1. I did end up signing up for Remix Revival, and assignments are now out, so now I'm at the (presumably traditional) next step of staring in dismay at my assigned recipient's fic and being intimidated by how good it is.


2. At gaming group last week, I played games of Cards Against Humanity (still don't like the actual game at all, but had fun playing it because of who I was playing with), Magic: The Gathering (was tired and rusty, and got squished quickly), and Skull (still not much good at it, still having enormous fun playing regardless).


3. Having failed to get cast in How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse (which has a very small number of roles, and I will happily admit that the people who got them were at least as well suited as me), I am instead working on the lighting and sound. It's the first time I've been lighting designer on a production (as opposed to working under someone else's instruction) and I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out.


4. We had the AGM for the brass band recently. For the last year, I've been the vice president of the committee, and found myself fairly well suited to it. This year I've swapped roles with another committee member who had been stuck with the role of secretary for the past few years and not thriving in it; apart from giving her a break I'm interested to see how she does as VP because she's always been one of the committee members who cares about the band having good leadership and not just keeping things rolling comfortably along, and did things about it even when she was just an ordinary committee member.


5. A while back I discovered on Youtube a really neat TV series from the 1980s called Playing Shakespeare. It's presented by John Barton, one of the founders of the Royal Shakespeare Company, accompanied by the actors of the Company, who provide practical demonstrations and share their experiences. That includes a lot of people who went on to become world famous (Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, David Suchet -- who's a revelation in this to one who only knew him as Poirot) or who will be familiar to people who watch a lot of British TV from the 1970s and 1980s (Sheila Hancock, Mike Gwilym, Donald Sinden) or just had massive stage careers (Peggy Ashcroft drops in for one episode to reprise one of her famous roles). There's an episode on character interpretation that consists almost entirely of actors who have played Shylock discussing and demonstrating their very different approaches (all from productions directed by Barton; one of the points the episode is making is that there's no one correct interpretation). Another episode, on "Passion and Coolness", ends with a performance of Leontes and Hermione's reunion scene in The Winter's Tale, with Patrick Stewart reprising his then-recent and highly regarded performance as Leontes.

1. Over at Mark Watches, Mark Oshiro has just watched his very first episode of Star Trek. (Yes. The fact that Mark somehow missed out on a lot of popular fiction growing up is kind of the point of the blog.) The plan is that he will go on to watch every episode of every Trek series in the original broadcast order. To say that he seems to be enjoying it so far would be a considerable understatement.


2. June 23 is Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Appreciation Day. I showed some concrete appreciation for one of my favourite living fantasy authors by buying a copy The Sea of Time, the latest volume of PC Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath series.


3. I have been to see X-Men: Days of Future Past. I didn't go to see the first of the new-young-X-men movies because it didn't have Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in it, but I gather that the thing with X-men being involved behind the scenes of famous historical events of the late 20th century is something of a running theme. I understand the temptation, but I get the feeling that that's only going to work up to a point before it becomes impossible to pretend that this is a secret history and not an outright alternate timeline... and furthermore I suspect that point went past somewhere in the course of this movie. (The moment where Magneto drops the thing on the thing is a major contender.)


4. I have also been to see Maleficent. I'm not sure I liked it, either as a new take on Sleeping Beauty or as a story in its own right. Lots of telling-not-showing, and a few too many of the kind of plot holes you get when something happens because that's what happened in the old version even though the reasons it happened in the old version no longer apply. (When I try to think of other movies to compare it to, I keep coming up with TV miniseries and things that went direct to video.) And even though this is supposed to be a version with the female characters front and centre, by my count it actually has fewer interesting female characters than the original, because the three good fairies who were a significant presence in Sleeping Beauty have been almost completely sidelined.


5. 'Allo 'Allo is going well. I have learned quite a bit about theatrical makeup in the last week or two, since something was required to make plausible the jokes about my character being over the hill, and since this is amateur theatre I had to come up with something by myself that I could apply by myself. By opening night I had managed something that was generally agreed did the job; with practice, repetition, and incremental improvement, it's possible I'll have achieved something I'm satisfied with before the show closes.