Whenever Joy plans to fly out to California to visit our friends, Mother Nature decides it's time to send some freezing stuff to Texas ... Generally, we don't have a white Christmas. No, we have a "white" Martin Luther King, Jr., day. This year, the snow's a week early.
Joy feeds the birds in our back yard thicket. By this time, we have numerous cardinals, chickadees, blue jays ... and squirrels coming to the feeding stations to check out the goodies. This photo is from the Big Snow of 2010, a storm that took down power lines and trees across North Texas. We're hoping that conditions don't get that bad this year, but no one knows. At least they're predicting only 1 to 3 inches. At Four Winds Faire, they're going for 3+. On black top country roads, driving can become very treacherous. My school commute on Monday may be the trickiest part of the day ... we shall see.
Mar and I (with Joy's help) are starting a story thread based on our BJDs dressed in Renaissance clothing (all made by Lady Fayre). This story line begins with the arranged marriage of a Fae princess with a Human price ... but undercurrents of politics and intrigue infect the new couple's fragile happiness. Mar loaned me her little netbook so I could keep the story in one place ... and I can work in front of the television instead of relative isolation in the computer room. I need to read up on my Renaissance politics -- the Italian city-states make a good background, and it may still be the time of the Pope and anti-Pope. I also need to connect the different Italian clans with their respective cities: Medicis & Borgias with Florence & Venice. And how does Roma fit into all this mess? Do we want to keep in the "real" world? Well, I can start writing, and we'll see where things go.
Final exam time for students this week means more (and less) work and stress. We must survive the last full day with kids -- a "C" day, that lets us see all of the students for 40 minutes or so. Since the weather today is nasty, we may be short teaching staff until they can drive the distance ... and some kids may opt to stay home. Who knows? We prepared our ACPs last week, though I still haven't met with the teacher who will give my exam. I spent too much time dealing with student problems on Friday; Mrs. B talked to the girls, and they seem to have worked things out without "bitch slapping" or curses. 1 long day, then the exams -- the kids go home early, which gives me time to grade projects and determine final grades. Then a 3-day weekend, a staff development day, then the 2nd semester begins ... Man! Didn't we just do all this last year?
Yesterday, we settled down to watch Trinity Blood. Mar hadn't seen the series, and we had watched it piecemeal on Cartoon Network -- when CN ran decent anime series. Now it's next to impossible to find anime on the so-called CN, just American drek. TB is a very densely plotted series -- you have to watch and listen to each episode because, at any moment, there may be a flashback or line or dialogue that foreshadows a character's past or future. Many fans saw the first episode which introduced the future earth and Abel Nightroad and the dangers from the vampires. Although this civilization has technology, much of it is based on "lost technology" from the past, which gives the series a steampunk feeling -- futuristic yet characters use swords or pistols and there are steam engines for the trains. Flying machines look like huge flying fortresses ... and every so often the translator (and it may be an accurate translation) will state that we're looking at a particular European city ... and the geography is all wrong. It's a case of "take your brain and put it aside." That's what we say when knowledge and the story don't jibe. Coleridge would call it "suspension of disbelief."
Back to the humans and vampires and the Vatican. Yes, the Japanese have turned to that bastion of the occult, the Roman Catholic Church. Well, Stephen Sommers did it with Van Helsing, as do other stories that don't fall under this purview. The Vatican connects the future human communities together and protects them from the vampires, similar to what the Church did during the Middle Ages when religion united men more than national pride. The costumes of the Pope, cardinals and priests are like nothing you'd see today -- well, the Pope does wear white, and the cardinals do wear red, and the priests wear black ... but the nuns' costumes are rather unique versions of the modern nun habit. But what the hey -- sit back, watch and enjoy the story.
And what a story! From the beginning, we have the doofus Abel Nightroad, who is more than a clumsy, hungry fool. We meet the vampire who works for a vast network of vampires; we meet Cardinal Caterina who runs the organization that sends out agents like Abel. (To tell the truth, there IS no other agent like Abel.) We see the richly imagined post-Armageddon world. (The series starts with a narration of how the world nearly destroyed itself.) Then there's the battle between Abel and the hijacker vampire ... when Abel reveals that he isn't just an ordinary priest. None of the AX priests and nuns under Cardinal Caterina is "just" an ordinary human. I must admit, however, that Caterina has a wonderful harem of pretty boy priests under her command ... and the music suggests that there is a romance lurking under the gothic horror. The artwork is gorgeous -- and with all the intricate lines (and pretty boys) IT falls more on the shojo side than the shonen side. Shojo gothic horror ... hmmmm. Yeah, I like it.
Since I watched the story all the way to its conclusion, I (and Joy) have to remain quiet whenever the foreshadowing appears ... We got to the point (1o years before) when Caterina ran from vampire assassins who killed her family only to be saved by a mysterious man (Abel in shorter hair) and the introduction of Esther, a nun who will become more important as the series progresses ... but there are hints even by episode 5 and 6 of why all this incidents are important. Shoot, in episode 2, Abel has a short flashback to his past -- and we're left wondering: where is he? who is the sleeping woman in the glass coffin? who is the guy holding up a severed head? We'll get the answers MUCH later in the series -- but don't forget the scene, boys and girls. It becomes very important near the end.
In a word -- Trinity Blood earns its 4 out of 5 stars.
Ballet this week may depend on the weather. I don't drive to East Dallas when the weather threatens to be freezing wet ... and my visits to Mom also depend on the highways. I just wish that one of us lived a little closer. That can't be helped. Back to ballet -- we have a show at the end of the month, a classical ballet festival hosted by some of Madame's former students. Many student/directors are invited to bring their companies ... we'll see how it goes at the Prince of Peace school this year. The school took an old car dealership's buildings and remade them into a church sanctuary and outlying classrooms. If you look at the buildings one way, you can see that the fine arts classrooms were originally part of the auto repair area -- the sanctuary was the show room. The auditiorium? I'm not sure what it originally might have been ... the stage is quite large, although the seating is rather small. I suspect that someone on the festival board knows someone on the church board. The church had posters for fine arts involvement, so I suspect that the costs of renting the facilities are less there than at the Granville ... There should be some good dancing on January 29. I'm just glad that we got most of the costumes finished in December.
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