October 2005

My wife remind­ed me of this one the oth­er day.

When you’re lovers in a dan­ger­ous time,
Some­times you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime.
Noth­ing worth hav­ing comes with­out some kind of fight
You got­ta kick at the dark­ness till it bleeds daylight. 

Back when I lived in rez at the Uni­ver­si­ty, I had the uncan­ny knack, on request nights, of being able to get through to the radio sta­tion on the third try. Two rounds of busy sig­nal, and on the third attempt, vir­tu­al­ly with­out fail, I’d end up talk­ing to the DJ. So my friends usu­al­ly got me to call in their requests.

One night we were sit­ting around and my friend Jill came up with a request. The phone was passed to me, and on the third try, I got through:

Me: Hi, I’d like to request “Lovers in a Dan­ger­ous Time” by the Bare­naked Ladies.

DJ: Ok, is that going out to anyone?

Me: Yeah, I’d like to ded­i­cate it to Steve and Rico.

DJ: [long pause] …o‑o-o-o-o-kay.

It only occurred to me after I hung up that he might have had less hes­i­ta­tion in his voice if he’d known that Steve and Rico were Jil­l’s goldfish.

But they played the song anyways.

We saw Seren­i­ty on the week­end. I’ve seen a few episodes of Fire­fly, and I quite enjoyed the way the film extend­ed the series and gave clo­sure on a cou­ple of things. We went with a few friends who had­n’t seen Fire­fly, and they all enjoyed the movie immense­ly as well. Viewed as a piece of the whole Fire­fly uni­verse, the movie suc­ceeds very well. Viewed sim­ply as a sci­ence-fic­tion movie, it also suc­ceeds very well.

Seren­i­ty the ship gave me the same kind of feel­ings as the Mil­le­ni­um Fal­con did in the Star Wars tril­o­gy, and it should—she’s a beat-up old hulk held togeth­er by chew­ing gum, bal­ing twine, and the com­bined spir­it of her crew. Said crew is at the fringe of soci­ety, doing jobs that at best skirt the edges of the law, and usu­al­ly are flat-out illegal.

There’s a scene, too, in the movie, where the cap­tain (Mal­colm “Mal” Reynolds) is essen­tial­ly telling his crew that they can either fol­low his orders or die where they stand, that very much put me in mind of Roland Deschain, the arche­typ­al gun­slinger in Stephen King’s Dark Tow­er saga. There was a core of iron to him, in that moment, that I found very powerful.

If you’re at all inter­est­ed in SF movies, I high­ly rec­om­mend that you go see Seren­i­ty. I sus­pect I’ll be going to see it again.

Done! Pho­tos — well, you don’t real­ly need more pho­tos, do you? Now all that’s left are a few trips to the dump, and return­ing some materials.

Huz­zah! It’s done!