Pentecost 2020

With Pentecost considered the birthday of the Church, I always like to share this song. It’s strange–certainly no Veni Creator Spiritus–but it always makes me smile.

Towel Day/Geek Pride Day 2020

Happy Towel Day, you hoopy froods! And it’s also Geek Pride Day, a day to celebrate all things geek. Especially with all the stuff going on in the world, it’s fun to kick back and relax for a bit by thinking about what makes us happy. To that end, I post this catchy little tune.

New Star Trek Series: Please Don’t be Terrible

After months–and a couple of years of speculation–there will finally be a Star Trek series that follows the Enterprise in the years it was under the command of Captain Pike.

My main concern is that it will turn out to be a divisive disappointment the way Discovery and Picard were. I watched the pilot episode of Discovery and didn’t much care for it. Later I watched clips on YouTube to see if things got any better (which they really didn’t). I didn’t see Picard, but I saw enough discussion about it to get the general impression that it wasn’t universally embraced. But Strange New Worlds is something I really want to succeed and do justice to Star Trek as a whole. So I am going into this with hope, hope that I will not once again be disappointed.

Celebrating Star Wars Day

Star Wars Day is always fun to commemorate in some way. This year I’ve decided to post the music video made for Revenge of the Sith, “A Hero Falls”. Not only was this included on the DVD, but I also got to see this performed live at a Star Wars concert several years ago. It was part of a special touring Star Wars concert where they would show clips from the movies, and a live orchestra would play the music. It even had Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) as the host!

Some Phantom-y Goodness

Andrew Lloyd Webber has been posting recordings of his musicals on The Shows Must Go On YouTube channel. A couple of weeks ago, he posted the 25th anniversary recording of The Phantom of the Opera. Although the full show has since been taking down (they can only be up for a couple of days because of something to do with copyrights), some clips of the performance still remain. And since it’s been awhile since the Opera Ghost has haunted my blog, I decided to post them.

The most recent musical posted on the YouTube channel was the less-than-stellar sequel Love Never Dies (seriously, spare yourself the pain and don’t watch it). It’s been kind of cool getting to see these musicals, and I’m definitely interested to see what comes next!

Starting to Have Doubts about “Dune”

We’re finally getting a look at the upcoming Dune move this December…and I’m starting to have some doubts. The doubts started when an early picture of Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides looked more like Edward Cullen, but now…now we know Dr. Liet Kynes is a woman in this version, married to Stilgar with Chani as her daughter. This is a distinct change from the book where Dr. Kynes is most definitely a man–Chani’s father; Stilgar is her uncle.

I guess I’m a little disappointed in Denis Villeneuve that he talked about how important it was to make an adaptation as close to the source material as he could and then gender-swapped Dr. Kynes because he thought there weren’t enough women in Dune. I’m still looking forward to the movie, but I also know from past experience that decisions like this usually signal a bad adaptation. This time I hope I’m wrong.

Holy Saturday/Easter Sunday 2020

One of my favorite things about the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday is the chanting of the Exsultet at the beginning of Mass. It’s so triumphant and stirring, you can’t help but feel your heart lift when you hear it. Finding a good recording of it was more challenging than I expected, but I think I ultimately succeeded.

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!