Rough Seas Ahead?

Oh, dear. Oh very, very dear.

Mad, Mad House

When the proposal for this show came up last year I’d hoped it would die a quick death. Alas, it is not to be; the first episode airs this Thursday in both the US and Canada.

Kerr Cuhulain of the Officers of Avalon has issued a press release with his position which you can read here.

I tentatively agree. People already tend to give me sideways looks if they learn that I’m Pagan, let alone Wiccan. A show that emphasises the freak aspect will do not much for the seriousness with which I present my spiritual path. It’s my business, yes. But I’m really tired of the media pushing the weirdness aspect. It’s nature-based, and encompasses reverence and tolerance for pretty much everything. It emphasises self-improvement and healing.

I am rendered speechless at the publicity stunt that author and witch Fiona Horne seems to be pulling with her appearance in this show. But then — selling stuff is what publicity is about, isn’t it. It rarely has to do with truth. Granted, I haven’t seen it (and I still haven’t decided if I’ll watch the first episode or not: do I evaluate the damage, or do I boycott?), but the material I’ve read on it over the past year has done nothing to calm my dread and suspicion.

Return of the King Sweeps the Academy Awards

I rarely watch the Academy Awards; I find them overblown, boring, and a waste of time. This year, however, I watched it all, simply because I wanted to see what would happen with Return of the King nominated for so many categories.

And lo and behold, it won every single category in which it had been nominated, prompting a documentary winner to open her remarks with, “I’m glad Lord of the Rings wasn’t nominated in my category.”

For those who didn’t watch because they too consider the awards overblown, boring, and a waste of time, those eleven categories are: Makeup, Music (Score), Music (Song), Art Direction, Costume Design (yay Ngila!), Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, Film Editing, Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Directing, and Best Picture. That’s a total of eleven, tied for the most awards ever won for a single picture with Ben Hur and Titanic. I don?t believe that this single picture deserved all these awards, not for a moment; I believe a lot of them were retroactive in a way, and signified an achievement for the entire trilogy.

Other awards I was happy with included Best Animated Feature going to Pixar (formerly of Disney, as Billy Crystal put it) for Finding Nemo. I wish Best Actress could have gone to Keisha Castle-Hughes for Whalerider, but it went to Charlize Theron for Monster. And since I hadn’t seen a single other film in which a nominated Best Actress had performed, I wasn’t in a position to argue.

Bits I was not happy with included one particular red carpet host, Chris Connolly, who is a perfect example of why they ought to test IQ before they let people on the air. Not only did he comment on the “epical performances” in Cold Mountain, he also later asked Jude Law what made the film “so Oscar-nominatable.”

Gods help me.

Overall, though, the production was much more tasteful than I had anticipated. The clothes were certainly better than I remember them being in past shows. The humour was there: it was a stroke of genius on the part of the producers to have Adrien Brody present the award for Best Actress, and Billy Crystal looked out over the sea of faces early in the evening to say, “Everyone in Hollywood is here tonight — it’s like the Canadian Oscars.”

For a complete listing of who won what, check out the official Oscar site.

Ta-Da!

Victory!

As you can see, the images are back on the Owlyblog. Owldaughter is back up and running!

So the site was only down for ten days in total. Irritating, but it was all worked out. My old host graciously transferred the domain over without charge as an apology for the misunderstanding (which surprised me simply because I’m so used to corps not caring).

Now I just need to finish straightening out my email.

Update: And… done! All Owldaughter email addresses are operative! Of course, if you sent anything to one in the past ten days, it was lost…

Chamber Orchestra — Season Three, Round Three

I just lost a longish decent post and I’m in no mood to recreate it. So, the salient points:

We’re playing a bunch of neat stuff. One symphony, many shorter pieces. Most actual chamber pieces, some with vocal accompaniment from a Hudson music group. Good rehearsal, everyone bright and bushy-tailed.

There. It hardly conveys how terrific an evening it was.

Hold the Presses

Before you update your links:

I might not have to change the domain name after all. My previous web host appear apologetic for their screw-up and have offered to transfer my Owldaughter.org domain to me and waive the $190 USD fee usually involved as a result of this sort of situation.

Stay tuned.