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A Bit About Patrick Stewart

Bet you weren't expecting that, huh?

Variety today had a positive review of Masterminds, a new film in which bad guy Patrick Stewart gets outwitted by some teenagers. I read somewhere that he told his agent to get him any roles that were absolutely, positively unlike Capt. Picard, which is why his first movie after ST:TNG was Jeffrey.

What I like to tell people is that for over a decade I was convinced that Patrick Stewart was the most evil man alive. I first saw him as Sejanus in I, Claudius (a show that endeared Derek Jacobi to me forever and which got me to start taking acting lessons -- in fact, I'll just blame everything on I, C, including the name of my new computer, Nero), as Claudius in Jacobi's BBC Hamlet, in Tinker, Tailor, and then on stage in London as the title role in Yonadab, a play by the same guy who wrote Amadeus. In all of these he played the villain.

When I heard he was going to be the captain of the new Enterprise I said, "No, don't you understand? He's the most evil man in the galaxy!" Of course, Patrick Stewart is actually a very talented actor and probably not particularly more evil than most humans. But he sure had me fooled.

This is my week in the center circle of the Theater of Blood, the critique group for online journalers. Whenever I get a message from the list critiquing The Paperwork, it goes into my Paperwork folder instead of the Crit folder, because that's how I have my filters set.

Usually I don't read the group critiques until the end of the week. And now...I realize I'm scared to read them. Doesn't matter if they're positive or negative -- I'll either rationalize the compliments away or think, No, no, this person hates me.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

A mile and a half this morning: I babied myself, thinking that too much bouncing up and down would hurt my midriff.