Meeting Lyn's brother...

[fajrdrako]

Lyn has been my good friend since the 1970s, but I have never met her brother Michael or his wife Heli. They have lived in Calgary for a very long time, and have never come to Ottawa - until this week.

Lyn wanted her local friends to meet them, so she rented the party room at her condo building and invited us all over. We made it a pot-luck supper, and had a wonderful time. It was a bit like a Who Cares revisited.... A Who Cares was a kind of party we used to have every second Saturday night in roving locations, in which anyone associated with local fandom was welcome to turn up, and bring their friends.

Those days of easy socializing are behind us, but we had a wonderful time. There was a vast amount of food, and Beulah brought some delicious carrot cake.

I liked Michael and Heli, too. I expected Michael to resemble Lyn's father, whom I'd met, but he didn't. Nor did he resemble Lyn. He was just... himself, I guess, which is fair enough.

Afterwards, Beulah drove me home and we dropped in on maaseru to share some of the leftover carrot cake with her and maaboroshi. (Amazing, that there should be leftover cake, with that crowd!) We chanced on the beginning of the Kenneth Branagh As You Like It which instantly charmed us (and hooked us) with its multicultural melange of nineteenth-century Americans in Japan, Tudor England dialogue, ninjas, and Star Wars ambience. (And, muttered maaboroshi and I to each other, all this and femslash too. Gotta love Branagh.)

I didn't see more than the first third of it; dying to see the rest.

maaseru said that As You Like It was the first live play she saw, and that marked the moment when she fell in love with Shakespeare and with theatre. And she hasn't seen that particular play since, not even in movie form.

I don't think I've ever seen it at all - I've just read it.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

There's a Branagh list? I should probably be on it.

I really didn't want to tear myself away!

HBO doesn't exist in Canada, but maaseru gets a cable movie channel that often shows movies that HBO makes. She said she'd been considering dropping the channel and saving the money, and then a movie like this comes on and she changes her mind.

The ninja attack at the beginning was worth it in itself. I loved it.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

There is: http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/kenlist/ It's my oldest online fandom and the longest I've ever been on a mailing list -- I think I joined in 1994-5. Somewhere in there, anyway. I got my first computer in 1993, and was on the list at least a year before Hamlet was released, anyway. It's not a high traffic list, and there is some fundraising for Ken's charities (we sell something for his birthday every year, and do auctions of Ken-related stuff, and we work with his assistant to see that it goes to charities that help young actors get started), but it's also the best source for information on his latest projects and so forth. www.branaghcompendium.com is the companion website. They're a nice bunch of people.

I sure hope they don't wait long to release the AYLI DVD...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I joined. One more time, giving way to temptation - !

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Enjoy! See you there.