforgettable.”

The queen’s sigh of exasperation was almost drowned out by the princess’s sigh of longing. The two looked at each other warily and then both to Horatio.

“We must leave this place soon. It seems our host, the honorable prince Melhieu does not approve of my actions or the princess’s birth.”

“Yes, your highness?”

And in an inexplicable reversal of so many things she’d tried to build up over the course of seventeen years, a reaction to the deep and heart wrenching guilt she felt, the Queen of Terrafloria decided to make right by her kidnapped daughter. “She will never be wed to a prince now. Nor should she. A commoner princess is still a princess, but never will she be a queen.”

“Your highness?”

“Which nation are you of, Horatio?”

“None, your highness. I am born of the cliffs. I was a Shepherd until recently.”

”A nomad no less. A fine mess you’ve gotten your self into, Shepherd.”    

Horatio remained silent, staring directly into the queen’s eyes, unwavering. He’d do whatever it took.

“Well, you must be a respected member of my council if you are to wed my daughter. You shall enlist in my forces. And of course you shall need to be sent on campaign for the course of a year. It is the lot of all men in Terrafloria. Do you accept?”

Would that he could be surprised, but Horatio had known the outcome ahead of time. He had known from the moment he wrote his poem for the fair Catalina that she would be his, and now, fear or no, he would not turn aside. “Yes, your highness.”

“Good, we shall leave on the morrow from here. I leave it in your care to see to the Braxtons. They may return with us if they wish.”

And through this all, you must be wondering what of the Princess herself. Surely she is not of the vapid, empty headed stock variety princess, the kind that would sit patiently aside and await the words of a mother that is not even her own. Surely not.

Of course not. Princess Catalina, as powerfully and irreversibly as she falls in love, also falls out of courtesies just as easily, and for the Queen at the moment, she felt no love. Seeing her anew for the first time, she saw a vile captor, a liar and a thief and had no intention of returning to her castle. Never had the Queen had Catalina’s best interest at heart, but her own, and that of the nation. This young man, Horatio was a beautiful poet, a kind soul and soon to be a valiant soldier.

And so it was that she stole into his rooms that night, wrapped in a great black cloak, stripped of her royal garments, and carrying with her a pack and a purse of coin. From his bed she snatched him, undressed and confused and in her newly discovered mother’s room she left a note, but for the queen she left nothing.

And into the dark, into the vast emptiness of the East the two disappeared, strangers and lovers running from that which attempted more than anything to define them. Assuredly they lived happily ever after. And live they did. Their travels are legendary, their stories true. But those are for another time, another evening, another meal. And what of young Horatio’s mentor, the licentiously absent Bacchus? Why, who else to record the poet’s deeds than the man who taught him to write. Do no worry reader, we would meet again. And again still. The stars in the night sky are bountiful. Their brilliance unending. And in that brilliance, in those thousand and one perfect spots of light, a pair of newly discovered lovers jettison to their destiny. How could I not sight them again and again.

 

Fresh back from yet another disappointing summer movie sequel, I have to say that I’m not quite sure what it is Hollywood thinks it’s doing these days. Not only did Spiderman 3 take a perfectly good formula and F it up by trying to do more, so did Shrek 3. In fact, Shrek 3 just plain did less. As a franchise that always relied on its laurels of tongue-in cheek, adult oriented universal fairy tale satire, there isn’t a whole lot of any of those adjectives left. Sure it’s got the fairy tale part down and it tries to hit up the adult oriented part, but very rarely does it succeed in any of the rest. Basically, what you’re left with is a film that looks like a three part Nickelodeon special. When we left the theater, the first thing we said was “I’m trying to remember what the funniest part of the movie was….I can’t” and that just about says it all, don’t you think? I can’t begin to start on how weak this film was, rife with stereotyped character models, tired cliches in the supporting cast, and a Eddie Murphy voiced side kick who has just about lost all of the funny you can pack into a talking donkey.

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Nintendo Wii and the potency of its get up and go, moving about gaming style. It’s a different kind of game console. Over at Wii Weight Loss Plan, one man’s quest to lose weight with nothing more than less calories and the Nintendo Wii, with special focus on Wii Sports. Strapping on some wrist weights and playing Wii Tennis against yourself sounds like quite possibly the funniest, most entertaining way to lose weight since Atkins said to eat the burger without a bun. I love the idea that when I get up from here and play a little Wii Bowling, I’m burning calories…ah sweet Nintendo.