Falling Skies

Over Christmas break, my tv thing was Downton Abbey, which I am still thoroughly enjoying, but since I'm watching it now as-it-happens, my next show to watch on DVD was Falling Skies. We'd actually watched a couple of episodes before Christmas, and then I had to return the DVD to the library. I was sticking with it more out of loyalty to RyRo then anything else, but then the last half of the first season really kicked into gear and grabbed me, and now I'm SO impatient for season 2 to come out on DVD so I can get all caught up before season 3 airs in the summer.

Ryan Robbins and Noah Wyle

Who is RyRo, you might ask? He is otherwise known as Ryan Robbins, or Henry Foss from Sanctuary (which still remains my favourite show ever). He doesn't show up until season 2, but I had to watch season 1, of course. Falling Skies is set in Boston, about six months after earth is invaded by aliens, which sounds a bit cliche, but the characters are good, the atmosphere is great, and there are some plot twists that I really like. Noah Wyle plays Tom Mason, who before the invasion was a history teacher, and who is now the second in command of the 2nd Massachusetts, a group of military and civilians working together to try to not just survive, but fight back.

Noah Wyle and Moon Bloodgood

Mood Bloodgood plays the pediatrician thrust into the role of chief medical officer, and I *totally* ship her character, Anne, and Tom. They have great chemistry, they're both lonely, and she'd be a great step-mom to Tom's kids. When you're trying to survive an alien invasion, and you have three sons who are always getting into trouble, having the doctor on your team is a really good idea!

I know I'd watch it why Ryan tweeted that he was in it, but what really got me started on actually watching it was my friend's husband working on the costumes for season 3. Good thing too, because then I found out that my favourite actor ever, Christopher Heyerdahl, is going to be in season 3. Not only that, Jonathan Frakes directed an episode, and I *may* have gotten his autograph in my Christmas card from my friend....

I do quite recommend Falling Skies, if you like sci-fi!

Hiking in Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park

Life is funny sometimes. Opportunities come up and you respond to them as you feel appropriate, and I wonder: if we realized the vast consequences tiny decisions can influence, would we be more deliberate in our actions, or would we be paralyzed by indecision, or would we become even more careless when choosing actions? As a fan of scifi, particularly of the Stargate and Star Trek variety, where time travel, temporal paradoxes, and muddled time lines as the result of a moment's hesitation are all in a day's work, I thought I was rather aware of the ripples tiny decisions make, but one of those ripples snuck up and took me by surprise last week. :)

I'm sorry if you're one of the people who's ear I've already talked off about how great Sanctuary was/is, but that's where this ripple started. Last September I discovered my favourite TV show ever (which is really saying something...) and then started following the actors from it as they worked on various other projects, which is how I started watching Hell on Wheels. As the title may suggest, this show is not for the squeamish...it's on AMC, which will probably tell you quite a lot...anyway, the Sanctuary actor I started watching the show for keeps a low internet profile, so I started following the lead actor, Anson Mount, on Twitter. He's an interesting person, and while I don't always agree with him, he's more polite than a lot of Twitter celebrities with whom I don't agree, and he's really great about interacting with his fans.

In April Anson tweeted a blog that someone he knows had written about a visit to the set of Hell on Wheels. Of course I checked it out, and as I was very entertained by Shelli's 'voice', I started at the beginning and caught up on all of her old blog posts, and subscribed to new ones. I have a pretty wide range of blogs I follow, and I'm a fairly regular commenter, because I know how nice it is to know that someone's actually reading what you write. (Insert crickets chirping on my blog here. :) Shelli started chatting back, and eventually she was back in Calgary and emailed me to hang out, which really got me excited, because I really like making new friends, but in person I'm pretty much an introvert when it comes to starting up a conversation, so becoming internet friends first was a good way to get past my initial shyness (which, can you believe, has in the past been taken for snobbery?! :P).

And I figured what better way to introduce someone from LA to my favourite things about Alberta than to take a hike in a place I'd never been! :) Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park is about half an hour from my house, just west of Calgary on the way to Cochrane. It's so close and so beautiful, I can't believe I've never been there before.

CP Rail train and prairie skies!

The paths are mostly paved, and very well maintained. The views were absolutely stunning - we were close enough to Calgary to still glimpse Canada Olympic Park in the east, as well as see the mountains to the west.

Cute little critter!

One of the interpretive signs said that badgers live in the park, and I got really excited, because I didn't know we even had any in Alberta, but the park guide said that they're nocturnal so we wouldn't likely see one anyway. :( Still, we saw enough other things to make the hike worthwhile!

Old general store/post office. The original brick facing is piled up behind and to the left.

I ADORE rural decay. The old store is fenced off so we couldn't get too close, but it was close enough to spark my interest. The park was originally the site of a ranch, and a CP rail town with a brick-making industry. Eventually the town folded and all that's left is this building and a pile of bricks. My minor is in Canadian History, so this is all right up my alley!

It looked like rain!

We walked and talked for hours and hardly even noticed! I tend to get bored fairly easily when doing nothing but walking, because I'm usually multitasking like a crazy person, but when you add in talking about everything under the sun, the time just flew. :) The skies were clouding over and there was a bit of a drizzle by the time we were heading back, but despite faint thunder in the distance, we managed to avoid bad weather. My car needs a bath though...the road into the park is gravel, and very very very dusty!

After leaving the park we headed into Cochrane for some world-famous MacKay's Ice Cream, which you can read about on Shelli's blog...she posts more pictures and isn't as rambley as me... :)

So, thanks to Anson Mount, who I followed because of Hell on Wheels, which I checked out because of Christopher Heyerdahl and Sanctuary, which I first noticed because of Amanda Tapping and Stargate - in short, my fangirling of scifi - I met a friend, hiked, and ate ice cream. And it was a glorious break from a week of helping with Vacation Bible School...which is definitely a story all on its own. :)

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2012 - Saturday

I was up and online early Saturday morning. The first panel I wanted to catch wasn't until noon, but I was trying to figure out what was going on with the Phelps twins, who play Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. They were a late addition to the con, and there wasn't any info in the program guide about when they might be doing a panel, and the volunteers I talked to on Friday night didn't know anything about it. So before I went to bed, I tweeted @calgaryexpo and asked about it. During the night they did respond, but it wasn't very helpful - it just asked if I had gotten the update newsletter, which I hadn't. I did eventually find a copy - there was one in Trevor's goody bag, but not mine. Anyway, it didn't list a panel, just their photo ops, so I assumed that meant they weren't doing a panel.

But I was up early, so we headed down early and got there around 10:30. We basically walked right in - the only delay was simply the volume of people who also got off the same c-train. I wanted to walk down 'autograph alley', but it was literally such a dense crowd we could hardly move, so we gave up and headed into the exhibit hall. The problem was that they had all of the big stars down one aisle, and all of the old wrestlers down the other, so 90% of the foot traffic was stalled in one area.

The first panel I wanted to see was in the Corral, which was fairly empty during the Fringe panel right before the Star Trek one. We got seats and listened to the Fringe actors, and even though I don't know the first thing about Fringe, it was fairly entertaining. I need to check out what else John Noble has been in, because I really enjoyed him. While we were waiting for the Star Trek panel, we were joined by my new friend Stephanie who came all the way up from Lethbridge just for the one day. We secured decent seats further up after the Fringe people left, and were entertained by Spiner, Wheaton and Burton (Data, Crusher and LaForge). It was a fun panel, and each of the three of them got a fair amount of spotlight time. Burton's stint on Reading Rainbow came up, and the crowd sang the RR theme song. There was a lot of imitating Patrick Stewart's accent, discussion about Wil being easily amused, discussions of Timmies, and bashing of Microsoft, which is always a good time! The whole panel is up on YouTube, courtesy of 'oilcountryDon' if you want to look it up.

Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton and LeVar Burton

A lot of the panels during the weekend were moderated by one of a trio of talk show hosts from the Space channel. As a trio, I find them highly annoying. However, thankfully, apart from each other they weren't bad at all. Still, I would rather just have the dynamic of the actors without having another person added into the mix.

Trevor left part-way through the panel to secure a place in line for the Sanctuary panel, since that was really the MUST SEE panel of my weekend. Isn't he great? However, it turned into a bit of a gong show. Steph went off to do her own thing, since Sanctuary isn't her thing (but I mean really, how can Sanctuary not be anyone's thing?! :) and I went to try to find Trev. The crowds outside the Corral were dense, so instead of trying to struggle upstream, I just went to a spot near the start of the Sanctuary lineup, meaning to meet up with Trevor as the line progressed by my spot. However, once a large chunk of the line had gone by, it completely stopped and there was no more line. My cell phone couldn't connect, and since there was no line in sight, I hopped on to the end of what was passing by me into the theatre doors, and managed to snag two decent seats. The panel was supposed to start at 1 pm, but by 1:15 it hadn't started yet, although I'd managed to get enough cell reception to let Trevor know where I was and that I had a seat, since they'd stopped letting people in. SO CLOSE! I almost didn't make it, and that would have made me cry!

Shortly after 1:15, Amanda Tapping and Christopher Heyerdahl came out with the Space channel guy and sat down. It gets a little blurry in my memory, because I was trying to start the camera recording at the same time as Trevor was standing down in the doorway looking for me, and it seemed like ALL THE THINGS were happening at once. Amanda was needling Chris for checking his cell phone on stage, and he was talking about how he had a text from Ryan Robbins, and that Ryan wanted a Biggie head-slap (Chris plays two characters on the show, and this one, as a sign of affection, smacks people on the back of the head, like Gibbs from NCIS). 

Now, my Ryan-radar was already in full gear, because of this great historical western that's filming its second season in Calgary RIGHT NOW. Chris is in it, which is why I started watching and keeping an eye on what was going on with it (but he's not on Twitter, which makes things more difficult), however, Ryan IS on Twitter, and on April 20th he tweeted that he was packing up in LA and heading back to Canada for an exciting opportunity. 50% wishful thinking and 50% knowing that his good friend Chris was in Calgary meant that I immediately responded asking if he was coming to Calgary for Hell on Wheels, knowing that it was a huge leap, but not being able to resist the urge to fan-girl. Of course, the details were still confidential, so he couldn't reply, but on April 24th, he tweeted that he was on his way to Calgary, and there may have been a bit of flailing going on in my office. I KNEW that he was coming for Hell on Wheels, because it's the only thing filming here right now, and I made sure the Comic Expo knew about it too, just in case they could squeeze him into the Sanctuary panel as well. Really, I tell you, if fan-girling paid money, I'd be a rich woman. :)

But thanks to being so excited and trying to do too many things at once, I missed the surprise of Ryan walking out on stage, and managed to not get any usable photo or video! D'oh! Thankfully Trevor was able to rescue the camera from me and get really good video footage of the rest of the panel, which you can find on my new YouTube channel, MichelleEdits.

Ryan Robbins, Amanda Tapping and Chrisopher Heyerdahl at the Sanctuary panel.
Photo courtesy of tea-and-text.blogspot.ca

The first thing Amanda talked about was the future of Sanctuary, which is in limbo right now thanks to  a whole bunch of factors, and while she didn't have the news we were hoping for, it was good to know that Sanctuary isn't dead - she said its chest is still rising and falling, and she's standing by with the paddles. So here's hoping! Sadly, thanks to the crowd control issues, the panel ended up being only 31 minutes instead of 45, but I'm SO THANKFUL I managed to get in at all! They're just a wonderful bunch of people, and it was so neat to see them in person, particularly Amanda, who I've been a fan of since I started dating Trevor and he introduced me to Stargate.

All the excitement meant that I was STARVING, so we headed back to the autograph area to meet Steph for lunch at the Ceili's pub tent. The food was a bit pricey, but it was better than Stampede hot dogs, and we shared a table with a Newfie from Edmonton and did a lot of people watching. We braved the bathroom, which was DISGUSTING, and then managed to wander down autograph alley.

I hadn't been planning to get any autographs (that whole unemployed student thing) but while we were standing around Amanda Tapping came out to her table to the cheers of the people in her VERY long lineup. As much as I'm a fan, I didn't want to pay $40 and stand in line for the rest of the afternoon, but we happened to be standing by Chris' lineup, which was short, and I was speculating that if Amanda had arrived, he soon would be as well, which he did. And since I was there and the line was short, I got in it. :) Steph went to wander the exhibit hall, and Trevor and I hung out in line. Chris was letting everyone take photos as well, which was really nice of him. The Shatners and the Stewarts don't do that sort of thing - well, to be fair, so many people want to see them that they can't take that time with everyone - but I'd rather just meet a Canadian actor and feel like I actually met him or her. And for once I haven't been replying my conversation over and over wishing that I'd said everything all different - I was coherent and normal. As normal as a 31-year-old woman in a Starfleet mini-dress can be, anyway. :)

Me meeting Christopher Heyerdahl

After all that excitement, I needed to do something a bit quieter, so I headed to a publishing panel in one of the nice plushy conference rooms. The two women doing the panel were Krista Ball (an Alberta author who I saw at When Words Collide last year) and Margaret Curelas from a small Edmonton publishing house. They had both previously worked with 'my' publishing house, Edge, and so I was interested to hear their perspectives on the industry. Sadly, there was something very loud and distracting going on in the conference room next door, and the panel was a lot more basic than I was expecting, but at least I got to sit in a comfy chair for a while. :)

Trevor and I met back up (he'd been wandering the exhibit hall) and he told me about this vendor who had cheap DVDs, including some of the Stargate seasons, so I was able to acquire season 3 for $15, which is a heck of a deal! Who knows when I'll get time to watch it, but at least it's in my collection now. We went to the Coco Brooks (a GREAT local pizza chain) stand to get a bit of a snack, and shared a cheese pizza and a fruit smoothie. I was very entertained by the crowd of people who were camped out on the floor by the stand - I thought it looked like a refugee camp.

A geek refugee camp

We met back up with Steph and caught the last panel of the day - 'Stump the Nerds' with the local 404 geek comedy troop. The person on the troop who I knew doesn't appear to be with them anymore, and the whole panel was pretty special. It was supposed to be PG-13, but I would have given it a 14-A, and some of it was just strange!

I'd heard rumours throughout the day that the fire marshall had stopped anymore people from coming in, but I didn't realize the extent of it until I got home and online again. What a gong show - I'm HEARTILY thankful that my OCD tendency to be over-cautious and early meant that I didn't miss out on any of the fun things that happened on Saturday! My priority before bed was to get my Sanctuary panel video up on YouTube, which ended up being a lot more work than I'd expected, and we were up till midnight, but it's online in three parts, and the first in the series has over 1700 views! Everyone wants to hear Amanda talk about the future of season 5, apparently!

I was going to post a couple of costume photos, but this had turned out to be so long I'll have to give major kudos to those of you who are still reading. (Hi, Mom - happy birthday! :) Stay tuned for Sunday's recap!

Hallelujah

This is going to be a more personal blog then mine usually are - a departure from the updates on the fun and interesting things that have happened over the last few months. Well, I hope it's still interesting, anyway! :) I've got something on my mind that just won't let me focus on my Hamlet essay, so grab a cuppa (offering a hot bevvy is a social convention, you know!) and wander with me.

In late September, I was looking for a tv show to watch online while we ate dinner. We gave up cable a few years ago because I just didn't have a whole lot of self control when it came to prioritizing my time when the Food Network was calling my name. So now we either watch shows on DVD, or online. I was scrolling through the shows available on the CTV website, and the name Sanctuary caught my eye. I remembered right away that Sanctuary was the show that Amanda Tapping was involved with after Stargate ended, so that was enough of a connection for me to tell Trevor that's what we were watching, and fortunately season one was all available.

I haven't gotten that instantly sucked into a tv show since February of 1997 when I watched my first episode of Star Trek: Voyager, part way through season 3. Now, about 6 weeks after finding Sanctuary, we're about half way through season 3, and should get caught up to the current episodes in season 4 by the end of the month. I'm struggling to slow down so I don't run out of new episodes to watch, but on the other hand, nearly every episode ends on a cliff hanger, and it's driving me mental! Trevor is very entertained by my expressions of frustrated fan-girl-ness.

Sanctuary is set basically in a modern parallel universe inhabited by normal humans, as well as 'abnormal' humans and creatures...think along the lines of X-Men. Tapping's character, Helen Magnus, is a 150-ish year old doctor who runs this Sanctuary organization, and she has a highly entertaining team of sidekicks, and a lovely British accent. I'm not sure exactly what it is about Sanctuary that I enjoy so much - it's a combination of the acting, the characters, the one-liners, the noble goal, the historical nods, the teasing cliff hangers - it's just brilliant.

Since I'm on Twitter now (which is a long story we won't go into in public! :P) I decided to 'follow' some of the actors from the show, just out of curiosity. What is this Twitter? Why is everyone so crazy about following celebrities? And so I figured normal, Canadian, celebrities were about my speed, and since I basically have dinner with these people every night, I was curious to know a bit more about their 'real' lives. I say 'real' because on Twitter of course people are still acting, but it's a different perspective on them.

In the middle of my Sanctuary crush, we took a weekend to run a youth retreat at our church. We had 75 youth and leaders from BC and Alberta sleeping on the floor, playing games, singing (yay Trevor!) and soaking up some really great teaching. The central theme of the weekend was Matthew 5:14, which is basically about being salt and light in the world. The speaker, Jenny (who I just love - I'd never even emailed with her before Friday, but I felt like I'd known her forever almost right away! I love it when that happens) used a refrain of 'you are a unique child of God' to punctuate a lot of her messages.

For me, 'you are a unique child of God' applies outwardly. I'm secure in that I'm a unique child of God - I've never doubted that. But it gave me a different perspective loving on the kids around me, and reminded me of why I got into youth ministry in the first place, almost 15 years ago. So many kids go through life in the church not knowing how incredibly precious and unique they are. I also used this phrase as an anti-evolution slogan in youth Bible study on Sunday, which I thought was really cool. :)

But what really got my attention was something that happened yesterday. Ryan Robbins, who's one of the actors on Sanctuary, Tweeted a link to a video in which he sings 'Hallelujah' by Leonard Cohen. Here's a link to the video: http://vimeo.com/15215209

It totally blew me away. I watched a version of Hamlet recently where David Tennant (Dr. Who) played the title character, and his acting was just so raw and emotional I actually had to look away from the intensity, because his pain felt so personal (he's replaced Kenneth Branagh as my favourite Hamlet, by the way). I felt a lot like that watching Robbins sing this song.

Now, this song always breaks my heart a little bit, because I feel like Cohen was SO CLOSE to discovering the amazing grace of God, but he never quite gets there, and it's just so haunting and sad. It's basically about King David's horribly tainted relationship with Bathsheba, but in the Bible, David was forgiven and his relationship with God was restored, which is what the song leaves out. Robbins' version is the most heartbreaking I've ever heard - he said on Twitter that he'd been going through something at the time, and it's totally obvious.

This verse is the saddest, I think, it's just so hopeless and lost:
Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

The strangest thing happened while I was listening to Robbins; even though I knew this video was a year or more old, I had the sudden overwhelming urge to pray that he would know that he's a unique child of God. Blew my socks off - I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I actually couldn't sleep last night because it was so on my mind, which is crazy, because I can literally sleep through a rock concert if it's past my bedtime. :)

Is it weird to pray for an actor who you'll probably never even meet, because he was going through something that you'll never know about, when you don't even know how he feels about God in the first place? Or how he'd feel about being prayed for, and by a stranger? It feels a bit weird...but I didn't feel like I could do anything else in the face of such obvious pain. Salt and light, right?

Here's another version, called 'Another Hallelujah', by a Christian artist called Lincoln Brewster: http://youtu.be/uN5_PgtLpRc

It takes this melancholy cry for help and turns it into a triumphant anthem of grace and praise, which is totally what God is all about. Cool, hey?

So, that's the saga of how a tv show, a haunting song, and a youth retreat have all come together today to ground me in my faith in Jesus and give me goosebumps.

And how I just spent an hour banging out 1100 plus words about this when all I'm supposed to be doing is writing 500 on Hamlet... :)