Arontius of Bygelswade

.....You know, I was cautiously optimistic on the prospects for Peter Jackson's interpretation of 'The Hobbit'. The scope is much narrower than 'The Lord of the Rings'. The amount of emotional territory it covers is much less than LotR. The prospects for creative imagery greater in scope (think Smaug or Beorn). Morgan Freeman makes an excellent Bilbo. The Dwarves look great in their roles.

.....Then...I read this article tonight on a report someone wrote after watching the latest trailer for 'The Hobbit'. All of a sudden all the anxieties returned. There is potential for another travesty in the making.

.....Here is an excerpt:

....."So when it comes to the Hobbit trailer, I don’t mind Galadriel showing up. We knew they were going to make The Hobbit into two movies, which meant we were likely to see Gandalf be Gandalf and take on the Necromancer. Nice! I like epic wizard battles, and I like the idea of the white counsel placed on film. But …

.....I can imagine no reason the Galadriel I know from the books would ever touch Gandalf like that. More than that, I can imagine no reason the maia (demi-god) Gandalf would ever, ever look at any elf with the kind of need you can see in that clip. Uh-oh!

.....My friends, Peter, Fran, Phillipa, I beg you, please don’t make Gandalf needy! Please do not wreck his nobility. You have already done so with two other of my favorite characters. I just ask you, don’t mess with Gandalf’s motivations. Don’t make him unsure of himself, and don’t let Galadriel be his guide or his girlfriend: partner, yes; girlfriend or guide, no. Just don’t do it! If you already have done it, you can still save it. You have a year. A quick one day re-shoot, and I bet it will be all better — OK, now I am begging, I will stop. But after the flaws in the LotR adaptations, I am concerned. Trust is easily broken and difficult to repair. Getting this right would go a long way — I hope you do."

.....Read the entire article and prepare to be frightened. It is located here: <http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/hobbit-trailer/>.

.....Already making arrangements to see one of the first showings on December 14th, but now I'm a little worried. Oh, well, I'm sure the pendulum will swing the other way, at least for a while. :-)

.....It was rather a long week, coming off of Twelfth Night like it was, with its own long drive. But the traveling was not so bad. The hours on the road went by fairly quickly with TBT, myself, Madrun, Gwen and Tsuruko all sharing the drive. The only time the drive started seeming long was when we were almost home and we were all just DONE with the weekend. :-)

.....Lots of good things at Twelfth Night itself. And even managed to get some work done. Made progress on September Crown site location there. Supported an event for a member of the Dragon's Laire Populace who has a good idea on running a Kingdom Level Feast. Looks like it is almost in the bag as the Kingdom was willing to actually sponsor after reviewing the numbers. I'm looking forward to seeing the concept come into fruition. It's one of those events that is almost as fun to plan as it is to execute. Interesting without being huge and overbloatedly complex. He should have a good time with it I am thinking.

.....The work week was all about getting the Team ready and out the door to go back to Norfolk the Tuesday after the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Which it looks like is going to happen fairly easily. Looks like my travel to site will happen sometime in February. If I can time it just right I should be able to avoid traveling over Candlemas, Madrone A&S, and Kingdom KAS / KBC, or at least I'm hoping so.

.....Government keeps getting leaner and meaner. I wrote up an award for the crew who performed an installation this last summer, way under cost and ahead of schedule. Which is saying a lot considering the size and complexity of the work done. When my award write-up went upstairs, we were given the bitter truth. All awards budgets were stripped almost dry before the Fiscal Year had even started. The Mid-Level Boss and I had to reduce the group award down to an award for just a few of the very best performances. Who'll receive only a few hundred dollars for all their efforts. It was rather agonizing trying to pare down that list.

.....But I continue to count myself as relatively lucky. News reached me this week of someone I knew at work who had been stripped of his security clearance. Told to report to security where he was asked for his badge, and then escorted to the gate. He's in the process of hiring a lawyer now, but DoD does not mess around with these things. Unless and until he can prove his absolute innocence, he is out of a job.

.....Tuesday was the first June Faire Board meeting of this year. It was rather pleasant actually. Everyone on the Board was engaged and had good ideas to present. They all worked well together. There was still the Dragon's Laire tendency to talk over each other in their excitement. But it was a pleasant excitement versus the frenetic type of excitement we sometimes see. This bodes well for what we'll see in June.

.....Wednesday was Fight Practice at the OSSC. Brighid and I argued over Pelican notes. :-) But it was still a good conversation.

.....I started seriously playing in the SCA in 1991. I received my Pelican in 2005. A span of fourteen years. Which I'm told is just a little longer than average. I'm not entirely sure on that and probably should do some research. But where I was headed was that someone told me at one time that I might have been delayed for a little because of my weight, that I was maybe viewed negatively in an unconscious way because of my being grossly overweight. I don't know whether that was true or not, and there is certainly no way of ever proving it (nor would I want to do so), but I read an interesting article today on how being overweight affects your chances of landing jobs or job promotions. I have a feeling there is some truth to the article as I noticed that my promotions at work came more quickly after my gastric bypass surgery. I was also wondering about that connection in the SCA as well.

.....Take a look if you are interested: <http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/money-motives-to-lose-weight.aspx?ec_id=cmct_03_comm_pf_image_headline>

.....Thursday was cleaning up and catching up at home. With a run at the new episode of 'Project Runway'. I'm not sure just why I'm a fan. I don't sew. I am certainly not a fashion snob by any means. But for some reason the show has struck a chord with me as it is the only regularly scheduled show (other than the news) that I actually watch on the Tele these days. Last night's episode was all about clothing for the Opera. With only one or two exceptions, everything created actually looked interesting.

.....Next week's episode could either be interesting and funny, or rather weird, as it looks like the challenge is to create fashion for Miss Piggy of the Muppets. Hmm.....

.....A whole three days of a weekend upcoming. With nowhere we have to be! Huzzah. I need to finish the Doomsday Report for The Crier. Need to finish my overhaul of the Western Region Pelican Notes. Have some e-mails to send out and some September Crown stuff to organize. So, it'll be a fairly busy weekend. But not frenetic, which is good. I'm sooooo looking forward to sleeping in for a while tomorrow morning. :-)

.....I think I'll go and read something for a while before bed. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.