Whew! It was even hotter than yesterday when I awoke this morning. Cooled off with breakfast and an hour-long episode of The Backyardigans. "The Tale of the Mighty Knights" has knights Uniqua and Tyrone assigned to watch over an egg while King Pablo is away. They're dismayed at first...until the egg bounces away! Now they have to rescue it from the hands of the Grabbing Goblin (Austin) and Flighty Fairy (Tasha), before the King realizes it's gone. For extra bonus points, it's done as a rock opera, with Adam Pascal of the original cast of Rent narrating and singing one number in the finale.
Work wasn't nearly as much of a pain as it's been lately. It usually isn't in the morning shifts. While I did do trash, sweep the bathrooms, gather baskets, and help an old lady out to her car, I was mainly doing carts. Good thing we weren't really busy. It was incredibly hot here again, in the lower 90's. I spent a lot of the day sweating.
Went on the computer as soon as I got home. I worked on my story...then decided I didn't like what I'd written at the last minute. At the very least, we're now in the Desert Nights Night Club, the most exclusive club in Atlantic City. Jasper has shoved Leia into a glittery purple and gold concoction with more beads and ruffles than on the entire cast of Dynasty in 1983. He hasn't told her what he has in mind for Luke and Hank, but she's sure she's not going to like it...
I've also worked on yet another story idea. My second short fairy-tale spotlighting Han Solo will actually be a folk tale, Robin Hood. Han is Robin, Luke is Will Scarlet, Wedge Antilles is Little John, Leia is Maid Marian, Obi-Wan is Friar Tuck, Chewie is the Moor, Vader the Sheriff of Nottingham, Palpatine Prince John, Boba Fett Guy of Gisbourne, Lando Alan-a-Dale, and the droids are servants.
Henry of Solon returns to England in disgrace, having been thrown out of his regiment in the Crusades when he rescued a Moor from being cruelly beaten. Desperate for money after he discovers his lands and treasury have been taken for taxes, he and the Moor Chewbacca agree to help Friar Benjamin and Luke Scarlet, his protege, rescue feisty Maid Leia from Sheriff Vader's dungeons. Leia was once the ward of King Bail, but he vanished in the Crusades, and his wife died mysteriously. Prince Palpatine runs the country ruthlessly in his absence.
They're all declared outlaws after the botched rescue. Henry now calls himself Han Solo, or Robin Hood. He, Luke, and Leia all take the role when they become the leaders of the Merry Men (and women). While most of their money goes to the poor, Han keeps some of it to pay off the cruel nobleman who now owns his land (Jabba the Hutt). Sheriff Vader forces Lando-a-Dale to hold an archery tournament that'll trap the handsome rogue. While the spirited maid rescues him, Luke and Benjamin's replacement Abbot Yoda deal with new revelations about Vader and Luke's true heritage.
I'm hoping to get to this one around Christmas or early winter, after I've finished Beauty & the Frogs and the Babes In Toyland sequel novella. (Other short fairy tales I'm hoping to work on soon include Thumbelina for the Original Trilogy, Rumpelstiltskin, Molly Whuppie, and Little Red Riding Hood for the Sequels, and Swan Lake as my first Prequel short story.)
Broke for dinner at quarter after 6. I was starved from work and wanted a real dinner. Poached chicken legs in a sauce of red wine vinegar, chicken stock, water, and spices. Boiled potatoes with them. Made Cucumber-Tomato Salad for color and vegetables. Yum. It didn't come out too badly. Putting the potatoes in with the chicken was a great idea. I might have to cook them in stock or partial-stock more often.
Finished out the night while I ate with Divergent. The Chicago of the future has split itself into five "factions" after a devastating war - Dauntless is the brave military, Amity is kind farmers, Abignation are selfless government leaders and social workers, Candor are truthful lawyers and judges, and Erudite are intelligent scientists and scholars. Beatrice "Tris" Prior (Shalene Woodley) lives with her family among the Abignation, but doesn't really feel like she's a part of them. She has every right to feel that way. A test reveals that she's a Divergent, someone with more than one group in them. An instructor (Maggie Q) warns her not to reveal this to anybody. She ultimately joins the Dauntless, whom she's always admired, but they're a rough-and-tumble bunch who follow orders blindly and kill without thinking. Luckily, she discovers that her teacher Four (Theo James) is also Divergent. Together, the two have to use their independent thinking abilities to find out what Erudite leader Jeannie (Kate Winslet) has in mind for the Abignation...and stop her from causing a full-scale genocide.
On one hand, this actually wasn't bad. Nice cast, including Ashley Judd and Tony Goldwyn as Tris' supportive parents and Jai Courtney as a vicious Dauntless leader. I love that both the main hero and the main villain are women. That's something you don't often see in sci-fi stories. And I have to admire Tris for being just so darn determined. Absolutely nothing stops her, from jumping off a train into a pit to facing her fears to taking on the head of the country.
Ironically, despite the plot hinging on independence and original thought, this movie doesn't have an original thought in it's head. It's basically a slightly more sci-fi-oriented version of The Hunger Games. It doesn't help that while I like Shalene Woodley (she was a wonderful Felicity Merriman), she's no Jennifer Lawrence and is rather out of place here. Winslet is better as the cold politician who thinks that eliminating human emotions will somehow stop full-scale war. The emphasis on Tris' relationship with Four in the second half seems to be there more because the teens want to ship people than because it's necessary. The dark story, despite some wisecracks from Tris' Candor friend Christina (Zoe Kravitz), lacks humor and just isn't all that much fun.
This comes from a series of wildly popular young adult books, so...yeah, I'm probably not the right audience for this. If you're a fan of the books or young adult "dark future" novels like The Hunger Games, you may get a lot more out of this than I did.
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