Weekend musings
I had an awesome weekend with jennnlee.
I drove up to Jen's house on Friday. As always happens, I got stuck in traffic on a certain point of the journey. I called my sister in Ohio on my cell phone and we talked for a while. She was driving in a snowstorm...and going faster than me! Sheesh.
I arrived at Jen's in mid-afternoon. We had originally planned to go to lunch but the lateness of my arrival put paid to that. Instead we just hung out with snuggly puppies for a bit, then launched right into our Firefly marathon. Around 7:00ish we started to talk about getting some Chinese food for dinner...and it promptly began raining.
So we headed out in the rain. And it was cold rain! A front was coming through, and the temperature was dropping pretty quickly. We got utterly soaked in the time it took to run from the car to the restaurant...but it simply didn't matter. :-)
Saturday we got up and went into downtown Orlando for MegaCon. I had a blast! It's always so much fun to walk around and look at the things for sale, and geek out over cool toys and artwork and bootleg DVDs and T-shirts with funny sayings and jewelry and books. It's a fascinating place to people watch, and look at all the costumes. I wore the Jayne hat that Jen had knitted for me a while back. A few people commented on it, too, which is a testament to Jen's knitting skills!
I bought some artwork (click on the second one in the third row, the $1.00 with hearts for zeros). I also got some Farscape magazines which filled me with such delight that I may have kissed the cover of one as we walked away from the booth. *g*
Sunday morning we went to breakfast, then did some shopping around Mt. Dora. I love walking around there. It's got such a great small-town feeling. Not to mention a shop that makes the most amazing carrot-cake cupcakes!
I left around 1:00 and got home late in the afternoon. Kaylee was quite happy to see me, and even happier to see that I brought home a bucket of treats for her, as a way of atoning for leaving her all weekend.
Quite by accident, Jen and I managed to catch the last half of a guest speaker appearance by Adrian Pasdar, who plays Nathan Petrelli on Heroes. He was quite funny and very easy-going, and very down to earth in his speaking style (and also very pretty!). He answered audience questions with real answers, not rehearsed sound bites. And he offered up some theories and ideas for Season 3 of Heroes, which was pretty cool.
But for me the neatest thing was when he began to talk about the power of the audience. The power we have. He said the networks pay attention to us -- far more than they want us to know, far more than they will admit to. There are entire departments at the TV networks that do nothing except follow the fanbase on places like the Internet, paying attention to what websites are created, what is posted on public forums, on what we say on our blogs. "They're terrified of losing their audience," he said. And we have power in that respect. If we want to see something, if we want a show to move in one particular direction, we have the power to make it happen.
Now assuming all of that is true, why then do we still have such dreck on TV? Why do great shows like Farscape and Firefly get cancelled? Why can't we use all our supposed power to make good things happen on TV?
Makes you wonder.
Trying to catch up on my Friends list after being gone for so many days is well nigh impossible. If anything has happened, please alert me to your post so I don't miss it!
By way of atonement, I offer vids for my current two favorite songs.
Paralyer by Finger Eleven
Love Song by Sara Bareilles
I drove up to Jen's house on Friday. As always happens, I got stuck in traffic on a certain point of the journey. I called my sister in Ohio on my cell phone and we talked for a while. She was driving in a snowstorm...and going faster than me! Sheesh.
I arrived at Jen's in mid-afternoon. We had originally planned to go to lunch but the lateness of my arrival put paid to that. Instead we just hung out with snuggly puppies for a bit, then launched right into our Firefly marathon. Around 7:00ish we started to talk about getting some Chinese food for dinner...and it promptly began raining.
So we headed out in the rain. And it was cold rain! A front was coming through, and the temperature was dropping pretty quickly. We got utterly soaked in the time it took to run from the car to the restaurant...but it simply didn't matter. :-)
Saturday we got up and went into downtown Orlando for MegaCon. I had a blast! It's always so much fun to walk around and look at the things for sale, and geek out over cool toys and artwork and bootleg DVDs and T-shirts with funny sayings and jewelry and books. It's a fascinating place to people watch, and look at all the costumes. I wore the Jayne hat that Jen had knitted for me a while back. A few people commented on it, too, which is a testament to Jen's knitting skills!
I bought some artwork (click on the second one in the third row, the $1.00 with hearts for zeros). I also got some Farscape magazines which filled me with such delight that I may have kissed the cover of one as we walked away from the booth. *g*
Sunday morning we went to breakfast, then did some shopping around Mt. Dora. I love walking around there. It's got such a great small-town feeling. Not to mention a shop that makes the most amazing carrot-cake cupcakes!
I left around 1:00 and got home late in the afternoon. Kaylee was quite happy to see me, and even happier to see that I brought home a bucket of treats for her, as a way of atoning for leaving her all weekend.
Quite by accident, Jen and I managed to catch the last half of a guest speaker appearance by Adrian Pasdar, who plays Nathan Petrelli on Heroes. He was quite funny and very easy-going, and very down to earth in his speaking style (and also very pretty!). He answered audience questions with real answers, not rehearsed sound bites. And he offered up some theories and ideas for Season 3 of Heroes, which was pretty cool.
But for me the neatest thing was when he began to talk about the power of the audience. The power we have. He said the networks pay attention to us -- far more than they want us to know, far more than they will admit to. There are entire departments at the TV networks that do nothing except follow the fanbase on places like the Internet, paying attention to what websites are created, what is posted on public forums, on what we say on our blogs. "They're terrified of losing their audience," he said. And we have power in that respect. If we want to see something, if we want a show to move in one particular direction, we have the power to make it happen.
Now assuming all of that is true, why then do we still have such dreck on TV? Why do great shows like Farscape and Firefly get cancelled? Why can't we use all our supposed power to make good things happen on TV?
Makes you wonder.
Trying to catch up on my Friends list after being gone for so many days is well nigh impossible. If anything has happened, please alert me to your post so I don't miss it!
By way of atonement, I offer vids for my current two favorite songs.
Paralyer by Finger Eleven
Love Song by Sara Bareilles