Poem for Saturday

Song
By Seamus Heaney

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

--------

For Ethel King.

I had a weird day. Wrote a review of "Allegiance" in between making the kids lunch, sending them to the pool and washing their bed linens. Was all excited to see Great Big Sea at Wolf Trap in the evening; we got there just after the doors opened, sat on the lawn to eat dinner, then went into the house expecting to see Eddie From Ohio open for Great Big Sea; instead Great Big Sea opened, which instantly filled the house. The center aisles were mostly season ticket holders and stayed in their seats at first, but the sides, which is where we were sitting, were full of people with flags and Newfoundland Republican Army shirts who danced through the entire set (they did pretty much everything on the new CD -- "Walk on the Moon," "England," "Banks of Newfoundland," "Straight To Hell," "Company of Fools," etc. -- plus "Ordinary Day," "The Night Pat Murphy Died," "General Taylor," "Consequence Free" and lots of others). But younger son was shielding his eyes from the house lights, and we ended up leaving shortly after Eddie From Ohio came on after the interval, because nothing sucks more than being at a concert with a migraine, as I know. I am so glad GBS came on first!


There are no photos allowed in the Filene Center -- not that everyone was following the rules -- but I did leave the flash off, so none of my Great Big Sea photos are great.


There were a lot of empty seats when we got inside (I think a lot of people thought Eddie From Ohio would take the stage first) but they filled up quickly.


But I don't have any photos of Sean McCann dancing across the stage with the bodhran. Nor of Alan Doyle making up his own sign language to announce his bid for King of the United States.


Here from a greater distance is Eddie From Ohio; I don't know their music well enough to report on the songs in the part of their set we heard, though they sounded great (despite the name, they're local, from Virginia).


We met these two wild and crazy women on the lawn. They may wish to remain anonymous, however. *g*


Here are everyone's t-shirts for sale in the souvenir booth...


...and here's the upper deck of the Filene Center before the concert, for posterity.

Fannish5: Describe the five worst costuming choices in a tv show or movie.
I'm sure there are far more egregious examples from film that I'm not thinking of at the moment (not counting fun historical anachronisms like everything in Elizabeth or The Ten Commandments):
1. Seven of Nine's catsuit, Star Trek: Voyager.
2. Kirk's evil green wraparound, Star Trek.
3. Everything Inara wore, Firefly.
4. The nipple suit, Batman & Robin.
5. Guinevere's battle bikini, King Arthur.

I thought SGA was pretty well done until the end -- terrific performances from everyone but Jewel Staite who impresses me less the more things I see her in, and way outshone here as a character by Rodney's sister and by John...I know Elizabeth was not popular in some quarters as too much of a wimp, but from what I've seen, she would never have been so completely closed-minded about alien miracle cures even if she didn't want to risk the Wraith attacking, and the whole "I love you" bleeeecccch is the ultimate in bad TV romance writing, dictating a character's emotions to us that they've never shown us or justified through the character's actions...this rang totally wrong to me and I don't even pair Rodney with anyone else! I buy that Keller's his type (female, younger, not very bright) but not that he'd think this was love even when he was dying. John's refusal to say goodbye to Rodney sounded a lot more convincingly like love to me.

Also, SGA was outshone a bit for me by the SG-1 rerun that was on right afterward, which started with a discovery in a cave under Glastonbury -- I didn't realize they'd done an Avalon arc -- so of course I left it on. And then they revealed that Merlin built the device and gave up his ascended status to protect the other ascended Ancients, which just makes me grin. Plus it was a pretty good Sam episode, which I always enjoy.